The Wide World's End (35 page)

“We do not know that Naevros killed your other second—”

“I
saw
him!” Denynê shouted, her orange face tinted dark with fury. “He was standing over her body with a bloody blade in one hand and the bag of anchors in another! He chased me down and knocked me out, and when I awoke—I—I—I—”

Denynê's eyes became unfocused and Aloê guessed she was returning to those dreadful hours when she was bound, gagged, and blindfolded, waiting for death. She touched the binder's arm with her free hand, and Denynê broke off, sobbing.

“Well,” Bleys said bleakly, “I don't believe it. Not yet. Why should Naevros kill Oluma but not Denynê?”

“Oluma was his accomplice. He got to her somehow, just as he got to that woman who is the Arbiter of the Peace in Big Rock. Denynê, however, was true to me. He could not be sure what she knew, and he might have seen some value in questioning her to find out what she knew.”

Lernaion looked away from Aloê and glared at Naevros. His normally impassive face betrayed his anger and contempt. “Vocate Naevros, you shame us all. This was ill done.”

“I will make it right,” Naevros said quietly.

“Do so.”

Denynê lurched against Aloê and began to cough up blood. Aloê cried out without words and grabbed the binder before she fell to the floor. Aloê looked into Denynê's tawny eyes, gaping wide with surprise and fear, and saw that it was too late. Denynê was dying . . . died . . . was dead.

Behind Denynê, Naevros stood holding a bloody sword in his left hand.

Aloê let her evidence—letter, anchors, dead witness—fall to the floor between her and the murderer.

“Won't you finish the job, Vocate?” she said, looking him in the eye for the first time that day. Her hands were empty and open, waiting. If he moved to attack her, she would close with him. No one, not even Morlock, could defeat Naevros with the sword, but she liked her chances if it came to hand-to-hand.

He did not move to attack her. He endured her gaze for a moment and looked away.

“You were foolish to entrust your evidence to us, Vocate,” Lernaion said coolly. “Did you not think that Naevros might have accomplices in the Graith?”

“On the contrary!” Aloê said. “I knew that he did. For one thing, there was Dollon, the thain who tried to kill me. He broke his neck trying to escape when he heard Naevros' voice: Naevros must have had some power of fear over him. Then there was Bavro, the thain who stole the palimpsest of Earno's last letter. He obviously expected Naevros to come to his aid. Then there was all this magic.” Aloê disdainfully kicked the bag of anchors where they had fallen by her right foot. “That was never among Naevros' talents. He needed help for it. I had hoped that it was only one of these
women
whom he can get to do
anything
for him.” She noticed Naevros flinch when she said
women
and
anything
—exactly as she had meant him to.

“But, of course,” she continued to address Lernaion, “I thought of you.”

“You're boasting now, Vocate,” Lernaion said shrewdly, “playing for time. We—”

“‘Shut your lying mouth,'” Aloê quoted, and smiled in his face.

Lernaion froze. Then he shook his gray head sadly. “So you heard that.”

“I heard it.”

“It has nothing to do with this, really.”

“I would need more than your word, Guardian, to accept that as true. But it doesn't matter. It got me thinking along these lines. Then there was the magic. That
is
, famously or infamously, one of Bleys' skills. And you were both here in A Thousand Towers when the palimpsest was stolen. If the thains were merely agents, as I suspected, who was their principal? A senior Guardian seemed most likely. I suspected you both, but only one was really necessary. But now I see you are both complicit.”

“I didn't know about Earno's murder in advance,” Lernaion said mildly.

“But you approved of it after the fact?”

“Yes.”

Aloê did not expect this. She found she had nothing to say.

“We are not Arbiters of the Peace,” Bleys said irritably, “nor half-witted lawmen gibbering of justice in the unguarded lands! We are Guardians. We don't judge; we defend. The Guard must be maintained.”

“You have killed Guardians and the Guarded. And to justify yourself you claim you have done it to defend the Wardlands?”

The two summoners looked at each other in surprise.

“Of course,” said Lernaion finally. “What did you think we did it for? Money?”

Aloê laughed harshly. “Or love? Is that what drew you to their noble cause, Vocate?” she asked Naevros. “Was that what led you to do their knifework? Will you kill me now, too, to protect the guilty secret that you share? And to protect the realm, of course.”

Naevros looked at her and took a step back. He put his right arm on the dais. He raised his sword and slashed it down, cutting off his right hand.

He held the spouting stump and the bloody sword both toward Aloê, as if they were a great gift. “Take the other hand,” he said thickly, as if he were drunk. “Take everything that I am. Take everything that I could have been.”

She would not pity him, not with Denynê lying murdered at her feet.

“What you are isn't much,” she said coldly. “What you could have been, you cannot give me.”

He fell, unconscious, across the corpse of his last victim.

She crouched down and undid her belt. It would do for a tourniquet, she hoped. As far as she was concerned, he could die. She'd prefer it that way. But he knew things the Graith would want to know, and it was clear he would talk without much prompting.

“And so, summoners?” she asked, as she twisted the belt tight around Naevros' severed wrist. “Your henchman is fallen. Your plot is exposed. But I suppose you could still try to kill me before my peers arrive.”

“So you have already spread the tale?” Lernaion asked sadly.

“I told you she would,” Bleys answered, sourly. “Nonetheless, madam, your peers will
not
arrive as soon as you think. We instructed Maijarra to admit no one after Naevros.”

“Maijarra is a good fighter,” Aloê acknowledged. “I've sparred with her myself. But my friends will be coming in force. Noreê is marshalling all her thains.”

“She is not the only Guardian with a personal following,” Bleys replied. “Had you not guessed?”

Aloê had not. But she should have, she realized: the actions of Dollon and Bavro should have warned her.

From outside the door, and the street beyond, there were the sounds of combat. To maintain the Guard, Guardians were fighting each other in the streets of the Wardlands' greatest city.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
O
NE

The Chains of the God

Danadhar and Morlock strode down the jail corridor side by side. Deor and Kelat fell in behind them. The other freed prisoners, the Gray Folk, stood by and held out their hands toward Danadhar as he passed.

“
Ar ryn jyrthin?
” Deor asked Kelat in Dwarvish:
Do you understand me?

“Yes,” Kelat admitted, in Ontilian. “The Regent wanted some of us to learn Dwarvish so that we could deal with workers from the Endless Empire. But I don't speak it very well.”

“No one does—certainly not in my family. You have unsuspected depths, Prince Uthar.”

“So does your mother.”

Dwarvish mating practices made this insult pointless indeed, but Deor laughed politely and punched Kelat on the forearm.

They found their packs and weapons in the vestibule of the jail under a shelkhide tarp. The other prisoners waited, politely or reverently, until their saint had passed before filing out into the coldly luminous spring night.

One of them ran back inside—a youngling with a long jaw and bluish scales. “St. Danadhar!” he cried. “The Enemy! The Enemy is coming for us!”

From outside in the dark they heard the cries of terror and exultation, “Olvinar! Olvinar! The Enemy!”

“Morlock,” Deor said urgently.

“Yes,” said the crooked man. He drew his dark, accursed blade and ran out into the night, Deor and Kelat at his heels.

“
Ruthenen!
” Danadhar called after them, but Morlock ran on, slithering through the crowd of Gray Folk when he could, shoving them out of the way when he had to.

Soon they saw what the Gray Folk had seen and paused to take it in.

The gigantic, cable-laid house at the north end of town was moving. The tower at the top that looked like a head—that
was
a head—wove back and forth and uttered a shriek like a straight-line wind running down a mountainside of pines.

There was red light coming from the center of the coil.

“
Rukhjyrn! Rukhjyrn!
” screamed someone in the crowd.
The dragon-sickness! The dragon-sickness!

The gigantic snake began to move, uncoiling itself, reaching for the distant stars, shaking mundane fire from it as it moved.

“Wait!” Deor shouted, but Morlock had shouldered off his pack and was already running. There were human figures moving, dark outlines in the cascade of fire.

Morlock dashed into the burning torrent, dodging left and right to avoid planks and beams, heedless of the heat and fire.

Danadhar came to a halt beside Deor. “What happened to the Olvinar's house?” he asked, gasping.

“Ambrosia Viviana, I think,” said Deor. “Look!”

One of the two human figures was trapped under something. The other was standing near, a strangely shining ovoid in one hand, a long blade in the other. And a beard—the dark outline definitely sported a beard. “The old bastard!” he muttered in Wardic.

“It is the Olvinar,” Danadhar said.

“It is Merlin Ambrosius,” Deor said, not disagreeing.

The trapped figure must be Ambrosia; no one else could have lived in that chaos of fire. Before Merlin could strike at her, Morlock was there. He hit the old man with the fist holding his sword. The bearded figure went flying, lost his grip on his blade, juggled the shining egg wildly, almost fell but did not quite.

Ambrosia's voice stabbed through the flames. “Kill him, Morlock! Kill him!”

Morlock raised his damned sword.

“Morlock!” shouted Deor. “No!
Xoth dhun!
The bond of blood!”

Morlock's twisted shadow paused—and sheathed the sword. He turned to where his sister lay trapped.

Danadhar ran from Deor's side into the flames. His garments were afire at the first step, but he ignored them, going to where Morlock stood.

Merlin's dark shape steadied, took hold of the shining egg with both hands. He seemed to look at his offspring for a moment, then turned away and was lost in the flames.

Together, Morlock and Danadhar hefted the burning beam off Ambrosia and she rolled to her feet. “Where is that demented old cutthroat?” Deor heard her demand.

He did not hear whatever Morlock and Danadhar said to her, if anything. The three came together through the burning wrack and out of it.

It was Danadhar, rather than Ambrosia, who collapsed when they emerged from the flames—except for those still flickering among the rags that had been his clothing.

“Haven't firewalked for an age,” he said apologetically, struggling to his feet. “An intoxicating experience. Most mrmrmrblble.”

Morlock took off his smoldering cloak and handed it to the Gray One.

“Yes. Yes. Thanks,
ruthen
.” Danadhar took the cloak and wrapped it around his midsection as a makeshift kilt. “Wouldn't do for the Gray Folk to see their saint naked. Though they'd find a way to explain it as a miracle.” He waved a clawed hand vaguely at the fire and the gigantic snake slithering off into the night. “Find a way to put this on me. ‘Nother miracle o' St. Danadhar. Pardon me.” He put his hands up to his snout and literally held his mouth shut for a few moments.

“I'm sorry,
ruthenen
, and new friend Kelat,” he said when he released himself. “Do you not get fire-drunk?” he asked Ambrosia and Morlock.

“I feel a kind of high,” Ambrosia admitted.

“Eh. I prefer a drink-drunk,” Morlock said.

“We must empty a few jars sometime,” Danadhar said. “
Ruthen
,” he continued, speaking to Ambrosia, “I am Danadhar, god-speaker for this unhappy town. I am glad to meet you. I have heard much of your exploits among the Vraids.”

Ambrosia took his proffered hand without apparent fear, which is more than Deor could have done: apparently the Gray Folk around here didn't bother trimming their nails. “I am pleased to meet you, too, God-speaker. I have heard almost nothing of you or your folk.”

“That's how we prefer it, mighty Regent of the Vraids. We have few friends among the Other Ilk or the Little—the dwarves, I mean.”

“You have one more as of tonight.”