Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

The priestess didn’t flinch nor did she hesitate. She leaned toward him and said, “I will never again leave you, Pelmen Dragonsbane. Except, perhaps, through death.”

Her answer made him want to shout, but his jubilation was tempered by that last condition. “Do you… know something… about that?” he asked tentatively.

Serphimera’s beautiful face took on a severe aspect, and her voice had a sepulchral edge she used only for intoning prophecy. “I see us together to the mountain, Pelmen Dragonsbane. And then I see no more.” The expression remained fixed for a moment—the face one might expect to find carved on a sculpture of a goddess. Then abruptly it crumpled, and she bowed her head, leaned against Pelmen’s chest, and wept. He held onto her, wisely saying nothing. Finally she choked out, “That’s all. And I don’t know what it means.”

Pelmen clung to her and let her sob, casting about for some appropriate reply. He never found it.

Suddenly his mind filled with a completely different conversation, one she could not be a party to. His eyes slammed shut in pain and concentration, and once more, as had happened so many times before, the normally dark field behind his eyelids burned a hot, bright blue. Rosha! he wanted to shout, don’t do it! But his own words were crowded out by the words of others. The link had again been made. The three pyramids were in contact.

Savage waves batted the rowboat toward the shore, drenching the sky blue garments of its seven occupants. Erri wrestled with an oar while shouting instructions to the other oarsman. The poor man struggled to hear, but the hammering sea drowned the prophet’s words. Moments later their keel scraped the sand, and several initiates hopped out into the surf to drag the boat onto the beach. Erri hung over the side gasping for breath, then gestured for the three men who were to return to the ship to lean toward him.

“Row into the swells!” he shouted. “Don’t let the craft turn edge-on into the waves or you’ll be swamped!

Ship oars as the peaks roll under you, then row for all you’re worth into the troughs! Oh, what am I saying,” he broke off, grumbling to himself. “You can’t hear me anyway.”

One initiate leaned toward his master’s face, cupping a hand around his ear. “What?” he shouted.

“I said let the Power guide you!” Erri bellowed back. Then he shook his head in frustration, shrugged, and smiled brightly. When he jumped out of the boat they were all smiling back. He helped them push back out, then waved and turned for the shore. Suddenly strong young arms closed around his chest and picked him up. “Strahn!” he barked. “Set me down! I assure you I can walk!” The initiate doubtfully released him, and Erri ploughed through the foam as it first rushed up the shore past him, then sucked backward into the sea. He didn’t stop until his squishing sandals were grabbed and slowed by the dry sand high on the beach. Wayleeth and Tahli-Damen waited for him here; she had her arm wrapped protectively around her husband’s waist, and he was scowling sightlessly toward the ocean. The blind man had been scowling for the past two days.

“Look!” Strahn shouted enthusiastically as he joined them. “You see that huge boulder over there? I used to play by that boulder!” No one looked but Strahn. Indeed, the other three really didn’t hear him.

Already they were learning to screen out most of his irritating enthusiasm.

“Tahli-Damen, stop your frowning,” Erri ordered. “You can’t see it but the rest of us can, and it will only make this trip that much more unpleasant.”

“You know why I’m scowling,” the blind man grunted. “The choice was yours.”

Erri winked at Wayleeth and smiled warmly at her. “Actually, the choice was yours some time ago. And a fine choice it was, too. Wayleeth, please excuse him.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, Prophet. I’m used to him.” The young woman’s bright eyes returned to her husband’s face, and the devotion Erri saw in them confirmed again this pairing. Some matches were certainly made by the Power himself.

“I used to pick up seashells near here! And down there at those rocks?” Strahn danced as he pointed.

“We used to sit on those rocks until the tide came in and rose up around our necks! We made a game of seeing who could last the longest!”

Some matches, Erri complained to himself meditatively, seem to be made by mischievous powers intent on taxing patience to the limit. Strahn, Erri grieved silently to himself— how had he inherited Strahn?

“I told you I used to live near here, didn’t I? Goats. My father herded goats right over there, at the foot of the Spinal Range!” The young man was grinning and pointing again, and Erri felt obliged to look.

“Yes,” he murmured wearily, “I believe you have mentioned that. Eight or nine times, I would guess.” It was his own fault, Erri reasoned. Begin anything new and exciting while opening yourself to receive any who might follow, and you’re bound to wind up with some of the Strahns of the world. “Shall we go? It’s a long walk to Dragonsgate.”

“It’s not that far,” Strahn corrected eagerly as he fell into step with the prophet. “Why, my father and I—”

“What’s that?” Wayleeth gasped, stopping as she said it and pointing. Tahli-Damen banged into her shoulder and his scowl

deepened. He quickly forgot his irritation, however, when Erri grunted back:

“Dogs.”

They had reached the top of the sandy strand and were about to descend into a small gully. On the far side, silhouetted against the red sky of the setting autumn sun, a line of hounds waited. They weren’t normal dogs. These had been a part of that vast canine army that had ringed the city of Lamath the night Erri fell from power. They were Flayh’s dogs, and Erri’s mouth suddenly felt cottony with fear.

Strahn’s stricken expression announced his terror to the world, but he still managed to stammer,

“Wh-wh-what do we do?”

Erri swallowed. “What do we do? What we came here to do. We walk to Dragonsgate.” Erri plunged down the hill, churning a plume of sand before him. He didn’t look back to see if his small band followed, nor did he hesitate when he reached the bottom of the dune. He started up the other side, gazing into the fiery orange eyes of the hound directly above him. As if on cue, the dog slipped to one side and let Erri stalk on through the line.

Now Wayleeth and Strahn hurried to catch up, and Tahli-Damen did his best to keep his feet in all the sliding and tugging. “What kind of dogs?” the blind man demanded of his wife and guide. “Describe them to me!”

“They’re… dogs. Black. But their eyes are… they’re like flames—”

“Are these the dogs that attacked Lamath?” Tahli-Damen quizzed her, and Wayleeth nodded in assent.

“Well, answer me!” he demanded.

“Yes!” she whispered vehemently.

“I see.” Tahli-Damen nodded, unaware of the irony in his words. “They’re the demon dogs then, aren’t they. Prophet?”

“If you choose to term them such,” Erri called back, continuing rapidly on. As he did, he noticed the line of hounds turning to trot along beside him. He stopped. They stopped. He waited until his band caught up, then started walking westward again. The dogs trotted forward, matching their pace to his. “It appears they plan to escort us.”

“Why?” Wayleeth flared, hooking one arm through her husband’s and turning her head to frown at the hounds. “What do they want from us?”

“I don’t know,” Erri replied offhandedly. He glanced at Tahli-Damen as he said it and took note of the blind man’s grim expression. A bag holding that object that Tahli-Damen had borne to Lamath now dangled from Erri’s neck, hidden by the fullness of his robe. Had these dogs come for the pyramid?