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Eyes still moist, he kissed his teacher's cooling cheeks. "I mourn, Megelin. This wasteland is no resting place for a don of the Rebsamen." Vulture shadows ghosted along the wadi walls. "But I have to leave you. You understand, don't you? You were always a student of necessity." He rose. "Bragi! Let's go. They'll be through the ambush in a few minutes." The sounds of fighting were diminishing already.
He pushed on, into the night, knowing darkness would not stop Nassef. Only the Dark Lady herself would stay the Scourge of God. The three youngsters grew progressively weaker. Horses halted and refused to go on. The camels grew increasingly balky. Bragi became fractitious. He did not know how to handle the animals.
Haroun slaughtered the weakest horse, caught its hot blood, passed it around. Their water was gone. He prayed to no certain god for strength, for guidance, for a miracle. His future kingdom became confined to that narrow and perhaps endless passage of the desert.
Deep in the night, under a silver, uncaring moon, the wadi faded. If he paused to listen Haroun could hear men and animals in the distance. Nassef was gaining again.
Moments after he departed the wadi he halted, confused. Before him stood a strange old tower. He recognized the type. Ilkazar's emperors had erected hundreds to house local garrisons. Their ruins could be found wherever the Imperial legions had passed. He was baffled because he hadn't expected to encounter evidence of human habitation in the waste.
Bragi came up beside him. "What's that?"
A sad keening came from the tower.
Haroun shook his head. He glanced back. The boys had collapsed.
The keening came again.
"That's no animal," Bragi said.
"The wind?"
"Maybe it's a ghost."
Haroun reached out with his shaghûn's senses. Incompletely trained, attenuated by hunger and exhaustion, they told him nothing. "I don't get anything."
"Look!" A wan light illuminated a face behind an archer's embrasure.
"That's no ghost."
"Maybe we can get water."
"Could be a bandit hideout. Or a demon's lair. Or a sorcerer hiding from El Murid." But if the magical or supernatural lurked there, his shaghûn's senses should have warned him.
He listened. The sounds of horses and men hung just on the edge of hearing. "I'm going to investigate."
"Nassef is too close."
"I might find something. Water, at least."
"Yeah. Water."
"Let's go." It was hard to get moving again. His joints ached, his muscles begged for respite. His wound sent wires of pain crawling toward his shoulder. He was afraid it would fester. Somehow, he had to elude Nassef long enough to cleanse and cauterize it.
Bragi cuffed horses, camels and boys and got them moving again. Battered sword in hand, Haroun approached the tower step by leaden-footed step. Once around the tower he stalked, seeking an entrance.
"Find anything?" Bragi asked.
"No."
"What are you going to do?"
"Look again. You stay here."
"What about Nassef?"
"I won't be long." He went around the tower again. And this time he found a black cavity at its base, facing south. He was perplexed. The opening hadn't been there before, yet he could sense nothing magical. Was he so weak his shaghûn's senses had fled him completely?
The keening resumed. It stirred images of a whole people grieving. It wakened a surge of emotion, of empathy.
Haroun gasped.
In the doorway stood a child, or imp, or cherub, naked, hands on hips, gri
Though conventional images formed in immediate response, Haroun suspected the imp meant something deeper, was trying to evoke the nightshapes that lurked in the deeps of souls. Snakes, spiders, El Murid and the Scourge of God could be handled with boot heels and blades. The devils of the soul were more formidable.
Startled and puzzled, he could think of no appropriate reply.
He glanced at his companions. They had fallen asleep where they had stopped. Even the animals had surrendered to exhaustion. He listened. The pursuit seemed no closer.
The imp gri
Things exploded from the doorway. The first was a blinking, puzzled lion which, pausing to assess its situation, died under Haroun's blade. Then came vampire bats that ripped and tore and let his blood a dozen times before he finished the last. Then came snakes and scorpions and spiders.
He never considered flight. He defeated each wave by summoning reserves of energy, anger and courage he didn't know he possessed.
Then came the nebulous thing, the real enemy, the dark shifting form on which he painted his own faces of horror. It flung parts of itself to the sides, to strike from behind. With it came scents and whispers of evil that tore at already tortured nerves.
He stepped back, raised his torn left arm to shield himself. With a cackling, wicked roar the thing doubled in size. Haroun swung wildly. His blade encountered nothing, yet elicited a screech of pain.
Weariness threatened to drag him down. Pain became unbearable. He knew he was doomed. Yet he persisted. The screech convinced him his sole hope was attack. He stumbled forward, sword cleaving Night in wild strokes.
Darkness took him into its gentle arms. For a moment he thought he saw a beautiful, weeping woman approaching, and knew he had glimpsed the face of Death. There was one instant of trepidation and reluctance as he remembered the Scourge of God close behind him, then nothing.
He wakened to warmth and daylight and a sense of well-being. A bent old man stood over him, examining his injuries. Imp-Child watched from a doorway.
He was inside the tower. Its interior was no ruin. He tried to rise.
The old man restrained him. "Let me finish." Haroun found his accent difficult. Sad tones crowded his reassuring smile.
"What time is it? How long have I been here?"
"Three days. You needed the rest."
Haroun surged up. The old man pressed down on his chest with all the weight of the world.
"My people—"
"All safe and well. Resting and healing at the foot of the tower. Your enemies won't find them. Child!"
Imp-Child brought a copper mirror with a surface clouded by age. "Stare into your own eyes," the old man said. He did something strange with his fingers.
At first Haroun was too shaken by changes in his appearance to see anything else. Youth had fled him. The brown of his skin had deepened. His thin, long face had become an emaciated death's head. His hawkish nose had become more shadowed and pronounced. His eyes looked haunted. Anger and pain had etched deep furrows across his forehead.
Then he began to discern the hunters deep in the pools of his eyes. The Scourge of God and two score Invincibles followed a trail implacably.
There was something wrong. Their eyes blazed with madness. They were within a mile of the tower, but never glanced its way.
"They're following their own trail around the stronghold," the old man said. He giggled crazily.
Haroun glanced at him and surprised a malice which instantly transformed into sorrow. "Four hundred winters of despair," his savior said in a voice gone sepulchral. "And finally you've come. I hope it's you. Pray, be the One. This charge has grown tedious. I long for the embrace of the Dark Woman."
Haroun felt he was an audience of one. There was something subtly unconvincing about this old man. "Where am I?" he demanded.
"The place has no name. A watchtower. It had a number once, but I've forgotten it."
"Who are you?" The old man seemed not to hear. "Why are you helping me? If you're helping."