by Andre Norton
Nosh saw the Hold Heir tense and she herself jerked back the hand she had put out to aid him. Then Kryn unsheathed the fellow’s own knife, inserted it carefully within the hook of the neck cord from which the death stone was suspended, and pulled it free. For a moment he stared down at it, his features grim set, and then he nodded as if in answer to some thought, looking up to Nosh.
“You have the secret of the wards.” That was a statement, no question. “Can you take this back to the cell and plant it there?”
“What good will that do?” she countered, unable to guess the reason for such a risk of time.
“It will dust trail for us.” He used the metaphor of a scout and she knew what he meant—for she had seen the rearguard men on their trail from the refuge dust over prints to disguise the road. “This is not of Markus,” he continued. “There is more than one dark server in Kasgar….”
She caught his meaning at once. If there were any division of purposes and powers, for Markus to find this in place of his prisoner would indeed dust their trail.
Nosh caught up the thong which held the stone and slipped around the edge of a door she opened with the utmost caution. Then she sped down the hall to that other door, once more passed the ward, and opened it to toss the amulet within, where it would lie in plain sight on the stone floor.
She came back to find that Kryn had made good time in his stripping of the armsman, the mail shirt, knife belt, two bootknives all lying plain in the lantern light. He had rolled the man over so that he could pull the limp hands together behind his back and lash the wrists in tight bond. There followed a gag made of a piece of the guard’s own undershirt. He had not moved by himself or opened his eyes but still he was not dead, and Nosh began to wonder if the zark’s poison simply stunned and did not kill.
Kryn tossed her one of the bootknives and she thrust it in her belt, feeling some reassurance from the very grip of it in her hand. He held up the mail shirt and then put one hand to that metal band about his own throat.
“It was too much to wish from fortune that this one had the key for the unlocking of this….” he said.
A sudden thought out of nowhere crossed Nosh’s mind. She held out her hands, flexed the fingers. There was no visible lock on that collar to be seen. And certainly it had not been forged on. Then… there was some trick to its fastening—and just perhaps…
She made a quick movement which brought her to his side as he still lingered there on his knees. “It can do no harm to try…” she said, as much to reassure herself as to have him understand what she might do. Her hands closed about that rusty band, slipped along it while she called upon her talent to read in another fashion than she had ever used it before. Kryn stiffened and held his head up as far as he could to give her room for both sighting and feeling.
There! Right there! Her thumbs came together on the band and pressed while she summoned that inner strength which was a part of reading. Not—not straight—very well, turn a fraction… the thumbs moved and there was a click loud enough to resound through the dusk about them. The collar came apart and Kryn’s hands were swift to catch it by the trailing chain and drop it to the floor. Then he was pulling on the mail shirt, snapping the latches, reaching for the belt.
Nosh looked down at her hands for a long moment. This was the first time she had tried to use Lyr’s talent for anything else than the finding and judging of stones. Perhaps it was very true that with the addition of each Finger to her store the talent was fed, stretched, strengthened.
Yet there was something strange, too. Something she had sensed in that moment when she had solved the invisible lock—as if Kryn also had that which had aided what she would do.
“Put him back there.” On his feet once again, Kryn was lifting the shoulders of their captive and heading toward a pile of chests at one end of the room. Nosh hastened once more to aid him and then went back to take up the lantern.
However, another thought crossed her mind. That door through which they had come with their prisoner was of normal width, but as she swung the lantern around, its rays made clear for an instant or two that there were certainly wrapped and boxed things here which outspanned that opening. She had seen Danus’s warehouse and that had had another door—one opening directly on the way where carts had been unloaded. If this house, large as it was, followed the general design of Danus’s—and she suspected it did—then there might well be another exit, one which would serve them better than to return to the hall and the stairs where there might even be another guard now. She said as much to Kryn and he agreed.
So they struck away from the door through which they had come, threaded a crooked path among the piled-up goods in search of the opposite wall. Suddenly the zark gave one of its chittering cries and leaped to the top of the nearest pile of boxes, racing into the dark. Nosh’s hand went to her knife, even as Kryn’s dropped to the hilt of his sword.
They paused to listen—but all that sounded was the chittering which Nosh thought she would not have heard if the zark had gone to launch an attack. But they started forward with every sense alert.
Now the lantern did pick up a break in the wall. There was a ramp leading up, wide enough for the transport of the largest things they had seen here. And parked at its foot was a wheeled platform, which certainly must be used for the transport of goods. But, as Nosh swung the lantern out and upward, they saw the zark patting its forepaws against a door which closed that way.
“Locked—or warded?” Kryn wondered.
They could make sure quickly enough. The slope of the ramp was not impeded by any clusters of boxes and they climbed rapidly, joining the zark. Kryn ran his hands across the door. It was smooth of any latch or lock which they could see. Nosh thrust the lantern in his direction and placed her palms flat against the surface, hopefully calling on her talent. It could be that there was a hidden catch even as there had been for Kryn’s collar.
She sensed at once that there was a ward, but added to it a second sealing new to her. Catching her lower lip between her teeth, she concentrated on solving that puzzle. Kryn moved closer, his shoulder brushing against hers.
Nosh felt a queer sudden jolt at that contact and then—yes! She had it, indeed a second ward but it was already yielding to her will. She pushed with all the force she could summon to the use of the talent. And under her hands the surface of the door seemed to tremble—almost ripple.
Kryn added his strength to hers as if he sensed what was to be done. The barrier slid to one side but what hung in that slit—for she did not try to force it as far as the second ward.
“Take my hand!” she ordered and stepped confidently forward, sure that they would meet no resistance now. Again she had to give that extra tug to bring Kryn through, but it was less difficult this time.
They found themselves caught in the coming of night and standing outside the block of Markus’s stronghold in an alleyway.
“Return to Danus?” Kryn asked in a low voice.
“We dare not,” Nosh returned. “Markus would seek us there. We have one chance—though how good a one I cannot tell until we put it to the test.” Her hand had gone to her bodice where she had placed for safekeeping that picture Markus had left with her. All she had was her own speculations but there was no other choice she could see.
“You have been abroad in this city,” she said. “Can you guide us to the house of Lathia D’Arcit?”
“Lathia—the head of the gem dealers guild? Why her?”
Keeping it to as few bare words as she could, Nosh detailed Markus’s planned attack. “Where else in Kasgar,” she ended, “can we hope for any aid? If she will take our warning, then she is, in a fashion, debt bound to us.”
“Lathia….” he repeated, but with the tone of one searching for a memory. “Yes… but I must find the market and strike out from there. And which way is that?”
Nosh gestured. “We have but two ways—this to the right and that to the left. It must this time be left to fortune. Wait…
” She stooped and caught up the zark, turning up her skirt to stow the creature away in her pocket. She had no proper cloak; if she were sighted, she would be remembered, if not accosted.
This street seemed very quiet. Nosh was glad of the custom which sent the families in these great houses to their roof gardens for the evening. There had seemed to be, as she had observed during her stay at Danus’s, little roving of the streets by the respectable after dark.
“I have no cloak,” Nosh said. Kryn had already turned to the right and was striding down the short street at a swift pace. He was frowning as he looked over his shoulder to where she hurried to catch up with him.
“Stick to the side.” He jerked his thumb toward the building at their right. “Where there are doorways, take cover until we are sure of what is ahead.”
A feeble defense, Nosh thought, but there was certainly nothing else to be offered now. She shivered. Lacking the cloak as a disguise was not all; the night winds were chill and her Kasgar garments were not meant to be worn in the open without covering at such times.
They came to the edge of the next street. Here in niches of the buildings’ walls were set lanterns much like the one Nosh now carried. The light those gave tended to gather in pools, with longer stretches of the dark between.
There were people here and Kryn and Nosh remained in the shadow of the short street, Nosh having hurriedly blown out the lantern. They flattened themselves against the side of Markus’s fortress and waited. The pair of pedestrians coming their way halted some distance away at the door of a house across the wider way and their voices joined in boisterous good-nights as one went within and the other came on in their direction at a queer wobbling gait.
“Fortune favors us!” Kryn’s mutter was a whisper. “Wait!”
The man coming toward them wore the longer robe of a merchant of some substance, such as Danus donned at times of formal gathering. But he was wavering from side to side and Nosh suddenly realized he was drunk. There must have been a guild dinner at which they had dined very well.
Kryn let him pass and then with a leap almost as wide and noiseless as that of the zark he came up behind the man, his arm curling about the fellow’s throat so that only a very small choked cry sounded. Holding his captive hard against him, Kryn’s other fist—with belt knife grasped by blade—brought the knobbed hilt down in an audible crack against the struggling man’s temple. The captive went limp and Kryn let him down to the ground, his hands already busy with the latches of that outer robe, rolling the fellow easily about while he stripped it off. Then he jerked the fallen man closer to the wall in one of the darker patches well between lanterns and was back to Nosh, the robe bundled under one arm.
“Play the guildman—you might pass as the son of a wealthy House. Then we can go openly—House Heir and guard.”
He was very right. Nosh shook out the robe and pulled it on. It was too long but she could bundle it up by tucking it under her belt, which she loosened several notches.
Kryn lighted their lantern again and nodded to her to step out boldly. They walked away from their benefactor at a fair pace and turned as quickly as they could into the first cross street. Along the way they passed two other couples of master and armsman—Kryn had been right about the proper procedure—though why the man they had despoiled had been without a guard Nosh could not guess. That they were headed in the right direction was proved a few moments later when they saw brighter lights ahead and heard noises as if a crowd gathered. Though it was past dark, some of the die-hard merchants, determined to squeeze out the last of the day’s possible sales, were still at their stalls, apprentices and gearmen calling out wares in voices hoarse from the day’s service.
Under Kryn’s direction they skirted the open space, keeping to the inner fringes of stalls already closed. As far as Nosh could see no one even gave them more than a passing glance. Then Kryn took another street which was less used, and finally a third, bringing them to the flat wall of another house so large it spanned the entire block between two side streets.
The blankness of that lower story when the shutters of the shop were fastened down was forbidding. Their chance was so small, yet it was the only one. Nosh took the lead, for here she recognized the same general features as were a part of Danus’s establishment. With the shop curtain down there remained for entrance only the small door to one side where visitors after business hours could be admitted if wished. She went directly to that, pulling up the too-long sleeves of her robe to free her arm and hand.
There was a code—that, too, she had learned from Danus when she had accompanied him one day to another merchant to verify the gems for sale there. One who came for business did this and this…. Bringing out that plaque bearing Lathia’s picture, she gave the required number of knocks, rendering them as loud as she could against that door.
There was a snap, and a narrow peephole opened in the door.
“Who comes?” demanded the unseen viewer.
“One with a message of import.” Nosh tried to think of something which would convince that door guard. Certainly in Lathia’s house those in attendance would be ever on guard.
“The day is over; the Lady holds no speech with unknowns out of the night.” And that peephole snapped shut again.
Nosh had been eyeing the door. Lathia was said to have the strongest wards in Kasgar. It might just be that this door was warded so, and not locked and held. She could only try. Sliding the picture back into hiding she set palms against the surface. She could only hope that what had taken them out of Markus’s hold would work for them here.
There was a kind of thrumming to be felt—yes, a ward! She concentrated, bending all her will—strength. It was in a way another code, for she could feel the sensation of a snap, and then another and another, as she mastered each of those unseen ties. Fine guards, yes… but not against the Hands of Lyr!
The door, with a swish, slid to the right and Kryn was ready—the heavy blade of Bringhope swung up to hold it so. Nosh stumbled in and he was so close behind her that his body struck hers, sending her farther forward.
“Stand!” There was light aplenty here; they were well able to see that archer, arrow already to cord.
“We come in peace,” Nosh found her voice. “We have that which your Lady should know.” Sleeves of her borrowed robe swung as she jerked out that plaque with the picture. Turning it so the guard could see it clearly, she continued:
“This was in the hands of Markus this day. Ask your Lady what dealings he would have to hold such.”
“Parger!” A second guard loomed into sight behind the archer.
“Take that… no, you toss it to him!” he ordered Nosh. She could do none other than obey.
The second guard caught it out of the air as she tossed it and was gone through another door. But the archer remained at the ready. It seemed a very long wait, and the fact that so much depended on so thin a thread wore at Nosh.
It felt as if several night watches had passed before Parger returned.
“She will see these—in the audience hall,” he reported.
They moved forward, Parger leading the way, the archer falling in behind as they passed him. Nosh in a side glance saw that Kryn was holding out bare hands well away from any sword or knife.
Skirting what must be the side of the shop, they came on down a short hall and passed through the door at its end. Before them was a wide table and behind it a chair in which sat a woman not wearing the dress of her sex but rather the rich robes of a Master merchant of the highest rank.
She was of middle years and had a majestic form of good looks. Her hair was dressed high and there was the glint of gem-headed pins holding it so. On the long hands resting on the tablecloth there was a ring on each mid-finger, one flashing a rainbow of coloring, the other the deep gold of the finest of sun eyes. And between those hands lay the plaque.
“You are?” Her voice was that of one who expected answers, correct and quickly.
“I am Al
nosha,” Nosh answered, not knowing what to add to that.
The woman’s gaze was steady on her and after a moment she nodded.
“You have the discerning talent—I have heard. You came with Danus from the north but you disappeared suddenly from his house….”
“I was taken by Markus.” At least Lathia was willing to listen.
“Markus!” There was a hint of anger in that. “And you told Amgar that you brought this from there.” She gave the picture a push with a forefinger. “What kind of a coil is this?”
“One which was meant to entrap you, Lady. He plans to raid—if he can.”
Lathia D’Arcit gave a small sound of contempt. “That one has sought to bring me down for many seasons. What makes him feel that he may do it now? And what would he have of you? That you open wards… that is a trick, girl, which will bring you under the wrath of the Council.”
“He has collected certain gems,” Nosh replied. “They are steeped in black power. He demanded that that power be used against you, and he gave me that”— she pointed to the picture—“as a focus.”
Lathia regarded her for a long moment and then she snapped the fingers of one hand. Nosh heard a stir behind her and waited for the hands of the guard to clamp down upon her and then she realized that what they were doing was leaving the room. Drawing a deep breath of relief she felt more secure.
“Alnosha, there has been much rumored about you in Kasgar. Rumor and gossip supply many with occupation. And”—once more her finger moved to tap the edge of the picture—“of such use of black power I have also heard. You say that Markus has stones of the dark—how did he gather such?”
“I think through general trade, Lady. One such came into Danus’s hands when I served him. There may be many such in Kasgar. Unknowing, you may hold such yourself.”
Lathia’s lips tightened. Then she leaned forward a little, one of her hands rising to her throat. The gleam of a chain shone in the light and she plucked out of concealment a crystal. Nosh nearly reeled with the instant answer of what she herself carried. Her hands flew to draw out the bag as the heat of the gems seemed to scorch her flesh. Through the bag itself their burst of life nearly matched that of Lathia’s pendant.