Part 13 (2/2)

The men in the saffron tunics stayed, all six of them, to guard a woman and two men, and one of those wounded. It was a measure of their importance.

Gerrith was making a dazed and fumbling attempt to wipe some of the blood from her face. Halk said, ”Gerrith, what you said about Irnan-was it true?”

Answering for her, Stark said harshly, ”Of course it's true. Why else would they want us alive? If the revolt were really over, dead would be good enough.”

In a curiously gentle voice, one of the bright-eyed men said, ”Do not talk.”

Halk ignored him. He seemed to have recovered a measure of strength, even of eagerness. ”Yes, I see. If Irnan still stands, then perhaps other city-states have joined her-”

He broke off with a gasp of pain as the man nearest him kicked the frame of the litter.

If that were so, thought Stark, it would not be enough for the Wandsmen to announce that the wise woman and the Dark Man and the ringleaders of the revolt were all dead and the prophecy come to nothing. They would have to produce real evidence, and parade it before people who knew and could attest to its authenticity. Gerrith alive, the Dark Man alive, one undoubted ringleader alive-all captives of the Wandsmen, proof that the prophecy was a lie and the power of the Lords Protector invincible. Gelmar and his aides could keep the three of them in cages for the rest of their lives, dragging them up and down the roads of Skaith. Or a fitting end could be devised for them, a very public end, with recantings and repentance-an end to remain vivid for generations in the minds of the people.

Then, if hope of the fulfillment of the prophecy had anything to do with keeping the revolt alive, it would collapse very quickly. Irnan would fall, and that would be the end of it. For the present, at least.

The Wandsmen obviously believed that that hope was keeping the revolt alive. Stark believed it too. Not because the Irnanese were childishly superst.i.tious, but because if the Citadel and the Lords Protector were not destroyed, they could not hold out alone against the mobs of Farers and whatever mercenary troops the Wandsmen would send against them. Their allies, present or potential, among the other city-states then would fall away. Jerann himself had said that these others would wait and see what happened.

The Citadel and the Lords Protector. It all came back to them. They were the symbol of permanence-the unchanging, the holy and unseen and forever inviolate power.

The power that would by now have p.r.o.nounced judgment on Ashton.

Was it, after all, a power that a man could fight? Even if he were free?

Stark looked at his bound wrists. The thongs were wet with his blood. The six men crowded the small room, watching. They had orders not to kill him, he didn't doubt. But there are worse things to do to a man than killing him.

Six men between him and the door. Beyond the door, the Iron House, and beyond that, Thyra. With every gate and every path guarded. Not a puff of wind could get through.

Halk had had second thoughts. ”Why would Gelmat lie to Hargoth?”

Again the litter was kicked.

Again Stark answered, speaking rapidly, eye on the nearest guard.

”Does he want the People of the Towers marching south. . .”

He dodged the first blow, stiffened fingers aimed at his throat.

”. . . singing the Hymn of Deliverance?”

The second blow he could not dodge. He didn't try. He caught the vicious fingers between his teeth.

He learned one thing. These too-perfect creatures were not automatons. They bled.

So did he.

After a time a healer came, a Thyran in a tunic both undyed and unwashed. He wore a chain of office around his neck and was followed by two boys bearing pots of ointment and bundles of rags. The healer tended their hurts, spending long minutes over Halk, grumbling at wasting his time and talents on a non-Thyran who would probably die anyway. When he was finished, servants came and fed them, and then they were told to rest in preparation for a journey. Gelmar seemed to be in great haste.

The room was stiflingly close. The powerful bodies of the men in the saffron tunics were oppressive in the confined s.p.a.ce. The smell of them was repulsive to Stark. They smelled like snakes. Nevertheless, he managed to sleep until men came in with new manacles for them, fresh from Strayer's forges. Gelmar's man with the bitten hand held his sword-point at Stark's groin while the irons were fastened on; his face had still shown no expression, not even pain.

Gerrith seemed to have awakened from a dream, and not a pleasant one. She was careful not to look at Stark.

When the Lamp of the North was above the peaks, they were taken out of the room and marched along a corridor to a yard beside the Iron House, where men and beasts were waiting. The beasts were small, with s.h.a.ggy hair that swept the ground and sharp horns lipped with metal b.a.l.l.s to prevent them hooking. The men who led them wore bulky garments of skins with the fur inside, and only their eyes showed between heavy caps and thick tangled beards. The beards were flocked with white as though the snow had got into them; it did not seem to be a sign of age. Stark guessed that these were Ha.r.s.enyi, in the service of the Wandsmen.

For a moment the prisoners were close together, and Gerrith managed to touch Stark's hand and smile at him. A strange smile.

It was as though she had said goodbye.

21.

The beasts shuffled and blew, breath puffing white in the icy air. Stark and Gerrith were made to mount, with a guard on either side, afoot. Halk was transferred to a traveling litter slung between two of the animals. He appeared to be unconscious or asleep most of the tune. Even so, he had been manacled like the others, and a guard stood at the head of his litter.

Gelmar, cloaked and hooded for the journey, came and bent over him, feeling Halk's throat where the life beat in it.

”Cover him well,” he said to the beautiful man by the litter. ”If he reaches the Citadel alive, we can heal him.”

The beautiful man, with sword and dagger belted now over a rich outer tunic, covered Halk carefully with furs.

Gelmar and the lesser Wandsmen mounted. The retainers, twelve in all, portioned themselves out along the line, walking near the Ha.r.s.enyi but obviously disdainful of them.

An escort of Thyran troops tramped up, banging the inevitable drum. The cavalcade started.

They pa.s.sed through the gate and turned north toward the night-sparkle of the Witchfires. The escort saw them past the outer guardpost, then saluted and went drumming and clanking back to the city.

The path lay ahead, climbing a long gradient to the summit. Somewhere on the other side of the mountains was the Citadel. In a way, Stark thought, getting there was going to be easier than he had thought At least he would not have to worry about the Northhounds.

No wagons had come this way in centuries, and the track was narrow. The hard little hoofs of the beasts clattered steadily on the frozen ground. The sky was a glory of s.h.i.+fting color.

It was bright enough to see quite clearly the shapes that thronged the pa.s.s.

For geological ages the forces of wind and water, thaw and freeze, had worked at the rock walls, scouring, carving, polis.h.i.+ng, wearing away. Sheathed in ice, the sculptures seemed alive in the shaking light of the aurora. Great faces watched with deep-gouged eyes. Towering pinnacles soared and tottered, gargoyle wings spread out to shadow the little humans pa.s.sing beneath. In the wider places, where softer strata had been carried off, whole crowds of cowled and hooded forms seemed to whisper together. The wind from the high north blew down the pa.s.s, chuckling and singing, talking to the s.h.i.+ning creatures it had helped to create.

Stark's human reason told him that these monsters were no more than lumps of eroded stone. His mind knew that. His primitive gut said otherwise. And his animal senses told him that other beings not of stone were close by.

The Children of Skaith-Our-Mother?

He could not see anything, but a regiment might have hidden itself in the eccentricities of the rock. Still, the Wandsmen and their retainers, even the beasts, moved on confidently. If there was something here, they were accustomed to it and not afraid.

The manacles weighed heavily on Stark's wrists. The sky flared. White, pure as the veils of angels. Pale green, delicate as shoal-water. Red, like a fire of roses. From time to time the s.h.i.+mmering curtains drew apart to show the velvet darkness beyond, with the green star glowing.

Gerrith rode ahead of him, sitting her little beast quietly, her head bowed as though she rode toward an ordeal. He wished he knew what she had dreamed.

At length, just below the summit, at the right-hand side of the pa.s.s, he saw a tall pinnacle standing, canted forward until it seemed that it must fall of its own weight. It had the form of an elongated man in an att.i.tude of prayer, and about its base irregular groups and lines of hooded figures stood as though they listened.

In the s.h.i.+fting light and shadow of the aurora, three of the figures moved, detached themselves from the stone, came into the center of the pa.s.s and stood barring the way.

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