“Obey! Satisfy!”
If you do not, the necromancer repeated amid the labor of my pulse and the straining of my chest, I will render the marrow from your bones—
Nevertheless by degrees the avenues embraced by locusts moderated my trepidation. Eventually, the sun’s gracious light drew away a portion of my distress. The open porticoes on either hand appeared to invite me back to men and transactions and courtesies which were within my compass. Remembering the safety which had swaddled all my days, I amended somewhat the indignity of my haste.
Before I gained the sanctuary of my villa, I attempted to apply a measure of reason to my plight.
Here, under the benison of a warm breeze, I might have found it congenial to dismiss the dire necromancer’s requirements and threats. But his confidence in our Thal’s acquiescence to his cruel designs raised an uncomfortable echo within me. Privately, I had always considered the Thal a weak ruler—too quick to profit when he could, and too quick to retreat when he could not. More than the well-being of his citizens, he coveted the bliss of augmenting his riches. Thus I could all too easily imagine that Sher Abener had offered some rich accommodation which would inspire our lord to turn his back toward the blot of necromancy upon his demesne. The Thal was rather like myself in that regard. Trusting Tep Longeur’s honesty, I had never previously troubled myself over the nature of my merchantry’s transactions.
Now, however, I understood clearly that I could not recall my refusal to fulfill Sher Abener’s demands. My overseer would never countenance the acquisition of slaves. And nor could I.
Therefore it was plain that I must contrive some means to defend myself.
This I determined to accomplish with little delay, once I had regained the familiar solace of my villa. My gates I would seal—although I did not expect such an obstacle to hamper my enemy. More to the point, I meant to procure assistance from my friends, associates, and neighbors, several of whom maintained in their employ theurgists of no small repute. The wards, glamours, and periapts of theurgy might secure my person. And my cohort of guards I might strengthen greatly by enlisting Tep Longeur’s righteous caravaneers. If necessary, I could pay large sums for such aid—and begrudge not one saludi of the expense. Beyond all question, I could not stand against the necromancer without help.
Fear gave my resolve all the vigor it required. Despite the discomfort of speed, I advanced briskly.
Yet my resolve was folly—as much an action of fancy and moonshine as the prescient alarms which had frighted me upon first entering Sher Abener’s manor. Despite our encounter, I still failed to grasp how entirely the necromancer surpassed me. For when I reached my villa, I found the ornamented welcome of the gates barred and guarded to refuse me.
Though the home I cherished was now in plain view, I could not reach it. Men whom I had known for years obstructed my way with pikes clutched in their sweating hands. Strange fears glistened whitely from their eyes. Though I ordered them to admit me—though I called loudly for succor—though I entreated them with curses—they only tightened their ward against me.
I might have screamed at them in the open street, as much in frustration as in apprehension, but before I was reduced to that indignity I saw Tep Longeur approaching the gates. He was the overseer of my merchantry—more completely in command of it than I had ever been—and his courage as well as his rectitude were unshakable. Truth to tell, the wealth I had harvested so negligently since my father’s passing derived from his judgment, determination, and integrity, not from any virtue of mine. He would retrieve me from the incomprehensible terror of my guards. He would know how to defend me from Sher Abener.
When he drew near, however, he did not order the gates unbarred.
I have said that his features were sun-toughened and hardy, that his beard was trimmed as straight as his ledgers, that his gaze was quick to anger. All these things I had trusted to compensate for lacks in myself. But never had I seen his eyes burn with such fanaticism and disgust as they did now.
Without preamble, he informed me, “Urmeny, you must flee.” The harshness of his voice appeared to strain his throat, although he spoke softly. “Benedic is done with you. Your life won’t be tolerated. I can’t hold back your death beyond the next hour.”
I gaped at him. “Tep—” He appalled me to such an extent that I could scarcely form words. “What is this? Admit me. Admit me at once. I must enter or die. Sher Abener means to destroy me.” My voice broke. Pointing urgently past his shoulder, I cried, “That is my villa!”
My overseer confronted me, unmoved. “The Sher won’t destroy you if you flee. It’s your merchantry he means to take.”
Was this the man who had served me, and my father before me, with such fidelity for so many years? I could not credit my ears—or master my dismay. “Have you lost your wits?” I protested. “Are you drunk? Tep Longeur, I command your obedience. It is my right. You are not yourself.” Clenching the bars of the gates, I pressed my appeal as near to him as I could. “Sher Abener wishes us to procure slaves for him. Slaves, Tep! He means to introduce that vile practice here.”
Though I had little acquaintance with such extremes, I saw madness in Tep’s stare. Bitterly, he answered, “So it will be. He’s already taken me. He’ll take as many as are required to produce the outcome he intends.
“Do you think I choose to serve a master such as him?” Whips of fury and loathing flayed in the overseer’s tone. “I, who refused to acquire his foul mechanisms and serums for him? I would prefer death by my own hand. As he well knows. But he cares nothing for my choices or desires. I’m only allowed to let you flee.”
Foundering as though I were a swamped coracle, I strove to counter, “The Thal—”
Tep Longeur spat at my feet. “If you appeal to the Thal, you’ll be laughed away. If you attempt to approach any of your friends, I must bind you and deliver you to the Sher.” The mad glaring of his gaze hinted at Sher Abener’s fire. “No theurgy in Benedic can preserve you. No force of arms will rise to your aid. The Sher was driven from many lands before he came among us, but he’s drawn profit from those defeats. He’s grown wise in the uses of power. He wouldn’t have declared himself to you if he hadn’t first secured his grasp upon this demesne.”
My hands clutched the graceful bars of the gate, while within myself I floundered, gasping. Sher Abener had indeed surpassed me. With fire and coercion, he had altered the foundations of my life. My dilemma appeared before me in terms I could neither recognize nor understand. I did not ask how Tep Longeur could speak with such surety of the Thal’s attitudes, or of Sher Abener’s history. I did not think to ask. The eerie distress in the overseer’s eyes sufficed to convince me that he spoke truth.
Yet if he spoke truth, then it was also true that I could not oppose him. No appeal or argument of mine would impinge upon the transformation of my circumstances. My life depended utterly upon the presumption that Tep Longeur would accept my instructions and carry them out. My merchantry and all my wealth derived from that conviction. If he refused me now, I was powerless to compel him.
In that way, he bereft me of dignity even more thoroughly than did his new master. I might have preferred to face the necromancer’s power again. Tep Longeur’s forced madness was as fatal to me—and far more hurtful to my self-regard.
“Yet you are not such a man, Tep,” I panted, although my resistance was broken. “You have said it yourself. How do you carry out his wishes?”
His teeth set against each other as on a bit. Between them, he answered, “With great pain.”
To that I could make no reply. Beyond question, I was powerless.
Yet where could I go? I had no other home than Benedic. And the nearest municipality where I might obtain temporary lodging was some ten leagues distant, too far for even a hardy man—which I was not—to journey afoot under this sun. Indeed, my feet were better suited to being massaged with perfumed oils than to arduous treks. I would cripple myself within a league. Within two, I w
ould perish of thirst.
Helpless to do otherwise, I cast my fate abjectly upon the overseer’s mercy. “Tep,” I beseeched him, “I must have a horse. I will die upon the road without a horse.”
His anguish wrung my heart, although I was its victim. Unlike myself, he was accustomed to responsibility and action. Doubtless he had taken pride in the necessary authority of his place as my overseer. Perhaps he had gone so far as to take pride in my dependence upon him. By his own admission, his plight was an excruciation to him. The cost of his distress was ledgered in his face.
“That’s not permitted.” He spoke so thickly that he seemed to choke himself. “The Sher desires only your immediate departure. He doesn’t care that you die.”
My dignity was gone. I made no effort to reclaim it now. “Tep,” I groaned, “I am lost. Without you, I am naught.” A well-meaning fool, empty of hope. “I have no power to save myself.” Though I saw how my words pained him, I did not hold them back. “If you do not succor me, I must abandon myself where I stand, and accept whatever ill Sher Abener intends for me.”
The prospect of being enslaved—taken as Tep Longeur had been taken—horrified me. Yet I saw no alternative to it.
Despite Sher Abener’s tyranny, the overseer retained some vestige of the man he had been. Anguish glared from his gaze, but he did not refuse me again. Instead, he raised one strong hand before him, leather palm inward, and struck himself a resounding blow across the cheek.
Thus compelled, he informed me in bitten words, “I’ll do it.”
At once, he turned to the guards. “A horse for Urmeny,” he demanded. “Quickly. Before the Sher stops us.”
Apparently, it was fear rather than necromancy which commanded the guards. Tep Longeur ruled them with his own authority as much as with Sher Abener’s. Together, they pelted in disarray toward the stables.
Though my life hung on the delay, I turned my back to the gates while I waited. The Tep struck himself again, and yet again, and I could not bear the sight. Truth to tell, I did not mean to look at him ever again, if I could avoid it. My own catastrophe consumed me. I could not attend to his.
Nevertheless he demanded my notice. In a voice which must surely have drawn blood from the soft flesh of his throat, he pronounced, “Urmeny, it’s your place to help us.”
Involuntarily, I flinched as though he had slapped at me. Turning my head, I directed my dismay toward him.
“The merchantry was yours,” he continued cruelly. “The villa was yours. We were yours. The burden is yours. If you don’t rescue us, we’ll never be free. Even death won’t redeem us from the Sher.”
Rescue them? I? At another time, I might have laughed my scorn into his face. Only the open agony of his regard restrained me.
I lowered my gaze. “You have mistaken me for my father,” I answered in a groan. At that moment, I loathed myself. Nevertheless I spoke the truth. “I am not such a man.”
There Tep Longeur could not gainsay me. Though he continued to stand against me, he did not speak again. No other farewell passed between us, regardless of our years together. When his men brought the beast they had selected—a tired, old nag with a gait like a broken wheel—he opened the gates for it, but took care to ensure that I could not attempt to enter.
His men had cinched a traveling saddle to the beast’s back. Pitifully, I set my foot to the stirrup and pitched upward. Gripping the reins in both hands—I did not trust my seat otherwise—I hauled my horse’s head around and departed from my home and my life at a wrenching canter.
So it was that I left Benedic on a mount I could scarcely endure, lacking both water and food, with no coin beyond the few saludi I chanced to carry in my purse, no destination except to reach a place where I might gain lodging, and no purpose other than to escape Sher Abener.
I could not say whose voice haunted me more as I rode, the necromancer’s or Tep Longeur’s.
I will render the marrow from your bones, and drink it while you die!
If you don’t rescue us, we’ll never be free.
Under the shade and locusts of Benedic, the sun’s warmth had seemed kindly, beneficent. But when I had left behind the washed plaster of the municipality’s walls and risen among the hills which bordered Benedic to the west, I learned that a benison may also be a curse. In my merchant’s finery, I was foolishly attired for a journey, and the trees which graced the hillsides—olive, locust, and feather-leafed litchi—gave no cover to the dusty roadway. Before my trek was truly commenced, I had begun to ooze like a squeezed pomegranate.
Within a league, I had shed my formal cloak. Within two, I had bundled my robe behind my saddle, leaving myself clad in naught but a loose blouse, my flowing underbreeches, and a fop’s ornate sandals. Still the weight of the sun accumulated on my head and shoulders, bearing down like the threat of Sher Abener’s malice. Under its pressure, I soon saw difficulties and dilemmas throng the shimmering heat before me.
Thirst was the most immediate of my discomforts, although it was among the least of my concerns, for I knew that beyond the next ridge of hills lay the river Ibendwey. Hunger would assume larger proportions as my journey extended itself. However, the lack of substance in my purse posed a far greater peril. Doubtless there were men and women in the wide world who would have called my few saludi wealth, but I did not. With the coin I carried, I could purchase lodging in an austere inn for a brace of days, no more. Then they would be gone.
Worse still was the fact that I could not long call upon the credit of my merchantry to sustain me. Beyond Benedic’s boundaries, men with whom I had indirectly shared many transactions would perhaps make me welcome—briefly—in the name of our joint ventures. Yet I hardly knew their names. I did not know the men themselves at all. While Tep Longeur had cared for my interests, I had paid them a profound inattention. And it was certain those men would refer their curiosity concerning my circumstances to Benedic, and would learn that I could no longer command my own riches.
What would they do then, those men whose names I could scarcely recall? Why, naturally they would be overtaken by pity for my helpless plight, as well as by righteous indignation on my behalf. Being strong, forthright, wise, and above all generous, they would devise some means—I could not imagine what—to quash my dire foe, restoring what I had lost. Would I not have done the same in their place?
Honesty and thirst, and the burnished pressure of the sun, compelled me to admit that I would not. I had enjoyed wealth too much, and contention too little, to bestir myself against any injustice which did me no personal harm.
Clearly, I must prepare myself for the likelihood that men with whom I had once shared profit would simply turn their backs upon me, once they discovered the truth of my condition.
Then what would I do?
I had no idea at all.
If you don’t rescue us, we’ll never be free.
Tep Longeur’s appeal galled my sore heart. I was not fit to carry such burdens—as he well knew. If I could not prolong my life with alms in the days ahead, I would die as surely as if I had given myself over to Sher Abener’s mercy.
Daunted by such considerations, I was in a state approaching despair as my nag crested the intervening ridge, and I saw below me the course of the river Ibendwey.
Eager to slake my thirst, I amended my pace. As I descended, however, I soon observed that the river was swollen and swift, troubled with silt. Quantities of rain must have fallen in the mountains which fed the watercourse, for the current surged and frothed uncomfortably. Even my inexpert eye could discern that a customarily placid ford had become turbulent and uncertain.
In dismay, my heart sank still lower. Here was another obstacle I could not surmount. Not only had the crossing become impassable, but the water appeared undrinkable as well. Now I must either suffer from thirst or make myself ill with unclean drink—and yet neither choice would improve my lot, for I would remain within reach of the necromancer’s power.
Surely a malign fate had stir
red my stars when Sher Abener had first selected my merchantry to serve him. My doom had been fixed from that moment, and nothing I might do would alter it.
Thus consumed by my own difficulties, I did not immediately notice that there appeared to be a man caught in the midst of the tumultuous stream.
Blinking against the perspiration of my brow, I peered downward. There, beyond question—a man perched on a jutting boulder midway between the banks of the Ibendwey. How he had come to place himself in such straits I could not at first imagine. Had he attempted the ford afoot, despite the force of the river? If so, he was either a fool or a madman. Or perhaps the Ibendwey had risen suddenly, surprising him with its rush. My caravaneers had often described similar misadventures. Taken unaware, the man below me had gained the only sanctuary within reach before the current could bear him away.
Madman, fool, or unfortunate, he was well stranded. Until the Ibendwey eased its spate—or until some rescue chanced upon him—he remained ensnared, as helpless to correct his plight as I was to answer Sher Abener’s ire.
Whipping the reins, I belabored my mount to a brisker pace.
The man crouched upon his boulder with his knees against his chest, his head downcast. He seemed unaware of my approach—certainly he did not react to it. Instead he appeared to stare vacantly into the current as though he studied the swift tumble of silt for auguries.
At first, I could see little of him. Rudely cropped hair was his head’s only covering. Boots clogged with mud, an unmarked and indefinite brown shirt, worn leather breeches—so much was visible. To that extent, his apparel suggested that he was a traveler. Yet he had no sack or satchel for a traveler’s belongings and supplies. His possessions must have been lost when the rising of the river overtook him. In every particular, he was indistinguishable from the grime and wear of his sojourns.