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That left the city. There was no way to search the entire city for one boy, and no real reason to attempt it. Young Carlyle would not be able to get off the planet, would not even be able to approach the spaceport without being challenged by the perimeter guards. He was effectively marooned on Trellwan. The rest of the Plan was proceeding smoothly, and it seemed that Carlyle's son would pose no obstacle to its final stages.
Besides, there was always the chance that he would be picked up by a patrol unit. Singh decided that it would be best to issue a patrol order requiring that he be notified if anyone of Carlyle's approximate age were taken in Sarghad or at the spaceport. . .no, make that any offworlders, whatever their age. One way or the other, he would learn the boy's whereabouts or assure himself that he was dead.
The officer was still standing at attention before him. "That will be all, Lieutenant You have done well. Thank you for your report"
The Lieutenant sagged visibly with relief, then stiffened and executed a smart right-fist-to-left-chest salute. "Yes, Lord!"
Singh watched the man turn on his heel and leave. No, Carlyle's escape should not affect the Plan at all.
He returned his attention to the work on his desk, a report he was writing for the Duke. A fast courier was scheduled to arrive at the jump point within 24 hours, and Singh's report would bring the Duke and his armada to Trellwan before another local year had passed.
Singh knew that His Grace, Duke Ricol, known throughout the Successor States as The Red Hunter, was eager to begin execution of the next phase of the game.
* * * *
Above Mount Gayal and the brooding, truncated pyramid of the Castle, there rose a series of jagged, cliff-faced peaks, part of the braid of rugged mountain ranges circling Trellwan's equator. The Crysander Mountains were raw and new, shaped by the incessant tidal twistings of Trellwan's very close sun, which continued to fold and refold those uplhrusting layers of igneous rock and, on occasion, literally turned them inside out in lava flows and eruptions. Many of the peaks along the 35,000-kilometer-long range were enthusiastically active volcanos, and mild seismic quakes were a daily occurrence.
Although most of Trellwan was arid, there were two small, snaking, mineral seas nestled among the equatorial mountains. The planet's human colonies had grown in the relatively fertile regions within a few hundred kilometers of these bodies. The slow tidal swell raised by red Trell once each fifteen standard days was too high to encourage seaside settlements. Also, the high sulfur and hydrogen sulfide content of those acid waters made the air for kilometers around heavy with a sour, rotten-egg stench. However, much of Trellwan's power came from unma
Periasteron marked the begi
The Periasteron called Near Passage occurred over the Nerge, the Black Desert, 2,000 kilometers to the west of the city, and was altogether different.
Trell was in the sky at that lime, just past the middle of Firstday for Sarghad's longitude. As the local temperature rocketed under the burning heat, water evaporated from the surface of the nearby sea at an accelerated rate. Clouds boiled skyward so quickly that their growth could be followed with the eye. As vast volumes of hot, wet air rushed from ground level into the chill stratosphere, they dragged in desert winds that howled across Sarghad from the mineral flats to the east
Then the rains came, violent, rattling-wind rains that turned the ocher deserts to seas of mud and flooded the streets of Sarghad. As the planet's slow rotation continued, Sarghad gradually descended into continuous night In that long night, the storm continued while temperatures plummeted.
By mid-Firstnight, some five or six standard days later, it was snowing in the mountains above the city. Most of the moisture deposited as snow fell in the mountains, and across the great ergs and glacial plains far to the north and south. The equatorial desert around Sardghad froze solid as temperatures plummeted to 50 degrees or more below zero, and high in the mountains, short-lived glaciers grew.
The snow lay heavy among the jagged range peaks. There were places where seismic shocks and the repeated cycles of snow, freezing, heat, and falling meltwater had cracked open the mountains, laying bare ancient, hidden faults, caverns, and the wellsprings of river leading down to the sea. Hot mineral springs rising within the caves opened caverns beneath glistening roofs of ice. Within these caverns' sheltering heat, there was the steadily echoing plip-plip-plip of snow melting and trickling down the fantastic dagger shapes of stalactites.
Far Passage occurred in mid-Secondnight. There were storms then, mostly wind- and duststorms born on warm winds from the antipodes, and the temperature began to rise. By mid-Thirday, the temperature was above freezing, and still climbing. Whole mountains of rapidly accumulated ice and packed snow began melting.
In places, the melt was catastrophic.
Thunder Rift was the largest and deepest of the network of fault-rifts and caverns in the mountains north of Sarghad. During cold periods, it was completely roofed over by ice hundreds of meters thick. From early Thirday until well into Firstday, meltwater created an icy cataract. The booming, cascading, white-raging waterfall fell by many-branching paths worn through ice and rock into a deep-cleft lake, from which spray rose like a cloud. During warmings periods, that cloud spray hung above the V-shaped notch that marked the Rift as seen from the city plain, and the thunder of the waters could be distantly heard above the incessant murmur of street merchants and vendors.
Grayson had discovered the Rift shortly after Carlyle's Commandos had arrived on Trellwan. It had become a refuge for him from Kai Griffith's demands and criticisms and from the crowded barracks. At times, it had even given refuge from the the gentle but critically sharp eye of his father. Once, several local years ago, he had brought Mara here for a few hours' gentle diversion. He'd hoped she would feel as enthralled with the cavern's beauty as he, and had been keenly dissappointed by her lack of response. The mouth of the Rift was too noisy, she'd told him, the air too wild and wet, the water-worn rock too cold and hard for what they'd pla
He'd not returned for several local days after that episode, but not even Mara could long dim his enchantment with the place. Though Grayson returned many times after that day, he had always come alone.
The Rift was where he needed to be now. It had taken only a few moments to find a Sarghad militia ground effect skimmer parked at the fringe of the churning street mob. He felt little compunction about taking the machine. It was, after all, one of the light military vehicles the Commandos had given the local militia shortly after the garrison had arrived. It had been signed over to the locals as part of the mutual military training and assistance agreement between Trellwan and the Commonwealth government
After what Grayson had been through in the last few hours, he felt the Trells at least owed him some transportation. The skimmer carried him on a swirling trail of dust out of Sarghad and across the irrigated fields north of the city.