The Legend of Broken

stores of meat for the city’s population during the coming siege?”

“I did,” he answers. “And it will take some time — for those mounts have been trained to avoid capture by such clumsy, untrained hands as those of the Guard, and will likely be scattered. In addition, I don’t know why you continue to insist on any ‘ballistae’ at all — for you know as well as I that both the granite of Broken’s walls and the dense oak of her gates are impervious to such weapons. In addition, the building of such devices will take the better part of a day and a night, even for such skilled craftsmen as Linnets Crupp and Bal-deric and their men.”

“Perhaps my explanation for wanting the machines, when you hear it, will alter your point of view,” Caliphestros replies, knowing that he dangles bait that the sentek cannot resist. “So it would seem you have time and reason enough, then.”

“And it would seem that I’ve been outmaneuvered by you again,” Arnem comments, without rancor. “I know, now, who taught Visimar that skill. Very well, then—Akillus! ” The sentek, his mind back upon affairs at hand, spurs the Ox forward, and the others can still hear him shouting for his chief scout long after he has vanished back into the strange, surrounding cloud.

“Well,” Visimar comments, with a small laugh. “That was deftly managed — your skills at such negotiation have not suffered during your years among the denizens of the Wood, my lord.”

“Perhaps, Visimar,” Caliphestros replies, “but one thing I said was simply and unarguably truthful; we must know what change in the mountain’s weather this strange mist portends, if any change at all.”

“We shall, would be my guess,” Visimar says. “Akillus has a shrewd eye for details, as well as the ability to gather them quickly.”

“Precisely my impression,” Caliphestros rejoins. “We shall not have long to wait, then.”

“No, not long,” Keera adds softly, from her seat beside Caliphestros’s former acolyte. “But, perhaps, time enough — and distance enough from any ears save your own and ours, my lord — for you to explain, without fear of rancorous interruption, what took place in the Wood, just before the slaughter of the First Khotor of Lord Baster-kin’s Guard …?” The statement apparently comes as no surprise to Visimar, making Keera realize that Visimar and Caliphestros must already have discussed the latter’s encounter with the First Wife of Kafra. Keera is taken aback when Visimar turns to face the cart behind them and calls:

“Ho! Heldo-Bah! Veloc! Come help me down, that I may be certain your containers are properly secured. Not that I distrust your assistants — but neither they nor you have ever handled such materials as you now bear.”

“What makes you think we need the help of a man with one leg and half a mind?” Heldo-Bah replies. “Worry about your own cart, acolyte!” Stasi turns to Heldo-Bah and gives him an admonishing look, which, although a brief one, is sufficient to its purpose: “Oh, all right, go get the one old lunatic, Veloc …”

Veloc trots forward briskly, and, as the two wagons halt briefly, gives Visimar a shoulder and two good legs to lean upon, so that he can take his weight from the worn piece of wood and leather that has for so many years been strapped to his once-whole body.

“Let us get back under way as quickly as we can,” Caliphestros commands, at which Keera gets her horses moving once more and he speaks to her privately. “For I would be finished with this tale, ere we reach the meadow Sentek Arnem and I spoke of, when Akillus and his scouts will return …”

Heldo-Bah is soon preoccupied enough with the business of getting Visimar up and onto his cart’s bench that he cannot so much as try to listen to the conversation that unfolds in the conveyance ahead. Once his horses are pulling again, however, the gap-toothed Bane leans to his side and says to his new passenger:

“All right, acolyte — I will make my friendship easy for you: tell me what those two are talking about.”

“Why should you wish to know, Heldo-Bah?” Visimar says, in a congenial but firm fashion. “Even if I told you, it would be as a language deeply foreign to you: mere nonsense-speak that would only conflict with your outlook upon the world.”

Heldo-Bah’s eyes widen. “You know me so well that you can say this with certainty?”

“I believe so,” Visimar answers. Then he turns to the third forager, who walks beside the wagon. “Am I wrong, Veloc?”

Veloc laughs. “You are not, Visimar.” He looks to his gap-toothed friend, and says proudly, “They speak of love, Heldo-Bah, if I am right.”

“Oh,” Heldo-Bah answers. “And so I know nothing of love? Or of loss?”

“I did not say that,” Visimar answers. “Simply not of the type of love that they are discussing.”

“Believe what you like, you two,” Heldo-Bah says, attempting to rise above the insult with rather absurd pride. “But at the same time, return to our story — I want to know how our that clever relic we’ve been traveling with”—he points to Caliphestros—“ever coaxed that supreme beauty into his bed.”

“And why need he have been the one who did the coaxing, Heldo-Bah?” Visimar demands.

“That argument again,” the sharp-toothed forager grunts. “Leave such ideas to fools like Veloc, old man — they are beneath you, if you are half the mystical scholar the Tall once believed you.”

His predicament obvious, Visimar shakes his head once. “Not so — and if Veloc will aid me in the occasional translation into your own unique language, Heldo-Bah, I shall relate it.” Immediately, Heldo-Bah nods in firm agreement, not realizing he has been roundly insulted; and the tale continues. “Well,” says Visimar, “I warn you, Heldo-Bah, what I have to say will not be what you have in mind, in any way. You desire a story rife with lasciviousness, but the truth runs in quite the other direction.”

“Whatever the direction,” Heldo-Bah, replies, “I desire to know how that old man achieved such a feat as taking that beauteous creature to bed.”

“You will be disappointed,” Visimar repeats. “For, as I expect my master, or former master, is now telling Keera, it was Alandra who took him … And the results were — devastation. For both of them …”

2

The large cavalry training ground of which Sentek Arnem spoke is bounded by short, cliff-like faces on its western and southern edges, so that the trail from below enters on its eastern edge and then continues upward from its northern. The last length of pathway that the two carts must cover to reach it is not long, but because of the plateau-like formation of the field the approach is steep, and special attention must be paid to the heavily laden carts; yet even such care for calm and quiet cannot prevent the horses from announcing their approach, for they are familiar with the place, having spent much time upon it training for battle; and they find the experience of dragging heavily laden carts toward it confusing and irritating. The remainder of trip, then, is a tricky one, which only gives Heldo-Bah more time to harry Visimar with questions about the romance between Caliphestros and the First Wife of Kafra called Alandra. Not that Heldo-Bah has any difficulty understanding the basic facts of the tale: it is perfectly easy to see how a man like Caliphestros — then ten or more years younger, his body whole and fit, his experience, wisdom, and manner worldly, and his prestige with the God-King Izairn and the latter’s retinue so great that he was given chambers and a laboratory within the high tower of the Inner City’s royal palace itself, and the unprecedented position of Second Minister — could be seduced by the charms of a young woman such as the First Wife of Kafra, given her entrancing green eyes and her shimmering, straight lengths of coal-black hair, to say nothing of a form that to this day embodies all the attributes that the Tall admire. Caliphestros had indeed been tutor to Izairn’s royal offspring, from shortly after he arrived in Broken: throughout the period, that is, that he was also murmured to be the leader of a group (chief among them Visimar) who snatched dead bodies, performed profane experiments upon them, and dabbled in black arts of all kinds, while at the same time performing their royal duties. Which of the offenses was the greater, his accusers eventually asked, sorcery or the supposed “guidance” of a young girl into becoming his lover? The last was certainly an odd question, to be put by a society whose god and priests called for physical indulgences of all varieties, and between all sexes and ages (and in some cases species). And so the second indictment might never have carried any weight, without the first, which was why Caliphestros’s enemies in the Kafran priesthood — who first suborned the young Prince Saylal — knew that they must also gain the backing of the Royal Princess, if their dream of expelling the influential but no less blasphemous foreigner and his followers