The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn. Ardath Mayhar

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      But at last a lagging step was heard, and a voice said hopelessly to the air, “One day is left before my father’s return. Where are my friends? Have I a friend? Or am I doomed to work the destruction of all I love?”

      Then Kla-Noh rose up and said, “We are here, Lady. And despair you need not, though the Cat with the Sap­phire Eyes will not be seen again in this world.”

      “It is gone, then, irretrievably?” she asked mournfully.

      “It has returned to its maker,” said the old man sternly. “Long have I known your mother’s people, though I did not know who they were. Through a way I found long ago I have spoken with your mother herself, though hard and long the task must be to reach the ear of a queen. No man stole away the Cat with the Sapphire Eyes, that I learned soon. Then I thought long. Your father, though subtle and powerful, still could not reach across the sea—­as yet—to remove it from your care. But your mother, if my speculations were not in error, was able to do this thing.

      “You are about to ask why. But think. You have taught your only child the old strengths you know. You have loved her and nurtured her, but she will be taken into a strange world by an enemy whom she must fight alone. She is untried in her arts, utterly unused to battle with sorcerers. She will need, above all things, confidence. So you create a talisman. But you are able to see into that world where she is taken, and you find that she is relying upon that talisman to the injury of her powers. You know she has more than she will need of art and of will, if she will only use them, practice with them, strengthen them. So you reach out your thought, and you take back the tal­isman. For such is your confidence in your child that you have no fear of her failure.

      “Do you see, child?”

      The lady swayed tiredly upon the edge of the terrace. “I see,” she said clearly. “In my unwisdom, I misused it. And in your wisdom, you made me learn to work without it. And tomorrow my father will return to find an enemy within his own stronghold, ready to wrest from him his stolen arts and to thwart his twisted schemes.

      “My thanks, friends, for your aid. Without it, much that is good might have perished.” They saw the slim shadows that were her hands, and each took one and touched it to his forehead, and they turned and went into their craft and sailed away.

      And when, under a red and raddled moon of the next night, the house of Tro-Ven sank upon its crumbled buttresses and heaved, amid a shower of strange lights, into the sea, they watched from afar, sitting upon their terrace. When the grinding crash had ended, they reached out their hands to each other and clasped them tightly.

      “May the gods grant,” said Kla-Noh, “that the lady has found her way home.”

      Chapter Three

      The Man Who Thought Batwise

      Si-Lun and Kla-Noh sat upon their terrace, gazing across the Purple Waters at the far side of the Bay of Shar­-Nuhn. Just visible in the evening light was a jumble of fallen stone that marred the neat shoreline.

      “And there stood the house of Tro-Ven, merchant lord and warlock,” said Kla-Noh sardonically.

      “Such seems the fate of those who seek to overcome the limitations of mankind,” answered Si-Lun. “One other such have I known, and his fate was stranger—though not, perhaps, more unexpected—than that of yonder de­parted wizard.”

      Kla-Noh’s eyebrows rose in an arc of surprise. “Never before have you spoken of your past,” he said. “And though I am a Seeker After Secrets I have never sought beyond your willingness to reveal. But surely, now, you have a tale to tell me, and I am anxious to hear.”

      And this is the story told by Si-Lun:

      * * * *

      Across the Purple Waters, many months’ voyage be­yond the Far Islands, lies a vast continent whose forbid­ding mountains, clothed in forests of fir and pine, hide valleys of the utmost fertility and cities of amazing splendor. In the deeps of those mountains I was born and grew to be a youth. And when the time had come for me to learn a trade, my father sought in the greatest city for a master who might appreciate and bring to fruition the talents of Si-Lun, his only son, for even then I was adept at ferreting out things hidden and things forgotten.

      Though I longed for the life of a seafarer, my father was adamant. My fortune would be made, did I but apply myself and please the master he chose. So he ap­prenticed me to Lo-Vahr, Doctor of the Sciences and In­vestigator of the Unknown, and I was sent to live in his tall house which, though of utmost luxury, was placed most strangely in the narrow streets of the oldest part of the city of Am-Brak.

      Seldom, I should surmise, was there an apprentice who loved his master. Never, I’d wager, was there one who more heartily despised his than did I. Lo-Vahr was a nar­row man—in body, face, eyes, and mind. For though he sought to know that which was unknown, he had no real interest in what he learned. Only for the furtherance of his plots and machinations did he seek, not for the dis­covery of the truth and the straightening of tangled lives and purposes.

      I was young, very young, and Truth was the goddess I worshiped. How I despised that one-dimensioned man who would not respect her, but used her as he would a trull!

      The missions upon which I was sent did not increase my liking for him. Into squalid tenements I went, seeking filthy crones who bartered stinking bundles for my master’s coin. Only once did I investigate such a burden, and never again for years. The hag who provided it had bitten the good gold coin that my master had sent to her, then had looked me in the eyes with such a mocking and leering glint in her own that, as soon as I was out of sight in the higgledy-piggledy alleys, I opened the wrapping and peered into the box I carried. It contained a newborn child; I think it had been strangled. I left the good meal I had eaten in that alley, and never again, until I had learned a purpose of my own, did I seek to know what it was I was transporting.

      Necromancy was some part of what Lo-Vahr practiced, though I doubt that he was an adept at that, or at any­thing. Alchemy he dabbled in, without success. I found, indeed, that his reputation was based upon his mysterious demeanor and great wealth, which he had had from his fathers, and not from any effort that he put forth. He needed no apprentice, for he had nothing to teach. Only for a messenger did he have need.

      So for three years I trudged through slimy alleys and into night-bound burial grounds, seeking for things I would not think of for purposes I did not wish to know.

      The familiarity of daily contact dulls perception. For how many months a gradual change in my master had been taking place, I cannot tell, but one evening it was brought forcibly to my attention.

      It was my duty to stand behind his chair at the evening meal and to keep his glass filled and his needs satisfied. Upon the evening in question, I was more alert than usual, for Lo-Vahr had guests, one a lovely young girl who was the daughter of an agent whom he was enter­taining.

      During the meal he flattered the father and watched the girl, and I watched him, thinking, “How strangely bent he has grown, and how pointed his ears. Hunching his thick shoulders forward and bending his head as he speaks, he looks like nothing so much as a bat.”

      And as I thought this, he turned his head and looked me in the eyes, gesturing for me to fill his glass, which was by no means empty. The glance he gave me was like a hot needle through all my nerves, bringing me to full alertness. Though I hurried to do his bidding, my facul­ties were focused upon the meaning that those slitted black СКАЧАТЬ