The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,130

changed the shape of this pass; steep and jagged now, it ran straight for barely a hundred yards at any one time, winding back and forth through the fractured bones of the Mountains of the Sun; only in the thirty years of her father’s rule in Mere had it been possible for a lone rider to pass through without fear of being robbed, not once, but several times.

Worriedly she reached inside her grimy sheepskin jacket, to touch the amulet she wore.

This is the only road down to the Drowned Lands, she told herself firmly. It’s logical I’d be taking it; logical they’d guess where I’d be going. The fact that they’re coming doesn’t mean I was betrayed.

Her horse jittered uneasily, and the spare mount, burdened with food and the leather-wrapped bundles of Jaldis’ books, flicked its ears and snuffed at the wind. Tally gauged the length of this particular reach of the pass, calculated in her mind how many more miles of narrow canyon, hemmed in by unscalable cliffs, lay between her and the wet, cloud-scarved woods of the downward slopes beyond.

A burst of speed...

But no burst of speed would take her beyond the sight of the riders in the pass behind her, and the clatter of her horses’ hooves would carry. Then they’d know she was there, and the amulet she wore would not hide her from their eyes.

But if that old Hand-Pricker told them to look twice at any sloppy-looking man in an old sheepskin coat, she thought, panic rising in her chest, it won’t hide me anyway...

Whatever happened, she knew she must not let herself be caught. Not in flight from Erralswan. Not with Jaldis’ books.

In a scattered few seconds the whole scene in the Hand-Pricker’s hut returned to her, and with it the memory of the smell of the place, the reek of filth, old blood, dirty bedding, and cats. The Hand-Pricker himself had shrunk blinking from her, an emaciated man of middle age whose light-brown hair and beard had both been crusted stiff at the ends with the blood of sacrifices made years ago; bloodstains had shown up even on the faded black of his robe. He’d stammered, “T-the woman who wanted the powder,” and in his watery yellow eyes was the fear that more trouble was coming to him.

“I need an amulet,” Tally had said, setting down a small bag of money among the litter of herbs and sticks and crumbling fragments of half-mummified toads on the table. She’d already cropped her hair short like an urchin boy’s, and wore a boy’s breeches, shirt, and dirty sheepskin jacket. “An amulet that will turn aside men’s eyes, make them believe that they see a man in these clothes, fat and harmless and bearded; and I need it quickly.”

“Who—whom do you flee?”

In his eyes she saw that he’d already half guessed. The eyes of Agon are everywhere...

“Isn’t it enough to know,” she had asked softly, “that I fear for my life and the lives of those I love?”

Fumblingly, he had made the amulet, pulling at the cords that passed through his fingers and palms and earlobes until the blood came, rocking and whispering above the flat rock in the corner of his hut, stretching forth his bleeding hands to murmur the name of the familiar spirit that gave him—so the Hand-Prickers believed—his power. And Tally, sitting at the table with the Hand-Pricker’s cats purring around her boots and sleeping on her lap, had strained her ears for sounds in the village back lane outside, praying that no one had yet marked her lateness in returning to her husband’s house.

She had already left Kir and Brenat, in the charge of their nurse, with the local physician. That worthy had been sufficiently puzzled by Kir’s symptoms—hallucinations, convulsions, and pains in the joints unaccompanied by any fever or inflammation (Kir was an enthusiastic actor but Tally had drawn the line at drugs that might do him real harm)—to recommend sending him immediately to a more skilled practitioner in Brottin, far down the mountain and, she hoped, out of harm’s way. But there was always a chance that their nurse was one of Agon’s spies. Or one of the grooms. Or...

Or anyone.

That was the worst, the nightmare of all this. Not knowing whom to trust.

Those who did not serve Agon through hate, like Mijac, or cynicism, like Esrex, might just as easily do the Veiled God’s bidding through fear.

“I’m sorry to have brought this upon you,” she said, reaching out