Chapter 10: To The Hills!

The room where Shantar stood was about three times as wide as he was tall, roughly cubical in shape, with walls and ceiling of gleaming white. There were no windows, but it was brilliantly lighted by glowing patches set into the walls and ceiling. The air was fresh and clean after the reek of filth and fear that had pervaded Khamul's dungeons, though there was a faint odor that reminded Shantar of summer lightning.

"Is everything ready?" Nurm question brought Shantar's attention to where Ch'Will sat at a low table to one side of the magic doorway. She nodded, touching something on the table, and once more the magic door opened. Bright sunlight spilled in, and he realized that he was looking into the courtyard of Nurm's house in Talai!

The next few hours were a blur of activity. A steady stream of servants and slaves poured both ways through the magic doorway. They brought everything that was movable into the white room, and out again through another magic doorway that strangely clad workers opened by the opposite wall. At last, the building on the Street of Merchants was cleaned out. Even the ponies from the stables had been led across the smooth white floor between the two doorways.

Shantar and Gortai led their nervously prancing ponies out through the second door, followed closely by Ch'Wing and Ch'Dan. Nurm and his two 'demons' followed them out of the oval of white light that was the far side of the magic doorway, and it shrank to nothing behind them. The sun was low in the sky, nearly hidden by a barren ridge, and there was already a hint of chill in the air that felt good after Talai's sultry warmth.

"Where is this place," Shantar asked. "This isn't Talai."

"You have just come a fast ten day's ride from Talai," Nurm answered with a faint smile. "We are in the foothills behind Weilin. This is a place I have long prepared for just such a time as this. The middle of a war is no place for an honest trader, not when the leaders of both sides are after his hide. There is food here in plenty, and drink. The only way out is by a narrow path that can be easily defended, or even closed off completely.

"And you are just going to stay here, hiding?"

"No, I have many other things that I must tend to. My people can wait here until it is safe, or at least until the worst of the fighting is over. One of us will look in here from time to time to see that everything is all right." He studied Shantar's somewhat disgusted expression. "I'll make a guess, though. Staying here doesn't much appeal to you."

"You guess right! I don't want to be penned up in here like a gronch in wintertime while the fighting is going on."

"I'm with you on that," Gortai exclaimed fiercely. Ch'Wing and Ch'Dan silently nodded their agreement.

"All right!" Nurm laughed at their unanimous decision. "I didn't think that you would want to stay here. You are free to go. If you see Orzad, be sure to tell him what I've done. It should be another day or two at least before the fighting reaches this far, even with Sholim's bats to carry the word. I'll draw you a map that will get you to Orzad's StarVillage from here. He will want to hear about the happenings in Talai."

The four men left the hidden valley by a steeply winding trail that was passable only on foot, or on ponies as agile and sure footed as their own. They rode in silence as the sun settled toward the distant sea, pausing at last where an overhanging wall of rock made a half cave.

"I'm glad we're out of there!" Gortai spoke up at last between sips of hot herb tea. "The less I have to do with sorcerers the better. And with royalty."

"That's a good trick he has, though," Ch'Wing volunteered. "If we're really in the hills behind Weilin, he brought us farther than we could ride in a ten day. I wonder how he does it. He didn't draw any magic figures, or cast any spells that I could see."

"I think that it must have something to do with that charm he wears around his neck," Shantar answered, glancing up from the map that he was studying by the flickering firelight. "He used it to cast some kind of a spell, just before the first magic doorway opened up for us in Khamul's dungeon."

"I wonder why he didn't use his magic to put us closer to StarVillage," Gortai grumbled.

"I'm just as glad that he didn't," Ch'Wing replied, soberly. "I still say that the less a man has to do with magic, the better off he is."

"Yeah, how about that?" Gortai pointed a skinny finger at Shantar. "Still think that there ain't no Gods or demons or stuff like that?"

"There's lots of things that I don't know," he answered after a moment's reflection. "How Nurm's magic works, what Gods or demons do or don't exist, or why a woman acts the way she does. All I know is that the sun set tonight. I'm going to act like I think it'll rise in the morning, so if we want to make an early start we'd better turn in. I'll take the first watch this time."

The path they followed would have been invisible to anyone who didn't have a map, winding its way as it did up and down hills, through narrow canyons, and along barren ridges. They rode quietly, the only sound the ring of unshod hooves on occasional stretches of bare rock. At first the path climbed higher, crossing a low range of hills before it dipped back down toward the lowlands. They had been traveling northward most of the day, and were swinging back toward the mountains when Shantar pulled his pony to an abrupt halt.

"Hold it!" He stopped them just inside the mouth of a narrow defile. Swinging down from his pony's back, he ran lightly up a rocky bank to where he could see the trail up ahead. Removing his iron cap, he peered cautiously from behind a concealing boulder before sliding hurriedly back down to rejoin his friends.