Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

Rosha appreciated Kam’s bravado, but he was watching the man’s eyes and saw something false there.

Mar-Yilot must have seen it too, but she didn’t comment. That puzzled Rosha. He’d always heard that Mar-Yilot spoke before she thought. Since he’d been around her, however, he’d had the sensation that she was hiding something.

“So, Rosha,” Kam said grandly, “we’ll have to finish this up the next time you stop by.”

“We’d like that.” Rosha nodded.

“We?” Kam muttered.

“My father and I,” Rosha explained. Kam’s embarrassed response confused him.

“What—Oh yes! Right. Ah… listen, Mar-Yilot, I’ve got my best horses waiting for you. You really think Pelmen’s well enough to ride?”

Frowning, Rosha flicked his gaze to Mar-Yilot just in time to catch her eyes studying him worriedly. She immediately looked at Kam, and answered with too much intensity, “I feel certain that he is.”

“Good.” Kam nodded. When there was an awkward pause, the blond warrior got to his feet. “Ah—just let me check to see if the horses are ready.” He quickly left the hall. Mar-Yilot shifted in her seat and found a bite of biscuit to nibble.

“What’s going on?” Rosha asked suspiciously.

“What?” the sorceress snapped, looking annoyed. “Nothing’s going on, but we certainly need to be, so grab that precious bundle and let’s move, shall we?”

Rosha persisted. “You’re hiding something. What is it?”

“I’m hiding nothing!” Mar-Yilot snarled. “I’m just tired, that’s all, and I’m not looking forward to a day of playing magical tag.”

“Why haven’t you told me what happened to your husband?” Rosha demanded, his face expressionless.

Mar-Yilot feigned surprise. “My husband? What about my husband?”

Rosha stared at her, his eyes hard. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

The powershaper met his gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Kam stepped back into the hall and said, “Everything’s ready. Pelmen’s already mounted and is waiting for you. Seems he’s in a hurry.”

“Very good.” Mar-Yilot nodded and picked up the heavy cloak Kam had provided for her, wrapping it around her shoulders. “Coming?” she asked Rosha cuttingly.

The warrior’s only reply was to stand slowly and stalk out of the hall. He fetched his own cloak and the bundled-up pyramid and went to join Pelmen in the stable. His friend greeted him, but Rosha said nothing.

Kam bade them all good-bye with a cheerful smile, but his eyes were filled with worry. His cockiness fooled no one. His danger was real. And if there was any true hope for the survival of his house, it rested upon the alliance of these two power-shapers. “Be careful,” he warned them.

Mar-Yilot fixed him with a sobering look. “You could have your people ready to ride by midmorning. I could Cover all of us, and you’d be out from under Flayh’s shadow.”

Kam hesitated a moment, then shook his head. “Not now. The dog is chasing you, not me. We’d slow you down too much, perhaps even cause your capture. What safety is there for my household in that?

No,” he added, glancing around at the stable walls, “I’ll stay here. And if that dog of a shaper should happen by, perhaps Kam can be a thorn in his paw.” He smiled again, waved, and the three riders galloped out of his gates.

They rode northward three abreast; Pelmen was in the middle, Rosha and Mar-Yilot flanking him should he fall. There seemed little danger of that at the moment. He seemed fit, and sat well in the saddle.

The only evidence of his weariness was his detachment from them. He obviously thought of other things.

Still, he concentrated enough to add his own coverage to the magic cloak Mar-Yilot wrapped around them. That protection enabled them to avoid a half dozen earnest patrols of slavers.

Mar-Yilot and Pelmen talked a bit at first, but Rosha said nothing. He’d not opened his mouth since he’d left the breakfast table. It was his manner of showing rage—an old habit, bom in his stuttering childhood—and he felt certain Pelmen, at least, sensed his anger. The other two let their conversation die. When they avoided asking him what the problem was, he knew for certain they’d conspired against him. He savored his fury in silence.

After several hours they rounded the northern face of the plateau and hit the straight stretch of road that led westward to the Garnabel Bridge. Suddenly his rage spilled over; with volcanic violence, the words spewed from his lips. “Foul friends, the both of you! I’ll travel no farther, not a pace, until you tell me what you’ve hidden!” He reined his horse about and jerked it to a stop, staring at his companions with glittering eyes.

His outburst startled them both, but Mar-Yilot quickly recovered. “I’m trying to cloak us!” she shot back at Rosha. “Just what are you trying to do?”

Rosha ignored her words, turning his hot gaze on Pelmen.

“What are you not telling me?” he asked, half in demand, half in plea. It was the pleading that broke the powershaper, and Pelmen’s posture, which had been so erect since their departure, wilted into a slump.

He sagged in his saddle, and his eyes dropped from the road ahead to the tangles in his horse’s mane.

When he finally spoke it was to the woman, and his voice was as thin and weak as Rosha had ever heard it. “Who should tell him?”

Mar-Yilot’s lips—already pencil thin—seemed to disappear altogether into a tight line. Rosha twisted in his saddle so that his shoulders faced her squarely and scowled expectantly. Mar-Yilot squinted toward the sun, then turned her gaze toward him. Rosha saw only a sliver of her golden eyes, as those auburn eyebrows pinced together in a frown. “I killed your father,” she announced. Then she looked back at the road. Pelmen’s strength returned, and he sat back up straight. “Tell him why,” Pelmen ordered, and Mar-Yilot turned back to look at him, a bit surprised by the authority in his voice. Her eyes flicked back to Rosha’s, who was clenching his teeth and fighting the urge to cry out.

“I was blind. I was fooled. Flayh tricked me into believing that Dorlyth had ambushed my husband and that Pelmen had bound him with dread. I wanted vengeance, so I trapped your father and Pelmen in a ring of fire. I knew Pelmen could escape, of course. But I also knew he couldn’t save your father.”

“And that was your vengeance on me” Pelmen whispered

hoarsely.

“In part.” The woman shrugged. “I did intend to kill you, too, eventually, but I recognized that would take much more planning. Still, I knew you would suffer, as I had, the futility of having power and not being able to use it.” Mar-Yilot spoke frankly, in all honesty, without rancour or bitterness.

To Rosha it sounded almost casual, as if she recited the

details of her breakfast instead of his father’s murder. For a moment, as the blood rushed into his head and his tongue thickened beyond all possibility of usefulness, he calculated the time it would take to unsheath his borrowed blade, leap over Pelmen, and halve the woman in her saddle.

“Don’t, Rosha,” Pelmen murmured, and the quiet wisdom in his statement stilled the warrior’s hand.

“Oh, go ahead,” Mar-Yilot growled, and for the first time her voice betrayed the depth of her remorse.

Rosha looked at her sharply and saw a tear glisten on her wan cheek before the woman could brush it away in irritation. “You have the right.” Staring at her, Rosha was surprised at how very frail she looked.

“He had as much right to kill you as you did his father,” Pelmen said evenly. Then he looked at her. “That is, none at all.”

Mar-Yilot snorted a mirthless laugh. “If he doesn’t, then no one has the right to kill anyone.”