The Heart of the Sands, Book 3 of The Gods Within (23 page)

Morgin suspected that if it had been an arrow from his bow
it would not have missed. Not that he was better with a bow than Harriok. He
was as good, or better, than most clansman, but any Benesh’ere
displayed much more skill with bow and arrow than him. No, something in the
steel made his arrows strike true in an uncanny way. He’d begun to
suspect the steel warhead on an arrow understood his desire, and somehow found
the target regardless of any mischance or ill luck. He kept such thoughts to
himself.

They broke out of the undergrowth and onto the Gods Road
just south of Gilguard’s Ford. Morgin heard the rest of their
hunting party not far behind them. He looked up the road and caught a fleeting
glimpse of the buck staggering into some undergrowth just north of the Ulbb. “There
it is,” he shouted, pointing. He climbed into Mortiss’
saddle and spurred her forward at an easy gallop.

When he hit the ankle-deep water of the wide ford, Mortiss’
hooves sent water spraying ahead of her, splashes of it glinting in the bright
summer sun. Once across the ford he reined her in at the edge of the road near
the brush where he’d seen the struggling buck. He dismounted and
didn’t need to tell her to wait there.

He carried his strung bow in case he might need to down
the buck from a distance. But he found the animal just off the road, lying on
its side, spent and no longer able to run. He felt a pang of sorrow and pity
for it as he thrust his sword into its heart.

He stepped out of the brush. The hunting party had
gathered in the road just south of the ford: Jack the Lesser, Jack the Greater,
Harriok, and Jerst. He waved an arm and shouted, “Come and help
me. This buck’s too big for me to handle on my own.”

After he’d said it, only then did he recall
that his Benesh’ere friends, in their exile, could not cross the
ford and stand north of the Ulbb, and he felt shame that he had so callously
taunted them, even if not intentionally. In his forgetfulness, he had reminded
them of the greatest of all torments for a whiteface. They sat astride their
horses waiting for him silently.

He wiped his sword on some leaves and sheathed it. The
buck was not the largest he’d downed, so he thought if he gutted
it first, he might just be able to lift it onto Mortiss’ saddle on
his own. He threw a rope over a convenient branch, tied one end about the buck’s
neck, but could only hoist it just off the ground. He gutted it quickly, and
with its weight reduced he managed to hoist it high enough to drape it across
Mortiss rump. He stood panting by Mortiss’ side for several
heartbeats after doing so. He’d damaged the hide and some of the
meat in the process, but there’d been no avoiding that. He’d
come back for the guts later, since every part of a kill had some use.

He cinched the buck in place with a few short lengths of
rope, then walking ahead of Mortiss he led her down to the ford. They crossed
it quietly, and when they reached the rest of the hunting party no words were
spoken. In silence Jack the Lesser and Jerst lifted the carcass off Mortiss’
back and began butchering it. They’d break it up into pieces to
distribute among the five of them, making it easier to carry it back to camp.

“Why not,” Jack the Greater said
loudly, standing with his back to them at the edge of the ford looking north. “Why
can’t we cross the Ulbb? It’s just legend. Has anyone
ever challenged it?”

Jack the Lesser, Jerst and Harriok straightened from
dismembering the carcass. “Don’t,” Jack
the Lesser said.

Harriok added, “You know it’s
been tried. And you know what happens.”

“That’s legend too,”
Jack the Greater shouted angrily, and he took one step into the ford. “Just
tales told around the fire after dinner.” He took another step
forward, the water of the ford rushing around his ankles. “It hasn’t
been tried in my time, or my father’s time, or my father’s
father’s.”

He took another step, then another, then he marched like a
soldier going to battle, his footsteps spraying water in front of him much like
Mortiss’ hooves had. He stopped just short of the center of the
ford and turned back to face them. “See,” he shouted.
“Just tales, stories, legends with no truth to them. Since we
never go north of the Ulbb, how do we know we can’t?”

He spun and marched further into the ford, and as he
crossed its center he started laughing, loud maniacal cries that echoed through
the forest. “Just stories,” he screamed as he marched
toward the north shore. “Tales to fool stupid and foolish
whitefaces.”

Nothing hindered him or slowed him, and he did not falter
as he crossed the entire width of the ford, his cries and shouts growing more
unintelligible with each step. “A joke made by kings to fool us
all. Skeleton kings and great, giant wolves and enormous half-birds, and dog
warriors.”

Morgin recognized his references to the distant past, even
if the rest of the hunting party did not.

Jack reached the far shore, stepped onto it, put both feet
on dry land and stood there with his back to them at the very edge of freedom. Then
he turned about, and they all gasped at the sight of his face. Trails of blood
streamed down his cheeks from his eyes. More blood streamed down his neck from
his ears, and blood flowed freely out his nose and mouth. When he spoke he spit
gobbets of thick brown blood, a color that told them the blood had already
begun to clot. “You seeeeeee!” he cried, looking up
to the heavens, his arms outstretched. “I can stand north of the
Ulbb.”

He stood there silently for several heartbeats, his arms
outstretched, his face turned up toward the heavens as if praying to the gods,
then he toppled forward like a tree felled with an ax. He hit the water face
down with a mighty splash; his body bobbed in the shallow water for a moment,
and then the current took him. It floated in the shallows of the ford, drifting
slowly downriver, the water around it turning red. Then it drifted out of sight
around a bend in the river.

With tears in his eyes, Jack the Lesser said, “I
guess now I’m Jack the Only.”

He turned to Morgin. “Will you try to
retrieve the body? If it washes up on the north side, none of us can do so.”

Morgin simply said, “Sure. I’ll
bring it back to the camp.”

He climbed into the saddle and let Mortiss pick her own
way east. Just past the ford the Ulbb narrowed into a raging torrent, then
further still it opened up again, and flowed calmly northeast. Just a few
leagues down from the ford he found Jack’s body washed up on the
south shore. Oddly enough, he had only a little difficulty lifting Jack onto
Mortiss’ back, for all that remained of the towering whiteface was
a bloodless husk.

He tied Jack across Mortiss’ back, then led
her on foot up to the top of a low-lying hill to survey his surroundings. He’d
never traveled through this part of the forest and didn’t want to
get lost. But as he stood there he recalled that Morddon knew this country
well. And Morddon remembered the Ulbb flowing south of the hill on which he
stood, not north of it as it did now. And he could even make out the ancient
riverbed where it had once flowed, dry now, and overgrown with brush.

Curious, he followed the crest of the hill west, the dry
ancient riverbed on his left, the flowing Ulbb on his right. As the crest of
the hill led downward, the two riverbeds converged about a league east of the
ford. There, a massive tumble of stone and earth had spilled into the old
riverbed, an ancient cataclysm that had diverted the flow of the Ulbb. The
stones were rounded and smoothed by time, telling him the massive slide had
occurred centuries ago. And yet, above the tumble of rocks stood a tall cliff
of raw basalt, and he thought that if the gods ever wanted to have another
cataclysm, they could divert the Ulbb back to its original course.

He shrugged the thought away and began the long walk back
to the Benesh’ere camp with his sad burden.

Chapter 17: The Blade is Near

Rhianne had intended to be back in her hut well before
dark, but a sky filled with gray, dreary clouds and constant drizzle had
brought dusk early to the town of Norlakton, catching her off guard. As she
guided the horse into the town at a slow walk, Braunye walking beside her, she
glimpsed a dark shadow at the edge of her vision, and it startled her. She
looked toward it, but saw nothing there.

“Is something amiss, mistress?”
Braunye asked.

“No,” she said, chiding herself
for being so skittish. “Just jumping at shadows that aren’t
there.”

“Ye done a lot of that lately.”

Yes, she had done a lot of that lately. It had started
three days ago with a sense of foreboding, as if something malevolent stalked
her from the shadows. Since then she’d had that feeling of a
watcher hovering nearby, and had been startled several times by a dark shape
moving in the periphery of her vision. She trusted her witch’s
intuition, had even attempted a seeking in the hope she could uncover any
danger that might be haunting Norlakton, but she’d turned up
nothing.

She left her horse with the stableman at the inn, then she
and Braunye walked back to her hut to prepare dinner.
I’m
just jumping at shadows,
she thought.
Just
shadows.

She’d spent the day up at the miners’
camp, treating quite a number of them for a nasty cold making the rounds from
miner to miner, and child to child. She couldn’t cure a cold, not
without resorting to some powerful healing spells, but she did relieve some of
their symptoms, for which the miners and their wives were quite grateful.

The blade pulled at her constantly now, unrelenting in its
demands. It hated
the fires
, feared them in fact,
seeking always to be free of them, and for some reason it seemed to think she
held the key to its freedom. And she’d come to understand it didn’t
want freedom merely so it could devastate and destroy. It wanted its freedom so
it could escape from the fires. In some way they tormented it. But what fires? The
fires of a hearth, of a cook’s oven, of a campfire, of a smith’s
forge—

She almost vomited at the rush of hatred that washed
through her soul. That must be it. In her entire life she’d seen a
smith’s shop only once or twice, and then only in passing, had had
no interest and hadn’t paid any attention at the time. She knew of
that kind of fire only as an academic concept, though with the way Benesh’ere
blades and steel had recently come to mean so much to Norlakton’s
economy, the smith’s craft was in the forefront of everyone’s
thoughts.

This time she steeled herself, prepared for the blade’s
reaction as she again thought of the fires of a smith’s forge—

Again, hatred washed through her soul, so intense she
cringed under the onslaught. And she resolved to not again think such thoughts.
But she’d learned something, though she still could not be certain
what.

~~~

Something about the town of Norlakton drew the attention
of the steel, and Morgin felt compelled to go there. But he didn’t
act on that until Harriok and Jack the Lesser came to the Forge Hall to pick up
a few steel arrowheads.

“We’re going to the plainface
town,” Harriok said.

Jack added, “Need the arrowheads to trade for
some nice things for our ladies.”

Morgin stood up from his workbench and said, “I’ll
go with you.”

All activity in the Forge Hall ceased as Chagarin said, “No.”

Harriok and Jack said, “No,” as
well, and so did the smiths.

“It’s too dangerous for you to
walk among plainfaces,” Chagarin said.

The steel agreed with him about the danger, but he still
knew he must find out why the town drew its attention. Morgin said plainly, “I’m
going.”

They had quite a loud discussion about that, but Morgin
refused to relent. So a short time later he found himself standing outside the
Forge Hall in the bright morning sunlight as Chagarin, the smiths, Harriok and
Jack the Lesser looked him over carefully. He’d donned a hooded
Benesh’ere tunic, the straw hat turning the hood into a tent-like
affair that hid his face in deep shadow. And he’d augmented it
with a bit of shadowmagic just to be sure. A pair of riding gloves hid the skin
of his hands.

Harriok said, “He looks Benesh’ere.”

Jack added, “A short Benesh’ere.
But I guess he does.”

Chagarin said, “Keep your face and hands
hidden. And we can’t call you by your real name, so what should it
be?”

“Call me Morddon,” he said.

They all agreed that Morgin had chosen a good Benesh’ere
name. The smiths also agreed that they and their sons should all accompany him
as bodyguards, but Morgin pointed out that a large, heavily armed troupe of
whitefaces riding into town would draw more attention than just the three of
them. They compromised; Chagarin and Baldrak would go as well.

As they rode into town Morgin noticed that the plainfaces
eyed them curiously, and he realized that if he were in their shoes, curiosity
would compel him to do the same.

“Let’s start at the inn,”
Harriok said. “The innkeeper’s ale is not bad. And he
keeps a small stock of trade goods on hand. And on a nice day like this he’ll
have tables outside. It’ll be nice to sit in the sun instead of
that sweaty common room of his.”

They stopped in front of the inn, Morgin swung his leg
over Mortiss’ rump and stepped down onto the dirt of Norlakton’s
main street—its only street, actually. His comrades dismounted
nearby and they tied their horses to metal rings hammered into the side of the
inn. They took one of the outside tables and the innkeeper introduced himself
as Fat John. The innkeeper fit his name.

Harriok and Jack dropped their hoods, while Morgin,
Baldrak and Chagarin kept theirs up. Five tankards of ale and a lunch of bread
and cheese cost them only four steel arrowheads. Until that moment, Morgin had
not truly understood the value of Benesh’ere steel.

The innkeeper brought out his trade goods, and while
Harriok and Jack haggled with him, Morgin leaned back and let the lunch and ale
settle in his stomach.

He was simply staring down the street, not really paying
attention to anything in particular, when he saw her. From a distance he couldn’t
make out her face, but she walked like Rhianne, moved like her in every way,
and in that moment his heart climbed up into his throat. But as she came closer
and he saw her features more clearly, while there certainly was a resemblance,
it was slight at best. Up close there were so many differences between this
woman and Rhianne; she carried far too many years in her face, her nose and
chin were square and rough like those of a laborer, and her eyes were a dull
brown.

As she approached she slowed and hesitated, looked at
Morgin and his whiteface comrades fearfully. Harriok and Jack had warned Morgin
that many of the plainfaces reacted that way; the stature of the Benesh’ere
apparently intimidated them quite a bit. Then Fat John approached her and
greeted her warmly as Mistress Syllith. He escorted her past their table and
into the inn.

“Bit old for my taste,” Jack
said.

Harriok added, “Take a couple decades off her
and I’ll bet she was a pretty one once.” To Morgin he
said, “You like them older, huh?”

For just an instant, he had hoped they had gotten it
wrong. He’d had a moment to believe Rhianne still lived, but then
reality had intruded painfully. “No,” he said. “She
just reminded me of someone I once loved. But she’s dead now.”

Harriok frowned. “Sounds like you still love
her.”

~~~

“What can I do for you, Mistress Syllith?”

Rhianne had to shake herself to focus on Fat John’s
question. As she’d stepped from her hut to walk to the inn, the
sword’s influence had suddenly begun to grow rapidly, and it now
pulled at her painfully. Ever since the Benesh’ere had arrived at
the lake, it had hammered at her with such force there was no question it had
come nearer. She had concluded that one of the Benesh’ere had
found it, and brought it here to their camp near Norlakton. But this! She’d
only felt it this strongly once before: when kneeling in front of Morgin in the
Hall of Wills after the blade had gone berserk, and it muddled her thinking
now.

“Are you ill?”

Focus
, she told herself. “No,
just a little addled. I’ve never been so close to the Benesh’ere
before.”

“They’re fearsome, ain’t
they?”

“Yes, they are.” She had to
think for a moment to recall why she’d come. “I need
a new mortar and pestle. Mine is broken.”

“Well, you come to the right place.”

Fat John happily gave her a new mortar and pestle, as long
as she agreed to spend at least two afternoons every twelve-day ministering to
her patients from his common room, though he also agreed to feed her and
Braunye dinner afterwards. She could probably have struck a better bargain, but
it took so much energy to remain focused, her heart wasn’t in it. She
bundled up the mortar and pestle in a cloth sack she’d brought,
then stepped out of the inn onto the street. She hesitated on the inn’s
threshold, trying to catch her breath and steady her nerves.

She took a tentative step forward, unsure if she could
walk without falling, and wanting to avoid such embarrassment. She took another
step, then another, and began the short walk to the other end of town and her
small hut. The intensity of the blade increased for a few steps, but as she
passed the table occupied by the five strange Benesh’ere, it
started to wane. It had done the same when she’d approached the
inn earlier, but she’d been too addled to notice it.

She gasped, stopped and turned toward them; two had
removed their hoods and hats, but the faces of three remained deeply hidden in
shadow. She had to ask, had to know if they’d come across a
dangerous talisman. But as she opened her mouth to speak, the two with their
hoods thrown back stood and stepped between her and the other three, towering
over her menacingly. She’d never been this close to a whiteface,
never truly understood how enormously tall they stood.

“Did you want something?” the
older one said warily, and his tone made it clear they only wanted to hear one
answer.

She stepped back fearfully and gave them what they wanted.
She shook her head, then turned, lowered her eyes and walked hurriedly down the
street toward her hut. She’d been a fool to try to approach such
barbarians that way.

~~~

Carsaris watched the Kull lieutenant—Qartan
was his name—march across the floor, drop to one knee in front of
Valso and bow his head. Behind Valso the little flying snake lay coiled about
its perch.

“Rise, rise,” Valso said
impatiently, waving a hand to emphasize the point.

Qartan’s leathers creaked as he slowly rose
to his full height. He faced the king impassively, his left hand resting
casually on the hilt of the sword strapped to his waist, the look on his face
not even remotely human.

Valso said, “I’ve brought Salula
back.”

At that, Qartan’s lips spread slowly into a
broad grin. “I had heard rumors. I look forward to seeing him
again. He is a leader I can respect, a strong leader, as are you, my king.”

Valso said, “I think you respect his
ruthlessness.”

“Aye, my king, as I respect yours.”

“But you’ll have to be patient,”
Valso said. “It will be some time before you work directly with
him again. I’ve sent him on a special undertaking, something of
great importance to me. And you can help, my dear Lieutenant.”

Qartan nodded and lowered his eyes. “Whatever
you require, Your Majesty.”

“Salula will need a diversion, something
spectacular to focus the entire Benesh’ere camp away from
Norlakton. And I have devised the perfect distraction. And you, Lieutenant, are
the perfect man—halfman, I should say—to carry it
out. I think it will also be the kind of thing you Kulls enjoy doing.”

The halfman bowed his head slightly and said, “I
enjoy serving you, my king.”

Valso smiled. “No doubt, that is because of
the nature of the tasks I assign you.”

“There is that, my king.”

Valso turned and paced back and forth as he spoke. “Take
however many men you need. I’ll leave you to be the judge of that.
Travel incognito. Wear common livery, and let no one see that you are Kullish. Travel
only in small groups and take enough supplies so you need not stop in any town
or village for more. Do bring your Kull cloaks, but keep them hidden in your
saddlebags until after you’ve acted. Then wear them openly, for
they are your signature livery. We wouldn’t want some common thug
to take credit for the deed I wish you to perform.” Valso stopped
pacing and faced the Kull. “Do you understand?”

“I do, Your Majesty. And this diversion you
have devised?”

Valso’s smile broadened. “That
will be the fun part, at least for you halfmen, a vicious little display of
your depravity. But with the diversion, you must also deliver a message to the
Elhiyne.”

~~~

The kitchen maid hurried up the hallway in Penda,
carrying a tray of food for BlakeDown. When the lord of Penda reviewed his
accounts he usually took lunch in his study, and Chrisainne had learned it
could be a good opportunity to catch him alone. She intercepted the kitchen
maid just outside his study, held out her hands and nodded toward the tray of
food. “I’ll take that into Lord BlakeDown.”

The maid curtsied and said, “Yes, milady,”
and handed the tray to Chrisainne. “Will that be all, milady?”

“Yes, thank you.”

As the maid turned she had a little trouble suppressing a
knowing smile, but she managed to keep it to no more than a slight upturn at
the corners of her mouth. The servants, like all servants everywhere, knew
everything that went on inside the walls of this castle. And had the girl been
indiscreet enough to let the slight smile turn into an actual smirk, Chrisainne
would have reported her to BlakeDown. She’d be quietly
disciplined, and possibly dismissed.