by Don McQuinn
Nalatan was already chipping at the hole with his sword. The material was as tough as the stone itself. Conway noted other places where it had been applied to the wall. He couldn’t fathom their significance. Sylah and Lanta drew shortknives, squatted to help Nalatan. Lanta positioned Sylah so she could work with least stress to her injured back. Conway and Tate faced the door, waiting.
A voice Conway recognized instantly came down the hall. “Conway. I am Fox Eleven. You should know who killed you.”
“You should know I’m not dead.”
Fox laughed. “You’ll die here, all of you. Moonpriest has decided. I’m ordered to repeat his words: ‘Knowledge not held by me alone must not exist.’ He said you understand the strange things we found here, that you will understand the meaning of the words.”
“Go back to your master. Tell him I’ll deal with both of you soon enough.”
“It would be a pleasure to take you alive, Matt Conway. There are things you should see. Church Home is gone. The women there are learning what it costs to anger men. It also pleases me to tell you there is plague in the Three Territories.”
Karda and Mikka seemed to understand. Both rose, whining. Heads high, they paced, bouncing off each other, distracted.
The level of noise in the hall increased sharply. A distant voice called. Others rose in response. Footsteps sounded. Then silence. The group in the room exchanged puzzled glances. Work continued at the hole, now as big as a fist.
The dogs came to Conway, nuzzling him. Sharply, he ordered them away. They went reluctantly, tails down.
Tate said, “I don’t hear anyone outside anymore.”
Conway said, “Open that door, you’ll hear plenty.”
Once again, there was only the chink of knives on stone and metal in the room. And the whining of the dogs. Conway shushed them irritably.
“What smells?” Nalatan pulled away from the hole, sniffing. Tate said, “Keep digging. Leave the nose work to the…” The phrase trailed off to thoughtful silence. Everyone tested the air.
“Smoke.” Fear edged Nalatan’s declaration. “Not torches.”
“Poison.” Tate spat the word. “Wires. Plastics. Paints. This place is a toxic palace.” She turned to Nalatan. “Out. How long?”
The hole was barely larger. He shrugged. “Not soon.”
A lacy, gray tendril wisped under the door. Everyone watched in fascinated horror as its sinuous delicacy flowed to the hole and outside.
Tate said, “Is there anyone in the valley now?”
Nalatan looked. “Horse handlers. Many horses. I can see the Door. Three guards there. Oh. Men coming out. Looking back. Talking to the guards.”
Conway pulled Tate’s wedge out of the way. “I won’t burn to death. No way. Back me up.” He threw open the door, leapt out to fall, roll, ended up aiming down the hall. A thin, sinister haze smudged the floor.
Wordlessly, the others joined him. Trotting, they retraced their earlier steps. At the head of the stairwell leading to the vacated library, they looked down into a well of smoke. Pulsing, it seemed to be trying to gather itself to lunge up at them. Far above, hardly visible against the high ceiling, a thinner, more nebulous veil roiled angrily. An orange glow poured through the door leading to the dead Teacher’s office. Its illumination touched the bottom stair and the floor. As they descended toward it, a thudding explosion tumbled them in a heap.
Disembodied cries from the huge auditorium bored through the dust and smoke, clearer now that the wall between it and the library was breached. Through those gaps licked eager, exploratory flames. Men screamed for someone to open the stairwell, let them out. Others merely screamed.
Sylah got to her feet, ascended a few stairs, turned back to face her friends and speak. She carried the torch, and in its wavering light, she was pale with grim resolution. “‘Ignorance and evil,’ the Teacher warned against. They’re destroying the legacy, except for what we saved. The seeds will be planted. Come.”
Conway and Tate exchanged despairing glances. The books were such a meager find. The vidisks and the electricity to make them viable were both gone. The only escape route from the underground complex was blasted shut and afire. Everyone was already coughing and tearing from noxious gases.
Nevertheless, Sylah’s voice demanded respect. Her determination was impossible; it was equally irresistible. Nalatan was the first to shuffle toward her. Obediently, her group followed her.
At the top of the steps, Sylah turned for one last, yearning look at what Conway and Tate called the library. Her friends hurried past her, anxious to get back to their only possibility of survival. She grimaced at the eruption of fresh flame from the tumbled rows of vidisk cabinets. A rumbling sound distracted her. Apprehensively, she looked up, afraid the ceiling was giving way. Instead, she saw a solid black wall descending. Ponderously, it lowered, creating a barrier between the vidisks and the books. The fire, as if aware it was being denied part of its due, flashed across the intervening gap, lashing at the curtain. It stood firm, unassailable.
Raging heat drove Sylah after her companions.
The laser room filled with smoke. Its smothering presence generated desperate urgency. Tate’s bandage hung loose, swinging. Irritably, she jerked it free, hurled it into a corner.
The panting dogs lay by the metal cabinet. Conway patted them, consoling. Looking up, he wondered if the cabinet held tools that might help the nibbling progress on the cement wall. He opened it.
“Tate! Look. Ammunition. Wipe rounds. Boop rounds. And a wipe. Why didn’t we look before? That’s what those cemented spots are; sealed gun ports. And why didn’t we think of these AP rounds for the boop? Load up. Everyone.” He distributed with both hands. When they had all they could carry, he said, “That’s it. In the hall. Lock and load, Tate. We’re going out.”
Sighting the boop, he pulled back around the corner, saying, “I don’t want any splinters. I’ll just—”
Something moved down the hall. At his feet, coughing, choking, Karda and Mikka rose groggily. Conway shouted challenge. Nalatan and he filled the hall, side by side, crouched.
The smoke swirled, suggested a figure, obscured it. Something solid materialized, advanced in tiny, uncertain increments. Tate gasped, stepped back.
Conway took the sword from the man’s unresisting fingers and helped him to sit down, back against the wall. Looking up at Conway, the man gestured for water. Most of it spilled past his ruined lips. Where it washed away soot and grime, the flesh was burned. Charred clothing still smoked. When he finished drinking, he spoke in slow, pained words. “Me. Blizzardman. Good you left. Moonpriest. Set fire to everything. Blocked stairs after fire started. Closed doors. Fox. Others. Left us. Sacrifice, Moonpriest said.” His head dropped forward, shook slowly side to side.
Sylah saw a forlorn child in the gesture. She rushed to him, Lanta close behind. He sagged in their arms. Tortured eyes sought Conway. “Moonpriest. Kill him. Kill the evil one.” He sighed. It had a satisfied sound. Sylah and Lanta checked pulses, reflexes. They lowered him gently. Lanta said, “He’s gone. You knew him?”
Conway shook his head. “I don’t know. A Blizzardman. I trained them.” He paused, features hoarding hurt he tried not to show. “Stand back. I’m firing.”
It took five earsplitting rounds to blow a large enough hole. Nalatan crawled out first, sword in hand. The women followed, then the dogs. Last, Conway. Trembling, scrambling, coughing, they got away from the smoke pouring out of the hole behind them.
Another explosion thundered and vibrated deep in the mountain. Smoke erupted from laser ports all over the valley. The Door leaned outward from its base, smoke roiling up its back side. It toppled forward. With a low rumble, the tunnel collapsed behind it, expelling smoke that jetted horizontally for yards, then bent to raise skyward. A moment later, the hillside slipped, covering the Door.
The next explosion rocked the entire valley. The laser ports vomited larger gouts of smoke and, in some cases, flame. The gr
ound leapt upward and slumped massively down again. The smoke and flame almost stopped entirely as the complex of tunnels and rooms collapsed. For several heartbeats, the earth shivered and growled.
As soon as they cleared their lungs and vision, the group proceeded downhill. Conway sent the dogs ahead to scout. When the animals reached the mouth of the canyon without incident, he called them back. Still, the group passed slowly through the defile leading to the larger valley. They were at the joining of the Door’s valley and the larger one when Blizzard charged out of their hidden draw.
Obviously, the attackers had banked on the dogs scouting no farther than the canyon entrance. Conway cursed himself. These were men he’d trained, men eager to die for a siah they didn’t know had just consigned their companions to a fiery, suffocating death. Their eyes were fanatic in their death-mask war paint. Tate and Conway fired as fast as they could. Nalatan waited, sword and parrying weapon in hand. The wipes did terrible damage in the few seconds before the charge was on them.
The dogs attacked the horses, sending them into hysterical bucks and leaps. Riders were thrown to the ground. Those at the rear of the attack pressed forward, crushing the fallen, forcing others into the maelstrom off balance.
Nalatan’s parrying bar spun and twisted like a live thing, smashing, stabbing. In his other hand, the sword sang destruction. Conway and Tate drew swords, handed off the wipes to Sylah and Lanta to protect the barrels from damage.
The trio was inexorably driven back. Screaming of life eternal, Blizzard’s warriors gave up their lives in religious frenzy.
Mikka yelped, staggered to Conway with a broken leg dangling. A sword thrust caught Nalatan in the stomach. He stumbled. Tate leapt to his side, slashed the throat of the man who’d done it. Nalatan recovered; bloody, bent over in pain, he was back in the fight. Mikka stayed beside Conway, using her minimal mobility to protect his off-sword side. Karda continued to rip at the horses.
Moonpriest’s voice rose from far behind the melee. “Kill the Church witches! Get me those weapons! Quickly! Moondance conquers!”
A man broke past Tate, reached for Sylah. She raised her shortknife. Needlessly, because Mikka threw herself on the man. Sylah screamed, turned away from what was happening at her feet.
A headbutt knocked Conway sprawling. Dazed, eyes unfocused, he struggled to his feet. Mikka had the man who’d felled her master. Karda assured Conway had space and time to clear his vision. A howling warrior pressed in. Conway parried, slashed, felt the impact of his blow shiver up his arm, twist him sideways. There was no time to wonder about the effect. Another man filled the gap the last man left.
The battle was a dull, painful roar in his head. He couldn’t make his legs work. Instinct took the place of thought.
A voice, calling his name. Lanta. The last dregs of adrenaline shocked his system, energized his last reserves. He withdrew toward the sound of her voice, desperate to catch her words. At last, he was close enough to understand, and when he did, despair fell on him like winter’s breath.
“They come, Matt! They come!” She was pointing. So was Sylah. They grinned. He decided they’d gone mad.
When he faced forward again, slumping with exhaustion, there was only himself with his dogs. Tate and Nalatan. There were no Blizzard men left standing. Three stragglers on horseback raced up the slope of the smoke-filled valley. It struck Conway as odd they should leave in that direction.
There was no sound from the group but the rale of exhaustion as a wave of fresh horsemen trotted toward them. Bleary-eyed, leaning on each other, Conway and Tate readied the wipes.
Lanta grabbed Conway’s weapon, forced the muzzle down. Tate staggered sideways until caught by Nalatan. Lanta was laughing, crying, kissing Conway in a transport of happiness and relief. “They’re Dog warriors, Matt. Dogs. The Messenger Sylah sent home got through. To home. Where we’re going. We’re going home.”
Chapter 31
The sound of soft voices from the surrounding camp filled a waking Conway with a sense of well-being that approached euphoria. Eyes closed, he thought back on the meeting with the rescuing Dog warriors. Only hours ago. It seemed centuries had passed. Details of the fighting were vivid, shocking fragments, their place in time uncertain, disordered.
Primary, though, was the memory of joy. In his mind, he heard again the racket of glad greeting, relieved excitement, the elation of being alive.
Analyzing the latter sensation, he sobered. The battle of the Door was different. For once, he was able to consider what he’d done and feel clean, as if this time he’d washed away guilt and unworthiness.
He wanted desperately for it to be so. This time he’d fought to protect, to further something good. There was more than survival involved. More than simpleminded proof of ability, more than a warped sense of vengeance.
Had he found in himself the man he hoped he could be? Was he strong enough to face savage strength without becoming a savage? Was he wise enough to compromise, capable of pride without arrogance?
No man perfected those qualities.
Matt Conway sighed, willing to be contented by the self-awareness that he was closer to those goals than he’d ever been.
Something touched his face. Gentle. Wet, deliciously cool, herb-scented. A soft cloth, drawn slowly across his brow.
He opened his eyes. Lanta sat beside him, legs curled under her, catlike, compact. She smiled her greeting, wrung the cloth into a bowl on the ground, then resumed wiping his face. The cloth whispered against coarse whiskers, and she laughed at the noise.
The simple pleasure of the sound rang in Conway’s ears like pardon.
Still flat on his back, he looked into her eyes. He said, “At the Starwatch camp, when you were all tied to that pole—you know the one thing that I was thinking, coming down that hill behind you?”
She shook her head, cloth poised, waiting. The posture suggested a readiness for flight.
“I had to tell you,” he said. “All the way down, I kept telling myself that whatever happened, I was going to tell you how ashamed I am. I didn’t care if I died to do it; I wanted you to know. And then I was too ashamed to say anything. Now I can. I hurt you unforgivably. No one can ever know how much I regret what I did. I’m sorry.”
Lanta resumed washing his face. He winced when she touched the left cheekbone, where he’d been butted. She paused, studying the cloth for a long while. Then she looked at him, almost questioning, even though she spoke in the affirmative. “Not unforgivable. I don’t think anyone can ever forget something like that. A person can forgive. For a while, I tried to tell myself I was to blame, too, but I wasn’t. Until I admitted that, I wanted to forgive you, but I couldn’t. But it wasn’t my fault.”
“That’s what I had to tell you. I’d never ask you to forgive me. All I wanted was to be sure you knew. My fault. My guilt.”
Lanta was suddenly brisk. “It’s all been said, then.” Conway opened his mouth to continue the subject. A closer look at her changed his mind. She went on in the same manner. “Mikka chewed off her new splint while you slept, and Sylah had to do that all over again. Nalatan’s doing well. Tate’s tending him.”
Conway sat up. Evening light, sultry with blues, lavender, resonant grays, streamed across the face of distant slopes. The sky above them was tenuous, as if exhausted by the sun’s day and anxious for night’s dark ease. A short distance away piñons collected light on stiff needles, so that each stood out, individual and stark. He was surprised to realize he remembered almost nothing of the trek to his high ground. Nalatan, lip curled in a grimace that was a sneer at his pain. Mikka, limping stoically. Sylah, straight and tall, imperiously denying any effect of the wound that bloodied her back.
Conway remembered Sylah talking to the Dog leader. Conway asked Lanta his name.
A strange voice answered from close behind Conway. “I know you, Matt Conway.” The man who came into view was young, ruggedly handsome. Exposed arms bulked with muscle. His grin was open, uncomplicated.
“We met briefly, after we crushed Altanar in Ola. I’m Darbannen Vayar, a Nightwatch of the Dog People.” As he spoke, Darbannen lifted his eyes to someone on the other side of Conway. Conway turned to find Sylah, Tate, and Nalatan approaching. The latter pair were obviously as freshly awakened as Conway. After a smile for them, he greeted Darbannen with Dog formality, asked how Dog warriors found their way to this place.
With the easy brevity of a tale repeated, Darbannen said, “A Messenger from Rose Priestess Sylah came to Clas na Bale. We’d already heard Windband was moving against Church Home, and that’s where the priestess was going. We found Windband’s burned-out camp as they were leaving, and followed them.”
Conway called the dogs to him. They came from where they’d been quietly watching, Mikka stumping unhappily on her splinted leg. Conway had her lay next to him, so he could sympathize. She sighed gustily. He would have sworn she smirked at the aloof, proud Karda.
Looking to Darbannen again, Conway said, “You saw the destruction of Church Home. How bad was it?”
Darbannen shook his head. “They stopped their attack, left the bulk of their force to besiege the place. Moonpriest and a small unit rode off, looking for you.” He made a wry face. “We didn’t know it was Moonpriest leaving, at first. By the time we discovered it and pursued, we were almost too late. As it is, Moonpriest himself and most of his men escaped.”
Tate moved to Darbannen, put her hand on his arm. “Nothing to apologize for. You timed it perfectly. If you hadn’t chased him and his crowd, we’d have finished off the whole bunch, and there wouldn’t have been a speck of glory in this for you all. Now you can brag about how you saved us. We’ll back you up.”
Grimacing wearily at Nalatan, Darbannen said, “Is she always like this?”
Tate faced the warrior monk, smiling slyly. “Answer the man right, honey: you’ve got a lot riding on it.”
Nalatan blushed, fiery red. He stammered. Darbannen laughed raucously. Swamped by opposing waves of pride and embarrassment, Nalatan smiled and sweated.
