5

Day dawned through a strangely undesertlike fog. It might have been a cloud, for by then the travelers were already high into the hills.

Departure from Tall Cranes had been a very educational procedure. Inos had listened in fascination as Azak reduced both hamlet and caravan to utter confusion. Although the visual detail had been obscured by darkness, she had been able to make out enough from the sounds alone.

The famous Code of the Lionslayers had proved to be much less reliable than the proverbs about not trusting djinns. Gold and promises had worked their usual wonders. Although she did not hear the actual words of treachery, Inos could guess that exiled princes would readily succumb to offers of future royal status in the court of Arakkaran—even though they had no reason to expect Azak’s pledges to be any more reliable than their own oaths. However he did it, Azak prevailed and Elkarath was betrayed.

If the villagers had guards of their own posted, then the lionslayers dealt with them—Inos preferred not to know—but probably the foxes had not expected danger from the chickens. Most of the men were absent, anyway.

The camels had been freed of their hobbles and bells, and driven from their paddocks. By dawn they might be anywhere. The rest of the livestock—mules, cattle, horses, even poultry—had also been chased out into the night. Some had tried to follow the fugitives for a while, but had eventually given up. The lionslayers had loaded their familes and taken off south, to Ullacam. When the old sheik awoke, he was going to have much to keep him occupied—marooned and defenseless amid a very hostile population. No one was going to be starting a pursuit for quite some time.

Mules would be better than camels in the mountains, Azak had said, so it was from the back of a mule that Inos greeted the dawn. A mule was not a smooth ride, but the tough little beasts had climbed and climbed and climbed without protest. Already Tall Cranes was a long way back and a long way down.

The night wind had gone, or else it was confined to the valley and the mule train was now above it. A pearly glow filled the air, and she could smell dampness for the first time in weeks. Delicious! The mules’ small hooves clopped on a smooth stone surface.

“A road?” Inos said.

Azak and his mule loomed large and dark at her side, just foggy enough to hint that they were not quite corporeal. His red-bearded smile was visible now, but she had been hearing it for some time in his voice.

“The road to the city, certainly. We have been following it for an hour. It comes and goes. See?” The paving vanished below a bank of sand.

Inos twisted around and confirmed that Kade was in view now also, although misty. She waved and received a wave in reply. Wonderful old Kade! Inos herself sat the lead mule of a string of four, with her aunt bringing up the rear. Azak had kept his mount free, and rode ahead or alongside, as the terrain dictated. Even mules did not argue with Azak ak’Azakar.

Escape! Freedom!

Boulders and a few scraggy bushes appeared out of the fog, paid their respects, and withdrew to the rear like a procession of courtiers. The light was growing brighter, the fog drifting. A few minutes later, the pavement was back again. After a furlong or so, the mules reached a gully where it had been washed away, but Azak found it again on the far side.

He was very pleased with himself. He had reason to be. The current confusion in the Oasis of Tall Cranes did not bear thinking about—meaning that it was very enjoyable to think about. Revenge!

Weary as she was, not having slept all night, Inos could still convince herself that she was thinking more clearly than she had done in weeks. She said so. “I feel as if my mind has been wrapped in a blanket! Sleazy, deceitful old man! Everything feels sharper and clearer.”

“Then you agree to marry me?”

She parried with a jest, and won a laugh. Azak seemed to be feeling the same sense of relief she did. He was flippant and high-spirited. He was totally unrecognizable as the saturnine sultan who had ruled a palaceful of ferocious princes by brute terror. He was in love.

She had seen the same transformation happen at Kinvale, although never on quite such a scale. A man in love reverted to boyhood. He rediscovered fun and frolic, and cheerfully played the fool in ways he would never otherwise have considered. She had seen a normally lordly tribune leap into a fish pond to recover a lady’s hat. Temporary mating plumage, the girls had called it among themselves. It suited Azak. It made him seem much more credible as a husband in Krasnegar. But how long would it last after the courtship was over?

And he was very persistent. Even at dawn, on a mule, after a sleepless night, heading into unknown dangers, possibly being pursued by an angry sorcerer, Azak was busily wooing. He badgered, and he deflected every objection. “Tell me! ” he said. “Describe these customs that you find so unacceptable. ”

“Murder, for one thing. I know you poisoned your grandfather . . . how about Hakaraz and his snakebite? Did the snake have help?”

“Certainly. Asps do not infest royal apartments from choice, and there were six of them. The one in his boot got him.” Inos shivered. “How many brothers have you killed?”

“Eighteen. Do you want to know about uncles and cousins?” She shook her head, not wishing to look at him. The mules were back on the made road again, and the surrounding slopes were coated in rank brown grass, wet with dew. The air was cold yet.

“Do you wish to hear my reasons?”

“No. I’m sure you had reasons. And I know that it is the custom of the country, so they couldn’t complain that they—”

“Complaints were some of the reasons.” He was mocking, and yet serious, too. “But I shall have no relatives around in Krasnegar to vent my barbarous impulses on. It just isn’t as much fun with commoners, somehow.”

“Oh, Azak! I know you don’t do it for fun, but . . . Oh, Azak! Look!”

The fog swirled as if bowing farewell, and withdrew like a drapery. Sunlight blazed hot and bright. Inos stared up in amazement at a rugged mountain that filled the sky, seeming to overhang her; and yet the craggy hills directly ahead were sizable in their own right. Then, even more dramatic, the crumbled yellow landscape seemed to waken like a sleeping dragon and transform itself before her eyes into the ruined city that was their immediate goal. Cliff became wall, peak tower, gorge gateway. And Kade cried out.

Azak wheeled his mule even before Inos had hauled hers to a stop. She dropped the reins and scrambled off its back, suddenly aware of stiffness and stabbing aches. And she was not a quarter of Kade’s age! How could she have been so thoughtless as to drag the old lady up here without any decent respite? Keeping her up all night . . .

By the time she had limped back to the fourth mule and her aunt, Azak was dismounting a short way farther back, and Kade was full of apologies. She had dropped her breviary, was all.

Well, if she could attempt to read and ride a mule at the same time, she was in not too bad a shape.

“We must take a break, though,” Inos said. —

Azak nodded agreement as he returned with the missing book, leading his mule. Although his mule was larger than any of the others, in the light of day he seemed absurdly huge alongside it, like a man walking a dog.

The sky was blue, the sun hot, and sunward the land tumbled away in scrawny ridges to the hazy immensity of the desert. Inos had a sudden heady sensation of being a bird. The view was breathtaking. She was amazed at the height they reached already, at the vastness of the world spread out before her.

Somewhere down there in that jumble of rock was the Oasis of Tall Cranes, full of enraged brigands and a very angry sorcerer. Doubtless the local men knew of this road and would follow as soon as they had recovered their livestock, but so far the sorcerer had not reacted. He had not called the fugitives back to him. He might have lost them, or they might be beyond his range already.

But a rest, and hot tea, and food . . .

“Which God?” Azak murmured politely, thumbing through Kade’s breviary. “Travelers?”

“Humility,” said Kade.

Without hesitation, he expertly flipped the pages and found the place, but as he handed back the book, he raised one copperred eyebrow. “And why should you choose to invoke Them, ma’am?”

Normally Kade deferred to Azak as thoroughly as any Zarkian woman would. This time she met his mocking gaze with a royal confidence of her own. On muleback, she was almost at his eye level, which no doubt helped, and perhaps she no longer wished to play the Mistress Phattas role, for there was no deference in her ice-blue eyes as she replied. “Because I am convinced we have made a terrible error, your Majesty.”

He flushed. “I trust that you are mistaken!”

“I hope I am. I pray that I may live to apologize.”

Azak’s red eyes flashed anger, and he turned away, yanking his mule’s reins.