Margaret Weis - Fire Sea

And Alfred? It had been a mistake to bring him. Haplo cursed himself bitterly. He should have left the Sartan behind on the ship, left him in ignorance. Then he could have taken the Sartan back to the Labyrinth, keeping him in complete ignorance of the fact that his people were alive and well on Abarrach, the world of stone. Now, with just one shout, Alfred could end Haplo’s mission, end his lord’s hopes and dreams, end Haplo.

“Blessed Sartan,” whispered a soft voice behind him, nearly causing Haplo to jump out of his runecovered skin.

He turned swiftly, to find Alfred hovering in the air overhead, staring down at the fire-lighted bodies moving in the cavern. Haplo tensed, waiting, casting a furious glance at the dog, who had failed its trust.

At least I’ll have the satisfaction of killing one Sartan before I die.

Alfred stared into the cavern, his face a pale glimmer in the reflected firelight, his eyes sad and troubled.

“Go ahead, Sartan!” Haplo demanded in a savage whisper. “Why don’t you get it over with? Call to them! They’re your brothers!”

“Not mine!” Alfred said in hollow tones. “Not mine!”

“What do you mean? That’s Sartan they’re speaking.”

“No, Haplo. The Sartan language is the language of life. Theirs”—Alfred lifted a hand, ghostly in its grace, and pointed—“is the language of death.”

“What do you mean, language of death? Come down here!” Haplo reached up, caught hold of Alfred, and pulled him nearer. “Now talk!” he ordered in a soft undertone.

“I understand it little more than you do,” the Sartan said, looking helpless. “And I’m not sure what I mean. It’s just that. . . well, listen for yourself. Can’t you tell the difference?”

Haplo did as he was advised, pushing aside the turbulent emotions warring in him to pay close attention. Now that he concentrated, he had to admit Alfred had a point. The Sartan language sounded discordant to Patryn ears. Accustomed to hard, swift, harsh, and uncompromising words that expressed what one had to say in the quickest, simplest, shortest way possible, the Patryns considered the Sartan language elaborate, airy-fairy, cluttered with flights of fancy and unnecessary verbiage and an inexplicable need to explain that which required no explanation.

But to hear these cave-people talk was tantamount to hearing the Sartan language turned inside out. Their words did not fly, they crawled. Their language evoked no images of rainbows and sunshine in Haplo’s mind. He saw a pale and sickly light, a light given off by something rotting and corrupt. He heard a sorrow deeper than the dark depths of this world. Haplo prided himself on never feeling “soft” emotion, but this sorrow touched him to the core of his being.

Slowly, he released Alfred from his rough grip. “Do you understand what’s going on?”

“No, I don’t. Not clearly. But I think I could become accustomed to the language in time.”

“Yeah, me, too. Just like I could become accustomed to being hanged. What’re you going to do?” Haplo eyed Alfred narrowly.

“Me?” Alfred was astounded. “Do? What do you mean?”

“Are you going to turn me over to them? Tell them I’m the ancient enemy? You probably won’t even have to tell them. They’ll remember.”

Alfred did not answer immediately. His lips parted several times as if he intended to speak, but shut when he changed his mind. Haplo had the impression that the man was not trying to decide what to do, but how to explain his decision.

“This may sound strange to you, Haplo. I have no desire to betray you. Oh, I’ve heard your threats against me and, believe me, I don’t take them lightly. I know what will happen to me in the Nexus. But now we are strangers in a strange world—a world that appears to grow exceedingly more strange the deeper we probe it.”

Alfred appeared confused, almost shy. “I can’t explain myself, but I feel a ... a kinship to you, Haplo. Perhaps because of what happened to us going through Death’s Gate. I’ve been where you were. And I think, if I’m right, that you’ve been where I was. I’m not explaining this very well, am I?”

“Kinship! The hell with all that. Keep in mind one thing—I’m your way out of here. Your only way out of here.”

“True,” said Alfred gravely. “You are right. It appears, then, that while we are on this world we must depend on each other for survival. Would you like me to pledge it?”

Haplo shook his head, fearing he might be called on to pledge something in return. “I’ll trust you to save your own skin and because that includes saving mine, I guess that’ll be good enough.”

Alfred glanced about nervously. “Now that that’s settled, shouldn’t we be going back to the ship?”

“Are these people Sartan?”

“Ye—es ...”

“Don’t you want to find out more about them? What they’re doing on this world?”

“I suppose so ...” Alfred hesitated.

Haplo ignored his reluctance. “We’ll move closer, see if we can figure out what’s going on.”

The two men and the dog crept ahead, keeping to the shadows of the tunnel wall, edging their way toward the light until Haplo deemed they were close enough to see without being seen, hear without being heard. He raised a warding hand and Alfred bobbed up close beside him, hovering silently in the air. The dog flopped down on the rock floor, keeping one eye on its master and the other on Alfred.

The cavern was filled with people, all of them Sartan. Sartan appear to be human at first glance, with the exception that their hair rarely varies in color. Even among children, the hair is almost always white, shading toward brown at the bottom. Patryn hair coloration is exactly the opposite. Haplo’s hair was brown on top, shading to white at the bottom. Alfred had almost no hair (perhaps the balding was another unconscious attempt at disguise) and was thus not easily recognizable.

Sartan also tended to be taller in height than those of the lesser races. Their magical power and the knowledge of that power gave them extraordinarily beautiful and radiant countenances (Alfred being the exception).

These people were Sartan, beyond doubt. Haplo’s eyes darted swiftly over the crowd. He saw only Sartan, none of the lesser races, no elves, no humans, no dwarves.

But there was something odd about these Sartan, something wrong. The Patryn had met one living Sartan—Alfred. Haplo had seen visions of the Sartan on Pryan. He’d looked on them with scorn, but he was forced to admit that they were a beautiful, radiant people. These Sartan seemed aged, faded; their radiance dimmed. Some of them were, in fact, hideous to look on. Haplo was repelled by the sight of them and saw his own revulsion reflected strongly in Alfred’s eyes.

“They’re holding a ceremony of some sort,” Alfred whispered.

Haplo was about to tell him to shut up when it occurred to the Patryn that he might learn something to his advantage. He swallowed his words and counseled patience, a hard lesson he’d learned in the Labyrinth.

“A funeral,” said Alfred in a pitying tone. “They’re holding a funeral for the dead.”

“If so, they’ve waited long enough to entomb them,” Haplo muttered.

Twenty corpses of varying ages, from that of a small child to the body of a very old man, lay on the rock floor of the cavern. The crowd stood at a respectful distance, giving Haplo and Alfred—unobserved watchers—an excellent view. The corpses were composed, hands folded across the chest, eyes closed in eternal sleep. But some had obviously been dead a long time. The air was foul with the odor of decay, although—probably by their magic—the Sartan had succeeded in keeping the flesh from rotting away.