shapes of the Moders rose from the plain about us. They stretched for mile after mile, set in patterns, and at random, some relatively small, others encompassing many miles of subterranean passages.
“D’you fancy going down another one to see what we can lay hands on, Hunch?” I overheard Nodgen speaking thus, and half-turned. Hunch spluttered a passionate protest.
“What! Has your ib decayed, Nodgen! Go down there again!”
“It was a thought,” said Nodgen, and he laughed in his coarse, bristly, Brokelsh way. The Pachak twins marched in silence, and their eyes remained alert and they scanned every inch of the way.
The slinger and the archer marched one each side of their lord, Prince Tyfar. He strode on, head up, breathing deeply and easily. Yes, I had seen much of goodness in this young man during those periods of horror; now, with our way ahead at least for the moment clear, I hauled alongside him and we fell into a conversation about — of all things — the state of theater in Ruathytu, the capital of Hamal.
“A few houses play the old pieces,” he said. He sounded aggrieved. “But by far the majority play these new nonsenses, all decadence and thumping and sensation. It is the war, I suppose.”
“Yes. Fighting men-”
“But, surely, Jak, a fighting man needs the sustenance of the inner spirit? Needs to have himself revitalized?”
“You mean, when he isn’t trying to stop his head coming off?”
Tyfar breathed in. He eyed me meanly. “You mock me, Jak.”
“Not so. I agree with you. But you are a prince-”
“I am! But — what has that to do with it?”
“Just that you have had the advantages and privileges of an education that was not primarily aimed at earning a living.”
I probed deliberately here. I had opened a gambit — in Jikaida I would have been opening the files for the Deldars to link ready for the zeunting — and he was aware that I meant more than I said.
“You know no man may inherit his father’s estates and titles as easily as he climbs into bed, Jak. You know that, one day, when — and I pray to all the gods it is a long and distant day — my father dies I shall be called on to fight for what is mine. You know that. The law upholds. But a man must uphold himself as well as the law. I have been trained as a fighting man, and much I detested it at the time.”
I had heard how he had always been running off to the libraries as a young lad, and how he had taken up the axe as a kind of reproach to those who taught him.
The conversation at my nudging came around to his axe and he repeated what the slaves had said. He preferred the knowledge that came from books; but he had become an accomplished axeman as though to proclaim his independence from that emblem of many things, the sword. I thought I understood. There was in this young prince an inner fire I found engaging. His diffident manner, so noticeable when in the company of his father, had all fallen away under the tutelage of the horrors of the Moder. He gave his orders with a snap; yet one was fully alive to his own estimation of himself and what he was doing, as though he saw himself acting a part on a stage of his imagination. Our conversation wended along most comfortably, and Quienyin joined us to debate again what we had discovered and our chances of the morrow. Our voices were low-toned. And we all kept a sharp lookout.
“We must seek to move from one point of vantage to another,” I said. “If we get our backs against good cover we can deal with the swarth folk. Once one of them is dismounted we will see what his mettle is on his own two feet.”
“Yes,” nodded Quienyin. “I fancied they did have only two legs apiece. Although, of course, you cannot be sure.”
“Quite.”
“I couldn’t make out what kind of diff they were,” said Tyfar. “There was something of the Chulik about them-”
“No tusks, though,” said Quienyin.
“No tusks. But something about the jut of the head.”
“We shall find out when the suns are up,” I said, and that tended to end the conversation for a space. The Moders rose from the rubbly plain something like a dwabur apart. Walking those five miles gave us an itchy feeling up the spine, traipsing as we were across relatively open ground. The trouble was, that open ground was probably safer than the areas in the immediate vicinity of the artificial mountains, the Moders, the tombs of the ancient dead and their treasurers and magics. The rosy shadows of the next Moder enfolded us, and Hunch, for one, let go with a sigh of relief.
“Still!”
Modo’s piercing voice reached us, thrown so as to tell us the position and not to reach to the danger he had spotted ahead. We stopped stock-still. A few scrubby thorn bushes threw splotchy shadows from the Twins. In this dappled shade we stood and watched the file of Nierdriks pad past. They looked like ghostly silhouettes, animated dark dolls against the radiance of the moons. Silently they padded past, one after the other. They were walking. I, for one, was content to let them go. Had they been riding, now, straddling any of the magnificent assortment of Kregan riding animals — why, then, I do not think my companions would have let them go…
When the last had gone, vanishing into the shadows of the Moder, we resumed our progress. And we kept even more alert, staring about even more vigilantly.
Quienyin kept up with us, struggling along without a murmur.
“Prince,” I whispered quietly so that the Wizard of Loh would not overhear. “I think we must rest for a moment or two-”
“Rest, Jak? I thought the plan was to march as far as we might in the light of the moons and rest in the heat of the suns.”
He saw my gaze fixed on Quienyin, who had not turned to stare back at us but was doggedly ploughing on over the rubbly surface.
“Ah — yes, of course. It is thoughtless of me.”
Tyfar hurried ahead and checked the Pachaks in the vanguard.
We all rested, although of us all only Quienyin needed the break. Again I pondered on Prince Tyfar. Many a haughty prince would simply have gone on, ignoring anyone else’s discomfort. That Quienyin was a Wizard of Loh was now known to my companions; but that had not caused Tyfar to call a brief halt.
We discussed the fate of our dead fellows of the expedition, and we expressed ourselves as confident that the survivors had escaped. We had seen them emerging into the sunshine before we had been trapped within the Moder, and Tyfar, it was clear, could not countenance any thoughts that his father and sister had not escaped to safety.
“And, Jak, do not forget. Lobur the Dagger was there and he is mighty tender of my sister Thefi.”
“As is Kov Thrangulf.”
“Oh, yes, Kov Thrangulf.”
That pretty little triangle had its explosion due, all in Zair’s good time. When we set off again Quienyin unprotestingly marched stoutly with us. Dawn was not far off. The sweet smell of the air, only faintly tinged with dust, the host of fat stars, the glistering glide of the moons, all held that special pre-dawn hollowness, that waiting silence for the new day. I began to spy the land with more stringency, seeking a strong place where we might rest. What I needed was precise and as we dipped down into a little groove or runnel in the ground, with thorn-ivy crowned ridges each side, I felt we had come as near as I could hope for. This was not perfect; it was as precise as we would find.
“Here, I think, Tyfar.”
He stared about. I watched his face, wondering if he would suffer a character change now that we were out in the fresh air.
The thorn-ivy, vicious stuff that flays the unwary, clustered thickly on the two ridgeways bordering the runnel. This was the real spiny ivy of Kregen. The Kregish for ivy is hagli. If we kept low we would be out of sight of a rider approaching at right angles. We chose a kink in the runnel so we could arrange one avenue only to watch. The clumped bushes shone a lustrous green and the thorns prickled like an army of miniature spearmen.
“You think so, Jak?” Tyfar looked uncertain.
The three principals stood together. The other six would not offer their opinions until asked, although the two Pachaks had every right to speak up.
