Текст книги "Island of Exiles "

Автор книги: Ingrid J. Parker

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outs of it myself, but Taketsuna wasn’t his real name, apparently.

Frankly, I never thought of him as anything but a gentleman,

and Masako . . .” He paused and sighed. “Masako is my daugh-

ter. She’s disappeared also. We’re at the end of our ropes, the

governor and I. Both of our children gone, heaven only knows

where. And now here you are, asking about Taketsuna.” He

shook his head sadly.

Tora thought respect for his betters was all very well, but

there were more important things at stake here. “Tell me what

happened to . . . this Taketsuna,” he demanded of Yamada.

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“We don’t know. He’s gone,” said Yamada. “In fact, he was

the first to disappear.”

Tora blinked. Gone? Perhaps not dead, then. “When, where,

and how?” he asked.

“Wait, Yamada,” said the governor. “We do not know

how much this young man knows. You have already said

too much.”

Tora closed his eyes and clenched his fists. Patience, he

reminded himself. He was on his own and he must not make

a mistake. Looking at the governor, he said, “Sir—Excellency—

do I take it that you have told Superintendent Yamada

about Yoshimine Taketsuna? I thought nobody was to know

besides you.”

The governor flushed and looked away. “Yamada is perfectly

safe,” he said. “You don’t understand my problems. After my

son escaped with the superintendent’s daughter, my people

refused to follow orders. Superintendent Yamada was the only

one with whom I could discuss the situation. He knows

that . . . Taketsuna was sent here to investigate my enemies.”

Tora felt more anger building inside him. “You shouldn’t

have done that, sir.”

Mutobe blustered weakly, “Who are you to tell me what I

can or cannot do, Lieutenant?”

Tora stiffened. “I’m Lord Sugawara’s personal retainer and

I’ll gladly die for him and his family. I don’t mind stepping on

anyone’s toes, provided I find him. So you’d better tell me what

you know, and hope he’s still alive. Your blabbing to everybody

about this may have cost him his life. And if it did, I’ll be back.”

His hand moved to the grip of his sword.

Mutobe paled. “I assure you . . . I had no occasion to tell

until after the incident. And then I only told Yamada. No

one else knows.”

“What incident?”

I s l a n d o f E x i l e s

251

“My son’s escape.” He bit his lip and glanced at Yamada.

“Toshito is innocent and fled to save his life. I had no hand in it but was instantly accused of having helped him, and now—”

Tora interrupted, “Yes, never mind. What about my master?”

“Ten days ago, Lord Sugawara was on his way back from

Tsukahara. I don’t know if he was successful in solving the case.

He never arrived. Of course I ordered a search, but we found

no trace of him. They say he escaped or joined with bandits

or pirates. With the trial just a day away, my son despaired and

fled, and after that I could do nothing more. I live here like

a prisoner now. The servants and the guards simply ignore my

orders. I don’t know if anyone is still looking for your master. I

do know they are looking for Toshito and Masako. And that

they’ll kill them if they find them.” He sagged and brushed a

hand over his eyes. Yamada wept openly.

Tora let out a slow breath. “All right,” he said. “I’ll find him

myself. Tell me everything he did up to the time he disappeared.”

Mutobe began the tale, with Yamada supplying what he

knew. The governor concluded, “That fool Osawa decided to

get married and left your master to travel the last leg of the

trip alone. Lord Sugawara disappeared on the road between

Tsukahara and Mano.”

“Or at that monastery,” said Tora. He was no friend of Bud-

dhist monasteries, remembering only too well a past encounter

with murderous monks.

Mutobe protested. “Our monks are very gentle and devout.

No, I know what must have happened. I’m convinced he

was caught by Kumo and the others who tried to pin the

murder of the prince on my son and me. I think he did solve

the case and was on his way back to clear us when they stopped

him.”

“If that’s true, then they knew his real identity.”

“Not from me,” said Mutobe sharply.

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Tora chewed his lip. It was possible that something else had

given the master away. He wished he could retrace his master’s

steps, but there was no time. “And you think this fellow Kumo’s

behind it?”

Mutobe nodded.

“Does he have soldiers?”

“No. That is not permitted. Kumo’s family lost all its privi-

leges. But he employs many people and is very wealthy. If he

wished to rebel, he could raise a small army very quickly.”

Tora wrestled with this for a moment. His background had

made him regard the privileged classes with suspicion, and his

instincts were on the side of men like Kumo who had risen

in spite of the opposition they faced. “From what you say, he

employs farmworkers, house servants, and the men who work

his mine. I don’t see any of those attacking my lord.”

Mutobe looked at him bleakly. “Why not? You see the situa-

tion I’m in. Kumo controls all of Sadoshima, even my head-

quarters and staff.”

Tora looked from Mutobe to Yamada. Yamada nodded his

head mournfully. No help here, Tora decided, and got to his feet.

“I’ll need a pass to travel without being stopped. There’s an ob-

noxious police officer in town who’s been threatening me al-

ready.” Suddenly it struck him that those threats were completely

irrational unless Wada knew or suspected why Tora had come,

and that must mean that he knew who Yoshimine Taketsuna

really was. The job no longer looked so hopeless after all.

The governor wrote out a safe-conduct, inked his seal, and

impressed it on the paper. Handing the pass to Tora, he said, “I

doubt it will do you much good, considering my position, but

you have my best wishes.” He glanced at Tora’s sword and

smiled a little. “Normally my guards would have taken that

from you, but it appears that I have become expendable. Be

careful and hold on to your sword. You may need it.”

I s l a n d o f E x i l e s

253

Tora stiffened into a snappy salute. “Thank you, Excellency.

If I come across news of your son or the young lady, I’ll let you

know.”

◆

Turtle was huddling in the shade of the tribunal wall and

jumped up when he saw Tora stepping through the gate.

“Whereto now, master?” he cried.

Tora blinked at the westering sun. The brightness from the

bay was blinding. Hmm,” he said. “It’s almost evening. How

about something to drink, Turtle? You know a quiet place where

one can have a good cup of wine without being bothered by

police? Preferably a place not owned by one of your relatives?”

“Oh, yes, master. Follow me.” Turtle hobbled off, grinning

happily.

Tora grinned, too. He liked being called master and he had

a plan.

Turtle took him to a noodle shop in one of the alleys behind

the market. This time of day, it was already crowded with farm-

ers and market women snatching a quick bowl of soup before

returning to their wares for the last sales of the day. Nobody

paid any attention to them. There was a line in front of an

immensely fat woman with a large iron kettle. She dipped out

the soup with a bamboo ladle and took their money. Turtle

whispered to her and she jerked her head toward the back.

They went to sit, Turtle at a little distance from Tora, and in

a moment she came and brought two bowls of noodle soup, a

large flask of wine, and two cups. Tora paid and poured for

himself. Then he sampled the soup.

“A cup of wine would go well after sitting in the dust outside

provincial headquarters,” Turtle hinted.

“No wine for you,” said Tora, smacking his lips. “Eat! I need

your advice.”

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Turtle’s eyes opened a little wider. He gobbled the soup and

moved closer. “Yes, master?”

Tora flinched away. “Why don’t you take a bath more often?”

“Water wears down a person’s skin, and then sickness gets

in. What you should do is rub plenty of oil on yourself to keep

your skin fat and thick. Ask me something else.”

“Idiot. What I meant is, you stink so bad you ruin a man’s

appetite. I want you to take a bath today. I’ll pay for it.”

Turtle’s face fell. “Please don’t make me, master. It’s my life

I’m risking,” he whined. “If you like, I’ll stop using the oil.”

“Oh, never mind. I’ll hold my breath. Now, here’s what I

want to know. That Lieutenant Wada, do you know where

he lives?”

Turtle nodded. “Inside the provincial headquarters.”

“Not good. Too many guards and soldiers about. What does

he do at night, after work?”

Turtle’s eyes got bigger. He rubbed his hands and grinned.

“You want to jump him in a dark alley, master? Beat him up

good, eh?”

Tora glanced around. Nobody was near them. “No. I want

to nab him.”

Turtle’s eyes almost popped out. “Oh, heavens! Oh, dear!

Oh, Buddha! If you do that, you’ll have to kill him or it’ll be

both our necks.”

“I may kill him if I have to. Now, how can I get him alone?”

Turtle leaned closer and whispered.

He whispered so long that Tora’s face turned red from hold-

ing his breath, but he started to smile, and reached for the flask

to fill Turtle’s cup.

C H A P T E R F I F T E E N

T H E M I N E

Later Akitada guessed that he had been in his grave for weeks.

Telling the days apart was impossible in a place where there was

no daylight. He gauged the passage of time by the visits of the

old crone with his food. Once a day she crept in with her

lantern, blinding him by shining it on his face, put down full

bowls of food and water, took up the empty ones, and left.

Before, he had existed blessedly somewhere between sleep

and unconsciousness. With the return of reason came confu-

sion, pain, fear, and panic. The total darkness made him think

he was blind until the stench of the stagnant, fetid air brought

the realization that he had been buried alive. And that discovery

had driven him back into a semiconscious state which resem-

bled dreams. Or in his case, nightmares.

The first time he thought his jailer was part of his hallucina-

tions. As he passed in and out of consciousness in this utterly

dark place, a distant clinking became the hammering of car-

penters, or the clicking of the gigcho ball when hit with its stick, 256

I . J . P a r k e r

or the tapping of the bamboo ladle against the stone water basin

in the shrine garden, each drawn from childhood memories

which took on a frightening, mad life of their own in his

dreams. Light and shadow also moved through his dreams, for

neither consciousness nor sleep could deal with impenetrable

darkness.

In the case of the old crone, a strange clanking and creaking

preceded her appearance. Then the darkness split into thin lines

of gold forming a rectangle which expanded suddenly into

blinding brightness. He closed his eyes in fear. A sour smell

reached his nose, and the sound of soft scraping his ears. Some-

thing clanked down dully beside him and an eerie voice

squawked, “Eat.”

He blinked then, cautiously, and there, not a foot from his

nose, a horrible goblin face hung in the murk made by the flick-

ering light reflected from black stonewalls. Long, shaggy, kinky

hair surrounded a moonlike visage dominated by a broad nose,

a wide mouth turned down at the corners, and small pale eyes

disappearing in folds of orange skin pitted and covered with

wens. She was female, he deduced from her voice only, and he

was glad when she turned her scrutiny and the light of the

lantern away and left him once again to the silence and darkness

of his grave.

But the intrusion of the goblin had marked a return to

awareness. After a while he overcame his nausea enough to feel

around for the bowl. When he lifted it to his face, it stank, but

the shaking weakness in his hands and wrists convinced him to

eat. It tasted slightly better than it smelled, and it was best not to think about the gristly, slimy bits in the thick soup. He had

managed about half of it before he vomited and fell back to

doze off again.

He slept a lot. Lack of food or his injuries were responsible

for that, and he was grateful for the oblivion because his waking

I s l a n d o f E x i l e s

257

moments were filled with terror. He was unbearably hot—

feverish?—and his grave was indescribably filthy. The stench of

urine and excrement mingled with the sour smell of vomit and

sweat. Why did they bother to feed him?

Why did he bother to eat? Yet after each visit, he would

raise himself on an elbow and make another effort. In time he

managed to keep down some of the food. In time he slept less

and was forced to take notice of his body, which remained stub-

bornly alive, adding periodically to the filth around him and

protesting against each movement with sharp pain.

He charted the pain as if his body were unknown territory

and he were taking gradual possession of it. Head and neck

at first seemed the worst, especially the back of his head. He

managed to turn it enough to avoid contact between the sorest

area and the hard stone. But twisting his neck brought on new,

lesser, but persistent pains. The other center of agony was his

right leg. He could not bend it, and a steady dull ache radiated

from hip to knee and from knee to ankle even when he was not

moving it. The rest was uncomfortable but did not take his

breath away at every move. As for his skin, apart from being

covered with sweat, almost every part of him was painful to the

touch, and there was an itching scab on his forehead.

At first he did not bother to think, to remember, to wonder

what had brought him to this state. But pain is a great stimula-

tor of thought. Pain will be recognized and acted upon. Pain has

nothing to do with dying, and everything to do with being alive.

You might wish you were dead, but pain fights blessed oblivion

and forces you into some sort of action.

The blinding ache in his head and the swelling on his skull

had no associations whatsoever, but when he thought about the

leg, touching it and encountering a grossly enlarged knee,

something clicked. A cudgel. Many cudgels in a forest clearing.

Wada’s constables. The mad escape attempt on the horse and

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I . J . P a r k e r

Wada with his sword raised high. Then nothing. Strange, he felt

no sword wounds, smelled no blood.

But wait. Someone else had been there. Kumo!

With Kumo’s image came the rest. So it had been Kumo all

along! And that raised the question: why was he still alive?

The fact that there was no satisfactory answer exercised him

for days, though he did more than think. During those days he

managed to explore his grave by touch, a very slow process

because of his weakness and injuries. He learned that it was

carved from solid rock, moist, and hard under his fingers, that

the rock floor was gritty and full of sharp bits of gravel. This

fact jarred his memory about the distant hammering, which

seemed to last for hours at a time. A stonemason might make

such sounds. Somewhere nearby people were chipping their

way into the rock.

He was in one of Kumo’s silver mines. For no logical reason

this discovery gave him new strength of will and curiosity.

He could not stand, so he was uncertain of the height of his

grave, but by careful rolling and shifting, he established that he

occupied a square slightly larger than he was, perhaps six feet by

six. Its only opening was barred by thick wooden planks, a door

of some sort that was only opened by the female goblin with his

food and water. The rock walls felt rough and were bare.

He moved away from the vomit and excrement to a clean

corner and took off most of his filthy clothes, using them to

clean himself with. The shirt he kept on. All of this took the best part of a day and required concentration and willpower, but

afterward he felt marginally better.

At some point he had begun to count the visits of his

wardress, but he soon became confused. He guessed she had

come ten times since he had first seen her. But how much time

had passed before, he did not know. He wondered if someone

was looking for him. Surely Mutobe would have sent out search

I s l a n d o f E x i l e s

259

parties to comb the island from one end to the other. But they

would scarcely look for him underground.

In his blackest moments he thought of Tamako, his wife.

And of his baby son. Of old Seimei, who had been both father

and mother to him. Of Tora, with his ready smile and his eager-

ness to be of service. Surely Tora would come to find him.

Dear heaven, where was this mine? Kumo’s secretary had

said the mines were in the northern mountains. Not too far

from Mano, then. Two weeks, perhaps more, had passed. On a

small island like Sadoshima that meant he was hidden too well

to be found. Only his jailers knew he was still alive.

He forced his mind away from the present and thought

of the conspiracy. Okisada, Taira, Sakamoto, Nakatomi, and

Kumo. As unlikely a group of rebels as he had ever encountered.

The prince, of course, had rebelled before, and Taira supported

him. But Sakamoto, a fussy professor who spent his nights get-

ting drunk in Haru’s restaurant, was hardly a useful ally. Nor

was Nakatomi, who had neither the rank nor the education

of the others, though he appeared greedy enough for the spoils.

At best, these two were minor players. Kumo was different.

Though he was without ties to the capital, he had enough

wealth and local power to make their grandiose plot feasible.

He had been playing for control of Sadoshima, just as Mutobe

had charged.

The plot failed when the prince had killed himself, yet the

conspiracy had continued and was still continuing, or Akitada

would not be here. The vengeful Genzo had provided Kumo

with Akitada’s papers, proving that his suspicions of the convict

Taketsuna had been correct. Treason was punishable by death in

one of its more painful forms, and that explained why Kumo

had ordered Akitada captured. But it explained nothing else.

When Akitada was not thinking about Kumo, he exercised

his body. He began by stretching his limbs and moving all but his

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I . J . P a r k e r

injured leg regularly and repeatedly. The slop he ate, unappetiz-

ing though it was, gradually brought back some strength so that

the enervating trembling stopped and he was less light-headed.

The pain was still with him, but head and neck improved until

he could sit up and lean against the rock. His right leg did not get better. He feared that he was permanently crippled, for however

much he tried to bend his knee, he could not do it. Still he per-

sisted, over and over again, gritting his teeth against the pain as he massaged the swollen flesh, and wondered why he bothered.

The day he pushed himself up against the wall and stood

upright for the first time, the goblin caught him. He heard her

at the plank door, but did not manage to get back down because

of his stiff leg. When she saw him, she shrieked and disap-

peared, slamming the door behind her.

He took a deep breath and made himself slide along the

rock toward the door. The right leg hurt abominably every time

he put his weight on it, but he needed only a few steps. When his

fingers touched wood, they were wet with sweat, and his eyes

burned with perspiration. Still he pushed and pulled on the

door. But it was locked. He felt all around and above it. The ceil-

ing was barely a foot above his head at its highest point, but the

door was much lower, so that he would have to bend to get out.

He was still leaning against the door when he heard them

and saw the light again. In a panic, he tried to get away from the

door too fast. Pain, hot like scalding water, shot up and down

his right leg and he fell. The door, when it flew open, struck his

foot, and Akitada writhed in agony.

They had no trouble at all with him after that. The three

men made quick work of tying him up with a thick rope. The

goblin held a burning torch for them, and later he was to re-

member the scene like something from a painting of hell, with

himself the tortured soul about to be fed to the flames. Then the

door clanked shut and he was alone again.

I s l a n d o f E x i l e s

261

Things were immeasurably worse than before. His wrists

were lashed together behind his back, and the rope continued to

his ankles, which were also tied together. Not only did the rope

restrict his circulation, but he was now in an arched position

causing continuous pain to both his neck and injured leg.

He also could no longer feed himself. The goblin had left his

soup and water within reach, but he was lying down and his

hands were tied. Eventually ravenous hunger drove him to

stretch enough so that he could lap like a dog, covering his face

and beard with food, dirtying his water.

Why did they not just make an end of him? What was he

being saved for?

After a while, he resorted again to taking his mind off his

condition by concentrating on other things. He was not entirely

successful in this, because the moment he cast his mind back

to his family and pictured himself with his wife and child,

or practicing stick-fighting with Tora, he would be seized by

despair. Even the playing of an imaginary flute did not work

any longer. Eventually he turned his thoughts again to the

events in Sadoshima.

The trial must be long over by now, its outcome surely a

guilty verdict without Akitada’s information. Had Toshito

been taken to the capital or quickly executed in Mano? And

what about his father? Mutobe would hardly remain governor.

Perhaps father and son had been taken off the island together.

That would account for the lack of interest in the disappearance

of the convict Taketsuna. And even if Mutobe reported in the

capital, help would not reach Akitada in time.

All his thoughts tended to the same dismal conclusion. More

time passed. Nothing happened, except that now when the gob-

lin brought his food and water she was accompanied by a short,

burly man with the same long matted hair and a long curly

beard. The man carried a cudgel and wore some sort of fur. Once

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Akitada tried to speak to them, begging to have the rope loos-

ened a little, but he was ignored. They communicated only with

each other in strange grunts and left again as soon as possible.

It came to him then that they must be Ezo. He had seen

people of mixed Japanese and Ezo blood. But these were full-

blooded Ezo. That accounted for their curly hair, their strange

light eyes, the fur clothing, and their guttural language. If his

guards knew that he was an official in the service of the em-

peror, they would have little pity for him.

He suddenly wondered if he was being kept alive because

they planned to ransom him. Perhaps he would go home after

all, home to hold his wife and child, home to breathe the clean

air, home to become human again.

That hope brought such relief that he relaxed in spite of his

miserable condition and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

But waking up in the same hot, stinking darkness cured

him quickly of ridiculous hopes. He had forgotten Kumo, the

man who had put him here, as well as the fact that no ransom

payment would be made for him. His family certainly had

nothing to trade for his life. And the imperial government

would hardly raise a large amount of gold or trade territory for

a junior official who had so signally failed in his assignment.

Knowing how powerful his enemies at court were, and how lit-

tle his superiors thought of his ability, he doubted they would

even negotiate on his behalf. So it would only be a matter of

time before either Kumo or the Ezo got rid of him.

When the goblin and her companion brought his food, he

looked at them more closely. Both creatures looked brutish, but

they seemed indifferent to him as a person. There was no par-

ticular animosity in the way they treated him, just caution and

dull obedience to orders.

In spite of an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, he ate.

Life was extraordinary. The more someone tried to crush it out

I s l a n d o f E x i l e s

263

of you, the harder you struggled to stay alive. There was neither

honor nor pride in this persisting. Chained in the bowels of the

earth, lying in your own filth, and lapping food from a bowl like

a dog, you were nothing. Yet you clung to life.

One faculty distinguishes a man from a trapped animal:

his reason. Akitada spent the waking hours thinking. What, for

example, were Ezo doing working in this mine? They had been

subjugated everywhere except in Hokkaido. Their presence lent

some credence to the fears that had brought the imperial secre-

taries first to Sadoshima and then to him. Okisada and/or Kumo

had formed some sort of alliance with the warlords of Dewa or

Mutsu, strongholds of the subjugated Ezo. Their territories were

only a short ship’s journey away. Aided by a rebel Ezo army and

funded by Kumo’s wealth, the traitors could march on the capi-

tal to place their candidate Okisada on the throne. No doubt the

Ezo lords had been promised whole provinces as reward for their

help. Such an alliance had happened before when Koreharu had

rebelled. It had taken decades to subdue the uprising.

But then the prince had died, and an extraordinary thing

must have happened next. Kumo had apparently stepped

into Okisada’s place. With Mutobe out of the way, he would

take over the government of Sadoshima and from there join the

rebel army and attack the northern provinces of Japan. He

could hardly claim the throne by birth, but other possibilities

were terrible enough. Because of his carelessness Akitada had

failed to stop him. Even if, by a miracle, he survived this ordeal, and even if Kumo’s rebellion was crushed, there would be no

future for him anywhere.

He fretted over his helplessness and became so discouraged

that he stopped eating, and even the simple act of breathing

seemed an intolerable burden.

It seemed particularly bad one night, or day, when he

awoke, choking and gasping for air. After a moment he realized

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that he was breathing smoke, dense, acrid, throat-searing

smoke. As if being buried alive were not enough, he was appar-

ently about to be cremated alive.

But he was wrong. Just when he was about to give up the

pointless struggle, they came for him.

They cut the ropes and dragged him out of his grave and

back into fresh air, life, and time.

It was nighttime outside, a chill, wet mountain night with a

slight drizzle falling. They dumped Akitada somewhere near a

tree and ran back.

Akitada did not know this and, had he known, he could not

have taken advantage of the perfect opportunity for escape. He

wanted nothing but breath after breath of clean air. He lay on

his belly on the wet ground, shaking with the sudden cold after

weeks in his grave, and coughed in great wrenching spasms. The

moisture in the air he gulped made him aware of a great thirst.

He was breathing water, he thought. He was drowning in sweet-

smelling water. Pressing his face and lips into the rain-drenched

moss, he sucked up the moisture and wished he could stop

shaking and coughing, and just let himself float in the moist,

clean air.

His coughing stopped after a while. He rolled himself into a

ball against the chill and opened his eyes. In the light of torches and lanterns, men darted back and forth, their shadows moving

grotesquely against the cliff face. Others lay about, inert or

barely moving. He thought belatedly of escape, but collapsed af-

ter the first attempt to rise. After that he sat, staring around him, thankful for the air—much cleaner than any he had breathed in

weeks, dizzyingly clean—and enthralled by the visual spectacle

after all the time spent in darkness.

A fire in a mine is deadly not because there is much to burn.

Later Akitada was to learn that there were only the notched tree

trunks the miners used to ascend and descend between shafts,

I s l a n d o f E x i l e s

265

and baskets and some straw and hemp rope to raise and lower

the baskets, and the many small oil lamps and occasional

torches with which they lit their way through the tunnels. A fire

might start easily if oil was spilled on rope and somehow

ignited, but it was the smoke that did the damage. The smoke

had nowhere to go and seeped through the tunnels, choking

the men.

Eventually Akitada thought of the filth caking his skin and

took off the sodden rag of a shirt. Pressing it against the wet

moss and then scrubbing himself with it was exhausting work,

but he felt better afterward. Sitting there, stark naked in the chill mountain air, he looked around for something to cover himself

with. No one paid attention to him. He crawled over to one of

the still bodies. The man was dead, his eyes rolled back into his

head and his face black with soot, but his clothes, a cotton shirt

and a pair of short pants, were almost dry because he lay under

a tree. Akitada managed to take the shirt and pants off the

corpse and put them on himself. But the effort was all he could

manage. He collapsed beside the dead man and fell into a brief

sleep of exhaustion.

He woke when the goblin and her companion wrapped a

chain around his waist and attached it to the tree. It was loose

enough to allow short steps if he could have stood up. His hands

were tied in front with rope, so that he was much more com-

fortable than in the mine. The corpse was gone, tossed on top of

a couple others. Akitada spent the rest of that wet cold night

leaning against the tree trunk, alternately shivering and dozing,

too weak and tired to take notice of the dark figures milling

about and the coarse shouts and cracks of whips.

The rain stopped at dawn when blessed light returned, a

gray and filtered light here under the tree on a cloudy morn-

ing, but that, too, was a blessing, for his eyes were no longer

used to sun. The goblin returned with a bowl of food. He ate it

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I . J . P a r k e r

gratefully, sitting up and lifting the bowl to his mouth like a

man instead of an animal. It took so little now to please him.

But the distinction between men and beasts began to blur

again as he saw his surroundings. They were somewhere in the

mountains, fairly high up. Before him was a wide, open space

covered with rubble and stone dust and ragged creatures. Ahead

rose a cliff perforated by many holes, some only large enough

for a small animal to enter, some—like the one from which he