Limits (18 page)

“I swear.”

Sung bent down and kissed her heartily on the lips. Then he set about freeing her. He set out tea while she was rubbing her wrists. There was a lump on her head. The tea seemed to help.

She said, “We must be very near the treasure. The pointer led me back the way we came…straight into your arms, in fact.”

Sung chuckled.
He fished the silver box out of his saddlebag. He opened it, took out Sparthera’s counterfeit bronze teardrop, hesitated,
then
dropped it on the rug. He stood up with the genuine object in his hand.

Sparthera cried, “Stop! That’s—” Too late. Sung had flung the genuine pointer into a grove of low trees.

“I’ll keep yours,” he said. “It’s only for the benefit of people who think a box has to contain something. Now watch.”

He pressed down on the silver box in two places and twisted four of the small stone ornaments. The box folded out flat into a cross-shape with one long arm.

“You see? There never was a spell on the bronze lump. You took it to a spell-caster, didn’t you?” Sparthera nodded. “And he put some kind of co
n
tagion spell on it, didn’t he?” She nodded again. “So the bronze lump sought what it had been a part of.
The box.
It’s been in there too long.”

Sung pulled the faded red lining off of the surface. Underneath, the metal was engraved with patterns and lettering. Sung stroked a finger over the odd markings. “It looks like a valuable trinket on the outside. No casual thief would just throw it away. I might have a chance to get it back. But a magician turned robber would take the pointer, just as you did.”

She’d had it in her hands!
Too late, too late.
“When can we start looking for Gar’s treasure?”

“Tomorrow morning, if you’re so eager.
Meanwhile, the afternoon is growing cold. Come here and warm my heart.”

“Sung, dear, just how cl…” Sparthera’s words trailed off in surprise. She had walked straight into Sung’s arms. She had behaved like this with no man, not since that damned tinker. Her voice quavered as she said, “I don’t act like this. Sung, what magic is on me now?”

He pulled back a little. “Why, it’s your own oath!”

“I feel like that puppet you showed me! This isn’t what I meant!”

Sung sighed.
“Too bad.
Well—”

“I don’t mean I won’t share your bed.” Her voice was shrill with near-hysteria. “I just, I want power over my own limbs, damn you Sung!”

“Yes. I tell you now that binding yourself to me does not involve b
e
coming my concubine.”

She pulled away, and turned her back, and found it was possible. “Good. Good.
Sung, thank you.”
Her brow furrowed suddenly and she turned back to face him. “What if you tell me different, later?”

She might have guessed that Sung’s answer would be a shrug.
“All right.
What was I trying to say earlier? Oh, I remember. Just how close is the
King’s Way? We don’t want that caravan camping next to us. Somebody might get nosy.”

Sung agreed.
They had moved a good distance down the King’s Way before they camped for the night.

In the morning Sparthera saddled Twilight and loaded Eagle while Sung packed his gear on the unicorn. The wingbeast caught his attention.

“Where did you get that creature?”

“Near my father’s farm.
It was running wild. I think it’s some sort of magic beast.”

Sung shook his head sadly.
“No, quite the opposite.
In my grandfather’s day there were flocks of beautiful horses that sailed across the sky on wings as wide as the King’s Way. He rode one when he was a little boy. It couldn’t lift him when he grew too big. As time went on the colts were born with shorter, weaker wings, until all that was left were little beasts like this one. I used to catch them, when I was a boy, but never to fly. Enchantment is going out of the world, Sparthera. Soon there will be nothing left.”

It was a mystery to Sparthera how her companion read the talisman. It looked the same to her, no matter which way he said it pointed. Sung tried to show her when they set off that morning. He set the flattened-out box on the palm of her hand and said, “Keep reading it as you turn it. The runes don’t actually change, but when the long end points right, the message becomes ‘Ta netyillo iliq pratht’ instead of ‘tanetyi lo—’”

“Skip it. Just skip it.”

In any case, the pointer continued to lead them straight down the King’s Way.

They reached an inn about dusk, and Sung paid for their lodging. Spa
r
thera watched him setting the spells against thieves. Sung was not secretive. Quite the contrary: he drilled her in the spells, so that she would be able to set them for him.

Though he had freed her from the obligation, the magician seemed to consider lovemaking as part of their agreement. Sparthera had no complaints. The magician was adept at more than spells. When she told him this, she expected him to preen himself; but Sung merely nodded.

“Keeping the women happy is very necessary in Sung House. How much did I tell you about us, that first night?”

“You were the immortal Sung. You abdicated in favor of your son.”

“I was bragging.”

“What were you? Not the stablehand, I think.”

“Oh, I was the immortal Sung, true enough. We rule a fair-sized farming region, a valley blocked off by mountains and the Yellow River. We know a little magic—we keep a herd of unicorns, and sell the horn, or use it ou
r
selves—but that’s not what keeps the farmers docile. They think they’re being ruled by a sorcerer seven hundred years old.”

“The immortal Sung.”

“Yes. I became the immortal Sung when I was twenty. My mother set a spell of
glamour
on me, to make me look exactly like my father. Then I was married to Ma Tay, my cousin, and set on the throne.”

“That’s…I never heard of
glamour
being used to make anyone look older.”

“That’s a nice trick, isn’t it? The spell wears off over twenty years, but of course you’re getting older too, looking more and more like your father, magic aside. When I reached forty my wife put the
glamour
on my eldest son. And here I am, under oath to travel until nobody has ever heard of Sung House. Well, I’ve done that. Someday maybe I’ll meet my father.”

“What happens to your wife?”

“She took my mother’s place as head of the House. It’s actually the women who rule in Sung House. The immortal Sung is just a figurehead.”

Sparthera shook her head, smiling. “It still sounds like a nice job…and they didn’t throw you out naked.”

“No. We know all our lives what’s going to happen. We think on how we’ll leave, what we’ll take, where we’ll go. We collect tales of other lands, and artifacts that could help us. There’s a little treasure room of things a departing Sung may take with him.”

He leaned back on the bed and stretched. “When I left, I took the pointer. It always fascinated me, even as a boy. I collected rumors about Gar’s treasure. It wasn’t just the gold and the jewels that stuck in my mind. There is supposed to be a major magical tool too.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a levitation device. Haven’t you ever wanted to fly?”

Sparthera’s lips pursed in a silent O. “What a thief could do with such a thing!”

“Or a military spy.”

“Yes…and the Regency raised hell trying to find Gar’s treasure. But of course you’d keep it yourself?”

“Or sell it to one government or another. But I’ll fly with it first.”

That night, cuddled close in Sung’s arms, Sparthera roused herself to ask a question. “Sung? What if I should have a child by you?”

He was silent for a long time. Long enough that she wondered if he’d fallen asleep. When he did answer it was in a very soft voice. “We would ride off into the mountains and build a great hall, and I would put
a
glamour
on the child to raise up a new House of Sung.”

Satisfied, Sparthera snuggled down into the magician’s arms to dream of mountains and gold.

They woke late the next morning, with the dust of the caravan actually in sight. They left it behind them as they rode, still following the King’s Way. “This is ridiculous,” Sung fretted. “Another day and we’ll be in Rynildi
s
sen!”

“Is it possible that this Gar actually buried his loot in the King’s Way?”

“I wouldn’t think he’d have the chance. Still, I suppose nobody would look for it there.
Maybe.”

Around noon they reached a region of low hills. The King’s Way began to weave among them like a snake; but the silver box pointed them stea
d
fastly toward Rynildissen.
Sung dithered.
“Well, do we follow the road, or do we cut across country wherever the pointer points?”

Sparthera said, “Road, I guess. We’ll know if we pass it.”

And road it was, until the moment when Sung sucked in his breath with a loud “Ah!”

“What is it?”

“The talisman’s pointing that way, south.” He turned off, guiding the unicorn uphill. Sparthera followed, pulling the wingbeast along after her. The unicorn seemed to be grumbling just below audibility.

Now the land was rough and wild. There were ravines and dry creekbeds, and tumbled heaps of soil and stone. They were crossing the crest of a hill when Sung said, “Stop.”

The unicorn stopped. Sparthera reined in her horse. The wingbeast walked into Twilight’s haunches, got kicked, and sat down with a dismal
bray.

Sung ignored the noise. “Down in that ravine. We’ll have to try it on foot.”

They had to move on all fours in places. The bottom of the ravine was thick with brush. Sparthera hesitated as Sung plunged into a thorn thicket. When she heard his muttered curses stop suddenly, she followed.

She found him surrounded by scattered bones, and recognised the skull of an ass. “The pointer reads right in all directions. We’re right on it,” he said.

A pair of large stones, brown and cracked, looked a bit too much alike. Sparthera touched one.
Old leather.
Saddle bags?

The bag was so rotten it had almost merged with the earth. It tore easily. Within was cloth that fell apart in her hands, and a few metal ornaments that were green with verdigris.
Badges of rank, for a soldier of Rynildissen.
In the middle of it all, something twinkled, something bright.

Sung had torn the other bag apart.
“Nothing.
What have you got?”

She turned it in her hand: a bright faceted
stone,
shaped like a bird and set into a gold ring.
“Oh, how pretty!”

“Hardly worth the effort,”
Sung
said. He worked his way backward out of the thicket and stood up. “Diamonds have no color. They’re not worth much. You see this kind of trinket in any Shanton jewel bazaar. Give it here.”

Sparthera handed it over, feeling forlorn. “Then that’s all there is?”

“Oh, I doubt it. We’re on the track. This was just the closest piece. It must have been part of the hoard, or the talisman wouldn’t have pointed us here. Even so…how did it get here? Did Gar lose a pack mule?”

He opened out the pointer. With the bird’s beak he traced a looping curve on the silver surface. “There. The talisman is pointing true again. There’s still treasure to be found.”

They climbed back uphill to their steeds. The King’s Way was well b
e
hind them now, and lost among the hills. They were picking their way across a nearly dry stream bed when Sung said, “We’re passing it.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know yet.”
Sung dismounted.
“You wait here. Sparthera, come along—” and she realized he’d spoken first to the unicorn. He picked his way carefully up a vast sloping spill of shattered boulders: leg-breaker country. At the top, panting heavily, he opened the box out and turned in a circle.

“Well?”

Sung turned again.
He spoke singsong gibberish in what might have been a lengthy spell; but it sounded like cursing.

“Are you just going to keep spinning?”

“It says all directions are wrong!”

“Uh?
Point it down.”

Sung stared at her.
Then he pointed the talisman at his feet. He said, “‘Ta netyillo—’ Sparthera, my love, you may be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“I am delighted to hear it. My shovel’s still on the horse. Shall I go for it?”

“Yes. No, wait a bit.” He started walking, staring at the talisman. “It must be deep.
Yards deep.
More.
Forget the
shovel,
there must be a cave under us.” He grinned savagely at her. “We’ll have to find the entrance. We’re almost there, love. Come on.”