Enchanter's End Game Part 19

"Hettar?" Ce'Nedra repeated. "I had no idea."

"Mayhap it is because I am Mimbrate," Ariana concluded. "The ladies of my people are most sensitive to the signs of gentle affection in others."

It took perhaps a hundred yards for Hettar to overtake Adara's plunging horse. He seized her reins in one fist and jerked her roughly to a stop, speaking sharply to her, demanding to know what she was doing. Adara twisted this way and that in her saddle, trying to keep him from seeing her face as he continued to chide her.

Then a flicker of movement no more than twenty feet from the two of them caught Ce'Nedra's eye. Astonishingly, a mail-shined Murgo rose up out of the sand between two scrubby bushes, shaking off the sheet of brown-splotched canvas beneath which he had lain concealed. As he rose, his short bow was already drawn.

"Hettar!" Ce'Nedra screamed as the Murgo raised his bow. Hettar's back was to the Murgo, but Adara saw the man aiming his arrow at the Algar's unprotected back. With a desperate move, she ripped her reins from Hettar's grip and drove her horse into his. His mount lurched back, stumbled and fell, throwing the unprepared man to the ground even as Adara, flailing her horse's flanks with the ends of her reins, plunged directly at the Murgo.

With only the faintest flicker of annoyance, the Murgo released his arrow at the charging girl.

Even at that distance, Ce'Nedra could hear the distinct sound the arrow made when it struck Adara. It was a sound she would remember with horror for the remainder of her life. Adara doubled sharply, her free hand clutching at the arrow buried low in her chest, but her plunging gallop did not falter nor change as she rode the Murgo down. He tumbled and rolled beneath the churning hoofs of her horse, then lurched again to his feet as soon as she had pa.s.sed over him, his hand jerking at his sheathed sword. But Hettar was already upon him, sabre flashing in the glaring sunlight. The Murgo screamed once as he fell.

Hettar, his dripping sabre still in his hand, turned angrily to Adara. "What a stupid thing," he roared at her, but his shout cut off suddenly. Her horse had come to a stop a few yards beyond the Murgo, and she drooped in her saddle, her dark hair falling like a veil across her pale face and both of her hands pressed to her chest. Then, slowly, she toppled from her saddle.

With a strangled cry, Hettar dropped his sabre and ran to her.

"Adara!" the princess wailed, her hands going to her face in horror even as Hettar gently turned the stricken girl over. The arrow, still standing out of her lower chest, throbbed with the rhythm of her faltering heartbeat.

When the rest of them reached the pair, Hettar was holding Adara in his arms, staring into her pale face with a stricken look. "You little fool," he was murmuring in a broken voice. "You little fool."

Ariana slid from her saddle even before her horse stopped moving and ran to Hettar's side. "Do not move her, my Lord," she told him sharply. "The arrow hath pierced her lung, and shouldst thou move her, its keen edge will gash out her life."

"Take it out," Hettar said from between clenched teeth.

"Nay, my Lord. To pull the arrow now will do more damage than to leave it."

"I can't bear to see it sticking out of her like that," he almost sobbed.

"Then don't look, my Lord," Ariana said bluntly, kneeling beside Adara and placing a cool, professional hand on the wounded girl's throat.

"She's not dead, is she?" Hettar almost begged.

Ariana shook her head. "Gravely wounded, but her life doth still pulse within her. Instruct thy men to improvise a litter at once, my Lord. We must convey our dear friend to the fortress and Lady Polgara's ministrations immediately, lest her life drain away."

"Can't you do something?" he croaked.

"Not here in this sun-blasted desolation, my Lord. I have neither instruments nor medications, and the wound may be past my skill. The Lady Polgara is her only hope. The litter, my Lord. Quickly!"

Polgara's face was somber, and her eyes as hard as flint when she emerged from Adara's sickroom late that afternoon.

"How is she?" Hettar demanded. He had been pacing up and down in the main corridor of the blockhouse for hours, stopping every so often to strike savagely at the crudely built stone walls with his impotent fists.

"Somewhat improved," Polgara replied. "The crisis is past, but she's still terribly weak. She's asking for you."

"She will recover, won't she?" Hettar's question had a note of fear in it.

"Probably - if there aren't any complications. She's young, and the wound looked more serious than it actually was. I gave her something that will make her very talkative, but don't stay too long. She needs rest." Polgara's eyes moved to Ce'Nedra's tear-streaked face. "Come to my room after you've seen her, your Majesty," she said firmly. "You and I have something to discuss."

Adara's porcelain face was framed by the tumbled ma.s.s of her dark brown hair spreading across the pillow. She was very pale, but, though her eyes had a slightly unfocused look about them, they were very bright. Ariana sat quietly at the bedside.

"How do you feel, Adara?" Ce'Nedra asked in the quiet but cheerful voice one always a.s.sumes with the sick.

Adara gave her a wan little smile.

"Are you in any pain?"

"No," Adara's voice had a little dying fall to it. "No pain, but I feel very light-headed and strange."

"Why did you do that, Adara?" Hettar asked very directly. "You didn't have to ride right at the Murgo like that."

"You spend too much time with horses, my Lord Sha-dar," Adara told him with a faint smile. "You've forgotten how to understand the feelings of your own kind."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He sounded puzzled.

"Exactly what it says, my Lord Hettar. If a mare looked admiringly at a stallion, you'd know how things stood immediately, wouldn't you? But when it comes to people, you simply can't see at all, can you?" She coughed weakly.

"Are you all right?" he asked sharply.

"I'm surprisingly well - considering the fact that I'm dying."

"What are you talking about? You're not dying."

She smiled slightly. "Please don't," she told him. "I know what an arrow in the chest means. That's why I wanted to see you. I wanted to look at your face once more. I've been watching your face for such a long time now."

"You're tired," he said brusquely. "You'll feel better after you've slept."

"I'll sleep, all right," she said ruefully, "but I doubt that I'll feel anything afterward. The sleep I'm going to is the sleep one doesn't wake up from."

"Nonsense."

"Of course it is, but it's true nonetheless." She sighed. "Well, dear Hettar, you've finally escaped me, haven't you? I gave you a good chase, though. I even asked Garion to see if he could use sorcery on you."

"Garion?"

She nodded slightly. "You see how desperate I was? He said he couldn't, though." She made a little face. "What good is sorcery if you can't use it to make someone fall in love?"

"Love?" he repeated in a startled voice.

"What did you think we were talking about, Lord Hettar? The weather?" She smiled fondly at him. "Sometimes you can be impossibly dense."

He stared at her in amazement.

"Don't be alarmed, my Lord. In a little while, I'll stop chasing you, and you'll be free."

"We'll talk about that when you're better," he told her gravely.

"I'm not going to get better. Haven't you been listening? I'm dying, Hettar."

"No," he said, "as a matter of fact, you're not dying. Polgara a.s.sured us that you're going to be all right."

Adara looked quickly at Ariana. "Throe injury is not mortal, dear friend," Ariana confirmed gently. "Truly, thou art not dying."

Adara closed her eyes. "How inconvenient," she murmured, a faint blush coming to her cheeks. She opened her eyes again. "I apologize, Hettar. I wouldn't have said any of this if I'd known that my meddling physicians were going to save my life. As soon as I'm up and about, I'll return to my own clan. I won't bother you again with my foolish outbursts."

Hettar looked down at her, his hard-angled face expressionless. "I don't think I'd like that," he told her, gently taking her hand. "There are things you and I need to talk about. This isn't the time or the place, but don't go trying to make yourself unaccessible."

"You're just being kind." She sighed.

"No. Practical. You've given me something to think about beside killing Murgos. It's probably going to take me a while to get used to the idea, but after I've thought it over, we'll definitely need to talk."

She bit her lip and tried to hide her face. "What a stupid mess I've made of things," she said. "If I were somebody else, I'd laugh at me. It would really be better if we didn't see each other again."

"No," he said firmly, still holding her hand, "it wouldn't. And don't try to hide from me, because I'll find you - even if I have to have every horse in Algaria go looking for you."

She gave him a startled look.

"I am a Sha-dar, remember? Horses do what I tell them to."

"That's not fair," she objected.

He gave her a quizzical little smile. "And trying to have Garion use sorcery on me was?" he asked her.

"Oh, dear!" She blushed.

"She must rest now," Ariana told them. "Thou canst speak with her further on the morrow."

When they were back out in the hallway, Ce'Nedra turned on the tall man. "You might have said something a bit more encouraging," she scolded him.

"It would have been premature," he replied. "We're a rather reserved people, Princess. We don't say things just to be talking. Adara understands the situation." Hettar seemed as fierce as ever, his sharp-angled face hard, and his manelike scalp lock flowing over one leather-armored shoulder. His eyes, however, had softened slightly, and there was a faintly puzzled crease between his brows. "Didn't Polgara want to see you?" he asked. It was polite, but it was a dismissal nonetheless.

Ce'Nedra stalked away, muttering to herself about the lack of consideration that seemed to infect the male half of the population.

Lady Polgara sat quietly in her room, waiting. "Well?" she said when the princess entered. "Would you care to explain?"

"Explain what?"

"The reason for the idiocy that almost cost Adara her life."

"Surely you don't think it was my fault," Ce'Nedra protested.

"Whose fault was it, then? What were you doing out there?"

"We just went for a little ride. It's so boring being cooped up all the time."

"Boring. What a fascinating reason to kill your friends."

Ce'Nedra gaped at her, her face suddenly very pale.

"Why do you think we built these fortifications to begin with, Ce'Nedra? It was to provide us with some measure of protection."

"I didn't know there were Murgos out there," the princess wailed.

"Did you bother to find out?"

The entire implication of what she had done quite suddenly came crashing in on Ce'Nedra. She began to tremble violently, and her shaking hand went to her mouth. It was her fault! No matter how she might twist and turn and try to evade the responsibility, her foolishness had nearly killed one of her dearest friends. Adara had almost paid with her life for a bit of childish thoughtlessness. Ce'Nedra buried her face in her hands in a sudden storm of weeping.

Polgara let her cry for several moments, giving her ample time to accept her guilt; and when she finally spoke, there was no hint of forgiveness in her voice. "Tears won't wash out blood, Ce'Nedra," she said. "I thought I could at least begin to trust your judgment, but it appears that I was wrong. You may leave now. I don't believe I have anything more to say to you this evening."

Sobbing, the princess fled.

Chapter Fourteen.

"IS THIS PLACE all like this?" King Anheg asked as the army trudged through one of the flat, gravel-strewn valleys with the bare, sun-baked mountains around it dancing in the shimmering heat. "I haven't seen a tree since we left the forts."

"The country changes about twenty leagues out, your Majesty," Hettar replied quietly, lounging in his saddle as they rode in the blazing sunlight. "We start to hit trees when we begin coming down out of the uplands. They're a kind of low, scraggly spruce, but they break up the monotony a bit."

The column behind them stretched out for miles, dwarfed into a thin line by the enormous emptiness and marked more by the cloud of yellow dust raised by thousands of feet than by the presence of men and horses. The Cherek ships, covered with canvas, jolted along over the rocky ground on their low, wheeled cradles, and the dust hung over them in the stifling heat like a gritty blanket.

"I'd pay a lot for a breeze right now," Anheg said wistfully, wiping his face.

"Just leave things the way they are, Anheg," Barak advised him. "It wouldn't take much to start a dust storm."

"How much farther is it to the river?" King Rhodar asked plaintively, looking at the unchanging landscape. The heat was having a brutal effect on the corpulent monarch. His face was beet red, and he was soaked and dripping with sweat.

"Still about forty leagues," Hettar replied.

General Varana, mounted on a roan stallion, cantered back from the vanguard of the column. The general wore a short leather kilt and a plain breastplate and helmet bearing no marks of his rank. "The Mimbrate knights just flushed out another pocket of Murgos," he reported.

"How many?" King Rhodar asked.

"Twenty or so. Three or four got away, but the Algars are chasing them."

"Shouldn't our patrols be farther out?" King Anheg fretted, mopping his face again. "Those ships don't look that much like wagons. I'd rather not have to fight my way down the River Mardu-if we ever get there."

"I've got people moving around out there, Anheg," King Cho-Hag a.s.sured him.

"Has anyone run across any Malloreans yet?" Anheg asked.

"Not so far," Cho-Hag replied. "All we've seen so far are Thulls and Murgos."

"It looks as if 'Zakath is holding firm at Thull Zelik," Varana added.