The Well of Darkness (18 page)

Tarani took a breath and tensed—and Obilin nodded to someone behind me. Before I could react, an arm whipped around my throat, and the bronze blade of a thin dagger gleamed in front of my face. I gripped the arm with my hands and pulled at it, gasping for breath.

“Do let him breathe, Sharam,” Obilin said, and the tension in the muscular arm eased slightly.

“You can’t control both the man and the dralda,” Obilin said to Tarani. “And they all have orders to kill your friend if anything, um, unusual happens. Do you understand me?”

Tarani nodded.

Here we are again
, I thought bitterly.
Tarani bound because of me.
There was no despair this time, however, only fury—and a determination to find a way out of the trap. Amid the frantic creation and rejection of plans was a small kernel of pleasure in being
able
to “think on my feet” again.

Obilin laughed. “To answer your question, Rikardon, I didn’t need to
find
you, only
wait
for you. I knew as soon as the messages from Lingis stopped that you were behind it, and that you were free. You had to be coming to Eddarta. When Zefra convinced that fool Indomel that the lady Tarani was too ill to meet with him, I knew the two of you were together and on your way out of the city. I and Sharam and the dralda have been waiting here for you since noon.” He shook his foot, spraying water on the nearer dralda, which jumped, snarled, and edged away. “Uncomfortably, I might add, and at the cost of an excellent pair of boots.”

Since noon
, I thought.
What happened to our contacts? Has he scared them away?
Then something else Obilin had said penetrated.

“Indomel doesn’t know Tarani’s gone?” I asked. “No. Nor you, either, for that matter. The High Lord has been preoccupied lately. The silence from Lingis disturbed him, of course, but I persuaded him to wait for more definite information before he took any rash action.”

“You mean against me,” Tarani said. “Indomel would have killed me if he had been certain Rikardon had escaped. You protected us both. Why?”

“That’s easy to figure,” I answered, before Obilin could speak. “He wants you for himself, Tarani, and he needs
me
to control
you.
When Indomel finally figures out we’re gone, he’ll pretend to look for us, and fail. The High Lord won’t be happy with him, but Obilin will have plenty of compensation for that—you and me, hidden away and in his power.”

Obilin smiled grimly. “Well stated,” he said. “And entirely accurate. Our—shall we call it our try sting place, my dear?” He bowed mockingly to Tarani. She merely glared at him, and he laughed. “In any case, it is prepared for us, and it’s time we were on our way. The trip will be more comfortable for all of us if you both cooperate. We shall not, obviously, be traveling by the road. The dralda over there—” He nodded to the roadway behind us, from which there still came the sounds of mass confusion “—are keeping potential witnesses at a distance. They will be allowed to pass, once we are safely off the roadway. Shall we go, please?
Now.
“

Obilin gestured to us with his sword, and the man behind me started dragging me off to my left. I went with, him, staggering but not struggling. I was watching Tarani as Obilin approached her. There was a look about her, one I had seen when she walked on stage and prepared to dance—

Tarani burst into flame just before Obilin’s hand touched her. He jerked his hand back in surprise, but with startling quickness recovered and reached out again. “From now on, your skill will serve me instead of trick me,” he promised grimly, grabbing a tongue of flame that shimmered back into the shape of Tarani’s arm. “Sharam, cut the lady’s friend. Just a little.”

“No!” Tarani shouted, and lunged in my direction. Obilin’s grip held her back, but Sharam’s attention had been distracted just enough.

I grabbed the hand that held the dagger with both my hands, braced my feet on the ground, and arched my body, pushing his arm over my head. The movement threw Sharam off balance; he staggered backward, grunting and straining to bring his arm down again.

“Mara,” Sharam grunted, and the dralda on my side of the lighted circle launched itself at me. Obviously following orders from its master, it turned at the last minute and broadsided into me, knocking the wind from my lungs and tumbling me and Sharam off the edge of the road into the spongy ground cover.

The double shock of the dralda hitting me and my slamming full-length into Sharam as we fell made my head swim and loosened my grip. Sharam had taken a knock, too. He pulled his knife hand free, but in the process loosened his hold around my neck. I rolled to the left, striking back with my elbow.

We were nearly out of range of the light. I felt, rather than saw, the knife swing by me, a miss too near to bear thinking about. Both dralda were at the edge of the road, ready to lunge. I pulled out my sword, bracing for the attack.

“Stop!” Tarani called, and the dogs pulled back, shaking their heads furiously, whining.

“Tass, Mara, attack!” Sharam said, no longer interested in Obilin’s need to keep me alive. He moved into the light, swung his arm at me. “Attack!”

Obilin’s sword pressed into Tarani’s side. “Release them,” he ordered. They came at me.

The first beast ran right onto the point of my sword. I rolled back and used its body as a shield. The other dralda concentrated on my unprotected legs and I kicked out and scrabbled around, trying to keep free of its teeth and claws. The weight of the dead one made breathing difficult, and its fur muffled and garbled the noises around me.

I recognized the howling I remembered from the desert—it came from the direction of Eddarta, and frighteningly close. And I heard voices. Their tone was angry or fearful, but only a few words reached me clearly.

“Sharam, I told you to leave the others—” Obilin’s voice.

“I
did;
I
am
telling them; they aren’t—” Sharam.

Obilin’s voice again, menacing. “It is
your
doing.”

The sound of bronze striking bronze, then Tarani’s voice.

“Too slow, Obilin. You fleason,” she spat at him, and, had I not been quite so busy, I would have shuddered at the contempt and power in her voice. As it was, I found myself listening more carefully.

“I would kill him with my own hands, and then destroy myself, before I would allow you to command me as Molik did!”

The howling came closer, stopped abruptly.

“There,” I heard Obilin say. “You may have the mindgift, whore, but Sharam knows his animals. They are
his
, not
yours.
“

“Are they?” Tarani’s voice said, then:
“Attack”

The second dralda stopped worrying me; I pushed the dead one away, relieved beyond words to be free of its musky smell, and watched three dralda stalk Obilin and Sharam as Tarani, sword and dagger both ready in her hands, backed through the line of animals toward me. The big, wild-looking dogs were silent except for skin-tensing growls.

“No,” Sharam shouted, pointing at me with one hand, Tarani with the other. “
They
are the prey. Attack!”

The dralda stopped, looked back at us, hesitating.

“Attack, I said!” Sharam yelled, and grabbed the nearest one by the fur at its shoulders. He lifted, pulled, tried to turn the animal, then howled in pain as powerful jaws closed on his wrist.

That seemed to decide things. I caught a glimpse of Obilin backing away from a lunging dralda—but I was moving, myself, by then.

Tarani was right behind me; we ran west along the road. I was trying not to listen to the noise behind us—yelling, snapping, chewing.

Or the sound beside me—sobbing.

A shape loomed up in the dimness of the road; Tarani and I skidded to a halt and crouched back, ready for another fight.

“No!” a scared voice cried, while the shape backed away hastily, hands upraised. “I came to meet you. Carn? Tellor’s caravan?”

“You were supposed to be at the joining,” I said.

“You didn’t find enough people already there?” the voice asked sarcastically. “You’re lucky I stuck around when I saw who else was waiting for you.”

True
, I thought.

“All right,” I said. “Now what?”

The faceless man dragged us into the reeds, where a small, damp clearing had been cut away. Another man waited for us there, and the two of them exchanged clothes with us.

“The usual plan,” the first man said, “is for us to step back out on the road and pretend we’re you. I think we’ll change that plan, considering.”

“You’ll have to hurry,” the other man said. “There’s a river crossing about an hour west of here. Take it, and go straight north—no roads, mind you,
directly
north.

“That’s the only way you can hope to find Tellor’s caravan by dawn. He knows you’re coming, but he won’t wait for you.” They slapped us on the back, and pushed us out toward the road.

“Good fortune,” followed us as a whisper.

It was nearly dawn before Tarani and I spoke again. We had located Tellor’s caravan and were watching the bustle of camp-breaking.

“Do your clothes fit well?” I asked.

“They fit,” she said. “They smell
vile.
“

I had already noticed that.

“Vleks,” I said. “I don’t think we can look forward to a fun trip.”

“I prefer the company of vleks,” she said drily, “to that of Lords or dralda.”

“Thank you, Tarani,” I said, and she looked at me.

In the growing light, I could see the lines at eyecorners and around her mouth—they seemed to be a fixture now, worn in by the strain of the past few weeks. I wanted to smooth these lines with my fingertips, but I held back.

Time
, I reminded myself.
Give her time.

“Why do you thank me?” Tarani asked.

“Your work with the dralda saved us,” I said. We both knew that wasn’t what I really meant, so I stumbled on. “Thank you for what you said to Obilin.”

She drew into herself, holding her shoulders, and turned her face away. “What I did to the dralda—it destroyed them,” she said in a small voice. “And as for what I said to Obilin, I spoke in anger—”

She stopped, caught her breath, started again.

“That is untrue,” she said. “I meant what I said. Molik was—
was filthy
inside. Thymas was sweet and kind and joyful—but he felt desire only, and that for—not for me, but for the image I allowed him to see. Being with him was more pleasant, and did not involve my gift, but it was not—not basically different from what I had done for Molik.”

She snapped around to face me, her dark eyes shining in a way I had never seen before but I would never forget.

“At last I have been touched with love, Rikardon. I shall not permit any other kind of touch.”

I leaned toward her, wanting more than anything to hold her against me, just to hold her. But she stepped back and laughed shakily, deliberately lifting the intense mood.

“And in that line of thought,” she said, “perhaps it would be best if those on the caravan believe me to be a man.”

I forced myself to think instead of want, and I considered her suggestion.

“We’ll be on the road for a long time,” I said. “A sustained illusion would drain your strength, and we may need it later.”

She jumped at that. “You mean Obilin—surely not!”

“No,” I said, praying that I was right. “I mean Worfit.”

“The roguelord from Raithskar,” she said, nodding. “We will need to pass through Chizan, which he controls now.”

“And your skill will help us there,” I added. “So—” I looked closely at the people moving in the melee of bawling vleks. “It seems there
are
female vlek handlers,” I said. I smiled at her. “But do wear your scarf,” I cautioned her. “There must be fewer dark-headed handlers than female handlers.”

“As you say.” She pulled a soiled and wrinkled scarf from her belt, made a face when she sniffed at it, then arranged it over the short, silky fur to hide it. Then she adjusted her weapons—nobody traveled the desert in Gandalara unarmed, so they weren’t out of place—and threw back her shoulders. “I am ready,” she said.

We went down to meet Tellor, who turned out to be a large man, beefy with muscles, with a rough and physical sense of humor. A joke was met with a roaring laugh and a backslap that, often as not, sent you face-first into the sand. After acknowledging our arrival, appraising Tarani’s body with inoffensive appreciation, and turning us over to the vlekmaster, he never spoke to us.

Tellor mastered the caravan. That is, he had contracted with a number of merchants to move them and their goods across the desert. This particular caravan was made up of only very rich merchants, who brought not only goods for sale, but retinues of servants and “sales help”—men and women who would sit within a circle of goods at the markets and talk price to prospective buyers. There were also mercenary guards and us—the vlek handlers.

The vleks were goat-size, with spindly legs, dull minds, and unpleasant dispositions. They were the means for moving trade goods, the poles and distinctly colored awnings that marked a merchant’s market territory, food and water for the whole caravan, sleeping pallets, feed for themselves, and personal travel supplies for Tellor, the merchants, and their people.

A vlek couldn’t carry more than about a hundred pounds of stuff on its back, but two to four of the creatures could be harnessed to deep-bedded, two-wheeled carts and the load in the cart could be, perhaps, a third heavier than the total weight manageable by the vleks individually.

If I had had the time to think about it, I would have expected the caravan to be heading for Iribos, the closest Refreshment House to Eddarta. Since Carn had mentioned Vasklar and Stomestad specifically, I would have assumed that the Fa’aldu slave route led from Iribos north and east to the big Refreshment House at which we had left a wounded Thymas on our first approach to Eddarta.

I would have been wrong, so I was just as glad I’d never thought about it. Tellor’s caravan was bound on the northern route, aimed directly for Stomestad. A map would have shown it as ten man-days from Eddarta, and normal caravan travel (vlek-speed) would have stretched the time to the two seven-days Carn had mentioned. But this caravan was so big that there were more carts than usual and a lower vlek/cart proportion, so that the animals tired quickly and the wide-based wheels of the carts slowed us down.