“Fine, uncle,” Pezi replied. If Flayh was expecting any elaboration, he was disappointed.
“Getting along well, are you?”
“Fine, uncle,” Pezi said.
“Are you enjoying Ngandib-Mar?”
“It’s fine, uncle,” Pezi replied,
“Liking the climate?”
“It’s fine, uncle,” Pezi answered. Pezi was suspicious. What was his uncle driving at?
Flayh kept on smiling, staving off exasperation. How to get the lad’s attention? He had a sudden inspiration.
“Had any good meals lately?”
Pezi’s interest immediately picked up. “Oh yes! I had a stuffed pheasant leg this afternoon with a dish of mallinsok pudding, and a ”
“Fine, nephew,” Flayh cut him off. He knew from long experience that Pezi could wax positively rhapsodic on the subject of an onion souffle, and he’d already accomplished his purpose. The fat merchant was at least listening. “I’ve been studying you, Pezi. You have potential.”
“I do?” Pezi asked. He quickly altered that to a quasi-firm expression of self-confidence. “I do.”
“Yes,” Flayh smiled, carefully avoiding the subject of what Pezi had potential for. “That’s why I’m placing you in charge of this manor.”
Pezi nearly swallowed his tongue. “You what?” he exclaimed.
“You were a competent enough manager in Chaomon-ous not brilliant, but so few of us in the family really are and I believe you can handle the responsibility. If ”
“If what, Uncle Flayh!” Pezi was excited.
If you’ll concentrate with your brain instead of your belly.” Flayh stood. “I’ll be travelling for a while, and someone needs to handle the Man accounts. Trade will soon be returning to normal, with control restored to the pass. Of course, Admon Faye is readying a strike for I4gne*s heart, and you’ll need to notify me by flyer immediately when you’ve received word. After his conquest of Chaomonous and his recovery of Jagd’s pyramid, we’ll be able to converse regularly.”
“Yes, uncle!” Pezi responded. He was flabbergasted. He, Pezi, in charge of the Man accounts! But Pezi was suspicious by nature, and he wasn’t a dummy. Obviously his uncle was planning something. And knowing Flayh, it would be deliciously sinister. “What are you going to be doingr
“What business is that of yours?” Flayh snarled. Pezi sank back into his pitiable chair, chastened. “That’s not for you to know… yet,”
Flayh went on, a bit more cordially. “All you need to know is where to post the flyer, informing me of Admon Faye’s move.”
“Fine, uncle,” Pezi replied. “Ah… where will that be?”
Flayh got a faraway look in his eye and appeared to Ware through the room’s western wall. “I’m bound for the palace of Pahd mod Pahd-el the fortress of the High City Of Ngandib.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Drax
BURIED IN THE TIMELESS DARKNESS, they couldn’t know that they had talked away the morning and most of the afternoon. Pelmen and Serphimera knew only that they found each other’s presence enchanting, and neither wanted to be first to break off the conversation. For the first time in their unusual relationship they felt really free to talk.
She teased him, her emerald eyes flashing warmly as she charmed him with her mischievous smile. Again and again, his quick wit and self-mocking humor pulled trills of unexpected laughter from within her. They leaned on the door, clinging to the bars that parted them until their legs could stand no more. Then they slumped to the floor, propping their heads in their hands as they continued their rapt discussion through the door’s narrow food slot. Mostly they compared backgrounds. His experience as a cosmopolitan traveler contrasted sharply with the memories of this small town girl from the Lamathian farm lands. They were as different as their origins. It was no surprise that they seemed to agree on almost nothing. The surprising thing was how little their differences mattered at the moment. They skirted the issues of religion and faith entirely, realizing that a chasm too deep for even love to bridge separated their two views. While that difference loomed as a giant question mark between them, they both ignored it, preferring for the moment the warmth of one another’s eyes, and the halting hope that perhaps even that wall could someday be breeched. Occasionally verbal conversation ceased entirely, and their lips communicated silently by touching. The food slot permitted little contact, so they stood again and kissed between the bars.
Their kisses saved Pelmen from discovery, for it was during one of those sweet silences that they heard sandals slapping on the stairway.
Serphimera’s eyes shot open in shock, and she whispered, “My dinner!”
“I’ll be back,” he whispered intensely. Then he streaked down the hall, past the stairway toward the half-open cell door at the far end of the corridor.
“Ho!” he heard someone cry behind him. “Is someone there?” He slipped into the cell and wasted no time slithering head first through the narrow gap into the caverns beyond. There he paused and listened.
There was no sound of scuttling soldiers, no shouts of alarm. Evidently Serphimera had succeeded in covering his escape,
Pelmen sat in the dark, contemplating this new situation. He was hungry. He was tired. And now that he’d at last been forced out of the warmth of Serphimera’s gaze, the seriousness of her circumstances finally impacted on him. Now he had to evolve some plan to extricate both Serphimera and Rosha from Ligne’s grasp and then to deal with Admon Faye. And he didn’t even know his way out. “I hope you’re still around,” he mumbled fervently, then crawled to his feet and started down the corridor in the dark.
He tried to concentrate on solving the maze, but his thoughts kept drifting back to Serphimera. He’d be counting his step , trailing one hand along an uneven wall, then would realize suddenly that for the past ten or fifteen paces he’d been replaying some snatch of their lengthy conversation, and that his count was hopelessly off. From time to time he would stop and wave his arms above him, searching for some drafty sign of the Power’s presence. He felt none. He wasn’t surprised.
The Power did not jump when he called. He had no assurance that his every request would immediately be met.
If past experience were any guide to the Power’s actions, Pelmen could count on no assistance until he’d exhausted his own resources. Often in the past, when he’d felt he had no other alternatives, a silence from the Power had demanded that he seek new ones and he’d found new alternatives in every case. Other times, the Power had come unbidden, before Pelmen realized his own inability to cope with the particular struggle at hand. The relationship was complex and constantly puzzling, forcing him into continual reevaluation of the Power’s nature… and sometimes even of its existence. At other times, the Power’s presence was so overwhelming as to brook no doubt whatsoever. There seemed no logical consistency to the Power’s participation in his life, and yet a perplexing patterning appeared to run through all of their relating. It was not quite capricious, but certainly unpredictable beyond him, somehow. All in all, it was easier to shape than to be shaped, but far less exhilarating. He had learned to live with the ambiguity between the two.
At the moment, it appeared he had not exhausted his own resources.
His foot sloshed into water, and he froze against the wall. Like a shaft of light in this dark tomb, a long-forgotten memory broke into his consciousness with a force that left him gasping. He saw before him the book, spread open to the pages of prophecy he had come to term the “cryptics” because of their hidden purposes. A single phrase stood out boldly for him to read: “Deal gently with the House that speaks, lest it make the waters rise.” The line had been meaningless when he’d first read it, meaningless when he’d memorized it. But the cryptics were always meaningless until they were needed. This one had suddenly become so.