Darkness and the monster"s hoa.r.s.e, booming roar.
The earth shivered.
Soth"s eyes were huge behind his spectacles. "b.u.g.g.e.r all!"
Tosu was right. As the dark bulk condensed into a moving shape, Hokiros looked a great deal more like a G.o.d than a water dragon, but a G.o.d of what, Pomegranate couldn"t imagine. He walked on two legs, like some impossibly huge, naked bird, and carried the immense tail high to counterbalance the serpentine arrowhead of his spiny skull. She guessed already that the old rites, and the dragon wards Soth had unearthed from the millennia-old grimoires in the palace library, probably weren"t going to work.
He went straight for the livestock pens. The villagers had, reluctantly, obeyed Soth"s order to draw lots and leave enough stock to interest the monster so that he and Pomegranate wouldn"t have to hunt him up and down the sh.o.r.es of the lake. Following Soth"s instruction, Pomegranate-who up until last year had been a beggar in the Yellow City"s marketplaces-had circled the pens with the ward spells that had worked against the water dragons in the Lake of the Moon. Hokiros jerked back at the line of them-the line that Pomegranate could see as a smoky rim of light hanging in the air-and thrashed his long neck in pain. Then he stepped through the ward signs like a man thrusting through a thorned hedge and began to kill, striking at the terrified beasts like a shrike killing lizards, tossing each into the air, shaking it about with a murderous whiplash of his long neck, their screams echoing through the unreal world of white vapor and stillness.
Pomegranate whispered, "Got any ideas?"
Hokiros swung his head around, as if he"d heard her voice. Maybe he had. He"d stepped on the rails of the pen, the sheep and goats scattering through the village fields in terror. The black, dripping spines of his haunches swayed at least twenty-five feet above his clawed hinder toes-he"d have a stride of nearly forty feet, could catch the fleeing animals easily.
But Pomegranate saw the red gleam of his eyes trained on the straw of their observation hut.
She screamed, "Pontifer, run!" but the little white pig had already vanished. No fool, he, she thought.
Soth caught up one of their crossbows and thrust the other into Pomegranate"s hands. "Have you ever shot one of these things?"
"And at what point in a lifetime of selling fruit in the streets would I have done that?"
"Load for me, then. Bolt in the notch, string over that lever. Tosu-"
But as the ground shuddered with the creature"s lengthening stride, Tosu ripped aside the thin wall of woven reeds that made up the back of the hut, pushed himself through.
"Tosu, don"t be a fool!" yelled Soth, as the boy began to run along the dry ridge land above the waving ta.s.sels of the rice fields that surrounded Hon village. At the best of times this wasn"t a good idea-even so far from the lakesh.o.r.e the occasional crocodile crept in among the stalks-and the thought that a human would be able to outrun Hokiros would have been laughable were it not hideously tragic.
The monster came on with horrifying speed, running like the desert lizards. Wizard and Raven sister dashed out of the hut with a single accord, both firing crossbows into Hokiros"s black, gleaming flank as he pa.s.sed.
Then Pomegranate shoved her bow at Soth and tore open her satchel, to reweave the ward spells that Tosu had disrupted by dashing across them rather than pa.s.sing through the thaumaturgic "gate" in the protective square.
The beast backed from the ward lines before crashing through, thought Pomegranate, struggling for calm. That means they hurt him. She concentrated marks of pain in the ward lines copied from those ancient spells used by the mages around the Lake of the Moon. She was barely conscious of Soth loading both bows, waiting. Her friend Raeshaldis had described the Sun Mages" exercises, to teach their novices to form their spells with the proper focus and deliberation even while being walloped by the instructors with thorned switches or screamed at or surrounded by bales of burning straw. Pomegranate had thought those tests excessive and barbaric, but had to admit they made a great deal of sense now. Ancient runes, sourced in the magic of the earth, in the strength of its metals and crystals, bringing fear and pain to Hokiros-here she wove his name into the spell, along with the nearly forgotten glyphs the ancient mages had used for the four-legged, fin-footed water dragons.
Focusing her mind on the earth, on the runes, on the magic that centered somewhere behind her breastbone, just as if that glittering tower of black strength weren"t a hundred yards away . . .
She heard Tosu scream, the sound jerking, catching as Hokiros shook him; and for those few moments the earth was still. Her long mare"s tails of gray hair hanging in her eyes, she was aware of using the time to strengthen the spell lines, thanking Koan G.o.d of Mages that they"d had the wits to ensorcel the crossbow bolts last night with spells of death and malice to water dragons.
Then the earth shook again.
Just go on with your spell-weaving, she thought. Don"t look.
Pounding, trembling . . .
Glyph of pain, connected at its three points with hands of power formed of salt and ochre. Hook together the lines of the innermost circle with the power curves that continued down into the bones of the earth.
That booming roar that swallowed up the world.
She yelled, "Done!" and looked up as Soth leveled the crossbow and fired, the black, spiny triangular head striking down at him.
Hokiros threw up his head and bellowed as the bolt drove into the flesh just beneath one glaring eye, close-dear G.o.ds, how close!-above them. Soth leaped back between the two "hands"-scribbled signs marked on the earth in salt and pigeon blood-that bounded the gate of the protective square: Pomegranate trailed the line of salt between them, to close it. If, she thought, she wasn"t too terrified to concentrate on the final words of the spell.
The monster reared back, opened his mouth, and spit. From the hillock yesterday Pomegranate had seen scorched and corroded splotches all over Shonghu village"s huts, and she and Soth both knew to leap aside. The yellow slime smoked between them on the ground, and Soth fired the other crossbow at Hokiros"s gaping mouth, though the head moved too fast and the bolt whizzed past. Pomegranate ducked into the hut, s.n.a.t.c.hed at the pile of bolts that lay beside the wooden trapdoor in the floor. Before her husband"s death twenty years ago she"d done all the poor housewife"s tasks of grinding cornmeal and doing laundry, and had the arm muscles to prove it, but her hands were shaking so badly she fumbled twice trying to hook the string on the firing lever. Soth, moving faster than Pomegranate would have thought possible for a man of middle age and no conditioning, whipped into the hut; and the next instant the roof was gone, and in its place grinned that terrible black head, those red eyes that seemed to shine with such wicked, watching light.
Soth s.n.a.t.c.hed the bow from her hands and fired, missed, shoved Pomegranate down into the little clay hole, and dropped through himself on top of her. He jerked the trapdoor into place and slammed the latch that held it, gasping for breath. The next second claws like chisels knifed through the wood, raining them with splinters. Pomegranate, balled into a corner of the tiny s.p.a.ce, worked frantically at the levers and strings, reloading both bows, heard the trapdoor jerk overhead, then rend apart. The clawed hand, like the forepaw of an enormous lizard, jabbed down, and Soth struck at it with his sword, but the snap of the claw drawing back tore the weapon from his grip and, by the look of it, nearly broke his arm.
Pomegranate pulled her own shorter blade from her belt-though she"d had little more call to use a sword in her life than she"d had to use a crossbow-and when the black gleaming nose slammed down into the square hole above them, struck at it with all the strength of her arm, screaming the words of the ward spell at the top of her lungs. Hokiros withdrew his head and Soth caught up the bow, scrambled up through the trap. Pomegranate saw him kneeling above her as Hokiros struck down again.
The whap of the bow firing echoed in the little hole; she heard Hokiros scream. Soth dropped the bow and Pomegranate thrust the other, freshly loaded, into his hands, then heard it fire with a noise like the breaking of a tree trunk; the ground shook. Soth dropped back into the hole, and in the next second straw, bamboo, and other debris rained down on them as Hokiros smashed the hut with his tail.
Thud. Thud-thud. Not the pounding tremor of his terrible charge but aimless staggering, like that of a drunken man.
Soth fumbled, dropped the next bow Pomegranate handed him, then grabbed it back and scrambled up through the hole. Pomegranate followed in time to see Hokiros reeling away, forehands tearing at his eyes, blood dribbling and splattering. The huge tail struck at the houses of the village, shattering them like toys, crushing fences, splintering sheds. She glanced sidelong at the former Earth Wizard and saw him shaking all over, white as a ghost in the unreal fog light, his hand pressed to his side and his breathing like a leaky bellows.
Together they stood and watched as Hokiros stumbled away into the thinning white mists.
Dislimned into a blot of darkness in the slow-lifting fog.
The water splashed.
A final howl in the mists, hoa.r.s.e and furious.
Then he was gone.
The fog was clearing. Overhead, the sky was blue and hot. Across the rice fields, the white shape of Pontifer Pig appeared, trotting toward them. He stopped to sniff at something on the path, probably, Pomegranate guessed, Tosu"s body.
She estimated the entire attack hadn"t lasted a quarter of an hour.
She turned back to Soth as he sat, very suddenly, against what remained of the hut wall. He looked green, like a man about to faint, his face clammy with sweat. For most of his fifty-eight years, she reflected as she unwound one of her many ragged scarves and soaked it from the water bottle, he"d done little but study spells. He"d occupied himself with perfecting his technique in the drawing of wards, in the healing of the sick, the occasional spells for good fortune or to conceal tombs from robbers or to keep the teyn of some village or other in awe of their minders. Because of his wizardry, he"d probably never done any manual labor in his life.
Wizardry could be dangerous-seeking out djinni in the desert was never a safe practice-but it was dangerous by its own rules.
And of course for the past ten years, after his powers had vanished, Soth had remained in an alcoholic fog and hadn"t done much of anything until the previous spring. Since that time he hadn"t touched so much as a gla.s.s of wine, but Pomegranate knew that wasn"t the kind of damage you got over in six months.
He looked like he would very much like a drink now.
Then he drew a shaky breath, took off his spectacles, and opened his eyes.
She handed him the soaked rag. "Did we win?"
Hon village lay in absolute ruin a hundred yards away: huts smashed, ground scorched with acid, livestock scattered or shredded, the date palms that brought in most of what little money came to the village flattened by Hokiros"s monstrous tail. Whatever he was, there was no guarantee that either the poison or the spells of death on the crossbow bolts would work.
Soth dropped his head back against the shattered wall, slapped the wet rag over his face, and said firmly, "Yes. You and I, madam, have ranked ourselves as subjects of the balladeers for years to come." He flexed his right arm gingerly, as if to make sure the shoulder still worked. "And I think we"d better get in touch with the Lady Summerchild and let the king know what"s going on here. This is the third unknown creature to-er-surface in a year, and it"s by far the worst. I don"t think His Majesty is going to be pleased."
SIX.
Chirak Shaldeth was sitting behind his desk as Habnit led Shaldis between the tiny beds of jasmine, roses, lime, and avocado trees of the innermost court.
Her grandfather"s study, and his chambers off the second-floor gallery nearby, formed a sanctum of silence from the noise of the camel-drivers" court at the front of the house and the smokes and stink of the kitchen yard that lay between. Though both his sons-Habnit and Shaldis"s uncle, Tjagan-had chambers off the opposite gallery, Chirak had always forbidden either-or anyone else-to enter the garden when he was in his study. It was the only silence and privacy in the crowded house, and Chirak claimed it as his alone.
The folded lattice wall that would later in the day shut some of the morning cool into the study hadn"t yet been put up, and she saw her grandfather as a pale shape looking out from the shadows of his private cave. When Habnit and Shaldis stopped in the entrance, the old man"s square red face twisted.
"Veil yourself, girl. Any man would take you for a wh.o.r.e."
There was a time when Shaldis would have retorted that she"d been in such a hurry to come here to save his life that she"d left her veils behind-and would have cheerfully taken the beating for such impertinence-but she"d spent many months now observing her friend Summerchild"s impeccable good manners and how the lovely concubine could simply sidestep insults without replying in kind. So now she took a deep breath, salaamed with the exact depth and simplicity that her brother Tulik did when coming into Chirak"s presence, and said, "Father told me an attempt had been made on your life, sir."
Rage blazed up in those pale-brown eyes, but so clear were her unspoken words, I can leave if you don"t like the sight of my face, that he said nothing.
This forbearance left Shaldis speechless with shock. She thought, He"s truly afraid.
She"d never seen him forgo a burst of rage before, not against a member of his family, only against other businessmen and merchants, whose goodwill he needed.
"What happened?" A bandage wrapped his neck to hold a dressing to the left side of his jaw, and the left sleeve of his robe bunched over more bandages underneath. "You"re hurt, sir."
Beard and eyebrows jerked forward. "Of course I"m hurt! It"s no thanks to the cowardly imbeciles in this household that I wasn"t killed!" All the smoking bile he would have hurled at her for not prostrating herself in the deepest of the twenty salaams proper to women-and a granddaughter of the house to its patriarch at that!-spewed into the glare he directed at his son. "So this is the brat that"s grown so crafty, is it, Habnit? Just like any other female, telling me what I already know! She"s a fool, and the daughter of one!"
"Have you had anyone look at your wounds, sir?" Shaldis felt sick at the way her father cringed from the words, marveled that her own voice sounded so cool and steady.
The old man rounded on her. "Fat lot of good it would do! There isn"t a wizard in the town who could charm a wart off my backside anymore! And if you think I"ll let some midwife smear it with rotted leaves and lizard dung you"re out, girl! I"ve good-healing flesh. Ask any man in my company of the militia, when I was a boy."
"Father, you must-" began Habnit, and the old man snarled at him like a dog.
"If I did all you said I must, I"d be a poor man, and a dead one, too! As for this brainless whelp of yours-"
"What happened, sir?"
His hand flinched toward the rod that lay across his desk-the fourfold split bamboo with which he lashed the teyn and which he didn"t scruple to use on his sons and grandchildren as well. But he drew it back. Shaldis had thin, straight white scars on her arms and legs from girlhood beatings. It was one of the things that had made her mother plead with Chirak: too many scars could easily sink a prospective marriage, marking a girl as defiant. Parents and matchmakers looked for them.
How did I ever live this way? Day out and day in?
Chirak"s lip drew back from his teeth again. "I was attacked in my chamber, is what happened- Didn"t you listen to what your father said? I woke hearing a noise-it was pitch-black, even the night-light had gone out, though there"s no magic to that: that imbecile Flower never puts enough oil in the lamp."
Maybe that has something to do with your withholding food from all the maidservants-who were all named Flower, the custom in most wealthy houses-for wasting oil.
"I felt hands seize me and I pulled aside as a knife slashed into me. I shouted-I"ve had a couple of the camel drivers sleeping in the gallery outside my room, since those d.a.m.ned protective wards I paid a fortune for have quit working, and the wizard who laid them on the house seems to have skipped town."
He s.n.a.t.c.hed up his bamboo rod and slapped angrily at the wood of his desk. "I pulled away and the slime-got b.a.s.t.a.r.d followed me, as if he could see in the dark. When your father and your uncle burst open the door there was no one in the chamber and the door and window shutters were bolted from inside. They ransacked the room and found no one. The drivers were still waking up in the gallery, both of them. Drunken louts and fools, but the door was bolted. It"s a pretty pa.s.s the world"s come to when you can"t get a wizard who"ll put a spell of ward on an honest man"s house, but there"s still plenty of them around who"ll hire themselves out as a.s.sa.s.sins! Only a wizard could have got into the room or out of it without being seen."
"Do you keep gold or valuables in your chamber these days, sir? Or anything a robber would have been seeking?"
"Just like a woman, trying to find other explanations for what"s staring her in the face! Have you ever known me to keep such a thing in my room, girl? What would I be doing that for, when I have a perfectly good strong room?" He lashed sideways toward the strong room with his rod, then flicked Habnit a stinging slice on the arm. "What G.o.d did I offend, to deserve you bringing a stupid female into my house to plague me with inanities? Someone tried to murder me, girl!" He slewed back furiously to Shaldis. His voice shrilled, "Not rob me, not rape me, not kiss me in the dark! How much clearer do I need to make it? Someone put a spell on the guards to send "em to sleep; someone who could get out of a bolted chamber and rebolt the doors and windows behind him! D"you need it spelled out for you?"
"Yes, I do, sir," replied Shaldis evenly. "I"m sorry if the questions I ask seem trivial to you, but small details help me put together a picture of what happened and who I should be looking for."
"You should be looking for a wizard!" the old man screamed at her, and the rod whistled close to her face. "That"s why your imbecile of a father wanted to bring you here! A wizard who hates me! Now can you or can"t you find him?"
"Her," said Shaldis.
"WHAT?"
"Her, sir. Every wizard has lost the ability to work magic. If magic was used, then your attacker was a woman."
"That"s the most ridiculous thing I"ve heard in my life! It"s the kind of puling bathhouse rumor women pick up and believe rather than look at the facts! Because there"s been a raft of charlatans in this city and not a decent teacher in that precious Citadel of yours-and well they deserved to be run out! Let them work for a living for a change!-you and every other fool in the marketplaces just up and decides that all men have lost their power! Stuff! I want to hear no more of it."
He jerked to his feet, not quite as tall as her father but wiry, with a leashed and dangerous power. He slapped the desk with his rod, and Shaldis fought not to jump.
"If that"s the best you can do, girl, you can go back to your precious Citadel, and good riddance to you! I told you how it would be, boy," he added, his green-flecked glare raking his son. "Women haven"t the brains to see what"s under their noses! Now get her out of here before I get truly angry!"
SEVEN.
I should probably have a look at his chamber before he comes out of his study," said Shaldis.
Interrupted in the midst of his nervous apologies, Habnit regarded his daughter with surprise. She returned the look with a calm perfected in eighteen months of continuous hazing by the male students of the Citadel. She felt now as she had during those ugly days: knees trembling, stomach hurting, jaw aching from gritting her teeth. In those days each of the masters had been secretly confronting his own loss of power-they had been of no help to a girl who obviously still had it.
In what she hoped was a rational voice she went on, "And I"ll need to see every woman in the household."
Her father goggled, then stammered, "Of-of course," and led her through the gloomy pa.s.sageway that connected the rear garden to the busy kitchen court. "Let"s just go up to my room so I can get a-a tablet and stylus for you."
Shaldis had a tablet and stylus in the leather satchel slung around her shoulder, but she followed her father up the stairs anyway. She knew what he really wanted was the wine he always kept in his room.
She supposed, if one had to live in her grandfather"s house, it helped to start drinking an hour after sunup. At least it clearly helped her father. She"d seldom in her girlhood seen him staggeringly drunk, but never entirely sober.
The pain of that girlhood awareness returned, but it was an old pain, like the shadow of a cloud she knew would pa.s.s.
They took the wooden stairs that ascended from the kitchen court to the upstairs gallery. This arcaded wooden walkway ran around all four sides of that busy heart of the household. From it, they cut back through the maids" dormitory to the gallery that similarly surrounded her grandfather"s garden. It would have been more direct to climb the stairs from the garden itself-there were two flights of them, one on the north side leading directly to her grandfather"s rooms and one on the south to the smaller chambers of her father and uncle-but in that case her grandfather would have seen them from his study.
Neither Shaldis nor her father felt any need to comment on this roundabout route. But after two years away from the household, Shaldis was interested to see how naturally she fell back into the unspoken set of local rules about not disturbing Grandfather. Fear of the old man seemed to breathe from every mud brick and painted pillar of the house, like tainted water that everyone drinks because there is no other.
At the top of the kitchen court stairs she halted and looked down into the big rectangle below. The pregnant jenny Five Cakes was now sweeping the soft, pitted bricks of its pavement: Shaldis had always found the slow, deliberate movements of the teyn, and their habitual silence, curiously comforting, though she"d heard they could move with terrible speed when roused. Shaldis"s mother emerged from the kitchen, unveiled since this area of the house was harem but with her hair bundled under a striped scarf, followed by Fish-Hook, the biggest of their boar teyn, carrying a huge iron cauldron in his arms.
Of course they"d be dyeing cloth the day I come back to investigate in the household, thought Shaldis. The place would stink of boiling urine for weeks.
Her mother, always stout, had put on weight, she saw, under her billowing yellow dress, but her voice as she gave Fish-Hook his simple instructions was as lilting and sweet as ever. The girl who skipped behind her Shaldis took for a very young maid-her grandfather believed in buying children for slaves because they were cheaper-until she heard her mother call the girl Foursie.