The Legend of Broken (50 page)

“Is all this true, Veloc?” Caliphestros asks, without either rancor or censure. “But I understood that the Priestess may choose any mate she desires from your tribe—in emulation, say the Kafran clergy, of their own customs—and that none dare refuse her.”

“Well, Lord Sorcerer,” Heldo-Bah declares, now holding a mockingly proud hand toward Veloc, “allow me to present the only one who ever has!”

Trying to ignore Heldo-Bah’s caustic comment, Veloc also attempts to direct the conversation elsewhere: “But how come
you
to know so much of
our
tribe, my lord?”

“I?” the old man says. “It was many years ago—a lifetime, one could say, without exaggeration. I had served the God-King Izairn long and faithfully enough to gain his trust, and he bade me undertake a study of your tribe. Together with my acolytes, I assembled an enormous store of information—a store that would subsequently become very useful during my years of exile.”

“Oh?” Heldo-Bah inquires pointedly. “And what has become of that collection? For there are more than a few in our tribe who contend that you carried out your ‘study’ by dissecting the living bodies of Bane prisoners.”

“Can you never cease your childish prattle, Heldo-Bah?” Keera says angrily. “Those were fables, made up by a few Outragers.”

“I’m simply asking, Keera,” Heldo-Bah says. “You know that I despise the Outragers even more than you, or indeed than any other Bane. I merely wish to know what truth, if any, there is in the tale.”

Caliphestros snorts in dismissal: “If you will believe such stories, Heldo-Bah, there is little point to continuing either our discussion or our actions in concert.” The old man’s features grow momentarily puzzled: “But is it true that you despise the Outragers—and that others in your tribe harbor similar sentiments?”

Keera and Veloc nod in turn, leaving it to Heldo-Bah to say: “Despise them? Why, we as good as left one for dead, not a week ago. And an important one, at that—”

“Heldo-Bah!” Keera commands. “There is no reason to reveal what we may or may not have—”

“Oh, but there is, Keera,” Caliphestros says. “If you will pardon my interrupting you. This hostility among the Bane against the Outragers was not a fact that was contained in my study of your tribe. During my years in Broken, I actually tried to rouse similar sentiment against another group of murderers turned sacred soldiers—the Personal Guard of the Merchant Lord, of whom we have just been speaking. Those posturing villains who, after my banishment, tortured and murdered my acolytes.”

Heldo-Bah’s mangled brows come together in distrust, and his filed teeth again show in the skeptical curl of his lip. “Truly, old man?”

Caliphestros takes in an excited breath, yet he hesitates: he knows that the veracity of his next words, and the greater trust that they will—with luck—breed, cannot help but be crucial to the future of the little band’s present undertaking; but as ever, secrets shared make him uneasy. “What I tell you now, I say in confidence. Fate having brought us together in a vital undertaking, I must trust in the sincerity of each of you, and must also be able to trust that you comprehend the need for constant discretion—for that undertaking will require from us all the best efforts and truest belief in one another that we can muster. And so—can you, all three, pledge me that trust and that assurance? And will you believe me if I pledge the same?”

Among the foragers, it is Veloc who nods assent first, quickly and eagerly; Heldo-Bah, not surprisingly, continues to appear uneasy, but also agrees to the compact, after only a few moments’ further consideration; but Keera, somewhat surprisingly, displays the most cautious aspect. “If that be so, my lord,” she says, “then—in the spirit of the honest alliance you would establish between us—there is yet one thing that we must tell you.”

Both Veloc and Heldo-Bah appear suddenly alarmed, as though they know exactly what Keera is referring to, and dread its announcement; yet Caliphestros—to the surprise of all the foragers—smiles kindly, indeed, almost indulgently. “Yes, I thought there might be.”

Heldo-Bah throws his hands toward the branches of the forest ceiling. “There—you see? He reads our very thoughts—an undoubted a sorcerer, just as I have always maintained!”

“Hush, Heldo-Bah!” Veloc orders; and then, to his sister, he murmurs, “So long as you are certain, Keera …”

Keera keeps her gaze on Caliphestros’s gently smiling face. “How did you know, my lord?”

“How could I not?” answers the old man. “I do not know if you realize as much, Keera, but you Bane, inscrutable as your activities may sometimes be, are not obscure, when conversing with one another. And last night, as we were packing my instruments and materials, there was one subject that all three of you seemed anxious to mention—save that every time any one of you came near to it, one of the others would give the careless speaker a boot in his backside, or the flat of your hand across his head.”

Caliphestros coaxes Stasi a few steps away from the others, and faces northeast, toward Broken: for the distant mountain and the city walls atop it have now been plainly revealed by the dawn, across the river and through gaps in the much thinner lines of trees on the riverbanks. “So,” he says, his voice scarcely audible. “She has been in the Wood again …”

The foragers move slowly closer to the spot on which stand the white panther and her rider. “She has,” Veloc says. “And you know more about this Wife of Kafra, my lord, than simply her station and rank—as we supposed you must. And, apparently, that she has been in the Wood before. But you are certain that we’re talking about the same witch?”

Caliphestros inclines his head in agreement, but keeps his eyes on the horizon. “A tall woman with coal-black hair that falls in straight, gleaming sheets, and eyes of a darker green than Stasi’s, but just as brilliant?”

“The very one,” Heldo-Bah answers, clapping his hands to the sides of his head in resignation. “Allow me to guess—she is your daughter? Or are you yourself a half-breed demon, who had your way with some mortal female—and a female of great beauty, she must have been—when you still had legs?”

To the forager’s somewhat accusatory suggestions, Caliphestros offers only a small laugh. “You are wrong in every respect, Heldo-Bah. The woman you saw is no kin to me—or no
blood
kin, I should perhaps say. She was—
is
—a princess: the daughter of the God-King I served, Izairn, and sister to that good man’s heir, Saylal.”

“That cannot—” Veloc stops before he can complete the question, allowing himself time to frame it more cautiously. “I would not have thought that possible, my lord. For the Wives of Kafra, Bane historians have long known, are the God-King’s mistresses, as well.”

“Fool, Veloc,” Heldo-Bah chastises quietly. “Did you truly think that a woman demented enough to seduce a Davon panther would pause at bedding her own brother?”
†

Keera alone sees that Caliphestros winces and trembles abruptly at this question. “My lord?” she asks. “Are you unwell? Shall we rest a short while, and prepare some of your medicines?”

The old man smiles faintly at the question. “No, Keera … although I thank you. But not even I have medicines to cure such foolishness and tragedy …” Again he looks up and through the trees to the northern horizon, as if he can see into the chambers of the God-King’s palace itself; and, as he indulges this seeming vision, he murmurs just one name:

“Alandra …”
‡

Keera approaches Caliphestros and Stasi carefully; and when she is beside them, she summons the nerve to ask, “That was—is—what she is called?”

Caliphestros nods again. “It was and is, Keera. A name derived from the legends of those whom the people of Broken know as the
Kreikisch,
and the people of
Roma,
or
Lumun-jan,
call the
Graeci.
†
In particular, the name comes from the ancient tale of another great city that was put to siege—just as we may well be forced, one day, to lay siege to Broken.”

Ignoring a scoffing grunt from Heldo-Bah, Keera says, “I do not wish to reach for conclusions before we have sufficient reason, my lord, but—”

Keera grows suddenly silent, turning toward the northwest with an expression that Veloc and Heldo-Bah know only too well: for it betrays the detection of some new danger. A gust of wind has coursed through the series of long, high gorges that comprise this portion of the valley of the Cat’s Paw, and finally made its way to the rock on which the tracker stands with Caliphestros and Stasi; and, almost immediately after turning away to the left, Keera turns back round again, to glance down and see that the white panther has also detected something on the breeze, and that her large, brick-red nostrils are flared open.

The panther’s ears slowly go down and back, down and back, until they sink beneath the crown of her head; and she is already growling in both alarm and warning, as well as opening her mouth and taking quick, steady breaths in the quietly peculiar way that cats do at such moments. Caliphestros, in a whisper, explains to Keera that, when employing certain exceptionally sensitive organs found inside their mouths, cats can actually
taste
scents
‡
and therefore danger: a most impressive ability that seems, to the uneducated, a sort of magic.

Yet Keera is little interested in academic matters, just at this instant:
“Death!”
she suddenly cries. “Perhaps not
the
Death, but death, all the same, and much of it. I would place it—” Her nostrils again flare, as the cat growls. “Above the point at which we emerged from the deep forest and reached the river; and it comes—” She dashes to the edge of the Wood and climbs a gnarled cherry tree, judging the increase or decrease in the power of the scent from that point. She then returns to the spot where Stasi stands with her rider, the old man knowing enough to let the tracker go about her work without interference. “From very near the river, if not from within the valley itself. Indeed, my best guess would be that it originates along the silted banks of one of the large pools that form where the river first descends. Those calmer stretches, that is, where creatures of every variety come to drink and bathe.” Her upper teeth bite at her lower lip, as her confusion and concern heighten: “For there are many varieties of death and decay, within this one stench …”

Stasi soon steps to the left, moving onto the more solid ground at the edge of Davon Wood; and there she paces uneasily to and fro, her eyes searching the northwest forest and sky, both of which are still gripped by darkness sufficient to allow her imagination full sway. Caliphestros strokes her neck and urges her to be calm, but with little success: “It was in just such a spot,” explains the old man to the others, “that Stasi and her cubs were first spied by the party of Broken hunters and drivers that gave them chase deeper into the Wood.”

Keera studies the white panther’s motions and the expressions of her face and voice for a few more moments, and finally says, “It seems that Stasi returns to that terrible time even now—as if she senses that those who carried out the attack upon her family are also responsible for the death she now detects; and she desires another chance to settle—”

Stasi suddenly releases her resonant, hauntingly high-toned cry of alarm. She then rushes a little deeper into the forest proper, to a nearby cluster of thick roseberry
†
bushes that grow out of a patch of particularly soft Earth that is covered by a thick layer of moss. Here, she gracefully but deliberately dips her left foreleg and side, causing Caliphestros to lose his balance atop her and, clutching his twin bags and his bundled crutches, to roll into the patch of almost harmless bushes and, soon, into the thick moss at their base. Then, briefly glancing back to see that the old man has survived without mishap, Stasi dashes away, keeping just within the line of the forest’s edge, where the ground is easier to grip, and soon disappearing into the northwesterly wilderness.

“Stasi!”
Caliphestros cries, before he has even gotten himself into a sitting position. As the foragers rush to assist him, he continues to shout in fear, “Stasi, do not be rash—you must wait for our help!”

{
vi
:}

“My lord!” Keera says, leaping into the enveloping bushes, finding a path through the more widely spaced branches at the base of the thicket, and thus a way to the old man’s side, as quickly as we might, by now, have grown to expect of these Bane. “Are you injured?” Keera says, when she reaches him.

Caliphestros grinds his teeth hard, already grabbing at a small deerskin pouch that hangs round his neck. “No—not injured, Keera,” he says, groaning. “It is nothing more than the old pain …” This statement bleeds into another groan and more teeth-gnashing: “
Nor is it anything less.
May the true deities who watch over this world damn the golden god and his priests to such eternal fire as is forever mine!”

“
Hak!
Be careful, now,” Heldo-Bah laughingly scolds, as he cuts his way through the berry bush branches. “You’ve spent too much time in our company already, Lord of Wisdom—blaspheming like some cheap Daurawah whore, you shock me!”

“But what happened, my lord?” Veloc asks, his mind, like Heldo-Bah’s, fully capable of carrying on a conversation as his hands and arms slash away at the strong bush expertly enough to avoid the painful cuts that the larger thorns can inflict.

“As I have told you, Veloc, Stasi’s actions and purposes are her own,” the struggling Caliphestros replies sharply, taking three pressed balls of what Keera can tell, simply by their scent, are powerful combinations of herbaceous medicines out of his pouch, then quickly putting them into his mouth and chewing them, seemingly oblivious to what the tracker surmises must be their terribly bitter taste. “Although I cannot pretend that both my pride and other, pettier feelings of my heart do not suffer when these things happen …” Already having revealed far more about this moment than he would have liked, even in friendly company, Caliphestros abruptly ceases such talk and calls out: “Heldo-Bah! I assume you have some quantity of potent drink on your person?”