Brotherhood of the Wolf (45 page)

“Not exactly,” Binnesman said heavily. “He will lose form, but I think he will not dissipate quickly, not like an elemental of flame. Nor do I think he will leave us alone.”

Down below, in the city, the city guards all began to come out of hiding, gazing nervously uphill to the ruined keep. She saw four of them standing down at the gate.

In all of the commotion, Myrrima had dropped her bow, and now she saw it lying across the bailey. She picked her way toward it among fallen stones and rubble. The Darkling Glory had so devastated this part of the castle that she was astounded to be alive.

Suddenly on the ground before her, she saw a part of the Darkling Glory, a severed hand with three clawlike fingers, their dusky nails as sharp as talons. Blood leaked from the stump at its end.

To Myrrima's horror, the hand was moving, grasping the air rhythmically.

She stomped on it and kicked the horrid thing away. It lay on the ground and groped at the paving stones, lumbered
about like an enormous spider. Her pup ran after it, barking and snarling even louder.

Myrrima picked up her bow, returned to where the others stood. Jureem eyed the moving hand nervously, while Iome kept staring at the pup.

It snarled savagely, took a nip at the vile hand.

“That pup wants to protect you,” Iome said. “It's ready to give you an endowment.”

It surprised Myrrima that the pup would be ready to give an endowment so soon, although Duke Groverman had said pups of this breed were quick to bond to their masters.

Myrrima dared hope for a boon. She had slain the Darkling Glory, slain him while good men like Sir Donnor and the city guards had failed.

She knelt to face Iome, presented her bow at the Queen's feet. She had hoped to be considered worthy of becoming a warrior, had hoped to earn the right to use the King's forcibles. The cost of taking endowments was tremendous. And with blood metal so scarce these days, she knew it would be impossible to gain the use of forcibles any other way.

“Your Highness,” Myrrima said. “I come before you to swear my troth. I offer my bow and my life to you, and beg for the honor to bear weapons in your service.”

Iome stood a moment, as if unsure what to do.

“She has a warrior's heart,” Binnesman said, “and more. She fought on while stouter men hid.” Iome nodded her head; the decision was made. She glanced about for a sword of her own. Jureem drew a curved dagger from its sheath, and handed the ruby-encrusted blade to Iome.

Iome touched Myrrima's head and each shoulder with the blade, and said solemnly, “Arise, Lady Borenson. We accept you into our service gladly, and for your deeds this day, I shall award you ten forcibles from my personal stores, along with the maintenance of your Dedicates.”

Ten forcibles. The very thought brought tears to Myrrima's eyes, and she thought vainly that if she were to become
a warrior, she ought not cry. But with ten forcibles, she could take enough endowments to become a warrior. It was a great gift, far more than she dared hope. Yet when she considered what she'd done for the kingdom, she knew that Iome felt so many forcibles were merely payment well earned.

Myrrima took her bow in hand and stood. By right, she was now a warrior of Heredon, equal in stature to any knight. She felt… relieved.

Iome went off to the tombs. While she was gone, Iome's Days came out of hiding, her face still pale with fear, and Binnesman and Jureem recounted for her the manner in which the Darkling Glory had been slain.

But Myrrima did not speak. Instead, she sat on the ground with her yellow pups and played with them, felt the prick of their sharp teeth, let them kiss her face with their tongues.

Her dogs. The key to her power. By tonight they would reach Castle Groverman, and there a facilitator would sing his chants and take an endowment from a pup. The pup that had sought to protect her was bred for stamina. Myrrima would sorely need the attribute if she were to continue her training.

A wolf lord. By morning she would be a wolf lord. Rumor said that those who took endowments from dogs became more feral. She wondered if it would really change her, if in time she would become no better than Raj Ahten.

When Iome returned from the tombs, she had more than three dozen forcibles. She knelt beside Myrrima and said, “I brought extra, for me. I wouldn't want you to be the only wolf lord in Heredon.”

“Of course not,” Myrrima said. They mounted up. Jureem gave Iome his own horse, and went to the stable to fetch a spare mount left by the King's Guard. Myrrima and Iome each held their baskets of pups, while the wizard Binnesman rode with the clubfooted boy.

As they ambled down the cobbled streets, Myrrima kept gazing back at the skyline of the city. It looked wrong without
the King's Keep standing, without the towers of the Dedicate's Keep.

When they reached the drawbridge, Myrrima spotted the reaver's head still lying at the far side. She stopped her horse on the bridge, and gazed down into the water. She could see no fish; none finned the surface, none drew their runes of protection as they had over the past two days.

At last she spotted a sturgeon resting in the shadows beneath the bridge, among a bed of golden water lilies.

Resting. No longer seeking to protect the castle. The water wizards knew what they'd done, she suspected. Perhaps more than anything else, their spells had helped bring down the Darkling Glory.

“Binnesman,” Myrrima said. “We should do something for the wizards. We must thank them in some way.” She felt guilty for her remark, for yesterday morning she'd hoped to eat one. Now she realized just how great a debt she owed these fish.

“Of course,” Binnesman said. “The river is clearing of silt today. We could go unblock the spillway now, let the wizards go where they will. That's not something they can do for themselves.”

Myrrima tried to imagine being a fish, imprisoned in the moat. The river had to be better, with its frogs and eels and ducklings and other delicacies.

With the help of Binnesman and Jureem, Myrrima pried loose the boards that dammed the spillway, opening the channel from the moat to the river.

As she climbed up out of the millrace, she saw the dark shapes of the wizards, their blue backs shadowy in the depths. The huge fish wriggled their tails and shot off into the river, heading upstream toward the Dunnwood and the headwaters of the river Wye.

26
OBRAN

Borenson rested his eyes as he rode toward the Palace of the Concubines, still weak and reeling from fatigue and grief. He was never quite sure if he'd fallen asleep for only a moment or for an hour. The horses thundered on relentlessly; it seemed only moments before Pashtuk began prodding Borenson's ribs.

“We are here,” Pashtuk said, indicating the valley down below. “The Palace of the Concubines.”

Borenson lifted his head. He did not feel refreshed by his respite, did not feel as if he'd slept at all. And the “palace” did not live up to his expectations. He'd imagined an opulent edifice of stone, like the golden-domed palaces to the north, with soaring arches above the porticoes and vast open courtyards.

But there, on the valley's far side, a smattering of ancient stone buildings leaned against the rock face of a cliff.

It seemed an old place from afar, a deserted ruin. The valley around it was strewn with jagged stones and ancient boulders and spinebush and greasewood. He could not smell water nearby. He saw no sign of flocks or herds, no camels or horses or goats. No fires seemed to burn in the city. He could see no guards on any walls.

“Are you sure?” Borenson asked.

The Invincible merely nodded.

“Of course,” Borenson realized. “He would not hide his greatest treasure in the open.” The palace was concealed, an anonymous ruin in the wastes. Obran. Borenson had thought the word meant “City of the Ancient King.” But now another possible translation came to mind: “Ruins of the King.”

Pashtuk led him down the trail.

Even as his horse ambled within the gates of the ancient city, Borenson saw no sign of guards. Indeed the gatehouse was an indefensible pile of stones that had collapsed hundreds of years before. The piled-up stones of what he'd thought was the palace looked upon closer inspection to be a fine abode for scorpions and adders.

Everywhere he went, large gray lizards sunned on stones. They dashed off at his approach. Birds were plentiful, desert sparrows among the greasewood, yellow-crested flycatchers dipping along the trail.

There is water here, he realized. Animals would not be so plentiful otherwise. Yet he could see no sign of water—no wells, no lush trees growing in profusion.

He rode through the streets of the city, up to a large ancient ruin, a state house or manor of some kind, and the Invincible led him, still ahorse, right into the building, as if they'd not bother to dismount upon entering a lord's throne room.

Inside the manor, the roof had collapsed. The walls had once been brightly painted with murals of ancient lords in long white silk coats, all of whom seemed to have curiously curly hair. But now the sun had bleached the murals to the point that in most places only a few faded earth-toned pigments still showed.

Finally, Borenson saw evidence of life. At the far wall to the throne room, someone had recently dug through, revealing a small, narrow chasm.

At this end, the chasm was dark, but ahead he could see that it opened wider, for sunlight filtered down to light the path ahead.

Now he saw the guards.

Two Invincibles stepped from the shadows and began speaking loudly to Pashtuk in a dialect of Indhopalese that Borenson could not follow. Pashtuk showed them the forcibles and described Borenson's message. In broken Rofehavanish, the Invincibles offered the normal death threats that Borenson was beginning to realize constituted the majority
of any guard's conversation in this country.

Borenson was so weary after having lost endowments that he frankly did not care if they killed him or not.

One Invincible ran through the chasm to bear the message that Borenson sought an audience. When he returned twenty minutes later, Borenson left his horse behind as the guards ushered him ahead.

The first thing he noted as he entered the narrow ravine was the smell of wet earth and lush vegetation. An oasis had to be ahead.

He walked through the chasm, looking up at the golden shafts of sunlight that played on the yellow sandstone. The walls of the cliff were over one hundred feet high, and all the light that reached the chasm floor now, so late in the day, reflected from the walls above.

The chasm walls were smooth, creamy in color. Borenson imagined that this place had been hidden for thousands of years, and was only newly discovered.

Odd, he thought. Terribly odd, that water, such a precious commodity here in the desert, would be lost for so long a time. He wondered at the story. What lord had hidden this oasis, walled up the entrance behind his throne? And how had the presence of the water ever been forgotten?

The chasm wound like a serpent through the hills, and spilled into a small triangular valley. To the east and west, high cliffs reared up, meeting in a V three miles farther to the south. To the north hunkered a ridge of broken rock that no beast could have traversed.

And here in the hidden valley, beside a small lake where palm trees grew in abundance, squatted the palace that Borenson had dreamed of.

Its cream-colored exterior walls rose forty feet, while the square guard towers at odd intervals each rose forty more. Over the palace spanned an enormous central dome, open to the air around the sides, so that it would serve as a veranda under the stars. The dome was all plated in gold, while copper plating served to highlight the tower walls. With the blue of the lake, the vibrant emerald of the grass,
the lush palms, and the strands of wild honeysuckle and jasmine that trailed up the palace walls, in some ways it was perhaps the most exquisite palace Borenson had ever seen. It was simple, yet elegant.

Borenson approached the palace in manacles, lugging his bundle of forcibles. A thousand forcibles weighed about ninety pounds, and without his endowments of brawn, Borenson found himself grunting and panting from exertion long before he reached the palace.