Four men on horses. That would be … he focused the glasses more carefully. That would be Ybon Saelan, the minister to the Shah, the one who had escorted them around the town and bought them the daggers. He was flanked by the Prince and the Marshall The fourth man, just behind, had to be the Shah himself, for the horse was caparisoned into virtual immobility. Behind the horses came a few dozen dark-clad men with fancy helmets, and behind them a motley assembly, shambling along in wavering ranks, twenty abreast, carrying a variety of weapons. Aufors lay quiet and counted a couple of hundred ranks, four or five thousand men. That would be almost the entire male population of the city, excluding very old men and boys.
At the rear of the procession came a line of baggage harpta, and he watched while this array made a wide, purposeful track around the base of the nearest dune to continue southward. The travelers he had seen during the night had moved singly and surreptitiously, but this bunch obviously didn’t care who knew they were coming.
As the procession disappeared, a glitter of weapons brought his eye to a long, low building half buried in the dunes outside the gate. Though the Shah had taken virtually every man in the city with him, he had left a company of armed men to guard this unprepossessing building. He scanned it intently, intrigued by its odd shape, realizing finally that it was edged and topped by massive wooden shutters to hold back the sand that flowed above it and at either side.
Darkness would decrease his risk in entering the city, so he composed himself in the shade of the nearest convenient Thorn tree, one of several that stood outside a small patch of lichen. While removing food from the pack, he came across the packet of cut lichen. Seeing that it was already partly dried, he laid it in the sun to desiccate while he ate his bread and dried meat and drank a long, slow ration of water. Finally he rolled in his robes and fell asleep immediately, as any soldier long in the trade learned to do.
When he woke, he was in the shade of the dune and the sun was just above the western horizon. The scraps of lichen he had cut earlier were thoroughly dry, and they crumbled to powder as he rewrapped them before stowing them in his pack. Then, as he pulled on his boots he noticed that the patch of lichen was now growing around the tree he had shaded under. Did he remember it wrongly? Or had the lichen moved nearer him while he slept?
Thoughtfully, he removed his dagger from its sheath, set the point against the vein at the base of his thumb, and nicked it. He held his hand above the lichen, dripping blood and counting slowly, one, two, three
By the count of twelve the lichen came alive like a suddenly wakened tangle of tiny snakes, twisting and thrashing as they reached upward for the falling drops, the proximate disturbance gradually rippling outward to the far edges of the patch, the whole shrieking shrilly, like the high-frequency buzz of a swarm of tiny insects.
Considerably alarmed, Aufors moved away from the growth. The edge nearest him stretched as though to follow him, the frond tips questing like tiny snouts. Did it smell him? It sensed him somehow, that much was sure. With a slight shudder, Aufors wondered what would have happened to him if he had lain closer to the patch while he slept? Did it take spilled blood to get it going? Or could it dig through flesh all by itself?
And why, if making it grow was what the Mahahmbi were after, did they feed it only on women’s blood—if he’d been correct about the bodies—when it had reacted very strongly to his own? He put on his gloves before cutting a good handful of the questing strands, wrapping them well and putting them into his breast pocket in order not to confuse them with the other sample in his pack.
When dusk fell he emerged onto the flat territory south of the city, plodding toward it in an unhurried and unbothered manner. The malghaste gate was to the left of the city gates, and he headed directly for it. When the prayer call screamed over the wall he stopped and bowed his head respectfully as he had seen the malghaste do. Malghaste could not sully the Mahahmbi religion by following it or adopting any of its rites, but neither could they show disrespect toward it. The quiet stance and the bowed head were sufficient to let them go unnoticed and unpunished.