It had always been inevitable.
Brual and Rathkrun leaped forward simultaneously, raising their weapons. The barrels were hurled over, spilling axes that flashed in the light of the moon. Kalkor and his two henchmen swung around to meet the attack. Brual struck one, but Kalkor himself somehow stepped around Rathkrun’s thrust, felled him with a punch too fast for the eye to follow, and flattened Brual with a kick. Then the raiders had their weapons in hand, and they charged.
The jotnar of Durthing fled screaming.
By morning, the settlement was only a memory.
2
Thume, the Accursed Place . . . The War of the Five Warlocks . . .
History had never been one of Inos’s interests. Throughout her childhood she had rejected history with a passion second only to the fanatic fervor with which she had spurned mathematics. Her long-suffering tutor, Master Poraganu, had learned to temper their mutual excursions into history to a tolerable minimum.
But even Inos had heard of the Accursed Place. It had a romantic name.
As Elkarath’s caravan had drawn near the foothills of the Progiste Range, she had heard more of it. Azak had spoken of Thume a few times, as they ate their evening meal outside the tent. To him it was a place of annoying mystery, an untidy tangle in the military logic of Pandemia—a hazard when Zark wished to invade the Impire, an unreliable defense when the Impire attacked Zark. The local women in their bathhouses and bazaars had spoken of Thume with hushed voices and stretched eyes, muttering tales of ancestors who had wandered too far into the mountains and been Seen No More. To them it was a place of dread.
Ulien’quith had been warlock of the south, and a sorcerer of renown, cut from the cloth of such legendary masters as Thraine, and Ojilotho. Ulien’, it was said, had sought to become supreme, to overthrow the Protocol and dominate the Council of Four. He had been balked, repudiated, and cast out. He had fled to Thume; the other wardens had appointed another South, and had pursued him to wreak vengeance. The resulting War of the Five Warlocks had continued for thirty years.
To be exact, there had then been three warlocks and two witches, and the war should rightwise have been called the War of the Five Wardens—a point Inos had made forcibly to Master Poraganu—but Five Warlocks was how it was known.
Even before that disaster, Thume had always been a cockpit. Trapped between imps and djinns, between the gnomes of Guwash and the merfolk of the Keriths, it had been doomed to eternal struggle. Its two long coasts had doubtless brought double trouble from jotnar raiders also. The native race, the pixies, had been looted, raped, massacred, and enslaved without respite since before the coming of the Gods.
The War of the Five Warlocks had been merely the final catastrophe. Fire and earthquake, storm and monsters, bronzeclad armies and rampaging hordes—all had struck at Thume, or at one another. Death and destruction had swept back and forth with no clear victory for anyone. Not being bound by the Protocol, Ulien’quith and his unknown allies had resisted even the legions, dragons, and jotunn raiders that were normally immune to the ravages of sorcery. He had destroyed them, or turned them on their nominal masters and their allies. For thirty years. At the end of that time, seemingly, everyone just stopped fighting and went home.
Not the least of the irritations of history in Inos’s view was that it so often failed to end its stories tidily.
No one ever went back, said the legends. There was nobody there now, nothing left to fight over. Solitary travelers returned reporting an empty land, forest and game in abundance.
Or else they did not return.
Intruding armies either passed through unmolested or mysteriously disappeared. Attempts to colonize the empty land never prospered, the settlers fleeing in inexplicable terror or just vanishing without trace.
No one had seen a pixie in almost a thousand years.
3
Princess Kadolan of Krasnegar was concerned.
With her comfortable girth wrapped in a couple of towels, she sat on a rather lumpy cushion in a very hot and overcrowded bathhouse and listened politely to the troubles of a Bloody Phlegm on one side and a Hardened Liver on the other.
She was not especially worried that this remote mountain hamlet was reputedly the worst nest of cutthroats in all Zark. Whatever evil might be planned, it was not going to occur in the village women’s bathhouse, and almost certainly not until after the caravan’s departure the next day.
She was not even troubled at the moment over the mysterious Sheik Elkarath, who might or might not be a servant of the sorceress Rasha. Either way, his lifelong immunity to the dangers of the Gauntlet merely confirmed her previous suspicions that he was a sorcerer. The second danger canceled out the first.
No, Kade was apprehensive about Inosolan, who was clearly plotting something. Inos was always more of a leaper than a looker. Kadolan had learned to be prepared for the worst when her niece was in this mood, and the worst in this situation might be very bad. Inos resented restraint of any kind, and she was probably scheming some way to make the first danger cancel out the second.
Every evening, after serving their menfolk’s meal, the womenfolk of Zark headed for their local bathhouse. There they shed their all-enveloping robes and veils and lounged around in comfort upon cushions set on ancient floors of tile or clay. They talked of their children, their health, their husbands, and their husbands’ problems. Often they played thali. In some places the women’s bathhouse was little better than a shack over a mud pit,. but the larger, better houses were well equipped for socializing and recreation.
The men, of course, would similarly gather at their own establishment, and talk of serious matters: trade and politics, health and poverty . . . horses, dogs, camels, and women. Visitors were always welcome. In the sparsely settled Interior, the caravans were prized as much for news and gossip as for their trade goods. The drab lives of the inhabitants held few excitements.
The bathhouse at the Oasis of Tall Cranes was as spacious and comfortable as any, but the population was large, and at least a hundred women and girls were crowded around in the dimness. The massive walls had kept out the worst of the day’s heat, but they took a long time to cool, and the windows were so heavily shuttered that the room had become headachingly stuffy. Lamps smoked and sputtered, insects buzzed, and voices droned. Babies snuffled and whimpered in a dark corner.
Bloody Phlegm was again explaining the difficulty she had in sleeping at all now, growing hoarse as she tried to drown out details of Hardened Liver’s grandmother’s guaranteed physic. Kadolan nodded and smiled, or frowned as required, and meanwhile she tried to keep an eye on Inosolan.
Inosolan sat in a group of younger wives in a relatively bright corner, under a patch of lamplight. She was still combing out her hair, a stream of moonlight in the gloom. The upper half of her face had darkened in the desert glare, a trait inherited from her jotunn ancestors; without her veil she looked as if she were wearing a mask.
Of course there had been the usual questions earlier, provoked by her green eyes, Kadolan’s blue eyes, and their pale skins. Tonight Inosolan had stayed with the simplest explanation—jotunn blood in the family, too far back for details. The local ladies had sighed understandingly. Some nights Inosolan went into lurid particulars involving longships, or she might invent elvish ancestors instead. After an especially hard day, she was capable of including both elves and rape, in highly unlikely combinations.
The Tall Cranes bathhouse was acceptable. The women, Kade noticed, were better dressed than most. There was no ostentatious flaunting of jewelry, but the negligees and even towels were of fine stuff. Of course the oasis lay only three days or so from a great city, and should not be compared with some hamlet in the middle of the desert. On the other hand, there was no local industry to account for the prosperity, as Azak had wryly pointed out only that evening.
Thoughts of the sultan made Kadolan realize that she had not heard him mentioned in the bathhouse. He was a noticeable man and lionslayers were romantic figures. Almost invariably on other evenings, some of the younger women had directed wistful queries about him to his supposed wife. The women of Tall Cranes had not. That discretion might have pleased Inosolan, but it was an ominous break with routine.
But so far Inosolan herself had done nothing out of the ordinary. There had been no further mention of the mysterious favor she had requested earlier. Bedtime was approaching. The younger women were already dressing, preparing to leave when impatient husbands would arrive and lead them home to perform their final duties of the day.