it was just as it had been.
The Initiate looked me full in the face and said, “It is a responsibility, heavy for one so young, that you have been given. Strong thoughts and good will go with you, to strengthen your spirit and steady your hands. Your apprenticeship is at an end, though you may not yet know it. When you feel that you are free, return here, and we will find a way”—and here he smiled—“to find you a berth upon an honest ship, that you may have your heart’s desire.”
As I hurried away, back to the house of Lo-Vahr, I was consumed with wonder. How had the Initiate known my secret wish? Never had I mentioned it to En-Bir. Certainly they were wonderful men, but their ways were mysterious and fearsome.
I returned well within the time set by my master, for so smoothly had the extra time been spent that it cost me only a little effort at speed to recover the lost minutes.
Lo-Vahr waited at the door of his chambers, looking now and again down the hall toward the closed door of Ne-La’s rooms. When he heard my step, he turned, and his cloak spread in the draft, so that a bat, in truth, stood with claw outstretched. I placed the bundle in that awful hand and turned and fled down the stair.
Now was the hardest of all disciplines mine to learn. I must wait, hoping, believing that the rites of the Initiate would render the thing that my master would use to begin his ritual destructive to him. Yet I stole back and hid behind the garnet curtains. Should all fail, I would still try to save the girl, Ne-La.
In my heart I pictured my master drawing his foul diagrams upon his hearth, setting out the tools of his spell. His eyes would be glittering, I knew, with his awful lust, not for a woman, but for the ability to fly like a bat.
Strange, is it not, that so childish a desire should devour a man in his prime, to his utter corruption?
I learned waiting, and dreading, and prayer, in that short time which seemed so long. But beside my heart I felt the presence of the Initiate’s promise, and it warmed me from despair.
Faintly I could hear Lo-Vahr’s chanting and the clinking of vessels as he moved them. More faintly I could hear Ne-La’s steps as she paced nervously in her rooms. But above all there hung a pall of dark silence, a waiting, airless miasma of stillness.
I leaned back in the embrasure of the window, and my eye was caught by a blur of motion. Making a frame of my hands, I peered out and saw by starlight a cloud of bats that whirled and boiled about the house of Lo-Vahr. I opened the window and leaned far out. His window glowed with fitful light, and I knew that his fire burned high.
Then, on the wall of the adjoining house, I saw his shadow appear as he moved toward the window. Arms spread wide, cloak drooping like bat wings, he seemed to stagger, and I heard a terrible cry.
There was a growing red glare from the fire, which seemed to have caught the room. I turned and leaped from the window space to the door of Ne-La. “The house is burning!” I cried. “Come to safety!”
Never had she heard my voice, but she knew it was not his and came at once. Sending her down the stair, I went to the servants’ wing and cried a warning to them, then hurried after Ne-La, but she had fled into the night and, I hope and believe, to some place of safety unrelated to a father who would sell her to a warlock.
I sought for her for a time as the firelight grew behind me. Then I turned and looked a last time upon the house of Lo-Vahr. It was a tower of flame. I could see the ragged line of servants straggling from the wide door. The window of Lo-Vahr was upon the other side, but I could see a sprinkling of specks against the light that I knew to be the bats, and I could hear their cries as they fled the heat down the dark alleys. Then I knew that I was indeed free, and I went to the Tower of Truth.
So I became a seaman and lost for a time my love of secret things, and for all time any desire to look into the ways of warlocks.
Chapter Four
Shallah Sits at Her Loom
A curving wing of shadow raced across the Bay of Shar-Nuhn, dyeing the Purple Waters with dapplings of darkness. High in his pigeon loft, Kla-Noh, Seeker After Secrets, watched with delight as the spectrum of color spread below him. The softly muttering pigeons supplied a quiet music to suit his mood, and he felt his heart lift as he saw, far to the south, a belated bird speeding its way toward his loft.
Swiftly as a cloud it came, and it alighted and entered its nook with a weary air.
“Well, old friend,” said Kla-Noh, “long has it been since you last rested in my aerie. Now what has brought you winging from the south?”
He lifted the bird, feeling its throbbing life hot between his hands as he soothed and fondled it. From its leg he took the small container that bore the message, then he hurried down the steps to his sitting room. To his reading table the old Seeker went at once.
Si-Lun, entering from the terrace, lighted the lamp for his foster father, and the two sat side by side, studying the coded symbols inscribed upon the tiny bit of paper.
“Strange,” said Kla-Noh. “From Lo-Shel, who lives in the mountain fastnesses to the south, has the bird come. Always have I sought word from Lo-Shel, never he from me. Quiet are his ways and his life; strong is his mind, and great his heart. No trouble—and he has known many, living as he does upon the very edge of the lands of men—has ever thwarted his abilities. What can he need of me?”
Slowly he deciphered the message contained in the crabbed symbols. Si-Lun bent closer to see as the words formed, one by one, upon the page beneath the Seeker’s pen. “‘Shallah sits at her loom’,” he read. “Shallah?”
“Wife and heart’s heart to Lo-Shel. Seer and prophet is she, and many other things, yet tender to him and to their children and strong in any adversity.” Kla-Noh thumbed through a worn tablet, seeking for the symbol keys, then wrote again: “‘She does not speak, though the younglings cry at her side. She will not eat. She falls at night across the loom and must be carried to her couch. She looks always at the weave, with horror in her eyes. Come to me, my friend. I have great need’.”
The two Seekers looked each into the other’s eyes. They nodded, slowly, and Si-Lun rose from his chair. “We go by sea or by land?” he asked. “Steep are the anchorages to the far south, yet few are the roads. How go you when you visit Lo-Shel?”
“We must obtain riding beasts. Send Nu-Veh into Shar-Nuhn after supplies, for we will be many days upon the road. Go you to the farm yonder after beasts, and I shall send a winged courier to assure Lo-Shel that we come.”
Swiftly could the Seekers move when there was need, and morning saw them upon the road, mounted upon the sturdy beasts that their neighbor had supplied. Late summer lit the fields with gold upon either hand, and they rode with enjoyment in the balmy air, keeping a steady gait yet never forcing their mounts.
Two days they rode before the mountains rose, a dim blue line across the southern horizon. From the warm comfort of their way they could see, glinting in the sunlight, peaks wrapped in never-melting snows.
“There lies the first pass that we must cross,” said Kla-Noh, pointing. “It is well that it is summer, for in winter the passes lie buried beneath terrible masses of snow. Even now it will be a perilous journey which, without the aid of these strong mounts, might well leave our bones upon those heights with those of many other wayfarers.”
But their pace did not slacken, and as day followed day they
