Read Online The Quest of Kadji by Lin Carter - Free Book Online Page B

assumptions. However, the guards also state that one other person used this gate, and that but recently, scarce an hour ago.”
    “Could they describe him, at least?”
    “Alas, it was not a him ; it was a young woman,” replied Akthoob.
    Kadji gasped, and swore feelingly.
    “A young girl—my own age—a flamehaired girl with smoky amber eyes?”.
    “I cannot say. She, too, went heavily robed against the cold wind; my two friends yonder could not describe her appearance, save that her saddle was silver-mounted, and her robes of expensive fur.”
    It is that girl again—Thyra—the girl we glimpsed looking at the corpse at the foot of the throne—it must be her!” Kadji growled. “At every twist and turn of the way, I encounter this girl! She is a puzzle, aye, a great puzzle . . .”
    “They say she rode alone, but that there was a great dog with her, like a tame wolf,” offered the little wizard.
    Kadji grinned. “Aye, the grey plains-wolf, her pet. Then it is the girl Thyra! But why should she have left the city? Could she be in pursuit of Shamad as well as we?”
    “I know not the answer to these riddles, young Kadji, but if this lowly person may suggest haste . . . yon two guards remain ‘mazed and bewildered by the art of the mind crystal, and I have opened the gates for our passage. We should be on our way, for the power of the jewel will not hold them in the magic slumber for very much longer.”
    And so Kadji, accompanied by the little Easterling wizard, rode forth from imperial Khôr on a bleak wintry late afternoon, and turned east on the tracks of Shamad the Impostor.
    The boy thought that with luck they might catch up to the fleeing traitor ere nightfall, for the Impostor could have no suspicions that he was being followed.
    Kadji was determined to ride as far as was needful, however.
    He did not dream how far his journey would take him in truth. Had he somehow known, he might well have turned back. As it was he rode on into the gathering shadows, following the triple trail of tracks across the snowy ground . . . east and ever east they led, and the Red Hawk and the little wizard followed ever after.
    iii. Flaming Eyes
    WHEN IT became too dark to any longer follow the trail, Kadji was forced to· halt, to make camp amidst the frozen plains, and to wait for.day.
    Because they had so swiftly left the city to avoid the vengeance of the kugar Jashpode, they had with them neither those of their belongings which had been left behind in the inn nor any provisions whatever. But Akthoob had cleverly “borrowed” the winesack wherewith the two guards of the postern, gate had been driving off the chill, together with a few wheaten cakes one of the guards had been munching. So it was not entirely on empty bellies that the two travelers went to sleep that night, wrapped in their saddleblankets and curled about a small fire.
    WHEN THEY woke to the first light, of dawn, Kadji cursed with great feeling. For soft fat flakes of white snow were falling and, from the thick white blanket that covered the ground, had obviously been falling for an hour or two. Thus the slight track left by Shamad in his flight was now hopelessly obscured.
    Refreshing themselves with the last of the wine and some crumbs of the wheaten cakes that were left, the two mounted and rode on due east through a driving blizzard that steadily grew worse until at length Kadji could no longer perceive their direction from the position of the sunstar Kylix, as the sky was one blowing mass of freezing whiteness. He dared go on no further, lest in the blind flurry of snow they deviate from the eastward and wander aside, thus losing whatever small advantage they had, for by now he reckoned they were not far behind Shamad, who could have had no reason to have pressed his flight with such tenacity and vigor as had the vengeful Red Hawk of the Kozanga Nomads.
    They had halted on a low rise of ground and Kadji was debating whether it would not be wise to try