The ship veered this way and that. Huge stalagmites, with wicked, sword-sharp edges, thrust up from the molten sea like black teeth from a red maw. Haplo understood what had caused the trashes they’d previously experienced. Jolted to action, he moved forward and placed his hands on the steering stone, reacting by, instinct more than by conscious thought, his gaze riveted with horrid fascination on the dreadful landscape into which he sailed.
“Blessed Sartan!” murmured a voice behind him. “What frightful place is this?”
Haplo spared Alfred a brief glance.
“Your people made it,” he told him. “Dog, watch him.”
The dog had obediently herded and harried Alfred to this point by nipping at the man’s heels. It plopped itself down on the deck, panting in the heat, fixing its intelligent eyes on the Sartan. Alfred took a step forward. The animal growled, its tail thumped warningly against the deck.
I’ve nothing against you personally, the dog might have been saying from its expression, but orders are orders.
Alfred gulped and froze, leaned weakly against the bulkhead. “Where .. . where are we?” he repeated in a faint voice.
“Abarrach.”
“The world of stone. Was this your destination?”
“Of course! What did you expect? That I’m as clumsy as you?”
Alfred was silent, eyes staring out on the awful panorama. “So you are visiting each of the worlds?” he said at length.
Haplo didn’t see any reason why he should answer and so he kept quiet and concentrated on his steering. It deserved concentration. The huge boulders sprang up suddenly, without warning. He considered taking to the air, but decided against it. He couldn’t determine the height of the cavern’s ceiling. The hull could withstand punishment far better than the fragile mast and dragon’s head prow.
The heat was intense, even inside the ship, which had the advantage of being protected by runes on the outside. Haplo’s skin gleamed a bright blue as the runes cooled him. Alfred, he noticed, was humming beneath his breath, tracing runes in the air with his long-fingered hands and shuffling his feet slightly, his body swaying to the rhythm of the Sartan magic. Flanks heaving, the dog panted loudly, but never took its eyes from Alfred.
“You’ve been to the second world, I presume,” the Sartan continued in a low voice, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “It would be natural for you to travel to them in the order in which they were created, the order they appear on the old charts. Did you. .. did you find any trace of”—Alfred paused, seeming to have trouble speaking—”my people?” he asked finally in a voice so soft that Haplo heard him only because he knew what the question was going to be.
The Patryn didn’t immediately answer. What was he going to do with Alfred? This Sartan? This mortal enemy?
Haplo’s inclination, and he was astounded by how his hands and fingers itched to perform the action his mind presented to him, was to toss the man into the magma river. But to murder Alfred would be to indulge in his own hatred, a lapse of discipline the Lord of the Nexus would not tolerate. Alfred, a living Sartan—as far as Haplo had discovered, the only living Sartan—was an extremely valuable prize.
My Lord will be pleased with this gift, Haplo thought, considering. Far more pleased with this than anything else I could bring him, including my report on this hellish world. I should probably turn around, deliver the Sartan immediately. But.. . but. . .
But that would mean reentering Death’s Gate and Haplo, although he hated admitting his weakness to himself, couldn’t view that prospect without true alarm . He saw again the rows and rows of tombs, knew again the death of hope and promise, experienced the knowledge of being terribly, horribly, pitifully alone. . . .
He wrenched his mind from the dream or whatever it had been, cursed the eyes that had made him see it. I won’t make that journey again, not now, not so soon. Let time blunt it, blur the images. He rationalized: it would be extremely difficult and dangerous to turn the ship around. Better to keep going, complete my mission, explore this world, and then return to the Nexus. Alfred isn’t going anywhere without me, that’s for damn sure.