The Ruling Sea (55 page)

Pazel’s head was swimming; he was finding Ott’s words very difficult to follow. “What … does it tell you?” he managed to ask.

“Headings,” said the spymaster. “Course headings, and distances, from Stath Bálfyr to lands
on this side
of the Ruling Sea. Lands we know, cities that yet exist, even though the names have changed. Eldanphul, the old name of Uturphe. Marseyl, that the Noonfirth Kings renamed for their founder, Lord Pól. And one island whose name has not changed: Gurishal. Do you see, Pathkendle? If we can but find this Stath Bálfyr, we will know the exact course to the Shaggat’s kingdom, and the multitude that awaits him.”

“If we
find it,” said Alyash, shaking his head.

“Yes,” said Ott, “if. Unfortunately the collector of ancient manuscripts who owned this particular scrap of writing … died, trying to stop my men from seizing it. And his records contain no mention of the page.”

Syrarys turned impatiently from the table. “You needn’t explain things to the tarboy,” she said.

Ott looked Pazel up and down. “I am following my instincts with this one,” he said. “The ignorant make poor servants. For as long as he is with us, he must grasp the fundamentals. Of course, he will not be with us forever.”

“What do you mean by
that?”
demanded Chadfallow, leaning forward.

The spymaster ignored him. “Pathkendle,” he said softly, “do the words
Stath Bálfyr
mean something in themselves?”

“No,” said Pazel.

It came out too quickly, a blurted denial. Sergeant Drellarek sat back with a laugh.

Ott turned to look at Chadfallow. “There’s an answer for you, Doctor. Your tarboy has just lied, very clumsily. My boys in the School of Imperial Security tell better falsehoods after thirty minutes of training. How long will Pathkendle be with us? A short time indeed, if he fails to answer my questions. But long enough to hear one or more of his friends beg for death: a death Ramachni’s spell, alas, will make it inconvenient to provide.”

Pazel swallowed. He was only too aware how easily Ott could carry out his threats. Thasha, Neeps and Marila would be forced to leave the protection of the stateroom in short order if Rose let the spymaster cut off their food.

“Look at him, he’s stalling,” said Syrarys.

Fascination glimmered in Ott’s eyes. “No, he is considering his choices. He’s a thoughtful lad.”

Diadrelu
. Pazel closed his eyes.
Forgive me
.

“Answer the question, Pathkendle,” said Rose.

“‘Sanctuary,’” said Pazel. “Stath Bálfyr means ‘Sanctuary-Beyond-the-Sea.’”

Broad daylight. Somehow Pazel had slept the night away, chained once more in his corner. He shook his head fiercely. He had no memory of waking at all.

He was on horseback, clinging to the saddle horn, startled out of his trance. Birds were singing; the great black horse pranced in the mud; and around him a million leaves and fronds and flowers glittered from a recent downpour.

It was already hot; Pazel felt as though some great animal were breathing on him. Yet the noise of the sea was close and loud, and off to his left he saw a place where the trees ended and blue sky began. He knew suddenly where he was: atop the cliffs, on the edge of Bramian’s great wilderness. It felt like trespassing, like putting a toe through some forbidden doorway just to see what would happen.

Ott climbed into the saddle behind him. Pazel stiffened: it was frightful to be so close to the assassin, with his scarred and deadly hands gripping the reins on either side. Pazel had heard the phrase
Stath Bálfyr
whispered among the ixchel. Only once or twice, when they forgot his abilities; and they spoke it with reverence, like a holy name. He had given something sacred to the most profane man he’d ever known. Ott turned the horse in a half circle, and Pazel caught a glimpse of the cave mouth, low like a burrow and all but invisible with greenery.

There were other horses: one bore Chadfallow, another Alyash. Swift and Saroo were mounted also; their horses carried large leather purses secured to chaps before the riders’ knees. The last and largest steed bore Drellarek and Erthalon Ness, the latter gazing in horror at the jungle about them.

Ott waved his men back underground. Then he turned to the other riders and raised a cautioning hand.

“The first part of this journey is likely to be the foulest,” he said softly. “Stay close to me, and do not stop unless I do. Trust your horse’s footing: these are the noblest animals His Supremacy could provide, and mountain-trained from birth. Away, now! Ride fast and silent, as you value your lives.”

With that he spurred his horse into the bush. There seemed no path at first, and they crashed (far from silently) through great sprays of palm and ferns and creepers. But very soon the underbrush thinned. Huge trees loomed over them, craggy black-barked monsters laden with vines and mosses and dangling epiphytes. The horses were indeed magnificent. They dodged roots and rocks, and somehow guarded their riders’ balance at the same time.

They began a steep ascent, crisscrossing a gurgling stream. In patches of sunlight over the water Pazel saw butterflies of iridescent blue, rising in sapphire clouds at their approach.

“Where are you taking us?” he asked.

“Quiet!” said Ott. “Or you’ll find I’ve taken you only to your grave. We are ascending the mountain known in the Outer Isles as Droth’ulad. An evil corner of a vast, evil isle.”

“Evil?” said Pazel. “But it’s beautiful. Look at it.”

“I am most certainly looking,” said Ott, who was in fact peering deep into the trees ahead. “Yes, evil: the name means Skull of Droth, the Demon-Prince. But it is not Droth who threatens us now. I am looking for the Leopard People. This has been their part of Bramian for longer than anyone from the outer world has been coming here. Fortunately for us they fear to climb Droth’ulad, but they will slip around its base sometimes, to hunt monkeys or wild dogs. They are master archers, and will kill us if they can.”

“Why do they fear the mountain?”

“Because something lives at the summit that kills
them
. Not the demon himself, I think, but perhaps something not greatly to be preferred. We would do better to avoid that place ourselves. But the ridgetop is the only swift path to our destination, and Elkstem swears we must put to sea in a matter of days or be kept from all hope of safe passage by the Vortex.”

“But what in the Nine Pits do you want on Bramian?”

“Nothing whatsoever. It is our allies’ wants that concern me.”

“Allies?”

“Be silent, lad.”

The way grew steeper yet, and they were forced to slow the horses to a walk. There was a path of sorts, now: a meandering mud track, full of roots and snags and fallen trees. Weird shocks of color met their eyes: a fleshy orange fungus that seemed to glow in the shadows, a scarlet hummingbird, a metallic-gold moth. Now and then the path left the cover of the forest to skirt clifftops, jutting like gray teeth from the blanketing green. At such moments Pazel looked down on steaming valleys, over lakes and serpentine rivers, and once he saw a ring of standing stones upon a treeless hilltop, and a thread of rising smoke.

But the sounds were a torment. Whistles, hoots and howls: the noise of countless birds and beasts, never seen except as shadows, flickers of movement, hints of wings. Worst of all were the insects. His altered hearing made their whines, drones, chirps and buzzings hideously distinct. When they bit him near his ears he heard the piercing of his skin.

Up they went, hour upon hour. Rain came and went with astonishing force. When it grew strong enough to blind them Ott would signal a halt, and the horses would stand steaming in the cold spray as the path became a river gushing about their legs. Pazel covered his ears, deafened. But the downpours were brief, and it seemed that the instant the last drops fell the sun came dappling through.

Once more Pazel’s mind became clouded, and he lost all sense of time. One minute he would be clinging to the horse’s mane as the animal struggled up some narrow ravine; the next he would be staring at a hairy vine as thick as his arm, only to discover that it was a monstrous centipede, scurrying up a trunk.

At still another moment he found himself listening to the halfhearted daytime hoot of an owl. No one else seemed able to hear the bird, and Pazel could not find it in the canopy overhead. But he heard its mate answer, and a soft flutter of wings. And then (Pazel caught his breath sharply) the first owl spoke in words. Its voice was black and velvety, the voice of a night hunter woken by day.

“I should like to know where they think they’re going.”

“You could ask,”
said the other, in a higher voice.

“They’re savages, my dear fool. They speak no tongue of Bramian.”

The second owl trilled uneasily.
“I do not like this mountain. I can taste sea air, and it frightens me. The shorebirds’ talk is always full of fear, warships, movements of men. Let us go inland tonight. Where the world is still whole.”

“We will go to the Court of Grethim,”
said the first owl.
“The priest will welcome us, and let us hunt in the spice gardens, and perhaps I will read another story from his book of leaves.”

Pazel never told anyone about the woken owls. He had an awful image of Sandor Ott trying to shoot them from the branches. He stopped searching for them with his eyes, and the birds did not speak again.
^*

Onward, upward. At last Pazel’s acute hearing diminished, and he began to feel more like himself. Far above them, he thought the texture of the forest changed, as though something immense stood among or behind the trees. Then Drellarek reined in his horse. He pointed up into a nearby tree. A large white monkey dangled there, its back to them, motionless, dead. It was pinned to the trunk by an arrow.

Ott cursed. “We’ve startled them,” he said. “The Leopard People don’t just abandon their kills. And blood is yet leaking from that wound. Forward! It is a race now, and we must win.”

He said a soft word to his horse and it charged up the slope, abandoning the trail in favor of a straight line for the summit. Pazel heard the other horses thundering behind.

Suddenly a human voice spoke from the jungle.
“What are they, Uncle?”

Pazel jumped, startling both Ott and the horse.

“They are men like us,”
replied another, older voice.
“But they are slavers from across the sea. Don’t fear them, boy. They will take no slaves today.”

“Damn you, be still!” growled the spymaster.

“Mr. Ott,” said Pazel, struggling to keep his voice low and calm. “They’ve found us. They’re watching.”

Suddenly Erthalon Ness gave a squeal of terror, pointing a finger at the jungle to their left. Pazel turned and saw them: scores of long-limbed figures, racing through the forest with the swiftness of cats. They wore loincloths only, and their pale yellow bodies were dabbed all over with spots of black. Some of the men carried strange iron hooks, and all had bows over their shoulders.

The riders cried out, and the horses increased their speed. But the footing was terrible now that they were running sidelong to the slope, and more than once Pazel would have been thrown from the saddle if Ott had not held him fast.

“Talk to me, Pathkendle!” he roared.

“Talk?”

“Why do you think you’re
here
, fool? Use your Gift! Tell me what they’re saying!”

Pazel listened. But the men were only shouting things like
Fast
and
That way
and
Not the horses!

“Just keep going!” he said to Ott. “They’re only—Wait! Damn! They’re in the trees, Ott! They’re going to shoot us from the trees!”

Even as he spoke Alyash howled in pain. A long black arrow quivered in his thigh. Somehow the bosun managed to spur his horse on. Above them scores of voices cried out, like hounds on the hunt. More arrows whizzed about their ears. Looking back, Pazel saw the trees filled with the spotted men, climbing down headfirst from the upper canopy, using the hooks they carried like claws. In a heartbeat they had dropped to the ground.

“Turn!” cried Ott. “They will drive us into another trap if they can! We must gain the mountaintop!”

Once again they aimed their steeds uphill. The poor creatures were frothing with the effort now, their legs and bellies plastered with mud. But they ran on, and seconds later Ott’s fears were confirmed. An even larger band of the Leopard People rose from the underbrush to their right: just where the horses would have carried them in another few strides.

The pursuit was fierce, but not even those born to the forest could run with the speed of horses. Soon only the fastest runners were still giving chase. Pazel heard them shout to one another as they fell behind:

Why do the horses obey them?

They enslave horses too
.

They’re going to the Ma’tathgryl
.

They will die
.

For ten minutes longer they charged uphill. Then at last the spymaster reined in his mount, and they walked, dazed and stumbling. Chadfallow rode up alongside Ott and Pazel.

“Your savages climbed higher on Droth’ulad than you reckoned with, Ott.”

“They hate us a great deal,” said Ott, grinning wolfishly. “They take all outsiders for Volpeks, who set snares for their children and make mercenaries out of them, or hawk them to the flikkermen.”

“Then their hate is warranted,” said Chadfallow, “since your operations here depend on Volpek supply ships. Let me extract that arrow, Bosun, before you faint.”

“Pah,” said Alyash. “We should not stop here. I have lost but little blood.”

“You may before we reach the summit.”

“Look up, Doctor,” said Sandor Ott.

Pazel raised his eyes, and gasped. They stood nearly at the mountain’s crest. And looming over them, all but lost in the trees crowding the summit, rose a wall.

It was clearly a ruin—but such a ruin! Pazel had seen walls as high in the great keeps of Etherhorde and Pól, but those walls lay in the hearts of mighty cities, not lost in the wilderness. And the wall before him ran east and west along the mountaintop until it vanished in the trees. The builders, whoever they were, had not flattened the ridge but carved mammoth, sinuous yellow stones to fit its curves. The effect was of something more alive than constructed.