A Dragon at Worlds' End (22 page)

Nights were spent on small sandy beaches, usually with a fire blazing and a strict watch kept for pujish. The slavers were very nervous about the presence of pujish which they called kebbold, the name in the tongue of Mirchaz. Kebbold were always called "bloodthirsty" or "man-eating" and were spoken of with special loathing. Relkin understood better why the slavers had always limited their raids to the southern forest, where the pujish were few and far between.

Days were spent in the boat, always bound at wrist and ankle. Katun himself made sure of Relkin's bonds. He was released briefly, to eat and relieve himself in the evening and in the morning. Calluses grew on his wrists and ankles.

On one occasion when a big green pujish showed itself at the campfire and began to make threatening advances, the slavers ran for it. Katun simply grabbed Relkin and threw him over his shoulder, sprang nimbly to the boat, and shoved it off in the next moment with an incredible heave. Relkin now realized that Katun was an unusually strong man. Combined with his speed and undoubted prowess with weapons, he was a deadly combination. Relkin wondered what some of the other great fighters he had known in his time would make of Katun. He also realized that any attempt to escape would have to be well planned. If he had to kill Katun, he would have to strike without warning and be successful with his first blow. Relkin knew that in combat with Katun he would have little chance, and Relkin of Quosh had fought in many battles and faced all manner of opponents. Relkin suspected that Katun was a gladiator, a born killer of swordsmen, and beyond Relkin's own power.

He also understood why surly Bilj obeyed Katun's strictures and avoided contact with Relkin. Bilj and Eidorf kept to the other end of the boat. For this Relkin was grateful, but he did his best not to seem so. To Katun he had to maintain a front, a mask for his emotions. At no time could he reveal the despair he was beginning to feel.

Between Katun and Bilj there existed a constant undertone of dislike and unspoken violence. Relkin sensed that Bilj would have killed Katun in an instant if he dared, but understood that Katun was the better man.

Eidorf, an older man of few words, barely seemed to associate with either of the others. Relkin learned that Eidorf had once been a soldier, a man of honor, and now felt much reduced in the world. Eidorf received little but contempt from Bilj, while Katun hardly ever spoke to him, though Relkin noticed that Katun did not treat Eidorf with contempt.

No opportunity to escape ever presented itself. The Mirchaz slavers' techniques for restraining a captive were foolproof. And in his case they were making a special effort. Relkin learned that there was a reward out for him. He had been identified during the summer battles as a leader of the rebel Ardu and freed slaves. The Slaver Associations had offered a brick of gold called a tabi for him. Katun was determined to collect that tabi and retire from the slave business.

That was not the end of it, however. Beyond the reward was the price that might be obtained by selling him to the lords. Apparently there were lords who would pay a fine fortune for Relkin. Between the lords there was strong competition to win such prizes as were represented by occasional freaks like Relkin. Such prizes might be displayed at social gatherings, sometimes in cages, and they might also be used in darker, more secret ways, for the lords were magicians all, and both old and very wicked.

Relkin's mental picture of the city they were going to had become clearer over the course of some conversations with Katun. It was a large place, and very old. Katun said the Lords Tetraan had come from the far north, at the end of the Old Red Aeon. They had been led by a great prince, Zizma Bos of Gelderen. Under Bos and the Arkelauds the lords had set to building a great city of marbled streets, great public buildings of white stone, palaces, libraries, concourses, and huge monumental structures that were used for the Great Game of the Lords Tetraan.

This had become the Upper City and it was enclosed within high walls and mighty gates. Outside the walls there was a "lower" city, known as the City of Slaves because the bulk of its population consisted of former slaves, many of them elderly and worked out, who were no longer useful and were simply ejected from the city and left to their own devices. Most died within a year or two, but while they lived they formed a lumpen mass of gray-faced white-hairs who formed the bottom layer of the society of the Slave City.

One thing Relkin learned early on was that most slaves were no-tails. The Ardu, in fact, were unusual and highly sought after for their physical beauty. Most of the slaves came from tribes in the western interior of Eigo. Large organizations dominated the slave trade in those regions. It was in the more dangerous Ardu trade that buccaneers like Katun could hope to make some gold.

Beyond the lumpen mass of elderly slaves was another population of drifters, adventurers, merchants, and cutthroats. Laws were enforced by the Upper City. Relkin gathered that there was a kind of legion which served to protect the Upper City from physical attack. This legion was recruited from all over the world. Katun had once belonged to it, as had Eidorf.

The Upper City was a complicated place. There were several levels, of increasing exclusivity as one approached the City of the Temples and the Game Board. In addition there were eyries set high above the city called the Overlooks. These were occupied by the leading lords as ranked in the Great Game that was played in the Pyramid of the Game. Every mention of this Game brought a tone of reverence into Katun's voice, though to Relkin's questions concerning it, Katun gave few answers. Relkin felt that Katun was acutely aware of his loss of social status. He had been ejected from the Upper City when he'd been kicked out of the Guardians, as the protective legion was called, and he yearned to return to that life. He regarded his sojourn in the Slave City as an aberration of which he was ashamed.

Of Katun's life before he'd migrated to Mirchaz, Relkin learned much less. Katun was evidently not proud of that era, either.

Toward the folk of the Slave City Katun had little but contempt. For the Lords Tetraan, who competed in the Great Game, he was filled with conflicting emotions. Relkin detected envy, desire, and a kind of hate. Relkin came to understand that Katun felt he should belong to the lord class himself. He despised both the slaves and the thieves in the outer city.

The frontier town of Yazm City appeared one day as they rounded a bend. It was a mean little place, huddled along the bank of the river. Most of the buildings were of logs and rough-hewn timber. There were a dozen jetties and some dilapidated docks. Beside the docks were large cages, now empty, but Relkin knew they had been full just a few months earlier, jammed with Ardu slaves.

Katun didn't care to waste any time in Yazm City. Bilj protested, but got nowhere. The whorehouses and saloons would have to do without their business. They took their small boat into a jetty. Katun negotiated briefly with the jettyman and sold the boat for pretty close to what he'd paid for it. Then they went across and boarded the big river brig that was tied up at the longest jetty. It was single-masted and schooner-rigged and well maintained from the look of it.

Relkin was taken below and chained up in a dark closet. His wrists were cuffed to a single chain attached to the ceiling. This chain was long enough to leave him some freedom of movement—he could scratch himself, for instance, a relief from days of torment—and the lack of restraints on his ankles was another great relief. Not that there was enough room to move around or anything. Friendly rats came to investigate his clothes and hair, but found nothing to seriously interest them and eventually left him alone.

While he was asleep the brig slipped her moorings. When he woke up he felt the different motion of the hull and the slap of waves against the bow and knew they were on their way. Mirchaz loomed ever closer.

The routine was quickly established. Meals were simple, basically just bread and water, with one small piece of fruit a day. Exercise was taken on the deck, with a long chain running from his wrist cuffs to a belt around Katun's waist.

As before, Relkin could see no way of escaping except by somehow overpowering Katun. However, Katun was an experienced slaver who understood the wiles of desperate captives all too well. Relkin saw no opportunity.

Of the others, Relkin saw little. Bilj seemed to sleep most of the time, and Eidorf sat up in the bow all day, alone.

Relkin had time to study the crew. There were five sailors and the captain, a burly brute with a missing eye. All were capable men and their ship was trim and well handled. They made good time on the long reaches of the river. None spoke enough Ardu to converse with, however, which limited Relkin's inquiries.

The country changed as they passed through it. The dark-leaved forest of the Lands of Terror gave way to a forest of palm trees and then a forest of many different kinds of trees, but with a lighter green than that of the realm of the pujish and the mighty shmunga.

As the days went by, Relkin sank into a deep depression. Escape seemed impossible and he had come a long way from the land of the Ardu. How was he going to get back and find his dragon? How was his dragon going to manage without a dragonboy?

His faith in the gods had sunk to a new low. He caught himself whispering the prayers he'd learned as a child, to the Great Mother, who was said to hear all, see all, feel all, and know all. Relkin had never really believed this; now he hoped he'd been wrong all these years. If ever he needed her help it was now.

In an attempt to keep his spirits up he questioned Katun as much as possible. Sometimes Katun would allow himself to be engaged. At other times he would be irritated by something and would fall silent before dragging Relkin down below and chaining him in the dark closet.

Katun disliked owning up to the fact that he knew so little of the outer world. He knew the interior of the continent Eigo, but he had never seen the oceans, not even the inland ocean the Wad Al Nub, from which Relkin had come to the land of the Ardu. Katun had heard of their existence and he soon came to believe some of the things Relkin told him about the rest of the world, but he hated the thought of his own ignorance and made up for it by denigrating Relkin's intelligence whenever possible.

One day Katun mentioned Bos while talking about the northlands. Katun knew very little about the north except that Bos came from there, accompanied by the Lords Tetraan.

"Who was Bos?"

"You know nothing, just like Ardu. Stupid as pigs."

"I just don't know who Bos is."

"Bos founded the great city. He come from the holy lands, long ago. You will see very soon now."

Katun got to his feet. "Come." He hauled on the chain and dragged Relkin down into the dark.

Another time Katun asked Relkin about the faint scars on his back, acquired from the lashes given him by dwarves in an underground city in the magic forest of Valur far away.

Relkin tried to explain, but at the mention of dwarves, Katun snorted and refused to listen to any more. Dwarves no longer lived in the world. On this point he was adamant. He accused Relkin of lying about his wounds.

"Probably caught thieving. Don't want to admit that you're just a little thief."

And then one day the forest gave way to cultivated land. The river broke out of forested hills onto a wide alluvial plain that was dotted with villages, crisscrossed with roads and tracks, and at night speckled with the lights of man.

That day Bilj appeared on the deck. Katun seemed much more lively than usual. Relkin understood that the journey was approaching its end. This was civilization.

Ahead appeared a line of wooded hills punctuated by a canyon cut by the river. They wound through the hills and emerged into a long lake, flanked on either side by steep slopes. Trees grew up the slopes. On nearby hills there were meadows with flocks of white sheep. There were lines made by stone fences and small stone houses.

It soon became apparent that this was only an extension of the main lake, for the water ahead broadened and the far side of a bigger body of water began to come into view. Relkin saw distant buildings, large buildings, and there were gleams of gold, which at this distance told him that fairly immense objects were catching the sun and reflecting it to him.

Katun tugged on the chain and pointed upward to the hill to their left. Relkin looked up and gasped. Atop the hill was a statue, a huge work. Carved in white stone there stood an enormous figure, a man, with arms stretched out in benediction over the lake below, toward the distant shore.

"Bos!" said Katun with adoration in his voice.

Bilj looked around and said something that made Katun spit before answering with a curt negative.

Bilj's eyes rested momentarily on Relkin's. Bilj giggled. Relkin gave him a hard stare. With a knife in his hand, Relkin could take care of Bilj all right. Katun… now, that was another matter; but Bilj was just a fat bully.

The lake opened out now and Relkin looked out to the east across a wide stretch of water, two or three miles across north to south and many times that on the east-west axis. All across the southern shore there were buildings, a mighty city. Far across the water in the east there were some enormous structures that bulked up into the air like hills. One was a pyramid and it reminded him at once of the enormous pyramids to Auros in the ancient land of Ourdh.

Eidorf had drifted back. Relkin studied the lean features. Eidorf looked at him and for a moment Relkin felt pity from the man.

"Mirchaz is there. You in Mirchaz now."

They came ashore in the port at the southern end of the lake, where Relkin glimpsed briefly the splendor of the tall houses in the merchants' quarter. Then they entered a wide, cobbled passageway that sank down below high stone walls and passed out of a massive gate into the City of Slaves.

There they entered a world of tightly packed, dingy tenements that loomed over narrow, twisting alleys. Sewers ran openly and unspeakably foul ponds collected here and there. The stench was eye-watering. At corners were gangs of gaunt figures picking through piles of garbage.