The Burning City (52 page)

“But mostly,
three
men in Lordsman armor were facing me in that pose they use with the shields locked edge to edge. I saw that once during a fair in Tep's Town.
Nothing
can get through that.

“Rordray, I sure couldn't fight them. I could outrun them, even moving backward, but they had Carter. What I did was climb the bales of rope and hop to the back of the building. The Armadillo men were still just staying clear. The armored men ran toward me, got close, and lockstepped their shields again. That gave me time to cut Carter loose and send him up the spools. He got a rope anchored in the smoke hole to the roof. He was pretty battered and not climbing very fast. I waited until he was through, then climbed up after him.

“Then I sprinkled my gold sand down into the Ropewalk.

“I kept a hand on Carter to keep him from looking into the smoke hole. We could have gone down the outside then if Passenger Pigeon hadn't been below us with a long knife. Left-handed, though. He yelled up and threatened to burn down the Ropewalk if we didn't surrender. I told him he should move the rope-weaving device out first. That's the actual Ropewalk, the most valuable single thing at the New Castle.

“We got some of the story out of him while we all circled around and waited for developments.

“The way Pigeon tells it, this all happened because three Lordsmen took ship to escape the Lords in Tep's Town. Pigeon didn't know why. They took their armor with them. They offered to protect Armadillo Wagon on the Hemp Road, but Pigeon told them about a Lordkin gone missing, so they attacked the New Castle instead.

“Armadillo Wagon wouldn't have done this to anyone
but
a Lordkin. But, see, I'd been married nine years. Now I was going off. Lordkin don't come back! Everyone knows it. So Passenger Pigeon and his tribe set forth to marry the abandoned widow. Willow Feathersnake wasn't going anywhere until she agreed. There were the children for hostages. Pigeon told us he never threatened them. Later, Willow told me he did.

“By and by Carter and I decided that nobody was coming out of the Ropewalk. I went over the roof fast and slid down the other side and was in fighting stance before Pigeon could come around. He ran for the Ropewalk doors. They were closed. Carter and I blocked his path, but we let him pull a door open and look in.

“He backed away gobbling like a turkey.”

Rordray's family were nodding. Mers were sophisticates in magic. And Whandall's family knew the tale, but horror looked out of Lilac's eyes.

“They were all strangled,” Whandall said. “Pulled into shapes no sane man ever thought of. Nobody but Pigeon left to tell the tale. He sits at the south gate of Hip High Spring and warns you about hemp, even if you don't ask. Hemp is like that, you know? It wants to soothe you to sleep and lose you in dreams and then strangle you. And hemp rope on wild magic is a thing of nightmares.”

Nobody seemed to want to top that story. It was full dark by now. The remaining fishers went up to the roof, and Whandall heard splashing. Then Estrayle led them down to their rooms.

The room was clean, the bed a bit damp. Still, it was luxury. He could not fall asleep at first, and could not think why.

Presently he realized that they didn't turn off the ocean at night. The
shh, sss
of the waves went on forever… and presently carried him away.

They left for Morth's mountain after two days of feasting.

Whandall was inspired. “People come to Road's End tired and ready to be pampered. They want fish from Rordray's Attic. They just don't know it yet! If we can bring this to Road's End, we have goods to trade.”

“Find Morth,” Rordray said.

They took one of the wagons. Green Stone
had
to come, that became clear, so Whandall made him drive. Whitey couldn't drive because the bison didn't trust him. Lilac—Whandall wasn't sure why they were taking Lilac. He and Green Stone had decided sometime last night. Someone had to guard the wagon while the others were climbing. Why Lilac?

Willow would have his head.

Or not. Lilac might be just the girl—woman—for Green Stone. A link to Puma Tribe could solve some problems for the family, and the trade to Great Hawk Bay would never be vast, but it could be lucrative.

They hadn't brought a one-horn, but every woman knew she would confront one eventually.

They rode for four days, taking their time, hunting, letting the bison graze where they would, before the ground grew too rough to go nearer. Whitey spent an extra day leading them around the mountain to the shallower eastern slope. They stopped where bison could still forage.

Mount Carlem stood above them all that night, intimidating.

They started at dawn, leaving Lilac in charge of the wagon. They
climbed in shirts, kilts, and packs. When the bird settled on Whandall's pack, Whandall chased him away. The bird rose with an angry squawk, found an updraft, and kept rising out of sight.

Green Stone carried a flat box of cold iron, a rectangle with the corners cut off, flat enough to ride a strong man's back. This one was empty and not yet ensorcelled. Whandall had the heavier talisman box loaded with provisions from the Attic kitchen. They left the heavy fishing net on the wagon. If Morth somehow needed that to get down, someone would have to go back for it.

The packs held water, blankets, and clothes. Why so many clothes? Because Whitey insisted.

The day grew hot. Shirts came off early. At noon Whitey let them stop to drink. By then Whandall knew he was an old man beyond his strength. He had never climbed like this. Everyone else was making his decisions for him… had been for years, without his realizing it… and he was just beginning to resent it.

When Whitey and Green Stone went on, Whandall made himself follow. He was at the edge of making his son trade burdens with him… but now the way became easier.

They'd found reserves of strength, Whandall thought, but it rapidly became ridiculous. They'd been climbing toward a scary, near vertical bare rock slope. The tilt seemed less now; it had flattened out. But the horizon eastward was tilted up like a dandy Lord's hat! It looked like anything loose should be sliding west toward the sea.

Green Stone said nothing of this. He must have thought he was going mad. Whitey watched them both with that Puma grin.

Whandall bellowed, “Mooorth!”

He just glimpsed a man-shaped streak zigzagging at amazing speed among tall stands of lordblades, near naked and all knobs, red braids flying. “Whandall Placehold!” Glimpsed and already here. “You came!”

Whandall looked him over. Morth wore only a sun-bleached and ragged kilt, and the bird now settling on his shoulder. He was tanned near black. His feet were bare and callused hard. The Morth of twenty years ago had dressed better but was otherwise little changed. Lean, with stringy muscles and prominent ribs; high cheekbones; long, curly red hair washed and braided. He was grinning and panting like a dog… and even so, he did not seem
mad.

Whandall said, “Right. You know Whitey. Green Stone, this is Morth of Atlantis. Morth, my second son. Willow's second son.”

The wizard gripped the boy's hand. “Green Stone, I'm very pleased you could come! May I see your palm?”

The boy looked at his father, got a nod, and let Morth turn his hand palm upward in the sunlight. Morth said, “I haven't done this since… Early marriage.
Children branch off soon, here. Twins. Both girls.” The wizard pointed with a fingernail that needed tending. “No, don't squint, you can't see your own future. More children down the line, I think, but your path gets fuzzy…” Morth looked up with satisfaction in his eyes. “Come. I live on the peak.”

“Can you fly us?”

“Whandall, those days are long gone mythical! But I wove a spell for easier climbing so the Lion's people can visit me.”

He babbled as they climbed. “The way I left you and the children, I'm embarrassed. Of course gold fever had my mind, and I still had to lead the water elemental away from you—”

“We saw that.”

“—just kept going into the mountains. There's manna untouched by any wizard, but there's also wild magic, virgin gold. I have no idea how long I was out of my mind. I wound up on some tremendous height in the Vedasiras Range, with no gold around me, just a magical place with a view of half the world. Like this place, really, but even farther from any decent hunting. By the time I had my senses back—why do they always say that?—I was sensing
everything
, no path blocked within my mind, no way to concentrate on any one thing, like eating or bathing, digging a jakes, raising a shelter, tending a wound. Scatterminded.
That
was what had me so crazy.

“Where was I? I was stuck on a mountaintop, sane but starving and tanned like Sheban leather. Only my own spells were keeping me alive. I found meat and firewood downslope and spent some time building my strength back. Built a talisman to get me through, then set out north for Great Hawk Bay.”

“Rordray told us.”

“I thought I'd lost the sprite. All that wild gold should have had it totally confused. I was careless. When that wave humped itself, I just went up the nearest mountain as quick as I could. I've been stuck here ever since.”

They put their shirts back on. It had grown cold. Morth didn't notice.

The mountain's peak was a fantastic lacework of stone castle.
Indefensible
, was Whandall's first thought. Any Lordkin tribe could have pulled it down with their hands.
What's holding it up?

He looked in vain for supporting beams. There was no wood to be seen anywhere. It was as if rock had melted and flowed into place. There were no corners, no straight lines. Rooms and chambers and corridors spilled over and under and between each other like the insides of a careless knifefighter, rising up into a bulb of clear glass, a wonderful wizard's crow's nest.

Morth led them in.

In a roomy ground-floor chamber the rock walls humped into chairs around a fire. Four people, four chairs, and a high ridge for a bird to perch. Dark rocks were burning in the fireplace.

Whitecap Mountain set out both talisman boxes. He didn't open them. The Attic's provisions were for Morth alone. But Morth had prepared a meal for four, a stew of mountain goat, herbs, and roots. Whandall realized that he was ravenous; he saw the look in Green Stone's eye and waved him on.

When they had slaked their hunger a bit, the wizard said, “You came at my asking. I can pay that debt now, in refined gold.” He waved at the fireplace. “Take what you like.”

Had Morth been using wild magic? But the gold he was pointing at had drained out of the fireplace and formed a flat pool before it froze. Whitey and Green Stone wiggled it loose, used an edge of rock to break it in roughly equal halves, and slid it into packs.

“Energy wants to be heat,” Morth said. “The simplest thing you can do with any kind of manna is help it to become heat. I can burn gold ore without its hurting me, and the expended gold just flows out.”

Whandall nodded.
Uh huh.

The wizard pointed to Whandall's crotch. “What is that?” Morth caught himself. “Secret?”

“Supposed to be. I'm not surprised
you'd
see it.” Whandall eased a flat metal flask out from just above his groin. “What does it look like to you?”

“A dead spot. I can show you how to see the blind spot in your eye, but this is a bit more obvious. Nothing else looks like cold iron.”

Whandall held it up without opening it. “Coarse gold right out of a riverbed. You wouldn't remember when I threw gold at ensorcelled ponies? But—” Whandall waved away Morth's attempt at an old apology. “But it broke the spell. So I carry raw gold, just in case, and it did save me once.”

“That must be an interesting tale,” Morth said, “but I want to hear a different one. Whandall, tell me about the last time you did violence.”

Whandall looked at him. “Violence?”

“We last saw each other twenty-one years ago. I don't quite remember, but I think I tried to take a girl you wanted. I think you tried to kill me,” Morth said.

“No. Not tried. I thought I might have to.”

“Now I hear tales of a wagonmaster whose sign is a feathered serpent. He keeps his oaths and enforces honesty with a knife of spelled bronze. Whandall, I have to know what you are.”

“The last time I did violence.”

“Was that it?”

They were all waiting. Whandall said, “No, it was the last time I saw Tras Preetror. Do you remember him?”

“The teller.”

“Six years ago. I was up on the house with my sons, fixing the roof. A servant came to tell me I had a visitor.

“It was Tras Preetror and a big man in part Lordsman armor who stood behind him and didn't say anything. They'd got past the guards. Willow was serving him tea. I got her aside and she wanted
me
to explain what he was doing here.”