Free Empire of the East by Fred Saberhagen Page B

very near it. But that’s Charmian, Ekuman’s daughter. She evidently went halfway to meet her bridegroom, and now comes finishing his journey with him. It might be an interesting wedding; I’ve heard there’s another in the Castle who dotes on her.”
    â€œHow could you hear that?”
    â€œThe Castle servants are human if the masters are not. They’re too frightened to talk much, but sometimes a single word can travel marvelously.”
    Rolf had heard of Charmian’s existence, but had not really thought about her until now. “I thought that Ekuman had no wife.”
    â€œHe had once, or perhaps she was only a favored concubine. Then he went East, to perfect himself in…the ways that he has chosen.”
    Rolf did not understand. “He went East?”
    â€œFrom where he came to begin with I do not know, but he has been to the Black Mountains, to pledge himself to Som the Dead.”
    That name was new to Rolf. Later he would seek to learn more, but now he took a turn at thoughtful silence. It was beyond his understanding that a fiend like Ekuman should have a lovely daughter, to be given away like some kindly farmer’s, with a feast.
    Thomas’s thoughts were evidently running along the same lines. “I wonder sometimes why such as these bother to marry. Hardly to pledge their love. I think not even to pledge each other any kind of honest help in life.”
    â€œWhy, then?” Rolf wanted to think of anything but what might be happening to Sarah.
    Thomas shrugged. “It’s hard to remember sometimes that Ekuman and those about him are still human, that the crimes they commit are human crimes. I’ve heard Loford say that if the Satraps live for many years, growing stronger in their evil, it sometimes happens that they are summoned East at last, to stay.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œTo become something more or less than human, I think that was the way Loford put it.” Thomas yawned. “Loford wasn’t sure, and I’m talking in total ignorance. You want another nap?”
    â€œNo. I don’t feel tired.”
    So Thomas did sleep again, but he roused himself well before sunset, and then Rolf was willing enough to take another nap himself. He only dozed, and got up without being wakened as the shadows began to deepen.
    Like the humans of the Castle, the reptiles had been coming and going in small numbers all through the day, but now they came from all directions, in haste to reach their roosts before night. Now was the time when Feathertip, if she had been following her original plan, would have come soaring forth. Tonight she could have caught more than one straggler made careless by the Castle’s nearness. But with a far greater enterprise hanging in the balance, the birds would not hunt reptiles tonight. The leatherwings came home unmolested, to slowly blacken the rooftops of the Castle with their clusters.
    And in the earliest of the true night the two birds came silently down the canyon, following the dim twisting channel of it with scarcely a wing-movement. Their huge shapes were over Rolf before he had more than imagined that he saw them.
    Rolf and Thomas were each carrying ropes, long and strong but thin, wound about them under their shirts. Thomas unwound a long rope now from his ribs, and tied one end of it into a loop, of a size Feathertip directed.
    The two birds then flew back up the canyon. Behind them a trailing end of rope tickled over the sand and over shadowed, broken rocks where human feet must move with caution.
    Rolf and Thomas followed. The looped rope had already been hung for climbing when they caught up with the birds, who sat waiting on the canyon floor.
    â€œWell,” said Thomas. He set down his pack, then tugged hard on the rope, to make sure that the loop was holding solidly on the invisible peak, about eleven times his height. Then he hesitated. At last he said, “If I’m killed or left