by David Grace
"How much longer, do you think, until we get all of this out of the way?" he asked Buster, who, because of his crippled leg, now assumed the task of supervising the relocation of the boxes.
"With our four-armed friend here, perhaps only three or four minutes. I have almost come to believe that my scheme may work after all."
"Just the same, I'll feel better when we have left this accursed city behind."
With Buster trailing a few paces behind, Grantin walked back to Mara at the far end of the room. By now she had stopped crying and was attempting to wipe away the traces of her tears with her velveteen cuffs. In the background sounded the scrapes and thuds of Castor's and Chom's labors.
"Mara, I am sorry I made you cry. I shouldn't have interfered. Still, I have a favor I would like you to do for me."
"A favor? What is it?"
"You remember when you gave me this ring? Well, I'd like to take it off, but only you can remove it. It's a simple spell. I have it written down here. All you need do is read it and then pull on the ring."
"Remove the ring?" Buster hissed. "How will you do your magic without the ring?"
"I plan to do no more magic beyond a few elementary spells of self-gratification. This cursed ring has done nothing but bring me trouble. The sooner I am rid of it, the sooner I can return home and assume my normal station in life."
"But you must retain your powers--it is the only way the Gogols can be defeated. Mara can explain to you about Zaco's mine where the bloodstones are quarried. It is said that it is a place where in ancient times a meteor crashed into the earth and that the stones were formed as a result of the impact. Hazar will go there himself in a few days to pick up his last, shipment. When he has it his forces will be unstoppable. I have pledged my life and those of all my people to freeing you so that you could use the energy of the ring to prevent Hazar from completing his plan."
"How could I do such a thing? It is certain death."
"This is far more important than the life or death of any one person. All our lives are hostage to Hazar's plans."
"Well, it is not more important to me than my life, because it is the only one I am going to have. I've risked my skin enough times with Hazar and his deacons. Now someone else can fight this battle. I'm going home to my uncle's manor while I'm still in one piece. If you want the ring you are welcome to it."
"Can't you understand? It will not work for me. It will not even work for another human until he has been accustomed to it. You have worn it long enough now. You can use it. Even if we had someone else he would never become attuned to its forces in time."
"Buster, I want to thank you for saving my life, if in fact we get out of here alive, but I'm not going to put my neck back into the noose after escaping from this trap. You'll just have to think of another way to thwart Hazar's plans."
"There is no other way! We have risked everything to rescue you so that you can use the power of the ring against Hazar. It was on this basis alone that the decision makers authorized the attack. If you abandon us now, Hazar will slay half the tribe."
"Ever since I put on this ring I've been forced to do others' bidding. My uncle tried to cut off my hand. Bandits pursued me. Black sorcerers threw me into their dungeons, and now the Grays expect me to give up my life in a crusade of their own. Well, no more! Mara, if you please."
Buster looked on with frustrated impotence as Grantin motioned for Mara to commence the spell.
Reluctantly she held the ring with the tip of her thumb, index finger, and middle finger of her right hand and recited the incantation. With a gentle tug she freed the bloodstone. For a moment she looked at it strangely, then handed it back to Grantin, who, with no better use for it, dropped it into his pocket.
Buster's face was grim. With the removal of the ring all his plans were shattered. Grantin turned and saw that the last of the crates had been moved out of the way. Chom and Castor pulled the loosened stones from the floor. Mara wandered across the room to the window and idly stared out, searching the dawn-lighted street beyond. At the far right-hand edge of her vision a shape moved, then another, then another still. A squad of three soldiers came into view, then turned toward a door set into the outer wall on the far side of the street. The search for the fugitives had begun. Mara stood frozen for a moment, hypnotized by the spectacle, then turned back to the others.
"Soldiers!" she whispered. "They're making a door-to-door search. They're across the street now. They will be here in a minute or two. They will see the crates have been moved and find the passageway."
"Is there some way to stop them? Is there anything that we can do?" Grantin asked.
Mara put her arms around Grantin and stared solemnly into his face.
"Do you really believe what you said, about my mother lying to me, and about my father?"
"Mara, this is no time to--"
"--Because if you are right, then I do not belong here with the Gogols. I am really a Hartford and I should be doing everything I can to save my people."
Mara abruptly released Grantin and stepped over to the door.
"What are you doing?"
"I have a plan, another diversion. Go ahead without me. You must escape to thwart Hazar's plans."
Before anyone could move, Mara opened the panel and slipped outside.
"She will need some help," Buster announced as he limped toward the door.
"Buster, come back," Grantin hissed.
"It makes no difference. If you don't put on the ring and defeat Hazar, my people are lost in any event."
"Buster, come back! We can still escape through the tunnel."
"No," Buster said over his shoulder as he slipped out the door. "I do not wish to outlive my race."
Buster disappeared through the door and closed the panel from the outside. Chom and Castor redoubled their efforts to free the trapdoor. Grantin ignored them and hurried to the window. Outside, Mara crossed the street, putting distance between herself and the storeroom. Of Buster Grantin could see no sign.
Mara ducked past the doorway into which the soldiers had been recently admitted, then turned around and began walking back. She halted fifteen yards beyond the door and waited for the guards to reemerge. A few moments later the first soldier reappeared and Mara ran down the center of the street in full view of the guards. The first one leaped after her. In an instant a second soldier followed. She struggled in their grasp. An officer appeared but stood well back from the skirmish. He eyed Mara and searched the street in the direction from which she had come. In a flash of inspiration the officer looked across the First Circle directly at the barred window from which Grantin now observed the fight.
The officer turned and walked purposefully toward the storeroom door. He was halfway across the street when a bundle of fur darted from the shadows and collided with his marching form. Buster could not hope to reach the soldier's throat. As he charged he held the knife high in his right hand and aimed for the officer's stomach. But the Ajaj was tired and lame and the soldier keyed to a sharpness of senses and acute reaction.
The officer drew his own knife. The blade pierced Buster's torso even before the Gray reached him. It was only through his momentum that the Ajaj succeeded in reaching the guard. With his dying hand Buster planted his dagger deep in the officer's stomach.
Both fell to the dusty pavement, Buster dead and the soldier already losing consciousness. The guards saw what had happened to their commander and, convinced that the fugitives had avoided their initial search, dragged Mara back up the First Circle toward Hazar's quarters.
A groaning creak sounded behind Grantin. He turned to see Chom lift the iron door. Almost in a state of shock he stumbled forward and, gripped by the Fanist's four strong arms, felt himself being lowered into the darkness.
Chapter Forty-Three
Inside the cavern a dim luminescence was generated by lichen-encrusted walls. While the radiation was too feeble to illuminate the features of the cavern, it did mark the twistings and turning
s of the walls on which it grew. As the one most comfortable in cave-like surroundings. Castor led the way, then came Grantin, then Chom.
In the caverns hearing was an unreliable sight. Grantin found himself struggling to ignore the scrapes and rattles which reached his ears. Ahead of them he fantasized spiders and poisonous snakes, while from behind he feared attack from the pursuing Gogols. Each of Chom's footfalls, the rattle of pebbles, the scrape of arms or hips against protruding limestone walls, all echoed and reverberated. Whispers were amplified and returned to terrify the travelers. Neither the direction, origin, nor cause of the echoes could be discerned, and so the fugitives tramped onward blind to the terrors which pursued or awaited them.
Grantin's original plan had seemed straightforward and definite: reach Cicero, find Mara, remove the ring, and return to the good graces of Uncle Greyhorn. Now his life bumped ahead aimlessly. His schemes had lost their anchor and his mind was filled with conflicts which he found impossible to reconcile. Mara was captured; what would happen to her? And didn't he still owe his uncle something, the loyalty of blood to blood if nothing else? But wasn't Greyhorn lost beyond all hope? What about Buster's bloody end? Didn't he have some kind of obligation to the old Gray? Yet, dead is dead and nothing could change that.
Grantin suppressed all these disturbing questions and sought to focus on the details of their passage. Slowly the character of the darkness changed. Ahead the air became suffused with a thin gray light which gradually grew brighter as the fugitives wound their way through a series of twists and turns. At last, a glowing clot of whitish gray burned through the center of a velvet screen. The rent in the darkness expanded until the fugitives found themselves standing at a brush-encrusted exit. With reluctant curiosity they advanced and studied the scenery beyond.
The mouth of the cavern stood halfway up a hillside overgrown with vines, springwood trees, and creepers. A procession of low, rolling hills marked the landscape ahead.
"Castor, do you know this place? Where are we?"
"I have never been here, but Buster lived in Cicero a long time and heard many things. He instructed me in Gogol geography. We are just beyond the northern edge of the city. To the west lies a great plain all the way to the Endless Ocean. These estates are farmed by the Grays under Topor's direction. To the east the country is poorer. There Gogol freemen have staked out their homesteads between Cicero and the edge of the Weirdlands. Directly ahead the foothills continue all the way to a group of peaks the Gogols call Satan's Chair. A bit to the east of us a major trail follows a winding valley between these mounds all the way to the headwaters of the Mephisto River. From there barges travel downstream to the city of Mephisto itself. To the northwest one can skirt the foothills and travel the boundary between Topor's estates and Satan's Chair. The country is by and large rough but not impassable. It is said that if one continues far enough he will reach Grog Cup Lake."
"Are you suggesting that we turn this into a tourist expedition?" Grantin asked.
"Buster said that Zaco's mine is to the northwest, at a place where a meteor had long ago smashed into the earth. It could be Grog Cup Lake."
"A lake?"
"Now it is a lake, but it might have begun as a meteor crater. It is said that in the middle of rolling country its walls rise hundreds of feet above the surrounding soil. The cliff is perfectly circular and the bowl within filled with clear water and in the center is an island. Where else could Zaco's meteor crater be?"
"Where else indeed?" Grantin said testily. "You expect us to embark on a wild-goose chase across hostile, uncharted wilderness, racing toward a colony of evil sorcerers, on the word of some third hand geography lesson? For all you know there might be hundreds of places which could just as easily be the location of Zaco's mine."
"What else can we do? Surely we haven't come this far just to escape? Hazar must be defeated."
Grantin snorted in dissatisfaction. He turned to Chom, who had been studying the countryside below.
"Chom, you're very quiet about all of this. What do you say? Can you give me one good reason why we shouldn't wait until nightfall and then make our way home?"
"We each have our own goals. You must find your own reasons for doing what you do. Neither mine nor Castor's can properly be sufficient for you."
"And what does that mean? Tell me this--if I declared my intention to go home would you come with me or go running off on some wild-goose chase with Castor?"
"I do not wish to affect your decision. Assume that I will do what is in your best interest as balanced against the best interests of my people."
"Riddles! Double-talk! I'm in the company of a mad Ajaj and a logic-chopping Fanist. Castor, let me ask you this--how would you propose that we defeat Hazar if, in fact, we did find Zaco's expertly manned and guarded bloodstone mine? What am I to do--throw rocks at him?"
"It seems to me that with the great power stored in your ring and with the assistance of Chom and myself a potent spell could be forged."
"Perhaps you have forgotten that I came all this way to be freed of that ring? Has it escaped your attention that I no longer wear it?"
"Your ring? Gone?" Castor grabbed Grantin's hand with a wild motion. "What happened to it? It isn't lost?"
"While you and Chom were clearing the passage I had Mara remove it."
"But you can't abandon us now," Castor shouted. "Does saving my people mean nothing to you? Can you stand by and allow the slaughter of the Grays?"
"What would you have me do?"
"Can there be any question? You must put the ring back on."
Grantin threw up his arms and paced a tight circle inside the cave's entrance. "Chom, what do you have to say about all this? Can you bring no sanity to this discussion?"
"I can say this: we should leave this cave at once. At any moment Hazar's guards may discover evidence of our presence in the storeroom. We cannot allow ourselves to be caught here. Whichever direction we go, we must move quickly."
Grantin seethed with frustration. He peered through the trailing network of vines in a vain attempt to locate a path to the Guardian Mountains far to the east. Why should he feel responsible if Hazar slaughtered the Grays? He hadn't asked them to rescue him. But you didn't refuse their offer, a small voice at the back of his mind reminded him. And what about your uncle? Grantin rejected his conscience's argument. His uncle had chosen to get involved with the devil-worshipers. His fate was of his own making. And what of Mara? She sacrificed herself to save you. Mara, lovely Mara --but she wasn't the only woman in the world. With his uncle's property he would find plenty. Against his will the vision of Buster's murder and Mara's capture flashed through Grantin's mind. Blast! Blast! Why could not his life be simple, uncomplicated, and pleasant, like that of other normal men?
"Grantin, we must leave," Chom prodded. "You must make up your mind. Are you coming with us or going home?"
"He'll not go home like this. If I be a mad Ajaj, as they claim, I may as well be one to perfection. I'd sooner draw my knife here than let Grantin abandon us all to the Gogols,"' Castor said as he reached down to pull out his blade. Almost as if by lazy accident, one of Chom's fore arms snaked out and grabbed the Ajaj's wrist.
"An unwilling wizard is worse than no wizard at all," Chom said quietly. "This must be a question for Grantin's own conscience.'"
"Chom, you're going with Castor no matter what I do?" Grantin asked.
"For what good it will do. Shenar's spell still binds me. My powers are still blunted. I had hoped that with the help of you and Castor we might be able to restore them. As it is"--Chom shrugged--"we will have to do the best that we are able."
"But this is madness!"
Castor jerked his hand free from Chom's easy grasp but made no move to withdraw his blade.
"Grantin, we must leave now. We wish you good luck," Chom said as he ushered Castor toward the edge of the cave.
"Wait! Apparently, Castor, your madness has contaminated me as well. Very well, then, we may as wel
l march out of here together and all of us throw our lives into the very jaws of death. Why is it that the honest fellows such as myself are always sucked into the maelstrom of others' tribulations?"
From his pocket Grantin absentmindedly extracted the patch of cloth within which was wrapped the ring. "Always it is the innocents who are called upon to hurl their bodies in the path of evil, ordinary citizens who like nothing better than a quiet evening at the inn, a harmless dalliance with a local maid, the simple life of genteel companionship. Why is it always we who are called upon to perform heroic deeds?"
Without looking at his hand Grantin unwrapped the fabric and positioned the ring just beyond his index finger. "I am surrounded by reckless beings who urge me into a dangerous undertaking only to fulfill quixotic desires of their own. Ah, that is my flaw, my good-hearted nature! I am too easily taken advantage of. I know the error of my ways, but I am too weak to help myself."
A psychic shiver rippled through the cave as Grantin again slipped the ring over his finger. An inaudible snap reverberated through the ether as the band contracted and once more affixed itself to his flesh. "There, now I've done it! Are you happy? Are you pleased? Are you overjoyed at the position into which you have maneuvered me? Very well, lead me to my death! Forward to horrible trials and tribulations! Onward into the very maw of evil--but don't say I didn't warn you!"
"Does he always act this way?" Castor whispered to Chom as they picked their way down the hill.
"Only when his conscience is bothering him," Chom whispered back. "But do not worry. Generally with Grantin that is a rare and short-lived event."
Having overheard the exchange, Grantin emitted a loud "Hrrumph!" and slipped into a black sulk for an entire fifteen minutes.
Chapter Forty-Four
Clerks scuttled busily up under the dome of Topor's market while over-deacons intent on sniffing out spells examined the walls. Below at the five doorways which led to the five stairways to the circular room above the market, ten of the Gogol lords' most vicious soldiers warily stood guard. By and by the frantic maneuverings of the clerks dwindled. The over-deacons expressed satisfaction at the absence of traps and talismans. The guards' narrowed eyes grew a fraction less suspicious. At last the appropriate coded signals were given and the five lords emerged from the steep-walled safety of the spoke roads leading to the Central Plaza.
