you journey. I will be your protector and your servant. I have believed I would see this day since I was a child.'
'Doulos, please understand this. I… I can't be the king. I'm only a digger, and I'm looking for my son, who has left our camp to travel to the Borderlands. He is in terrible danger. He is pursued by one who would take his life. That's where I journey: into danger and uncertainty. Away from Sumifa, to the farthest reaches of Almaaz, not to the throne of the Citadel. I am one man alone. I could not free anyone from the Fascini. I can only hope to find my son before he is killed.'
'Muje, I have spoken. My word stands. Upon my name.'
Doulos closed his mouth and held up the palm of his right hand in the candlelight, then took a bit of ochre from the cave floor in his left hand and placed his right upon an empty space on the far wall. He blew gently upon the powdery ochre and removed his palm, leaving a sharp outline of every finger on the smooth cave wall. He beckoned to Javin.
'I would ask that you leave your mark to stand with theirs in faith for their freedom, Muje. And to witness my oath.'
Javin could hardly refuse the man who had saved his life. He rose and placed his good hand next to the print Doulos had made and let the Neffian mark the image upon the warm cave wall. He stepped back and looked at his own finished print. Javin smiled to himself. The shape of the hand he saw was a perfect copy of Cheyne's.
10
Yob stopped the party outside the gates of the bone temple, saluted Rotapan's guards, shook his spear at them, reminding them again of his name, and waited for them to swing the heavy doors open. Cheyne mentally sketched the enormous building, thinking that someday, if he lived through this, he would put down it on paper for Javin.
They moved into a dry, dusty yard, where a few stone-and-shell dwellings had been irregularly scattered and several ragged squadrons of ores drilled with hooks and chains. One or two bodies lay along the sidelines, casualties of the day's practice. Yob dismissed his group and came back to Og, who still stood cowering in Womba's awesome shadow. Cheyne and Claria kept their distance; every time Claria came closer, Womba bared her huge teeth and roared her deafening jealousy.
'We will see Rotapan now,' said Yob, yawning. 'Womba, go to the western sentry and wait for me. Tell the arms master I will see her when I have delivered my report.'
Yob's daughter moaned and let large tears form in her eyes. Yob glowered at her, shaking his spear, and she left, obviously pouting, now and then hissing at Claria, until she disappeared behind the temple.
Relieved to be rid of his would-be paramour, Og fell in beside Cheyne and Claria as they mounted the threescore marble steps that led to the temple's main entrance. Oddly, the stairs seemed to vibrate beneath their feet with a kind of keening, a doleful wail coming from deep under the temple. Og placed his hand over his heart for a moment until the tones died away. Claria shivered, unable to make sense of the sound. Cheyne took her arm, and they continued up the stairs.
'This will be tricky. Rotapan can be, uh, difficult,' Og said. 'He's not very impressive upon first glance, but he's a deadly fighter, more ferocious for his lack of size. Nobody can beat him with an edge. That's how he got to be overking, actually. |ust don't panic when we get to the top; I'll take care of it. And, well, watch where you put your feet,' Og assured them.
Cheyne nodded, noting that the bone temple was really a secondary structure, built on ruins perhaps as ancient as the ones he had just deserted in Old Sumifa. Cemented into broken walls and between tall, scallop- shell-capped marble columns, the rib bones of huge sea creatures served as the building's major supports. Some kind of long tusks framed many of the windows. The temple's friezes and archways were decorated with the skulls of all kinds of beings Cheyne could identify, and many more he had never seen before, each reverently housed in separate niches formed of long bones. Despite Og's admonition, at the last step Claria shrieked, pointing to something in the darkness of the main doorway. Yob turned around, laughing nervously.
'That is Sister Krota. Rotapan keeps her out here because she is so mean. Rotapan says if she likes you, she will not try to strike. But I don't think she likes anyone. Every time I come to make the tribute, she bites me. Takes me days to get well.'
Yob sighed and motioned them toward the biggest rattlesnake Cheyne had ever seen, a foot-wide specimen coiled tightly on an uprooted sapling that had been wedged into the bottom of a huge, broken, overturned ceramic pot. Krota suddenly flicked her tongue at them, shook her rattles menacingly, and drew her head back, preparing to strike. Yob prepared himself, teeth clenched and yellow eyes squinched shut. But Og jumped in front of Claria and whistled a low note, gradually raising the pitch as she and Cheyne and Yob flattened themselves to the hideous wall and made their cautious way around the snake. Og let go of the note and hopped to the other side of the temple doorway. The rattler stretched back on her perch, fangs bared and frozen in the striking pose, one lidless eye fixed coldly on Og.
'She'll stay that way until I revoke it,' assured Og. 'I think.'
Claria, recovering her composure as they moved into an anteroom of sorts, looked over her shoulder at the rattlesnake, then pulled on Og's sleeve. 'Why does he call her 'sister'?'
Og smiled. 'Because she is Rotapan's sibling. One day they were having an argument, and quite by accident, he claims, he bewitched her with the ajada. Then he couldn't undo the magic, but I don't think he tried very hard, either. Now he keeps her out here because he can't control her like the others. She tries to kill everyone who passes. Can't blame her,' he replied. Yob stopped walking and laughed nervously.
'Others?' said Cheyne, his eyebrows raised. Og shrugged as Yob cut in.
'He's over there. I will go before you and make my report.'
In the dim light of the temple's rotunda, Cheyne waited for his eyes to adjust, the sound of gentle friction all around him. When he could see again, he instantly preferred the blindness. From every corner, every niche, and statue, snakes of all colors, patterns, and lengths clung and draped, hissed and coiled, dropped and slithered. And every one of them bore the marks of being poisonous.
'By the seven stars and the three sisters!' Claria's fingers flashed through all of the warding signs she knew. 'I've had enough. No treasure is worth this. I'm going back to get my inheritance. I'm cutting my losses, and that will be that last I see of you two and your friends here,' she muttered.
'Why do you wish to part company before we have met, woman? I think I must take that personally. That sort of attitude will irritate the Lord Chelydrus,' a cracking voice from somewhere in the midst of the snakes boomed under the rotunda, the chamber's acoustics magnifying the tones and scattering the sound all over the building. Something in that voice made Cheyne's skin crawl even worse than the snakes did. Yob snapped his feet together at the heels and bowed deeply.
'Yob reports to Rotapan with quarterly tribute,' he shouted. 'Six dozen warriors slain from Glom's tribe. Fourteen from Puffer's. Five drams, eight hundred kohli, and two heads, taken in combat from Riolla's spies. Three lost. But their bones were recovered,' he finished, after a pause to count everything up on his fingers and toes.
Silence answered him. Cheyne shifted his weight to the boot Claria wasn't standing on. She seemed completely disinclined to move; the several inches around Cheyne's feet looked to be the only place the snakes shied away from.
'Og, you say? Og is back? Well, of course he is- you would be moaning in pain from Krota's greeting otherwise. Oh, do bring him over here. Send the heads to the masons. Tell them to place them facing west, so that Riolla's other spies may easily notice them. That was a good piece of work, Yob, though somewhat late in coming. You must tell me, after the feast and the great sacrifice, how you managed it. The Schreefa thinks she does not need Rotapan anymore. From her safe city, she sends her spies to kill me. She does not honor my Lord Chelydrus. We will see if she can't find it within her power to reopen the caravan route now. I do so despise that woman. And you have something else, I see,' he crooned.
Yob released his breath at last, his report seemingly acceptable.
'Yes, Overking. I was confused and decided to let you decide what to do with these humans and Og.'
