They had laughed again when he showed them the rabbit, and asked if they would not rather wait for morning. Then it was Jalantri’s turn to quote the scripture, as he scrambled from the tent: “And should the morning never come, how now, my soul?”
Their master smiled, but only faintly: one did not make light of the soul. It was man’s claim on eternity, his gift from the omnipotence that some called Rin or God or the Gods, but which Mzithrinis would never presume to shackle with a name.
Jalantri had scurried like a boy to build the fire. Neda had skinned and gutted the rabbit, while Cayer Vispek walked out to the beach to touch the Nelluroq, and whisper quietly to the five hundred brethren who had perished there.
By the time he had returned the rabbit was sizzling. Now, sipping their brackish tea, they felt as though the smell were already nourishing them, the appetizer to the feast.
Jalantri saw the intruder first. A youth, standing in the brush on the high eastern dune, looking down with the moonlight behind him. “Vrutch,” he swore. “I thought we’d driven them off.”
Cayer Vispek stopped turning the spit. “He’s the first one to come upon us from the east,” he said. “How peculiar. The land ends in just a few miles that way. Perhaps he smelled the rabbit.”
Neda glanced up at the boy and shrugged. “He can’t have any of mine,” she said.
Jalantri’s big chest rumbled with laughter. But their leader stilled him with a hand. The youth had started toward them, slide-stepping down the dune. They rose, tensing. Not one of the witless humans had ever tried to approach them, even in stealth. This one had to know he was being observed, yet on he came. The shadow of the dune hid his features. But there could be no doubt: he was deliberately approaching. They scanned the basin on every side: no companions. Neda drew her dagger. Jalantri pulled a burning stick from the fire and strode forward, waving it.
“Ya! Away!” he shouted, in a voice for scaring dogs. The youth paused. Then he took a deep breath and continued toward them.
Cayer Vispek bent and picked up a fist-sized stone from the fire ring. “I am going to kill this one,” he informed them rather sadly. “If they lose their fear they will give us no peace. Don’t help; it will be easier if he doesn’t run.”
Neda squinted at the figure, intuition gathering inside her like a storm. Then the Cayer walked past Jalantri and waited, turned slightly away from the youth, the stone loose in his hand. He was a deadly shot. The rabbit might have been no closer when he crushed its skull.
The youth reached the foot of the dune. He stepped from its shadow, and Cayer Vispek whirled and threw the stone with all his might. And Neda screamed.
Sound flies faster than any arm-and Pazel lived because the Cayer’s mind was faster yet. He skewed the stone with his fingertips as he released it, and the shot went wide. As the youth flinched and ducked Neda ran forward, crying his name.
“Stop!” roared a voice from the dune-top. A second figure, a grown man, was flying down its shadowed face. “Harm that boy and I swear I’ll send you to meet your faceless Gods! Damn you, Pazel, I should never have agreed-”
The youth looked at Neda. He was more ashamed than afraid, standing before her without a stitch of clothing. A different body, but the same fierce, awkward frown. She had seen that look ten years ago, him standing in a tiled basin, and Neda, the older sister, approaching with a sponge.
The hug she gave him was pure instinct, as were the tears she shed in a single, toothy sob. But before he could return the embrace she released him and stepped back, glaring through her tears. A sfvantskor could not put her arms around him. A sister could not do otherwise.
The Orfuin Club
Who has sown the dark waters in sorghum and rye?
Who has whispered to gravestones and heard their reply?
In the deluge of autumn, who has danced and stayed dry?
Let him gaze on the River, and sigh.
“Arunis, what do you fear?”
The speaker was a short, round-faced, potbellied man with thick glasses, dressed in clothes the color of autumn wheat. In both hands he cradled a large cup of tea, the steam of which billowed white in the chilly breeze on the terrace. On the table before him a red marble paperweight held down one sheet of parchment. At the man’s feet squirmed a small creature, something like an armadillo, except that it lacked any obvious head, and instead of limbs, two feathery antennae and countless tentacle-like feet emerged from its shell. The creature was foraging for insects; as it moved in the torchlight it became invisible, transparent and darkly opaque by turns.
“I fear that one of us will expire before the woman arrives,” said a second figure-a tall, gaunt man in a black coat and white scarf, ravenous of mouth and eye, who stood near the doorway letting into the club, orange firelight on his left cheek, cold and darkness on his right. “Otherwise, nothing at all. I have no time for fear. Besides, there is no safer house than yours, Orfuin. Safety is your gift to all comers.”
The doorway was framed by leafy vines, within which a keen observer might glimpse movement, and now and then a tiny form of man or woman, running along a stem, or peering from a half-hidden window the size of a stamp. From within the club came music-accordion, fiddle, flute-and the drowsy chatter of the patrons. It was always late at the Orfuin Club; by daylight the tavern’s many entrances could not be found.
“Safety from the world without,” corrected the potbellied man, “but if you bring your own doom within these walls, you can hardly expect them to protect you. What is that thing in your hand, wizard?”
“A product of a sorcery beyond my knowledge,” said Arunis, displaying the shiny, slightly irregular metal cube. “Ceallrai, it is called, or mintan, batori, pile. The lamp you keep on the table on the third floor draws its fire from some source within the metal. It is a feeble sorcery and does not last. This one is dead; the goat-faced creature who wipes your tables gave it to me.”
“That is why he is always opening the lamp.” The man called Orfuin chuckled. “It was in his sack of trinkets, when he came to me so long ago, fleeing assassins in his own world. He loves that ugly lamp. Arunis, you resemble a human being; did you begin life as such?”
Arunis scowled, then hurled the metal object into the darkness beyond the terrace. “What can be keeping her? Does she think I have all night?”
Orfuin took a languorous sip of tea. He moved the paperweight, glanced briefly at the parchment. “You are not a frequent guest,” he said to Arunis, “but you are of long standing. And in all the time you have been coming here I have observed no change. You are impatient. Never glad of where you are. Never cognizant that it may be better than where you are going.”
Arunis looked directly at the man for the first time, and there was no love in his glance, only pride and calculation. “You will see a change,” he said.
The little animal scurried under Orfuin’s chair. The innkeeper looked down into his tea with an air of disappointment. Then he lowered his hand and scratched the little creature along the edge of its shell.
“I thought all yddeks had been exterminated,” said the mage, “but now I see that you welcome them like pets.”
“They were here before us, in the River of Shadows,” said Orfuin. “They come and go as they please. But they’re rare today, true enough. This one swam out of the River while you were inside. He’s quite a bold little fellow.”
“He is a masterpiece of ugliness,” said the sorcerer. Then, with a sharp motion of his head, he added: “I am leaving; I have urgent work on the Chathrand. You will inform the woman that Arunis Wytterscorm cannot be kept waiting, like a schoolboy for his coach.”
