All told, there were eighteen silvers, seven of them Nemarl’s men, scouring the land for me. It appeared an odd number. If they were intent on having me, why send this few; if I was worth little, why bother with me at all? It seemed a
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personal feud, as before. I considered that Demizdor could have rallied her kin kinfolk on my trail, her bitter love curdling into hate again. That would certainly account for the small number of Kortis’ men, and for the sparsity, yet determination, of Nemarl’s band, for no doubt there were several in the city who were sweet on my blond wife and ready to run her errands.
As for their plan-some rode ahead, less, now that I had had dealings with them; some rode around, circling for me. The storm had disorganized the hunt, and the wolf had fallen on the pack from behind.
The night dawned black, rain-washed of its stars.
The marsh had slid from sight to the east; the hills were leveling into rolling uplands of gray chalky turf and clawing trees.
My body felt hollow from wanting sleep, but I had a powerful urge to keep going, and to say I had got no keen joy from killing my enemies would be to lie. In fact I was looking forward to next meeting them with a distinct thirst for blood, a raiding warrior again, with a store of fury to spare. I had been slave and coward and sophisticate too long in Eshkorek, and the gilt was wearing thin.
Eventually, I saw a red glow on the black ahead of me.
In an ancient quarry about eight feet below, a fire burned, and around it sat seven men. Two were unmasked skullheads, the other five wore the ragged gray and saffron livery I recalled as being Nemarl’s. The slave guide was also with them, roasting over the flames on a skewer a couple of illskinned rabbits.
I was curious to learn how they would eat these, the households of the two Javhovors, unlike Erran’s, keeping as they did to the pretense of secret stomachs. But I never did learn, for one of the skull captains turned to me, took in my gear and horse, and said, “Well Skor, we have abandoned the search for tonight. Did you come across Zrenn and Orek and the rest out there, chasing their tails in the dark?”
So it was the cousins of Demizdor who were yet absent, together with two of Nemarl’s men. All others I had accounted for, bar these in the quarry.
“No,” I said. I was smiling in the mask, biting on the feel of violence to come. Seven men for killing. I never thought I
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should not do it. Even if they wounded me, I would heal. They were babes left in the grass of the lion’s run.
“No? That’s a short sentence for Skor,” a man remarked. “What, no grumbles about the storm and the ride, and a wolf hunt with no wolf to be found?”
“Oh, there’s a wolf,” I said.
And I rode the horse straight over the edge and across the fire at him, striking him down as I passed, wheeling, and leaning to slaughter three more before they realized properly what devil was loose among them.
The Dark Slave had tumbled aside. I took up his skewer, the roasting rabbits still fixed on it and got another unmasked skull-head through the brains with it as he came for me.
Then someone had stumbled the horse, which crashed over, and I with it. A man of Nemarl’s leaped on me; I twitched aside, and his blade, missing the heart, pinned my right shoulder to the earth. I wrenched up the length of it with a howl of agony and rage, and smashed my fist into his jaw, and as his head snapped back, I stabbed him left-handed in the throat.
He fell on me, stone dead. I got up from under him and worked the sword out of my flesh. Only the slave and I remained. The last skull-head was scrambling from the quarry, yelling for Zrenn (or maybe for his mother; it was hard to be sure). I wished for an arrow or spear to bring him down, but had none, and a knife would not travel far enough.
But I did not require an arrow. Now, when I barely needed it, I grew aware of the armament I had in me, as I had in Ettook’s painted tent.
Yet it was not the same. On that occasion the energy had used me to escape into the world. Currently it seemed I could control the thing, saddle and ride it, and dismount when I was done. I pulled off the silver skull-mask, dropped and kicked it aside.
Become easy, I scarcely felt it leave me, that sorcerer’s power, by the door of the eyes.
A thin white skim of light over the quarry. The yelling man floundering there let go his hold and flung wide his arms as if to fly, and dropped back among the scattered embers of the fire, and was silent.
I felt dizzy, but not weak; I had contained the power, uti-
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lized it, and put it to rest. This exhilarated me. I turned about and found the Dark Slave still standing near me.
His ugly face showed no fear, enjoyment, or chagrin at the death I had inflicted on his masters. But he got down, without a word onto his belly, and pressed his face in the mud and ash before me. Then rising, still speechless, he sought the murdering skewer, the end of which was affixed in the forehead of a man, plucked off a part-roast rabbit, and loped away with it into the pit of the night.
I had been worshiped as a god, and I had been ignored as valueless.
Two strong liquors to mingle in one cup.
My shoulder was spurting blood. I assumed it would heal quickly and paid no heed to it. Indeed, I was very arrogant about the matter. After this I remember little for several days.
My game with the power of white light had cost me something after all. My wound was slow to close and bled much. Weary as I was, I must have staggered for miles, forgetting the horses or that four hunters remained to seek my trail.
Somehow I eluded pursuit, or else my drunkard’s insane wanderings took me out of the path of it.
I went mainly east, I think. At one point I rambled over a thread of river by a bridge of stone older than the old trees that grew there.
I lost about four days in this obtuse state, and finally came to myself lying by some pool where I had crawled to drink like a sick bear. My wound was healed, and my thickheaded stupidity with it. The air smelled new to me, an open, singular smell, and the pool was salty.
I muttered to myself that never again must I kill by use of a white energy harvested from the brain. But I sounded like a lunatic mumbling there. I could hardly believe any of it, and a sense of reality returned to me only in stages.
3
That evening I met a black witch with a red cat, walking on a headland above the sea.
I had reached the sea unexpectedly, but the sea is unexpected in any event to one who has never known it. You think it land at first, or sky, and penultimately mist. Then you realize a vast azure mass of water lies like a dragon in the sun’s last rays, breathing and shifting on the beaches.
Like a sort of madness itself it seemed to complement my own bewildered wandering. When I saw the girl, she, too, was like an oblique figment or expression of my mental process.
A striking wrench, black as a coal, with a black satin mane, born demonstrably of the black marsh tribes, except that when you came near, you saw she had some mixed blood, for out of that delicate ebony face (the black women do not wear the shireen) stared a pair of wild eyes, the pale bluegray of the sea behind her.
She had on a dark shift, plain krarl women’s garb, and a bracelet of greenish smooth stones, and gold studs in her ears. Around her neck was what I took for an orange-red fur hood, but it was a foxy cat, with a fierce glare.
Both their heads went up when they saw me and both their eyes flashed so that I smiled at it.
“Well,” she said, “I have summoned you, and you have come. Are you specter or man or conjuring?”
“Man,” I said. “Shall I prove it to you?”
Then she smiled also, a different, woman’s smile, and turned her face. Her profile was chiseled, aquiline and almost flat, like a carving, save for her full mouth, the lower lip indented like a plum, but the color of mulberries.