Perilous Seas (22 page)

Nothing
like fire to spook horses! Two were off into the trees already. The third had
caught in one of the mules’ tethers and was down. The mules were breaking
loose but two of them had gone over also, and all were screaming in terror.
Still the mysteriously glimmering figure on the horse flailed the torch around,
and now the mules were up. Pounding hooves seemed to shake the clearing,
gradually dwindling as the stampede faded into the forest, until all the
animals had gone into the night and only two horses remained: one rolling
helplessly, obviously injured, the other still bearing the maniac with the
torch. Three young men ran impotently, uselessly, over the meadow, howling in
wordless rage.

Then
the rider hurled down the dying brand and wheeled the horse, and came across
the clearing like an avenging hurricane, hooves hardly seeming to touch the
ground. It was Kade! Incredible Kade, riding a mad horse as if she were Azak
himself, wearing nothing but her flimsy cotton slip, white hair fluttering in
the night.

Had
she been armed with a lance, she might have skewered one of the marauders in
her charge. As it was, he leaped to catch the reins, stumbled aside at the last
minute, and fell heavily.

The
jailer’s grip had slackened. Inos straightened her legs, slamming her
head up into his face with a satisfying impact, throwing all her weight back
against him, then letting it all drop again. The two of them sat down
simultaneously, hard. She lashed out backward with an elbow, hoping to hit him
in the belly, but he grabbed her hair and pulled her over at just the same
moment, so she tilted and missed and caught him between the legs instead. He
seemed to have a sensitive spot there, for he spasmed and cried out. She
pounded again, harder, and he lost interest in her altogether. She scrambled
free.

She
was on her feet and running as the horse came thundering by, and she made a
wild grab for the harness as if she were an acrobat, but all she caught was a
glimpse of Kade’s terrified face above her. Brutal impact threw her aside
and into the ground hard enough to explode the world into fragments.

For
a moment she was stunned ... in pain and breathless and too battered to care
what happened. She tried to rise. A stab of white-hot agony in her ankle
stopped her. Reality flooded back.

Grass
was burning over by the shelter, a fountain of yellow light in the dusk. Kade
was still somehow clinging to that berserk horse. It must have balked at the
river, or she had wheeled it, for now it was pounding back toward the two men
still on their feet. Again it seemed one must be ridden down. Again the man
leaped aside in time, and this one did not fall.

And
the other stepped between Inos and the spreading grass fire-and he had a bow!
He was taking aim; the horse had turned again. The arrow flew, Inos yelled a
warning, the horse reared, hooves flailing the sky. Then it sank back on its
haunches and toppled over sideways. Kade! Inos could not see what had happened
to Kade.

Silence.

No
rider rose from the fallen horse.

Again
Inos tried to stand, and again was stopped by that fearful pain. She must have
broken her ankle.

One
by one the men limped over and stood, glaring down at her.

The
one who had fallen was clutching his arm in a way that reminded her of Kel
breaking his collarbone years ago, going after birds’ eggs on Windle
Scarp. The man who had been her jailer was holding his groin, bent over and
muttering horribly. His nose had bled darkly all over his chin and his shirt.
The other two were gasping for breath and looking just as mad.

She
wanted to cringe, to make herself as tiny as possible before their fury. There
was no amusement or mockery now in their slanted eyes, only Hurt and Pain and
Revenge. Two of their mounts had run off, two been killed or crippled, two men
injured, and all four had been made to look like idiots. They were not after
fun now. They were going to make her pay. Long and hard.

Her
fingers scrabbled on the ground, gathering sand and grit for throwing in eyes.
She wasn’t going to cringe and she wasn’t going to cry out no
matter what they did. She was a queen, for Gods’ sakes!

“Animals!”
she shouted. “Serves you right. Wait till my other friends arrive! You!
Go and bring my robe from over there...”

One
of the younger pair, one of the uninjured, said something emphatic and stripped
off his shirt. She couldn’t do much against those muscles, even if the
other men did not help him. He kicked off his boots, glaring at her. Then he
dropped his pants, and she instinctively averted her eyes. Oh, Gods! The
drumming of her heart was making her feel giddy. This time there could be no
escape, but whatever happened she wasn’t going to give in. She would make
them fight for every scrap of satisfaction, and if she could claw out an eye or
two then Evil take the consequences because they would surely kill her
afterward anyway.

Was
all that noise just the beating of her heart? Hooves? A third time Inos was
saved by a distant sound of hooves. A third time they all turned to look.

A
horse came galloping out of the trees. It was huge and spectral, gleaming white
as if wrapped in glory. Its rider was garbed all in white, and his cloak
streamed like aurora in the night. Horse and rider glowed alike with unearthly
silver radiance that brightened as they came thundering across the meadow,
making the ground tremble. The pixies started to shout in alarm, the stripper
hastily hauling up his pants. And they all fell silent, freezing in position.
Inos felt a wave of calm and peace flood over her. She was saved. The occult
had arrived.

The
sense of serenity was as distinctive as a signature. That, and a flicker of red
fire around his head, told Inos who her savior was even before he drew close
and reined in his magnificent luminous stallion.

When
she had first met him in the seclusion of his home,

Sheik
Elkarath had wom a sumptuous robe of many colors. On leaving Arakkaran he had
set aside such unbusinesslike ostentation in favor of plain white garb. Of all
his finery, he had retained only his gem-adorned agal, as if it were a small
vice he could overlook in himself. Now a halo like blood flashed from its
rubies. The trailing edges of his kaffiyeh shone brighter than moonlight
alongside his snowy eyebrows and beard, making them seem to glow also, while
the draperies of his kibr flowed to his boots in waves of white glory. He was
almost too bright to look upon, and he lighted the glade as far as the trees.

“Greatness,
you are a welcome sight,” Inos said weakly. She could feel herself
floating in strange surges of emotion, like long ocean swells, up and down and
up ... There was pain and terror and screaming-horrible-hair-tearing hysterics
inside her somewhere, there was a broken ankle and worry about Kade and Azak,
but all those were overlain by the silken web of calm that she had recognized
as Elkarath’s. It was an intensification of the spell he had used on her
every day from their first meeting until she had fled from him at Tall Cranes.
It was magnified now to soothe her after what she had endured. The slow ups and
downs must be variations in the intensity of the magic as he sought to adjust
it to her needs.

He
nodded calmly from the eminence of horseback. “I regret that I did not
arrive sooner, Majesty. However, it would seem that you have suffered no harm I
cannot heal. “

Her
ankle had stopped throbbing already. She fingered the swelling absently. “My
aunt?”

Elkarath
glanced across the clearing to the body of the felled horse. “She has
been stunned, but she is in no danger. I shall attend to her when we have meted
justice here.”

“And
Azak?”

“He
also will survive. I was just in time for him, also.”

A
wave of relief burst through the emotional blanket, and Inos muttered a swift
prayer to the Gods. “This is good news indeed, Greatness!”

“Humph!”
The white brows came down in a scowl, and Elkarath turned his regard on the
four frozen youths. They twitched slightly and mumbled. Harmless as flies in
amber, they drooled and rolled their eyes in their efforts to move lips and
ongues.

“These
vermin,” the sheik said icily, “shot down a man from ambush and
then did not have the grace to kill him. He might have lain there suffering for
days so far as they knew, or cared. As it was, he had almost drowned in his own
blood when I arrived. Else I had been here sooner.”

He
swung a leg and dropped as nimbly as an adolescent, although the stallion stood
at least seventeen hands. Then it didn’t. The great horse shrank and
faded and in moments had become merely another shaggy mountain pony like many
Inos had seen in the foothills on the far side of the Progistes. Its occult
glow dimmed and vanished. Even through the euphoria spell, Inos felt prickles
of shock, and she heard the four immobilized pixies mumble gutturally.

The
least surprised seemed to be the pony itself. It flickered ears and swished
tail in a sort of equine shrug, then lowered its head to crop the lush grass.

The
sheik knelt to examine Inos’s ankle. Inos had no clothes on. He chuckled
softly. “Do not be shy. No woman has secrets from me. “ He laid a
cool hand on the swelling and it subsided. Her other scrapes and bruises were
healing also.

“There!
That will do for now.” The old man rose, with none of the stiffness he
displayed when there were others around to tend him. He held down a courtly
hand to help Inos rise also. Silver sandals appeared on her feet and, as she
came erect, a silken robe enveloped her. A filmy shawl materialized over her
filthy, tangled hair. He had either forgotten underwear or was too tactful to
use magic so intimately.

She
mumbled thanks and bobbed a shaky curtsy. He bowed in response and laughed
softly, as if he were enjoying this rare opportunity to exert powers he
normally concealed. He did not look straight at her, though. He never did.
Being a sorcerer, he could see without looking, she supposed, and that had
become a habit to him. But she always found it irritating.

The
prisoners moaned and slobbered and twitched in their efforts to move. Lighted
by Elkarath’s awesome light, they all seemed younger and slighter than
they had before-unusually broad, perhaps, and with a curl to their hair that
she had rarely seen on men before, and only by artifice on women. Their eyes
were large and angled like elves’, stretched wide now in terror. The
irises were pale hazel, almost gold. But they were no hideous monsters, merely
youths little older or taller than herself. How could they have behaved so?

“Scum!”
said the sheik. “Who are they?” Inos asked.

He
shrugged. “Not formal guards at their age. Just a hunting party, I fancy.”

“They
are well groomed, civilized-looking. Their clothes are well made.”

“Ha!
Their behavior was not civilized. They had been stalking you for some time.
Their lives are forfeit, so it matters not who they are, nor whence they came. “

The
amber eyes rolled in their sockets. Curiously, Inos was discovering that she
felt very little hatred toward her attackers. Perhaps it was because they
looked so helpless and she could remember how it felt to be pinned down by
sorcery, or perhaps because she had escaped without permanent hurt. Maybe it
was only the sorcerer’s spell working on her emotions, but they seemed
very young to die.

The
sheik was stroking his shining white beard in dignified consideration. “They
did not actually consummate their viola tion of your person, Queen Inosolan,
but the intent was manifest. Your escape was narrow enough to justify granting
you the traditional satisfaction.” He drew his dagger and offered it to
her with a flourish, hilt first.

Inos
stared at it in bewilderment. “What am I supposed to do with that? “

“Take
what they were so eager to give.” She recoiled a step and turned to meet
the horrified gaze of the immobilized youths. “No!” she said. “I
am not a public executioner! And I would not stoop to barbarity like that.”

“Indeed?”
Elkarath murmured, and snatched away the occult blanket he had laid upon her
emotions.

A
thunderbolt of rage and hate struck her, followed at once by a shivery wild joy
at having the tables turned. Again her heart thundered in her ears. She tasted
bile burning her throat as she recalled what these four moral cripples had done
to her and what they had intended. The gloating, the mockery, the actual pain,
and above all the planned degradation ... four men against one woman ... her
hand trembled as she reached for the dagger. Revenge would feel very good.

And
she heard her father’s voice. “Do what is good,” he had told
her once, “not just what feels good.” When? Why? She could not
recall the occasion-perhaps something very trivial in her childhood. But the
precept was not trivial. With a great effort she mastered her fury and turned
to face the old man.

“No!
They deserve punishment, I agree. But not by me.” The sheik raised his
snowbank eyebrows in disbelief and for once looked at her squarely.

“Punishment
and vengeance are not the same,” Inos shouted. “You are judge here.
Yours is the power. They are your captives. Judge then, and execute your
judgment. “ She took a deep breath, steadied her voice, and added, “And
if it please your Greatness-I prefer the world this way. I want to take life as
it is and as I am, not a painted replica seen through the eyes of a drunkard. “

He
frowned. “You are trembling.”

“I
am not ashamed of that under the circumstances. I would rather tremble than be
a puppet.”

A
faint smile rumpled the folds of his chubby red face. “Spoken like a
queen! So be it. “ He replaced the dagger in his sash and turned to the
four captives. “You are judged unfit to live. Die, then, and may the Gods
find more good in you than I can. “