Part 42 (1/2)

Felthrup swallowed, and pushed his spectacles up his nose. Ramachni jumped to the floor, crossed once more to the divan, and crawled up beside Thasha's shoulder. His pink tongue dabbed once at her forehead; then he turned and studied the chamber again. His eyes settled on the bearskin rug. A look of satisfaction crept over his face.

'How dare you keep me waiting.'

The sorcerer waited just beyond the red stripe, his mouth twisted with anger. The four Turachs leaned against the walls. Arunis watched the thin, bespectacled man leave the stateroom without closing the door.

'So you can fight my summons now? Well after tonight you'll wish you'd never tried, you mangled, three-legged misery of a rat. Get out here!'

The thin man took his time, but at last he reached the magic wall. He did not immediately step through it, however. Instead he paused with his face just inches from the sorcerer's own.

'After tonight,' he said quietly, 'you will wish you'd never invaded his dreams.'

'Whose dreams?'

'Felthrup's, you fool.'

With that the man in spectacles reached through the wall and seized Arunis by his scarf. At his touch the mage gasped aloud and tried to pull away. But the thin man held him fast, and began to chant: Light is the purse that brimmed with deceit Fierce are the hunters, and swift their feet And the night so late and lonely.

Bribe them you might, but what can you offer?

A curse, and a kick, and a black barren coffer, And the taste of treason only.

Dear have you cost us, but never so dear That we'll tender our souls to a peddler of fear.

Pride may be costly, but pain is free: For thee, old deceiver, it comes for thee.

On the last word he let go of the scarf, dropped to the deck, and became once more a mink. Arunis leaped back in terror. But the mink did not attack him. It fled.

'What's this?' roared Arunis. 'The great Ramachni, turning tail? Have you nothing but rhymes to fight with?'

A deafening roar filled the pa.s.sage behind him.

Arunis whirled, and for one second he gaped at the bear, a huge brown boulder of an creature, looming over him, so tall its shoulder touched the roof of the pa.s.sage.

'Stop, Felthrup!' he shrieked. 'I order order you--' you--'

Then its weight was upon him, and its claws like mallet-driven spikes, and its teeth that ripped his dream-flesh like so much tissue paper, like the wrapping on a box that held no gift, nothing but emptiness and a voice that cursed and was gone.

27.

The Ambush

24 Freala 941 133rd day from Etherhorde

By the time they reached the hill overlooking the Chathrand Chathrand, Diadrelu was winded, and the man beside her was panting like a hound. Even at nine in the morning the heat was fierce - particularly at eight inches above the barren ground. Seabirds whirled over them, innumerable: the dry side of Sandplume was one great eyrie, where gull and plover and albatross and tern vied for every available inch of nesting s.p.a.ce. The birds had no real stomach for fighting creatures who could take off one of their wings with the swipe of a blade, but their pecking and diving made it hard to attend to other matters. Their noises - outraged wails, honks, brays, screeches - made Diadrelu think of the torments of the d.a.m.ned.

'A fool's errand,' grunted the man, whose name was Steldak.

Diadrelu shaded her eyes. Three hundred feet below them, the Chathrand Chathrand and Sandor Ott's single-masted s.h.i.+p lay at anchor, hidden on three sides by the horseshoe-shaped isle. and Sandor Ott's single-masted s.h.i.+p lay at anchor, hidden on three sides by the horseshoe-shaped isle.

'Look there.'

She pointed. From behind the cutter the Chathrand Chathrand 's skiff was gliding into view. Her sail was down already. Aboard the Great s.h.i.+p men were running out the davit-chains to receive the little craft. 's skiff was gliding into view. Her sail was down already. Aboard the Great s.h.i.+p men were running out the davit-chains to receive the little craft.

Diadrelu took a short monocular telescope from her pocket and raised it to her eye. There was Pazel There was Pazel. She heaved a great sigh of relief. The boy had survived another misadventure ash.o.r.e. Rin only knew what they had done to him this time.

'Erthalon Ness is not aboard,' she said aloud.

Steldak hissed through his teeth. 'It's as I foretold, then,' he said. 'They have given him to someone on Bramian, someone who will put him to evil use. How I wish you had stabbed them both!'

The rejoinder flashed through Dri's mind: How I wish I'd stabbed you How I wish I'd stabbed you. She closed her eyes, deeply shamed by the thought. Steldak was gaunt, despite the food and nursing lavished on him these past two months. He had spent years in a cage in Rose's desk, lifted out only at mealtimes, to test the captain's food for poison. His rescue had been a triumph of cunning on her brother's part. But Steldak's disobedience - he had tried to a.s.sa.s.sinate Rose on the spot - had cost Lord Talag his life.

He was delirious, Dri reminded herself. He'd believed for years that he would die in that cage. And he has done his penance, and sworn an oath to the clan. He'd believed for years that he would die in that cage. And he has done his penance, and sworn an oath to the clan.

Still she was glad she'd remembered the little scope, if only to give her something besides Steldak to focus on. The very sound of his breathing set her teeth on edge. Hate (so her people's adage went) was the place where death entered the living, the blind mote in the eye of the soul. Dri had always liked the adage, although she could not remember the last time she heard it on any tongue but her own. It was wrong to hate Steldak. But she did.

'There was a death ash.o.r.e - a military death.' She pointed at a black ribbon of canvas snapping in the breeze from the masthead. 'I do not see Drellarek, the Turach commander. I wonder if it was he who fell.'

Steldak shrugged. 'It was not Rose, more's the pity. Beyond that I am not much interested.' He lunged at a gull, which sheered away with a ravenous wail. 'Let us go, Diadrelu. There is nothing more to be learned here.'

'What of the winds?' she asked. Steldak, who claimed to have been born at sea, had also declared himself a fine judge of weather.

'A storm from the north-east,' he said, glancing vaguely at the sky. 'These westerlies are not half what they were twelve hours ago. Some gale is sucking all the force from them. Soon they will turn back on themselves, and then we shall see.'

'How soon?'

Steldak's eyes travelled the horizon. 'After midday, if you force me to guess. But Bakru's lions answer to no one but Bakru, and sometimes not even to him. Lady Dri, I would return to our commander's side. He may have need of us.'

'Lord Taliktrum knows where we are.'

Nonetheless she relented, and the two ixchel started back down the hill. The footing was treacherous, and the birds, excited by movement, redoubled their attack. By the time they reached the island's highest shrubs they were winded again.

They groped beneath a stand of spiny, wind-tortured thorbal trees, their legs sinking to the knees in a powder of dead moss and lichen, and then began an easier descent, under greener growth. The Black Shoulder Ott had chosen as the Great s.h.i.+p's final harbour in the northern world had two faces: the parched east, scoured by the rising sun, and the lush west, doused by the fogs that drifted almost daily from the Bramian landma.s.s. They had crossed from one side to the other, and soon were able to slake their thirst on beads of water clinging to leaf-tips. From below the sound of pipes grew stronger.

'There they are,' said Diadrelu.

Just ahead, the land fell away in a cleft, like a jagged pie-slice cut from the island, all the way to the sea. At the edge of the precipice stood Taliktrum and two other ixchel, gazing down at the bright rock walls. The cliffs, like the hilltop, were alive with nesting birds; but here the birds were sh.o.r.e-swallows: cousins to the common birds that dwelled in barns and outbuildings. They screeched and bickered; you could hardly call it song. Their nests dappled the cliffs, gra.s.s-woven, mud-mortared, dried to the harness of stone. Thousands of the birds came and went on wings like dark flames, bringing grubs and insects to their fledglings.

It was, thought Dri, like a scene out of legend: the wall of sacred birds (swallows alone were sacred to her people), the cras.h.i.+ng surf, and above them the young master of a n.o.ble House, resplendent in a swallow-suit of his own. The suit was one of but two such feathered coats in the possession of the clan. They were treasures, cared for and mended over centuries. But their value was more than ceremonial: with hands thrust into the cloak's wingbone gauntlets, any reasonably strong ixchel could fly.