“It is well we came when we did,” Balthazar whispered, before moving off to issue commands to his people.
Alfred was too harried and flurried to reply. Marit also had no comment. She was staring, amazed and aghast, at her ship. Almost two-thirds of the runes protecting the ship were destroyed, their magical power broken. Perhaps she hadn’t believed the Sartan. Now she knew they were telling the truth.
“Do you suppose Xar put Kleitus up to this?” Alfred was, in truth, asking Haplo, but Marit apparently thought he was talking to her.
Her eyes flashed. “My lord would never have permitted the lazar to learn the rune-magic! Besides, what purpose would this serve?”
Alfred flushed, stung by her anger. “You must admit, this is a convenient way to rid himself of the lazar ... and keep us trapped here on Abarrach.”
Marit shook her head, refusing to consider the idea. She lifted her hand to her forehead, to rub the sigil put there by Xar. Catching Alfred watching her, she snatched her hand away, wrapped her fingers tightly about her sword hilt.
“What do you plan to do?” she asked coldly. “Are you going to change into the dragon?”
“No.” Alfred spoke reluctantly, not wanting to think about what he was going to do, what he was going to have to do. “It will take all my energy to perform the spell to free this tormented soul.” His sad-eyed gaze was on the lazar. “I couldn’t do that and be the dragon, too.”
He added softly, first checking to make certain Balthazar was nowhere near, “Marit, I’m not going to let the Sartan have the ship.”
She regarded him silently, thoughtfully, taking his measure. Finally she nodded, once, abruptly.
“How are you going to stop them?”
“Marit . . .” Alfred licked dry lips. “What if I were to destroy the ship?”
She was thoughtful, did not protest.
“We’d be trapped in Abarrach. There would be no other way out for us,” he said to her, wanting to make certain she understood.
“Yes, there is,” Marit replied. “The Seventh Gate.”
19
“My Lord!” A Patryn entered Xar’s library. “A group of what appear to be Sartan have arrived in Safe Harbor. The scouts believe they are going to attempt to seize the ship.”
Xar knew, of course, what was transpiring. He had been with Marit mentally, following events through her ears and eyes, although she had no idea she was being used for such a purpose. He made no mention of this fact, however, but looked up with interest at the Patryn making the report.
“Indeed. Sartan—native to Abarrach. I heard rumor of this before our arrival, but the lazar led me to believe all the Sartan were dead.”
“They might as well be, Lord. They are a ragged, wretched-looking lot. Half starved.”
“How many of them?”
“Perhaps fifty or so, My Lord. Including children.”
“Children . . .” Xar was nonplussed. Marit had made no mention of children. He hadn’t figured them into his calculations.
Still, he reminded himself coldly, they are Sartan children.
“What is Kleitus doing?”
“Attempting to destroy the rune-magic protecting the ship, My Lord. He appears to be oblivious to all else.”
Xar made an impatient gesture. “Of course he is. He, too, is half starved—for fresh blood.”
“What are your orders, My Lord?”
What indeed? Xar had been pondering this ever since he had known, from Marit’s whispered conversation with Alfred, what was being planned. Alfred was going to attempt to wrench the soul from the lazar’s body. Xar had a great deal of respect for the Serpent Mage—more respect for Alfred than Alfred had for himself. He might very well be capable of ending the lazar’s tormented existence.
Xar didn’t care a rune-bone what happened to the lazar. If they all turned to dust, if they fled Abarrach—it was all the same to him. He would be happy to be rid of them. But once Kleitus was destroyed, Alfred would be free to take over the ship. True, he had told Marit he intended to destroy it. But Xar didn’t trust the Sartan.
The Lord of the Nexus made his decision. He rose to his feet.
“I will come,” he said. “Send all our people to the Anvil. Have my ship there, ready to sail. We must be prepared to move . . . and move swiftly.”
Out beyond the New Provinces, directly across from Safe Harbor, stood a promontory of jagged rock known—for its black color and distinctive shape—as the Anvil. The Anvil guarded the mouth of a bay created eons ago when a tremor had caused part of the rock peak to crack and break off. It had slid into the sea, creating an opening in the cliff that permitted the magma to flow into a lowlying section of land.
This created a bay, which was named Firepool. The lava, fed continually by the Fire Sea and surrounded by sheer rock walls on all sides, formed a slow-moving, sluggish maelstrom.
Around and around flowed the viscous magma, carrying chunks of black rock on its glowing surface. A person standing on the Anvil could pick out a particular rock and watch it being carried inexorably to its doom. Watch it enter the Firepool, watch it revolve around the outer surface, watch it drift nearer and nearer the Fire-pool’s heart, watch it vanish, dragged down into the sucking maw of the fiery maelstrom.
Xar often came to the Anvil, often stood and stared into the mesmerizing swirl of fiery lava. When he was in a fatalistic mood, he compared the Firepool to life. No matter what a man did, how much he struggled and fought to avoid his fate, the end was always the same. But Xar was not indulging in such morbid thoughts this day. He looked down on the maelstrom and saw—not rocks, but one of the iron, steam—and magic-driven ships built by the Sartan to sail the Fire Sea. The iron ship floated in the bay, hidden from the eyes of the dead and the living.
Perched on the Anvil, Xar gazed across the Fire Sea at the abandoned town of Safe Harbor, at the dock, at Marit’s ship and the lazar Kleitus. Xar had no fear of being observed. He was too far away, a black-robed figure against black rocks. The iron ship was out of sight behind the promontory. Besides, he doubted that anyone over there—lazar or Sartan—would bother to look for him. They had more urgent matters at hand.
All Patryns remaining on Abarrach, with the sole exception of Haplo, lying in the dungeons below Necropolis, were on board the ship. They awaited the signal of their lord to sail out of the bay, surge across the Fire Sea. They were prepared to intercept Alfred should he attempt to leave Abarrach.
The Patryns were also—and this Xar considered an incredible thing, but one he was driven to by necessity—prepared to save Alfred should anything go wrong.
Xar used the rune-magic to enhance his vision. He had a clear view of the docks of Safe Harbor, of Kleitus working to unravel Marit’s spells. Xar could even see, through a porthole in the ship, what appeared to be a mensch—the human assassin, Hugh the Hand—moving from one side of the ship to the other, nervously watching the lazar at work.
The mensch—another walking corpse, Xar thought, somewhat bitterly. It irritated him that Alfred had been able to work the necromancy by giving life back to the mensch, whereas Xar had been able to do nothing with necromancy except provide a dog a soul.
Xar could see, but he could not hear, for which he was grateful. He had no need to hear what was going on, and the echo of Kleitus’s soul, trapped in the dead body, had been getting on his nerves lately. It was bad enough watching the corpse shuffling and shambling about the dock, the imprisoned phantasm struggling constantly to break tree. The chained soul undulating around the body gave the lazar a fuzzy look, as if Xar were watching it through a flawed crystal. He found himself constantly blinking, trying to bring the watery image into focus.