Silence is Deadly (17 page)

It occupied the top of a tall, isolated hill, and at the base of the hill, on the side of easiest approach to the castle, a sizable town had grown. It was large enough to have a formal market square, and Darzek and Sajjo drove directly to it. They set up their display of perfume samples, and then Darzek strolled about for a look at the mart.

Perfumers, dyers, peddlers, all kinds of itinerant artisans and vendors came to such rural centers of commerce. They did a modest business for a time; and when the townspeople had inspected and sampled their wares, or satisfied a curiosity about what information a new keeper of secrets might have to offer, their trade fell off and they moved along to the next mart.

Sajjo had a modest rush of customers as soon as they opened for business. Darzek, returning from his circuit of the market place, found her so busy that he joined her, and the two of them dispensed perfumes until evening to a steady stream of townsfolk.

With the evening came two purple-caped knights to the mart, accompanied by a scribe. One knight took the names and professions of the day’s arrivals, and while the scribe entered this information in his records, the other knight prowled about their carts and tents with something cupped in his hands. Fortunately, the new shielding worked.

Darzek thoughtfully watched the inspection party move on to the next newly arrived vendor. Then he turned to Sajjo, who had been thoroughly indifferent to the menace of the duke’s knights.

These new perfumes of Hadkez must he good.

They are beautiful,
Sajjo announced, using the Kammian term of highest approbation.
Ours are the favorite scents in the entire Northpor mart. The perfumer Hadkez worked for wanted him to come back, but he wouldn’t.

They must be beautiful,
Darzek agreed. Privately he was less than enthused about this unexpected genius of Hadkez’s for creating new scents. He preferred an anonymous mediocrity to popular success, which could bring more attention than he cared for.

He went to talk politely with his fellow vendors, who were closing for the night. He asked one or two questions of each, and when he returned to the cart he was in a thoughtful mood.

What’s the matter?
Sajjo asked.

Tell me why the Duke Fermarz would call in all of his knights and use them to guard his castle,
Darzek said.

Sajjo gazed at him perplexedly.

Normally the knights are scattered all over the province,
Darzek went on.
They have important peacekeeping, and judicial, and administrative duties. But now they do nothing but guard the castle. The lane up to the castle has a series of check points, where all traffic is stopped and searched, and the knights are maintaining guard posts all over the hill.

The duke is afraid of something,
Sajjo announced.

Right,
Darzek agreed.

And since the Duke Fermarz’s call for help seemed to have come only a couple of days after Darzek’s invasion of the Duke Merzkion’s castle, Darzek thought he knew what it was.

Like the Duke Merzkion, the Duke Fermarz was afraid someone would steal his pazul—or whatever the pazul was guarding. The Duke Merzkion must have sent word to him at once, by fast messenger: Someone tried to steal mine. Better guard yours well. And the Duke Fermarz called in all of his knights.

Trying to look into an alien mind, Darzek thought, was like peering through the window of a strange room furnished entirely with trick mirrors. In time, the windows that looked out on reality might become the most distorted of all.

Obviously the dukes did not think of their pazuls as offensive weapons. Otherwise, since the two dukes obviously were in league, why didn’t they conquer Storoz together? But if they thought of their pazuls as defensive weapons, why did they place so little confidence in them?

He knew he had no chance at all of getting up the hill to the castle. He did not even consider it. At the same time, the Duke Fermarz was so obviously guarding something of immense value that Darzek was reluctant to leave.

They remained at the mart, and he helped Sajjo handle the rush of perfume trade and watched the formations of purple-caped knights get in each other’s way moving about the ridiculously safeguarded castle hill.

CHAPTER 11

With the castle blocked off to him, Darzek fell back on his pastime of studying Kammian psychology. He had been attempting to comprehend the alien mentalities that surrounded him; suddenly, to his vast amusement, he discovered that these aliens were the same vendors and customers he had met on so many worlds.

The newly arrived vendors moved slowly up and down the rows of tents and carts, craftily weighing the virtues and liabilities of each vacant space. Those with foodstuffs to sell preferred positions near the entrance. Kammians who followed the old religion would see the looming Winged Beast as they entered the mart and buy something for a sacrifice; and many customers preferred to buy foodstuffs on their way out of the mart, so that their hands and arms would be unencumbered when they haggled over more expensive purchases. Vendors of dyes liked to set up near weavers, who sold quantities of undyed cloth. Perfumers liked a position where there were as few nabrula as possible, so that their scents could be enjoyed by prospective customers without olfactory distractions. All vendors preferred to crowd in with their competition rather than to set up by themselves in a remote part of the mart. A customer seeing display after display of similar merchandise might be moved eventually to stop and buy, and all the vendors benefited. A solitary display did not provide such motivation.

Having watched for several days this sly maneuvering for desirable sites, Darzek was intrigued to see one newly arrived cart make immediately for the most remote corner of the mart. The elderly driver got out agilely, unharnessed the single nabrulk, and led it to the back of the cart, where he tied it to a feed trough. A pull of a rope folded down a canvas-covered framework at the side of the cart, and a sizable tent had been erected almost instantaneously. While Darzek watched in amazement, the owner deftly pegged it down. A jerk of another rope unrolled a small banner. A moment later, having moved in a few furnishings, the owner was seated in the tent entrance, ready for business.

Darzek drifted closer, wondering whether the mechanical ingenuity that had produced the unfolding tent could also have fashioned other contrivances. An electrical generator, for example.

Then he saw something even more startling. While this new vendor was still moving into his tent, a passer-by noticed his banner, turned into the mart, and hurried toward him. Shoppers already in the mart were streaming in that direction. The vendor had scarcely seated himself before he had a waiting line.

Darzek moved close enough to scrutinize the banner.

It contained only a large line drawing of a face, and the face seemed to be a fair likeness of the old man who sat in the tent opening. There was no hint of who he was or what he did.

Darzek asked one of the waiting customers.
Bovranulz,
was the answer. It meant, “Old Blind One.”

He was a clairvoyant, a fortuneteller, a keeper of secrets; and since the mere unfurling of his banner brought a rush of business, he had local fame and a following. Probably he had been traveling the same circuit for years and making a regular stop here.

His popularity did not interest Darzek. Any keeper of secrets who put on a good act and kept his gibberish vague enough so that all of his predictions seemed to come true could achieve popularity. Darzek wanted to know who had designed the Old Blind One’s folding tent. He returned to his own cart, seated himself in its shade, and continued to watch.

That evening, the ducal inspection team of two knights and a scribe made its usual visit to record the day’s arrivals. This time, instead of striding into the mart to curtly administer their inquisition, the three halted at the mart entrance. One of the knights signaled to the scribe, who remounted his nabrulk and clattered off up the ascending lane to the castle. The two knights quietly got in line with those waiting to consult Bovranulz.

A short time later the duke himself arrived, accompanied only by the scribe who had carried the message. And the duke, a lank, mournful-looking individual whose mustaches seemed always destined to droop, took his place in line and quietly awaited his turn.

Darzek went to Sajjo.
Did you ever hear of a keeper of secrets named Bovranulz?
he asked.

Of course,
she answered.
Everyone knows of Bovranulz.

Of course,
Darzek agreed.
Obviously. Everyone knows of him. Do you know the names of any other keepers of secrets?

She did not. Bovranulz was one of a kind. He was unique. Darzek left Sajjo to her customers, strolled over to the far corner of the mart, and got in line. To see Bovranulz.

Dusk was approaching. Normally the vendors would have closed for the night, but some of them remained open to importune Bovranulz’s customers as they left the mart. The line moved slowly, shortening in front of Darzek and lengthening behind him.

As Darzek edged along with the patient crowd, he experienced a sensation he had not known before. A mystical feeling of oneness with the People of Kamm overwhelmed him. With it came a sharpened sense of urgency.

Ahead of Darzek was a tottering oldster who perhaps wanted to know if his rheumatism would ease. Behind Darzek was a young female carrying an infant—was the problem hers or the child’s? There was the duke, quietly waiting his turn like any commoner. “We are all commoners before the forces of fate,” Darzek mused. Next to the duke stood a female who on Earth would have been in her mid-teens. Her fingers twisted and intertwined nervously, and her need seemed far more compelling than that of His Highness.

The People of Kamm. The dukes were choosing up sides, a super-weapon was waiting to be used, and these, the innocent commoners, would pay the high price of ducal folly.

If Bovranulz had genuine powers, Darzek thought, he would speak of the horrors of destruction to a white-faced duke.

But when the duke finally had his turn, he strolled away peacefully, nodding to a subject who performed the Kammian genuflection to him, half bow, half curtsy. He seemed in a complacent mood—had the seer assured him that there was no plan afoot to raid his castle?

The line moved up.

The seer was seated in the recessed tent opening with a rug hung before him on a frame. The suppliant leaned over the rug, bringing his head close to that of the seer. The seer’s hands were concealed by the rug and visible only to the suppliant. As darkness set in, the seer lit candles on either side of him to keep his hands visible, and the glow of candlelight suffused the aged face. It was a rudimentary but effective system of confidentiality, and it underscored the seer’s role as keeper of secrets.

But Darzek was completely unable to figure out how the suppliant asked his questions.

The line moved up again. Finally Darzek was close enough to see what was happening, and his perplexity deepened. The suppliant merely leaned over the rug and studied the seer’s concealed hands. He asked nothing at all; he merely read the answer. Then came the clink of a coin in a coin pot, the suppliant stepped aside, and the next in line took his place.

Finally it was Darzek’s turn. Uncertainly he took two steps forward and leaned over the rug. Since he had no notion of what was expected of him, he did nothing at all. The deeply wrinkled face loomed close to his; the clouded, sightless eyes stared at him—stared through him, and Darzek gazed into the infinity of their nothingness.

Suddenly the fingers moved. Darzek looked down at them.

You have come far.

Darzek had to will himself to remain motionless. Then he decided he was being foolish—half the people in the mart, the vendors and their families, had come far. As the Kammians measured distance, this place was a long way from Northpor.

The sightless eyes continued to stare at Darzek. The fingers moved again.

I thank you for your concern for my people.

Again Darzek had to will himself to remain motionless.

Do not he alarmed. I am keeper of secrets. What do you wish to ask me?

He was a mind reader. Darzek did not believe in mind readers. He knew too many of their tricks—he even had performed mind-reading tricks himself—but he could not disbelieve what he was experiencing. He struggled to bring his thought into focus. Rok Wllon—

Your friend is alive.

“Where?” Darzek thought.

He travels.

Again Darzek thought the word, “Where?” This time he got no response.

Then his mind formed a question about the pazul. Again there was no reply, so he reshaped the thought and reshaped it again.

It is a frightening question,
Bovranulz’s fingers said finally,
but I do not understand it.

Darzek dropped two coins into the pot and turned away.