Текст книги "The Wide World's End"

Автор книги: James Enge

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

“Yes, Lady. I will, Lady. May I use my young messengers?”

“No, your successor will need their services.”

“Very well, Lady Regent.”

There was a brief silence.

“Prince Uthar Olthon,” Ambrosia said gently.

“Yes, Lady?”

“Where is King Lathmar?”

“I—” Olthon sighed and got to his feet. “Your pardon, gentles,” he muttered, and left the booth.

“I feel like a walk, myself,” Ambrosia said. “Won’t you join me, my friends?”

They filed out of the booth’s narrow door into Uthartown. Ambrosia strode alongside Morlock, and Deor and Kelat walked behind.

It was strange for Deor to look on the decent-sized village and know that everyone (or almost everyone) in it was named Uthar, and that each Uthar was also the son of the demented old man he had just met. There were a pair of decrepit old geezers playing drafts—sitting on the ground between a couple of booths, with a board scratched into the dirt and chunks of rock for counters.

“Haha, Uthar! King me, you bitch of a bitch’s bastard!” crowed one of the relics.

“I’ll king you with this,” replied his opponent, briefly grabbing his sagging trousers at the crotch.

These princes looked far more decrepit than their father. But some of their half-brothers were playing naked in the mud nearby. Deor was no judge of human pups, but he guessed these were two or three years old at most.

“Lady Ambrosia,” said Deor, “can you explain to me about all these Uthars?”

“The next king must be named Uthar, so—”

“I do understand that,” Deor interrupted, earning a respectful look from Kelat. “But is it quite usual in the unguarded lands for a man to have hundreds of children?”

“Well, that’s my fault, I suppose,” Ambrosia admitted.

“Madam,” said Deor, not knowing what else to say.

Ambrosia looked back at Deor and then quizzically at Morlock. “He fears there may be some scandal,” Morlock explained.

“Oh? Well, it’s not scandalous. A long time ago—well, Lathmar and I, we helped each other out of a tight place.”

“Doesn’t sound less scandalous,” Morlock observed.

“Shut up. I assure you, Deortheorn, he was too old for me, even then. But I owed him a favor, and what he wanted in repayment was an extended lifespan. He felt he had no heir worthy of the crown, which was true enough, and he wanted to conquer an empire in the wide world beyond the Vale of Vraid. I managed to arrange it. But the effects left him—well, they left him rather single-minded. That was eighty-seven years ago, almost to the day.”

“Ah.”

“Things were going well enough, though. He might have seen a capable son carry his dream closer to its conclusion. Until the world began to die, and we had to turn our energies to survival.”

“How are you and the Vraids doing?” Deor asked. “Our journey through the Lacklands was grim indeed.”

“Morlock told me some of it. Other parts I can guess. Yes, those lands are pretty well empty. The farmers there would not change their ways. Some crops respond better to the shorter growing year—there are greenhouses and other resources. And it has been a pretty good year for mushrooms, if you can tell the good from the bad. The sea is not much harmed yet, though some waters have been over-fished.”

“So your Vraids are more adaptable?”

“Not really, but they follow orders, you see, which is close enough, where I’m concerned.”

Kelat grumbled, but nobody took his bait.

“Here’s Prince Uthar-Null,” Ambrosia remarked. “Greetings, Vice-Regent!”

Walking toward them up the unpaved street was Prince Uthar-Null, a man about a half-century old with a long, clever face and a long, thin beard and a fringe of silver hair around a shining pink scalp. Next to him walked young Uthar Glennit, whose shining eyes were fixed on Lady Ambrosia.

“Vice-Regent am I now?” asked long-suffering Uthar-Null. “Well, it sounds better than Mayor of Uthar-Town. What are my duties?”

“Every one of mine until I return. I have to go on a trip west and south, and then, it may be, to the far north. Keep a lid on things here for me, eh?”

“I’ll try.” Uthar-Null pointed with a disdainful thumb towards the sun. “Something about that?”

“Maybe.”

“Good. Good. If anyone can do anything about it, you can.”

“We’ll try. This is my brother, Morlock Ambrosius, by the way: Prince Uthar-Null, Morlock.”

They clasped hands.

“And me,” Deor said, coming around Morlock’s side. “Deor syr Theorn, at your service.”

He grabbed Uthar-Null’s proffered hand, although that wasn’t really a dwarvish custom.

“Theorn, eh?” said Uthar-Null shrewdly. “You’ve come a long way from the Deep Halls under Thrymhaiam.”

“Well worth it, sir. I never thought to see so many Uthars in my life.”

“Nightmarish, isn’t it? What the next king will do with them all is beyond my telling.”

“What’s traditional?”

“A quiet execution of rival heirs was apparently not unheard of. I don’t think any one of us will stoop to that. But they say that kingship does strange things to the mind.”

“And—pardon me for asking—why are you Null?”

“Many of us are Null,” Uthar-Null said without apparent offense. “It means we are no longer in the succession. Therefore we can wield certain types of power and also marry and have children of our own, which is a great comfort I sometimes think.”

“Only sometimes? Never mind: we do things differently under Thrymhaiam.”

“And in the Endless Empire under the Blackthorns also, I believe,” Uthar-Null said politely.

“Listen, Prince Uthar-Null,” Ambrosia began.

“Madam.”

“I’m going to bring an Uthar along with me. Morlock suggests young Kelat, here. I thought you might tell him your thoughts on the subject.”

“Ah.” Uthar-Null’s clever brown eyes looked with concern at Kelat, glowering in Ambrosia’s shadow. “Perhaps Prince Uthar would care to step aside.”

“I would not,” said Kelat. “And don’t call me Prince Uthar.”

“Sir,” said the Vice-Regent, addressing himself to Morlock, “the Prince Uthar under discussion—”

“Arrrrrrrgh!”

“—the Prince Uthar under discussion is ill-tempered and unpredictable. He is intelligent but disobedient. He is brave but undisciplined. His every virtue has a vice. I would not trust him to carry a message to my mother, and I do not care very much about sending messages to that horrible old woman.”

“He drew a blade on me just now,” Ambrosia remarked.

“He did?” Uthar-Null looked sharply at his half-brother. “Why?”

“To defend Uthar Olthon.”

“Olthon? But they hate each other!”

“Yes.”

Uthar-Null threw up his hands and said to Morlock, “You see it, sir? He is not reliable, even in his hatred. Can you trust a man like that on a long road? I ask you.”

Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders, and Uthar-Null glanced aside, his features twisting with distaste.

“If it is up to me,” Morlock said to Ambrosia, “I still prefer Kelat.”

“It is not up to you, brother. This is my domain and my word is law, under the King’s. However, in this instance, I think you’re right.” She turned and spoke to the prince standing behind her. “Uthar Kelat, go to your booth and pack up some things for the trip. Bring some warm clothes.”

He stood there blinking at her, and she said kindly, “Hurry, now. This is your adventure. You don’t want to miss part of it.”

Kelat’s look of adoration almost matched Glennit’s. He turned quickly away and ran up the narrow dirty street, dense with Uthars.

“Uthar Glennit, my prince,” said Ambrosia.

“Yes, my lady,” said Glennit like it was a prayer.

“You are now the censor of Uthartown. Take up Olthon’s old post, or do the job however you see fit.”

“Thank you, my lady!”

“Don’t do that. It’s a horrible job. Soon we’ll find you one more worthy of your talents. Or the world will end, and it won’t matter.”

Glennit went down on one knee in the filth of the street and made a fist with his right hand over his heart. Then he jumped to his feet and ran away without speaking, tears running down his face.

Ambrosia and Uthar-Null watched him go, both smiling.

“You see him as the new king, don’t you?” Uthar-Null said confidentially.

“Little Glennit? Not in ten thousand years of seasoning. Oh, he will be a great man in the new empire, but not the greatest. A king needs a little orneriness in him. Morlock here might be a good one—”

Morlock grunted irritably at this blasphemy.

“—if he could bring himself to talk in words like a person. My friend, I made your half-brother Olthon the King’s keeper. The old man really can’t be allowed to wander around embarrassing everybody anymore.”

“True, true. A good choice. Olthon is always minding someone else’s business. Might as well put his one talent to good use.”

“That’s a good deal of the art of kingship, my friend. You’d’ve been a good one, if you hadn’t chickened out and gone null.”

“Never would have lived long enough, lady. Besides, I love my wife. Have you ever been in love?”

“Only with power, Prince Uthar-Null. Morlock, Deor, let’s see what we can do to outfit you for the journey ahead. Our wealth is slender these days, but we have some dwarf-made goods from the Endless Empire that may meet your finicky standards.”

“We aren’t going to be riding the Hippogriff, are we?” Deor said with some concern.

“That rattletrap quadricycle beast you three rode in on? Fate and Chaos! No. Never, never.”

“Horses, I suppose? Very small, very gentle horses?”

“What? No. From what Morlock tells me, I think we’ll travel by galley. Have one ready for us, won’t you, Vice-Regent?”

The implications of this slowly sunk into Deor’s imagination.

“A galley is a boat? To go across the water?”

“Yes.”

Deor groaned. “Maybe I should go home and see how Aloê is doing? I promise to write.”

“Nonsense,” said Ambrosia. “We need your sage advice and high spirits.”

“I wish I was dead. Or the both of you were. I hate this trip. Each leg is worse than the last. Well, at least it can’t get any worse than this.”

Morlock shrugged and said nothing. But it was the way he said it.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Intruder in the Death House

The long ride back to Big Rock gave Aloê a lot of time to think and Ulvana a lot of time to talk.

Aloê hardly noticed the talking. She only noticed when it stopped. Occasionally she would glance over to see Ulvana looking at her with a patient smile.

“I’m sorry,” she said the first time, but Ulvana said, “No matter. I know there’s much on your mind. If you’d like to talk it out. . . . But maybe you don’t do that.”

Aloê would have loved to do that, and Ulvana seemed a sympathetic and intelligent listener. But the matter in hand had some very dark elements she could trust to no one. She smiled and shook her head.

They rode onward. Ulvana prattled onward. Aloê thought onward.

The crux of the matter was this: the killer was almost certainly a member of the Graith of Guardians. She was still hoping that there was a Person Unknown to blame—someone else besides Kelat and the Khnauronts who had entered the Wardlands when the Wards were shattered. It was not impossible.

But! Such a person would not have been part of the dragon Rulgân’s plan. And he or she would have had to know about the plan in advance to take advantage of it. And he or she would have had to know where Earno would be on a given day, or within a range of days, assuming Earno was not a target of opportunity.

She hoped he was. But she did not believe he was. And Earno’s habit of carrying a message sock gave the Graith, or at least some of its members, the knowledge of where he was every day.

Perhaps it was someone, some rogue magic-worker with a grudge against Earno who had gotten the information out of some innocent belonging to the Graith. She kept her mind open to this possibility, too—would welcome any sign leading in that direction.

But the most likely explanation was that Earno had been murdered by someone in the Graith. She would have trusted three people enough to talk it over with: Thea, who was dead, or Morlock and Deor, who were in the unguarded lands. So she would keep her own counsel for the present.

But her next step was clear: find out who knew that Earno would be travelling down the Road at this time. Many in the Northhold certainly. Fewer in the south. She would start there, in A Thousand Towers. Who had Earno written? Who knew of the messages? What were the messages? That would get her started.

And she would scrutinize those spell-anchors. One could not work a magic like that without leaving any traces of one’s identity on the instruments of the spell. She might need help with that. She thought she would trust Noreê with that, although that bore thinking about.

And so she thought and thought.

They came at last in the evening to Big Rock, and Aloê took some comfort in the thought that she could sleep in her horrible little closet-sized room rather than in a bed soiled by the sweat of a perfumed woodcutter.

“I should go see to the incineration of Earno’s corpse,” she said to Ulvana.

“Surely tomorrow. . . .”

“No, his family has waited long enough. If I burn it tonight, I can send the ashes to his people tomorrow at first light.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Thanks. I’ve been a dull companion, I’m afraid.”

“Silence is a skill I should learn,” Ulvana said good-humoredly. “So my father always used to say, at any rate.”

Aloê said something rude about Ulvana’s father and the Arbiter laughed.

Big Rock was no metropolis, but it did have a death house with a furnace for cremating corpses. Ulvana led Aloê to the place, not far from the inn and the Arbiter’s House.

One of the Arbiter’s servants was sitting glumly on the porch of the death house. He saluted them wordlessly as they approached.

“Dull work, Gyllen?” Ulvana said briskly.

“Sad work, Arbiter. We didn’t used to get so many bodies around here.”

“It’s truth,” the Arbiter admitted, and clapped him on the shoulder as they passed.

They entered the dim atrium of the death house, lit by a single coldlight. There were two biers set up on trestles, a body covered with a shroud on each one.

“Someone must have died while we were out of town,” Ulvana said, concerned. “I didn’t know anyone was ailing.”

Aloê was not completely indifferent to the death of strangers, but she had a great deal of work to do before she slept that night. Still, she suppressed her impatience. Big Rock was a small town, and Ulvana likely knew, possibly had loved, this dead person in life. She forced herself to be still and silent as Ulvana went to uncover the two bodies.

The first was Earno: still dead. Deader than ever, in fact: the reek in the death house was dense enough to bottle and sell as an emetic. A capable necrophor would have established a stasis spell over the body to prevent corruption, but perhaps Oluma had better ways to occupy her time.

Then Ulvana drew back the second shroud and cried out. Aloê moved forward in an instinctive impulse to comfort her, then froze when she saw the face of the second corpse.

It was Oluma.

Aloê cursed violently. She ran over to the bier and hurriedly examined the body. Dead for a day or more, she guessed from the slackness of the limbs. She had been stabbed in the back: the wound stood out like a pair of bloody lips, gaping to reveal her back ribs, shattered by the blow.

“A long knife or a sword blade,” Ulvana speculated.

Aloê said nothing to that but ran to the Arbiter’s servant seated gloomily on the front steps.

“Who brought the corpse of Oluma here?” she demanded from him.

He looked up at her in astonishment. He stood up to face her but did not speak.

“Answer her, Gyllen!” Ulvana commanded.

“I did, Arbiter,” the servant replied, choosing to speak to Ulvana instead.

“Couldn’t you see she’d been murdered, you fool!” Aloê raged at him.

“We don’t get many murders up around here.”

“Chaos in bright underwear! There are two murdered bodies in there right now! How many more do you want before you consider this serious?”

“I. . . .” The servant was confused. He looked at the Arbiter but evidently saw no help there. “I don’t have much experience in this sort of thing. What does it matter, anyway?”

Every time Aloê thought she’d reached the pinnacle of rage, this idiot said something that pushed her higher up the slope.

“You might find it matters to you,” she said grimly, “if the vengeance of the Graith falls upon your neck, Gyllen.”

“But—”

“Shut up.” Aloê turned to Ulvana. “May I have the services of this creature for an hour or two? I need to go out to the new murder scene. If it can be found.”

“I know where it is,” Gyllen said with some show of dignity.

“Shut up.”

“As long as you need him, Guardian,” Ulvana said. “Then, Gyllen, you and I will talk.”

“I’ll need my other second as well—Binder Denynê. Where is she?”

“Am I allowed to speak?” asked Gyllen bitterly.

“Don’t get righteous with me, you quivering pimple. If you know where my other second is, just tell me.”

“She never came back to town.”

“What?” Aloê cried.

“She never—”

Aloê turned away from his flat, empty mushroom of a face and ran all the way to the Big Rock House. The bald householder was enjoying the spring weather with a mug of hot cider in front of the fire in the common room.

“Goodman Parell,” said Aloê, “is Binder Denynê in this house? Have you seen her recently?”

“Not for a day or two,” the householder replied. “She rode out of town with you, I thought.”

“If she returns, send her to find me at the Chamber of the Graith in A Thousand Towers.”

“Are you leaving us, then?”

“I’m afraid so—a thousand thanks for your courtesy.”

“Won’t you eat something before you ride? We—”

“Can’t! Thanks! Goodbye!”

She ran back to the death house, where Ulvana was having some quiet words with her servant.

“. . . not if you expect to amount to anything in the Arbitrate!” she concluded forcefully as Aloê came up to them.

“Arbiter Ulvana,” said Aloê, “I am sorry to leave you with my work to do, but I must move like a riptide if I am to have a chance of catching this killer.”

“Say what you need, Guardian. I’m ashamed to say we haven’t been much use to you up until now.”

“Can you find someone to put a stasis over both these bodies, and put a guard over them until I send further word?”

“Easily. Is that really all, my friend?”

Aloê was so lonely, trapped within her thoughts and suspicions like a beast swimming in an empty sea, that the last word stabbed right through her. She seized Ulvana’s hand and said, “I’m glad we’re friends. It’s my fault we haven’t been for the last hundred years. But it won’t be my fault if we’re not for the next hundred.”

“Good hunting, Aloê,” Ulvana said, smiling. “And you, Gyllen, mind what I said.”

Aloê mounted her horse and Gyllen climbed unskillfully onto the Arbiter’s. At her motion, he led the way out of town, southward on the Road.

The murder scene was at the first milestone they came to. Gyllen dismounted there and pointed sullenly at a patch of grass behind the stone.

Aloê dismounted and got a coldlight from her bag. She tapped it against the milestone and it sprang into luminous life. She looked closely at the patch of ground.

Yes: someone had bled deeply here. The imprint of the body was clear in the deep, dry grass. And . . . and. . . .

She bent down and scooped up what she saw glittering there next to the bloodstain.

A spell-anchor. Like the spell-anchors she and Denynê had recovered from Earno’s body—Denynê who had taken those anchors with her—Denynê who was now missing.

Was this truly one of those seven anchors? Or just one that looked like them? Had it fallen here by accident or been left here by design? More damn questions. She was sick of them.

It didn’t look like the murderer had gone away through the grass on the side of the Road. Why should they? The murderer had no doubt stepped away from Oluma’s corpse and walked or ridden wherever they chose along the Road.

If Aloê was right, her next stop was A Thousand Towers: to find out who had the knowledge of when Earno was passing this way. Somehow she thought the killer was down there, too. Predatory beasts hide in deep waters after a kill. Murderers would hide in a city.

“Gyllen, I am done with you,” she said. “If you are lucky, we won’t meet again.”

“What difference does a death or two make?” Gyllen said sullenly. “The world is ending, and soon we’ll all die. We should be making ships to cross the Sea of Worlds, not looking for bloody footprints.”

“The next bloody footprint you see,” said Aloê, “will be mine—across your face.”

She mounted her palfrey and rode away southward.

The poor beast couldn’t travel much farther tonight, but she didn’t want to return to Big Rock. She would sleep beside the Road. She would add to her arsenal of questions. And when she got to A Thousand Towers, she would damned well find some answers.