“Are we going to study the Sartan runes tonight, Grandfather?” Bane asked eagerly. “I learned some new ones. I can make them work. I’ll show you...”
“No, child.” Xar withdrew his hand from the boy’s head, his body from the child’s clinging grasp. “I am weary. And there is study I must undertake before I journey to Abarrach. You run along and play.”
The boy looked downcast. He kept silent, however, having learned the hard lesson that arguing with Xar was both futile and dangerous. Bane would remember the rest of his life the first time he’d thrown a floor-kicking, breath-holding tantrum in an effort to get his way. The ploy had always worked around other adults. It didn’t work with the Lord of the Nexus. The child’s punishment had been swift, hard, severe.
Bane had never respected any adult until that moment. From then on, he respected Xar, feared him, and came to love him with all the passion of an affectionate nature granted him from his mother’s side, darkened and corrupted by his evil father.
Xar left for his library, a place Bane was not permitted to enter. The child returned to his room to draw again the elementary Sartan rune-structure that he had finally, after much exhaustive toil, managed to reproduce and make functional. Once alone in his room, Bane paused. An idea had come to him. He examined the idea to make certain it had no flaw, for he was a shrewd child and had learned well the lord’s lessons in proceeding on any venture cautiously and with forethought.
The scheme appeared flawless. If Bane was caught, he could always whine or cry or charm his way out. Such tricks didn’t work with the man he’d adopted as Grandfather, but Bane had never known them to fail with other adults. Including Haplo.
Snatching up a dark cloak, throwing it over his thin shoulders, Bane slipped out of the lord’s house, and merged with the twilight shadows of the Nexus.
6
Troubled, Haplo left his lord’s house and walked without any very clear idea where he was going. He wandered the forest paths; there were several, crisscrossing, leading to different parts of the Nexus. Most of his mental processes were given to reconstructing the conversation with his lord, trying to find in it some hope that Xar had heeded his warning and would be on his guard against the serpents.
Haplo wasn’t very successful in finding hope. He couldn’t blame his lord. The serpents had seduced Haplo with their flattery, their attitude of abject debasement and fawning servility. They had obviously fooled the Lord of the Nexus. Somehow, Haplo had to convince his lord that it was the serpents, not the Sartan, who were the real danger.
Most of his mind running on this worrisome topic, Haplo watched for any sign of the serpent, thinking vaguely that he might catch the creature in an unguarded moment, force it to confess its true purpose to Xar. Haplo saw no false Patryn, however. Probably just as well, he admitted to himself morosely. The creatures were cunning, highly intelligent. Little chance one would permit itself to be coerced.
Haplo walked and considered. He abandoned the forest and headed across twilit meadows for the city of the Nexus.
Now that Haplo had seen other Sartan cities, he knew the Nexus for one of theirs.
A towering, pillared, crystal spiral balanced on a dome formed of marble arches in the city’s center. The center spire was framed by four other spires, matching the first. On a level beneath stood eight more gigantic spires. Large marble steppes flowed between the spires. Here, on the steppes, were built houses and shops, schools and libraries—those things the Sartan considered necessary to civilized living.
Haplo had seen this identical city standing on the world of Pryan. He had seen one very similar on Chelestra. Studying it from a distance, looking at the city with the eyes of one who has met its siblings and sees a disconcerting family resemblance, Haplo thought he could at last understand why his lord did not choose to live within the marble walls.
“It is just another prison, my son,” Xar had told him. “A prison different from the Labyrinth and, in some ways, far more dangerous. Here, in their twilight world, they hoped we would grow soft as the air, become as gray as the shadows. They planned for us to fall victim to luxury and easy living. Our sharp-edged blade would turn to rust in their jeweled scabbard.”
“Then our people should not live in the city,” Haplo had said. “We should move from these buildings, dwell in the forest.” He had been young and full of anger then.
Xar had shrugged. “And let all these fine structures go to waste? No. The Sartan underestimate us, to think we would be so easily seduced. We will turn their plan against them. In these surroundings that they provide, our people will rest and recover from their terrible ordeal and we will grow strong, stronger than ever, and ready to fight.”
The Patryns—the few hundred who had escaped the Labyrinth—lived in the city, adapted it to their own use. Many found it difficult, at first—coming from a primitive, harsh environment—to feel settled and comfortable inside four walls. But Patryns are practical, stoic, adaptable. Magical energy once spent fighting to survive was now being channeled into more constructive uses: the art of warfare, the study of controlling weaker minds, the building up of supplies and equipment necessary to carrying a war into vastly differing worlds.
Haplo entered the city, walked its streets, which glimmered like pearl in the half-light. He had always before experienced a pride and fierce exultation when he traveled through the Nexus. The Patryns are not like the Sartan. The Patryns do not gather on street corners to exchange high-minded ideals or compare philosophies or indulge in pleasant camaraderie. Grim and dour, stern and resolute, occupied on important business that is one’s own concern and no other’s, Patryns pass each other in the street swiftly, silently, with sometimes a nod of recognition.
Yet there is a sense of community about them, a sense of familial closeness. There is trust, complete and absolute.
Or at least there had been. Now he looked around uneasily, walked the streets warily, with caution. He caught himself staring hard at each of his fellow Patryns, eyeing them suspiciously. He’d seen the serpents as gigantic snakes on Arianus. He’d seen one as one of his own people. It was obvious to him now that the creatures could take on any form they chose.
His fellow Patryns began to notice Haplo’s odd behavior, cast him dark, puzzled glances that instinctively shifted to the defensive if his suspicious stares appeared about to invade personal boundaries.
It seemed to Haplo that there were a lot of strangers in the Nexus, more than he’d remembered. He didn’t recognize half the faces he saw. Those he thought he should know were altered, changed.
Haplo’s skin began to glow faintly, the sigla itched and burned. He rubbed his hand, glared furtively at everyone passing by him. The dog, pattering along happily, noticed the change in its master and was instantly on guard itself. One woman, wearing long, flowing sleeves that covered her arms and wrists, passed by too closely, or so Haplo thought.
“What are you doing?” He reached out, grabbed her arm roughly, shoved the fabric up to see the sigla beneath it.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The woman glared at him, broke his grip on her arm with a practiced, easy twist of her wrist. “What’s wrong with you?”
Other Patryns halted in their pursuit of private affairs, banded instantly and instinctively together against the possible threat.
Haplo felt foolish. The woman was, indeed, a Patryn.