Robert Hughes - The Prophet of Lamath

“I failed you, my Lord,” Venad mumbled. “The water flow has been stopped.”

“What? Failed me, Venad?” Dorlyth said softly. “Never that, my friend. No, you think you’ve failed yourself—and only that because you expect far too much of Venad mod Narkis. It would have taken a miracle to keep them from destroying that water main, once they found it.”

Dorlyth sighed. Then he looked through a window that faced north. “And it’s our miracle worker whose escape we fight to protect. Come.” With an arm around Venad’s shoulder, Dorlyth led the exhausted warrior down the steps and out into the inner court of the keep. The siege had been launched. There was nothing left now but to lick the wounds, and wait.

Later that day Dorlyth sat alone in the greater tower. The curtain was open, and he gazed sadly out across his wheat field, sprinkled not with seed but with blue-and-lime tents. Was this a mistake, he wondered to himself? On the table before him lay a list his seneschal had prepared—a casualty list. Forty-three warriors were wounded, but that figure bothered him less than the other number scrawled on the sheet. Eighteen men were dead. Was it worth it? These eighteen lives for the sake of Pelmen’s escape? So many decisions came back to haunt a man long after they had been made and left behind. Would this decision? Could he still end it all by simply announcing to Tohn mod Neelis that the party he sought had moved on? Tohn would want to inspect the castle, naturally. Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad.

No! Could he sit still while a supposed ally, a member of the Confederation of Mari Lords, ransacked his apartments and strolled through his keep like a conqueror? Tohn was no evil man, that Dorlyth knew well. But those who had ordered him to battle, those who controlled the Council of Elders-Dorlyth was convinced they were evil. He would not step aside and let evil men roam the land he loved without calling them into check.

Dorlyth’s decision was made. He would not change his mind now—that was not the Mari way. By the powers, the battle would come eventually, and he would whittle away at the enemy now, while he and the Mar still had the chance!

But—eighteen Mari dead. Doriyth rose and walked to the window. He had plenty of time to rehash the argument in the days that followed—and so he did. Over and over again. Still, he stayed within Dorlyth’s castle, the gate tightly locked.

Flayh bustled down a long colonnaded walkway, thrusting people out of his path. The slaves were used to his foul moods, but no one could remember a series of tantrums quite so severe as those of the last week. “Why won’t Tohn communicate?” he railed at the serving girl who brought him his tea in the morning. “What is taking Pezi so long?” he shouted in the face of his barber, giving the nervous little man fresh pains in his stomach. “Nobody listens to me!” he screamed at the captain of the guard, who sat up straight in his seat and endeavored to be as attentive as possible.

Flayh was impossible to please.

He banged open a door at the base of his tallest spire and turned to scowl at the slaves who had watched him do it.

They all went back to their chores—clipping the roses, sweeping the walk, changing the torches—and only looked again as he slammed the door shut behind him.

Slumped in his darkened room, he stared at the blue pyramid and thought angry thoughts at Tohn mod Neelis. The fool! The finest communications tool in all the world and the old fool wouldn’t use it! Wouldn’t say what he was doing, wouldn’t tell where he was, no news about the girl, no news about Pelmen, no news about anything! There was a chirp from the draped window. It drew an immediate response from the little man, for he bounced to his feet and jerked the black hangings aside. A blue flyer sat on the window ledge, a parchment at its leg flapping in the slight breeze. Flayh grabbed the note and read it quickly, oblivious to the fluttering flyer. In a very unsteady hand it read: Dragon is unstable, advise extreme caution in all approaches to Dragonsgate.

It was unsigned, but obviously it came from the trading captain of Jagd’s caravan. It was just enough news to be aggravating. How was the dragon unstable? What was the beast doing? And why hadn’t he heard from the caravan leader himself? Surely he had arrived in Lamath by this time. Obviously the bird had been delayed by the captain’s inability to give good guidance to Flayh’s estate, but where was the man himself? Flayh wanted hard facts, not tantalizing tidbits! He paced his airy cell, pausing every other moment to gaze out the window, watching for some action on the road south to Dragonsgate, or the road to the southeast, where the Lamathian estates of Uda were clustered. Nothing.

There was another sudden flutter of wings, and Flayh cursed the stupid bird and reached out to grab the feathered creature. Then he realized there were now two blue flyers on his window ledge, and the latest arrival bore a message tied in the orthodox cylinder around its leg. Flayh tore the message off and shot a mental picture of his aviary at the two birds. They wasted no time leaving his company.

Flayh unrolled the message, and nodded. It was in the large scrawl of Tohn mod Neelis:

You will be pleased, to note I have taken your advice. Have left this morning to visit Dorlyth mod Karis with an entourage of six hundred. Will keep you informed by carrier.

“By carrier!” Flayh exploded. Then he sat again before the blue’ crystal object on the table, and focused his malevolence into it. “Perhaps you won’t talk to me, Tohn mod Neelis, but at least you will be aware that someone is talking to you—and that the words are getting nastier every day!” As they rode deeper into the Great North Fir, Pelmen withdrew into himself a little more each day. It was barely noticeable at first, for the two young people were giving progressively more attention to one another. But it soon began to register with them that oftentimes now he would go for hours without speaking, and that he occasionally appeared to forget they were with him.

Other than the slight sense of insecurity this odd behavior birthed in them, the forest journey proved nothing short of idyllic for the boy and girl. At the southern edge of the great tangle of trees and shrubs, the powerful firs mixed with trees of other kinds. But the deeper they pushed, the more the evergreens took control, until at last they rode on a floor of needles alone, surrounded only by giant firs. Bronwynn had never seen trees so big, or forest glades so dark.

They had spent the first day ducking low limbs and avoiding brambled bushes. Now they rode freely where they willed, for the nearest branches interlocked twenty feet above their heads. They spoke of the Fir as a vast green temple, with thousands of columns rising into an emerald ceiling, frescoed by light and shadow. They laughed at the antics of nervous squirrels, and compared their childhoods at length. Rosha taught Bronwynn what little he knew of falconry, and they freed Sharki to give him exercise as they rode. Swooping between the massive trunks, the bird looked less like a falcon than it did like a bat darting through subterranean caverns. The girl attempted to describe for Rosha the ocean and the beach, but succeeded only in making him angry.

“You t-t-tease me! There is n-n-not so much water in the w-world!”

“I’m speaking the truth! Just because you have never trav—”

“You think to m-m-make a f-fool of me!” Bronwynn made a face at him. “No one needs to make a fool of you! You do it so well to yourself!” Pelmen was riding some distance ahead of them. At this he turned Minaliss around and sat looking back at the young pair. His look wasn’t scolding, just curious. He hadn’t heard the argument, only the noise.