by Tim Stead
“It is worth trying. I will send someone to fetch what you suggest, and then we shall see.”
“Can I get out and unbend my legs for a minute? This box is a torture. I will hide the knife.”
“As you wish, but we must not be still for too long.”
She stepped down into the street and looked about them. It was an ordinary looking street, lined by small, brown houses, each set back ten paces or so from the thoroughfare. The spaces before them were fenced and paved for the most part and each was dominated by a pole about a foot thick, rising some twenty feet into the air. At about head height the poles were painted in coloured rings, and each house had different colours. When she looked carefully at the nearest pole she could see random carvings – not covering the wood, but scattered about the surface. They were about the size of a hand, and each was a representation of a creature. Some looked mild, others fierce, some almost human, others quite definitely not.
Alder spoke to one of the soldiers while she was examining the poles, and the man set off at a run. He came over to where she stood.
“I have told him to meet us elsewhere. He will bring what we need,” he said.
“The poles…” she began.
“There is not time,” he said. “They represent family, allegiance, gods, but you could study them for a lifetime. Some have. Now we must move again.”
She climbed back into the cushioned box and was shut up once again. She withdrew her knife from a pocket and ran her finger along the blade.
“Show me again where Raganesh is hiding.” The blade moved. “Left,” she said. “Always left.”
They carried on, moving in slow loops through the city. They were not circles, though. They never seemed to travel the same streets. Felice guessed that they were slowly moving towards the gate, and that they would arrive there at the end of the day with the crowds leaving the town for their villages.
The palanquin stopped again, and Alder lifted the curtain. He passed her a map and a small, smooth stone. “Speak to the stone as though it were my ear,” he said. “I think you will have some trouble with the map.”
She looked at it and realised that she could not read a word that was written on it. The writing was meaningless – an alphabet she had never seen.
“I will manage,” she said. “Show me where we are now.”
Alder pointed.
She held Pathfinder loosely in her hand so that it dangled lightly above the map.
“Can you do it?” she asked the knife. “Show me where Raganesh stands. Point to the map.” The knife swung loosely for a moment, without purpose. She worried that it would fail, that Pathfinder could not do this, but a tremor felt through her fingers told her that it was moving, pointing.
Alder looked on apprehensively, and compared his own map with hers.
“It is only three streets away,” he said. “I will take half of the soldiers with me. The rest will stay to guard you.” He was gone.
Now she was alone. She could not even tell the soldiers to stop or change direction. They were moving in a pattern, as instructed by Alder, imitating their previous movements. The knife point moved.
“He is moving south,” she said, “down a short street to a junction of three ways.” There was no reply from the stone. It lay in her lap, and she wondered if it was working. She watched the point of the knife trace Raganesh to the next junction, where it paused, then bore left again.
“He had reached the junction and taken the left hand road,” she said. The palanquin turned again, taking a left. She was uneasy about her isolation, and lifted the curtain for a moment. She saw the same thing she had seen before, brown houses and poles, the marching feet of soldiers.
Glancing back at the map she saw that Raganesh had reached another junction. The knife point hovered over a crossroads, and then went straight over it.
“He has gone straight through a crossroads,” she said. The knife point crept on, moving steadily. How close was Alder by now? Would he be in sight? Had he even reached the first point? She could ask Pathfinder to show her where the Ekloi was, but it might cause her to lose sight of Raganesh for a moment.
The knife point came to another junction, a crossroads, and paused again. Then it turned right. He had been bearing steadily left for an hour, and now right. What had changed? Whatever it was it leant a new urgency to their pursuit. It would not be long before he sensed that she was still turning left, and he would be alerted. He would guess that something was wrong.
“He has turned right at the next junction, Alder,” she said. “Right at the next crossroads.” Perhaps he had caught sight of Alder and his soldiers. The old man was hard to miss in his red robes, and the soldiers would be obvious, too.
At the next junction Raganesh turned right again, no hesitation this time. She relayed the turn to Alder. What had made him change? She watched the knife point trace his route with a growing sense of unease. Felice did not know where she was on the map. Alder would certainly be moving as quickly as he could along the Faer Karani’s trail, but where was the palanquin?
He was up to something; some Faer Karan trick, but what could it be? Another junction, and another right turn. He had almost turned back on himself. Was he trying to come up on Alder from the rear?
She was seized by a terrible thought. What if Raganesh could sense both of them? He would know that they had split up. He would know that she was on her own.
“Show me where I am on the map,” she said. The point barely moved. It swung to the end of the street down which Raganesh was passing. He was heading directly for her. She reached out and pulled the curtain aside.
The streets here were not busy. It was a residential part of the town, and the houses were mostly quiet. People were at the market. She could see a single figure, a typical brown clad Shi, striding down the road towards her. There was rare purpose in his step, and a promise of violence. There was no sign of Alder.
Felice opened the door of the palanquin and stepped down into the street. The soldiers, who had been relaxing, immediately sprang upright and looked at her, as though expecting some instruction. They followed her eyes and saw Raganesh approaching. Ivory blades were drawn, so many sharp teeth, but they would not worry a Faer Karani.
She glanced at the soldiers and gestured for them to lower their blades. They looked reluctant, but did as she wished. There was no point in all these getting killed. She folded her arms and waited by the palanquin until Raganesh was no more than twenty paces away.
“You would be unwise to kill me,” she said.
“No. You are the one who can track me. With you gone, I will escape.”
“You are already too late, Raganesh. The Ekloi can see you.” She was lying, trying to stall him for a moment, and was as surprised as Raganesh to see Alder, red robes flying, round the far corner of the street trailing a phalanx of sprinting soldiers.
Raganesh turned back from the sight. He looked quite calm. “They will not save you,” he said.
“Think, Raganesh. If you kill me you will face the real death. There will be no more Raganesh, no more sunshine, no more power. How many years will you sacrifice for the pleasure of seeing me die?”
“I will die whether I kill you or no.”
“Not so. I can protect you. I can save your life.”
“You? You are nothing.” Raganesh drew closer. A couple more steps and he could strike her down. The soldiers were getting nervous, but she knew if they intervened all bloody chaos would break loose in the street and dozens would die, including her, Raganesh, and most of the Shi. She gestured again, and again the ivory blades were lowered, though more slowly this time.
“You know something. A name. If you tell me I can bargain with it. The Ekloi owes me a life.”
“That much is true.” He seemed to ponder for a moment. “What name?”
“The Faer Karani who brought you back to Shanakan.”
“I cannot. If I betray him I will suffer greatly.”
“If you d
o not, then you will die.”
“Your argument is well made. I will tell you the name. It is Kalnistine.”
She looked at the Faer Karani, and saw that the threat had gone out of it. The soldiers, too, looked more comfortable, so she was reassured that she had read him correctly. It could still be a trick, of course. The Faer Karan were famous for their lack of honesty.
“It is the truth?” she asked.
“It is my life,” the creature replied.
Now she had to deal with Alder. It did not surprise her that the old man arrived ahead of the soldiers, hardly out of breath, his hand raised in the gesture that she had seen before, when the sword had grown from it. She stepped between Raganesh and the Ekloi.
Alder stopped a few feet short. He looked surprised, puzzled, angry.
“You are protecting it?” he asked.
“You said you wanted Raganesh alive. I see that you are ready to strike, and I would not have you regret a hasty blow.”
“But he tricked you. He doubled back to kill you, and now…” he gestured at the soldiers with their swords lowered.
“We have come to an understanding.”
Alder looked more angry, less surprised. “It is not your place to do deals with the Faer Karan. You do not understand what is happening. It is complicated, and any arrangement that you may have made is not binding on me.”
“It is simple enough, Aki,” Felice said, reverting to a more formal address. “I have promised Raganesh his life in exchange for mine, and he had given me the name of the Faer Karani that brought him to Shanakan. Is this not what you wanted?”
“The information, yes…”
“The alternative was my death, his death, and the deaths of any number of these soldiers, and you would not have the name.”
“I do not have the name now,” Alder said.
“You owe me a life. Will you honour the agreement? I will consider the debt paid.”
Alder shook his head. Now he seemed more annoyed than angry. “I will honour the agreement,” he said. “Now tell me what lie you have been told.”
“Kalnistine.”
Alder’s eyes narrowed, and he studied the Faer Karani for a moment.
“Why did he bring you with him?” he asked.
Raganesh did not hesitate. “We were exiled to the same place,” he said. “It was a place of moderate power, and we were able to work a spell to return. He needed someone to watch White Rock, to see if Serhan suspected anything, to warn him if anything moved to threaten him.”
“And where is Kalnistine now?”
Raganesh shrugged. “I was not told.”
Alder turned back to Felice. “It rings true,” he said. “But we will have to investigate further.” He called out instructions to the soldiers, who produced long strips of red cloth and began to bind the Faer Karani’s arms to his sides. Raganesh did not resist. The strips were decorated with symbols that were unknown to her, stitched onto its surface in black and yellow.
“What are they doing?” Felice asked.
“He is a demon. They are binding him.”
“We have an agreement,” she reminded him.
“The bindings have no power over me,” Raganesh said. “They are just a lie that the Ekloi tell the Shi.”
“Be silent,” Alder commanded, “or I will forget this ridiculous bargain and end you.” To Felice he said “We cannot simply release him. He must be taken out of this world and placed somewhere that is more difficult to flee, and where he can do less harm.”
“And then you will take me home – back to my own world?”
Alder hesitated.
“I have helped you,” Felice said. “You would have failed without me.”
“Things have become more difficult.”
“How? Why?”
“It is Inshaful. He has reported the situation to others. It is out of my hands.”
“You have lied to me!” She was angry now. After all she had gone through, all the help she had given him. Alder must have known that this would happen.
“Now you see,” Raganesh said, and there was a certain bitter triumph in his voice.
“Be quiet!” Alder snapped. He was angry, but though he glared at the Faer Karani it was not the creature that made him angry, she was certain. He turned back to her. “It is a matter of law. There must be an assessment.”
“What do you mean?” Some sort of trial, she thought, but to what end? Alder quickly answered her unspoken question.
“The Ekloi cannot harm – others – who are deemed to be of significance. Many know who or what we are, but are protected by their station. The Shan are an example. If we acted against them it would reveal our presence more than inaction.”
“And if I am not significant enough?”
“There are many alternatives, but more will be explained to you at a later time. I can only say that we are fair, and we abide by our law.”
“I do not care much for your law, Alder. I have done no wrong.”
“I will speak on your behalf,” Alder tried to reassure her.
Raganesh laughed.
16. Prisoner
Felice was surprised at how calm she had become. She sat on a comfortable bed, legs crossed, looking out of a window through thin bars. The bars were stronger than they looked, but quite unnecessary. It was thirty feet down to a stone paved street below, and the walls seemed smooth and impossible to climb.
The door was not locked. They did not consider her a danger, and she was permitted to wander freely between the rooms on the third floor of the house, but she was the only occupant and there was not much to do or see. Tall shelves held a number of books, but none were in her own language, and the windows gave mostly onto empty streets and blank walls. A man stood on the stairs to prevent her wandering further.
She was bored.
She should have been afraid as well. She was yet again on an alien world with a different people and a different language, trapped by a group of creatures whose power far exceeded any she had know, and she was on trial for being in the wrong place at the right time. Her life was in danger. But when she inspected her feelings, when she closed her eyes and looked deep down inside herself, there was no fear. In fact there was very little of anything.
She had waited here for a day, and now, surely, the wagons would have gone to Woodside, and she would fail yet again to be in the same place at the same time as her brother’s murderer. It troubled her, but it no longer seemed as important as it once had. More than anything she wanted to go home, to be part of her family again. But that desire, too, no longer burned. It had become a dull ache that she was learning to live with.
She had not spoken to anyone since they had left her in this room. The man on the stairs did not speak her language, or pretended not to, which was much the same thing. Food had been provided at regular intervals, and it was good and plentiful, so there was no taint of hardship to her captivity.
The journey here had been less traumatic than their precipitous tumble into the world where they had hunted Raganesh. It had been disorienting, and she had felt dizzy, but no more than that. She wondered what had happened to Raganesh. She could never claim to have liked the Faer Karani, but he was at least simpler in his motivations than the Ekloi. Alder and the others seemed to be subject to notions of duty that overpowered their own feeling for what was right and what was wrong.
Her thoughts were disturbed by a knocking on the door.
“You may enter,” she said. She wondered why they bothered to knock.
The door opened and a man came in. She did not recognise him, but he was an older man, like Alder, tall and thin. He wore a grey coat over black trousers, and his face was one of those quiet, closed faces that tell you nothing. When he spoke his voice was quiet, and he spoke her own language with a Samaran lilt.
“Felice Caledon,” he said. “I am here to answer your questions.”
“What is your name?”
“That is not important,” the man said
.
“So what questions are you here to answer?”
“Those which concern your assessment.”
Felice studied the man. Here was someone who had dwelled in her own world, in Samara, perhaps. He had lived with people like her.
“Tell me the purpose of the assessment,” she said.
The man folded his hands and recited, Felice was certain, a definition that he had committed to memory.
“The assessment exists to determine the relative benefits of allowing a particular inhabitant of a world to continue to inhabit that world once a threshold of knowledge has been acquired.”
“That means nothing,” she said. “Benefits to whom?”
“It is complicated. There are certain things that I am not permitted to speak of, but a degree of benefit accrues to your own world.”
“And the rest to yours. No benefit for me, then?”
“No. You are the subject of the assessment.”
“And the knowledge – that is what I know about the Ekloi, Sinalder, the existence of other worlds?”
“Some of that, yes.”
“And you have to decide if it is safer for your secrets if I am permitted to return home or not.”
The man looked faintly surprised, his indifference wavering for a moment. “Yes, that is precisely it,” he said. “Sinalder said that you were clever.”
“How kind of him.” She said, her tone implying something entirely different. She did not particularly like the use of the word clever. It seemed to describe a shallow and self serving form of intelligence. “So if I want to go home I will have to demonstrate that I will be missed, that important people will want to know what happened to me, and will make efforts to discover the truth.”
“Yes.”
“How does the assessment work?”
“It is simple. Three Ekloi will be present. One will speak for you, one against, and you may speak for yourself. One who is not Ekloi will be present, and he will control the assessment. The Ekloi will make the determination, and the other will make any other decisions necessary.”