by K. G. McAbee
Garet gave a patient sigh, and then spread his hands as though to ask why he was cursed with such an ignorant fool for a master.
Their mount chose that exact instant to trip over a partially buried skull, bleached by the sands and sun.
Garet snatched at a handful of Val's robe. "The Malmillard are the only ones who can remove a curse," he continued with a bit less of his former bumptiousness. "It's apparent to any but a fool that the mistress is laboring under a curse."
"Plain to you, perhaps, oh teacher, but as you so rightly point out, not quite so plain to the rest of us fools," Val said. "And even if she has been cursed, what makes you think these Mallow-folk will remove it for her? What does she have to do, just ask them, and they do it for a favor?"
"It is said," began Garet in a sonorous singsong, the cadences of the professional storyteller, "that the great adepts of Malmillard will remove a curse if one offers them something in return."
"Mercenary magic workers, aren't they? What does one offer, money?"
Garet leaned around to catch Val's eye. Val was surprised at the utter seriousness on the boy's usually cheerful face. "They must be offered something that will increase their own power, you see," he said.
"And that might be?"
Garet tightened his arms around Val's waist. "Usually," he admitted, "usually, but not always, of course—a life."
After a moment of uneasy reflection, Val asked hopefully, "Do you mean these adept people are looking for slaves, to toil for them and cook their meals while they're busy casting spells and such?"
"No," said Garet. "They have plenty of slaves for such mundane tasks as that…creatures, I have heard, that they conjure from some nether world and set to work. No. To remove a spell takes something more than slavery."
Val was suddenly impatient and more than a little angry. "Tell me, clear and open, what these witches do with a life that is given them."
A tiny sigh came gusting out of Garet's garrulous throat.
"They use blood to destroy the spell," the boy admitted. "Everyone knows that the only way to remove a spell is to drown it in innocent blood."
***
For the rest of the day, Val rode along in a stupor, barely noticing the boy who clung to him and jeered at others who had to walk. Val's dazed mind raced from image to image, trying to make sense of the information he had received from Garet. Was it true, or simply the boy's imagination? And if it were true, how did it couple with the happenings of the last days and weeks—and especially, with what had happened last night between Madryn and himself?
Was Madryn indeed cursed? Were his dreams somehow a part of that sinister magic? Was Madryn going all this weary way to have a curse removed by these Malmillard adepts, as Garet had opined with such assurance? But how could Garet, an untutored boy from the streets, know such things, especially about Madryn?
No, Val decided. The entire story was ridiculous, the silly imaginings of a dreaming boy. What could Madryn have done to deserve a curse…?
Yes, he decided. Lord Valaren Starseeker had died at Madryn's hand; there may well have been a curse placed on her in revenge. Evil though Valaren had been, he still may have had followers, powerful and ready to avenge his death in any way possible.
Cursed? Madryn, cursed?
No, impossible. Madryn was not cursed. Yet when he thought it over again, all the things that had happened to her from the moment they'd met—attacks, shipwrecks, set upon by thieves—in fact, she could well have been put to the hunt herself, for giving him assistance.
His escape. Why had Madryn been passing by at just the particular time when she would meet him, running for his life? Was that another part of the curse, ill met and dangerous?
Images and questions fought in Val's exhausted mind, running around and around and around…as he struggled to make some sense of it all. So lost was he in the roiling depths that Garet had to beat on Val's back with angry fists for several moments to draw his attention.
"Master!" yelled the boy.
He had been shouting for some time now, Val realized dimly.
"Master! Bandits!"
An ululating scream rose up behind Val.
Behind? he wondered
But, without realizing it, Val had managed to wind up at the back of the caravan, with the detritus and the camp followers, those who had not the money to travel in state and who lived—when they did live—off the discards of their more affluent brethren.
Val pulled hard on the reins and struggled to wheel his horse about while at the same time trying to see behind him.
There, high atop a mounded dune that reared to one side of the trail, and outlined in black against coppery sky, rode a long line of mounted, hooded figures. The wailing that he'd heard must come from them, he decided; long, drawn out screams so high-pitched that it was difficult to believe that they originated in human throats.
"Bull-roarers," whispered Garet, his hands tight around Val.
Val had forgotten the boy was there. "What?" he asked distractedly as he tried to count the bandits.
"That sound," Garet replied, his voice shaking. "Bull-roarer. It's a sound they make with sk-skulls tied to leather strips and whirled through the air very fast, in cir-circles." Even in his fear, Garet was trying to increase his ignorant master's knowledge.
Val's spirits rose as a concrete enemy rode towards the caravan. At last, something he could understand—and fight.
With a shake of his shaggy head, his broad mouth splitting into a grin of pure delight, Val laughed. Just what he needed—some heads to bash and bones to break. Something to do battle with that he understood.
The long dark line of mounted figures began a steady and rapid descent of the mounded dune, and then raced with ever increasing speed towards the end of the lumbering, vulnerable end of the caravan.
Val darted quick glances to right and left. He was the only guard in sight. The others must be further up the long train of horses and wagons. He had to warn them, had to send word to Madryn and the others.
Did he have time? Val watched the mounted figures race forward, tried desperately to gauge their speed, deceptive in the shimmering desert air. Val looked around; there, a horse struggling to pull a too-heavy cart from a deep indentation in the soft sand. The horse must have wandered from the hard beaten path; now the inattention of its driver would cost him.
Val cantered over and slid from his saddle, pulling the reins over his head as he dismounted. Slashing through the carthorse's harness took seconds with his sharp blade.
Val reached up, pulled Garet from his horse and, without letting the boy's bare feet touch the sand, boosted him onto the top of the now-unencumbered animal.
"Ride to the front of the caravan!" Val shouted to the boy. "Warn the others! Find Madryn!"
With a slap on the horse's rump and a startled grin, one part terror to three parts delight, Garet was away. His shrill whoops whipped back to Val, born on the wind of his ride.
Val remounted, wheeled his horse around and looked to see how close the bandits were. They were even closer than he'd feared. He looked about; the camp followers were dropping to their knees as if they felt the sharp knives against their throats already.
Unconscious of a sigh of satisfaction, Val settled himself more firmly in his saddle and awaited the first wave of bandits.
***
"Have our pawns reached the gathering place?" asked the dark voice.
A whisper of wind blew through the empty eye socket of a bleached skull, rustling the pages of an open book bound in the stitched skins of a dozen warty toads.
"They're just there, I think," replied cold with a dank, chill chuckle.
A spider, its legs as long as the breadth of a big man's hand, scampered across the stone floor, leaving markings in the thick dust.
"It is almost time for the last act, then. Good. I grow weary of this everlasting waiting."
Obsidian tears flowed down a stone idol's face.
"When they arrive,
shall we play with them first?" asked the dark, in a tone that already knew the answer.
"You must stop repeating your same old mistakes, brother," warned the cold, with a chuckle like the gasp of a dying man. "The next time, you might not escape so easily."
"Easily?" asked the dark petulantly. An ebony crow, its orange beak the only color against the sallow stone walls, froze solid and fell from its onyx perch, to crash and shatter into a thousand jetty shards.
"Easily?" repeated the dark as it eyed the globe that floated in the middle of the chamber.
Deep within the murky depths, a tiny string of shadowy horses was faintly visible, riding against pale dun sands. Far behind the string, two horses paced it, following, always following…
Chapter Seventeen
"The destruction was not nearly so great as it could have been," Garet repeated to his band of small admirers as he strutted before them, a long dagger slapping against his bony thigh. "If I had not, at the greatest danger to my own life," he paused, liking the sound of that last phrase enough to repeat it, "at great danger to my own life, ridden to the caravan master and informed him of the coming attack, there would have been far more casualties."
Oohs and ahhs of admiration and awe greeted this comment, and Garet was emboldened to continue. "Yes," he poked out his hollow chest, "it was I, above all others, who really saved so many of us from death and destruction from the bandits."
Val listened with half an ear as he strapped provisions onto the back of the second horse. No smile broke through his concentration, even as the boasting rose to mountainous heights. Val's heart was heavy within his chest, and even the antics of the garrulous Garet could not lift it.
The bandits had captured Madryn. Val had not found out until long after the battle was over, the marauders driven away with no more than a few wagons overturned and burned, a score of lives lost, a handful of guards wounded. During the attack, Val had no time to spare thought for Madryn. She could take care of herself in a fight. No one knew that better that he did. So even after the bandits had been repulsed for the second time and had gathered their own wounded and raced away, Val had not thought to look for Madryn. Doubtless she was somewhere in the midst of the clean-up after the fighting, her sword bloody to the hilt, that strange light in her eyes that he had seen many times before, both awake and in his dreams of another man's life.
Madryn had been a soldier; Val remembered as he at last began his search for her, after the bandits had disappeared into the dusty depths of the desert. Surely she, of all the members of the caravan, would be safe in battle?
But Madryn had not been safe. Not safe…not safe…the words ran round and round his weary mind as he gathered supplies for a solitary trek into the surrounding dunes.
Of course, Val was going after her.
"I don't blame you," Master Aubry had rumbled, his plaited hair spattered with gore. "She's one in a thousand, that one. Take a spare horse and enough supplies and go. We're just four days from the oasis, with Rinidia not far beyond." A wondering look crossed the sun-darkened face of the caravan master. "Odd, that," he murmured, as if to himself. "Odd that the bandits would attack us here, so close to our first stop, instead of the long reaches between Rinidia and Zamorna. I don't believe I've ever known it to happen before, in all my years as rider and master."
The towering man strode off, to whip his disordered and disheartened charges back into shape for traveling.
Val picked out a good spare horse; Madryn would need something to ride when he got her back.
And he'd get her back.
Val had no doubts on that matter.
***
Garet surprised him.
The boy insisted on accompanying him.
"Now how in all the world, Master Val, could you even consider leaving me here?" he'd asked in high dudgeon, when Val had informed him of his plans.
Val would have smiled at his recent elevation from 'great lummox' to 'Master Val'—if he'd been in the mood for smiles.
"Besides," continued Garet as he added extra dates to the already plentiful supplies, and lashed another water bottle to the saddle, "how in the names of all the gods do you expect to get the mistress back from a thousand bandits, without my assistance—and my brains, might I add?"
Val made no reply as he boosted the chattering boy into the saddle of the second horse. He suspected the main reason Garet wanted to accompany his quest, regardless of his admiration and respect for Madryn, was that the boy would be allowed to ride the other horse.
"After all," Garet went on in a loud voice, for the benefit of his cadre of admiring onlookers, "I was the one who saved the caravan. Who better to ransom my mistress from that vast horde of vicious bandits than the valiant Garet?"
The boy watched complacently as Val mounted a fresh horse and turned its head to the rear of the caravan.
"Farewell," cried Garet as he kicked his own horse to follow Val. "Farewell, and do not worry. I shall be back soon, with my mistress and my master."
Val hoped he was right.
***
They could easily make out the bandits' trail across the dun-colored sands, picked out as it was here and there by lost or discarded bits of booty. The horde had no more than half a day start on Val and Garet, and such a huge mass of horses and riders could not travel as fast as a single man and a boy on fresh horses.
Yet Val could see no sign of the bandits. Hour after hour of weary riding, the sun beating down on their heads, the heat reflected back from beneath their mounts' hooves…and still, no sign of the horde.
Yet the trail was disappearing, growing fainter as they followed it, as if it were aging by days and months for each heartbeat that passed.
"How could such a huge throng of riders disappear, in such a desert as this, rolling away to the misty distance, Master Val?"
Val shook his head. They were at the top of a tallish rise, and he could see the horizon in all directions. Where could they have gone? How could such a multitude have vanished?
"There must have been five or six score of them in the attack," Garet continued as he gazed from under his palm. "No pack that large could hide in a dip in the sand, a hollow or depression scooped in the shadow of a dune. So where are they?"
Val shrugged and kicked his horse. But he wondered as they ate away at the leagues, the spoor growing fainter at each stride, yet still clearly visible behind them, stretching back toward the caravan.
Where were the bandits? How were they making their trail disappear?
It didn't matter. Val would find them and Madryn.
Or die in the attempt.
***
The sun was a blistering ball of molten metal, sinking into the dunes before them. Soon it would be too dark to follow the trail. Soon they would have to stop for the night, or risk losing their direction and spending valuable time the next morning backtracking…or not be able to find the trail at all.
This was what frightened Val the most. He looked over at Garet. The boy had been silent for the last few leagues, his stubbly head bobbing on his thin neck in time to his horse's trot. Val wondered if the boy regretted that he'd insisted on coming along.
No, he doubted that very much, Val decided. Garet, for all his boasting and bragging, did have an actual concern for Madryn.
His concern for Val, however, was debatable.
Finally, it became too dark to see the trail before them. Val waited until the very last moment before stopping, hoping against all hope that the moon or stars would cast enough light to continue. But it was not to be. Instead of the fabled glory of the desert night, moon blazing above, stars too thick to count, there was a hazy mist over everything, twining about the ground and rising into the air so high that nothing could be see for more than a few lengths in any direction.
Val pulled back on the reins, his heart sick within him. Garet's horse continued for a few more paces, its rider's head drooping in unabashed sleep, before stopping of its own volition. Garet's body swayed
for a moment, then slid bonelessly to the sands.
The boy sat up, a surprised look just visible on his face. "Master Val?" he quavered, looking about in startled fear. Now that Garet had no other children to impress, he'd reverted to his boyish state.
"I'm here," Val called groggily as he dug into a saddlebag, seeking rations for himself and the boy. The first thing he found was a handful of dates; he shared them with the exhausted Garet. Then they both sank down and wearily pulled blankets over them.
They were both asleep almost at once.
***
That night, Val's dreams took off on a new tack altogether.
Instead of seeing and living Valaren's depraved and perverted court life, Val now saw earlier into the lord's existence, long before he had become that heartless creature that had so repelled—and attracted—Madryn and others.
Val wore Valaren's child body as he wandered through a blasted and arid landscape, crying out for his father as cold winds blew about his shaking form. He gazed up through the child's eyes at a tall stone tower, its outer shell decorated with the most appalling of motifs—hanged men, their twisted heads gazing downward with frightened, sightless eyes; women with bleeding stalks where their heads had been, carrying their lost appendages under one arm; skeletal horses, fire and smoke billowing from their nostrils; the deadly denizens of a thousand nightmares, huge teeth bared in hideous grins.
But not only were these depictions on the tower the most graphic and lifelike of carvings; no, they moved, cavorting and capering together across the gray rock.
The boy Valaren wandered away from the tower, across blasted heath and arid moor, his soul crying out in torment as demons danced about him. He reached a stony outcropping, where stood an idol carved of obsidian, its eyes weeping sable tears.