Shards of Time (42 page)

Soon all of them were betting with his money even as they liberally cast around slurs on his ancestry. Seregil took it all with vapid, self-deprecating good humor, hoping the money
didn’t give out before they did. The hour grew late and the gamblers began to drift away. Lemiel, who was well into his cups, started to go and Seregil pulled a deck of cards from his pocket.

“I haven’t had much luck tonight with bakshi, but I’d love to try my hand at some Blue Goose,” he wheedled. “Do people play that here?”

“Women do,” Lemiel scoffed, taking the cards and riffling them with an expert hand. “Do you know Beggar’s Get?”

“I do, and agree that it is a superior game.”

Despite being drunk, the other man shuffled and dealt skillfully. They looked over their hands, discarded, and placed their bets. Seregil was careful to lose three games in succession, and finally protested an empty purse.

Lemiel grinned as he swept up his winnings. “I guess that finishes you for the night then, doesn’t it?”

“Not quite,” Seregil replied. Shifting seats so that the few remaining patrons in the tavern couldn’t see, he took the golden arm ring from his pocket and placed it on the table between them.

Lemiel’s bloodshot eyes widened at the sight of it. He reached for it but Seregil moved it back out of reach.

“I thought you might recognize it,” he said, keeping his voice low.

“What are you doing with that?” Lemiel asked. “I brought it to the governor and he gave me a reward for turning it in.”

“I’m a very close friend of the new governor and she gave it to me.” He winked and stuck the tip of his tongue out the left corner of his mouth in a crude intimation of just how close he and the new governor were.

“You lie!” Lemiel laughed. “You’re a bum boy if I ever saw one.”

“Looks can be deceiving. Now, shall we discuss where you got this, and if there’s any more where it came from?”

“What makes you think there’s any more?” Lemiel asked, but his gaze slewed away to the left for an instant—a liar’s tell.

“Because you’re a man who knows how to keep something back for himself if I ever saw one.” Seregil winked again.
“Why, what
do
I have in my pocket?” He felt around for a moment. “Well, look at this! I have another purse I forgot all about.” He tossed the leather money bag onto the table next to the arm ring. The coins inside clinked alluringly.

Lemiel eyed it like a dog at a butcher’s booth. “Guess there’s no harm in telling. I inherited it from my brother.”

“I see. And how did he come by it?”

“Can’t rightly say.” Lemiel’s eyes flicked sidelong in the tell again.

“He wouldn’t perhaps have been a workman at the oracle’s cave site?”

The other man pursed his lips, still staring at the money bag. “He was, but he never said where he found those things. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“You can’t possibly be blamed. So, there were other items?”

“A few. Just bits and pieces, really.”

Seregil picked up the money bag and rattled the coins. “I’d really like to have a look at those ‘bits and pieces.’ I can make it worth your while.”

“I don’t have them with me.”

Seregil pocketed the money bag and started to rise.

“Hold on now,” Lemiel said. “I never said I wouldn’t show you. I just don’t carry them around. You’ll have to come back to my house.”

Wandering off into the night with a stranger armed with nothing more than his poniard was a risk, but Seregil figured he could take Lemiel if he needed to, drunk as the man was. His sense was, though, that the promise of more gold was his new friend’s main motivation.

Lemiel’s little cottage was only a few streets away. Taking a key from around his neck, he let Seregil in and struck a light. As the lamp flickered to life Seregil was surprised at how clean and tidy the place was. The ground level was all one room, with a ladder leading up to a loft.

“Very cozy,” Seregil said.

“Governor Toneus gave all his workmen proper homes,” Lemiel replied as he climbed the ladder to the loft. “Sit yourself down at the table there. I’ll only be a moment.”

As ’faie hospitality went, it wasn’t a welcome of any sort, but perhaps the man had never experienced it himself. Seregil took a seat and listened as Lemiel moved something heavy, then climbed back down with a small flannel bag.

Sitting down opposite Seregil, he unwrapped his treasure and showed him a single golden earring shaped like a bumblebee, a clay votive figure of a horse, most likely also from the lower cave, and finally, a hacked, distorted fragment of the gold rosette.

Seregil casually poked at it as if uninterested, then picked up the earring. “This is your great secret? These little things?”

“You’re the one so anxious to see them!”

“I had the impression your collection would be more than this.” He picked up the votive. “This is interesting, I suppose. I’ll give you a silver sester for it.”

“You don’t want the gold?”

“I was hoping for something a bit more impressive.” He picked up the piece of the rosette and looked it over with disappointment. “Now, if this setting was whole I might be interested. What was it?”

“I don’t know. Markis—my brother—had the whole thing, and it was pretty, but all he cared about was the gold. He hacked it up to hawk when he needed a bit extra.”

Seregil turned it over in his fingers. “It looks like something that once held a gem. Did he have that?”

“If he did, he didn’t let on to me about it. But he died right after he st—found these things.”

“Of what?”

“A flux of the gut.”

Seregil looked bored, but his heart skipped a beat. “Really? Was it the bloat?”

“Don’t think so.” Lemiel shook his head sadly. “Markis was a good boy, ’cept for the stealing. Guess Bilairy finally caught up with him. One day he felt fine, the next he was bringing up black blood and passing it. Doctor Kordira couldn’t make any sense of it. By nightfall he was gone.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. When did he pass?”

“Right before the old governor, not more than a couple of days.”

“May gentle winds carry his ashes.”

Lemiel snorted. “We don’t burn our people like garbage here on the island. He’s buried out on the point, right and proper. So, what do you say? Do you want any of this or not?”

“This for the lot of it.” Seregil opened his purse and slid four gold sesters over to him. “What do you say? That’s more gold than any of this is worth, and you can spend it without anyone asking questions.”

Lemiel nodded and scooped up the coins. “Much obliged.”

Seregil rattled the purse thoughtfully. “I certainly would have liked to see the gem that came out of such a pretty setting.”

“If I had it I’d part with it,” Lemiel said with what appeared to be genuine regret. “Markis didn’t say anything about a stone. Didn’t say anything about any of it ’til he was on his deathbed. Then he gave me what he had in the world. We didn’t have any family but each other. Never did.”

Seregil gathered up the spoils of the night and rose. “If you come into any other interesting articles, send word to me at Mirror Moon. And if you ever need anything …”

Lemiel held out his coarse, scarred hand. “Much obliged, but I get on fine.”

Seregil shook with him, touched by the former slave’s pride.

Exhaustion rolled over him as he walked back to the tavern for Cynril. Everything hurt as he climbed into the saddle. He definitely wasn’t up to grave robbing on his own tonight. Fixing his mind on a hot bath and a soft bed, he kicked Cynril into a gallop and headed back to the governor’s house.

Mika thought he was awake, but he couldn’t see anything. He was cold and wet and scared and very much in pain. The last thing he remembered before the red came was the beautiful lady breaking his arm again and the dra’gorgos that almost entered his body.

He was lying on his back in water and when he tried to sit
up his arm hurt so much he screamed, then bit his cheek to keep from crying.

“Hello?” he quavered. “Klia, are you here?”

But all he could hear was water dripping. No one was there to help him, so he had to help himself. With his good hand, he pulled his broken arm across his chest, crying out with the effort, and managed to sit up. Pain and the red had taken away most of his strength, but he concentrated very hard on the illumination spell Master Thero had taught him and slowly a tiny orb of light grew into being in front of him; by its light he saw that his fine velvet clothing was nothing but faded scraps and rags. He concentrated harder and the light got to be the size of a wren’s egg, the best he could do. Right in front of him was a stone post and on it was a sparkling skull. That told him where he was—in the haunted cave.

It was hard to get to his feet without using his hands but he managed it, every move jarring fresh pain through his arm and shoulder. Imagining the light tethered to the top of his head by a silver cord as Master Thero had taught him to do, he managed to control it as he turned around to see where he could get out. The cave was very large, though, and he was going to have to walk around to find the tunnel exit. Under different circumstances he would have been entranced by the glimpses he got of animals drawn on the walls, but all he could think of was a ghost—or worse yet, a dra’gorgos—jumping at him out of the surrounding darkness.

He found the opening at last, and the dauntingly steep tunnel up. It wasn’t very big. He could stand in it, but only with his head down. Since he had to hold his broken arm to his chest with his good hand, he had to use a shoulder to brace himself against the side of the tunnel as he started the painful climb. He had no idea how far it was to the upper chamber. Before long, his light started to shrink. He just didn’t have the strength to keep it alive. With no choice, he kept going in the darkness, so black that soon he began to see colored stars whirling in front of him. He’d have been scared if it wasn’t for Master Thero telling him it was just a trick the eyes played in the dark.

Just when he thought he couldn’t go any farther the way
became less steep and he felt a whisper of breeze against his face. Then he saw light ahead. That gave him the last burst of strength he needed to reach a chamber where a large lightstone glowed in a brazier. There was an old black stool there, too, and he sat on it, waiting for his legs to stop shaking before he went into the next tunnel. He’d just sit here a moment, then get out of here and find Master Thero and the others and tell them all that Klia had told him to remember. He felt better sitting down, even though his arm still hurt terribly. The longer he sat, though, the harder it was to think of getting up. Leaning back against the cave wall behind the stool, he felt more tired than he could ever remember. But he had to go on …

He was in Menosi, and it was full of life and color. There were people in old-fashioned clothing in the streets, and flags and banners on poles everywhere, like it was a festival day. He could see the palace down a nearby street and walked toward it, since it was the only place in the city that he really knew. He was almost there when the great doors opened and Rhazat and a handsome Aurënfaie man came out. She looked younger, and even more pretty, and was wearing a blue gown, not red, with a golden coronet on her brow
.

A great cheer went up and she and the man smiled and waved at everyone, then mounted two white horses and headed toward the city gate. The people started chanting something that Mika couldn’t understand. As the woman and man came abreast of where he stood, Rhazat smiled down at him and said something that sounded like what the voice in his head had said just before the red came out
.

Eshrlee.

It had taken two days for Alec to find a portal in the palace again. As Thero had surmised, the things moved, coming and going like mirages and only Alec could see them. Like a stalking hound, he led Thero and Micum down one corridor after another for hours, returning frequently to the corridor where he’d first gone through to the other side.

They were there again as the sunlight was fading outside
when a flicker of motion caught Alec’s eye as they passed the corridor where Mika had disappeared.

“There!” Alec said, pointing to the wavering image of grey grass and distant hills. “Can you see it?”

“All I see is corridor,” said Micum.

“Me, too,” Thero agreed. “Give me your hand and see if you can lead me through.”

They both shouldered the packs of food and water they’d brought, and Alec took the wizard’s hand and hurried toward the portal. Reaching it, he stepped through as easily as always, but suddenly he wasn’t holding Thero’s hand. Turning around, he saw nothing but rolling grassland. This time he was on the far side of the river, across from the town.

“Bilairy’s Balls,” he muttered in exasperation. Not only couldn’t Thero get in, Alec was on the wrong side of the river, there was no bridge in sight, and there wasn’t much daylight—if you could call it that here—left. With a sigh, he started walking upriver, hoping something would present itself before he ran out of daylight or food.

He’d gone perhaps half a mile when he caught sight of a darker patch against the evening gloom, surrounding what looked like the flicker of a fire. Gripping the pack straps, he started for it at a run. He hadn’t gone far, though, when he heard the unmistakable sound of a horse galloping behind him. Turning, he saw a woman on a black horse coming down the road toward him. Glad to have the river between them, he hurried on. But suddenly the hoofbeats were much, much closer. Glancing back, he saw that she’d somehow gotten across and was gaining on him, accompanied by two large dark shapes loping along ahead of her. A quavering, hooting call went up—one Alec recognized with horror. He’d heard just such a call the night Thero had been hunted by a dra’gorgos. He ran for his life. The cries grew louder and he thought he could hear hollow, crazed laughter.

He was within a few yards of the portal when he felt a terrible chill at his back. Something clutched at his neck but he reached the dark, wavering portal and threw himself through. Before he could get up the dra’gorgos was on him, reaching for his heart. Instead, it found his amulet and silently
disintegrated into nothingness before his eyes. Another distant, hooting hunting cry drifted to him on the breeze. Rolling to his feet, he kept running until the ground went out from under him and he was falling, tumbling, rolling over rocks.