We could scarcely make our way through the crowd inside. The room was drowned with smoke from the hearth fires heating the food. Amidst the smoke, dozens of bodies were jammed together: traders dressed in dark tunics and holding their cups with ink-stained fingers, housewives taking a break from their work and holding squalling babies, market-sellers rushing in to buy a drink and keeping a nervous gaze through the window at their lightly-guarded stalls, and many more. The tavern guests stood close to each other with fellowship and also with the usual Koretian stubbornness against accommodating others. Yet as I entered the room, the crowd, seemingly without taking any notice of me, parted so that they would not have to touch me.

I looked over to the other side of the room and discovered I was not alone in my isolation. Fully half the tavern was taken up with soldiers sitting in neatly ordered groups and ignoring the Koretians with as much concentration as the Koretians were ignoring them. I saw a few of the Emorians eye me curiously, but none of them showed any signs of wishing to speak to me. Perhaps my face was too Koretian for that.

John led us through to the back of the tavern, heading for a door there. He reached the door at the same moment as a serving woman who was holding a tray full of mugs and a pitcher.

"John!" she cried with delight. "Where have you been hiding yourself for the last few days?"

"I"ve been at the priests" house, Mai." John spoke in a low voice I could barely hear above the chatter around us.

Mai c.o.c.ked her head at him. "And did your G.o.d speak to you?" she asked with such mockery that I wondered whether she was insulting John.

John answered her seriously, however. "Only with commands, not with the answers I was seeking. Are you taking that tray to the others?"

"This is their second tray a the ale is flowing there as fast as the gossip. And as for gossip, a few rumors have been spreading here at the tavern."

John smiled. "I"ll be glad to relieve you later of the burden of keeping all of those rumors locked in your mouth. In the meantime, let me relieve you of this." He reached out and took the tray.

"Are you trying to steal my job again, John? You should let one of the other men play the role of servant for once."

"I am free-servant to the others a I do this of my own free will. In any case, you appear to be busy this afternoon."

Mai cast her eye back at the crowd. "As busy as we have ever been. We"ve run out of room for all the soldiers here."

"Ah." John shifted the tray in his hands and caught hold of a mug that had been about to slide off. "The governor has sent more divisions to the city?"

"He has sent back the division from Valouse, at any rate. Nothing is left there to guard." Her gaze slid over to me.

"This is my blood brother Andrew," said John. He did not look at me as he spoke. His eyes were on the soldiers, as though he were memorizing their faces.

Mai smiled at me and gave me the free-man"s greeting. "You are very welcome here, Andrew. I heard Brendon telling the others about you; he said that you had known John when you two were boys. Has John changed much since then?"

"Not much," I said. "Except that, when we were young, he let me order him around more."

Mai laughed. "That hasn"t changed, has it, John the free-servant? Let me know if you have need of anything more. It looks to me as though that soldier over there is about to pick a fight with one of our customers. I had better go prevent the city riots from beginning at this tavern."

Mai left, and I lifted the latch to the door in front of us so that John could walk through. We entered a dark pa.s.sage that immediately veered off to the left. John turned the corner and then stopped suddenly. "I forgot to ask a do you prefer ale or wine?"

"I"ve found myself drawn to wild-berry wine since my return, but I"ll drink whatever is in that pitcher."

"It"s ale, but I know where Mai keeps the wine. Guard this; I"ll return in a minute." He placed the tray on a small table in the pa.s.sage, and then disappeared back into the main room of the tavern.

The pa.s.sage was musty with the scent of dust and wood. It was as dim as the corridor at the Chara"s palace, lit only by a small window facing south. I went over and rested my arms on the windowsill, listening with half an ear to the m.u.f.fled sound of voices that were raised and then subsided. Mai had evidently been able to prevent the fight.

Idly, I gazed out on the open square behind the tavern. I had never seen it before, of course; the houses surrounding it had all been built since the fire. Looming over it was Capital Mountain. I thought I could see, well hidden by summer foliage, a bit of red stone that might have been the G.o.ds" house. Then my gaze drifted down the mountainside: to the priests" house, to the trees that hid the cave, to the city wall at the other end of the square, and, finally, to the charred remains of a tree trunk standing in front of the wall.

I do not know at what moment I realized where I was. But after a time I found that I was frozen, reliving in my mind an earlier square, with flames surrounding it on all but one side. The flames touched my mind and burnt at it with the fire of remembered death and lost hopes. Within a short while, I could not bear the images brought forth, so I stared instead at the blackened tree marking the tunnel. John and I might have escaped through that tunnel a we might have helped my mother escape through it a if only the G.o.d had placed us under his care that day.

The dark hole of escape grew in my mind as though it were something greater than a simple tunnel. Soon the flames were gone, the tavern was gone, and all that I could see was blackness.

"I"ve sometimes wondered whether what happened that day was my fault."

The voice drifted to me through the blackness. I was already vaguely aware that I had been standing in the dark for some time, unwilling to return from it to the pain of my memories. But the sound of John"s self-judgment jolted me back to the tavern, and I found myself still standing by the window, my head cradled in my arms.

I raised my head and looked at John. He was gazing unwaveringly at the scene before us, but his fists were clenched tightly against some enemy. As he saw me look his way, he let his hands grow loose and said, "I don"t think the soldier had any immediate plans to harm you. If I"d talked to him rather than trying to kill him, I might have been able to persuade him to let you go."

"John," I said firmly, "there is a time for talking and a time for fighting, and that was the time to fight. You"re in no way to blame for what happened."

"Blood must sometimes be shed, I know," said John, "but talking is more likely to bring peace." He turned abruptly and picked up the tray. I followed him to a door at the end of the pa.s.sage and walked beyond it into the next room.

The sounds from the main room of the tavern subsided to a whisper as the door closed behind us. The only sound which greeted us here was that of Brendon, who was speaking, with long pauses between his sentences, to five men seated at a table. They made no move as we entered the room, but one of them looked at John, a couple gave the free-man"s greeting, and the rest nodded their welcome. Then their attention was focussed back on Brendon, who was rubbing his bloodstained bandage as he spoke.

John ushered me into the one of the two remaining chairs at the table, poured me a mug of wine, and began refilling the other men"s mugs with ale. Brendon paused again in his narrative, this time with a small gasp of pain. John glanced toward him before continuing to make his way around the table.

"You aren"t badly hurt, I hope?" said a man sitting next to Brendon; he was wearing the dark clothes of a trader.

Brendon gestured toward John. "John says I"m not, so you may be sure that I"ll heal. I"d have been glad to have my arm cut off if I could have accomplished my goal, which was to save a man who had just been stabbed by a soldier and who was too badly hurt to move. But by the time I"d killed the soldier, it was too late: the flames had reached the man."

John finished pouring the ale for the others and went over to the window opposite me, where he placed the tray. He took up the remaining mug and poured himself some wine, and then stood with his back to the window, watching the others. The man who had spoken before said, "So then you escaped?"

"Then, as you say, I escaped, and was joined by a lucky few on the road. Soldiers were posted at the town gates, killing the townsmen who tried to leave, but I managed to slip past them."

"They showed no mercy." A man sitting near the window slammed his mug down onto the table. "It"s no more than we might have expected. These Emorians have hearts of stone."

John did not look my way, but he said quietly from his place of isolation, "What Brendon has told me of Valouse reminds me of a village I visited several years ago. I spoke to a woman who lived there a she was in fact the only person who lived there, for the village had been burnt to the ground by soldiers, just as Valouse was. I think she continued to live there out of sheer hatred of the men who had destroyed the place. She said she had been visiting the city at the time the soldiers came, or else she would have been killed with the other villagers. Just as in Valouse, the soldiers took no prisoners."

"How can we hope to gain peace with such people?" exclaimed the man near the window. "It seems to me that we should simply destroy the vermin before they spread their poison further."

John took a sip of his wine before saying, "This particular village was one of the borderland villages in Emor. It was destroyed by the Koretians."

Silence lengthened. Finally Brendon said, "I fancy it was after you moved out of the priests" house that you learned blade thrusts such as that, John."

"It was a shock to me as well." John leaned over to the wine pitcher and poured himself another mugful. "It was then I realized that the only way to peace was either for one of our lands to utterly destroy the other, or for the Koretians and the Emorians to speak together peacefully and jointly find a solution to our problems. I think that the G.o.ds" peace is more likely to rest upon us if we talk with the Emorians."

"Speaking of Emorians ..." The man sitting next to me flashed me a smile.

"My apologies, Andrew," said John. "I haven"t yet introduced my friends. This fiery gentleman near me is Faustus ..."

He gave me their names, and the men all greeted me with smiles and friendly looks. It appeared that their hatred of Emorians did not extend to John"s blood brother. When they had finished, the farmer next to me raised his mug. "Welcome, Andrew, in the name of the G.o.d you worship."

I raised my mug in thanks, responding, "In the uncomplicated days of my boyhood it was the Jackal that I worshipped, but somehow I do not imagine he has me under his care these days."

The others laughed heartily at my small joke. The farmer replied, "The ways of the G.o.ds are mysterious, and the Jackal may surprise you one of these days. At any rate, he is likely to look with more love upon you than upon most Emorians, who are not even willing to admit that he exists."

"I met a city court official the other day who was willing to entertain the idea that the Jackal G.o.d existed," said the third trader at the table. "But he only wished to do so because it gave him the opportunity to tell me what the G.o.d was like. He said he knew that the G.o.d was named after the animal, and everyone knows that jackals are cowards and lackeys."

A roar of laughter went up at this statement. Even John smiled at the tale of the Emorian"s impiety as he reached forward to refill the mug of the fiery-spoken doctor near him. Brendon growled, "If he thinks that the Jackal is like that, then the Emorians are bigger fools than I thought... . Begging your pardon, Andrew."

The third trader said, "I didn"t conclude from this episode that the Emorians have dull wits, but rather that the G.o.d of disguise has done a masterful job at his work. If the Emorians think the Jackal is a mere follower and a recreant, then we needn"t worry they will ever penetrate beyond that mask."

"Oh, it"s a favorite occupation of Emorians to speculate about who the Jackal truly is," said the man sitting next to me. "We get soldiers at my market-stall all the time, and they"re forever offering theories as to who the man is behind the G.o.d-mask. Some say he"s an old Koretian soldier, some that he"s a trader, some that he died long ago and that only his death spirit now leads the thieves. One soldier even speculated that the governor is the Jackal."

Amidst the laughter, the farmer said, "If that were the case, then this land would have no more troubles, if the rumors are true and the governor is playing host to the Chara. That would be a nice trap for the Chara to find himself in."

Brendon drained his ale and added, "John would say, I suppose, that the Jackal should talk to the Chara, rather than kill him."

"That is the method I would recommend to the G.o.d," responded John, coming forward to refill Brendon"s mug. "But from what I hear, the Chara is just as stubborn in his beliefs as the Jackal is supposed to be. Such a conversation might bear no fruit."

"But would be worth trying?" said Brendon, looking up at John.

"Would definitely be worth trying. However, the Jackal would first have to find a way to lure the Chara to his lair, and that in itself would be difficult."

This long discussion of the Jackal caused my mind to wander. Any one of these men, I thought, could be one of the Jackal"s thieves, and if so, the words I spoke this day might be reported to the man who claimed to be the thief G.o.d. I had never known as a child whether my prayers reached the G.o.d, and now I preferred to think that the G.o.d had not heard them, rather than that he had ignored them. Slowly I began to think of matters I had long ago hidden dark inside me, rather than allow them to pain me.

I became aware of my surroundings again and realized that many of John"s friends had already left. The only men still remaining in the room were John, Brendon, the farmer, and the one man who had not spoken since my arrival nor even looked my way. He was seated in the far corner of the room, close to the window, and John was now kneeling at his side, murmuring something, while the farmer continued to speak to Brendon about the Chara.

Suddenly the silent man turned his head to look at me, and my throat tightened.

The left side of the man"s face, which I had not seen hitherto, was black and broken and sunken, scorched by fire as the earth is scorched by the sun. The man a his name and occupation had long since fled from my mind a stared at me with deep hatred through the one eye he still retained, but he remained silent, as though waiting for me to make the first approach.

I said, "You wanted to say something?"

The mutilated man remained speechless a minute longer, his eye fixed on mine. Finally he said with soft anger, "If I were the Jackal, and I had the Chara in my power, I would not talk to him but show him. I would show him the piles of ashes that still dust the streets after all these years, and the bones that lie in the gutters unclaimed. I would show him the beggars on the streets who still have nowhere to go because they never regained what they lost. I would ask the Chara a I would ask all Emorians a how in the name of all mercy they can claim to bring peace to this land and yet allow such a thing to happen."

I stared down at my pewter mug, which I had set in the path of the sunlight falling from the window. A bit of the fiery light was trapped in the metal. I reached forward to touch it, but pulled my hand away quickly as the heat seared my finger. Instead, I picked the mug up by its bone handle and drained it. As I lowered my mug, I saw that John was watching me, waiting.

I said, "I live at the Chara"s palace, so I have heard him answer the question you ask. I will not tell you what he said, because I received no satisfaction from his answer, and I doubt that you would either. But I will say that, if you were to show the images you mention to the Chara, I would also want you to show them to the Jackal."

"The Jackal does not need to be shown," said the man, his voice angrier than before. "He was in the city when the fire broke out, as everyone has heard."

"That is exactly my point." I looked at the men in front of me. Brendon and the farmer were waiting to see what I meant. John"s hand hovered over that of the mutilated man, perhaps in an effort to keep his friend from drawing a dagger against me. The man had opened his mouth to speak again, but he looked over at John and subsided.

I continued, "I say these words, not as the Emorian I am today, but as the Koretian I once was. I have told you that the Jackal was my G.o.d, and because I served him and loved him, the one thing I was certain of on the day that this city was destroyed was that the G.o.d would not allow such a thing to happen. It is easy enough for me to understand why a fallible man like the Chara would do something that was wrong, but I have never been able to understand why the all-wise Jackal allowed the Emorians to destroy this city. Either the Jackal is not all-wise or he is not all-powerful a in either case, that is why I found it possible in the end to leave the service of the Jackal and place myself under the care of the Chara. At least the Chara is sometimes willing to admit that he is wrong when he has caused great suffering."

Brendon and the farmer were looking at each other, and the mutilated man gazed at John. Only John continued to look at me, his black eyes as calm as the night sky. He said quietly, "If the Jackal were here, he might remind you that, since he was in the city that day, he presumably suffered along with the Koretians. But since you no longer serve the G.o.d and have not asked for his peace, I will not speculate on what he might say. All I can tell you is the answer I found for myself in the days after the fire, when I too wondered at the mystery of the Jackal"s actions."

He reached down and picked up the wine pitcher, which was carved with the symbol of the tavern. "This tavern is called the Flower and Flame because, like the rest of the city, it grew up out of the ashes of the old city. We can say that it would have been better if the old city had continued to live, and perhaps that is true. But we cannot deny that a new city has bloomed out of the flames, just as a forest regrows after a fire. The fire brought death, but it also brought new life."

"Then you are saying that the Jackal wanted there to be a fire?"

I had kept my voice at its usual even level, but I saw something flicker in John"s eyes and knew that he had seen beyond my mask to the anger I had long nurtured toward the G.o.d.

John walked toward me from the window, saying, "I doubt that the G.o.d created the fire, any more than he creates the blades that men use to kill one another. But since the fire was created, it may be that the G.o.d made it his own fire and used it to bring both vengeance and mercy. The fire brought pain and death, and if it had been only men"s fire, that is all that it would have brought. But in ways that men will never fully know, the G.o.d"s fire brought peace as well."

I stared down at the mug in order to avoid looking up at John, who was now standing beside me, pitcher in hand. I said, "If the Jackal is all-powerful, then I fail to see why he could not simply have given us the peace without making men undergo the pain."

"I do not worship the Jackal but the Unknowable G.o.d, whose thoughts will be forever cloaked to man, so I am unable to understand why the fire has to bring pain as well as peace. What I do know is that the G.o.ds give us what we pray for. If your wish is to have peace without pain, then the Jackal will find a way to give it to you. But if you wish to live your life without pain, you must give up everything that might bring you pain. Is that what you want?"

The room was very still, as though John and I were the only men there. I stared at the sunburst on the mug, and images came to me of the most painful moments of my life: Myself, standing amidst the carnage of the flame-filled square, on the point of being captured. Lord Carle, smiling at me as he prepared to make me his maimed slave. Lord Carle, smiling again as he told me what my punishment would be for running away from him. Myself, staring at the Koretian mountains in the moments before I broke my blood vow to the Jackal and became an Emorian. Lord Carle, staring at the dagger as I placed it against his heart. And finally, an image as terrible as the first one, Peter wearing his pendant and judging me with the cold face of the Chara.

And it came to me then, with a shock, that if any one of these sufferings had not occurred to me, Peter would not have become my friend.

I touched the sunburst again, and this time I did not flinch away from the pain it caused. John"s voice drifted down to me: "Which type of peace do you want the G.o.d to give you?"

"His fire," I said in a low voice. "I want the G.o.d to give me his fire."

"Then he will give it to you," said John, and leaned over to refill my mug.

I think Brendon said something thereafter that broke the tension and allowed the conversation to continue. But I did not speak again while I was there. My eyes were fixed on the blood-red liquid that John had given me, and I felt, without knowing why, as though I had just placed myself under the high doom.

Blood Vow 5 THE EYES OF THE JACKAL.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

"The only way in which to bring peace," said the governor, "is to find this Koretian rebel-leader and kill him."

We had finished dinner that night in the presentation chamber of the governor"s palace. Lord Alan was now occupied with pa.s.sing around Daxion nuts to the Chara, Lord Dean, Lord Carle, and myself. Upon our first meeting a or so it seemed to Lord Alan a the governor had treated me with the distant dismissal with which he treated the other servants. But throughout the afternoon I had noticed him watching the Chara as he spoke to me, and when Peter, without comment, included me in the governor"s dinner party, Lord Alan showed no surprise. He had me placed on the reclining couch that stood next to the Chara"s a Lord Alan followed the older custom among Emorian n.o.blemen of reclined dining. From that point on, the governor had treated me with great courtesy.

Lord Alan poured out a gla.s.s of Emorian wine and offered it to me. He had dismissed the slaves from the room earlier, explaining that he could not be sure which of his servants were in the pay of the Jackal. I shook my head, declining the gift. Lord Alan gave the gla.s.s instead to Lord Carle, who said, "Whether it brings peace or not, this fellow must be executed. It is an affront to Emorian dignity that he has been able to defy the Chara"s commands for so many years. He ought to have been captured long ago."

"So I thought, when I first became governor," said Lord Alan. "But the Jackal inspires a fanatical loyalty among his thieves. It has proved difficult to send spies to his lair, and those I have sent are killed by the Jackal. Or else a this is far more discouraging a they are converted to his cause." He paused to crunch delicately on a nut. "The Jackal has been making trouble in this land since before the Chara Nicholas even arrived here, yet after all these years, his true ident.i.ty remains unknown. He is never seen by any but his closest followers without his mask. As for his voice ... Well, n.o.body seems to be able to agree on the nature of that."

Lord Dean peered over his wine gla.s.s. "Yet you say that he has become bolder in recent weeks."

"Yes, and that may be his undoing," said Lord Alan. "Andrew, if you do not care for wall-vine wine, may I offer you some wild-berry wine? I received several casks of it as a gift from some Koretian n.o.blemen who support me, and I am told that it is quite good."

"Thank you, no," I murmured. "I have no taste for it any more."

Lord Alan smiled. "A true Emorian. I had no intention of suggesting otherwise; it is just that old customs are hard to abandon. I find myself longing sometimes for all of the ceremonial trappings of Emorian life, though I have been here for fifteen years now. It is hard to adjust to the sloppy manner in which these Koretians carry out their civil ceremonies."

"I understand that their priestly rites are more impressive," said Peter. He had been scanning the narrow-windowed room with his eye, his gaze stopping now and then on vases, paintings, and gold-ta.s.seled cushions.

"You may be right, Chara, but I confess that I avoid the G.o.d-worship here as much as possible. It is hard for me to comprehend why the Koretians spend all of their time worrying about what the G.o.ds want rather than simply obeying the laws."

"Perhaps that is because they had no laws before we came," suggested Lord Carle, reaching to take another nut from the cut crystal bowl.

Lord Alan laughed. "Much as it pains me to agree with you, Lord Carle, I think you have wisely hit upon an important point about the Koretians. The Koretians certainly have some n.o.ble qualities a that is why it has given me pleasure to govern them for so long a but they have no history of ceremony or law. The result, as one might guess, is that they can be unrestrained in cruelty. This recent incident in Valouse is an example of what I mean."

A pause hovered, and Peter looked at me as though bidding me to speak. So I said, "From what the High Lord was telling me this afternoon, Lord Alan, I thought that you had not yet determined how the riots began."

"Quite true, Andrew; thank you for mentioning that. I ought to have said, the incident that caused the town to be in a riotous spirit to begin with. This event happened a fortnight ago, while your party was still on its journey. The incident gives us much insight into the nature of the Jackal and how we may be able to capture him in the end."

"The nature of the Jackal interests me very much," said Peter, wiping his fingers on the embroidered cloth he had been given. "Any leader who has been able to inspire his followers for so long must be an extraordinary man."

"The Chara is no doubt right," said Lord Alan, "but I confess that this story makes me wonder instead how the Jackal manages to persuade any Koretian to follow him. Cruel as the Koretians can be, the Jackal seems to exceed them all. What happened in Valouse two weeks ago was that the Jackal murdered a man. This happens regularly, of course. In this particular case, though, the man was no spy of mine, but simply an unlucky Koretian who stumbled upon the rebel-leader"s lair."

"You now know where the Jackal"s hideout is?" Frowning, Lord Carle leaned forward quickly.

"We know only where his hideout was two weeks ago, alas," said the governor. "The Jackal changes his lair regularly. In the past, however, he has usually met with his thieves in isolated locations far from any villages. If he is beginning to set his lair in large towns such as Valouse, it is possible that he will meet with his thieves here in this city. If that happens, I doubt that we will fail to find him. My soldiers are thick on the ground here, and they will be able to detect unusual activity."