The Bronze of Eddarta, Page 2

  As in the fragmented maps I had seen, a thick, dark line winding its way across one long edge of the map represented the Great Wall. Gandalaran charting conventions placed the Great Wall at the top of the map. Though I was sure the Wall didn’t run truly east-west, it did mark the northern edge of Gandalara, so Ricardo was fairly comfortable with using such a map.

  The southern border was marked off into sections. At the left edge of the map was a feature with the intriguing name of Valley of Mists. From it, the Wall of Mist ran eastward below the Kapiral Desert toward the Morkadahl Mountains, where it merged into the unnamed mountain range which butted up against the Korchis to form the Chizan Passage. East of the Zantro Pass, one of the two high crossings that enclosed Chizan, the southern wall was divided into three sections. The Rising Wall began at Inid, the Refreshment House at the foot of the slope leading down from the Zantro. It approached a plateau isolated from the walls, and became the Desert Wall. Further east, it was known as the River Wall.

  I put the index finger of my right hand on a spot marked in the middle of the River Wall. “This is Eddarta,” I explained to Thymas and Tarani, who were looking over my shoulders. I hooked a chair out with my foot, and sat down to give them a clearer view.

  “And Dyskornis is here.” Tarani touched the map.

  Thymas studied the area between our markings. “Gharlas will take the quickest route,” he said. “Tarani—which way?”

  Without hesitation, Tarani said: “South.” She moved her finger as she talked. “The main caravan route to Eddarta follows the line of Refreshment Houses. Inid. Haddat. Kanlyr. Iribos. You have said that Gharlas was a caravan master—that is the way he must have traveled before.”

  The shortest way home is the way you know best, I thought. She’s probably right.

  Thymas was peering at the map closely, muttering to himself. “Five days to Inid, another five to Haddat. He’s four days ahead, but with the sha’um …” He tilted his head. “We should catch up with him midway between Haddat and Kanlyr.”

  “Correction,” I said. “We would catch up with him—if he went that way, which I think is likely, and if we followed him, which we aren’t going to do.”

  “Not follow—”

  I held up a hand to cut off Thymas’s explosion. “Use your head. There’s nothing in that direction but Refreshment Houses. Tarani, you tell us—what is the southern route like?”

  “The way from Inid to Kanlyr lies in a trench between dry hills. I have gone no further, but that far, at least, it is a miserable trip.” She smiled a little wistfully. “That’s why my troupe did so well through there; the caravans were desperate for some distraction from the journey.”

  I nodded, thinking that Gharlas had traveled the main caravan route regularly between Eddarta and Raithskar, yet had never seen Tarani, who had entertained caravans with her dancing and illusions. The odds against his missing her had to be enormous.

  But there’s no doubting it—he was astonished when he finally put it together that Volitar’s phantom “niece” was the illusionist he had heard so much about.

  Call it destiny, I thought. Call it fate. Call it scrambled eggs, if you like. But Gharalas wasn’t meant to know about Tarani until we all met here in Dyskornis.

  “Right,” I said. “So we’re going to follow the Great Wall—” I traced the northern route with my finger. “—past all these little towns.

  “The reasons we are going to do it this way,” I said, forestalling something else Thymas started to say, “are threefold.

  “First, there are towns and rivers north of us, which means that the countryside is more hospitable, and it’s likely the sha’um can hunt for their meals along the way.

  “Second, Gharlas is crazy, but not foolish. He’ll expect us to follow him. There’s no telling what sort of traps he’ll leave along the way.

  “Third, I hope he won’t expect us to be waiting for him in Eddarta when he gets there.”

  “You mean you’re going to let him reach his home territory?” Thymas demanded.

  I sighed. Why is it that the only time he sounds like himself, is when he’s arguing with me?

  It was Tarani who answered the boy. “You’re forgetting that Gharlas is more than just an Eddartan, Thymas. He’s a caravan master. He probably knows every vlek-handler from here to Eddarta. If they do not already owe him service, he can buy them. And those he cannot buy, he can … command.”

  I glanced at Thymas, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  He’s remembering that he nearly killed me, while Gharlas controlled him.

  “We’re already in his home territory,” Tarani continued, in the vibrant voice that contained its own kind of command. She sat down and leaned over the map. “I agree with Rikardon’s plan, but that has little weight.” She placed her hands flat on the map and lifted her head to look directly at the pale-haired boy. “It does not matter that you disagree, Thymas. We will both do whatever Rikardon suggests.”

  Uh-oh.

  I waited for the explosion, but it never came—at least, not from Thymas. He squared his shoulders, stared at his boots, and said: “Yes, I see what you mean. I’ve done enough damage.”

  I slammed my hand on the table—Tarani snatched her fingers out of the way just in time—and stood up.

  “I’ve had all I can take of your simpering self-importance, Thymas.”

  Thymas gasped. “But I—”

  “You think you keep apologizing, but you know what you’re really doing? You’re trying to take credit, all by yourself, for letting Gharlas get away. Your mistakes were the serious ones. Your mistakes were the avoidable ones. If you had done things right …

  “You want to talk about stupid mistakes? What idiot, who knew there was a price on his head, went into the rogueworld and flashed Serkajon’s sword, so that every thief and assassin in Dykornis knew who he was?” I stabbed my thumb at my chest. “This one, that’s who. You didn’t let Gharlas get away, Thymas. We did. Even Tarani. She could have sent Lonna after Gharlas, but instead she chose to send the bird to help me. If the only important thing is to stop Gharlas, she made the wrong choice.

  “She did succeed in saving my life. Maybe you think that was the wrong choice!”

  “Rikardon!” Tarani’s shout cut me off in mid-harangue. I was leaning across the corner of the table, forcing Thymas to back away from me. I straightened up.

  “You once told me,” she said more gently, “that it is easy for you to say insincere things.”

  Ouch, I thought. Touche.

  Thymas tried to read the silent message that passed from Tarani to me, and he was beginning to look angry.

  Is that what I’m trying to do? I asked myself. Provoke him into being as nasty as he used to be? God forbid.

  “Sorry,” I said. I rubbed my hand over the short, dark blond fur on my head, searching for the right words—and sending a small shower of dirt onto the map. “I’m only trying to say that we’re a team, and that none of us can take credit or blame alone, from here on out.

  “Tarani is right about this—a team needs a leader. For reasons that mystify me, I’m it.

  “You’re right about something else—there is nothing more important than getting the Ra’ira away from Gharlas.

  “Trust is the key to teamwork, Thymas. You and Tarani have to trust me to give the right orders, and I have to trust you to follow them. Not because you promised your father to obey me.”

  Which is yet to happen, I thought. Wups, “Captain”—could be you need some lessons in trust, yourself.

  “Especially not because,” I continued, “you feel you’ve proved yourself unworthy of command.” He flinched a little at that, and I knew I had touched a nerve. “We can’t afford your self-pity.

  “I’m the first to admit that you and I aren’t the best of friends, Thymas, but we have fought the same enemy. And we’ve ridden together.”

  A muscle along Thymas’s jaw tensed and relaxed.

  This “boy” is going to
be the next Lieutenant of the Sharith, I thought. He takes that duty very seriously. It’s time I showed him that I take HIM seriously.

  “Tarani’s power and your sword, Thymas. If I’d had a choice, I couldn’t have selected two stronger weapons to use against Gharlas. But an unwilling weapon is more hazard than help. Convince me that I’ll have your cooperation—not obedience, mind you, but cooperation—or stay behind.”

  I stopped, wondering if I’d said enough, or too much. The boy was thinking about it; that was a good sign. He leaned heavily on the back of the chair in front of him, looking at me, considering. When he spoke, the meek, whining tone was absent from his voice for the first time since the fight with Gharlas. If I’d done nothing else, I’d taken his mind off his guilt.

  “ ‘Trust.’ ‘Cooperation.’ ‘Sincerity.’ ” He quoted the words skeptically. “Here’s some sincerity, Rikardon. I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. And I still don’t understand why Dharak made you Captain.”

  Your resentment is showing, Thymas, I thought, but this isn’t like your usual fit of temper. It is possible—barely possible—that we’re finally beginning to communicate with one another?

  “Dharak was worried that you were going to lead the young Riders after Gharlas,” I said. “He thought that if he made me Captain, and I told them to stay put, they’d listen. He does believe that I’m supposed to be the Captain. But what he really wanted was to avoid the split-up of the Sharith.” I let that sink in, then I said: “Dharak still leads the Riders. So will you, when your time arrives.”

  Thymas was quiet for a moment. “Convince me of something,” he said at last. “Convince me that you’re the one who is supposed to lead this ‘team.’ And while you’re at it, tell me what the filth you’ve been hiding all this time. Show me the same kind of trust you say you want from me.”

  I heard Tarani’s intake of breath, but I didn’t give her a chance to say anything.

  “That’s fair, Thymas, and I wish I could give you clear, objective reasons for it. I can’t. It’s just something I feel. There, is something which I have been concealing—not for lack of trust, but because I didn’t think your knowing it would be useful to either one of us. I’m a … Visitor. Markasset was killed by one of Gharlas’s accomplices. I arrived a few hours later.”

  I saw a look of revelation cross Thymas’s face, and I was sure that I was about to be accused, once more, of being a reincarnation of Serkajon. Because Markasset was descended from the man who had destroyed the corrupt Kingdom, and because I had been given his unique steel sword, that seemed to be the standard conclusion people jumped to when they found out I was a Gandalaran personality returned from the All-Mind.

  Of course, that’s not what I was, but I had let the few who knew about me believe it, because the concept was acceptable to them. No one in Gandalara knew the truth about where this “Visitor” had come from.

  Ricardo had been cruising the Mediterranean Ocean—a concept in itself unacceptable to the desert-familiar Gandalarans—in the company of the lovely young Antonia Alderuccio when the fireball had somehow transported Ricardo to the Kapiral Desert, Markasset, and Keeshah. That star-covered night, and Antonia, were secret memories that came often to my dreams.

  It turned out that I was wrong about what Thymas was thinking.

  “That’s why Gharlas called you ‘double-minded!’ ” he cried. “Is that why you could break—? … Oh.”

  I didn’t say anything while he mulled it over, all his thoughts turned inward. When his eyes refocused, he said: “All right. You’ve convinced me. Now, what proof will you accept that I’ll follow orders?”

  “All I need is your word, Thymas, freely given.”

  3

  I was on the slope below the workshop, walking back from the bath-house, when the sudden Gandalaran night overtook me. Although no starlight could penetrate the cloud cover, the diffused moonlight gave a ghostly glow to the large features around me—the road, the fields, the outlines of the workshops. A brighter patch of light marked the upstairs window of Volitar’s old living quarters, and I aimed my steps in that direction.

  As I neared the downhill entrance of the house, I heard the sound of Tarani’s humming, and I was able to separate her from the other dark shapes. Ronar was stretched out on the ground, lying on his side. Tarani was kneeling behind him, touching the ugly, infected gash on the back of his neck with one hand. Her other hand was stroking his head slowly, smoothing the fur between his tapered ears.

  While I stood there watching, the cat’s labored breathing slowed and softened; his limbs moved slightly as the muscles relaxed into Tarani’s hypnotic sleep.

  I could resist or accept Tarani’s powers. This one I had accepted, benefited from, and enjoyed. It had become harder to resist, and right then I had to shake my head to keep from falling under the spell of her rich, compelling voice.

  When Tarani had finished, she stood up and came over to me. She touched my arm and led me away from the house so our voices wouldn’t disturb the sleeping cat.

  “It would be hypocritical of me, now,” she said, “to question your decision, Rikardon. But I am concerned for Ronar and Thymas. You must know that they really aren’t ready to travel.”

  “Tell me something,” I said. “Was it easier to put Thymas and Ronar to sleep tonight?”

  “Yes,” she answered, after thinking about it for a minute. “Yes, it was.”

  “Staying here was tearing Thymas apart inside, Tarani. He wanted us to get going, but didn’t want to be left behind. His sense of duty was in conflict with his desires. And that was another source of guilt for him.

  “Sitting still is hard for a man like Thymas. That inner turmoil had to be interfering with your healing. Now that he knows we’re all going to do something—and now that he and I know where we stand—I’m hoping he’ll mend faster.”

  She laughed and shook her head as she took two quick steps forward. The window’s light cast a golden sheen on her fine-boned, pale face as she turned toward me.

  “Why is it, Rikardon,” she said, “that I have the mind-gift, yet you read people more clearly than I?”

  She was not speaking of telepathy. She meant what Ricardo would call intuition, or empathy, and what Markasset would define as a strong link with the All-Mind: an ability to compare an individual’s actions and attitudes to a wide spectrum of experiences, and to define his motivation.

  If Markasset had such a link, it was entirely subconscious in Rikardon. But Ricardo hadn’t lived for sixty years without learning something about people. Gandalarans weren’t human, physically—their body and facial construction differed slightly from Homo sapiens—but their mental and emotional patterns were very human.

  “Perhaps it’s because I’m older, Tarani.”

  “You’re referring to your … other lifetime?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it like?”

  I shrugged. “Ordinary.” I felt the usual twinge at the deception; I let her assume that we shared the same heritage. “I was something of a scholar, something of a fighter.”

  I was grateful that she didn’t pursue her curiosity. She merely nodded. “I expect it was the second one that lets you see what Thymas is feeling.”

  “I … can appreciate something else he feels,” I said. What the hell am I doing? I asked myself.

  “The sha’um,” I stammered lamely, and too late.

  “Don’t back away from it, Rikardon,” she said quietly. “You and I—we need to ‘know where we stand’, too.”

  She was right, of course. And in the lamplight—in any light—she was beautiful. Even Ricardo would have appreciated Tarani’s slim, dancer’s body, the high-cheekboned face. She shared the patrician looks of the Lords of Eddarta, which were closer to human facial features. The wide tusks that took the place of canine teeth were there, still, but the supraorbital ridge was less pronounced, the face more narrow. Her unusual dark head fur and the glow of power in her eyes set off her striking
appearance—even now, with refracted candlelight wavering across her face.

  “Before I walked into Thymas’s life, he had everything, Tarani. The respect of the Riders, a guarantee of the future he had aimed for all his life, a woman he hoped to marry. I’m not responsible for the upheaval he has lived through in these past weeks, but I am associated with it.

  “He and I made a start, this afternoon, toward—well, not friendship. Call it noncompetition. If I were to … say certain things to you right now, that balance would be destroyed.”

  Her back stiffened. “You seem to know so well what Thymas feels,” she said. “Assuming that I am no more than a prize for a footrace, does he think he can still compete for me?”

  “You know I didn’t mean it that way. Thymas has an abundance of pride. I think he’s accepted the fact that the woman he loved was only one dimension of the complex Tarani he’s getting to know now. But he knows—more importantly, you and I know—that, within the limits of the personality you showed him, you really did love Thymas.

  “Maybe you still do.”

  “Yes,” she admitted, and her stiff posture relaxed. “At least, I still care for him insofar that I would not wish him any further hurt. I do see your point. It is one thing that I have turned away from him. It would be quite another if I turned to you. It would disturb him and disrupt the healing process.”

  “And we need Thymas healthy when we meet Gharlas,” I agreed.

  She shook her head. “Your concern goes deeper than that,” she said. “I can read that much, at least. In spite of all the trouble he has been to you, in your own way, you care for Thymas, too.”

  “I said we have ridden together. You know Thymas, and the Sharith.”

  “A bond of loyalty,” she said. Abruptly, she took a couple of paces, then came back.

  “I confess that I feel drawn to you, Rikardon. It may be no more than curiosity. It may be a kinship created by what we are trying to do. It may be gratitude for your compassion toward Thymas, and Volitar. Whatever is causing it, the attraction is there, and it is better that we recognize and control it.