“Others?” Mazlek’s voice came sharp and clear now.
’Ten men and horses—black riders—skull masks—except for him, the dark one—the wolf—”
Mazlek turned and looked back at me. My hands were tight on the reins, and my heart thudded in intermittent, painful, nervous beats. Mazlek left the man and came back to the road.
“Vazkor,” he said unnecessarily. “Still alive?”
“Oh, yes. I never thought him dead.”
“Making for Eshkorek—as we are,” Mazlek said. He mounted swiftly. “We should hurry, goddess; perhaps we can catch them, now that we’re on the same road.”
“No,” I said.
The old man shouted hoarsely at us, without words.
“Wise to ride with him,” Mazlek said. “Twelve men can protect you better than one.”
He was anxious for my safety. It was useless to protest. We urged the horses forward, and left the old man standing in the field, beside the pigeon-heavy scarecrow he had put up to keep the birds away.
Darkness thickened around us. Stars burned blue-white be tween the distant crag-crests.
“We do not know how long ago they passed,” I said. “We may be days behind.”
“I don’t think so,” Mazlek said. “That one would have had a short memory, yet he remembered them very well.”
“I must rest soon,” I said.
He nodded through the gloom.
“I will find a safe place, then ride ahead to them. He’ll wait, or return with me.”
“Will he? I wonder, Mazlek, if he will.”
But he would, of course. I carried what was his.
Not long after, the road began to drop downward. Across rock thrusts came a new light, faintly red.
“A fire,” Mazlek muttered.
We saw the dip a minute later, a trickle of path and scrub bushes clinging around it, and, at the bottom, a hollow full of firelight. It seemed blatant, careless even. I saw horses moving beyond the flames, shapes sitting against the rock. Abruptly two men leaped from the scrub, one for each of our bridles. A third stood a little behind, a couple of knives very ready. Not so careless, after all, for he had posted sentries.
Mazlek’s ambusher prodded at him. “Who are you?”
Mazlek said calmly, “I am Mazlek, Commander of the Goddess Uastis’ Guard. I have conducted her to her husband.”
The skull faces turned to me. There was nothing about me recognizable, no golden cat mask or rich robe. Even the pregnancy had shown itself since they saw me last.
“Well,” I said, “go and ask your Lord. He will remember me, I think.”
A little hesitation, then they pulled our horses aside, and led them down the path into their camp, the knife man coming last.
It was warm in the hollow, and smoky. One of our guides strode off around the fire into a cave beyond it. I began to feel stifled, the smoke catching in my throat and eyes. I wanted to run away, and cursed Mazlek unfairly for bringing me here. Damn Vazkor, I did not want his venomous weight on my freedom again.
The man ducked out of the cave, and another man followed him, tall, spare, dark; under the silver strings of the wolfs head, his own black hair hanging in long, raw silks. He came around the fire, and stood looking at me. “Welcome, goddess,” he said.
When he spoke, the race of my fear stumbled. I looked back at him bewildered. Not Vazkor’s voice, a stranger’s voice, dry and old, and empty.
Mazlek was at my stirrup, offering his arm to help me down. I dismounted.
“Make the goddess comfortable,” the unknown voice finished. He nodded and turned back into the cave, and was gone.
“So, even he understands defeat,” Mazlek said softly. “It is finished for him, and he knows it.” There was a bitter pleasure in his tone I might have shared if he had said it on the road.
I took my hand from Mazlek’s arm, walked around the blaze, and followed Vazkor into the black mouth of the cave. Far back there was a leather curtain hung up for privacy, and beyond it the slight glow of a wick in oil. I let the flap fall to, and stood staring at the bed, made of one folded blanket, on which he lay.
He was very still. The mask gone now, his face showed sick pale under the gray-olive skin, and the shadows of his face seemed bruised deeper. Except for his open eyes, which turned slowly to look at me, he might have been dead. His mouth stretched a little.
“Our positions are finally reversed, you see,” he said.
“You are ill,” I said softly, not quite believing it.
“Yes. I am ill. But I will be better soon. I’m sorry to disappoint you, goddess.” His eyes shifted a little to my belly. “Well,” he said, but even that could not anger me. The walls of hate I had built against him had crumbled instantly, of course. His vulnerability stirred me almost into an agony of compassion I could not help. I went to him and kneeled down.
“What can I do for you? Shall I fetch you anything...?”
I reached out and touched his face with my fingertips, and, as if it were a signal to my body, I began at once to weep, the silent scalding tears of our separate loneliness. He too had lost what was dear to him, however perverse his desires and hopes had been. Lost. He could not even express any pain he felt. He lay like ice under my touch, Darak turned to jade at the bottom of the tomb-shaft because I could not weep for him.
“Let’s put an end to this,” he said after a moment, quite gently. “This is no use for either of us.”
I got to my feet, and he shut his eyes, closing that last door into himself with the finality of stone.
There was another cave place they had found for me, and here I lay, Mazlek across the mouth of it, but his body defenseless in worn-out sleep. It was I who watched that night.
Dawn, ice-chill in the mountains, stippled rock flanks with incandescent red.
There was a beaker of the wine-drink for me that morning. Mazlek, like a child, stretching, rubbing at his eyes, glancing guiltily in at me because he had not stood guard all night.
Vazkor came from the cave as they were saddling and loading the horses. He saw to his own mount, slowly and carefully. The mask hid his face. After a while he mounted, and sat with an unusual stiffness, as if it took much effort to keep himself there. They waited for his signal, and followed after him up the road.
It came to me: I have done this. The storm I turned from Belhannor was the beginning of it. I have smashed the soul of Vazkor. Yet I could not quite believe it. Where, after all, was my triumph in the act?
Mazlek and I were some way behind. After a while Vazkor motioned another man into the lead, and waited on the road until we reached him. He turned to Mazlek, and Mazlek dropped back until out of earshot. Vazkor’s black gelding dwarfed the horse I rode.
“I have seen that man before,” Vazkor said after a while. His voice was slightly husky from the fever, yet different from when I had heard it last; how, I was not sure. “Your commander. One of Asren’s men who rode with me for a time, I think. In Ezlann.”
I said nothing, could think of nothing to say, since the words I needed to speak he had locked inside me forever.
“You think,” he said, after another little silence, “things are finished with me.”
Hooves bit sharp on the road.
“Well, goddess, the castle fell at the river An, but I can build it again, on its own ruins, out of its own bricks. This is not defeat, goddess, it is delay. We are headed for a mountain fortress that will keep us very safe until the time is right for me. Tower-Eshkorek—my gift from the last Javhovor of Eshkorek Arnor. I hope you will find it comfortable. Our child will probably be born there now.”
Part V: Tower-Eshkorek