The Forests Of Gleor

Chapter 16

Neena pointed out her father to Blade as soon as the king came in sight. Blade would not have needed her help. It was obvious at once who among the people facing them was King Embor of Draad.

Embor was half a head taller than Blade, but like his daughter he was slim and fine boned. The loss of flesh that comes with age had turned his slimness almost into gauntness, but his movements were sure and fluid and graceful. He carried himself with a dignity that Blade would have called «regal» even if Embor hadn't been a king.

The king's skin was the same color as his daughter's, but his dark hair and small square beard had turned a gray that was already shading into silver. He wore a necklace of gold links holding together copper disks set with large emeralds, emerald rings on four fingers, and a sword with a truly enormous emerald set in the hilt. He wore a tunic and trousers of monkey fur dyed red, soft leather boots, and a copper-studded belt, but no crown.

Embor stepped forward toward Blade and Neena, and the warriors with him gave way to either side. Most of them were looking intently at Blade, and several had their spears raised. One went so far as to nock an arrow to his bow and point it at Blade. That drew a glare from King Embor, and the warrior hastily dropped the arrow back in his quiver.

«Well, daughter,» said Embor, with a surprisingly gentle smile. He looked at the moment much more the father than the king and warrior. «So you return to us safely-and with a husband.» Then his reserve broke down completely, and he stepped forward and embraced his daughter. For a long moment they stood, holding each other. The warriors smiled broadly.

One person in the group was not smiling, at least not while King Embor's attention was all on his daughter. This was a tall woman, large boned and almost voluptuous, her perfectly molded face framed in a mass of mahogany-colored hair. She also wore garments of red-dyed monkey fur and a necklace of gold, copper, and emeralds. For all her beauty, though, her face was chill and blank, except when her eyes fell on Neena. Then unmistakable hatred flashed in them.

Blade did not try to meet the woman's eyes or attract her attention. He knew who she was without being told-Queen Sanaya. What he saw in her eyes also confirmed everything Neena had said about the queen's being an enemy. Very well, he would accept that-then wait for her to make the first move. Sanaya was queen of Draad, and he was a newcomer. How strong his position as Neena's husband would be, he couldn't be sure. He did not want to put the matter to a test out of sheer carelessness.

Eventually Embor and Neena unwound from each other. The king turned to Blade. «You come here as the betrothed husband of my daughter, so I will not ask many questions that I would ask otherwise. I do not despise her judgment enough to believe that she would choose one unworthy, and LET NO ONE ELSE DO SO EITHER!» His voice boomed out suddenly, and Queen Sanaya jumped like a startled horse.

«So be it,» he said, stepping forward with both hands outstretched. Blade stretched out his own hands and the king took them. «There is much I do not know of you and what you and my daughter have done to escape from Trawn. I shall ask you and Neena to tell me all of it, at another time and in another place. Here and now, I say only-be welcome in Draad, my son.»

Embor embraced Blade. Over the king's shoulder Blade could see both Neena and Sanaya. They were alternately glaring at each other and watching Embor and Blade. Neena's face was split in a broad grin as she saw her father embrace her husband. Sanaya's face was frozen again, so completely that not even her eyes gave any clues to the emotions that were certainly bubbling inside her.

With Blade and Neena joined to it, the royal party turned about and headed back down into the valley of Draad. Everyone marched except Queen Sanaya and an elderly man Neena described as the High Kaireen, the most important scholar in Draad. These two were carried in litters. Everyone else walked, from King Embor down to the thirty-odd servants with the party.

They walked fast, too. At the end of each day's march Blade was quite happy to sink down onto the ground beside the king's campfire, drink beer from wooden cups, and tell King Embor of his and Neena's adventures in Trawn.

As King Embor learned more of what had happened to Blade and Neena, Blade learned more about Draad. Much merely confirmed what he'd already heard from Neena-the prickly rivalry of the clans, King Embor as a referee, the skill and endurance of the hunters and warriors of Draad in the great forests.

Other things were new. Neena had not told him that Draad was poor in metals, for example. Only the greatest chiefs and warriors could afford swords. Everyone else had to make do with spears and arrows or clubs and axes with stone heads. These served well enough for hunting. Facing the swordsmen and the stolofs of Trawn was another matter.

Of the metals, iron was fairly common, and the Kaireens and their servants had some skill in working it. Copper, on the other hand, was so rare that only the highest in the land could afford to wear a few disks of it as jewelry. The copper in King Embor's great royal necklace was worth more than half a dozen large rich villages with all their people, beasts, and land.

On the other hand, the people of Draad had a good many skills and resources that helped make up for their lack of metals. There were the emeralds, which poured out of rich mines in the southern part of the great valley. There was also the threebo tree. This bamboolike plant had round jointed stalks that could be cut into tough spear shafts, axe handles, and eight-foot quarterstaffs that were called threebos after the tree itself.

Blade made a notable impression on the warriors of King Embor's guard by defeating half a dozen of them in quick succession in bouts with the threebo. Then King Embor challenged him. He could have defeated the king as well, but managed to avoid doing so without being detected at it. King Embor would probably not object to being defeated by his new son-in-law. But the king had too many enemies who might draw the wrong conclusions from such a defeat.

There were also leaves, resins, and barks that the people of Draad had learned to use with great skill. They also had a surprisingly advanced medical science, which Blade saw in action one day.

The royal party was marching on a wide path along the shore of a lake. It was a gray, damp morning with the lake's surface as smooth as glass. Suddenly a woman burst out of the bushes toward the lake, waving her arms and screaming.

«Lord, oh lord king, send a Kaireen! Send one, send! My son, my son, a black stalker has him! A Kaireen, for the love of the gods!»

The royal party scurried into action. King Embor summoned six warriors of his guard. The High Kaireen climbed out of his litter, summoned his assistants, and lined up with the warriors. A chance to practice his medical skills seemed to have taken twenty years off his age.

«May I go with them, Lord?» said Blade.

«Certainly,» said Embor. «The arts of our Kaireens are no secret.»

Blade fell in with the rescue party and marched off with it as the woman led it down toward the lake shorn. As they marched, the woman calmed down enough to give a more coherent explanation of what had happened. Apparently the black stalker-some sort of large carnivorous animal-hadn't actually carried off her son. But it had mangled his leg rather gruesomely.

They found the boy soon enough. He was lying on the grass beside a log but near the shore of the lake. His right leg seemed to have been hacked from thigh to ankle with razor-sharp axes. He was unconscious and deathly pale, but still breathing regularly.

The High Kaireen took one look, then turned to his assistants. «The leg must come off.» The mother whimpered and sank to her knees beside her son. «Forgive me, little mother, but there is no choice if your son is to live. The leg will never hold him up again. Instead it will fester and burn, and in the end finish what the black stalker began.» The woman turned blank eyes on the old man, then nodded slowly.

The assistants went rapidly to work. One of them drew out a saw, with iron teeth set in a wooden bar. The other drew out a stained pad of cloth and a leather bottle. He removed a wooden stopper from the bottle and poured several ounces of the liquid on the cloth. Finally he gripped the boy's hair with one hand and clamped the soaked cloth over his nose and mouth with the other.

The boy mewled and writhed. The High Kaireen had to hold his shoulders before he would stay still. Even then it was a long time before his breathing became regular as he slipped down into unconsciousness.

Once the anesthetic took effect, the assistants event swiftly to work. Both seemed to be competent surgeons. In a matter of minutes they had the mangled leg off and the stump bound up and bandaged. They seemed to have some hints of antiseptic principles-they were careful to keep their hands clean, and did not let the wound or the bandages touch the ground.

Blade had a host of questions he wanted to ask about medicine in Draad, and particularly the anesthetic liquid. It occurred to him, however, that showing too much curiosity could arouse suspicions and make him enemies. He kept quiet while the High Kaireen carefully explained to the woman how to take care of her son, and how another trained man would be sent from the nearest village in a few days. The woman kept nodding without saying anything. Blade hoped she understood at least half of the excellent advice she was getting. The High Kaireen obviously knew a good deal more about medicine than Blade would have expected from even the most learned man among such a primitive people.

They were on the way back to join the rest of the party before the High Kaireen felt like speaking. «Prince Blade,» he said. «You watched with interest my people at work. There are Kaireens in your land of England?»

«Yes, quite a few.»

«Are they wiser than I?»

Blade sensed that the old man was asking to be praised, although he did not seem like the sort to appreciate really gross flattery.

«Some are,» said Blade. «A great many are not.» That was both flattering and accurate. The High Kaireen seemed to be a man able to use all of his intelligence for any purpose that interested him. That made him a wise man by any standards of any dimension.

The High Kaireen smiled graciously. «Thank you. I do not imagine, then, that our skills have many surprises for you.»

This was an admirable opening. Blade shrugged. «Not many. But the liquid you poured on the cloth-the one that made the boy sleep-that interests me. I-«

«That?» The High Kaireen sighed wearily. «The sleeping water from the peza leaves? It is a strange jest of the gods.»

«How is this? It saved that boy much pain.»

«Yes, it is better to have it than not to have it at all. But it is not all that good. It is made by boiling peza leaves in water from mountain springs, then letting the liquid settle. When it has settled one takes the part close to the bottom, and that is the sleeping water. It is not strong enough, for as you saw even a small weak boy took a long time to fall asleep. Yet if one uses too much, it is very easy for the sleep to turn into death.»

«You have no way of making it stronger?»

«The gods have given us no such knowledge, Blade, not in all the years we have been using the sleeping water. I suppose they will never give it to us. Perhaps they wish us to endure pain, to remind us that we are weak after all.»

«Perhaps,» said Blade. His mind was no longer entirely on his conversation with the High Kaireen. Instead, part of it was drawing conclusions from what the old man said and leaping on ahead to exciting guesses.

The anesthetic was too weak and too unreliable. That was not surprising, considering the crude methods used in making it. Suppose one developed a way of distilling the sleeping water, so that it was five, six, ten times as powerful?

Yes, but distillation involved metal tubing, large quantities of it. There wasn't enough copper in all of Draad to make a single good still. Nor was there the skill in iron working needed to make usable pipes out of iron.

True enough, all of it. But threebo stalks are hollow, and the wood is strong, tough, and waterproof. Seal the joints with resins and leaves, and you might have exactly what you need for a still. It would be a weird-looking setup, all the tubing probably zigzagging instead of coiled. But it might work. If it worked, Draad's sick and wounded would have cause to bless the name of Prince Blade for a long time to come.

Blade smiled at the thought. Then his mind took another leap ahead, and abruptly his face straightened out. Suppose you could make the sleeping water even stronger than you needed for an anesthetic? Then you'd have something usable as a weapon. Spray a good dose of it on a man, and he'd go down.

A man-or a stolof. A man might be fast enough on his feet to evade the spray. But a stolof? They were deadly, true, but they were not that fast on their eight feet. Attacked by brave men spraying powerful sleeping water, what would happen to them? They might be knocked out. Certainly they would be far too slow to fight, to kill, to hurl their deadly ribbons with such accuracy.

Blade swallowed. For a moment he felt almost dizzy at the possibilities opening up in front of him. He felt as though he was slightly drunk and standing on top of a high cliff in the darkness, with a strong cold wind blowing around him.

The sensation faded, and Blade began to think clearly again. There were a hundred questions he'd have to answer before he could say if his idea made sense or not. How did stolofs breathe? How well could the joints of threebos be sealed? What with? And so on.

Well, he would just have to go about finding out the answers. In the meantime he would keep his mouth shut. He did not want to arouse vain hopes in those who would be his friends. He also did not want to arouse jealousy and all the things that might follow from jealousy in those people who could easily become his enemies.

Neena came out to greet him as he approached the main party. «Blade, you look-strange. As though something very important had happened to you.»

«I do?» He shook his head. «I did not know. I suppose it is just being happy that we have saved the boy. That is all that has happened, and isn't that enough?» Even Neena would have to remain ignorant for the time being.

«I suppose so,» she said, and took his arm.