The guards closed ranks around their prisoners, the several groups were almost instantly separated by the crowd. Haplo and the prince vanished from sight. The duke and duchess pressed close to Alfred, one on either side, their hands closing over his arms.
He felt an unusual tenseness, a rigidity in their bodies, and looked at each in doubt and sudden, sickening apprehension.
“Yes,” said Jera, her voice pitched low, barely audible above the noise level created by the multitudes jamming the streets, “we’re going to try to help you escape. Just do what we tell you, when we tell you.”
“But… the prince … my fri—” Alfred paused. He had been about to term Haplo his “friend” and wondered uneasily if the word quite proper or even accurate.
Jonathan appeared troubled, glanced at his wife, who shook her head firmly.
The duke sighed. “I’m sorry. But you see that helping them is impossible. We will make certain you get away safely, then perhaps together we can do something to assist your friends.”
What he said made sense. How could the duke know that, without Haplo, Alfred was a prisoner no matter where he went on this world? He emitted a small sigh, that no one could possibly have heard. “I suppose it wouldn’t matter if I told you that I didn’t want to escape?”
“You’re frightened,” said Jera, patting his arm. “Thafs understandable. But trust us. We’ll take care of you. It won’t be that difficult,” she added, casting a scornful glance at their dead guards, shouldering their way through the crowd.
“No, I didn’t think it would,” Alfred said, but he said it to himself.
“Our concern is for your safety,” added Jonathan.
“Is it?” Alfred asked wistfully.
“Why, of course!” the duke exclaimed, and Alfred had the feeling that the young man actually believed what he said.
The Sartan couldn’t help but wonder, with a gentle melancholy, how ready these two would be to risk their lives to save a clumsy-footed bumbling fool instead of a man who’d fulfilled “the prophecy,” whatever that might be. He considered asking, decided he really didn’t want to know.
“What will happen to the prince, to … to Haplo?” ‘
“You heard Pons,” said the duchess shortly.
“Who?”
“The chancellor.”
“But he’s talking about murder!” Alfred was aghast. He could believe it of mensch, believe it of the Patryns . .. but his people!
“It’s been done before this,” said the duke grimly. ‘And will be done again after.”
“You must think of yourself,” Jera added softly. “There’ll be time to think of helping your friends escape when you’re safe.”
“Or at least we might be able to rescue their cadavers,” offered Jonathan, and Alfred, looking into the young man’s eyes, saw that the duke was completely in earnest.
Everything within Alfred went numb. He was walking in a dream, but if it was a dream, it must be someone else’s, because he couldn’t wake up. The warm hands of the duke and duchess steered him among the sea of dead, combating the chill flow from the blue-white flesh of the cadavers pressing around them. The odor of decay was strong in his nostrils and emanated not only from the dead but from everything in this world.
The buildings themselves, made of obsidian and granite and cooied lava, were subject to the constant, drizzling, acid-filled laze. Dwellings and shops, like the cadavers, were crumbling, falling apart. Alfred saw, here and there, old runes or what was left of them; sigla whose magic would have brought heat and light to this gloomy, forbidding city. But most were obliterated, either washed away or covered over by makeshift repair work.
Duke and duchess slowed their pace. Alfred glanced at them nervously.
“Up ahead is a cross-tunnel,” Jera said, drawing near him. Her face was firm, resolute, her tone urgent, impelling. “We’ll encounter the normal traffic tie-ups, confusion. Once we reach that point, be ready to do what we say.”
“I think I should warn you—I’m not very good at running, fleeing pursuit, that sort of thing,” said Alfred.
Jera smiled, a rather right smile and lopsided, but her green eyes were warm. “We know,” she said, patting his arm again. “Don’t worry. It should all be much easier than that.”