At his first movement, the birds had fluttered away in complaint and the mice had made themselves invisible. Wishing fervently that he could mimic either feat, he waited, wondering who came.
His first impulse was of the Guard, but the Imperials patrolled only in groups of a quad or more. Besides, the heavy-footed armsmen in the Viceroy’s service knew as much of stealth as did the large, rambunctious green frogs that assaulted the banks of the Ice during the fall mating season.
It was more likely just some thug come to slit his throat. The Lower City certainly had plenty of common hoodlums.
He readied himself, trying to find strength in his shivering muscles, and reached for his knife. With sudden alarm, he realized he could not feel the bulge of the hilt against his calf. When his hand closed upon the empty sheath, the cruel fact that his only weapon was missing gripped his soul like a vise. A frantic glance toward the pallet failed to locate it.
His mind raced. He had not used it in the fight. He had not, in fact, spared it a thought. It was a skinning knife with a short, single-edged blade and no hilt. He had had it for some dozen years and it was more suited to carving wood than fighting, but served well enough for close in work. It was the wrong shape to be thrown and flew like a wounded duck. He might have lost it during the fight, but thought that unlikely. The best explanation for its disappearance was that Waleck had taken it and why the old man would take the knife and leave the gold was a puzzle.
He hastily considered his options, determinedly avoiding words like ‘desperate’ and ‘hopeless.’ He had nowhere to run. In his present state, the stair was the only exit he might have tried if pressed. He lacked strength for a struggle, knew one blow would send him to the floor, and had no weapon other than surprise. Bleakly and with no other choice, he continued to wait.
The sounds came steadily closer until they were only perhaps a dozen steps below the room, and then, unaccountably, ceased.
Mar’s lips tightened into a grim smile. So much for surprise.
“It is only I, Mar,” echoed a voice from out of the stairwell.
Waleck! Mar nearly shouted the old man’s name aloud as a curse.
“What did you forget, old man?” he cast down the framed opening, not relaxing.
A heavy pause followed, then somewhat bemusedly, “Nothing.” The wasteminer paused again before asserting with the familiar tone of command Mar knew so well, “Permit me to enter.”
Mar would have refused, but saw no point in doing so. “As you will, old man.” Still, he edged along the wall, putting distance between himself and the doorway.
The sounds resumed, more careless this time, and Waleck climbed into the room.
All the words Mar might have heaped upon the old man at that moment evaporated from his mind as a Gheddessii tribesman appeared before him.
The Gheddessii, of the same heritage as the tribes conquered by the Empire at Khalar, were the people of the western slopes of the Mheckel Mountains. They were a nomadic race that roamed a vast area stretching from the fringes of the Waste to deep within the rugged, dry foothills north of Mhenrhaach Peak. The Gheddessii tribes were a hardy, combative people, and, as the Imperial Army had learned on many occasions, were exceptionally skilled in the defense of their lands. The eighth post-imperial viceroy, Vechrhel the Benign (or, as he was dubbed after his poisoning, the Malignant) had found that the easier path to peace was through negotiation and had enacted treaties with the seven major tribes. The documents, full of meaningless rhetoric concerning everlasting peace and mutually beneficial trade, had nevertheless achieved Vechrhel’s goal of ending hostilities between the Imperial City and its primitive neighbors.
In practical application, the peace remained everlasting only so long as no Army or Guard troop attempted to penetrate the recognized boundary of the Chrlhu Pass high in the Mheckels. The mutually beneficial trade consisted solely of Gheddessii traveling overmountain and south along the Blue Ice with goods to trade in Khalar -- no trader from the city dared enter the Gheddessii domains.
The tribesmen did bring goods that were in small demand -- furs in quantity, rough-mined uncut gems, strange woods ideal for carving, some other odds and ends of no great value but of some use -- and so the Viceroy’s Guard tolerated them. For the most part, they kept to themselves when they came to Khalar. Many had established residences of a sort in the dilapidated district north of the fish markets, and they were seen commonly about the streets of the Lower City, often employed at menial tasks or just loitering.
Mar could not have mistaken the figure who had exited the stairwell as anything else. The Gheddessii dressed distinctively, their clothing a product of the harsh conditions under which they existed. The high-laced, knee boots and wrapped leggings protected their legs from the rough hides of their longhaired ponies. The billowing short robes, white but for a few personal color markings about the hood, reflected the heat of the Waste. The intricately knotted and beaded veil-like masks of heavy canvas, named jhuhngt’n, shielded their faces both from blowing sand and from prying eyes.
“Ah, you find my disguise convincing, then, Mar?” the Gheddessii asked with Waleck’s voice.
“I’ve seen better. The Imperials might accept it, but the Gheddessii never would. If they discover you, they’ll probably have a good laugh while sinking your body in the river.”
The old man shrugged expansively as he reached up to unhook his jhuhngt. For just a moment, as the jhuhngt fell, Mar saw another face. It was Waleck’s but not Waleck’s, not simply the old man’s timeworn features, but something keen and almost deadly. Mar rubbed his eyes, saw only the old man he knew well, and dismissed the illusion as a product of his weakness.
“If it will pass the Guard,” Waleck asserted, “then that is enough, for now.” He passed Mar the blanket-wrapped bundle he carried.
“Here is yours. It should fit well. The man who supplied it was about your size.”
Unable to think of an appropriate response, Mar accepted the bundle, then found himself sliding down the wall to the floor.
Waleck quickly crouched at his side to steady him. “You should not be about,” he reproved. “You are spending strength that we will need later.”
Mar said nothing, oppressed by the leaden weight of his body.
The old man rummaged in his robe a moment and produced a dusky vial stoppered with a bit of rag. A murky green fluid peered ominously from within.
“Drink this. It will return your vigor for a time. Long enough, I hope, to fetch you to Marihe.”
Drawing from an empty well, Mar summoned the strength to push the vial away, though not with the force he desired.
“I’ll have none of your vile potions, old man.”
Waleck sighed patiently, seeming more like the old Waleck of their simple, unhurried Waste routine than the driven madman of recent days.
“Like the sleeping draught that I poured down your throat when I splinted your arm, this concoction will do no harm. It simply strips away the body poisons that deplete your strength. What your flesh would take hours to accomplish, it does in seconds, and seconds is all the time we have. We are quarry, with a warrant posted before every Guard post in the Lower City and an active search underway.”
Mar frowned. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
“We were attacked not by chance but by design. There are monks of an order known only as the Brotherhood of Phaelle who have recently appeared in the city. They have influence with the Viceroy’s Council and I heard one rumor that their gold has bought the assistance of Patriarch Hwraldek. These monks were the ones who set the bandits upon us in the alley.”
“I’ve never heard of this Brotherhood.”
“They are from the south -- this is all that is openly talked of. They shun public view, but they know of you and I in some detail, have caused us to be attacked once by clandestine means and having failed now move more openly. It is clear that they have somehow learned that we hold the Text and it is also clear that the
y intend to have it. We must find a more secure hiding place -- you must be able to move now.”
“What place is this?”
“An old temple of Seichu, north of Old Market, about half-way between the Concourse of Imperial Glory and Mud Street.”
“I know it,” Mar confirmed. Mean dwellings, collapsing tenements, and ruins like this one surrounded them. It was a poor district that supplied day labor to the brick pits north of the city. “If you were followed here, then I know of other places nearby where we can shelter, places where the Imperials will not find us.”
“I was not followed,” Waleck countered flatly, “but they will find us in any hole you might take us to. They use magic, somehow, to seek us. That is how they knew of our arrival, how they knew where to try to take us. None who took my money could give more detail than that, but there is no doubt but that we cannot hide in this area. We must find a refuge elsewhere.”
The old man offered the vial again.
Hwraldek of the merchant house of Korhthenr was the second ranked member of the Viceroy’s Privy Council, newly elected President of the Assembly of Patriarchs, a rich and powerful man. The whole city knew that he housed his mistresses in luxurious and splendid apartments. It was also common knowledge that mistresses were far too wise in the ways of men, by half again, to accept only trinkets for their favors. Kept women of high standing demanded hard coin from their paramours and held that coin close at hand. A rich man’s mistress would surely keep a strongbox too heavy for one man to carry, Sihmal had suggested, and then had argued that Hwraldek was far too arrogant to guard his possessions properly. He had claimed to have watched the house of Hwraldek’s current mistress for a month and had sworn that Hwraldek never visited on ninth day.
Sihmal had been a bumbling fool, and a liar, among other things, but he had also had an earnest wife and two always-hungry children. And he could not pick a lock to save his life.
In defiance of Sihmal’s observations, Patriarch Hwraldek of the House of Korhthenr had been sporting with his favorite mistress when Sihmal slipped and crashed through a skylight into his bedroom.
Mar winced in remembrance of the horrified expression that had gripped Sihmal’s face as his hand slipped from Mar’s grasp. Sihmal had yelled wildly as he fell, drawing bodyguards from the hall. Mar had watched through the smashed skylight, helpless, as the armsmen fell upon the pleading Sihmal and killed him. Hwraldek had had a full file of the Guard quartered on the first floor of the house, and Mar had been compelled to flee immediately for his life. Only the chance meeting with Waleck had allowed him to escape the city.
Patriarch Hwraldek was not known to be a forgiving man. If he had allied with these Phaelle’n brethren, who obviously wanted the treasure the text led to and not the text itself, then he would be doubly motivated to want to see Mar dead.
Mar managed to keep his hand still as he took the vial, but required Waleck’s help to open it. A faint reek of vinegar and cinnamon and other things he could not name wafted by his nose. Surely, the old man would not go to all this trouble just to poison him?
Mar put the vial to his lips and drank the contents in one swallow.
He felt nothing at first, just a somewhat welcome cool sensation as the thin liquid slid down his throat. When the coolness reached his belly, it became by lightning degrees a warmth that burst outward, coursing up through his chest and along his limbs to every extreme of his body. Even his fingernails and the tips of his hair felt warm. Where the warmth passed, he experienced an odd tingling in his skin. This, too, gradually faded, leaving him feeling quite ... normal.
“How do you feel?” Waleck demanded, watching carefully.
“Fine,” Mar told him wonderingly.
This was true. Amazingly, he did feel well -- not exhausted, not ill. Better than well, in fact. He got to his feet in one smooth motion, power surging through his limbs.
Waleck nodded, satisfied. “Good. The potion will have effect for only a few hours, but that should be enough to get you to Marihe and keep us out of the hands of the Guard.”
“Who’s Marihe?” Mar demanded, emboldened by an energy of spirit and a clearness of mind he had not seen in days.
“A healer who follows the old ways. She is said to dabble in magic and it might be so. I would suspect that healers would naturally preserve bits of magic lore. She concocted the potions I have ministered to you, and they seem evidence enough of her competence.”
“Still, I don’t need a healer, now. I’m fit enough.”
“Your arm is still broken. I have set it as well as I am able, but you will be of no use to me until it is mended -- “
“Why then,” Mar interrupted intensely, “did you return for me?”
“I have paid you, Mar, and there is no one else.”
Mar accepted that. He understood it. For now, that was enough. He shrugged, then bent and retrieved the bundle from the floor. He glanced significantly at his splinted arm. “I‘ll need help with this...”
With considerable assistance from Waleck, Mar managed to don the Gheddessii clothing.
“A one-armed Gheddessii?” Mar questioned at length.
“The nature of your injury may be known. A man with a broken arm, of whatever stripe, might be stopped. I would warrant that a cripple would not be.”
Waleck had bound his arm, splints and all, to his side, then evened out his outline with spare wads of clothing.
“Now,” the old man pronounced, “we must go.”
As if to emphasize that point, a high-pitched Guard whistle sounded in the distance, then again, measurably closer.
“This way, quickly!” Waleck urged, crossing to a window.
Before Mar had taken a full step, the old man hoisted himself to the sill and dropped through out of sight. Mar reached the window, paused, and leaned out to look.
The old man stood just below him on the tiled roof of an adjacent wing. Beyond this long structure, which appeared to be the nave of the temple, and two storeys below lay a trash-strewn courtyard enclosed by a high, crumbling wall of half-fired brick. The roofs of the buildings across the way beyond, one with lathe showing in place of missing tiles, could be seen above the top of the wall. Several smaller structures had been built into the wall, dormitories for the faithful perhaps, to either side of a sagging plank gate. Many of these had been mined for building materials and were in various stages of collapse. The place had the look of being thoroughly deserted.
A soft cry, perhaps a child, came over the wall, followed by shouted orders and then the syncopated tramp of many boots in quickmarch. Doors crashed in under blows. Alarmed voices and the general sounds of disturbance swept toward the temple.
Waleck turned, raised both hands, and gestured urgently. Mar leapt. The old man steadied him as his boots struck, then immediately started around the roof to the left, striding quickly but carefully on the cracked tiles. They reached and rounded the up thrust corner of the upper chamber, passing beneath the aerie hole, and proceeded along the roof revealed here until they reached the rear courtyard wall. The wall was only waist high where it joined the roof, and beyond it the steeply gabled roof of a small house was visible. The angle of the roof of the house left its bottom edge much lower than the top of the courtyard wall, forming a blinded space. At the bottom of the blind, a wide gutter drained the roof through downspouts bored through the wall.
Mar vaulted the wall, dislodging several chunks of brick, and dropped flat. He slithered to one of the downspouts and peered through it. Waleck matched his motions, crawling to another spout so that he also could observe the courtyard.
A Guard whistle shrieked just outside the courtyard, accompanied by sounds of running. The whistle sounded again, an inquiry, was answered by a yell. With a great roaring crash and a wave of dust, the gate of the temple fell inward and shattered. At least a full file of Guardsmen, twenty-five men, in duty leathers and mail with swords drawn, scrambled over the remains of the gate and dispersed purposefully into the courtya
rd.
Mar tapped Waleck’s shoulder, pointed with a nod of his head across the roof of the house away from the temple. Without waiting, the young thief started to crawl in the direction he had pointed.
The old man grabbed Mar’s wrist without looking around and twitched his head in a quick negative. Finding it impossible to shrug, Mar relaxed and looked again through the downspout.
Another file of Imperials crowded through the gate. A fugleman had taken station at the center of the courtyard and began tailing off quads of the first file to search the buildings, every man charging off with a zeal and intensity that astonished Mar. Normally, even in active pursuit, the men of the Viceroy’s Personal Guard took a sedate approach.
The second file began clearing away the ruins of the gate. Hardly before they had opened a path, a file of men in the uniform of a Patriarch’s personal guard -- plumed helmets, gilded breastplates, crimson cloaks, and all -- marched into the courtyard and formed a defensive square. More armsmen of the same stripe followed, warding a sizable group on foot.
Mar examined these men.
The first, thrusting his way forward with obvious arrogance, wore a stiff-brushed, white-plumed helmet, splendid armor, and had a large blocky body. That must be Erskh, Scion of the House of Dhent, Grand Commandant of the Viceroy’s Personal Guard. Mar had seen him often enough, at a distance, during the Guard’s frequent parades.
The next three were non-entities -- a legate, a factor or scribe, and a mousy fellow who looked to be a Praefect’s flunky.
Next followed a tall man dressed plainly in a leather jerkin in the southern style, serviceable boots and breeches. His head was bare, though, displaying his flowing mane of white hair. Guardsmen gave way before him, as if brushed aside by some invisible force, and braced stiffly in salute. The bodyguards, disdainfully ignoring the Guardsmen, smoothly closed square about this man and the two men who accompanied him.
Mar’s heart chilled as he recognized Patriarch Hwraldek.
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