Song of Time

4

The old book he'd found in the jar fascinated him. The parchment was in excellent condition, the dryness of the sand and the air in the crypt having preserved it beautifully. Its bronze cover was somewhat tarnished, and still bore the blackened, faint fingerprints of the last owner; the binding was pulled just the tiniest bit away from the spine. Oddly, for the book had obviously been well-cared for at one time, the last page of parchment was ragged and barely clung to the stitching. Flecks of something that looked very much like blood covered parts of that same page, almost as though something sudden and violent had happened over it. Cheyne thought of the bits of broken glass he and Muni had found in that same room and wondered if there were a connection.

He leaned against the Mercanto gates for a better angle in the soft dawn light, tried his magnifier again, but could not read the language. The last pages appeared to have been written with a steady hand, the style very tight and cramped, lines of Old High Sumifan carefully inserted between the other, unrecognizable lines. All but the final page, that is. The writing on that one was overlaid with more Old Sumifan glyphs, and the new words confused their boundaries; the bloodstains, for surely it was blood, blurred some of it also. Without time and the knowledge of the languages, it was impossible to sort them out. Still, Cheyne wondered why anyone would write over the other words-and the closer he looked, the more he realized that the glyphs were sort of burned onto the page, rather than inked.

If only I spoke Old High Sumifan. If only anyone here did. Anyone that I could find again, he groused, thinking of the elusive elf.

The long journey west he'd set for himself seemed more than he could accomplish in the clear morning light and the rising desert heat. By the time he'd slipped from the mess tent and slunk into the city again, miraculously finding the same hole in the outer wall he'd used the day before, he had also recalled that he would need to somehow get past the western erg, and after that, the Wyrvil ores' stronghold. Even sketchy memories of a quick run across the scrubland and salt flats of that barren waste when)avin had first brought him home were almost enough to check his confidence.

Cheyne, at ten, had seen his first and only ore, then-it was a dead one, but the thought of the creature's two-inch incisors, jutting brow, and green-tinged skin still made him uneasy. Even in death, the thing had seemed so feral and wild, more like a beast than a sentient being.

But I have grown up since then, Cheyne reasoned. Perhaps my memory is more terrible than true,

Cheyne gently closed the little book and placed it securely inside his pack.

Business began early in Sumifa: the Mercanto's gates swung open precisely as the gnomon's shadow struck the fifth mark on the sundial. Cheyne strode through and made his way to a stall he had noticed the day before. Several ex-caravan guides had gathered there already and stood waiting for other work, their hoods low over their eyes and their sun-darkened hands avidly punctuating stories of recent adventures.

One fellow loudly extolled how his last fare had lost his shoe to a hungry drom, how the beast sickened and died on the spot from eating such a horrible meal, and how the man had limped home, leaning on the arm of his miserable guide the whole way. The next guide's fare had demanded to be taken to hunt the wild goats, a couple of miles off the regular route, where his feet were trampled and severed from his body in the goats' subsequent attack, and he had to be carried home on his miserable guide's back. The third guide's fare had asked to hunt in the cork forest, truly off the regular trail, had encountered a rutting canista and been stuck to a tree, driven through with the beast's horn, then devoured by the whole herd on the spot, before the very eyes of his guide and six esteemed persons of rank. So completely consumed by the beast was this last poor tourist that the miserable guide could find only his moneybag to carry home.

Amid the chorus of laughter the last story had provoked among the men at the stall, Cheyne stepped up and smiled, beginning to state his case. "Good morning, gentlemen, fine day. May the Twelve Blessings abound in your lives. Would any of you be interested in taking me over the western erg to the Borderlands?

The guides grew silent instantly and each wandered off to a different part of the street, the fellow whose story had won the day staring daggers at Cheyne's forehead. Cheyne shrugged and moved past them, up the winding cobblestone pavement toward the center of the Mercanto. After several hours and an equal number of encounters ending almost exactly like the first one, he came to a small raqa stall and sat down in the shade to rest. When the smiling attendant came with a small cup and a large bottle, he waved her away, taking a long pull on his water skin.

"No, no, no! You cannot sit there. You don't buy, you don't sit. No. Go away." The raqa server bellowed in his ear, her friendliness suddenly transformed into a toothless snarl.

Cheyne escaped the good-sized club she produced from under her counter by ducking through another stall, and then another, until he found himself turned completely around and, worse, out in the Barca again, still with no guide.

He wandered the dirty, narrow alleys of the south side for awhile, its ruby-lipped, green-lidded courtesans beckoning to him from shirrir-scented clouds and raqa-induced stupors. He smiled back at the girls, but they reminded him of the glittering lizards he had seen on the rocks by the river: pretty, but poisonous. He walked until he needed to refill his canteen, but the only place he could do so without paying was at the public well, famous among the workers at the dig for its unsavory contents. When he found the well, he hung his head under its covering, a huge flat rock supported by three smaller ones, a dolmen of sorts, for both shade and a look at what might be floating in there today.

"Oh, hello, there. We meet again," said a voice coming from somewhere behind what looked like an over-large net bobber. Cheyne had seen that nose before.

"You? How did you get-?" Cheyne gestured at the dolmen.

"In the well? Fell. Must have. Say, could you lower the bucket down here and help me out? I'm nearly sober now, and I really don't want to experience this situation in that frame of mind," said the vagrant, the corners of a smile appearing on either side of the nose.

"Of course. Just wait there." Cheyne backed away from the edge of the well and then reappeared instantly. "Sorry. Where would you be going, after all?" he added, embarrassed.

The vagrant beamed up at him tolerantly. Cheyne turned away again, this time returning with a bucket and rope. Within moments, the beggar stood dripping in the street, waterlogged, but no worse for his baptism.

"Thanks very much, good sir. We have broken even, a life for a life. Although yours, it might seem, is worth far more to the Schreefa than mine," said the beggar, wringing out his robes.

"The least I could do," replied Cheyne, thinking he should find another place to get a drink of water.

After a moment of awkward silence, the beggar bowed gracefully, deeply, and introduced himself. "My name is Ogwater Rifkin."

" Cheyne."

Ogwater bowed again, ignoring Cheyne's lack of a surname. "Pleased. For the price of a bottle of raqa, Cheyne, I would be even more pleased. Drowning is hard and thirsty work."

Cheyne smiled bleakly. "Muje Rifkin-"

"Og." The beggar smiled hugely, revealing many perfect, very white teeth.

Cheyne began again. "Og, what money I have must go toward paying a guide and provisions. I'm sorry."

The beggar shrugged, his face falling. "No harm. A guide, you say…?"

Cheyne nodded. Og's smile slowly returned.

"Muni? You'd better come out here…"

Muni awoke thrashing again, his dreams full of the evil djinn, the voice in his ears unfamiliar. He sat up on the low cot, fumbling for a lamp before he swung his feet onto the floor, the precaution ingrained by years of habit. Before he could find the strikebox and the tamp, Kifran lifted the tent door, a torch in his hand. Muni instantly came awake when the light struck him and he focused on the guard's grim face.

"Muje Javin did not come this morning. I waited for him until first light, then came to find him. He lies ill in his bed, and he asks for you."

Kifran let the tent flap drop and waited for Muni to pull on his robes and boots. In another moment, they were both running toward Javin's tent, Muni reaching it first.

"My old friend… what happened?" Muni rasped, his voice heavy and the words coming hard. His old friend opened his gray eyes and tried to smile. Javin's face burned with fever, his flushed, sun-darkened skin drawn tautly over his angular features.

"How do you fight vermin?… They were here," he said softly, barely lifting his hand and pointing toward the corner of the tent. Muni followed the gesture to a single scorpion lying dead on the dirt floor.

"Scorpion? Javin, when? When?" Muni shook his friend back to consciousness.

"I don't know. All night, I could not move. I fought them in my dreams." He shuddered and fell silent.

Muni calmed himself, pushing down the thoughts of the irate Fascini, of the dig closing before they had found the Collector, of Javin dying here and now, and of his own helplessness to heal his old friend.

"No, no, Javin, you cannot die. We have too much to do, and you owe me a game of chess," he assured, trying to smile.

Then he turned to Kifran, who still held the torch at the door. "Where is Cheyne? Find him and go with him to fetch the doctor in the city."

Kifran bowed, lit a lamp for Muni with the torch, and disappeared.

That's not ordinary vermin, thought the linguist, who was something of an unwilling expert on the subject, as he moved to examine the creature. The dead scorpion, a large brown one, lay curled into a ring, its poisonous tail embedded in its own head.

Ah. The Ninnites. So they have found him again, Muni raged silently, understanding the symbol. The scorpion had been magically summoned, a creature from some other realm, not the kind that roamed the site, or hunched in the dark crevices of walls in the city. A creature out of its element. The Ninnites had tracked Javin from one end of Almaaz to the other, even to his home in Argive. No matter how often he moved along, no matter where he dug next, they always found him, but up until now, he had always seen them coming. Javin was a careful man, but this particular dig had been too much of a distraction.

Muni moved back across the tent to his friend, who was murmuring in his sleep. He brought an earthenware cup to the fevered man's mouth, forcing the tepid water past his swollen lips, javin coughed a bit, and his eyes opened.

"I thank you. May your house be washed away in a flood of blessings." He grinned, choking again on the water.

"Be still, my friend." Muni poured some of the water onto a cloth and dabbed it to Javin's burning head. "Cheyne will soon bring the physician, and you will feel much better. Yes, you will live this time."

He found Javin's right hand, checked his pulse, relieved that it was strong. As he leaned over to place the archaeologist's hand back upon his chest, Muni also discovered the sting site: Javin's other hand lay by his side, the fingers swelled to three times their normal size, a small whitened whelp around a prick of dark blood on his ring finger. The wound appeared to be several hours old and looked horribly painful. Muni had seen a similar case before, when he had worked among the Fallaji mages-the poison would come and go, the wound would heal and fester, weakening the person until, eventually, it would sap their strength to the point that there was no more healing. Gangrene followed rapidly.

"You can recover, my friend. But listen to me, Javin: we will have to remove the finger, else the poison will spread. I'll bring more water for the fever. Just rest," he whispered.

"No, Muni, I will be all right. Already, I am feeling better. There is no need to take the finger. And I must tell you… what I saw in the dreams… The man with no face. The Raptor. I could not move; I was powerless. He meant to kill me this time. I am the last one, you see. But it's all clear now; someone has told him about Cheyne. Where is Cheyne?" He sat up in the cot.

"Save your strength, my friend. The one after your son is Saelin. Yes, he is the chiefest of the Ninnite assassins, but he has failed once already; he will fail again. He is not so good as he thinks he is," Muni said, hushing him.

"No, you don't understand…" Javin protested.

"Muni-* Kifran opened the tent flap and held up his hand, a couple of pages from Cheyne's drawing tablet in it. "Javin's son is missing. All I could find were these."