Sahmanan murmured, "This, too, was part of Nawami." She sent a vision. For an instant he saw the bustling cities, the endless miles of farms and fields and country carefully tamed. Now wilderness ruled. The descendants of Nawami were savages using stone tools, hunting and eating one another.
Their speed increased. They whipped over a thousand miles of Dread Empire before Ethrian recognized it, and another thousand before he could make Sahmanan understand that this was the land of his enemies.
They passed over another thousand miles, and another, and yet another, before reaching the Pillars of Heaven and Pillars of Ivory, the great twin barrier ranges marking Shinsan's traditional western frontier. "Do you begin to see?" Ethrian called.
The woman's response darkened her face. Nawami could not have matched a tenth of this.
They fluttered across the vastnesses of the Roe Basin, rapidly outpacing the sun. They crossed the mighty Mountains of M'Hand, drifted down on the little green kingdom of Kavelin. Down to its capital, Vorgreberg, which had seemed such a huge city to a younger Ethrian. He observed that it had not changed.
"Be quiet. Don't distract me. I have to reach back and find the right moment." Sahmanan's face became intent.
Down they dropped, gently, till they were among the towers of Castle Krief. Reality began to flicker. Ethrian thought of the quick flashing of distant lightning.
"Now," Sahmanan told him. She squinted with her eyes closed. "Follow me." She drifted toward a wall.
And into that wall and out of sight. "Eh?" Ethrian murmured. Then, "Why not? I don't have a body to stop me." He willed himself to follow.
Two men were fighting on the far side of the wall. One was a big man. The other was short and fat. They tumbled across a bed. The big man was unarmed. The smaller had a knife. The bigger had a wound across his back.
"Father!" Ethrian shrieked at the fat man. And at the big, "Uncle Bragi!"
They did not hear him. Sahmanan reached out, gently drew Ethrian into a corner.
Ragnarson smashed his opponent's knife hand against a bedpost. The blade skittered under a wardrobe.
Mocker, the boy's father, bit and gouged. So did Ragnarson. Ragnarson was doing a lot of yelling, but Ethrian could not hear what he said. The only voice in this dead zone was that of Sahmanan.
Ragnarson seemed to be weakening. His wound was bleeding freely. He stopped blocking the smaller man's blows, tried for an unbreakable hold. He got behind Mocker and slipped an arm around his throat. He forced his hand up behind his own head. He arched his back and pulled.
It was a terrible hold. It could break a man's neck, Ethrian knew. His father had taught it to him when he was five.
Mocker kicked savagely. He wriggled like a snake with a broken back. He slapped and pounded with his free hand, and clawed for the dagger beneath the wardrobe. Bragi held on. Mocker produced another knife, scarred Ragnarson's side repeatedly.
"Why are they doing this?" Ethrian whined. "They've been friends longer than I've been alive."
Sahmanan did not answer. Her lips shaped a weak little smile.
"Father!"
Mocker's struggles were weakening. Ragnarson slowly dragged him to his feet...
The smaller man exploded. He had been faking.
Ethrian foresaw the inevitable. He threw himself forward, shrieking, pounding both men with his fists. He might have been battering ghosts. He felt no impact at all.
Ragnarson leaned forward till Mocker was almost able to throw him. Ethrian begged him to stop. He snapped back with all the strength and leverage he could apply.
"No!" the boy shrieked.
He could almost hear his father's neck breaking.
Sahmanan seized his arm. "Come!"
He fought. "No! I won't! My father... "
Fear filled her eyes. "We have to leave now!" She dragged him into the wall.
The door of the bedchamber burst inward. Bragi's brother Haaken, the wizard Varthlokkur, and several soldiers charged in. Light flooded the bedroom. Ragnarson let his old friend slide to the floor.
Ethrian struggled, but could not break the woman's grip. She tugged him through the wall. He kept pulling back toward that room, but she lifted him into the approaching dawn and carried him back to the east. After a while he stopped fighting.
"Now you have seen your father slain," she said. "You have seen your enemy. Will you deliver us now?"
"Why were they fighting?"
Waves of anger beat at him. "We used the last of our power to show you this. Will you persist in refusing us? Have we destroyed ourselves over you? I warned him... "
Ethrian answered anger with anger. "Enough. I may loosen the ties a little. Let me think."
He had seen his father slain by his best friend, true, but there had been something askew there. The something, perhaps, behind Sahmanan's eagerness to depart before the piece was complete.
He relived that moment of breaking bone... A flash of hatred hit him. It stabbed toward Bragi Ragnarson, then recoiled, twisted, speared toward those who ruled the island in the east. They had choreographed that bitter scene. The old man had hinted at it... Those tools of the Dread Empire...
"All right. I'll free you. A little."
He was sure the woman and stone beast were more than they pretended. They were hiding from him. He was afraid they represented a deadly trap. He had heard all the tales of deals with devils.
The hatred remained with him, twisting his thoughts, telling him to take what they offered. The stone beast had known, and had sent him where the black emotion would be triggered. It had placed its bet well. The hating was too strong to deny.
He would loose them slowly, shaping them to his will. Forcing their cooperation.
Sahmanan brought him through the long eastern day, into the twilight, over the desert, and down to his place between the stone beast's paws. She was now but a ghost of the ghost she had been. The monster's voice was the whisper of a petulant child when it questioned her. It hadn't the strength for anger.
Ethrian decided to release them a little more, for his own sake. He went down inside himself and found the key to it, and tried to replenish them.
The will of the stone beast smashed against him. He staggered, fought back. It had deceived him. It was not as weak as it pretended.
He controlled his panic, used his will. Gradually, the flood rushing to that mighty thing failed.
Stopping it completely was as hard as slamming a vault door. He did it, and lent the closure a deep-throated finality. He tried following through with a bolt of anger, but there was nothing left to throw. He was exhausted.
He collapsed in his sleeping place.
The monster alternately cursed its failure and crowed over its success. It had stolen ten times the strength Ethrian would have delivered willingly.
The boy slept. Time lumbered along. The woman came to him in dreams, again arguing for deliverance. He ignored her, and nurtured his hatreds.
He would shatter the island in the east. He would carry fire and sword through the Dread Empire. His armies would feed on the enemy fallen, and grow fat. They would become invincible. He would take them across the world, to his former homeland, and would avenge his father...
These aren't my thoughts, he told himself. Something is shaping my dreams.
The something left him. His dreams became his own. His strange companions were preoccupied elsewhere.
Often, it seemed, he touched distant minds and unconsciously took from them, adding to his own knowledge and strength. He began to follow his desert companions more exactly.
At first they were delighted with their new strength. As time passed, though, there was a change to consternation which threatened to become fear. Then:
"Deliverer! Wake up!"
A hand rocked his shoulder violently. He ignored it. He clung to his twilight state and drifted out of himself, surveying his surroundings.