The Malmillard Codex (18 page)

With a slap on the horse's rump and a
startled grin, one part terror to three parts delight, Garet was
away. His shrill whoops whipped back to Val, born on the wind of
his ride.

Val remounted, wheeled his horse around and
looked to see how close the bandits were. They were even closer
than he'd feared. He looked about; the camp followers were dropping
to their knees as if they felt the sharp knives against their
throats already.

Unconscious of a sigh of satisfaction, Val
settled himself more firmly in his saddle and awaited the first
wave of bandits.

***

"Have our pawns reached the gathering
place?" asked the dark voice.

A whisper of wind blew through the empty eye
socket of a bleached skull, rustling the pages of an open book
bound in the stitched skins of a dozen warty toads.

"They're just there, I think," replied cold
with a dank, chill chuckle.

A spider, its legs as long as the breadth of
a big man's hand, scampered across the stone floor, leaving
markings in the thick dust.

"It is almost time for the last act, then.
Good. I grow weary of this everlasting waiting."

Obsidian tears flowed down a stone idol's
face.

"When they arrive, shall we play with them
first?" asked the dark, in a tone that already knew the answer.

"You must stop repeating your same old
mistakes, brother," warned the cold, with a chuckle like the gasp
of a dying man. "The next time, you might not escape so
easily."

"Easily?" asked the dark petulantly. An
ebony crow, its orange beak the only color against the sallow stone
walls, froze solid and fell from its onyx perch, to crash and
shatter into a thousand jetty shards.

"Easily?" repeated the dark as it eyed the
globe that floated in the middle of the chamber.

Deep within the murky depths, a tiny string
of shadowy horses was faintly visible, riding against pale dun
sands. Far behind the string, two horses paced it, following,
always following…

"The
destruction was not nearly so great as it could have been," Garet
repeated to his band of small admirers as he strutted before them,
a long dagger slapping against his bony thigh. "If I had not, at
the greatest danger to my own life," he paused, liking the sound of
that last phrase enough to repeat it, "at great danger to my own
life, ridden to the caravan master and informed him of the coming
attack, there would have been far more casualties."

Oohs and ahhs of admiration and awe greeted
this comment, and Garet was emboldened to continue. "Yes," he poked
out his hollow chest, "it was I, above all others, who really saved
so many of us from death and destruction from the bandits."

Val listened with half an ear as he strapped
provisions onto the back of the second horse. No smile broke
through his concentration, even as the boasting rose to mountainous
heights. Val's heart was heavy within his chest, and even the
antics of the garrulous Garet could not lift it.

The bandits had captured Madryn. Val had not
found out until long after the battle was over, the marauders
driven away with no more than a few wagons overturned and burned, a
score of lives lost, a handful of guards wounded. During the
attack, Val had no time to spare thought for Madryn. She could take
care of herself in a fight. No one knew that better that he did. So
even after the bandits had been repulsed for the second time and
had gathered their own wounded and raced away, Val had not thought
to look for Madryn. Doubtless she was somewhere in the midst of the
clean-up after the fighting, her sword bloody to the hilt, that
strange light in her eyes that he had seen many times before, both
awake and in his dreams of another man's life.

Madryn had been a soldier; Val remembered as
he at last began his search for her, after the bandits had
disappeared into the dusty depths of the desert. Surely she, of all
the members of the caravan, would be safe in battle?

But Madryn had not been safe. Not safe…not
safe…the words ran round and round his weary mind as he gathered
supplies for a solitary trek into the surrounding dunes.

Of course, Val was going after her.

"I don't blame you," Master Aubry had
rumbled, his plaited hair spattered with gore. "She's one in a
thousand, that one. Take a spare horse and enough supplies and go.
We're just four days from the oasis, with Rinidia not far beyond."
A wondering look crossed the sun-darkened face of the caravan
master. "Odd, that," he murmured, as if to himself. "Odd that the
bandits would attack us here, so close to our first stop, instead
of the long reaches between Rinidia and Zamorna. I don't believe
I've ever known it to happen before, in all my years as rider and
master."

The towering man strode off, to whip his
disordered and disheartened charges back into shape for
traveling.

Val picked out a good spare horse; Madryn
would need something to ride when he got her back.

And he'd get her back.

Val had no doubts on that matter.

***

Garet surprised him.

The boy insisted on accompanying him.

"Now how in all the world, Master Val, could
you even consider leaving me here?" he'd asked in high dudgeon,
when Val had informed him of his plans.

Val would have smiled at his recent
elevation from 'great lummox' to 'Master Val'—if he'd been in the
mood for smiles.

"Besides," continued Garet as he added extra
dates to the already plentiful supplies, and lashed another water
bottle to the saddle, "how in the names of all the gods do you
expect to get the mistress back from a thousand bandits, without my
assistance—and my brains, might I add?"

Val made no reply as he boosted the
chattering boy into the saddle of the second horse. He suspected
the main reason Garet wanted to accompany his quest, regardless of
his admiration and respect for Madryn, was that the boy would be
allowed to ride the other horse.

"After all," Garet went on in a loud voice,
for the benefit of his cadre of admiring onlookers, "I was the one
who saved the caravan. Who better to ransom my mistress from that
vast horde of vicious bandits than the valiant Garet?"

The boy watched complacently as Val mounted
a fresh horse and turned its head to the rear of the caravan.

"Farewell," cried Garet as he kicked his own
horse to follow Val. "Farewell, and do not worry. I shall be back
soon, with my mistress and my master."

Val hoped he was right.

***

They could easily make out the bandits'
trail across the dun-colored sands, picked out as it was here and
there by lost or discarded bits of booty. The horde had no more
than half a day start on Val and Garet, and such a huge mass of
horses and riders could not travel as fast as a single man and a
boy on fresh horses.

Yet Val could see no sign of the bandits.
Hour after hour of weary riding, the sun beating down on their
heads, the heat reflected back from beneath their mounts'
hooves…and still, no sign of the horde.

Yet the trail was disappearing, growing
fainter as they followed it, as if it were aging by days and months
for each heartbeat that passed.

"How could such a huge throng of riders
disappear, in such a desert as this, rolling away to the misty
distance, Master Val?"

Val shook his head. They were at the top of
a tallish rise, and he could see the horizon in all directions.
Where could they have gone? How could such a multitude have
vanished?

"There must have been five or six score of
them in the attack," Garet continued as he gazed from under his
palm. "No pack that large could hide in a dip in the sand, a hollow
or depression scooped in the shadow of a dune. So where are
they?"

Val shrugged and kicked his horse. But he
wondered as they ate away at the leagues, the spoor growing fainter
at each stride, yet still clearly visible behind them, stretching
back toward the caravan.

Where were the bandits? How were they making
their trail disappear?

It didn't matter. Val would find them and
Madryn.

Or die in the attempt.

***

The sun was a blistering ball of molten
metal, sinking into the dunes before them. Soon it would be too
dark to follow the trail. Soon they would have to stop for the
night, or risk losing their direction and spending valuable time
the next morning backtracking…or not be able to find the trail at
all.

This was what frightened Val the most. He
looked over at Garet. The boy had been silent for the last few
leagues, his stubbly head bobbing on his thin neck in time to his
horse's trot. Val wondered if the boy regretted that he'd insisted
on coming along.

No, he doubted that very much, Val decided.
Garet, for all his boasting and bragging, did have an actual
concern for Madryn.

His concern for Val, however, was
debatable.

Finally, it became too dark to see the trail
before them. Val waited until the very last moment before stopping,
hoping against all hope that the moon or stars would cast enough
light to continue. But it was not to be. Instead of the fabled
glory of the desert night, moon blazing above, stars too thick to
count, there was a hazy mist over everything, twining about the
ground and rising into the air so high that nothing could be see
for more than a few lengths in any direction.

Val pulled back on the reins, his heart sick
within him. Garet's horse continued for a few more paces, its
rider's head drooping in unabashed sleep, before stopping of its
own volition. Garet's body swayed for a moment, then slid
bonelessly to the sands.

The boy sat up, a surprised look just
visible on his face. "Master Val?" he quavered, looking about in
startled fear. Now that Garet had no other children to impress,
he'd reverted to his boyish state.

"I'm here," Val called groggily as he dug
into a saddlebag, seeking rations for himself and the boy. The
first thing he found was a handful of dates; he shared them with
the exhausted Garet. Then they both sank down and wearily pulled
blankets over them.

They were both asleep almost at once.

***

That night, Val's dreams took off on a new
tack altogether.

Instead of seeing and living Valaren's
depraved and perverted court life, Val now saw earlier into the
lord's existence, long before he had become that heartless creature
that had so repelled—and attracted—Madryn and others.

Val wore Valaren's child body as he wandered
through a blasted and arid landscape, crying out for his father as
cold winds blew about his shaking form. He gazed up through the
child's eyes at a tall stone tower, its outer shell decorated with
the most appalling of motifs—hanged men, their twisted heads gazing
downward with frightened, sightless eyes; women with bleeding
stalks where their heads had been, carrying their lost appendages
under one arm; skeletal horses, fire and smoke billowing from their
nostrils; the deadly denizens of a thousand nightmares, huge teeth
bared in hideous grins.

But not only were these depictions on the
tower the most graphic and lifelike of carvings; no, they moved,
cavorting and capering together across the gray rock.

The boy Valaren wandered away from the
tower, across blasted heath and arid moor, his soul crying out in
torment as demons danced about him. He reached a stony outcropping,
where stood an idol carved of obsidian, its eyes weeping sable
tears.

"Father!" cried the boy. "Father?"

Val could not tell if the boy cried out for
his father—or to his father.

He did not think he wanted to know that
answer.

***

A scream jolted through Val's ear.

He sat up, sand showering away from him in
tiny rivulets, scrabbling wildly for his sword.

A vulture, the skin of its bare, crusty head
gleaming pink in the feeble rays of dawn, watched Val with a black
and considering eye. The bird was less that an arm's length from
his tangle of blankets.

"Get way!" Val snarled, batted at it with
one hand while the other finally found his sword.

Disappointed, the carrion eater hopped
backward on scaly claws, then spread huge wings and flapped upward
with another long, eerie scream.

Not today,
the scream promised Val.
Perhaps not tomorrow. But soon…soon…

Val looked blearily around, his normal
confusion upon awakening from his uncanny dreams even greater than
usual. He shook his head, trying to drive away the dim images that
still cluttered it; his sense of urgency, his need to resume his
quest, was already making his heart pound.

The light from the sun just peaking over the
distant horizon grew stronger with every heartbeat; it was already
casting long shadows from the empty saddlebags that lay in a
discarded heap, blankets and supplies piled beside them.

But where was his horse?

Val shook off his blankets and struggled to
his feet, his muscles aching. He did not remember unsaddling his
horse, but he remembered with the utmost clarity tying its reins to
a peg driven in the sand, to prevent it from wandering off in the
night. Where was it?

"Good morning, Master Val," chirped a cheery
voice.

Garet, his scrawny figure casting a shadow a
dozen feet tall and as thin as a post, slithered down the side of
an adjacent sandy dune. The boy's arms were wrapped tight around a
huge bundle.

"Where are the horses?" Val snapped. "Have
you seen them? And what's that you have?"

"Yes, yes, and breakfast, sir," sang out the
boy as he slid to a stop just in front of Val. "Dates, almonds, and
fresh baked bread. And a jar of milk, of course."

Val eyed the boy with concern. "Of course,"
he repeated, concerned that the previous harrowing day had unhinged
the boy's mind.