The Seekers of Shar-Nuhn. Ardath Mayhar
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the agent and his daughter to the evening meal, and the women servants began to whisper in the halls and kitchens that the master must be intending to take a bride. Attentive he was, but not, it seemed to me, in the way of a suitor. And the conversations between the father and my master began to have strange undercurrents, almost like—haggling?
The girl grew pale and thin, and I knew her to be afraid, though we never exchanged any word. Then I began to have an inkling of my master’s course, perhaps of his ultimate purpose.
I believe that the girl’s intuition led her to much the same conclusions that I reached, so far as her part in the program was concerned. And being young, I was also chivalrous. I determined to protect her if it might be done, and to avenge her if it could not.
Thus it was that I decided upon a bold course. There was in the newer city an Adept of science and sorcery, well respected by the Initiates and feared by the petty warlocks and practitioners of unclean arts. He was removed from evil, but not sworn to expose any who came to him with unorthodox problems. To him I went, bearing my tablet of notes and my strange tale.
At the door of his modest house I almost lost courage. He was indeed a great man in the city of Am-Brak and in the country. Why should he concern himself with the troubles of an apprentice? Yet I knocked, and to the servant told my name and that I was the apprentice of a warlock in the city, not naming him.
After a time that seemed long, the servant returned and beckoned. I followed her down a white-paneled hall into a low room filled with light and warmth that radiated from a dazzling globe set into a niche in the wall. So absorbed was I in trying to puzzle out its mode of operation that I almost missed seeing the sturdy old man who walked forward and looked at me piercingly.
“You are Si-Lun,” he said. “And who is Si-Lun, and why does he seek En-Bir?”
I started, then recollected myself and bowed. “Si-Lun is a lowly person with an uncommon tale to tell, though I must not name names other than my own. Here”—and I proffered my notes—“is a tablet filled with observations of rites practiced by my master. Greatly do I need to know where they are leading and if”—I looked up at him uneasily—“if they might mean harm to any human being.”
His gray eyes sparked and his brow crinkled as he motioned me to a chair and sat down with my tablet upon his knees. Long he perused it, turning back at times to read again bits at the beginning. When he turned to question me, he seemed to know my answers before I made them.
When he was satisfied, he leaned back before the bright globe and sighed deeply. “This is a heavy matter you have brought to me,” he said. “You are right, by moral laws if not by the laws of apprenticeship, to question the aims of these practices. For the rites that you have shown to me culminate”—he looked at me narrowly—“in the murder of a virgin.”
I trust I did not blanch. I nodded and said, “Such was my conclusion, though I hoped that I was in error. Yet I cannot, by the rules of honor and of apprenticeship, reveal my master’s name to you, that yon may put an end to his works. What can I do to make this evil turn to good, and to save the unlucky wench he has chosen?”
Then that great man leaned forward and spoke, and I listened, and when he was done I bowed and kissed his hand and went away to my own place.
In a week it was known in the house that there would be a guest to stay, and the maids giggled in the halls as they made up a set of rooms in the same hall as my master’s. I listened with contempt to their scandalous gossiping, thinking how far better it would be if Lo-Vahr had only designs upon her virtue.
There was great feasting upon the night that little Ne-la came to stay in the house of Lo-Vahr. The great wheels of candles were lit in the state chamber, and fires were set to burning in the cavernous fireplaces. But the only guests were Ne-La and her father, and when the father went, the lights were all put out and the house stood in darkness.
Then Lo-Vahr sent for me and, in a voice taut with urgency, said, “This night you go upon your most important errand for me. In the street of the Crane, in the house of At-Nah, you will find one who waits with a parcel ready. Give her this bag of coins and hurry back with your burden. This is of great import. Go, and return with utmost speed.”
So I hurried out and made my way with all speed to the appointed place. But when I had the bundle, I went first to the Tower of Truth that stood in the old city and knocked upon the door. To the attendant I said, “I must see an Initiate. I am the one sent by En-Bir, the Adept.”
The Initiate came at once and took my bundle from me. Into an interior room he took it, and I could hear him chanting in the high language of the Initiates, and I could smell strange fragrances. But when he returned it to me, 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