"You"re crazy, girl. Teyn-"
"No one came in? Let me in."
"Go to h.e.l.l." He slammed the door in her face.
She heard the bolts sc.r.a.pe.
She could have slammed back the bolts and confronted him-and while she was at it demanded to have a look at the gla.s.s ball that was the focus of the trouble-but she knew that every second, the teyn and their mistress would be heading for whatever bolt-hole had let them through the city wall. Tulik and the camel driver came dashing along the gallery, and Tulik called out, "Grandfather!"
"Let him be," said Shaldis. "If that"s the way he wants it, I have other things to do. Get me a horse, a remount, a groom, and two days" food and water and get them fast. I"m going after them." She"d already pushed past her brother and was striding back along the gallery toward her room to change clothes. "And tell Grandfather that when I get back, I"m going to want to see whatever it is that he"s got hidden in his room."
THIRTY-SEVEN.
Two laborers insane in two days, rumors of others. Please send someone to advise. Ykem.
Ykem was the foreman in charge of the aqueduct camp.
Oryn turned the curled sc.r.a.p of parchment over in his hands. "Get some horses saddled, if you would, please, Geb." Geb started to protest-probably that it was already midmorning and no cavalcade was going to get far by noon, and besides it did not suit the dignity of the king to ride horseback and look what had happened last time.
Oryn simply lifted his hand and shook his head. Moth-who was on duty at Summerchild"s side that morning, stylish as ever in pink gauze and topazes-did not even look up from her meditations. "Is the messenger who brought this still in the palace? Please find out, and, if he is, have him meet me in the Golden Court to ride out with us. Jethan!"
The young guardsman, who had brought the message from the front gate to the Summer Pavilion, came swiftly to the bottom of the stair as Oryn raised his voice. Palace custom dictated that whatever commands Oryn had for a guard would be taken by Geb, or preferably by a page, but Oryn simply descended the stair, to the chamberlain"s scandalized twitters.
"Would you be so kind as to go back to Chirak Shaldeth"s house and ask Raeshaldis to join us on the road to the aqueduct? This is all becoming . . . very disquieting."
"Yes, my lord." Jethan salaamed.
"And send another guardsman here at once!" added Geb as the young man strode away up the garden paths. "My lord, you can"t simply-"
"I"m the king, my squash blossom," said Oryn with a faint smile. "As I keep telling you, I can do whatever I want."
Except save the life of the woman I love.
He looked for a time down at Summerchild"s face. In the hot morning sunlight she seemed terribly pinched and wasted. Yesterday evening, after the four sisters had made their sigil and their circle, he"d thought she looked better and had dared to let himself hope.
Silly, he thought. His father would have had a few words to say to him about that. Not to speak of what he"d have said of a king letting a silk merchant"s granddaughter cry on his shoulder and pick through leftovers with him.
He wondered what, if anything, had been the result of the tall girl"s ambuscade last night. Nothing useful, he thought. If she"d actually found this nomad Raven sister, she"d have brought her here to the palace early that morning. Or brought word of her own defeat.
Dear G.o.ds, don"t let the battle between them have harmed her.
If Shaldis had been injured or killed . . .
He looked down at Summerchild"s face again, and thought once more, I can do whatever I want, except save the life of the woman I love.
Or the lives of my people.
Or my own.
The messenger was indeed awaiting Oryn when the king"s guards, packhorses, and Elpiduyek the parasol bearer-honestly, Geb!-a.s.sembled in the Golden Court. He reported that both men were simple laborers on the aqueduct, part of the small gang in charge of roofing over the finished section behind the main diggers. One man had come running out of his hut with a knife in hand just after sunset and had thrown himself into the midst of a band of teyn just being brought back to quarters from the ditch. They"d killed him before the minders could whip them away.
The other man was still alive, tied hand and foot, alternately screaming and singing in a language no one could recognize.
Had the villagers sung, Oryn wondered, as they"d run among the burning huts of Three Wells?
Though the cavalcade a.s.sembled with a swiftness unheard-of among kings, still crowds were gathered along the Avenue of the Sun to watch them ride away. There was something speculative in their silence, though when Oryn raised his hand to them they cheered, like a sun patch breaking through winter clouds.
"They don"t imagine I"m running away, do they, Bax?" he inquired, leaning a little in the saddle to speak to the commander, who rode at his side.
"Course they do." The stocky soldier spoke without turning his head, his pale-blue gaze scanning each side street and temple; Oryn wished he didn"t suspect the white-haired commander of marking out possible sites for fortification should street fighting break out in the wake of a bid for power by Sarn or Mohrvine or Akarian. "I expect before noon there"ll be odds offered at every cafe in town as to whether you"re coming back."
"So nice to know my people take an interest in my welfare."
"Don"t you think they don"t, sir." Bax nudged his mount to a hand gallop, deftly avoiding Elpiduyek, who determinedly cantered close by, silken canopy flapping up and down with the jogging stride. "There"s hundreds in the city doing just that-betting the G.o.ds will carry you through. Will carry us all."
Betting Raeshaldis and the others will come up with the appropriate spells, perhaps. Oryn wondered again what that tall, shy girl had encountered last night that had prevented her from either coming herself that morning or sending word. The events at her grandfather"s house and those at Three Wells-not to speak of the madman in Little Hyacinth Lane-had a suspiciously similar ring. And whether the advent of the lake monsters-thankfully uncomplicated so far by a reappearance, according to Pomegranate-was part of the puzzle or merely the G.o.ds" attempt to prod him into nervous prostration before his consecration, only the G.o.ds knew.
He"d sent another messenger posthaste to the ruined village, with a message to Soth to make all speed for the aqueduct camp.
But as the cavalcade pa.s.sed through the east gate square, with the harsh sun bright now on the gate"s green tiles and the dust like a golden fog, Oryn happened to turn his head. And though he knew that the Veiled Priests never left their temples, he could have sworn he saw them, seven black figures almost invisible in the shadows of the alleyways nearby.
Watching him as he rode out the gate.
"She movin" over rock, miss." The camel driver Tulik had fetched for Shaldis as a groom was an elderly man named Dhrosas, whom everyone in the caravanserai called Rat-Shaldis had known him from her childhood. He now pointed with his quirt at the streambed, decades dry but paved with smooth stone and gravel and dotted with the gray desiccated mounds of camel bush. The noon sun sent up waves of heat from that impermeable pavement already, flung harsh glare into the pursuers" eyes. "We not find her tracks before, we sure not find her here."
"I thought nomads could pick up the tracks of birds an hour after they"d flown past."
The little man grinned and leaned forward to pat the neck of the lean bay mustang he rode. "I"m only half nomad, miss, so I only track that one halfway to where she goin"." He did look like a rat, too, reflected Shaldis, with the tip of his long nose-pink with sunburn-sticking out through the dark gauze veils that protected his face and eyes, and below it his bristling white mustache. His skinny hands on the reins had the look of a rat"s forepaws in their tattered gloves. Most camel drivers didn"t live to be old-their lives were too harsh, and most of them that weren"t killed by bandits and nomads died in bar fights. But she remembered Rat telling her stories of the djinni, when she was a child.
She sat back in her saddle and closed her eyes. As she"d suspected, she wasn"t able to scry the fleeing teyn in her crystal, which meant she was with the Crafty who controlled her. But half in a trance of seeking, Shaldis could still catch the acrid pungence of indigo, clinging to the rock of this parched Dead Hills streambed, hanging in the air. Scanning the dun slopes above the banks of the wadi, eyes narrowed against the blazing sun, it seemed to her that far off, she saw the moving dot of blue.
She had followed that scent through the night, among the tangled wadis and steep-walled canyons of the Dead Hills, moving south from the Yellow City, then bending east. In the darkness her ears had sifted through the scuffle of hunting jackals, the yips of foxes, and the scrambling whisper of rabbits, searching for the steady tread of fleeing bipeds. But those sounds, like her scrying, had been masked by cloaking spells. Now and then she"d stopped to look up and to gauge by the stars burning white and steadily above the matte-black cliff faces where they were.
And sometimes, in those cliffs, she"d seen the faint glow of greenish light, outlining the mouths of the ancient tombs that dotted those withered valleys.
Keep away from the mist, the voice had whispered in her thoughts. Flee it. . . .
She wondered if, in some nomad legend forgotten by Rat"s father, there was mention of a lake of fire.
Or of something that crashed and boomed, again and again, with the regularity of breath?
They"d ridden through night and morning. Now with the sun straight overhead they had come to the end of the hills, and before them the desert stretched, north, east, and south. Far away to the north Shaldis was aware of the tiny glittering cloud that marked the construction face of the aqueduct, but beyond that there was no sign of habitation, of human pa.s.sage at all. Even the salt caravans that crossed the distances to the oases and the migratory camps of the deep-desert nomads, who navigated by the stars and by the far-off shapes of the land, knew well that to go beyond the farthest oasis was suicide.
She opened her eyes and saw Rat kneeling on the descending bank of the failed wadi, making a cairn of stones to guide them back. He"d done this half a dozen times already, through night and morning. In the desert, one did not take chances.
Even behind the protection of the veiling he shaded his eyes to look up at her. "Nothing out there," he said. "That direction-one oasis, ten days journey, and the Rai an-Tzuu camp there this time of year. They hunt teyn, for the market."
"Our teyn is fleeing with a Crafty woman," said Shaldis. "If she wasn"t, I"d be able to see her. They may be meeting someone between here and there." She unhooked the water bottle from her saddle, took a sparing drink. Following Rat"s example, she was being stingy even though there were waterskins on both spare horses. "Will the horses be all right?"
Rat checked both remounts, then swung to his own saddle again. "Camels be better," he reported. "We give them rest in the heat of the day, they good for a day, two days. After that . . ."
"With luck we"ll catch our friend within a day." Shaldis wrapped the dark gauze once again over her eyes. "Now she knows she"s being pursued, this may be the last clear chance we"ll have to face her down and bargain with her. This way."
THIRTY-EIGHT.
Breast deep in the stinking green of the sc.u.mmy pool, the young boar teyn made no sound. The guards had gagged it with a wad of leather and rags, bound it hand and foot before lowering it into the water. From where she stood behind the railing opposite it, Foxfire could see it trembling, see the terror in those huge, pale, dilated eyes.
Belial the crocodile slid through the filthy water. The bow wave of his pa.s.sing sent up a reek to her, like the cesspools under h.e.l.l. She closed her eyes, but she could see the pool, the reptile, the terrified, helpless victim all engraved on her mind like some inescapable dream. Through her exhaustion and her terror she repeated the patterns of the spell, formed up the lines of power in her mind.
He will go away. He will turn aside. There"s nothing there.
Belial"s eye was like yellow gla.s.s as he turned in the water.
And slipped past the teyn, so close that his scales sc.r.a.ped the huge, furry shoulder.
Foxfire"s mind locked around her spells, her body sick with unbreathing terror.
He will turn aside.
Belial turned aside.
Hold the spells. Don"t think about anything else.
"You"ve done it, girl!" Her grandmother"s hand tightened like a thumbscrew around her arm. "You"ve done it!"
She wanted to twist her arm away and couldn"t, couldn"t move for fear of relaxing her concentration the tiniest bit.
"Get him out of there," she managed to whisper. "Please."
Red Silk shook her with bruising triumph. "You"ve done it!" Her laughter was almost a shriek. She didn"t even look at the teyn.
"urthet," Foxfire gasped, and her brother and Soral Brul began to gently haul on the rope that bound the teyn, drawing it to the edge of the pool.
At the same moment Red Silk s.n.a.t.c.hed one of the wicker cages from Urnate Urla, the chicken within it squawking with protest, and hurled it into the water a few feet from Belial"s enormous head.
With deadly speed the huge reptile whirled in the water, snapped up cage, chicken, all.
Red Silk shrugged. "He was hungry, all right." Then she cackled again, almost hugging herself with delight. "You"ve done it! Your father will dance! You"ll be a royal princess, my girl, the daughter of a king! You"ll marry whom you will, do as you please."
Marry whom I will? Foxfire fought not to cry; above all things else she couldn"t let her grandmother see her cry. Not if Father has a word to say about it. But she glanced back to the corner of the clammy vaulted cellar, where old Eleven Gra.s.shoppers sat wrapped in her own long arms, quietly watching her, and felt that the old jenny, if she didn"t know exactly what was going on, at least sensed her sickened, desperate pain.
She held her breath, trembling, until her brother and the failed Sun Mage had pulled the bound teyn, dripping, from Belial"s pool. Then she had to dig her nails into her own wrist to keep from collapsing in tears of relief. Yesterday it had been the same, and the day before, when they"d poured poison down a poor young jenny"s throat and had waited an hour, two hours, three hours in sweating heat before it was clear that Foxfire"s spells had worked. She"d gone to the compound to check on the jenny this morning-Six Thistles, they called her-and had found her nursing her infant as if nothing had happened. The first young boar they"d dumped into the snake pit had been ignored by the cobras until he"d tried to run. Then he"d been bitten four times, and Foxfire had clung to the rim of the pit, working and reworking the spells of the cure of poison from a distance for three hours, before Red Silk would let one of the guards go down and bring him out.
Foxfire"s spells had protected the guard as well. The boar teyn was still alive, and they"d tied up the next one they"d thrown down, to make sure he stayed still.
Afterward, when Foxfire had wept hysterically in Opal"s arms in the secrecy of her own room, Eleven Gra.s.shoppers had again tried to comfort them both.
"She said it today," whispered Foxfire when after two more teyn had been pa.s.sed unhurt through the crocodile"s pool Red Silk finally let her return to her room. Opal gathered her into her arms. Eleven Gra.s.shoppers had, in imitation of the maid"s habitual tasks, carefully fetched a bowl of lavender water from the wall bench, making both girls laugh. "She said, "You"ll be a royal princess." She hasn"t the slightest intention of saving the king"s life."
Foxfire wiped her eyes on the bedsheet, where the two girls were now sitting-Eleven Gra.s.shoppers, too, though Red Silk would have whipped them both for letting a teyn, however well washed, sit on a bed. ""You can marry whom you will," she said."
"Well, that"s a fairy tale, anyway," said Opal. She went to the table where a supper of couscous and lamb was being kept warm under a basket. Evening light slanted harsh and golden through the lattices of the window. Beyond, the crests of the Dead Hills, visible above the compound wall, had a weirdly desolate beauty, abstract red shapes against a molten blue sky. "I heard Soral Brul talking to madam this morning, when I went to get your breakfast. He was telling her that though he can"t do magic himself anymore, it"s in his blood. He said that your daughter by him would be Crafty born for certain."
Foxfire was so exhausted that the flash of anger she felt wasn"t enough to warm the sinking in her chest. She felt tears begin to leak from her eyes again, but her voice was steady and sharp as metal in her own ears. "That sounds exactly like the kind of thing that"ll make sense to Father. And I"m sure it"s never even occurred to that stuck-up Brul that once I have children by him, neither Father nor Grandmother is going to let him live."
Opal"s eyes widened. It had clearly never occurred to her, either.
Foxfire felt a thousand years old.
She took a deep breath as Opal came over to the bed with a bowl of food. Eleven Gra.s.shoppers sprang neatly down and trotted to her own little bed of folded blankets in the corner; she knew if she did this the girls would give her the sc.r.a.ps. The jenny curled herself up neatly, wrapped in her long arms, for all the world like a little old woman in her simple tunic, watching the girls with her wise pale-blue eyes.
"How long did it take us to get here?" asked Foxfire. "We left Golden Sky not long after sunset, camped once at noon, then got here late in the afternoon. The city should be a little closer than that."
"It takes the supply trains all day and part of a second," said Opal. "I know because I asked one of the drivers to buy me the latest horoscope from Starbright-I got one for you, too." She went to the loose floor tile behind the wardrobe, under which Foxfire hid the pilfered pottery food bowl she used to talk to Shaldis, and brought out two small squares of yellow paper. They were rather dark from having been washed and reused a number of times. "They"re from two days after the half moon, and that was the day before yesterday."
She sat again on the corner of the bed, watched as Foxfire scooped up couscous with her bread. Her brown eyes filled with concern beneath the scarred mess of lashless lids. "You aren"t thinking-? We can"t."
"You"re not," said Foxfire simply. "Because I"m going to poison you-just enough to make you sleep a lot and then be really sick-so Grandmother won"t think you had anything to do with my getting away." She got to her feet, carried her empty dish back to the table, and stood looking through the window at the shallow crescent of the waning moon, luminous in the burning sky.
It was nine days past full. Four days until the dark of its cycle.
"Foxfire."
"The king saved my life," said Foxfire quietly, still looking out at the moon. "I love Father, Opal, and I-I even love Grandmother, you know. But I can"t go on living like this." Her throat tightened, and she forced back the tears that burned the backs of her eyes. "I can"t go on waiting for the next awful thing Father or Grandmother is going to make me do. And even when Papa becomes king, you know it"ll be something else. Raeshaldis . . . Raeshaldis left her grandfather. Left her family, because they would have tried to do the same thing to her, tried to make her be just a tool for getting them what they wanted, the way Grandmother and Father are doing to me."
She turned back, to look into her friend"s horror-stricken eyes. "If I protect the king, he"ll protect me."
"You can"t betray your father!" Opal had lived in the same house as Red Silk long enough to speak the words in a nearly inaudible whisper. "You can"t go against your family!"
"The king is the head of my family," replied Foxfire shakily, though she knew Mohrvine would not see it that way at all.
He"ll never speak to me again.