“I don’t see a thing,” Frain said, puzzled.
I wouldn’t drink the stream water. I melted snow in a pan for myself; there are no dead things in such lifeless water. But the jug haunted me—that, and the brown man’s kindness. Long before the storm abated I took to pacing the beehive house in unrest, nearly frantic to be gone. Finally, as suddenly as it had begun, the snow stopped and began just as quickly to melt. It was spring, after all. Green buds showed above the white ground.
I boiled eggs for our journey and made more of my awful bread. As I cooked the brown man tried to talk to me.
“You are not so very different from me,” he said. “Part beast, as we have said, and also part immortal, being a descendant of Aftalun.”
“He did not frighten me,” I muttered.
“He and Shamarra are of Ogygian kind, sky gods. But I am of earth, as was the maiden you loved.”
“Don’t speak of her!” Spasms of pain rippled through me; I had to clench myself like a fist to keep from blubbering. “Abas will be sorry he did not slay me as well,” I said finally, angry because of the pain and the fear.
“He has no desire to slay you. Every day he seeks you earnestly.”
I barked out a laugh. “He would kill me cheerfully enough if he had me in his reach! He would kill his own mother if the mood took him. Anyone who knows him knows that. Ask Frain what Abas is capable of doing.”
“Frain sees the most clearly of you all, in his youthful way,” the brown man agreed, speaking very softly, for Frain stood just outside the door. “But in this one regard he falls short of truth. He believes himself to be Abas’s son, but he has known no fatherhood from him. Therefore he thinks you stand in the same peril as himself.”
Angered the more because the brown man seemed to know all our secrets, I could not answer. “Why are you so enmired in rage and hatred, Prince?” he asked me. “You will make fit food for the Luoni.”
“Sisters of yours?” I inquired acidly.
“In their way, as Mylitta was in hers. Yes.”
The name pierced me like a fiery lance. I sprang up and lunged at him, straight through the flames, scattering cooking gear and cursing. I can’t tell what I might have done to him—though, he being what he was, I believe I could not have hurt him much. But Frain hurried in and came between us. My rage always seemed to reach him somehow.
“If only she had not been killed,” the brown man mused as if I had not moved, “all would have been well for you, Tirell. Now I can’t see what is to become of you, and neither can Daymon Cein.”
Frain reached out toward me. I was all in tumult; I suppose if I had let him touch me I might have wept, and perhaps that would have saved me from much sorrow later. But I turned away from him as if he were made of white-hot iron and ran outside, into the wilderness. I did not rejoin the others until they had gone a day’s journey toward Qiturel.
Chapter Four
I was fit only for the company of catamounts from that time on until Melior. Perhaps I did not always act it—I hope I did not—but I felt it, fear driving me wild inside, the brown man’s remembered touch and Grandfather’s old head bobbing along at my shoulder—if only he would walk faster!—and Fabron and Frain—all I had wanted were followers, and I had found friends, confound it. Love distressed me; clashing with my rage, it kept up a constant foam and splatter in my mind. And there was Abas still calling—damn Abas!—and I knew I did not dare to answer. We were afoot, helpless; his Boda could have caught us like insects in a moment if they had known where we were. So I could vent none of my spleen on Abas. I wanted only to be finished with my hatred, have my business done, settled—but Grandfather crept along.
And there were all the streams in the way. Eidden is full of them. Eidden Lei—Eidden Hills, the name means. They are covered with pine forest, and the streams run down between. Some of them stretch all the way back to the mountains.
“We are never going to get to Qiturel,” Frain complained, “if we must pussyfoot up and down every trickle until we find a bridge. Ford them, for mercy’s sake!” He was impatient, as tired of the journey as I was.
“You’ve grown bold in your old age, lad,” Grandfather remarked frostily, staring at him, and he subsided. But he repeated the argument at every rivulet we met.
I would not go near the streams, in spite of all Frain’s urgings. I could see the swimming things in them, waiting to touch me with their cold fingers. I would not even drink the stream water Frain dipped for me. I would find myself a well or go thirsty. But one day, when we came to a particularly broad but shallow stream and started up it toward the mountains again, Frain lost his temper.
“Mother of Aftalun!” he shouted fiercely, and splashed in until he was wet to the boottops. He stood with water running about his ankles, hands on hips and glaring at us. “Am I being eaten alive?” He lifted each foot fastidiously. “Pulled down? Carried away?” I still remember the sweet daring of him, standing there, but at the time I was speechless with wrath and fear.
“Come on!” he challenged us. “Tirell, you pugnacious coward—”
I found my voice. “Frain, I’ll thrash you for that!” I roared.
“Come and get me,” he said, grinning, and threw a handful of water at me.
I went in after him, of course, blind as a charging bull, and found myself on the other side before I knew it. He had led me there, the rogue. I stood on the bank, shocked and panting, and he went back for Grandfather.
“Do you want me to carry you?”
“Great goddess, no!” Grandfather glared at him and picked his way across, leaning on his staff and with Frain’s hand at his elbow, however he attempted to shake it off. Fabron followed the pair of them, sweating a little and staring straight ahead. The beast nickered angrily and plunged across. And there we all were.
“Now,” said Frain smugly, “can we be getting on?”
So after that we waded across the shallow streams. But the time saved did not improve my temper—Eala, no! I felt everything rising to a peak in me, felt myself drawing nearer and nearer to what frightened me, or being drawn, being driven, and fear and rage walked with me. I had come through darkness, spoken with dragons, walked in water—I would not have been able to touch it a few months before. But every step caused me fresh terror.
The journey wore on. The brassy sun beat down every day. There was no escaping the promise of drought, even there in shady Eidden, the brown man’s country, where the silver mists rose in the morning and the rolling ranks of hills broke through—I loved them. Bah! Love! Something was trying to heal me. It was healing Grandfather.
“It’s coming back, Tirell! It’s starting to come back!” he whispered to me excitedly one morning a few weeks after we had left the brown man.
“What is coming?” I growled, though I already knew.
“The sureness, the sight!”
I thought as much. I had seen it growing in him days before he spoke. The rest of him had not changed much, but his eyes had gotten younger. “Why, what do you see?” I asked.
He grimaced. “Only those dearest to me. I can feel Frain’s presence there beyond the alders.” Frain went off by himself more and more those days. I shrugged. I had known where Frain was too, if only because the black beast with its animal senses knew.
“And,” Grandfather added, “the presence of your mother in Melior.”
So she was yet alive. More love to harrow my heart.
Our pace hastened a bit. Grandfather’s step was growing stronger, and it continued to strengthen all the way to Qiturel. We arrived at last in the heat of early summer and were admitted by a suspicious gatekeeper. He would not let us in the keep, but he went off to get Oorossy, shaking his head. We must have looked like beggars. Well, in a Way we were.
To my surprise I saw an old acquaintance nearby—my faithful black steed! The horse was tied outside the stable, as if he had been making trouble. I went over and stroked him, and he eyed me sourly. There were no manners in that hor
se, but he would carry a rider till he dropped.
“Yours, Prince Tirell?” asked Oorossy, coming out to greet us.
“He used to be. How strange that he has come to you!” Not strange, really. The steed was big and powerful, a war horse, so he would naturally be sold to a lord’s stable. I wondered what had become of the other two. We never found out.
“No, he’s yours,” Oorossy declared, adding a curse or two. “The big, hammer-headed, foul-tempered, graceless plug! Take him and welcome! Fabron, Prince Frain, you’re welcome.” He clapped Fabron heartily on the shoulder. “Choose mounts for yourselves. It is not seemly for royalty to go afoot. Daymon Cein, I am at your service. What may I get you?”
“A drink of water,” Grandfather snapped.
He took us inside to have wine instead. I found, to my dismay, that I liked Oorossy. He made a proper shrewd, rough and roaring canton king. He fed us well and couched us well and found us fresh clothes in the morning. After breakfast we held council and I told the tale of our wanderings. We had virtually disappeared for the past six months, and not even Abas seemed to know where we were. Oorossy said that all of Vale was in ferment with wondering what had become of me. The time was good for challenging Abas. His forces were divided between three places: Vaire, where he laid siege to Ky-Nule, and the Wall, and Melior. The people were murmuring, foreseeing yet another season of drought. Only the lack of an heir to the altar prevented insurrection.
“I will be sacrificed to no goddess,” I told Oorossy as courteously as I was able.
“Why, neither would I,” he agreed instantly, with great good humor. “But there is no need to tell everyone that right away.”
“Wayte will march toward Melior as soon as the siege is lifted,” Fabron said eagerly. “And Sethym will march as soon as he receives word.”
“Sethym! That big sissy!” Oorossy lamented. “Is there no other help we can depend on?” He leaned back in his chair and fixed an appraising gaze on me. “What a pity you didn’t see Raz.”
Oorossy had sense. He was no slave to honor, he frankly hated Abas, and he did not mind fighting either, but he questioned my chances of winning such a battle—my sanity, even, for undertaking it. Well, he had to be persuaded to throw in his lot with us in spite of sense or reason.
“I am not going back to Nisroch,” I stated.
“Why, no need!” Oorossy replied, straight-faced. “Raz and a few hundred picked men are marauding through my bottomlands right now—”
“What!” I shouted, and everyone else jerked to attention.
“—and a few days’ journey will take you to him,” said Oorossy.
“But—how—” It was Fabron, floundering.
“He does it every summer,” Oorossy added mildly. “He always leads the raids himself, makes a jaunt of it. They loot the little towns, terrorize a few countryfolk—”
“And you sit here?” Fabron demanded.
“Why, yes. I don’t want to turn his little sorties into a war. He could take Eidden in a few weeks’ time with perhaps half his force. I often wonder why he has not.”
“Have you never met him at all?” asked Frain.
“A few times. He offered me one of his daughters once, and I had to go to Nisroch to make a courteous refusal, since I already had a wife at the time, which he knew well enough.… He seemed proud. He has a right to be proud. He must dream of power, sitting on a canton as big as the rest of Vale and rich to boot. But he keeps to himself. I’m still not sure whether he’s selling daughters or giving them away. Folk say he offers them to his snakes, but the snakes won’t have them.”
Grandfather stirred reproachfully at this bit of gossip. “He schemes and dreams,” he stated. “Someday he will act.”
“And then Adalis help us,” said Oorossy cheerfully. He was gazing at me again with a hint of a dare in his eyes, and I knew I had to meet it.
“You will aid me if I can make an ally of Raz,” I said.
“To the top of my bent.”
“All right, then.” I rose. “I am off.”
Frain and Fabron automatically stood to come with me. Even Daymon Cein creaked stiffly to his feet. “We will be riding, Grandfather,” I told him.
“Oh.” He creaked back down again. “Your hospitality, Oorossy, until they return?”
“Of course.” Oorossy rubbed his hands in high spirits. He was clever, that Oorossy, sending us to interrupt Raz’s looting. And of course he was looking forward to a jaunt of his own. “Meanwhile, I will be mustering my men.”
Within a few hours Frain and Fabron and I took horse, well provisioned and well mounted, I on my old black with the black beast by my side, and my temper was as sour as the steed’s. I felt ready in advance to hate Raz, I suspected Oorossy of having gotten the better of me, and I darkly predicted that there would be Boda about. Actually, we met none. The journey went well. We found flat wooden bridges across the streams—too many for the Boda to guard or hold—and when we had to cross by fording the horses bore the brunt of it; I would not even look down. The beast would bugle its protest, then splash across at our heels. Presently we left the forest behind and rode across Eidden’s rich river farmland. The sun beat down day after day, making the young crops hang limp. And they had been trampled; there was more devastation than drought could account for.
Oorossy had only a notion of where Raz might be, but we found him easily enough by following a trail of wailing villagers. Their lamentations set my teeth on edge. I could not afford to be touched by them or anyone.… Not that they came near us—I am sure they thought we were their nightmare embodied, with our swords and war steeds and the winged monster in our van. Even Frain could not comfort them. We had to ride by them, and he and Fabron would look straight ahead, as hard-faced as I. After several days of this we sighted Raz’s campfires ahead in the dusk.
“Now what?” Fabron muttered. The old hound, he was worried about how to approach Raz; we had discussed it again and again. He was afraid of treachery, but we had been able to reach no decision because Frain held fast to that damned unnatural valor of his, and as for myself, I simply did not care. So we rode straight into Raz’s camp and up to his royal self. I had not seen him for years, not since I was a child, but Oorossy had said we would have no trouble recognizing him, and indeed we did not. His tent looked more like a temple to avarice, all gaudy with gold thread and bits of gem, and he himself was a proper peacock of a man in a jeweled velvet cap and jeweled earrings; I was surprised he did not wear jewels in his nose. He sat at ease by his fire, picking at the capon a manservant offered to him and not bothering to rise as I, still mounted, towered over him.
“Yes?” he inquired blankly. He knew quite well who I was, curse his eyes! I could not bring myself to announce myself. Next he would have had me stating my business like a courier! I felt too angry to move, lest I slay him where he sat. The beast lunged out of the shadows and thundered toward him. Soldiers gasped and scattered, and the manservant dropped his platter of capon in the dirt.
“Ah,” Raz declared as if in sudden benign enlightenment. “Tirell of Melior.” He got to his feet with oily grace, paying no attention to the beast that had stopped just short of his campfire. I dismounted to speak with him.
I could see why he preferred to remain seated. He was short, even shorter than Fabron; he came only to my shoulders. He did not have the advantage of Fabron’s blacksmith’s build, either. He dressed in layer on layer of sumptuous robes to bide his flab, and he strutted. I sighed and sent the beast away with a gesture and a hard stare. I had to deal with this man.
We sat around the fire. Raz snapped his multiringed fingers for slaves to take the horses, hit the manservant and sent him for more supper. “How good-hearted of Oorossy to send you to visit me here,” he remarked.
“We are here on our own business,” I said levelly.
“Ah.” Incredible, the tones and overtones—irony, subtle mockery, cunning, and bland inquiry—that he managed to convey in that one simple exhala
tion.
Of course, he would not ask me my business, now that I wanted him to. And it should have waited until after we had eaten. Nevertheless, I blundered on. “We have come to request your aid in the necessary overthrow of King Abas.”
“Ah.” Again. He stroked his pointed beard as I detailed my somewhat ill-formed plans. Wayte from Vaire, Sethym from Selt, Oorossy, and Raz, all of us to meet near Melior and make Abas dead, that was all. I wanted nothing more.
“And set you on the throne,” Raz prompted.
I shrugged, avoiding his eyes lest he see the flaring hatred in mine. He smelled of oil and musk. Supper came, but Raz sat back, letting it cool. “Take hundreds of men, march to Melior, kill Abas, and crown his son,” he mused aloud. “Now why would I want to do that?”
I met his eyes then. “I am not sure why you do anything that you do,” I said.
He gave a squeak that must have been a laugh and regarded me with sudden interest. I had addressed the enigma, and he liked it.
“All of Vale is mad, and I alone am sane,” he proclaimed. “Any noble in this accursed land would think I should leap at the opportunity to place on that throne yet another powerless King! Ruler of a parcel of land scarcely large enough to support his household, sustained only by tribute, offering not even good advice in return, of no function or use whatsoever except to be troublesome, to be flattered, to he killed for the goddess—”
“I do not intend to be killed for the goddess,” I said.
“A sensible intent,” he returned. Oh, the sneer even in that! “But how, then, can you expect the throne? Thousands of sacks of wheat every year as tribute. Gold. Baubles and adulation—”
“I will have earned it,” I snapped, losing patience. “Let the throne take care of itself. I ask only your aid in taking Abas. Name your reward.”
“By old Dahak,” he said smoothly, “that will take some consideration! The proposal strikes me as troublesome, mightily expensive, a strain, a bore, and, worst of all, aimless. You, Fabron!” He turned suddenly on my silent companion. “What possesses you to have thrown in your lot with this get of the madman? That idiot Sethym I can understand, and even Oorossy—he still holds to his silly ideals—but you! I thought you had sense, a streak of cleverness, even—”
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