Gerd growled, muttering of lies. But Stark was already reaching for the black box.
"Then why were you so anxious to destroy it?"
Gelmar did not answer.
Aud's Islanders had gone on, but Stark's people had followed him. Now Ashton joined him by the transceiver, as the troops stayed in the hallway, shuffling nervously, awaiting some attack. Soon there began to be terrible sounds not far away. The Northhounds whined, bristling and uneasy.
Wandsmen, N'Chaka.
They did not distinguish individual names, but they knew one Wandsman from another well enough, and they knew Ferdias and the Lords Protector as they knew themselves. Stark understood that these were somewhere close at hand.
There.
"There" was beyond a paneled wall, which showed the outlines of a door.
Stark pointed to it. "Halk. Tuchvar. Take the hounds. I don't trust the Islanders."
"Why so tender of the Lords Protector?" asked Halk.
"They're old men. Besides, Ashton has a use for them."
Halk shrugged and went off through the small door, which revealed a connecting passage. The Irnanese went with him. Tuchvar followed with the hounds, leaving Gerd and Grith, who watched Gelmar with baleful eyes.
The room became very quiet, except for the sounds from the black box, which seemed very loud—and very empty. Only the eternal cross-talk of the universe, having in it nothing of human comfort. Ashton's voice was a monotonous counterpoint as he moved the needle carefully across the shipbands, repeating his name and the emergency code letters, requesting an answer.
There was none.
Gelmar smiled.
Stark asked, "How long ago did you speak to this ship?"
"Three days."
Lies, said Gerd.
"Try again."
Ashton tried again.
The plain of Ged Darod, beyond the walls, held a milling chaos. Where folk had been pouring into the city for weeks, now they poured out of it all at once, dragging wounded, dragging the sick and the old and the very young, dragging burdens of loot. The plain became littered with people and things dropped by the wayside. Streams of folk still incoming along the pilgrim roads collided with the refugees, adding to the chaos as it became apparent that Ged Darod no longer offered any hope.
By the one gate that was solidly held, Sanghalain of Iubar waited with Morn and a guard of Ssussminh. Nearby, the Fallarin also waited, surrounded by the Tarf with their four-handed swords. Alderyk's thin nostrils quivered with disgust at the mingled reeks of unwashed humanity and unlimited filth that the warm breeze brought to him along with the dust and the noise. From time to time he clapped his wings against the breeze, ordering it aside. But the smells did not lessen, nor did the incessant shrieking.
Klatlekt blinked his horny eyelids with the expression of indifference common to his race. His banded torso glistened in the sun. So did the long, broad blade of his sword, which a strong man could not have lifted. He watched the scurryings and cryings on the plain with the incurious contempt he felt for all beings who were not Fallarin.
At length, he saw something in the distance which caused him to raise his round and hairless head even higher. He turned to Alderyk and said, "Lord . . ."
Alderyk looked and saw a great cloud of dust rising on the Wandsmen's Road, coming from the north.
He called Morn and pointed out the cloud. "Get word to Stark, if you can, and warn the Ironmaster and your own captains."
Are these enemies, or are they the allies the wise woman told of?
Alderyk's wings made a small thunderclap. "We'll soon know."
A voice spoke in the room. It was thin against the cracklings and hissings, but it was there.
"Ashton? Simon Ashton? But they told us you were dead."
"Not quite."
"And the other man. Stark."
"Here. They told you I was dead, too."
"Yes. Not more than an hour ago."
Stark glanced at Gelmar, whose face showed nothing. "Ferdias told you that. The Lord Protector."
"Yes. We were forbidden to land, and knowing how touchy the situation is on Skaith . . . Well, with you two gone, we thought we had no reason. We were shifting orbit, preparing to jump. Another twenty minutes and we'd have been gone."
"Hold orbit above Ged Darod," said Ashton, and the sweat was running down his cheeks like tears. He wiped it away. "We're securing the area now. We'll let you know when it's safe to land. Keep open for transmission."
"Understood," the voice said, and was silent.
Ashton turned to his foster-son. They looked at each other, but said nothing. There were no words for what they wanted to say, and in any case they did not need them.
The dustcloud on the Wandsmen's Road halted its forward motion. It bunched up and remained stationary while the dust settled and the leaders took stock of what was happening at Ged Darod. In a little while, Alderyk's falcon gaze was able to distinguish the blocks of color—dull purple, red, white, green, yellow, and brown—all in the faded leather of the Hooded Men, and beyond them a larger mass of green-gold enclosing dark shapes that perched on tall desert beasts like birds poised for flight.
And now the wings of the Fallarin set up a wild whirlwind that rose high above the plain in dusty greeting.
The six old men in white—Gorrel was dead at last and there had not been time to fill his place—sat in the lofty chamber where the casements opened onto the beauty of the temple roofs and the chiming of the bells. Sounds of bitter strife now marred the sweetness of that chiming, and a pall of smoke had dimmed the brightness of Old Sun.
Five red Wandsmen stood by the Lords Protector. The remainder of the Twelve had died defending their lords, and some of the five were wounded. The room and its antechamber were choked with bodies, chiefly in the red robes of high office, but with many others in green and blue and even one in apprentice gray, a boy not yet bearded. It was here that the Wandsmen had made their final stand. Now the naked Islanders kicked the bodies aside to make standing room, and stared with their small, fierce eyes at the men and hounds who held them from further killing.
The hounds grumbled and whined and drooped their great, rough heads. They remembered the mists and snows of Worldheart, where they had served these six old men with their lives.
Pedrallon asked, "Where is Llandric?"
"It was necessary to find your transceiver," said Ferdias. "He did not survive the questioning."
His back was as rigid as ever, his iron composure unshaken, at least on the surface. He regarded the Islanders with disgust. For the others, his bitter loathing was more complex, and for Stark he had a look that was quite indescribable. Nevertheless, he betrayed neither weakness nor fear.
Pedrallon's anger was obvious. "You murdered him. You allowed hundreds of your people to die. And even with your last citadel besieged by your starving children, you sent away the ship that might have brought them help."
"This is a time of change," said Ferdias. "A Second Wandering. Without traitors, we would have survived it. Without traitors, this last citadel of ours would not have fallen. We would have brought peace and order to the world as we did before. A smaller world, it is true, but our world, Mother Skaith, untainted by the ways of strangers."
He turned to Stark. "For some reason which is obscure to me, we seem to have lost the favor of her we tried to protect." He paused, and then added simply, "We are ready to die."
"That was in my mind," Stark said, "but Ashton is wiser than I."
Ferdias turned with frosty courtesy to Simon Ashton, who had been his prisoner for months in the Citadel in the High North.
"The Lords Protector will come with us, in the ship," said Ashton. "Nothing else can better prove to the people that a new time has come to Skaith."
"They will know that we have been forced. They will hate the off-worlders even more."
"Not when food and medical supplies begin to arrive. You can plead your cause before the Council at Pax, of course, but I hardly think that the idea of condemning half your population to death rather than letting them emigrate, simply to perpetuate your own rule, will gain you much applause. You can still help your people, by using your special knowledge to help us in organizing the distribution of food and the mass transportation of those peoples who wish to leave Skaith."
Ferdias was amazed. "Surely you do not expect our help!"
"Damn it!" Ashton roared, in sudden fury. "Somebody has got to feed these infants you've created. More than enough of them are going to die anyway, thanks to you."
Unperturbed, Ferdias said, "Suppose that we refuse to go. Will you turn us over to them?" He nodded at the sweating Islanders.
"Oh, no," said Stark, smiling. "Not to them. To your own people, Ferdias. To your starving children."
Ferdias inclined his head.
"I take it you're requesting asylum," Ashton said.
Ferdias looked away. And now at last the rigid line of his shoulders had crumpled, just a little. "Our own storehouses are empty," he said. "We gave them all we had. But they would not believe."