The Stricken Field (32 page)

"Insolence!" the Keeper said, but more gently. "You have yet much to learn, and time is short. Time is desperately short. Had you come to the College when you should . . ."

Memories stirred. "What?"

"Never mind." The hidden eyes were studying her. Doubtless the power she could sense was reading her thoughts. "So with three words you have been working sorceries. You clamored all over Thume like temple bells and some of what you did was true sorcery. And with only three words! There is no record of that since ... for a long time."

"Since Keef?"

"Since Thraine. Oh, Thaile, Thaile, do not be stubborn and willful! The Evil is almost upon us. The atrocities have begun, and now the Usurper stirs. The dragons are rising!"

The last words prickled goosebumps on Thaile's arms. "Dragons?" she whispered.

Yesterday Analyst Teal had sent her off by herself to read a dismal, gruesome book about the Dragon Wars. It had brought back memories of the Defile and being slain in torment by the heat of a dragon. She knew about dragons. Her flesh crawled. She jumped as a something began to hiss overhead, then realized it was a burst of rain falling on the roof, wind lashing the trees.

"He is raising the dragons!" the Keeper cried, her voice breaking with horror. "From Gralb nest and Kilberran nest, even the few still at Haggan, and of course the Wurth blaze, the greatest of them all now. The worms brighten the sky. May the Gods be merciful!"

"Coming here?"

"No, not yet, but he plans a fiendish mischief with them, and great slaughter, a needless evil such as your mind will not conceive. Shall I show you? Close your eyes."

"No, please! Please don't! I believe!"

The Keeper sighed. "I hope you do. I hope I am reading the prophecies correctly, else I am about to make a grievous error."

"Error, ma'am?" Thaile trembled at the thought of the Keeper-the Keeper!-making an error.

"Error. My instincts tell me I am, and the auguries are black, yet the prophecies say I must do what needs be done. We shall see before the night is out, I think. You must go now and keep a Death Watch."

"No! I just became a mage. I cannot yet control the power you have given me."

The Keeper sighed. "One teaming is as easy as two. In the Outside, when a sorcerer dies, he usually bequeaths all his words at once. Men go from mundanes to sorcerers in an instant. Do you wonder that so many go mad?"

Thaile did not want to go mad. She was not supposed to answer the question, though.

"Your Faculty will sustain you," the old voice murmured. "Go back to the Way. Raim will call you on it." "Raim?"

"An archon. He is keeping the old man alive until you get there."

Thaile rose unwillingly, very shaky. "And child!"

"Ma'am?"

"Be very careful he tells you only one word!" Five words destroyed.

Thaile tried to speak, and failed. She went. The Chapel was empty, the Keeper and her furniture gone. She scurried off to the door, ignoring the lament from Keef's grave.

Inos emerged from the front door of the inn and paused to look up and down the main street of Highscarp. It was a quaint little place, reminiscent of Krasnegar in some ways. The moon shone peacefully over rooftops; candlelight and firelight gleamed in the windows. The night air was wonderfully refreshing after the heat and stink of the tavern.

A party of legionaries had come out ahead of her and was now making its way unsteadily along the road, but there was no one else in sight. She knew that gnomes tended to be nocturnal, and she had expected to see some of them around. This was gnome country, after all, even if it was also part of the Impire.

Behind her, the raucous drunken singing rose to a crescendo in the chorus of "I Loved a Hot Little Gnome." The chorus was obscene, but most of the verses were even worse. As a hostelry for gentlefolk, the Imperor's Head left much to be desired. Just about everything, in fact.

She had spent the whole day in a bumpy, smelly, grossly overcrowded stagecoach, listening to meaningless chatter from witless wives of Imperial officers and fending off their prying questions. Shandie and Raspnex had ridden on the roof, and suffered even more, no doubt. All the male passengers had been required to walk up the hills. Even the Impire could not build straight, flat roads across Guwush.

Even the Impire could not guarantee the safety of its highways there, either. The stage traveled with a mounted escort.

And after all that, the Imperor's Head-four women to a room, and a thousand fleas apiece. The food could only have been cooked by gnomes-carrion souffle, fricassee of offal. In retrospect, Dwanish had been a pleasant vacation. She would go uphill, she decided.

The door flew open and a man almost cannoned into her. "Inos!" It was Shandie.

Wearing a sword.

"Just where do you think you're going?" he demanded angrily.

"Needed some fresh air. Remember it? I thought I'd take a stroll."

He snorted. "Take a stroll? Here, in Highscarp?" "Where else? Why, is that unwise?"

"You'd be lucky to live long enough to be raped." "Oh." Inos tugged her cloak around her and took another, hard look at the empty street. "Well, thanks for the warning. It seems peaceable enough."

"Believe me, it isn't! They'd come out of the alleys like swarming rats. Even the legionaries go round in groupshaven't you noticed?"

"No, I hadn't." She laughed. "Glad you mentioned it! I'll settle for the fresh air."

"You're welcome." He folded his arms. Obviously he was going to stand guard while she breathed.

Neither spoke for a while, and the silence darkened into melancholy.

"Wasn't Highscarp the scene of a battle a few years ago?" she asked, seeking a safe topic.

"Yes."

His tone alerted her-not a safe topic. "One of yours?"

"One of mine. A glorious victory!"

"Why do you speak of it like that? Wasn't it?"

He took so long to answer that she was just about to apologize for asking. Then he said, "Yes, it was. We guessed that they lost ten thousand men, but it was probably more. It set Oshpoo back a long way." After another pause he went on. "We'll pass the field in the morning, just over the first bridge. I don't suppose there's anything to see there now except a monument."

"A monument to ...?"

"To the gallant legionaries who died serving the Impire, of course."

Inos recalled some of the stories that had filtered through to Krasnegar, months later. Highscarp had been a notable victory. The imps had partied for days, her imps.

"There will be more battles soon, you think?" "Sure to be. I don't know what he's waiting for." Oshpoo. The rebel. She supposed he was Oshpoo the Patriot to the gnomes. Shandie had been very reticent the last few days.

"You should not have come with us!" Inos said sharply. "You should have taken ship with the others."

"I'm in no more danger than you are. Probably we should all have taken ship."

"But if we do manage to contact the People's Liberation Army, and you're recognized-"

"I said don't worry! The best we'll manage will be a letter."

She felt unconvinced. How would the gnomish rebels feel about the general who had inflicted such a devastating defeat on them?

"How do you feel about Highscarp now?"

Shandie shrugged. "Why do you ask? How do you think I feel?"

She should not be wandering on such dangerous ground. "I'm not sure. It was a great triumph for you personally, wasn't it? I suppose you were proud of your success."

"Yes, I was. Very. In a way I still am." He looked up at the sky. "Bats?"

"I do not scream at bats!"

He chuckled. "I didn't expect you to. I'd forgotten the bats of Guwush ... Yes, I was a soldier and I served my grandfather as I hoped others would serve me when I succeeded. Did my duty. I hoped it would end the war. Now I know that it solved nothing in the long run, nothing at all. Few battles do."

"Is it addictive?" she asked. "Victory, I mean. Soldiers who win and reap fame, who get medals pinned on them and speeches made to them ... Do they yearn for other wars and other victories?"

"This one doesn't," he said harshly.

She nodded in the night. The singers had gone on to another song, one she did not know. She thought she could see movements in the shadows now, and was glad the inn door was right behind her. Were there eyes watching, ears listening?

"I believe you," she said. "Thanks."

"Truly!" She held out a hand. Surprised, he hesitated, and then took it.

Inos said, "When we first met, I thought you were a very cold person. Hard, unfeeling. Lately I've been catching glimpses of a much nicer man underneath." Surely moonlight was making her reckless!

He did not seem to mind her prying. "Gods! I shall have to be more careful in future."

"I thought you were a man of war. You're not, are you?" "Not really," he said. "At least, I believe peace is better. That was my excuse. I thought that once I'd proved I could be a fighter, then I'd be able to choose peaceful solutions without being called a weakling." He turned his face away from her, as if to study the shadowed doorways nearby. "Perhaps it wouldn't have worked."

"I think it would. Think it will. It does you credit. And some wars are just."

"Are they?"

From Shandie, that ought to be a very surprising question, but she knew him now. He took nothing for granted. "Yes," she said. "When the jotnar seized my kingdom, I had them all killed, every one, and most of them were not much older than Gath. Well, they were quite young. But none of the thanes has menaced us since."

"If a war is just for one side, then must it not be unjust for the other? Have I mangled the problem successfully?" "No, you're right. I'm sorry if I offended."

"I enjoy talking with you. Know something? No one has ever spoken to me in my whole life like this. Not the way you do."

Poor, poor Shandie! His mother had been the worst sort of bitch, of course. He had had no brothers or sisters, and probably no real friends, even as a child. What of his wife? But to speak of the impress would be too cruel. The man was probably frantic with worry about her. However, there were limits to the amount of comfort Inos was willing to provide lost husbands, even imperors, and this conversation was drawing very close to those limits. She wondered if moonlight had this effect on people. Or was it loneliness calling out to loneliness?

"Highscarp is not a happy memory!" Shandie said firmly. "What's unsettling you?" He moved closer.

Fair enough. She had wrung confidences out of him, so now it was his turn, and this private little chat was becoming altogether too intense and intimate.

"Riding in that coach."

"I thought maybe it was dinner."

She smiled, then chuckled in case he couldn't see the smile. "That, too. No, I kept remembering the last time I rode in a grand carnage like that."

"When?"

"When I left Hub. Many years ago. We drove all the way to Kinvale before lunch!"

Shandie sighed. "Then I can guess who was driving." "Yes," she said. "You want to hear something funny? The footman on that journey was Death Bird! Me and Aunt Kade, seven hundred leagues in a morning!" She laughed. Rap driving.

Rap gone. And Kadie and now Gath. Shandie took her in his arms.

The tears came at last. He held her tight in the moonlight while she soaked his shoulder.

The journey was the longest Thaile had ever taken on the Way, except perhaps her first trip to the Defile. She had a strange conviction she was going around in circles, so perhaps the archon was having trouble making the Way work backward for her.

Eventually she saw a light ahead and heard a distant boom of surf. The moon was higher, riding through milktinted clouds. Wind sighed over the bent grass on the dunes.

A strange group crouched around a bonfire, their shadows writhing on the sand behind them. No, there were two groups, she realized. On one side an old woman huddled, distraught, weeping in the arms of a bewildered boy. On the other sat a couple of young men she knew, novices from the College. They looked at her with pale, strained faces, but she could tell they were greatly relieved to see her come at last. The dying man must be a full sorcerer, and these two would be granted the other two worthwhile words.

Beyond them was a cottage. There was no light in it, but archons did not need light. She trudged over the soft sand with her heart laboring. One word only! Only one word! The door stood open on darkness. A voice said, "Enter!"

She recognized him, a blocky man with very gold eyes, and much younger than she would have expected of an archon.

"Yes, we have met," he said impatiently, and gestured to the bed. The face on the pillow was wrinkled and pallid, its eyes closed. Under the mundane salt tang of the sea lurked the occult scent of death, old and stale and cruel.

"You want the Tylon word," Raim said brusquely. "I will rouse him. Give me a moment." He strode past her, out the door and away, leaving her alone with the dying man.

Why? Oh, to move out of earshot, of course. Words could only be heard mundanely, not by sorcery. Had she ever been told that, or did she just know? Remembering her great-grandmother Phain, she moved softly over to the bed and knelt down beside it. This would be a much shorter Death Watch than Phain's. The man's breath rattled like snakes. She wondered if she would ever know his name.

Minutes wormed by. If she wanted to pry, she would be able to Feel his agony. An insane urge to do so began to niggle at her like an itch. His features had the immobility of old ivory, reminiscent of the portrait busts in the Library. She lifted a corner of the sheet and wiped the trickle of spittle trailing from his lip.

His eyelids flickered and opened a little. The mouth pursed as if in pain. What a horrible way to die! She felt like a buzzard, picking at a corpse.

"Which? " The word was not spoken aloud. "Can I get you anything? Water?"

"No. I am in something of a hurry, Novice. Which? " "Tylon. "

He tried to speak, and no sound came from his lips. He ran the tip of his tongue over them; she leaned closer, offering her ear. He croaked, gasped for breath; tried again. He spoke.