and shuffled after her. At the cross street, the prince called an order. A lasher captain turned and blew a piercing blast on his whistle. In a matter of moments the lashers remounted, formed up, and collected the sentries left at the barriers. They flashed along Midd Street with a sustained rumble of hoofs and were gone.
Even before the last of them had disappeared, villagers poured into the streets. Many of the crafters worked at home, and the raid had come so early that children were not yet at their tasks or studies. Arne was quickly surrounded by a sympathetic crowd.
“Never mind,” he said as a woman tugged worriedly at his ripped and bloody shirt. He gathered the prentices’ belongings into a bundle and handed it to her. “Would you take charge of this, Erinor? It must be returned to the owners with our apologies. The clothing is soiled, and small objects may have been lost.” He turned to another woman. “Margaya, I want a full report in writing describing what the lashers did in every dwelling in the village. I want a list of anything that was taken or damaged and the names of anyone who was injured or mistreated in any way. Would you see that this is done?”
He hurried up the rough stone walk to the schooler’s house and burst in without knocking. Old Wiltzon, massively gray, rugged like a granite boulder, irrepressibly good humored in most situations, was ruefully surveying a room littered with books. Those precious objects had been ripped from their shelves; several had lost their covers.
But the schooler smiled delightedly when he saw Arne. “The prince was hunting blind,” he said. “She knew nothing, and she got nothing.”
“Roszt and Kaynor?”
“I moved them over here after you left yesterday. I was worried that one of those nosey prentices might have noticed something. One of my students brought the alarm the moment the lashers entered the village, and I had them bundled away, nary a trace, long before the search reached this street. The lashers vented their spite on my books. They have an instinctive hatred for books.” He sadly picked up a detached cover and placed it lovingly around a bundle of loose pages. “Sit down. Rest. Have a little wine—you look as though you need it. Let me take care of your back. It is still bleeding. Don’t worry about the raid. The prince got nothing.”
“You would have had more time if the barriers had been up and a watch kept.”
“The barriers weren’t up?” Wiltzon asked wonderingly.
“We were lucky. We were extremely lucky. The prince was
Tiredly he dropped into a chair. He sat there, turning the events over in his mind, stirring them, rearranging them, while Wiltzon, clucking his tongue with concern, washed the blood from Arne’s back and applied a dressing. When the old schooler had finished, he righted a chair the lashers had knocked over and sat down to wait.
Arne gingerly leaned his sore back against his own chair. Now that the suspense was over, he felt exhausted. He said finally, “While the prince was getting nothing, she gave us something. Two things.”
“Aha!”
“For one, she gave us a lever. To her mother, she pretends she is still a child amusing herself with war games, but this raid can’t be called a game. The guard
Wiltzon nodded excitedly. “Yes. Of course. It wasn’t merely her mother’s orders that the prince violated. It was years of tradition. What is the other thing?”
“We have a traitor among us. We ought to thank the prince for letting us know.”
“A traitor? Are you sure?”
“The prince wouldn’t have raided Midd Village unless she had good reason to believe there was something here. She wouldn’t have dared. When I arrived, she was triumphant. She had caught me violating the rule about reporting strangers— she thought—and that would have justified her own violations. It was my house the lashers concentrated their search on. The prince must have known two strangers were staying there. Thanks to your foresight in getting Roszt and Kaynor hidden, the only evidence they found belonged to the sawyer prentices. Now she has no justification at all for her raid, and she will be extremely worried about the peer’s reaction.”
Wiltzon’s gentle face suddenly became flushed with anger. “You are right. There must be a traitor. What can we do? We have a long road to travel yet. Not even Egarn knows how long. If the prince has any kind of suspicion about the Secret—”
“The Secret is safe, and this is one spy she will never believe again, but I wonder why she suddenly became so obsessed with the notion there are strangers about.” He thought for a moment, and then he said slowly, “When she visited Chang, she may have heard rumors about the League of One-Namers. The League is in difficulty there. Chang viciously mistreats its one-namers, as you know, and during the prince’s visit, a local officer of the League was questioned under torture. He recited a lot of nonsense, but he also let slip some truth. Peeragers are suspicious of crafts and learning because they know so little about either, and many of them fear a one-name revolt. Also, the idea of an organization that reaches through all of the Ten Peerdoms and transcends peerdom loyalties is frightening to them. That was the reason for the order to report the arrival of strangers. The League couldn’t exist without a system of messengers, and the peeragers know that. When the prince’s spy informed her I was harboring unknown persons, she hoped to capture a pair of League officials. She intended to use torture to strip their secrets from them.”
“We were lucky,” Wiltzon agreed. “We must be more alert in the future. Did they really fail to put the logs in place? That is frightening.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “But what happened? In all of this confusion, I forgot why you were away. Did the thing work?”
“It worked perfectly. The first flare went out during passage, and that worried us. I fastened the others to stones to keep them upright, and they kept burning.”
“The rabbits?”
“As far as we could tell, they went precisely where we intended them to go and arrived in excellent condition. There is quite a jolt to the landing, and some of them seemed momentarily stunned, but they got over it quickly and hopped away. The sending has never been a problem. It is the sending to a precise place and a precise time that is difficult. Now Egarn has identified two places and two times, and that gives him a basis for calibrations.”
“What did Egarn say?”
“He was pleased, of course, but he said little. He is extremely tired. He has been working too long without a break. I wish we could make him rest occasionally.”
“Did you remind him about the money?”
Arne shook his head. “We were much too preoccupied with the experiment. But he will remember. He will scan again today, I’m sure. Perhaps he will be able to suck some up for you.”
“The money is important. Roszt and Kaynor are having trouble understanding it. Don’t go—you are hurt, and you have been up all night. Rest yourself and take some food.”
Arne shook his head impatiently. “I must see about replacing a rotten bridge plank.”
“Surely it can’t be that urgent!”
“It must be done at once. I will tell you about it later. Everyone deserves a rest, especially Egarn, but he won’t take one, either. It was an eventful night. Tell Roszt and Kaynor, will you?”
“I will tell them,” Wiltzon promised. “It has been an eventful morning, too. Don’t try to do more than you have to.”
Arne nodded and went out. In his anxiety about the prince and her lashers, he had forgotten just how eventful the night had been. When Inskor first mentioned Egarn’s plan to him, he thought it an old man’s senile fantasy. Now each incredible step forward seemed no more remarkable than reaching the next kilometer stone on a well-marked road.
And the Great Secret was still safe. The villagers he came in contact with on this day might notice that he seemed more tired than usual, but none of them would suspect that he had just spent a night looking some three hundred sikes into the past and transposing objects through time.
8. EGARN
