Samlor lay on his back, clutching the medallion of Heqt in his left hand as he watched transfixed. The broken door panel exploded into splinters. They cleared themselves up the shaft of the screaming vortex. The demon flashed out in the grip of the wind, upright and battling momentarily while its hind claws gouged pieces the size of a man's fist from the stone of the doorjambs. Then the creature was gone, falling upward into the sky in a helix so tight that its limbs had been plucked from its body before it disappeared into the tunnel of lightning.
The tornado was lifting and folding in on itself like a purse whose drawstrings were being tightened. Samlor hadn't seen what happened to the four remaining demons, but they had vanished when he knelt to look around.
"If you are not slack," said Tjainufi in a perfectly audible voice, "then your god will be active for you."
Samlor uncurled his fingers from the amulet of Heqt; but it had not been to the toad goddess that he screamed his prayers in the last instants-
"I thought Mummie's box was empty," said Star as her eyes met the caravan master's. "But it wasn't."
The tornado funnel flattened into the overcast almost a mile above Sanctuary. Only then did the normal wind return, a huge gust of it, and with it the start of a cold downpour. It was as dark again as the inside of a tomb.
But the whorl of hair on Star's temple burned for a moment like the lightning's heart.
CHAPTER 7
THERE WERE OIL lamps in the caravansary, but they could not compete with the blaze of lightning through the clerestory windows beneath the great vaulted roof. Unlike the sun by day, the storm's harsh illumination blasted from any direction-and sometimes from every direction at once. Thunder shook the building and filled its hollows so thoroughly that there was no question of trying to speak except between the echoing peals.
Star murmured in her sleep, burrowing deeper into her uncle's cloak as he stroked her shoulder.
"Did you hear the watchman at the gate below as he let us in?" Khamwas asked Samlor. "He looked at the sky and muttered. 'He's back. I wonder who the fellow meant?"
Samlor shrugged at his companion whose face, lighted for the moment by a blue-white flash, had an inhuman intensity. "All the 'back' I care about is getting myself and Star back out of this hellhole. That'll wait till dawn-but only because they won't open the city gates till then."
"Be gentle and patient," said Tjainufi, sprawled at his miniature leisure on Khamwas' shoulder, "that your soul may become beautiful."
Samlor was relaxed as well-he was alive, after all, and that was better than he'd expected for several recent hours. "I'm very gentle and patient, little one." he said, "which is how I'm able to keep from hurling you through a stone wall.
Indeed, it may be that when I've been apart from you for a few years I'll find I miss your comments."
"Ah, Master Samlor," said Khamwas diffidently. "That raises a matter that I'd like to discuss with you."
Fresh thunder silenced the Napatan and left Samlor with time to consider his answer to the question he knew was coming. He was sick with anger-at Khamwas, for preparing to make a reasonable request, and at himself for putting so much emotional weight on what should have been a business proposition to which he would decide yea or nay.
The caravansary was built in two levels. Below, rooms opened onto the hollow interior. These were for merchants to store the goods they brought to Sanctuary behind heavy, bolted doors.
The rooms in which the merchants slept were on the level above, each chamber separate from the rest. Access was by ladder through the strongroom beneath. When the ladder was drawn up, as now, the occupants were as safe as men could be in Sanctuary.
After a night of terror like the one he had just survived, all Samlor wanted was safety.
And Khamwas was about to ask him to take further risks.
Star's hand, tiny and white, patted her uncle's scarred, wind-roughened, knuckles.
"You've done me great service tonight, Master Samlor." Khamwas continued when the echoes let him speak. "Helped me find the information I needed-you cannot imagine the importance of those few words-and brought me out alive."
"We're quits, then." said Samlor, his voice a tiger's growl like the muted thunderclap in the background. "You helped me to what I was looking for too… and as for getting out alive, I don't know that either of us had a great deal to do with that."
"I-" Khamwas began.
"Besides," Samlor continued deliberately. "I don't count myself safe until we're back in Cirdon. Which is where I'm headed now with Star."
"When you have delivered your niece to a place of safety," said Khamwas, "I wish to hire you as my
companion for the journey I have next to make. You are experienced as a traveller and-" he met and held Samlor's eyes. Blue lightning fingered across them in token of the coming thunder. "And there may be danger, physical dangers, of the sort you proved tonight that you are experienced with also. I will pay you well."
"Give one loaf to your laborer" said Tjainufi with a sardonic smile. "Receive two from the work of his hands."
"I don't claim to be a charity, Master Samlor." Khamwas retorted sharply, as if the caravan master and not the manikin had spoken. "I need a man like you; and, having seen you in operation, I cannot imagine that anyone else would be more than a pale echo."
There was a deafening crash, and for a moment light sizzled and cracked from all the bolt-heads projecting downward from the roof trusses. Animals stabled in the adjacent courtyard blatted or whinnied.
"Do you think flattery will help you?" Samlor demanded. But of course it would, and the statement was no more than the truth. That wouldn't have been enough by itself to cause Samlor to change his plans, but-
But the stranger from Napata had proved he was willing to sacrifice himself to permit Samlor and Star to escape. How could Samlor refuse to help a man as honorable as that? As honorable as himself.
"Star'll be back in Cirdon," said Samlor loudly, muting his voice as the child stirred restively on his lap. "Back with my parents. With the servants, at least, who know who they'll answer to if anything harms the child while I'm away. There'll be no magic if you hire me, only a man who knows camels and donkeys."
"And the end of a knife that cuts," murmured Khamwas. "Yes, I understand that. Master Samlor."
He paused for long enough that Samlor hoped he was rethinking, preparing to change his mind. Instead Khamwas said, "I wouldn't permit Star to come with us now. Her powers are-" he shrugged " – I can't even guess how great. I'm only a scholar, and she…"
He shrugged again. "But for all that, she's a child the age of my own daughter-at least if she's still alive, my
daughter Serpot and Pemu her brother. And this will not be work for children."
Samlor gave Star a hug, controlled against his fierce desire to squeeze the child until their two forms merged. She could be safe then because he would always be there to guard her. . Detaching himself carefully, Samlor left Star curled on the couch while he strolled to the barred windows overlooking the interior of the caravansary.
Travellers ioo poor to hire strongrooms huddled on the floor in informal groups about cooking fires. A few sang or played stringed instruments-despite the thunder, or because of it.
"If you're expecting real trouble," said Samlor with his face to the bars, "There's others you could hire. Soldiers, men with proper armor, swords. Nobody hires me to fight. I just run caravans the easiest way I can."
Tjainufi said, "The hissing of the snake is more effective than the braying of the donkey." The thunderclap that began a moment behind him did not drown out his voice.