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skepticism. "How can you be certain? Hair is hair. My friends searched those
quarters, too."
"And found that map you refused to look at." King Ha-manu sighed heavily.
"Mahtra has no hair. Both
Ruari and Zvain have hair that's too dark, and all of them are too tall,
unless Ruari was on his hands and knees when he hit his head. That is
halfling hair, Pavek, and it will lead you to Kakzim. Guard it carefully.
You begin your search tomorrow; kanks are waiting for you at Khelo.
A double maniple from the war bureau awaits you there as well. The Codesh
survivors volunteered; the others are solid veterans. We will make our own
search for Urik's guardian when you return; you will return, Pavek, with
Kakzim or proof of his death."
Orders had been given orders the Lion-King had intended to give
Pavek from the beginning, no doubt. Hamanu began to walk toward the wall
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and a door Pavek hadn't noticed before.
Acting on impulse, which had gotten him into trouble so often before, Pavek
called out to him: "Great
King "
Lord Hamanu turned and showed an unfriendly face. "What don't you understand
now, Lord Pavek?"
"My friends Ruari, Zvain, and Mahtra what happened to them?"
"If you spent half as much time thinking about yourself as you
think about others, Pavek, you'd go farther in this world. Your friends
escaped from Codesh before I arrived. They went to Farl. Five days ago, Ruari
sold the staff I gave him to a herder; since then, I do not know. You know my
dilemma, Pavek: magic hastens the dragon. I will not risk Urik to find any one
man not Kakzim, not a friend of yours. If it suits you, you may search for
them after we've raised the guardian."
"It suits me, Great King," Pavek said to the great king's back.
*****
With the purse Ruari had gotten from Pavek before he died, the silver he got
in exchange for his staff, the handful of coins Zvain insisted he "found"
beneath a pile of rubbish in a Farl alley, and the three silver coins Mahtra
got he-didn't-ask-where, they had enough money to purchase three unimpressive
kanks from the village pound and outfit them with shabby saddles,
peeling harnesses, and other supplies of dubious quality.
Six days west of Farl, they were down to two kanks. Tempers were short, and
they spent a part of each day arguing whether any of the landmarks they
passed matched those on their white-bark map. If it weren't for Ruari's
fundamentally sound sense of distance and direction, they'd have been
hopelessly lost.
Each time they set off in a direction the three of them eventually agreed was
wrong, he'd been able to get them back to a place they recognized.
The sun was at its height in the heavens and there wasn't a sliver of shade
anywhere except in the lee of the same three boulders where they'd camped last
night.
"I told you these rocks matched the three dots," Ruari grumbled as he
dismounted. He hobbled the bug before offering a hand to either Mahtra or
Zvain, who rode together on the other one.
"They're awfully small," Mahtra said.
"All right, they don't match the three dots -and we've followed Kakzim's
damned map into the middle of nowhere. In case you haven't noticed, we're
running out of land!" Ruari swung his arm from due north to due west where the
horizon was a solid line of jagged peaks. "The circle is north of here,
between us and those mountains, or it's not anywhere!"
"You don't have to shout," Zvain complained as he jumped down from the kank's
saddle.
Mahtra tried to make peace. "We'll go north next. We always go two
directions before we settle on one."
"At least two."
Ruari got the last word as he hobbled the second kank and let it go foraging.
The surviving kanks were doing better than their riders. Bugs could eat
just about anything that wasn't sand or rock; people were more
particular. They'd run out of village food two days ago. Ruari didn't consider
it a serious problem; he'd had little trouble hunting up a steady supply of
bugs, grubs, and lizards more than enough to keep the three of them healthy,
but Zvain was fussy, and Mahtra truly seemed to become ill on the wriggly
morsels. She'd sooner forage with the kanks which she did, after Ruari
rationed out their water.
It was midafternoon before they were remounted and headed north. Ruari wasn't
as well-organized as
Pavek, and certainly wasn't as effective getting Mahtra and Zvain moving; he
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owed Pavek an apology
The half-elf closed his eyes and pounded a tight fist against his thigh.
Pavek's name hadn't crossed his mind since sunrise. He was ashamed that he'd
forgotten his friend for so many hours and was grieved by the memories, once
they returned. The downward spiral between shame and grief hadn't
ended when
Mahtra and Zvain both called his name.
"Look " Mahtra extended her long, white arm.
Wisps of smoke rose through the seared air. They could be mirages the
sun's pounding heat made everything shimmer by late afternoon. But the
smoke didn't shimmer, and it wasn't long before they saw other signs of
habitation. Zvain prodded their bug's antennae, urging it to greater speed;
Ruari did the same thing until he got his kank far enough ahead to force the
other one to a halt.
"Not so fast! We don't know what's up there, who's up there, or if they're
going to be friendly to the likes of us." Wind and fire, he was sounding
more like Pavek every time he opened his mouth. "This could still be a trap.
We go in slow, and we go in cautious. Stay close together. Keep your heads
down and eyes open. That's what Yohan would say "
Pavek, too, but by unspoken agreement, they didn't mention his name.
"Understand?"
They both said they did, and probably with the best of intentions. But
strangers weren't common in this faraway corner of the Tablelands. A handful
of folk came out to meet them while they were still a fair
distance from the settlement. They were mostly human or half-elves,
like himself which was no assurance of welcome, especially considering that
every one of them was armed with knives, swords, and spears. Mahtra drew the
most stares; that was to be expected, but Ruari drew a surprising number
himself.
He had Pavek's metal knife and a greenwood staff lashed to the kank's saddle
where it wouldn't do him any good in a fight. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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