by Andre Norton
One, at least, had wit enough to be suspicious. He called out something in one of the complicated river languages, reining back his horse, his closest comrades drawing in about him.
"Na ... Na ..." Modic raised bare hands in a gesture meant to reassure, following his denial with a stream of speech, each word gliding close to the one before it so that Rentam could not begin to pick out the few he knew .. . except one "treasure" ... perhaps that was akin in meaning in every speech, because it was a universal cry to action. Though for a moment or two it looked as if this one rider was not easily convinced, though those who had gathered about him fell into eager talk with much gesturing of hands and licking of lips. At length he, too, grunted, the bush of filthy hair on his cheeks and chin stretching as he made a spitting motion into the sand. Though it was plain he had no excess liquid to so void.
Modic lingered, fussing with his horse's gear as if making sure all was in good order... in the mean time giving quick glances at the men riding, two together, down that defile which marked the road. As the last one passed another dune some distance away, he spoke again to
Rentam.
"What is the threat which keeps you and your kind from such places open for looting? I have seen pieces of ancient metal, gems, and even bits of carvings offered for sale. Yet upon the asking they will always say that such was found in some miserable small ruin.
Have you never tried for Pospfer or Wejn or perhaps Slasta?"
Rentam hoped he controlled his surprise well. Why did this Seeker mark down the three worst cities of the old tales, places where in lay death in waiting?
"Such are cursed," he replied shortly.
"The abodes of demons, eh?" Once again Modic showed his teeth in a grin.
"How know you that it is not the dead themselves who rise to defend what they once held? What tales do your Speakers tell of these lands? That they were conquered one by one by a fearsome enemy? If that be so where is that enemy now? No tale of such an invasion has ever been told. Why strike your people at one portion of the land only?"
"These be the riddles all share, Seeker," answered Rentam. He was on his feet, testing the cord of the net which held his supplies.
"Legend says the death rode from the sky on a forked flame and where that touched the ground there was ruin and nothingness.. ..
The dead do not live to fight for what was once theirs. But the breath of the dying clings to the cities. A man breathes in that which will shrivel his lungs, and stands against the unseen which will eat the flesh from his bones. Some times even now a reckless far rover dies
so."
Modic fingered his bristled chin with two grimy fingers, staring after the disappearing men of his party.
"Breath of death..." he repeated slowly.
"Then we shall at least prove that right or wrong." From one of his saddle bags he pulled two cloths, the metallic smell of leif about them both. One he tossed to Rentam who automatically caught it. He watched Modic hang his cap on the saddle horn of his horse, shake out the material to pull it like a bag over his head. There were holes for eyes, and where the mouth would be a slit covered by a mesh woven of shining threads. Somewhat clumsily the guide followed the Seeker's action.
The heavy odor which appeared to waft from the material was so pungent that he began to cough and would have taken off the thing if Modic had not caught him by the wrist.
"Leave be, Betweener. That which you smell is a mighty spell against all which fills the air. I paid a full year of swording caravans to get those ... and had a heavy argument into the bargain. There only lives one in the river land who makes such now. He works from a very old picture and notes of how it is done .. . and those he will share with none. Still Amers of Klydul, wearing one of these, did ride the streets of Maksheeff and returned alone of his company."
"To die ten days later screaming that a demon within him gnawed at his heart," replied Rentam.
"Yes, we have heard the full of that tale."
"Only his demon was a potion brewed by his own second wife, that she might set hand on what he had brought back but would show to no one, saying that it was worth the war ransom of at least five lords. Also he intended to take it to the Fire of Venex for an auction," Modic returned coolly.
"It was not his travels which killed him ... only his own foolish tongue for he told wide and far just what he had gained."
The last of the riders disappeared around an upstanding rock spur, and now Modic swung into the saddle and flicked his riding lash at Rentam as a sharp-edged order to move. The guide was well able to match the ambling gait Modic's horse approved, it seemed that the Seeker must
still be in quest of landmarks. However he and Rentam followed the same path as those others.
Yet their rest had lasted longer than even Rentam had noted.
Now shadows crept out from the rocks and the chill of the open night, as the baking sun set, loosing winds which carried cold out of the western unknown. The far mountains were only distant blots against a graying sky. No guide had ever struck as far as to climb those. If
ever a Seeker had gone there he had not returned. Rentam pulled his cloak tidily about him and thought of the Seeker again and the tale which threatened all who were with him.
If Modic had even been to Maksheeff that was on a dream supplied by a night demon. Rentam padded on tirelessly and thought of demons. During his own few years and his strikes into the Dry Country he had never seen a demon. Nor had anyone in his village back to the first foray
accounts of their clan's coming, which Jawser the Blind kept counted in his bundle of remembering knots. Demons were talked of often ... but they were never seen.
Rentam had come to think that they must be totally invisible. Yet the Speakers who had the freedom of Above and Below had not reported them either. Thus they indeed might... if they still existed ... be able to shelter themselves on more than one level of dream seeing. That such would lurk in the dire, broken cities moldered half away by time was reasonable enough.
He felt a sickness gathering at the back of his mouth, born of the stuff in which his mask was steeped. Now he tried to raise the banding from his throat and spat a glob of greenish phlegm to the rock beside him.
"Keep that mask on, you young fool!" Modic's words were muffled but could be heard.
"See where we now stand, and you would give the ill which lies in waiting here a chance to get at you!"
The rock against which he spat he could see now through the dulling light of late afternoon, was not virgin stone but rather a tongue of what might be a buried building, pointed skyward. It was fashioned of small stones fitted together so that the cracks of their joining were
difficult to see. On the other side of the road was a second such hill; the width between certainly measured a space of entrance which might once have stood as a gate to a road four or five times as wide as those which were known outside the Dry Land.
Some of the sand was disturbed here, moved to show under red earth like unto any field where the keeps had little access to irrigation.
Where this appeared it was churned and marked by the horsemen who had proceeded them.
Also they could hear voices from ahead where the piers of stone grew higher and even turned into a wall which ran true for more than just a stride or two. Modic's men were gathered there, all ahorse, gazing about them as if they were not really prepared for this.
Ahead of them the walls arose abruptly. While there were cracks in them, they were not tumbled across the road. Those led to taller walls ... to buildings like unto towers such as Rentam had seen in ruin all along the border, as if erected hastily to help defend against what might come from the Dry Lands. These were broken here and there, after no regular pattern, by narrow slits which must have been intended to give watch sites for defenders.
Here, too, there was a difference. The sun had gone far enough down its sky trail now to lengthen shadows greatly. Only these were no honest shadows such as a man could trust w
ith his eyes. For from those wall slots leaked a defused blue light, thin, haze like not unlike, save in color, to that haze which locked trails in the dawn hours.
The men had stopped where four roads came together and there was an open space centered by an oval which was curbed waist high, perhaps in order that none could fall within its circumference.
From that also curled, in wisps like the lazy curls of a smoking fire, bluish swirls.
One of the troopers had looked back to see the two of them.
Now he gestured to the Seeker.
"Ho, Modic." They were not too far away for such a shout to carry, yet this greeting sounded as if it came from the other side of the sprawl of ruins, muddled and fuzzy.
"Ho, Modici" It was plain to Rentam that the Seeker was hesitating before, at last, he urged his sorry horse to amble on. Had the man actually sent this motley crew of his ahead to be picked off by any hidden enemy, thus securing his own entrance? Rentam saw him raise his hand as if to pull off the odorous hood but he did not complete that gesture.
Before they had yet reached the party there shot, from the heart of the ruins, a shaft of light, rippling color ... first the scarlet of man-blood, then the blue cast by the walls around. It reached up to the heavens, as if to provide a guide to a whole army of men even if
they did not have the keen sight of the Betweeners. Having shot heavenwards, it now twisted to the left, whirled just above the roofs of the still standing buildings, moving so fast that it wove a great wheel of light. They might be standing again in full sun, save for the colors that touched them, first blue and then red and then blue again.
Having once established this circumference the haze descended again by sharp jerks until it engulfed the upper floors of the buildings and yet continued to descend.
Modic swung from his horse, grabbing hastily at his saddle bags and a coil of rope around the horn. The horse had lost its early lethargy. It tossed its head as Modic left the reins hanging and retreated before the next circling of the light as might a man, step by step, keeping its head forward and up, while it whinnied and snorted and than gave a sharp cry such as Rentam had never heard issued from any mount before. Though he had not long to observe it, for Modic had caught his cloak-muffled arm in a grip which dug painfully into his flesh, and his light body was jerked by that hold into a pile of stone which was still connected to a standing wall on three sides. Then Modic flung himself down, perforce taking the guide with him, so they lay flattened on a stony pavement. The eye holes of the mask so shortened Rentam's vision that he could see nothing but a piece of wall, now red, now blue, and yet always bright at each viewing.
Perhaps he could not see, but hearing was not denied him.
Horses screamed. There were other screams, too. With the sounding of each of those he could feel the pressure of Modic's hand still lying heavy upon him keeping him down. The Seeker was mouthing words in his own tongue in a steady litany. Rentam recognized the name of one of the river land gods. Was Modic striving to make magic in a place already so ridden by the threat of evil? If so he was the greater fool, magic drew upon magic for feeding power, and somehow Rentam believed that Modic's spell speaking would only encourage that which was on guard here.
So the guide waited, as they lay together under an overhang of an ancient building which was like a cave, for that which would also seek them out.
There was no more screaming from the horses. Once they heard a clatter of hooves showing that one of the mounts was less panicked, able to flee. There was instead a whimpering which tore at Rentam's mind with the hurt and fear that it bore. Even that was done in time and yet they lay still. The colors no longer swept over the stone which was all Rentam could watch. And humming, which he had not been really aware of until then, was gone. It was quiet enough so that he could hear the two deep breaths... almost like sobs... which Modic uttered as he took away his prisioning hand.
Rentam edged as far as he could out of range of the Seeker's reach and sat up. There was still light overhead, but that was drawing together into the single beam which had first sent it forth.
About them the full night was drawing in.
Modic raised up, not to his feet but instead crawled on hands and knees to an aperture through which he could see to where the men of his party had gathered. There he squatted while Rentam leaned back against the wall, satisfying what had become a weakening hunger with a portion of journey rations he twisted off the tight cone of the stuff which he carried. He had no desire to view what must have been a battlefield of sorts. Now with his right hand he stroked the empty knife sheath at his belt. If he were to come through this venture ... alive ... he would need a weapon of sorts.
Perhaps Modic was saving him for a secondary sacrifice ... Rentam squared his shoulders back against the wall. The Seeker had now no followers, the guide was sure of that even though he had not looked beyond as Modic was doing. Certainly he had no armament which could stand against a circle of killing light. Modic was but a man without a following, no threat to Rentam's clan. The guide's hand crept out of his cloak and he began to feel about him in the growing darkness. One finger suddenly smarted and instantly he was feeling along something which had a knife's shape right enough, but lacked the smoothness of metal, even though it was edged, as more delicate touch suggested. He still dared not look at what he had found, but continued to tug the object loose from where it had been planted almost straight up with only a finger's breadth or so of blade already uncovered. Wriggling it with care Rentam kept his gaze on the Seeker, freeing the find by touch alone.
Modic, in this gloom, resembled a headless body for the bag mask covered his full head. He was breathing noisily ... as might a man who had been running quite a distance. Then he spoke, in a very low voice, which was so muffled by the bag, Rentam barely heard.
"The poor devils..."
Strange that he would mourn men he had sent to whatever frightening death the whirling colors had cloaked. Rentam could never understand this man. If one of his own kind made an enemy, and that was seldom, for their barren life was precious to the Betweeners, none worked out
such elaborate plot as this. Instead either of the two took their quarrel to the Speaker. There they talked, each telling what was in his mind and heart. Sometime it did lead to a battle with the hands and there would be hurts to tend. But death never entered in ... that was too familiar a visitor on its own to be deliberately summoned.
Now Modic had stripped himself of his main threat, the men who rode in this train. There was certainly that between him and Rentam which sooner or later would lead to open confrontation.
The guide was not afraid but he accepted wariness to be a part of his thinking and planning from this time forth. He had freed the thing in the earth. Glancing up now and then to make sure that
Modic was paying no attention, he brought it forth, holding it under one of the flaps of his cloak to examine it more clearly.
It was, he believed, made of stone ... but not the same as that which formed the buildings moldering around them. As long as his thin forearm it was a blade with a butt end surely intended for a hilt and a sharp point. The tip of that had been broken off, but the remained
possessed a cutting edge. This was a shimmer of color.
As the defense of the city had been red and blue interweaving, so this was a gray-white, in the depths of which showed gem beauty, red, golden, green, blue. Those colors moved when one turned the blade from side to side. Had Rentam seen this cut into gem size, he would have believed he had a fortune in his hand. As it was he shoved it quickly back into full hiding. Hoping to have escaped Modic's eyes he slipped the blade into an inner loop of his cloak.
However, as Rentam dropped his fingers from the hilt, he was still aware of a tingling, a prickling. Modic had not moved. He had thrust head and shoulders as far as he could through the spy hole he had chosen. For a space there was quiet between them. Rentam viewed the ruins about him, trying to guess what had been the original u
se of this now vanished building. At the same time, with the patience of a Xole caught waiting to make a heo prey he began a new search with his long prehensile toes trying to discover if any more treasure lay beneath the scum of wind-driven sand. His claws raked across the rock which appeared to be a flooring but each piece of that he so located was firm set and could not be lifted out. If another one of these gem-bladed knives awaited discovery it would take more time and perhaps a lot of extra digging to uncover it.
As Modic moved Rentam ended such exploration. The Seeker drew back from his hole and untied his bag mask, signaling Rentam to do likewise.
"There is naught to fear ... for now!" Sweat had plastered his greasy hair flat to the skull, and small trickles of moisture made their way down, to drip from his square chin.
"You have been here before...." Rentam spoke aloud the suspicion which had been growing in him ever since the Seeker had waved on his men and taken a slower pace.
"No!" Modic sounded overly emphatic in that.
"No!" His hand went to the breast of his thigh-length over robe where he had put the map stone for safe keeping.