The web of wizardry (35 page)

miserable shower. In the death struggle with the demon snake, Danaer had lost his helmet, but he still had his sword, which Gordyan cursed as a nuisance. He unbuckled it and gave it to Lira, then put Danaer atop his roan again.

The following time was a horror which must be borne. Sometimes Danaer sank into a state where no distraction could reach him, but the pain could. Now and then he roused enough to know the sky was darkening as the day wore on into evening. Once they stopped and Lira readjusted the makeshift bandage. She and Gordyan gave him some water and a bit of grain cake from the Destre's saddle pouch. The taste was satisfying but brief, for Danaer promptly vomited most of what he had swallowed. Then there was the ordeal of remounting and more riding toward the west. He no longer cared about anything, and when the ringing in his ears started once more, he had no strength to tell Lira or Gordyan of it.

The roan stopped. Danaer gazed about dully. It was night, and in the distance there was a campfire. It looked inviting. Why did not Gordyan take them there? The comforting warmth of his friend's big body disappeared from behind him, then Danaer felt a tug at his arm. "Slide off, maen. I will catch you." In a few moments Danaer was lying on his side, on sand, his head pillowed in Lira's lap.

Sand? Then they had reached the Sink. Gordyan had pressed them hard to come so far so quickly. Danaer's shoulder lessened its throbbing, and he was startled by a sudden clarity of thought and senses. Lira was caressing his forehead as he looked up at her. Her face was illuminated by a wavering golden glow far brighter than that campfire should have cast. "Lira?" She bent close to hear him well as he asked, "Where is Gordyan?"

"At the camp ahead. He said he would go and see what their clans were." The wisdom of this satisfied Danaer, but it sounded as if the fragile aUiance of Malol and Gordt te Raa had been thoroughly undone. Gordyan, unsure of his fellow Destre-Y and checking

their calling and tribes ere he entered their camp? And wary of all army men save Danaer?

"Lira, why can I see your face so clearly in the darkness?" Danaer asked in childlike wonder.

She turned eastward, her expression grim. "There is a great fire back there, qedra. It is Deki. But what would burn in that city of stone?"

"Bodies," Danaer said with tired frankness. "Thatch, fodder for beasts, any manner of thing which could tinder the conquerors' celebrations." He considered this and added, "But if the Markuand are looting, they will not be pursuing survivors. They may believe the desert, and our own rivalries, will destroy us for them."

Suddenly and silently, Gordyan was back with them. "They are none of mine, these warriors," he said with a low growl. "But we must have water and fire." The big man eyed Danaer worriedly, then took out his knife and slashed open the scout's tunic.

"What are you doing?" Danaer protested, struggling to rise.

Gordyan forced him back. "Making you into a proper Azsed." He cut the tunic into a Destre's loose vest, then tucked Danaer's breeches into his boots in the fashion of the plains people. Badges and insignia were sUced off and discarded. "You will pass for an ordinary Sarli with no trouble, Lira. Bury that sorkra cloak of yours, though. And that sword of Danaer's as well. I will tell them you are one of Qhorda's women who became separated from your little companions. Speak only Sarli, no Krantin, or they may turn suspicious. Lead the roans. I will say Danaer was unable to ride the last leg, and from his looks they will not doubt me. Bog'! This cursed thing is bleeding again. Up now, maen, just a bit further ..."

Danaer could not stand alone, his knees sagging uselessly, and finally Gordyan carried him again. Danaer turned his head to the campfire and the Destre-Y gathered around it. He imagined he saw a ha-usfaen dancing and heard a delisich's silvery song. Then he realized it was only the ringing in his ears.

Gordyan was loudly complaining at someone, but the debate passed over Danaer, without meaning. He

was stretched full length on the ground and then pulled up into a sitting position. The ringing noises quit abruptly, and Lira braced her hands against his chest to keep him from falling. Gordyan's voice eventually penetrated the pain. "You know me, stander. Do I ask much? Water and a cautery, in the name of the Siim Rena." Gordyan hunkered by Danaer and said softly, "You have already borne much, hyidu. Prove yourself an Azsed now, or they will kill us all."

He was much pleased when Danaer met his gaze steadily and said with shakiness, "I will not disgrace Nyald Zsed."

If the arrow had struck more outward, Danaer knew he could expect to lose his arm. But this wound was more dangerous. His father's tribe friend had died of such a wound suffered in the clan wars. Pride ruled him, and he hoped the men watching them so narrowly would know any weakness came from loss of blood, not lack of courage. Lira put a small, battered copper pot of steaming water at his feet, and Gordyan was heating his knives in the fire.

"Take your arm with your good hand," Gordyan instructed. Danaer had barely time to comply when Gordyan started to cut away his shirt and bloody tunic. He worked at withstanding any wince or outcry. "Are these Markuand arrows barbed much, hyidu?"

"A slight barb, but sharp." Danaer managed a bitter smile.

"Then I shall have to dig a bit."

At what seemed the peak of his pain, Gordyan gasped in triumph, then splashed the hot water over the wound. He took his other knife out of the fire, its blade smoking.

The ringing in Danaer's ears came back powerfully, and Lira's face swam before him. Oddly, the pain subsided as the ringing noise built. A yellow blur spiraled in from the edge of his vision. He watched with mild curiosity while it came closer and closer, and the more it contracted the faster it curled in upon him, blotting out everything but Lira's eyes.

Finally those, too, vanished. The ringing sound sped

up out of his hearing and disappeared, and with it went all sensation.

XX In Dreams There Is Magic

The fever visions blurred into one another mad-deningly, with no way to elude them. Danaer suffered again Yistar's death in poignant detail, knowing the ending of that gruff presence which had guided him so many years. His weapons availed nothing against the inexorable enemy, and once more he felt Yistar's life ebb through his hands.

That horror was gone, and Kandra was before him, exquisite, the paragon of Destre womanhood. She was smiling, bowing, turning . . . slowly, slowly. As people in a tapestry come to life, Danaer witnessed Kandra speaking to Gordyan. His blood friend took his mistress's hand and kissed her fingers. It was more than the action of an adoring servant. In his dream he saw that Gordyan was deeply stricken and helplessly bound, held by a silken tress or the crook of a small finger. Sworn to serve lord and lady, and never to know the fulfillment of Kandra's promise.

That image was gone, too, and now Danaer lay encircled by Markuand. They rained blows upon him with staves and swords and lances and knives, hurting and killing him, again and again. He died and lived once more, and suffered anew. Each blow had but one target—the fire in his shoulder.

Always, in those rare times when he came to himself. Lira or Gordyan was there. His head would be lifted and water given him. He would sink back into fitful dreaming, despite Gordyan's pleas, and Lira's weeping. Their voices slipped away from him and he was allowed to drown.

Kandra again was in his dreaming ... no, not Kandra. This was another woman assuming her form. The mirage, coming from the rainstorm—the rain sent by the Markuand wizard. This time Danaer knew the illusion for what it was, and in his nightmare he clutched at Lira's obsidian talisman and bade the false Kandra begone. Instead, she changed, became a cloaked figure, the traitor from The Interior. The hood was thrown back, and a lovely and evil face peered out at him, smiling. A man drew near her, leering at Danaer. He knew them both, thus revealed, as they stared their hatred at him. She was Kandra no more, but Chorii, the Prince's wanton mistress, and Diilbok himself abetted her in this treachery!

They hated him and hated Lira. The woman, especially, hated Lira. She stretched forth her hand tipped with sharp painted nails, as if she would claw his face, scar him, and thus bring pam to her dainty adversary from Sarlos.

Danaer moaned and writhed and fought to escape the nightmare, and the fever carried him elsewhere, away from that terrible pair. Now he gazed upon Malol te Eldri. The Royal Commander stood before a Destre council, swearing away his precious son's future, giving him to be consort to the successor of the Siim Rena. It was a sacrifice far deeper than any at the council reaUzed, Malol's only seed.

That dream faded, and Danaer held Ildate in his arms, slaking his lust, taking joy. The woman of ease smiled, and her image altered and became Lira's, welcoming him warmly, ardently. Danaer embraced her with delight, wanting this dream to be unending.

But such things could not be commanded. Lira was no longer joined with him, their bodies one. Yet she was nearby. She sat and watched as Danaer and Gordyan mingled blood and pledged their lives to each other. The fervent emotions were reborn for Danaer —his woman, his blood friend, the three of them by the fire ...

And from the fire came a devil beast, a winged snake from the very depths of Bogotana's Realm. Danaer wanted to scream and run, but his feet were

encased in stone, words choking his throat. The vicious claws struck his shoulder. Pain ripped at him, and Danaer thought of the taUsman, focusing on the black stone.

Branra was there, and in the dream Danaer did not question how the nobleman came upon the scene. Branra was slashing with his sword, killing the creature from the wizard's world of the damned. The sword hilt glittered in the sun, a holy thing, studded with obsidian—the same material as the talisman. Chased with silver, bright metal and black stone bhnd-ing, being one with the charm at Danaer's breast, combining their powers to slay the snake-bird. One— all one—silver and obsidian, the creations of the smoking mountains of Krantin.

Osyta sat before him, mumbling prophecies, and behind her the volcano rumbled, birthing more glassy rock, cracking the mountains where the silver lay. She was chanting. "From Krantin must come a strength, a magic ... it is the children of the smoking mountain. . . . You go into danger beyond your imaginings. You go into danger, Destre-Y!"

The warning echoed repeatedly, fading. Gradually Osyta's withered form dissolved, hke all the other dream shapes, releasing him. He seemed to be rising to the surface of Deki's river. Danaer was a Destre and could not swim. But in this world he was leaving, he could swim, not wondering how, accepting it.

For a long while he had been vaguely aware of great heat, when the nightmares were particularly terrifying. There had been worse—periods when he had known nothing, his spirit held by the thinnest of threads and liable to snap at any moment and send him to join Osyta.

Now that was fading, as had the dreams. It was some minutes before he opened his eyes, but Danaer grew aware of sounds—the nickerings of horses, the slap of leather, men calling to one another, their accents Siank-thick. This last puzzled him, for Gordyan had said the warriors were strangers. Then Danaer realized his mind was unclouded. The sounds were real, not the companions of dreams. His shoulder still

pained him, but not severely. He parted his eyelids narrowly, letting his vision adjust after long unconsciousness.

He was in a tent, sunlight streaming through an open flap to his right. At his feet, Lira was sewing a garment. She turned to catch the light for her needle and Danaer studied her face. Her cheeks had lost fullness and her eyes were rimmed with dark flesh. Guilt twisted at him as he recalled the many times he had wakened and found her always ready with comfort.

Danaer's throat was so dry that his first attempt to speak failed. He tried again, and when he called her name. Lira started with glad surprise. She knelt by him, pressing his bare chest, touching the amulet. "Qedra! When did you waken?"

"Just now. Is there water?"

She steadied the canteen for him, for he was very shaky. Danaer drank slowly, savoring, wanting to drain the skin yet fearful of using too much water if they were camped in the Sink. \Vlien he nodded that he had had enough for the present. Lira set down the canteen, then went to the tent flap and summoned Gordyan. The big man came in at once, very worried. But when he saw Danaer conscious and sitting up, he beamed. "Hai! The scout found his way back alone. How do you feel?"

"As if I were in Nyald, where the game is scarce."

"We all hunger, though you suffered most, with Httle food kept in your fevered belly."

"I can still taste some of that," Danaer said. "How long have I been out of my wits with this wound?"

"Half a ten-day." Danaer stared as Lira explained, "You fainted when Gordyan applied the cautery. And then the wound became infected despite it. I beUeve you were nearly dead when the herb-healer lanced it."

"I remember it not at all. An herb-healer? Are we in Siank, then?"

Gordyan chuckled sourly. "Not yet! This is a small camp of my men. We met with them a few periods' ride beyond that first fire. They managed to save some of our horses and equipment from the rout of Deki,

but little food. The army emptied all the caches along the caravan trail, of course." Gordyan shrugged and grinned. He acted as if he very much wanted to drag Danaer into one of those rib-cracking hugs, but he forbore, careful of his friend's wound. "Maen, I am joyous to see you with us again!"

"It is a joy I share." Danaer brought his weight down tentatively on his right hand.

"Care," Gordyan warned him.

"The pain is well down. I would see if I can stand." Gordyan helped him up. Danaer swayed uncertainly, wincing at the sharp tingling in the soles of his feet. Cautiously, he took a few steps to the tent flap and peered out, seeing haggard warriors and roans with gaunt ribs. Lira was obviously hungry, and even Gordyan looked a bit thin. "Have you any food at all?" Danaer asked.