“What about the others? Who are they, then?”
“I thought you wanted to learn about yourself, not others.” She leaned toward him with a countenance of supreme self-confidence. “Other people don’t really matter to you, now do they?”
Oba glared at her private smile. “I guess not.”
She rattled the single stone in her loose fist. Without looking away from his eyes, she cast the stone down at the board. Lightning flickered. The stone tumbled across the board, rolling to a stop out beyond the outer gilded circle. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“So,” he asked, “what does it mean?”
Rather than answer, and without looking down, she scooped up the stone. Her gaze didn’t move off his face as she rattled his stone again. Again, and without a word, she cast it at the board. Lightning flashed. Amazingly, the stone came to rest in the same place as it had the first time—not just close to the same place, but in the exact same place. Rain drummed against the roof as a stutter of thunder crackled through the swamp.
Althea quickly swept up the stone and cast it a third time, again accompanied by a flash of lightning, only this time the lightning was closer. Oba licked his lips as he waited for the fall of the stone that represented him.
Goose bumps ran up his arms as he saw the dark little stone roll to a stop in the same place on the board as it had the two previous times. The instant it had halted, thunder boomed.
Oba put his hands on his knees and leaned back. “Some trick.”
“Not a trick,” she said. “Magic.”
“I thought you couldn’t do magic.”
“I can’t.”
“Then how are you doing that?”
“I told you, I’m not doing it. The stones are doing it themselves.”
“Well, then, what’s it supposed to mean about me when it stops, there, in that place?”
He realized that somewhere during the stone-rolling, her smile had gone away. One graceful finger, lit by the firelight, pointed down to where his stone lay.
“That place represents the underworld,” she said in a grim voice. “The world of the dead.”
Oba tried to look only mildly interested. “What does that have to do with me?”
Her big dark eyes wouldn’t stop boring into his soul. “That’s where the voice comes from, Oba.”
Goose bumps flitted up his arms. “How do you know my name?”
She cocked her head, casting half her face in deep shadow. “I made a mistake, once, long ago.”
“What mistake?”
“I helped save your life. Helped your mother get you away from the palace before Darken Rahl could find out that you existed and kill you.”
“Liar!” Oba snatched up the stone from the board. “I’m his son! Why would he want to kill me!”
She hadn’t taken her penetrating gaze from him. “Maybe because he knew you would listen to the voices, Oba.”
Oba wanted to cut out her terrible eyes. He would cut them out. He thought it best, though, if he found out more, first, if he gathered his courage, first.
“You were a friend of my mother?”
“No. I didn’t really know her. Lathea knew her better. Your mother was but one young woman among several who were in trouble and a great deal of danger. I helped them, that’s all. For that, Darken Rahl crippled me. If you choose not to believe the truth about his intentions toward you, then I leave it to you to please yourself with a different answer of your own devising.”
Oba considered her words, checking them for any connection they might have to anything on his lists. He didn’t find any links right off.
“You and Lathea helped the children of Darken Rahl?”
“My sister Lathea and I were at one time very close. We were both committed, each in our own way, to helping those in need. But she came to resent those like you, offspring of Lord Rahl, because of the agony it caused me to have tried to help. She could not bring herself to witness my punishment and pain. She left.
“It was a weakness on her part, but I knew she could not help having such feelings. I loved her, so I would not beg her to visit me, here, like this, despite how terribly I missed her. I never saw her again. It was the only kindness I could do her—let her run away. I would imagine she did not look kindly upon you. She had her reasons, even if they were misdirected.”
Oba was not about to be talked into any sympathy for that hateful woman. He inspected the dark stone for a time and then gave it back to Althea.
“Those three were just luck. Do it again.”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I did it a hundred times.” She handed the stone back. “You do it. Cast it yourself.”
Oba defiantly rattled the stone in his loose fist, as he had seen her do. She leaned back against her chair as she watched him. Her eyes were getting droopy.
Oba threw the stone down at the board with enough force to be certain that it would roll well beyond the board and prove her wrong. As the stone left his hand, lightning flashed so hard that he flinched and looked up, fearing it was blasting through the roof. Thunder crashed on its heels, shaking the house. The strike felt like it rattled his bones. But then it was over and the only sound was the rain drumming against the undamaged roof and windows.
Oba grinned in relief and looked down, only to see the cursed stone sitting in the exact same place it had come to rest the three times before.
He jumped up as if he’d been bitten by a snake. He rubbed his sweating palms against his thighs.
“A trick,” he said. “It’s just a trick. You’re a sorceress and you’re just doing magic tricks.”
“You are the one who has done the trick, Oba. You are the one who invited his darkness into your soul.”
“And what if I have!”
She smiled at his admission. “You may listen to the voice, Oba, but you are not the one. You are merely his servant, no more. He must choose another if he is to bring darkness upon the world.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Oh, but I do. You may be a hole in the world, but you are missing a necessary ingredient.”
“And what would that be?”
“Grushdeva.”
Oba felt the hair at the back of his neck stiffen. While he didn’t recognize the specific word, the source was indisputable. The idiosyncratic nature of the word belonged solely to the voice.
“A senseless word. It means nothing.”
She regarded him for a time with a look that he feared because it seemed to hold a world of forbidden knowledge. By the cast of iron resolve in her eyes, he knew that no mere blade would gain that knowledge for him.
“A long time ago, in a faraway place,” she said in her quiet voice, “another sorceress revealed to me a bit of the Keeper’s tongue. That is one of his words, in his primordial language. You would not have heard it unless you were the right one.
Grushdeva
. It means ‘vengeance.’ You are not the one he has chosen.”
Oba thought she might be taunting him. “You don’t know what words I’ve heard or anything about it. I’m the son of Darken Rahl. A rightful heir. You don’t know anything about what I hear. I will have power you can only imagine.”
“Free will is forfeit when dealing with the Keeper. You have sold what is yours alone and priceless…for nothing but ashes.
“You have sold yourself into the worst kind of slavery, Oba, in return for nothing more than the illusion of self-worth. You have no say in what is to be. You are not the one. It is another.” She wiped the sweat from her brow. “And, that much of it is yet to be decided.”
“Now you presume to think you can alter the course of what I have wrought? Dictate what shall be?” Oba’s own words surprised him. They’d seemed to come out before he thought to say them.
“Such things are not amenable to the likes of me,” she admitted. “I learned at the Palace of the Prophets not to meddle in that which is above me and ungovernable. The grand scheme of life and death are the rightful province of the Creator and the Keeper.” She seemed contented behind a sly expression. “But I am not above exercising my free will.”
He’d heard enough. She was only trying to stall, to confuse him. For some reason, he couldn’t make his racing heart slow.
“What are holes in the world?”
“They are the end of the likes of me,” she said. “They are the end of everything I know.”
It was just like a sorceress to answer with a senseless riddle. “Who are the other stones?” he demanded.
At last, she turned her formidable eyes from him to look down at the other stones. Her movements seemed oddly jerky. Her slender fingers selected one of the stones. As she lifted it, she paused to put her other hand across her middle. Oba realized that she was in pain. She was trying her best to cover it, but she couldn’t cover it now. The sweat beading her brow was from pain. The agony came out in a low moan. Oba watched with fascination.
Then, it seemed to ebb some. With great effort she straightened her posture and returned her attention to what she had been doing. She held out her hand, palm up, with the stone sitting in the center.
“This one,” she said, her breathing labored, now, “is me.”
“You? That stone is you?”
She nodded as she cast it at the board without even looking. The stone tumbled to a stop, this time, without the accompaniment of lightning and thunder. Oba felt relieved, even a little foolish, that he had been so rattled by that before. He smiled, now. It was just a silly board game, and he was invincible.
The stone had come to rest at one corner of the square that lay within the two circles.
He gestured. “So, what does that mean?”
“Protector,” she managed through a shallow pant.
Her trembling fingers gathered up the stone. She lifted her hand up before him and opened her slender fingers. The stone, her stone, rested in the center of her palm. Her eyes were fixed on his.
As Oba watched, the stone crumbled to ash in her palm.
“Why did it do that?” he whispered, his eyes going wide.
Althea didn’t answer. Instead, she slumped and then toppled over. Her arms sprawled out before her, her legs to the side. The ash that had been a stone scattered in a dark smear across the floor.
Oba leaped to his feet. His goose bumps were back. He had seen enough people die to know that Althea was dead.
Rending slashes of thunderous lightning ignited, lacing the sky with violent flashes of light that lanced in through the windows, throwing blinding white light across the dead sorceress. Sweat trickled down his temple and over his cheek.
Oba stood staring at the body for a long moment.
And then he ran.
Panting and nearly spent from the effort, Oba stumbled out of the thick vegetation into the meadow. He squinted around in the sudden bright light. He was spooked, hungry, thirsty, weary, and in a mood to tear the little thief limb from limb.
The meadow was empty.
“Clovis!” His roar came back to him in an empty echo. “Clovis! Where are you!”
Only the moan of the wind between the towering rock walls answered. Oba wondered if the thief might be nervous, might be reluctant to come out, worried that Oba might have discovered his fortune missing and suspect the truth of what happened.
“Clovis, come here! We need to leave! I must get back to the palace at once! Clovis!”
Oba waited, his chest heaving, listening for an answer. With fists at his sides, he again bellowed the little thief’s name into the cold afternoon air.
When no answer came, he fell to his knees beside the fire Clovis had started that morning. He thrust his fingers into the powdery gray ash. It hadn’t rained up in the meadow, but the ashes were ice cold.
Oba stood, staring up the narrow defile through which they had ridden in early that morning. The cold breeze blowing across the empty meadow ruffled his hair. With both hands, Oba ran his fingers back through his hair, almost as if to keep his head from bursting as the awful truth settled in.
He realized that Clovis had not buried the money purse he’d stolen. That had never been his plan. He’d taken the money and run as soon as Oba had gone down into the swamp. He’d run with Oba’s fortune, not buried it.
With a sick, empty, sinking feeling, Oba understood, then, the full extent of what had really happened. No one ever went in the swamp by this back way. Clovis had talked him into it and guided him there because he believed Oba would perish in the treacherous swamp. Clovis had been confident that Oba would become lost and the swamp would swallow him, if the monsters supposedly guarding Althea’s back didn’t snare him first.
Clovis had felt no need to bury the money—he figured Oba was dead. Clovis was gone, and he had Oba’s fortune.
But Oba was invincible. He had survived the swamp. He had bested the snake. No monsters had dared come out to challenge him after that.
Clovis had probably thought that even if the swamp didn’t finish his benefactor, there were two other mortal dangers he could count on. Althea hadn’t invited Oba in; Clovis had probably figured that she would not take kindly to uninvited guests—sorceresses rarely did. And, they had deadly reputations.
But Clovis had not anticipated Oba being invincible.
That left the thief only one safeguard against Oba’s wrath, and that one was a problem—the Azrith Plains. Oba was stranded in a desolate place. He had no food. Water was nearby, but he had no means to take it with him. He had no horse. He had even left his wool jacket, unnecessary in a swamp, with the underhanded little hawker. Walking out of this place, without supplies, exposed to winter’s weather, would finish anyone who had somehow managed to survive the swamp and Althea.
Oba couldn’t make his feet move. He knew that, given his situation, if he struck out and tried to walk back, he would die. Despite the cold, he could feel sweat running down his neck. His head was pounding.
Oba turned and stared back down into the swamp. There would be things back at Althea’s house—food, clothing, and surely something in which he could carry water. Oba had spent his life making do. He could make a pack, at least a pack good enough to get him back to the palace. He could put together a supply of food from the sorceress’s house. She wouldn’t be there alone and crippled without food on hand. Her husband would be back, but maybe not for days. He would have left food.
Oba could wear layers of clothes to keep himself warm enough to make the trek across the bitterly cold plains. Althea said her husband went to the palace. He would have warm clothes to cross the Azrith Plains, and might have left extra clothes at the house. Even if they didn’t fit, Oba could make do. There would be blankets he could take in a pack and wear as a cloak.
There was always the possibility, though, that the husband might come back sooner. By the lack of a trail on this side, he would most likely come in the wide path from the other side of the swamp. He could already be there and have discovered his wife’s body. Oba wasn’t really concerned about that, though. He could deal with the nuisance of a grieving husband. Maybe the man would even be pleased to be out from under the obligation of having to care for a petulant crippled wife. What good was she, anyway? The man should be glad to be rid of her. He might offer Oba a drink to help him celebrate his liberation.
Oba didn’t feel like celebrating, though. Althea had pulled some evil trick and denied him the pleasure he had so looked forward to—the pleasure he deserved after his long and difficult journey. Oba sighed at how trying sorceresses could be. At least she could provide him with what he needed in order to get back to his ancestral home.
But when he got back to the People’s Palace, he would have no money, unless he could find Clovis. Oba knew that was a thin hope. Clovis had Oba’s hard-earned fortune, now, and might well have decided to travel to fine places, wantonly spending his ill-gotten gain. The little thief was likely to be long gone.
Oba didn’t have a copper penny. How was he to survive? He couldn’t go back to that pauper’s life, a life like the one he had had with his mother, not now, not after he had discovered that he was a Rahl—almost royalty.
He couldn’t go back to his old life. He wouldn’t.
Simmering with anger, Oba plunged back down the spine of rock. It was getting late in the day. He had no time to waste.
Oba didn’t touch the corpse.
He wasn’t at all queasy about the dead. Quite the contrary, the dead fascinated him. He had spent a great deal of time with dead bodies. But this woman gave him the shivers. Even dead, she seemed to watch him as he searched her house, throwing clothes and supplies in a pile in the center of the room.
There was something profane—sinful—about the woman sprawled on the floor. Even the flies buzzing around the room didn’t light on her. Lathea had been troublesome, but this woman was different. Althea had pulled some evil trick and denied him the answers he deserved after his long and difficult journey.
Oba fumed at how trying sorceresses could be. At least she could provide him with what he needed in order to get back to his ancestral home. There was something unholy about this woman. She had been able to look right into him. Lathea had never been able to do that. Of course, he had once thought she could, but she couldn’t. Not really. This woman could.
She could see the voice in him.
Oba wasn’t sure if he was safe around her, even if she was dead. Since he was invincible, it was probably only his fertile imagination, he knew, but a person couldn’t be too cautious.
In the bedroom, he found warm wool shirts. They were not nearly large enough, but by ripping out some of the seams a little here, or a little there, he could get them on. Once he was satisfied with his alterations, he threw the item of clothing on the pile. They would be good enough to keep him warm. He added blankets and shirts to the pile in the center of the main room.
Annoyed that the tardy husband hadn’t returned, and to distract his mind from the smug dead woman who just lay there watching him work, Oba laid plans to kill someone before he went crazy. Maybe a catty woman. One who had those vicious scowl lines around her eyes like his mother had. He needed to make someone pay for all the trouble he had been through. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t.
It was already dark outside. He had to light an oil lamp in order to continue his search. Oba was in luck; in a lower cupboard he found a waterskin. On his hands and knees, he rummaged through a collection of odd scraps of cloth, cups with cracks, broken cooking tools, and a supply of wax and wick. From the back he pulled out a small roll of canvas. He tested its strength and decided he could stitch a pack from it. There was material from clothes around he could use to make straps. A sewing kit was handy enough on a low shelf nearby.
He had noticed that such useful things were on low shelves, where the crippled sorceress with the evil eyes could get to them. A sorceress without magic. Not likely. She was jealous because the voice chose him and not her. She was up to something.
He knew it would take him some time to collect everything and stitch together a pack for his supplies. He couldn’t leave at night. It would be impossible to make it out though the swamp at night. He was invincible, not stupid.
With the oil lamp close by, he sat at the workbench and started in on sewing himself a pack. Althea watched him from the floor in the main room. She was a sorceress, so he knew it would do no good to throw a blanket over her head. If she could watch him all the way from the world of the dead, a mere blanket wasn’t going to blind her dead eyes. He would just have to be satisfied to have her watch while he worked.
When he had the pack finished and tested to his satisfaction, he set it on the bench and started packing it with food and clothing. She had dried fruit and jerky, along with sausages and cheese. There were biscuits that would be easy enough to carry. He didn’t bother with pots or food that had to be cooked because he knew there was nothing on the Azrith Plains from which to build a fire, and he certainly wasn’t going to be able to lug firewood along. He’d travel light and swiftly. He hoped it would only take him a few days to reach the palace.
What he would do once he reached the palace, how he would survive without money, he didn’t know. He briefly considered stealing it, but rejected the idea; he wasn’t a thief and wouldn’t lower himself to being a criminal. He wasn’t sure how he would get by at the palace. He only knew he had to get there.
When he had finished putting together what he would take, his eyes were drooping and he was yawning every few minutes. He was sweating from all his work, and from the heat of the foul swamp. Even at night the place was miserable. He didn’t know how the know-it-all sorceress could stand to live in such a place. No wonder her husband went off to the palace. The man was probably downing ales and moaning to his chums about having to go back to his swamp-wife.
Oba didn’t like the idea of sleeping in the same house with the sorceress, but she was dead, after all. He still didn’t trust her, though. She might be up to some trick. He yawned again and wiped sweat from his brow.
There were two well-stuffed sleeping pallets close together on the floor in the bedroom. One was neatly made, the other was less orderly. Judging from the tidy workbench, the neatly made bed was likely the husband’s, and the other Althea’s. Since she was dead on the floor way in the other room, he didn’t feel quite so uneasy about sleeping on a nice soft pallet.
The husband wasn’t going to be coming home in the dark, so Oba wasn’t worried about waking to a madman at his throat. Still, he thought it best if he wedged a chair against the door lever before he retired for the night. With the house all secured, he yawned, ready for bed. On his way by, Oba gave Althea the cold shoulder.
Oba fell right off to sleep, but it was a fitful slumber. Dreams haunted him. It was hot in the swamp house. Since it was winter everywhere else, he hadn’t gotten accustomed to such sudden sultry heat. Outside, bugs kept up a steady buzzing while night animals hooted and called. Oba tossed and turned, trying to get away from the sorceress’s haunting gaze and knowing smile. They seemed to follow him no matter which way he turned, watching him, not letting him sleep soundly.
He woke for good just after it had begun to get light out.
He was in Althea’s bed.
In a rush to untangle himself from the covers and escape her bed, he rolled over onto his hands and knees. His weight abruptly pushed his hand through the stuffed bedding. In wild alarm, Oba threw back the bedding and overturned the pallet to see what vile trick she had planted for him. She had known he was coming to see her. She was up to something.
Under where her pallet had been resting, he saw that a floorboard was loose. That was all it was—a floorboard that had pivoted. Oba frowned in suspicion. A close inspection revealed that the plank had pins in the middle so it would seesaw.
With one careful finger, he pushed the sunken end farther down. The other end of the board rose up. A compartment under the board contained a wooden box. He lifted out the box and tried to open it, but it was locked, somehow. There was no hole for a key, and no readily apparent lid, so there was probably some trick to opening it. It was heavy. When he shook it, it made only a muffled sound from inside. It might have simply been a weighted weapon the crippled woman kept under her bed in case she was attacked in the night by a snake or something.
With the box in his meaty hand, Oba shuffled to the workbench. He sat on the stool and leaned close. As he selected a chisel and mallet, he noticed that the sorceress was still on the floor in the other room, watching.
“What’s in the box?” he called to her.
Of course she didn’t answer. She had no intention of being cooperative. If she had been cooperative, she would have answered all his questions, instead of dropping dead after performing her stone-to-ash trick. It gave him shivers just remembering it. Something about the entire encounter had been more than he wanted to contemplate.
Oba used the chisel to pry on the box. He tested every joint, but it wouldn’t open. He hammered on it with the mallet, but he only succeeded in breaking the mallet’s handle. He sighed, deciding that it was probably just a weighted weapon Althea kept for defense.
He rose from the bench to go gather his supplies and check that he had everything. He’d had enough of the odd goings-on and the puzzling things she’d left. He needed to be on his way.
Oba paused, then, and turned back at some inner urging. If the heavy box was a weapon, she would have kept it easily at hand. Something about this box was important, or it wouldn’t be hidden under a floorboard. Something inside told him so.
Resolving to get into the box, he sat again at the bench and selected a narrower chisel and another mallet. He worked the sharp blade between a lengthwise joint, near the edge. Sweat dripping off the end of his nose, he grunted with the effort of whacking at the end of the chisel handle, trying to open the joint to see if it was just lead weight inside.