Short of the Xylarian border, Jorian took a side road that led southwesterly through the forest, clad in the dense green foliage of late summer, toward the Marshes of Moru. When the road petered out to a mere track, he halted, tethered the animals, and left Margalit in charge. He also left her his crossbow with instructions for its use. He was pleased to find that she, unlike most women, was strong enough to cock it.
Jorian and Karadur set out afoot. They followed a copy of a map from the Grand Ducal archives and Jorian's memory of the country from his flight through it nearly three years before. Flies buzzed round their heads; Jorian slapped one that bit him in the neck. The woods resounded with the metallic song of cicadas.
At the time of Jorian's previous visit to this area, Rhithos the Smith had laid a confusion spell on the forest around his house. He did this as a favor to the Silvans, the aboriginal inhabitants, to keep hunters and woodcutters out of their woods. In return, the Silvans furnished Rhithos and Vanora, who was then his slave, with food. But when Rhithos had tried to kill Jorian in order to put a spell on a magical sword he was making, Jorian killed him instead. So the spell was broken.
They had been walking the trail for an hour, going slowly because of Karadur's age, when Jorian jerked his head back as something whispered past him. The sound ended in a sharp tick. Jorian saw a dart sticking in a tree beside the trail; he pulled it out. The point had been smeared with some sticky stuff.
"That must be the doing of the Silvans," said the Mulvanian. "It is doubtless poisoned."
"I thought they dwelt leagues farther east, in the vicinage of Rhithos's house?"
"Nay, they range widely through the forest belt north of the Lograms."
"But why should they shoot at me?"
"You slew their ally the smith. We had better get back to the wagon—"
Another whisper, and another dart struck another tree, this time behind them.
"Get down!" said Jorian, throwing himself flat on the trail. "Are they warning us, or are they merely bad shots?"
"I know not," said Karadur, lowering himself more slowly.
Jorian had already started to crawl back along the trail. Another dart struck his leather jacket; he snatched it out.
"They seek to slay us, forsooth!" he said. "There goes one of the losels!" A small, hairy, naked form with pointed ears and a tail flitted among the trees. "And me without my trusty crossbow! Canst work a spell to get us out of this?"
"If they would stop shooting blowguns at us, I could effect another confusion spell. It is a simple magical operation."
"O Silvans!" roared Jorian, rising on his elbows. "We are friends! Come out and let us talk!" He ducked as another dart whizzed past.
"Crawl faster!" he growled, wriggling along the trail past his companion.
"I cannot keep up with you!" panted Karadur.
"If I could get close enough to seize one… Look you," Jorian whispered. "I'll pretend to be hit and dying. Do you likewise."
A dart flew at Jorian's face, but a twig deflected it at the last instant. "Ai!" screamed Jorian, thrashing about as if in his death throes. Behind him, Karadur made similar noises and motions. Then both lay still.
After what seemed a long wait, a rustle in the greenery announced the forest folk. Three appeared on the path, with blowguns made from canes. When they stepped closer, Jorian bounded to his feet and threw himself on the nearest one. Since the little fellow was only waist-high to Jorian, he was easily overcome.
The other two leaped back, squeaking in their own tongue. As they raised their blowguns, Jorian put the blade of his knife against the captive's neck.
"Don't shoot, if you want your friend alive!" he shouted.
Whether or not they understood the words, the two hesitated. Karadur came up behind Jorian and spoke in the twittering tongue of the Silvans, who answered. Then they lowered their weapons.
"What say they?" asked Jorian.
"They say they shoot all 'big folk' who trespass here. Since their friend the smith was slain, their woods are overrun with our kind."
'Tell them you will put on another confusion spell if they will leave us alone."
"I was about to do so." Karadur and the Silvans conferred further.
The Mulvanian gathered twigs and started a small fire on the trail. From one of the many internal compartments of his wallet he took a pinch of powder and sprinkled it on the blaze, intoning words. The vapors made Jorian, holding his captive, sneeze.
"They say," said Karadur, "that you may release their fellow now without fear."
"I know not how far to trust these creatures."
"Oh, I am sure—"
"Aye, I have accepted your assurances to my sorrow ere this. What's their most binding oath?"
"By Thio's soul, I believe."
"Very well, tell them to swear peace with us by Thio's soul. I must release this fellow sooner or later, since I cannot dig for the crown and hold him hostage at the same time."
More twittering, and Jorian released his captive. The three Silvans faded into the vegetation. Jorian asked:
"How did you come to know so much about them?"
"I bad to pass examinations in those subjects when studying wizardry at Trimandilam."
"If you knew their language, why didn't you speak to them sooner?"
"I was too frightened and out of breath."
They plodded on. Jorian sweated, swatted flies, and cast anxious looks through the aisles of the greenwood. The day wore on.
In the afternoon, they came out on the shore of a branch of the Marshes of Mom. One of the small crocodiles of the marsh slipped into the water, sending ripples out across the still, black mere, over which glittering, glassy dragonflies hovered and darted.
"This is odd," said Jorian, frowning at his map. "It looks like the middle finger of the north branch of Kadvan's Marsh. But we should be much farther south, around here." He pointed. "I thought I knew this country like the palm—great Zevatas! I know what's the matter! Your confusion spell has confused me, too!"
Karadur spread his hands. "What expected you, my son? I had no means of immunizing you from its effects."
"Does it affect you, also?"
"Not really, since I never did learn my way about this lieu so well as you did when you were King; so I have little knowledge to be twisted by the spell."
Jorian shrugged. "Then there is naught for it but to keep on trying. Come on!"
He started off on a vast circumambulation of the marshes, plowing through thickets of shrubbery and sinking into boggy patches. Karadur's fatigue forced them to stop to rest more and more often. Time and again, Jorian would set his course by the sun and start off in what he meant as a straight line, only to find soon after that he had somehow gotten turned around and was heading in the opposite direction. At sunset they were still struggling.
"I thought we should be back at the cart with the crown by now," grumbled Jorian. "I can testify that this spell of yours, at least, works fine. Had I known, I should have brought food and blankets. No use blundering on without light to see our way."
"Must we spend a night on the ground?" asked Karadur.
"So it seems. Let's hope that tiger I saw at Mount Aravia wander not down this way. Twere not an impossible distance for it."
Jorian built a small fire and spent an uncomfortable night, sleeping in snatches with his back to a tree and wondering whether the sounds he heard were those of some prowling predator or the rumbling of his empty stomach. Karadur seemed to manage better, settling into a cross-legged position, putting himself into a mystical trance, and awakening with dawn apparently none the worse.
They plodded on through the morning, as the cool of the night gave way to the steamy heat of midday. At last Jorian said: "We should be near our goal. The lay of this land looks familiar, unless your spell has addled what memory I have. Have you a short-range divination spell that will tell us where lies the crown?"
"Nay; that is Goania's specialty. Let me see; we buried
the bauble beneath a log, did we not?"
"Aye. Younder lies a log; could that be the one?"
It was not; nor were the next six logs they investigated. Jorian said: "I shall have nightmares of digging under one fallen trunk after another through all eternity—ah, that one looks familiar!"
A few minutes later, Jorian gave a whoop as they dragged out a mass of rotted rags wrapped around a heavy object. The rags were the remains of the clothing from which Jorian had changed when he made a rendezvous with Karadur here on his flight from Xylar. Inside the tatters, bright and gleaming, was the crown of Xylar.
Jorian held it up to admire the gutter of the morning sun on the jewels around the rim, which flashed scarlet and azure and green. "At least, 'tis some satisfaction to have guessed right for once… What's that?"
A sound of a heavy body moving came to his ears. He sprang to his feet, peering about. The swish of displaced branches and the thud of heavy footfalls came closer. Jorian cried:
"It's a Paaluan dragon! Up a tree, and yarely!"
Through the brush came a monstrous lizard, over thirty cubits long. Jorian sprang to the nearest large tree, an old silver-gray beech, with enough low branches for easy climbing. As he swarmed up the trunk, he turned to see how his companion fared.
Instead of climbing a tree, Karadur had loosed the rope from around his waist and laid it in a coil before him. He was chanting a spell over it. The upper end of the rope reared up, like the head of an angry cobra. As it rose to man-height, Karadur seized the tip in both hands and wrapped his scrawny legs around it lower down. The rope continued to rise until it almost stood on its tip, raising the wizard three fathoms above the ground.
The dragon came briskly to the foot of the tree that Jorian had climbed. It placed its foreclaws against the trunk and reared up, maneuvering its head among the branches and shooting out a long forked tongue. Jorian climbed higher to keep out of its reach.
The dragon backed down the trunk and turned its attention to Karadur, bunched at the top of his rope. It cocked its head to one side and then to the other; it approached the rope and gingerly touched it with the tip of its tongue.
Jorian foresaw that even its small reptilian brain might have the wit to seize the rope in its fanged jaws and shake Karadur off his precarious perch. Without stopping to ponder, Jorian descended with reckless speed, ran to where the lizard was still scrutinizing the rope, and drew his sword as he ran. He aimed a cut at the dragon's tail, opening a small gash in the thick, scaly hide.
With a hoarse bellow, the dragon swung its ponderous head about to see what had stung it. Prepared for this, Jorian sheathed his sword and ran, the dragon lumbering after.
Jorian did not run so fast as he could have, knowing that if he tripped and fell, the dragon might gobble him up before he regained his feet. So he ran cautiously, watching for roots and fallen branches. Behind him came the dragon. From the sounds it made, Jorian thought it was gaining; but he held to his course.
Jorian ran and ran. His heart pounded and his breath came in gasps. At least the sounds of pursuit seemed to be getting no closer.
Then, despite his care, he put his foot into a hole in the turf, masked by dead leaves, and fell sprawling. He scrambled up, expecting the fanged jaws to slam shut on him. A glance showed him still several fathoms ahead of his pursuer. He ran on.
When his laboring lungs seemed ready to burst, Jorian became aware that the dragon, too, had slowed. He risked a glance back. The monster was still coming, but more and more slowly, like a clockwork toy running down.
Jorian slackened his own pace, taking care not to gain so much on the dragon as to lose sight of it altogether. A savant in Iraz had explained that cold-blooded organisms like lizards had less efficient hearts than birds and mammals and hence could not sustain such strenuous efforts so long. And so it had proved.
The dragon stopped altogether, lowering its huge barrel to the forest floor and lying still, save for the movements of its tongue and rib cage. Breathing great gulps of air, Jorian watched from a distance. After a while the lizard rose to its stumpy legs and ambled off. Jorian feared it might head back toward Karadur; but instead it set out at right angles to its former direction. When it was out of sight and hearing, Jorian returned to the place where he had buried the crown.
Karadur still clung to his perch. "Is it safe to come down?" he quavered.
"Aye, at least for the moment. Didn't you realize it could seize your rope in its jaws and jerk you back to earth?"
"Oh, I thought of that. But whereas I find tree climbing impossible at my age, and we had no ladders as in the Grand Duke's park, I knew the rope would carry me up on the strength of the spell." Karadur slid to the ground. At his command, the rope fell in a limp heap at his feet. He picked it up and wound it round and round his waist. "My thanks for saving my life at the risk of your own. Whatever your faults, my son, you are a true hero."
"Oh, rubbish!" said Jorian, looking embarrassed. "Had I stopped to think, I should have been too fearful to do aught."
"Jorian!" said Karadur sternly. "What have I told you about deprecating yourself?"
"Sorry. I haven't run so hard since Estrildis's father chased me with a scythe, the first time I came over to his farmstead to spark his daughter." Jorian picked up the crown. "I feared lest the dragon swallow this. Then I should have had to slay the beast, cut it open, and dig out the crown, and I have no idea of how to do that. Let's be off, ere another come along."
"I saw none when I met you in Moru before. Whence come they?"
"That was a dragon of Paalua, from across the Western Ocean. The Paaluans used to raid the coasts of other lands to seize the folk to eat; for, albeit civilized in some ways, they retained this unneighborly habit. Several generations past, they landed on the coast of Ir, hoping to replenish their larders with Novarian captives. They brought a number of these lizards as mounts for cavalry, each dragon bearing hah? a dozen soldiers. When the Paaluans were crushed, some dragons found their way south to the Marshes, where they survived and bred. There have been rumors of them, but this is the first one I have seen."
By paying close heed to the map and the terrain, they finally found their way back to the wagon despite the confusion spell, which several times sent them astray. Jorian wore the crown of Xylar as the easiest way to carry it.
As they neared the glade where Jorian had left the cart, the sound of voices jerked him alert. He stole forward, motioning Karadur to keep behind him and be quiet.
As the cart came into view, Jorian saw figures moving. Coming closer, he perceived that they comprised two raggedly-clad men holding a struggling Margaht by the arms. A third was pulling things out of the cart; only his lower half could be seen. The horse and the mule placidly grazed.
Jorian supped behind a tree as he eased his sword out of its scabbard, lest a flash of sunlight on the steel alert the brigands. Behind him, Karadur whispered an incantation.
Jorian gathered his legs beneath him and hurled himself toward the cart in a swift, silent charge. He had covered half the distance when a robber saw him and shouted: "Ho! Aldol, beware!"
The third robber, who was stripping the cart, whirled around. He was smaller than Jorian but lithe and quick. Before Jorian, his sword extended before him, could get home, Aldol had drawn his own sword, a double-curved hunting falchion.
Going too fast to stop to fence, Jorian bore in. His point plunged into Aldol's chest halfway to the hilt. At the same time, the robber brought his short sword down on Jorian's head in an overhand cut. The blade struck the crown of Xylar with a clank.
A little staggered, Jorian tried to withdraw his own blade, but it seemed to have become wedged in Aldol's spine. As Jorian pulled, the man struck again, forehand at the side of Jorian's head. Jorian threw up his left arm. He felt the blade bite through leather and cloth into the flesh. Then Aldol sagged as his knees gave way, dragging Jorian's sword down with him.
The robbers holding Margalit released her to reach for the
ir weapons. Still trying to free his sword, Jorian thought: this is the end; they will make ground steak of me ere I can get my hanger free.
But to Jorian's surprise, a look of terror flickered in the surviving robbers' faces, even as they drew. Instead of attacking, the pair turned and ran down the track toward the main road until lost to sight Jorian got his sword loose at last. The robber he had skewered moved and groaned. Jorian put his point over the man's heart and, with a vigorous thrust, quieted him.
"Jorian!" cried Margaht, throwing her arms around him. "You came just in time! They were boasting of how often they would rape me ere cutting my throat."
'Take care; you'll get yourself bloody."
"Art wounded?"
"Just a scratch. What befell?"
He peeled off his jacket and shirt. Aldol's falchion had been stopped by the ulna, but there was a freshly bleeding cut on his forearm, a finger's breadth long. As Margalit washed and bandaged the wound, she told her tale:
"I was washing my face in the stream, when these stinkards pounced upon me. The crossbow was in the wain, so I had no chance to use it. Methinks I gave one a black eye." She glanced down and saw that her shirt had been widely torn open. She pulled the edges together. "What was that I saw, as you rushed upon the chief robber? It looked like three or four Jorians, all running toward us with bared blades and all wearing golden crowns. Twas a daunting sight."
"Just a little illusion spell," said Karadur. "It sufficed to put the other twain to flight. Lady Margalit, if you keep much company with Jorian, one thing is sure: you will never suffer boredom. Life in his vicinage is one dire endangerment after another."
"I know not why," said Jorian in plaintive tones. "I am a peaceable man, who asks for nought but to be suffered to make an honest living."
"Perhaps," said Karadur, "you were born on the day sacred to your Novarian war god—what is his name?"
"Heryx; but I was not born on his feast day." Jorian took off the crown, in which Aldol's sword had made a deep nick. "This thing saved my brainpan, just as your turban did. I do not think the cleft will much impair its value."
The Unbeheaded King Page 14