Only Faenaeyon seemed to resent the greeting, continuing toward the city at the unrelenting pace Sadira had set earlier. “By the wind, I hate this place,” he growled.
“The last time we were here, the guards demanded five silver coins to let us inside. No wonder they’re glad to see us.”
His gray eyes remained fixed on the gate, a high-pointed arch flanked by a pair of craggy minarets. On the terraces of these towers stood many Nibenese guards, each waving his bow over his head as he swayed to the music. Between the minarets, a buttressed porch extended from the city wall and overhung the gateway. A dozen musicians stood on this balcony, playing the huge drums, xylophones, and pipes that sent the melodies drifting into the silvery desert.
“I can get us inside for two coins,” said Sadira.
“How you can you save me this money?”
“Sorcery,” she answered.
Sadira gave him a knowing smile, hoping it would disguise the lie in her eyes. Her conversation with the chief had convinced her that Rhayn’s warning earlier had not been entirely self-serving. Despite the casual manner in which he had accepted the sorceress’s refusal to join the tribe, Faenaeyon clearly did not wish her to leave. As for her own feelings, Sadira’s curiosity about her father was sated. If he was braver than she had imagined, he was no less self-centered, and she had no desire to know him better.
Faenaeyon nodded. “Good. Do it.”
When, he did not reach into any of his purses to extract the coins, Sadira held out her palm. “Have you forgotten?” she asked. “I gave all my coins to you at the canyon.”
“In matters of money, I never forget,” the chief said. Instead of reaching for his purse, he summoned his son Huyar forward. The warrior’s relationship to Sadira showed only in his pale eyes, for his features were square and heavy for an elf. “Give her two silver, my son,” Faenaeyon ordered.
“I would, willingly, but you have taken all my coins,” answered, Huyar.
Faenaeyon frowned. “I would expect one who hopes to replace me someday to be wise enough to hold a few coins back,” the chief said, still waiting for his son to produce the money.
“I would never dishonor my tribe by disobeying my chief,” Huyar said. The warrior scowled at Sadira, clearly blaming her for this setback with his father.
Resentment had become common for Huyar since the sorceress had ingratiated herself with Faenaeyon. Whenever she wanted something, the chief looked to his son to provide it. Sadira suspected that her father had no true fondness for Huyar, but pretended to favor the gullible warrior only because it made him more willing to do his bidding.
Glowering at his son, the chief opened the purse he had taken from Sadira and gave her two of her own coins. “Will you get them back for me?”
Sadira shook her head. “Think of it like this—you’re not losing two silvers, you’re saving three.” She took the coins and slipped them into the pocket of her tattered cape. “I’ll go ahead and cast my spell on one of the guards. Allow a quarter hour for it to work its enchantment. Then, when you reach the gate, be sure to speak to the same guard I did.”
Faenaeyon, looked suspicious. “Perhaps I should go with you.”
Sadira had an answer ready to counter her father’s concern. “It’ll be easier to work my magic if I’m alone,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for you on the other side of the gate.”
The chief’s gray eyes dropped to the pocket where she had deposited the coins. He bit his lip, then nodded and looked away. “Two silver is not so much.”
“You’ll save more than that,” Sadira said, leaning forward to tap the inside of the kank’s antennae.
The beast slowly worked its way ahead of the tribe, two of its six legs striking the ground with each beat of the distant drums. A short time later, she passed between two argosies drawn up close to the city walls, one to either side of the road. A long line of Nibenese porters worked to unload each of the mighty fortress wagons, carrying heavy vessels and huge baskets into the dark shadows beneath the musician’s balcony. The great mekillots that drew the argosies, hill-sized lizards with a penchant for making snacks of unwary passersby, were turned away from the road.
Sadira slowed her kank to a walk and glanced over her shoulder. Her father’s tribe was more than a hundred yards behind. It was approaching in its customary disarray, the warriors moving together in a confused, noisy mass while their sons and daughters tended to the difficult work of keeping the kanks from straying into the king’s fields.
Sadira turned forward again and, as she passed into the shadows beneath the musicians’ balcony, found a sharp-featured half-elf stepping into the road. He wore a long checkered scarf wrapped around his head and a yellow sarami swaddled over his body. In his hands he clutched a spear of blue-tinted agafari wood.
“Nibenay welcomes you,” he called.
As he spoke, two guards forced their way past the bustling porters and crossed their spears to bar Sadira’s path. She waved a hand over her mount’s antennae, bringing it to a complete stop. The music from the balcony above reverberated through the stone ceiling, echoing off the walls in sonorous tones that were slightly less compelling than those drifting into the desert.
Sadira reached into her pocket and extracted one of the silver pieces Faenaeyon had given her. Holding it out for the man, she said, “If you overlook the baggage of the elf tribe following me, there will be nine more of these for you.”
The guard opened his palm and bowed. “If that is true, my eyes will not see.”
“Good,” Sadira said.
She released the coin, and the guard signaled his fellows to let her pass. As she rode through the gateway, the sorceress felt confident she had at last escaped the elves. Faenaeyon would never pay a bribe of nine silver, and the guard would not allow the Sun Runners to pass through the gate until he received the coins he had been promised. With luck, the tribe would be turned away from city altogether. Even if that was not the case, it would be delayed long enough for Sadira to lodge her mount. Then she would search out someone from the Veiled Alliance and ask for the secret organization’s help in finding a guide to the Pristine Tower.
The gateway opened into a muggy, foul-smelling courtyard surrounded by a warren of mountainous towers and gloomy portals. To all sides, square doorways led into the bases of jagged minarets, reminding Sadira of nothing quite so much as the ancient mines that honeycombed the peaks west of Tyr. Huge sculpted faces, sometimes vaguely human and sometimes completely monstrous, covered every available surface.
From the corners of the buildings peered long-nosed giants with disapproving frowns and blank stares. Where there should have been windows were gaping, fang-filled mouths. Columns carved to look like stacked skulls supported the balconies and overhangs. Even the walls were masked by fat cherubic visages with glutonous smiles, or by skeletal countenances of long-tusked fiends.
Between these looming buildings ran narrow, twisting lanes covered by vaulted ceilings of stone. Lines of Nibenese porters bustled down two of these dark tunnels, carrying their heavy loads to the emporium of some merchant house in the heart of the city.
Sadira directed her kank into what seemed to be the widest street. She had expected the shaded lane to be cool and pleasant. Instead, a stifling wind drifted down the tunnel, carrying with it the sour smell of too much humanity and the putrid scent of unkempt stables.
The sorceress urged her mount past a dozen Nibenese citizens and entered another courtyard, also encircled by sculpture-covered towers. Many of the doorways were larger than normal, with kanks and riders moving into and out of them. Sadira rode halfway through the plaza to an anonymous-looking livery, then dismounted and led her beast toward the door. She was greeted by an elderly, bald-headed man dressed in a grimy sarami.
“You wish to lodge your mount?” he asked.
“How much?”
“Three days boarding for a king’s bit,” he answered, referring to the ceramic coins most cities used as common cur
rency. “We will feed it every night and water it every five.”
Sadira nodded. “I’ll pay when I return and my kank is in good health.”
The old man shook his head. “That’s not the way in Nibenay,” he said. “You pay in advance—every day if you like. If you don’t return before your money runs out, I sell your mount.”
Sadira fished her second coin out of her pocket. “You can give me change?”
“I can,” the man replied.
He snatched coin and let her inside. The lowest floor of the gloomy building was a workshop filled with slaves laboring to repair howdahs, carts, and even a massive argosy wheel. Sadira caught only a glimpse of this room before her guide took a torch from a wall sconce and led her up a dark ramp spiraling through the interior of the unlit building. The over-sweet stench of kank offal was terrible, and Sadira had to pinch her nose closed to keep from gagging.
Soon they reached the first of the dark animal pens. As they passed each gate, a kank stuck its mandibles through the bone bars and clacked them at the newcomer. Sadira’s beast returned the gestures, keeping up a constant clatter as they slowly climbed the steep ramp.
Dozens of pens later, they reached one with an open gate. The bone grid was held aloft by a rope running through a wooden pulley and tied off to a bone stake in the wall. The old man allowed Sadira’s mount to pass by the vacant pen, then stopped. He forced the beast to back into the stall by standing in front of it and tapping its right-hand antenna.
As the kank’s head went under the gate, it stopped and began waving its antennae in agitation.
“Go on stupid beast,” the old man said
He raised his hand and stepped toward the kank. Sadira saw an angry glint in the beast’s eyes. “Careful!” she cried, pulling the old man back just in time to avoid the kank’s snapping mandibles.
The beast started forward, but Sadira quickly stepped to its side and grabbed an antenna. She yanked on the stalk and forced it back into the pen.
“When I let go, drop the gate,” she said, looking over her shoulder. The liveryman, who was staring at her kank with his mouth hanging agape, made no move to obey. “Do as I say!”
The old man snapped out of his shock and untied the gate rope. “I’ve run this livery for thirty years, and never has a carrier drone snapped at me,” he said, keeping a suspicious eye fixed on the beast. “What’s wrong with yours?”
“I don’t know,” Sadira said. “It did something like this once before, not long after my journey began, but it has never been so violent.”
The sorceress released the antenna and leaped out of the pen, barely clearing the threshold before the gate came crashing down. The kank threw itself at the bars. When they showed no sign of breaking, it retreated to the back of its stall, then slammed into the gate again. It repeated the actions over and over as Sadira watched, perplexed.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” the old man said, shaking his head in bewilderment. “I’ll have to hire an elf to look at it.”
“What for?”
“It could be diseased,” he said, leading the way back down the tunnel. “If so, I’ll have to kill and burn the drone. Otherwise, the sickness could spread, and every kank in my stable could die.”
Sadira was immediately suspicious of his motives. “My mount had better be here when I come back,” she warned.
“Can’t promise that,” he answered, not bothering to look at her. “And I’m keeping your whole silver. You’ll have to pay for the elf.”
“No!” Sadira protested.
“It’s your kank,” the old man said. “It’s only fair that you pay the cost of examining it.”
“How do I know you won’t pocket my coin, sell the kank, and claim the beast was diseased?” Sadira demanded, outraged.
The old man stopped and pointed up the ramp. “You don’t, but listen to that.” The echoes of Sadira’s mount banging itself against its gate continued to fill the corridor. “I’ll give you the coin back, but you’ve got to take the kank with it. Do you think any other livery master will charge less?”
“I suppose not,” Sadira admitted, wondering where she would find the money to feed herself until she contacted the Veiled Alliance—or to buy another kank, if it came to that.
The old man started down the ramp again. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t destroy your beast unless I must, and I’ll get the best price I can from the elf who looks at it.” When they reached the ground floor, the old man turned toward his workshop.
Deciding to see how well her plan to rid herself of the Sun Runners was working, Sadira retraced her steps into the dark lane from which she had approached the livery. She stopped in the shelter of its depths, then looked toward the gate. Her father had just arrived at the head of his tribe, and was approaching the sharp-featured half-elf to whom Sadira had given the silver coin. Faenaeyon smiled warmly and said something to the man.
The guard also smiled and held out his hand.
The chief scowled, then shoved the half-elf so hard that he came tumbling into the square. The gateman’s assistants screamed the alarm and thrust their spears at Faenaeyon. The elf casually slapped the weapons from their hands, then stepped past the two men into the courtyard.
“Lorelei!” he screamed, his angry eyes searching the gloomy portals that lined the small plaza.
Sadira saw a company of guards beginning to pour from the gate tower, then smiled to herself and turned to leave.
EIGHT
PRINCE OF
NIBENAY
AN INKY MURK FILLED THE CHAMBER, SO THICK AND dark that it seemed to brush over the kank’s carapace like smoke. In the pitch blackness, not even the ground—the one thing the beast’s weak eyes always kept in focus—was visible. To stay attuned to the creature’s surroundings, Tithian had to rely entirely upon the insect’s other senses. For the king’s vision-oriented mind, the task was an onerous one.
Still, Tithian could tell that the earthy scent of mildew clung to the insect’s antennae, as did a muskier smell that terrified the drone. Clutched in the kank’s powerful mandibles was the old liveryman to whom Sadira had entrusted her mount. He smelled of sweat and blood, and drew his breath in shallow gasps.
The clatter of two dozen sticklike legs rose from the far side of the room and approached, reverberating through the kank’s drumlike ears with a chilling quiver. When they reached the liveryman trapped between the kank’s pincers, the legs stopped and fell silent. Then Tithian heard something else coming from the other side of the cavernous room. This creature moved much more quietly, its feet whispering across the floor as though barely touching the slimy stones.
When the second arrival reached the old man’s side, a pair of bulbous eyes appeared in the darkness. The orbs were golden yellow, with pupils as black and glassy as obsidian. Tithian could tell little else about the creature, for the gleam of the eyeballs was too faint to illuminate any more of its face.
“Make the kank speak, old man,” demanded a man’s voice, as quiet and as smooth as the frigid breath of night.
“The drone doesn’t speak aloud, Mighty King,” gasped the liveryman, weak and pained from having his ribs constricted by the kank’s mandibles. “It talks to me, and I repeat its words.”
The color of the eyes changed to scarlet, but the king did not speak. Instead, a harsher, chattering voice sounded from where the clattering legs had stopped. “If you came here thinking to dupe my father with sophistry, your death will be slow and painful.” The speaker remained concealed in the darkness.
The liveryman began to tremble. “Please, Great Prince, I am only a prisoner,” he said. “After it was lodged with me, the kank collapsed and acted like it was dead. When I opened its pen to dispose of it, the beast sprang past two of my assistants and seized me. I heard a man’s voice in my mind, demanding that I show it the way to your palace. If you will allow me, I can prove that what I say is true.”
The liveryman made his statement with brisk effi
ciency, for he had already repeated it to the gate guards, to their commander, and to a bare-breasted woman addressed as the Consort of the South Gate. In order to convince each of the officials to take his request for a royal audience to the next level, the liveryman had asked them to command the drone to do whatever they wished. Tithian had used his control over the beast’s mind to make the kank respond appropriately.
Unfortunately, the last official, a naked matron calling herself the Most High Concubine of the Palace Chambers, had proven even more difficult. To win her over, Tithian had been forced to speak to her mentally, as he had to the liveryman. The exertion had left him exhausted, for it was no easy matter to use the Way over such vast distances.
When both the prince and his father remained silent, the liveryman looked back to the yellow eyes. “Command the beast to do anything you wish,” he said. “You will see that it seems truly intelligent.”
“There’s a better way to see if you are lying,” said the king’s voice.
He slipped past the old man and moved closer to the kank’s head, until the creature’s antennae began to dance in the Nibenese ruler’s musty breath. The king’s eyes shined directly into those of the drone, and Tithian was almost blinded by the golden luminescence. The light shimmered and twinkled for several moments, forming a series of ephemeral shapes as the sorcerer-king used the Way to invade the kank’s mind.
When the glow died away, Tithian found his attention focused on a mass of slime-covered flesh, shaped like a teardrop and banded with thick folds of skin. From one end of its body rose a tube-shaped torso, with a pair of corpulent arms ending in hooklike claws. The creature’s head was the only thing even remotely human, with a heavy crown of gold sitting atop a fine-boned brow. He had a broad nose with flaring nostrils and bloated lips that did not quite conceal the curved fangs hanging from his upper jaw. His eyes were bulbous and yellow, identical to those that the liveryman had addressed as the sorcerer-king of Nibenay.
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