A Hero Born, Page 4

  In fact, 1 noticed the teeth about the same time I noticed that the animal was not slowing as it approached me. Before I could retreat, Cruach leaped up and dropped both forepaws on my shoulders. Unbalanced, I crashed backward and ended up with the hound pinning me to the ground. I felt the wiry hair of his chin against my throat and my nose was full of dog breath.

  “Roarke,” I squeaked, “some help here?”

  The Axman laughed aloud and dropped on his butt, clutching his stomach. “Hold your hand out to him, easy, so he can sniff it.”

  “I think we are a bit past that stage, Roarke.” I reached up with my left hand, willing to sacrifice it in case Cruach decided 1 was dinner. Roarke smiled and clapped his hands to call the beast off, but the hound ignored him. Cruach sniffed my face, then licked it with an incredibly soft tongue.

  I got the impression 1 wasn’t on the dog’s menu.

  I reached up and scratched Cruach behind his ears. As my fingers met stiff resistance on the beast’s pelt, 1 looked over at Roarke. “His fur is steel!”

  “True enough. Things like that happen in Chaos.” Roarke reached over and pulled the dog off my chest. Cruach slid to the side and lay there beside me. He lifted his left forepaw and dropped it across my ribs.

  Roarke shook his head. “You wouldn’t have food on you—something he thinks is meant for him?”

  “Sure, I have half a Tarris buffalo dressed and hidden here in my pocket.”

  “1 wish that was true.” The Axman straightened up and glanced in the stewpot. “Lentils, again.”

  “So your dog doesn’t take to strangers, eh?” I crawled out from beneath the hound’s paw and stood. Cruach came up on all fours, then leaned heavily against me. His shoulder came up to hand height on me, so I petted him. “Did you take Cruach into Chaos with you?”

  Stirring the stew, he shook his head. “No, Cruach lias been there a lot more than I ever have, as you can tell by the eyes and his pelt.” Roarke smiled easily. “Cruach found me in Chaos and managed to help me home. Haven’t been back in sixteen years or so.”

  I frowned. “Sixteen years? The Hamptons, in the next farm over, had hounds like Cruach here, and said they never live past ten or eleven years. That means Cruach is …”

  “Different?” Roarke nodded quickly. “Things like that happen in Chaos.”

  “Lots odder things, as well.” A black-haired woman whose long tresses were streaked with green walked into the circle of firelight. I noticed that the elbows and heels of her leather riding clothes had been capped with bony spurs that could be used in combat. Cfiaosfire totally filled her eyes, though even without it her slightly pointed ears and green hair would have marked her as someone who had spent a great deal of time in Chaos.

  “Roarke, are you filling this youth’s head with all sorts of romantic pictures of Chaos?” She gave me a quick, appraising glance that made me feel, momentarily, as if 1 were naked, then she shook her head. “He’s only an Apprentice. Have mercy on him. Let him grow up before you tell him of Chaos.”

  “Lachlan is also Cardew’s son, Eirene.” Roarke rested his fists on his hips. “Chaos is bound to be in his blood.”

  Eirene arched an eyebrow above a black-opal eye. “So this is Cardew’s get?” She tossed me one of the wooden bowls she was carrying. “Help yourself, Lachlan.”

  I caught the bowl deftly. “Thank you. I normally go by Locke, if it suits you.” I waited for Roarke and Eirene to serve themselves, then took something less than either one of them had. Roarke gave me a wooden spoon, and I seated myself on the ground to eat. Cruach lay down beside me and put his head on my knee.

  The lentil stew, flavored with bits of formerly dried beef, actually tasted fairly good. “Again, thank you. This is good.”

  Eirene smiled for a second, then narrowed her eyes. “So what are you doing on the road, Locke? Going off to win great battles in Chaos?”

  Roarke frowned at the question, but I answered it without balking. “My grandmother wanted one of her grandsons to accompany her to the Bear’s Eve Ball at the Imperial Palace.”

  “I am certain the balls have not been the same since your father and uncle stopped attending them.” Eirene looked over at Roarke, and something passed between them, but I could not decipher it.

  “You seem to have spent a long time in Chaos, Eirene.” I set my half-finished stew down, taking care to keep it away from Cruach. “Did you know my father?”

  “No, but his story is well enough known among Chaos Riders.” She shrugged effortlessly, and I sensed some of her tension easing. “Your father led the Valiant Lancers into Chaos, and they did not come back. Your mother left the capital and returned to her father’s home in Garik. She died, leaving you in the care of your grandfather.” She shook her head. “It is best if Chaos Riders have no one left behind.”

  “How about you, Roarke? Did you know my father?”

  Roarke hesitated for a second, then shook his head. “Same as Eirene—1 know his story, but never met him.”

  “But you said you made payment on a debt when you pulled me away from Ferris. What were you talking about?”

  Roarke glanced at Eirene, then smiled. “Out in Chaos many things are strange. There are places where time moves faster than it does here, sometimes very much faster. There are spots where you’d age to death and beyond, your bones being reduced to dust before they could hit the ground. You can tell them because they are big circles of white powder on otherwise normal ground. Your father ran into one of those spots and tricked a Chademon into it. I used his ruse to get myself out of a similarly difficult situation.”

  I accepted what Roarke told me as the truth, but 1 knew the Chaos Rider was holding something back. Roarke said he had not been in Chaos for sixteen years, which I believed was the truth. Unlike Eirene, Roarke only had the beginning of Cfiaosfire in his eye, so I guessed he had made only one or two expeditions in Chaos. Out there, somewhere, Roarke ran into something that made him never want to return beyond the wall. It followed, logically, that Roarke probably lost his eye at the same time. Given that sequence of events, 1 could easily understand his reluctance to talk much about Chaos.

  Spooning more stew into my mouth, 1 noticed a rank badge I’d not seen before on Roarke’s belt. Red on a black background, the Cavalry piece’s silhouette marked Roarke as a Journeyman chess player. I smiled and swallowed quickly. “You play chess.”

  The Chaos Rider nodded. “Reached Journeyman rank two months ago on the previous trip to Herakopolis.” He took a close look at my coat, then frowned when he saw no rank badge there for chess. “Do you play, or do you just want to learn?”

  “I play, but never outside my family.” I smiled. “If you want, we could play. I have a set.”

  Eirene groaned, and Cruach growled. Roarke looked sternly at both of them, then gave me the biggest smile I’d yet seen the man wear. “Set them up, Locke. I’ll even give you the Empire to start.”

  3

  check.” I smiled as I passed the board over to Roarke. The motion opened my coat to the cold wind, and 1 quickly pulled it

  closed against the mountain chill. “Sorry to trick you with that last gambit, but I had to offer it to you.”

  The Chaos Rider accepted the board and turned it around so he could view the game from behind his own lines. He rested the board on his left knee, which he had wrapped around the pommel of his saddle. The skin around his eyes tightened as he winced, then his steamy breath drifted up like smoke as he swore under his breath. “Chaos take you, Locke. You are a two-Cavalry player who has decided not to wear his badges just to vex me.”

  1 reined Stail a bit back away from Roarke’s horse as the mountain trail narrowed. “As 1 have told you, I’ve not been ranked. The village of Stone Rapids did not have a Master to test me.”

  Riding near the middle of the caravan, 1 looked back and saw half of it stretched out along the snowy switchback trail leading up through the mountains to the City of Sorcerers. In just the half a day’s clim
b from the forests to the alpine heights the weather had gotten cold. If the dark clouds coming up from the southwest made it into the mountains while still loaded with moisture from the ocean, we’d be buried in snow by dawn.

  Trying to distract me during the game, Roarke had gone on about how this last snaky run would lead to the lip of the high mountain valley in which the sorcerers had built their citadel. Carved by centuries of wagons, horses, and other packbeasts, the trail had been ground into the granite rising above the last of the forests. Try as I might, while Roarke worked on his moves, I saw nothing to indicate we were really getting near the power source for the Ward Walls holding back Chaos.

  To me, everything on the trip was new and utterly fascinating. Stone Rapids had been the largest human settlement 1 had ever seen, but the caravan itself had more people than the whole village and surrounding countryside. The geography around my grandfather’s farm had been largely flat and very fertile, in direct contrast to the rocky soil here in the foothills, or the granite mountains where only lichen and scrub trees existed. The blue sky, which had been limitless at home, appeared smaller here, where the mountains sliced up into it.

  And all that, I kept reminding myself, was normal. The things I had seen that had been touched by Chaos, like Cruach, were even more strange and intriguing. Despite Eirene’s admonition about the fantasy of romance involving Chaos, I found myself drawn to hearing more about it. Roarke said I had Chaos in my blood. As I spent more time with Eirene, Roarke, and Cruach, i slowly realized that attending the Emperor’s Ball, instead of being the adventure of a lifetime, could pale in comparison with actually going on an expedition into Chaos. Though I knew Chaos and the Bharashadi warrior Kothvir had killed my father, 1 found myself wanting to go beyond the wall.

  The trail broadened again after we passed between two dolmen. I gently kicked Stail in the ribs, and the bay gelding responded by pulling up alongside Roarke. We rode two abreast for all of a minute, because Eirene and her mount worked their way back from the front of the caravan toward us. Stail liked the creature she sat astride no more than I, so I let Stail drift back in behind Roarke’s mount.

  Eirene’s horse—at least I thought it had started life as a horse-—had clearly spent a lot of time in Chaos. Instead of having a normal coat, a black-and-orange lizard-flesh covered the beast, though its mane and tail remained normal and black. Its eyes were full of Chaosfire and the two fangs protruding from either side of its muzzle gave it the look of a carnivore, which was what I assumed disturbed Stail. I had no idea what the creature ate and no real desire to find out, either.

  It had taken me a day or two to figure it out, but the green in Eirene’s hair and the points on her ears were not the only changes Chaos had wrought in her. When she smiled, especially in the daylight, I could see she had a set of fangs to rival those on her mount. I also gathered real quickly that the bony spurs on her elbows and heels were not part of her clothing.

  When 1 asked Roarke to confirm my suspicions, he answered, “Things like that happen in Chaos.” He also quickly added that Eirene was lucky because the changes Chaos created were not always symmetrical or easy to look at.

  Eirene reined her mount in, stopping us. “Roarke, Haskell wants you to ride ahead and let the magickers know we’re going to defile their valley again.” She tapped his knee with her quirt. “Did you hear me?”

  “That’s what I’ve always liked about you, Eirene, your assumption 1 hear with my knee.” Roarke looked up distractedly from the board. “I heard, and 1 obey. Locke, I resign, you win.”

  Eirene smiled. “Again?”

  “Again and always.” Roarke closed the hinged board and slipped the catch before he handed it back to me. “Next time.”

  I grinned like a wolf spotting a flock of sheep. “If you let me ride with you, we can play while the caravan catches up with us.”

  “Good idea.” Roarke looked over at Eirene. “Keep an eye on Cruach. Ride on, Locke.”

  We reached the head of the caravan easily enough, and Haskell waved us on our way. The trail continued upward, but leveled off as it ran just below the mountain ridgeline. We rode along the shore of a lake fed by melting snow, and I saw ice already forming along the edges of the shore. Looking into the lake’s murky green depths, I imagined I saw large things swimming about, and commented on them to Roarke.

  “I doubt that, Locke. Hauntblood Lake supplies the water for the City of Sorcerers. Were there anything in it, it would have long ago been slain.” He hesitated for a second, then grinned. “Then again, there just might be things in there, just to keep people from doing anything to the water supply.”

  But why would anyone want to cause harm in the city of Sorcerers? They keep Chaos at bay.”

  “There are those who think Chaos should rule the land.” Roarke coughed lightly into his hand. “The Empire has many enemies.”

  “But they are in Chaos, right?”

  “Not all of them.” Roarke reined his horse around a

  stone outcropping. “There are some people who think chaos was preferable to life within the Wardlines.”

  I frowned heavily. “But that’s insane. How could they hate the Empire? Life is good here.”

  “Is it?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Roarke nodded. “I think so, as do you, but not everyone agrees with us. The fact is that some people resent the order the Empire impresses on everything. They dislike the whole system of ranking, all the regulations and limitations. They’re not creatures of chaos per se, but their personalities are less than orderly.”

  The image of the whole Tugg brood back in Stone Rapids came to mind. “I’ve known people like that, true, but they didn’t want Chaos to sweep over the world

  again.”

  “Of course not, but from their number are drawn I hose who do. There are not many of the virulent ones, but they can be quite dedicated to their cause. You must have heard of such things. Stone Rapids wasn’t that small.”

  I shivered, and it wasn’t just the cold. “The Church of Chaos Encroaching.”

  ‘Black Churchers.” Roarke nodded slowly. “They are one group that believes Chaos should reign supreme. There are also other groups of renegade magickers who resent the hold the Grandmaster of Magicks has on magickal knowledge. While outwardly the Etheric brotherhood may disdain politics and interfering in the affairs of the Empire, they practice the manipulative art among themselves with great relish.”

  The last vestiges of my naive view of a world being united to oppose Chaos slowly evaporated. “You make things sound as if the Wardlines will collapse tomorrow.”

  A jet of steam shot out with Roarke’s laugh. “Not at all, Locke. It’s just that most folks overestimate the threat of Chaos, and underestimate the threat from within. It all balances to the level of terror we’ve grown used to, so you need not get all anxious about it. Still, the nice thing about Chaos is this: there you have a fairly good chance of knowing who your enemies are just by looking at them.”

  Rounding a bend, we entered a narrow pass through which the wind howled and a few flakes of snow swirled. I noticed the biting cold for all of a second or two, then slowly forgot about it. A hundred yards down the trail, halfway through the pass itself, I saw two gigantic granite statues. Winged humanoids both, the naked figures knelt on one knee and had their heads bowed. The one on’the left, the bearded male figure, rested his hands on the hilt of a sword that had been driven into the ground. The female figure held a magick staff, and as we rode closer I could not see any chisel marks or weathering on either titanic carving.

  “How old are these statues?”

  Roarke shrugged. “Five centuries or so, I would guess. They date since the time of Chaos.”

  “They must have taken forever to carve out of the mountain.” I craned my neck back to look up toward the woman’s face. “She’s bigger than the tallest tree around Stone Rapids.”

  “They’re both big, and would have taken a long time to carve, but
they were magicked into being.” Roarke pointed to where the colossi joined the rocks behind (hem, then directed me to look up. In sharp contrast to i he rough, craggy walls of the canyon, above us I saw a smooth chimney that looked eroded through the rock. “Some sorcerers caused the granite to run like water while others used their power to shape it into the statues you see. When the spell that liquefied the stone wore off, the statues solidified into the new shapes I hey had taken.”

  As we passed between the statues, Roarke rubbed at his missing eye, then spurred his horse forward. I matched Stail’s gait to that of Roarke’s stallion and followed the Chaos Rider through the rest of the pass. I felt a tingling all over my body as I rode between the I wo guardians and felt mildly uncomfortable. It seemed to me that the statues were watching me and studying me more closely than my grandfather had when I passed from Daggerman to Apprentice.

  They marked the summit of the mountains, so the lrail beyond them began to slope downward. It cut back and forth three times before opening out into a green valley. While riding through the latter half of the pass the feeling that i was being watched stayed with me, but I found it more easily explained as we got closer to the City of Sorcerers. I knew the narrow trail would prove an excellent ambush point for defenders higher up in the mountains, so I assumed sentries in hidden watching posts were keeping an eye on the both of us.

  Roarke reined up as we entered the valley. A small blue river cascaded from the western end of the valley and splashed down into a pool on the valley floor approximately sixty feet below. From there it split the valley in half and provided water for the fields, which were, uncharacteristically for the time of year, green. From my vantage point I saw a few people in the fields, but no one seemed to be working at any particular task.