Reave the Just and Other Tales (46 page)

My hands clutched the graceful bars of the gate, while within myself I floundered, gasping. Sher Abener had indeed surpassed me. With fire and coercion, he had altered the foundations of my life. My dilemma appeared before me in terms I could neither recognize nor understand. I did not ask how Tep Longeur could speak with such surety of the Thal’s attitudes, or of Sher Abener’s history. I did not think to ask. The eerie distress in the overseer’s eyes sufficed to convince me that he spoke truth.

Yet if he spoke truth, then it was also true that I could not oppose him. No appeal or argument of mine would impinge upon the transformation of my circumstances. My life depended utterly upon the presumption that Tep Longeur would accept my instructions and carry them out. My merchantry and all my wealth derived from that conviction. If he refused me now, I was powerless to compel him.

In that way, he bereft me of dignity even more thoroughly than did his new master. I might have preferred to face the necromancer’s power again. Tep Longeur’s forced madness was as fatal to me—and far more hurtful to my self-regard.

“Yet you are not such a man, Tep,” I panted, although my resistance was broken. “You have said it yourself. How do you carry out his wishes?”

His teeth set against each other as on a bit. Between them, he answered, “With great pain.”

To that I could make no reply. Beyond question, I was powerless.

Yet where could I go? I had no other home than Benedic. And the nearest municipality where I might obtain temporary lodging was some ten leagues distant, too far for even a hardy man—which I was not—to journey afoot under this sun. Indeed, my feet were better suited to being massaged with perfumed oils than to arduous treks. I would cripple myself within a league. Within two, I would perish of thirst.

Helpless to do otherwise, I cast my fate abjectly upon the overseer’s mercy. “Tep,” I beseeched him, “I must have a horse. I will die upon the road without a horse.”

His anguish wrung my heart, although I was its victim. Unlike myself, he was accustomed to responsibility and action. Doubtless he had taken pride in the necessary authority of his place as my overseer. Perhaps he had gone so far as to take pride in my dependence upon him. By his own admission, his plight was an excruciation to him. The cost of his distress was ledgered in his face.

“That’s not permitted.” He spoke so thickly that he seemed to choke himself. “The Sher desires only your immediate departure. He doesn’t care that you die.”

My dignity was gone. I made no effort to reclaim it now. “Tep,” I groaned, “I am lost. Without you, I am naught.” A well-meaning fool, empty of hope. “I have no power to save myself.” Though I saw how my words pained him, I did not hold them back. “If you do not succor me, I must abandon myself where I stand, and accept whatever ill Sher Abener intends for me.”

The prospect of being enslaved—
taken
as Tep Longeur had been
taken
—horrified me. Yet I saw no alternative to it.

Despite Sher Abener’s tyranny, the overseer retained some vestige of the man he had been. Anguish glared from his gaze, but he did not refuse me again. Instead, he raised one strong hand before him, leather palm inward, and struck himself a resounding blow across the cheek.

Thus compelled, he informed me in bitten words, “I’ll do it.”

At once, he turned to the guards. “A horse for Urmeny,” he demanded. “Quickly. Before the Sher stops us.”

Apparently, it was fear rather than necromancy which commanded the guards. Tep Longeur ruled them with his own authority as much as with Sher Abener’s. Together, they pelted in disarray toward the stables.

Though my life hung on the delay, I turned my back to the gates while I waited. The Tep struck himself again, and yet again, and I could not bear the sight. Truth to tell, I did not mean to look at him ever again, if I could avoid it. My own catastrophe consumed me. I could not attend to his.

Nevertheless he demanded my notice. In a voice which must surely have drawn blood from the soft flesh of his throat, he pronounced, “Urmeny, it’s your place to help us.”

Involuntarily, I flinched as though he had slapped at me. Turning my head, I directed my dismay toward him.

“The merchantry was yours,” he continued cruelly. “The villa was yours. We were yours. The burden is yours. If you don’t rescue us, we’ll never be free. Even death won’t redeem us from the Sher.”

Rescue them?
I?
At another time, I might have laughed my scorn into his face. Only the open agony of his regard restrained me.

I lowered my gaze. “You have mistaken me for my father,” I answered in a groan. At that moment, I loathed myself. Nevertheless I spoke the truth. “I am not such a man.”

There Tep Longeur could not gainsay me. Though he continued to stand against me, he did not speak again. No other farewell passed between us, regardless of our years together. When his men brought the beast they had selected—a tired, old nag with a gait like a broken wheel—he opened the gates for it, but took care to ensure that I could not attempt to enter.

His men had cinched a traveling saddle to the beast’s back. Pitifully, I set my foot to the stirrup and pitched upward. Gripping the reins in both hands—I did not trust my seat otherwise—I hauled my horse’s head around and departed from my home and my life at a wrenching canter.

So it was that I left Benedic on a mount I could scarcely endure, lacking both water and food, with no coin beyond the few saludi I chanced to carry in my purse, no destination except to reach a place where I might gain lodging, and no purpose other than to escape Sher Abener.

I could not say whose voice haunted me more as I rode, the necromancer’s or Tep Longeur’s.

I will render the marrow from your bones, and drink it while you
die!

If you don’t rescue us, we’ll never be free.

Under the shade and locusts of Benedic, the sun’s warmth had seemed kindly, beneficent. But when I had left behind the washed plaster of the municipality’s walls and risen among the hills which bordered Benedic to the west, I learned that a benison may also be a curse. In my merchant’s finery, I was foolishly attired for a journey, and the trees which graced the hillsides—olive, locust, and feather-leafed litchi—gave no cover to the dusty roadway. Before my trek was truly commenced, I had begun to ooze like a squeezed pomegranate.

Within a league, I had shed my formal cloak. Within two, I had bundled my robe behind my saddle, leaving myself clad in naught but a loose blouse, my flowing underbreeches, and a fop’s ornate sandals. Still the weight of the sun accumulated on my head and shoulders, bearing down like the threat of Sher Abener’s malice. Under its pressure, I soon saw difficulties and dilemmas throng the shimmering heat before me.

Thirst was the most immediate of my discomforts, although it was among the least of my concerns, for I knew that beyond the next ridge of hills lay the river Ibendwey. Hunger would assume larger proportions as my journey extended itself. However, the lack of substance in my purse posed a far greater peril. Doubtless there were men and women in the wide world who would have called my few saludi wealth, but I did not. With the coin I carried, I could purchase lodging in an austere inn for a brace of days, no more. Then they would be gone.

Worse still was the fact that I could not long call upon the credit of my merchantry to sustain me. Beyond Benedic’s boundaries, men with whom I had indirectly shared many transactions would perhaps make me welcome—briefly—in the name of our joint ventures. Yet I hardly knew their names. I did not know the men themselves at all. While Tep Longeur had cared for my interests, I had paid them a profound inattention. And it was certain those men would refer their curiosity concerning my circumstances to Benedic, and would learn that I could no longer command my own riches.

What would they do then, those men whose names I could scarcely recall? Why, naturally they would be overtaken by pity for my helpless plight, as well as by righteous indignation on my behalf. Being strong, forthright, wise, and above all generous, they would devise some means—I could not imagine what—to quash my dire foe, restoring what I had lost. Would I not have done the same in their place?

Honesty and thirst, and the burnished pressure of the sun, compelled me to admit that I would not. I had enjoyed wealth too much, and contention too little, to bestir myself against any injustice which did me no personal harm.

Clearly, I must prepare myself for the likelihood that men with whom I had once shared profit would simply turn their backs upon me, once they discovered the truth of my condition.

Then what would I do?

I had no idea at all.

If you don’t rescue us, we’ll never be free.

Tep Longeur’s appeal galled my sore heart. I was not fit to carry such burdens—as he well knew. If I could not prolong my life with alms in the days ahead, I would die as surely as if I had given myself over to Sher Abener’s mercy.

Daunted by such considerations, I was in a state approaching despair as my nag crested the intervening ridge, and I saw below me the course of the river Ibendwey.

Eager to slake my thirst, I amended my pace. As I descended, however, I soon observed that the river was swollen and swift, troubled with silt. Quantities of rain must have fallen in the mountains which fed the watercourse, for the current surged and frothed uncomfortably. Even my inexpert eye could discern that a customarily placid ford had become turbulent and uncertain.

In dismay, my heart sank still lower. Here was another obstacle I could not surmount. Not only had the crossing become impassable, but the water appeared undrinkable as well. Now I must either suffer from thirst or make myself ill with unclean drink—and yet neither choice would improve my lot, for I would remain within reach of the necromancer’s power.

Surely a malign fate had stirred my stars when Sher Abener had first selected my merchantry to serve him. My doom had been fixed from that moment, and nothing I might do would alter it.

Thus consumed by my own difficulties, I did not immediately notice that there appeared to be a man caught in the midst of the tumultuous stream.

Blinking against the perspiration of my brow, I peered downward. There, beyond question—a man perched on a jutting boulder midway between the banks of the Ibendwey. How he had come to place himself in such straits I could not at first imagine. Had he attempted the ford afoot, despite the force of the river? If so, he was either a fool or a madman. Or perhaps the Ibendwey had risen suddenly, surprising him with its rush. My caravaneers had often described similar misadventures. Taken unaware, the man below me had gained the only sanctuary within reach before the current could bear him away.

Madman, fool, or unfortunate, he was well stranded. Until the Ibendwey eased its spate—or until some rescue chanced upon him—he remained ensnared, as helpless to correct his plight as I was to answer Sher Abener’s ire.

Whipping the reins, I belabored my mount to a brisker pace.

The man crouched upon his boulder with his knees against his chest, his head downcast. He seemed unaware of my approach—certainly he did not react to it. Instead he appeared to stare vacantly into the current as though he studied the swift tumble of silt for auguries.

At first, I could see little of him. Rudely cropped hair was his head’s only covering. Boots clogged with mud, an unmarked and indefinite brown shirt, worn leather breeches—so much was visible. To that extent, his apparel suggested that he was a traveler. Yet he had no sack or satchel for a traveler’s belongings and supplies. His possessions must have been lost when the rising of the river overtook him. In every particular, he was indistinguishable from the grime and wear of his sojourns.

Nevertheless as I neared the marge where the Ibendwey’s rush gnawed at my road, and halted to scrutinize the man more closely, I discovered that despite his lowered head and dull raiment he seemed more
vivid
than his circumstances or surroundings. He drew my gaze as though he made all other things illusory by comparison. An air of significance resembling a hint of the sun’s own fire defined him against the far verge of the river. In some fashion, he was more truly
there
than any man I had ever met.

How he achieved this effect mystified me. Whatever the cause, however, its result was to convey the disturbing impression that his crouch upon the boulder was the only aspect of the Ibendwey’s spate which held any importance.

Hardly thinking what I did, I shouted, “Ho, fellow! Do you require aid?”

He seemed unable to hear me—still unaware of my presence. I told myself that my call had not carried over the loud grumble of the river in its ragged banks. Yet I was troubled by the eerie conviction that he would have heard me easily if I had not lacked the
vividness
to attract his notice. Like the peril in which he found himself, I had no importance. If my pampered and pleasant life in Benedic had owned any real substance, Sher Abener could not have stripped me of it with so little difficulty.

This belief was unreasonable as well as unexplained. The traveler’s need was obvious—and there was no one else to help him.

In response, a sudden, unwonted fury overcame me. My composure had passed its limits. I had suffered altogether too much thirst and heat and humiliation.

“Ho, fellow!” I shouted again. “Do you take pleasure in your plight? Heed me, fool! There is no other rescue! I have seen no one else on the road.”

When he did not so much as raise his eyes, I added, “I will abandon you where you sit!” As I myself had been abandoned by those who held my life in their hands.

For the moment, I had forgotten that I had nowhere else to go.

Yet I did not forget that I possessed a horse. The man trapped before me had none. Contemptible though my nag undoubtedly was, the beast might be able to brave a current which I could not confront myself.

And this deaf traveler was indeed trapped. The Ibendwey’s spate gave no sign that it might abate. In time, of course, the waters would recede, as they must. But that might not occur for days. Indeed, the river might swell still more while the storm in the mountains ran its course—might swell until it swept the man from his perch and carried him to his death. Already I seemed to see the torrent thrash higher against his rock.