by Tom Deitz
In any case, her course of action was set for her: Whether she liked it or not, she had to retrieve the sword. If she was lucky, the geen had dropped it close by—What earthly need did it have for a weapon, after all?
But suppose the beast was as mad as Rrath had been. Human minds could only endure the full power of the gems under certain circumstances, so what would one do to a geen?
Well, for one thing any aberrant conduct could easily result in the thing getting itself killed by its fellows—especially if it turned on them. Even better, the blade itself could have turned on the beast with fatal results, in which case she was lucky again, and might not have to travel far to find out for sure.
Now that was a comforting notion—but even so, it was not one she was prepared to address at the moment, what with night coming on and neither she nor Krynneth having been fed in over a day. She helped herself to another quaff of wine and rose, turning to yank Krynneth up with her. He rose easily. Too easily, perhaps. Had he lost that much weight? And how much had she lost lately, on a diet of camp fare and water? Fortunately, food wasn’t a problem in the short term, what with the hold, the Ixtians’ supplies, and an ample cache of freshly dead horse. And while the latter notion held little appeal, she had eaten horse before, and the alternative was to waste a ready supply of meat.
Whichever alternative she chose, she had to build a cook fire—one well away from sight or scent of the bodies. She also needed to investigate the house in search of a place to sleep for the night. There were geens thereabouts, after all; and with the stables now in ruins—Well, there was absolutely no way she was going to sleep outside tonight.
As for tomorrow …
Food, first, in large quantities. Then …
Tracking she supposed.
Or—
A bath? It would consume a hand at most, if they hurried, and make up for that in comfort. Besides which, there was the small matter of Krynneth, who hadn’t bathed since sometime before she had met him, and that had been over an eight ago. Yes, tomorrow morning, like it or not, and quest be damned, she was going to get him into the river, then into some clean clothes, if she had to pillage the Ixtian dead to do it.
In the meantime—
“Eat?” Krynneth queried hopefully.
“Yes,” she sighed. “That’s a good idea. Do you think you could find some firewood? I’ll go see if there’s anywhere to cook inside, though I don’t think it’s very likely, else these lads wouldn’t have set up out here.”
“Yes,” Krynneth repeated. Which settled a great many things for the nonce.
CHAPTER IX:
LATE-NIGHT DISCOVERY
(NORTHWESTERN ERON: GEM-HOLD-WINTER–HIGH SUMMER: DAY LXXV NIGHT)
“But what I want to know,” Zeff said emphatically, and not for the first time that evening, never mind that day, “is where in three worlds was Avall?”
“Not on the siege tower; that’s all we know,” Ahfinn replied wearily, dodging deftly aside as Zeff swept by on his latest round of pacings. Those took him by a small table on which bread, wine, and cheese were always arrayed. He paused there to refill a goblet he had already refilled twice—then turned in place to glare at his adjutant, eyes blue as his Ninth Face tabard, but far, far colder.
“I knew that much a finger past sunrise,” Zeff snapped. “I’ve spent the rest of the day scanning their camp from our top gallery with the best distance lenses I have, and learned nothing—and curse them, too, for not cutting down more trees. I could see the top of what might be the Royal Pavilion but nothing at all of who goes in and out there.” He took a long draught of wine for emphasis.
Ahfinn availed himself of that opportunity to refill his own goblet, though he was drinking more slowly than his Chief. He hated it when Zeff got like this; then again, whatever else he was, Zeff was also human—and it was human to vent one’s frustrations. He only hoped Zeff didn’t realize how much he was revealing about himself in the process. Information was power, after all, and Ahfinn had acquired quite a lot of information about his Chief of late—if not a clear notion of the extent of that Chief’s hold on sanity.
Something had certainly changed since Zeff had tried to wrest the secret of the gems from Avall. And changed again since yesterday, when he had called the lightning, then snatched defeat from victory’s jaws.
“Think, Chief,” Ahfinn ventured finally, trying to look as serious as his youth allowed. “Avall had minimal food once we brought him here. He was also plied with imphor wood and—forgive me—physically abused. Any of those things alone could have worn his stamina to a nubbin even without what happened.”
Zeff rounded on him, his lean face dark as thunder. “And what did happen?”
“You were there as well as I was,” Ahfinn retorted. “Avall was clamped to the tabletop; there was that … confusion with the sword; then Kylin grabbed Avall’s hand, whereupon he simply … wasn’t—nor was Kylin. We’ve chosen to call it magic because that’s how we’re conditioned to term such things; but it could just as well have been anything from a very clever conjurer’s trick to intercession by The Nine.”
“If The Nine could free him,” Zeff sniffed coldly, “it would mean he has Their favor absolute, in which case we wouldn’t be sitting here now.”
Ahfinn shrugged beneath his own blue surcoat—wool, where Zeff’s was velvet. “They’re capricious. They don’t always agree. Perhaps it’s a test.”
“It is a test!” Zeff flared, claiming a seat on the padded bench built into one wall. “A test of patience. The fact is, Avall vanished yesterday, hasn’t been seen since then, and hadn’t obviously returned this morning. That tells me a number of things. Rationality dictates that he and Kylin somehow returned to their camp, since that would be their nearest place of refuge, as well as being where their friends are. It also tells me that Avall could have been injured in … transit or became sick thereafter. He could even have been killed—what Kylin did certainly looked to me like the work of a desperate man, and such things often go awry. For that matter, they could simply have vanished completely. We could have witnessed a very spectacular suicide-regicide, for all we know. And that’s the problem, Ahfinn: We know nothing.”
“We know that Avall didn’t reappear this morning,” Ahfinn replied with a carefully contrived calm he hoped would be contagious. “Even that fact, tenuous as it is, gives you more time in which to find new gems. We also know that Rann didn’t reappear, which I find interesting.”
“Rann is Avall’s bond-brother,” Zeff spat. “If Avall was injured, it would be perfectly consistent with Rann’s character to abandon everything else to nurse him.”
“Which would also explain Vorinn’s presence on the tower.”
“And Tryffon’s and Preedor’s and Veen’s. But the rest—I don’t know, Ahfinn; those two particular absences just seem odd.”
“There’s still an army,” Ahfinn offered, “one that’s only going to get bigger while ours can only remain the same.”
Zeff scowled. “Conceded. But then we may ask another question. When Avall and Kylin vanished, Kylin had the Lightning Sword—without its proper gem, apparently, but which still worked after a fashion even with the ‘wrong’ one. Why, therefore, hasn’t anyone been out there wielding it against us? That’s why I had most of the hold folk out on display today: to prevent anyone using the Lightning Sword on us. Fortunately, as far as we can tell, it’s the only actual weapon among the three.”
“Agreed,” Ahfinn sighed. “So where are we, then?”
“Waiting,” Zeff replied sourly. “Exactly like our foes.”
“We could always try to revive Rrath again.”
Zeff glared at him. “Another exercise in frustration? Are you trying to drive me mad?”
Ahfinn chose not to answer. “I’ll check on him if you like.”
The glare did not diminish. “Suit yourself—only get out of my sight.”
Ahfinn sketched a bow and withdrew. He did not, however, exit Zeff’s quarters;
rather, he opened a door to his left that let onto an empty corridor lined with identical round-topped doors. He walked straight to the third one on the right, fumbled briefly with a large bronze ring at his waist, chose one from the dozen keys clustered there, and thrust it into the lock. A pause to compose himself before entering, and he slipped into the chamber beyond: one of a series of small, austere rooms that permeated this part of the hold—rooms that had been built as a matter of course but had not yet had any particular function assigned to them, thus their sparseness. Which made them perfect as cells—or sickrooms—in which capacity this one presently served.
Rrath—Rrath syn Garnill, to use the full name of the young man who lay faceup on a plain white cot against the opposite wall—had not moved in any obvious fashion since Ahfinn had last looked in on him two days earlier, nor had he changed for the better. Never large, even by Eronese standards, Rrath seemed to have shrunk in all dimensions since he had been brought here by the same band of Ninth Face soldiers that had captured Avall back at the Face’s primary citadel. That was odd, too, Ahfinn considered. Usually when one wasted away one simply got thinner and thinner until no meat remained on one’s bones for the soul to consume, whereupon one died. Rrath, however, merely seemed to be … diminishing. He was almost certainly shorter than when he had first arrived.
Ahfinn shuddered as he stared down at the man. Nine, but it was cold in here! Maybe he should talk to Zeff about installing a brazier to knock the chill off the room. Maybe that would aid Rrath’s recovery.
Somehow he doubted it.
Rrath was victim of.… of himself, he supposed. Why, he hadn’t even been a Fellow of the Face for a year yet; only since the previous autumn, when old Nyllol had recruited him. But he had been a remarkably fast riser—perhaps too fast. Certainly if he had behaved with more circumspection they might have retrieved Avall’s magic gems long since. As it was, Rrath had fallen in with Avall’s brilliant but fatally flawed cousin, Eddyn, and everyone in the Face knew how that had ended: with Eddyn dead, with the gems out of reach in the regalia, with Avall on the Throne, and with Rrath having—briefly—worn the regalia—which had promptly driven him mad, then forced him so far into himself that not even the Royal Healers—not even Avall, with intercession from one or the other of the gems, so he had heard—could recall him.
Perhaps Zeff could have—if he had dared use the gem.
But Zeff had not dared: not since the episode with Avall—and if Zeff dared not, there was no doubt whatever about whether Ahfinn dared.
Maybe if they found more gems …
Sparing one final glance at Rrath—a glance marked by the rare privilege of actually seeing the man breathe—Ahfinn shook his head sadly, returned to the corridor outside, and re-locked the door.
As he approached Zeff’s chambers, the sound of voices reached him. He paused at the portal, listening. A messenger had just arrived, so it sounded: one of the Fellows newly returned from Tir-Eron, if he heard right—and that was a neat trick, too, given that Gem-Hold was effectively surrounded. Still, the Face knew of entrances that the Royalists did not, and that knowledge had served them well so far. The question was, did he announce himself or simply remain in place, listening?
The former, he decided.
Straightening his tabard, Ahfinn rapped a courtesy cadence on the door and reentered his Chief’s chambers.
Instead of glaring, Zeff ignored him, intent as he was on a dark, slightly built young woman clad in the tight black garb of those whose duty it was to come and go from the hold unseen. By the ritual cup of greeting still clasped in her hand, she had only just arrived. She looked tired but alert. Ahfinn doubted that he had missed much more than ritual.
“And now,” Zeff addressed the woman, motioning her to a seat and claiming one himself, as did Ahfinn, “how fare things in Tir-Eron?”
The woman’s face was sober. “Things could … fare better.”
Zeff raised a brow. “How so?”
The woman took a deep breath. “On the surface, affairs proceed decently if not well. That is, people—the low clans—go about their lives much as before. Rather, I should say those from Eron Gorge and north go as before, as much as they can without the implicit leadership provided to them by the Chiefs. What we had not reckoned on was the extent of displacement in the south, nor on the number of refugees who must be fed, housed, and the pains in their souls attended to. Our stores, already stretched thin, are now, I fear—”
“—Overtaxed,” Zeff finished for her. “The question is, has there been direct dissent?”
“Not to say, though we have observed meetings of Common Clan and clanless—and dispersed them quickly with appropriate arrests. But there also seems to be at least one covert effort afoot to systematically assassinate our guards, generally those in remote locations. Mostly they just turn up dead with no mark on their bodies we can find—if we can find those bodies before the fish or the flames do, which seems never to be the case.”
“And the Chiefs?”
“Which Chiefs? Ours, or the others?”
“Both.”
The woman shifted position, staring at her drink. “As far as the other Chiefs are concerned, after Mask Night, we have had little success in … accounting for those we have not accounted for already. Nor, unfortunately, have we identified where those survivors might be gathering, though surely they must be doing so—all of which means that we must be on guard at all times.”
Zeff steepled his fingers before him. “And why do you suppose this is? This problem with the rank and file?”
The messenger looked up at him. “May I be frank?”
“You may.”
“Because we reckoned on the people being angry at the High Clans for withholding access to The Eight, but in fact what seems to have affected them far more strongly is this rumor that Avall has proven that the soul and the body are not bound together. That alone—proof that the soul exists—seems of greater import to them than any sort of access to The Eight we can provide.”
“In other words,” Ahfinn broke in, “the fact that they have more reason to suppose there is something to life … hereafter gives them less reason to question the facts of their life in the here and now.”
“That, in essence, would seem to be the case,” the messenger conceded carefully.
“Not what we wanted to hear,” Zeff growled. “I—” He froze abruptly, cocked his head, and glanced toward the door. “Someone’s coming—in a hurry, by the tread.”
Ahfinn followed his Chief’s gaze, but by then a knock had sounded in urgent cadence. “Come!” Zeff called at once, his face dark as thunder. Ahfinn pitied anyone who used that cadence frivolously.
The door opened immediately, to admit a short, wiry young man whose clean novice robe did not mask a dirty and sweaty body. “Forgive me, Chief,” the lad began, glancing around quickly, his gaze pausing briefly on the messenger. “Forgive me, I say—but you wanted to be told at once, no matter what.”
Ahfinn’s heart double beat, both from the news and the light he saw waken in Zeff’s eyes. “You’ve reached the mines!”
The novice nodded, barely suppressing a grin. “We have. And, sir—the news is even better than that. We have—we think we have—discovered a few more magic gems!”
Zeff was on his feet at once, all anger and apprehension fled from his face. “Ahfinn, go with this lad immediately. Tell them I will be down as soon as I can make myself ready. Fate seems to have rolled the dice again; it remains to see how much of our fate that higher Fate has altered.”
CHAPTER X:
REAWAKENING
(SOUTHWEST OF ERON–HIGH SUMMER: DAY LXXVI–EARLY MORNING)
Avall was running.
He did not recall beginning, only that he was doing so now.
Effortlessly.
His legs marked out impossibly long strides across an endless plain of sand—sand laced ever more frequently with hard earth and short, sturdy grass that turned yellow or tan a hand above
the earth, but which still evinced a comforting green about its roots, even in what seemed to be the silver-blue of moonlight. Small animals dived here and there among those shadowed shoots, and for some reason they made Avall hungry enough to reach down now and then and scoop one up. If he ate them, he did not recall.
There were birds, too: a few, that rose from among that low growth. And every so often there were snakes and lizards: moving shadows among the still. Never mind the insects that rose chirring in his wake as he rushed along.
Tirelessly.
Never pausing.
Running.
Running at the head of the pack.
The light of a single moon beat down on him, and the stars whispered that it was not yet morning. He wondered why he wasn’t sweating. The wind whipped along his sides, touching more of him than it ought.
Something glittered in one hand, flickering in and out of sight.
He turned minutely, aware that others ran behind him and altered their courses to suit.
His shadow slid around and ran before him, long across the plain in the silver light.
But it was not his shadow.
Not the shadow of a middle-sized, neatly built young man.
This shadow was longer and taller. It had thick-thighed legs with three-toed claws for feet and a torso that was heaviest toward the hips. The arms were roughly the same size as his own, though the head was longer.
And there was a tail, tapering from a thick base to a sharp whip that stuck out straight behind as he ran. His back was a zigzag ridge of hand-sized plates.
He was hungry.
But it was a craving for more than food. Something had awakened in his brain that had not been present before: something profound and bright—something that filled spaces, where before there had been nothing but base desire.
He wanted, he realized, to know things.
And that desire flowed into him from a strange new place, from the shiny thing in his hand, in fact. And that hand hurt, he noticed, yet it was a pain he would never relinquish. It was like the exquisite pain when one’s mate bit one during copulation. Or the pain in the base of one’s teeth when they clamped down on a rival’s neck and sent him down to doom.