Silence is Deadly (27 page)

Moving that many people over the lanes of Storoz is going to be slow. On the way out, I’ll encourage the dukes to eat from my wagons instead of their own. The moment a wagon is empty, I’ll send it back to Midpor for another load. That way there’ll be a continuous stream of provisions overtaking us or meeting us on the way back. That’s the only thing that’ll keep this expedition from starving.

All the dukes are talking about you,
the captain said.
They think you’re a genius. Is there anything I can do to help?

Yes. Bring in enough food to refill my warehouses after we leave for the mountains—and keep refilling them. Even if the expedition gets back here safely, I have a feeling that the dukes may wait in Midpor a long time for ships to take them home.

The captain smiled.
I’ll do that.
Then he added slyly,
Will you be needing more dried namafj?

Especially dried namafj,
Darzek said firmly.

That was well thought of. Have you found a use for the special scent our friend Nijezor prepared for the Duke of OO?

No,
Darzek said.
I brought the crock along with me, and I intend to take it all the way to the mountains, just in case I think of something. Thus far, the only thing I’ve been able to compare it with is nabrula manure.

Darzek warmly bade the captain farewell and went back to the Synthesis headquarters, where Sjelk and a scribe were making lists of independent vendors and artisans Darzek intended to take along with him. Harnesses would break, clothing would wear out, wagons would break down, doctors would be needed both for Kammians and for nabrula, tools would be required—the immensity of the task of transporting eleven hundred people and their nabrula staggered Darzek. That evening he began to move his wagons and drivers, and those of the independent vendors and artisans, out beyond the city wall where the dukes had established their entourages.

The Protector had arrived, and Darzek studied him carefully from a distance—tall, lean, incisive in look and manner, a leader accustomed to command, an ascetic whose eyes flashed fanaticism. His character was indeed the mirror image of that of his self-indulgent brother, the Duke of OO, but to Darzek that simply made him a different kind of villain. He doubted that the Protector’s victims felt any special consolation because the cruelty inflicted on them was sanctimonious.

The Protector was clothed in black and mounted on a solid black nabrulk, a creature so rare that Darzek had never seen one. With him was a retinue of a dozen black knights, and these priests of the Winged Beast, like their leader, disdained the luxury of tents. They unrolled their sleeping rugs wherever they chose to lie.

Darzek made his evening rounds carrying a basket of dried namafj, his trade-mark. Sajjo drifted along with him, sometimes the dutiful daughter following obediently at his heels, sometimes a wraith flitting unnoticed among the tents, seeing everything that happened, looking in on private conversations.

The rolling meadow was an incredible mélange of tent-covered wagons, of caravans, of separate tents of all shapes and sizes and colors, of cooking fires and sputtering torches, of restless nabrula. Darzek moved slowly through the encampment, and the sheer confusion that reverberated everywhere seemed so magnificently contrived that Darzek felt for it the kind of affection he would have had for a singularly bad work of art. He felt the same way about the accompanying noise and also about the stench of the haphazard sanitary conditions.

At the enclave of each duke, he paused to talk with the duke’s own commissariat. He was known to all the sentries, who allowed him to pass without challenge; but each enclave had an inner circle of tents and wagons where no outsiders were permitted, and these Darzek scrupulously avoided.

He had a long conference with the Duke of OO’s commissariat, since the duke’s entourage had just arrived and still hadn’t purchased its needed supplies. Darkness had come on by the time they finished. Darzek promised delivery in the morning—he was getting rich, which couldn’t have mattered less to him—and as he turned away he felt a soft touch on his arm.

It was Sajjo, and she tapped out a code they had invented between them so they could talk in the dark.

She had found Bovranulz.

Where?
Darzek responded.

She motioned to him to follow her. They slipped between the shadowed tents and into the forbidden inner circle of the Duke of OO’s enclave. Sajjo pointed. It was not Bovranulz’s own distinctive tent but one indistinguishable from the others.

Darzek parted the flaps and looked in on darkness. Cupping his hands about his hand light, he pointed it at the interior and turned it on.

The gaunt, elderly form was seated on the edge of a cot. The wrinkled face grinned as its sightless eyes embraced Darzek.

Bovranulz’s fingers were barely discernible in the dim light.
Greetings, my friend. Did you receive my message that we would meet at Midpor?

Darzek’s mind shaped the one question that mattered above all others. “Did the duke make you his captive because you refused to tell him who would be chosen king?”

No, my friend,
the fingers answered.
He took me captive because I did tell him, and he feared that I would tell others. Bovranulz does not conceal the truth, nor does he fear to speak it. The duke made me his prisoner because I told him who would be chosen king.

“Who?” Darzek’s mind demanded.

The Duke of OO,
the fingers replied.

“Is there no way to change that? No way to make another duke the king?”

None,
the reply came.
The picture is drawn. The Duke of OO will be chosen King of Storoz.

* * * *

Two days later, the procession began to move westward at dawn. It was an interminable, utterly chaotic beginning because no one was in charge. The Protector and his personal escort of knights moved at the head of the line on their riding nabrula. Immediately behind them came the party of the Duke Merzkion, because his group was encamped at the extreme western edge of the meadow. The entourages of the other dukes contended for positions, and a knight of the Duke Suklozk fought a death duel with a knight of the Duke Pabinzk on the lane they were disputing and killed him. While they fought, passing wagons, carts, riders, even pedestrians—for there was no way to keep impoverished foot peddlers from tagging along—veered around them, showering them with clouds of dust as the heavy traffic churned the seldom-used lane to powder.

Few had thought to carry water, and though there were frequent small streams, the panting nabrula rushed into each one they encountered and fouled it for kilometers before drinking and cooking water could be drawn from it. Not until the third day did the dukes themselves realize that something had to be done to ease the water problem and settle the daily squabbles and duels that took place along the line of march. A capable knight of the Duke Rilornz was placed in charge, and after that things went much more smoothly. And there were no more duels.

But the procession continued to move slowly.

Each night, when the various entourages broke their line of march to encamp, Darzek made his rounds. He routinely took orders from those wishing to replenish supplies: crocks of flour, weights of dried meat or fish, bales of nabrula fodder.

And he watched and listened, and Sajjo flitted about everywhere, but they learned little. Evidently someone had seen Bovranulz with an unknown visitor, and the Duke of OO had been sufficiently alarmed to publicly whip a negligent sentry and place additional guards around the inner circle of his enclave. Darzek could glimpse Bovranulz’s tent from a distance, through a narrow gap between tents—it was recognizable because a sentry now stood at its entrance constantly—but he did not dare attempt to approach it. And during the daily march, the covered cart carrying Bovranulz moved directly in front of the duke’s carriage.

Darzek had his moments of stark despair, when it seemed to him that the selection of a king had nothing to do with him or the Synthesis, and he was wasting precious weeks of time on this outlandish trek. Even if there was something to be learned, the difficulties in doing so seemed insurmountable. It pained him to know that the Duke of OO and his closest advisers, the haughty black knights that accompanied him everywhere, were in secret conference beyond a thin expanse of canvas, and that Darzek—as the expedition’s popular and efficient provisioner—could pass the tent closely without arousing a twitch of suspicion from the watchful guards; and yet he could not overhear a word. For there was no eavesdropping on the Silent Planet except when one could watch the hands of the talkers.

It bothered him even more when he realized that the Duke of OO was transporting a treasure. This thing of immense value had a wagon to itself and its own special guard of black-caped lackeys. The duke visited it every morning and every evening and sometimes during the day, but no one except the duke and its guard was allowed within twenty strides of it. At night, the treasure shared the inner circle with Bovranulz.

Darzek pointed this out to Sajjo, who considered it gravely and then went her flitting way through the night’s encampment—she slipped unseen or unnoticed into places where even the distinguished provisioner Lazk would have been arrested at once—and she returned with the staggering news that
all
of the dukes were transporting treasures. Even Captain Wanulzk’s friend, the redheaded Duke Dunjinz, had a thing of immense value in his entourage that was guarded as carefully as that of the Duke of OO.

Darzek wracked his imagination, came up with no answers, and finally dismissed the mystery from his mind. It was only one more imponderable among so many.

The daily march tediously crept closer to the mountains, which now could be seen on the horizon. Sajjo watched them uneasily as they loomed larger. When Darzek asked her why, she answered,
That’s where my father is.

He questioned her and discovered that the Central Province was called the Realm of the Holy Beast because Storozian religious mythology did in fact make that its lair. The Winged Beast perched atop the highest peak to look out over the world and select the next victim it would take to feed its young. Those who came close to the mountains were, in Sajjo’s naive version of the myth, much more likely to be seized. She seemed to have forgotten the reassuring words of Bovranulz.

Darzek reminded her of the villages they had passed along the way, and their apparently happy residents, subjects of the Duke Tonorj, whom the Winged Beast miraculously failed to molest; but she could not be convinced, and her uneasiness grew as the mountains loomed closer.

Darzek worried about her.

When they reached their destination, and the dukes and the Protector proceeded alone to their rendezvous, Darzek intended to follow them and learn what he could about the lottery. If it were in any way possible, he would prevent the Duke of OO from being selected king.

He knew that the chances were excellent that he would be captured. He also knew that retaliatory measures might be taken against his family helpers. He intended to alert Sjelk so that he could warn the others in time, and he felt that they could look after themselves. He already had told Sjelk to have every worker prepare a survival pack of supplies for himself.

But he worried incessantly about Sajjo. Therefore he struck up a friendship with a harness maker who had brought his wife and children with him. He invented a fictitious illness. The Winged Beast might spare him for a long time, he said; on the other hand—

The harness maker gestured wisely. His wife shrugged understandingly. They found his fatherly concern touching. In return for his personal wagon and nabrula, they would cheerfully add Sajjo to their family and raise her to maturity. And—they were fond of the child—they would give her a marriage portion equal to the value of the wagon and nabrula. Darzek thanked them profusely and told them he knew no nobler people on Kamm.

He knew they would reduce Sajjo to the role of an unpaid servant and there would be no marriage portion; but they would treat her kindly and provide a temporary refuge, and as soon as she reached a Free Port, any of the many sea captains who now knew her would return her to Northpor.

Now the mountains were close enough so that their precisely stratified vegetation was visible, from the lush brown of the zarak forests to the vibrant blue of the izu meadows and finally the snow-capped peaks. It was a formidable chain, and few would be the Kammians hardy enough to trace the mythical Winged Beast to its lair.

As the land moved precipitously upward in their first really difficult climb, they passed the village of Surjolanz, the last village and the last wayside forum of the Duke Tonorj’s province. A looming sculpture of the Winged Beast announced what all of them already knew: From this point, the old religion ruled. They stood at the border of the land of death.

Their panting nabrula finally gained the narrow pass at the top of the rise and pointed their bulging noses downward in long, steep descent. At the bottom was a broad valley, and on the far side of a shallow, swift-flowing, cold river was the village of Veznol—the only Central Province village on this surlane east of the mountains, it was said.