Fire Sea (31 page)

The prince frowned. His hand jerked, he knocked several pieces off his partially completed wall.

“As you may have surmised,” Pons continued, “this room is in one of the older parts of the palace. Although, of course, we've made considerable modern improvements. The royal family's living quarters are located back here; the air's purer, don't you agree? Official chambers and halls and ballrooms are to the front, near where you entered.”

“Seems a confusing sort of place,” Haplo pursued. “More like a bee's hive than a palace.”

“Bee's hive?” asked the dynast, raising an eyebrow and stifling a yawn. “I'm not familiar with that term.”

Haplo shrugged. “What I mean is, a fellow could get himself lost in here without too much trouble.”

“One learns one's way around,” said the dynast, amused. “However, if you would truly be interested in seeing a place in which it is easy to lose oneself, we could show you the catacombs.”

“Or, as we know them, the dungeons,” the chancellor inserted, with a snigger.

“Pay attention to your wall, Pons, or we shall be here all night.”

“Yes, Sire.”

Nothing more was said. The walls were completed. Pons noted that Haplo, who maintained that he had never played, constructed his wall with perfect accuracy, although many beginning players found the markings on the bones confusing. It was almost, the chancellor thought, as if the runes said something to him they said to no one else.

“Excuse me, my dear sir,” said Pons fussily, leaning over to whisper to Haplo. “I believe you've made a mistake. That particular rune doesn't belong up on the battlements, where you've put it, but down below.”

“Properly placed, it goes there,” said Haplo in his quiet voice.

“He's right, Pons,” said Kleitus.

“Is he really, Sire?” The chancellor was flustered, laughed at himself. “I—I must have it wrong, then. I've never been very good at this game. I confess that all the bones look alike. These markings mean nothing to me.”

“They mean nothing to any of us, Chancellor,” said the dynast severely. “At least they didn't, up until now.” A glance at Haplo. “You have to memorize them, Pons. I've told you that before.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. It's good of Your Majesty to have such patience with me.”

“Your bid, Your Highness,” said Kleitus to the prince.

Edmund stirred restlessly in his chair. “One red hexagon.”

The dynast shook his head. “I'm afraid, Your Highness, that a red hexagon is an improper opening bid.”

The prince sprang to his feet. “Your Majesty, I have been arrested, beaten, insulted. If I had been alone, without a responsibility for others, I would have rebelled against such treatment that is not due from one Sartan to another, let alone from one king to another! But I am a prince. I hold the lives of others in my keeping. And I cannot concentrate on a … a game”—he waved a hand contemptuously at the board— “when my people are suffering from cold and starvation!”

“Your people attacked an innocent village—”

“We did not attack, Sire!” Edmund was rapidly losing control. “We wanted to buy food, wine. We intended to pay for it, but the people attacked us before we had a chance to say a word! Strange, now that I think of it. It was as if they'd been led to believe we
would
attack them!”

The dynast cast a look at Haplo, to see if he had anything to add. Haplo toyed with a rune-bone, appeared bored.

“A perfectly natural precaution,” said the dynast, returning his attention to the prince. “Our scouts sight a large force of armed barbarians, moving toward our city, coming from the outland. What would have been
your
assumption?”

“Barbarians!” Edmund went white to the lips. “Barbarians! We are no more barbarians than … than this fop of a chancellor is a barbarian! Our civilization is older than yours,
one of the first established following the Sundering! Our beautiful city, open to the air, makes this one look like the stinking rat's warren that it is!”

“And yet I believe you've come to beg to be allowed to live inside this ‘stinking rat's warren,’ “ said Kleitus, leaning back and looking languidly at the prince through slit eyelids.

The prince's livid face suffused with a red, feverish flush. “I have not come to beg! Work! We will work to earn our keep! All we ask is shelter from the killing rain and food to feed our children. Our dead and our living, too, if you want, will work in your fields, serve in your army. We will”— Edmund swallowed, as though forcing down the bitter stalagma—“we will acknowledge you as our liege lord …”

“How good of you,” murmured the dynast.

Edmund heard the sarcasm. His hands closed over the back of the chair, the fingers punching holes through the strong kairn grass in the desperate need to control his raging anger. “I wasn't going to say this. You have driven me to it.”

Haplo stirred at this juncture. It seemed he might have interrupted, but he apparently thought better of it, relapsed into his former state of impassive observer.

“You owe us this! You destroyed my people's homes! You leeched our water, you stole our heat and used it for your own. You made our beautiful lush land a barren and frozen desert! You killed our children, our elderly, our sick and infirm! I have maintained to my people that you brought this disaster on us through ignorance, that you knew nothing of our existence in Kairn Telest. We didn't come in retribution. We didn't come in revenge, although we could have. We came to ask our brethren to right the wrong they inadvertently committed. I will keep on telling them this, although I know, now, that it is a lie.”

Edmund left his place behind his chair. His fingers bled, the sharp prongs of the splintered kairn grass had driven through the flesh. He didn't seem to notice. Moving around the table, he bent gracefully to one knee and spread his hands.

“Take my people in, Your Majesty, and I give you my
word of honor that I will keep my knowledge of the truth from them. Take my people in and I will work with them, side by side. Take my people in, Sire, and I will bend my knees to you, as you require.” Although in my heart, I despise you.

The last words were not spoken aloud. There was no need. They hissed in the air like the gas that lit the lamps. “We were right, you see, Pons,” said Kleitus. “A beggar.

The chancellor could not help but sigh. The prince, in his youth and beauty, graced by compassion for his people, had a majesty about him that lifted him in stature and in rank far above most kings, let alone beggars.

The dynast leaned forward, fingertips touching. “You'll find no succor in Necropolis, Edmund, prince of beggars.”

The prince rose to his feet, suppressed anger leaving patches of chill white in the feverish crimson of his skin.

“Then there is nothing more to say. I will return to my people.”

Haplo stood up. “Sorry to break up the game, but I'm with him,” he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the prince.

“Yes, you are,” said the dynast in a soft and menacing tone that only Pons heard. “I suppose this means war, Your Highness?”

The prince didn't stop walking. He was halfway across the room, Haplo at his side. “I told you, Sire, my people do not want to fight. We will travel on, perhaps proceed farther down the shoreline. If we had ships—”

“Ships!” Kleitus sucked in a breath. “Now we come to it! The truth. That's what you've been after all along! Ships, to find Death's Gate! Fool! You will find nothing except death!”

The dynast gestured to one of the armed guards, who nodded in response. Lifting his spear, the cadaver aimed and threw.

Edmund sensed the threat, whirled around, raised his hand in an attempt to ward off the attack. Futile. He saw his death coming. The spear struck him full in the chest with
such force that the point shattered the breastbone and emerged from the man's back, pinned him to the floor. The prince died the instant the blow was struck, died without a scream. The sharp iron tore apart the heart.

By the expression of sadness on the face, his last thoughts had been, perhaps, not of regret for his own young life, cut tragically short, but of how he had failed his people.

Kleitus gestured again, motioned toward Haplo. Another cadaver raised its spear.

“Stop him,” the Patryn said, in a quick, tight voice, “or you'll never learn anything about Death's Gate!”

“Death's Gate!” Kleitus repeated softly, staring at Haplo. “Halt!”

The cadaver, arrested in the act of throwing the spear, let it slip from the dead hand. It fell, clattering, to the floor, the only sound to break the tense silence.

“What,” demanded the dynast at last, “do you know of Death's Gate?”

“That you'll never get through it if you kill me,” returned Haplo.

CHAPTER
24
NECROPOLIS,
ABARRACH

I
T HAD BEEN A GAMBLE, BRINGING UP THE SUBJECT OF
Death's Gate. The dynast might have blinked once, shrugged his shoulders, and ordered the cadaver to pick up the dropped spear and try again.

Haplo wasn't risking his life. His magic would protect him from the spear's deadly point, unlike the poor devil of a prince, who lay sprawled dead on the floor at the Patryn's feet. It was the revelation of his potent magical power that Haplo sought to avoid, one reason he'd faked unconsciousness when that cadaver had attacked him on the road.

Unfortunately, he hadn't counted on Alfred rushing to his rescue. Damn the man! The one time fainting would have been beneficial, the blasted Sartan weaves some inexplicably complex and powerful magical spell that stands everyone's hair on end. It was always better, Haplo had learned, to encourage your enemy to underestimate you rather than overestimate. You were far more likely to catch him napping.

But at least this gamble had apparently paid off. Kleitus hadn't blinked and shrugged. He knew about Death's Gate, would almost have
had
to know about it. Obviously intelligent, a powerful necromancer, such a man would certainly have looked for and found any ancient records those early Sartan had left.

His “opening bid” strategy flashed through Haplo's mind
while the prince's splattered blood was still warm on the Patryn's rune-covered skin.

The dynast had recovered his composure, was affecting indifference. “Your corpse will provide me with whatever information I might require, including information about this so-called Death's Gate.”

“It might,” Haplo countered. “Or it might not. My magic is kin to yours, that's true, but different. Far different. Necromancy has never been practiced among my people and there could be a reason for it. Once the brain that controls these sigla”—he held up his arm—“is dead, the magic dies. Unlike you, my physical being is inextricably bound with the magic. Separate one from the other and you may have a cadaver who can't even remember its name, much less anything else.”

“What makes you think we care what you remember?”

“Ships, to find Death's Gate.
Those were the words you used, almost the last words this poor fool heard.” Haplo gestured at Edmund's torn body. “Your world's dying. But you know it isn't the end. You know about the other worlds. And you're right. They exist. I've been there. And I can take you back with me.”

The cadaver had picked up the spear and was holding it ready, aimed for Haplo's heart. The dynast made an abrupt gesture, and the cadaver lowered the weapon, brought it down butt end against the cavern floor, and resumed standing at attention.

“Don't harm him. Take him to the dungeon,” ordered Kleitus. “Pons, take both of them to the dungeons. We must think this matter through.”

“The prince's body, Sire. Shall we send it to oblivion?”

“Where are your brains, Pons?” the dynast demanded irritably. “Of course not! His people will declare war against us. The corpse will tell us everything we need to know to plan our defense. The Kairn Telest must be destroyed utterly, of course.
Then,
you may send the beggar to oblivion along with the rest of his clan. Keep his death hushed up the requisite number of waiting days until we can safely reanimate him. We don't want that rabble to strike before we're ready.”

“And how long would you suggest, Sire?”