“The buildings are illusion, the people pretend to be a large population, so that you won’t guess the truth.”
“You have to return to the world below, but you’re afraid to go back and reveal how weak you’ve grown,” finished Hugh. “The changeling became the prince of Volkaran. And now he’s going back as king!”
“King? That’s impossible. They already have a king.”
“Not impossible, madam. Your husband’s planning to hire me to get rid of their king and queen, and then Bane—their son—will inherit the throne.”
“I don’t believe you! You’re lying!”
“Yes, you believe me. I see it in your face. It’s not your husband you’re defending, it’s yourself. You know what your husband’s capable of doing. You know what he’s done and what you haven’t! Maybe it wasn’t murder, but he would have caused two people down there in the Mid Realm less pain if he’d driven knives into them instead of taking their baby.”
The dark, colorless eyes tried to meet his, but they faltered and fell. “I grieved for them. I tried to save their child … I would have given my life if their baby could have lived. And then there are the lives of so many others—”
“I’ve done evil. But it seems to me, Iridal, that there is equal evil in not doing. Sinistrad is returning to conclude his deal with me. Listen to what he has planned and judge for yourself.”
Iridal stared at him, started to speak. Then, shaking her head, she shut her eyes and, in an instant, was gone. Her chains were too heavy. She couldn’t break free.
Hugh sank back down, alone in his cell within a cell. Pulling out his pipe, he clamped it between his teeth and glared at the prison walls.
Walk the dragon wing.
If Sinistrad intended to startle him by his sudden appearance, the mysteriarch must have been disappointed. Hugh glanced up at him, but neither moved nor spoke.
“Well, Hugh the Hand, have you decided?”
“It wasn’t much of a decision.” Rising stiffly to his feet, Hugh carefully wrapped the pipe in its cloth and tucked it away near his breast. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in this place. I’ll work for you. I’ve worked for worse. After all, I once took money to kill a child.”
CHAPTER 54
CASTLE SINISTER, HIGH REALM
HAPLO WANDERED THE CORRIDORS OF THE CASTLE, IDLY WASTING time, or so it seemed when anyone paid any attention to him. When no one was around, he continued searching, keeping account of everyone, as best he could.
The dog was with Bane. Haplo had overheard every word of the conversation between father and son. The Patryn had been caught off-guard by Bane’s strange question about the sigil. Scratching the skin beneath his bandages, Haplo wondered if the child could have seen the runes. The Patryn tried to think back to a time when he might have slipped up, made a mistake. Finally, he decided he hadn’t. It would have been impossible. What, then, was the boy talking about? Surely not some mensch wizard trying his hand at runes. Even a mensch had more sense.
Well, there’s no use wasting brain power speculating. I’ll find out soon enough. Bane—dog faithfully trotting along at the boy’s side—had recently passed him in the hallway, searching for Alfred. Perhaps that conversation will give me a clue. Meanwhile, there’s Limbeck to check up on.
Pausing before the door of the Geg’s room, Haplo glanced up and down the hall. No one was in sight. He traced a sigil upon the door and the wood disappeared—at least to his eyes. To the Geg, sitting disconsolately at a desk, the door seemed as solid as ever. Limbeck had asked his host for writing materials and seemed to be absorbed in his favorite pastime—speech-composing. But Haplo saw that very little composing was being accomplished. Spectacles pushed up on his forehead, the Geg sat, head in hand, staring into a tapestry-covered stone wall that for him was a multicolored blur.
“‘My fellow Workers United …’ No, that’s too restricting. ‘My fellow WUPP’s and Gegs …’ But the high froman might be there. High Froman, Head Clark, fellow WUPP’s, brother Gegs … brother and sister Gegs, I have seen the world above and it is beautiful’”—Limbeck’s voice softened—“‘more beautiful and wondrous than anything you can imagine. And I … I…’ No!” He tugged violently on his own beard. “There,” he said, wincing at the pain and blinking the tears from his eyes. “As Jarre would say, I’m a drugal. Now, maybe I can think better. ‘My dear WUPP’s …’ No, there I go again. I’ve left out the high froman …”
Haplo removed the sigil, and the door took shape and form again. He could hear, as he continued down the corridor, Limbeck reciting to his crowd of one. The Geg knows what he has to say, thought Haplo. He just can’t bring himself to say it.
“Oh, Alfred, here you are!” It was Bane’s voice, coming to Haplo through the dog. “I’ve been searching all over for you.” The child sounded petulant, put-out.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness, I was looking for Sir Hugh …”
He wasn’t the only one.
Stopping at the next door, Haplo glanced inside. The room was empty—Hugh was gone. Haplo was not particularly surprised. If Hugh was even still alive, it was only because Sinistrad intended to make him suffer. Or, better yet, use him to make Iridal suffer. This jealousy Sinistrad was exhibiting over his wife was strange, considering he obviously didn’t care for her.
“She’s his possession,” said Haplo to himself, turning back down the hallway and heading for Limbeck’s room. “If Hugh’d been discovered making off with the spoons, Sinistrad would probably have been just as mad. Well, I tried to protect him. Pity. He was a bold fellow. I could have used him. Now, however, while Sinistrad is preoccupied with Hugh, would be an excellent time for the rest of us to leave.”
“Alfred …” Bane was speaking in sugared tones. “I want to have a talk with you.”
“Certainly, Your Highness.”
The dog settled itself on the floor between them.
Time to leave, Haplo repeated. I’ll collect Limbeck, we’ll get back to the elf ship and take it, and leave this mensch wizard stranded on his realm. I don’t have to put up with his meddling.
I’ll transport the Geg back to Drevlin. Once that’s done, I will have accomplished my lord’s goals, except for bringing him back someone from this world to train as a disciple. I’d considered Hugh, but he’s out, apparently.
Still, my lord should be satisfied. This world is wobbling about on the brink of disaster. If all goes well, I can nudge it over the edge. And I believe that I can safely say that there are no longer any Sartan—
“Alfred,” said Bane, “I know you’re a Sartan.”
Haplo came to a dead stop.
It must be a mistake. He hadn’t heard right. He’d been thinking the word and therefore heard it when in reality the boy had said something else. Holding his breath, almost wishing impatiently he could still the pounding of his heart so that he could hear more clearly, Haplo listened.
Alfred felt the world slide out beneath his feet. Walls expanded, the ceiling seemed to be falling down on top of him, and he thought for an awful, blessed moment that he might faint. But this time his brain refused to shut down. This time he would have to face the peril and deal with it as best he could. He knew he should be saying something, denying the boy’s statement, of course, but he honestly didn’t know whether or not he could talk. His face muscles were paralyzed.
“Come, Alfred,” said Bane, regarding him with smug self-assurance, “there’s no use denying it. I know it’s true. Do you want to know how I know?”
The child was enjoying this immensely. And there was the dog, its head raised, watching him intently, as if it understood every word and it, too, was awaiting his reaction. The dog! Of course, it was understanding every word! And so was its master.
“You remember the time when the tree fell on me,” Bane was saying. “I was dead. I knew I was dead because I was floating away and I looked back and saw my body lying on the ground, with the crystal pieces sticking right through me. But suddenl
y it was like a great big mouth opened and sucked me back. And I woke up and there weren’t any crystals hurting me anymore. I looked down, and there on my chest I saw this.” Bane held up the piece of paper he had removed from his father’s desk. “I asked my father about it. He said it was a sigil, a rune. A rune of healing.”
Deny it. Laugh lightly. What an imagination you have, Your Highness! You dreamed it, of course. That bump on your head.
“And then there was Hugh,” Bane continued. “I know that I gave him enough hethbane to kill him. When he fell over, all in a heap, he was dead, just like me. You brought him back to life!”
Come, now, Your Highness. If I was a Sartan, what would I be doing earning my living as a servant? No, I’d live in a grand palace and you mensch would all flock to see me and fall at my feet and beg me to give you this and give you that and raise you up and cast your enemies down and offer me whatever I wanted except peace.
“And now that I know you’re a Sartan, Alfred, you’ve got to help me. And the first thing we’re going to do is kill my father.” Bane reached into his tunic, pulled out a dagger that Alfred recognized as belonging to Hugh. “Look, I found this in my father’s desk. Sinistrad’s going to go down to the Low Realm and send the Gegs to war and fix the Kicksey-winsey and make it align all the isles, and then he’ll control the water supply. All the wealth and power will go to him, and that’s not fair! It was my idea! I was the one who figured out how the machine worked. And of course, Alfred, you probably know all about running the machine, since you and your people built it, and you can help me with that too.”
The dog, with its far-too-intelligent eyes, was looking at Alfred, looking straight through him. Too late to deny. He’d missed his chance. He’d never been quick-thinking, quick-reacting. That was why his brain had taken to shutting down when confronted with danger. It couldn’t cope with the constant war that raged inside him, the instinctive urge to use his wondrous powers to protect himself and others versus the terrible knowledge that if he did so he would be exposed for the demigod he was—and wasn’t.
“I cannot help you, Your Highness. I cannot take a life.”
“Oh, but you’ll have to. You won’t have any choice. If you don’t, I’ll tell my father who you are, and once my father finds out, he’ll try to use you himself.”
“And, Your Highness, I will refuse.”
“You can’t! He’ll try to kill you if you don’t obey him! Then you’ll have to fight, and you’ll win, because you’re stronger.”
“No, Your Highness. I will lose. I will die.”
Bane was startled, perplexed. Obviously this was one move that had never occurred to him. “But you can’t! You’re a Sartan!”
“We are not immortal—something I think we forgot.”
It was the despair that had killed them. The despair he was feeling now; a great and overwhelming sadness. They had dared to think and act as gods and had ceased to listen to the true gods. Things had begun to go wrong—as the Sartan saw it—and they had taken it upon themselves to decide what was best for the world and act accordingly. But then something else went wrong and they had to step in and fix it, and every time they fixed one thing, it caused something else to break. And soon the task became too large; there were too few of them. And they had realized, finally, that they had tampered with what should have been left undisturbed. But by then it was too late.
“I will die,” repeated Alfred.
The dog rose to its feet, came over to him, and laid its head on his knee. Slowly, hesitantly, he reached out his hand to touch it, and felt its warmth, the well-shaped bones of the head hard beneath the silky fur.
And what is your master doing now? What is Haplo thinking, knowing that his ancient enemy is within his grasp? I can’t begin to guess. It all depends, I suppose, on what Haplo is doing in this world in the first place.
The chamberlain smiled, much to Bane’s frustration and ire. Alfred was wondering what Sinistrad would do if he knew he had two demigods under his roof.
“You might be ready to die, Alfred!” said Bane with sudden sly cunning. “But what about our friends—the Geg and Hugh and Haplo?”
At the sound of its master’s name, the dog’s plumy tail brushed slowly from side to side.
Bane came forward to stand at the chamberlain’s side, the child’s small hands clasped earnestly on his servant’s shoulder. “When I tell father who you are and when I prove to him how I know who you are, he’ll realize—like I do now—that we won’t need any of these others. We won’t need the elves or their ship, because your magic can take us where we want to go. We won’t need Limbeck because you can talk to the Gegs and convince them to go to war. We don’t need Haplo—we never did need Haplo. I’ll take care of his dog. We don’t need Hugh. Father won’t kill you, Alfred. He’ll control you by threatening to kill them! So you can’t die!”
What he says is true. And Sinistrad would certainly realize it.
Expendable. I make them all expendable. But what can I do to save them, except kill?
“The truly wonderful part,” said Bane, giggling, “is that at the end of it all, we won’t even need father!”
It is the old curse of the Sartan, coming back to me at last. If I had allowed the child to die, as, perhaps, he was meant to, then none of this would have happened. But I had to meddle. I had to play god. I believed that there was good in the child, that he would change—because of me I believed that I could save him! I, I, I! All we Sartan ever thought about was ourselves. We wanted to mold the world in our image. But perhaps that wasn’t what was intended.
Slowly, gently thrusting aside the dog, Alfred rose to his feet. Walking to the center of the room, he lifted his arms into the air and began to move in a solemn and strangely graceful—for his ungainly body—dance.
“Alfred, what the hell are you doing?”
“I am leaving, Your Highness,” said Alfred.
The air around him began to shimmer as his dancing continued. He was tracing the runes in the air with his hands and drawing them on the floor with his feet.
Bane’s mouth gaped open. “You can’t!” he gasped. Running forward, he tried to grab hold of the Sartan, but the magical wall Alfred had built around himself was now too powerful. There was a crackle when Bane’s hand touched it, and the child, wailing, snatched back burned fingers.
“You can’t leave me! No one can leave me unless I want them to!”
“Your enchantment doesn’t work on me, Bane.” Alfred spoke almost sadly, his body beginning to fade away. “It never did.”
A large furry shape plummeted past Bane. The dog bounded through the shimmering shell and landed lightly at Alfred’s side. Leaping, teeth snapping, the dog caught the chamberlain’s ankle in its mouth and held on tightly.
A startled expression crossed Alfred’s now-ghostlike face. Frantically he kicked his leg, trying to jerk it from the dog’s mouth.
The dog, grinning, seemed to consider this a great game. It held on more tightly and began to growl playfully and tug back. Alfred pulled harder. His body had ceased to fade and was now gradually starting to regain its solidity. Going round and round in a circle, the chamberlain begged and pleaded, threatened and scolded the dog to let go. The dog followed him around and around, feet skidding as it sought to get a grip on the stone floor with its claws, its jaws clamped firmly around Alfred’s leg.
The door to the room slammed open. The dog, looking over, wagged its tail furiously, but continued to keep its grip on Alfred.
“So you’re leaving us behind, are you, Sartan?” inquired Haplo. “Just like the old days, huh?”
CHAPTER 55
CASTLE SINISTER, HIGH REALM
IN A ROOM DOWN THE CORRIDOR, LIMBECK FINALLY PUT HIS PEN TO paper.
“My people …” he began.
Haplo had long imagined meeting a Sartan, meeting someone who had sealed his people in that hellish place. He imagined himself angry, but now even he could not believe his fury. He stared at this ma
n, this Alfred, this Sartan, and he saw the chaodyn attacking him, he saw the dog’s body lying broken, bleeding. He saw his parents dead. It was suddenly hard to breathe. He was suffocating. Veins, red against fiery yellow, webbed his vision, and he had to close his eyes and fight to catch his breath.
“Leaving again!” He gasped for air. “Just like you jailers left us to die in that prison!”
Haplo forced the last word out between gritted teeth. Bandaged hands raised like striking talons, he stood quite close to Alfred and stared into the face of the Sartan that seemed surrounded by a halo of flame. If this Alfred smiled, if his lips so much as twitched, Haplo would kill him. His lord, his purpose, his instructions—he couldn’t hear any of them for the pounding waves of rage in his head.
But Alfred didn’t smile. He didn’t blench in fright or draw back or even move to defend himself. The lines of the aged, careworn face deepened, the mild eyes were shadowed and red-rimmed, shimmering with sorrow.
“The jailer didn’t leave,” he said. “The jailer died.”
Haplo felt the dog’s head press against his knee, and reaching down, he caught hold of the soft fur and gripped it tightly. The dog gazed up with worried eyes and pressed closer, whimpering. Haplo’s breathing came easier, clear sight returned to his eyes, clear thought to his mind.
“I’m all right,” said Haplo, drawing a shivering breath. “I’m all right.”
“Does this mean,” asked Bane, “that Alfred’s not leaving?”
“No, he’s not leaving,” said Haplo. “Not now, at least. Not until I’m ready.”
Master of himself once more, the Patryn faced the Sartan. Haplo’s face was calm, his smile quiet. His hands rubbed slowly, one against the other, displacing slightly the bandages that covered the skin. “The jailer died? I don’t believe that.”
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