Angus Wells - The God Wars 03 (26 page)

           
"And we strangers in it,"
Calandryll replied, crossing to the window to peer down into the plaza. He saw
Ochen leaving the temple, hurrying across the square, the sorcerer's gait, the
set of his shoulders, spoke of anxiety and Calandryll felt presentiment stir.
The ancient glanced up and saw his face, raising a hand to beckon him down.
Presentiment became certainty and Calandryll turned to his companions:
"Something's amiss."

           
Not waiting for any response, he
quit the window and went into the corridor, the others hard on his heels as he
descended the stairs.

           
The hall below was lit now, dimly as
seemed the Jesseryte custom, a fire started in the hearth. Ochen stood with
Chazali by the fire, speaking urgently, both their faces grave. The kiriwashen
had removed his helm, but not yet his armor, and one hand clenched and flexed
around the hilt of his sword as the other tugged angrily at the oiled triangle
of his beard. The outlanders joined them, and even before Ochen spoke,
Calandryll sensed his news was not good.

           
"The priest is dead." The
words came flat, intoned as if this were the grossest outrage, an enormity
beyond comprehension. "Slain by tensai."

           
"Here?" Calandryll
gestured, encompassing the town.

           
"Not in Ghan-te." Ochen
shook his head, reached to lift strands of disarrayed silver from his face.
"In the woodland. He rode to a naming ceremony in that last village—he did
not return."

           
He paused, sighing, and Chazali
expanded: "Foresters found his body and brought it here three days agone.
It was butchered, they said. As if torn apart by rabid dogs." His voice
was harsh, stony as the cold rage burning in his slitted eyes.

           
"Then likely the tensai lie
behind us," Bracht said, "and no threat."

           
Chazali fixed the Kern with a savage
glare. "You do not understand," he snarled, pent rage finding small
outlet in the words.

           
"How should he?" Ochen
waved a placatory hand, his voice somber as he said, "Albeit he was of
lesser skill, still this priest was of the wazir caste. No tensai would dare
harm such as he, for fear of damnation. To slay a priest is to consign oneself
to eternal torment; to risk attacking a wazir is to face dangerous magic."

           
"Still I fail to
understand," said Bracht.

           
Calandryll watched as Ochen looked,
grim-faced, to Chazali, comprehension dawning, confirmed by the mage's next
words.

           
"That they dared it—that they
succeeded—can mean only one thing: they've magic of their own. Rhythamun's
magic! And be that so, we can surely count on ambush ere long."

           
CALANDRYLL studied the two Jesseryte
faces, seeing horror writ there, such open expression of outrage somehow
lending far greater import to the alarming news. It had been, he knew, rank
optimism to think their enemy should let them pass unchallenged. That was not
Rhythamun's way, and that the warlock should leave defenses behind him was
hardly unexpected; but the rage that lit Chazali's eyes, the repugnance in
Ochen's, suggested this was a matter that struck to the core of their beliefs,
a thing they had not anticipated, as if their world was shaken by the murder.

           
"I must advise my men,"
the kiriwashen growled. "Do we encounter those who slew him . . ."

           
His smile grew feral. Ochen put a
hand to his wrist, the golden nails bright against the jet of the vambrace, and
said firmly, "Remember we've a higher duty, friend. And I suspect we shall
meet them soon enough, save Horul bring us safely past them."

           
Ungently, Chazali took his arm from
the sorcerer's grip, his lips compressed in a narrow line of rejection. He
seemed about to move, to bellow orders that would send his kotu-zen out into
the night after the tensai, but Ochen fixed him with a stare and said,
"It's my belief you'll have no need to find them. I think it likelier they
hunt us, and these are but servants of a larger cause. The murder of a priest
is an abomination, aye. But that Rhythamun should go on to raise Tharn, that is
far worse."

           
He spoke softly, but each word was
weighted, binding Chazali, and with a frustrated groan the kiriwashen ducked
his head in reluctant acknowledgment.

           
"Aye, you speak aright, though
it sits ill with me to let this go unpunished." His head lowered, chin to
chest. Then he looked up, squaring his shoulders, and clapped his hands.
Silence fell, and in a somber voice he informed the kotu-zen of the slaying.
They took it grimly, calling curses on the blasphemers, promising vengeance,
grumbling when Chazali repeated Ochen's admonishments, reminding them that
their foremost duty was to deliver the questers safe to Pamur-teng.

           
Katya asked, "Can you be
certain Rhythamun took a hand?"

           
"Who else?" said Ochen,
his rhetoric glum. "Only the wazir command such powers as might destroy a
man who wards himself with magic,- not tensai."

           
"Then is he close?" she
demanded.

           
"He need not be." Ochen
shook his head, and on his face was an expression Calandryll had not seen
before: a look, almost, of fear. "I think he likely encountered
tensai—perhaps they thought to waylay a solitary traveler." He barked a
short, ugly laugh. "I suspect they found him no easy prey. Indeed, I suspect
they found themselves the prey; that he possessed them, or sufficient of them
to serve his purpose. And that he leaves them behind, guardians of his
path."

           
"Still they are only
brigands," Bracht said, sanguine.

           
"Aye," said Ochen,
"but brigands gifted with fell magic, which I like not at all."

           
"Nor I." The Kern chuckled
grimly. "But when a man's only the one path, then he must follow it to the
end."

           
"And we've perhaps more than
just your magic at our beck," said Katya. "Remember Calandryll wears
a blade that offends our enemy's gramaryes."

           
"There's that," allowed
the wazir, though with little enough conviction.

           
"Then lose that gloomy
visage," suggested Bracht. "We've faced Rhythamun's magic ere now and
won through. Likely we shall do so again."

           
Ochen smiled then, wanly, as if he
welcomed the Kern's encouragement but found it ill-placed. Calandryll said,
"What choice have we, save to go on? Better we do that in hope, no?"

           
"Aye." Ochen's smile
lightened somewhat as he nodded. "Forgive me, but that a priest should be
slain ... It is an unprecedented thing."

           
"So," said Calandryll,
"is the resurrection of the Mad God."

           
THE
dinner they ate that night, in a tavern emptied of all save their party and
the serving folk, was a glum affair, for the slaying of the priest, and all it
implied, sat heavy on all their minds. The kotu-zen radiated a palpable
discomfort, compounded of disgust and righteous anger and frustration. Were
they not sworn to bring the questers to Pamur-teng,

           
Calandryll was sure they would even
then be out in the hills, hunting down the tensai like rabid dogs. No less were
the townsfolk disturbed by the murder, looking to the warriors of the hold to
which they swore allegiance to bring the killers to justice. The innkeeper and
his people served them in wary silence, as though momentarily anticipating an
announcement of retribution against the tensai, and though the food was good
enough, and the wine served with it palatable, none took pleasure in the meal,
and when it was done they quit the tavern to find their beds, leaving behind
folk utterly confused by such disruption of accepted order.

           
For his own part, Calandryll felt
mightily uneasy, his mood enhanced by the Jesserytes
⁷
ominous
reaction. To face armed men was one thing, and none too forbidding with fifty
trained warriors in escort. To face creatures of the occult was an unpalatable
hazard, but still something he and his comrades had previously overcome. To
know that both dangers, conjoined, lay ahead was poor recipe for comfortable
sleep, and he lay on his narrow bed staring at the play of light over the boards
of the ceiling. It seemed that he grew aware for the first time that he might
well die, that Rhythamun might well succeed, and all the long months of the
quest count for naught.

           
The fear he pushed aside, reminding
himself that the knowledge of possible death had always been present and that
fear alone was insufficient to deter him. That he should consider the
possibility of Rhythamun's victory was, he told himself, to grant his adversary
an advantage, to open gateways to trepidation, to vacillation: he set doubt
aside. And found he was left with anger, which strengthened him, firming his
purpose again, so that in time, not knowing his eyes closed, he slept.

           
He woke to early sunlight and the
faint chill of autumn's advent, birds chirruping about the eaves of the
garrison, the sounds of a town already awake. He rose without delay, going out
to bang impatiently on Bracht's door, which opened on the instant, the Kern
buckling his swordbelt, eyeing Calandryll with a small, fierce smile.

           
"Come," he declared,
"let's rouse Katya and Cennaire and break our fast."

           
Both women were awake and ready,
Katya's tanned face grave as she came out into the corridor, the mail of her
hauberk rustling softly, a hand upon her sword as if she thought perhaps some
monstrous conjuration might momentarily appear. Cennaire seemed calm, though
she stepped without preamble or excuse to Calandryll's side, and he,
unthinking, set a hand upon her arm, proprietory.

           
"I fear we bring you into ever
greater danger," he murmured as they found their way to the hall.
"But be assured that no harm shall come you for lack of my
protection."

           
"I know that," she
returned, and in the instant of the saying was aware that it was true: that she
had no doubt but that he would lay down his life for her.

           
Without thinking, without intention
of artifice or coquetry, she moved closer to him, so that for a moment their
bodies pressed tight. She felt him start, from the corner of her eye saw him
glance down, smiling, embarrassed, and then they reached the stairs and moved a
little way apart again, though still he held her arm. From the dim-lit hall she
saw Ochen watching, his face clear, though his expression was enigmatic and she
wondered if he approved, or merely observed, his interest motivated by his own
concerns. She could not tell, and none others appeared aware of the wazir's
subtle observation, settling to table as food was brought out with the
determinedly cheerful air of folk committed to a path from which there could be
no turning.

           
They ate well, as if this might be
their last meal, their conversation of the way ahead, Ochen and Chazali, who
joined them, speaking of the road and the settlements along the way. It ran,
they said, northward out of Ghan-te, through forest for several days before emerging
at the foot of the great central plateau that gave the Jesseryte lands the name
of Plain, where lay another town, Ahgra-te. There were more villages, but for
most of its length, it wound lonely through densely wooded cordillera that
afforded natural advantage to the tensai.

           
It was not, Cennaire thought,
encouraging information, and she found Calandryll's eyes across the table. They
were grave, his expression resolute, breaking into a smile as he met her gaze,
as if he sought to reassure her. She answered his smile, thinking that of all
there present she was likely the least endangered, warded against physical harm
by her very revenancy, and perhaps immune to whatever magic Rhythamun left
behind, were it designed to act upon the living only. Almost, she felt guilty,
dropping her gaze to her plate as it came to her that she might see all these
folk slain, she left . . . she could find no other word save
alive.
And then that did she succeed in
regaining her heart, should it be better to reclaim it—were some sorcerer such
as Ochen able to perform that countering magic—or only hold it for herself,
within the pyxis, and remain as she was.

           
The thought was simultaneously
intriguing and confusing. To be again mortal, or continue revenant? To choose
the one would be to relinquish all the powers, all the strengths, afforded by
the other. She had gloried in her newfound senses, in the preternatural
awareness they gave her—and yet she had suppressed all those abilities during
the days spent in company of these questers. And they, mortal flesh and blood,
seemed no more caring of danger than was she, as if they accepted their lives
with relish, living them day by day, prepared to face the unknown she no longer
had need to confront. Because, she decided, they devoted themselves to their
purpose, to their quest, pursuing a higher ideal than mere existence.

           
Once, she would have laughed at
that: dismissed it as foolishness, as mortal frailty. Yet, in their company,
she had ofttimes near forgot her immortality, had learned again to enjoy small
things: their acceptance, Calandryll's smile, the touch of his hand. Certainly
she had forgotten much of her past: abruptly she wondered how Calandryll would
react did he know she had been a courtesan,- did he learn she went about Anomius's
business,- did he discover she had slain men in that cause.

           
"Fear not." Ochen's voice
interrupted her musing, and she raised her head, aware that the others looked
toward her. "You've blades and magic, both, to defend you."

           
She essayed a smile, quite unable to
interpret the wazir's expression. His tone, the words, suggested he sought only
to reassure a nervous woman. Yet he knew her for what she was, and so knew that
she, of all there present, had the least need of comforting. Did he then
pretend? Or did he, like Anomius, look to use her for purposes of his own? She
could not decide,- still could not entirely understand why he had not exposed
her. He had spoken of her having some part to play in the quest, and that had
then suited her own purpose well enough—but what part? On whose behalf?

           
"Aye," she answered,
smiling again. "And as Bracht said—have we not but the single path?"