Haplo had no doubt in his mind who would win a contest between the two of them, and he guessed that Alfred didn’t either. But a contest would take time and the fighting magicks generated by these two beings—the closest beings to gods the mensch would ever know—would proclaim their presence to everyone within eyesight and earshot.
Besides, on reflection, Haplo didn’t particularly want to leave the Sartan on his ship. The dog would prevent Alfred from breathing, if Haplo ordered it. But the Patryn hadn’t liked the Sartan’s reference to the animal. I know about the dog, he’d said. What did he know? What was there to know? The dog was a dog. Nothing more, except that the animal had once saved Haplo’s life.
The Patryn docked the ship at the silent, empty pier. He kept close watch, more than half-expecting some type of welcome—an official demanding to know their business, an idle straggler, watching their arrival out of curiosity.
No one appeared. Haplo knew little of wharves or shipyards but he took this as a bad sign. Either everyone was fast asleep and completely uninterested in what was happening at their docks or the town was, as Alfred had said, deserted. And towns that were deserted were generally deserted for a reason and that reason was generally not good.
Once the ship was moored, Haplo deactivated the steering stone, placed it once more on its pedestal, its glowing runes extinguished. He began to prepare to disembark. Rummaging in his supplies, he found a roll of plain linen cloth and wound it carefully around his hands and wrists, covering and concealing the runes tattooed on the skin.
The same runes were tattooed over most of his body. He kept himself covered with heavy clothing—a long-sleeved shirt, a leather vest, leather trousers tucked into tall leather boots, a scarf tied close around his neck. No sigla adorned the grim, square-jawed, cleanshaven face, no runes appeared on the palms of the hands or the fingers or the soles of his feet. The rune-magic might interfere with the mental processes and those of the senses: touch, sight, smell, hearing.
“I’m curious,” said Alfred, watching the proceedings with interest. “Why do you bother to disguise yourself? It’s been centuries since . . . since . . .” he faltered, not certain where to go from here.
“Since you threw us in that torture chamber you called a prison?” Haplo finished, glancing at Alfred coolly.
The Sartan’s head bowed. “I didn’t realize … I didn’t understand. Now, I do. I’m sorry.”
“Understand? How could you possibly understand unless you’ve been there?” Haplo paused, wondering again, uncomfortably, where Alfred had spent his journey through Death’s Gate. “You’ll be sorry, all right, Sartan. We’ll see how long you last in the Labyrinth. And to answer your question, I disguise myself because there could be people out there—like yourself, for example—who remember the Patryns. My Lord does not want anyone to remember—not yet, at least.”
“There are those such as myself, who would remember and try to stop you. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?” Alfred sighed. “I cannot stop you. I am one. You, from what I gather, are many. You didn’t find any trace of my people alive on Pryan, did you?”
Haplo looked at the man sharply, suspecting some sort of trick, though he couldn’t imagine what. He had a sudden vision of those rows of tombs, of the young, dead corpses. He guessed at the desperate search that had taken Alfred to every part of Arianus— from the high realms of the self-accursed wizards to the lowly realms of the slavelike Gegs. He experienced the terrible grief of coming to realize, finally, that he alone had survived, his race and all its dreams and plans were dead.
What had gone wrong? How could godlike beings have dwindled, vanished? And if such a disaster could happen to the Sartan, could it also happen to us?
Angry, Haplo shrugged off the thought. The Patryns had survived a land determined to slaughter them—proof that they had been right all along. They were the strongest, the most intelligent, the fittest to rule.
“I found no trace of the Sartan on Pryan,” Haplo said, “except a city that they’d built.”