Sung In Blood

XXVIII

Rider noticed the men tailing him immediately. There were three of them and they were fairly good, but he spotted them all the same. He shook them by a method that was almost cruel.

He began running, confident none of his pursuers could stay with him all the way to his destination.

The toughest kept up for five miles.

Rider ran five more miles, at a slower pace. By then he was well into the farm country west of Shasesserre. He ducked into a woodlot and adjusted his disguise slightly. When he reappeared upon the road he looked to be just another farm laborer trudging along with hands thrust into pockets.

His trudge was deceptive. It ate ground quickly. And when he was sure no one was watching he ran.

It was the hard way to make this journey. The slow way. But Shai Khe's spies and eyes would not be watching for a man afoot. An airship or a dromon, yes. Perhaps chariots, coaches, or horsemen. But not a lone, stooped, tired farm hand.

At dusk he came to the ridge that formed the spine of Shroud's Head. He was more than forty miles from the Citadel. That much walking tired even him. He located a sheltered place and fell asleep immediately.

He wakened six hours later, in the ebb hour of the night, exactly as planned. He listened to cricket sounds. Nothing else was moving, a fact he confirmed by cautious extension of his wizard's senses.

Confident that he was alone and unwatched, he began working his way up and out the ridge. He avoided trails and easy traveling. In the dark even the most skilled of men could overlook some warning device.

He reached the crown of Shroud's Head without incident or discovery. Once there he settled himself and set his wizard's senses roaming in earnest.

There were guards, yes. And warning devices. And an incredibly complex net of spells meant both as alarm and trap ... And something more. Something dark, the nature of which he could not immediately discern.

There were only two men, though. One was asleep and the other was nodding. There should have been more. Unless Shai Khe had grown so short of manpower he had stripped his airship of its crew.

That must be it. Rider could detect no other human beings anywhere within reach of his talent.

That other thing, though ... He had begun to sense its outlines, its black formless form. And he had begun to suspect what it might be. And if it was, he had learned much about the horror that slithered within a man named Shai Khe.

If that thing were loosed, no single sorcerer, not even a Jehrke or a Shai Khe, would be able to bind it again. An army would be needed, and many of them would die in the struggle. Horribly.

But for now it was confined and constrained and could, with relative ease, be returned to that foul place whence it had been summoned.

If Rider could untangle the net of spells shielding both airship and devil.

Now he knew why Kralj Odehnal had said "Devil's Eyes" instead of "Devil's Eye." The deep cave and hidden airship were only half the story. There was, perhaps, the approximation of a pun in confining the devil in the other, shallower eye.

Rider examined the nest of spells. His regard for Shai Khe, as a sorcerer, rose. It would be a long, arduous, interesting, dangerous job, penetrating that without leaving tracks. He settled in to do it.

He was through. He was safely inside unseen. He had done what he had come to do and had seen what he had come to see. And now he was trapped.

Just as he was about to leave, Shai Khe's airship crew returned, having come down the Bridge of the World by boat. And with them they had brought Caracene, Soup, and Greystone. How had they gotten to Greystone and the girl?

For the moment all three were safe enough. The airshipmen had orders to install them in the airship and keep them confined. Nothing more.

Rider wished he could get back to the City and learn what had happened. The airshipmen knew nothing. But he could not depart without being seen, or, at least, without leaving traces that would be instantly apparent to Shai Khe's eye.

He slipped into a shadowed cleft and rested, and waited for a chance to make a properly discreet departure.