The Avengers of Carrig (3 page)

“All right, switch that thing off! Both of you are under arrest!”

Pargetty, at the controls of the communicator, was absolutely thunderstruck. But Belfeor, moving as though he had been expecting this moment and had been rehearsing his response for weeks, took up something else that lay on the table beside the communicator. An energy gun. An old one, but serviceable.

With a blazing bolt he cut Heron down where he stood, and the servants—to whom it was as though he had wielded the lightning—screamed, turned tail, and fled for their lives.

When Sir Bavis lost his temper for the third time with the valets who were robing him, in a little stone-walled room close to the summit of the fortress’ great tower, he realized that his futile, self-directed irritation ran the risk of delaying him past the moment when the evening star should appear. Mastering himself with a violent effort, he called to a harper to quiet his jangled nerves.

Shortly one appeared, who bowed with a flourish and inquired his master’s preference of songs.

“Sing
The Ballad of Red Sloin,”
Sir Bavis ordered.

The harper bowed again, seated himself on a red velvet stool, brushed back his long dark hair, and struck a chord. In his ringing tenor voice he began:

“I sing the honor and renown,

The glory brought on Carrig town,

When first Clan Parradile was—”

“Stop!” exclaimed Sir Bavis, so sharply that his valets, already victims of three outbursts of unaccountable fury, cringed reflexively away from him. “Not that version! The old version!” He heard his voice ragged with tension.

The harper was not the least astonished of the company. He said doubtfully, “But, sir, the old version is—”

“Have you forgotten it?” Sir Bavis cut in.

“I, sir?” The harper looked affronted. “I, who can recall the snatches my mother taught me ere I learned to walk? I intended only to say—”

“If you remember the old one, then in the name of all the gods do as you’re told and sing it!” Sir Bavis roared. Paling, the harper shrugged and began again.

“I sing a hero of renown,

Red Sloin who came to Carrig town,

A stranger and a man of might …”

Listening, Sir Bavis felt a grim stir of satisfaction. It was as though he were symbolically regulating accounts with the gods.
The Ballad of Red Sloin
was so old no man could be sure when it was made; it told how the first interregnum had come about. There had been nine clans then, instead of the present eight, and the chief of the ninth, Clan Graat, was a treacherous schemer, hated by all. But his son was the skillfullest glider pilot of his day, and as spring and the king-hunt approached, men were certain that he would be the one to kill the king, and his clan would achieve power, and would then sell the city to a tribe of bandits who had besieged it for three summers running.

From the south, though, came Red Sloin, a mighty stranger, and he spoke up in the assembly called at the beginning of the king-hunt. Though he was not a clansman, not even a native of the city, everyone was so desperate to escape the threatened triumph of Clan Graat that they would snatch at any straw for deliverance and agreed that he must be allowed to go forth with the other contenders
… not that anyone imagined he had a chance to win.

But he dashed his glider against the king’s neck, and fell together with the king into the crater of a volcano, and thus laid clear the way for the chief of Clan Parradile to assume power, which he did, his first act being to extirpate the treacherous Clan Graat by slaughtering its adults and scattering the children among the other clans. Afterward the bandits were driven off and peace returned.

During the eighteen years that Sir Bavis had now ruled, the harpers of the city—perhaps out of a deliberate wish to flatter him—had taken to making Red Sloin’s part in the story smaller and Clan Parradile’s far larger. But to Sir Bavis it now seemed imperative that the original version should be restored.

His mind rambled as his valets finished putting on his regalia, started to comb his beard and to dress it with the paste of oil and lampblack, which he used to disguise the fact that it was turning gray. Reaching back into time with his imagination, he tried to picture the way things must once have been—before men learned to count the number of days in a year, perhaps, when the first new moon of spring came as a surprise. Doubtless, back then, they must have called the people together and chosen the fittest to attack the king by popular acclamation. It would all have been spontaneous. Not as nowadays, when all the clans had spent the entire winter preparing for this season, putting their most hopeful contenders through grueling tests, improving their gliders, redesigning their darts to make them fly farther and straighter and penetrate more deeply, until long before the assembly they knew almost beyond doubt whether anyone this year was good enough to kill the king.

Ritualized. It had become ritualized, stilted, formal, routine! And yet it still enshrined the essential truth, as a little dry seed may hold the form of a great tree …

The harper’s song was dying to a close when the door of the room slammed back and Sir Bavis’ only son, Ambrus, came hurrying in.

“Respect, father,” he said, making a perfunctory bow, and did not wait for the polite answer before charging ahead. “I would know whether what is to be done should
be done now or in the morning.”

“What?” said Sir Bavis stonily, looking the youth up and down. He had sometimes wondered about his wife’s constancy, seeing this black-browed fellow with his sullen mouth and his fierce face devoid of subtlety. Himself, though men might say he was strong as a pillar of the fortress and hard as its stones, he had ever been a man who would not strike down what he could undermine, a patient schemer who planned for years ahead if need be.

Nonetheless, he knew how rarely a strain bred true from generation to generation; maybe some ancestor of his or his wife’s had endowed Ambrus with so many faults. It was a burden that had to be borne.

Not understanding his father’s reaction, Ambrus gave a blank stare. He said, “You know what I’m talking about—what has to be done!”

Stifling a sigh, Sir Bavis leaned back in his high-armed chair and extended first one leg, then the other, so that his valets could slip on and lace his ceremonial boots. He said, “Tell me, Ambrus, who do men say stands the best chance tomorrow?”

The youth brightened. At last he was catching on. Sir Bavis prompted him further—though surely only a dummy would have failed to realize that a servant’s mouth could be unlocked where a noble’s could not, and that those who attended him were nonetheless servants, before whom one did not refer even obliquely to secrets of state.

“Do they not,” he pursued, “speak especially highly of Saikmar son of Corrie, of Clan Twywit?”

“Indeed!” Ambrus confirmed, pretending enthusiasm. “It’s said he’s the cleverest seen in forty years!” Unspoken under the words was his private gloss on the remark:
Not that that will make any difference to his fate!

“Before the week is out, then,” Sir Bavis muttered, “we may see a new clan ruling in this fortress.” He spoke levelly, watching Ambrus’ face for a reaction. It came: a dark flush of jealousy.

And, a moment later, he himself felt a new stab of pain so acute he had to close his eyes. Another warning from the gods, that was what it must be—like the prick of a graat-goad, harrying an obstinate animal along a path it did not wish to follow.

The subject of this dialogue with his son was a certain porcelain jar that reposed, well-stoppered, in a locked chest in an adjoining room. It held a brew of herbs and fungi of which twenty drops would fuddle the strongest man. Seventeen times at the start of the king-hunt Sir Bavis had sent a luck-cup to the most fancied contenders … spiked with the drug.

And yet this year, whenever he thought of it, the hand of a god squeezed cruelly around his heart.

He opened his eyes and looked harshly around at his servants. “Are you done?” he demanded.

They nodded fearfully.

“Then get goner!”

They went, scurrying like little thievish animals. Only Ambrus remained. Getting to his feet, Sir Bavis began to pace up and down, wishing with all his being that he had never made the boy party to this secret. He had told himself he had done so because it was time for Ambrus to team the skills of statecraft, but that had been a lie. He knew the real reason now: it was because the only thing his son knew how to admire in an older man, father or not father, was a greater degree of duplicity and cunning than he had as yet had time to master.

Abruptly he said, “We will send no luck-cup to Saikmar.”

Ambrus took half a step forward, words boiling to his lips. “But, father, if he does—!”

“Silence!” Like a spear, the command halted Ambrus in mid-rush. Sir Bavis continued, fumbling for words.

“Son, I have perhaps led you to … to an over-light regard for the gods. I have been tempted to … to change matters, to arrange things as I would have them, not as the gods willed. At least, that’s what I thought I was doing. But now I realize it was all illusion, for what the gods will comes to pass, and men they use only as their instruments. We have prospered for a long time—but not owing to any cleverness of mine: on sufferance from
them.
And their patience has finally run dry.”

He could not express the sense that went deeper than words, the sense of impending death, and beyond death the pit of torment in the Smoking Hills. He had only words to utter.

“Eighteen years, Ambrus, have made the king mighty beyond belief. Perhaps I have helped him. Perhaps but for me, and the—the luck-cups I have sent annually to his challengers, he would have been laid low. But now it is time to make an end of interfering. We must cast our destiny to him, and rely on his strength and cunning.”

He could read the rebellion in Ambrus’ eyes, to which words were no counter. Ambrus was saying, “But that this womanish Saikmar should oust Clan Parradile from ruling—it’s unspeakable!”

“If it happens, it happens,” his father answered heavily.

“It must not!” Ambrus stamped his foot. “Oh, why was I born into Clan Parradile that’s permitted to rule only when others default?”

“You’re greedy!” snapped Sir Bavis. “Envious of power! I’m ashamed for you. Do not men pray as they lie dying to be reborn into this clan you prize so lightly? Do they not hold it an honor to have the noblest of beasts for a clan-sign?”

“Oh, for you to speak is well enough!” Ambrus retorted. “How do you think I feel, seeing hope of such estate as you’ve enjoyed for eighteen years snatched from me?”

“By your words and actions now, you seem ill-fitted for any post of dignity!”

For a moment Ambrus was at a loss for speech. His eyes narrowed. Finding himself before a low table, he planted a balled fist on it for a prop and leaned forward. He said, “How shall I prove you wrong? Shall I arm my glider and go forth tomorrow to contend with the king? Better that I should lay him low than that—that weakling Saikmar!”

All Sir Bavis old strength came back with a sudden torrent of rage and horror. He strode toward his son, snapped his fingers on the youth’s ear like the jaws of a parradile, and used the pain as a lever to bend him from the waist. As he had not done since Ambrus was twelve years old, he clouted him enormously on the seat of his breeches.

“Go!” he said thickly when he had delivered the blow. “Go purify your mouth before you dare speak to me again
—or anyone! You must make atonement for your sacrilege!”

As though realizing at last the weight of what he had said, Ambrus’ anger gave way to fear, and he made no move against his father. His mouth working, but not uttering a word, he turned blindly to the door and went out Shocked to the core, Sir Bavis remained alone. That his son should speak of going forth against the king—himself a member of the king’s clan! How far was it from there to talk of killing a cousin … or even his father?

Through his sick dismay an important point gradually worked its way into consciousness. If he was capable of blasphemy, mere disobedience would be nothing to Ambrus—and he knew of the existence of the porcelain jar in the next room.

Sir Bavis stole, guiltily like a thief, to the door and peered both ways along the corridor. No one was in sight. Hastily he located the proper keys among the many which depended from his belt, let himself into the other room and opened the chest. There was the jar, mercifully untouched since last year. He seized it and hastened to the nearest window. Outside it ran a rain-sluice. He spilled the contents of the jar into it, and as the poison trickled away felt a great calmness come over him. With an exultant gesture he hurled the empty jar far into the distance, and heard it smash on one of the lower roofs of the fortress.

He returned to the robing-room moments before the chief acolyte came tapping at its door with his staff of office to say that the sun would shortly be setting. Sir Bavis, smiling a little, accepted the staff and followed the acolyte to the winding stair that led to the topmost parapet of the highest watchtower. In the distance could be heard the confused noise of the nobles as they arrived for the assembly that would succeed the sunset ritual.

Emerging on the flat stage that circled the top of the tower, he found all in order—robed acolytes, servers, sages, and his kinfolk, who wore the proud symbol of the senior clan, the stylized two-winged shape of the parradile their king. He greeted them stiffly as he went by.

At last he came to the western battlements and stared toward the twin furnaces of the sunset and the Smoking
Hills. Already the reddish disc of the sun was misshapen by the hot air rising over the volcanic range. And the wind must be from that quarter, for he could smell—

No. The scent of burning was from close at hand. Glancing down over the city, he could make out a smear of smoke indicating the site of a house afire. Fortunately it was not far from the river, which meant plenty of water was available to protect nearby buildings. From the volume and density of the smoke it was clear there was small chance of saving the house itself.

Out of curiosity he called to one of the young servers standing near him, a boy noted for the keenness of his eyesight “See you there!” he said, gesturing. “Can you discern whose house it is that’s burning?”

The boy hesitated. “It might be Trader Heron’s,” he said doubtfully. “But there’s too much smoke to be sure.”

Trader Heron’s! Why, what a disaster to befall him on the very day of his return to—

Sir Bavis glanced up, and realized that while he was distracted the evening star had come out like a water-white jewel on the dying-coal color of the sky. All else was instantly forgotten except the ritual words; he raised his staff and pointed toward the star.