Song of Time

16

"Javin!" the shout echoed through the rocks from Doulos's left.

"Cheyne?" came the weak answer. "Is that really you?"

A hail of stones rained down on the snarling, laughing canistas, and they broke off the attack and scattered through the low brush in all directions.

"We are here, Muje! By the tree," cried Doulos.

Just then, the canistas, no longer confused, herded back together and bounded through the brush and charging Cheyne and Yob. Half the pack separated and circled warily around the ore while three others took turns rushing Cheyne. The beasts were quicker than anything Cheyne had ever fought, and seemed to enjoy dancing in and out of his dagger's range, snapping at his heels as he whirled around and around, keeping them away. The others, wide grins on their slavering jaws, paced around Yob and began to narrow their circles.

They were within seconds of closing in when Doulos began to yell an ancient Neffian war cry at the top of his lungs from the tree. The shrill sound bounced around the flinty rocks and echoed off the mountainside, causing the canistas to hesitate just long enough for the big ore to drive through their circle and reach Cheyne. As they met, Cheyne pressed himself to Yob's back, and when the canistas rejoined the attack, two of them had their throats slit before they knew it. They fell slowly, never seeming to notice they were dying, their jaws continuing to snap and snarl. The others hopped over the bodies of their packmates with no concern. Frustrated, Doulos could not aim his spear for their constant motion.

"Over to the fire, Yob," cried Cheyne. The ore grunted his understanding and they began to move slowly, a step at a time, toward the dying fire. "Good. Get ready."

Cheyne took his opening when one of the beasts jostled another and fell into the firepit. The fire caught at its fur instantly, but the beast died before it felt the burning as Doulos finally got his opportunity to stab it. Cheyne leapt away from Yob, retrieved the spear with a quick jerk, and rolled the dead canista off the embers.

He took the stick on which Doulos had roasted a rabbit and stirred the embers into new life as Yob moved around behind the fire, keeping the rocks at his back. The canistas drew back, growling low. Cheyne cautiously worked the fire until it caught on the greasy stick, then he advanced on the canistas, swinging the flaming stick in the midst of them.

He tossed Yob the spear, then ran from behind the firebed, crushing the pack together, causing them to turn and bite one another in their fear and frenzy. There were still too many. At least they still couldn't get to Javin. The biggest of them broke from the fur fight and loped off a short distance to gather speed, then ran back at Cheyne. Cheyne stood his ground as the beast charged, and opened him from breastbone to belly with his dagger as the canista leapt onto him. Their leader dead, the others scattered, wailing and crying and snickering into the night.

"Good fighting, master. We don't have long," said Yob. "They'll come back again. Canistas are a worthy enemy. They never give up."

"Neither do I, Yob. We'll play until we win," said Cheyne, wiping the dark, sticky blood from his dagger and hands. "Come on."

They found favin with Doulos crouched protectively over him, quietly weeping. Javin appeared to have lost a lot of blood from several bites, Javin was calling for his son. Cheyne bent over him, straining to hear what his foster father was saying.

"Cheyne… I thought I would never see you again. Are you safe?"

"Yes, very safe. And so are you, now, Javin."

"1 found him… the Collector."

Cheyne smiled, his ears alert for the canistas. "I'm glad, Javin."

"There is something you must know." Javin's breathing had suddenly become shallow and far too fast.

"What's wrong with him? He's not hurt that badly." Cheyne clutched at Doulos as he ground out the words. Doulos pointed to Javin's exposed arm, where the poison had advanced up to his shoulder.

"He says it was the Raptor. He followed you because you are in terrible danger," said Doulos, his face bleak in the starlight. Cheyne let the slave go and bent closer to hear, hoping Javin had the strength to say what he intended.

"The caravan. You were right, Cheyne, I never told you… all. But if I had, the way I hid you from him would never have worked. I was on my way to the forest with that caravan to dig for the Collector. When the Raptor came, you were bringing water to the animals. One of the droms had loosened its hobbles, and you had gone far afield to find it. By the time you returned, the Raptor's agent, an elf with a scar across his cheek, had killed everyone but me. But he didn't know about you. That day, when you came back from the wood, I took you and hid you from him.

"Your amulet… for centuries, we have passed it down one to another, in the Circle. It was the Collector's, and some of his magic has remained upon it. I am no good with magic, but I used the amulet to take away the picture in your mind of your identity. That's why you cannot see yourself. If you do not know who you are, then he cannot know who you are.

"Cheyne, the Circle ends with me… I am the last. The Raptor, he has hunted us down over the centuries, finding us no matter how well we hid. Many times, I have been within his grasp, and he let me go. This time he tried to kill me. It could only be because of you, and the Clock…"

"Because of the treasure?" Cheyne repeated incredulously.

"Yes, but it is you he wants… has always wanted. You are the one, you see…"

Cheyne looked up at Doulos, who shook his head in bewilderment. Doulos hushed Javin for a moment, listening. Cheyne raised his dagger, thinking the canistas had returned. They waited in silence for awhile, but heard nothing else. Doulos slipped around the boulders for a look, but found only Yob, his spear firmly in hand. From the high branches of the big oak, Naruq leapt and landed without a sound, already counting his fortune.

Cheyne was still holding Javin's head when he began to talk again. "The Clock is really a weapon, made by the Collector long ago, when the brothers fought. The book-"

"Javin, you have the book? The little bronze-bound one? I… I found it in the crypt and took it with me. I'm sorry, Javin, I was angry with you. I should have left it for you. I thought it lost forever!"

"It's all right. The book must explain how the Clock works; it has to. The juma writings say… it's where the Collector left his clues. You cannot let the beast get out. The Raptor still believes the crystal wall shields a treasure. He will stop at nothing to get it- and you. He is a madman, no man at all anymore… part phantom, his hand a claw." Javin collapsed without another word.

Cheyne huddled over his father for a long while, until Doulos pulled him away and covered Javin with his outer robe.

"What do you know about this?" Cheyne asked Doulos.

The Neffian shrugged his shoulders, took the book from Javin's pack and gave it to Cheyne, who shook his head sadly.

"Only the Treefather can read this. And I've missed my only chance to get through the curtain of light."

With Saelin following at a safe distance and the wind taking his words the other way, Rotapan trudged up the dark, windy mountainside, cursing Riolla loudly and with great exuberance. It made him feel better. More importantly, it made him warm.

Icicles had formed on his long ears by the time he had cleared the tree line. His ill-shod feet were cut and bleeding from the unavoidable patches of obsidian and broken lava, and the only thing that kept him moving upward was the thought of those talking heads and their miserable prophecy. As long as there was a chance to rebuild his tower, to regain his staff, he lurched onward. In his mind, he had already redecorated the topmost pinnacle of the new temple with Riolla's head. The great Lord Chelydrus would enjoy his offering of her adder-poisoned blood.

The higher he climbed, the more an ice cloud obscured his vision. Soon, only the steady strain of moving upward and the dark patches of the barren, wind-scoured rock beneath his feet guided him. He began to imagine smells and noises in the cold fog. A whiff of wet fur and a low growl behind him. The padding of heavy feet in the snow off the trail. The pant and whine of wolves.

And Saelin nowhere around. He should never have trusted Riolla's assassin to watch his back. Fighting for breath, Rotapan quickened his step, looking for possible weapons on the trailside and sending small rocks plinking down the path behind him. He broke stride to pick up a large piece of obsidian, but his hands were so stiff with cold that he fumbled it. When he turned to retrieve the dark glass, he found himself standing within three feet of the biggest white wolf he had ever seen. Rotapan froze in his tracks, cold weapon in hand.

"It will be sweet, that day when the Lord Chelydrus appears to me before my people. Then they will believe," he said aloud, trying to chase his fears with the sound of his own words.

"Believe what?"

The voice behind him was strangely accented. He turned his head to see a gray-eyed Neffian in furs and a silver slave collar and his other companion, the white wolfs mate.

"Don't move. Do you need help? Are you lost?" said the Neffian.

Rotapan turned his head slowly to face forward again. The wolf stood silently gazing at the half-ore for several seconds, then his lips rippled, his nose lifted in a snarl, and he began to growl almost imperceptibly. Rotapan knew if he made the slightest move, the bigger wolf would be upon him. He felt himself close to passing out from fear and lack of air.

Worse still, the other wolf had moved soundlessly closer to his back. He could feel its hot, rank breath upon his neck. Probably the female, thought Rotapan. She might be a little smaller. The male pulled back into a half-crouch, tightening to spring.

Rotapan swallowed hard, took a deep breath, then shrieked a wordless prayer to Chelydrus at the top of his lungs as he tried to run past the female. She whipped her claws into his back as he went down, but Rotapan somehow found her neck and managed to bring the rock across it, opening her throat with a frantic swipe of the glass. She yelped once before dropping. Instantly, the big male sprang over her body with a magnificent leap, but Rotapan ducked and caught him in the belly with the same edge that had killed his mate.

Rotapan looked around for the Neffian, but there was no sign of him. He cautiously kicked at the dead wolves, all the while straining to see into the deep mist where more of them might be waiting. But all he heard was a hungry pup's distant whimper.

Let him go, thought Rotapan. He'll starve on his own, and I can be on my way.

As he turned to go, Rotapan noticed some sort of metal band around the female wolfs neck. "Like that Neffian's collar… the slaves will come for me now," he muttered. "But let them do their worst. Mighty Chelydrus has protected me. And you I did not need, worthless Saelin!" He searched his pocket making certain Riolla's Ninnite coin still rested there, and walked on.

He worked another hour scaling the steep path, slick with snow and black ice, and finally came upon a more level road that led into the castle's keep. Before him, white with five or six inches of fresh snow, stood Drufalden's crystal gates. If the slaves were going to ambush him, this would be the most likely place. Saelin had said there was some kind of secret entrance just outside the gate, which the slaves used when they slipped out to hunt.

The thieves' colony supposedly lay just beyond this point, with Drufalden's castle further up the mountain and within the old volcano's protective shell. If Rotapan could manage to get past these gates, he could slip in and deliver his order, asking for a legion of his own to take back to his temple. After all, he had the coin. How would Drufalden know until he was gone that Riolla's orders were any different?

Rotapan slowed his pace and kept to the shadows of the rock wall, where the mist seemed to linger. But before he had taken another three steps, white-shrouded guards stepped out from the gates and advanced stiffly toward him, swords drawn.

"Stop where you stand!" shouted the one on the left.

Rotapan plastered himself to the rock wall. His knees knocked together and his breath came in gasps. Unbidden, stories of travelers lost on this peak, checking their maps and freezing open-eyed and standing, came racing to his mind. The coin, in his hand for the last few feet, was losing its heat even faster, and felt as though it were stuck to his palm like a searing brand.

The guards shuffled through the heavy snow and stopped a few feet away from him. "We hear you. Show yourself, slave. We have warned you about leaving the colony without our escort," said one of them, his eyes strangely vacant, his breath making no mist in the frigid air.

Rotapan could not move. But from the other side of the path came a faint sound. The Neffian crouched behind a snowbank, holding a whimpering wolf pup inside his furs. Rotapan breathed a slow sigh of relief when he realized he was not the guards' objective. At the sound of the pup's cry, they moved in on the Neffian, affording Rotapan a strange revelation. The guards' skin was as white as their stiff robes, and when he looked directly upon their faces, he could almost see the outline of everything behind them. They looked as though they were made of the same ice that covered the entire top of the mountain. They carried swords made of brilliant crystal and their words hung in the air like the sound of steel on steel.

As they came forward, the Neffian released the pup and silently bade him to stay, then broke from his cover and shot past them as they clashed their swords over his head. The slave ran in through the gates, then took to the even steeper path toward the main entrance of the slave colony, the guards following stiffly, but with amazing speed. Rotapan shrugged and slipped through the silvery gates into the vacant courtyard.

The mist had thinned and the light from the moons and the three sisters sparkled over hundreds of intricate ice sculptures, making the courtyard seem alive with strange animals, flowers, and trees. The half-ore stood transfixed, forgetting the cold, forgetting the guards and the coin in his hand, forgetting his mission and Riolla.

For there in the midst of the cavorting ice sculptures, occupying a massive block of ice, complete with carved waves and the surge of the cauldron, reared the shining, glossy shape of a sea dragon.

"Chelydrus!" breathed Rotapan.

"Amazing, isn't it, Wyrvil? These were carved when her people ruled most of the continent, before the great Thaw. Some say all of them really roamed the world at that time." Saelin's voice came drifting past Rotapan's ear.

"Bow your knee to the god of the waters!" Rotapan snapped, irritated that anyone else would be sharing his audience with Chelydrus. "And just where were you when I was dragged and bloodied and mauled by those wolves?"

Saelin gestured mockingly at the ice sculpture. "Right behind you. Conserving my strength. You didn't seem to need any help. Let's go. The Rimscalla guards won't be long with that slave. I'd rather not have to wait on them."

Before Rotapan could move, Saelin threw a blindfold over his head and jerked the knot tight, setting his dagger's edge at the half-ore's scrawny throat.

"Nobody sees the way in, Wyrvil."

And you won't see the way out, either, he chortled to himself, pointing Rotapan in the direction of Drufalden's castle.