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its shadows. There was a racket in the direction of the Sawn. At least one large fire illuminated the underbellies of dense, low clouds. "Looks like rain," Else told Stewpo. "That would be good. It'd cool tempers." They traveled barely a quarter mile, which was a large fraction of the width of the Devedian quarter. The quarter was densely populated. It occupied very little ground. Deves had to bury their dead outside the wall, in unhallowed ground set aside by the Church. The dwarf muttered, "There are spies everywhere." Two determined-looking youths challenged the dwarf quietly. Stewpo responded. One youth hurried ahead to open the door of what looked like a rich man's home. It had no shops at street level. The door opened on a narrow hallway illuminated by a sin- gle candle. The floor was worn hardwood. Four doors opened off on that central hallway. Each was shut. At the end of the hall a door opened on a steep cellar stairway. The dwarf needed no guide. Stewpo stopped at the bottom, said nothing until their guide climbed back up the narrow stairs. Then he opened what appeared to be a derelict clothes cupboard stuffed with castoffs, reached through the clothing, pushed sideways. The back panel moved slightly, men swung away to reveal a darkness behind the cupboard. Stewpo said, "There isn't anything lurking in this darkness." "I'll be right behind you," Else said. And, "Have you visited Suriet yourself?" "No. Have your' "Yes. Nowhere is the night so dark as it is there." The dwarf pushed into the darkness. Which proved to be hanging strips of black felt. There was no light on the other side of the felt, though. Until Stewpo said something mat must have been a password. An ancient Deve in traditional costume, wearing a huge beard, appeared behind a tiny candle. He said nothing while Stewpo and Else eased past and pushed through another set of felt hangings into a large underground room. Else suspected the whole neighborhood was rife with tunnels and underground rooms, escape routes and places to hide. He wondered what the Deves had done with the surplus earth. These Deves had been getting ready for trouble for a long time. The underground room contained an arsenal and seven wizened, shrunken old men. Stewpo said, "These are the Devedian Elders of Sonsa." Else noted forests of gray facial fur. These old men might not have seen the real world in a generation. One old man looked like he might have been around, Page 54 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html criticizing and complaining, when the Creator was putting together his great, flawed clockwork piece of art. Else considered them, pigeonholed them, shifted attention to the arsenal. He was impressed. "There must be a lot of money in the Devedian quarter." He saw fire-throwing weapons from the Eastern Empire and Lucidian crossbows of the sort any fool; could use with almost no training. He saw weapons meant for. use by specialist troops like grenadiers. He saw amphorae] marked as containing deadly poisons suitable for use on arM rowheads, spearheads, crossbow bolts, swords, and knives. I It all suggested a ferocious determination. j The Devedians of Sonsa had suffered all they were going j to take. ] "I'm here," he said. "And I see that you're serious. What do' : you expect me to do?" "Nothing if we're not attacked," Stewpo said. "Everything if we are. You'll be our general. You'll be our hope. But no one who isn't in this room now will ever know that a foreign soldier was involved." Else felt his arm being twisted figuratively. "Let's see what we have to work with." They did have him at their mercy. Five minutes later, Else told the elders, "What'll happen is, you'll get yourselves massacred. First time they roll a wizard in on you." Sorcery, even in the hands of its masters, seldom operated on a large scale. In a large battle a single sorcerer was almost irrelevant because he could impact only a tiny fraction of the struggle at a time. But on the close, intimate battleground of a house-to-house struggle, the ability of a sorcerer to crush resistance systematically could be terrifying. Else asked, "Why do Chaldareans want to attack Devedians?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |