Part 25 (1/2)

”No, sir?” The commander's white eyebrows flared up at the ends, like inquiring wings.

Oryn looked uneasily at the length of the shadows that had now completely crossed the wadi, at the fading gold of the sky. ”No. Whatever is going on here, I'd rather risk losing track of it through not setting a guard than lose four more men as we did at Three Wells. Soth should be here by morning, and, please the G.o.ds, Shaldis. And one or the other of them will, I hope, be able to find some answers about whatever is going on here. And elsewhere.”

As he walked back toward the horses, Oryn felt his eyes drawn, as if in spite of himself, to the dark of the tent doorway. Beyond the body of Urah's wife, nearly hidden in the shadows, the gla.s.s vessel gleamed like a watching eye.

”I thought there wasn't curses anymore, sir,” he heard Zhenus argue to Bax. ”That's what they say is going on with the rains, isn't it? That magic don't work no more, not for good nor for ill. So that means nothing that was cursed is still cursed.”

”That's what it means,” replied the commander imperturbably. ”But that's only the curses that work by magic. Not going along with what the king says is one of those curses that doesn't work by magic. You step out of line, and magic or no magic, you're for it. Understand?”

”Yes sir. I understand.”

By the horses Elpiduyek was muttering as he readjusted the ingenious gyroscopic arrangement that changed the angle of the royal parasol's canopy, cursing the sand that fouled the mechanism. Two of Urah's nephews brought the horses and camels from the lines behind the tents, the horses stumbling and wild with thirst. Oryn stopped and turned back to look at the dark tents again, and the sheikh paused beside him, his face filled with unbearable grief.

”How can it be,” the older man asked quietly, ”that the curse would pa.s.s by my horses and my camels and yet take my beautiful Nisheddeh, the honey of my days, the stars of my nights? Is this what the curse is: that I who sinned should not die but should live on in sorrow?”

”I do not think any man, not even the great sages of old, has ever found an answer to that,” replied Oryn, thinking of the still, wasted body on the linen pillows, the voices of his Raven girls raised in spells that did not seem to touch the shadow that lay on Summerchild's face. ”If I ever learn the answer I shall tell you.”

And the sheikh glanced sidelong at him and managed a little smile under his grizzled mustache. ”Thank you, Lord King. And I shall do the same for you, should I learn the answer first.”

”I appreciate it.” Oryn turned toward the horses again and paused once more, looking down at the black, writhed form of the naked mummy in the dust. ”Is that common?” he asked. ”I'm a scholar, and I've never encountered mention of it: of Zali mummies being deformed in that fas.h.i.+on. It's only recently that we've seen any that survived. But, if you will forgive my frank speech, lord sheikh, you're a tomb robber and have more experience in this matter than I. Is that something the Zali did to their dead that made them convolute that way?”

”Mummies?” Urah's eyes filled with shock and with pain as he looked down at the blackened, leathery thing at their feet. ”Lord King, that is not a mummy! Look at the face-can you not see the tattoos still upon the forehead and the chin? I know those tattoos, my lord, and by them I know this man: he is my brother, Warha. It is the curse that has left him so.”

FORTY.

Someone was seeking her.

Shaldis put the thought aside.

Darkness lay upon the desert. The moon had set; the evening wind was long stilled. Around here even the plants were failing, the eerie sentinels of cactus and the clumped sleeping sagebrushes growing farther and farther apart. Very soon, Shaldis knew, they would end altogether. Underfoot the floor of the world was colorless stone and sand.

The air smelled of heat and sand, and nothing more.

And far, far off, like the ghost of smoke, the faintest trace of indigo.

Look in a mirror!

But she knew now that if she took her attention from that far-off scent, she would never find it again. Not in this world that seemed to grow wider and wider, this silence that deepened with every forward step she took.

Behind her she had the dim consciousness of Jethan riding, leading the camels. Many yards behind, but what did it matter? In this world there was no longer any concealing brush, and even the cracks and wadis that came down out of the Dead Hills had shallowed to nothing.

Anything that would come at them could be seen for miles.

Anything that came near her now would swamp that elusive scent that was more within her mind than any part of the real world around her. Like a single silk thread flying loose in a windstorm she traced it. They have to be headed somewhere, and it has to be somewhere they can get afoot with only the water they can carry.

I will not be outwalked.

She stumbled, numb with exhaustion, her body burning with a fever of sleeplessness, weariness, dehydration. After two days and a night, the only thing that existed was the faint scent of indigo and it was weakening, calling her soul from her flesh in order to follow, leaving the flesh to catch up as it could.

You will not escape me.

Shaldis!

I'm sorry, she answered whichever sister it was who cried to her mind. I can't. This may be our only chance.

A footfall in the corridor. Foxfire dumped the water from the scrying bowl back into the ewer, thrust the bowl under the mattress, slid like a cat into the high-legged bed, and whipped the sheet over herself and Opal. Both girls dropped their heads onto the pillow and shut their eyes as the latch of the door slid back: Grandmother.

The whisper of hinges.

No light.

Of course. Grandmother can see in the dark as well as I can.

With moonset the chamber was dark as the inside of an oven. Maybe the reason Shaldis hadn't responded to her call was because she couldn't s.h.i.+ne light on the water in the bowl-it was something she intended to ask the older girl as soon as she was safe in the king's palace. Now she could only deepen her breathing and think dreamy thoughts about Belzinan, the gazelle-thin dancer whose performances were all the rage in the Yellow City: conjure up thoughts about what it would be like to be pa.s.sionately clasped in his arms. Of course, all the gossip said that her father would be far likelier to attract Belzinan's notice than she would, even could she ever find it in herself to be interested in any man again. But never mind. The dream was pleasant enough.

She hoped Opal was doing the same. Her grandmother was capable of sensing other people's dreams, as she herself had sensed those of the guards at Nebekht's Temple. Maybe her grandmother could even read the dreams of another Raven sister.

After a long time she heard the door close again.

Foxfire didn't know if Red Silk suspected, but she knew she wouldn't dare try to reach Raeshaldis again tonight.

Maybe not until she was out of the house completely, on her way back to the city. How close would she have to be to the city's walls before she called out for riders to meet her? How far from her grandmother to prevent Red Silk from catching her before she was met?

And how would she be able to tell that?

She was still working out the mathematics of time and distance of a single hard-riding old lady against that of a troop of the king's guards searching the broken hill territory between the Valley of the Hawk and the Yellow City when she fell asleep. At least, she reflected, she actually dreamed of Belzinian dancing, rather than of a young teyn lying bound and gagged in slimy green water, staring with frantic eyes as the crocodile swam nearer and nearer. . . .

A guard coughed. The one at the watch fire over by the closest of the teyn pens, Oryn thought, identifying the direction of the sound. That d.a.m.ned kitchen cat who'd been courting one or another of the camp toms all night started up yowling again. All the half-wild toms who prowled the desert around the kitchen tents took up the serenade, and Oryn briefly considered turning out the entire guard to have the female captured and taken twenty miles out into the desert and dropped. It would take her the rest of the night to return to the camp and resume her love life, and by that time he'd be eating breakfast.

Chained in the quartermaster's tent, the mad digger continued to sing in that eerie up-and-down wailing, the same unknown words repeated over and over in an unknown tongue.

The king turned over on his gilded camp bed-carefully, since the last thing he wanted was Geb scurrying in yet again with inquiries of had he called and did he want a slave to fan him or someone to read to him or play the flute or engage him in a game of fox and geese that he'd be sure to win. No, and no, and NO.

What I want is for Soth to arrive.

What I want is for Raeshaldis to come with news that she's caught that wretched nomad Crafty her groom told me about and her wretched indigo-soaked teyn and has solved this entire tangled puzzle. Or even if she hasn't solved it, I want her here to tell me if she's heard from the ladies around Summerchild.

And while I'm wanting things, I want Summerchild here beside me in this deathly not quite silence, alive and healthy and well.

Despairingly, Oryn shut his eyes and saw her face again as last he had seen it, wasted, waxen, like a ghost on the threshold of death.

People always tried to bargain with Death, but Death was notoriously uninterested. I shall be in Death's house two days from tomorrow, he thought. What if while I'm there, when the priest seals me into that stone grave with the scorpion, I see Her, and She offers to bargain after all. What would I do?

Give the land to Mohrvine and to civil war in trade for Summerchild's life?

In front of the tent, the guard stood up.