“I was looking for you and McKay. Where is he?”
She lifted her shoulders.
“Well, it doesn’t matter.”
He squatted down by her.
“I think we’ve wasted enough time. We should get away the moment we have a chance.”
“We?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Why should I want to go with you?”
He looked exasperated. “You surely don’t want to spend the rest of your life here?”
“I don’t intend to. But I mean to make sure first that Kickaha is either alive or dead.”
“That leblabbiy really means that much to you?”
“Yes. Don’t look so disgusted. If you should ever feel that much for another human being, which I doubt, then you’ll know why I’m making sure about him. Meanwhile …”
He looked incredulous. “You can’t stay here.”
“Not forever. But if he’s alive, he’ll be along soon. I’ll give him a certain time to come. After that, I’ll look for his bones.”
Urthona bit his lower lip.
He said, “Then you won’t come with us now?”
She didn’t reply. He knew the answer.
There was a silence for a few minutes. Then he stood up.
“At least, you won’t tell the chief what we’re planning to do?”
“I’d get no special pleasure out of that,” she said. “The only thing is … how do I explain your French leave? How do I account for a representative of the Lord, sent on a special mission to check out the Wendow tribe, my subordinate, sneaking off?”
Her uncle chewed his lips some more. He’d been doing that for ten thousand years; she remembered when she was a child seeing him gnaw on it.
Finally, he smiled. “You could tell them McKay and I are off on a secret mission, the purpose of which you can’t divulge now because it’s for the Lord. Actually, it would be fine if you’d say that. We wouldn’t have to sneak off. We could just walk out, and they wouldn’t dare prevent us.”
“I could do that,” she said. “But why should I? If by some chance you did find the palace right away, you’d just bring it back here and destroy me. Or use one of your fliers. In any event, I’m sure you have all sorts of weapons in your palace.”
He knew it .was useless to protest that he wouldn’t do that. He said, “What’s the difference? I’m going, one way or the other. You can’t tell the chief I am because then you’d have to explain why I am. You can’t do a thing about it.”
“You can do what you want to,” she said. “But you can’t take this with you.”
She held up the Horn.
His eyes narrowed, and his lips tightened. By that she knew that he had no intention of leaving without the Horn. There were two reasons why, one of which was certain. The other might exist.
No Lord would pass up the chance to get his hands on the skeleton key to the gates of all the universes.
The Horn might also be the ticket to passage from a place on this planet to his palace. Just possibly, there were gates locked into the boulders. Not all boulders, of course. Just some. She’d tried the Horn on the four big rocks she’d encountered so far, and none had contained any. But there could be gates in others.
If there were, then he wasn’t going to risk her finding one and getting into the palace before he did.
Undoubtedly, or at least probably, he would tell McKay just when he planned to catch her sleeping, kill her, and take the Horn. Would McKay warn her? She couldn’t take the chance that he would.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll go with you. I have just as much chance finding Kickaha elsewhere. And I am tired of sitting here.”
He wasn’t as pleased as he should have been. He smelled a trap. Of course, even if she’d been sincere, he would have suspected she was up to something. Just as she wondered if he was telling her the truth or only part of it.
Urthona’s handsome face now assumed a smile. In this millenia-long and deadly game the Lords played, artifices that wouldn’t work and which both sides knew wouldn’t work, were still used. The combats had been partly ritualized.