The kender tugged absently on his long carrot-colored topknot, thinking. “I suppose I could take Lord Tolandruth to the foot of the misty pass,” he opined, “but my skill don’t come cheap. Will you pay me in gold?”
Payment was promised, and Early accepted the job. Nods of satisfaction along with more than a few raised eyebrows greeted this proposed arrangement.
The emperor rose stiffly, pushing himself up with both hands until he was standing, then issued his orders. Lord Tolandruth would go forth to the Thel Mountains and investigate the fog-filled peak. If he found Mandes there, he would administer imperial high justice.
“What’s that?” asked Early.
“Bring back the sorcerer’s head,” said Rymont coldly.
Having ruled, the emperor sank back into his chair. He dismissed all present, asking only Tol to remain behind. Thura and the healer, Klaraf, wanted to stay, but Ackal irritably ordered them both out.
With only a quartet of bodyguards at the far doors of the chamber, Ackal beckoned Tol to him.
“When will you leave?” he asked.
“Whenever Your Majesty requires.”
“Tomorrow morning then. Draw whatever supplies you need from imperial stores. Get a pony for Master Stumpwater, too,” Ackal said. “You’ll need a map of the high Thel.” Tol glanced at the array scattered across the table, but the emperor shook his head. “There are better charts in the library. I’ll send Lady Valaran to you. She knows the library better than the chief archivist.”
Tol tried to gauge the emperor’s purpose. Ackal IV provided the answer.
“You know how dangerous this mission will be, don’t you?” he said. “Mandes won’t be sitting on that mountain-top unprotected. He had considerable treasure, and none was found in his house after he fled. He’ll have hired guards, so you’ll be contending with swords as well as sorcery.”
Tol nodded. He had surmised as much on his own. The emperor said, “This may be the single most important deed you’ll ever do for your country, Tolandruth. No other man in the empire would have a hope of success.”
“Thank you, Majesty. I shall not fail.”
Ackal extended his hand. Surprised, Tol reached out uncertainly. Ackal’s hand was dry and feverishly hot.
“Go with the gods, my lord.”
Once Tol was gone, Ackal IV let his head loll against the wing of the great padded chair. So weary… he was so weary, yet he was filled with hope, too. If anyone, Tolandruth could do it. He was a great warrior, and a loyal Hade. His strength would carry the day against any foe-
The itching began again. All over his fingers and toes, the maddening sensation of tiny, spiked feet and glistening pincers began.
“Ants!”
Ackal IV clutched at his fingers, trying to scrape off insects only he could see. His feet burned with their bites. Drawing one leg up, he tore off the velvet slipper and flung it across the room. Already his pale feet were scored with long scratches, crusted with dried blood.
“Ants! Ants!” he gasped, clawing at his feet anew.
At the doors, the guards heard the emperor’s hoarse exclamations and witnessed his mad gyrations. They did nothing. They saw this spectacle less often nowadays, but when it came it was fiercer and wilder than before; anyway they had been warned not to interfere. Gold in their pockets assured their compliance. Prince Nazramin could be very generous when he chose.
Ackal’s voice rose to a shriek as the burning, stinging pain increased. “Can no one stop the ants?” he cried.
In this lonely struggle, the Emperor of Ergoth had no champion.
It took all afternoon and most of the evening for Tol and Valaran to find the best map of the Thel Mountains. According to the catalog, the particular map they needed had been made one hundred fifty years earlier by surveyors working for Empress Kanira, as part of her mad dream of building a road from Daltigoth to Hylo. However, finding the terse entry in the catalog was one thing; finding the actual map on the dusty, ill-maintained, seemingly endless shelves was quite another.
“Look at this!” Valaran said, drawing out an unusually large roll of parchment.
She was crouched at the foot of a tall shelf, surrounded by loose scrolls. Hair looped behind her ears, she’d hitched up the hem of her fine silk gown without hesitation to search among the dusty books on the bottommost shelves.
Sitting on the floor close by, and moving the four-flame oil lamp as she commanded, Tol watched her with frank affection. They were alone; the ancient librarian, an old friend of Valaran’s, had long since abandoned them to their quest and was snoring in his cubicle.
“I’ve heard of this!” she said, shaking the scroll excitedly. “Scholars claimed it was a myth, but here it is!”
“The map?”
“No, Kanira’s plan for a new capital city!”
They unrolled the heavy parchment. In fantastic detail, the vainglorious empress’s plans for her new capital were laid out. The city was circular and was to have been built at the end of Hylo Bay, approximately where Old Port was located. Kanira’s palace would have occupied a flat-topped artificial mountain in its center. The terraced mound would have been almost as big as the entire Inner City of Daltigoth now was.
“Merciful gods,” Tol breathed. “No wonder they deposed her!”
Valaran pointed. “Look here-a canal encircling the city’s outer wall, both banks paved with granite… twelve temples, evenly spaced around the circumference of the city… and the gardens! The gardens are tremendous, built on the terraced sides of the palace mountain!”
Tol sat back, shaking his head. “She was mad.”
“But what vision!”
Her profile, gilded by the warm lamplight, was vision enough for Tol. He never wanted to look away.
She felt his gaze, and a faint blush colored her cheeks.
“You know the dangers I’m facing, don’t you?” he said quietly.
Valaran concentrated on rolling up the large scroll. “All I know is that you are going away again,” she said ruefully. “You love danger more than-more than anything.”
“All the days since I returned, we’ve been so chaste,” Tol said, catching her wrist.
“I’ve told you. We’re not love-addled youths any longer.”
“No, we’re not, but I can’t go to my possible death like this, hollowed out and empty of you.” He tugged on her wrist, drawing her to him. She did not resist. “Will you let me go again, perhaps never to return, without a single embrace?”
“Can we stop at one?”
Tol fervently hoped not. He put his arm around her waist. Valaran touched her cheek to his.
Chapter 17
The Wall of Mist
The next morning, after a whirlwind of preparations, Tol rode out with Early Stumpwater as his only companion. It was brilliantly cold, the sky clear as a dome of polished sapphire. All around them the land glittered under a heavy frost, every weed, every tree limb, and every sheaf of grain silvered with frozen dew. Tol was astride a tall black war-horse chosen from the imperial stables for his formidable strength and stamina, and in spite of the prickly temper that had earned him the nickname Tetchy. He led a pack horse laden with gear and provisions. Early was mounted on a white-maned sorrel pony he’d christened Longhound, after a dog, he’d ridden as a child.
After the fashion of his race, the kender’s name seemed a slippery issue. When, at the Inner City gate, guards asked his name for the daily log; he told them, “Early Thistledown.” A short time later, after regaling Tol with a wild tale about his adventures in the eastern lands beyond the Thel Mountains, the kender declared, “And that’s the true story of how I rescued the chief of the Karad-shu tribe, or my name isn’t Early Foxfire!”
Kiya was still asleep as Tol prepared to depart, after haranguing him late into the evening about risking this mission without her; he didn’t wake her. He left her a goodly purse of gold to live on in his absence, as well as two scrolls. The one sealed with red wax was a legal documen
t, giving Kiya her freedom and absolving her of all obligations to him. Under Ergothian law a widow was liable for her spouse’s debts, monetary and social. It was not unheard of for a surviving wife to be forced into marriage with a man to whom her late husband owed money. Tol had no such debts, but he wanted to be certain Kiya would be unencumbered.
The second document was closed with white wax, as was customary with wills. Over the years Tol had amassed quite a fortune in war bounties and imperial largesse. In the will, drawn up by Felryn over a year ago while they were still fighting the Tarsans, he left everything to Miya, Kiya, and Egrin, and made bequests of gold to certain old comrades like Darpo. The millstone, listed among his possessions as “a decorative metal-and-glass artifact of ancient origin,” he left to Valaran. The night before he departed, he had revealed its power to her.
“This is the means by which you’ve always escaped enchantments?” she’d said, staring at the trinket resting in her palm. “It looks like a brooch, and a rather dull one at that!”
He took it back. “Yoralyn told me many lives could be lost if word of its existence got out.”
“She’s right.” Valaran the historian put a hand to her chin, thinking hard. “Pakin Zan himself once owned a nullstone. He sacked the city of Ulladu on the western coast to obtain it from its owner, the priest Gomian.”
“Ulladu? I’ve never heard of it.”
“That’s because Pakin Zan razed it to the ground. Sixty hordes breeched the defenses. Those inhabitants not slain in the battle-men and women, young and old-were forced to sift the wreckage of their city with sieves until Gomian’s treasure was found, then they were executed. Burned alive, if I recall correctly.”
Once again, he was struck by the calmness with which she could relate the most horrific information. He didn’t know if this was due to her scholarly detachment or to her upbringing in the imperial palace, where plots, assassinations, and massacres were common occurrences. Perhaps it was a little of both.
“What became of Pakin Zan’s nullstone?” he asked.
She looped a stray strand of hair behind her left ear, and for a moment was again the bookish girl hiding in an alcove, reading dusty tomes.
“A rook stole it from him.”
As Pakin Zan lay on his deathbed in the palace, a large Mack rook had flown in a window and plucked the millstone from the dying emperor’s neck. Onlookers could only watch helplessly; Pakin Zan’s strictest edict decreed death to anyone who touched his amulet. The rook flew away with the ancient artifact, never to be seen again.
Some authorities, Valaran said, held the bird was simply attracted by the shiny metal. Others believed the rook was the familiar of a sorcerer or rogue spellcaster, perhaps even the Silvanesti mage Vedvedsica himself. In the intervening twelve decades, no millstones had surfaced. Until Tol’s.
Tol gripped her hands tightly and stared into her green eyes. “You will keep this secret?”
She did not wince or shrink away. “I have forgotten it already,” she replied calmly.
As he and Early clopped through the frozen farmland in the cold light of morning, Tol was melancholy. Departing without saying good-bye to Kiya had left him with an odd, unfinished feeling. Through strange turns of fate, she was the only companion of his youth still with him. Miya was married and soon would bear Elicarno’s child. Egrin ruled in the emperor’s name back in Juramona. Darpo scoured the seas in command of the imperial fleet. And so many of his other brothers in arms were dead-Narren, Felryn, Frez-
For the first time in his life, Tol felt old. Though wrapped in fur, his knees ached and old wounds pained him. The deep stab wound in his side, courtesy of his one-time friend Crake, was particularly troublesome when the air was this chilly. More than that, he felt lonely. He’d survived so many of his friends, and so many enemies, too. Surprising how much a fellow could miss his enemies.
“-until the whole house collapsed!”
Tol’s wandering attention returned. “What?”
“That’s how I became chief food taster for King Lucklyn. Weren’t you listening?” Early said, a little exasperated. Tufts of hair, stiff as broomstraw, protruded from his fur hood, framing his face with an orange fringe.
“Remarkable,” Tol replied, though he’d heard none of the tale. “How fares Lucklyn’s queen, Casberry? I met her once.”
He’d made the acquaintance of the wizened kender queen when he and his men had gone to Hylo to find XimXim. Upon learning they had vanquished the monster, Queen Casberry fined Tol for hunting out of season.
“Oh, Cas is gone.”
“Gone? You mean dead?”
“No, no. She left on a tour of Balifor the same day Lucklyn returned from his long walkabout.”
“Was it affairs of state that separated them again, after they’d been apart so long?”
Early gave him a disbelieving look. “I thought you said you’d met Queen Casberry?” Tol laughed.
Putting aside his own worries, Tol found the kender a diverting companion. Early had an endless supply of droll, bizarre, and amusing stories, including one explaining the origin of the topknot hairstyle so many of his people wore. Tol blushed like a new bride when he heard that one.
They rode northeast all day, through empty orchards and harvested fields. Tol stayed off the main road, wanting to make it more difficult for spies to track their progress.Well after sunset, Tol finally called a halt, and they camped in a windbreak of pines. The woods were silent. All sensible creatures were either hibernating or had shifted to warmer climes. Early settled on the other side of the small campfire, making a tent of his blanket. Only the tip of his nose and frosty puffs of breath betrayed his presence. Frost formed on the horsehair blanket Tol draped over his head.
Hypnotized by the flickering flames, Tol slept sitting up, Number Six lying across his lap. In the oblique, abrupt way of dreams, he found himself sharing the fire with two robed figures, one seated on each side of him.
At first the two seemed identical, cowled in dark gray fabric, their faces invisible. Tol tried to speak but could make no sound. Even so, he was not afraid. There was no telltale flicker of heat, so magic wasn’t at work. This was only a dream.
The figure on his left slowly leaned forward, hands extending from the sleeves of his heavy gray robe. The right hand was white, with short fingers, the left dark and lean. A memory of the apparition on the bowsprit of the galleot Quarrel flashed into Tol’s mind; it too had had mismatched hands. After a slight hesitation, the phantom on the right made the same motion; his hands were both dark.
The fire hissed and popped. Sparks lofted skyward, winking out against a background of brilliant stars. Rising above the sputter of burning wood came other sounds-indistinct, rapid whispers. Gradually, the scratchy sounds resolved into words.
Go back! Go back!
The words came from the specter on his left, the one with mismatched hands.
Tol tried again to speak, and this time he could. “I will not go back! “he stated.
There is grave danger. This came from the apparition on the right, yet its voice seemed identical to the first.
“I will not turn back,” Tol repeated. “Many wrongs must be righted.”
From his left: Go back, or all you love will suffer.
“Who are you?”
The figure with two dark hands pointed through the leaping flames at the other phantom: He is the one you seek.
Tol gripped his sword hilt, and glared at the phantom with mismatched hands. Mandes, of course! The sorcerer must have replaced his lost arm with a limb belonging to someone else.
The shade with mismatched hands gestured sharply. Pay no attention to him. He is dead!
Tol’s heart raced. A name surfaced in his mind, the name of one cherished and lost, one who had dark skin. “Felryn? Felryn, is that you?”
Go back, or all you love will suffer!
The words came from the Mandes figure, and this time there was no doubt they were not a warning, but a threat.
Although his limbs felt oddly leaden, Tol shifted the heavy saber off his lap.
Mandes spoke again. Go back, Tol of Juramona. Give up this quest, or each night someone you care about will die!
“No! This matter is between us, Mandes! Leave everyone else out of it!”
He’s afraid, whispered the Felryn shade. You are his doom.
“Protect them, Felryn! Protect Valaran and the rest!”
He can do nothing! He is dead! Mandes said.
With a mighty effort, Tol swung the saber up, laying the blade flat on his right shoulder.
“Nothing short of my own death will keep me from seeing justice done. You will submit to the emperor’s judgment. If you harm anyone else, nothing will prevent me from taking your life-and it won’t be easily done! You’ll die by moments, traitor! I promise you!”
With that, he managed a wild swing of his sword. It swept through the campfire and into the figure with the mismatched hands. There was no sensation of striking cloth or flesh. The blade passed through the specter as through smoke.
Tol lost his balance and pitched headfirst into the fire. He clenched his eyes shut, expecting to feel searing flame.
With a jerk, he came awake. He was sitting upright under his blanket, Number Six cold across his legs. The fire had died to a few glowing embers. By this feeble light he saw his kender companion curled up across from him, frost heavy on his blanket. The horses drowsed nearby, standing so close together their sides touched.
The quiescent horses as much as the undisturbed dirt around the fire told Tol that no one had been present. The millstone was safe in its pouch in the waistband of his smallclothes. Had it been only an ordinary dream, or was Felryn truly warning him?
He stood and stretched his stiffened limbs. With the constellations as his guide, he looked back in the direction of Daltigoth, out of sight below the horizon. Did Valaran sleep peacefully tonight? Were Kiya and Miya well? Would Egrin be safe?
Early shifted in his sleep, snorting as he settled back into deeper slumber. Tol added wood to the fire and listened to his companion’s steady breathing.
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