Free Book 2 - October's Baby by Glen Cook Page B

block. But it'd buy a few months. And get the kingdom
     turned upside down. How many people at your place? Better think about them." "I am."
    "Something could be arranged... If I could get them to safety?..."
    "You'd have a corpse. I hate to lose the place, but it looks like I'm damned no matter what."
    "Keeping it could be fixed. Yourgrant runs to the river. That puts it in a military zone. I could take it over till this blows away. I'll have to put troops in anyway, if you and your eastern friend leave a forty-mile gap unpatrolled. If I don't, I'll have the north woods thick with bandits from Prost Kamenets, and trade with Iwa Skolovda cut off. But getting you, and your eastern friend, off the hook would take some doing. You might have to stay away for years."
    "I think," said Ragnarson, "I'll have to do that anyway. To get help reaching Greyfells." He was on the edge of decision. He knew where to buy the knife, but the price would be playing Haroun's game in Kavelin.
    "We'll meet tomorrow, then. Where're you staying?" "King's Cross, but I may move. We had some trouble in New Haymarket. Greyfells might try to have us arrested."
    "Uhm. Charge would only have to stick till something regretable happened in the dungeons. He's foxy. All right. Wansettle Newkirk, ten in the morning. You know it?"
    "I can find it."
    "Good luck then."
    Ragnarson rose, shook the Minister's hand, joined Blackfang. He remained uncommunicative the rest of the day.
     

FIVE: Their Wickedness Spans the Earth
     
    i) But the evil know no joy
    At last. The end of a long and tiring journey. Burla glanced back to see if he had been overtaken at the penultimate moment, sighed, slipped into the cave. His friend Shoptaw, the winged man, greeted him with anxious questions. "Fine, now," Burla replied with a wide, fangy grin. "But tired. Master?"
    "Come," the winged man said.
    The old man was solicitous and apologetic. "I'm sorry you had to go through this. But Burla, you did me proud. Proud. How's the child?"
    Swelling in the Master's praise, Burla replied, "Good, Master. But hungry. Sad."
    "Yes, so. You weren't prepared to bring him so far. I feared..."
    Burla laid the baby before the Master. The old man opened its wrappings.
    "What's this? A girl?" Thunderheads rumbled across his brow. "Burla ..."
    "Master?" Had he done wrong without knowing?
    The old man held his temper. Whatever had happened, it had not been Burla's fault. The dwarf didn't have the
     brains. "But how?..." he asked aloud, wondering how a counterswitch had been made. Then he looked closer. The hereditary mark was there.
    The King had lied. To support his shaky throne he had announced the birth of a son when a daughter had been born. The fool! There was no way he could have pulled it off...
    Realization. His own schemes had been dealt a savage blow. A wildcat was growling in his embrace. Willy-nilly, he had inherited the Krief's plot. "Oh, damn, damn..."
    Two days passed before he trusted his temper enough to confront his shadowy ally. The failure was the easterner's fault. He should have used spells to assure the sex of the child. The old man would have done it himself had he suspected the other's sloppiness.
    But no one accused the Demon Prince of incompetence. No sorcerer was more powerful or touchy than Yo Hsi, nor had any had more time to perfect his wickedness. He was an evil spanning unknown centuries. Only one man dared openly challenge the Demon Prince, his co-ruler and arch-enemy in Shinsan, the Dragon Prince, Nu Li Hsi. And, perhaps, the Star Rider, the old man thought, but he was irrelevant to the equation.
    The old man, who had taken great pains to remain anonymous, was a noble of Kavelin, the Captal of Savernake, hereditary guardian of the Savernake Gap. His castle, Maisak, in the highest and narrowest part of the pass, had seen countless battles fought beneath its walls. Only once had it been threatened, when El Murid's hordes, by sheer numbers, had almost swamped it. The Wesson,