“I am going to cut your hands free. Do not move.”
Quentin did as instructed and felt his bonds fall away. His right arm swung limply down; he gathered it up with his left hand and held it close to his chest. Without waiting for further instruction, he rolled to cover beneath the wagon.
The three met, heads together, under the shelter of the wagon box. Toli rubbed his wrists and asked, “Why are you doing this?”
There was a brief flash of white in the darkness as the warlord’s emissary smiled. “They are my captors, too. I have long planned to escape, but if I am to survive I will need the help of those who know this country.” He looked at both of them, his eyes glinting in the firelight. “Time is short. We must go.”
Away from the wagons there was little chance of discovery. There were no sentries on this night, but there were several smaller groups of revelers gathered around smaller fires at the edges of the camp, and others could be heard crashing through the woods in hysterical rapture. Their screams tore through the night, leaving little doubt in Quentin’s mind of the reality of the animal spirits to which this night was devoted.
The three crouching figures worked their way around the rim of the camp, darting furtively through the mingling expanses of light and darkness. In the trees around them, the huge elongated shadows cavorted in grotesque mummery as the savage rites progressed unabated.
It was slow work threading through the circle’s outer ring, but at last they managed to reach the shelter of the wood where the shadows gathered over them like a cloak. “I have hidden our horses just there.” The seneschal nodded into the further darkness beyond. “I was able to retrieve your steed-” he looked at Quentin-“but yours could not be found.”
Toli grinned and replied, “It was not my horse-I took it from among the others at tether.”
Even in the dark Quentin could see their guide’s eyebrows arch upward in surprise and his eyes shine in amused disbelief. “Then I was right about you two after all. You are not without considerable resource yourselves. I have chosen my partners well.”
The air seemed cooler in the woods and they moved with increased confidence, though the dell rang on every hand with the howls and shrieks of the celebrants of Hegnrutha. The familiar woodland seemed now a desolate place given to the homeless shades who wandered the nightlands.
Quentin shivered inwardly and fought to keep pace with the others. By the time they reached the horses, waiting patiently in a small cone-covered draw, Quentin was panting and weak. The modicum of strength he had been able to scrape together was nearly exhausted.
“I know a way out of the wood, if you will follow me,” said the emissary. “Then it is I who will follow you.”
“Very well,” said Toli. “Lead on.”
The two mounted quickly and wheeled their horses to the north and away from the camp behind them. Toli cast a quick look over his shoulder and saw Quentin hanging from the saddle with one hand, too weak to climb onto his horse.
“Wait!” shouted Toli, slipping from his mount. “My master, I am sorry… I should have realized…”
“No-I will be all right. Just help me into the saddle.”
In the moonlight softly filling the draw Toli saw the film of sweat glistening on Quentin’s brow. “Ride with me; I can take us both.”
“Once we are away from here I will be all right,” insisted Quentin. “Hurry, now. Help me into the saddle. There is no time to argue.”
Toli caught his master’s foot and hoisted him onto the mount. He could see that Quentin’s right arm dangled uselessly from his shoulder. Quentin grabbed the reins with his left hand and drew his right across his lap to tuck it beneath his cloak.
“Let us away,” he said hoarsely.
Toli sprang to his mount and they were off, the horses clipping over the furze and heading into the wood. Blazer seemed none the worse for his adventure, thought Quentin, relieved to be in his own saddle once again. At least with Blazer he did not need two hands to ride-the horse would anticipate the commands of his rider Quentin had only to hang on; that was something he desperately hoped he would be able to do.
In a moment they were in the deep wood where the thick columns of trees broke the silver moonlight and scattered in slivers all around. Behind them, like the voices heard in dreams, the cries of the revelers wailed on, diminishing rapidly as distance and the thick growth of the wood cut them off. It is a dream, Quentin imagined as he chased the elusive shapes before him, flitting in and out of shadow and light-an awful dream that will be forgotten upon waking. But the sting of the occasional whipping branch and the bracing freshness of the night air on his face was only too real. He knew this was one dream that could not be shaken off in daylight. The nightmare was real, and it had come in force to Mensandor.
TWENTY-THREE
“IT IS TIME something is done,” the High Priest of Ariel said to himself as he paced his bare cell. “It is time to act.” The thick candle guttered in the swirls stirred up by Biorkis’ passing to and fro. A stack of parchment scrolls teetered precariously upon the table, clustered and rustling like autumn leaves in the breeze.
“It is time… it is time,” he said, heaving himself through the door of his cell and into the darkened passageway beyond. He ran through the empty temple and passed through a side entrance used only by the priests. He hopped across a moonlit courtyard and through a narrow portal in the wall, then stood alone on the edge of the plateau and looked out across the silent valley below. He turned and cast his old eyes, still sharp as blades, toward the eastern sky.
The moon was overhead, but in the east a star blazed brightly-more brilliant than any of its sisters. And round the glowing star a film of light seemed to gather, streaming out from the star’s core. The portion of the night where that star was fixed shone with pale radiance, and wherever the eye roamed in examination of night’s black dome it was drawn back to that star-the Wolf Star.
“Yes! Yes, it is time to act,” shouted Biorkis. His voice echoed back to him from the empty courtyard and the temple colonnade beyond the wall. He turned, fled over the jumble of rocks and swept back through the courtyard and into the temple once more. He made his way, puffing along on short, stout legs, to one of the temple’s many summons gongs. He picked up the striker and, pausing one final instant for reflection, banged it into the gong several times in quick succession.
“That will bring them running,” he said, and he was right.
In a moment the vestibule was filled with sleepy priests who rubbed their eyes and groaned at the disturbance to their slumbers.
“Fellow-priests!” Biorkis’ voice sounded loudly in their sleep-dulled ears. He shouted on purpose to bring them fully awake. “My bed has remained empty these two nights running; you can bear with me just this little while. I wish to speak to you.” There were groans among the general body of priests.
“What is this, Biorkis? Why have you called us from our devotions?”
“Your snoring vespers are not important,” Biorkis snapped at his insolent questioner. “It is time to act! The star which shines without, growing bigger with each passing night-I know now what it means.”
“And this could not wait until morning?” The speaker was Pluell, the under-high priest, his own assistant. He at least had the privilege, as Biorkis had once had, of questioning the High Priest.
“I think not. It has waited too long already. While we have blindly contemplated its meaning at our leisure, the star has grown large, and with it the strength of the evil it betokens. Mensandor is under siege by forces from far countries. The world we know is trembling on the brink of destruction.”