Current Music: Still Para Para – now the official Game OST! Boom Boom Fire, yeah! ;-)
Disclaimer: I do not own any part in David Eddings' work, and I do not intend to make money out of this fic.
CHAPTER 18
Five days after they had left Cimmura, Lenda appeared behind a hilltop on a warm late afternoon. Sparhawk sighed happily. "Finally a real bed again!"
Khalad eyed him, obviously amused. "Getting too old to sleep on the floor, my lord?", he teased his master.
Bevier laughed at that. "Sparhawk? Never! He will still sleep on the hard floor when he is as old as Obler was when he finally died of old age, I have no doubt in that!"
"Very funny, Bevier," the prince consort grumbled. Indeed he had been feeling increasingly stiff and his back hurt from sleeping on the ground – but he refused to admit it to his companions, most of whom were quite a bit younger than he was. Ah, the joys of advanced age... he decided to ram those words down the throat of the poet who had first coined the phrase.
"Khalad, why don't you ride ahead and find a good inn while we check our rations and see whether we can resupply before we leave Lenda?"
"At once, my lord." The squire spurred his horse into a canter and rode towards the city, which looked much like any other Elene city on the continent of Eosia – and quite a few Elene cities in Daresia, as well.
When he was gone, Aphrael suddenly raised her head. "Something is wrong!", she said
After a few seconds of what seemed like intent listening, Dorgatan nodded.
"Zoltach is trying to make locating him harder for us. The flow of energy... it suddenly started splitting up, and the split-up parts split up again... he is trying to mislead us by creating more focus points. There are good things about that – for once, I believe that at the fake focus points, where he doesn't use his power to bundle it into whatever he plans to do with it, the energy will simply flow back to your world, so his plans have at least been slowed down significantly for now. But, and that is the downside, his plan seems to work – at least as of this moment. I can't focus on the main beam anymore, and that means we will have to come up with a new idea to find out where we have to go."
Aphrael added: "Why don't we restock and sleep on that? Maybe we can come up with a solution after a good night's sleep."
It didn't take long for them to find the market place, where Polgara took charge; she haggled with the farmers selling meat and vegetables as though every copper piece meant the world, and restocked the packhorse fairly quickly with everything they needed.
"I still don't know why you don't let me cook, but ask Sir Ulath whose turn it is to cook instead, just to be told that it is YOUR turn. Is this some kind of obscure joke?"
Tynian started to laugh aloud when Bevier, a huge grin on his tanned face, explained: "Yes, it is a joke, indeed – very hard to explain, Lady Polgara. You almost had to have been there when he started doing that... but I will not ask Ulath anymore, if it makes you happy. Truth be told, I would bet my life that your cooking is a lot more palatable than anything I and my fellow knights could come up with."
Just then, Khalad had found them among the masses on the large square, and told them that he had found a good, cheap place for the night, one that appeared clean enough and even seemed to have a bath house.
Nobody raised any objections, and so the group led their horses into the stables which belonged to the inn just a few minutes later. Then they entered the large house, and Sparhawk called out for the innkeeper.
"Well met, neighbor," he greeted the fat, red-faced man with the huge hands, "we would like rooms for all of us, and a good supper."
"And a bath after supper, if possible," Polgara added.
Sparhawk nodded with an amused smile. "Just as the lady said, good man. And please serve up some lamb additionally to the ham – four of our number do not take well to pork. That will be all, I believe."
The innkeeper nodded eagerly; he obviously thought that there would be a good sum of money in it if he pleased these guests.
"Of course, my lord. Dinner with extra lamb will be served in half an hour. If you want to take your belongings up to your rooms before we have your food ready..."
"We will," Sparhawk replied, eyeing the innkeeper suspiciously. Something about the man struck him as wrong... but there was no definite reason for this feeling. He decided to wait a little longer before he alarmed the others – maybe he was wrong about him...
After a solid supper and a refreshing bath, the group had retired rather quickly to their rooms. They had all been weary after a few days on the road – not that they minded sleeping on the floor, but a bed was always preferable.
The innkeeper, who had already been compensated by the tall Church Knight in the black armor, was about to retire himself, when a sudden urge drove him up the stairs to the guests' rooms. Ctuchik had told him what to do...
The innkeeper usually was a harmless, although not completely honest man; that had changed, however, when tiny teeth had clamped themselves into the skin of his neck while he had been asleep next to his wife. He did not even know that there was anything wrong with him, did not notice the tiny yellow snake, which had locked her teeth into him, hidden by his hair and hat. Through her poison came the message that drove him, and the message was "kill".
Slowly, he opened one of the doors, cold steel glinting in the dimly lit corridor leading to the rooms. It was occupied by the Alcione Knight and the young Styric brat they had had with them. Both were fast asleep; the knight snored rather loudly. It would be easy...
The innkeeper turned toward the bed the boy slept in, lifted the hand holding the knife over his head, and plunged it into the Styric's breast.
The boy's eyes flew open, his head lifted off the pillow it had been lying on, and a loud gurgling noise came from his mouth as blood gushed out of it. The next moment, he heard a gasp as the knight woke up and saw what he had done. It did not matter. He had to kill... for Ctuchik...
The innkeeper turned around, eyes piercing into those of the Deiran...
Tynian had woken up at once when he had heard the noise Dorgatan had made. Sitting up as fast as he could after having been forced out of the depths of sleep, he assessed the situation at once; the innkeeper stood in the middle of the room, holding a bloody knife which obviously was responsible for the gaping wound in Dorgatan's chest.
He jumped to his feet, blocked a slow thrust of the innkeeper's dagger and hit him hard upside his temple. The knight's opponent collapsed, unconcious.
Frantically, Tynian ripped the door open, ran along the hallway and entered the room Sephrenia slept in without even bothering to knock.
"Little mother, come quickly! The innkeeper stabbed Dorgatan, and the boy seems to be dying!"
It didn't take long to alert the rest of the group of what had just happened. Now they sat around the still unconscious innkeeper, who had been brought into Ulath's and Bevier's room, while Sephrenia and Aphrael tried to save the life of the incarnation of the Styric Messenger-God.
Polgara kneeled next to him, pushing his head forward to have a look at his neck. "As we thought," she said. "One of Zoltach's dominating snakes."
She thought for a moment, then she added: "I don't think we should remove it just yet. He will forget everything that happened once we do. Maybe he can tell us why he was instructed to kill us."
Sephrenia entered the room, a very tired-looking Aphrael right behind her.
"I couldn't do anything," she said wearily. "His heart was stabbed, and the iron in the knife did the rest. This incarnation of Dorgatan is dead, I am afraid."
"... Which means, it will take him a long time to get over it," Aphrael added grimly. "Of course, you can't kill a God by destroying one of his incarnations, but killing his human body is like breaking an incredibly powerful spell – it hurts a lot. Dorgatan won't be able to join us again for weeks on end now – he can't manifest while coping with the pain..."
At that moment, the innkeeper's eyes fluttered open, slowly focussing on the figures standing over him.
Polgara, who was more upset about Dorgatan's incarnation dying than she was willing to show, nonchalantly set the tip of one of her daggers to the man's throat. He sneered up at her.
"Go ahead, wench, kill this body. I have served my purpose!"
"That you have, snake," Polgara answered, more than a hint of steel in her voice. "However, I wasn't planning on killing this man – I will settle for peeling your skin off the hard way instead."
The man's eyes went wide with the snake's apparent surprise.
"You wouldn't dare. I am the pet of the great God Zoltach!", he hissed.
Polgara laughed at that. "Try me, worm," she replied coldly, moving the knife to the back of the man's neck. "Or tell us some more about what your master wants with the energy of our world!"
"I don't know." The man's tone was sullen now. The sorceress raised her dagger, as if ready to slice off a part of the brightly colored snake. "I don't know!", the man screamed now. "Ctuchik wouldn't tell..."
That was how far the snake got before her God caught up with her. The tiny reptile suddenly exploded with a loud pop, parts of it showering the stunned Polgara. She exchanged a dazed glance with her father.
Ctuchik!
Okay, that's it for tonight! Hope you enjoyed! Comments appreciated!