The Ruby Knight

  Berit looked a little puzzled, but did as he was told.

  Ulath hefted one of his rocks. ‘That’s far enough, Berit,’ he called. He gave the rock an underhand toss towards the shaky raft. ‘Mark that place!’ he bellowed.

  Berit wiped the water the rock had splashed on him from his face. ‘Yes, Sir Ulath,’ he said, poling the raft towards the widening circles on the surface of the lake. Then he took one of his willow saplings and sank one end of it down into the muddy bottom.

  ‘Now pole the raft off to the left,’ Ulath shouted. ‘I’ll throw the next rock a ways beyond you.’

  ‘Your left or mine, Sir Ulath?’ Berit asked politely.

  ‘Take your pick. I just don’t want to brain you with this.’ Ulath was tossing his rock from one hand to the other and squinting out at the brown-stained waters of the lake.

  Berit pushed the raft out of the way, and Ulath launched his rock with a mighty heave.

  ‘Lord!’ Kalten said. ‘No dying man could ever throw anything that far.’

  ‘That was the idea,’ Ulath said modestly. ‘That’s the absolute outer limit of the area we search. Berit!’ he bellowed in a shattering voice, ‘mark that spot and then go down. I need to know how deep we’re going and what kind of bottom we’ve got to work with.’

  Berit hesitated after he marked the place where the second rock had struck the water. ‘Would you please ask Lady Sephrenia to turn her back?’ he asked plaintively, his face suddenly bright red.

  ‘If anyone laughs, he’ll spend the rest of his life as a toad,’ Sephrenia threatened, resolutely turning her back on the lake and turning the curious little girl Flute around at the same time.

  Berit stripped and went over the edge of the raft like an otter. He re-emerged a minute later. Everyone on shore, Sparhawk noticed, had held his breath while the agile novice had been down. Berit exhaled explosively, spraying water. ‘It’s about eight feet deep, Sir Ulath,’ he reported, clinging to the end of the raft, ‘but the bottom’s muddy – two feet of it at least – mucky and not very nice. The water’s dark brown. You can’t see your hand in front of your face.’

  ‘I was afraid of that,’ Ulath muttered.

  ‘How’s the water?’ Kalten called out to the young man in the lake.

  ‘Very, very cold,’ Berit chattered.

  ‘I was afraid of that, too,’ Kalten said glumly.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ Ulath said, ‘time to get wet.’

  The rest of the afternoon was distinctly unpleasant. As Berit had announced, the water was cold and murky, and the soft bottom was thick with brown mud from the nearby peat-bogs. ‘Don’t try to dig around in that with your hands,’ Ulath instructed. ‘Probe with your feet.’

  They found nothing. By the time the sun went down, they were all exhausted and blue with the cold.

  ‘We have a decision to make,’ Sparhawk said soberly after they had dried themselves and put on tunics and mail-shirts. ‘How long is it going to be safe for us to stay here? The Seeker knows almost exactly where we are, and our scent will lead it right to us. As soon as it sees us in the lake, Azash will know where Bhelliom is. That’s something we can’t let Him find out.’

  ‘You’re right, Sparhawk,’ Sephrenia agreed. ‘It will take the Seeker a while to gather its forces, and a while longer to lead them back here, but I think we’ll need to set a time limit on how long we stay in this place.’

  ‘But we’re so close,’ Kalten objected.

  ‘It’s not going to do us any good to find Bhelliom just to turn it over to Azash,’ she pointed out. ‘If we ride off, we’ll lead the Seeker away from this spot. We know where Bhelliom is now. We can always come back later when it’s safe.’

  ‘Noon tomorrow?’ Sparhawk asked her.

  ‘I don’t think we should stay any longer.’

  ‘That’s it then,’ Sparhawk said. ‘At noon we’ll pack up and go back to the city of Venne. I get the feeling that the Seeker won’t take its men into a town. They’d be very conspicuous the way they shamble around.’

  ‘A boat,’ Ulath said, his face ruddy in the light of their fire.

  ‘Where?’ Kalten asked, peering out at the night-shrouded lake.

  ‘No. What I mean is, why don’t we ride to Venne and hire a boat? The Seeker will follow our trail to Venne, but it won’t be able to sniff our tracks over water, will it? It’ll camp outside Venne waiting for us to come out, but we’ll be back here by then. We’ll be free to search for Bhelliom until we find it.’

  ‘It’s a good idea, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said.

  ‘Is he right?’ Sparhawk asked Sephrenia. ‘Will travelling by water throw the Seeker off our trail?’

  ‘I believe it will,’ she replied.

  ‘Good. We’ll try it then.’

  They ate a meagre supper and went to their beds.

  They rose at sunrise the following morning, took a quick breakfast and poled the raft back out to the markers that indicated where they had left off the previous day. They anchored the raft and once again went into the chill waters to probe at the muddy bottom with their feet.

  It was almost noon when Berit surfaced not far from where Sparhawk was treading water and catching his breath. ‘I think I’ve found something,’ the novice said, gasping for air. Then he up-ended himself and swam down head-first. After a painfully long minute, he came up again. It was not a crown he held in his hand, though, but a brown-stained human skull. He swam to the raft and laid the skull up on the logs. Sparhawk squinted up at the sun and swore. Then he followed Berit to the raft. He hauled himself up on the logs. ‘That’s it,’ he called to Kalten, whose head had just popped up out of the water. ‘We can’t stay here any longer. Gather up the others, and let’s get back to shore.’

  When they reached the shore, the sunburned Ulath curiously examined the skull. ‘Seems awfully long and narrow for some reason,’ he said.

  ‘That’s because he was a Zemoch,’ Sephrenia told him.

  ‘Did he drown?’ Berit asked.

  Ulath scraped some of the mud off the skull and then poked one finger into an aperture in the left temple. ‘Not with this hole in the side of his head, he didn’t.’ He went down to the lake-shore and sloshed the skull around in the water to rinse centuries of accumulated mud out of it. Then he brought it back and shook it. Something rattled inside. The big Thalesian laid it on the mounded-up stones of the grave of the Earl of Heid, took up a rock and cracked the skull open as casually as a man might crack a walnut. Then he picked something up out of the fragments. ‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘Somebody put an arrow in his brain-pan, probably from shore.’ He handed the rusty arrowhead to Tynian. ‘Do you recognize it?’

  ‘It’s Deiran forging,’ Tynian said after examining it.

  Sparhawk thought back for a moment. ‘Ghasek’s account said that Alcione Knights from Deira came along and wiped out the Zemochs who’d been pursuing the Earl of Heid. We can be fairly certain that the Zemochs saw the Earl throw the crown into the lake. They’d have gone out after it, wouldn’t they? – and in the exact spot where it hit the water. Now we find this one with a Deiran arrow in his head. It’s not too hard to reconstruct what happened. Berit, can you pinpoint the precise spot where you found the skull?’

  ‘To within a few feet, Sir Sparhawk. I was taking bearings on things along the shore. It was straight out from that dead snag over there and about thirty feet out into the lake.’

  ‘That’s it, then,’ Sparhawk said exultantly. ‘The Zemochs were diving after the crown, and the Alciones came along and raked them with arrows from shore. That skull was probably lying no more than a few yards from Bhelliom.’

  ‘We know where it is now,’ Sephrenia said. ‘We’ll come back for it later.’

  ‘But -’

  ‘We must leave immediately, Sparhawk, and it would be far too dangerous to have Bhelliom in our possession with the Seeker right behind us.’

  Grudgingly, Sparhawk had to admit that she was probably right. ‘All right, then,??
? he said in a disappointed tone, ‘let’s break down the camp and get out of here. We’ll wear mail instead of armour so we won’t be so conspicuous. Ulath, push that raft back out into the lake. We’ll wipe out any traces that we’ve been here and ride on up to Venne.’

  It took them about half an hour, and then they moved out. They rode north along the lake, moving at a gallop. As usual, Berit rode to the rear, watching for signs of pursuit.

  Sparhawk was melancholy. Somehow it seemed that for weeks he had been trying to run in soft sand. No matter how close he got to the one thing which would save his queen, something always seemed to interfere, to force him away from the goal. He began to have darkly superstitious feelings. Sparhawk was an Elene and a Church Knight. He was at least nominally committed to the Elene faith and its rigid rejection of anything remotely related to what the Church called ‘heathenism’. Sparhawk had been abroad in the world too long, however, and seen far too many things to accept the dictates of his Church at face value. He realized that in many ways he hung suspended between absolute faith and total scepticism. Something somewhere was desperately trying to keep him away from Bhelliom, and he was fairly certain he knew Who it was – but why would Azash bear such enmity towards the young queen of Elenia? Sparhawk grimly began to think of armies and invasions. If Ehlana died, he vowed to himself that he would obliterate Zemoch and leave Azash weeping alone in the ruins without one single human to worship Him.

  They reached the city of Venne not long after noon of the following day and returned through the gloomy streets to the now-familiar inn. ‘Why don’t we just buy this place?’ Kalten suggested as they dismounted in the courtyard. ‘I’m starting to feel as if I’ve lived here all my life.’

  ‘Go ahead and make the arrangements,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘Kurik, let’s walk down to the lake-shore and see if we can find a boat before the sun goes down.’

  The knight and his squire walked out of the innyard and down the cobbled street that led towards the lake. ‘This town doesn’t get any prettier when you get to know it,’ Kurik observed.

  ‘We’re not here for the scenery,’ Sparhawk growled.

  ‘What’s the matter, Sparhawk?’ Kurik asked. ‘You’ve been in a foul humour for the last week or more.’

  ‘Time, Kurik,’ Sparhawk sighed, ‘time. Sometimes it’s almost as if I can feel it dribbling through my fingers. We were within no more than a few feet of Bhelliom, and then we had to pack up and leave. My queen is dying inch by inch, and things keep getting in my way. I’m starting to feel a very powerful urge to hurt some people.’

  ‘Don’t look at me.’

  Sparhawk smiled faintly. ‘I think you’re safe, my friend,’ he said, putting his hand affectionately on Kurik’s shoulder. ‘If nothing else, I’d hate to make wagers on the outcome if you and I ever had a really serious disagreement.’

  ‘There’s that, too,’ Kurik agreed. Then he pointed. ‘Over there,’ he said.

  ‘Over there what?’

  ‘That tavern. People with boats go in there.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I just saw one go in. Boats tend to leak, and the men who own them try to seal up the seams with tar. Anytime you see a man with tar on his tunic, you can be fairly sure that he has something to do with boats.’

  ‘You’re an absolute sink of information sometimes, Kurik.’

  ‘I’ve been around in the world for quite a long time, Sparhawk. If a man keeps his eyes open, he can learn a great deal. When we go inside, let me do the talking. It’ll be faster.’ Kurik’s stride suddenly took on a peculiar roll, and he banged open the tavern door with unnecessary force. ‘Hello there, mates,’ he said in a raspy voice. ‘Have we chanced by luck on a place where men as works on the water be accustomed to gather?’

  ‘You’ve found the right place, friend,’ the barman said.

  ‘Praise be,’ Kurik said. ‘I hate to drink with landsmen. All they can talk about is the weather an’ their crops, an’ once you’ve said it’s cloudy an’ that the turnips is growin’, you’ve exhausted the possibilities of conversation.’

  The men in the tavern laughed appreciatively.

  ‘Forgive me if I seem to pry,’ the barman apologized, ‘but you seem to have the speech of a salt water man.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Kurik said, ‘an’ sore do I miss the smell of brine an’ the gentle kiss of spray upon my cheek.’

  ‘You’re a long way from any salt water, mate,’ one tar-smeared fellow sitting at a table in the corner said with an odd note of respect in his voice.

  Kurik sighed deeply. ‘Missed me boat, mate,’ he said. ‘We made port in Apalia, sailin’ down from Yosut up in Thalesia, an’ I went out on the town an’ got sore took by the grog. The Cap’n was not one to wait for stragglers, so he upped an’ sailed with the mornin’ tide an’ left me beached. As luck had it, I fell in with this man,’ he clapped Sparhawk familiarly on the shoulder, ‘an’ he give me employment. Says he needs to hire a boat here in Venne an’ he needed someone as knew the way of boats to make sure he doesn’t wind up on the bottom of the lake.’

  ‘Well, now, mate,’ the tarry man in the corner said with narrowed eyes, ‘what would your employer be willing to pay for the hire of a boat?’

  ‘’Twould only be for a couple of days,’ Kurik said. He looked at Sparhawk. ‘What thinkee, Cap’n? Would a half-crown strain your purse?’

  ‘I could manage a half-crown,’ Sparhawk replied, trying to conceal his amazement at Kurik’s sudden alteration.

  ‘Two days, you say?’ the man in the corner said.

  ‘Dependin’ on the wind and weather, mate, but it’s always that way on the water, isn’t it?’

  ‘Truly. It could just be that we can do some business here. I happen to own a fair-sized fishing boat, and the fishing hasn’t been very good of late. I could hire out the boat to you and spend the two days mending my nets.’

  ‘Why don’t we just nip on down to the water’s edge an’ have a look at your vessel?’ Kurik suggested. ‘It might just could be that we could strike a bargain.’

  The tar-smeared fellow drained his tankard and rose to his feet. ‘Come along then,’ he said, moving towards the door.

  ‘Kurik,’ Sparhawk said quietly in a pained tone, ‘don’t spring surprises like that on me. My nerves aren’t as good as they used to be.’

  ‘Variety keeps life interestin’, Cap’n,’ Kurik grinned as they left the tavern in the wake of the fisherman.

  The boat was perhaps thirty feet long, and it sat low in the water.

  ‘She appears to have a leak or two, mate,’ Kurik noted, pointing at the foot or so of water standing in the hull.

  ‘We were just patching her,’ the fisherman apologized. ‘I hit a submerged log and sprung a seam. The men as works for me wanted to get something to eat before they came back to finish up and bail her out.’ He patted the boat’s rail affectionately. ‘She’s a good old tub,’ he said modestly. ‘She responds to the helm well, an’ she can take whatever kind of weather this lake can throw at her.’

  ‘An’ you’ll have her patched by mornin’?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be no trouble, mate.’

  ‘What thinkee, Cap’n?’ Kurik asked Sparhawk.

  ‘Looks all right to me,’ Sparhawk replied, ‘but I’m no expert. That’s what I hired you for.’

  ‘All right then, we’ll try her, mate,’ Kurik told the fisherman. ‘We’ll come back down come sun-up an’ settle up then.’ He spat on his hand, and he and the fisherman slapped their palms together. ‘Come along, Cap’n,’ Kurik told his lord. ‘Let’s find us some grog an’ supper an’ then a bed. ’Twill be a long day tomorrow.’ And then with that rolling swagger, he led the way up from the lake-front.

  ‘Would you like to explain all that?’ Sparhawk asked when they were some distance away from the boat-owner.

  ‘It’s not too difficult, Sparhawk,’ Kurik said. ‘Men who sail on lakes always have a great deal of respect for saltwater sailors, an
d they’ll go out of their way to be accommodating.’

  ‘So I noticed, but how did you ever learn to talk that way?’

  ‘I went to sea once when I was about sixteen. I’ve told you that before.’

  ‘Not that I remember, no.’

  ‘I must have.’

  ‘Maybe it slipped my mind. What possessed you to go to sea?’

  ‘Aslade,’ Kurik laughed. ‘She was about fourteen then and just blossoming out. She had that marrying sort of look in her eye. I wasn’t ready yet, so I ran away to sea. Biggest mistake I ever made. I hired on as a deck-hand on the leakiest bucket on the west coast of Eosia. I spent six months bailing water out of the bilges. When I got back to shore, I swore I’d never set foot on a ship again. Aslade was very happy to see me again, but then she’s always been an emotional girl.’

  ‘Was that when you decided to marry her?’

  ‘Shortly after that. When I got home, she took me up to her father’s hayloft and did some fairly serious persuading. Aslade can be very, very persuasive when she sets her mind to it.’

  ‘Kurik!’ Sparhawk was actually shocked.

  ‘Grow up, Sparhawk. Aslade’s a country girl, and most country girls have already started to swell when they get married. It’s a relatively direct form of courtship, but it has its compensations.’

  ‘In a hayloft?’

  Kurik smiled. ‘Sometimes you have to improvise, Sparhawk.’

  Chapter 19

  Sparhawk sat in the room he shared with Kalten, poring over his map while his friend snored on a nearby bed. Ulath’s idea of a boat was a good one. Sephrenia’s statement that it would indeed evade the Seeker’s most dangerous means of tracking them down was reassuring. They could return to that lonely mud beach where the Earl of Heid slumbered and resume their interrupted search without looking over their shoulders for signs of a hooded figure sniffing at the ground behind them. The Zemoch skull Berit had found on the murky bottom had almost precisely pinpointed Bhelliom’s location. With only a little luck, they would be able to find it within the space of a single afternoon. They’d have to return here to Venne for the horses, however, and that was the problem. If, as they had surmised, the Seeker’s blank-minded cohorts were lurking in the fields and woods around the town, they’d have to fight their way out. Under ordinary circumstances, fighting would not have concerned Sparhawk; it was what he had trained a lifetime to do. If he had Bhelliom in his possession, however, it would not only be his own life he would be risking, but Ehlana’s as well, and that was unacceptable. Moreover, as soon as Azash sensed Bhelliom’s re-emergence, the Seeker would hurl whole armies against them in a desperate attempt to seize the jewel.