Seregil focused on Alec then, clutching at the front of the boy's tunic in desperation. "We must get off the road!"
Alec regarded him for a long moment, then shook his head resignedly. "We will," he promised.
They came to a ramshackle crossroads inn just before dark. Seregil's legs buckled as he stepped down from the cart and Alec had to help him inside.
"I want a room. No, two rooms," Alec told the innkeeper curtly.
"Top of the stairs." The man eyed Seregil nervously. "Is your friend here sick?"
"Not so sick that I can't pay," Seregil said, forcing a smile. It took all his concentration to make it convincing and as soon as he was out of the man's sight he dropped the pretense, sagging against Alec as they climbed the narrow stairs.
Suddenly he was tired, so tired! He was already half asleep as Alec lowered him onto a bed.
He dozed, woke, dozed again. Alec was there for a time. He tried to help Seregil drink, but he wasn't thirsty, just tired. Presently, Alec left and Seregil heard a key turn in the lock.
It was all very strange, but he was too sleepy to think about it anymore. Turning onto his side, he drifted deeper into a murky doze.
He woke up shivering sometime later. The room had grown cold and Alec was crowding him off the bed against the wall, digging an elbow into the small of his back in the process. Twisting a bit, he tried to reclaim some space, but it was just too cold to sleep. Could the window be open? Did this room have a window? It seemed to him it didn't.
Giving up, he opened his eyes to check and found the night lamp still burning.
"Damn it, Alec, move—" The words died in his throat.
It wasn't Alec pressing against him, but his tormentor, the black specter. It lay face up, arms crossed over its breast in the frightful parody of a tomb effigy. It remained perfectly motionless as Seregil dragged himself over the foot of the bed and scrambled for the door. Too late he remembered hearing the key turn; he was locked in.
"Alec! Alec, help me!" he shouted, pounding on the door. Dizzying panic constricted around his chest like bands of iron.
"No one will hear you."
The creature's voice was like a high wind rushing through the naked branches of winter trees-sardonic, inhuman, the embodiment of desolation. Seregil turned and the dark thing sat up, its upper body levering in a single rigid motion like the folding of a clasp knife. In the same unnatural fashion it bent forward slightly and stood up. It seemed to fill the cramped room.
Seregil tried to cry out again, but no sound came out.
"He can't help you now." Waves of frigid cold radiated from the figure, and with it the same terrible stench.
"What are you?" Seregil demanded in a strangled whisper.
The specter advanced a step, halving the distance between them. "You led a good chase," it replied in its soft, moaning voice. "But there is no escape, no forgiveness for such as you."
Seregil flattened himself against the wall, eyes darting about the room for some cover, finding none. "What do you want?"
"Don't you know? Such a pity to die in ignorance. But it is all one to us. You are a thief, and we want back what you have stolen. You can elude us no longer."
"Tell me what it is!"
Anger and despair mingled with his fear to recall a tentative shred of courage.
Stretching its arms out across the ceiling, the loathsome thing wheezed out another blast of sepulchral fetor.
He was going to die; not knowing why seemed the final injustice.
The figure laughed again as it reached down for him, the sound of its voice tugging at the last roots of his sanity.
" No!" Snarling, Seregil sprang at it.
For a brief second his hands seemed to grasp at some distorted form, then he slammed into the far wall.
When he whirled about, the creature was standing by the door.
Another of the strange fits of blood lust came over Seregil then and this time he welcomed it, opening himself to the strength it lent. He ached with it, was driven mad with it as he flew at the dark thing. The night candle was kicked over and went out but still he fought on, finding the creature with his hands, feeling the chill of it slip away again and again.
Suddenly his fingers found purchase. The form grew solid and he clawed at it, seeking a throat with his hands.
It toyed with him, fending him off without returning his blows.
The game did not last long, however. Huge talons sank suddenly into his chest and the world erupted in a searing blast of pain. Mercifully, his mind went out.
Alec lay half strangled on the cold floor beside Seregil. In the darkness he couldn't see what had happened to his hand, but it hurt like hell.
"What's going on up there?" the landlord shouted angrily from the far end of the passage. "I'll not have my house torn up in the middle of the night, do you hear?"
"Bring a light. Hurry!" Alec gasped, struggling one-handed to his knees.
The landlord appeared in the doorway, candle in one hand, a stout cudgel in the other. "Sounds like someone's being murdered up—" He stopped short as his light fell over them.
Seregil lay unconscious or worse, blood staining the breast of his shirt and his throat. Alec realized he probably didn't look much better.
His nose was bleeding where Seregil had struck him, and his face and neck were badly scratched. Cradling his left hand against his chest, he saw what looked like a round, raw burn in the center of his palm.
"Hold the light down," he told the innkeeper.
Kneeling over Seregil, he made certain his friend was still breathing, then pulled the neck of his shirt open and gasped in dismay.
The last time he'd seen the reddened area on Seregil's chest had been aboard the Darter.
Now there was a bloody wound in the same spot.
Holding the palm of his throbbing hand to the light again, Alec saw that his burn and this mark were exactly the same size and shape.
On the floor beside Seregil lay the wooden disk, the useless trinket he had stolen from the mayor's house because it wouldn't be missed. Picking it up gingerly by the broken leather thong, Alec compared it to the strange burn on his palm and the one on Seregil's chest.
It matched perfectly. Looking closer, he could even make out the print of the small square opening in its center.
It was right in front of us all the time! he thought in silent anguish. How could he not have known?Why didn't I see?
He'd been awakened by the sound of Seregil crashing about in the next room and gone to see what was the matter. In his haste he forgot the lamp and cursed angrily to himself as he'd fumbled the key into the lock of Seregil's door. The hallway was dark, the room inside darker still. In spite of the noise, he'd been unprepared for the attack that came the moment he stepped in.
When cold fingers grasped at his throat, Alec's only thought was how he could defend himself without injuring Seregil. He was trying to get a better grip on Seregil's tunic when his hand slipped inside the neck of it. Finding the thong under his hand, he'd grabbed for it, felt it sliding away as Seregil drew back. Then the terrible pain.
"What sort of foolishness is this?" the landlord demanded, looking over Alec's shoulder. Then the man was backing way, making a sign against evil.
"You've killed him with sorcery!"
Alec thrust the disk out of sight. "He's not dead. Come back here with that light!"
But the man fled. Cursing in frustration, Alec stumbled to his own room and struck a light.
What was he to do with the cursed disk? Throwing it into the fire seemed to be the wisest course of action, yet doubt stayed his hand; Seregil had thought it valuable enough to steal, and later had said he was determined to get it to Rhнminee.
Handling it only by the leather lacing, he found a patched tunic in Seregil's pack and rolled the disk up in it. Shoving it to the bottom of the pack, he carried their gear downstairs and hurried back for Seregil. The innkeeper and his family had barricaded themselves in the kitchen
storeroom and, despite his various pleas and assurances, refused to come out.
In the end he had to get Seregil down by himself, carrying the unconscious man across his shoulders like a slaughtered deer. Once downstairs, he laid him on a table and went through the kitchen again to the storeroom.
"You in there!" he called through the door. "I need a few supplies. I'll leave money on the mantelpiece."
There was no reply.
A candle stood in a dish on the sideboard.
Lighting it with an ember from the banked fire, he cast about for food. Most of it was locked in the storeroom with its owner but he still managed to come away with a basket of boiled eggs, a jug of
brandy, half a wheel of good Mycenian cheese, some new bread, and a sack of pippins. Going out to the well, he discovered a jar of milk let to cool and added that to his haul.
Stowing everything beneath the seat of the cart, he used their blankets and a few from the inn to make a pallet in the back.
When everything was ready, he carried Seregil out to the makeshift bed and carefully wrapped him up.
Except for his labored breathing, Seregil looked like a dead man on a bier.
"Well, he won't get any better sitting here," Alec muttered grimly, slapping the reins over the pony's rump. "I said we were going to Rhнminee, and that's where I mean to go!"
12 Alone
— did the dead sleep within death? Some vestige of his living consciousness sensed the passage oftime. There was a change of some sort, but what? Slowly he became aware of pain but it was muted, experienced at a distance.
Very odd.
Smells came with the pain, the smell of illness, infection, the unwashed odors of his own body from which his fastidious nature recoiled even as he rejoiced in the ability to discern them. Perhaps he wasn't dead, after all? He had neither explanation for his predicament nor memory of his past and now even the pain was slipping away again. Silently, helplessly, he willed it back, but it was gone.
He was alone. And lonely—
Alec drove as hard as he dared, determined to reach the seaport by the following day. He stopped only to rest the pony and tend Seregil's wound.
The burn on his own hand made his arm ache to the elbow, but it was scabbing over already. Inspecting Seregil's breast in daylight, however, he found that the wound there was still raw, with angry lines of infection fanning out from it.
He stopped at the next farmstead they came to, hoping to beg a few herbs and some linen. The old wife there took one look at Seregil and disappeared back into her kitchen, returning a few moments later with a basket containing yarrow salve and aloes, clean linen rags, a flask of willow bark tea and one of milk, fresh cheese, bread, and half a dozen apples.
"I–I can't pay you," he stammered, overwhelmed by such generosity.
The old woman smiled, patting his arm. "You don't need to," she said in her thick Mycenian accent. "The Maker sees every kind deed."
The countryside fell away into gentle slopes as Alec drove westward toward Keston. By the following afternoon they came down into more settled country.
There was a different scent on the breeze here. It was a water smell, but with an unfamiliar tang.
Gulls wheeled overhead, much larger than the little black-headed ones on Blackwater Lake. These birds had long yellow beaks and grey wings tipped with black. Great flocks of them flew overhead or picked their way over empty fields and rubbish heaps.
Topping a rise, Alec saw in the distance what could only be the sea. Awestruck, he reined in and stared out over it. The sun was low. The first golden stain of sunset spread a glittering band across the silver-green water. A scattering of islands lay like knucklebones cast along the coastline, some dark with trees, others bare chunks of stone thrusting above the waves.
The road wound on down to the coast, ending in a sprawling town that hugged the shore of a broad bay.
"You must be an inlander."
An old tinker had come up beside the cart. Wizened and bandy-legged, the fellow was bowed nearly double under the large pack he carried. What Alec could see of his face beneath the brim of his battered slouch hat was dark with stubble and dust.
"You've the look of an inlander finding the sea for the first time. Sitting there gape-mouthed like that, you couldn't be nothin' else," the old relic observed with a rusty chuckle.
"It's the biggest thing I ever saw!"
"Looks even bigger when yer in the middle of 'er," the tinker said. "I was a sailor in me youth, before a shark took me leg for dinner."
Twitching his dusty cloak back, he showed Alec the wooden peg strapped to the stump of his left leg.
Cleverly carved to resemble the limb it replaced, the end of it was made in the shape of a wooden clog that neatly matched the real one on his other foot.
"Trampin' all the day, I don't know which foot gets more sore. Might you offer a fellow traveler a ride into town?"
"Climb up." Alec reached to aid him.
"Much obliged. Hannock of Brithia, at your service," the tinker said, settling himself on the bench.
There was an expectant pause.
"Aren. Aren Silverleaf." Alec felt a bit silly giving the old man a false name, but it was becoming a habit.
Hannock touched a finger to the brim of his hat.
"Well met, Aren. What happened to your friend in the back here?"
"A bad fall," Alec lied quickly. "Tell me, do you know Keston town?"
"I should say I do. What can I do for you there?"
"I need to sell this cart and find passage to Rhнminee."
"Rhнminee, is it?" Hannock rubbed at his bristly chin. "By the Old Sailor, you'll be damned lucky to find passage this close to winter. It'll come dear, too. More than you're likely to realize from this contraption and a spavined pony. But don't fret yourself, boy. I've a friend or two in most any port you can name. Leave it to old Hannock."
Alec was soon glad of the tinker's company.
Keston was a bustling town, full of rambling streets laid out with no rhyme or reason that he could make out; the lanes that Hannock directed him down were little more than broad pathways between the tenements that stood cheek by jowl with warehouses and taverns.
Gangs of sailors, reeling with high spirits of one sort or another, jostled in the dark alleyways and snatches of songs and curses seemed to come from all directions.
"Yes, I've still a friend or two along the quays," said Hannock as they reached the waterfront. "Let me ask around a bit and I'll meet you back at the Red Wheel. You con the sign yonder? Two shops down from that, at the next warehouse, there's a drayman, name of Gesher. He'll probably take this rig off your hands. It'll do you no harm to mention my name in the bargaining."
Hannock's name notwithstanding, Drayman Gesher ran a bleak eye over the cart, the exhausted pony, and its equally exhausted driver. "Three silver trees, not a penny more," he said gruffly.
Alec had no idea what the relative worth of a silver tree might be, but was happy enough to unload the rig and be done with it. With the understanding that they would close the deal when Alec brought the cart back, he hurried off to the Wheel. Leaving Seregil well covered, he went inside.
He found the old tinker seated at a long table joking with a weathered man in seafaring garb.
"Here's the lad himself," Hannock told his companion, pushing a pot of beer Alec's way.
"Sit down, boy. Aren Silverleaf, this is Captain Talrien, master of the Grampus. As fine a mariner as you can hope to find on the two seas, and I should know. We first sailed together with Captain Strake, me as mate and him but a green slip of a cabin boy. He's agreed to work out a passage for you and your unfortunate friend."
"So you're short on jack, eh?" Talrien grinned, getting right to the point. His skin, brown as an old boot from salt and sun, contrasted sharply with his pale hair and beard. "How much have you got?"
"I can get three silver trees for the pony and the cart. Is that a good price?"
Hannock shrug
ged. "No, but it's not a bad one, either. What do you say, Tally? Will you take the lad?"
"That's scarce a single passage. Mighty important that you get to Rhнminee, is it?" Talrien drawled, settling back in his chair.
When Alec hesitated a moment too long, he laughed, holding up a hand.
"Never mind, then, it's your own business. Tell you what I'll do. I'm short a man this time out; for three silver I'll take your friend and you can work your passage. You'll have to bunk in the hold, but you're in luck there, for the cargo is grain and wool. Last voyage we carried granite cobbles. If that's agreeable to you, let's cross palms on it and call it done."
"Done it is," Alec replied, clasping hands with him. "Many thanks to you both."
Talrien had a longboat moored at the quay.
After loading in his few remaining possessions, Alec and Talrien carefully lifted Seregil into the bottom of the boat.
Seregil was paler than ever. His head lolled limply from side to side as wavelets nudged the longboat against the stone footing of the quay. Tucking a wadded cloak behind his friend's head. Alec looked down at him with a pang of fear. What if he dies? What will I do if he dies?
"Don't you worry, lad," Talrien said kindly. "I'll see to it he's made comfortable. You go sell your wagon and I'll send the boat back for you."
"I–I'll be here," Alec stammered, suddenly reluctant to leave Seregil in the hands of strangers. But what else was there to do? Clambering into the rickety cart for the last time, he flicked the reins over the pony's dusty rump.
Mycenian silver trees turned out to be rectangular lozenges of silver, each with the rough shape of a tree struck into it. Clutching the coins, he ran back as fast as he could to the docks.
As he came within sight of the deserted quay, a sudden thought stopped him in his tracks. Before they'd left the Darter, hadn't Captain Rhal spoken of Plenimaran press-gangs working the ports?
"By the Maker," he groaned aloud, dread settling like heavy ice in his belly. In his haste and weariness, had he handed Seregil over to a clever pair of rogues? Cursing himself, he stamped up and down in the cold, squinting into the darkness for any sign of movement. He hadn't even thought to ask Talrien which of the ships was the Grampus. It was a still night. Waves lapped gently against the quay. The faint sounds of men singing happily over their mugs in nearby taverns made his vigil all the more lonesome as he stood in the darkness. A bell sounded aboard one of the ships at anchor, its tone muted and distant.
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