by Andre Norton
The woman arose, her eyes flickering from that bag to Nosh’s face and back again. Then her own hands came up, wrist to wrist, palms and fingers back-spread.
“Long awaited, come at last,” she said. “Only truth can abide with you; therefore, tell me what I must know.”
CHAPTER 23
“These are tainted.” Nosh sat at just the same sort of table she had known in Markus’s house and before her were sparkling heaps of gems which had been hurriedly sorted. “I do not know, Lady, whether such call to others as the Fingers call,”—she gave a glance to the bag laid beside her and with it that crystal Lathia had worn—“but it is a matter which cannot be overlooked.”
She had found five of the dark-stained stones in the collection the guild mistress had had spread before her. Now there was a stir in the shadow behind where she sat, wearily resting her head on one hand, elbow planted on the judging board. Kryn moved forward… Lathia had accepted him for what Nosh had declared him to be. But he was scowling, and the head of the guild looked up inquiringly.
“Lady, there is another matter.”
“That being?” she asked him.
He spoke of the seller of amulets in the market and ended with:
“This I saw, Lady, some days past. There was one who came from your household—at least she returned to it, for the door she entered is that through which we came. She spoke with this man of dead stones and when she left his stall there was one less amulet. We think that more than the malice of Markus lies heavy in Kasgar…” He launched then into a quick report of the rathhawks with their stones, and the fact that one of Markus’s guards had worn such.
Lathia who had been pacing up and down the room while Nosh worked, stopped, turned, and stared at Kryn. “Of this you are certain—that one of my household took a death stone?”
“I will swear to it, Lady. I followed her from the market; it was your door she entered.”
“Ha!” She went to the door and pressed a stud near it on the wall. Nosh could hear the distant ringing of a bell. Then a maid appeared. She was old and apparently long familiar with Lathia, for she grumbled:
“It is past the middle of the night, Lady. Time for those of goodwill to be safely abed.”
“I agree, Varsa. Listen well; these two are honored guests but their presence here is not to be known. You will take them to the sealed corridor and see they are well served. Then return, for I have another task for you.”
They followed the maid through silent corridors. Nosh was wearied nearly past the ability to walk. Twice she stumbled and Kryn supported her. She clasped very close to her breast, hoping that their power would buttress her, the bag and that pendant Lathia had given into her hand. Five… She had five of the Fingers! Her mind clung to that.
There was another warded door before them but Varsa had the key to that and then they found themselves in a suite of very quiet rooms. The maid disappeared and returned with a tray of cold foods, and Nosh suddenly found herself ravenous while Kryn made eye-widening inroads on his share.
Nosh tumbled onto what seemed the most welcoming bed she had ever known, stuffing the crystals back into hiding before sleep overcame her.
But this was not sleep—it was a demon-haunted nightmare. She stood again in Markus’s house before the pitiful body of the priest of Lyr. And the down-bent head this time lifted of its own accord, so the battered face was close to hers. Behind him gathered a dark cloud and she thought that things were a-move in it. She found her voice and screamed!
Hands were on her and she fought that hold until her eyes opened and in a shaft of daylight saw that Kryn held her.
“The priest—the priest of Lyr—they tormented him to his death.”
“So it was the truth he foresaw,” Kryn said. “He was with me in that cell. When they took him forth he thought that he would not return. He…” Suddenly Kryn settled her back on the bed, his hands going to the front of his jerkin. And he brought out that queerly wrapped bundle he had taken out of the hiding place.
“This… he told me to take this!”
Nosh held up a hand to wrap around the one in which Kryn held that bundle. There was a surge—an unmistakable answer. Kryn uttered an exclamation and tried to drop the package but she held him fast.
“Open it…” she ordered. “Now!”
He had to use the point of his knife to hack at it, attempting to split the sealing which had kept it secure—perhaps a sealing also intended to conceal its powers.
Then there dropped from that grimy roll another shaft of crystal, this smaller than the others, but not to be mistaken.
“Six—one hand and the beginning of another,” Nosh crooned as she slipped her fingers along that shaft. Then, on impulse, she caught the hand which still held the covering for that Finger. Twitching away the grimed roll of rag and glue she touched the crystal to Kryn’s flesh. He jerked back and away.
“What would you do?” he demanded. “I have no need for powers…”
He stood up and walked away from her out of the room. Nosh sighed. Almost she had thought—the priest had trusted him—there had been, she remembered, that surge of power when their shoulders had touched and she had worked to break the door ward. Lyr’s influence had traveled far. There was Lathia D’Arcit, who had become a guardian—and the priest—there was that piece in the shrine. How many more lay in Kasgar to be discovered?
However, Kasgar itself had problems, as they discovered later that morning when Lathia joined them in the sequestered travelers’ suite in which they had been concealed from the household at large. They had again been fed—cold viands but good and satisfying—and were growing impatient with this seclusion, though both of them were well aware that they must stay close that some of Markus’s hidden corps would not rout them out.
What Lathia brought with her changed any vague plans which they might have half-made. With an impatient gesture she summoned them to her as if she feared even the walls of her own supposedly staunchly held house might be growing enemy ears.
“Look you!” Onto the top of a small table she tossed, holding it carefully by the thong on which it was strung, a holed stone. It was a grey shading to pink around that hole.
Nosh almost reached for it and then was suddenly struck by such a pull as made her reach for a chair back and hold on to that tightly, for fear she would be so drawn to that stone that she would have to pick it up, as part of her mind cried out to her to do. Yet that was evil.
Kryn looked down at it as one might thoughtfully survey a new weapon which he was not trained to use. Then he said in a low voice:
“Death stone?” That being more question than identification.
“But those are red!” countered Nosh, having herself now enough under control that she could approach the table, though she held her hands determinedly behind her back so that they might not betray her by reaching, against her will, for that thing.
“This,” Lathia said, “was found this morning about the neck of my cousin Indea. And she,”—the guild mistress paused, there was a grim twist to her lips and her eyes were very bleak—“is a babbling idiot, though only last night she retired to her bed a woman of skill and intelligence. Nor is she the only one to be so struck. Kasgar is on the edge of mob violence. There are others stricken down so, from gearmen and guards, even to the second rank of the Council. Death stone? What the wearers of these have had visited upon them is worse than any clean death. It would seem that their minds have been sucked, as one would suck the pulp of a janson fruit through a hole in its skin. What remains is… no longer human! And three have died within the hour of their discovery. We do not know yet how deep this evil has gone, how many townsmen and women have been caught in it.”
“The amulet seller…” Kryn said.
“Has no longer any stall in the market—at the second hour of the sun I sent a guard to see. He was not there. Nor did any of the regular stall owners know of him, from where he came—save he was supposed to have traveled with that forei
gn embassy the Councilers would not deal with—or where he went.”
“Markus…” Nosh started to suggest but already both Lathia and Kryn were shaking their heads.
“What you have told me, armsman,”—Lathia nodded to Kryn—“those noxious rocks were known where certainly no arm of Markus could reach. Yes, Markus would play his games here; he is a man of overwhelming ambition and ridden with envy. But this is not a matter of his ability—did you not say you took such a stone from one of his guards and left it behind just to dust your own trail? No, there is a far greater power than Markus’s working now in Kasgar, and we can accept that it means ill to all of us.
“Those ill-omened stones you found among my wares,”—now she turned directly to Nosh—“have been subjected to fire and then to grinding. Their dust is buried deep. But these”—she pointed to the death stone— “may be too perilous for any to handle.”
Nosh gathered her courage. She faced the guild mistress across the table and put out her right hand, keeping the left tightly curled about the bag of the Fingers. She did not touch the stone, only held her palm flat over it and closed her eyes.
That sense of pull which had struck her at the first showing of it was still there but to a far lesser degree; she could hope that the Fingers fought it to her security. She could pick up no picture—perhaps that was because she did not really hold it, but she knew what had happened. Somewhere someone having more power than she could dream of had used these as a focus and way to draw from those wearing the amulets energy, intelligence, perhaps—in the case of the dead—even the force of their lives. To summon such energy meant that the unknown one was either in fear or preparing for a strike, as the High King might so align his army for the best blow to be delivered.
So the amulets were not only used to relay information—they were deadly weapons in themselves. But perhaps it was far too late to save any of those who had surrendered to the blandishment of the marketplace sender.
“You feel?” Lathia demanded.
“Only the drawing. Some power has sapped those wearing such as these and taken to itself what it has robbed from its pawns.”
Lathia sat down suddenly, her eyes on the stone.
“We do not yet know,” she said dully, “how many have been stricken. Some of our leaders may be lost to us. Is this some ploy of a new enemy—one we have not suspected? We—some of us—have been aware of Markus. His power has been growing fast in the past year. But he wants no more than the rule of Kasgar— the subtlety of such things as these are not his. Then who…?”
Kryn stirred. His hand had gone to the hilt of Bringhope. “Lady, in the east the worship of a false god has riven from their places those of the blood best able to stand firm against a threat. The High King, who is no warrior by trade, has unleashed his army to march south into a wilderness where there is nothing to repay the loss of men and beast in such a venture.
“Does it not then appear that there is another who seeks in every way to bring down any who can stand against invasion before that invasion begins?”
“Invasion from where?” she countered. “The barbarians of the western plain have never been so subtle as you suggest in preparing for a raid. They are bound to quick raiding, not to outright war where they have to face trained forces. Your High King—does he intend to come over the Heights and take Kasgar—and in this season, which is the worst he could choose for such assault?
“Your false god’s priests have already been within our walls and gotten a flat answer from us—we do not welcome missionaries of their One here. So who?”
She sat silent a long moment and then put her elbows on the table and allowed her head to fall into her hands.
“Do we now,” she spoke very slowly as if she must stop to search for each word before she voiced it, “do we return to the legends?”
“Razkan!” Nosh could not have told why that name came to her.
“But he must have died long since!” Lathia flared in return. “It has been four—five—even six lifetimes of a normal man since he disappeared, leaving the wreck of a world behind him. You are of Lyr… strong was the power of Lyr but it was shattered in the last days of that wanton destruction.”
“Someone who has discovered the power sources Razkan once drew upon?” hazarded Kryn.
“Perhaps. But…” She shook her head. “What would that one gain by visiting this plague on Kasgar, from the meddling of the priests of the One, from the urging of the High King into suicidal war? Is it only destruction for its own sake?”
Both of Nosh’s hands were cupped about the Fingers now.
“Whoever moves—fears Lyr!” She knew that she was right. “Lady, I have six of the Fingers now—we need only four. I do not know what will happen when I have the full number of them—Dreen did not tell me. But she was the last full priestess of Lyr and she said my talent was meant for some great thing.”
Lathia raised her head from her hands and looked at the girl. Then she nodded slowly.
“Yes, that may be one thing to consider. Therefore, Talented One, the sooner you can get the remaining Fingers the better.”
“I cannot go about the city…” Nosh began.
“I believe it would do you no good if you could,” the guild mistress continued. “My crystal came from my mother and her father was son to a line started by one of the priests who fled the blasted shrine. There were a priest and priestess here in Kasgar, but they were versed only in the scraps of tradition and learning which had been hidden and so saved.”
“They are dead,” Kryn returned. “Markus saw to that.”
“So we suspected, but there was no proof, and none of the Council would move on suspicion alone. Therefore, I would believe, Talented One, you have already reaped all which lie within Kasgar. So you must seek elsewhere, and soon.”
“How do we get out of the city?” Kryn asked practically. “Markus will have his creepers out on our trail. He may already know where we are.”
Lathia rose. “That can be accomplished. I cannot send you with an escort but I shall provide you with the best gear I can.”
Her promise was quickly fulfilled. The elderly maid and one of the guards who had greeted them at the door drew in between them a large hamper. There appeared trail clothing of finely dressed leather with underclothing of first-weave cloth designed to stand up to hard usage. Lathia had been surprisingly accurate with her guess of sizes, for both Nosh and Kryn found it all to fit well. And to Kryn’s great satisfaction he was able to put aside the rusty mail he had stripped from Markus’s guard for a shirt infinitely better—while there was one of a smaller size ready for Nosh.
They were both trailwise enough to sort through the gear and supplies Lathia made free for their assembling of two packs. Kryn chose a crestless bowl helm but Nosh settled for a hood with an attached shoulder cape which could be pulled well over the face. There was even an air-holed pouch for the zark, the creature having been most warily eyed by Lathia and her people. She informed Nosh that indeed the lizard was poisonous but that its poison produced deep unconsciousness, and eventual recovery with an aching head as a reminder.
As Kryn tightened the last strap on his pack he looked to Nosh.
“How now? We can’t just walk out of here and make for the gates.”
But Nosh had faith in the guild mistress. “Lathia said there was a way she can show us. Do you not believe her?”
Kryn took up the traveler’s cloak he was rolling to be carried on top of his pack—unless they met bad weather he felt freer without its folds to encumber him.
“We have to,” he returned. But it was plain that his uneasiness was growing. They were served another meal and ate well, laying up against the time when they would be reduced to trail rations—though each had a fat pouch of those to hand also.
It was dark outside the high-placed windows of the room where they had gathered their gear when, at last, Lathia came in. She was frowning and it was plain that something had occurred which she found
disturbing.
Nosh’s thoughts immediately flew to Markus. But before she could ask any questions the guild mistress drew from the inner folds of her wide robe sleeve a small roll which she spread out on the tabletop, held it firmly flat with her two thumbs to display the lines on it to both of them.
It was a map with Kasgar plainly marked in the left hand lower corner.
“I would advise you to strike north and more west,” she said as they examined the lines drawn there. “The priests and priestesses of Lyr came over the mountains—that much my own family lore has said. But not all headed south. I would look for what you seek west, or north again. You have what will lead you…” She looked questioningly at Nosh.
“Yes. They flare when they are near their kind. Only once”—she glanced at Kryn—“did that not occur but I think it is because he who had it concealed it with something to defuse that light.”
“Keep off the caravan road. Yes, it is late in the season, but there are still travelers there. Those who might be moved to track you would expect you to keep to it as a guide. Instead, when you are past the walls, strike directly west for at least a full day’s travel before you turn north, and then keep as well as you can to that distance away from the highway as you go.”
“When we are past the walls…” commented Kryn. “And how do we achieve that, Lady?”
Lathia had let the map curl back into a roll which she left for Kryn to take up and thrust into his belt pouch.
“We of the great houses of the guilds have our own secrets. Kasgar has not always been a place of peace, just as it seems to be losing that peace again now. I must share with you a house secret, but ask also that when I call for closed eyes, you will obey until I say to open them once more.”
Both of them nodded. The guild mistress started toward the door and the two, shouldering their packs, followed her eagerly. They went back down a hall and then through a very large chamber centered by a long table along the side of which were tall-backed chairs. Another and wider door here gave upon an open courtyard in the middle of which played a fountain, the lace of falling water causing also a murmur of sound.