The Dark God: Servant Part 26

They'd demand the children be locked up as bait. They would torture them until they produced answers. Or they'd kill them.

Da said, "Only a coward lets the innocent be punished when it's within his power to stop it."

This was crazy. These weren't two children accused of stealing apples from their neighbor's orchard. "It's not cowardice," said Talen. "We're talking about sleth, Da. Sleth."

"Sleth," said Da. He sighed. "Fine. I suppose River's right. It's time. Although I do not believe you're ready." He turned to Nettle. "That would go as well for you. Of course, this should be your father's office, shouldn't it? But we can take care of that. You two are coming with me today."

Talen didn't understand half of what Da had just said. But it didn't matter. "What about them?" he asked, pointing at the girl and boy.

"What about them? River and Ke will return soon enough. And it doesn't appear you enjoy their company much."

"You're just going to leave them here unattended?" And then he understood what Da was doing. "You're going to give them a chance to run, aren't you? And that way if someone asks, you can truthfully say you have no idea where they are."

Da shook his head. "Them running is the last thing I want, Talen. Because then they'll surely be caught. You might want to think about that. Even if you haven't a nit's teaspoon of compa.s.sion, you'll want to consider what will happen when the Questioners begin their work. How long will it take before the boy is tortured into revealing who hid him for so long?"

That was easy to calculate. As were the consequences. Da had placed them all on a crumbling precipice and asked them to dance. "I don't understand why you're doing this," said Talen.

"Nettle," Da said, "tell me. Does your da tell you everything that goes on in his councils? You're his son. If you were to ask him, would he tell you all his battle plans?"

"He tells me a lot."

"Everything?"

"No."

"Why is that? He trusts you, doesn't he?"

"Well," said Nettle, then he fell into silence and shrugged. "I guess he thinks I've got a b.u.t.ter jaw."

Da laughed. "Hardly. It's because some truths, if shared, would hurt those who do not deserve it. And it is at such times you cannot simply pa.s.s the responsibility of the secrets you hold to someone else. You either carry the burden of the secret or release the whirlwind."

"Secrets?" An alarm sounded deep within Talen. What secrets did Da keep that concerned the girl and the boy?

Talen said, "There's more to this than the flimsy logic you've tried to fob me off with today, isn't there?"

"There's more to everything, son. Even when all the words have been spoken. But right now I have an appointment to meet the Clan Council. I was overtaken by a messenger earlier. I've been summoned back to Whitecliff to testify about what happened in the tower. I can understand your frustration, but I can't trust you here alone. So you're going with me. Now get the wagon hitched."

Talen buckled the second belly strap about Iron Boy, their mule. Nettle was gathering food because, despite the current turmoils, Da said there were families needing supplies. And now, according to Da, was just as good a time to deliver what they needed as any other. Talen suspected it was only to cover something else, but he could not guess what that was. He simply didn't understand his father.

Talen stroked Iron Boy's neck. If the Questioners found out they'd harbored the hatchlings, Iron Boy would go into the fires along with all the rest of them.

"I'm not oblivious to all the dangers about us," said Da.

Talen turned. Da walked up to the wagon and secured the Hog under the seat. He wore a poultice about his neck where it was bruised. He looked over the stores in the bed of the wagon then came to stand before Talen. He pulled an unusually dark braid of G.o.dsweed out of his pocket. "I want you to wear this for protection."

G.o.dsweed was used to ward off things not wholly of this world. It was most potent when burned, for the smoke chased the dead. But even having it upon you was supposed to have an effect. "Why are you giving me that? This isn't about malevolent souls."

"Oh, but it is," said Da. "Did you not listen to what I said about the creature at the fortress? It was full of the dead. Now, hold out your arm."

Talen pulled back the sleeve of his tunic and let Da tie the braid about his upper arm. The braid was thicker than most, woven in an odd pattern.

"Where did you get this?"

Da said nothing. When he finished tying the braid, he pulled the sleeve of Talen's tunic back down over it, nodded, then reached out and cupped the back of Talen's neck with his large hand. He looked deep into Talen's eyes. "Courage, son."

This was Da's habit since Talen was a boy. He'd look him in the eyes and make him focus on a word. It was embarra.s.sing; he wasn't a little boy anymore. He tried to shrug out of his father's grasp, but Da's grip was even stronger than Ke's and he waited for Talen's response.

"Courage," Talen repeated back to him.

Da smiled. "See, you feel better already."

"All I felt was your hand, cold as the tomb." Talen hated that little ritual, and he swore at that moment he would never submit his sons to anything like it.

Da nodded. "We're almost done here. I just need a bit of barley."

Nettle returned shortly with what looked like most of what had been hanging in the smoke shed, including the salmon Talen had caught just last week. Nettle placed it next to a basket of cabbages and another of carrots resting in the wagon bed. Then Da came out of the house rolling a medium-sized barrel of barley.

"Goh," said Talen. "How many are we to visit?"

"Not enough," said Da.

Every two weeks Da went to Whitecliff and delivered supplies to struggling families along the way. Most were widows whose Koramite husbands had died or been maimed in the battles with the Bone Faces. One of the families had lost both mother and father, and the oldest son had sold himself to one of the clans to pay their debts.

Talen didn't know how Da knew who to visit. He supposed they discussed such things in the Koramite council Da attended. All the Koramites in the area were supposed to donate their surplus to help the affected families. But it seemed a large portion of what Talen delivered came from his family's own larder and garden. This time was no different.

Da drove the wagon and made Talen and Nettle walk alongside to spare Iron Boy. When they got up on the flats, Da looped the reins to the wooden hook under the seat and untied the thin, black leather strips holding his beard braids and proceeded to comb the beard out with an old bone comb as Iron Boy plodded along. When Da finished and began to retie the first braid, Talen figured he'd had enough time for his temper to die down. He looked up at his father on the wagon seat and said, "So have you got some G.o.dsweed for Nettle?"

"Not today," said Da. He held a beard braid with one hand and brought up a leather tie. "That's his father's office."

"That's the second time you've said that."

"I'm glad you can count," said Da.

"It never does any good to hold onto your anger," said Talen.

"You're absolutely right," said Da.

Talen rode in silence for a few more yards waiting for more. When Da didn't respond, he decided to take another tack. "So what are all these facts you were going to bestow on me?"

"What?" asked Da in mock amazement. "A fart-brain like myself attempt to explain anything to you? I wouldn't presume."

"Oh, come," said Talen.

"You'll get your facts," said Da. "Both of you. Just a little patience is all you need."

"You didn't make us come with you because you were worried about us killing or turning that girl and boy in, did you?" Talen asked.

Da smiled. "How does that arm feel?"

"Feels like an arm," Talen said and rolled his eyes.

Hunger watched from the woods as Argoth's daughters came out to hang clothes on a line to dry. The wife stood in the back doorway and whistled for the dogs that lay at his feet. Meanwhile, a group of servants walked out to the vineyard with baskets and cutting knives and begin to pick grapes.

When he was a man, he would have salivated at the thought of the red grapes, the skin colored with a blue dust, and all of it bursting with a tangy sweet. But grapes held no appeal to him now. It was only a memory of a desire that ghosted by.

He supposed Argoth would be conducting a search for him. But could they track a man of dirt? He did not think so. Morning grew toward noon, and then the breeze brought him a whiff of magic. The scent was barely detectable, almost a lie, but it was there.

Hunger prepared himself, but the scent disappeared and did not return. It hadn't come from the direction of Whitecliff. The breeze was blowing from a different direction.

What did this mean?

It meant Argoth had simply crossed the wind's path and had moved on. Argoth wasn't coming home. Or maybe it wasn't Argoth at all. Maybe it was someone else entirely. Someone with more secrets. Someone he would not have to fight the Mother's compulsion to eat.

That idea burned in his mind.

He had been stupid with the other man. He would not be stupid with this one.

Hunger jolted upright and lumbered out of his hiding place, running in the direction of the breeze. He kept to the wood line, not because he feared attack, but because he did not want to raise an alarm and scare off whoever it was.

For a few minutes he lost the scent. But he ran perpendicular to the general direction of the breeze, and then, there the stink was again, more powerful than before.

He traced the scent, moving like a dark animal through the woods, avoiding clearings and meadows as best he could, and when he couldn't, running with utmost speed through the gra.s.s.

The scent grew and grew, taking him toward Whitecliff, but Hunger ran out of woods before he caught up to the source of the stink.

He stood in the tree line at the foot of a hill and looked over the acres of fields that lay between him and the walls of Whitecliff and the shining sea beyond.

Leagues to his left rose the ridge of white cliffs for which the city was named. They were the forbidden cliffs, riddled with crumbling warrens and wondrous carvings wrought by creatures long dead before the first settlers arrived, the same creatures that had carved the Mother's caves. Just below him ran the Soap Stone river. A toll bridge spanned it.

Hunger looked along the road to the bridge and then beyond. It was crowded with people. The Festival of Gifts was not too far away, and then the whole land would be celebrating the blessings of the Creators given this year. There would be games and dances. Sacrifices. And the Divine would grant boons to even the most humble pet.i.tioner.

A bearded man on a wagon rode out from behind the bridge house. Beside him walked two boys, a Mokaddian and a Koramite. Hunger recognized the man. It was the Koramite who had been with Argoth.

A mighty stink rolled toward him in great waves. It was more potent than anything Hunger had encountered so far. More potent than anything he'd experienced from the Mother. He must have incredible power, that Koramite.

But, no, it wasn't the man.

He remembered the Koramite's stink; this one was different.

Small fingers of brightness rose from the boy like steam rose from wet clothes in the winter. They were fingers of Fire, fingers of his life spilling out into the wide world. Many came from the upper part of one arm.

It was the Koramite boy making the overpowering stink. Hunger opened his mouth and took in a great breath of the scent.

Was this the young male the Mother spoke of? The band around the boy's arm wasn't a normal G.o.dsweed band. It was a weave, smoking with power. He wondered if that weave was the cause of this reckless waste.

Hunger looked at the second boy, and another memory tumbled into him. The second boy, the Mokaddian, was Argoth's son. Suddenly Hunger knew who the Koramite was. He was Hogan, Argoth's Koramite brother-in-law. Hunger was sure of it.

But why release Fire like this? Why waste it? Fire, spilled like this, would draw frights just as a dead carca.s.s would draw crows. Frights were creatures not completely from the world of flesh. Most were small and very difficult to see because they only gained substance in this world as they fed. They were leeches, but not of blood. There were three parts to all living things. Frights fed on Fire. They did not have the power to separate a living thing like he did. But sometimes, if someone was mortally sick or wounded, their Fire might bleed out. And this gave the frights an opening into which they could burrow and feed.

Hunger did not know the full powers of such creatures, but it didn't matter, he would deal with them. And he would be careful of the boy. Who knew: perhaps the boy was not being used to bait frights, but Hunger himself. To throw off a stink he could not resist. Perhaps these sleth thought to trap him.

But what trap could hold him? He could see none here. He should take them, the Koramite and his son. He should chase them down now. And while the Mother had commanded him to bring the Koramite to her, she hadn't said anything about the boy. Surely that boy knew some secrets.

Hunger identified the line of pursuit that would cut them off, then stopped himself. The Koramite and his boy were sleth; they would simply multiply themselves and run away, and then, when they were safely surrounded by the thousands in the city, they could cease their magic. The stink would die, and Hunger would lose them. They'd disappear, leaving Hunger exposed. There were priests at the temple in Whitecliff with a number of implements of lore. Maybe the priests and the sleth had joined forces. Or maybe they hadn't. Either way, if the boy was bait, then the trap, if there was one, was in the city.

But he didn't have to fall into a sleth trap. He sat down where he was next to a tangle of trumpet vine. The Koramite lived on this side of the river. He and his burning son would surely return from the city before long. And Hunger would be there along an empty stretch of road to greet them.

Talen had never received so many hard glances in his life. He doubted they would have been allowed to cross the bridge had Da not been wearing the token of the Council-a sash that was sewn with the patterned cloth of all Nine Clans and draped over one shoulder.

Almost everyone they pa.s.sed or overtook on this overcrowded road to Whitecliff looked at him like he himself had committed horrors. And the one man that hadn't given him the eye had shouted and waved his goose stick, rushing his gaggle of geese off the road so quickly you would have thought Da, he, and Nettle were a pack of wolves just come out of the wood. It was obvious the events of Plum Village had only turned the ridiculous rantings of the Fir-Noy against Koramites into truth.

The road they traveled ran almost straight to the Farmer's Gate in the outer wall of the city, taking them through fields that stood half-harvested and on to the gaming fields.

Every fortnight two or three of the Clans would send their best to compete here. Their best horses, runners, archers, slingers, and swordsmen. Along with the compet.i.tion there were jugglers and singers, story-tellers and ale wives. When the weaves had been full, the dreadmen would compete, sometimes against each other, sometimes against an animal. Only recently had Koramites been allowed to compete in the games, but Talen was sure the events of the last week would reverse that.

Between the gaming fields and the city moat stood plots with timber houses on them. At one a woman sat outside her door delivering well-s.p.a.ced blows to the bottom of a kicking boy she held across her lap. At another a girl with long black hair stood feeding old vegetables to a number of piglets. At yet another, two brown-and-white goats stood on the low-hanging branch of a tree chewing what leaves they could find. A third attempted to clamber up the woodpile next to the house to get to the gra.s.s growing on the sod roof, but she only succeeded in slipping off and bringing pieces of wood down with her.

Beyond the plots rose the outer wall of the city. Four men, tiny in the distance, worked on the red roof of one of the newer stone towers set in the wall.

The city of Whitecliff had three rings of defense: an outer wall, a fortress wall, then the fortress inner-wall. The fortress walls were made of stone. But the city wall was made of a steep embankment and timber palisades, like the many walled villages. A few years ago the clans had begun to replace that outer wall with stone, but it was far from finished. More than half of the seventeen towers were still made of timber.

As they approached the Farmer's Gate, a guard motioned Da to pull the wagon into a separate line from the Mokaddians.

At least a dozen guards stood on the rampart with strung bows. From their colors, he could see they were a mixture of Fir-Noy and Burund. Down at the base and off to the side of the gate a guard held a dead rabbit up by its hind legs, baiting the two mastiffs chained to the wall. He tossed the rabbit between the two dogs. The result was a violent scuffle, but in moments the smaller dog had most of the rabbit and gulped it down, leaving only a tuft of fur and one leg that had flown off into the weeds.

"See," said the guard. "That's the one to watch. And now I'll take your coppers."

"They've posted double the men," said Nettle.

"It won't do them any good," said Da. "Not against that creature of gra.s.s and stone."

Two guards motioned Da to come down off the wagon. One told Da and Talen to strip completely.

"Do you not see the token of the Council?" asked Da. "I've been summoned."

"Then we'll have to be double sure, won't we?"

"They're not going to strip," said Nettle. "I vouch for these men."

"You little p.i.s.s," the second man said and reached out to strike Nettle, but the first grabbed his arm and stopped him.

"That one is Captain Arogth's."