Auk chuckled.
"You--You--Help me _up_."
"Help yourself, Patera. You were the one that wanted to wait for
him. You won. He's here."
Before Auk had finished speaking, Incus sprang onto the talus's
back with astonishing alacrity, apparently impelled by the muscular
arm of the fisherman, who clambered up a moment later. "You'd
make a dimber burglar, old man," Auk told him.
"Hackum, where are we?"
"In a cave on the west side of the lake."
The talus turned in place, one wide black belt crawling, the other
locked. Auk felt the thump of machinery under him.
Puffs of black smoke escaped from the joint between the upright
thorax and long wagon-like abdomen to which they clung. It rocked,
jerked, and skewed backward. A sickening sidewise skid ended in a
geyser of icy water as one belt slipped off the quay. Incus clutched at
Auk's tunic as their side of the talus went under, and for a dizzying
second Auk saw the boat tossed higher than their heads.
The wave that had lifted it broke over them like a blow, a
suffocating, freezing whorl that at once drained away; when Auk
opened his eyes again Chenille was sitting up screaming, her
dripping face blank with terror.
Something black and scarlet landed with a thump upon his
sopping shoulder. "Bad boat! Sink."
It had not, as he saw when the talus heaved itself up onto the quay
again; Dace's boat lay on its side, the mast unshipped and tossing
like driftwood in the turbulent water.
Huge as a boulder, the talus's head swiveled around to glare at
them, revolving until it seemed its neck must snap. "_Five ride! The
small may go!_"
Auk glanced from the augur to the fisherman, and from him to
the hysterical Chenille, before he realized who was meant. "You can
beat the hoof if you want to, bird. He says he won't hurt you if you do."
"Bird stay," Oreb muttered. "Find Silk."
The talus's head completed its revolution, and the talus lunged
forward. Yellow light glared back at them, reflected from the
curved white side of the last tank, leaving the Sacred Window empty
and dead looking behind them. Sallow green lights winked into
being just above the talus's helmeted head, and the still-tossing
waters of the channel congealed to rough stone as the cavern
dwindled to a dim tunnel.
Auk put his arm around Chenille's waist. "Fancy a bit of company, Jugs?"
She wept on, sobs lost in the wind of their passage.
He released her, got out his needler, and pushed back the
sideplate; a trickle of gritty water ran onto his fingers, and he blew
into the mechanism. "Should be all right," he told Oreb, "soon as it
dries out. I ought to put a couple drops of oil on the needles,
though."
"Good girl," Oreb informed him nervously. "No shoot."
"Bad girl," Auk explained. "Bad man, too. No shoot. No go away,
either."
"Bad bird!"
"Lily." Gently, he kissed Chenille's inflamed back. "Lie down if
you want to. Lay your head in my lap. Maybe you can get a little
sleep."
As he pronounced the words, he sensed that they came too late.
The talus was descending, the tunnel angling downward, if only
slightly. The mouths of other tunnels flashed past to left and right,
darker even than the damp shiprock walls. Drops of water clinging
to the unchanging ceiling gleamed like diamonds, vanishing as they
passed.
The talus slowed, and something struck its great bronze head,
ringing it like a gong. Its buzz guns rattled and it spat a tongue of
blue fire.
Chapter 2 -- Silk's Back!
"It would be better," Maytera Marble murmured to Maytera Mint,
"if you did it, sib."
Maytera Mint's small mouth fell open, then firmly closed.
Obedience meant obeying, as she had told herself thousands of times;
obedience was more than setting the table or fetching a plate of
cookies. "If you wish it, Maytera. High Hierax knows I have no
voice, but I suppose I must."
Maytera Marble sighed to herself with satisfaction, a hish from
the speaker behind her lips so soft that no ears but hers could hear it.
Maytera Mint stood, her cheeks aflame already, and studied the
congregation. Half or more were certainly thieves; briefly she
wondered whether even the images of the gods were safe.
She mounted the steps to the ambion, acutely conscious of the
murmur of talk filling the manteion and the steady drum of rain on
its roof; for the first time since early spring, fresh smelling rain was
stabbing through the god gate to spatter the blackened altartop--though
there was less now than there had been earlier.
Molpe, she prayed, Marvelous Molpe, for once let me have a
voice. "Some--" Deep breath. "Some of you do not know me..."
Few so much as looked at her, and it was apparent that those who
did could not hear her. How ashamed that gallant captain who had
showed her his sword would be of her now!
Please Kypris! Sabered Sphigx, great goddess of war .
There was a strange swelling beneath her ribs; through her mind a
swirl of sounds she had never heard and sights she had not seen: the
rumbling hoofbeats of cavalry and the booming of big guns. the
terrifying roars of Sphigx's lions, the silver voices of trumpets, and
the sharp crotaline clatter of a buzz gun. A woman with a bloodstained
rag about her head steadied the line: _Form up! Form Up!
Forward now! Forward! Follow me!_
With a wide gesture, little Maytera Mint drew a sword not even
she could see. "_Fr_iends!" Her voice broke in the middle of the word.
Louder, girl! Shake these rafters!
"Friends, some of you don't know who I am. I am Maytera Mint, a.
sibyl of this manteion." She swept the congregation with her eyes,
and saw Maytera Marble applauding silently; the babble of several
hundred voices had stilled altogether.
"The laws of the Chapter permit sacrifice by a sibyl when no augur
is present. Regrettably, that is the case today at our manteion. Few
of you, we realize, will wish to remain. There is another manteion
on Hat Street, a manteion well loved by all the gods, I'm sure,
where a holy augur is preparing to sacrifice as I speak. Toward the
market, and turn left. It's not far."
She waited hopefully, listening to the pattering rain; but not one
of the five hundred or so lucky enough to have seats stood, and none
of the several hundred standers in the aisles turned to go.
"Patera Silk did not return to the manse last night. As many of you
know, Guardsmen came here to arrest him&151"
The angry mutter from her listeners was like the growl of some
enormous beast.
"That was yesterday, when Kind Kypris, in whose debt we shall
always be, honored us for a second time. All of us feel certain that
there has been a foolish enor. But until Patera Silk comes back, we
can only assume that he is under arrest. Patera Cub, the worthy
augur His Cognizance the Prolocutor sent to assist Patera Silk,
seems to have left the manse early this morning, no doubt in the
hope of freeing him."
Maytera Mint paused, her fingers nervously exploring the
chipped stone of the ancient ambion, and glanced down at the
attentive worshipers crouched on the floor in front of the foremost