Octobers Baby (27 page)

It took a half-hour to slog the short distance to the castle wall, then just minutes to set a grapnel and climb up. Five minutes later they had finished the two owl-faced creatures at the gate and prepared it for their retreat. If all went right, they would be well on their way before their visit caused an alarm.

Maisak was thick with smells and smokes, but in the outer works, in the winter chill, they encountered no other evidence of occupation.

“Lot of men here,” Kerth observed. “Wonder how they keep them fed?”

“Probably with transfers from Shinsan,” Derran replied. “That door there, with the brass hinges. That look like the one we want?”

“Fits the description.”

“Okay. Brad, you open. Kerth, cover.” He went in low and fast so Kerth could throw over him, but the precaution proved unnecessary. The corridor was empty.

“All right,” said Derran, “let’s see. Commissary down that way. Third room this way.”

In that room they found a half-dozen odd little people sleeping. “Look like rabbits,” Brad said, after they had been dispatched.

“Place’s supposed to be full of weirds,” Derran replied. “Kerth, find the panel. We’ll clean up.” Soon they were climbing a dusty circular stair in complete darkness.

The stair ended in a landing. There was a wall with peepholes. Beyond the wall lay an empty, poorly lighted corridor.

“Brad, you watch.” Derran felt for the mechanism that would allow access to the corridor. A small panel scraped aside. They awaited a reaction. Brad hastily assembled a crossbow.

“Go.” Derran tapped Kerth’s shoulder.

Daggers in hand, the man rushed the one door opening off the corridor. He paused beside it. Closed, he signaled. Derran joined him, pointed to the regular stair. Kerth checked it, signaled it was clear. Derran dropped to his stomach and peered beneath the door with his good eye. From his bundle of plans he took one of the Captal’s library, indicated the position of each person in the room.

A final problem. Was the door locked? Barred? Haroun’s captive had claimed there were no locked doors in Maisak, only hidden ones.

Derran stood, placed his back to the door, took its handle in his left hand, held his sword vertically in his right. Kerth readied his daggers, nodded.

Explosion. Derran slammed the door open. As hismomentum carried him out of the way, one of Kerth’s weapons took wing. Its pommel smacked the Shinsaner woman between the eyes.

Derran didn’t pause to appreciate the throw. It was what he had expected. Kerth had spent countless hours practicing.

The woman was the key. If she weren’t silenced, all was lost.

In passing he crossed blades with the old man, pushed through his guard, left him clutching his wound in amazement. He grabbed the woman, shoved a hand into her mouth, with his free hand tossed Kerth his dagger. Kerth took it on the fly and turned to two weird creatures who had thrown themselves in front of the little girl...

A wall opened up and men with swords stepped in. Ragnarson’s men.

FOURTEEN: The Roads to Baxendala

I) In by the back door

Though April was near, the snow remained deep and moist. The two men fought it gamely, but were compelled to take frequent rests.

“Must be getting old,” Turran grumbled, glancing up the long, steep slope yet to be climbed.

Valther said nothing, just made sure moisture hadn’t reached his sword. He seldom spoke even now.

“Almost there,” Turran said. “That bluff up there... That’s the one that looked like a man’s face.” The last time they had been in the Gap it had been summer and they had been hurrying to their fates in Escalon. Nothing looked familiar now.

Valther stared uphill, remaining statue-still till a bitter gust reached him. “Better camp,” he muttered.

“Uhm.” Turran had spotted a likely overhang. It would yield relief from the wind while they hunted a usable cave. Though those were reportedly numerous, they had become harder to find near Maisak.

“Think they’ve spotted us yet?” Turran asked after they made the overhang.

Valther shrugged. He didn’t care. He would feel nothing till they had come face to face with Mist.

“That looks like one,” said Turran, indicating a spot of darkness up the north slope. “Let’s go.”

Valther hoisted his pack and started off.

They had little firewood left. Turran used the minimum to heat their supper, then extinguished the blaze. They would wrap in their blankets and crowd one another for warmth. The mouth of the cave was small and inconveniently located anyway. The smoke didn’t want to leave.

During the night Turran shivered so hard that when he rose he had cramps.

Valther didn’t notice the chill.

For breakfast they had jerky warmed by their body heats, washed down with snow melted the same way.

Afterward, Valther said, “Time to begin.”

“Is she here?” Turran asked.

Valther’s eyes glazed. For a moment he stared into distances unseen, then shrugged. “I don’t know. The aura’s there, but not strong.”

Turran was surprised his brother showed that much spirit. He seemed genuinely eager for the coming confrontation.

Turran was not. He saw no way they could best the mistress of Shinsan. Surprise was a tool that could be used against anyone, but how did one surprise a power so perceptive it could detect an enemy’s heartbeat a hundred miles away?

But the attempt had to be made. Even in full expectation of death. It was a matter of conscience. They had betrayed those who had trusted them. Just trying would help even the balance.

“Ready?”

Valther nodded.

From his purse Turran took a small jewel the Monitor had given him. He set it on the cave floor. They joined hands, stared into the talisman. Turran chanted in liturgical Escalonian, of which he understood not a word.

In a moment he felt little monkey-tugs at the fringes of his soul. There was a sudden, painless wrench, as of roots pulling away, then his awareness floated free.

The sensing was nothing like that of the body. He didnot “see” objects, yet knew the location and shape and function of everything about him.

Valther hadn’t shed his clay. He was too distracted by obsessions that Turran could now trace. Valther lay trapped in a sort of in-between, and would remain there till Turran freed him or pulled him back to the mundane plane.

Just as well, Turran reflected. Valther might have gone haring direct to Maisak, to see Mist, and so have given them away.

There was no sense of time on that level. Turran had to concentrate to make events follow one another in temporal parade. He saw why the Monitor had told him not to use the stone unless he had to. He could get lost on this side, and forget his body, which would perish of neglect.

This was how most ghosts had come into being, the Monitor had told him.

While Turran had had no training in this sorcery, the wizardries of his family had taught him discipline. He began his task.

He floated the slopes between their hiding place and the bluff which masked Maisak. He felt no cold, nor any pressure from the wind.

He discovered he could sense not only the realities obvious to corporeal senses, he could look around, beneath, and within things, and it was with this faculty that he searched for entrances to the caverns honeycomb-ing the mountains. Many came clear. Most had been sealed. Those that had not, he probed deeply. He found the one he was hunting.

Just in time. His attachment to his body was attenuating. His will and concentration were suffering moments of vagary.’

As he reentered his body, he learned another danger of the magic.

Feeling returned. All the aches and pains of a hard march, more intense for having gone unfelt for a time. And his senses suddenly seemed severely limited. What a temptation there was to withdraw...

He reached out and brought his brother back.

Turran’s eyes opened. Their hands parted.

Valther had less trouble recovering. “Did you find it?” he asked.

Turran nodded. “I don’t want to try that again.”

“Bad?”

“Just the coming back.”

“Let’s go.” Valther was ebullient.

Turran rose stiffly, got his gear together. “We’ll need the torches. It’s long...”

Valther shrugged, drew his sword, ran his thumb along its edge. He didn’t care about the in-betweens, just the destination.

“What I wouldn’t give for a bath,” Turran grumbled as he hoisted his pack. “I’ll lead.”

It was snowing again. That was their fault. The past several months they had used their weather magic to confine winter’s worst to the high country.

The cave mouth was a half-mile from their hiding place, naturally but cunningly hidden. He had a hard time locating it. It had to be dug out. It was barely large enough to accept a man’s body. He sent Valther in, pushed their packs through, slithered in himself.

“I’ve got a feeling,” he told Valther as they prepared the torches, “that we’d better hurry. My memory’s getting hazy.”

But speed was impossible. The subterranean journey was long and tortuous and in places they had to dig to enlarge passages for crawling. Once they climbed twenty feet up a vertical face. Another time they had to cross a pit whose Stygian deeps concealed a bottom unguessably far below. At a point where several caverns intersected they found skeletons still arrayed in war gear of Hammad al Nakir. Though they pushed hard, they couldn’t make the journey in one day. They paused for sleep, then continued.

They knew they were close when they reached caverns where the walls had been regularized by tools. Those would be passages worked during the wars, when the Captal’s fortress had had to have space for thousands of soldiers.

Then they came on a large “chamber occupied by Kaveliners who supported the Captal’s pretender. Those who were awake were bored. Their conversation orbited round women and a desire to be elsewhere. Nobody challenged the brothers as they passed through.

“That was the worst,” Turran said afterward. “Now we take a side tunnel to the Captal’s laboratories and get into his private ways.”

Valther nodded, caressed the hilt of his sword.

It was strange, Turran thought, that their coming hadn’t been sensed or forseen. But, then, their weak plan had been predicated on inattention by the enemy.

In the laboratories, in a dark and misty chamber they recognized as one where transfers were made, they encountered trouble.

It came in the form of an owl-faced creature guarding the transfer pentagrams. He was asleep when they spotted him, but wakened as they tried slipping past. They had to silence him.

“Have to hurry now,” Turran said. The thing’s disappearance would raise an alarm.

Because they followed secret stairs they reached the Captal’s chambers before they encountered second trouble. And this came as a total surprise.

They pushed through a secret panel into a room full of murder. It had been a library or study, but now it resembled a paper-maker’s dump. Against one wall an evil-faced, one-eyed man, unarmed, struggled with a woman. He had the heel of one hand jammed firmly into her mouth.

An old man lay unconscious and bleeding on the floor. Now, with a pair of long daggers, a second killer stalked two weird creatures guarding a child. One creature was a frail winged thing defending himself with a blazing crystal dagger, the other an apelike dwarf wielding a short, weighted club.

All eyes turned to the brothers. The failure of hope in the winged man and ape-thing spurred Kerth. One of his blades shattered the crystal dagger while the other turned the dwarf’s club. Then the first arced over into thedwarf’s throat. He went down with a squeal.

“Burla!” the child screeched, falling on him. “No. Don’t die.”

Workmanlike, Kerth wheeled and dispatched the winged man.

When Kerth wheeled on the child, Valther said, “No.” He said it flatly, without the least apparent emotion. The assassin froze.

Kerth and Derran exchanged glances. Kerth shrugged, stepped away from the girl.

Sudden as lightning, a dagger was in the air, hurtling toward Valther. The man got his sword up in time to deflect it. It had been a gut-throw.

And a feint. The second dagger followed by two yards, bit deep into Valther’s right shoulder. Turran jabbed with his own blade, missed the block.

There was a crack from Derran’s direction. Mist sagged in semi-consciousness. The One-Eye blew on his knuckles.

Turran charged Kerth, who had already armed himself with the Captal’s weapon...

The universe turned red.

Mist forced herself up on her hands, stared through an open window. In the starkest terror Turran had ever witnessed, she croaked, “O Shing. He’s raised the Gosik of Aubochon!”

None knew the name, but each knew Mist. Their conflict ceased. In moments all crowded the window, staring up at a pillar of red horror.

“The portal!” Mist cried. “He’ll try the portal while we’re distracted. We’ve got to destroy it.”

Too late. The clack of armor echoed up the same stair Turran and Valther had used.

II) Approaching storm

March sagged toward April. Spring came to the lowlands. The days of reckoning drew rapidly closer. Ragnarsongrew ever more dour and pessimistic. Things were going too well. The censuses were in. Crops had suffered less than anticipated. In areas where there had been little fighting there had been surpluses. Only the Nordmen, it seemed, were suffering.

Volstokin hadn’t been as lucky. Ambassadors from the Queen Mother were pleading credit and grain in both Kavelin and Altea.

Favorable weather permitted early plowing. This, to Ragnarson’s delight, meant more men for summer service. Hedging against the chance they would be in the field at harvest, the Queen was buying grain futures in Altea, a traditional exporter.

The winter had caused changes at every level. Kavelin had shaken her lice out. As the kingdom settled down and vast properties changed hands, the citizens looked forward to a prosperous future. Because good fortune attended the Queen’s supporters, her strength waxed. Feelers drifted in from provinces still in rebellion.