Part 19 (1/2)

Shaldis was silent for a time, reflecting that for all his appearance of blockheaded obstinacy, Jethan understood the king-and the realm-surprisingly well. After a time she remarked, ”It's hard to find grounds on which to argue with him. As long as he has the largest army, and some of his captains or landchiefs-or even merchant lords-don't decide that they have as much right to rule as he does.”

”Only one man has the right to rule.” Jethan reined away from the rise of ground where they'd halted their horses back toward the trace that wound toward the gap in the hill concealing the city wall. ”And that is the man who has laid his life in the hands of the G.o.ds, for all the people to see. It's like when I used to ask my grandmother, 'Can I take my brother's bow and go hunting?' Because I was the older and stronger than he. And she'd say, 'You can, dear, but you may not.' And I would be ashamed to have acted like a bandit, only because I was strong.”

Shadow of that shame still lingered behind his rueful half smile.

Shaldis had seen no woman old enough to be Jethan's grandmother in the striped shade of the ramada beside that isolated adobe house. A boy, Jethan had said. He'd be sixteen.

There is nothing we can do, Yanrid had told her.

She sighed. ”Do all mothers say that? Mine did.”

”I think it's a thing that rises into women's minds with their first milk.” He drew rein a little and pointed to where a doe antelope and two fawns, barely larger than hunting dogs, melted briefly into view from the sagebrush, their vast ears swinging nervously as the dusty little cavalcade rode past.

For all her instruction in the ways of beasts and birds, Shaldis was at heart very much a city girl. During the past day and a half, she had acquired a profound respect for the simple earth craftiness that set Jethan apart even from his fellow guardsmen. He had a primitive sense of kins.h.i.+p with animals, insects, birds, and sky, a quiet harmony that Shaldis-raised in the crowded Bazaar District-had learned only with great labor and thought.

The other riders, warily alert or jos.h.i.+ng Cosk about what he'd do for a day in bed and an extra brandy ration, seemed to lack even that.

After a time Jethan went on, ”Without the right to rule, it will come down to whoever is the richest: who can buy the loyalty of the most men and who can buy the loyalty of the greatest number of the Raven sisters. I think that's what the king fears most,” he added, seeing Shaldis open her mouth to protest even the thought. ”That Lord Sarn will offer one of you the thing that she most treasures-and that thing may be as simple as her family's life-and that Lord Jamornid or Lord Mohrvine will offer another something else: money, perhaps. A lot of money. Don't sneer at it,” he added, seeing the flush of disgust rise beneath the thin skin of Shaldis's forehead. ”Money buys freedom. Ask any dirt farmer. Or any dirt farmer's wife.”

Shaldis thought of Cattail in her elegant house. Of Yellow Hen and Foursie with nowhere to live but under Cirak Shaldeth's roof. Of that brown adobe house, a day's walk to the nearest village.

”Then, too,” Jethan went on, ”if one woman stands out against the blandishments of one or another lord, that lord may take it on himself to kill her rather than see her in the employ of his enemy. And that is the road to death indeed.”

Shaldis was silent as they pa.s.sed around the shoulder of the hills and saw the shadowy bulk of the city's walls outlined in the glow of dawn and the ta.s.seled green velvet of cornfields and palmeries all tipped with gold. At length she said very softly, ”There are times when I hate men.”

Streaming over the Dead Hills to their backs, the long light of morning tipped the palace roofs, the exuberant horns and scrollwork of the Marvelous Tower, with glittering gold. The tower's chimes rang out to greet the morning, vying with the hum of insects, the far-off crowing of the city's c.o.c.ks.

Stooped, hairy teyn jostled in lines along the cornfield pathways closer to the city, slow moving and deliberate, and lifted their heads to watch the dozen riders as they pa.s.sed. The other guards called out jocular obscenities to the silent creatures, but Shaldis heard at least one of the men mutter to another, ”They got to do better than that, keeping them in line.”

News of the attack in the desert would spread, she knew, no matter what orders the king gave to keep it quiet. Garbled and magnified into a threat that every teyn owner would react to. The thought that some Crafty was able to control teyn-to command them to murder their owners-would expose thousands of perfectly innocent, good-natured creatures to ma.s.sacre at worst and at best ever-harsher methods of incarceration and control.

Yet as the little party rode through the glazed-brick pa.s.sageway of the Flowermarket Gate, she thought of the empty compound on the outskirts of Three Wells and of the crooked tracks in the dust between those burned walls.

Did the voice that cried to her for help in her dream have anything to do with any of this?

Or the whisper of magic in the walls of her grandfather's house?

She didn't know what to think or what it meant, and moreover, now there did not seem to be anyone to ask. Through the night she'd felt the slow draw on her power through the Sigil of Sisterhood, as Pebble and Moth sought by whatever means they could to hold Summerchild with spells of strength and life. Her instincts shrieked at her to search for both the unknown mages, but deep in her bones where her power lived, she sensed Summerchild poised to slip away.

And with her would go, almost certainly, any hope of saving the king.

And maybe the realm as well.

They emerged from the gate shadows into the Square of Rohar, facing the G.o.d's brightly painted temple, and heard men's voices shouting and a woman's screams.

Trouble in any of the city's squares spread very quickly. The donkey trains of market-bound fruits and vegetables, the boys who hawked milk and ointment door to door, and the water sellers with their huge clay jars slung before them and behind panicked first, trying to run without knowing where they fled or from what, stumbling and cras.h.i.+ng into barrows of fruit and flowers in the square. Housewives and teyn fetching water dropped their jars and leaped for safety. Shaldis's horse s.h.i.+ed violently and one of the guards' mounts reared. Dogs barked and voices rose, shouting; and above the sudden din Shaldis heard a man shrieking, shrieking in rage and agony such as she'd never heard before.

From her vantage point in the saddle she saw him as he ran out of Little Hyacinth Lane, naked as if he'd just leaped from his bed. He carried the remains of a chair and in his other hand a gardener's machete; and he slashed with both all around him-Shaldis barely saw these details, so horrified was she at his face. His mouth hung open, howls pouring out of it like water from a bucket.

His eyes bulged. Windows into h.e.l.l.

Shaldis flung herself from the saddle, threw the reins to Jethan. The crowd had separated them from the other guards; she ran forward alone, hearing them shout behind her. The howling man plunged through the crowd in the square as if he were running a race, las.h.i.+ng, stabbing, lunging now at one person, now at another; but Shaldis could tell-she didn't know how-that what he saw had nothing to do with the reality around him.

A woman stumbled, fell in a tangle of horoscopes and almanacs as she tripped over her own blanket; the howling man struck her with the chair, bent to rip with the knife. Shaldis yelled, summoning a spell of pain with all her strength and flas.h.i.+ng it at the man's guts; and though she saw him buckle-saw blood splash out of his mouth-still he fell on one knee beside his victim, cut her throat, and ripped her body open before Shaldis could get there. In rage Shaldis blasted him with a spell of pain again, and when he sprang up, leaped at her in spite of it, she flung a burst of light at him like the sun exploding before his eyes.

He didn't stop, came at her with eyes wide and staring. Shaldis grabbed the first thing that came to hand, an awning pole off a tipped-over vegetable barrow, and jabbed it straight at him, ramming it in his belly with the force of a thrown spear. It would have knocked any man to the ground breathless and vomiting, but it didn't. He struck at it, lunged at it, striking now at her, swinging the wooden chair like a vicious club and forcing her back with such violence that she stumbled.

He never ceased to scream, never altered his expression, blood pouring out of his mouth now and trickling from his nose and his ears. Face distorted, eyes staring, he struck at her, and she held him off with the pole like a boar with a spear, frantically hurling every spell she could think of at him-of pain, of blindness. What else?

It seemed to take hours and it was probably only a handful of moments before men swarmed him from behind. One instant Shaldis was staring into those frightful eyes, separated from her own by two yards of bending, splintering pole . . .

. . . the next instant steel flashed, and she saw Jethan's face beyond the howling man's shoulder and blood fountaining up from severed arteries as the madman's head rolled forward and lolled on a strip of tendon and skin. The body thrust and rammed and swung its weapon at her for several seconds before it collapsed on the ground.

Shaldis stood shocked, gasping, her face and clothing splattered with blood.

Jethan stuck his sword tip down into the dirt of the street to catch her. ”Are you all right?”

She managed to nod.

”It's Gime,” someone said in the crowd. ”Gime the tomb robber.”

”He isn't either a tomb robber.”

”He is. He works for Noyad the jeweler, and if Noyad gets his jewels honestly, I'm a-”

Someone handed Shaldis a cup of water. She found herself sitting on the toppled barrow, Jethan beside her wiping off his sword on the hem of his tunic. The other guards came crowding up. ”Good cut, Stone Face,” and ”You all right, lady?”

A man's voice yelled, ”What's going on here, then?” and looking up, Shaldis saw two of the city guards thrusting through the crowd.

Voices layered over each other like the baying of a dozen hounds. ”Been acting strange . . . hear him shouting at night . . . come cras.h.i.+ng out of his room-his room's next to mine at the tavern-screaming fit to wake the dead . . . killed Flower the kitchen wench . . . No, didn't hear no words, just screaming.”

One guard bent over the dead horoscope seller, the other moved off down Little Hyacinth Lane in the midst of the knot of gawkers. Both then turned and converged on Jethan, shouting questions at him as if he'd seen the whole thing and knew who the dead man was. The royal guards pushed back, defending their own. The crowd was already jostling away up Little Hyacinth Lane. Using her awning pole for support Shaldis stumbled after them. The track of Gime the maybe tomb robber from the Square of Rohar to the tavern where he lodged was horrifyingly clear, like the trail of a sacking army: blood splashed on the whitewashed walls, broken fragments of the chair, doors and window shutters gouged and splintered, a dead dog with its head twisted nearly off its body. Gime's neighbors-other single men who roomed at the White Djinn Tavern-cl.u.s.tered around her, along with the tavern owner himself.

Yes, Gime worked for Noyad the jeweler. No, there'd been no trouble with him before, a very quiet sort he was, went early to his room and to sleep.

”Dear G.o.ds!” The tavern keeper, a stout graying man with a scar on his cheek, stopped in the doorway of his tavern, staring about the room. As Jethan and the two constables pushed through the crowd, the rest of Jethan's guards in tow, the tavern keeper whirled on them. ”Look at this place! Look at it! Gime never did all this! Just raced on through.”

”My gla.s.ses!” wailed his wife, shoving into the room from behind him. ”All my gla.s.ses! And my mirror, too!”

Shaldis looked through the door at the ransacked common room. Gime's whirlwind progress from the stairway to the outer door was marked by overset tables and shattered chairs, and in one place by the body of a kitchen maid lying with a broken neck against the wall. But someone had clearly entered the room after everyone had rushed out in the madman's wake, opening cupboards, smas.h.i.+ng every gla.s.s bowl and vessel in the place.

”Did they get the cashbox?” the innkeeper was yelling, and his wife rushed to one of the wrenched-open wall cupboards. ”If whoever did this got the cashbox, I'll hold the city proctors responsible!” he yelled at the city guards. ”You should have been here protecting my place!”

”Deemas be thanked,” gasped his wife, clutching the little locked box to her bosom. In addition to being the G.o.d of thieves Deemas was the G.o.d of innkeepers. ”But who would do a thing like this?”

Who indeed? Shaldis stepped back as the city guards and what seemed like several hundred other random citizens all crowded into the common room. Hesitantly she put her hand to the doorpost, fearing that if she touched it-if she listened into the wood and adobe as Summerchild had done-she herself might disappear into a coma, her mind vanis.h.i.+ng down into sleep that spiraled to death.