And he was very persistent. Even at dawn, on a mule, after a sleepless night, heading into unknown dangers, possibly being pursued by an angry sorcerer, Azak was busily wooing. He badgered, and he deflected every objection. “Tell me! ” he said. “Describe these customs that you find so unacceptable. ”
“Murder, for one thing. I know you poisoned your grandfather . . . how about Hakaraz and his snakebite? Did the snake have help?”
“Certainly. Asps do not infest royal apartments from choice, and there were six of them. The one in his boot got him.” Inos shivered. “How many brothers have you killed?”
“Eighteen. Do you want to know about uncles and cousins?” She shook her head, not wishing to look at him. The mules were back on the made road again, and the surrounding slopes were coated in rank brown grass, wet with dew. The air was cold yet.
“Do you wish to hear my reasons?”
“No. I’m sure you had reasons. And I know that it is the custom of the country, so they couldn’t complain that they—”
“Complaints were some of the reasons.” He was mocking, and yet serious, too. “But I shall have no relatives around in Krasnegar to vent my barbarous impulses on. It just isn’t as much fun with commoners, somehow.”
“Oh, Azak! I know you don’t do it for fun, but . . . Oh, Azak! Look!”
The fog swirled as if bowing farewell, and withdrew like a drapery. Sunlight blazed hot and bright. Inos stared up in amazement at a rugged mountain that filled the sky, seeming to overhang her; and yet the craggy hills directly ahead were sizable in their own right. Then, even more dramatic, the crumbled yellow landscape seemed to waken like a sleeping dragon and transform itself before her eyes into the ruined city that was their immediate goal. Cliff became wall, peak tower, gorge gateway. And Kade cried out.
Azak wheeled his mule even before Inos had hauled hers to a stop. She dropped the reins and scrambled off its back, suddenly aware of stiffness and stabbing aches. And she was not a quarter of Kade’s age! How could she have been so thoughtless as to drag the old lady up here without any decent respite? Keeping her up all night . . .
By the time she had limped back to the fourth mule and her aunt, Azak was dismounting a short way farther back, and Kade was full of apologies. She had dropped her breviary, was all.
Well, if she could attempt to read and ride a mule at the same time, she was in not too bad a shape.
“We must take a break, though,” Inos said. —
Azak nodded agreement as he returned with the missing book, leading his mule. Although his mule was larger than any of the others, in the light of day he seemed absurdly huge alongside it, like a man walking a dog.
The sky was blue, the sun hot, and sunward the land tumbled away in scrawny ridges to the hazy immensity of the desert. Inos had a sudden heady sensation of being a bird. The view was breathtaking. She was amazed at the height they reached already, at the vastness of the world spread out before her.
Somewhere down there in that jumble of rock was the Oasis of Tall Cranes, full of enraged brigands and a very angry sorcerer. Doubtless the local men knew of this road and would follow as soon as they had recovered their livestock, but so far the sorcerer had not reacted. He had not called the fugitives back to him. He might have lost them, or they might be beyond his range already.
But a rest, and hot tea, and food . . .
“Which God?” Azak murmured politely, thumbing through Kade’s breviary. “Travelers?”
“Humility,” said Kade.
Without hesitation, he expertly flipped the pages and found the place, but as he handed back the book, he raised one copperred eyebrow. “And why should you choose to invoke Them, ma’am?”
Normally Kade deferred to Azak as thoroughly as any Zarkian woman would. This time she met his mocking gaze with a royal confidence of her own. On muleback, she was almost at his eye level, which no doubt helped, and perhaps she no longer wished to play the Mistress Phattas role, for there was no deference in her ice-blue eyes as she replied. “Because I am convinced we have made a terrible error, your Majesty.”
He flushed. “I trust that you are mistaken!”
“I hope I am. I pray that I may live to apologize.”
Azak’s red eyes flashed anger, and he turned away, yanking his mule’s reins.
6
Someone slapped Rap’s face to get his attention. He was still bound, crammed in on top of some angular sacks and under a bench. He could not feel his feet at all, and his hands were only more anonymous lumps twisted underneath him. Day and night were a blur, as if he had been lying there for weeks, unwanted baggage on Blood Wave. Even in the taiga, he had never felt so cold. His head throbbed from the effects of the blow that had felled him as he boarded, although he had detected the ambush in time to dodge and avoid some of the impact. Gathmor had not been so lucky, and he remained an inanimate bundle jammed in beside Rap.
The storm roared unabated. Kalkor had set sail into the middle of it, with brazen insanity, and Blood Wave had been whirling around like a feather ever since—standing on her bow or her stern or her beam ends, never still. She groaned and creaked under the battering, but an orca ship was as near to indestructible as a jotunn raider himself. Even in the dark, Rap had been able to see the waves, and from his low vantage they had been green mountains, taller than the mast. They were still coming.
“Water!” he croaked. The only water he had tasted had been the rain on his face mingled with the salt spray that drenched him and everything else aboard every few minutes.
Then he recognized the hairy giant kneeling over him. “What’s it worth, Stupid?” His sibilant growl was familiar, too. That voice came with the nightmares.
“Water!”
Darad thumped a fist on Rap’s right eye. Cold and numb as he was, the pain was unexpectedly overwhelming. For a moment it blocked out the whole world, crushing, deadening, nauseating. Lights blazed around in his head.
When his mind cleared a little, the jotunn was grinning his wolf grin, the big canines emphasized by the missing front teeth, top and bottom. “Andor told you he’d find a way to get you off that stupid little tub. Well, we did, didn’t we? I did!”
“Friend of yours, is he?” Rap croaked. “Kalkor an old friend? ”
Darad nodded, leering. He was ugly as a troll, and almost as big. With any other of the sequential five it was possible to argue, but Darad was too witless to be distracted.
“And he was willing to do me a favor!”
“How’d you meet up with him?”
“Luck, Stupid. Just luck. My word makes me lucky, see? Yours doesn’t! You’re mine now, faun. A gift from Kalkor! You’re going to tell me your word. ”
“I don’t know—” The other eye was thumped now, harder. Oh, Gods! That was worse.
“Thinal thinks you do. That’s good enough for me. “ Darad raised a thick finger and stroked his goblin tattoos. “You’ll talk.”
Rap had recognized Darad among the raiders. That was the main reason he had rushed forward like a maniac to denounce Kalkor—he had known then why the jotnar had come to Durthing. But some of his madness had been the remains of his own killer anger. Without that he might just have run away, and he would have escaped, unless he had lingered to help the women and children. He had been within seconds of beating Ogi; now he was getting what he deserved for losing his temper.
And for being so stupid! He had known that Darad would always be a danger—Darad and Andor and the rest of the five—but he had thought he could shelter in Durthing, guarded by a few hundred jotnar. Had he used the wits he was born with, he’d have guessed that Darad might enlist some jotnar of his own. So Rap had brought down the full horrors of a Nordland thane on the settlement, and for that evil he deserved. more punishment than even the Gods could decree.
Whining was not going to help, and telling his word would mean instant drowning. He wasn’t ready for that yet, not quite. So he gave Darad a very obscene instruction he had learned from Gathmor. The resulting punches knocked him out for a while, and that was an improvement.
Piety nor wit:
The moving Finger writes;
and, having writ, Moves on;