Day kicked him in the shins, hard.
'I'm running out of patience, Togura Poulaan. You've used up most of your chances. You don't have many left.'
'My lady,' said Togura, the formality of romance coming to his rescue.
He took her hand in his and kissed it, gracefully. Then he led her inside. Unable to resist the opportunity to show off a little, he took her to the central courtyard to show her the odex. By night it was, when they stood in front of it, an amazement of brilliant colours, far brighter than the night lamps arrayed around the courtyard.
While they were standing watching, two figures dressed in black jumped down from the roof above and landed in the courtyard. Day squealed. The intruders drew swords. They were masked with darkness: only their eyes showed.
'We seek Togura Poulaan,' said one, speaking a foreign variety of Galish rather than the local patois.
'The swordmaster-assassin otherwise known as Barak the Battleman,' said the other.
'Here I am,' said Togura – and instantly wished he had held his tongue.
'Joke with us again and you're dead,' said one of the intruders, grabbing Day Suet by the throat. 'The girl dies, too. Now tell us where we find our quarry. We know he's here! The whole town knows. We know him to his face, so try no substitutes. We know the head required in Chi'ash-lan.'
Togura stood rooted to the spot, paralysed with terror. He had no weapons. Face to face with this twin death, what could he have done with weapons anyway?
'Tog,' gasped Day. 'He's hurting me!'
'Silence, girl!' snarled the man holding her, looking around. For the first time he looked directly into the odex, and so, for the first time, he saw its ever-changing maze of kaleidoscopic colours. 'What,' he said, slightly startled, 'is that?'
Day did not answer, but Togura found voice enough to say:
'A kind of Door.'
'You can go through it?'
'In a manner of speaking,' said Togura.
At that moment, they were interrupted by sounds of argument beyond the courtyard. Then in came the Baron Chan Poulaan with a squad of bowmen and spearmen. Two wordmasters were clinging to the baron, trying to restrain him.
'This place is forbidden by dark,' cried one.
But the baron advanced remorselessly.
'I'll have my son tonight,' he said. 'Or know the reason why. Ah, Togura! There you are! Come, boy. Heel!'
'Stay where you are,' hissed one of the men in black.
'Who are your funny friends?' said the baron, advancing, with his men behind him. 'Drawn swords, I see. Do we have a problem here?'
So speaking, the baron drew his own sword. He was by no means a master of the weapon, but he was strong, aggressive and enthusiastic. In Sung, he was regarded as fearsome.
The man holding Day in a throttle edged closer to the odex. His companion gave Togura a shove which sent him sprawling to the ground, then menaced the baron and his men.
'Back, rabble!' he said, speaking now in a loud, hard voice.
Baron Chan Poulaan was amused.
'There are at least seven of us and only two of you,' said the baron, reasonably. 'Throw down your weapons and surrender.'
'I,' said the man confronting him, 'am a ninth-grade adept of the Zenjingu fighting cult. I can kill all of you without thinking. Your very existence here is at your peril.'
'Your grammar suffers under stress,' said the baron, dryly.
'Out, vermin! Do you not know the dread doom which walks in the midnight black of the Zenjingu fighters?'
'No,' said the baron, frankly.
He was essentially a provincial man who led a narrow and provincial life; he knew nothing whatsoever of the Zenjingu fighters, whose very name was terror in the lands around Chi'ash-lan.
'You have outlived your life,' snarled the Zenjingu fighter, raising his sword.
The baron snapped his fingers. An archer standing behind him unleashed an arrow. The Zenjingu fighter lurched, dropped his sword, threw up his arms, then waddled round in circles, gasping as he clutched at the arrow, which had pierced his throat.
'Thus we do in the highlands,' said the baron, striding forward with an easy gait.
As the Zenjingu fighter tottered, the baron hacked into the unruly fellow's head. On the third blow, the man dropped dead at his feet. Whistling tunelessly, the baron turned his attention to the remaining trespasser.
'Get back!' shouted the survivor. 'Get back, or I kill the girl.'
'The life of a female Suet is nothing to me,' said Baron Chan Poulaan, who saw no harm in telling the truth. 'Go ahead. Make my day.'
'No!' screamed Togura, launching himself at the Zenjingu fighter.
The fighter threw Day Suet into the odex, which had been described to him as a Door. Then he jumped in after her. Both were briefly visible, then gone, disintegrating – with a jangle of music – into a storm of colours. An ilps, popping out of the odex, celebrated the occasion with hearty laughter.
'So much for that,' said the baron crisply, wiping his sword then sheathing it. 'Come along, Togura, we're going home. What is it, boy? Not crying, are we? Now now, don't be a baby.'
'I loved her,' said Togura wretchedly.
'I'm sure you did,' said the baron, unsympathetically. 'We all suffer these fevers in our youth. Stop snivelling, boy!'
'You killed her!' screamed Togura.
'She's gone into the odex,' said the baron. 'I've heard the Wordsmiths say that it stores whatever's fed into it. If that's so, then get them to unstore it. Or do it yourself. Or if it can't be done, forget about it. Suets copulate like ferrets. There's plenty more where that came from. Come come, there's no use crying over spilt milk.'
When Togura continued crying, the baron slapped him briskly. Togura clenched his fist and smashed him. His father fell unconscious at his feet, poleaxed. There was a murmer amongst the bowmen and the spearmen.
'Take him,' said Togura, in a thick wet ugly voice. 'Him and his sword. Take him, and get him out of here!'
The men obeyed.
The two wordmasters who had tried to prevent Baron Chan Poulaan from entering their stronghold muttered to each other. Togura Poulaan, now of the Wordsmiths, had made war on the head of the Warguild: no good would come of this.
They had more to mutter about shortly, for Togura, bloodlust in his heart, began to attack the odex.
Chapter 8
The night was cold, but Togura Poulaan was hot, feverish, burning. Armed with a sword which had recently graced the hand of a Zenjingu fighter, he was attacking the odex, hacking and slashing at its soft, yielding surface. It bled colours and music. As he fought, he became lost in a cloud of jangling rainbows, in a delusion of humming auras, in sprays of pealing orange and rumbling red, in veils of hissing mist and belching steam.
Finally, he stopped. He was panting harshly. His legs were shaking. Blisters had puffed up hard and ripe on the palms of his hands where the hard labour of battle had taken its toll on his innocence; he had never used a sword before, except in the occasional desultory half-hearted sparring match. The odex reformed and repaired itself, effortlessly, making itself perfect once more. The last free-floating colour died with a chord of music.
Togura hawked, and spat, and swore.
As he swore, an ilps jacked itself out of the odex and hoisted itself to the sky, smacking its bulbous lips, which
