The Avengers of Carrig Read Online Free PDF Page B

side of Saikmar, and his mother on the other. His mother was queenly still, though growing old, and carried herself grandly.
    And now there was a clash of gongs and silence followed the dying reverberations as doors behind the dais opened to admit Sir Bavis, surrounded by his acolytes and servers and all his splendid retinue. Saikmar’s eyes fastened on the face above the glossy black beard. Could it be true, as gutter-gossip held, that this noble head of the noblest clanhad dragged contenders year by year to ensure that the king would not be killed? Oh, it was past belief! That ringing voice as it uttered invocations to the gods sounded like a bell of sincerity, resonating to the very marrow of Saikmar’s bones …
    Then, when the invocations were done, there came the appeal for contenders against the king. Saikmar felt his heartbeat quicken; he turned to look at the first of his rivals as he rose to give his name to the notator for the record. Of course, the contenders had been selected weeks—in some cases months—ago. But for the sake of the ritual the notators had to hear them speak for themselves and write the names down in the honor roll. (For some contenders, lost among the volcanoes, an entry on the roll had to stand as their only memorial.)
    In olden days, ancient traditions reported, the pattern was not so rigid as now; contenders were not confined to one from each clan, and even men from outside the Carrig territory had been permitted to attempt the king’s life: Red Sloin, for instance, about whom a famous ballad had been made. Waiting his turn to speak, Saikmar heard a few lines of that song in his memory.
    Then his uncle was urging him to rise, and he was recalled to the present with a start. Making his voice as deep as he could—for it was high and clear, and sometimes he was taunted because it had never actually broken, merely slid from a boy’s treble to a youth’s tenor—he announced his name, his clan, and his intention to go forth against the king.
    One moment later he had forgotten, and was lost anew in visions of the hunt.
    It was not until after the contender from the last clan had been listed that reality broke in on him again, and then in a strange, unlooked-for fashion. The great doors at the rear of the hall had been heard to open, but no one had looked round, assuming that with the approach of darkness servants were coming to light the torches, or attend to some other necessary task. Now, though, from a pool of shadow a bass voice rang out.
    “And I! I also would go to hunt your king!”
    Startled—Sir Bavis perhaps the most startled of all—the assembled nobles craned to see who had spoken. Emergingfrom obscurity, he proved to be a man of at least thirty, possibly older, heavy-set, with dark brows. He wore a southland costume of loose belted shirt and flapping breeches, and he hooked his thumbs defiantly into the belt as he confronted the hostile glaring of the company.
    After a moment’s silence, indignation against the intruder broke out like floodwater breaching a dam, and Sir Bavis had to command the bearer of the loudest gong to hammer on it before he could cut through the tumult. When he had a semblance of order, he shouted, “Come forward and make yourself known!”
    Expressionless, the stranger tramped up the aisle alongside the folk of Clan Twywit, and Saikmar, heart hammering, wondered if he had had some kind of premonition just now, when he found
The Ballad of Red Sloin
running through his brain.
    Sir Bavis was half out of his seat now, staring at the dark-browed man. “Why, you came for audience this afternoon with Trader Heron—I recognize you now. You’re the southerner, the one called Belfeor!”
    “Correct,” the stranger said sarcastically. “But please don’t tell me that that prevents me going to hunt the king. Red Sloin wasn’t a Carrig man either, and I ask no more than you accorded him.”
    Considering what he had been through since his arrival in the