"Peace." For a moment he looked haggard, his face bearing his true age. "A word, Earl, but can you realize what it means? Can anyone? To be at rest, to be free of regret, never to be tormented with doubt, to be sure and never to wonder if only- Peace, Earl. Peace."
Dumarest said quietly, "The past is dead, Marek."
"Gone, but never dead, Earl. And I think you know it. Always it is with us in our memories. A glimpse of a face, the touch of a breeze, the scent of a flower, the echo of a song, and suddenly the past is with us. A thousand things, tiny triggers impossible to wholly avoid, and those gone rise to live again. To live. To accuse!"
"Marek!" Pacula moved forward to lay her hand on his arm. "Marek. Please!"
He stood a man transfigured, one grown suddenly old, his shoulders stooped, his face ravaged, stripped of the cynical mask. His hands were before him, slightly raised, the fingers clenched, the knuckles white with strain. A man exposed, vulnerable, and a little pathetic. More than a little easy to understand.
To die by his own hand would be too easy and never could he be sure that, even in death, he would find the peace he sought. It was better to tempt danger, to risk the destruction dealt by others and so, always, he invited punishment.
Watching him Pacula realized it and, realizing, understood how much they had in common. She, too, lived with guilt Had she been a little more attentive, a little less easily persuaded, Culpea would be alive now. Alive and grown and at her side. A girl of twelve, one at puberty, blossoming from child into woman and needing a mother's love. If only-
"Marek," she said again. "Please don't hurt yourself."
He stiffened a little, shoulders squaring, the mask falling over his face and eyes. Deliberately he unclenched his hands and looked at the fingers as he flexed them. A moment and he had become a stranger, but she had seen and recognized the real man and her hand did not fall from his arm.
Usan said, "Earl, my head. It aches like hell and I'm tired. To have come so far for so little. Nothing but dirt and mist." Her laughter was strained, artificial. "An old fool," she said. "That's what they called me. Well, maybe they were right after all. I'm old, certainly, and there is the evidence that I'm a fool." Her hand lifted to gesture at the open expanse, the mist. "We are all fools."
"No." Sufan Noyoka was insistent. "There has to be a mistake. The rumors must have some foundation. We must keep looking. Somewhere in the city we shall find it. The real treasure of Balhadorha. It has to be here."
"You are stubborn, Sufan." Marek dropped his hand to cover Pacula's, his fingers tightening as if he found a comfort in the warmth of her own. "I've solved the puzzle. What you see is the only treasure you will find. I swear it."
"You're mistaken! You have to be! I-"
"You're tired," said Dumarest sharply. The man's voice had risen to poise on the edge of hysteria. "We all are and Usan's hurt. She needs to sleep. Later we can examine the area. There might be something in the mist."
"Yes." Sufan snatched at the suggestion like a starving dog at a bone. "Yes, Earl, that must be it. The mist, of course, it would hide the treasure. We must look for it."
"Later," said Dumarest. "First we sleep."
Chapter Fifteen
Dumarest woke after two hours at the touch of Marek's hand. The man had stood the first watch-a precaution Dumarest had insisted on-and had seemed glad to do it. An opportunity to be alone, perhaps, though he and Pacula had spoken together before she had gone to rest.
"Earl?"
"I'm awake. Anything?"
"No, but Usan is restless and so is the girl. I heard her moaning." His voice held a note of concern. "To be blind in a place like this! Earl, without us she'd wander until she died!"
"You care?"
"Yes. A weakness, but I care. Somehow she has touched me and I-"
"Remember?" Dumarest's voice was soft. "Another girl, perhaps? Another woman. Who does she remind you of, Marek? Your wife?"
"You know?"
"A little. What happened?"
"Something I prefer not to remember, yet I cannot forget. My wife and daughter. She would have been a little younger than Embira. That surprises you?" His hand drifted toward his face. "Always I have looked young. A genetic trait, but that is not important. I was clever, proud of my skill, unable to consider the possibility I could ever be wrong. There was sickness, a mutated plague carried by a trader, and both fell victim. I knew exactly what had to be done. A selected strain of antibiotic, untested, but logically the answer. Something developed by the Cyclan."
Dumarest said flatly, "And?"
"I went to them and begged for a supply. They gave it at a price. My germ plasm for experimental uses-I would have given my life!"
And had given it, in a way; his seed used to breed, the genes manipulated so as to strengthen his trait, raw material used by the Cyclan in their quest for the perfect type.
"And the antibiotic failed?"
"It failed." Marek's voice was bitter. "Had I waited a few more days, a week at the most, all would have been well. A vaccine had been developed and-"
"You didn't know," said Dumarest. "And it wouldn't have helped. You did your best."
"I killed them, Earl. I went begging for the thing which took their life. The Cyclan warned me of the danger but I wouldn't listen. And what did they care? To them it was a test, no more. Had they lived I would have been in their debt and how could I have refused what they asked?"
By a simple rejection, but he wouldn't have thought of that. To him they would have given life and repayment would have been in small ways. Without knowing it he would have become an agent of the Cyclan.
Perhaps he was one? Dumarest studied the man's face and decided against it. His grief was too restrained, too deeply etched into his being. Too honest to blame others he had taken the fault on himself, but never could he forget those who had placed the instrument of death into his hands.
He said, "Get some sleep, now Marek."
"I'm not tired."
"Then rest, close your eyes and relax." He added, "Later Pacula and the girl could need you."
She was restless as Marek had said, twisting where she lay, her lips moving as if she cried out in nightmare. Gently he touched her, his hand caressing the golden mane of her hair, and, like a child, she turned toward him.
"Earl?"
"I'm here, Embira. Go back to sleep now. Relax and sleep. Sleep."
"Stay with me, darling. Stay…"
She had been barely awake and drifted into sleep as he watched. Usan was also restless but with more obvious cause. The wound on her scalp showed an ugly redness, inflammation spreading from the torn area. Beneath his touch Dumarest felt a fevered heat.
Rising he walked to the opening of the chamber in which they had settled. Strands ran across it attached to canteens; if anything touched the ropes an alarm would be given. Turning he walked through the room and out on the colonnade.
The silence was complete.
It was something almost tangible as if sound had never been discovered. A heavy, brooding stillness in which the slight tap of the gun he carried against a pillar roared like thunder. There were no echoes, the sound dying as if muffled in cotton. Standing, he looked at the mist.
At the treasure of Balhadorha.
It was nothing, just mist rising above an open area, the vapor thick toward the center and shielding the ground. Its continuous movement caught and held his attention, plumes drifting to fall, to rise again as if touched by an unfelt wind or stirred by invisible forces. A swirling which, like the leaping flames of an open fire, gave birth to images of fantasy. A chelach, a krell, the face of a man long dead, a smiling woman, the twisting thrust of a naked blade.
Dumarest blinked and they were gone, but the mist remained, a fleecy cloud of bluish gray illuminated by the soaring height of the inverted cone. A kaleidoscope, devoid of color, replacing it with moving form and substance, whisps and tendrils forming patterns and hinting at familiar objects.