Part 26 (1/2)

Because it was, he saw now, the most beautiful object he had ever laid eyes on. It was perfectly plain, round, and appeared to him to be crystal clear though he could not see through it or into it. Under the surface iridescence lay darkness, as if the bottle were filled with it.

And under the darkness, a wakeful eye of green light.

This is the answer, thought Oryn wonderingly, settling himself cross-legged on the tattered nomad carpets, letting the sword slip from his hand.

This is what will save not only me but Summerchild and the realm as well.

This power.

Relief swept him, drowning him; sank him into sweetness he had never imagined before. Like the memory of his dreams he saw himself wading into the lagoon in the House of the Twin G.o.ds, the green water lapping around him, warm with the sunlight. Saw on the lagoon's rim not two priests but seven, and the answer seemed so clear to him, deceptively simple and beautiful with the perfect beauty of all simple things. The crocodiles merely stayed away from him, did not even turn their wicked yellow eyes in his direction. That was all there was to it.

Not two priests but seven.

And trees with lavender flowers, visible over the enclosure wall.

Relief and gladness as he waded up out of the lagoon, dripping water from his thin white garment, holding up his arms to the cheering crowds, to show himself unhurt. Then he saw her coming down the steps to him, his lady, his wife. It had to be Summerchild, from the love that filled his heart at the sight of her, but she no longer looked the same. She was dark haired and green eyed. . . .

Why was that?

The people cheered as he pa.s.sed before the seven priests, who salaamed in the style that only they used. Crowds followed him along the dusty path back to the city-back to the city? When had the House of the Twins moved into the desert? But he recognized the House of Death, built curiously into the city's southern wall. Death at least had a single servant, as Death always did and always had, but after he'd gone into the stone hollow and come out safely, with the scorpion in his hand, he saw that the House of Wisdom-the house of the serpent king-was also outside the city, only it wasn't called the House of Wisdom but the House of Madness.

In either case, the pit of serpents was the same, and the answer was the same, too. To simply walk down the steps and lay his head upon the idol's altar. To have the snakes ignore him. Easy, easy as a little song, and from the pit's rim his beloved one smiled down at him from among the nine-nine?-priests.

But as he approached the altar in the center of the pit, a tiny yellow snake, the length of his hand, struck at him from between the cracks in the altar and bit him on the foot. He kicked it aside, stamped at it, though it eluded him; and he heard the people who lined the pit's edge gasp. Something went through his mind, some thought, some terrible sense of deja vu, gone as soon as it touched him.

He turned back to the altar knowing the pain would start as he turned, and it did. It hit him first in his chest, like the blow of a spear or a knife, searing so that he gasped like a landed fish. Then the next instant knives of pain slashed every joint in his body, so that sweat poured from him, tears flowed from his eyes. His knees gave way and he fell, catching at the altar, crying out. Above him, s.h.i.+bathnes of the Serpents, the lord of the darkness in the mind, stared down at him with eyes like the darkness behind the stars. Pain, and worse pain, and still worse, and he was screaming, and the nine priests of Wisdom (or Madness) stepped closer to the edge.

At the same instant men came rus.h.i.+ng down the steps into the pit, men with drawn swords. His brother's men-not Barun's but some other brother's, the same way his dark-haired beloved whom he knew so well wasn't Summerchild but someone he'd never seen before. The pain made it impossible to think. Madness seized him, madness born of the pain that set his brain on fire, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the sword that he'd let slip from his hands and flung himself at them, screaming in pain, knowing he was going to die and not caring.

Anything, anything to end the pain.

And to take them with him, traitors who had bribed the priests to let him die, when the answer had been in his grasp.

Then his eyes cleared, the dream s.h.i.+fting to waking for one moment, or what would have been waking but for the glowing iridescence of the bottle still burning in his mind. His attackers were but shadows in the darkness around him, but where the starlight touched their eyes he saw they were pale, with slitted pupils like cats.

They seized him, held him down, and the knives all slashed at once. The snake's venom rushed out with the blood as darkness poured in.

FORTY-ONE.

They're out there somewhere.

They can't simply have vanished.

Raeshaldis stopped, letting her slitted eyelids drift that last fraction of an inch into complete closure, sank her mind into the emptiness that now smelled of nothing but air and rock. The desert floor was bare here, even of sand. Only rock stained dark by the slow leaching of the sun. The air was like a diamond, shriveling the tissues of her nose and lips even through her veils.

They have to stop somewhere. She may be a Crafty but she's no more than human. She has to rest.

As her eyes slipped closed that final fraction of an inch, her mind slipped back down into trance, her senses reaching out over the desert like the farthest extension of a single drop of blood spreading in a still pool that taints all the water with its presence. Through weariness like the pounding of a hammer she was aware of Jethan and the camels, some half mile behind her, waiting in the dove-gray twilight of the coming morning. Was aware of her own fatigue and thirst-she couldn't even remember when she'd let her mind be distracted long enough to go back to them for water.

Was aware that this was the hour called the Bird Sun, when back in the lands where there was water all the birds would be waking to cry their territories, to hunt insects, to coo and twitter at one another: in her grandfather's little garden and the king's great ones, under the eaves of every house in the Yellow City and in the palmeries and fields and pastures all along the sh.o.r.es of the lake.

Here there was no sound but the sob of the wind across the bare black rocks and now and then the creak of saddle leather far behind her and the jingle of a camel bell.

It would be full light soon. Full sun.

The night before last she'd followed the teyn's scent far into the bare desert, as she'd followed it through the Dead Hills with Rat on the night preceding that. And the one before that she'd ridden with Jethan to the house of Ahure. She knew she'd dozed and eaten at some point in the past three days but couldn't remember exactly when. Despite her training in long fasts and nights without sleep, she knew she was coming to the end of her physical endurance.

Just what was that other woman made of?

Was she like the teyn, who could go for seven days, it was said, without rest or food?

Was she getting her tame teyn to carry her while she slept?

Were her spells over them that strong?

Shaldis realized she was nodding on her feet, and jerked her mind to wakefulness. Like a wolf she scented the air, turning her head again, sifting and sorting the dry, hard air of dawn.

And finding nothing.

Still she started forward, eyes half shut, trusting that in time she would pick up the trail again.

”Lord King?”

The voice came from a thousand miles away in the darkness.

”Oryn?”

The image of the nine priests on the edge of the crocodile pool dissolved and Oryn opened his eyes. ”Where in the G.o.ds' names were you?”

It was Soth kneeling beside him.

Morning sun glared in Oryn's eyes, and the next second a vulture's shadow pa.s.sed across it. The world smelled of the birds and of blood. His skin was on fire with pain.

”And what happened? There were nine priests, though Death still had only one.” He brought up his hand to touch a burning line of pain on his forehead and saw that someone had drawn a circle on the back of his wrist in blood to which stuck sand grains and dust. The movement brought back the knives of all his enemies. The henchmen of the brother who wasn't really his brother, or something.

Soth's face looked ghostly white in the pale wrappings of his veils. ”Can you sit up?” Behind him a whole squad of guards crowded close, as if they expected their monarch to utter prophecies or give birth.

”Of course I can sit up! I only . . .” He tried it and sank back with a gasp. ”On second thought, please have the palace baths transported out here.” He managed to get up on one elbow and looked around.

He lay on the ground in mid-desert. Far off a column of dust proclaimed the aqueduct camp, but it had to be a good five miles away. Vultures circled overhead.

At least with such helpful fowl in the neighborhood, once they knew he was missing he couldn't have been difficult to find.

”My lord, what happened? Who did this?” Soth reached back for the dripping waterskin Commander Bax pa.s.sed forward, propped Oryn's shoulders, and helped him drink. Oryn's hands were shaking so badly he found he couldn't support the skin's weight himself. ”The relief guard found Sergeant Zhenus missing. He fetched Geb to go in and check on you, and you were gone, too. Bax tells me they were searching for you for the rest of the night. I saw the vultures myself as I rode into camp at dawn. I thought it odd that they didn't land.”