Part 5 (1/2)

Harpirias closed his eyes a moment. It was essential to gain some control over these interchanges, or he was lost.

”Tell the king,” Harpirias said sternly, even though Toikella was in the midst of speaking again, ”that I would now like to discuss with him the issue of the hostages. In particular I request permission to visit them without further delay so that I can satisfy myself that they are in good condition.”

”My good prince-”

”Tell him.”

”I beg you - ”

Harpirias made the finger-across-throat gesture again.

Korinaam gave him a sour look. Then he turned toward King Toikella and began once more to speak.

The discussion went on for quite some time. Harpirias strained his ears, desperately trying to pick out key words to remember and have translated for him afterward. The Shapes.h.i.+fter was entirely too slippery; he must try to learn a little of the Othinor tongue himself.

A new word had entered the parley, at any rate-goszmar, is what it sounded like. Harpirias heard it over and over again. He hoped that it was the Othinor -word for ”hostages,” that for once Korinaam had actually obeyed him in regard to the topic of conversation. Goszmar, goszmar, goszmar-it was bandied back and forth for what seemed to be an hour. Finally the Shapes.h.i.+fter turned to Harpirias and said, ”It wasn't easy. As I've told you, he hates to be hurried. But he has agreed to let you see them this very afternoon, -when his men bring them their regular meal.” ”Fine. Where are they?” ”An ice-cave on the side of the mountain, high above the north end of the valley. He says the climb is extremely strenuous and difficult.”

”Especially for an effeminate lordling like me, I suppose. Let him know that I look forward enthusiastically to the chance for a little exercise.”

”I already have, prince.”

”Have you, now? How very thoughtful of you, Korinaam.”

As it turned out, ”strenuous” was a moderate term indeed for the ascent of the mountain. Young as he was, strong as he was, Harpirias found himself pushed almost to the edge of his endurance. The route, narrow and rough, went by way of a maddening series of hairpin switchbacks that traced a slowly rising curve along the face of the canyon wall. Menacing jagged rocks, half-hidden in the snow-speckled trail, jutted upward from it every few yards, offering the unwary climber the possibility of tripping and slipping and plunging into the ever-deepening chasm that yawned without a guard rail at their left elbows. The air grew colder and colder as they rose, and powerful gusts of icy wind beat remorselessly at their faces. Ungainly big-beaked birds, roused from their nests amongst the crags, flapped screeching about their heads, beating at the intruders with broad powerful wings.

These were unaccustomed privations. The muscles of Harpirias's legs quickly began to protest. Bands of pain sprang up across his breast and gut. His eyes ached, his nostrils stung. But he made a point of concealing even the slightest indication that he found the climb a struggle. This was a test which he had insisted upon taking, and he knew he must pa.s.s it.

With him he had brought not only Korinaam but also the Skandar Eskenazo Marabaud, whose size and strength would make him a comforting presence. Five of the Othinor accompanied them: the high priest and four men of the warrior caste. The king stayed behind, having excused himself from the climb with a show of such cool insouciant self-regard that Harpirias could only be charmed by the man's audacity. ”I would go with you in a minute, and gladly so,” Toikella explained. ”But my people need me always close at hand. I must never ignore their wishes.” Was that a wink? Harpirias wondered. And a royal smirk?

The path took them over crackling crusts of hardened snow and then across a perilous-looking bridge of ice. Below that flimsy span pa.s.sed a rus.h.i.+ng stream that came spurting from the heart of the cliff like a gush of dark blood. Beyond it the switchbacks abruptly ended and the trail shot straight upward at a heart-straining angle over loose gravelly rocks glazed by ice. Harpinas's bare fingertips turned numb and he thought his chest would crack from the coldness of the air.

And this was summer! Othinor summer! By the Lady, how did these people survive the winters in this place? Were they made of stone? Did icy -waters flow in their veins?

The air up here was thin and pale. Harpirias told himself that he could see right through it, and then asked himself in some perplexity what he had meant by that. Was his mind beginning to give way under the stress of the climb? He warned himself to be on guard against nonsensical thoughts. The alt.i.tude, the lat.i.tude-'the att.i.tude, he added-the alt.i.tude, the lat.i.tude, the att.i.tude-the words ran through his mind over and over, an infuriatmgly relentless jingle.

The others evidently were having no trouble with the climb. All the Othinor but the priest were carrying heavy sacks of provisions for the prisoners, without the slightest difficulty. Eskenazo Marabaud actually appeared to be enjoying himself more and more as the difficulties of the ascent increased. Even the flimsily built Korinaam was striding readily along. Harpirias found that mortifying; but he reminded himself that his companions all were people of cold-weather climates, accustomed to such harsh conditions as these. He, young and strong as he was, had lived all his life in the gentle climes of Castle Mount.

He looked down once, only once. The village was a mere outline, white against white, a collection of distant tiny boxes huddling against the mountain wall. The sight dizzied him and he swayed, but Eskenazo Marabaud reached out easily with his lower left hand to steady him.

They were not far below the rim of the wall now. Harpirias could see it, a wide flat summit, stretching back away from him. Here the trail turned a corner and unexpectedly broadened to two or three times its usual width. A short way below the summit a dark uneven oval in the face of the cliff announced the presence of a cave. Boulders were piled high to block its mouth; two fur-clad Othinor armed with swords stood guard before it, their arms folded, their faces expressionless.

The high priest-Mankhelm was his name -said a few brusque words to them. The sentinels saluted and made haste to roll back the uppermost level of the boulders so that they could enter.

All was dark within. There was a long business of lighting torches; and then Harpirias saw that they were in a low-roofed cavern, deep and narrow, that ran back far into the core of the rocky wall. Seepage from some mountain spring had coated its sides everywhere with an icy skin, which glinted with a beautiful bluish sheen by the torches' smoky glow.

Shadowy figures came lurching out of the cavern's depths, blinking and murmuring as they approached the light.

In a formal tone Harpirias said, ”I am the amba.s.sador of His Highness Lord Ambinole, come to win your freedom for you. Harpirias is my name. Prince Harpirias of Muldemar.”

”Divine be praised! What year is this?”

”What-year?” Harpirias was taken aback. ”Why, the thirteenth of the Pontificate of Taghin Gawad. Does it seem that you've been here so long?”

”Forever. Forever.”

Harpirias stared. The man with whom he spoke was tall and terribly thin, pale as bleached parchment, with a crest of wiry graying hair fanning far out in every direction from his balding scalp and a thick, unkempt black beard covering nearly all of his face. Two burning half-crazed eyes peered from that thicket of hairy growth. He was dressed in loose fraying rags, pitifully inadequate to the cold.

”You've been here only a year,” Harpirias told him. ”Or perhaps just a little more. It's the middle of the summer in the Marches. The summer of the year Thirteen.”

”Only a year,” the man repeated in wonder. ”It feels like a lifetime. -I am Salvinor Hesz,” he announced, after a moment. Harpirias knew the name. The leader of the ill-starred paleontological expedition, yes.

Others much like him in their raggedness and gauntness stood gathered behind. Harpirias counted quickly: six, seven, eight, nine. Nine. Was one missing?

”Is this the entire group of you?” he asked.

”All of us, yes.”

”There was some question about how many of you had made the journey. Eight, ten-the records were unclear.”

”Nine,” said Salvinor Hesz. ”Changes of personnel were made at the last minute. Two dropped out-what luck for them!-and one replacement was found.”

”Myself,” a man of remarkable height and thinness said, in a black sepulchral voice that seemed to rise from the bottom of the Great Sea. ”It was my good fortune to be allowed to join the expedition just as it was leaving Ni-moya. What an opportunity for furthering my career!” He put out a trembling hand. ”My name is Vinin Salal. How much longer are we to be kept here?”

”I've only just arrived,” said Harpirias. ”There's a formal treaty to negotiate with the king before you can be freed. But I hope to have you out of here before the summer ends. I will have you out of here by then.” He looked from one to another of them, marveling at the fleshlessness of them all. Skin and bones was all they were. ”By the Lady, they've been starving you, haven't they? They'll pay for this! Tell me: what kind of treatment have you had?”

”They feed us twice a day,” Salvinor Hesz said, without rancor. He gestured to the sacks of provisions which the Othinor had thrown down against the side of the cave, and which the men of the cavern appeared to be in no hurry to fall upon. ”Dried meat, nuts, roots-pretty much the same things they eat themselves. It isn't a diet one can love. But they do feed us.” ”Every morning, every afternoon, very punctually. A party of them always comes climbing up here with these sacks of food for us,” one of the others said. ”Sometimes we can hear terrible storms raging outside, but they never miss a meal, they come up here all the same. You don't get plump on Othinor fare, you know. Still, we can hardly say that we're being starved.”

”No,” someone else agreed. ”Not starved, no.”

”No.”

”Not at all.”

”Treated quite well, in fact.”

”Decent people. Very backward but not unkind, all things considered.”

Harpirias was puzzled by the mildness of their words, the almost benign tone in which they spoke of their savage captors. These men looked like walking skeletons. They had lived a year and something more in this dark glacial hole, far from their homes and loved ones and careers, slowly wasting away on the odds and ends of repellent food that was all the Othinor could provide. Where was their fury? Why were they not raining down curses on their jailers? Had this imprisonment so broken their souls that they were grateful even for the miserable bits and pieces that those who had condemned them to lie here were giving them to eat?

He had heard that prisoners, after many a month and year, sometimes came to love their keepers. But that was a hard thing for him to understand.

”You have no grievances against the Othinor at all?” Harpirias asked. ”Other than having been forced to remain here against your will, I mean?”

They met his question with silence. It seemed to be difficult for these men to think clearly. Their minds as well as their bodies must have been weakened by their privations, Harpirias thought. The hunger, the cold, the separation from the world.

Then Salvinor Hesz said, ”Well, they've taken our specimens away. The fossils. That was very distressing. You must try to get them back for us.”