Such things were not completely unheard of. Sometimes the ruler of a city would amuse themselves and their court by insulting visitors they called barbarians. What worried me now was that the insult was being offered while the Morassa sat in places of honor. And they had been willing to bribe us with sensuously trained girls, forgoing the insults and affronts, to keep us from this hall. These things worried me.
Once more Eilinn broke into my thoughts. “My sister and I wonder why you have come to our city.”
An innocuous question, casually asked, and yet, like the officer at the gate, she should not have had to ask it.
“It has been our custom for centuries to stop at cities we pass to trade,” I said. “Always we visit the ruler of the city to make it known that we are there for trade, not to fight. Surely it has not been that long since other Altaii have stopped here.”
Eilinn brushed past my words, as I had known she would, for after all I had only told her what she already knew.
“You have no other reason for coming here at this time?”
Someone shifted in the shadows behind the thrones, but the anger was on me again, and I paid no mind. She probed at me clumsily, as if I were too stupid to realize what she did. Whether she did it because to her I was only a barbarian from the Plain or for a deeper reason, I did not care.
“In truth, there is another reason for my coming, a reason of little importance, involving nothing of note, but a reason.”
Harald gave me a sidelong glance, for this was news to him. Eilinn leaned forward eagerly, and even Elana, her composure seemingly broken, listened more intently.
“And the reason is?”
“I am looking for slave girls.”
“Slave girls?” she said blankly.
“Slave girls,” I repeated. “Not just any girls, of course. I want a matched pair, twins in fact. Their hair should be the palest blond, and their eyes green. If they are untrained or clumsy, it does not matter. My slave mistress will no doubt train them to perfection.”
Harald spoke softly from the side of his mouth. “I think it was the three-toed gromit after all.”
Stunned silence filled the hall. Eilinn stared at me in shock, and Elana seemed to no longer breathe. Then the silence was ripped away by an explosion of shouts and oaths. Fists were shaken, and hands went to sword hilts.
Eilinn rose from her throne, eyes flashing. “How dare you,” she hissed. “You barbarian animal! You hulking, dung-soaked—”
At the touch from her sister she stopped, though with obvious difficulty, and the rest of the hall did the same. Elana smiled, almost warmly, and spoke for the first time.
“Perhaps, dear sister, our—ah—guests would like to see their futures. They speak so confidently of stealing hangings and”—her mouth twisted in distaste—“of other things. Let them see the truth of matters.”
Instantly Eilinn’s humor was restored. “Yes.” She laughed. “Let them see their future. Sayene! Sayene, come out and show these men what awaits.”
From the shadows behind the thrones a woman stepped out. Even without the robes she wore I would have known her by the respectful silence with which everyone but the two queens greeted her. She was a Sister of Wisdom, a seeress. Her presence firmed my resolve to consult Mayra, the Sister of Wisdom among my own tents.
Sayene bowed slightly toward the thrones, but only slightly. “I advise against this, my queens. I—”
“And I say it is to be done,” Eilinn broke in.
The seeress nodded, but her mouth was tight. It was not important enough for her to oppose the queen, but it still angered her. “An acolyte will suffice for this,” she said.
Another woman came forward, also in the robes of a Sister of Wisdom, but with the scarf of an acolyte, a learner, about her head. She bowed, to Sayene before the queens, then took a pouch from her belt and began. Slowly she poured a powder out, and a five-pointed star took shape on the floor.
Harald shifted, and in truth I was not comfortable myself. Magic is a thing foreign to the male, and therefore disquieting.
A second acolyte came forward with candles, and the first placed them, one at each point of the star. With an incantation and the ringing of a bell each candle was lit. The acolyte who had been chosen surveyed the pattern she had set, then smiled unpleasantly at Harald and me. The stage was laid. I could only hope the play was to our liking.
The chosen one unfastened her robes and let them fall.
All of the light in the room seemed suddenly to focus on her. It was as if her skin took on a glow.
She moved to face the topmost point of the star and raised her arms. There was silence. And then she began to chant. At first the words were understandable, but they began to change. Although her voice grew no softer the meaning of her words seemed to somehow slip away, as though they had not quite been heard. Then, slowly, a change began inside the figure on the floor.
The air within the star began to shimmer, like heat waves rising from the Plain at midday. The shimmers increased, grew stronger, began to thicken and jell. Before our eyes the empty air was filled with a dark tube, a tube that began to show images.
From indistinct shapes the images became clearer, sharper, until they were plain to all. Inside the tube knelt Harald and myself, naked, chained, cowering as though in fear. Sitting there, knowing that I did sit there and was not kneeling on the floor, still I felt a sense of drifting, of doubt as to whether I was real or the things before me were.
Harald’s breath came in rasps, and his knuckles were white, but the set of his face showed rage replacing fear. The other men, Lantans and Morassa alike, took the vision with little more welcome than I. A few laughed weakly, prompted by their serving girls’ giggles, but they, too, felt the alienness of it to men.
Once more the images were moving. They cringed away from something unseen. And images of Eilinn and Elana stepped out of nowhere. They were perfect images, and yet different from the real women, taller in some way, more regal, more commanding.
The fake Eilinn and Elana walked toward the fake Wulfgar and Harald. Suddenly they held whips, and began to ply them with laughter and cries of delight. The images of us also cried out, but with howls and screams and pleas for mercy, writhing and twisting on the stone floor.
With a muttered oath Harald started to rise, but I grabbed his arm and held him back.
“Let me go, Wulfgar. There are worse places to die.”
“And there are better,” I replied. “Keep your head, and we may yet walk out of here.”
Even as I rose I did not know what I was going to do, but something guided my hand to the dagger at my belt. I realized that I was smiling. The test of the image, and maybe our way out, was right there. Quickly, before any could move to stop me, I drew the dagger and threw it, and if I threw for the heart of the fake queen who whipped the fake Wulfgar, it is to be understood.
The men around me stared dully, wondering what I was about, but the acolyte saw, saw and screamed, a scream of fear and fury and denial. The dagger touched the image, and the light of a thousand suns blossomed in the center of the hall. Light beat at us, tearing through closed eyes and sheltering arms to burrow into the center of the brain. And the sound began. It was a sound that turned the blood to jelly, that knifed to the very marrow, a sound beside which the earlier scream of the acolyte was as the laughter of children.
The sound faded and was gone, and the light died. Spots danced before my eyes when I tried to see, but I made my way down onto the floor. The candles were melted puddles, still bubbling from the heat. The star was still there, burned into the stone of the floor. In the center of the star lay my dagger, unharmed and not even warm to the touch.
The acolyte lay halfway down the hall, lying as if thrown there by a giant hand. She seemed twisted, unnatural in some way. It was as if her body seemed to blur when the eye tried to focus on it. Sayene said something sharply, and the other acolytes rushed forward to cover the body. They also avoided looking at it, a
s if the sight were more than they could bear.
At Sayene’s voice the silence broke. People began to speak again, to breathe and move, but none loudly. I slid the dagger back into its sheath.
“The blade has been with me since I can remember,” I said. “It was given to me when I could barely grasp it. My imprint is on it as surely as if it was my own hand or my foot. Had the image been true, the power would have recoiled against me.”
I did not look at the covered shape on the floor, but my message was clear to all.
Sayene wasn’t interested in the truth of the image. “You risked putting cold steel into a spell-star, cold steel that carried part of your life force. Why?”
What answer I would have given I can’t say, but I was spared answering by Eilinn.
“I don’t care why he did it,” she shrieked. “He has killed an acolyte in my service, killed her in my own palace, and in my own great hall.”
“Her own lie killed her,” I said. “My life was also in balance against the truth of her image.”
She laughed in disbelief. “You think I’m going to let you walk out of here after this. You actually think—”
“I no longer care what you think,” I interrupted. “I came here to announce our presence. Our tents lie to the west and south, an hour’s ride away. If your merchants wish to trade, they are welcome.”
With that I turned on my heel. Harald joined me, and we began the long walk from the hall. Eilinn shouted behind us in fury, with Elana and Sayene struggling to calm her. With every step I expected an arrow through my back, and the prickling between my shoulder blades stopped only when the doors to the great hall closed behind us.
Harald looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps,” he said, “it wasn’t a three-toed gromit after all.”
III
THE MOST HIGH
Once out of the great hall we picked up our pace from a dignified walk to a hurried trot. If Sayene and Elana won the argument we would be allowed to leave unimpeded, though why they were willing to argue for the lives of two barbarians I could not understand. On the other hand, if Eilinn prevailed, warriors would come pouring out of every opening any moment. Within paces of the door I slid to a halt. Harald nearly ran into me, then cursed as he saw why I had stopped.
From a side corridor glided three figures, man-sized, hooded and robed in shimmering bluish gray. Each carried a rod, longer than he was tall, a Staff of Power. The Most High were in the palace.
We Altaii have little to do with gods, living or otherwise, but a man must give some measure of respect to beings who have wagons that fly through the air and powers as great as, or perhaps greater than, the Sisters of Wisdom. A measure of respect I will give them, but now, on top of all that had gone before, I wished more than anything else to know why they had come.
The Most High do not visit the houses of men casually. Their appearance always foretells great events, times to shake the earth and move the sky. For them to give their favor to Lanta while the Morassa sat within the palace walls could tell of no good for the Altaii.
At the same instant that we became aware of them, they became aware of us. To my surprise they jerked away from us, as though startled or frightened. The bird-like trillings they call speech rose as if from a stirred nest of timir, and before either of us could move, one of them lifted its Staff toward us, and we could move no longer.
I struggled, but my body was turned to stone for all the control I had over it. I could not even turn my head to look at Harald, but his ragged breathing told me he was still there, as frozen as I.
The Most High seemed to ignore us. There was little enough reason for them not to, in truth. They faced each other in a circle, and though the trilling speech had died away I had the feeling that they still conversed.
Finally they stopped and turned back to us, seeming to study us for the moment. Then, paying no more attention than if we were just two more pieces of statuary, they glided smoothly past and on down the hall.
As they moved away I felt the stiffness melt from my limbs, like water running out of a jug. I took a shuddering breath, and the feel of being free to shudder was greater than I could have believed.
“What can they be doing here?” Harald asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but I think the odds against our leaving the city alive are growing shorter.”
He laughed. “Then let us not stay to take wagers.”
The guards outside eyed us curiously, but they had received no orders and so let us pass. There was a stir among the lances as we approached. They, at least, seemed to sense something, to feel the danger. Swords were eased, and lances casually freed.
Orne brought my horse and leaned down to hand me the reins. “There is trouble? We fight?”
“Not now. At least, I hope not now.” I swung into the saddle. “Let’s ride.”
We pushed harder now, moved faster than we had on the way in. Even without words the urgency had passed to the lances, and they rode with purpose. There was an air about us now such that, where men had previously paid little attention to us, and we had had to wend our way through crowded streets, now the crowds parted before us, and men eyed us warily, as if fearing sudden violence. They had no need of fear. The gates were our only goal, the gates and the Plain beyond. There would be no violence if no one tried to stop us.
My mind was not on the ride to the gate, though. I merely rode with the others. What kept running through my mind was why. There was a pattern to the events of the day, a pattern that was as important as life to us, but I could not find it.
The Morassa apparently were destroying the water, yet they lived by the waterholes no less than anyone else. They were scavengers, pickers over better men’s leavings, but the queens, with all their pride and arrogance, feted them and seated them in a place of honor. Even if their presence was strange, stranger still was the attempt to hide it from us. What about their visit must be kept from the Altaii? And why did they think we had come for some hidden reason? Why did we come at this time, she had asked. At this time. What was special about this time above any other? And the Most High. The Most High, indeed.
We rode through the inner gate, and I turned to look back. The road ran straight back to the palace. Twelve roads ran from the palace like the spokes of a wheel, one to each of the Twelve Gates, unbroken except for market squares. The wall I faced, the Inner Wall, towered impregnably, topped by ballistae, onagers and catapults that had rained boulders and firepots on the few armies that had tried to besiege Lanta.
I turned my horse slowly, and some of the peddlers gathered around the inner gate made a sign to ward off evil. Harald and the lances waited outside the outer gate impatiently, but I made no haste.
The Outer Wall had been constructed by men who knew that the winds of war blow in many directions. There was no covering facing the Inner Wall. Each level was open, and an enemy who took it would find themselves open as well, open to arrows and quarrels from the Inner Wall. The men who had built it had planned well. The men who now guarded it planned less well.
Wooden walls closed off many of the open spaces, and in some areas even small huts had been built. The men on those walls no longer stood their watches in the rain and the wind, and if the original planners’ design had been ruined, it did not matter. Lanta the Unconquerable would never fall, not even so much as a part of her Outer Wall.
The officer who had been at the gate was gone, and the guards, too, had been changed. Those who manned the gate now glowered at me, but did not speak, as I slowed almost to a stop to look closely at one of the famous Iron Gates. Those gates had withstood every battering ram brought against them. They looked as solid as the walls.
When finally I joined the others outside the gate Harald shook his head. “I was beginning to wonder if you were waiting for orders to be sent to stop us. Perhaps you had some wish to fight your way out.”
“I was merely thinking how to make good on a boast,” I said.
He
had begun to follow me, but at that he stopped.
“Did the Most High addle your brains, Wulfgar? Or did Sayene cast a spell while we watched her acolyte?”
“Neither, Harald. What wits I had before I entered Lanta are still with me. The thing you do not see is that we are set on a path, now. It may not be of our choosing, and the gods alone know where it leads, but I don’t think we have any choice but to follow it.”
He pulled his cloak tighter around him, though the wind seemed to be slacking a little. “If we must travel this path, as you say, perhaps we can arrange a few surprises along the way for those who set us on it.”
“That we will. I will consult Mayra, and you speak to Dvere. In three days we will meet again with what we can find out.”
“Done,” he said, and we spat to seal the bargain.
We rode then in silence, and when he moved away with his lances to the south there were no words spoken. What must be said, had been said. It was enough.
IV
A WANDERER
A few minutes’ ride from the tents, Orne pulled up beside me and gestured off to the right. “My lord, riders.”
A dozen men were coming toward us, Altaii by their garb. One rode leaning forward in his saddle as if wounded. I halted to see if they had encountered Morassa.
As they came closer I could see that two of them carried a lance between them, resting on their saddles. Tied to it, face to the ground, was a young woman. They pulled up in a swirl of dust.
“My lord,” said their leader, raising his hand in salute. He was one of those who carried the lance with the captive.
“Have you seen anything of the Morassa, warrior? Tents or riders or sign?”
“No, my lord.” He smiled. “Usually they do their best to avoid us.”
“And where did you find this prize?” I asked.
Warrior of the Altaii Page 3