Sung In Blood

XIII

Rider's ship was ready. It was a light vessel, capable of carrying just a ton of crew and freight, designed for speed. Rider and Spud went to the control array. There were great magicks involved in the airship's propulsion, but much of its control was mechanical. Spud had helped refine the system.

"Ready to cast off," Rider called to the ground. "Dump ballast, Omar." Rider was the only one of the group to use Spud's proper name. And he forgot much of the time.

Spud tripped levers. The ship began tugging at its restraining lines. "Cast off!" Rider shouted.

The ship lurched upward. Rider murmured to the demonic body, spellbound and beguiled, which constituted its motive force. The airship turned toward the river, began to slide forward like a fish through water.

Aft, Su-Cha and Preacher hastened to take in the mooring lines.

"He was headed Henchelside when last I saw him," Rider said. "And downriver. We'll start looking where Deer Creek Drain runs into the river."

"Keep an eye out for his airship, too," Spud said, making an adjustment to levers which controlled flaps on the ship's sharklike fins. "Be hard to hide something that big."

Rider nodded.

The airship's balance shifted as Preacher and Su-Cha came forward. Spud adjusted with the fins. "Any sign of him?" Su-Cha asked.

"Too soon to tell," Rider replied. The river along Henchelside was crowded with the boats of fisherfolk. Rider directed the demon to follow the shoreline south toward the Golden Crescent.

"Take us lower, Omar. I want to see their faces."

There was no tension in the web. Shai Khe was not using his power.

The fisherfolk all looked up as the airship passed over. Rarely did one drop so low.

In time the riverbank curved away westward. The land grew marshy and wild. "Not going to find him this way," Spud said.

"We'll return a ways inland, looking for somewhere where he might have put his ship down,"

Rider said. So they ran inland again, as far as that part of the city on Henchelside opposite the Protte rookery. Still they found nothing.

Rider persisted till nightfall made continued search pointless.

"You could turn a hand with this one," Soup complained to Chaz, as they faced the stair to the laboratory. Soup was carrying Odehnal.

"I could. But I like the one I've got just fine." He had Caracene over one shoulder. She was thoroughly bound despite Rider's admonition to treat her well. She wriggled, and squeaked behind her gag. Chaz just grinned at his companions.

Greystone prodded his man with the tip of a sheathed dagger. That fellow never quit protesting his innocence of anything and everything.

At the laboratory door Greystone said, "Somebody tried to get in while we were out. Evidence of attempted entry was obvious. The effort had been a failure, though."

Chaz said, "Vlazos' friends, no doubt."

Greystone popped a signet ring into a small hole in the wall some feet from the doorway. Each of Rider's men wore identical rings. The door responded with a down-scale, musical whine. "Should have done something like this a long time ago."

Soup countered, "When the old man was running things nobody had the guts to try getting in.

It'll be that way again when they get used to Rider."

"Let's hope."

One small lumber room had been converted to a cell for the prisoner already on hand. Odehnal and the other man joined him. "Have you some dinner in a few minutes," Soup told them. "Except you, Odehnal. You'll have to wait on Rider."

The dwarf's eyes smouldered.

Chaz released Caracene in another room. He told her, "Couldn't give you special treatment in front of the dwarf. Sorry."

She did not answer. There was an odd, measuring look in her eyes. She watched him closely still when she sat down to eat with the three men.

"Shai Khe," Greystone said. "An ill name out east. One that strikes terror everywhere. I wouldn't have thought his interest in Shasesserre to be so intense as to bring him here personally." He glanced at Caracene.

She said, "Shasesserre is all that stands between Shai Khe and creation of the greatest empire the world has known."

"He the one gave you to Odehnal?" Chaz asked.

"Yes."

"What can you tell us about him?" Greystone asked.

"Nothing. While he lives, nothing."

"Me, I lost something somewhere, beautiful lady," Chaz said.

"I am his slave." She said that as though it explained all. In her native land, perhaps it did.

"Who?" Chaz insisted. "Odehnal or Shai Khe?"

Caracene bowed her head. Softly, she replied, "Shai Khe."

"Why? You're in Shasesserre."

"There are no slaves in Shasesserre?"

Chaz had to think his way around the side of that. "He is an enemy of the state. As such he has no rights. You have been freed. We could get you manumission papers by tomorrow."

She looked at him with eyes in which tenderness warred with exasperation. "Paper has no meaning while Shai Khe lives."

Gallantly, Chaz offered, "I'll kick his head in, then. Just tell me where he is."

"I cannot betray him. He is my master."

Soup snickered. Even Greystone smirked.

"I give up," the northerner said. He began muttering about "Women!" under his breath. He cleared his plate and cutlery away, then prepared a tray for the prisoners.

During the afternoon and evening he made every opportunity for Caracene to escape. She did not seize her chance.

Rider reached the laboratory quite late. He examined the prisoners while the others prepared themselves a supper. "Any message from the King?" he asked.

"Nary a word," Chaz replied. "Nothing from anybody."

"I suppose that means he's decided to accept me as Protector—to the extent that he'll ignore me. Till he wants something."

"That's what most of them did with your father. How long you reckon Belledon will last?" Few Shasesserren kings fulfilled normal lifespans. Some years there were three or four selfcoronations.

Jehrke had held the opinion that the city was its empire's worst enemy. The Protector had provided more stability and continuity than the crown.

"He could be a good one. If he stays alive. Suppose we skip the hired hands and deal with Odehnal directly?"

"A truth-drawing?"

"Get it ready. I'll eat first."

Odehnal’s eyes were wild. He was hopelessly caught, for the first time ever at another's mercy. Judging his captors by himself, he was frantic.

"Ought to be interesting," Chaz said, closing the lumber room door. Softly, "The girl wouldn't run."

"I noticed. We'll find him another way."

After eating they brought a more composed Odehnal into the library and strapped him into a chair the twin to that Greystone had used to monitor the web. Rider exercised the utmost caution while unbinding the spells which restrained the dwarf. Odehnal was dangerous still.

"Bit backwards from the way you're used to?" Rider asked. "You willing to tell me what I want to know?" Fear still lurked behind the dwarf's eyes. "Got in over your head when you joined up with Shai Khe, didn't you?"

Odehnal betrayed a flicker of surprise.

"Oh, yeah," Chaz said. "We know about your friend and his pirate airship."

"That being the case, you have no need to question me," Odehnal concluded with a snarl.

"Where is he?" Rider asked.

Silence.

"Do you consider yourself more valuable than Vlazos? He killed Vlazos."

Again Odehnal betrayed a moment's surprise. Vlazos, Rider believed, had been the foot in the Shasesserren door, the lone contact between outsiders and conspirators.

"Let's get on with the truth-drawing, Rider," Su-Cha chirruped. "I love it when they squeal."

His cherubic face darkened. "And this one has abused so many of my kind. Let me have him when you're done."

Kralj Odehnal was not to be manipulated by psychological maneuvers. He was old and tough and tempered, and knew all the games interrogators played. He believed he had invented some himself.

Rider shrugged. "Since we have no choice, then."

Greystone placed a contraption on a stand in front of the dwarf. Odehnal looked puzzled.

"Spud's special design," Greystone said. "More efficient than candles and mirrors."

Odehnal drew a deep breath ...

Chaz stepped behind him, clapped a hand over his mouth. The hand held a wad of cotton impregnated with a fluid of Rider's devising. In moments Kralj Odehnal wore a drugged smile. His head lolled to one side.

Su-Cha stuck him with a hot pin. "Just to make sure he isn't faking."

Rider said nothing, though he knew the Odehnal who was a legend among assassins had selfcontrol sufficient not to start at a pin's prick. "Start it."

Greystone cranked a handle, opened a tiny door. Light flickered upon Odehnal's face. Greystone made a few adjustments.

This was a truth-drawing much less unpleasant than the traditional, which combined a bit of witchcraft with subtle torture. "Waken him," Rider said.

Chaz buried Odehnal's face in cotton moistened with ammonia. The dwarf sputtered and spat and wakened. His eyes met the light and glazed.

Rider asked several hundred questions, each phrased so a yes or no answer would suffice.

Greystone recorded questions and answers and kept his notesheets positioned so Rider could refer to them. The others stayed back, conferring in whispers. Occasionally Soup would dart forward with a note suggesting a question.

The picture that shaped was not one to gladden men devoted to Shasesserre's welfare.

For several years Shai Khe had been recruiting among the sorcerers of the world. Those who refused to make common cause, under his command, he crushed. Those who joined him he gave gifts like Caracene, and powers torn away from those who would not serve him. Now he felt strong enough to test Shasesserre and its Protector.

Rider worked with especial care when he began drawing the names of those Shai Khe had recruited. Yes and no answers were not possible.

Some names amazed him. Some chilled him. Some left him blank, for they were names unknown to him. Those he did know were widely scattered, proving the eastern master had a far reach indeed.

He had drawn just over a dozen names when Odehnal suddenly bucked against his restraints, made squealing noises, and began foaming at the mouth.

"What's wrong with him?" Greystone demanded.

"I don't know ... He's dying. Somebody get the medical kit."

Blood flecked the foam on Odehnal's chin.

Rider brushed the hypnotic engine aside, laid hands on the dwarf's heaving chest. He felt the inner wrongness instantly. "Poison!"

"What kind?" Soup demanded, yanking a battery of antidotes out of the medical kit.

"Can't tell. Something different ... Complex."

Odehnal's eyes opened. Hatred and the knowledge of his own murder filled them. "Polybos House," he croaked. "The Devil's Eyes." His eyes rolled up. He began to shudder violently.

"Rider!" Chaz shouted from the laboratory. "There's something out here."

Rider ripped away from Odehnal, rushed into the darkened laboratory. Chaz was at the window.

"Where?"

"Down there now."

Rider leaned out. A shadow clung to the face of the tower, seventy feet below. Points that might have been eyes blinked. A limb of shadow moved. Rider whipped back, into the laboratory an instant before something tickled against the window frame. "Light," he said. "Get lamps in here."

And, "We have to get that pane replaced." He moved to the library door behind Chaz, blocked that against the rush of his men.

"Whatever it was, it shot something at me. It ricocheted off the window frame into the laboratory. Watch where you step. Find it." He took an oil lamp from Preacher, cautiously returned to the window. He leaned out and dropped the lamp.

Down it plunged to smash on the foot of the Rock. He caught one glimpse of something scuttling into darkness. "What was it? A demon?" Chaz asked. "No. It was mortal. There was no strain on the web. But exactly what manner of mortal I don't know." "Here," Soup called.

Rider joined him, looked where he pointed. "A dart. Get tongs. Handle it with care. Let's see if we can't find another around Odehnal."

"This Shai Khe is some nice fellow," Chaz observed. "Kills anybody ... Caracene. Where did that woman get to?"

"I think Odehnal getting got got her moving," Greystone said. He indicated the exit door. It stood open a crack.

"Su-Cha," Rider said. "You follow her. I'll keep in touch through the web."

"Thought you had her on the web," Chaz said. "Not anymore. She figured she was marked and negated it. Su-Cha."

"Yes sir, boss, sir." The imp dived out the window. This time he did not howl on the way down.

Rider moved back to Kralj Odehnal. In a moment he found the lethal dart. "The bodies pile up.

And still we make no progress."

"At least they aren't our bodies," Chaz said. "That thing could have gotten one of us as easily as it got Odehnal."

"A point we were meant to take, I'm sure," Rider observed. "A bit more caution from now on, friends. Omar. I want you to fix that window. Soon."

"What do we do now?" Preacher asked.

"We find a place called Polybos House and something called the Devil's Eyes. We stay in touch with the web. And we wait for something to happen."

In the other room the dead eyes of Jehrke Victorious seemed to gleam with approval.