Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

blunder! And today, just before you came, when I saw that it all would be lost—” She interrupted herself. Fixing her eyes on Pelmen. “Thank you for being here,” she said earnestly. “Although I still don’t know why you’ve come.”

“I’ve come to reclaim the pyramid I entrusted into your care. I think you know the one?”

“Oh, the pyramid…” Bronwynn said, as if hesitant about surrendering it. Her hesitation lasted only a moment. “I’ll get it.” She walked to her bed, dropped to her knees and plunged her hand underneath it.

Her servants had found the object there when they’d broken camp that morning. They’d dutifully returned it to the same spot when the tent was erected that afternoon. “Here it is,” she grumbled, pulling the blue velvet bag out and holding it up. “What do you want it for, anyway?”

Pelmen looked at Serphimera. “That’s an excellent question. I only wish we knew the answer.”

“Tahli-Damen?” Wayleeth asked tentatively.

“Yes, my dear,” her husband answered, with a distant formality that made her heart hurt.

“Why are we doing this?” She asked it simply. She did not imply that they had made a mistake, that he was a fool, nor even that she was unhappy—although she was. She tried to keep all those feelings out of her voice as she asked, wishing in all sincerity for an answer that really made sense.

“Because the Power says we must.”

There it was again—a reply she’d heard before—a reply without substance. For although Wayleeth tried daily, she heard no such thing from any such Power. Or, if she was hearing the Power’s voice, she certainly didn’t recognize it. Her spirits sank a bit deeper. Her gaze dropped to the snow-covered ground around them. Her eyes teared.

They rode through the Mar on horses provided by the House of Uda. Tahli-Damen had suggested it, but only upon Wayleeth’s request had the cousins now in control of the family fortune surrendered the animals. They considered Tahli-Damen a crazy man. Wayleeth, on the other hand, had good sense. If she felt this was the only way to care for their mentally diseased kinsmen, they would indulge her.

The horses had sped them across the countryside, but not enabled them to shake their implacable escort. A ring of dogs still accompanied them, but they no longer took much notice. Tahli-Damen, of course, couldn’t see their black companions. Wayleeth was busy, spending the quiet hours of the ride thinking about past choices.

She was a dutiful wife. That’s what she’d been trained to be, and she did it well. Her task had been easy when they rode her husband’s talent to prominence within the Merchant League. She’d been a gracious, lovely hostess, always doing the proper things at the proper time. Now she traveled toward the High Fortress at the direction of a blind fanatic who once had been her husband, but seemed no longer to consider himself so. It made no sense—and yet she did it. The question that bothered her most was not why they rode to Flayh’s castle. That she could logically attribute to Tahli-Damen’s mental condition.

What she couldn’t understand was why she didn’t protest.

She glanced up and gasped in disgust and horror. She stopped her horse and Tahli-Damen’s as well, and sat gaping soundlessly at the field before them.

“What is it?” he asked. When she wouldn’t speak, he demanded, “Tell me what you see!”

Wayleeth swallowed with difficulty, battling nausea. It wasn’t a sight she could readily describe, but she tried. “The snow… is churned up. It’s… slushy, as if trodden underfoot by enormous horses. And it’s…

it’s stained. Bright, bloody red. There are—” She gulped for breath. “—bodies, frozen bodies in the snow. Some are…” But she couldn’t bring herself to tell him of the half-eaten human and equine remains scattered before them. She struggled, but could not stop the coming of her silent sobs.

“A battlefield then,” Tahli-Damen grunted, believing he understood. He couldn’t understand. He couldn’t comprehend this at all. Wayleeth counted it yet another blessing of his blindness. No wonder he could be so optimistic—and so holy. “Enormous horses, you say?” he mused. “I wonder what that could be?”

Wayleeth offered no suggestions. She just covered her mourn and tried to stop trembling.

“How close are we to the plateau?” Tahli-Damen asked her.

Wayleeth took two deep breaths, bit her lips, then replied with perfect composure, “We’re at its base.”

“Good,” her husband muttered. He dismounted clumsily.

She frowned. “What are you doing?”

“We’ll walk the rest of the way.”

“But—”

“Our cousins told us the city is full of thieves and black-guards. Horses would make us too conspicuous.”

Wayleeth gazed down at him bitterly, wanting to shout at him, wanting to scream. How inconspicuous did he think he could be, wearing a sky blue robe with eyeballs to match? But she didn’t. Instead she climbed down off of her horse. “It’s a long way up,” she muttered.

“It’s early yet. We’ll make it before nightfall.”

“There are slavers up there.”

“They’ll not bother themselves with a pair of foolish fanatics,” he told her with smiling confidence.

But Tahli-Damen was wrong.

After the escape of the magical thieves, Admon Faye had publically beheaded every slaver assigned to the Down Road on the night when Rosha had eliminated, twelve and escaped with Pelmen and Mar-Yilot. Now the rogues atop the Down Road watched it with a vengeful care born of fear. It was tense, yet boring work, and they laughed with glee at the diversion of two blue-clad initiates from Lamath.

“What have we here?” One slaver chuckled as he seized Wayleeth by the collar and jerked her around to look him in the face. “Why, it’s a girl!” he whooped. “Mates, we got us a religious girl!”

“Really? Let’s check!” another man cackled as he stooped to grab the hem of Wayleeth’s robe and jerked it upward.

“Stop!” she cried, struggling to hold the garment down over her.

Another group held the struggling Tahli-Damen. “This one’s blind,” one of them shouted.

“Let’s toss him off and go play with the woman,” another suggested.

They would have done so, had it not been for the dogs. They heard the snarls as the hounds bounded up the road into their midst.

“Dogs!” one slaver shouted and he fled up the street toward the castle.

“Get away!” another rogue cried to his fellows, but his words were unnecessary. The group was already scattered. The slavers had seen these devilish creatures before and wanted no part of them.

“Come on!” Wayleeth shouted as she grabbed Tahli-Damen by the hand. “Run, will you?” she screamed, dragging him. They ran up the street as far as the first alley, then ducked down it, Tahli-Damen banging against the wall of a shop in the process. She dragged him on until they came to a door, then she dropped his hand and pounded on it with both fists. “Please!” she cried desperately. “Somebody let us in!”

“Who is it?” a voice from within growled.

“We’re—strangers. Friends!” Wayleeth amended quickly. “We’re trying to escape some slavers! Help us, please!”

There was a brief pause, then the voice grunted, “Go away!”

Wayleeth stepped back. “Go away?” she said to the bolted door in disbelief.

“Go away!” the voice yelled again, and the heavy wood did not muffle its angry, insistent tone. The resident of the Man capital didn’t wish to tangle with slavers.

Wayleeth’s face crumpled, and she began to sob. She leaned against the door and cried, and Tahli-Damen stretched his hand toward the sound to pat her comfortingly. She knocked his arm away and scowled at him, an expression totally wasted. “Leave me alone!” she snarled.