This time, he’d fight the fear. This time—A shattering crash and an inhuman wail brought Haplo’s heart to his mouth. The dog jumped to its feet and was off like an arrow, lacing into the ship’s interior.
- Haplo wrenched his gaze away from the mesmerizing swirl of colors enticing him into the blackness beyond. In the distance, he could hear the dog’s bark echoing through the corridors. To judge by the dog’s reaction, someone or something was aboard his ship.
Haplo lurched forward. The ship rocked and heaved and bucked. He had difficulty keeping his feet, tottered and staggered into the bulkheads like some old drunk.
The dog’s barking grew in loudness and intensity but Haplo noted, oddly, a change in the note. The bark was no longer threatening, it was joyful—the animal greeting someone it knew and recognized.
Perhaps some kid had hidden himself aboard for a prank or a chance for adventure. Haplo couldn’t conceive of any Patryn child who would indulge in such mischief. Patryn children, growing up (if they managed to live that long) in the Labyrinth, had very little time for childhood.
After some difficulty, he made his way to the hold, heard a voice, faint and pathetic.
“Nice doggie. Hush, now, nice dog, and go away, and I’ll give you this bit of sausage ...”
Haplo paused in the shadows. The voice sounded familiar. It wasn’t a child’s, it was a man’s and he knew it, although he couldn’t quite place it. The Patryn activated the runes on his hands. Bright blue light welled from the sigla, illuminating the darkness of the hold. He stepped inside.
The dog stood spraddle-legged on the deck, barking with all its might at a man cowering in a corner. The man, too, was familiar, a balding head topped by a fringe of hair around the ears, a weary middle-aged face, mild eyes now wide with fear. His body was long and gangly and appeared to have been put together from leftover parts of other bodies. Hands that were too large, feet that were too large, neck too long, head too small. It was his feet that had betrayed the man, entangling him in a coil of rope, undoubtedly the cause of the crash.
“You,” Haplo said in disgust. “Sartan.”
The man looked up from the barking dog, which he had been attempting unsuccessfully to bribe with a sausage—part of Haplo’s food supply. Seeing the Patryn standing before him, the man gave a faint, self-deprecating smile, and fainted.
“Alfred!” Haplo drew in a seething breath and took a step forward. “How the hell did you—”
The ship slammed headlong into Death’s Gate.
8
The violence of the impact knocked Haplo over backward and sent the dog scrabbling to maintain its balance. The comatose body of Alfred slid gently across the canting deck. Haplo crashed up against the side of the hold, fighting desperately against tremendous unseen forces pressing on him, holding him plastered to the wood. At last the ship righted itself somewhat and he was able to lurch forward. Grabbing hold of the limp shoulder of the man lying at his feet, Haplo shook him viciously.
“Alfred! Damn it, Sartan! Wake up!”
Alfred’s eyelids fluttered, the eyes beneath them rolled. He groaned mildly, blinked, and—seeing Haplo’s dark and scowling face above him—appeared somewhat alarmed. The Sartan attempted to sit up, the ship listed, and he instinctively grabbed at Haplo’s arm to support himself. The Patryn shoved the hand aside roughly.
“What are you doing here? On my ship? Answer me, or by the Labyrinth, I’ll—”
Haplo stopped, staring. The ship’s bulkheads were closing in around him, the wooden sides drawing nearer and nearer, the deck rushing up to meet the overhead. They were going to be crushed, squeezed flat except, at the same instant, the ship’s bulkheads were flying apart, expanding into empty space, the deck was falling out from beneath him, the entire universe was rushing away from him, leaving him alone and small and helpless.
The dog whimpered and crawled toward Haplo, buried its cold nose in his hand. He clasped the animal thankfully. It was warm and solid and real. The ship was his and stable once more.
“Where are we?” Alfred asked in awe. Apparently, from the terror-stricken expression in the wide, watery eyes, he had just undergone a similar experience.
“Entering Death’s Gate,” Haplo answered grimly.
Neither spoke for a moment, but looked around, watching, listening with inheld breath.
“Ah.” Alfred sighed, nodded. “That would explain it.”
“Explain what, Sartan?”
“How I arrived ... er ... here,” Alfred said, lifting his eyes for an instant to meet Haplo’s, immediately lowering them again. “I didn’t mean to. You must understand that. I—I was looking for Bane, you see. The little boy you took from Arianus. The child’s mother is frantic with worry—”
“Over a kid she gave away eleven years ago. Yeah, I’m in tears. Go on.”
Alfred’s wan cheeks flushed slightly. “Her circumstances at the time—She had no choice—It was her husband—”
“How did you get on my ship?” Haplo repeated.
“I... I managed to locate Death’s Gate in Arianus. The Gegs put me in one of the dig-claws—You remember those contraptions?—and lowered me down into the storm, right into Death’s Gate itself. I had just entered it when I experienced a sensation as... as if I were being pulled apart and then I was jerked violently backward ... forward ... I don’t know I blacked out. When I came to myself, I was lying here.” Alfred spread his hands helplessly to indicate the hold.
“That must have been the crash I heard.” Haplo gazed at Alfred speculatively “You’re not lying. From what I’ve heard, you miserable Sartan can’t lie. But you’re not telling me all the truth either.”
Alfred’s flush deepened, he lowered his eyelids. “Prior to when you left the Nexus,” he said in a small voice, “did you experience an odd . . . sensation?”
Haplo refused to commit himself, but Alfred took his silence for acquiescence. “A sort of ripplelike effect? Made you sick? That was me, I’m afraid,” he said faintly.
“It figures.” The Patryn sat back on his heels, glaring at Alfred. “Now what in the name of the Sundering do I do with you? I—”
Time slowed. The last word Haplo spoke seemed to take a year to emerge from his mouth and another year for his ears to hear it. He reached out a hand to grasp Alfred by the frilly neckerchief around the man’s scrawny neck. His hand crept forward a fraction of an inch at a time. Haplo attempted to hasten his motion. He moved slower. Air wasn’t coming in fast enough to supply his lungs. He would die of suffocation before he could draw a breath.
But impossibly he was moving fast, far too fast. His hand had grasped Alfred and was worrying the man like the dog worried a rat. He was shouting words that came out gibberish and Alfred was trying desperately to break his grasp and say something back, but the words flew by so swiftly that Haplo couldn’t understand them. The dog was lolling on its side, moving in slow motion, and it was up and leaping around the deck like a thing possessed.
Haplo’s mind attempted frantically to deal with these dichotomies. Its answer was to give up and shut down. He fought against the darkening mists, focusing his attention on the dog, refusing to see or think about anything else. Eventually, everything either slowed down or speeded up. Normality returned.
It occurred to him that this was the farthest he’d made it into Death’s Gate without losing consciousness. He supposed, he thought bitterly, he had Alfred to thank.
“It will keep growing worse,” said the Sartan. His face was white, he shook all over.
“How do you know?” Haplo wiped sweat from his forehead, tried to relax, his muscles were bunched and aching from the strain.
“I... studied Death’s Gate before I entered it. The other times you passed through, you always blacked out, didn’t you?”