Fire Sea

20

An open-air carriage awaited the duke, duchess, and their guests. The vehicle was constructed of the same grasslike substance, woven together and covered with a high-gloss finish painted in glowing colors, Haplo had noted in the village.

“A much different material from that used to build your ship,” said Jera, climbing into the carriage and seating herself beside Haplo.

The Patryn kept silent, but Alfred tumbled into the trap with his usual grace. “Wood, you mean? Yes, wood is quite common in ... er... well. . .” He realized his error, stammered, but it was too late.

Haplo saw, in the Sartan’s enthusiastic words, visions of the trees of Arianus, lifting their green and leafy bows to the sun-drenched blue skies of that distant world.

The Patryn’s first impulse was to grab Alfred by his frayed coat collar and shake him. By their expressions, Jera and Jonathan had seen the same visions and were staring at Alfred in undisguised wonder. Bad enough these Sartan knew or guessed they came from a world different from their own. Did Alfred have to show them how much different?

Alfred was climbing into the carriage, still talking, trying to cover his mistake by babbling, and succeeding in doing further damage. Haplo insinuated his booted foot between Alfred’s ankles, sent him sprawling headlong across Jera’s lap.

The dog, excited by the confusion, decided to add its own and began barking frantically at the beast drawing the carriage—a large fur-bearing creature as long as it was wide with two small beady black eyes and three horns on its massive head. For all its girth, the beast could move swiftly, it whipped out a clawed paw at the pesky dog. The dog leapt nimbly to one side, danced a few paces out of reach, darted forward to nip at the back legs.

“Whoa, pauka! Stop! Get back there!”

The carriage driver—a well-kept cadaver—slashed at the dog with a whip, at the same time struggling to maintain a grip on the reins. The pauka attempted to swing round its head to get a good view (and mouthful) of its antagonist. Those in the carriage were jounced and jostled, the carriage itself seemed likely to tip over, and all thoughts of another world fled in their concern over remaining in this one.

Haplo jumped out. Collaring the dog, he dragged the animal away from the fray. Jonathan and Edmund ran to the head of the pauka, as Haplo learned it was called from certain maledictory phrases being hurled at it by the dead coachman.

“Mind the snout horn!” Jonathan called anxiously to the prince.

“I’ve dealt with these before,” Edmund said coolly, and grabbing a handful of fur, he pulled himself up deftly onto the pauka’s broad back. Sitting astride the plunging, frantic beast, the prince caught hold of the curved part of the sharp horn located just behind the snout. Giving it a swift, strong tug, he jerked the pauka’s head back.

The pauka’s beady eyes opened wide. It gave its head a shake that nearly threw the prince. Edmund clung firmly to the horn, jerked it back a second time. Leaning down, he said a few soothing words and patted the beast on the neck. The pauka paused to consider the matter, cast a baleful glance back at the grinning dog. The prince said something else. The pauka appeared to agree and, with an air of offended dignity, settled stolidly back into the harness.

Jonathan sighed in relief and hastened to the carriage to see if any of the passengers had come to harm. The prince slid off the pauka’s back, patted it on the neck. The cadaver retrieved its dropped reins. Alfred was extracted from Jera’s lap, from which he emerged extremely red in the face and profuse in his apologies. A small crowd of dockside necromancers, who had gathered around to watch, drifted back to their work, which involved keeping the laboring cadavers at theirs. Everyone climbed aboard the carriage. It rolled off, on iron wheels, the dog trotting along behind, tongue lolling and eyes bright over the remembrance of the fun.

Not a word more was said about wood, but Haplo noted that, during the ride, Jera would glance at him, her lips curving in a smile.

“What lush and fertile land you have!” said Edmund, gazing about him with undisguised envy.

“These are the New Provinces, Your Highness,” said Jonathan.

“Land left behind with the falling of the Fire Sea,” added the duchess. “Oh, it is prosperous now. But its very prosperity spells our doom.”

“We grow mostly kairn grass here,” the duke continued with almost desperate cheerfulness. He was aware of the prince’s discomfort and cast a pleading glance at his wife, begging her to refrain from bringing up unpleasant subjects.

Jera, with another glance through lowered lids at Haplo, clasped her husband’s hand in her own in silent apology. From then on she went out of her way to be charming. Haplo, leaning back in the carriage, watched the change of expression on the mobile face, the flash of wit in the eyes, and thought that only once before in his life had he ever met a woman to equal this one. Intelligent, subtle, quick to think and to act, yet not one to act or speak rashly, she would have made a man a good partner in the Labyrinth. It was extremely unfortunate that she was bonded to another.

What was he thinking? A Sartan woman! Once again, in his mind, he saw the motionless figures resting peacefully in the crystal tombs of the mausoleum. Alfred did this to me. It’s all the Sartan’s fault. Somehow, he’s playing tricks on my mind. The Patryn cast the Sartan a sharp glance. If I catch him at it, he’ll die. I don’t need him anymore.

But Alfred was hunched miserably in the corner of the carriage, unable to so much as look at the duchess without a wave of blushes sweeping over his bald head. The man appeared incapable of dressing himself without help, yet Haplo didn’t trust him. Looking up, feeling eyes on him, he caught Jera, looking back as if she were reading every thought in his mind. Haplo affected to be intensely interested in the conversation going on around him.

“You grow primarily kairn grass here?” Edmund was asking.

Haplo stared at the tall, golden stands of grass undulating in the hot vectors blowing from the magma sea. Cadavers, new dead by the looks of them, worked in the fields, busily cutting the grass with curved sickles, stacking it in bundles that other cadavers pitched onto trundling carts.

“The plant is extremely versatile,” Jera said. “It’s flame resistant, thrives on heat, drawing its nutrients from the soil. We use its fibers in almost everything, from this carriage to the clothes we wear to a kind of tea we brew.”

She was, Haplo realized, speaking to people from another world, a people who wouldn’t know kairn grass from paukas. Yet all the while she was talking directly to the prince, who—probably having grown up eating, sleeping, and breathing kairn grass—appeared slightly amazed at being thus edified, but was too polite to say anything.

“Those trees you see growing over there are lanti. They can be found in the wild. We cultivate them. Their blue flowers are known as lanti lace and are highly prized for decoration. Beautiful, aren’t they, Your Highness?”

“It has been some time since I have seen the lanti,” Edmund said, his expression grim. “If any do still grow in the wild, we did not run across them.”

Three thick, stalwart trunks thrust up through the surrounding stands of golden kairn grass. The trunks twined together to form one gigantic braided trunk that soared high up into the air, the tops lost in the mists. The tree’s limbs, thin and fragile, gleaming silver-white, were so intertwined that it appeared impossible to separate one from another. Some of these bore flowers of a soft pale blue color.

As the carriage neared the grove of these trees, Haplo noted that the air smelled sweeter, seemed easier to breathe. He saw, by the dimming of the runes on his skin, that his body was using less magic to maintain itself.

“Yes,” answered Jera, seeming again to understand his unspoken thoughts. “The flowers of the lanti have the unique ability to draw the poisons from the atmosphere and give back pure air in return. That is why the trees are never cut. To kill a lanti is an offense punishable by oblivion. One may pick the blue flowers, however. They are highly valued, particularly by lovers.” She turned a sweet smile on her husband, who squeezed her hand.

“If you took this road,” said Jonathan, pointing to a smaller highway that branched off from the major one on which they traveled, “and you continued on it almost to Rift Ridge, you would reach my family’s estate. I really should be getting back,” he added, looking at the road they were leaving behind with a longing gaze. “The kairn grass is ready to harvest and, although I left Father’s cadaver in charge, sometimes it forgets and then nothing is done.”

“Your father, too, is dead?” Edmund asked.

“And my elder brother, as well. That is why I’m lord of the manor, although oblivion take me if I ever wanted it or thought I’d come to it. I’m not very responsible, I’m afraid,” Jonathan admitted, referring to his own shortcomings with a cheerful candor that was quite engaging. “Fortunately, I have someone at my side who is.”

“You underestimate yourself,” Jera said crisply. “It comes of being the youngest. He was spoiled as a child, Your Highness. Never made to do anything. Now all that’s changed.”

“No, you don’t spoil me at all,” the duke teased.

“What happened to your father and brother? How did they die?” Edmund asked, thinking undoubtedly of his own recent sorrow.

“Of the same mysterious malady that strikes so many of our people,” Jonathan answered, almost helplessly. “One moment both were hale and filled with life. The next—” He shrugged.

Haplo looked sharply at Alfred. Because for every person brought back untimely to life, another—somewhere—untimely dies.

“What have they done? What have they done?” Alfred’s lips moved in a silent litany.

Haplo, thinking about all he’d seen and heard, was beginning to wonder the same.

The carriage left the New Provinces, left behind the tall stands of kairn grass and the lovely, lacy lanti trees. Little by little, the landscape changed.

The air grew cooler, the first drops of rain began to fall, a rain that, when it struck Haplo’s skin, caused the protective runes to glow. A shrouding mist closed in. By Jonathan’s order, the carriage rolled to a stop, the cadaver driver jumped from his post and hastened around to unfurl a screen of protective fabric over their heads that offered some protection from the rain. Lightning flickered among the trailing clouds, thunder rumbled.

“This area,” said Jera, “is known as the Old Provinces. This is where my family lives.”

The land was blasted, devoid of life except for a few scraggly rows of sickly looking kairn grass, struggling up through piles of volcanic ash, and some flowerlike plants that gave off a pale and ghostly light. But although the land appeared barren, harvesters moved among the mud pits and slag heaps.

“Why? What are they doing?” Alfred leaned out of the carriage. “The old dead,” answered Jera. “They are working the fields.”

“But . . .” whispered Alfred in a horror too profound to be spoken aloud, “there are no fields!”

Cadavers in the most deplorable condition, far worse than the army of the old dead, toiled in the drizzling laze. Skeletal arms lifted rusted sickles or, in some cases, no sickles at all but merely went through the motions. Other cadavers, flesh rotting from their bodies, trailed after the harvesters, gathered up nothing, put it carefully nowhere. Barely distinguishable from the mist around them, the phantasms trailed disconsolately after the cadavers. Or perhaps the mist around them was made up of nothing but phantasms belonging to those whose bones had sunk into the ground and would never rise again.

Haplo looked at the mist and saw hands in it and arms and eyes. It clutched at him, it wanted something from him and seemed to be trying to speak to him. Its chill pervaded body and mind.

“Nothing grows here now, although once the land was as lush as the New Provinces. The few stands of kairn grass you see grow along the underground colossus that carry the magma into the city to provide heat. The old dead, who worked this land once themselves when they were alive, are all that remain. We tried moving them to new lands, but they kept drifting back to places they had known, and finally we left them in peace.”

“In peace!” Alfred echoed bitterly.

Jera appeared slightly surprised at his attitude. “Why, yes. Don’t you do this with your own dead when they grow too old to be of use?”

Here it comes, thought Haplo, who knew he should stop what Alfred was going to say. But he didn’t. He kept still, kept quiet.

“We have no necromancers among us,” Alfred said, his voice soft and fervent with conviction. “Our dead when they die are allowed to rest after their labors in life.”

The three in the carriage said nothing, were stunned into silence. They regarded Alfred with much the same expression of horror as he regarded them.

“You mean,” said Jera, recovering from her shock, “you consign your dead, all your dead, to oblivion?”

“To oblivion! I don’t understand. What does that mean?” Alfred glanced from one to the other helplessly.

“The body rots, falls to dust. The mind is trapped within, powerless to free itself.”

“Mind! What mind? These have no minds!” Alfred waved a hand at the old dead, toiling among the ash and mud.

“Of course, they have minds! They work, they perform useful functions.”

“So does that dragonship on which we sailed, but it has no mind. And you’re using your dead the same way. But you have done worse than that! Much worse!” cried Alfred.

The prince’s expression darkened from one of tolerant curiosity to one of anger. Only his innate courtesy kept him quiet, because what he would say would obviously cause unpleasantness. Jera’s brows came together sharply, her chin jutted forward, her back straightened. She would have spoken but her husband held her hand fast, squeezed it tightly. Alfred didn’t notice, rushed headlong into an icy, disapproving silence.

“The use of such black arts has been known to our people but expressly forbidden. Surely the ancient texts spoke of such matters. Have those been lost?”

“Perhaps destroyed,” suggested Haplo coolly, speaking for the first time.

“And what do you think, sir?” Jera demanded of the Patryn, ignoring the pressure of her husband’s hand. “How do your people treat their dead?”

“My people, Your Grace, have all they can do to keep the living alive, without worrying about the dead. And it seems to me that this, for the moment, should be our primary concern. Were you aware that there is a troop of soldiers headed this way?”

The prince sat bolt upright, tried to see out the screened carriage. He stared into nothing but mist and rain and hurriedly ducked his head back inside.

“How can you tell?” he demanded, more suspicious of them now than he had been when he first encountered them in the cavern.

“I have extraordinary hearing,” Haplo replied dryly. “Listen, you can hear the jingle of their harness.”

The jingle of harness, the stamping of what sounded like hooves on rock came to them faintly above the noise of their own carriage.

Jonathan and his wife exchanged startled glances, Jera appeared troubled.

“I take it, then, that troop movement along this highway isn’t exactly normal?” Haplo asked, leaning back in the carriage and folding his arms across his chest.

“Probably a royal escort for His Highness,” Jonathan said, brightening.

“Yes, that’s it. Surely,” Jera agreed, with rather too much relief in her voice to be entirely convincing.

Edmund smiled, ever courteous, despite whatever private misgivings he might have had.

The wind rose, the mists thinned. The troops were close and clearly visible. The soldiers were dead, new dead, in superb condition. At sight of the carriage, they came to a halt, formed a line across the highway, blocking the way. The carriage stopped on a hastily given command by Jonathan to his dead driver. The pauka snorted and shook its head restlessly, not liking the beasts the soldiers rode.

Lizardlike creatures, the soldiers’ mounts were ugly and misshapen. Two eyes on either side of the head revolved, each independent of the other, giving the impression that they could see in all directions at once. Short and squat, built close to the ground, they had powerful hind legs and a thick, barbed tail. The dead rode on their backs.

“The troops of the dynast,” Jera said, speaking in an undertone. “His soldiers alone are permitted to ride mud dragons. And the man in the gray robes leading them is the Lord High Chancellor, the dynast’s right hand.”

“And the black-robed person riding beside him?”

“The army’s necromancer.”

The chancellor, mounted astride a mud dragon and looking extremely uncomfortable, said a few words to the captain, who guided its beast forward.

The pauka sniffed and snorted, shook its head at the mud dragon smell, which was foul and rank as if it had climbed out of a pit of poisonous ooze.

“All of you, please step out of the carriage,” requested the captain.

Jera glanced at her guests. “I think, perhaps, we better,” she said apologetically.

They trooped out of the carriage, the prince graciously assisting the duchess. Alfred stumbled down the two stairs, nearly pitched headfirst into a pit. Haplo stood quietly toward the back of the group. An oblique gesture of his hand brought the dog padding to his side.

The cadaver’s expressionless eyes peered at the group, its mouth forming the words the Lord High Chancellor had bidden it say.

“I ride in the name of the Dynast of Abarrach, ruler of Kairn Necros, regent of Old and New Provinces, king of Rift Ridge, king of Salfag, king of Thebis, and liege lord of Kairn Telest.”

Edmund flushed darkly at hearing his own kingdom thus claimed, but he held his tongue. The cadaver continued.

“I am looking for one who calls himself king of Kairn Telest.”

“I am prince of that land,” Edmund said, speaking up proudly. “The king, my father, is dead and but newly raised. That is why I am here and he is not,” he added for the benefit of the waiting necromancer, who nodded the black hood in understanding.

The cadaver captain, however, was somewhat at a loss. This new information came outside the scope of its orders. The chancellor indicated in a few words that the prince would serve in place of the king, and the captain, reassured, carried on.

“I am bidden by His Majesty to place the king—”

“Prince,” inserted the chancellor patiently.

“—of Kairn Telest under arrest.”

“On what charge?” Edmund demanded. Striding forward, he ignored the cadaver, glared at the chancellor.

“Of entering the realms of Thebis and Salfag, realms foreign to him, without first seeking the permission of the dynast to cross their borders—”

“Those so-called realms are uninhabited! And neither myself nor my father ever knew that this ‘dynast’ even existed!”

The cadaver was continuing its speech, perhaps it hadn’t heard the interruption. “And of attacking without provocation the town of Safe Harbor, driving off the peaceful inhabitants, and looting—”

“That is a lie!” Edmund shouted, his fury overtaking his reason.

“Indeed it is!” Jonathan cried impetuously. “My wife and I have just returned from the town. We can testify to the truth of the matter.”

“His Most Just Majesty will be only too pleased to hear your side of this dispute. He will let you both know when to come to the palace.” It was the chancellor who spoke.

“We’re coming to the palace with His Highness,” Jonathan stated.

“Quite unnecessary. His Majesty received your report, Your Grace. We require the use of your carriage to the city walls, but, when we arrive in Necropolis, you and the duchess have His Majesty’s leave to return to your home.”

“But—” Jonathan sputtered. It was his wife’s turn to restrain him from speaking his mind.

“My dear, the harvest,” she reminded him.

He said nothing, subsided into an unhappy silence.

“And now, before we proceed,” continued the chancellor, “His Highness the Prince will understand and forgive me if I ask that he surrender his weapon. And those of his companion, too, I—”

The chancellor’s gray hood, hiding his face, turned for the first time toward Haplo. The voice ceased speaking, the hood paused in its rotation, the fabric quivered as if the head it covered were subject to some strong emotion.

The runes on Haplo’s skin itched and prickled. What now? he wondered, tensing, sensing danger. The dog, who had been content to flop down in the road during the lull in the proceedings, jumped to its feet, a low growl rumbling in its chest. One of the eyes of the mud dragon swiveled in the direction of the small animal. A red tongue flicked out of the lizard’s mouth.

“I have no weapons,” said Haplo, raising his hands.

“Nor I,” added Alfred in a small and miserable voice, although no one had asked him.

The chancellor shook himself, like a man waking from a doze he never meant to take. With an effort, the gray hood wrenched itself from staring at Haplo back to the prince, who had remained motionless.

“Your sword, Your Highness. No one comes armed into the presence of the dynast.”

Edmund stood defiant, irresolute. Duke and duchess kept their gazes lowered, unwilling to influence him in any way, yet obviously hoping he would not cause trouble. Haplo wasn’t certain what he hoped the prince would do. The Patryn had been warned by his lord not to become involved in any local dispute, but his lord had certainly not counted on his minion falling into the hands of a Sartan dynast!

Edmund suddenly and swiftly reached down, unbuckled his sword belt, and held it out to the cadaver. The captain accepted it gravely, with a salute of a white and wasted hand. Cold with outraged pride and righteous anger, the prince climbed back into the carriage and seated himself stiffly, staring out over the blasted landscape with studied calm.

Jera and her husband, prey to shame, could not look at Edmund, who must think now that they had lured him into a trap. Faces averted, they silently entered the carriage and silently took their seats. Alfred glanced uncertainly at Haplo, for all the world as if he were asking for orders! How that man had survived on his own this long was beyond the Patryn’s comprehension. Haplo jerked his head toward the carriage, and Alfred tumbled in, stumbling over everyone’s feet, falling rather than sitting in his seat.

They were all waiting for Haplo. Reaching down, patting the dog, he turned the animal’s head toward Alfred.

“Watch him,” he instructed in a soft undertone that no one heard except the animal. “Whatever happens to me, watch him.”

Haplo climbed into the carriage. The cadaver captain rode forward, caught hold of the pauka’s reins, and started the grumbling animal moving, driving the carriage forward toward the city of Necropolis, the City of the Dead.