Part 20 (2/2)
Shaldis did sleep, rather to her own surprise, on the striped linen cus.h.i.+ons of the divan downstairs, which Summerchild's maid Lotus had made up into a bed. Her sleep was deep and free of the sense of profound wrongness that plagued her nights in her grandfather's house. She dreamed she was in the unburned kitchen of the White Djinn Tavern in Little Hyacinth Lane, trying to make a tisane of the healing herbs on which she still meditated diligently before lying down every night. Only every pot and basket she opened was, annoyingly, filled with mice, weevils, and gra.s.shoppers. They were written all over with wards, of course, and the wards had all ceased to work. There was a lake monster in the water jar that looked up at her with wise golden eyes and seemed about to speak.
After that, she gave up and walked out to the courtyard-hoping, perhaps, to find a fever tree growing there-and saw before her the burned ruins of the inn. The dead members of poor Corporal Riis's company lay strewn in the courtyard, covered with vultures. The dust at her feet glittered with broken gla.s.s.
Only it wasn't gla.s.s, she thought, it was jewels: jewels that came from tombs.
Jewels inscribed with curses. But the curses no longer work, she thought, bending down to pick up a ruby like a drop of blood at her feet. Any more than the mouse wards do. That's what happened to Riis and his men-mice killed them. A lake monster came up out of the village well.
She woke with the lake breeze drifting across her face and the sunlight making sharp-edged golden trapezoids all over the wall above her. She went upstairs and found Pomegranate still beside Summerchild's bed, but obviously Geb had been there in the meantime. A spindly-legged table had been set up beside her bearing coffee things and a dish of heavenly morsels, and the old lady was feeding fingerfuls of whipped cream to three of the palace cats.
”Any change?”
Pomegranate shook her head. ”Moth came for a time-you were out like you'd had a draught of poppy, dearie. She'll be back this evening, if you wish to go home and get some real rest.” She broke off, looking sharply over her shoulder as if at some sound.
”What is it?”
The old woman listened for a moment, then shook her head. ”Nothing, I guess. His Majesty's down at the wharf, seeing off his daughter. He's sending her away across the lake to one of the small estates in the Eanit country. As if he doesn't trust us to get him through his consecration!”
”I'm sure he's only concerned for her health in this heat,” said Shaldis. She scooped a fingerful of cream from a pastry. ”Would Pontifer care for some? Or doesn't he eat cream?”
”Oh, Pontifer's very particular,” said the old woman, ”even about the king's kitchens. But Pontifer isn't here.”
”Where's he gone?” Shaldis paused, startled, in the midst of offering the cream to the cats. It was the first she'd heard of Pomegranate's illusionary companion leaving her side.
”To look for Summerchild, of course. Since he isn't a real pig”-Pomegranate's voice dropped to a whisper, as it always did when she didn't want to hurt Pontifer's feelings-”he should be able to go where she is. I hope he'll be all right,” she added worriedly. ”It's a long way for him to travel, and . . .”
”And what?”
”And there's something amiss here,” whispered the old woman. ”Something amiss in the city, I mean, some evil going forward. I just hope he doesn't come to harm.”
The sun was setting. The guard had changed in the kiosk near the ornamental gate that led into the Summer Pavilion's maze of jasmine and pepper trees; Shaldis quickened her steps to a run, to catch up with the three red-clothed forms of the guardsmen on their way back to the barracks. The Akarian kings had staffed the entire harem area of the palace with eunuch guards, a system that had led to scandalous corruption. As generalissimo, old Oryn the First had sent most of these fairly useless watchers away and had replaced them with men from the regular guard units, rotated frequently and keeping watch in threes. Jethan was with his friend Cosk, his arm already out of a sling despite obvious remnants of pain, and with the boyish-faced Firmin. Through him, Shaldis was finding herself on a first-name basis with half the warriors in the palace, something that would give her grandfather a stroke if he knew.
”I thought with Pomegranate back, the four of you would be out tonight testing spells for the consecration,” said Jethan when Shaldis told him what she wanted him to do. They'd fallen back a step from the others, to keep their voices low.
”Well, the first thing the four of us are going to try to do in concert is bring Summerchild out of her coma,” retorted Shaldis. ”Pebble's going to be here tomorrow morning. Then we'll start throwing chickens at crocodiles again. Tonight's the first night I've been able to leave Summerchild's side.”
”So you're going to spend it riding out into the desert until all hours.” He stopped on the graveled path; the other two halted some distance away, waiting in the dappled shade. They'd removed their helmets and the leather caps beneath them, but Jethan-never one to be less than regulation at all times-still wore his; and his face, framed in gold, had a stripped-down look, as if the structure of its bones had been laid bare.
”I'm going to do something I needed to do six days ago,” said Shaldis. ”Which is go out to the Redbone Hills and pay a call on Ahure the Blood Mage. Something about our friend on Little Hyacinth Lane the other day is starting to remind me a lot of what we saw out in Three Wells, and both he and Ahure work for Noyad the tomb robber-excuse me, Noyad the respectable jeweler. But if you don't want to come along to watch my back, I can take care of myself.”
”I'm sure you can,” said Jethan, falling into step with her as she started up the path again toward the gate that led to the guards' court and, beyond it, to the stables, where she meant to beg a cavalry mount from Bax. ”Up until the moment that you can't. Riis could take care of himself, too,” he went on. ”I've seen him do it in more taverns than I'd care to tell you about. The men of his squad were tough, and now they're buried in a cornfield. Do we need those two mangy dogs with us as well?” he added, raising his voice to include Cosk and Firmin, who promptly began to howl, yip, and scratch their ears.
”Good heavens,” said Shaldis, more startled at the question than at the behavior of Jethan's friends. ”I can't imagine why. I only need someone to keep an eye on things in case a problem comes up. It isn't as if Ahure can do any magic.”
”No,” said Jethan, pausing again as they reached the square gray block of the barracks' gate. ”But someone can. Someone was controlling the teyn, who held us away from Three Wells while they burned the village. And someone has, at least once, used magic in your grandfather's house. You don't know what we'll find out there, once we get to Ahure's house. I agree that we probably don't need four of us, especially considering the difficulty in concealing four riders, but I'm glad you're taking help. Get changed into riding clothes,” he added, nodding back in the direction of the Red Pavilion. ”I'll talk to Bax about horses.”
”Thank you.” She turned to stride back toward her palace quarters, then paused and said a little shyly, ”I may be too proud and unruly for a woman, but I'm not stupid, you know.”
Jethan pulled off his helmet and smiled at her from beneath the sweat-soaked mop of his hair. It changed the whole of his face. ”I never thought you were.”
THIRTY-THREE.
Though the last daylight had barely faded from the sky the house of Ahure was dark. As Shaldis turned her horse toward it, from the wider track toward the necropoli deep in the hills, she wondered in a whisper how many clients Ahure got in the summer's heat. ”I mean, Cattail's patrons have the option of visiting in the early hours of the morning or in the evenings when it's cool enough to be out but the streets are still crowded.”
”If he's making amulets for Noyad,” objected Jethan, narrowing his eyes against the shadowy distance, ”surely Noyad would insist he not work for others.”
Shaldis grinned. ”Ahure pa.s.s up a chance to impress someone with his greatness?”
And Jethan let out a crack of laughter. ”I had an uncle like that. He-”
Then something rustled sharply in one of the clumps of sagebrush that dotted the hillslope before the house: ”Jackal,” said Shaldis. ”After the garbage.” By the smell of it there was garbage in plenty, and none of it buried or burned.
Her horse snorted and s.h.i.+ed, and Jethan said, ”No, it's too-” And there was a sudden, murderous whine in the air between them. Jethan's horse reared and twisted aside with a scream.
Shaldis saw blood on its shoulder, a long rake, like a knife slash. The same instant her own horse leaped sideways, and Shaldis kicked her feet clear of the stirrups as she was pitched out of the saddle, curling her shoulder to take the impact of the ground. She heard Jethan curse, and the thud of an arrow hitting the sand near her. She lunged for the nearest clump of sagebrush and something moved in it: the glitter of eyes under a teyn's overhanging brow.
Then it was gone, and between Jethan's cursing and the pummel of her horse's fleeing hooves on the earth, she couldn't tell where. When she rolled into the sagebrush and sat up, she glimpsed another teyn darting from cover a dozen yards away, heard men's voices shouting from the house. Ahure's, shrill and harsh, cried, ”Kill them, I tell you!”
Shaldis cried, ”Ahure, no! It's Raeshaldis!”
”I knew it!” the Blood Mage screamed. ”He sent her! Kill them both!”
Jethan dropped from the saddle beside her, keeping firm hold of the reins of his thras.h.i.+ng mount. Despite his efforts to pull her out of arrow range-and the men with Ahure must be using longbows, thought Shaldis, they were too far for crossbows-she called out, ”Ahure, my grandfather didn't send me!”
An arrow buried itself in the ground a few feet away. Jethan hooked an arm around her waist and dragged her back down the rise on which that small brown adobe stood. Ahure could be heard howling something, and Shaldis whispered the other half of the ward-and-retrieve spell she'd taken the precaution of putting on her mount. As she and Jethan retreated toward the main road the brown-and-white gelding came trotting back through the starlit sagebrush, reins trailing.
”He was watching for us,” panted Jethan as they cantered away in the direction of the faint sprinkling of the Yellow City's lights. ”Or watching for someone.”
Shaldis muttered, ”d.a.m.n my grandfather,” and summoned the wards of a Gray Cloak around them, as soon as she judged they were too far to be seen clearly in the starlight. Then she drew rein. ”He's afraid of something.”
”I'm afraid of something,” retorted Jethan. ”I'm afraid of being shot by a madman.”
”Why, Jethan!” Shaldis gave him her most dazzling smile. ”I thought the king's guards weren't afraid of anything.” And she drew her horse near his-he'd stopped a few feet farther down the road than she-and signaled to him to lower his voice. ”Sometimes mages can still hear at a great distance, if they go into trance,” she whispered. ”That's why I think we need to go on foot.” And she slipped down from her gelding again.
”Go on foot where?” He did remember to whisper. ”There were teyn circling that house-I saw three of them. Whoever was controlling the teyn out near Three Wells must have sent them against Ahure as well. The place is isolated enough.”
”Unless it's Ahure who's doing the controlling,” replied Shaldis softly. ”And if it is, I think we'd better find that out.”
Soth Silverlord heard the harp playing in the Summer Pavilion as he returned across the gardens from bidding Moth and Pomegranate good night at the gate of the Marvelous Tower; the music filled the air like the sweetness of jasmine and roses. Lamplight glimmered through the trees, though the hour was very late. He nodded to the eunuch guard in the little kiosk where the pathway curved, climbed the blue-and-gold-tiled stair to the upper chamber, where the king sat playing, and the woman Pebble swayed in a trance over the Sigil of the River of Life, chalked on the floor beside the bed. As Soth reached the top of the stair the song concluded, and he heard Pebble say, ”Thank you, Your Majesty. That was beautiful.”
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