and the Neversh, each with six wings, each with two feeding spikes reminiscent of the tusks of the mammoths of the Cold West. He remembered hunting mammoths with Gorn, Falmer and Morgan Hearst. Falmer was dead now: may the deep hell be gentle on his soul.
'Why are you telling me about the death-stone?' said Alish.
'To tempt you to my service,' said Heenmor. 'Believe me: the stone egg gives me power enough to conquer the world. Serve me, and you'll be richly rewarded.'
'With such power, what do you need me for?'
'To protect me from my enemies. Certain wizards are on my track. Jealousy makes them murderous. They wish to kill me for the death-stone.'
'If it makes you so powerful, what do you need me for?'
'When my enemies come, I'll have to flee,' said Heenmor. T need time yet to perfect my mastery of the death- stone. Till then, I need a bodyguard. It takes more than one pair of eyes to watch out the night.'
T have a job already.'
'What? Guarding Prince Comedo? Guarding that little smear of excrement that vaunts itself as a prince of the favoured blood? Is that the height of your ambition?'
'How can you, a wizard, dare recruit a Rovac warrior?'
T dare anything,' said Heenmor smoothly. T know your oath will bind you. if you enter my service.'
Heenmor's lethal copper-strike snake was coiled on one side of the table, watching. The death-stone sat on the other side. Alish knew himself fast enough to kill the wizard or the snake. But not both. Reaching to the chess board, he moved one of the Neversh to confront one of Heenmor's wizards. Heenmor moved the threatened piece out of range.
'Perhaps Morgan Hearst will accept my offer,' said Heenmor. 'He's a warrior's warrior. I've watched him matching swords with that peasant, Durnwold. Training troops for the spring – and the war Comedo's promised him. He's a killer, isn't he? You can see it in his eyes. Maybe he's my man.'
'Ask him and see,' said Alish.
Would Hearst yield to temptation? Surely not. A Rovac warrior could never pledge himself to a wizard. Alish studied the chess board, trying to work out how to kill Heenmor's two remaining wizards.
'Alish,' said Heenmor, 'All I need is a little time. Then I'll have perfect control of the death-stone. That means power. Enough power to rule the world – or destroy it. Join me. Serve me. What's the choice? To stay here? In Estar? Here is almost like being nowhere.
Winter's ending. My enemies are coming – I'm sure of it. Make your choices, Alish!'
Alish smoothed his hands over his long black hair, thinking carefully. If he struck at Heenmor, the snake would kill him, but what if he grabbed for the stone egg sitting so near to hand?
Heenmor gestured at the stone egg.
'The man who rules this rules everything,* said Heenmor. 'Even if he can't rule himself.'
Alish hesitated – then snatched up the death-stone.
Heenmor laughed.
'So,' he said, 'You do have ambition.'
The stone egg felt cool and heavy.
'See the script on the side of the death-stone?' said Heenmor. 'Any wizard can read it. Raise the death-stone above your head. Say the Words. Do it!'
Alish looked at the characters cut into the stone egg: cursive scrolls, loops and hooks, shapes that imitated worm-casts or the convolutions of the intestines. They meant nothing to him.
Heenmor laughed again.
Suddenly the death-stone kicked, as if it was a living heart.
'Use it now,' said Heenmor. 'Use it – or if you hold it any longer it will kill you.'
Alish threw down the stone, scattering the chess pieces. The snake raised its head and stared at him.
'One day I'm going to kill you.' said Alish. 'One day I'm going to kill every wizard in the world.'
Heenmor laughed, as one might laugh at a child.
CHAPTER FOUR
Salt Road: main trading route serving the continent of Argan, the Ravlish Lands and the Cold West.
Starting at the Castle of Controlling Power by Drangsturm, runs north through the cities of Narba, Veda, Selzirk and Runcorn, through the lands of Chorst, Dybra and Estar, then into the Penvash Peninsular.
Turning west, reaches the Penvash Channel then proceeds through the Ravlish Lands to the city of Chi'ash-lan and the Cold West.
Goods traded along the Salt Road include: salt, silk, slaves, animals, hides, gold, silver, lead, copper, bronze, keflo shell, linen, hemp, glass, crystal, wood, wool, quernstones, lodestones, leeches, sponges, olive oil, lemons, citrons, coconuts, rare birds, amber and ambergris.
News, rumour, gossip and slander also, of course, travel the Salt Road.
'Phyphor, it's too much for me,' said Garash. 'Can't we rest? Can't we stop?'
Phyphor trudged on, in silence, his eyes downcast. His walk was little more than a survival stagger. The long days spent labouring over the mountains then navigating across open country to regain the Salt Road had worn him to his bones.
'Slave driver,' muttered Garash.
That was about the worst insult one wizard could offer another. When Phyphor did not respond, Miphon took his hand. It was cold, like a bit of dead wood. 'Phyphor…'
The old wizard did not resist as Miphon drew him to the shelter of a clump of roadside trees.
'What's his problem?' said Garash.
'Too much wet, wind and road,' said Miphon.
Acutely aware that there would be nobody to help them if Phyphor began to slip into a death-stupor, Miphon gathered wood, lit a fire, heated a little gruel then fed it to Phyphor, who mumbled it down without resistance. It was the last of their food. They had eaten scarcely enough to warm their skeletons over the last few days.
Phyphor recovered quickly with the help of campfire warmth and gruel. Wizards had resources not given to ordinary men; though he had reached the edge of death, he was soon insisting that they press on. As they tramped north, Miphon engaged him in conversation from time to time to gauge his condition.
Phyphor was still holding up well when late afternoon brought them to the hamlet of Delve – a collection of squatdwellings crouching in the wetrot shadows of trees that choked a narrow gully. No dragon could have seen the hamlet from the air; it was almost invisible from the road.
The wizards knew what they would find: doors that stooped as low as the aching curve of rheumatism, rooves of sodden thatch, dark interiors cluttered with animals, floors of septic mud and manure, and people with the similar squinting eyes and chinless faces that come from generations of drunken fathers ramming their daughters against the walls.
First to greet them was a small black dog which raced through the mud so full of teeth and fury that Miphon at first thought it was rabid. It flung itself at them. Phyphor caught it with his staff, knocking it sideways into a tree. It lay in the rain as if stunned, then slowly crawled away, dragging its hindquarters.
People began to appear in doorways: old women with faces like those of smoke-shrivelled shrunken heads, young men picking at their teeth in a meditative way, a young woman with the bulging belly of a pregnancy near term. None of them said anything. They stood in the doorways as if they had been there all their lives staring out into the rain.
Finally a girl-child came splashing through the mud.
'Galish?' she said.
'No,' said Miphon, in the Trading Tongue. 'Not Galish, what?' said the girl. 'Wizards,' said Miphon.
