Read Online Empire of the East by Fred Saberhagen - Free Book Online Page B

the upper parts of the high Castle, showing a gray-green movement of reptile bodies under the nets. Ekuman’s flag of black and bronze had evidently flown all night from a pole on the flat roof of the keep. And there were other decorations dangling high on wall and parapet; the tiny whitish stick-figures that Rolf knew had once been people, good people, who had displeased the land’s new masters and had been lifted up there to be living toys and food for the leatherwings.
    The only living men to be seen now on the high places were dots of black and bronze, the movements of their arms and legs barely distinguishable at this distance. They were about the morning routine of furling the protective nets from around the reptiles’ roosts. Now the gray-green dots came into plainer view, swelling and contracting. The reptiles would be stretching their wings. Cawing and whining drifted faintly across the pass. In another moment the first of them were airborne, making room for more and more to appear on the perches. Soon the air above the Castle grew cloudy with their circling swarm.
    â€œAnd now we had better make sure to lie low,” said Thomas, casting a look around at their hiding place. To their rear, the narrow crevice in which they lay twisted back into the foot of the mountain, its sandy floor losing itself among huge tumbled boulders and splintered outcroppings of rock. A shoulder of the mountain had slumped and fallen here an age ago. Somewhere back in that jumble, this little crevice grown wider had high on one of its walls the hidden cave-entrance. Strijeef and Feathertip had taken shelter there for the day. Getting Rolf or Thomas somehow into the cave would have to wait for another night.
    Directly above Thomas and Rolf, the rock-bulges of the canyon walls shut out the sky entirely. The reptile swarm centered above the Castle had now spread until its thinned edges reached this far and farther, but still there came no cawing of alarm from overhead, no gathering of faces at the Castle wall. Rolf found it moment by moment easier to believe that he and Thomas would not be seen today if they kept still.
    Keeping still was not going to be hard. The folk in the swamp had given Rolf sandals, but still his feet were sore from the long, fast hike. And he was tired in every muscle.
    Lying stretched out in the sand, nerves still sleeplessly taut, he let his gaze wander eastward again. In the far distance the Black Mountains looked grayly insubstantial with the morning sunlight almost at their backs. Much nearer, but still well out over the badlands, clouds were forming a high knot that promised rain. Rolf knew that under those clouds the Oasis of the Two Stones must lie, though a low elevation of the land between kept him from seeing that round fertile patch. Years ago Rolf’s father had brought him here to the pass, to show him the Castle—then an innocent and wondrous ruin—and had also pointed out to him where the Oasis lay amid the desert, and had told him of the wonder of its rainfall.
    Rolf suddenly realized that something strange was happening to the clouds. Instead of remaining gathered above the one always-favored spot they were moving now, coming roughly toward the pass.
    This seemed to him so odd that he called it to Thomas’s attention. Thomas slid a few centimeters forward and peeked cautiously out of the canyon mouth to look for himself.
    â€œSomething must have gone awry with their magic out there,” he said shortly.
    â€œI wonder what their magic is.”
    Thomas shook his head. The distant knot of vapor had already darkened into a thunderstorm, and was chasing its shadow toward them across the desert, lighting itself from within by a sudden flicker of lightning.
    â€œI suppose the invaders are holding the Oasis too,” Rolf said. He thought he could hear the thunder, tiny and distant.
    Thomas nodded. “Quite a strong garrison, I understand.” He pulled himself