Book of Silence tlod-4

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The overman arose late, a good hour after sunrise, and took his time in preparing for his departure. The afternoon, he knew, would be more than enough for him to find his way out of Orgul; once he was in Eramma again, he intended to travel by night, as he had done before.

  When he had finished his packing, eaten a hearty breakfast, and made sure that Koros had been tended to, he swung himself into the saddle, ready to leave. Before Koros had taken more than a single step, however, he changed his mind and ordered the warbeast to turn west rather than northeast. He had no reason to hurry; no urgent tasks needed to be undertaken, no one eagerly awaited his return to Skelleth. It could do no harm if he lingered for a visit to the toymaker; after all, he had a purchase to make.

  Koros had no objection; it strode silently down the western street and halted obediently at the door of the last shop.

  The door was closed, and the curtains were drawn across the display windows; Garth saw no sign of the old man. He dismounted and rapped lightly, twice, on the wooden panels.

  A muffled call answered him, and a moment later the toymaker emerged, blinking in the bright sunlight. He stared up at the overman.

  "Oh, it's you," he said with an uncertain smile.

  "Greetings," Garth said. "I hope I did not wake you."

  "What? Oh, no; I was just eating my breakfast. Hadn't had time to open the shop yet." He blinked again and then said anxiously, "I heard about your fight with the dragon. I hope you didn't hurt it too much; I'm not sure whether I could fix any serious damage. It's mostly magic, you know, and magic is tricky stuff. I'm no wizard; I don't usually know how what I do works. I just build things and they work-or sometimes they don't. Did you do it much harm?"

  "No," Garth replied. "I pried a few scales from its back and I might have scratched the belly a little. I think that hurt my sword more than it hurt the dragon-or maybe the blade was dulled when I dropped it." He had retrieved the weapon before returning to the village; it had not been bent, fortunately, but part of one edge, from the tip halfway to the hilt, had been ruined.

  "What about yourself? Were you hurt?"

  "No. My warbeast's tail was singed, I'm afraid, and it seems to have been bruised here and there."

  "Oh, I am sorry!" The man stared past the overman at the beast, his face radiating sympathy.

  Garth decided that it was time he got to the point. "I came for the gull," he said.

  "Oh, of course!" the toymaker exclaimed. "Just a moment!" He vanished back into the shop, then emerged a few seconds later holding the metal bird. Garth accepted it, paid out the agreed-upon price of half a dozen silver coins, and placed it delicately on the saddle.

  "You'll need the key," the old man reminded him.

  Garth turned back and held out his hand; the toymaker dropped the silver key onto his palm, and he closed both thumbs over it. "Thank you," he said as he dropped it in his purse.

  "Take good care of it," the man said. "It's one of my finer pieces."

  "It is indeed," Garth agreed, gazing at the gleaming clockwork gull. "But not your finest," he added, with a nod to the west.

  The toymaker smiled. "No, it's not my finest, but my very best is not for sale." He watched as Garth seated himself in the saddle, the copper bird perched before him, and gave a command to his mount.

  Koros turned and headed back through the village, its smooth, silent progress carrying it and its master quickly northward out of Orgul.

  That steady stride seemed effortless, and the warbeast could keep it up for hours on end, perhaps days on end; Garth was continually impressed by the creature's incredible power and stamina.

  It took them the remainder of that day and the following night to reach the northern edge of the Barony of Sland, moving along the foothills east of the mountains that formed Eramma's western border. Garth made camp atop a ridge overlooking the desolate site of a moderately recent battle.

  His brief stay in Orgul had put him in a state of mild euphoria. He had not fought and slain a monster, but instead had found that his real task, that of freeing people from the menace that beset them, had been accomplished long before by the threatened people themselves. That was heartening; only rarely in his long life had he seen much evidence of human competence. Even among his own species, it often seemed that the average mortal had no more ambition or wit than a lower animal had. Too many people were willing to suffer under various forms of oppression, rather than make the effort necessary to improve their lot.

  No one among the overmen of the Northern Waste had attempted to come south overland for any purpose during the three centuries of relative peace that had followed the Racial Wars; they had been told that the border with Eramma was guarded night and day by ferocious human warriors and they had believed it until Garth made the journey to Skelleth himself, for reasons of his own, and discovered the pitiful state of the human defenses.

  No overman had troubled himself to explore other kingdoms until Garth, on an errand for the Forgotten King, ventured into Nekutta and learned that there were other overmen still in the world, living on the Yprian Coast. And no attempt had been made to establish trade until Garth began it.

  Among humans, the people of Skelleth had tolerated an insane baron without serious complaint, ignoring his bizarre behavior and occasional arbitrary executions, until Garth murdered him. In the Nekuttan city of Dыsarra, the populace had made no protest against the domination of the cults of the dark gods, nor had it tried to halt the kidnappings and human sacrifices of the more vicious cults.

  In Orgul, though, when heroes had failed to kill the dragon, ordinary farmers had managed to poison it, and common village craftsmen had built and maintained a replacement to ward off other predators, more human but no less vicious.

  That fact cheered Garth considerably.

  His own behavior pleased him as well. For the first time, he had ventured out into human lands beyond Skelleth, accomplished as much of his purpose as he saw fit, and headed homeward without killing a single person.

  He was, he had been told, the chosen avatar of Bheleu, doomed to symbolize the Fourteenth Age, the Age of Destruction. Heretofore it had seemed that he was destined to bring chaos and disaster wherever he went; he had led the sacking of Skelleth, been responsible for bringing the White Death to Dыsarra, been involved in the death of the wizard who had ruled Mormoreth and killed its population, and, he suspected, somehow contributed to the collapse of the Kingdom of Eramma.

  On this particular journey, however, he had not destroyed anything, nor killed anything more important than goats, and those only for food for his mount.

  This raised his spirits so much that even the battlefields and soldiers he passed on his way north did not dissipate his good cheer. He moved on past Sland and along the mountains until he came within sight of the towers of Ur-Dormulk, where he turned east and circled around the city. He had traveled this far by night, but from here on, the population was thin and the land inhospitable; the war would therefore not be much in evidence. Furthermore, beyond Ur-Dormulk, overmen were no longer totally unknown; the Yprian caravans had been crossing these lands occasionally for most of the past three years, and the people were accustomed to them. Householders would not attack Garth on sight simply because of his species.

  He could, if he chose, travel by day and use the highway to Skelleth openly.

  Switching his schedule all at once, however, was not particularly convenient; instead, he lengthened each leg of it, riding on into the morning until he was too weary to want to go farther, then sleeping on past sunset until he awoke naturally and fully rested. He did, however, follow the high road; the plains were still muddy from melted snow and spring rain.

  He finally came within sight of Skelleth around noon, but he had been awake since midnight, so that as far as he was concerned, it was late in the day and he was ready to rest. He had bought a goat for Koros the previous morning and eaten well himself, at a small farm he had passed, but he had had nothing since, save for a handful
of dried fruit and salted beef; his provisions were beginning to run low. He was tired and hungry and looking forward to cold ale and hot food at the King's Inn, followed by a soft bed in the house he had rebuilt for himself from the ruins at the edge of town.

  The prospect of a good rest, and his lingering good mood, put a smile on his face. He glanced down at the clockwork gull he kept on the saddle before him; he had not cared to pack it away where it might be damaged by bumping against his other belongings. It gleamed golden in the thin, dreary light that seeped through the thick clouds overhead. The weather had been good throughout his trip, but he knew that could not last much longer; indeed, the sky looked very much as if there would be rain before nightfall.

  When he glanced up from the metal bird, Garth noticed that something or someone stood outside the town wall, beside the highway he rode upon. His smile faded. The last time he had ridden up this highway, someone had been waiting upon it, an overman named Thord; he had been posted there as part of an inept siege laid by Garth's chief wife Kyrith, and it had been that siege which had led to the sacking of Skelleth. Garth did not much care to be reminded of that.

  He wondered whom or what he was seeing; the distance was such that he could not yet make the figure out. He hoped that, whatever it was, it was not the harbinger of more trouble.

  The thing stood about the height of an overman, Garth judged, or perhaps an unusually tall human, but the shape seemed slightly wrong. He rode on.

  When he had drawn somewhat nearer, he saw that it was, indeed, an overman, or something very much like one, but slumped forward, and with something projecting upward at the back of its neck.

  Another of the warbeast's long strides allowed Garth to determine that the overman-if such it truly was was hanging from a post or stake, apparently lifeless.

  Garth was confused; he had no idea what this thing could signify, what overman could be there, or why. He did not like it. The figure was utterly lifeless, and Garth wondered whether perhaps it was an effigy of himself, put there by some enemy, a townsman, perhaps, who had never forgiven him his part in Skelleth's destruction.

  The other possibility, that it was a real overman's corpse hung up as a warning of some kind, was much less appealing.

  He rode closer and began to perceive details. Black hair hung down limply, hiding the face; the hands were pulled back, out of sight, presumably tied to the pole or to each other. The figure faced directly toward him. A blue tunic covered the torso, and brown leather riding breeches the legs, with mudspattered boots on its feet. There was a disturbing familiarity to it.

  The possibility that it was just an effigy grew dimmer with each step and vanished long before he reached the corpse's side.

  The sensation of familiarity increased, and with it Garth's concern. By the time he told Koros to stop, he was seriously worried, convinced that he had come upon the body of someone he knew well.

  He dismounted, and as he turned toward the suspended corpse he realized for the first time that it was female. Overwomen were not as clearly differentiated from overmen as women were from men; there was no difference in height, and both sexes were equally flat-chested, though males tended to be broader at the shoulder and narrower at the hip. The primary sexual distinction was in the odor.

  With the realization of the sex of the corpse, he was suddenly sure of its identity; he ran to it, hoping that he was wrong, and lifted the drooping head.

  He had not been wrong. It was Kyrith. Her red eyes were open, blank, and staring, and her leathery brown skin was cold and clammy; Garth could have no doubt that she was dead.

  He was so horrified, so caught by her dead gaze, that he did not at first consciously notice the marks on her forehead. Like all their people, she had a broad, high forehead, the skin drawn tight across the bone; now her brow was caked with dried blood, and blood had congealed in rivulets down either side of her face.

  When Garth was able to turn his eyes from hers, he saw the blood and followed the dried streams to their source.

  There were cuts in her forehead, many of them, but not mere random slashes; Garth did not immediately see the pattern, for the blood had blurred it, and shock had dulled his wits. As he continued to stare, however, he made out the nature of the marks. On her right side was a horizontal curl, and a diagonal, and then a long downstroke-the rune for A. Next was the upward curve, hooked downstroke, and downward curve of GH, then another A, and finally the short upright and long double curve of a D-except that here the curve was broken and awkward, more like a series of short slashes. Runes were meant to be drawn with ink on paper, not cut into flesh.

  AGHAD.

  Garth knew that name well. Humans swore by it, sometimes, and used it in jesting reference to liars or unfaithful spouses, but Garth knew it to be no joke. It was the name of the god of hatred and treachery, and of a cult he had defied and defiled when he robbed their temple and slew their high priest in Dыsarra about three years before.

  The cult had made a habit of casual and gruesome murders, and had sworn vengeance upon him, but he had long since dismissed it from his thoughts. He had believed the cultists to be limited to their own city, far to the west, and had considered their threats merely human boastfulness.

  He had, he saw now, been wrong.

  No trace remained of his earlier euphoria, nor of the boredom and purposelessness that had driven him to undertake his errand to Orgul. A cold, hard determination burned in his breast; he would destroy the cult of Aghad, and if the means could be found, he would kill the filthy god himself. Garth was an oathbreaker, forsworn, so he made no spoken vow, but his unvoiced commitment was none the less certain for that.

  The initial astonished horror was fading, driven out by rage, and he looked over his wife's corpse.

  A cord was wrapped around her throat, then looped back and tied around the stake. Wire bound her wrists behind the post so tightly that it had drawn blood, gouging deeply into the flesh. A third strand, this one of hideously inappropriate gold braid, passed across her chest, under her arms, and up to a spike driven into the back of the stake; it was this last that actually supported most of her weight and held her upright.

  Garth drew his dagger and cut away the braid with a single short slash, then caught the corpse with his left arm as it started to slump. Another cut severed the line around the neck, allowing a small pouch he had not previously noticed to fall to the ground.

  He ignored the little bag for the moment as, holding his dead wife with his left hand and body, he tried to pry apart the wire at her wrists. It resisted; although it had the appearance of cheap iron, the wire notched the blade of his knife when he worked the point underneath. Nor could he find any loose end whereby he might untangle it.

  He lowered the body into a sitting position, the hands resting on the ground behind the stake, and considered. The followers of Aghad, he recalled, took a perverse delight in doing everything they could to infuriate their victims. They were also fond of mutilation. They probably intended to frustrate and annoy Garth with some manner of trickery, until he became sufficiently maddened that he would sever Kyrith's hand to free her from the post.

  The wire, he decided, must be ensorcelled in some way. There was no point in struggling with it-yet he had no desire to gratify the Aghadites by dismembering his wife.

  The problem could be handled in another way. He fetched his battle-axe from the warbeast's saddle and, with three blows, cut through the foot-thick stake just above Kyrith's sagging head. Having eliminated the spike that had held the braid, Garth was able to lift her easily, so that her hands slid up over the broken end and came free.

  That done, he remembered the pouch that had fallen from the neck cord. He laid the corpse gently on the ground and looked for it.

  The little bag lay where it had fallen, at the foot of the stake. He picked it up, opened it cautiously, and drew out the roll of parchment it contained.

  He had heard of spells that worked through runes, of messages that could bi
nd an unsuspecting victim to the writer's will, but he did not seriously consider it likely that this parchment was anything of that kind. He thought, rather, that it would be a threat or a boast, or perhaps both; the Aghadites had seemed to him the sort of vicious creatures who would not be satisfied with the mere fact of murder, or with the crude attribution carved on the corpse's brow.

  He unrolled the parchment and read the following: "Greetings to Garth of Skelleth, once Prince of Ordunin. The righteous vengeance of Aghad has begun, and you will suffer a thousandfold for the affronts you have committed. For the desecration of the god's shrine and the murder of his chosen high priest, you will pay with everything you value. All those you care for will die horribly. Your sons will die slowly as you watch. That which you have built will be cast down and destroyed. That which you have opposed will be exalted. That which you own shall be taken from you. As your pain grows, know always that Aghad will take joy in it, and his worshippers will laugh at your agony."

  There was no signature.

  Garth crumpled the parchment in his fist and thrust it into a pouch on his belt. Before he could withdraw his hand, he felt a sudden warmth, and the smell of smoke reached his slit nostrils. Startled, he withdrew his hand and dumped the pouch onto a patch of bare earth.

  Nothing remained of the note but smoldering ash.

  He snorted. If the indestructible wire had not been proof enough, this little demonstration left no doubt that the cult was using magic against him. He looked up, glanced quickly around, but saw nothing. He had fought magic before, several times, and knew it to be a real and sometimes deadly force; he would need to keep a careful watch.

  Someone, he realized, might be watching him even now, and he could no longer resist speaking. "Your god will not save you, filth," he said, his voice flat. "Your cult will die, to the last man or woman. My wife's forehead bears your death warrant." He picked up the axe he had dropped and, in a sudden display of fury, splintered the stump of the stake with a single blow.