Singer from the Sea (59 page)

“But if we plant it in Bliggen?” The Prince watched him narrowly, looking for signs of incipient stalling.

The minister moved back to his Shah, smoothing back the hair, covering the supine body with a coverlet. “It would not grow in Bliggen. It grows only in the desert of Mahahm, and even there it grows to its proper purpose only with the blessing of the Shah.”

“Whom, it seems, you no longer have around to do the blessing,” said the Prince, joining him near the bed. He poked the body lying there and received, in response, a flicker of eyelid. “Is he still alive?”

“That is a question for the doctors, Your Highness, and we should certainly return to the palace at once. We have no doctors here, but there are doctors in Mahahm-qum.”

“Oh, by all means,” murmured the Prince. “And what do we do about the Marshal?”

“He will either find his way back here, or to Mahahm-qum, or he won’t. We cannot afford to spend time and effort hunting for him with the Shah in this condition.”

“I agree.” The Prince smiled. “We certainly can’t.”

“If Your Highness will permit,” said the minister, bowing toward the door.

“Since it seems you did not poison the Shah, we will permit, yes,” said the Prince in an uneasy voice. For the first time, he considered that there might be an end to life even with P’naki. Was P’naki then, only a long delay and not a reprieve from mortality? “If it wasn’t poison, what was it? Was he very old?”

“He was, is, very old, Your Highness. Very, very old.”

So was the Prince, very old, and he did not like the thoughts those words brought to his mind. He himself was about due for his next dose of P’naki. Since his own supply was probably no longer available, it would be necessary to borrow some from Ybon.

Within a short time, the expedition set out, thousands of weary men who muttered amongst themselves while throwing curious glances at the litter bearing, all too clearly, the person of the Shah. They had come a very long way for no better purpose than the chopping of a few ornamental trees, and there was muttering in the ranks as they straggled rather than marched, following the windblown tracks they had made coming out, paying little if any attention to the world around them.

The strange ship that hovered silently above the procession had to fire a glittering burst into the sand ahead of them to get their attention. The horses reared, the harpta bellowed, the army milled about, and the twenty-member crew of the ship took them all captive in a matter of moments by virtue of superior weapons. The announcement that the world of Haven had been conquered by an off-world power came to the Mahahmbi, and to Prince Delganor, as a total and most unwelcome surprise.

A worse surprise came when he and Ybon were searched and the box that had contained the Shah’s P’naki was found to be empty.

“It contained foot powder,” said Ybon, when their captors questioned the empty box. “My horse reared and it was spilled when we were taken prisoner.”

Aufors was kept waiting by the Aresians all the following day. In late afternoon, he was taken by a Captain Dunnel of the Tracker’s Team, to meet again with Terceth Ygdaleson.

Terceth smiled grimly at him. “There’s a so-called Prince Delganor with the Mahahmbi army.”

Aufors looked up, questioningly.

“We’ve captured the army, all of it. And the Prince is looking for someone about your size.”

Aufors shrugged. “Many men my size.”

“True. Tell me, if we wanted to know something about Mahahm, would it do any good to ask Mahahmbi women?”

Aufors shook his head. “Mahahmbi women don’t know anything. Mahahmbi don’t even talk to women.”

Terceth exchanged an exasperated look with his officer.

Dunnel offered, “This man isn’t likely to be the man the Prince mentioned, Sir. He’s the right size and general description, all right, but the one the Prince mentioned was upper-mid-caste from Havenor, wasn’t he? This one is just like all the other malghaste we’ve picked up.”

Terceth smiled, eyes fixed on Aufors. “By which you mean dirty and stupid, Dunnel? Dirtiness is a condition, not an attribute, and stupidity can be a strategy. You’re probably right, but we’ll hang on to him, nonetheless. You can let the woman, the boy, and the infant go. Let this one have his belongings, except for his weapon, but keep him until I can have the Prince take a look at him.”

The officer took Aufors to the room where Awhero was, and as he packed his few belongings he whispered a few quick words.

“They’re not letting me go, but they are freeing you and the boy. I’ll have to think of some other way to get loose.” Putting his hand to the back of his head, he winced, closing his eyes. The wound there was puffed and angry, probably infected. “Awhero, take my son to Galul. Promise.”

“Of course,” she said, giving him an anxious look. “I will do it, Aufors Leys. That wound needs attention.”

“I’ll attend to it when I figure out how to get away.”

Since the few captive Mahahmbi refused to have a malghaste imprisoned among them, Aufors was taken out onto the sands and chained to a metal ring set in the side of a hastily erected sentry hut. Something about the site bothered him. He was not far outside the malghaste gate
through which he had entered the city. He stared at the gate and at the desert for some time before realizing that the much-guarded building he had seen through his glasses was gone. No, certainly not gone, though as certainly invisible. A great flow of sand had covered it.

Until this moment, he had assumed that the building would have been discovered by the Aresians, who would therefore also have discovered at least a few hardened Old Friends. Some of them must have accumulated over the years. Since they had not found P’naki in the palace, it stood to reason the Shah must have kept the stuff in the guarded building. If the building had been covered at the first alarm, however, then the Aresians had neither found the store of P’naki, nor had they seen what happened to Old Friends.

Aufors was not positive what had been given to the Old Friends, but he had a hunch he had some of it in his breast pocket: the lichen he had allowed to eat his own, male blood during his hike across the desert to Mahahm-qum. Though the guards had patted him down, the packet of lichen powder was so thin they had not felt it.

The sentries changed their post in early evening. Obrang, the same soldier who had beaten Aufors over the head previously, was the one assigned to the post where he was chained. Aufors showed no recognition. In the evening, both he and the guard were provided with a meal. The guard gave Aufors a sneering look while taking half of Aufors’s ration to add to his own. He ate greedily, with much lip smacking aimed in Aufors’s direction, then began gaping almost as soon as the meal was over, his normally torpid wits damped further by too hearty a meal.

Interrupting Obrang’s yawn, Aufors said softly, as though talking to himself, “My woman is in south. I would give much to rejoin my woman, my children.”

The guard stopped gaping and grinned. “Yeah. And what
much
might you have to give, shit-toter?”

“Everyone here is looking for long-life stuff, very rare, very valuable. I have some. I would give that.”

The guard’s grin vanished. He came nearer Aufors and knelt down. “Yeah? And where would that be?”

“Not here. I will show where, if you let me go.”

The guard stared at him for a moment, his dull wits struggling with the dimly recognized possibilities.

“I can search you,” blustered the guard.

“I don’t have it here. But close.”

“Tell you what,” the guard said after some time had passed. “I put a shackle on you. I lock the other end to me. You take me to the place, if the stuff is there, I let you go.”

“You have to use it right away,” murmured Aufors. “It’s already more’n two days old, and it’s only good for three days. I had more, but your commander took it.”

Obrang’s eyes swiveled. “The Prince? Terceth? Him?”

Aufors nodded.

The guard dithered. Terceth was known to be a good deal smarter than the average Aresian. Besides, he was the Chieftain’s son. Keeping his voice affable with some difficulty, Obrang said, “All right. You show me where.”

“Bring water,” murmured Aufors. “You have to use it right away.”

The guard fetched his water bottle, giving Aufors a chance to take the packet from his pocket and hide it up his sleeve. The guard shackled Aufors to him, pocketing the key, and they moved away from the guard post to the nearest dune that hid them from the city. There Aufors pretended to look for landmarks, finally settling on a dead bonebush, where he fell on his knees and dug into the sand at its root to come up with the packet.

The guard tried to snatch it, but Aufors turned away.

“I’m not fightin’ over it,” said the guard, with an evil grin. “We go back and I lock you to your post again. Then I’ll just take it.”

“You try, I yell,” said Aufors. “Guards come running. They’ll take that away from you. This is too valuable for me to give for nothing. You let me go first.”

The guard took a moment to arrive at a conclusion in which Dunnel and General Terceth both figured prominently. “All right,” he said with false geniality. “But I’ll use it first, then I’ll unlock you.”

“Pour water into cup,” said Aufors, waiting until the guard had complied to lean forward and sprinkle half the powder.

Obrang sniffed it, then gulped it down, grinned his evil grin, and started to move away.

“Be still,” said Aufors. “You have to be still for minute, let it work. Otherwise no good.”

The guard sat, staring ominously at Aufors and jingling the chain between them like a threat. Aufors hummed in time to the jingling. First an impatient quick time march.
Chink chink chink chink.
Then an adagio:
chinkle … chinkle …
Then a dirge:
clunk …
silence …
clunk …
silence …

Aufors leaned forward and took the key from the guard’s pocket. The guard’s eyes followed him, though slowly. Aufors unlocked and removed the shackles and replaced the key. He took the guard’s weapon, then took both cup and bottle back to the guard post where he rinsed the cup, then emptied Obrang’s water into his own water bottle before replacing the guard’s cup and locking one end of the shackle to the hut.

Darkness was falling as he walked away from the city, feeling, so he told himself, perfectly all right, though he staggered as he walked. The night winds wiped out his wavering footprints as he went, a single intention in his addled mind: somehow to get back to his boat, and then … then … find Genevieve.

Deep in the caverns beneath Havenor, beings had awakened. Some were small and some large. All were what the malghaste might once have defined as harbingers of then-respective worlds; all were from worlds no longer living. It was not chance that had brought them to Haven, any more than it had been chance that brought them to these protecting caverns. Vast and wondrous spirits had chosen that the harbingers come here, to await their future in a place better suited to their needs. They had come to a refuge in chrysalises of fiber and metal made by men, the chrysalises had been broken, and now was time to leave this dark place and move on.

The beings left their cartons and moved into the dusty aisles, noses smelling, eyes seeing, tongues tasting the air. Their senses led them to the food nearby, purchased long ago and stored for their eventual benefit. Latigern and
betivor, chamaris and thalliar, bruk and bralt, they among a hundred others wakened and fed and turned unfalteringly toward a desired exit, one southward under the mountains, one that led far from this place but much nearer the place they would go.

Swift as the sailing moon they went, hoofed and taloned, many-legged and legless, winged and finned, armored or furred or feathered, the larger carrying the smaller, away down dusty aisles, past towers of treasured artifacts and precipices of coveted devices, all, all fallen into ruin.

In a far nook, curled like a worm in a nut, lay the Lord Paramount. He had sucked up all but a tiny bit of the P’naki he had brought with him from the elevator, more than he had ever had all at once before, and he had been thinking about finding his way back to his elevator to fetch some more. As the creatures went by, their wild flight made him lose track of these thoughts, and he sat up to watch. There were his pets, his lovely zoo, his curiosities, his specimens, his amusements, his possessions. There they were, moving, running, going past. He lifted one little hand to wave. Byedy-bye to all that marvel, byedy-bye to all that wonder, byedy-bye, see them go, all gone. He began to hum to himself, a buzzing little hum, like a sleepy bee, musing over all those lovely creatures. Though he could not remember ordering some of them, surely he had. And quite right. They belonged here. He was quite certain they belonged here.

The creatures saw him as they passed, though they disregarded him as a function now obsolete, an actor whose sole act was done. They went from his view into tunnels no man had ever traveled, where they fled past underground rivers, slaking their thirst on dark waters that had never seen the sun. In time, sooner than anyone on the planet would have considered possible, they emerged from the seacliffs south of Bliggen, west of Frangia, near the Stone Trail. The separating seas meant nothing to them. Those who could not swim would be carried by those who could, and creatures of this world were already coming from the sea to offer assistance.

However they chose to go, they would end on Mahahm, Mahahm, which had been meant for them, from the time
the first one of them was stricken down by the weapons of mankind.

The seven supply sleds were driven by Joncaster, Enid, and Melanie, plus three men from the marae: Jorub, Etain and Gilber; and one woman, Ithil. Genevieve was the only passenger as they worked their way slowly southwest, stopping each night at one of the refuges and moving on each morning. When the refuges had been resupplied, the sleds would go on to Galul for safekeeping. They were too hard come by to leave behind.

They left the marae in the early morning of the sixth day after Genevieve had fled from Mahahm-qum, spending all that day and the two following along tortuous trails. Each morning they started well before sunrise and stopped at some shaded place midmorning for food and rest while the sun was at its zenith. During these stops, Genevieve usually fell asleep, for though she felt exhausted by the end of each day, she lay half awake in the night silences, haunted by sounds and visions that seemed always to stay just beyond her understanding.