The Golden Sword (24 page)

Once initiated, stalking will not be denied. Stalking is assiduous.

Stalking culls the weak from the strong. In both hunters and hunted does it perform this function of nature.

Stalking tests its own strength.

Stalking is both method and purpose. It realizes itself without judgment.

Stalking would not be other than it is, and therein lies the key to its success.

Adjuration: If the stalker, upon the trail of his prey, is in turn stalked, he may choose to continue, that by feigning ignorance he who stalks the stalker might reveal himself. Survival is both the goal and prerequisite of stalking. Stalking is always ready.

Before stalking, who can stand but those who also stalk?

—excerpted from
Ors Yris-tera

The screeling cries of pandivvers feasting kept time to the threx’ hooves as we passed between the last appreis set upon Frullo jer. In the ruddy glow of sun’s rising I could see them wheel and dive above us amid clouds of wirragaets, ultimately visible as a dark mist upon the air. The tiny insects were everywhere; we had been long apprised of them. We breathed them. We blinked them out of our eyes and flapped them from under our cloaks as the threx sped across the ever-hillier barrens toward Mount Opir in the west.

Had I been willing to swallow a thousand of them, I would have asked Chayin what had brought them out in such numbers. They died by the millions, crushed upon us as we rode. The cloud of them was neras across, fading only with full daylight.

One of the plain-leathered strangers had come to guide us. He said no word, but sat upon his brown threx with his helmet-cap masking his face, awaiting us. We followed him upon a circuitous route perhaps twenty neras. The ground began to roll, and then we were met by five of his brothers, all dressed alike in deviceless northern-style breast armor. There was another there, and that one was Lalen gaesh Satemit.

I had expected words from Chayin upon this account, but I soon realized that he did not mark the man before him as that crell whom I had freed. I did not feel the need to enlighten him. We rode among those taciturn men without a rest or a word spoken until well past midday, over stubbly tundra and progressively more difficult terrain. Larger and larger harinder bushes clumped in breaks before us, their thorny brambles scraping tithe from our flesh as we thrust our way through them. In the later day we turned into a dry stream bed and followed it up into the foothills of Opir.

The air became noticeably cooler and blue-shadowed with the bulk of the Yaicas around us. Small needle trees grew here, and strands of stunted southern thala struggled with their chancy hold upon the slopes. Just out of a copse of almost respectable trees we came upon a small clearing where the smell of the air was suddenly so rank I found myself gagged and choking. Guanden leaped and snorted, and I suppressed a moan as I put more strain upon my battered arms and shoulders to hold him.

One of our guides urged his mount over to Chayin’s. All the men held their threx with difficulty. Three were fitting arrows to strung bows that had been slung from their saddles.

“With your permission, Cahndor,” said the one who seemed leader of the men, when he saw Chayin’s drawn sword, “we would dispatch this apth from a safe distance.”

Chayin considered this gravely, while under him Saer twitched and shivered. Even that calm-tempered and sensible beast was discomfited at the smell that reached him. The men had fanned out in a circle, their threx’ rears toward Chayin, and I and the man with ready bow beside him.

“You may do what you will,” said Chayin. The killing of apths is tightly regulated in the Parset Lands; all apths belong to the cahndors, who are accountable for their use to Tar-Kesa.

I scanned the trees. I had never seen one.

There came to our ears a great cracking of branches and a guttural squealing. The apth crashed into the clearing, incredibly fast for all its enormous bulk. A red threx screamed in terror and walked backward upon its hind feet before that hairy, huge-tusked head with its short square snout and tiny red eyes. The rider of the retreating beast leaned over his mount’s shoulder. His bow thunked, and the arrow penetrated a hand’s length into the apth’s side-set left eye. Then the other riders were upon it. It reared up on its short stubby legs, its humped neck quivering with barbed, feathered bolts. Streaming brown blood, the thing wheeled and charged leftward, that it might impale a tormenter upon those curved tusks, tossing it in the air and gouging again and again the soft underbelly of its victim with thrusts of its powerful neck.

An arrow lodged in the apth’s water sack, and the crested hump deflated before my eyes. The apth, screaming, blinded by its own water, took a fatal arrow, just below those oversized jaws. It went to its knees and laid its tiny head between them. Only its tail twitched. Then that too was still, and the thing was dead.

The stench, coming from offal stuck to the huge beast’s hairy coat in thick chunks and rotting gore splattered there from the death struggles of previous victims as the apth tossed them about in the air, was truly unbearable. Not even for the trophy of those man-long tusks could any stand it long enough to dig them out from their sockets. We left it there, waiting only for the men to retrieve those few arrows still unbroken that bristled in the apth’s thick hide.

My stomach rumbled angrily, turned numb as my backside from the unrelenting pace, and still we climbed. Through the uncertain light of dusk and on into the dark with no stop, even to rest the laboring threx, did we assay the treacherous slopes of Mount Opir. The air was thin and clear, and Wirur the winged hulion rose twinkling and fully visible in the sky. The just-waning moon spewed a cold and silvered light upon the trail. To my right a sheer archite face rose up, and upon my left was a sudden drop into black-shadowed crevice. We went single file. I held my breath against the wind that tugged and pulled at me and set my cloak abillow. Soon the crevice was replaced by another cliff, and we picked our way along the bottom of the chasm formed between them in pitch dark. I looked straight up at the tiny slice of visible sky, and saw only the north star Clous. Then that was gone, as we went under some natural bridge. I heard Guanden’s feet splash, and realized that a stream coursed its way through the cavern. An ebvrasea screeched, and another answered. Our arrival had been announced.

We stood upon a ledge that sloped gently down into a valley limned clear in the moonlight. At its center, the stars were reflected back into the sky from the calm mirror of a mountain lake. Perhaps twenty neras around, the valley was bounded by rock upon all four sides. Mount Opir towered over the lake in her belly, glittering like a woman at feast of conception with the ice that mantled her regal head and shoulders.

As the threx assayed the twisting downward trail, I made out low, clustered shelters upon the valley floor. We did not go toward these, but took a sharp turn left, along one sheer cliff wall.

Only when we were upon them and dismounting did I notice the squared-off openings that entered into the cliff walls themselves. Old, even ancient, must be these cliff dwellings; not since before the rebuilding have we of Silistra made use of the terrible forces needed to hew those huge rectangular edifices from solid rock. Such square and ugly architecture as this squat giantism had nothing of Parset or even gristasha culture about it.

My speculation was cut short by the appearance of two men with torches, who conversed in low tones with the leader of those who had brought us. Though I had seen no sentries, I had no doubt that the Ebvrasea’s nest was near to impregnable to those uninvited. Everywhere my eyes found unsealable cliff face. The men separated, Lalen of Stra going off with two others. He made a casual gesture of farewell. One with a torch, he who had asked Chayin for permission to kill the apth, motioned us to follow.

We did this, I looking over my shoulder long enough to mark the direction in which they took Guanden and Saer.

Down a torchlit archite passage, glassy-smooth and geometric, our guide led us. The torches were set upon stands on the floor. I was later to learn that this was done because the ancient passage rock had been treated with some substance which made it impervious to hand tools. At intervals down the passage’s length I saw such diverse items as fresh threx
^.
dung and long-dark power lamps, some broken, with wires hanging down from them like fossil slitsas. Also I marked upon each passage numbers and legends in pre-hide Silistran, their messages unfaded through countless years. Like ghosts they spoke to me: “Med. 1,” “Surg. 2,” “Power Aux.,” Master Air.”

I noticed at intervals upon the walls visual displays whose colored graphs still shone brightly, ever shifting. A practiced eye could, from those displays, gauge how many were in the passages, where they were located, even when and where they had entered. This answered one of my questions—why there were no signs of habitation other than human and threx. The doors were air-scanner-controlled, programmed from some central source to admit only certain life forms and attendant matter through polarized molecular barriers that must still exist in every doorway. I sniffed the air and belatedly realized it to be the clear, sterile air, temperature-regulated, of mechanical processing. I was struck with wonder that such a place yet existed, functional, above the ground; and more, that the Day-Keepers had not claimed it.

We turned down a corridor that was not archite green, but a sterile white. It said “Admin. 1-5, Comm. Inter., Intra.” As we passed by the many cubicles upon either hand, it became obvious that the Ebvrasea was using the small rooms in this area as stables. Makeshift rope barriers ran down its length, and curious threx stuck their heads over the ropes and peered at us as we hurried past.

Another turning found us again in a natural archite passage, in the center of which was a threx with three men attending her. She was hobbled, and one of the men had his arm up the beast’s rectum to the shoulder. He pulled it out and peeled off the shoulder-high glove of transclucent denter intestine as we approached them. I put Chayin’s bulk between us, suddenly cold and trembling. Would the time match my hest?

“She has doubtless settled,” the Ebvrasea assured the others. The sound of his voice dazed me helpless. If I could have spoken, I would have called his name. If I could have moved, I would have run to him. I stood frozen, behind Chayin, my tiask’s mask upon me.

“Take her back,” he ordered, in northern Silistran, running his hand down the threx’ rump as he turned to face us. We might have stood in the halls of Arlet, so unchanged was he in a worn tunic of leather, with just a knife slung upon a parr belt at his hips, but that no chald lay there beside it. His tanned face broke into a grin when he saw the cahndor.

“Chayin!” Sereth clasped him in his arms, and as they embraced, his gaze fell upon me. His face, more tired and lined than I recalled it, drained white, all but the scar that traced its length, which turned livid. Icy cold chased the pleasure from his dark eyes. Not even a moment had it taken him to know me, though I was bedraggled, masked, and dirty, wrapped in Estrazi’s cloak.

He released Chayin, who moved uncertainly from between us.

“I—” Chayin started, but Sereth’s sharp gesture cut him off.

“I appreciate that which you have done in my behalf. I would speak with her alone. Go and get settled in my quarters. We will join you.” His voice was a whisper from the abyss. He jabbed a finger at our guide. “Install the cahndor, and see to his wants.” The man hurried to obey. Sereth leaned against the archite wall, his arms folded over his chest, his eyes shadowed by the mass of brown hair that fell across them. I remembered the silky feel of it from another time, when he lay all covered over with dust, unconscious beneath the Falls of Santha. I did not move. I did not speak, though my mind told me to go upon my knees to him and beg forgiveness.

After a time he dropped his hands to his sides, and the chaotic rolling of events ceased to deluge me through his memory.

“Come here.”

Woodenly I walked the few steps toward him and stood so close I could see his nostrils flare as he breathed. He raised his hands to my head and removed the mask from my face. His fingers touched my cheek, my eyes, and when they came upon my lips, I kissed them. Our eyes met and held.

“Have you no greeting for me after so long?” he asked softly. His arms went around me, pulling me tight to his chest. He buried his face in my hair. I wished that it was clean and sweet-smelling for him.

Then was my hest full upon me. The pattern of light and dark on his worn circlet armor, the smell of him, the feel of those arms about me, his warm moist breath against my neck—all were as I had waited so long for them to be. And owkahen—the time corning to be; I knew it not. This did not trouble me. I partook of his strength and was not afraid. Everything I had done to stand thus with him became as nothing. My paralysis left me.

I breathed his name, and the taste of it did me good. His hands ran up and down my back, tangled in my hair, confirmed the need in him for me. I closed down my sensing as best I could. He relived his pain and could not share mine. Waiting for him to come again into the land of words, I pressed against his hardness, content.

“All this time,” he murmured, his lips against my ear. “I have lived Celendra’s lie, though something in me knew it false. I thought, too often, that I had indeed gone mad. Though there has been much madness, I hold you—proof that such was not of my making.” He brought his face down to mine, so close that his breathing was a gentle breeze upon my cheek. “Where did you go that day? Where have you been all this time? And what brings you here before me at the side of my only ally, with his sign of rank upon your breast, garbed tiask, even to the chald of Nemar upon you?”

“I had to come to you. Since my return to Silistra I have been about it. I have my own questions. If you will have me, I will stay here with you. We can take our leisure at the answers.” So simply did I throw my will against my father’s. Though by Estrazi’s word Sereth was not for me, I disclaimed his rights upon me.