The Avengers of Carrig Read Free Page B

bags of spring produce they won’t let out of their sight. Look you, though: I have a house here, small but comfortable, and were you willing to sleep in one room you’d be my honored guests.”
    He thought for a moment that Pargetty was going to refuse, but Belfeor smiled quickly and cut in before his friend could speak.
    “We’d be more than glad,” he said. “I may say we’ve enjoyed your company too much to relinquish it before we must, and hope you think the same.”
    Pargetty said, “But—”
    “Our business will not suffer any delay by this,” Belfeor interrupted. “Is that what worries you?”
    Pargetty nodded, and Heron noted with interest:
So they do have business here! They never spoke of it before.
    He wondered what business it could be. Certainly it was of no ordinary kind.
    “What happens this evening in connection with the king-hunt?” Belfeor asked, falling in beside Heron as they left the market.
    “Oh, if I recall aright, when the evening star comes out Sir Bavis must declare the season of the king-hunt open; then there will be an assembly of all the clans, who’ll put forward their chosen contenders, one from each. These then will be dedicated, and must watch the night through until dawn while the other nobles hold a great feast in the fortress. Or so I’ve been told—you’ll appreciate that this is a sacred matter to them, and not one whose details they readily divulge to foreigners like myself. Tomorrow they’ll send to wake the king from his lair in the Smoking Hills. Sometimes it takes a day or two to find out which cave he’s chosen for his winter sleep, though usually it’s marked the year before. And then in the rising currents of hot air above the volcanoes the contenders do battlewith the king until he is slain—which has not befallen in eighteen years!—or until all the gliders are brought down. Some skillful challengers, they say, have remained aloft in constant battle for three days and nights, until the king was wearied and slow and a dart found him. But that must have been a generation ago, or more.”
    “And what honor to him who kills the king?” Belfeor asked.
    “His clan rules from that day until the next spring new moon.”
    “This then is how the old man we had audience of came to be the regent?”
    “Ah, that no.” Heron raised his hand. “At present Carrig is under the law of the interregnum, and Clan Parradile holds the power, being barred, you understand, from killing the king. And all the other clans attack together. Were it otherwise, were another clan ruling, then he who killed the king the previous year would go forth first alone for a chance to renew his power. So usually he does, for the old king will have driven away all serious rivals of his own kind, and a new king is often young and inexperienced. But this one, after surviving eighteen years, is mightier than ever was seen before.”
    “You’ve
seen him?” Belfeor suggested.
    “From a distance. For myself, I’d willingly go no closer to him than a day’s fast march.”
    Heron’s wife here was a Carrig woman and the household was run in Carrig style, which meant that when he arrived in the city he was treated like a visiting monarch. To have made his wife behave otherwise would have upset her view of what was right and proper. She had four children now; he was certain they were none of them his, but he had never complained—after all, a barren woman was regarded with contempt by most local people, and he was seldom in Carrig more than two months of the year. And it was very pleasant after a long and arduous trek across ice-bound hill passes to subside into the lap of such luxury as this one alone of his four wives knew how to provide.
    He had allotted attendants to wait on Belfeor and Pargetty, presuming that they too would welcome hot baths,massages, the services of a barber, and clean comfortable clothes. He was surprised, therefore, to find those same attendants returning to him in