Part 1 (2/2)

The thought made the chill mountain night suddenly seem warm. Aybas felt sweat on his brow and wiped it away with a greasy hand. A gust of wind blew down the street, and sparks flew away into the darkness from the torch outside Wylla's hut.

As if the sparks had kindled it, a light shone forth from across the valley. A pinpoint at first, it swelled until it was a harsh blue glow, reaching out to strip the softness of night from the rocky bones of this mountain land.

It came from beyond a high dam of rocks, logs, and rammed earth. The dam blocked the entrance to the gorge across the valley and held within it a deep lake. On one side of the gorge's mouth, the cliffs leaped upward, to form themselves into a jutting crest shaped like a dragon's head.

On the dragon's head, two human figures stood, one tall and one short.

The blue wizard-fire glowed on their oiled skins and on the chains that bound them. Bound them for what would soon be climbing up from the lake, to seize them at the Star Brothers' command.

Aybas decided that it was time for him also to be inside his hut. His stomach was not always fit to endure seeing the wizards' pet feed, and the Star Brothers might see this weakness as enmity.

Then, to let Aybas keep the wizards' favor, it would take more gold than his master could afford. With no friends and many foes in this land, it would be time to journey again. Otherwise, he might end up on that dragon-headed rock, waiting for the mouth-studded tentacles to claim his blood and his marrow-

Aybas gagged at the thought and all but spewed. He staggered into his hut and collapsed on his pallet without closing the door. So he heard on the wind the splas.h.i.+ng as the Star Brothers' pet heaved itself out of the water, heard the sucking and s...o...b..ring as it gripped the rock face and began to climb.

He had stuffed rawhide sc.r.a.ps into his ears before he heard the faint high call of pipes.

The fisherman and his son atop the dragon's head were more fortunate.

The pipes came to their ears with a sound clear and exciting, like war trumpets summoning cavalry to the charge.

The fisherman knew that the pipes could not really be making such a sound. Marr the Piper had magic at his command, as much as the Pougoi wizards had.

This did not surprise the fisherman. He had known that he risked much when he and his son went beyond Three Oaks Hill into a land where the man-hunting Pougoi warriors roamed. He had also known that in this land lay pools and streams rich in fat fish; salmon, trout, pike, even fresh-water oysters.

Nothing was ever won without danger in this life. Such was the G.o.ds'

will. The greater the victory, the greater the danger a man had to face to win it. The fisherman did not mourn his own shortened days. He would have given much to have refused his son's pleas to accompany him.

Now the boy stood in chains beside him, his days about to end before he had seen his fourteenth year. He bore himself like a man in spite of the weight of the chains and the agony of the raw welts across his back. He had been plain-spoken to the wizards, and they did not care for that. Or perhaps they thought to frighten the father by flogging the son.

No matter. That and all other questions would go forever unanswered as soon as what was climbing the cliff reached them.

It was hard to see it clearly. The wizards' magical light had turned the water of the gorge into blue fire, the mist swirling above it into blue smoke. The creature was larger than any riverboat that the fisherman had ever seen. It had tentacles where no creature outside a madman's dream would have them, and neither legs nor eyes.

Its color was that of a fish rotting on a sand spit in the sun; its sounds would have made the fisherman empty his stomach had it not already been empty.

It was then that the magic of the piping joined battle with the spells of the Star Brothers. The chains that bound father and son writhed like snakes. Then they snapped in the middle, leaving lengths dangling from wrists and ankles.

The piping also seemed to give the wizards' creature pause. It halted halfway up the cliff. Its call turned to a rumbling hiss, and its tentacles also writhed.

The fisherman looked about. There was no way down from the rock; a crevice-too wide to jump- sundered it from the hill. The Pougoi warriors had brought the sacrifices to their rock across a bridge of reeds and branches. Now the warriors had drawn the bridge back, and they stood beside the crevice, bows and spears ready.

Down was the only way, and death the only fate, for father and son. The fisherman still called the blessing of his people's G.o.ds and the rivers' spirits on Marr the Piper. His spell had given them the choice of a clean death.

”My son, it will be upon us soon. Will you come with me?”

The boy saw his fate in his father's eyes. The father saw knowledge, obedience, and love in his son's.

”Where you lead, I follow.”

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