by James Enge
But the arms carried the poison with them back into the wall. Now the wall began to ripple as the arms had rippled, expanding and contracting in pain.
Ambrosia jumped up and spat more blood directly on the walls.
Merlin came rushing in. “What have you done, you bad girl?” he screamed, just like he used to do when she was a child.
But she was a child no longer. She would have said, Old man! You have lived long enough! But her tongue hurt too badly to speak. But she was thinking it, and he seemed to read it in her face. In any event, he snatched up the crystal egg containing Nimue and ran away into his workshop.
Ambrosia grabbed a long serrated blade from the workbench and followed him. Behind her the walls continued to convulse and the fire continued to spread across the wooden floor.
Now she could see Merlin, through several arches, well ahead of her and running as fast as he could. But he was also having trouble hanging on to the glass egg; it almost slipped from his hands several times as she watched.
The fire was now running across the floor faster than Merlin or his daughter, and the gigantic snake or snakes forming the walls were writhing in agony. As they contracted, the inner framework of the strange house screamed: beams split and planks tore apart. A gap opened up in front of Merlin. He tried to dance away from it, but the floor was now sloping, funneling him toward the gap. He fell out of sight, still juggling the gigantic crystal egg.
He wasn’t getting away that easy. Ambrosia ran down the slope and jumped into the empty darkness, brandishing her bright, serrated blade like lightning.
CHAPTER TWENTY
End of Deceit
A day and a night gone by, and Aloê at last was ready to act. She and Denynê spent the time hiding in Fungustown. She found a little house with an overrun garden and a fountain, and a little stable in back for Raudhfax. She didn’t think it had been occupied long before it was abandoned—and, anyway, a nightmare or two was a small price to pay for the silence and emptiness of the streets around them.
She listened to Denynê’s story, helped her heal, and wrote messages. These she brought at night to the League of Silent Women—friends of hers for long generations—and they promised to carry them for her.
They finished a lunch of spring fruits from the garden. Aloê asked Denynê, “Are you ready?”
“Let’s get the bastard,” said Denynê tightly. It was probably the first time she had used so crude a word. Aloê laughed and they went out to saddle up Raudhfax.
They rode straight through the city to the domed Chamber of the Graith at the ruins of the eastern wall. Aloê dismounted, helped Denynê down, entrusted Raudhfax to one of the watch-thains on the steps, and then leaped up the steps and into the shadows of the atrium.
Maijarra was there, most senior of all the thains; she stood guard alone at the entrance to the domed chamber.
“Vocate Aloê,” she said, lowering her long spear and gesturing with it. “The summoners await you and your second within.”
“Thanks, Maijarra,” said Aloê, and strode past her. When Denynê had entered also, Maijarra shut the double doors and barred them from without.
The two summoners were standing in discussion next to the broken Witness Stone. Denynê’s orange-brown eyes were wide with interest: few outside the Graith had seen the Witness Stone, but she must have heard something of the terrible events during the last Station from her peers in the Skein of Healing. For all Aloê knew, Denynê had been among those called on to treat the spell-freed vocates. Aloê didn’t remember her, but there was much from that day that she didn’t remember, and some things she wished she could forget.
Bleys seemed to be desperately urging some desperate course; Lernaion’s dark, somber face was etched with skepticism. Bleys broke off at Aloê’s approach and turned on her in fury. “Well, here were are at your command, madam. I hope you find us prompt upon the hour and that we will not be rebuked for discussing some trivial business of our own instead of waiting in silence for your—”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” Aloê interrupted airily. In fact, she was as angry as Bleys was, or pretended to be. But she would not let him know that he had gotten to her. “What were you discussing?”
Bleys’ mouth snapped twice like an angry dog at the end of his chain.
“Tell her,” Lernaion directed.
Bleys’ bald head and bat-wing ears grew red as a sunset. He pressed his lips together, as if to imprison words within. Slowly, his color cooled to something not much more ominous than his usual pale pink. Sweat glimmered on his scalp as it cooled.
“Vocate,” he said quietly, “we are trying to make right what your husband made so wrong.” He gestured curtly at the Stone.
Morlock’s sword had shattered the Witness Stone into seven pieces. With astonishment, Aloê saw that they were now four. Somehow, three of the parts had been made to cohere—so closely that they seemed never to have been struck apart.
“Amazing!” she said in honest admiration. “Champion Bleys!”
The ancient summoner was somewhat mollified. “Thank you,” he said. “But the next step is somewhat . . . well, we are at a parting of the ways. We may have to choose between preserving the wisdom already implicit in the Stone or remaking it.” Then he said irritably, “Is that enough for you? Must you know still more?”
To needle him, Aloê said, “Perhaps you should wait for my husband’s return. He is the master of all makers; so the dwarven masters say.”
Bleys grew redder than before and seemed to swell up with angry words, but before he could say them Lernaion interposed, “The process is more like healing. When we heal a wounded mind, or a wounded brain, the process often involves forgetting. The Stone is not a brain or a mind, but it was made to work in harmony with them, and seems to function, or fail to function, in similar ways. Which would you choose, Guardian?”
“Heal the Stone,” Aloê said without hesitation.
“Yes,” Lernaion said. “I agree.”
“The knowledge of the past that would be irretrievably lost—” Bleys began.
Lernaion raised a dark hand and silenced him. “My friend,” he said gently, “perhaps you are too concerned with the past. It is for us to ensure that the Wardlands has a future.”
“I’m too old for this job,” Bleys said with a good humor that Aloê found surprising. “That’s what you’re saying.”
“We are both old,” Lernaion said, smiling.
“No one is as old as I am. No one in the world. So it seemed to me when I dragged myself out of bed this morning, anyway. Very well, Lernaion: I’ll heal the Stone, no matter what the cost. We’ll have need of it; you’re right about that.”
The Summoner of the City, not the oldest but the most senior of all the Guardians in the Graith, smiled with dark lips and turned unsmiling dark eyes to Aloê. “And now to your business.”
“The murder of Earno,” she reminded him. “Your peer.”
“Yes,” he conceded. “It is our business as well.”
“Not everything has been explained,” Aloê said, “and some may have to wait until you, Bleys, have healed the Witness Stone. But the murderer is Naevros syr Tol.”
“You surprise me,” Lernaion said gravely. He did not look surprised, but you couldn’t go by that: his dark, narrow face kept its secrets well. Bleys said nothing at all.
Aloê described the uneven course of the investigation, including the murder of Oluma, the way she had come to suspect Naevros, the rescue of Denynê from Naevros’ house, and then she displayed the original of Earno’s last letter with its bloody finger marks, the stolen spell-anchors.
The summoners heard her out without asking questions. They looked at the evidence with evident interest but did not touch or handle it.
The doors of the dome chamber were unbarred and Naevros syr Tol entered. Thain Maijarra peered into the room after him, frank curiosity in her bright brown eyes, but she closed the doors and barred them anyway.
Aloê did no
t bother to repeat her account for Naevros. She did not meet his eye or acknowledge his presence in any way. Neither did he speak.
“Well met, Vocate Naevros,” Bleys said finally. “The Graith’s vengeancer here claims that you are our murderer.”
Naevros still did not say anything. He seemed to be looking at Aloê but she would not meet his eye.
“Well, Vengeancer!” said Bleys. “I can lighten your mind by showing you that your suspicions are false. It’s too bad that you didn’t ask a few questions before you made this startling suggestion. Naevros was abroad in the Northhold before, during, and after the murder of our peer. He was seen by countless persons.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Aloê said. “I saw him there myself, shortly before the slain summoner left the North. But nonetheless, I think Naevros had left the North some time before.”
“You contradict yourself.”
“I do not. The Naevros in the North, the Naevros you say was commonly seen, was a simulacrum. It passed by me without a glance. But you can see how the genuine article cannot refrain from gawping at me.”
From the corner of her eye she saw, and with her insight she felt, Naevros recoil in pain from her words.
“A woman’s argument,” Bleys said dismissively.
“Yes.”
“It’s not proof, Vocate.”
She shook her hand, still holding the letter and the bags of anchors; they rattled like dice in a gambler’s cup. “This is proof. The kidnapping of Denynê is proof. The murder of Oluma is proof.”
“We do not know that Naevros killed your other second—”
“I saw him!” Denynê shouted, her orange face tinted dark with fury. “He was standing over her body with a bloody blade in one hand and the bag of anchors in another! He chased me down and knocked me out, and when I awoke—I—I—I—”
Denynê’s eyes became unfocused and Aloê guessed she was returning to those dreadful hours when she was bound, gagged, and blindfolded, waiting for death. She touched the binder’s arm with her free hand, and Denynê broke off, sobbing.
“Well,” Bleys said bleakly, “I don’t believe it. Not yet. Why should Naevros kill Oluma but not Denynê?”
“Oluma was his accomplice. He got to her somehow, just as he got to that woman who is the Arbiter of the Peace in Big Rock. Denynê, however, was true to me. He could not be sure what she knew, and he might have seen some value in questioning her to find out what she knew.”
Lernaion looked away from Aloê and glared at Naevros. His normally impassive face betrayed his anger and contempt. “Vocate Naevros, you shame us all. This was ill done.”
“I will make it right,” Naevros said quietly.
“Do so.”
Denynê lurched against Aloê and began to cough up blood. Aloê cried out without words and grabbed the binder before she fell to the floor. Aloê looked into Denynê’s tawny eyes, gaping wide with surprise and fear, and saw that it was too late. Denynê was dying . . . died . . . was dead.
Behind Denynê, Naevros stood holding a bloody sword in his left hand.
Aloê let her evidence—letter, anchors, dead witness—fall to the floor between her and the murderer.
“Won’t you finish the job, Vocate?” she said, looking him in the eye for the first time that day. Her hands were empty and open, waiting. If he moved to attack her, she would close with him. No one, not even Morlock, could defeat Naevros with the sword, but she liked her chances if it came to hand-to-hand.
He did not move to attack her. He endured her gaze for a moment and looked away.
“You were foolish to entrust your evidence to us, Vocate,” Lernaion said coolly. “Did you not think that Naevros might have accomplices in the Graith?”
“On the contrary!” Aloê said. “I knew that he did. For one thing, there was Dollon, the thain who tried to kill me. He broke his neck trying to escape when he heard Naevros’ voice: Naevros must have had some power of fear over him. Then there was Bavro, the thain who stole the palimpsest of Earno’s last letter. He obviously expected Naevros to come to his aid. Then there was all this magic.” Aloê disdainfully kicked the bag of anchors where they had fallen by her right foot. “That was never among Naevros’ talents. He needed help for it. I had hoped that it was only one of these women whom he can get to do anything for him.” She noticed Naevros flinch when she said women and anything—exactly as she had meant him to.
“But, of course,” she continued to address Lernaion, “I thought of you.”
“You’re boasting now, Vocate,” Lernaion said shrewdly, “playing for time. We—”
“‘Shut your lying mouth,’” Aloê quoted, and smiled in his face.
Lernaion froze. Then he shook his gray head sadly. “So you heard that.”
“I heard it.”
“It has nothing to do with this, really.”
“I would need more than your word, Guardian, to accept that as true. But it doesn’t matter. It got me thinking along these lines. Then there was the magic. That is, famously or infamously, one of Bleys’ skills. And you were both here in A Thousand Towers when the palimpsest was stolen. If the thains were merely agents, as I suspected, who was their principal? A senior Guardian seemed most likely. I suspected you both, but only one was really necessary. But now I see you are both complicit.”
“I didn’t know about Earno’s murder in advance,” Lernaion said mildly.
“But you approved of it after the fact?”
“Yes.”
Aloê did not expect this. She found she had nothing to say.
“We are not Arbiters of the Peace,” Bleys said irritably, “nor half-witted lawmen gibbering of justice in the unguarded lands! We are Guardians. We don’t judge; we defend. The Guard must be maintained.”
“You have killed Guardians and the Guarded. And to justify yourself you claim you have done it to defend the Wardlands?”
The two summoners looked at each other in surprise.
“Of course,” said Lernaion finally. “What did you think we did it for? Money?”
Aloê laughed harshly. “Or love? Is that what drew you to their noble cause, Vocate?” she asked Naevros. “Was that what led you to do their knifework? Will you kill me now, too, to protect the guilty secret that you share? And to protect the realm, of course.”
Naevros looked at her and took a step back. He put his right arm on the dais. He raised his sword and slashed it down, cutting off his right hand.
He held the spouting stump and the bloody sword both toward Aloê, as if they were a great gift. “Take the other hand,” he said thickly, as if he were drunk. “Take everything that I am. Take everything that I could have been.”
She would not pity him, not with Denynê lying murdered at her feet.
“What you are isn’t much,” she said coldly. “What you could have been, you cannot give me.”
He fell, unconscious, across the corpse of his last victim.
She crouched down and undid her belt. It would do for a tourniquet, she hoped. As far as she was concerned, he could die. She’d prefer it that way. But he knew things the Graith would want to know, and it was clear he would talk without much prompting.
“And so, summoners?” she asked, as she twisted the belt tight around Naevros’ severed wrist. “Your henchman is fallen. Your plot is exposed. But I suppose you could still try to kill me before my peers arrive.”
“So you have already spread the tale?” Lernaion asked sadly.
“I told you she would,” Bleys answered, sourly. “Nonetheless, madam, your peers will not arrive as soon as you think. We instructed Maijarra to admit no one after Naevros.”
“Maijarra is a good fighter,” Aloê acknowledged. “I’ve sparred with her myself. But my friends will be coming in force. Noreê is marshalling all her thains.”
“She is not the only Guardian with a personal following,” Bleys replied. “Had you not guessed?”
Aloê had not. But she should have, she realized: the ac
tions of Dollon and Bavro should have warned her.
From outside the door, and the street beyond, there were the sounds of combat. To maintain the Guard, Guardians were fighting each other in the streets of the Wardlands’ greatest city.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Chains of the God
Danadhar and Morlock strode down the jail corridor side by side. Deor and Kelat fell in behind them. The other freed prisoners, the Gray Folk, stood by and held out their hands toward Danadhar as he passed.
“Ar ryn jyrthin?” Deor asked Kelat in Dwarvish: Do you understand me?
“Yes,” Kelat admitted, in Ontilian. “The Regent wanted some of us to learn Dwarvish so that we could deal with workers from the Endless Empire. But I don’t speak it very well.”
“No one does—certainly not in my family. You have unsuspected depths, Prince Uthar.”
“So does your mother.”
Dwarvish mating practices made this insult pointless indeed, but Deor laughed politely and punched Kelat on the forearm.
They found their packs and weapons in the vestibule of the jail under a shelkhide tarp. The other prisoners waited, politely or reverently, until their saint had passed before filing out into the coldly luminous spring night.
One of them ran back inside—a youngling with a long jaw and bluish scales. “St. Danadhar!” he cried. “The Enemy! The Enemy is coming for us!”
From outside in the dark they heard the cries of terror and exultation, “Olvinar! Olvinar! The Enemy!”
“Morlock,” Deor said urgently.
“Yes,” said the crooked man. He drew his dark, accursed blade and ran out into the night, Deor and Kelat at his heels.
“Ruthenen!” Danadhar called after them, but Morlock ran on, slithering through the crowd of Gray Folk when he could, shoving them out of the way when he had to.