He gestured with both hands. “I assure you, time is of the essence,” he added. “Not only for the success of our endeavors, but for our very survival. We’ve escaped one set of dangers, but this place has many others. The sooner we’re out of it, the better.”
Garric said nothing for a moment. Part of him wanted to hang the oily little worm upside down over empty air and listen to him beg for his life. That was pointless, though. It wouldn’t remove Echeon from the throne of Laut, and it wouldn’t bring back Tint….
“I’ll take it under advisement with my fellows and Lord Thalemos,” Garric said coldly, turning his back on the wizard. “We’ll inform you of our decision.”
It was petty to leave Metron worrying about something Garric had no intention of carrying through on, but Garric needed some release for his anger. He walked across the quivering, chitinous joint, then up onto the next broad hoop of armor to rejoin the watching Brethren.
Ten of the bandits had made it this far. None of the survivors had wounds that they seemed to regard as serious; not even Hame’s slashed arm was incapacitating. They watched Garric’s approach with a mixture of fear and hope.
“So, lad,” Vascay said. “Any news for us?”
Garric shrugged. “A few hours,” he said. “Perhaps less. That one”—he twitched his head back toward Metron—“wasn’t sure.” He paused, then added, “I think Metron is telling the truth that far, at least.”
Thalemos grimaced unhappily. “I’ve just been telling your, your Brethren, Master Gar,” he said, “that I have no more idea than you do about what Metron intends. He told me that I’d wed a noblewoman from Tisamur, and that she and I between us would overcome the power of the Intercessors. This, though…”
Thalemos looked momentarily hopeful. “Her name is Lady Tilphosa bos-Pholial,” he said. “Perhaps you gentlemen have heard of her?”
“How could we hear about somebody from Tisamur, when nobody’s been off Laut in the thousand years since the Intercessors took over?” Ademos said peevishly.
Vascay looked at Garric with a raised eyebrow.
“I’ve never heard of her,” Garric said, answering the unspoken question. “On any of the places I’ve been.”
“As it chances,” said Vascay carefully, “I may have heard the name. On Serpent’s Isle, where we were looking for the ring our wizard friend has now.”
“There wasn’t nobody on that place but us, chief,” Toster said. The big man furrowed his brow like a fresh-turned field. “And more snakes than the Sister’s dungeon has!”
“Yes, but there were statue bases, Brother Toster,” Vascay said. “One of them read Thalemos, Earl of Laut”—he nodded to the youth in friendly fashion—“and Brother Gar found the rest of the statue with the ring. Eh?”
“Yes,” said Garric, trying vainly to dredge detail from Gar’s fuddled memories. Garric or-Reise hadn’t been present when the base was found; to Gar it must have been no more than another block of stone in a place that had too many of them already.
“A statue of me on Serpent’s Isle?” Thalemos said in amazement. “But…I thought everything there was ancient and in ruins?”
“Aye, so it is,” Vascay agreed, “and the statue was of an age with the rest, judging by the way the marble was pitted. But that’s neither here nor there.”
Which wasn’t quite true, Garric thought, glancing in the direction of Metron. The wizard watched intently, obviously fearful that the bandits and his ward were planning to overturn his desires with brute strength. He gave Garric a broad, false smile when their eyes met.
Thalemos was genuinely surprised to hear what the ruins on Serpent’s Isle really were. That meant that he was as innocent—as ignorant—of Metron’s plans as he claimed to be. Knowing that didn’t change the way Garric felt about the wizard, but it gave him reason to trust Thalemos.
Vascay went on, “Across the porch from where we found the one of you—”
He grinned at Thalemos. Garric had seen enough of the bandit chief to realize there really was humor in his expression. In another world, Vascay would have been an excellent schoolteacher. Of course, in another world Garric or-Reise would be managing the family inn in Barca’s Hamlet.
“—was a second, the base and the legs besides; though the stone was rotted to a couple sticks. Enough of the base had been protected by clay that I could read the first part of the legend: T-i-l-p-h-o.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t bother worrying about the rest; it wasn’t what Master Metron had sent us to find, that’s all it meant to me. But it seems it might’ve meant something to you, eh, lad?”
Thalemos looked from Vascay to Metron, then beyond the wizard to take in the forest of giant grass and brambles through which the millipede paced.
“Yes,” the youth said, “it must. But may the Lady forsake my soul if I know what it is!”
“I don’t understand any of this!” said Toster; and Garric smiled, because he was so perfectly in agreement with the big man.
Tilphosa’s wrists were covered with a poultice of mashed comfrey, attached by dock leaves tied on with string twisted from a birch tree’s inner bark. It’d given Cashel an extra degree of pleasure to use vegetation the way men were meant to use it, knowing that the Helpers’d be in screaming despair if they could watch him.
Cashel had nothing against plants, any more than he had against the sky or the sea lapping the beach back home. But he knew what a tree’s place in the universe was, and he wasn’t bragging when he figured that his own place was higher than that.
Tilphosa bent and swept a pebble from between her right foot and her sandal. Cashel had stopped to make bark footgear for her as soon as he figured they’d gotten beyond where the Helpers might be willing to follow them. He wasn’t afraid of the little people any more than he was afraid of Meas or-Monklin’s kicking ox. They both could be nasty if you weren’t careful, though, so Cashel was careful in his dealings with either one.
“Want to hold up here for a while?” Cashel asked.
“No, no,” the girl said, skipping to put herself a half step in front to prove her ability to go on. “There’s another house just ahead, I see.”
“Right,” said Cashel, wishing he could put more enthusiasm into his agreement. They’d seen half a dozen huts since they reached this road at midday. Seen the huts and walked onward, at the insistence of the people living there.
“At any rate, they’re just folks,” Cashel said, going on with his train of thought aloud. He was used to being alone except for sheep most of the time. He’d gotten into the habit of talking to himself, because otherwise he mightn’t hear a human voice between sunup and sundown.
“That’s right,” said Tilphosa. “You can’t blame them for being wary of strangers. And the city’s right ahead, they say.”
She spoke with more enthusiasm than the Cashel guessed she felt, but they were both trying to put a bright face on a tiring day that didn’t want to end. It was late in the afternoon. They could sleep rough in this dank landscape if they had to, but it wasn’t something Cashel was going to do for choice.
The road was on top of a causeway, built up arm’s length above the surrounding land. It was wide enough for a cart to travel it, but Cashel doubted that any did: there were no wheel ruts in the clay surface, anyhow. Mats woven from the osiers growing in waste patches everywhere about held the sides in place, and pilings rammed down at double-pace intervals on either side anchored the mats.
This wasn’t a wasteland, though. The whole route was bordered by terraced fields where an unfamiliar sort of grain grew in neat rows from standing water. A heavy fog lay over the marshes, concealing the dwellings that Cashel was sure must lie on the other side of the fields. That probably didn’t matter, because he guessed those folks would’ve been at least as disinterested in helping travellers as the ones living in the huts he and Tilphosa had stopped at. Like this one, for instance.