Meer whimpered and trembled.
“Well, you did,” Jahdo snapped, “You promised.”
Meer fell silent for a long while, then all at once laughed, a hysterical sort of rumble.
“Jahdo, lad, one day you’ll no doubt be a great man among your people, the chief speaker, I’d say, wielding power with words as your people do. Very well. Bring Baki over. I’ll saddle him up first. All day we shall travel, and in the night I’ll mourn.”
Yet they made only a few pitiful miles that afternoon, Meer was exhausted with his mourning, Jahdo with the horror he’d seen and smelt, and in the hot sun it seemed they could barely put one foot in front of the other. At times Meer would burst into a mourning song, half music, half keening, only to break off in midphrase and fall silent again. As if they picked up his mood, the horse and mule walked head down and weary, ambling to a stop unless Jahdo yanked their lead ropes to keep them moving.
“It be useless,” Jahdo said at last. “Just ahead does lie that little stream where we camped last night, and there’s grass for the horses here, and so why don’t we just stop?”
And there the Slavers caught them. It was still afternoon, and Jahdo was scrounging dead wood for an evening’s fire, when Gidro and Baki became restless, throwing up their heads, sniffing and snorting into the rising wind, finally whickering out a greeting. Distantly a horse answered, then another, Jahdo leapt to his feet and grabbed his grandfather’s knife, but Meer sat unmoving, hunkered down by their gear, his head on his knees. Hoofbeats sounded, riding fast, riding hard, and straight for them out of the east. Jahdo could see a plume of dust skittering along like a live thing.
“Meer, Meer! We’ve got to run.”
Slowly the bard raised his head and turned toward the sound.
“You run, Jahdo. Head west and hope you find those horsemen who aided your people once before. I might as well die a slave, so long as I die soon. A man is nothing without a clan, and my future holds no kin to serve the gods in my old age.”
“Stop that! It’s needful you come, too.”
The hoofbeats came louder, tack jingled and rang, men yelled, a wordless high shriek of triumph. The dust resolved itself to a mounted squad. Meer rose to his feet, grabbing his staff, but he only leaned upon it as he waited, turned toward the noise.
“Run, Jahdo! Grab that bag of food and run to the forest.”
Jahdo hesitated, and in that moment it was too late. With a whoop and a yell, like men driving cattle, the horsemen swept round the camp and surrounded them, about twelve of them, mailed and armed, and wearing loose long trousers tucked into high boots. When they edged their horses into the firelight, Jahdo stared in fascinated terror at their gear, but he could discern not one severed head—all the comfort he was going to get. He sobbed once, then drew himself up to full height with the knife clutched in his fist as two of the men dismounted, tossing their reins to others in the squad. Both of them were over six feet tall, hard-muscled under their mail, but one was blond and young, with a heavy mustache drooping over his mouth, and the other had dark hair, streaked with gray, and his road-filthy stubble of beard sported gray saltings as well. Each of them carried at their belts a peculiar dagger, narrow and sheathed, with three silver knobs on the pommel, and a heavy long sword.
“A blind man and a lad?” the blond said. “This is our ever so important prize?”
Jahdo goggled. He could understand their speech, a thing he’d never expected. Although they rolled every R and RH they spoke, and pronounced half their words deep in their throats, too, or so it sounded, by paying strict attention he could at least make out the main sense.
“Any Gel da’Thae’sa rare enough thing.” The dark-haired man was smiling. “I’d trust that Jill knows what she’s doing.”
Jill? That was a Rhiddaer name! Automatically he turned toward Meer, hoping for answers to these puzzlements, but the bard stepped forward at that instant and knelt at the dark-haired man’s feet.
“If I’m the prize,” he rumbled, “then let the lad go. Let him take what food we’ve got left and try to make his way home.”
The dark-haired fellow hesitated, visibly touched, but the blond strode forward, gesturing at the squad.
“All right, saddle up those pack animals! Let’s get on our way back to the main camp.” He turned to the dark-haired fellow. “Rhodry, the child can ride behind someone’s saddle, and we can load this hairy dog onto a packhorse, I suppose.”
“Maybe so.” Rhodry strode over to Jahdo. “Hand me that knife, lad.”
In sheer instinct Jahdo stabbed at him, but Rhodry caught his wrist in a huge grasp and half lifted him from his feet. The knife dropped.
“Here, now, you’ve got guts.” Rhodry was smiling at him. “But this is no occasion for heroics, like. Are you going to behave yourself, or are we going to have to tie you up?”
Jahdo tried to think of a really good insult, but at that moment the blond man grabbed Meer’s arm.
“On your feet,” he snapped.
“You leave him alone!” Jahdo snarled. “You treat him with respect, too. He be a bard.”
Although the blond man started to laugh, Rhodry hit him on the shoulder and made him stop. He walked over to Meer and knelt down in front of him on one knee.
“Does the lad speak true?” he said, and politely.
“He does. A bard I am, and a loremaster as well, to the twelfth level of the thirteen levels of the deepening well of knowledge, not that I’ll ever see my homeland and my master again, most like, to complete my studies.”
“And the lad’s your slave?”
“He is not that, but free born, traveling with me at my request.”
“Well and good, then.” Rhodry got up, turning to the blond man. “Yraen, put your saddle on that white horse, because the bard and his lad will be riding in comfort. You’ll have to make do with bareback, unless you want to clamber into that packsaddle yourself and shell your own nuts.”
“What?” The man called Yraen was practically spitting. “Have you gone daft?”
“A bard’s a bard, lad, and due all respect.”
Laughing and calling out jeers, the other men in the squad gathered round to see what Yraen would say to that—nothing, as it turned out, because Rhodry caught his gaze and stared him down.
“Have it your way, then.” Yraen heaved a melodramatic sigh. “You stinking bastard.”
Although Jahdo expected swords to flash, everyone merely laughed. Rhodry’s laugh taught Jahdo the meaning of that old saw, that a sound could make your blood run cold. It was daft and furious, merry and murderous all at the same time, a high-pitched chortle that reminded him of ferrets in a rage. The rest of the men, however, seemed to take it for granted, as if they heard him laugh that way often. With a shake of his head, Yraen strode off to get the squad ready to ride. As Jahdo watched them, he wondered why the view had turned so hazy, wondered why he felt so trembly, all of a sudden. Then he realized that he was crying, the tears running down his face of their own accord. Still kneeling, Meer held out one enormous arm. Jahdo rushed to him and flung himself against the Horsekin’s chest to sob aloud while Meer moaned and whimpered under his breath.
“Forgive me, Jahdo lad, forgive me, and may your mother forgive me, too!”
In a river twist the etheric water puddled Woe a mirror, slick silver, edged with green. Evandar knelt on the bank nearby and stared down at the surface, but his eyes moved, following a vision rather than contemplating himself. All at once he laughed and sat back on his heels.
“They have them,” he announced. “The bard and the boy, I mean. Rhodry and his squad have seized them upon the road. They’re all heading off to Cengarn.”
“I feel sorry for that poor child,” Dailandra said. “He must be terrified.”
Evandar merely shrugged.
“Don’t you feel anything for these people?” Dallandra burst out. “You’re moving them round like pegs in a game of Wooden Wisdom, knocking them off the board and r
uining their lives. Don’t you care?”
“I love you, and I love my daughter, and I love the memory of Rinbaladelan, the seacoast city I was telling you about. Beyond that, my darling, no, I don’t care. Not one whit.”
2
AMISSIO
A good omen for the taking of prisoners, but otherwise, evil in all things, though with great hope of mitigation. If it should fall under the presidency of Tin, the ninth land upon our map, it signifies evil without any such hope, for in all matters pertaining to the gods and their worship, this figure works naught but ill and harm.
The Omenbook of Gwarn, Loremaster
APPROACHED FROM THE WEST, Cengarn loomed. The day when Jahdo saw it for the first time was beautifully sunny and fresh, too, as if the gods were mocking his fate and making sure he could see every detail of the Slavers’ evil city. As usual, he and Meer, doubled up on Baki, were being led along at the rear of the squad. When it crested one last hill, the men spread out to rest their horses, and Jahdo could look ahead. Down below the view stretched out, the sparse woodlands dropping to a valley of rolling meadows and green crops. Toward their side of the valley stood a solitary farmstead. Some ways beyond that ran a stream, bordered with trees.
“The house be round, Meer, and there does stand this dirt wall, a mound like, all round it. I can see some cows, too, and it looks like they be white. It’s kind of hard to tell from here.” Jahdo shaded his hand with his eyes. “Oh! I do think that’s the city.”
In the strong morning light he could pick out, far across the valley, three gray hills surrounded by what seemed to be stone walls, being as they were too smooth and circular to be cliffs. Spread across the hills were the tiny shapes of whitewashed houses, all of them round, and some larger stone buildings. Over it all hung a faint haze—the smoke of cooking fires, most likely—out of which, at the top of the highest hill, rose a cluster of round stone towers with flat roofs, just like the ones mentioned in the old tales, as dark and grim and ugly as chunks of iron. When Jahdo described this view, Meer sighed, but he said nothing.
“It be not far.” Jahdo swallowed heavily. “We should get there before noon.”
“To find out our fate at last. I can only pray that some kind and decent master buys you, lad. What happens to me is of no moment, for I am a broken man with no house or clan, but you have a life ahead of you.”
“Not much of one.”
Meer stayed silent. Over the past three days, as the squad rode for Cengarn, Jahdo had run out of tears for his lost family, his lost freedom. He felt numb, as if he’d been so ill with a fever for so long that life had receded to some far distance.
“Come on, lads!” Rhodry called out. “Almost home.”
In a clatter and jingle of tack and hooves the squad jogged off downhill. When they came onto the flat, Jahdo got his first omen of what their welcome might be like. Just by the road they saw a young girl, her blond hair hanging in one long pigtail down her back. She was wearing a dirty brown dress, cinched in at her waist with a length of old rope, and carrying a wooden crook, apparently to help her herd the cows. At the sound of the horses’ hooves and the jingle of tack, she turned toward the road and watched as the men rode by. When Rhodry made her a gallant bow from his saddle, she laughed and waved, until she got a look at Meer. At that she turned and ran screaming for the farmstead.
“Stop!” Rhodry called out. “We won’t let him hurt you.”
When the other men laughed, Jahdo remembered how he hated them. Although the girl stopped screaming, she kept running, darting inside the earthwork wall. They could hear a gate slam, and dogs began barking hysterically—an entire pack, from the sound of it.
“Better trot, men,” Rhodry said, grinning. “Let’s get out of here before they set the dogs on us.”
Since they passed the farmstead with no more trouble than the din of angry hounds, Rhodry called the squad to a walk. Apparently he was in no hurry to reach the city, for all that he’d called it home earlier, not on such a lovely day, perhaps, with songbirds warbling and the sun glinting on the stream. As they rode closer, Jahdo found himself thinking of the city as a storm cloud, floating nearer and nearer, rising high and dark on the horizon at first, then looming to fill the view. He couldn’t decide whether he wished that they’d reach the city and get it over with or that Time would slow and they’d never quite arrive.
At length, though, they came to the West Gate, where a sheer rise of cliff, hacked smooth with tools and reinforced at the base with stone blocks, guarded a winding path up to the town. By tipping his head back Jahdo could just see the tops of the towers, rising over a dark gray wall at the brow of the highest hill. The gate itself stood partly open, a massive thing of oak beams bound with iron strips and chains. In the shadows inside he could just make out a huge winch. Armed guards stepped forward and hailed the squad.
“So, silver dagger,” one of them said to Rhodry. “You had a good hunt, I see.”
“Well, we’ve netted what Jill wanted, sure enough. Tell me somewhat. Are there a lot of people out and about in the streets today?”
“More than a few, it being so warm and all. Why?”
“I don’t want the prisoners stoned and injured.”
Jahdo felt briefly sick.
“True enough,” the guard said. “You’d best dismount, I’d say, and put them in the middle of you.” He jerked a thumb at Meer. “The rumors have spread about that fellow you killed, and his kind’s not exactly well loved round here.”
Meer grunted, just once, but it was close to a sob.
“Don’t worry, good bard,” Rhodry said. “We’ll get you through in one piece. Yraen, we’ll wait here. You go fetch Otho the dwarf. I’ll wager he and his kin have ways through this city that are out of the common sight.”
Although he grumbled, Yraen dismounted and puffed off uphill to follow orders. A few at a time the entire squad dismounted as well, leading their horses through the gates. Opposite the huge winch was a small wooden guardhouse, and everyone drifted over in front of it to stand round gossiping with the guards about things that had happened during their absence. Meer stood stiff and straight, his hands clasped tight round his staff, his lips trembling. When Jahdo laid a hand on his arm to comfort him, Meer shook it off. Rhodry noticed the gesture.
“I won’t let anything happen to the pair of you,” Rhodry said. “That’s why we’re waiting here.”
“It’s not that what does ache his heart. The Gel da’Thae you did kill was his brother.”
The moment he spoke Jahdo rued it. Even though he was visibly trying to choke back the noise, Meer keened, just briefly before he forced silence. Rhodry winced and swore.
“Well, my apologies.” And oddly enough, he sounded perfectly sincere. “But, Meer, your brother was doing his cursed best to kill me.”
“No doubt.” Meer let out his breath in a long sigh. “You are a warrior as he was a warrior. Your kind lives and dies by a different code than we ordinary men.”
Jahdo noticed the squad looking at Meer with a trace of new respect. Rhodry seemed to be trying to find something further to say, but Yraen came bustling back with three men in tow, two of them armed and mailed, the third elderly with a long white beard, but all of them the shortest, stockiest people that Jahdo had ever seen. The shortest of all, though obviously a grown man, was just his height, though twice his breadth. Jahdo frankly stared until one of the axmen glanced his way with a scowl, frightening him into looking elsewhere.
“My thanks for coming,” Rhodry said. “What do you think, Otho? Gan we pass by one of your roads?”
“Up to Jorn, here.” Otho waved in the direction of the taller axman. “By the by, silver dagger, young Yraen had the cursed gall to remind me about that little matter of the coin. I’m waiting for somewhat to sell at a good price, and then I’ll bring it to you, so stop your badgering.” He turned, looking Meer up and down. “Ah, he’s blind! I couldn’t imagine what you were thinking of, asking us to take a spy up this way,
but if he can’t see, then the secret’s safe enough.”
Meer bared his fangs but said nothing.
“Can’t bring the horses through.” Jorn stepped forward. “What about having Yraen and the squad take ‘em up to the dun?” His voice turned contemptuous. “You don’t need twelve men to guard a blind man and a boy.”
“Ah, but they’re wily, wily.” Rhodry was grinning. “Yraen, the rest of you—I’ll see you back in the great hall.”
Collecting the horses, including Baki and Gidro, the squad moved off, leading the stock up the steep hill. As he watched, Jahdo realized that he was sorry to see them go. Even though he hated each one for helping capture him, they were at least familiar, men he’d grown used to in the horror of the past few days.
“Come round here.” Otho gestured at a twisting lane that led behind the guardhouse.
With Jorn in the lead they walked to the base of the hill just beyond the gates, where the slope had been cut to the vertical, then faced with stone blocks to produce an artificial cliff. When Jorn pounded on one block with his ax, a good quarter of this structure creaked back three inches to reveal a sliver of face and a suspicious eye.
“Ah, it’s you already,” said a voice from inside. “Stand back, and I’ll open up.”
With much groaning and the crunching of dirt and the bouncing of pebbles the massive door opened just far enough for everyone to slip in sideways, one at a time. The two younger men ushered them down a long, cool tunnel of worked stone, a good ten feet wide but a bare six tall, so that both Meer and Rhodry were forced to walk stooped. Once everyone was safely in, the doorkeeper seized an enormous lever and pulled. The door inched shut to groan into place so tightly that Jahdo could see not the slightest crack of sunlight round it. The only light, a sickly blue glow, oozed from phosphorescent mosses and fungi, gathered into baskets and hung from iron pegs in the wall. Jahdo shuddered, wondering if a rat felt this way, caught in one of his family’s traps. Remembering how the creatures squealed and clawed when the trap splashed down and water rose to cover them made him want to weep.