The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,132

lower slopes leading down to the Drowned Lands below. She could never do it with the riders of Esrex’ household, the riders of the White Bragenmeres, on her heels. Not traveling alone.

What it came to, she thought, was trust. Trust in that scabby, frightened man in Yekkan; trust in his not-very-strong amulet; trust in the strength of his heart against the fear of the Veiled God. She drew her horse a little out of the main road and bowed her head, feeling as if she were drawing in upon herself, making herself invisible in spirit and hoping that Shilmarglinda, Goddess of Beasts, Fruit, and Birth, would keep the horses from snorting or neighing.

And waited.

From the misty shadows of the pass the masked riders of Agon appeared, anonymous, dark-clothed, empty-eyed, and at least thirty strong, and swept down the road beside which she sat, their hoofbeats ringing in the narrow way.

Twenty-four

“RIGHT,” TOM SAID GRIMLY, slowing and down-shifting. “Rabbi, Sara, down on the floor. Rhion, get one of those guns and get ready. We’re going to crash it.”

“No!” Rhion said sharply.

At the same moment Sara added, “If you give Rhion a gun we’re all gonna be killed,” a judgment call with which Saltwood had to agree, though he wanted to point out that the chances that they would all be killed in the next five minutes were astronomically high as things stood.

While the car slowed Rhion busily unwrapped the iron wire that held the circlet to the staff. Concentrating on the barricade, Saltwood was conscious again of a strange and disturbing optical effect connected with the Spiracle whose nature he couldn’t quite define. In the dim flare of the approaching flashlights he had an evanescent sense once more of seeing something floating around the twined iron loop, something that wasn’t precisely a webby cloud of spider strands, but that made him think of one for reasons he couldn’t guess.

Yet when he turned his head he saw nothing strange and, in fact, wondered why he had thought he had. It was only a ring of twisted iron and silver, scratched with odd little marks and holding five crystals in a pattern not symmetrical, but certainly definite, a pattern governed by what he dimly guessed to be the proportions of some non-Euclidean geometry. He noticed how gingerly the Professor cupped the Spiracle in his hand, framing it with thumb and middle finger and never allowing his fingers to pass through its rim.

Rhion’s voice was very calm. “Lie on the floor over the guns and gear,” he instructed, handing the decapitated staff back over the seat. He glanced at Tom. “You have a pass?”

“Yeah, but they’re looking into the cars with flashlights, in case you didn’t notice.” Slowing down, he had to talk fast—in another few seconds he’d have to decide whether to hit the gas or the brake. “If we stop long enough for that...”

“Don’t worry about it.” Rhion settled himself back into the seat, folded his arms with the circlet concealed in his hand, and bowed his head, his eyes slipping shut.

“Don’t worry about it? Are you out of your frigging mind? You think they’re not going to notice two people crouching down on the floor...? Not to mention you sitting there looking like a picture on a wanted poster...”

“I said don’t worry about it! Tell them you’re transporting the car through to somebody important at Ostend! Don’t mention us at all.”

“You’re nuts!”

“Do it, Tom!” Rhion’s head came up, his eyes blazing behind the glasses that flashed redly in the lights of the barrier. “There are about forty soldiers on the other side of that barrier with guns. You crash it and we’re Swiss cheese!”

Saltwood wasn’t sure how he’d deduced that, for beyond the lights of the barrier he himself could see only darkness. “Dead is one thing! Trying out the electrical fittings at Gestapo headquarters is another!”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Rhion demanded, his voice shaking, the burn scars on his face and throat shiny in the moving glare. “Do it. They won’t see us.”

The barrier was twenty feet away—yellow-and-black-striped sawbucks stretched between a couple of trucks parked across the road, around which hooded lights threw a feeble blur of illumination. Beyond that the blackout made anything further impossible to determine. At least a dozen Storm Troopers were in evidence, plus one or two civilians—Gestapo. He threw a fast glance at Rhion, who had subsided again into his attitude of meditative stillness. Did he only guess there were more men waiting