He turned his horse then, and started back north, riding hard. The crystal! he told himself. Follow the crystal! The thief, the tracks, are secondary.
Macurdy had ridden half a mile up the sleigh trail, when he came to a three-sided woodsmen's shelter. In front of it lay a snow-capped heap of firewood blocks, with a splitting maul standing upright beside it. He stopped, and getting from his horse, stepped into the shelter. Inside was a split-log bench. A heavy steel splitting wedge lay on it, and he picked it up. It could almost have been made in Indiana; it had the familiar deep grooves on its slanting faces.
He knew at once what to do. Stepping outside, he lay the wedge on the battered maple chopping block, then reached into his pocket. The crystal was almost too hot to handle! Alarmed, he laid it hurriedly on a groove of the wedge, then reaching, took the maul and hefted it. Eyeing the crystal, he swung hard, overhead and down.
The heavy steel head slammed the crystal-and a shocking pain stabbed through Macurdy's skull! At the same instant he heard a terrible cry perhaps a hundred yards away. Dropping the maul, he staggered to the horse and pulled himself into the saddle. Then he kicked the animal into a canter, and lying low on its back, fled westward through the trees, toward the clearing.
Kurqosz lay shuddering and puking in the snow, with Tsulgax and the other rakutu kneeling beside him. The blow that had struck the crystal had hammered Kurqosz much harder than it had Macurdy, whose bonding with it had been brief and superficial. After a couple of minutes, the crown prince raised an arm for help, and Tsulgax hoisted him to his feet.
"He tried to destroy it," Kurqosz croaked, "but it's still here somewhere. Unbroken. Help me."
With Tsulgax supporting him, he hobbled on, the other rakutu bringing the horses. A minute later they saw Macurdy's tracks, and in another the shelter and woodpile. They went to it, Kurqosz scanning around with his mind for the crystal. It took awhile to find it. Instead of smashing it, the force of the hammer stroke had sent it flying twenty yards, where it lay buried in snow.
When he had it in his mittened hand, Kurqosz raised it to his forehead, closed his eyes and concentrated. In his mind he saw a rakutu-no, a human or half-ylf dressed as a rakutu. Saw the face from the crystal's point of view. A face he remembered from the hive mind scene, of raiders murdering the headquarters staff at Colroi. And from somewhere earlier. He watched the attempt to destroy the crystal, saw the hammer raised and swung. And that was all. As if the sentience in the crystal had blacked out.
He realized now what had happened to Chithqosz and his circle-those who'd survived the flood. This same creature had somehow gotten Chithqosz's old crystal, and destroyed it. Crystals of power formed to resonate with the circle leader, and his younger brother wasn't hard like himself.
Turning, he gripped Tsulgax's shoulder. "I have seen his face," he told him. "And I will remember. I will hear him scream curses at the parents who gave him life. He will beg me to kill him."
The second rakutu held out Kurqosz's reins, but the crown prince declined. "I will run," he said.
Haltingly he started in Macurdy's tracks, while the rakutur mounted and followed. As he ran, he strengthened, his head clearing. He would, he told himself, have his revenge, but not tonight. First he would win the war, and he needed all his attention, all his strength, to control the forces he would use. His circle too would need to be clear-headed and strong.
So. Tomorrow night then. Tomorrow night he would win the war. The aurora would still be there for him; he sensed it with certainty. Slowing, he looked up. Through the leafless crowns of hardwood forest, he saw it flickering and pulsing. Victory and devastation would be the ultimate vengeance. He'd devastated the east with fire and steel. The energy storm he'd create tomorrow night would roll westward with far greater devastation. Where he willed, as far as he willed. Tomorrow night vast tongues of flame would lick the enemy army from the face of the earth, leaving not even bones!
Kurqosz did not follow his enemy's tracks. He pressed forward toward the farm. That was where the creature was going, he had no doubt. Going to collect the ylvin lord's widow. A half minute more and he'd have taken her earlier; she'd have been over the balcony railing and gone.
At the manor, Kurqosz posted guards inside every entrance, every ground-floor window. After working a spell, and showing them through the crystal what to watch for: a giant boar, and the face from the raid on Colroi. Kurqosz was familiar with cloaking spells. Being warned, and knowing what to watch for, was half the task of seeing through them.
When Tsulgax was shown the face, he said a single word, a name: "Montag!"
Kurqosz knew at once that Tsulgax was right. Kurt Montag, the German half-wit! But clearly no half-wit after all.
And Montag had been inside this house, inside his bedroom. Worse, inside his sanctum! Kurqosz hadn't been aware of the drape hanging from the loft vent till he'd returned with the crystal. Things became clear then; Montag had bypassed the door guard by using the loft. Ingenious! Daring! What kind of man could even contemplate the act, let alone carry it off?
Before he put him to the torments, he decided, he'd sit down with him, question him. There were things to be learned from him, and at any rate the man would be interesting.
The realizations, along with his run in the forest, had fired Kurqosz with a land of manic exhilaration, though without canceling his wits. Back in the manor, he order the woman called Varia locked up with the other ylvin women. She was dangerous. He would still beget sons on her-this evening had added to his respect-but he would not have her as a lover.
Having had two long runs in the snow, Kurqosz expected that when he went to bed, he'd fall quickly asleep. He was mistaken. There were things on his mind, demanding attention. Back in Bavaria, Tsulgax had said that Montag was dangerous, and should be killed. Tsulgax, with no access to the hive mind, and no apparent psychic talent. Only his hard, highly trained body and unbendable loyalty. But his concern over Montag had seemed ridiculous. Perhaps, Kurqosz thought, he has a talent that I do not: sensing future dangers. He warned me about the ylvin she-wolf as well.
Tsulgax. What kind of father had he been to him? By hindsight, better than he'd realized, it seemed to him. He'd been kind, and not overly demanding.
He looked back then at Kurt Montag in Bavaria. Had there been signs he should have seen? That should have warned him? None came to him. He focused on the man as first he'd seen him: earnest, stupid, and lame. He'd even felt a certain fondness for the creature. Montag, whose psychic talents were strong only by comparison with the other Germans at the Schloss.
Unexpectedly, his concentration on Montag's face clicked in another picture from the hive mind, one Kurqosz hadn't seen before: Montag wearing a peculiar uniform-baggy, and with many pockets. In Hithmearc, speaking to a guard corporal at the gate shelter! Montag, intelligent and self-assured, standing straight, and for a human, tall. This was the man in the raid at Colroi! No wonder he hadn't recognized him at first.
The corporal's trace in the hive mind ended with his shaking hands with Montag, and at the same moment a shocking pain in the abdomen. And unconsciousness. Kurqosz scanned ahead. On that same day, the gate lodge had burned to the ground, killing all but one of the guards and hostel staff. Days later the gate itself had collapsed, seemingly destroyed, stranding Greszak and his staff on Farside. Too much had happened, in too short a time, and the corporal's trace had not been investigated. The assumption had been, the man had died in the fire with the others.