Wulfston's odyssey se-6 Read online

  He swung down off his horse, strode to the well, and dropped the bucket into the water below. The splash was the most welcome sound he had heard all day. He licked dry lips as he added Adept strength to cranking up the winch, grabbed the bucket, raised it to his lips, spilling water on himself as-

  Something stung him in the neck.

  He let go the bucket with one hand to slap at it, but his hand did not connect. It fell to his side limply, the fingers of the other hand releasing the bucket, which fell back into the well.

  Wulfston’s knees gave way as he tried to turn in the direction from which had come-

  — a dart.

  The girl stood not ten paces away, a blowgun in her hand.

  Wulfston tried to speak, but he was falling, out of control of his body.

  He reached instinctively for his Adept powers to drive the poison from his blood, but it was as if he had used up every bit of his energy! He could do nothing-nothing- except stare up helplessly at the girl who bent over him.

  Traylo and Arlus snarled at the girl as she reached to touch him, but she smiled at the dogs, and in moments they were fawning on her, letting her scratch them behind the ears.

  Paralyzed, bereft of his powers, Wulfston could do nothing but stare, the greatest fear he had ever felt in his life tearing at his guts.

  Chapter Four

  Voices drifting in the darkness.

  Two women. What are they saying?

  Wulfston’s mind made snatches at the words buzzing around in his head, but could only make sense of a few.

  Trader’s Common? No. The other language, taught by-

  What was her name? Chaika? Eyes. Only her eyes could be seen. Eyes so much like.. whose?

  WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?

  For a moment Wulfston’s mind was startled into coherence, but he could not maintain it. Confusion returned.

  He tried to open his eyes, but the lids stubbornly refused to move.

  Drugged. Drug on that… dart. Must call up healing

  But his powers would not obey him. No matter how he tried, he could not make the healing fire flow through his blood.

  My powers… gone?

  Fear pushed some of the cobwebs from his brain. He was in acute discomfort, his tongue and throat raw and swollen.

  He remembered stopping at the well, thirsty. That’s where he had been captured!

  His flailing mind seized that thought. I’m a prisoner, and they’ve drugged me so I can’t use my powers to escape.

  A mixture of anger and fear charged his blood, helping to bring him to his senses. He lay in a soft bed.

  The air was warm and dry, had a “morning” smell. Aching joints announced themselves, but his attempts to stop the pain met with failure.

  No powers.

  He forced himself to calm his mind. For the moment, rational thought was his only weapon.

  My Adept powers will return, he told himself firmly. Reading doesn’t require energy, so perhaps-

  But his attempt to reach out with his mind, to summon Traylo and Arlus, also failed. He could not even sense them, nor any animal life.

  Reading might not require strength, but illness and injury curtailed it severely. The drug on that dart had made him so ill that he could not even open his eyes.

  The pain in his throat flared. He gave an involuntary moan. The women stopped talking. Wulfston heard them approach the bed. Gentle fingers pushed open his eyelids, and his eyes slowly focused on two concerned faces. They propped him up against some cushions, and one of them brought the mouth of a small clay bottle to his lips.

  The liquid that poured over his parched tongue had a sour taste, but it cooled the fire in his throat and eased the queasiness in his stomach. The woman let him have only a little at a time, so he would not choke.

  His thirst satisfied, Wulfston managed a weak smile in lieu of thanks. Both women smiled in return.

  Discovering that his tongue would move, Wulfston tried to say “thank you” in Trader’s Common. One of the women closed her eyes, and for a moment he “heard” the distant echo of a woman’s voice in his head, speaking foreign words.

  He was Reading her thoughts!

  Despite his situation, this long-dreamed-of moment buoyed his spirits. He wanted to laugh and shout for joy, but had no strength. At last I’m a Reader! A very weak one, apparently, but that will change as soon as I get some training from-

  Lenardo.

  The rescue mission.

  His elation disappeared as he remembered why he was here.

  He heard-no, Read-the woman’s thought again, the same words repeated; she was sending a message to someone. Soon another female voice echoed in his mind. He got the impression that she was a short distance away.

  He could not understand the words, but sensed orders being given concerning his welfare-and something else. As the message continued, the young Reader’s facial expression changed several times; mild surprise… consternation… wry amusement.

  What’s being said about me? he wondered, then tried to project the question to the Reader beside his bed.

  Either she couldn’t understand or was ignoring him. She spoke rapidly to her companion, who stared at Wulfston with the same series of reactions.

  The atmosphere suddenly chilled. Wulfston discerned that the mysterious message had changed his status from patient to prisoner.

  Or to someone’s property.

  The irony did not escape him.

  Not so many years ago he had captured a badly injured Lenardo and taken him to Aradia, who had healed him but claimed the Aventine Reader as her property. At the time, Wulfston had felt as she did: whatever an Adept could hold was his to keep by right of nature.

  Now someone wants to keep a Lord Adept, he thought. And in my present condition, there’s not a thing I can do about it!

  Again the women propped him up to a sitting position, but the olay bottle they brought him this time smelled like wine. It had a bitter taste. Wulfston tried to avoid swallowing it, but one of the women stroked his throat, forcing the swallow reflex. Instantly, his feeble attempts at resistance dissolved, and the women lowered him back to the cushions.

  No amount of drugs will make me anyone’s property, he thought defiantly as drowsiness overcame him. I will regain my powers and rescue Lenardo…ifl have to fight all of Africa to do it!

  He dreamed he was back on the grass plains again, trying to evade capture. Herds of wild beasts scattered at his approach. A dozen paces ahead of him, a giant eagle stood on the ground as though waiting to carry him away from his pursuers. But before he could touch it, the great wings spread and it was instantly aloft.

  Wulfston was surrounded by a dozen women in long dresses and veils. They approached as though sure he could not escape. He tried to use Adept force to drive them back, but found himself powerless, stripped of all his talents!

  The women formed a tight circle around him, each one raising a long dagger. He leaped for the throat of the woman immediately in front of him, feeling more like a beast than a rational man as he tried to strangle the life out of her. Her knife thrusts somehow missed him as they struggled… struggled… struggled until her neck snapped and her veil fell off-

  Revealing the face of his sister Aradia!

  Wulfston was shaken awake. Groggily he stared at the two very large men who dared thus handle a Lord Adept, but neither his powers nor his body would obey his will. He remembered where he was.

  Or did he?

  He was in the same room where he had awakened before, but as the two men helped him to sit on the edge of the bed his feet touched stone, not earth. The walls were also stone. This could not be one of the wooden huts he had seen near the well where he was captured!

  The men determinedly urged him toward a wooden tub. As he gathered that they wanted him to bathe, he realized that his clothes had been removed while he slept. The water was warm, and scented with spices. As he sank into it, the warmth eased the paralysis out of his muscles.

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sp; Still silent, the men handed him soap and a sponge, then stood back and waited. Wulfston studied them as he washed away the sweat of illness and bad dreams.

  His guards-or whatever their function-were night-black giants with no trace of humor in their faces.

  Like the horsemen who had pursued him, they wore tan tunics, but these garments were emblazoned with a black lion’s head in the center of the chest. Wulfston gathered that it was the mark of some elite group-palace guards?

  Palace?

  That was it-the place felt like his own castle. He glanced at the room’s only window, and saw the branches of strange trees at eye level. They were above the ground floor. The rosy glow of sunset filtered through the trees.

  His attention went back to the guards, who stood grimly waiting for him to finish his bath. Why so grim?

  They were not mistreating him, but he suspected they resented their orders to nursemaid him. Whose orders?

  Why had whoever was in charge decided he needed two strong men as guards? He was certainly no threat in his present condition. The guards had shaken him awake, even though the only safe way to waken a powerful Adept was with a light finger touch on the forehead. So they were sure his powers would not manifest, as he verified when he found that he could not even strengthen his limbs with Adept energy.

  Could it mean that his Reading powers were growing? Dominating his Adept talents?

  No, he realized as soon as he tried them, whatever small Reading talents I had have deserted me, too

  He could not even Read the surface emotions of the two men.

  “Where am I?” he asked them, first in Trader’s Common, then in Zionae. Both attempts earned him only stares, and an apologetic shrug from one of the men.

  The bathwater was cooling, so he turned his efforts to scrubbing himself clean. The brown soap they had given him was much coarser than even the cheapest at home, and he wondered what other differences he would find. Ghulaika had hinted-

  Chulaika. Chaiku. Zanos. Astra. Huber.

  Are they still alive? he wondered on a stab of guilt at having been completely consumed with his own survival. And where are they?

  While Wulfston toweled himself dry with a huge sheet of sheer, soft cotton, one of the guards laid out clothes for him. They were impressive, but nothing like what he was accustomed to: a black loincloth of soft, satiny material; a gold satin tunic with matching trousers that tie-cinched at the waist; and a pair of black leather sandals.

  He was handed a large wooden comb resembling a flat, oversized fork, and discovered that it was a better instrument for controlling his hair and beard than the combs and brushes he struggled with at home.

  As he stood before a small, circular mirror affixed to one of the walls, the image that stared back at him began to resemble his old self. His beard needed trimming, but he still looked reasonably neat, and felt much better about facing… what?

  Casually, he tried to slip the comb into his tunic-it could make quite an effective weapon-but one of the guards snatched it out of his hand the moment he finished grooming his beard.

  “Well? What now?” he asked rhetorically.

  One of them opened the door. Wulfston followed him out, and the other guard brought up the rear.

  Elaborate candleholders lined the corridor. Wulfston noted that the stone walls appeared new-not much older.

  than the walls of Castle Blackwolf, completed two years before.

  Near the stairs that appeared to be their destination, Wulfston stopped to look out a window. The second guard nudged him, but Wulfston held his ground to get a view of the outside of the castle.

  Stretching away before him were the dark outlines of a small community under a dusky sky. Lights were coming to life in structures resembling the buildings of Zendi. This was a city, not a primitive village.

  Just below him, workers were constructing a stone wall, hauling stone and mortar up wooden scaffolding to a height perhaps two stories above the ground. The first story had been completed around the castle for as far as he could see in either direction. The workers passed tools and materials with the precise, efficient movements of people who had labored together for a long time.

  His patience at an end, the second guard took Wulfston’s arm and urged him down the stairs. Still unaccustomed to such treatment, Wulfston glared at him-and noted a glimmer of fear in his eyes. So.

  The guards knew he had powers… and that the drugs they had given him would not deprive him of them forever.

  Feeling relief from a fear he had been unable to acknowledge, Wulfston began considering how he might escape as he turned and continued down the stairs.

  At the bottom they entered a wide, high-ceilinged foyer. To his left were the massive iron doors of the castle’s main entrance, closed and barred. To his right were an impressive pair of teakwood doors, also closed, each with the face of a roaring lion carved in its center.

  The two guards now flanked him, pausing for a moment before the doors. Wulfston squared his shoulders and took a deep calming breath as they pushed open the doors and ushered him into-

  — a gallery of a hundred silent, staring people.

  Two stone tiers, each higher than a man was tall, curved around the huge room in a semicircle. Seated on each level were perhaps a dozen ebony-skinned men and women in high-backed thronelike chairs.

  Each was dressed in elaborately embroidered finery, some in robes similar to Aventine fashion, others in gowns or caftans such as he associated with Africa. About each person’s neck was a talisman on a gold chain. All had the bearing of rulers.

  Each chair was flanked by two people standing, some hulking bodyguards, some more like his own retainers at home. All were impressively attired, as were the two dozen or so men and women standing on the floor level, against the curved wall directly ahead of him.

  Emotion charged the air. People stared, pulling back in their seats as Wulfston and the two guards strode into the brightly lit chamber. It felt for one moment as if this vast assembly of strangers recognized him-with fear.

  The mood was dispersed by the sudden yapping of dogs. Wulfston was unreasonably pleased to see Traylo and Arlus, even though they were leashed and restrained by two men flanking a young woman at the center of the lower tier.

  Wulfston recognized her: the girl with the blowgun at the well!

  His captor.

  But now she was resplendent in a gold gown, her hair elaborately upswept-no village maiden this, but a woman of consequence.

  When the guards stopped, so did Wulfston. His mind was on that girl/woman of catlike beauty, green-eyed and serene. She smiled enigmatically as she reached one hand to the head of each pup. Their barking ceased at once, and they sat like well-trained house pets.

  Wulfston felt as subdued as the dogs. He wanted to bide his time, see what was asked of him, store up information, but he dared not appear passive and compliant.

  A throat cleared, pulling his gaze upward to a middle-aged woman on the upper tier, directly above the woman in gold. She had the same catlike air, but in the older woman it was more like that of a lioness staring at her dinner. Her resemblance to the younger woman was unmistakable.

  “Lord Wulfston of the Savage Empire,” she said coldly, “I am Ashuru, Queen of the Karili Nation.” Her voice was soft, but it resounded clearly off the chamber walls. She spoke Trader’s Common with an accent much different from Sukuru’s or Chulaika’s. “We would know why you have invaded our lands.”

  “Invaded!” Wulfston’s first impulse was to defend himself, but the peculiar feeling that these strangers knew him when he knew nothing of them kept him from going beyond the single word of disbelief.

  He remembered Nerius teaching him, “When powerful Adepts first meet, each seeks to impress, dominate, or intimidate-or to make the other appear to brag or bluster. Whether you sit on your own throne, or stand before another’s, you must gain the advantage and maintain it.”

  The queen leaned forward. “Well?” she prompted.
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  My advantage, thought Wulfston. She displays impatience before her peers.

  He countered with a contemptuous glance at the guards on either side of him.

  Ashuru recognized that she had given him the upper hand, for he distinctly heard a low, angry sound come from her throat. She dismissed the two guards with a wave of her hand. They bowed and retreated.

  “Now,” said the queen, “explain your presence in our lands.”

  Excellent-he was now a presence rather than an invasion.

  “Explain why,” he countered, “when I was shipwrecked on your shores, I was three times attacked when all I sought was to survive.”

  “You entered Karili lands, wearing Karili clothing from one of our people you murdered,” Ashuru replied.

  ” Entered your lands thus attired,” Wulfston noted. “Then the man whose clothing I appropriated came out of your lands to attack me. I have done nothing to provoke your people, yet ever since I arrived in Africa my life has been in peril. Finally you,” he said, directing his gaze to the young woman in gold, “shot me down as I sought to quench my thirst. In my land, no stranger goes thirsty when there is water available.”

  “You killed Gorimu, the son of one of our allies,” a new voice suddenly spoke up. It belonged to the young man standing beside the woman in gold. He bore a strong resemblance to her, but was a bit younger. “In recompense, my sister Tadisha had to risk her life to capture you. “

  No wonder Ashuru hates me, Wulfston realized. A mother whose child has been endangered.

  “Queen Ashuru, Princess Tadisha, and Prince…?”

  “Kamas,” the boy supplied.

  Wulfston continued, “I assume that Gorimu was one of the men who attacked me in the grasslands.

  Another party tried to kill me on the beach. My ship was destroyed without so much as a warning, before I could even land- and I am the one accused of wrongdoing? Africans came to my land, and stole my brother Lenardo. They forced me to come to Africa against my will. Help me find Lenardo. I will take him home with me, and never set foot in Africa again.”