The Hands of Lyr (Five Senses Series Book 1)

by Andre Norton

  Then Valcur swept about once more to face the congregation gathered there. To his left was a figure wearing the dull grey of the land slaves, a red cord across one shoulder giving him the rank of overseer; to his right was one of the Temple guard, an officer whose overshadowing helm made him unrecognizable to the young spy overhead.

  A sullen roar sounded, emitted by the trumpet fashioned from the curled horn of a field varge—such a summons as brought slaves to their labor. There came a moment of silence, as if everyone under the high curve of that roof held their breath.

  Then out of that knot of brown came a man in fighting mail, though unhelmed, carrying that head covering in one arm, his other touching the hilt of his sheathed sword.

  Again Kryn swiped his hand across his eyes. Hot words were on his lips; he forced them back. His mouth worked, his tongue gathered saliva, he spat.

  Valcur waited as the warlord came forward. There was no uncertainty about his stance; he had no fears that this prey well within the nets he and his had spread would be hard to handle now—no, it was as it had been three times in the past four years—another House was to be erased from the Rolls of the High Born.

  The warrior stood at the foot of the steps leading up to the altar. His head was tilted up, his eyes fast on the Voice. There was still that silence as he dropped the helmet which rang as it struck the pavement, bounced and spun back toward the congregation. Unseeing, his eyes still on the priest, the warrior unfastened his sword belt, allowed that honored weapon to fall….

  Kryn sucked in a breath. His teeth closed upon his wrist and he bit down upon his own flesh that the pain might, in some way, keep him from shouting out his despair and shame.

  Now the man below was fumbling, still without looking to see what he was doing, at his mail shirt. That fell in turn. He stood reft of armor, or house cape; now he wore the coarse grey of the slave.

  Valcur reached out a hand toward the overseer on the one step below him, not looking to his servant, with the simple knowledge that he was there and ready to move at his gesture. Into the priest’s grasp the man passed a noosed rope. With expert ease, Valcur, having taken one step forward, tossed the loop of that about the head of the once warrior. As it fell on his shoulders the man went to his knees. There was a moan from those behind him—those who had been coerced into following him.

  “Hafner, in penitence for your many sins against the One and those who are His servants, you have come to swear bondage of body, of mind, of soul, not only for your own wicked self but for all of those of your shared blood—even unto the end of this world. Is this not your free wish?”

  Kryn hid his eyes but he did not stop his ears. That voice now answering—something had gone out of it— it was toneless, the voice of one whose spirit was already dead.

  “I do so swear, that my many sins may be forgiven in the labor which I and all of my House and blood will give—through my life and theirs, and their children’s— even unto the end of the world.”

  “Call forth your blood, bondsman,” commanded Valcur. “They must come at your call….”

  The kneeling man hunched a little around on the surface where he now knelt. His head had sunk forward until his square chin rested against his broad chest.

  “Charessa,” his voice was still toneless but it had not lost its clarity. “Ylla, Ranor, Sonon—”

  There was a cry from that small grouping of brown coats and then a woman came forth, carrying against her breast a small child. Behind her came two boys, their faces set with a kind of horror. One of them held hand to the hilt of a long hunting knife. As he came forward to stand behind his father the guard’s officer deftly jerked that out of his reach.

  The overseer came forward with the bustle of one about his business holding ready a handful of the noosed ropes. He twirled them out and about, until each of those waiting there had been so symbolically bound. But Valcur, surveying the handful of the degraded, frowned.

  “There is another of your blood, bondsman,” and there was a snap of anger in his voice. “Where is he?”

  “He has betrayed his House, thus he is not,” Hafner answered heavily. “He spoke so to his lord that he would have been struck down had he not drawn steel and fought his way out. That one has not been named among us for five days, nor will he ever be again.”

  “Such a one is outlawed,” Valcur said and there was a satisfaction in that. “The Blessing of the One will fall upon anyone who will have his blood. Let it so be proclaimed. Now, bondsman, be sure that your grievous sins will be forgiven and those of your blood will buy peace for you after your ending…. ”

  The officer had picked up the sword Hafner had discarded. Kryn saw him pass it to one of the lesser guard, who bent to also retrieve the helmet and the mail. The overseer caught up the end of the noose about Hafner’s neck and gave it a slight jerk as if to arouse the man’s attention to the duties of his newly chosen life, and others wearing the grey came forward to so lead his family behind him.

  Valcur summoned the guard’s officer with a lift of finger and bent his head to confer with him in a low voice. Slowly Kryn’s jaws released their hold upon his wrist. He tasted blood. Now, he would have to move. Had he been wise, he would have been well away from here two days ago.

  But there was Honor to argue against such wisdom. The sword Bringhope, which these lorshogs had just borne out of sight. He could not leave that… Up to the last he had hoped that this strange stubbornness which had taken possession of his father would be broken. Hafner in the past ten-day had become as another person.

  He had had the normal failings of any man but he had never prated before of mortal sin and the need to cleanse his House blood. Kryn had come home from a visit to the hill pasturage to be greeted with such a turnaround in the speech he heard in the great hall that at first he could almost believe that he had indeed wandered into another keephold. And the others—his stepmother—though her eyes had held the shadow of fear— had upheld his father’s wild bewailing of his sinning. His half brothers—they seemed cowed and he could get nothing of sense out of them. But the contagion of fear, if fear it was, had not spread to him. He could guess what would happen in the end—this very disgraceful scene he had just watched in sick horror. So he had done what he could to make plans.

  The House of Qunion would continue—even if in outlawry. To that he was bound even though his father, in this wild frenzy, had thrown him out. To continue to exist he would need all the wits, training, and luck he could draw upon. However—first there was the sword.

  With the ceremony being over, the congregation was filing out. He trusted that those of the other three remaining Houses had taken the lesson to heart. Though Valcur and his invisible god might be so firmly in control now that they would march willing victims to him even as Hafner had done.

  Kryn edged backward inch by anxious inch on the beam where he had lain. He believed—or hoped—that the Voice would think him already on the run, certainly not in the very heart of the enemy’s territory. Reaching the crawlway from which this beam sprouted, he arose to his hands and knees.

  He had never been a fervent follower of the One and the Temple was largely unknown territory. That he had found this secret way in was a piece of fortune he could not count on continuing. But his goal now was the armory of the guard. House swords carried legends—they were not to be used by anyone not of the Blood—every warrior knew that it called down the wrath of Those Gone Before were that to happen. No, he was sure that he could find Bringhope hanging with the other swords of the Houses Valcur had brought down in the past few years—if and when he could reach that storage place.

  The twilight had fallen before he managed to extract himself from those upper ways only used by repairmen on whom the upkeep of the temple depended. He pulled the novice’s robe tightly about him and wound a way downward by ladder, then by narrow inner wall steps, until he came upon that door which gave upon the courtyard.

  Kryn eased that open to a slit through which h
e could gain some sight of what now lay ahead. The armory of the guards lay to his right beyond his line of sight, and between him and there was a wide stretch of pavement. The guard was coming off patrol—he heard their voices and the clang of a carelessly held spear before he caught sight of the men themselves.

  That Valcur had gotten the countryside to accept the fact that he—and the One—maintained a private army was another puzzle. Supposedly the One ruled beneficently. Kryn’s lips again shaped a snarl. Why then would His own place need to be so guarded? But it was these guards who, under the oversight of one of the priests, collected the temple tax every fourth month—and they were undoubted useful in controlling such large congregations as had gathered here this day.

  Kryn waited. The twilight deepened, broken here and there by just a flare of bracket-mounted torch. There was a thickening of shadows into which his robe might well melt.

  He knew nothing of the duties of a novice. Could he be apprehended by being in the wrong place? Messages—could the lesser ones of the temple serve as messengers when there was a need? That could be his only excuse if he were trapped.

  There had been very little coming and going before the door when he finally decided to make the attempt. To linger here certainly availed him nothing and time was now an enemy. He must be out of the temple, out of the city, and away from any main road as soon as he could.

  Kryn slipped out of the door and stood in the open air, for the first time in hours drawing in breaths which were not scented or dust clogged. There was no moon tonight and the air had a feel that, as a hunter by choice, he recognized as promising rain. So much would he be favored.

  He wanted to dart across the courtyard, be as swift about his task as he could. But he held firmly to prudence. Clasping his hands together within the cover of his wide sleeves, having pulled his cowl over his head, he stepped out with the purposefully unhurried tread of one going about a task but not a too-demanding one.

  Twice his breath caught a little as he passed others— first a couple of guardsmen plainly off-duty and bound for the delights of the town—and then a true priest. However, the latter did not look in his direction at all, all his attention being directed to the fan of inscribed book leaves he was holding in his hand, in spite of the fact that the dark must have well hid what was written there. Saying some office, Kryn decided.

  The armory was to the side of the guardroom, walled on the other side by the barracks. There were lights within both of those and the sounds of voice but no one moved in either doorway. Then Kryn was at the armory; there was a faint light within which shone through a slit window above his head. He could not be sure there was no one there.

  He dared wait no longer. There were tricks even an unarmed man could use for offense and defense. Among the guards of his House there had been men well versed in several outré methods of such. Though he was only a clumsy beginner, he had practiced faithfully and had been able to take on the hulking brute of a poacher he had faced just two ten-days ago when the other had tried to pull steel on him.

  Heartened by that memory he tried the door. If it were locked, he knew a couple of other tricks; his acquaintanceship with the guards of merchant travelers was wider than his father had ever guessed. His father— he had no father!

  The door yielded and he slipped in. There was someone before him—that officer who had supervised the disposal of his father’s dishonored weapons and gear. And, just as Kryn had supposed, he had looped the belt latch of the sword scabbard over a hook on the far wall.

  There was a large stand of spears, not unlike a tree’s trunk, to his left. Kryn dodged behind that. The officer picked up the hand lamp he had brought and came back toward the door. Kryn waited. No matter how much he hated the man and all he stood for, this was no time to start revenge. If he could come unseen and unhunted out of this place, the better for him now.

  The door opened; the officer and his light were gone. Kryn was left in the darkness. Cautiously he began to edge forward, trying to remember what he had sighted in the glow of the now-vanished lamp.

  Then his outstretched hand met the wall with some force and he felt along it for the sword. He did not try to twist the scabbard loose. No, cover his tracks here as the poachers of the Heights did. Instead he caught at the hilt and worked the blade free. Then he felt along that surface until he touched the rack he had remembered. It took only a moment to slide out one of the common blades there and then return to wedge that into Bringhope’s place.

  Hugging the bared sword against his body, he regained the door. It was locked as he thought it would be but the only weapon he had dared to bring into the temple, a needle thin bootknife, solved the secret of that and once more he was free in the night.

  The gates were danger but he already had an answer to those—to win over the wall in the same place where he had earlier entered, and that way he went. Once on the dim-lit street below he took off the robe, wadded it into a ball, and thrust it into one of the sewer openings. Then he strode, with still enough caution to keep to the shadows, back to the small inn where a sign bearing the arms of his own House creaked in the rising wind. Smarle had better repaint that sign as soon as he could— there would be danger in showing the Crown barred sinister now.

  The door was shut; there was only the faintest glow in the window. Kryn wrapped softly the agreed upon pattern.

  A small gap showed and a voice urged him in.

  “It was done then?” the man who bore a disfiguring scar across his cheek asked harshly.

  “It was done.” Kryn showed him the naked sword.

  The other eyed him up and down. “You are young, too young…” he said slowly. “How many summers now?”

  “Fifteen,” Kryn returned. “But I am no youth tonight.”

  Smarle leaned forward and looked into his eyes. “No,” he agreed flatly, “you are not, my lord.”

  “Until the betrayed is restored, I am what they have named me, outlaw. I will take to the hills—of those and their ways I have learned somewhat. It was very well that I followed such rough running these past years. I go tonight if the way is open.”

  “It is open,” the innkeeper nodded. “There may be others to follow you. These temple snakes seek to devour or enslave us all.”

  “Change your sign quickly, Smarle.” Kryn was already shrugging his way into the coat the other had ready. There was an empty scabbard too, as if the innkeeper had been very sure of his success. He fitted Bringhope into scuffed leather and picked up the pack on the table. Smarle had already shoved aside a cask of ale and now he was feeling about the floor. His fingers caught in the concealed hollow he sought and he pulled up a trapdoor.

  “Good fortune, House Hope,” he rasped as the boy swung down into a dark which had been carefully mapped for him.

  “Guard yourself, Smarle,” he got out as the door fell back into place and he was left to face what time might bring.

  CHAPTER 3

  It was difficult to mark the passing of seasons under this never-changing cloud-filled sky when there were no new leaves to herald the spring, ripening grain to proclaim summer. There was indeed a period of chill when the zarks and the other rock creatures disappeared for a time and that might mark winter, though no snow fell nor did the river ice over.

  Nosh knew that she was growing older, for there were changes in even a body as lean as hers and now she was near as tall as Dreen. She had become skillful—more so even than Dreen—in several small things which made their life a little less hard. She had grubbed in the blasted orchards around those stumps of trees which now seemed as hard to crack as stone. But patient rubbing with rough chunks of river gravel smoothed the pieces she loosened, and, padded with reed fiber and given thongs of twisted snakeskin, after several efforts, she turned out sandals. More snakeskin could be braided into belts and pouches for the carrying of small objects.

  Her weathered hands seemed sometimes strangely aware before the rest of her as to what could be done with odd scraps which sh
e saved jealously. And it was her hands which, one morning when she was collecting gravel for one of her scraping chores, at last answered to her gift.

  For as she picked out the best bits for her purpose, her fingers seemed of themselves to cup around one piece. There was no sun to see it by but the fingers which pinched it now tingled with a new warmth. Nosh laid the find to one side and then selected what looked to her to be another small chunk twin to the first. But there came no tingling, no feeling that she held something which was more than the rough piece that it looked. Once more she tested that first selection and could not deny the answer in her fingers.

  She knew that of old there were indeed things of power. But the devastation of war and the passing of years had turned such into near legends. Had this bit of gravel once been perhaps a part of what men had once treasured as a focus for power? Dreen would know. Spilling the rest of the gravel she had gathered, Nosh hurried back to the rock-hidden house. Breathless in her haste she spun the stone across the table, where the woman sat patiently weaving on a small handloom a section of reed thread cloth into what might be stitched in length into a garment.

  “This—it is alive in my hand!” Nosh flexed her fingers. “It is from the river. None else made my hand feel so.”

  Dreen stared from the excited girl to the bit of gravel and then back to Nosh. Then she reached eagerly for the stone and sat weighing it in her own hand before she turned it over and over, holding it close to her eyes. Finally she reached for her knife—it was very precious, that knife, for it was worked metal and its like could no longer be found in the Ryft.

  Recklessly, first holding the stone close to her eyes, the woman pecked at one spot on the surface of the piece. She worked with infinite care for her precious tool but somehow she managed to chip away a fingernail length of the covering. What lay beneath was smooth, and, even in the limited light, Nosh could see the color—not blood red, not the brazen of the desert sun— but some hue between those.