Glen Cook - Sung In Blood

What followed was a merry roughhouse.

The invaders did not get the best of it.

"It's that captain and House and a couple of soldiers," Greystone said from the peephole. He opened the door.

The soldiers started House through ...

A wave of shantors hit them from behind. Greystone, House, the captain, and the soldiers went down under the tide.

Preacher shot one man and brained another with his crossbow before the rush made a shambles of his hiding place. Then he was trying to defend himself against clubs with bare hands. He got in a few good licks before he fell.

He lay there in semi-consciousness while the raiders located Caracene, the prisoners, and the hairy man-ape. Going into and returning from the suite the raiders gave Jehrke a superstitiously wide berth. They kept yelling at one another to hurry.

Hands grabbed Preacher up. He saw Greystone lifted, and Caracene ...

After that there was a lot of confusion. A lot of fighting, in which a lot of Citadel folk seemed to be helping the raiders and getting killed for their trouble.

Then one of the men carrying Preacher got bashed in the face with a pike butt. His partner dropped Preacher and ran for it.

Preacher's world went watery for a while.

A vigorous shaking wakened Preacher. He swore, then admonished himself with a scriptural quotation. He opened his eyes.

It took him a moment to recognize the man shaking him. The fellow had blood in his hair and all over his face. It was the captain who had tried to deliver Polybos House. The captain asked,

"Are you all right?"

"I'll probably live. Worse luck. Did we get them all?"

"Maybe a dozen got away." The captain looked around. "Really brought all the rats out of the walls this time. Your eastern friend played every counter he had. And used most of them up."

"That seemed an awful lot of trouble just to rescue Polybos House."

The captain laughed a hard laugh. "Rescue him? He's the first one they killed."

"Then what? ... "

"The woman. That ape thing. You and your sidekick. But I think mainly the woman."

Preacher tried to get up. The pounding in his head forced him back down. "Greystone?"

"Took him with them."

The first reports began to filter in soon afterward. No one was stopping the raiders—they were moving faster than the news—but their every step was noted. Their path—of course—led directly to the river.

Rider noticed the men tailing him immediately. There were three of them and they were fairly good, but he spotted them all the same. He shook them by a method that was almost cruel.

He began running, confident none of his pursuers could stay with him all the way to his destination.

The toughest kept up for five miles.

Rider ran five more miles, at a slower pace. By then he was well into the farm country west of Shasesserre. He ducked into a woodlot and adjusted his disguise slightly. When he reappeared upon the road he looked to be just another farm laborer trudging along with hands thrust into pockets.

His trudge was deceptive. It ate ground quickly. And when he was sure no one was watching he ran.

It was the hard way to make this journey. The slow way. But Shai Khe's spies and eyes would not be watching for a man afoot. An airship or a dromon, yes. Perhaps chariots, coaches, or horsemen. But not a lone, stooped, tired farm hand.

At dusk he came to the ridge that formed the spine of Shroud's Head. He was more than forty miles from the Citadel. That much walking tired even him. He located a sheltered place and fell asleep immediately.

He wakened six hours later, in the ebb hour of the night, exactly as planned. He listened to cricket sounds. Nothing else was moving, a fact he confirmed by cautious extension of his wizard's senses.

Confident that he was alone and unwatched, he began working his way up and out the ridge. He avoided trails and easy traveling. In the dark even the most skilled of men could overlook some warning device.

He reached the crown of Shroud's Head without incident or discovery. Once there he settled himself and set his wizard's senses roaming in earnest.

There were guards, yes. And warning devices. And an incredibly complex net of spells meant both as alarm and trap ... And something more. Something dark, the nature of which he could not immediately discern.

There were only two men, though. One was asleep and the other was nodding. There should have been more. Unless Shai Khe had grown so short of manpower he had stripped his airship of its crew.

That must be it. Rider could detect no other human beings anywhere within reach of his talent.

That other thing, though ... He had begun to sense its outlines, its black formless form. And he had begun to suspect what it might be. And if it was, he had learned much about the horror that slithered within a man named Shai Khe.

If that thing were loosed, no single sorcerer, not even a Jehrke or a Shai Khe, would be able to bind it again. An army would be needed, and many of them would die in the struggle. Horribly.

But for now it was confined and constrained and could, with relative ease, be returned to that foul place whence it had been summoned.

If Rider could untangle the net of spells shielding both airship and devil.

Now he knew why Kralj Odehnal had said "Devil's Eyes" instead of "Devil's Eye." The deep cave and hidden airship were only half the story. There was, perhaps, the approximation of a pun in confining the devil in the other, shallower eye.

Rider examined the nest of spells. His regard for Shai Khe, as a sorcerer, rose. It would be a long, arduous, interesting, dangerous job, penetrating that without leaving tracks. He settled in to do it.

He was through. He was safely inside unseen. He had done what he had come to do and had seen what he had come to see. And now he was trapped.

Just as he was about to leave, Shai Khe's airship crew returned, having come down the Bridge of the World by boat. And with them they had brought Caracene, Soup, and Greystone. How had they gotten to Greystone and the girl?

For the moment all three were safe enough. The airshipmen had orders to install them in the airship and keep them confined. Nothing more.

Rider wished he could get back to the City and learn what had happened. The airshipmen knew nothing. But he could not depart without being seen, or, at least, without leaving traces that would be instantly apparent to Shai Khe's eye.

He slipped into a shadowed cleft and rested, and waited for a chance to make a properly discreet departure.

"The boat just vanished?" Chaz demanded, keeping one eye on General Procopio, who had his nose into everything in the laboratory. The general was as excited as a kid. Retirement had been a bore for him. "Right in the middle of the river?"

Preacher nodded. He was tired of repeating the story. "Then he used sorcery. Meaning he was willing to disturb the web and attract attention."

"Like maybe he hadn't been noticed so far?" Su-Cha sneered. "The boat only had to disappear for a couple minutes. Just long enough to get to shore and let those guys do a fade."

Chaz paced. He was concerned about Caracene, though torture would not have gotten him to admit that. He stared at the darkness beyond the laboratory window. The gruesome memorial that had been Jehrke Victorious watched over his shoulder. "Where is the boss?"

"Gone. Without saying where he was going. The way he does."

Chaz stared at the vermilion characters in the window glass. They had, according to Preacher, simply appeared while his back was turned.

Ride-master Jehrke: You no longer possess the pearl so precious to me. I now possess two gems priceless to you.

"What do we do now?" Chaz asked.