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gross body drooped into a flaccid puddle. The Fristle still stood, petrified.
 If that is the best they can do... said Ariane, shaking herself. She laughed, a shrill tinny sound.
They were all laughing. The reaction after the black thoughts of a moment ago shuddered through them.
But the Fristle still stood, unmoving.
 Here, said Deb-Lu-Quienyin. He shuffled up to stand before the Fristle. He did not touch him.  Jak,
he said in his casual conversational voice.  Just Take a Look up through the trapdoor. There May Be
More Up There...
If I were a man who laughed easily, I would have laughed then. Obediently, I climbed up a pyramid of
men and stuck a torch through the opening. The trapdoor hung down. A fetid odor broke about my head
and I spat. The space beyond looked empty, full of ghosts and bones and stink.
 It appears clear, although 
 Quite!
Now we took greater cognizance of the configuration of the roof. The dome was broken here and there
by bulging cornices, grotesquely carved. From one of these the spider had dropped, and the height,
reachable by my pyramid of men, was not too great. We began to study the other bulging protuberances
in the roof. The decorations particularly intrigued Prince Tyfar.
 As Hanitcha the Harrower is my witness! I do not discern any pattern! What do you see, Notor Jak?
Before I answered I killed my automatic wince at his use of the name Hanitcha the Harrower. Ah,
Hamal, Hamal, that empire had done great damage to my beloved Vallia!
 If there is a pattern, prince, we must find it.
 True, by Krun!
 And, said his Brokelsh slinger, Barkindrar the Bullet,  My prince  beware, in the name of Kaerlan
the Merciful! There may be more giant spiders...
We all hopped back a few paces out from under the direct drop-zone in case there might be more Giant
Hypnotic Spiders.
 Catch him! suddenly shouted Quienyin s voice, and we whirled to see the Fristle who had been
petrified running, head down, racing madly and with demoniac screams, racing away down past the
ranked biers of corpses.
 By Krun! exclaimed Tyfar.  It s enough to give a fellow a bad heart!
A group of the mercenaries chased after him and brought him back, calmed him down. He still shook
like the leaves of the letha tree. What he had seen in the eyes of the spider no one cared to inquire.
 And have you riddled the riddle yet? demanded Quienyin.
 No. Ariane was short with the old Wizard of Loh.
 Well, we must see what an Old Fellow Can Do.
 Your permission, my prince, said Barkindrar.  There are nine bulges  whatever you call  em.
The great apim bear of a man, the renowned archer from Ruathytu, craned his thick neck back, stared
up.  And only one, my prince, has dropped a stinking spider, by Kuerden the Merciless!
Quienyin smiled.  You are well served, prince.
 Yes, yes, exclaimed Ariane.  But which way do we count?
I said,  Widdershins would seem appropriate in this place.
We all moved to the bulge to the left of the one from which the spider had dropped, and stared up, at a
loss.
 This is becoming impossible! Ariane tapped her fur boot against the floor impatiently.  Are all you
famous Jikais fools?
  I do not pretend to be a Jikai, lady, said Quienyin. He spoke quite mildly; but I, at least, caught the
undercurrent in his patient voice. And, I knew, his patience was forced on him by the loss of his powers
as a Wizard of Loh. I glanced across at the lady Ariane nal Amklana. She was not wearing well, of a
sudden, and I could not find it in my heart to fault her for that.
She was a girl on her own with us. She had left her four handmaids and their bodyguards with the main
party. No doubt she missed their loving ministration. Her rosy face stared up, deeply flushed, and her
bright yellow hair tangled in disarray, uncombed, with bits of dust and detritus still matting the fine
strands. Her dress was in a woeful state.
Yes, I felt sorry for her, the lady of Amklana.
As yet I had not learned her rank; but I felt absolutely certain she was a kovneva. Nothing less would
explain her manner and carriage. And, she had been gracious to me.
 It seems to me I said, and I spoke deliberately loudly,  if these Moder-lords want their fun out of us
they won t have much more if we cannot get on.
This was not strictly true. But my words made no difference. Nothing happened as a result of them,
unlike the occurrences in that fire-crystal-lit corridor where I had fought Tarkshur and had summoned the
key to unlock my chains. Different orders of illusion were clearly operative in the Moder. And I
wondered just how the damned Moder-lord watched us  as a Wizard of Loh might do, by going into
lupu and observing events at a distance?
Logu Fre-Da and his twin, Modo Fre-Da, were casting worried looks at their lady. The big numim,
Naghan the Doom, was looking at the two hyr-paktuns, and his mane indicated his own concern.
The twins, I had observed with some pleasure, each had the same number of trophy rings from defeated
paktuns dangling on their pakais. When a paktun defeats another noted mercenary he takes the ring with
which either the pakmort or the pakzhan is affixed to the silken cords at the throat. I had once been
betrayed by just such a dangling pakai. But I saw the twins fingering their pakais and I realized they were
reassuring themselves, seeking sustenance from their own prowess, the pakais giving them fresh
confidence in their nikobi. I have a great deal of time for Pachaks, and these two, it seemed to me, were
fine representatives of their fine race.
The intriguing thought occurred to me to wonder how much swag they had concealed about their
persons.
An acrimonious discussion began  at least, it was acrimonious from the lady Ariane, although Quienyin
and Tyfar remained exquisitely polite. We seemed to have reached a dead end, an impasse, and no one
could with any equanimity contemplate going back the way we had come.
For lack of anything better we tramped off around the Nine Halls again, passing Loriman and his men
still hard at work. We encountered a few prowling monsters, and lost a Rapa, and so returned to the Hall
of Ghouls and stared up at the roof once more.
The answer to the riddle was either so complicated we could not solve it  and with Quienyin with us,
despite that he had lost his sorcerous powers, I did not think that likely  or was of an imbecilic
simplicity.
Many folk on Kregen are fond of calling me an onker, a get onker, a prince of fools... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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