The River Wall Read online

  “Please, Ligor,” I interrupted him. “I’ll explain later. Right now, I just need to know about him. When did he come to Raithskar? When did he become a Supervisor? Whom did he replace? When did he become the Chief Supervisor? I know you quit shortly after that. You’ve already told me that it was basically because of Ferrathyn. I want to know the details. I need to know—before I tell you what it’s all about.”

  Smart move, I scolded myself. You’ve only been wondering for days whether to take Ligor into your confidence, and now you’re committed to it without thinking it through. Still, I considered, looking at the rough man who had been Markasset’s friend and who had accepted the differences in me with an attitude of minding his own business, I could do worse than trust Ligor. I would probably have decided to tell him, anyway.

  Ligor shrugged, kicked one of the chairs around and put his feet up on it, and leaned back against the wall.

  “All right, son—Rikardon, as you’re called now. First you gotta know about me. My daddy was a vlek handler, and I grew up hating the sight and sound and smell of the beasts, and knowin’ that was not the way I wanted to spend my life. Still, I was caravan-born, and the caravans were all I really knew.”

  I understood what he meant. During the short stint Tarani and I had spent working as vlek handlers, we had encountered almost an elite spirit among them, and something of the parent-to-child tradition maintained in most of Gandalara’s other skill areas. But even knowing that it was often true, it was entirely beyond my capacity to envision a kid growing up with ambition to be a vlek handler.

  “I was bigger’n some,” Ligor said, “and not afraid of a fight. I started working as a guard, I was young, and cocky, and I guess you see where that led. The other guards taught me how to fight—the hard way.” He stretched. “All the time my dad and I had been working caravans, we never crossed the Chizan passage. Well, I took it into my head to see the other side of the world for a change. We heard the stories, you know—about how every caravan hired hundreds of guards to see them through past the Sharith.” He snorted. “Hogwash, of course. But jobs were scarce just about then, and I was young. I was downright fed up with doin’ nothing most of the time. When I did catch some sneakthief tryin’ to make off with part of the goods, half the time the thief was one of my folk.”

  I noticed his phrasing and thought: I guess your beginnings are always with you.

  “So I waited for a caravan going to Chizan, then caught one in Chizan going to Raithskar.” He shook his head, pulled his torso forward, and poured some more faen. “When I saw Raithskar, so shiny and clean and cool, I knew I had to stay. There’s no prettier place in this world, son. I know; I’ve been near everywhere you can go.”

  “You won’t get any argument from me,” I said, and we drank together in a toast to Raithskar.

  “There was only one thing I could do well, so I went to the Chief of Peace and Security and asked him to hire me. He laughed in my face, and put me in a clerks job. Best thing ever happened to me. I learned more about the job in that one year than I’d have gotten out of five years of standard guard duty. Oh, I got to do that after a while, too—old Yolim must have felt sorry for me or somethin’, because he kinda took charge of my training himself.”

  “He recognized potential when he saw it,” I said.

  “Well, anyway, by the time he retired, I’d been working for him some fifteen years, and I knew his job inside out. He had a lot of respect in that city, especially from the people who worked for him. Everybody knew I was supposed to take his place. Everybody but one Supervisor, that is.”

  Ligor paused, so I said what he expected me to say: “Ferrathyn.”

  Ligor nodded.

  “Then your—um—disagreement with him after he became Chief Supervisor wasn’t the first one you’d had.”

  “Hardly. First, I could not stand to be around the man; just standing next to him made the fur on the back of my neck crawl up. Never understood that reaction—everybody else seemed to like him. He kind of reminded me of the people who travel with a caravan. They always kinda think they’re better than the folks who belong there….” He paused, searching for more words.

  “I know what you mean, Ligor. Was that the only reason you didn’t like Ferrathyn?”

  “Not on your life,” he said. “Like I said, being around him kinda scared me. And I didn’t like what I saw him doin’ to other people. The man has an absolute genius for persuasion, son,” Ligor said, shaking his head. “And I fell for it just like everybody else. Until one time he came into our office wanting something that was downright illegal. I started to do it, too—but all of a sudden it dawned on me that this little guy was pushin’ me around, just as if he were one of the big guards on the caravan. I’d come to Raithskar to get out of that, and I was fleabitten if I’d stand for it!”

  He sipped his faen.

  “I told Supervisor Ferrathyn what he could do with his special request. He was mad—so mad his eyes kinda glowed. But he left, and he never asked me for that kind of thing again.” Ligor stared at the wall. “Made me wonder if Yolim woulda done it.”

  “Done what?” I asked, and Ligor laughed bitterly.

  “Now, there’s another reason the man spooked me. When he walked out of the office, I was furious. I was ready to go to Yolim and tell him what had happened. I wanted to know if ‘special favors’ for Ferrathyn were so common that he had expected me to go along with him.

  “I went to Yolim’s house, practically busted the door down, and when we were face-to-face …

  “I couldn’t remember what Ferrathyn had asked me to do.”

  “You don’t have any idea?” I prompted.

  Ligor shrugged. “It needed writing, that’s all I remember—and that only because I still had the writing brush in my hand.” He looked at me sharply. “Do you know, son?”

  “We may be able to figure it out,” I said, “but right now, let’s get back to when you became Chief of Peace and Security. What reason did Ferrathyn give for not wanting to follow Yolim’s wishes?”

  “He made up a new rule that the Chief had to be a native of Raithskar. I—uh—think he had his own idea of who to appoint. The rest of the Council didn’t support him then, but by the time I quit two years later, they had come around to his way of thinking.”

  “Ferrathyn was pushing for Zaddorn?” I asked, thinking of the conflict I had seen between the two men.

  Could that all be just an act? I wondered.

  Ligor must have noticed my alarm, but he answered calmly. “Yeah, he wanted Zaddorn in that spot. I remember thinking—” He frowned.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I just put some things together for the first time, that’s all. When I heard Zaddorn was going to be Chief, I remember thinking he was being repaid for past favors.”

  “And?” I prompted.

  “The day Ferrathyn tried to make me do something to our records, I was just filling in. The regular clerk, who was out that day, was Zaddorn.”

  “Are you saying that Zaddorn did whatever Ferrathyn had wanted you to do?” I demanded. “That he owes his position as Chief to that one thing?”

  Could Zaddorn be so easily controlled? I thought. No,I won’t believe it. Ferrathyn was clumsy enough to try to control Ligor; he might have installed Zaddorn on the assumption that the younger man would be easier to manipulate.

  He might have been surprised, too—and finally wise enough to stick with that mistake instead of trying out a new one.

  Ligor slammed his bowl down on the table, chipping its bottom yet again on the sharp, uneven marble mosaic.

  “Fleas, man,” he said. “I’m saying that whole incident is like an itch I can’t scratch. I’ve been worrying at it for ten years or more, now. I didn’t know half of what I just told you, right after it happened. I’ve been digging it out, little by little—but the final piece still will not come. What was it Ferrathyn wanted me to do?”

  His eyes narrowed. “And whe
n are you gonna tell me what this is all about?”

  “As soon as you tell me why you quit your job,” I said.

  “I quit because I couldn’t get anything done,” he said. “Everything I did was criticized by Ferrathyn before the Council. They supported me—I suppose they knew how little we liked each other—but I expect they were relieved when I submitted my resignation.

  “Now,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “its your turn.”

  “This story, too, starts outside of Raithskar. In fact,” I said, and took a deep breath, “it begins half a lifetime ago, in Eddarta …”

  By the time I had finished telling Ligor the truth about the Ra’ira, Ligor was on his feet, pacing and angry.

  “All right,” he said, “all right. I don’t wanna seem unconcerned about the state of things in Raithskar now—to tell you the truth, it’s gonna take me a little while to absorb that—but I wanna know what this means to that fleabitten itch. Are you saying that Ferrathyn used his mindpower on me?”

  “Twice,” I agreed. “Once to try to make you do—whatever it was. Again to make you forget—whatever it was.”

  “Why didn’t I do it?” he asked me.

  “How can you be sure you didn’t do it?”

  Ligor said, “Now, just a minute—” He stopped, staring at me. He started to pace the tiny room again, muttering to himself. After a while, he sank back down on the bench beside the table.

  “I guess,” he said with a sigh, “there’s no way to believe only half of this. You’re right, son—if he could make me forget, he could make me believe anything. I’m fleabitten, though, if I can figure any reason for him to do it that way.”

  “I have the same question,” I said. “I don’t think I have it clear about the timing. Was Ferrathyn already a Supervisor when this happened?”

  “No, but he was already well known to the Supervisors. Even before I arrived in Raithskar, Ferrathyn had volunteered for service to the Council. By the time that—thing—happened, he was kind of a general assistant. He worked in the Council building, and everything. Most folks gave him what he wanted just because he generally represented the wishes of the Council.”

  I rubbed my headfur, remembering Zaddorn’s scroll-laden desk. “What kinds of records does your office keep?”

  Ligor shrugged. “Work histories of the officers, details of anything we get involved in—”

  “What is it?” I asked when he paused. “Have you remembered something?”

  “Yeah,” he said excitedly. “It seems to me that I had just filed a decision with the Council on the death of a Supervisor.”

  “Decision?” I echoed.

  “When somebody dies suddenly, the Peace division gets notified. If it was a violent death, we try to find out what happened.”

  “The dead Supervisor—did he occupy the place that Ferrathyn took on the Council?”

  “No, Ferrathyn didn’t become a Supervisor until a couple of years later—” He stood up slowly. “After another sudden death. Boy, are you telling me that Ferrathyn killed those men, that I knew he had done one murder, and he made me forget it?”

  “Hold on, one thing at a time,” I said. “First tell me how the first Supervisor died.”

  “The man died with a dagger in his heart; he had left a note saying …”

  “That he had chosen to die?” I prompted. Ligor nodded and swallowed hard.

  “Yolim wouldn’t believe it. The man had been a close friend, and he felt he would have known if the man had been that … unbalanced.

  “So he reported the death as a possible murder, presently unanswerable, but still open.” Suddenly Ligor slammed his fist on the table. “I remember!” he said. “Ferrathyn wanted me to change the record to show self-inflicted death.” His eyes narrowed. “That fleason Ferrathyn killed the Supervisor, didn’t he?”

  “I think it’s very likely.”

  “Then why didn’t he move right into that position? Why did he wait for another Supervisor to die?”

  “I think that’s the answer you’re really looking for, Ligor—because you didn’t falsify that record. People respond differently to mindpower, and some people seem better able to resist it than others. Ferrathyn may never have run into someone with a will as strong as yours before. He had to realize that if you could resist his compulsion, you might break free of the forgetfulness command. You stopped him from becoming a Supervisor then because he was afraid you would expose him. He had to wait until another Supervisor died—how?”

  “The healer ruled it was some illness he had never seen before,” Ligor said. “I saw the body; it looked like the man had been choked to death, but there wasn’t a mark on his body. Could Ferrathyn have done that?”

  I remembered the fierceness on Tarani’s face, and the terror in Molik’s, in that moment when Tarani had almost killed the roguelord by immobilizing his lungs with her mindpower.

  “He could have done it,” I said. “He must have figured enough time had passed that you wouldn’t connect him with the earlier death. But he couldn’t rest easy as long as you were in Raithskar. He couldn’t kill you outright, either—you had proved you had substantial resistance to his power. I suspect he wasn’t ready, yet, to use the Ra’ira overtly. So he used more ordinary tactics—political pressure and harassment—to drive you out.”

  “And now he’s finally got what he wanted all along,” Ligor said.

  I sat up straighter. “What do you mean?”

  Ligor’s jaw tightened. “His first motion to the Council, as a Supervisor, was to disband the Security force. He said that if vineh could be trained to clean streets, they could be trained to fight—and would be totally loyal and beyond corruption.” He laughed bitterly. “I thought it was a crazy idea—but I didn’t know about the Ra’ira. Fortunately, the Council turned him down, but he brought it up every now and then. Now—Council or no Council—he’s got his army of vineh.”

  10

  “You mean you had heard nothing about what’s going on in Raithskar?” I asked Ligor.

  We had left Krasa behind us several minutes ago, and were making our way through the rocky brush of the hillside above the town. It had taken very little to convince Ligor to go back to Raithskar with me, even though neither one of us had a clear idea what help he might be. He had succeeded in resisting Ferrathyn’s power once—but a power unaided by the Ra’ira and wielded by a much younger and less subtle Ferrathyn. There was no real reason to suspect he could resist Ferrathyn completely now.

  I believed Ligor was coming with me out of a sense of responsibility to Raithskar for having “run out” when things became uncomfortable for him. There was no doubt he was angry on a personal basis, too, after learning that the mind puzzle that had tormented him had been set deliberately by Ferrathyn. I wanted him to come for a very different, very selfish reason. I trusted him, and he was on our side. I had a strong feeling that we would need every ally we could get before this was over.

  “You got to remember, son,” Ligor said, holding aside the tangled branches of a bush so that I could pass through, “Krasa ain’t on the main road to anywhere. Caravans come here, they’re generally just coming here, from Grevor or Dyskornis, and they ain’t too frequent. We got one strange old maufel who sometimes takes it in his head not to talk to nobody, and he’s in one of them spells right now. He gets and gives messages when he’s asked—and paid—but he don’t inquire about the contents and he don’t share news.

  “As Peace and Security in Krasa,” Ligor added, “I expect I’d have made him keep shut about the vineh, anyway. These folks don’t know about the way Raithskar used vineh. They’d have taken the news of a vineh sickness to mean that the ones near here, which are none too easy to get along with, might catch it and make even more trouble. I wouldn’t have wanted that kind of panic.”

  We had struggled through a snarl of underbrush and come out onto a large, flat area of nearly smooth stone. We paused to catch our breath, and I called to Keeshah.

&nbs
p; *Here we are, Keeshah. Ready to go?*

  I had already talked to Keeshah about accepting Ligor as a second rider, and he had agreed. I knew he was nearby, but even I was surprised when he came up out of the brush nearly at Ligor’s right elbow. He was yawning, and the impressive tusks—along with the other less spectacular but equally threatening teeth—were in full view.

  “Yi-i-!” Ligor yelped, and jumped aside.

  I heard Keeshah’s mind chuckle, and I fought to hide my own smile.

  The big cat took his time coming into the clearing, stretching out each foreleg and clenching the stone with his long claws, then drawing his body forward until his back legs were fully stretched, his tail extended and fluffed. Then he stepped over the bordering brush with his hind legs and was fully present in the rock-floored clearing.

  He filled it up.

  “I’d forgotten how big he is,” Ligor said, looking slightly embarrassed.

  *Keeshah, quit trying to scare him, and make friends,* I said.

  *Already friends,* Keeshah said.

  He moved as far away from us as he could and still remain in the clearing. Then he lay down, rolled over, and came to rest belly-up with his side leaning against Ligor’s legs.

  Ligor staggered against the impact, but kept his balance. He laughed uproariously.

  “Hey, there, you haven’t forgotten me, eh?” He glanced at me and chuckled at the look on my face. “You say you have Markasset’s memories?” he asked.

  “I have them,” I answered shortly, “and he doesn’t remember ever seeing Keeshah do that with you.”

  “That’s because he never saw it happen,” Ligor said, and leaned over to stroke the fur on Keeshah’s chest and belly. A very special feeling of contentment came from Keeshah’s mind, and something of a cherished memory. “He still had school a couple of years after he brought Keeshah out of the Valley, and I—um—I dropped by his house now and again during the day. Keeshah was big enough to scare the fleas off me, even then, but there was something young about him, and I played with him some.”