At last, she turned her formidable eyes from him to look down at the other stones. Her movements seemed oddly jerky. Her slender fingers selected one of the stones. As she lifted it, she paused to put her other hand across her middle. Oba realized that she was in pain. She was trying her best to cover it, but she couldn’t cover it now. The sweat beading her brow was from pain. The agony came out in a low moan. Oba watched with fascination.
Then, it seemed to ebb some. With great effort she straightened her posture and returned her attention to what she had been doing. She held out her hand, palm up, with the stone sitting in the center.
“This one,” she said, her breathing labored, now, “is me.”
“You? That stone is you?”
She nodded as she cast it at the board without even looking. The stone tumbled to a stop, this time, without the accompaniment of lightning and thunder. Oba felt relieved, even a little foolish, that he had been so rattled by that before. He smiled, now. It was just a silly board game, and he was invincible.
The stone had come to rest at one corner of the square that lay within the two circles.
He gestured. “So, what does that mean?”
“Protector,” she managed through a shallow pant.
Her trembling fingers gathered up the stone. She lifted her hand up before him and opened her slender fingers. The stone, her stone, rested in the center of her palm. Her eyes were fixed on his.
As Oba watched, the stone crumbled to ash in her palm.
“Why did it do that?” he whispered, his eyes going wide.
Althea didn’t answer. Instead, she slumped and then toppled over. Her arms sprawled out before her, her legs to the side. The ash that had been a stone scattered in a dark smear across the floor.
Oba leaped to his feet. His goose bumps were back. He had seen enough people die to know that Althea was dead.
Rending slashes of thunderous lightning ignited, lacing the sky with violent flashes of light that lanced in through the windows, throwing blinding white light across the dead sorceress. Sweat trickled down his temple and over his cheek.
Oba stood staring at the body for a long moment.
And then he ran.
Chapter 38
Panting and nearly spent from the effort, Oba stumbled out of the thick vegetation into the meadow. He squinted around in the sudden bright light. He was spooked, hungry, thirsty, weary, and in a mood to tear the little thief limb from limb.
The meadow was empty.
“Clovis!” His roar came back to him in an empty echo. “Clovis! Where are you!”
Only the moan of the wind between the towering rock walls answered. Oba wondered if the thief might be nervous, might be reluctant to come out, worried that Oba might have discovered his fortune missing and suspect the truth of what happened.
“Clovis, come here! We need to leave! I must get back to the palace at once! Clovis!”
Oba waited, his chest heaving, listening for an answer. With fists at his sides, he again bellowed the little thief’s name into the cold afternoon air.
When no answer came, he fell to his knees beside the fire Clovis had started that morning. He thrust his fingers into the powdery gray ash. It hadn’t rained up in the meadow, but the ashes were ice cold.
Oba stood, staring up the narrow defile through which they had ridden in early that morning. The cold breeze blowing across the empty meadow ruffled his hair. With both hands, Oba ran his fingers back through his hair, almost as if to keep his head from bursting as the awful truth settled in.
He realized that Clovis had not buried the money purse he’d stolen. That had never been his plan. He’d taken the money and run as soon as Oba had gone down into the swamp. He’d run with Oba’s fortune, not buried it.
With a sick, empty, sinking feeling, Oba understood, then, the full extent of what had really happened. No one ever went in the swamp by this back way. Clovis had talked him into it and guided him there because he believed Oba would perish in the treacherous swamp. Clovis had been confident that Oba would become lost and the swamp would swallow him, if the monsters supposedly guarding Althea’s back didn’t snare him first.
Clovis had felt no need to bury the money—he figured Oba was dead. Clovis was gone, and he had Oba’s fortune.
But Oba was invincible. He had survived the swamp. He had bested the snake. No monsters had dared come out to challenge him after that.
Clovis had probably thought that even if the swamp didn’t finish his benefactor, there were two other mortal dangers he could count on. Althea hadn’t invited Oba in; Clovis had probably figured that she would not take kindly to uninvited guests—sorceresses rarely did. And, they had deadly reputations.
But Clovis had not anticipated Oba being invincible.
That left the thief only one safeguard against Oba’s wrath, and that one was a problem—the Azrith Plains. Oba was stranded in a desolate place. He had no food. Water was nearby, but he had no means to take it with him. He had no horse. He had even left his wool jacket, unnecessary in a swamp, with the underhanded little hawker. Walking out of this place, without supplies, exposed to winter’s weather, would finish anyone who had somehow managed to survive the swamp and Althea.
Oba couldn’t make his feet move. He knew that, given his situation, if he struck out and tried to walk back, he would die. Despite the cold, he could feel sweat running down his neck. His head was pounding.
Oba turned and stared back down into the swamp. There would be things back at Althea’s house—food, clothing, and surely something in which he could carry water. Oba had spent his life making do. He could make a pack, at least a pack good enough to get him back to the palace. He could put together a supply of food from the sorceress’s house. She wouldn’t be there alone and crippled without food on hand. Her husband would be back, but maybe not for days. He would have left food.
Oba could wear layers of clothes to keep himself warm enough to make the trek across the bitterly cold plains. Althea said her husband went to the palace. He would have warm clothes to cross the Azrith Plains, and might have left extra clothes at the house. Even if they didn’t fit, Oba could make do. There would be blankets he could take in a pack and wear as a cloak.
There was always the possibility, though, that the husband might come back sooner. By the lack of a trail on this side, he would most likely come in the wide path from the other side of the swamp. He could already be there and have discovered his wife’s body. Oba wasn’t really concerned about that, though. He could deal with the nuisance of a grieving husband. Maybe the man would even be pleased to be out from under the obligation of having to care for a petulant crippled wife. What good was she, anyway? The man should be glad to be rid of her. He might offer Oba a drink to help him celebrate his liberation.
Oba didn’t feel like celebrating, though. Althea had pulled some evil trick and denied him the pleasure he had so looked forward to—the pleasure he deserved after his long and difficult journey. Oba sighed at how trying sorceresses could be. At least she could provide him with what he needed in order to get back to his ancestral home.
But when he got back to the People’s Palace, he would have no money, unless he could find Clovis. Oba knew that was a thin hope. Clovis had Oba’s hard-earned fortune, now, and might well have decided to travel to fine places, wantonly spending his ill-gotten gain. The little thief was likely to be long gone.
Oba didn’t have a copper penny. How was he to survive? He couldn’t go back to that pauper’s life, a life like the one he had had with his mother, not now, not after he had discovered that he was a Rahl—almost royalty.
He couldn’t go back to his old life. He wouldn’t.
Simmering with anger, Oba plunged back down the spine of rock. It was getting late in the day. He had no time to waste.