[Lanen Kaelar 01] - Song in the Silence (62 page)

“Littling, listen to me,” said Varien,
putting one hand to my cheek and turning me gently to
face him. ”What has been done, on
both sides, is in the past. For the moment we are
responsible for him, and he suffers.
Maikel has tended him as best he may, but says that he
cannot yet make himself understood
aloud.”

“You
want me to bespeak him, don’t you, to see if I can hear what he is trying to
say? Despite
the
fact that he is Gedri and most likely deaf and mute?”
I
said in traespeech. I was feeling a
little dazed.

“Yes,” he replied, smiling. “It is
good to hear your voice, dearling, would that I could respond
in kind. But
I cannot, and I believe that you are his only hope. I cannot be certain, but I
believe that
I have heard a scattered voice, and I believe it to be his.”

“So, I must help him, who would give me to
demons.” Varien only looked at me, waiting, his
green eyes old and patient, and
behind him sat Rella, saying nothing. I had expected to find
myself
fighting my own temper, but to my surprise I began to understand a little of
pity.

Marik’s plight, however richly deserved, was
making me grow despite myself.

“Very well,” I said, with no good
grace. I loosed Varien’s hands and went to sit beside the
bed.
“Marik, it is Lanen,” I said. “Your daughter. I am going to
speak to you without words.
Try to hear me, and say what it is that troubles
you.” Taking a deep breath, I said in
truespeech,
“Marik of Gundar, it is Lanen Maransdatter—your daughter—who
speaks to you.
Can you tell me what troubles you?”

To my amazement, I heard a kind of response.
Scattered it was indeed, but it could only be
coming from him.

”Marik?

Lanen?

daughter

demons
       
nonono
               
light out of darkness

nono

lostlostlost

destroyer
comes
   
Corli
                
Caderan stop

Caderan
stopped

dead

dead dead
     
death comes
     
light goes
      
where

where
                       
lostlostlost

the
swift destroyer
        
stop
                    
who were

demons
                 
lostlostlost

nononoooo
… .”

I broke the connection, shuddering. Marik lived
now in a vast darkness, but something in that
broken mind sought light and life,
after a fashion. “It’s hard to tell, but he seems to be thinking
about
something called ‘the swift destroyer.’ I think he wants it stopped, but he
wants Caderan
to
do it.” Varien frowned. I turned to Rella. “Have you ever heard of
such a thing?”

“Yes,” she said grimly, looking daggers
at the troubled form of Marik. “We should have
strangled the bastard long since.
It’s a disease. The Swift Destroyer. Fever, chills, vomiting,
and one of
every two who get it, dies within the day. It’s a demon-spawned illness. Takes
a
strong
demon caller to bring it on, too. Damn Caderan and all like him.”

“But surely if Caderan is gone he cannot
bring this down upon us,” I said.

“Don’t count on it. The damned stuff is
almost always left behind by a sorcerer as a final piece
of
viciousness, while they get clean away. There’s some physical component to the
spell,
some
fetish that sets it off. If we could find that, we might be able to stop
it.”

I looked at Rella in amazement. “How do you
know so much about this?” I asked, shocked.

“I told you,” she said with a grin.
“I’m in the Silent Service. All that we do is learn things
and remember
them. You can believe me.”

“What would this fetish look like?”
asked Varien, taking all this in his stride. I was surprised
at his
calmness, until I remembered that, in a sense, it must be his usual state. You
can’t live
more
than a thousand years without gaining a certain composure about most things.

“It should be pretty obvious. I’m trying to
remember— there should be a mudball about the
 
size
of a fist, a few feathers, and a handful of the incense used for the dead.
Probably
wrapped
up together in a cloth somewhere on the ship.”

“Start looking now,” I said.

Rella

Well, that was another sleepless night. We looked
high and low, all over the ship, for hours
and hours, and found nothing. I began
to wonder if Marik wasn’t just babbling in his
delirium, until one of his guards
fell ill.

The one who had taken over Caderan’s quarters.

We quarantined the man and went back over the
room. We thought we had already searched it
thoroughly, but I had been taught
that the Swift Destroyer always struck first in physical
proximity to
the fetish that bound it. It must be in that room.

It was Varien who finally found it, in a hidden
panel above the small desk that was bolted to
the deck. He removed it with gloves
on, as I instructed, and dropped it over the side, then
followed it with the gloves.

The outbreak was not nearly so bad as might be
expected. The guard died, poor sod, but the
rest of us who contracted it had
little worse than what felt like a bad cold. Varien seemed to
escape the
infection, which surprised me, as he had come in closest contact with the
fetish. I
suppose
the gloves held it off.

Maikel helped us as he might, letting Marik fend
for himself for a few days. By the time we
started expecting to sight land,
there were a lot of us on board still sniffling and sneezing, but
no worse. It
would have been terrible had we not found that thing in the desk. I’d never
seen
the
Destroyer, but one look at what was left of the guard’s body was enough.

And of a sudden, in the late morning of the
twelfth day out from the Dragon Isle, there was a
cry from the crow’s nest. Corli had
been sighted away off the starboard bow.

We were home.

Lanen

We drew nigh to Corli as the sun rose to a
splendid
noon
,
and some three hours later I tossed
the mooring ropes over the side to those who waited on
the pier to haul them in and make us
fast to the dock.

I sought out Varien as the ship erupted into a
mad confusion. We had all been provided with
tallies of the lansip we had
gathered, and we were to be paid on the landward end of the
gangplank.
The moment we had docked all the Harvesters ran for their packs, aching to walk
again on land
and to collect their pay from Marik’s people (and, if I had known it, to get
away
from
this Dragon-cursed ship).

Rella and I collected our tallies from the
bursar, and I went with Varien to seek out Edril, the
merchant we’d bargained with for our
passage. We honoured our word and handed over what
now seemed to me a tiny amount of
gold. Edril’s eyes widened and he went so far as to bow
his thanks to us. Well, fair enough,
gold is exceedingly rare, and Marik never was the sort to
inspire
personal loyalty.

At the far end of the gangplank there was a
milling crowd of Harvesters seeking payment,
receiving payment, grinning madly,
laughing wildly at family and friends in the crowd that
had gathered to cheer and greet the
first Harvest ship to return in a hundred and thirty years.

Rella was behind me when I collected my pay for
the lansip I’d gathered, but I did not mean to
linger. Varien and I, at least, had
but one desire—to get away from there as far and as fast as
possible.

Varien

I had never imagined such a great crowd of
Gedrisha—of people. The quay swarmed with
them, shouting, laughing, working,
begging, a great seething mass of souls intent on their own
business yet
moving as in a great dance with their fellow creatures. It was dizzying.

We were past the paymaster and heading into the
crowd when Rella called out to us. Lanen
was in a hurry but she stopped,
waiting for her to catch us up. “Whither now, Rella?” she
asked.
“Now you’ve made your fortune proper, where will you go?”

The old woman smiled, her pack resting
effortlessly on her bent back, a mysterious something
in her eyes. “Home, I
think,” she said. She stared at Lanen, her smile growing wider. “It’s
a
long
way to go alone, though. I wondered where you might be headed. If our paths lie
together,
perhaps I might ride with you—some of the way, at least.” When Lanen did
not
answer,
Rella delighted me by standing in what could only be an Attitude, the backs of
her
hands
on her hips, her weight all on one leg and that hip higher than the other, with
a quirk of
the
lips and an expression I had not seen before. Now if only I could learn what it
meant.

“I’m making for a little village in the
North Kingdom, maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s called
Beskin.”

“What?” exclaimed Lanen.
“Beskin?” Her eyes glowed with delight. “Heithrek. Do you—
have you ever
known a man called Heithrek, a blacksmith? It would be—oh, near thirty years
ago, but his
family might still be there.”

Rella grinned with delight “Never met
him.” She paused, and I’d swear she savoured her next
words.
“I know his daughter, though. Tall woman, looks a lot like you, name of
Maran Vena.”

Lanen let loose a little cry and her mouth
dropped open. Her eyes were shining and she
couldn’t speak for a moment, lost in
wonder at something I could not imagine.

And then from nowhere, out of the seething crowd
of humanity, a small dark-haired man
came close behind Rella. I saw something flash in his
hand and heard Rella cry out in pain.

Lanen cried out as well and caught her as she
fell, but from where she stood she could not
have seen what happened. I left Rella
to her care and ran after the man, or tried to. There were
simply too
many people. I could not keep up with him— it seemed almost as if the crowd
parted to let
him through, then closed up behind like an impenetrable forest. In seconds he
was out of
sight.

I went back to Rella, now covered with blood and
lying in Lanen’s arms on the ground. She
was badly wounded, though I could not
be certain that the smell of death was on her. I ran to
seek Maikel, not knowing if he could
do her any service, knowing only that there was no
other hope for her.

Lanen

I had seen such a wound before, though Jamie was
better at it. Rella still lived.

“Who has done this?” I asked urgently.

“Caderan’s master. Berys. Demonlord,”
she said, breathless. Her face grew paler by the
second and I feared death was not far
off, but she managed yet to speak. “Beskin. Maran—give her … love …
warning,” and then, staring into my eyes and speaking very clearly, she
said,
“Go to your mother.”

Then she fell back. I did not know if she had
fainted or died.

Varien

Maikel and I came as swiftly as we might. He
found the pulse of life in her yet, weak but
present, and taking her body in his
arms he bade us follow him to the Healer’s residence hard
by. His
fellow Healers laid her on a clean table and began to put forth their power to
save her.

We could only watch.

Lanen stood in shock, helpless and angry. She
stared into nothingness for only a little space of
time, then with a jerk opened her
eyes wide and turned sharply to me. “Come on. They’ll take
care of her.
We have to go.”

“Where?”

“Away from here.” When I still did not
respond, she gripped my arm tightly with the strength
of her fear. ”If they found her they
can find us. We have to go now.”