“You were taken in by us when you were six cycles. I see in the records that ten cycles more have passed.” The abbot did not speak to him by name. Doubtless he didn’t even know it. “You are sixteen. It is time for you to make preparation for taking your vows and joining our brotherhood.” Caught by surprise, too proud to lie, Hugh said nothing. His silence spoke the truth.
“You have always been rebellious. Yet you are a hard worker, who never complains. You accept punishment without crying out. And you have adopted our precepts—I see that in you clearly. Why, then, will you leave us?” Hugh, having asked himself that question often in the dark and sleepless nights, was prepared with the answer.
“I will not serve any man.”
The abbot’s face, stern and forbidding as the stone walls around him, registered neither anger nor surprise. “You are one of us. Like it or not, wherever you go, you will serve, if not us, then our calling. Death will always be your master.”
Hugh was dismissed from the abbot’s presence. The pain of the beating that followed slid away on the ice coating of the boy’s soul. That night, Hugh made good his plans. Sneaking into the chamber where the monks kept their records, he found, in a book, information on the orphan boys the monks adopted. By the light of the stub of a stolen candle, Hugh searched for and discovered his own name.
“Hugh Blackthorn. Mother: Lucy, last name unknown. Father: According to words spoken by the mother before she died, the child’s father is Sir Perceval Blackthorn of Blackthorn Hall, Djern Hereva.” A later entry, dated a week after, stated: “Sir Perceval refuses to acknowledge the child and bids us ‘do with the bastard as we will.’ ”
Hugh cut the page from the leather-bound book, tied it up in his ragged scrip, snuffed the candle, and slipped out into the night. Looking back at the walls whose grim shadows had long ago shut out any of the warmth or happiness he had known in childhood, Hugh silently refuted the abbot’s words.
“I will be death’s master.”
16
Limbeck regained consciousness and found that his situation had improved, going from desperate to perilous. Of course, it took him, in his confused state, a considerable amount of time to remember just exactly what the situation was. After giving the matter serious thought, he determined he was not hanging by his wrists from the bedposts. Wriggling and grunting at the pain in his head, he looked about him as best he could in the gloom of the storm and saw that he had fallen into a giant pit, undoubtedly dug by the dig-claws of the Kicksey-Winsey.
Further examination revealed that he had not fallen into a pit but was suspended over a pit—the giant wings having straddled it neatly, leaving him dangling down below. From the pain, he deduced that the wings must have inflicted a smart rap on his head during the landing.
Limbeck was just wondering how he was going to free himself from this awkward and uncomfortable position when the answer came to him rather unpleasantly in the form of a sharp crack. The weight of the Geg hanging from it was causing the wooden frame to break. Limbeck sank down about a foot before the wings caught and held. His stomach sank a good deal further, for—due to the darkness and the fact that he didn’t have his spectacles on—Limbeck had no idea how deep this pit was. Frantically he attempted to devise some means of escape. A storm was raging above, water was pouring down the sides of the pit, making it extremely slippery, and at that moment there was another crack and the wings sagged down another foot.
Limbeck gasped, squinched his eyes tightly shut, and shook all over. Again, the wings caught and held, but not very well. He could feel himself slowly slipping. He had one chance. If he could free a hand, he might be able to catch hold of one of the coralite holes that honeycombed the sides of the pit. He jerked on his right hand . . .
. . . and the wings snapped.
Limbeck had just time enough to experience overwhelming terror before he landed heavily and painfully at the bottom of the pit, the wings crashing down all around him. First he shook. Then, deciding that shaking wasn’t improving the situation, he extricated himself from the mess and peered upward. The pit was only about seven or eight feet deep, he discovered, and he could easily climb out. Since it was a coralite pit, the water that was streaming into it was draining just as swiftly through it. Limbeck was pleased with himself. The pit offered shelter from the storm. He was in no danger.
No danger until the dig-claws came down to mine.
Limbeck had just settled himself beneath a huge piece of torn wing fabric, to protect himself from the rain, when the terrible thought of the dig-claws occurred to him. Hastily he leapt to his feet and peered upward, but couldn’t see a thing except for a black blur that was probably storm clouds and flashes of fuzzy lightning. Having never served the Kicksey-Winsey, Limbeck had no idea if the dig-claws operated during storms or not. He couldn’t see why they wouldn’t, yet on the other hand he couldn’t see why they would. All of which was no help.
Sitting back down—being careful to first remove several sharp splinters of wood and drop them down the holes of the coralite—Limbeck considered the matter as best he could through the pain in his head. At least the pit offered protection from the storm. And, in all probability, the dig-claws—which were huge, cumbersome things—would move slowly enough that he would have time to get out of the way.
Which turned out to be the case.
Limbeck had been squatting in the pit for about thirty locks or so, the storm was showing no signs of abating, and he was wishing he’d had the foresight to stuff a couple of muffins down his pants, when there was a large thump and the pit in which he was sitting gave a tremendous shudder.
Dig-claws, thought Limbeck, and began to climb up the sides of the pit. It was easy going. The coralite offered numerous hand—and footholds, and Limbeck reached the top in moments. There was no use putting on his spectacles—the rain streaming over the glass would have blinded him. And he didn’t need them anyhow. The dig-claw, its metal gleaming in the incessant flashes of lightning, was only a few feet from him.
Glancing upward, Limbeck could see other claws dropping out of the sky, descending on long cables lowered from the Kicksey-Winsey. It was an awesome spectacle, and the Geg stood staring, headache forgotten, his mouth gaping wide open.
Made of bright and shining metal, ornately carved and fashioned to resemble the foot of some huge killer bird, the dig-claws dug into the coralite with their sharp talons. Closing over the broken rock, the claws carried it upward as a bird’s claw grasps its prey. Once back on the isle of Drevlin, the dig-claws deposited the rock they had mined from the Terrel Fen into large bins, where the Gegs sorted through the coralite and retrieved the precious gray ore on which the Kicksey-Winsey fed, and without which—so legend had it—the Kicksey-Winsey could not survive.
Fascinated, Limbeck watched the dig-claws come smashing down all around him, biting into the coralite, digging down deep, scooping it up. The Geg was so interested in the procedure—which he’d never seen—that he completely forgot what he was supposed to do until it was almost too late. The claws were shaking free of the coralite and starting to rise back up when Limbeck remembered he was to put a mark on one of them to let Jarre and her people know where he was.