Haplo ignored his reluctance. “We’ll move closer, see if we can figure out what’s going on.”
The two men and the dog crept ahead, keeping to the shadows of the tunnel wall, edging their way toward the light until Haplo deemed they were close enough to see without being seen, hear without being heard. He raised a warding hand and Alfred bobbed up close beside him, hovering silently in the air. The dog flopped down on the rock floor, keeping one eye on its master and the other on Alfred.
The cavern was filled with people, all of them Sartan. Sartan appear to be human at first glance, with the exception that their hair rarely varies in color. Even among children, the hair is almost always white, shading toward brown at the bottom. Patryn hair coloration is exactly the opposite. Haplo’s hair was brown on top, shading to white at the bottom. Alfred had almost no hair (perhaps the balding was another unconscious attempt at disguise) and was thus not easily recognizable.
Sartan also tended to be taller in height than those of the lesser races. Their magical power and the knowledge of that power gave them extraordinarily beautiful and radiant countenances (Alfred being the exception).
These people were Sartan, beyond doubt. Haplo’s eyes darted swiftly over the crowd. He saw only Sartan, none of the lesser races, no elves, no humans, no dwarves.
But there was something odd about these Sartan, something wrong. The Patryn had met one living Sartan—Alfred. Haplo had seen visions of the Sartan on Pryan. He’d looked on them with scorn, but he was forced to admit that they were a beautiful, radiant people. These Sartan seemed aged, faded; their radiance dimmed. Some of them were, in fact, hideous to look on. Haplo was repelled by the sight of them and saw his own revulsion reflected strongly in Alfred’s eyes.
“They’re holding a ceremony of some sort,” Alfred whispered.
Haplo was about to tell him to shut up when it occurred to the Patryn that he might learn something to his advantage. He swallowed his words and counseled patience, a hard lesson he’d learned in the Labyrinth.
“A funeral,” said Alfred in a pitying tone. “They’re holding a funeral for the dead.”
“If so, they’ve waited long enough to entomb them,” Haplo muttered.
Twenty corpses of varying ages, from that of a small child to the body of a very old man, lay on the rock floor of the cavern. The crowd stood at a respectful distance, giving Haplo and Alfred—unobserved watchers—an excellent view. The corpses were composed, hands folded across the chest, eyes closed in eternal sleep. But some had obviously been dead a long time. The air was foul with the odor of decay, although—probably by their magic—the Sartan had succeeded in keeping the flesh from rotting away.
The skin of the dead was white and waxy, the cheeks and eyes sunken, the lips blue. On some, the nails had grown abnormally long, the hair was wild and uncombed. Haplo thought there was something familiar about the sight of the dead, but he didn’t know what. He was about to mention his notion to Alfred, when the Sartan signaled him to be quiet and watch.
A man stepped forward, stood before the dead. Prior to the man’s appearance, the crowd had been whispering and murmuring among themselves. Now, they all fell silent, all eyes turned to him, Haplo could almost feel their love and respect reach out to the unknown man.
Haplo was not surprised to hear Alfred whisper, “A Sartan prince.” The Patryn knew a leader when he saw one.
The prince raised his hands to draw their attention, an unnecessary gesture, because it seemed everyone in the cave had their eyes fixed on him.
“My people”—and it seemed that the man was speaking as much to the dead as to the living—“we have traveled far from our homeland, our beloved homeland.. . .”
His voice choked, and he had to pause a moment to regain his composure. It seemed his people loved him the more for his weakness. Several put hands to their eyes, wiped away tears.
He drew a deep breath, continued. “But that is behind us now. What is done is done. It is up to us to continue on, to build new lives on the wreckage of the old.
“Ahead of us”—the prince flung out an arm, pointed, if he had known it, directly at Haplo and a startled Alfred—“lies the city of our brethren . . .”
The silence broke, angry mutterings interrupted. The prince raised his hand in a gentle but peremptory and commanding gesture and the voices ceased, although they left behind the heat of their emotions, like the heat welling up from the magma sea.
“I say ‘our brethren’ and I mean ‘our brethren’. They are of our race, perhaps the only ones of our race left on this world or anywhere for that matter. What they did to us—if they did anything to us—they did unknowing. I swear it!”
“Robbed us of all we possessed!” cried one elderly woman, shaking a gnarled fist. The weight of years gave her the right to speak. “We’ve all heard the rumors you’ve tried to keep silent. They robbed us of our water, of our heat. Doomed us to die up there of thirst, if the cold didn’t kill us first and starvation second. And you say they didn’t know! I say they knew and they didn’t care!” Snapping her mouth shut, the old woman wagged her head wisely.
The prince smiled at the old woman, a smile that was patient and fond. She obviously recalled pleasant memories. “Nevertheless I say they didn’t know, Marta, and I am confident that I speak truly. How could they?” The prince raised his gaze directly to the rock ceiling above his head, but his look seemed to penetrate the stalactites and carry him far above the shadows of the cavern. “We who lived up there have long been parted from our brethren who live here beneath. If their lives have been as difficult as ours, it is no wonder that they have forgotten our very existence. We were fortunate to have wise ones among us, who remembered our past and from whence we came.”
Reaching out, the prince laid a hand on the arm of a man who had come to stand beside him. At the sight of this man, Alfred sucked in a deep and horrified breath that echoed among the rocks.
The prince and most of the people standing around him were wrapped in all types and manner of clothing, primarily animal furs, as though the region they’d left had been an exceedingly cold one. The man to whom the prince referred was clad differently. He wore a black skullcap and long black robes that, although the worse for wear, were clean and well kept. The robes were trimmed in silver runes. Haplo recognized these sigla as Sartan, but could make nothing else of them. Obviously, Alfred could but when Haplo cast him an interrogatory glance, the Sartan shook his head and bit his lip.
Haplo returned his attention to the prince,
“We have brought our dead with us these long and hard miles. Many have died along the way.” The prince walked over, knelt beside one corpse, who lay in the front of the rest and wore, on its wispyhaired head, a golden crown. “My own father lies among them. And I swear to you”—the prince raised his hand in solemn vow—“I swear to you before our dead that I believe the people in Kairn Necros to be innocent of the harm they did us. I believe that when they hear of it they will weep for us and will take us in and shelter us, as we would do the same for them! I believe this so strongly that I, myself, will go to them alone, unarmed, and throw myself on their mercy!”
The men raised spears, clashing them against shields. The people cried out in shock. Haplo was in shock himself—the peace-loving Sartan were actually wielding weapons. Several pointed at the dead, and Haplo saw that four corpses were those of young men, whose bodies lay on their shields.
The prince was forced to shout to be heard over the clamor. His handsome face grew stern, he sent a flashing-eyed glance around them, and his people hushed, chagrined, at the sight of his anger. “Yes, they attacked us. What did you expect? You came on them too suddenly, armed to the teeth, making demands! If you had remained patient—”
“It isn’t easy, remaining patient, seeing your children starving!” mumbled one man, his eyes on a thin little boy, clinging to his father’s leg. He reached out a hand, fondled the small head. “We asked them only for food and water.”