“We need to leave immediately,” Kormak said. “We need to stop Razhak before he can find his spell-engines and perform his ritual.”
It did not take Luther long to arrange things. His guards were well drilled and his stewards efficient. He was a wealthy man with little difficulty getting supplies. There were horses in his stables and mules. Watersacks were filled from the fountains and well. Maps were brought from the library. By noon, they were ready to go. A line of soldiers headed out with the Prince and his sister riding at the front with Kormak.
Olivia was dressed for travel in a cowled robe with a silk veil over her face. The veil was so thin as to be almost translucent and the effect was to hint at and accentuate her beauty rather than hide it. Much to his surprise she had a sword scabbarded at her waist and a bow on her saddle. On her belt were pouches for herbs and metal vials of alchemical substances held in leather loops.
Sensing the direction of his gaze, she said, “I wanted to learn as a child and my father saw no reason not to teach me. It was one of the advantages of having so unorthodox and disreputable a parent.”
“My sister is actually very good with both weapons,” said Prince Luther. “Better than many men.”
“I shall take your word for it.”
Kormak saw that they were being watched as they rode through the streets. It must have made an interesting procession for many people, the Prince and his retainers and a veiled and wealthy woman riding beside a Guardian, equipped for a long journey. Doubtless spies and newsmongers would be carrying the tale to all corners of the city within the hour. There would surely be people who would wonder what they were doing. Kormak did not care as long as it did not interfere with his mission.
He had a sense that events were coming to a close, that one way or another his hunt for Razhak would end in Tanyth. He pushed the thought to one side. In a hunt like this it was as well not to believe such feelings. He could take nothing for granted, not even the loyalty of the people he was with. They had their own agendas and he was not sure they were the ones they said they had.
One thing was certain, he would find out before the end.
The city receded behind them, the slums and hovels outside the walls gradually shrinking and vanishing until all that was visible were the gigantic walls, made pristine by distance and desert light. The Tower of the Sun loomed over them like the spear of a Titan thrust into the earth in the middle of the city.
They rode in silence, save for the whistle of the wind and the crunching of the friable ground under their horses’ hooves. Prince Luther seemed happy. He smiled as if contemplating some pleasing secret. Olivia glanced around as if she had never seen desert before. Surely that could not be the truth of the matter, Kormak thought.
His mouth had an odd gritty taste in it and his throat always felt a little dry, as if thirst was an ever present demon waiting to strike. He found himself glancing around at the mules with their cargoes of supplies and checking the skins that dangled from his own saddle.
Olivia glanced over her shoulder too, gazing north and Kormak wondered if she was thinking of her father in his cave. It seemed odd, Kormak thought, that a man should give up the wealth that so many wanted in exchange for the poverty so many had. He had chosen to become a beggar when he had been a Prince.
No. That was not strictly speaking true. His children still visited him. They brought him small gifts. In a way they showed that they still cared and that there was a path back to what he had once been should he choose to take it. That was not the same as the poverty of the true poor, who had no choices. He understood what it was that Olivia meant about her father. In his way he was still a rich man playing at being poor even if he chose to endure real discomfort.
Perhaps in the same way as, at this moment, his children were playing at being adventurers. Kormak was sure they understood the dangers of what they were doing on one level but on another they did not. They were blessed. They could opt to turn around at any point and return to their mansion and put this whole mad folly behind them.
So could he, if he wanted to. He could just turn his horse around and ride away. It was a thought that sometimes crossed his mind. Only it was not possible. He had sworn an oath to do this and his soul would be peril if he did not. If he had a soul, he thought sourly. He had seen enough in his lifetime to make him have doubts of the faith he had been taught as a boy and had sworn to serve as a man.
He would kill the demon if he could for any number of complex and individually insufficient reasons. He wanted revenge for the people Razhak had killed. He wanted to correct his own fault in letting the demon escape in the first place, and if truth be told, he wanted to kill the demon out of spite and jealousy.
Razhak had seen truly into his heart when he had spotted that. He wanted the demon dead because it was unfair that it should live and wreak havoc when he must die and walk into the Lands of Dust, if such lands there were. By killing Razhak, he would build his own small, secret monument. He would end the life of something that had existed since the dawn of history. He would achieve something, even if that thing was a negative.
He knew when he looked at things in this light that simple vanity was the real reason he had agreed to let Luther and Olivia come. He wanted witnesses. He wanted it recorded. He wanted it to be set down in a poem that would be remembered by future generations, the only limited form of immortality he could be certain was real. He too wanted glory.
He looked again at the desert and the people and the brilliant sun over the empty land. He thought of the living city behind them and the dead city ahead.
This is glory, he thought? It did not quite seem as the epics he had read as a boy had made it to be.
“You look sad, Sir Kormak,” Olivia said.
“This desert makes me feel very small.”
“It does that to everyone,” she said. “It is a good place for holy hermits.”
That evening they set up camp amid the dunes, raising silk tents, setting watch. On the horizon, to the North a golden light glowed in the sky, the great burning stone set atop the Tower of the Sun sending out its message of light into the wastes.
“They say the ancient Solari set it there as a challenge to the Moon,” said Olivia. She was sitting by the fire, on a small intricately patterned rug, drinking water from a silver cup, eating waybread and dates from a carved platter of wood. “Its light keeps her Children at bay.”
“Why is it that the Children cannot endure the Sun, do you think?” Prince Luther asked. The guards, all of those who were not on watch, sat in a circle around the fire, silent as stones. “Is it because of his curse, as the legends say, or is it something else. Could it be that they are even more sensitive to its light than an albino eunuch would be? Could it be that it burns them in the same way as it burns us only worse?”
“This is my brother’s pet theory,” said Olivia.
“You disagree?” Kormak asked.
“It is as good a theory as any other I have heard,” she said. “And it is not impossible that both my brother and the Golden Books are correct. Perhaps the Sun’s curse is that the Children are sensitive to His light.”
Kormak shrugged.
“You disagree?” she said.
“I don’t know. I do know they are cursed. I have seen it for myself. Too long in the Sun’s holy light unprotected and they die.”
“Die? How?” Luther asked.
“They simply cease to be. If they have created a physical form, it disintegrates. If they are immaterial spirits, they come apart like mist in a strong wind.”
“Does your sword work according to the same principle?” Luther asked.