Lawrence Watt-Evans - Book of Silence

Eventually they reached what Frima proclaimed to be the Street of the Fallen Stars and found her father's little shop. The door was closed and the windows intact, but Garth was not very optimistic about finding anyone alive within. The stone doorstep was dusty; no one had gone in or out recently, he was sure. Besides, they had seen no one alive since leaving the marketplace, and Garth thought it very unlikely that, in this dying, abandoned city, they would find the handful of people they sought still living in their old home as if nothing had happened.

Frima did not bother to think logically about such things. She hurried to dismount and ran eagerly up to the door, ignoring the dust on the stoop and windows. She knocked loudly; no one answered. She tried the latch. It clicked, and the door swung open. She stepped in, Garth right behind her.

The shop's interior was dim, and dust lay everywhere; human and overman both left clear footprints. To either side stood wooden display racks, from which hung pots, kettles, ladles, and tin vessels of every description. On shelves behind them were arrayed plates and tankards of pewter, copper bowls, and other implements. The tin and pewter were gray and dusty; the copper was dull and beginning to show flecks of green corrosion.

At the back of the shop stood the tinker's worktable, four feet across and ten feet long, a few tools laid out in a row near one corner, other tools hanging on the wall behind. Scraps of metal lay scattered about.

Sprawled across the center of the table were the bones of a man's arms, his skull grinning between them, his other bones in a heap on the floor behind the table.

Frima was horrified; she froze, stared, and stifled a scream.

Garth waited, ready to lend any help he could, but his assistance was not needed. The girl closed her eyes and fought down her trembling, forcing herself under control.

The overman decided not to ask if she could be sure it was her father. He was sure that it was; who but the tinker would be found at the tinker's bench? He saw no point in raising false hopes. Instead, he said, "We should look upstairs."

Frima nodded, took a few steps toward the curtain that closed off the back of the building from the public part of the shop, and then stopped. "You took," she said. "I can't."

Garth nodded. He had lived long enough among humans to understand how strongly they became attached to their homes, and to realize that Frima could not bear the thought of finding more dead in what should have been her sanctuary. He had no idea how large a family she came from; perhaps she was afraid of finding the remains of her mother or stepmother or siblings.

He moved cautiously through the curtain into the back room, and from there up the narrow staircase to the upper floor. Everywhere lay a thick carpet of dust. Cobwebs adorned the corners of each of the three small beds he found upstairs. A metal bowl on a small bedside table, now dry as the dust, had obviously been left full long ago; the bottom had corroded and sprung a leak, and the table had rotted where the, water had dripped.

There were no more bones, no corpses, no sign of any other inhabitants.

When he had satisfied himself that no unpleasant surprises lurked in wardrobes or under the beds, he returned to the shop to find Frima standing over the table, studying her father's skull.

"Are there any others?" she asked.

"No," Garth replied.

"Good."

"Did you have any other family?"

"Two sisters and a brother."

"Perhaps they escaped, then, and are still alive somewhere."

"Do you really think so?"

Garth hesitated, then lied. "Yes, of course."

Frima stared at the skull. "Are you sure this is my father's?"

"No," Garth said. "How could I be sure? I never met him, after all."

"I know, but can't you tell? I've been looking at it, and I can't be sure. It doesn't look like him. There's no hair, no eyes; it could be anybody's."

"I know no more than you," Garth answered. "But who else could it be? Who else would be sitting here at your father's table?"

Frima shuddered and turned away. "Get it out of here," she said.

Garth obeyed, gathering up the skull and several bones and carrying them out into the street.

He returned to find Frima huddled in a comer, weeping. Quietly, he gathered up and removed the remaining bones, placing them in a corner out of the wind, where they were unlikely to be disturbed, between the shop and the house beside it.

When he had finished he went upstairs, cleared away the dust and cobwebs from one of the beds, tested it, and found it marginally usable. Then he returned to the shop, led the girl upstairs, and put her in the bed.

She went willingly and quickly fell asleep.

Garth watched over her briefly, then went downstairs again, found a water pump in the back, and filled one of the larger vessels with water for Koros. That taken care of, he settled himself on the floor of the shop and slept.

Outside, Koros stood guard, dozing occasionally, but always alert enough to warn away with a growl any Dыsarrans who ventured near.

Garth was awakened by the roar of a warbeast. Startled, he sprang to his feet and hurried to the door of the shop. There he paused, waiting, the Sword of Bheleu in his hand.

The roar was not repeated; instead, he heard an unfamiliar voice calling his name.

"Garth! Garth of Ordunin! We would speak with you!"

Puzzled, and without opening the door, he bellowed back, "Who are you?"

"I am Uyrim, a priest of Aghad; I have been sent to seek a truce!"

Garth considered that. His immediate suspicion was that it was some kind of trick, an attempt to lure him into a trap, but after further thought he decided that the offer might be genuine. After all, although he had suffered at the hands of the cultists, losing his chief wife and his best human friend, they had suffered worse in return. Perhaps they had had their fill of sending assassins to be fried by the sword; perhaps they did not want to see their temple reduced to ash, as the remnants of Weideth had been.

He lifted the latch and swung the door an inch or so inward, so that conversation would be more convenient, but he did not emerge, nor present any part of his body as a, target. "I am listening," he called.

"Haggat, who set assassins upon you, who had your wife killed, who had the Baron of Skelleth slain, who sent the Council of the Most High against you, is dead, and his killer is the new high priestess of our sect. We wish to start anew. We are willing to forgo our rightful vengeance for the killing of Haggat's predecessor if you, in turn, will consider your own vengeance accomplished in the deaths you have already brought upon us. You have slain eighteen trained assassins and our fourteen magicians and cost us almost all our magical arsenal. You have destroyed our temple in Ur-Dormulk and eliminated our influence in Skelleth. Leave those of us who yet survive in peace, and we will, in turn, leave you and yours in peace. Swear that you will accept this offer, and we will swear in return, and you may leave Dыsarra unmolested. Refuse us, and we will strike against you in whatever way we can. We know now that we cannot kill you while you bear the Sword of Bheleu, but we can kill those you care for. For every member of our sect you slay from this moment on, a member of your family in Ordunin will die. Those, O Garth, are our terms."

"They're lying," Frima said close behind him. Garth started; he had been so attentive to the Aghadite's words that he had not heard her approach. The warbeast's roar of warning had awakened her as it had the overman, and she had made her way carefully down the stairs in time to hear most of what the priest had said.

"How can you know that?" Garth asked.