In his library, An-Shai, linked to the two outlanders by their shared experiences in the overmind, clutched at his chest as Adelinda’s terrible pain seared through his own heart. For a moment, he thought he was suffering a heart attack, and his panic intensified Adelinda’s guilt and Len’s remorse, but then he recognized the source of the feeling, and an expression of cruel triumph wiped out the rage and disappointment on his face. Now was the time! Now, when she was reeling from the blow Len had dealt her, he could crush her free spirit and reduce her pride to submission. But he had to move quickly.
He thought furiously. Then he dashed to the palace kitchen and snatched half a dozen sharp knives from a drawer, ordered a powerfully built palace servant to come with him. In his bedroom, he gathered some of the soft, thick ropes used to belt a bishop’s robes. As he strode through the library, he brusquely ordered Li-Mun to follow him.
He burst into the prison room, throwing the knives and ropes down on the sleeping bench by the door. Adelinda was
turned sideways on the bed-shelf, her feet drawn up, her face hidden on her upraised knees. Len sat near her, his hand on her shoulder, speaking comfortingly to her. Crossing the room in two giant strides, An-Shai grabbed the front of Len’s shirt and yanked him to his feet with enough force to snap his head on his shoulders. Spinning the young man around, he caught his head in the crook of his arm chokingly.
Adelinda raised an astounded face and came to her feet. “What are you doing?” she cried protestingly.
An-Shai ignored the woman. “Strip him,” he snapped. Li-Mun, confused but obedient, moved to obey. Len kicked weakly at him and was choked nearly to unconsciousness for his efforts.
Adelinda came forward. “Please, Your Grace, you’re hurting him!” She grabbed his arm imploringly.
She was shaken off with enough force to send her staggering. “Hold her,” he ordered, and the servant grabbed her elbows from behind, twisting them and forcing her to watch the action in the middle of the room. When Len’s clothing was removed, An-Shai flung him onto the table with enough force to send it skidding across the room under its burden. Regaining his grip on Len’s windpipe with one hand, and pinning him cruelly to the table, An-Shai, immensely powerful in his rage, used the other hand to wrench Len’s arm down and hold it next to the table leg. “Tie him,” he snapped at Li-Mun. “Tie him tightly. He’s going to be thrashing around.”
“The circulation will be cut off,” protested Li-Mun.
“It won’t matter,” said An-Shai, his voice as deadly as a viper’s sting. “It may even be better. Tighter!”
Mouth set, Li-Mun did so, and repeated the procedure on the other three limbs. The small table only supported Len’s body from his knees to his shoulders; with his wrists and ankles tied to the legs, his head lolled uncomfortably off the edge.
“Bring her here,” said An-Shai, when the tying was done and he had gotten the knives from the bench and returned to the table. Li-Mun shoved Adelinda forward, until she faced An-Shai across Len’s helplessly sprawled body. Deliber-
ately, watching her horrified face, An-Shai placed one of the knives under Len’s chin, pierced the skin with a quick jab, and drew the blade down his stretched throat, down the center of his chest, and down his hollowed belly. The skin parted neatly in the knife’s wake, showing the membranes beneath. An-Shai contemplated his handiwork, made a quick second cut at a place where he had not quite cut through the skin. Len was laid open as if prepared for skinning. There was surprisingly little blood from the shallow gash. The bishop had been careful to avoid cutting deeply enough to do any real damage.
An-Shai took another knife and looked up into Adeiinda’s dilated gray eyes. “Let me describe to you what I intend to do,” he said with the same deadly evenness. “I won’t kill him. I’ll just cut off a few bits that he doesn’t really need. Ears are really unnecessary, and noses, and fingers and toes. Without fingers and toes, hands and feet aren’t much use. I wouldn’t want him to suffer from seeing his ugliness, so his eyes will have to go. He won’t have much to say to anyone, so his teeth and tongue will no longer be necessary. The sound of his own screaming might distress him, so bursting his eardrums will be a real kindness. What priest, however compassionate, will give a marriageable girl to a hulk like that? His genitals will only be a burden to him, so they’ll have to be removed.” He paused to see what effect his words were having. Adelinda was breathing in gasps, perspiration beading on her wax-pale skin. “And then I’ll let you go, just as you’ve asked. Freedom was what you wanted, and if the price is a little high, well, anything worth having is worth paying for. You can even take your friend with you, although what use he’ll be, blind, deaf, mute, crippled, and castrate, I don’t know. But he’ll be free.”
“No,” said Adelinda. “No, please.”
“No? But I thought freedom was precious to you.” Adelinda looked wildly around the room. Her eye fell on Li-Mun’s face. The secretary looked horrified and revolted, but there was not a shred of doubt on his face that the bishop would do what he said he’d do. Len moaned, whether in pain or terror, she couldn’t tell. Using the new sensitivity that had developed in the overmind, Adelinda reached out desperately to An-Shai with her mind. She encountered only boiling rage and implacable purpose. Her gaze fell to Len’s agonized body. Bitter defeat welled into her shuddering soul. She could not let An-Shai do those things to Len, not at the cost of her pride or her soul or even her very selfness. “No,” she said dully. “Not that precious. Please, don’t hurt him.”
An-Shai straightened. Triumph blazed from him like a great white-hot light. Adelinda cowered from the impact of his victorious exultation, and Len whimpered. She groped for the words to express her final capitulation, while An-Shai waited, a grim anticipatory smile upon his lips. It was not easy to find the words; her surrender must be total, for he was quite capable of carrying out his threats if he thought she was withholding any crumb of heart or mind or soul.
Then one of Orvet’s supernatural allies entered into the room. There was a high keening wail, and An-Shai jerked around in astonishment to find himself facing a specter of a kind completely unknown to him. It was a female figure, draped in flowing robes, flickering eerily. Its hand was raised and the clawed forefinger pointed accusingly at him. The face was a mask of sorrow, but what sent An-Shai reeling back was that the thing wore his face, mournful, feminized, but recognizable. “An-Shai!” the specter mouthed. “Ah-Shai, I have come for you. You will never be free of me again. I am Erinys, who comes to those who willfully do great evil.”
An-Shai recovered from his astonishment. He gathered energy into his hands and flung a small clot of it at the apparition. “Begone!” he commanded. “Go back to wherever you come from. I do no willful evil.”
The clot of raw power passed harmlessly through the specter and dissipated. “No,” it wailed. “I will never go from you. You have chosen the wrong when you well knew the right. Wherever you go, I will be. Whatever you do, look beside you and I will be there. In your waking and sleeping, in going out and coming in, in illness and health, I will be, for I am An-Shai.”
An-Shai bowed his head for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts, then, raising it and looking directly at the specter, spoke one word. The word had no meaning that any of those present knew, but the walls quivered when he spoke it and little gray flecks danced for a moment in the air. The specter ignored his efforts. The accusing outstretched forefinger did not waver in its steady inclination.
Adelinda wrenched away from the paralyzed servant and began to untie the bonds that held Len and help him into his clothing. An-Shai saw her out of the comer of his eye. “That won’t help you. It will be easy enough to tie him up again.” The Erinys gave such a mournful shriek of sorrow at his words that he shied like a startled colt.
“Are you going to follow me around and scream whenever I try to say something?” he inquired, with irritation.
“Oh, evil, evil,” mourned the specter. “Shame and sorrow,
for evil knowingly done.”
“I have done no evil! Whatever I have done has been for the best interests of everyone concerned,” he said vehemently. “Shriek as much as you like, or go back to whatever hell you came from. I don’t care. I will do what I must however much you scream.” He turned and strode across the room to where Adelinda was supporting a trembling Len. He wrenched them apart and cast the wobbly-kneed Len aside as if he were a bit of trash. He took Adelinda’s upper arms in a firm grip. “We have business to finish, we two,” he said grimly. “You were about to decide how many pieces of Len’s person your freedom was worth.”
“Oh, sorrow, sorrow, for destruction of souls and goodness turned to evil,” cried the specter.
Even more sensitive to him now that he was touching her, Adelinda reached out again to contact An-Shai. He had been startled and upset by the Erinys; the shield of cold implacability slipped for an instant and Adelinda perceived with amazement that there was no hatred in him, either for her or Len. In fact, she caught a glimpse then of the image An-Shai had been so careful to hide, even from himself, of Adelinda turning to him in joy and gratitude and himself taking her gently in his arms to comfort and protect. Then the curtain snapped back into place.
Adelinda realized that An-Shai failed to understand his own feelings. It would be easy to force him into a position where he would think he had to carry out his threats against
Len. She knew that he would regret it; she had caught the merest glimpse of the shuddering distaste his own intentions aroused in him. She looked into his implacable face and opened her mouth. And then the world disintegrated. Or so it seemed for a moment. There was an ear-shattering groan, a creak, and a snapping sound. The floor lurched under their feet and fell, sliding sideways as it did so. The walls leaned crazily and cracked right across, and chunks of lath and plaster plummeted from the ceiling. The whole room bumped and slid, stuck and slid again, lurching downward with a mad staggering. The occupants of the room were sent sprawling, except for the Erinys, which never deviated its pointing forefinger from the bishop, no matter where he was thrown.
The south wall of the room split open like a melon, and the movement stopped except for the rain of displaced plaster and settling snaps and creaks. There was a confused shouting, a clattering of hooves, and then Tobin was peering in the crack in the wall. “Here they are,” he shouted. Scrambling through the crack, he pulled Adelinda to her feet, shoved her toward the opening, and turned to help Len.
As Li-Mun pulled himself waveringly to his feet and rushed over to help the groaning An-Shai, Orvet’s head popped into the crack. Adelinda came staggering dazedly into his arms, and he caught her and supported her, pausing for an instant to look at the Erinys, surprised comprehension on his face. Tobin scooped up Len and carried him to the crack, maneuvering him through the narrow opening with Ina’s help.
Adelinda could have wept with joy when Orvet half supported her to the side of a familiar red-brown horse, saddled and packed. “Can you ride?” he asked her, and Red Hawk whuffled a greeting.
“I can, but look to Len. He’s weak.” Orvet boosted her into the saddle and turned away to Tobin, still carrying Len in his arms.
“What’s the matter with him?” Orvet asked.
“I don’t know. He doesn’t weigh any more than a new calf. Look at this.” Tobin held the limp body so that Orvet could see the cut inside the partly open shirt.
An-Shai came staggering out of the crack in the south wall of his palace, bellowing for his servants, accompanied by the Erinys, dim and insubstantial in the sunlight. Orvet glanced at the ruin, assessing the enemy’s condition. Karel’s plan had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Cantilevers were not used in the Kingdom, and without realizing it, Tobin had fastened the trace chains to the projecting ends of those great beams that supported the south wing. When thirty greathorses had lunged against their collars, the cantilevers had acted like enormous skids, and the whole wing of the palace had been jerked down the slope like a titanic stone boat. Now it was disposed crazily on the grass, drunkenly leaning in a dozen different directions.
“He has to ride. The bishop’s going to get everything organized in a few minutes. Let’s get him onto his horse. Len, hold on to the saddle. Can you hear me?”
Len moaned. Karel came galloping up on Dusty. “Everyone get mounted! We’ve got to ride now!”
Orvet scrambled onto his own mount, and guided it alongside Len’s mare, reaching out to steady him on her back. Tobiil took the reins, and the cavalcade wheeled out of the meadow before the palace and headed for the eastern trail to the ocean. Karel came galloping back again. “Not that way!” he yelled. “The way’s blocked by the farmers who came to see the demonstration. We’d have to cut our way out with sabers and lances.”
“Where, then?” shouted Orvet.
“The west trail. We can turn north and bypass the head of the Vale once we’re clear.” He spun Dusty on his hocks and led the way at a reaching canter for the trail they had followed when they hunted down the night stalkers.
Chapter 14
It was cold, and dry, and the grit-laden wind blew eternally. Len had to be helped to mount and dismount, though he clung doggedly to his saddle. His wound refused to heal, subjected to the constant chafing of the many layers of clothing they all wore against the paralyzing chill. Time and again they turned to the east, only to be balked by An-Shai and the twenty soldiers he had hastily mounted on great-horses. He knew where they were and even had a general idea of what thier plans might be, since he was in constant contact with Adelinda through the overmind. He could not discern her thoughts, but he felt her feelings as if they were his own, and it was less of an advantage to the outlanders, struggling through unknown territory, limited in their choices of action, that Adelinda was also aware of An-Shai’s feelings. In any case, all she picked up from him in those desperate days were deep-burning anger and implacable determination.
Len, too, was aware of the feelings of the other two, but he was so sunk in misery and weakness that he was only distantly conscious of his surroundings much of the time.
The outlanders had one real advantage: their horses. Tough, enduring, their wiry mounts kept going day after day through hardships that would have killed lesser animals. Subsisting on the bleached scattered grasses, often thirsty, their once-glossy coats dulled with privation and their proud heads carried low, the mountain horses kept up their ground-eating walk hour after hour and day after day.
Each night in their comfortless camps, the first care of each rider was for his horse’s well-being. If the horses were lost, the riders were doomed, and they all knew it. Even Len, burning with fever, did what he could for his mare. The others walked, leading the horses to spare the animals’ strength.
An-Shai’s greathorses suffered terribly. The soldiers who rode them knew nothing of the care of horses. Ignorant as they were, they assumed that the greathorses, being bigger, must be faster and more enduring. They spent their mounts lavishly at first, only to find the outlanders melting away like mist before them, as elusive and as untouchable as any specter. An-Shai himself knew better; his brief experience as a horse had given him a unique appreciation for the huge creatures’ limitations, but his knowledge was not equal to the task of caring for them.
But even the amazing endurance of the mountain horses was nearly at an end when the outlanders made a dry camp in a little swale that offered partial protection from the sear-ingly cold wind. They had been turned back once again from an attempt to ride east to the ocean, and worse yet, had found a guard placed upon the only water hole they knew of for many miles. They were thirsty, and near exhaustion as they huddled together like sheep for the warmth, Len in the favored center. Discouragement was as much a burden to their spirits as their physical ills. (An-Shai, some miles away, exulted to feel how near his adversary was to surrendering to despair.)
“What are we going to do?” asked Tobin, at last. “We can’t get past them to the ocean and we can
’t get to the water.”
“We’ll have to fight our way out,” said Karel, but not as one offering a real hope.
“What, the six of us against all of Godsland? We might as well have stayed in the Vale and learned to be good little serfs.”
Through cracked and bleeding lips, Len, his eyes bright with fever, said, “You don’t know what you’re saying. We’re better off out here if we all die. I say we ride west.”
“Into the desert? We don’t know the routes or where the water is to be found. Winter’s coming on, and we don’t have supplies to last another week, much less until spring,” said Tobin. Ina began quietly to cry.
“No,” said Adelinda, decisively. “If I turn myself over to An-Shai, he’ll let the rest of you go. This is my fault. I’m the one who has to do something about it.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Karel, sharply. “First of all, he wouldn’t let the rest of us go. And secondly, what he’d do to you doesn’t bear thinking about. He’s gone mad. He must have, to have chased us so long.”
“He wouldn’t hurt her,” said Len, drawing the stares of the rest of the group. Manifestly none of them believed him. Adelinda stared pensively at the ground. “It’s too important to him to break her spirit. He’d use the rest of us to do it without a thought, just like he tried to use me.”
“Len’s right,” said Orvet. “Adelinda turning herself over to him wouldn’t help us. I think we have to turn west. The desert can’t go on forever, and we can swing to the north in the spring. We’re off the edge of the maps Karel made already; we must be at the farthest western edge of the known part of Godsland.”
“That’s right,” concurred Karel, grimly. “An-Shai won’t be able to follow us, either.”
“What makes you think that?” challenged Tobin.
Karel gestured at the huddled little herd of horses that loomed against the starlight, too tired even to eat the sere grasses. “Our horses are almost spent. His must be nearly dead. He can’t follow us into unknown wasteland on foot.” “He will, though,” said Adelinda. She well knew the quality of his determination.
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