Part 25 (2/2)
”I'm not dragging you. You can go back. Just give me h'alf the money.”
”What? You'd be in debtor's prison by tomorrow night. And I ain't riding around out here without n.o.body to talk to.”
”Then you'd better stick with me.”
”They can't go far anyway. Argon is the end of the road.”
”How do you know?”
”They're heading for the Argon Gate. If they were headed east, they'd go to Necremnos. So they'd head for the Necremnos Gate.”
”How do you know where they're heading?”
”You know my old man.”
”So?”
”His stories?”
”Oh. Yeah.”
Dantice's father bragged endlessly about his youthful adventures, before the El Murid Wars, when he had made a fortune in the eastern trade. Aral, having heard the tales all his life, had a fair notion of where they were.
They reached Argon two weeks later.
Argon, in summer, was an outpost of h.e.l.l. The city lay in the delta of the River Roe. That vast river ran in scores of channels there, through hundreds of square miles of marshland.
The city itself, twice the size of Throyes, had been built on delta islands. Each was connected by pontoon bridges to others, and some had ca.n.a.ls instead of streets.
The youths' quest took them to the main island, a large, triangular thing with its apex pointing upriver. It was surrounded by walls rising from the river itself.”Lord, what a fortress,” Trebilc.o.c.k muttered.
Aral was even more impressed. ”I thought Dad was a liar.
That wall must be a hundred feet high.” He pointed toward the northern end of the island, where the walls were the tallest. ”How did Ilkazar conquer it?”
”Sorcery,” Michael replied. ”And there weren't any walls then. They thought the river was enough.”
Aral looked back. ”Rice paddies. Everywhere.”
”They export it to Matayanga mostly. We studied it at school, in Economics. They have a fleet to haul it down the coast.”
”Better close it up. We might lose them in the crowd.”
The pontoon was crowded. They couldn't find anyone who spoke their language, so couldn't ask why.
The trail led to a huge fortress within the fortress-island.
”The Fadem,” Aral guessed. The Fadem was the seat of government for the Argonese imperium, and was occupied by a nameless Queen usually called the Fadema or Matriarch.
Argon had been ruled by women for four generations, since Fadema Tenaya had slain the sorcerer-tryant Aron Lockwurm and had seized his crown.
The men escorting Nepanthe were expected.
”Don't think we'd better try following,” Michael said. n.o.body had challenged them yet. The streets were full of foreigners, but none were entering the inner fortress.
Trebilc.o.c.k led the way round the Fadem once. He could study only three walls. The fourth was part of the island wall and dropped into the river. ”We've got to get in there,” he said.
”You're crazy.”
”You keep saying that. And you keep tagging along.”
”So I'm crazy too. How do you figure to do it?”
”It's almost dark. We'll go down there on the south end where the wall is low and climb in.”
”Now I know you're crazy.”
”They won't expect us. I'll bet n.o.body ever tried it.”
He was right. The Argonese were too much in dread of those who dwelt within the Fadem. They would have labeled the plan a good one for getting dead quick. Suicides traditionally jumped from the high point of the triangular outer wall, where the memorial to the victory over Lockwurm stood.
Trebilc.o.c.k and Dantice chose the Fadem, though. About midnight, without light, during a driving rain.
”No guards that I can see,” Michael murmured as he helped Aral to the battlements.
”Must be the weather.”
It had been raining since nightfall. They would learn that, in Argon, it rained every night during summer. And that by day the humidity was brutal.It took them two hours of grossly incautious flitting from one gla.s.sless window to another, attending only those with lights behind their shutters, to find the right room.
”It's her,” Aral whispered to Michael, who had to remain behind him on a narrow ledge. They had clawed eighty feet up the outside of a tower to reach that window.
”I'll go in and....”
”No! She'd turn us in. Remember, she came because she wanted to. Let's just find out what's up.”
Nothing happened for a long time. After resting, Michael slipped a few feet back down and worked his way across beneath the window so he could reach the ledge at the window's far side.
Three hours dragged through the stuttering mills of time. Neither man had ever been more miserable. The rain beat at them. Hard stone below dared them to fall asleep.
There was no room to move, to stretch....
Someone entered the room.
Trebilc.o.c.k came alert when he heard a woman say, ”Good evening, Madame,” in heavily accented Wesson. ”I'm sorry you had to wait so long.”
Trebilc.o.c.k and Dantice peeked through the slats of the shutters. Why the h.e.l.l don't they put gla.s.s in these things? Michael wondered. But Castle Krief, too, had unglaz.ed windows, and weather in Ravelin was more extreme.
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