Shadow went down, struggled up, fell a second time to lie still.
“Shadow!” cried Gom, starting out from under the bush.
“The dog is dead, so now I’ll have the rune, little man!” Exulting, Zamul fell upon him.
“What!” a new voice cried. “What in Ulm’s name is going on!”
Gom caught a glimpse of a flashing knife blade and a shock of black curls, dark against the sun’s rays.
A moment later there came a scream of human pain, and looking up, Gom saw Zamul kneeling on the grass, face contorted, blood running from a gashed shoulder, over his silver bracelet to splash his bright green breeches. The next instant, the image of the conjuror vanished and an injured skull-bird rose from the ground to flap clumsily away.
Had he imagined it? It had all happened so quickly. The ground heaved and tilted, came up to meet him with a roar. Through the noise there came another sound, a human voice.
“Good gracious—it’s Master Gom!”
Carrick.
Chapter Fourteen
"EASY NOW.” Carrick bent down and slipped his arms under Gom. Then with a heave, he lifted Gom up, and strode off through the bushes.
“Wait!” Gom protested weakly. “Go look to the dog.”
Zamul had said Shadow was dead, and he certainly seemed it, but he might just be alive still.
Carrick looked back. “The dog? It can wait.” He strode on.
Gom twisted in the tinker’s arms, trying to get down. “Carrick, we must go back. If he’s alive, he’s much worse off than I am.”
“Maybe, but he’s a dog, and you’re a human, and there lies a world of difference,” Carrick answered. “Ah, here we are.”
Off the trail, only moments from where Gom had stopped to rest, a packhorse stood grazing, and various bundles lay scattered about in the long grass. Carrick laid Gom down carefully on a bright red blanket then set about producing a small iron pot, a bundle of clean white cloth, and a thick blue bottle stoppered with a stout cork.
“Turn over, Master Gom, if you can,” Carrick said, kneeling beside him. “That’s right. This will hurt. I’m sorry, but we must get you clean. First, let’s have that shirt off you. And that stone, too,” he added, as the rune came to light.
“No,” Gom said quickly. “It’s my lucky charm.”
“And a right good one, too.” Carrick nodded gravely. “It brought me along at the right moment.”
Parting with the shirt wasn’t too bad, but Gom cried out as Carrick dabbed his back.
“What are you using?” Gom said through his teeth.
“Only water,” Carrick said, without stopping. “You’ve three very mean gouges, but not too deep. They’ll mend. There,” he went on. “Now they’re cleaned off, we can put something on them to help them heal. Brace yourself, Master Gom. This stuff really stings.”
Gom clamped his jaw tight against fresh pain as Carrick dabbed bright gold tincture from the blue bottle into his wounds.
“Liquid fire, they call it.” Carrick grinned. “Don’t know how the apothecaries make it, and heaven knows we professional travelers curse its sting often enough, but we wouldn’t be without it. Hold on now. I’m going to bind you up a bit, and set one of my old shirts upon you.”
Gom thought of Shadow, still lying in the heat among those bushes, dying, if not dead already, because there was no one to tend him.
“Carrick,” Gom said urgently, “would you—”
“All in good time,” the tinker said. “Can you ease up a bit?”
Beside himself, Gom suffered Carrick to sit him up and bind him with broad, clean cotton strips. Gom’s back throbbed with pain. For all his efforts to avoid it, he thought, it seemed he’d had Mat’s flogging after all.
The binding completed, the tinker slipped an oversized cotton shirt around Gom’s shoulders and eased Gom’s arms into the sleeves.
“Now,” Carrick said. “Give us that hand.”
“Please,” Gom said, “my hand can wait. Please see Shadow now. He saved my life.”
“He did?” Carrick took Gom’s hand, turned it over. “Ummm,” he said. “That’s nasty. Only just missed the third tendon.” He washed the gash, anointed it with the gold tincture too, and bound it.
“Strange,” Carrick said as he worked. “How all this happened. Here I am, taking a rest, when I hear shouting, then a dog's snarl. Robbers, I thought. Setting upon some innocent traveler.” He cocked an eye at Gom. “I get up, and run around the bushes, ready to take on a whole gang of them and what do I find?” He held up three fingers in succession. “One lad, one dog, and a bird.”
Gom watched him, tight-lipped, saying nothing.
Carrick tied up the binding around Gom’s hand, set it on Gom’s lap. “There you are, Master Gom. One hand, returned to owner. It’ll soon mend, if you treat it right. As I was saying, there I was looking to see the source of those voices and I find but one boy.”
Again Carrick waited, and again Gom stayed quiet. The peddler evidently suspected there was more to what happened than what he’d seen. And given the fact that Carrick had saved his life—and the rune—Gom knew that the tinker was due some sort of explanation. But he was too angry with Carrick to speak, and besides, what could he say?
“Of course, I could have been dreaming,” Carrick continued, when still Gom didn’t speak. “I could have imagined those voices shouting and all.” The master tinker bundled up Gom’s torn shirt and stowed it into one of the bags lying about. “But that bird was no dream, nor those injuries. That was some bird: big—and hideous, with its head looking like a skull, half-human. Where did it come from, Master Gom?”
Carrick was watching him closely.
Gom looked down. “Out of the clear blue sky,” he muttered. Carrick apparently hadn’t seen Zamul lose control of his bird shape. It had been quick. Again Gom wondered if he’d not imagined it, but then he remembered Zamul’s boast... he’s given me the changing power... Gom wondered whether he oughtn’t to tell Carrick something of what had really happened, just in case the bird came back. Because something was altered. Zamul, for all his talk, had heretofore been squeamish about attacking a small, defenseless boy. Not so this new Zamul. The conjuror had swooped on him no less savagely than the original skull-bird, had laid open his back, would have killed him without a qualm. Gom sought the rune, held it tight, as though protecting it and seeking its protection in return. He’ll not give you any more trouble, Ganash had said, and had truly believed it. Why not? The kundalara had not known of Zamul’s new power to change shape, and with new cunning, Zamul had kept that knowledge from Ganash. But far from having to trudge long miles from the farther side of the sound to find Gom again, Zamul had flown swiftly in his powerful bird shape, and awaited his chance to strike.
Gom’s mouth tightened. Ganash had called Katak an evil blight, and Gom had understood that from his own experience. But only now did he begin to see how evil. In such a short time Zamul had changed from a foolish, greedy man into a cold killer. Imagine such change spreading over the world!
“Funny.” Carrick stood up. “I seem to remember Hort telling me as how he rescued you from something very similar up on the Bluff.”
Gom kept his eyes on the ground.
“Oh well,” the tinker said finally. “It’s gone now. But we’ll watch out for it, and spread the word along the trail. It looked big enough to take a full grown man, let alone a boy. And now,” he said, “for that dog of yours.”
He started back through the bushes the way they’d come.
“He’s not mine,” Gom called after him, but Carrick’s words pleased him, all the same.
The moment Gom was alone, fresh pain swamped in, until it seemed that he was all back and the back was all pain.
Somewhere out there Zamul, though wounded, still waited. Gom thought of his earlier flight from the skull-bird through the pass, his fall from the Bluff. That time, which had been bad enough, he’d thought only of saving the rune. This was worse. For now Katak would be out not
only to get back the rune, but to wreak vengeance on those who had shut him away. More: if Katak escaped his grotto, what calamity would then be loosed upon Ulm?
He wants power... over those who rule the people, to bend them to his will.
Whatever that was, it wasn’t good. Gom shifted, wincing. So much, so much depended now on keeping the rune, handing it safely into his mother’s keeping. How? How was such as he going to prevail over such remorseless will? He wondered, not for the first time, at his mother leaving such a valuable thing with him. He even, for a moment, regretted it himself, such a burden it was, to carry it around like this. Did Harga know what was going on? Surely, if she were as great as Ganash claimed. In that case—why didn’t she just come out and claim it? It seemed to him that she should, for now not only his future, but that of the whole world seemed to depend on its safekeeping.
He sighed. Not knowing of Harga’s purposes, he could only keep going as best he could. There was one comfort: Zamul wasn’t all-powerful. He hadn’t seen Carrick, had he? And however cruel and savage he had become he was obviously still as much a coward as ever, letting Carrick put him to flight. Small comfort: Gom was no nearer to solving the riddle and finding his mother. And with Zamul following, his chances seemed more remote than ever.
He sat miserably waiting for Carrick’s return, oblivious to the sunlight, the rank stink of the undergrowth, the busy whine of insects around his head.
He nodded, and his chin sank onto his chest.
He dozed for a minute. Or two. Or three.
Gom’s head snapped up at something: a slight movement, some faint noise nearby.
Straight across from him, Shadow was lying limp in the grass, Carrick bent over him, his arm going slowly up and down. Doing what? Something bright and sharp flashed in the man’s hand. Gom shook his head, blinked, and focusing, saw stout black thread protruding from it.
The tinker was using a bodkin.
“Ah, you’re awake.” Carrick didn’t turn his head, but continued to concentrate on his task. “I’m sewing up our friend’s hide. Hole big as a kettle lid.” The tinker’s brown hands worked away, precise, sure, unhurried, cutting neat, tight stitches through Shadow’s flesh.
Shadow lived!
On the grass beside the dog lay metal basins filled with various fluids, and a razor covered in soap and hair. Gom looked quickly to Shadow’s side. Carrick had shaved it clean, exposing bluish skin.
Shadow lived. Gom’s throat constricted. No thanks to him. That very morning, he’d urged his new acquaintance to leave his old life and come away with him. Anything’s better than what you have, he’d said. And the dog had been almost killed.
The jagged line of black stitches slowly but surely replaced the gaping hole. His anger gone, Gom began to forgive Carrick’s neglect of the dog. Perhaps Carrick had foreseen that tending Shadow would take much longer than fixing Gom, and for that reason had treated his human patient first.
“There.” Carrick finished off the thread and trimmed the end with his knife. “He’ll live, I think. But he’s in bad condition. We’ll have to carry him for a day or two. How are you feeling now?”
“Fine,” Gom fibbed. “Carrick: if he lives, it’s thanks to you. I’m sorry for being short. He’s my friend, you see, and I owe him a great deal.”
Carrick gravely heard him out.
“I understand, Master Gom. I’m sorry, too, for making you fret. But in my book, a man’s a man, and a dog’s a dog, and there’s no doubt as to who comes first.” He nodded down to the unconscious hound. “I never thought I’d be serving the like. Them and me, we don’t see eye to eye. In fact, there’s many a peddler and tinker in Ulm as carries evidence of snap-happy fangs.”
He began to clear away his gear and stow it into one of the large bags lying around the horse’s feet, thick canvas panniers that, when Carrick moved on, would hang at the beast’s side.
“However, it’s over,” Carrick went on, kneeling over the pannier. “The cur will live, so you’ll keep your friend. But say, I thought you’d be down in the lakelands long before now. How come you’re still up here?”
Gom looked away. “I was delayed,” he said.
“But you’re still headed south?”
“Yes.” Gom looked to Carrick in sudden hope. “Could we go together?”
Carrick smiled. “You stole my words, young one. You hungry?”
A moment ago, Gom would have said emphatically, no. But now he felt a small appetite coming upon him, in spite of Zamul, in spite of Shadow lying there badly injured, and in spite of his fear and pain. There he’d been, on the verge of certain death from that hated skull-bird and now here he was, in the safe company of the very man he’d wished for.
He nodded.
“Good.” Carrick closed the pannier and stood up. “First, I’ll fetch your gear. Then we’ll eat. Tell you what: I was going on for another hour or two, but we’ll camp out here instead, and press on tomorrow. Then you can travel on Finnikin’s back,” he said, nodding to the packhorse behind them, “and Shadow can lie in one of the panniers. My, Master Gom.” Carrick beamed down at him. “I’m that pleased to renew our acquaintance.”
* * *
When Gom awoke the next morning, he felt stiff and bruised, but the pain in his back had eased some.
“It was the liquid fire,” Carrick said, smiling. “And a young body bouncing back.”
He bathed Gom’s wounds and redressed them, then they had breakfast. Fresh oatcakes, and honey, and tea brewed over a little lamp. As they ate, Gom glanced to the sky, then to where Shadow lay, still sleeping.
“Let him,” Carrick said. “ ’Twill stand him in good stead.”
When they’d finished eating, Carrick took out some dried beef and a large tin bowl, which he filled with water from a tin canteen.
“For that hound of yours when he awakes,” he said, and went to load up the horse.
Shadow stirred, opened his eyes. “What happened?”
Gom bent over him. “Easy. You’ve a nasty wound,” he said. “Here, here’s water. Can you sit?”
Shadow struggled up shakily. Suddenly, he growled.
“Who’s he?”
The dog was eyeing Carrick.
“Carrick’s a friend.” Gom spoke softly, not wanting Carrick to hear him speaking in Shadow’s tongue. “He saved us from that bird yesterday. In fact, he saved you twice over, for he stitched your side up good as new.”
“He what?” Shadow twisted, craning to see, and yelped in pain.
Carrick looked around.
“Ah. The beast’s awake, I see. Here,” he said. “I’ve emptied one of the panniers. He’ll fit in just fine. But first, let’s take a look at him.”
Carrick crossed over to where Shadow lay, and knelt down. Drawing his lips into a snarl, Shadow began to rise.
“That’s enough,” Carrick said sharply. “You want me to look at that side or not?”
Shadow subsided onto the ground and lay still while the tinker inspected his wound.
“It’s seeping some.” Carrick addressed Gom over the dog’s head.
Gom watched for Shadow’s reaction as Carrick dabbed the wounded side with liquid fire. To his surprise, Shadow only whimpered, twitched a little, but otherwise made no move.
To Gom’s further surprise as Carrick restoppered the blue bottle, the hound reached out and licked the tinker’s hand.
Looks like he's taken to you,” Gom observed enviously. Carrick, grunting, put the tincture away and set about preparing them all to leave. The dog, he saw, followed Carrick s every move, didn’t complain as the tinker lifted him into the pannier. In silence, Gom suffered Carrick to help him up onto Finnikin’s back, and stiffly settled himself sideways.
Carrick handed Gom the staff. “That’s a fine piece you have there, Master Gom, he said. “I’ve never seen the like. He reached out and touched the little sparrow’s head. The carving’s so fine that the creatures seem almost alive, particularly this little one.”
“That he was, and a fine father, too,” Carrick added, “to have produced such a son as you. Gee up, Finnikin. We’ve lost time to recoup.”
They made slow but steady progress that day, along the narrow, twisting trail, Gom perched on Finnikin’s back, Shadow deeply asleep in his pannier, Carrick walking alongside, whistling tunelessly.
Gom looked upward uneasily, found the skies clear. Zamul would be lying up somewhere, nursing his wounds. But for how long? he wondered.
On either side, the steep banks of the valley shimmered in the airless heat, and insects hummed among the bushes.
Gom held the staff absently, thinking how efficiently Carrick had taken care of his two unexpected companions. It seemed tinkers had to know much more than how to mend pots. Gom pictured himself kneeling by Shadow’s side, sewing it up, applying remedies, and liked the idea. He thought of the liquid fire. It was healing his back like magic. Carrick hadn’t made that. He’d gotten it from—what was the word? An apothecary. Could that mean wizard?
“Those apothecaries you mentioned yesterday,” he asked. “What do they do, Carrick?”
Carrick stopped his whistling. “Well, now, let’s see: they do pretty much the same as Mistress Gumby the herb wife back in Green Vale, only being city men,” he said dryly, “they charge lots of money for what they do, and grow rich and pompous in the doing. Why?”
Gom shrugged. “I just wondered.” Apothecaries weren’t wizards, then, for wizards were secret, while those men apparently lived highly public lives. But Harga knew all about herbs and remedies. Wizards, then, were higher than apothecaries, much higher, for they had to know about more than herbs.
“Are you thinking to become an apothecary, Master Gom?” The tinker smiled. “If so, ’tis an improvement on conjuring. But there’s many things a lad can turn his hand to, if he wants a change from woodcutting. When you get down to the lakes, you’ll see.” The blue eyes regarded Gom keenly. “I don’t see you as conjuror, nor do I see you growing fat on others folks’s ills. You know, I’ll be interested to see what you do opt for, in the end.”
The Riddle and the Rune Page 15