The Silver Stone

by Joel Rosenberg

  “No,” he said, shaking his head.

  She nodded, once. “I was your father’s ace-in-the hole with the Sons, and that made the difference in the end.” Her face grew grim. “And the simple truth, Torrie, is that while there are things you could do that would stop me, you wouldn’t do any of them.”

  Well, truth to tell, while Maggie wasn’t as good as Torrie or Ian with a sword—then again, she hadn’t been at it a quarter as long—she was a fair-to-good epée player, and according to Dad’s report, no slacker with the edge, either. That had made the difference when the Sons had finally cornered Maggie and Mom and Dad in the Hidden Ways: the Sons had written Maggie off as just another helpless female…

  “Jealous?” she asked.

  “Eh?”

  “I seem to recall one Branden del Branden showing some interest in me.” She smiled.

  That was true enough. Branden del Branden had tried to have Torrie killed over Maggie. That showed a certain amount of interest in her.

  “Are you planning on keeping the two of us apart?” she went on. The light tone was gone from her voice. “I don’t recall having agreed not to see anyone else. Or did I miss something?”

  Torrie’s lips tightened. Dammit, she had him on the defensive, and all he had been trying to do was to keep her out of danger.

  There was really no point in arguing with Maggie. She was like Mom: one way or another she would get her way. He sighed as he beckoned to the desk clerk. “Would you get our bill ready, please? We have to catch a plane.”

  Maggie barely broke a smile.

  “My turn to pack us up,” he said, handing over his American Express card. “Why don’t you get us a couple of seats on the next flight to Grand Forks?”

  As he headed for the elevator, she already had her battered datebook open, and was punching a telephone number.

  Part Two

  Tir Na Nog

  Chapter Five

  Avoidance Play

  The long tunnel stretched out in front of Ian, vanishing in the darkness ahead. He walked, surrounded by the dim, directionless gray light that was without heat. The air was flat, tasteless, odorless.

  Clearly he should have been hurting, probably he ought to be dog-tired, but for sure he should have felt something—shit, anything—but he didn’t. It was as though he wasn’t really there; it was like watching a dull silent movie projected into his eyes.

  It should have felt like something. His heavy woolen cloak covered his shoulders, but he had thrown it back to keep his arms free, leaving his upper chest open to the air. Either the covered part of him should have been warm and sweaty, or the uncovered part chilly, but neither was either. The unyielding surface beneath his boots should have made his feet ache, but they didn’t. It wasn’t that they were numb; he could feel the weave of his thick socks by wriggling his toes.

  His hands and shoulders should have hurt, too; he had been carrying the back of the stretcher for thousands and thousands of steps, long enough to lose count. There was no cramp in his fingers, no blisters or pain on the palms of his hands.

  Long enough, certainly, to be hungry and thirsty, to need to stop and take a meal and a piss. But his stomach didn’t feel empty and his bladder didn’t feel full; mainly he just plain didn’t feel.

  Ian walked through the endless grayness without pain, without pleasure, without hunger, without time. It was hard enough to think about, and would have been impossible to explain. It was almost as though it was happening to somebody else.

  On the stretcher in front of him, Hosea lay sleeping in his straps, his chest slowly, evenly rising and falling, his eyes never twitching, his head bobbing in time with their steps, as though nodding in lukewarm agreement. Ivar del Hival’s bulk at the front of the stretcher gave Ian only occasional glimpses of Arnie Selmo beyond him; the two of them trudged silently, constantly, unchangingly.

  Nobody had spoken in that endless time. Ian thought he should, could, might, ought to say something to break the silence interrupted only by the sounds of footfalls, but he was unable to.

  It was as though part of Ian had been turned off.

  He had walked that way for an endless time beyond time through the Hidden Ways, until the runnel slanted upward and in mid-step, in mid-blink Ian found that the ground beneath his feet was dirt, not the rippled gray stone of the Hidden Ways. The tunnel had widened, too, and the walls were of dirt, supported every dozen or so yards by an upside-down U of timbers that made Ian feel as though he was emerging from the world’s esophagus.

  The smooth wood of the stretcher poles weighed heavily in his hands, and the straps of his rucksack had started to cut into his shoulders. A distant reek filled his nostrils, and even before Arnie Selmo, in the lead, stepped through a curtain of ivy, a chorus of twittering birdsong filled Ian’s ears.

  The nice thing about being the back man on a stretcher is that there aren’t a lot of decisions to make; Ian shut his eyes and ducked his head as he followed Ivar del Hival through the leaves, and out into coolness that was fresh and bracing, with no trace of the tunnel’s dankness.

  They had exited through an arch in a curved wall, a wall so overgrown with vines that—

  No. That wasn’t wall peeking through the gaps in the greenery: it was bark. The tree above them was by far the largest he had ever seen, so much so that for just a moment, Ian felt like he and the rest of them had shrunk.

  But no: the brown, rotting leaves that lay on the ground around them were normal oak leaves, and the other trees off in the distance were simply large and leafy, not immense.

  The opening they had walked through was an up-thrust loop of root, overgrown with vines and moss, of the largest oak tree Ian had ever seen. Its girth was easily as grand as one of the great sequoias. Although it was impossible to tell how tall it rose. Thick branches sprouted from the trunk only a few yards overhead, a green canopy arching out over the forest.

  Ivar del Hival grinned as he and Ian set the stretcher down on the forest floor. “I’ve heard it said that a native-born draws strength from the very air and soil of Tir Na Nog,” he said, crouching, and grabbing up two fistfuls of rotting humus from the forest floor. “And I can swear it to still hold true for Ivar, the son of Hival.” He rubbed his hands together, as though to grind the blackened rot into his skin.

  Arnie Selmo had already walked a couple of yards up the mostly buried root and seated himself. “I don’t know about you two, but I don’t feel near as tired as I ought to be.” A corner of his mouth twitched, deepening the creases in his lined face. “Matter of fact,” he said, “I feel kind of good.”

  Ian nodded. “Same as last time; the Hidden Ways don’t seem to tire you. It’s as though—”

  He caught himself. Hosea’s brown eyes were looking up at him, a thin smile on his face.

  “Hosea!” Ian dropped to the ground next to him. Arnie Selmo was already half-climbing, half-tumbling down the side of the root, Doc Sherve’s black bag in his hands.

  Hosea licked his cracked lips, once, then swallowed.

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice thin and reedy, slurred. “Thank you, Ian.” He started to work his right arm free of the straps that bound him, waist and chest, to the stretcher; Ian knelt and released the catches.

  Hosea’s fingers reached down through the humus, the shaking of his hand and arm rattling the dry leaves. And then, with his hand buried up to the wrist, the shaking stopped. “It’s good to be back,” he said, his voice stronger.

  Ian couldn’t speak for a moment, and neither could Arnie. It wasn’t like it had been in the Hidden Ways; it wasn’t that he found himself unable to speak or unwilling to form the thought. But deep in the back of his head, he had been sure that this undertaking was doomed from the start.

  So much for his intuition; Ian had never much trusted his intuition anyway. Shit, intuition was mainly wired-in experience, and what had been wired into Ian’s head was that anybody you love is either going to beat the shit out of you and then kick you out
of his life, the way his fattier had, or fucking die on you, like Mom.

  You couldn’t win, not even for a moment.

  Ian stood and stretched. Well, fuck it; this is a win, at least for the moment.

  Ivar del Hival broke the spell with a grunt. “Let’s get moving. The day gets no younger, and neither do I.”

  “Yes,” Hosea said, nodding, as he let himself sag back on the stretcher. “We perhaps can make Bóinn’s Hill by nightfall, and sleep well.”

  “I don’t see the need.” Ivar del Hival frowned. “That place? It’s said to be hagridden.” He shook his head. “So much so that I’d not want to use the name, not out in the open.”

  Hosea smiled. “Hagridden is such an unkind word. Let’s just say that it’s … unempty. Eh?”

  He tried to push himself up to a sitting position, but he couldn’t, and before he could hurt himself trying, Ian laid a hand on his shoulder and eased him back to the stretcher. “I think you’d best let us carry you, for a while at least. Rest, Hosea. Please.”

  Arnie Selmo had put the medical kit away, and was already on his feet. “Anybody got a direction?”

  They weren’t more than three, maybe three and a half hours out of the hidden exit from the Hidden Way when Arnie Selmo, walking point, froze just short of the crest of a ridge.

  “Down,” Arnie Selmo hissed from up ahead, dropping three steps back, then following his own order.

  By the time Ian and Ivar del Hival had lowered the stretcher to the green strip of moss that edged the dirt road, Arnie had shed his rucksack and gear, and was down on his belly, snaking his way back uphill, toward the crest of the ridge, moving easier than a man his age should.

  Ian wanted to crawl up to where Arnie lay, but decided he had better check on Hosea first.

  Hosea was sleeping again—the jouncing of the stretcher seemed to put him right out. But his dark skin had an ugly grayish pallor, and his breathing was slow and ragged. Torrie felt Hosea’s throat for a pulse. The skin was cold and clammy, but the heart beat slowly and regularly.

  This was good; Hosea had refused Arnie’s offer of medicine, and Ian was relieved that Hosea seemed to be improving although slowly.

  One good thing for sure: he hadn’t had any seizures since they had entered the Hidden Way.

  Hosea’s eyes fluttered, then opened, and he looked up at Ian, glassy-eyed. He licked his lips, once, and tried to speak, his mouth moving wordlessly, until Ian silenced him with a finger across the lips.

  Not now, Ian more mouthed than whispered.

  Hosea gave the slightest of smiles, and let his head loll back. But the eyes kept watching Ian. There was always something special, something strange, about those eyes. The eyes of a judge maybe, constantly evaluating everything they saw, and behind them an intelligence that was neither warm nor cold, completely comfortable with what was, no desire to control or change anything.

  Rest, Ian mouthed, then, with a quick nod from Ivar del Hival, Ian made his way up the ridge toward where Arnie lay, first ducking down, then dropping into an awkward crouching walk, and then to all fours and finally snaking his way the last few feet on his belly.

  “Easy, boy,” Arnie whispered. “We’ve just missed bumping into a troop of horsemen moving east, all, er, dressed to kill.” The smile in the lined, homely face wasn’t warm, or particularly friendly. “Don’t know as we don’t want to meet them—but I don’t know as though we do. Want to take a look?”

  Ian started to creep up toward the crest of the ridge, stopping when Arnie rugged at his foot. “No. Not the top.” He jerked his thumb toward where a patch of gorse sprawled across the crest of the ridge. “You don’t want to show an outline. Give yourself some cover.”

  Arnie’s sureness wasn’t only making Ian feel his own clumsiness at this; it was beginning to be irritating. “And if there hadn’t been some cover?”

  Arnie smiled. “Then, say, you tie a headband around your head, and stick some small branches in the back of it. Just a few, now—the idea is to break the outline of your head. Or, if you don’t have branches,” he said, the smile on his lined face suggesting that he had anticipated Ian’s objection, “a few sheaves of grass.” His mouth twisted. “You want another lesson, or you want to go look?”

  With a frown and a nod, Ian dropped to his belly and snaked his way over to the gorse patch, careful of the spines. It wouldn’t have been possible to make his way into or through the patch without getting scratched all to hell, but the edge of the patch broke on a low cairn of stones, and Ian was able to work his way to a notch without getting too badly scraped.

  The ridge dropped to a small, silvery stream twisting through the valley below; the stream separated the grasslands from forest beyond, as though something or someone had decreed that no trees were to grow on the western side of the stream. Which was possible, Ian decided.

  Beyond the stream, a narrow road rimmed the edge of the forest, probably wide enough for one car—or one horsecart, as was probably more relevant. A line of horsemen plodded along the road in a double column.

  The front of the column had passed around a bend in the stream; Ian counted fifteen pairs of horsemen before the final pair disappeared, leaving a thin haze of dust in their wake.

  “Not good.” Ivar del Hival was suddenly at his side. Ian hadn’t been paying attention, and that was bad.

  Ivar del Hival grunted. “Best to wait a while. Can’t see what standard they’re carrying, but the armor is Vandestish—and that doesn’t bode well for anybody.”

  “This is Vandescard.” Why should it be a surprise that there would be Vandestish soldiers in their home country?

  Ivar del Hival nodded. “But why is there a troop of veteran cavalry patrolling here? Off in the south, surely; they’ll be campaigning against the Beniziri forever, perhaps.” His thick lips pursed. “But here, in the East? Could be they’re relieving some town outpost, but if so, where’s their baggage train?” He shook his head. “Let’s give it a little while, and head on down.” He jerked his chin at the road below. “We’ll not only avoid some of the dust, but we’ll miss having to explain ourselves to any stragglers.”

  Ian frowned. “We’ve got something to hide?”

  Ivar del Hival’s smile was a trifle too broad for Ian’s taste. “Well, truth to tell, I don’t feel like explaining what a minor noble from the House of Flame is doing in Vandescard with three strange-looking folks—no offense intended. If I’m on a trade mission, where are my trade goods? And if I’m after a word with, say, the local margrave, where are my letters-of-commission?” The big man pulled a flask from his rucksack and took a measured swig, offering one to Ian with a quick raising of the eyebrows; Ian declined.

  “So,” Ivar del Hival said, “that might make me a spy, and while I could likely be ransomed or just pardoned, there are those soldiers… and even possible spies can be hoisted on the all-too-certain end of a lance, apologies to come later, if ever.”

  Ian nodded, and turned to go back down the ridge, toward Hosea, rising to his feet only when he was sure that the crest of the ridge hid him.

  His breathing had slowed, and Hosea had gained enough strength to turn on his side; he had taken the canteen strapped to the rucksack Ian had dropped next to him.

  “Are we winning?” Hosea asked, his smile crooked.

  “So far, so good. Arnie spotted some local cavalry, and Ivar del Hival seems to think that’s strange.”

  Hosea rose to one elbow. “Cavalry?” He nodded. “He’s right. That is strange. Horse-borne soldiers are usually minor nobility—and there’s little glory and less gold to be won hereabouts, near the Dominion border.” His face was somber. “These days, that is.”

  “It’s perhaps worse than that, although it’s hard to say.” Ivar del Hival pursed his lips. “For a moment, I thought the foremost of the lancers was wearing an enameled armored glove, but—”

  Hosea’s brow furrowed. “Enameled?”

  “Which couldn’t be. That would be pretentious
, and in Vandescard, pretension is dangerous.”

  Ian didn’t understand any of this. “So one of them was wearing a decorated metal glove—why is that important?”

  “It means that the patrol is being led by a Tyr’s Son. It’s the elite Vandestish military society, and they tend to delegate the routine to others.”

  “And they’re the only ones allowed to wear decorated gloves?”

  “It’s not a glove. It’s a… prosthetic hand, I guess you’d call it.” Hosea pursed his lips. “It could be worse; at least it wasn’t an argenten.”

  “Small benefit.” Ivar del Hival straightened. “Well, we’d best be on our way. The sooner we make Harbard’s Landing, the sooner I can bring word to His Warmth that there’s something curious going on in Vandescard.”

  Ian grunted. “You seem to be making a lot of one troop of cavalry, and one guy missing a hand.”

  Ivar del Hival shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  The stretcher was getting heavier, but that wasn’t the worst part of it: Ian’s nose itched, and he could hardly stop every few moments to scratch at it. Twitching it didn’t help, and neither did screwing up his face.

  Arnie had insisted on taking a shift at the stretcher, and was bringing up the rear while Ian carried the front and Ivar del Hival took the lead, ranging anywhere from twenty to fifty yards or so in front of them, often disappearing around a bend for a few moments.

  Hosea was clearly feeling stronger; he was talking about walking, although that was, at best, premature.

  What had appeared to be a trail along the edge of the forest had turned out to be a stone road. An ancient road, at that—only the stones along the side near showed any bulge at all; the rest had been worn flat in their beds of mortar.

  Ian frowned. That didn’t make sense. The mortar should wear out much more quickly than the stones. He said as much.

  Arnie chuckled. “I was thinking about that, too. Next time we take a break, take out a piece of metal what don’t owe you no money and try and scratch at that mortar—bet you dollars to doughnuts all you’ll get is a scratched piece of metal.”