The Tower of Fear (2 page)

The old woman’s frown deepened. Wrinkles became gullies of shadow. Where had they gotten a skull?

The boy dropped the headbone and booted it. It ricocheted off a man’s leg. Another man kicked it past the old woman. It vanished in a canebreak of legs. That was a busy street.

The old woman saw char marks on the skull before it disappeared.

Of course. They were razing the ruins near the Gate of Winter, where, after breaching the wall, several hundred invaders had perished in a fire touched off by errant sorceries. The area would be rich in treasures for small boys.

The pack raced after their plaything, disrupting commerce and generating curses both good-natured and otherwise. One boy, about six, stopped in front of the old woman. He was very formal as he said, “Good afternoon, Grandmother Sayhed.”

The old woman smiled. She had teeth missing. With equal formality, she replied, “Good day, young Zouki. You’ve been exploring where they’re tearing the old buildings down?”

Zouki nodded and grinned. He was missing teeth, too.

At the beginning and at the end, toothless, the old woman reflected. Like Qushmarrah.

The boy asked, “Can Arif come out?”

“No.”

Zouki looked startled. “How come?”

“It wouldn’t be safe. You boys will be in big trouble in a few minutes.” The old woman put her mending down. She pointed in the direction of the bay.

The boy looked, saw the eight black riders swaying like the masts of ships above the turbulent human sea. The leader rated a horse. The others rode camels. They came straight up the hill, leaving it to the mob to get out of their way. Dartar mercenaries.

They were in no hurry to get anywhere. They were after no one. Just a routine patrol. But if they saw the boys abusing the skull …

Zouki gawked.

The old woman said, “Get along now, Zouki. Don’t bring the heathen to our door.”

The boy spun and plunged after his friends, throwing a shout ahead. The old woman continued to stare at the riders. They were close now.

They were young. The leader was the eldest. He might be twenty-three. None of the others had reached twenty. They wore black veils to mask their features, but those were not heavy. One could not have been more than sixteen.

As the Dartar riders came abreast of her, that youngest’s eye met the old woman’s. Her stare was hot and sharp, accusing. The youth blushed and looked away. The old woman muttered, “Well you might be ashamed, turncoat.”

“Oh, Mother. He’s not responsible. He was a child when the Dartar tribes betrayed us.”

“Dak-es-Souetta,” the old woman hissed as she looked up at her daughter, who had come from the house with a child on her hip. “Never forgiven, never forgotten, Laella. Herod is a passing wind. Qushmarrah is eternal. Qushmarrah will stand when the invader is dust. Qushmarrah will remember the Dartar treachery.” She spat toward the mercenaries.

“Why don’t you go burn a memorial tusk at the gate of the citadel of Nakar the Abomination, Mother? I’m sure the Witch will appreciate the gesture.”

Laella retreated into the house. The old woman sputtered curses under her breath. Another symptom of the conquest. Children showing no respect for their parents.

She glanced uphill. The citadel of Nakar the Abomination could not be seen from her vantage. Even so, chills tramped her spine.

Some
good had come of the occupation. Even she would admit that much. Even she thought Ala-eh-din Beyh a hero. Before his sacrifice no one would have dared call Nakar “the Abomination” in any voice but the most breathless whisper.

*   *   *

The old woman pointed and Zouki’s gaze followed the spearthrust of her withered arm.

The Dartar riders were like something out of the nighttime monster stories the older boys told to scare their little brothers. All in black, with nothing but hard eyes and a bit of dark, tattooed cheek showing.

He spun and ran into the crowd, alternately yelling, “Yahoud!” and apologizing to the adults he jostled. With everyone taller, and the dust so thick at his level, it was impossible to see his friends. He thought he heard his name.

Bam!
He ran into Yahoud, who had just lifted the skull from the dust. “You dope!” Yahoud said. “Look out where you’re going.”

“Yahoud. Dartars.”

“What?”

“Dartars are coming. Right back there.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Yahoud looked at the skull a moment. “Here, Zouki. Go throw it into that alley.”

Zouki held the skull in both hands and wove through the press. The alley was not far away. Before he reached it several boys were following him, alerted by Yahoud.

He was about to step into the alley when he saw the vague shape back in the shadows. He paused.

A voice just loud enough to be heard said, “Bring it here, boy. Give it to me.”

Zouki took three steps, paused. He did not like this.

“Will you hurry it up?”

Zouki responded to the authority in the voice, taking another three steps. That was one too many. The man leaped. A hand slammed down on his shoulder, a clamp of agony. “Yahoud!”

“Are you Zouki, son of Naszif?”

“Yahoud!”

“Answer me, brat!”

“Yes! Yahoud!”

Children crowded the alley mouth, shouting. The man shifted his grip to Zouki’s arm and dragged him deeper into the shadows. Zouki screamed and kicked and struck out with the skull he still clenched.

*   *   *

Yoseh fought the awe that threatened to overwhelm him whenever he left the Dartar compound. So many people. So many
thousands
of people, more than he could have conceived of as inhabiting the whole world a year ago. And the bay? Who cold conceive such a sprawl of water, vast as an arm of the Takes, but the blue of heavenstone? With far vaster expanses of sea beyond the Brothers, the headlands flanking the strait that led into the bay.

And the buildings! He did not believe he would get used to the buildings, ever. In his native mountains there were no builded things at all, except ancient fortresses that had begun their fall to ruin centuries ago.

There was an eddy and swirl in the mass of humanity ahead. An exuberant cry went up.

“Medjhah,” Yoseh said. “That’s the mudha-el-bal.” Though that battle cry was still heard in the canyons of the Khadatqa Mountains, here even Dartars were denied it.

“And we should go cut them down, Yoseh?” his brother asked. Medjhah was an old Qushmarrah hand after a year in service. “Eight of us meting out capital punishment to kids amongst a couple thousand of their relatives? If the ferrenghi want them punished, let them see to it themselves. Let them bear the hatred.”

Their elder brother Nogah, who was the captain of their little company, turned in his saddle, said, “Well spoken, Medjhah. Yoseh, we’re not here to die for the ferrenghi. We’re here to take their wages.”

Yoseh grunted. Ahead, one of the children had gone to the side of the street to talk to a crone seated on a mat. Old people lined the street on both sides, some on mats, some seated on steps, some trying to hawk, some just watching the parade of life. It was a miracle they did not get trampled.

The crone pointed. The boy looked, saw Yoseh and his companions. His eyes bugged. He yipped and dashed into the crowd.

“You see?” Medjhah said. “The streets of Qushmarrah are free of heresy and sedition.”

The others laughed. Yoseh did not. As the youngest he was always the brunt of their humor. He looked at the old woman. She looked back, her face as empty as a statue’s. But he could sense the angry hatred within, like the lakes of molten rock simmering deep within the holy mountain Khared Dun. Sometimes the god in the mountain became angry enough to spew fiery destruction upon anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby. The crone reminded him of the holy mountain.

That old woman had lost somebody at Dak-es-Souetta.

He felt the heat climb his cheeks. He tore his gaze from the old woman and called up all his Dartar contempt for city dwellers. But the embarrassment continued to mount. He had forgotten what he was. Now all these sessile goat flops would see a Dartar betraying his feelings.

Yoseh was very conscious of his youth, of his inexperience, of the unfaded newness of the manhood tattoos upon his face, and of the lance across his lap. Medjhah assured him that the self-consciousness would pass, that none of these city veydeen even noticed.

Yoseh knew that. But knowing with the head and knowing with the heart could be separated by the journey of the hundred nights.

Someone shouted. Yoseh saw the children rush to the side of the street. Adults followed after more shouts. The children seemed distressed.

Nogah yelled. He begun swinging the butt of his lance, urging his horse through the press. Yoseh did not understand. He had difficulties with the cants and dialects of Qushmarrah. But something was happening that Nogah considered to be within their venue. He kicked his mount. The camel promptly tried to take a bite out of the nearest citizen.

The crowd was thickest around the mouth of an alley about four feet wide. The children clustered and raised a repetitive wailing chant that sounded like,
“Bedija gha! Bedija gha!”

Nogah shouted at Faruk. Faruk sounded the horn that would summon any Dartar or ferrenghi troops within hearing. The crowd began to thin immediately. Nogah said, “Yoseh, Medjhah, Kosuth, go in there after them. The rest of us will try to get around and cut them off. You. Boy. Hold these animals.”

The Dartars dismounted in a clatter. Still baffled, Yoseh followed his brother and cousin into the dark, dank, stinking alleyway. His lance was unwieldy in that narrow passage.

Fifty feet in they heard a cry. It sounded like an echoing call for help.

Twenty feet onward the alley split at right angles. They paused, listened. Medjhah shrugged, said, “This way,” and turned to his right.

Ten steps. That cry again, from behind. The Dartars turned and ran the other direction, Yoseh now in the lead and more bewildered than ever. He kept his lancehead extended before him.

Fifty yards. A hundred. All upslope, tiring. “Slow down,” Medjhah said. “Let’s be careful. It could be a trap.” The veydeen were not all passive about the occupation.

A whisper of scuffling came from up ahead.

The alley bent to the right. Yoseh dashed around the angle and sensed a presence. It resolved into vague shapes struggling. A man trying to drag a boy. Panic swept the man’s face momentarily. Then he flung a hand toward Yoseh.

The alley filled with a blinding light and heat and a child’s cry of despair. Yoseh went down as Medjhah and Kosuth stumbled into him from behind. The fire burned like the furnaces of hell.

*   *   *

“Gorloch, thou art merciful,” Azel murmured as he watched the target take something from an older boy and hurry toward the alley whence he watched. He had anticipated a long and difficult stalk. They had become wary. But this bird was flying to the snare like it wanted to be caught.

What the hell was the kid lugging? A goddamned skull. Where the hell did he get that?

Azel fell back a few steps, hoping the kid’s eyes would be used to the glare off the bay and he would come into the alley blind.

No such luck. The kid was not seeing good, but he was seeing good enough. He stopped a dozen feet too soon.

“Bring it here, boy. Give it to me.” The kid moved some. Not enough. He wasn’t completely unwary. “Will you hurry it up?”

That got the brat close enough. Azel leaped, grabbed. The kid started yelling. Azel made him give his name. Taking the wrong brat would be worse than doing nothing.

The kid kicked and yelled and flailed around with the skull. Azel ignored that, backed up, watched the brats at the alley’s mouth, yelling themselves.

Then figures in black appeared, their weapons glittering.

Azel cursed. “Dartars. Where the hell did they come from?” Fear snapped at him. He spent a part of it by yanking the boy violently. He would lose those whoreson turncoats in the maze webbing the Shu quarter south of Char Street. No one alive knew that one better.

Only the brat wouldn’t let him get the head start he needed. He kept on fighting and kicking, yelling and tripping. Azel smacked him around as much as he dared, but not as much as he wanted. There would be no tolerance shown if he delivered damaged goods.

Then they were there in the labyrinth with him, the mercenary betrayers, with absolute terror coursing before them, and for the first time ever Azel found himself compelled to employ his penultimate recourse.

The ultimate recourse fluttered blackly behind his lids as he clung to the brat with one hand while flinging the contents of the envelope, his eyes sealed.

Heat drove him back.

The Dartars cursed and clattered into one another. The kid squealed and quit struggling. Azel opened his eyes. “That’s more like it, you little bastard.” He glared at the Dartars. If he didn’t have to keep the kid in hand he would stick them with their own spears.

He grabbed up the by now passive boy and draped him over his shoulder. The boy clung to the skull as though it was a protective talisman.

This time it was hard. This time it took all his knowledge of the labyrinth to lose the hunters. Dartars and Herodians and angry citizens were everywhere. Azel zigged and dodged and at times even crouched in hiding, the kid clamped helpless and silent in his arms. Of all the damnable luck, those black-clothed camel jockeys turning up when they did.

There was a warning in what had happened. The easy times were over. And they were barely past halfway down the list. With Gorloch knew how many more yet to be discovered.

There was going to be some serious talk after he made this delivery. No way was he going out again with nothing but a pack of flash to cover his ass.

He reached the outlet from the maze that lay nearest his destination. The brat started to struggle again, but that did not last. And he finally turned loose of the damned skull.

Azel scanned the square he had to cross. He saw no sign of excitement. He had distanced the hunt but probably not the news that a child had been snatched. Should he try it now, in the long shadows of afternoon, or await the friendly darkness?