She could not back off even if her sifting of facts and speculation left her sure that Haroun was out there, too. “Elwas, as ever, your decision is perfection, and beyond reproach. Just don’t waste the Invincibles. We may yet need to cross the erg to Al Rhemish.”
That notion startled al-Souki.
Yasmid continued, “Varthlokkur isn’t called the Empire Destroyer because he kicked over an anthill when he was seven. With Magden Norath gone he is the most dangerous man in the world. Try to find out what he’s up to without starting a war. Just walk up and ask him if you have to.”
“I understand. Such was the course I’d hoped to pursue.”
“Excellent.” Yasmid did not believe him. Brilliant though Elwas might be, he was capable of misleading himself into thinking he was clever enough to outwit and arrest someone like Varthlokkur.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, so far Elwas had not run into any evidence to disabuse him of such a conceit.
…
Haroun bin Yousif was back doing what Haroun bin Yousif did best. He was a ghost drifting down the wadi that passed close by the Disciple’s tent. Luck crawled with him. The wadi was dry. Assured by Varthlokkur that the Faithful here clung tightly to El Murid’s ban against sorcery, he did not fail to use his own skills to conceal himself and to probe for trouble lying in wait.
Despite the ruckus Varthlokkur raised in the Jebal, which had a troop of Invincibles headed out to investigate, Sebil el Selib itself was under no special state of alert.
Haroun oozed up to his former point of entry. Repairs had been made. New spikes had been set. But no watcher had been posted. No tripwire spells or actual cords had been installed, nor had booby traps been placed.
How could these people be so arrogantly overconfident? So lacking in justifiable paranoia? Did they really think that they had nothing to fear? Were they that sure of the countenance of God?
Must be. But no sane man ever should be.
God had proven, time and again, that His favor was fickle. Haroun bin Yousif was not made to trust anything outside himself. He dithered half an hour trying to find hidden pitfalls. Rational people would have created some in case the invader returned. Could it be that they never figured it out?
He could imagine Yasmid softening any effort to snare him-but did not believe that she would.
His innards knotted as he finally forced himself forward-not where he penetrated the tent before. This had to be done before there was light enough to show that something strange was happening.
Varthlokkur had convinced him-almost-that his part, successfully executed, would end the torments his kingdom had suffered for two generations. This would reshape everything. It would compel the birth of a new order because there would be no old order left. What shape that new order took would be in his hands, too, insofar as he cared to sculpt it.
Varthlokkur would build on what they did here, toward a new order for the rest of the world.
Haroun moved forward. He wanted to believe but could not. Not really. They were still trying to throw a bridle on the wind. Even so, he hoped. He had a goal again-though he did not quite understand it.
Once inside he produced a wane witch light. By its glow he proceeded to the area where once the foxes had denned. Ha! Here were sure signs that all was not as it had been. That whole wide space had been cleansed down to the bare earth. He would not have to climb over trash once he went to work.
He had brought equipment with him. He hoped the clatter he raised using it would not give him away.
He set out a triangle of witch lanterns for light, then assembled a pole fifteen feet long. He attached a spearhead so sharp that one ought not to look at it directly. He used that to make an eight-foot cut in the canvas overhead, made another cut at right angles to that, then a third parallel to the second, leaving a flap hanging down. Then he cut parallel cut to those to create a six-inch wide strip that might be climbable, making a last resort escape. Only…
Only that canvas was almost as old as he was. His weight ripped a longer strip out when he tested it.
Damn!
He was wasting time. He was behind schedule and falling further back. If he did not get a signal out soon Varthlokkur would abandon him to his fate.
He blew air into a sheep’s bladder, attached a mechanical device provided by the wizard, invested the bladder with a levitation spell, child’s-play simple but the possibility had not occurred to him till Varthlokkur showed it to him.
His time with the Empire Destroyer had been deflating. He now understood how limited his own talents and imagination were.
Once the sheep’s bladder rose a few hundred feet something tripped a mechanical device that sparked a flame. That lasted just seconds and was not showy. No one should notice at that hour. Anyone who did ought to think that it was some strange shooting star.
Too much to hope for, in Haroun’s estimation. Much too much.
He grew impatient. The risks were rising now. Others would be involved. He could not keep them from screwing up. Worse, his role now consisted entirely of waiting.
Varthlokkur and the Unborn dropped in so quietly that Haroun would have missed them if he had not been watching. The wizard had draped the Unborn in black gauze, rendering it invisible from outside while only slightly impairing the monster’s ability to perceive the world around it.
The Unborn deposited the sorcerer, rose against the stars. “There!” Haroun said. “I see a pink glow when I look straight up.”
“Aren’t you a bit long in the tooth and in the wrong religious tradition to be looking up someone’s skirt?”
Varthlokkur could not have stunned him more by whacking him with a hammer. “We’re late. We’ll have to push it if we’re still going to get this done quietly.”
Quietly was the ultimate hope. Full execution without ever being noticed. Come and gone undetected, leaving behind nothing but delayed confusion.
The hope.
Haroun considered it forlorn, insane, impossible.
Something would go wrong, if only because he was part of a team. Long experience left him confident that others never achieved his level of competence. They could not maintain the focus.
The wizard asked, “Is something wrong? Is there some reason you’re freezing up instead of trying to make up time?”
“No good reason,” Haroun admitted. “We can make up time fast if you expand your sleep spells. You were right. No one will notice and no alarms will be tripped. There is no magic here.” He used “magic” as a convenience, lacking something more precise.
Varthlokkur understood. “I’ll take advantage of that, then. I’ll deploy the spells as we go.”
Haroun appreciated the fact that Varthlokkur wasted no time on “I told you so.” He had argued for a more aggressive use of sorcery. He was less concerned about leaving evidence behind.
Haroun headed into the inhabited part of the tent. Changes were legion. The biggest was the reduction in clutter. Tons of trash had been carried off to be buried, burned, or laid out for anyone who wanted to pick over it.
Someone had done a masterful job. That someone was not yet finished. They passed through an untouched area where clutter was piled as high as a man could reach. Most seemed to be old records, moldy, water-stained, likely useless.
The Disciple’s quarters had to be accessed through a cloth-walled room featuring a Matayangan in a loincloth asleep on a pad on the earthen floor. This Matayangan did not like the dark. A tiny lamp wasted oil so the night could be held at bay.
The Matayangans all shared that failing. Lamps burned in the areas adjoining the four cloth walls of El Murid’s space. Night had been an evil time while Matayanga was at war with Shinsan.
Phogedatvitsu and his men slept surrounding the Disciple, which made sense because the man had that penchant for wandering off.
The Matayangans were under the sleep spell, but not deeply. Varthlokkur muttered irritably. Why were they not all snoring like the next to dead?