by Dave Duncan
The Mokthians had better horses and were setting a fierce pace. Gwin caught a glimpse of their rear guard on the next rise, with the towers of Om Balk in the distance. Then the road took her into a hollow and she lost sight of them altogether.
"Voice?"
Now what?
"I can dismount from the tiger, can't I? I can go home whenever I want?
You are a free agent. All I bring you is opportunity.
Good! Well that was settled.
So why was she so edgy? Because of Tibal's outlandish behavior? I gave Bulion my promise. I have never broken a promise and I will not break this one.
So there!
"You are troubled, Gwin Saj."
Gwin started out of her angry reverie and saw that she was again riding alongside dead-eyed Baslin Diblichith.
"I'm in love. You wouldn't understand."
"No. Is your husband not in love with you?"
"Yes he is, but he has many other responsibilities. He is going on ahead and I shall join him in a few days."
She thought that had ended the matter, but in a moment the Muolscath began again. "You will give up your Poulscath destiny for that man?"
"You have put the shaft in the gold. Very acute of you."
"Is that not dangerous?"
"Dangerous how? I'll be a lot safer back home than I will be playing world politics. If you mean I am putting the world in danger, then I don't agree. I'm not a general. I know nothing of warfare."
"I mean dangerous for him—your husband. You are setting him in the path of your destiny, and it may not choose to be denied."
She was startled. She had never thought of that. Baslin was emotionally dead and had a face like a pompous pudding, but he might not be as stupid as he seemed. She recalled that Wraxal Raddaith had been similarly Cursed, but he had retained all his wits. He had probably had a lot more to start with, of course.
"Voice? Will you harm Bulion?"
You anthropomorphize me too much. I am not a person. I am only your historical expression.
The sun was high now, dazzling and blazing in a cloudless sky. The wind was hot. Gwin shivered. "You are evading the question!"
Presiding genius would be an alternative term, perhaps, the Voice added thoughtfully.
"Preside elsewhere, then! I am going home to the valley and that is final! Hurting Bulion will not help you—it will only make me more determined! As soon as the treaty is signed, I am through!"
Ordur shouted. They were at the base of a long slope. Tibal had vanished over the skyline a few minutes ago, but now he was coming back. Fast, whipping his horse. There was something wrong in the way he was sitting... Gwin slammed her heels into Morningstar's ribs. The mare leaped forward, thundering up the ancient roadway. A moment later, Ordur went by her, riding like a master.
He was just in time to catch Tibal as he slumped sideways. The two horses danced madly. Gwin reined in and jumped down. She misjudged and pitched headlong, half stunning herself on the paving. Then the others were there—helping her up, helping Tibal down, jabbering at the tops of their voices. Little Pang Twoo took the Shoolscath with a surprising show of strength and lowered him to the grass.
"Tibal!" she cried. "Tibal, what's wrong?" She flopped down beside him. She had twisted her wrist and battered her knees and she could hardly breathe yet.
His eyes stared wildly in a livid face. His mouth twitched.
"Can't!" he mumbled, slavering. "Don't care!"
"Don't care what? What's wrong?"
Pang was holding Tibal's head. "I can't seem to do any good, Gwin Saj. I don't understand this."
"Tibal? Tell us what's wrong."
His voice was almost too slurred to make out. "Don't... care. Don't care what happens. Gotta... gotta warn you, Nien. Can't do this to you."
Gwin shuddered with a paroxysm of fear. "Warn me of what, Tibal?"
His eyes rolled, then focussed on her. "Can't watch you suffer. Gonna warn... ambush. Treachery..."
"Ambush?" Bulion? Riding into ambush?
"Fates!" Ordur said. "He's prophesying! He's changing his future!"
"Bulion!" Gwin shouted, heaving herself to her feet. "We must warn Bulion!" She located Morningstar. Jasbur was holding the horses. Gwin lurched forward, hobbling wildly. She tried to grip the saddle bow with her injured hand. Bulion in danger...
Calm enveloped her like heavy snow. Panic and terror drained away. It would seem that Bulion and the others might be riding into an ambush, and therefore they must be warned. She was not the logical person to carry the warning—she had hurt herself in her fall. Moreover, the attack might be directed at her and only the lucky chance of meeting the prince had made her turn back. For her to head back into danger would be illogical and inappropriate.
This calm determination was not her own reaction. The Muolscath was doing this to her; Baslin was doing this to her. She did not approve. She would tell him to stop it and he would have to obey her.
Baslin was already in the saddle. "Keep her here!" he said. "I will warn the others." He wheeled his horse and took off at a gallop.
Everyone watched his departure calmly until he was about a hundred paces along the road. Then they jerked awake. Wosion and Jukion scrambled into their saddles and galloped madly after Baslin.
Ordur threw an arm around Gwin from behind and clapped a hand over her mouth. She struggled in his grasp, trying to bite, kick, scream.
"Listen to me!" he said in her ear. "Baslin's the logical one to go. If he runs into danger, he can't be hurt. He can carry the warning as well as you can. If I let go, will you behave yourself? Promise not to give us orders?"
She squirmed, but he was impossibly strong. Then she saw Tibal—flat on his back, unconscious. She forced herself to go limp.
Ordur released her.
"He's gone," Pang said harshly. "He's still breathing, but I can't bring him round."
She limped over and sank to the ground beside him again. "Tibal? Tibal Frainith?"
His eyes had rolled up, unseeing. His mouth drooled, lips and tongue moved; no sound emerged except a vague cooing.
"He cannot understand," Pang said. "He cannot talk. His mind has gone, Gwin Saj. He has changed his future and lost all his memories. I cannot heal this."
Tibal! Oh, Tibal!
"Voice? What's happened to him?"
The Voice did not reply.
"Changed his future—just with those few words?"
The Ivielscath shrugged. "A few words can carry much meaning, Madam President. I have seen this in Raragash. He must have altered his whole life to be, so he does not know it. He knows nothing. His mind has gone."
She grabbed the unconscious man's shoulder as if to shake him. "Tibal, you idiot! Why didn't you speak up sooner? Why wait until the last minute, you... You coward!"
"Saj!" Pang Twoo was shocked.
"He let Bulion and the others go on, knowing there was danger!" she yelled. "All of them!"
"But he is a Shoolscath, ma'am! To change the future is suicide for him."
"One life for six—and the troopers! He should have spoken sooner!" She stared around, seeking help and finding only shock and bewilderment to match her own: Orth, Jasbur, Ordur.
Ordur heaved himself into the saddle. "Two messengers may be safer than one."
"Wait!" Pang Twoo scrambled to his feet. "It may be that Tibal Frainith has not yet made a significant change to his own future. If we put him on his horse and continue back to the city, he may yet recover his wits. Baslin's absence may not—"
"Go, Ordur!" Gwin yelled. "Kill that horse if you must, but go!"
With a clatter of hooves, Ordur spurted off after Baslin, who had already disappeared over the rise.
Jasbur screamed, scrambled onto her horse, and took off after Ordur.
Pang reached out to clasp Gwin's throbbing wrist. Cool relief flowed into it. The look in the little man's eyes was colder yet, though.
"I think the others will be all right," he said. "The fact
that Tibal did manage to change the future shows that the warning will arrive in time."
"Voice, is that correct?"
No answer.
"Voice!"
Still none.
"Maybe," she said. "But he may have changed his own future just by turning his horse. He may not have changed ours." Bulion's.
Had she destroyed her husband by seeking to revoke her destiny?
Tibal mumbled at the sky.
"He was a brave man to speak at all, ma'am," Twoo said stubbornly.
A book showed in the pocket of Tibal's smock. Gwin pulled it out. It would be his diary, of course. He was never without his diary. She discovered it was almost filled with writing, very small and neat. Only a few pages at the end were blank. She opened it at the first page.
Tibal Ambor Frainith,
Raragash
Personal and confidential
27 Poulday 96
This is my third volume. The other two are on the top shelf of my closet. I am starting this book on my favorite date. Five years from today I meet Nien for the first time, face to face. How am I ever going to live through another five years? Well, I see it's fifteen years since I was Cursed, so I have managed to get through three-quarters of my ordeal. Have I always felt that life would not begin until I meet her, or is the agony growing worse as the time approaches?
Gwin gasped and slammed the book shut. She looked at Pang's frown, and Orth's more puzzled disapproval. Then she turned to the back and discovered that there were no entries for the last two days.
Why not? She knew he never normally missed a day. What had been so bad that he had made no effort to record it? Shoolscaths could not foresee themselves changing the future... but perhaps they could tell that they would be tempted to. Had his thoughts been so terrible?
She thumbed back until she found the date she wanted:
27 Poulday 101
This is the day! In less than an hour I go to the Phoenix Street Hostel and meet her at last. She will be outside, sweeping the road with a broom, just as I have premembered her all my life. My diaries are full of her, even more precious now because from now on my time with her grows shorter. I grudge every forgotten second. I am shaking like a boy. I shall make a terrible fool of myself...
She slammed the book shut. "Fool!" She bent and stuffed it back in the unconscious man's pocket. "Idiot!"
Ivielscath and Ogoalscath stared at her blankly.
"Saj?" said young Orth.
"He expected me to..." She shuddered. Tibal had thought he could take Bulion's place! He had hinted, a few times. He had told her they would have a long future together. He had not dared to tell her openly, of course. Oh, no! Knowing that Bulion was destined to die today, Frainith Saj had stayed silent, expecting—eventually—to marry his widow.
"Oh, you fool!" she said. "You crazy, Cursed fool! You though I could ever have forgiven that?"
But Tibal had found the courage he needed... not too late? Please, God, not too late?
He would not be lying there if he had failed, would he?
What had her Voice said of Bulion? You have outgrown him.
"Voice!" she shouted to the sky. "I will do it! Let Bulion go home to the valley. I won't follow! I'll give him up."
The men exchanged frightened glances.
The Voice did not answer.
The grass and the road and the sky.
She screamed into the wind: "Voice! I submit! I will serve you, my Destiny! Just spare Bulion! I will ride the tiger wherever it goes!"
Pang rose and moved toward her. "Gwin, Saj—"
"You stay out of this! Oh, I'm sorry. I'm upset. Bulion will be all right, won't he? The Shoolscaths predicted he would be emperor! He must be all right. I mean, how could I live with my guilt if anything happens to him? Or Wosion and the others? And Tibal too? Spare them, Voice! I submit. I agree. Anything. I will ride the tiger!"
67
The sun was painfully hot on the fearmaster's back. The swamp's putrid stink was bad already, and would grow worse as the heat grew worse. Things crawled on his skin. He enjoyed discomfort. It proved he was alive, and a man. The dead did not suffer. The weak did not endure.
He was stretched out on his belly, his chin resting on his two forearms. The edge of the pavement was only three spans away. He could see the east road and the west road without moving his head perceptibly. A tuft of reeds in front of him trembled when he breathed, but even the patient buzzards waiting up there with Poul would not see that. Immobility was the secret of invisibility, of course. Every man in the sect could lie still for hours. They trained on anthills.
There was very little traffic on the highway. A large contingent of Mokthian soldiers had gone by a little while ago—incompetent part-men, riding right through a troop of Faceless without the slightest idea they were there. Had Ozion's orders been to kill Mokthians, they would have died without knowing how. HQ would be interested to hear about that delegation, though. Tonight he would send a runner back with the news. He was not short of spare bodies. Seven sevens were more than plenty to exterminate no more than thirty-five Nurzians. Given this sort of surprise, two hundred would still be a bloodbath. At three hundred he might start to worry.
He realized that there was a man lying close by him on his left. He began to turn his face that way, very slowly. Complete immobility destroyed men's ability to fight, so he had prescribed the usual exercises. Every man must report to his immediate superior at least once a day, and once to the fearmaster himself, and so on. They all knew what would happen to them back in camp if he saw as much as one reed twitch.
He studied the skull face at his side. He knew this one—the baby of the troop, face not healed yet, although he was actually two or three years older than some of the others. Promising lad. Took his medicine well. Wouldn't hurt to comment.
"Good," Ozion whispered. "That was very good, killer. I didn't hear a thing."
The boy knew better than to speak. He closed his eyes in rapture at the praise.
He opened them again, quickly. Ozion heard it too—hooves. His eyes shifted. A double line of riders coming from the west... pennants, too far off to make out the color.
"Stay!" he breathed.
Blue pennants.
"This is the prey. You get the honor. Repeat the drill." He was annoyed to feel his heartbeat rise.
A red tongue-tip passed over the whitened lips. "Saj, you say, 'Kill!' I jump up and throw my spear. First man this side."
"Correct. Relax now. Breath slow."
He could envy the kid. No man ever forgot his first kill. There was never anything quite like it again, and being point man would make it even better. The frozen horror on the victims's faces as death sprang up out of the ground, with the certainty that where that lone one had appeared there must be many more... Ozion savored memories.
A spear was a wonderful weapon. It could be thrown. It could jab. It could out-reach a sword or a quarterstaff. Swords were kids' stuff compared to spears.
The riders were coming at a fast trot, looming enormously high from this worm's vantage. Nurzian cavalry, all flashy trappings, dressed up like dowagers. Didn't even have their bows strung! Only eighteen or twenty, which was hardly enough for the boys to cut their teeth on. He'd been hoping for more. The one in front on the far side was a jackanapes in red, with a rootin' great plume on his hat. If Ozion only had time to spare, which he didn't, he would enjoy making the popinjay eat that plume before he died.
Some were civilians, all men. They looked like Zarda farmers, which was a disgusting concept in itself. The one in front, next to Red-pants, was a gross old white-beard. Why should a dozen of Nurz's best be escorting peasants and why did the dreadlord want them dead? Ozion had no interest in either question. His but to do, theirs but to die.
Here they came...
Feeding time for buzzards. Now! He loosed the slaughter. "Kill!" he said quietly.
Nothing happened.
He turned his eyes. The kid's jaw hung o
pen.
"Kill!" Ozion said sharply, almost at a full speech level.
Still nothing.
Fates! He'd have to do it himself. He gripped his spear. His muscles tightened.
Then the kid came to life. He was up and throwing in a flash. The victims' eyes turned in disbelieving horror toward this death that had risen out of the ground. His move was the signal. All around, similar skull-faced warriors sprang up from the sedge and the air was filled with spears. Horses reared and screamed. Horses and riders stumbled and pitched. Men fumbled for sabres, for bowstrings, but not an arrow was notched. Faceless raced forward with swords out. A few blades clanged, but the surviving troopers were hopelessly outnumbered. Hamstrung horses collapsed beneath them and then they were dead like the others. Blood, lots of blood. Two men made a break for it, heading back west. Spears soared and impacted. A few last shrieks. One riderless horse disappeared over horizon.
All done.
Not bad—it couldn't have taken as much as a minute. A babble of excited laughter rose as the tension dissolved. Men had retrieved their spears and were running around, finishing off horses, repeatedly jabbing the human corpses to make certain they were thoroughly dead.
Fearmaster Ozion strode forward, carrying shield and spear. The kid had not gone far. He was wandering around the slaughter, staring down at the corpses—just the civilian corpses, apparently.
"Killer!"
The lad jumped and wheeled around. "Saj!"
Ozion went close, spoke low. He hadn't quite decided...."You didn't move when I gave the order."
The boy's lips curled back in fear.
"Well?" Ozion said. "Any excuse?"
"Er... Buck fever, Saj."
There was gore on his sword; his limbs and face were well splattered. Once he'd started, he'd fought hard.
"And you didn't throw at the nearest. You threw at the officer."
If he denied that—if he said he'd aimed at the peasant—then he was a liar, and a dead one.
The kid's eyes rolled around and stared down at the nearest body. It was a youngish man, very large, very dead. They came back to Ozion.