by David Duncan
"That Thana has been missing a very good bet."
Brota nodded thoughtfully. "A mother should not say this, Lord Shonsu... but I doubt that she is worthy of him."
†††
"Someone's coming now!" Nnanji said, and slapped at a mosquito, bringing his score up to a hundred or so.
The undulant profile of mountains along the western skyline was sharp and black like obsidian, below a colorless, limpid sky. The sun had gone, but true darkness was slow in coming, here in the deep shadow of RegiVul. The cliffs and the River were gloomy, drab, and sad. A cool wind ruffled the water, but failed to discourage legions of the nastiest biting insects Wallie had ever met.
At noon, Sapphire had slipped by the sorcerer city of Ov, feeling her way cautiously southward amid shallows and sandbanks. Now she lay in mid-River off the Garathondi estate.
Her dinghy was tied at the end of the jetty. It had been there for what seemed like a dozen hours, and must be at least two. A couple of ramshackle fishing boats were tethered nearby. The River was much higher than it had been when Wallie had first come to this place―and how long ago that felt!
Peering along the surface of the ancient, scruffy planks, he heard what Nnanji's ears had discerned over the slap of the ripples: hooves, and a creaking axle, and wheels on gravel. The dinghy rocked gently.
"About time!" said Tomiyano.
There were five of them―three swordsmen, counting Thana, plus one sailor and one slave―or six if you also counted the sleeping Vixini. Holiyi had been sent inland to find Quili.
Holiyi had been gone too long, so something had not gone as expected. With Holiyi the delay was certainly not due to idle gossiping, and Tomiyano had begun muttering dark threats of vengeance if anything had happened to his cousin.
The circle had been turned. This was where the mission had begun, here at the end of this jetty, waiting for Nnanji to scout and return. By coming back, Wallie had followed his orders. He bad met the problem here, crossed the mountains, sailed around―turned the circle. Now the lesson might be learned. Maybe. He wished he had more confidence in his own ability to learn it. He was depressed by a nagging conviction that he had overlooked something, somewhere.
Damn horseflies! He slapped at the back of his neck.
A wagon came into sight at the bottom of the canyon, drawn by two horses. Two people dismounted and began walking. A third remained and commenced a long, painful effort to turn the vehicle. Horses would not step into the waters of the River, and there was little room with the River so high.
One of the pedestrians was Holiyi. The other was a woman, but not Quili.
"The rest of you stay here!" Wallie stepped up on the deck and strode forward to meet the visitors, his boots making hollow thudding sounds in the evening stillness.
Holiyi, when he came near enough to be clearly seen, was sporting his usual sardonic grin, which was reassuring. His companion was middle-aged, almost elderly. She wore the orange gown of a Fourth, and Wallie registered vaguely that it was of much too fine a velvet to be sweeping its lace-trimmed hem over this dirty, scabby jetty. Her hair was silver and well tended, her fingers jeweled. She was a priestess, and obviously a prosperous one.
"Adept Valia, Lord Shonsu," Holiyi muttered.
Salute and response.
"You had trouble?" Wallie demanded.
Holiyi shook his head with a relaxed and noncommittal shrug.
"Priestess Quili is well, my lord," Valia said, "but unable to come and see you at the moment. She is entertaining sorcerers." She smiled, being graciously amused at his reaction. Valia's manner was friendly enough, but she obviously fancied herself as a grand lady.
"That's not trouble?"
"Not as long as they do not know you are here, my lord! And I am sure that they will not find out."
Wallie turned and waved for his companions to join him. He could ask Holiyi for details, but it might take an hour to drag them out of him.
"Explain, please, adept?"
But boots were drumming, and bare feet. The others came running, and then Valia had to be presented to Nnanji, and the others to her.
"What a beautiful baby!" she exclaimed.
Vixini, grumpy from being awakened, did not feel like a beautiful baby. He buried his face in his mother and declined conversation.
Wallie said a silent prayer for patience. "We cannot offer you a comfortable chair, adept, and the air swarms with vampire bats, so perhaps we should get the story quickly?"
Valia inclined her head in regal assent. "I have the honor to minister here now, my lord. Priestess Quili is my protégé. She is also my secular superior, but that is no problem. We work well together."
"I don't think I quite understand," Wallie said. "I am delighted to hear that Quili has achieved promotion to Third. What of Lady Thondi?"
"She is with the Goddess."
"I would be hypocritical if I expressed regrets."
He received a slight frown of priestly reproof, then the smiling condescension due a Seventh. "Perhaps understandable. I believe that you yourself consigned her to the justice of the gods. Your prayer was heard, my lord, and her passing was not easy."
"Explain!"
Adept Valia glanced around the group, relishing an attentive audience for a good story. "She came down to this jetty to embark on the family boat, meaning to travel to Ov on business―not long after your departure, Lord Shonsu. A rotted plank failed beneath her, and she fell through."
"Goddess!" Wallie muttered. His skin crawled. Why did he feel guilty?
"Undoubtedly! Several large men had preceded her, and she was not a weighty person, as I understand."
"So the piranha got her?"
He had been expected to ask. "No. They rejected her. That does happen, of course. The current swept her out of reach, underneath. She was trapped, and she drowned. No one was able to reach her in time." The priestess was savoring her audience's reaction.
Jja slipped a comforting arm around her master. Nnanji and Tomiyano were looking impressed.
"I can show you the exact spot, if you wish," Valia offered.
"Thank you, no! And her son?"
'The Honorable Garathondi is in poor health, my lord. A few days after his mother's death, he suffered a seizure. He has been paralyzed and speechless ever since. The healers hold out no hope of recovery and do not expect him to live much longer."
"That's horrible!"
The priestess looked surprised. "You question the justice of the gods, my lord, when you yourself invoked it?"
"I didn't mean... Tell me about Quili, then. I trust her news is better?"
"Excellent. I have never seen a happier couple."
Wallie restrained a strong temptation to stun a holy personage. "She married Garadooi?"
"Of course! And they are so well suited! True lovebirds."
Feeling Jja's arm squeeze him, Wallie looked down at her smile. Some things did not need to be said.
"Please give them our congratulations."
"I certainly shall. And you, my lord? You have recovered from your injury?"
"How the... how do you know of that?"
Valia again displayed ladylike amusement. She was much less exposed to the wind and the bugs than the others were. "Some weeks ago, the sorcerers informed the builder that you had died. You had been seen in Aus, and then in Ki San, but very ill, from the effects of a sword cut. The healers had despaired of your life. Naturally, Quili was overjoyed when she heard that you were here this evening, and that the stories were all lies."
Not all; Wallie did not look at Nnanji. His mind was swirling with the implications. The sorcerers' powers were terrifying. They had agents in Ki San, then, at the very least, even if the healer himself had not been a sorcerer. But the healer had been wrong. That might by why Sapphire had not been more closely examined in Wal, when the sorcerer came aboard. The sorcerers had given him up for dead. Again that sense of power wasted by human fallibility...
"Not all their tales
were false," he admitted. "But what is their business here tonight?"
The priestess chuckled. "Work on the sorcerers' tower is proceeding very slowly since Builder Garadooi shortened his slaves' work hours. He has also banned all physical punishment without his personal approval, my lord."
"That could be deleterious, I suppose."
"But output from the estate itself is markedly improved recently, I am told."
It sounded like Garadooi. He would be giving his slaves meat next. Maybe he already had. Beds, even.
"And the sorcerers?"
"Honorable Rathazaxo came to call today," Valia said, with a cynical smile. "He wanted Builder Garadooi to return with him to the city and take over supervision in person, as his father did. There was some loud discussion. Even through closed doors, it was loud."
"The tower is not being completed?"
"The tower itself is almost finished, I understand, but there is still work needed on the adjacent plaza. I think the contract will be fulfilled, my lord, eventually. Of course his honor and his companions were invited to stay to dinner. That was when Sailor Holiyi arrived at the tenancy. Word came to the manor. There was some problem in passing a message―I was at the dinner, also."
Holiyi had been told to find Quili, but the presence of two priestesses might have caused some confusion. Hence the delay, passing information under the ears of sorcerers.
"Quili and I managed to slip out for a quick word together," Valia explained, "at the end. She dares not leave yet. If you wish to come back with me, then we should wait awhile, to be sure. If not... she sends her love to you and Adept Nnanji, my lord."
Nnanji grinned. "Give her mine."
"And certainly mine," Wallie added. "How many companions did this sorcerer of the Sixth bring with him?"
"Two. Both Thirds."
Wallie's pulse began to beat a little faster. "But Builder Garadooi will be returning to Ov with them?"
Nnanji stiffened slightly.
Valia indulged a genteel laugh. "If they cast a spell on him. But it will take a strong one! He did promise that in a couple of days..." Then she guessed, and her lips clamped together in angry silence.
Tomiyano had arrived there also. "The road runs by the River?"
Nnanji nodded. "There is a ferry," he said softly.
"They were being very insistent that he go with them, my lord," Valia protested. She was frightened now, furious at her own stupidity. "And he was still trying to persuade them to spend the night. The family boat will be arriving in the morning―"
"But you invited us to the manor. You thought they were leaving."
She would not admit that. "They may have."
Wallie ignored her then. He had often watched Honakura twist the truth without actually lying, and the old man was much more skilled at it than this pompous priestess was.
In the gathering gloom, the light from the River was reflecting in Nnanji's eyes, making them shine. But the bloodlust that should have been there was missing. He was watching Wallie intently, very still, not seeming with excitement as he should be at the prospect of action. Nnanji knew the answer and was waiting to see if Wallie did.
"Then here's your chance, Shonsu!" Tomiyano rubbed his hands gloatingly. "Five of us and three of them. Not bad odds, wouldn't you say, when we have surprise on our side?"
Wallie said, "No."
"What! Why not? Kill two, take one alive! It's your chance to find out what they have in their pockets, man! A heaven-seat opportunity! We'll tie him up and gag him―"
"No."
"Why not?" die captain shouted. "What's wrong with it?"
"Lord Shonsu is not Swordsman Kandoru," Nnanji said, more quietly than ever.
"What's he got to do with it?" Tomiyano was looking from one swordsman to the other, baffled.
"He drew against a guest."
Thana was as puzzled as her brother. "She said we couldn't go up to the house yet―we've been refused hospitality. We're not guests!"
"But they are." Nnanji was smiling faintly, approving.
"We shall not move against the sorcerers, adept," Wallie told Valia. It was crazy. Tomiyano was quite right―this was a heaven-sent opportunity, a chance to capture a sorcerer of the Sixth. But Valia had unwittingly betrayed her guests to their enemies, and to take advantage of that error would not be honorable. Good manners did not permit a war to be fought that way... crazy! Insane! But Nnanji was pleased―Lord Shonsu was a man of honor. Why should Wallie care what Nnanji thought? Why did that wry smile feel good? Penance for what he had done in Aus? Crazy!
Tomiyano snorted in disgust. Thana shook her head over such landlubber nonsense.
"I thank you, my lord," Valia said humbly. "The blame would have been laid to Quili..." There was less great lady now. "Will you not come up to the manor?"
"I think the hour is late," Wallie said. "We should return to our vessel before true darkness."
"As you please, my lord." Valia hesitated. "I was not going to mention... this was told in confidence, but there was no oath. I think my duty is to pass it on. You would find out soon anyway."
Wallie felt a sudden tingle of premonition. "Yes?"
"It seems to be the cause of the sorcerers' impatience." She was incapable of coming straight to a point. "Honorable Rathazaxo reported that a tryst has been called."
"A TRYST?" shouted Nnanji. "Where?"
Valia recoiled. "At Casr, adept."
"When?"
"Yesterday."
"And has She blessed it?"
Valia backed away before his vehemence. "Apparently, adept."
"Her swordsmen are coming?"
"So his honor said. .."
Nnanji stepped across the circle and grabbed Wallie by the shoulders. If he tried to shake him, nothing happened. "That's it, brother! You were wondering how to fight sorcerers, and there's the answer! Why didn't we think of it?"
"What the demons is a tryst?" Tomiyano growled.
"It's a holy war! It needs two Sevenths, a swordsman, and a priest―" He swung back to Valia, growing shrill with excitement. "And bullocks? They had the bullocks?"
She nodded.
"Why bullocks?" Tomiyano asked. "A barbecue?"
"No, no, no!" Nnanji was almost dancing. "There hasn't been a tryst for―oh! centuries. It takes a priest and a swordsman to call one, and they wade into the River. The bullocks go first."
Tomiyano's eyes popped wide. "It would take more than bullocks to get me―"
Nnanji spun back to Wallie. "But if the stories are true and the swordsmen are coming, then the Goddess has blessed it! So it's a real tryst! The saga of Arganari ... Za? Guiliko?"
"Who leads this tryst?" Thana asked with a glance at Wallie. "The Seventh who called it?"
Nnanji paused and frowned. "No, I don't think... not necessarily." His lips moved as he pondered. "Leadership is decided by combat, I think. The best swordsman." He swung round to face Wallie again and shouted. "The best swordsman in the World! Of course! And remember the ballad of Chioxin, brother? The emerald led a tryst, and so did the ruby! The fourth did, too! That's what your sword is for!"
And the leader's aide-de-camp and oath brother could be certain of an honorable mention in the epics to follow. Nnanji was as thrilled as a medieval squire given tickets to the next crusade. Thana and Tomiyano also had caught the excitement. Even Jja and Holiyi were beaming. Of course―a tryst against the sorcerers, led by Lord Shonsu and Her own sword.
So here was something else to think about. Lots of things. Perhaps Wallie had been interpreting the riddle wrongly. The army might not be Sapphire's crew after all. A tryst was a real army, the greatest the World ever knew. He had done nothing to earn that.
Nnanji lapsed into silence, his lips moving again as he recited epics to himself, researching trysts.
"I cannot persuade you to come up to the manor, my lord?" Valia asked. "Quili is anxious to see you, and the builder will be, also, if he did not accompany the sorcerers."
But
Wallie had too much on his mind―riddles and trysts, circles and armies, Casr and Aus. And he did not want to face his former helpers and have to confess that what they had been told about him was true.
"I think not, holy one. Give them our love and, again, our thanks. Tell them we shall continue the fight against the evil ones, and that it progresses. I think we must return to our ship before true darkness."
Or would Sapphire have vanished, and the dinghy find itself delivering the seventh sword to Casr? Under that bitter thought he tasted relief that Jja and Vixini were with him.
"And on to Casr, my lord brother?" Nnanji said eagerly.
Wallie sighed. "Yes. She has summoned Her swordsmen, so yes, we must go to Casr."
Then Thana's eyes went wide, and a brightness seemed to glow in her face. Before she could speak, the others wheeled around, staring to the north. Huge, but very distant, a giant rose of flame was unfolding graceful petals into the somber dusk― higher, higher, and ever brighter, belittling the range on which it grew, lighting the dark landscape below, setting the very sky ablaze. Then the darkening crest reached into the heavens themselves and was touched by the rays of the invisible sun, blooming pink and gold.
A volcanic eruption... the blast would arrive later, but the wind would carry the ash westward, toward Casr... Wallie was still analyzing, when he realized how this would appear to his companions.
"The Fire God rages!" Valia exclaimed, making the sign of the Goddess. "He fears the tryst called against his sorcerers!"
"He didn't fear it until he heard who was going to lead it!" said Nnanji. He grinned proudly at Wallie. A little hero worship was creeping back. Lord Shonsu was a man of honor.
†† ††
zzz
The first thing the sun god discovered when he returned to the World was the monstrous mushroom standing high above RegiVul, dwarfing the mountains themselves. Playfully he painted it red, then gold, and finally a very pale blue, but the Fire God still tinted the underside with angry rosy flickers. A little later the sun observed Sapphire as she headed into Ov.
Wallie had slept little and badly. He had been counting on the god's riddle to solve his problem for him. Turn the circle, he had thought, and some divine revelation would show him how to fight sorcerers. Instead his problem now looked worse. The sorcerers had known of his sickness at Ki San. They had demonstrated again an inexplicable ability to pass information. A tryst had been called. As a swordsman, he now had a sacred duty to head for Casr. Certainly the tryst explained why he had been given the legendary sword, but for Shonsu to return to Casr would be virtual suicide. Now he must beware not only denunciation but also challenge, for other Sevenths would flock to a tryst.
