The Doomfarers of Coramonde Read Online Free PDF Page A

were being followed.
To no avail; either he wasn’t pursued or his nearsightedness made it impossible
to see those behind him.
    He decided,
though, to take a circuitous route, swinging past the marketplace and coming
round to the southern wall and the Brass Lion Gate by back streets. He hoped
that, in tomorrow’s turmoil at his escape, no one would link a renegade Prince
to a lone Alebowrenian. Then it occurred to him that it was a foolish hope;
Duskwind had seen his attire.
    Memories of
Hightower’s death began to intrude again and he spent the ride in painful
examination of his conscience. Alternate outcomes spun in his head; if he’d
moved sooner, faster, fought harder, could he have saved the Duke? Should he
have stayed in Earthfast and fought the duel? At best, he would eventually have
had to meet Strongblade in arms, Strongblade who was wont to toy with two
lesser opponents at a time and who’d often bested their instructor, Eliatim.
    Springbuck’s
stealthy leave-taking and the deaths of Hightower and Faurbuhl began in him a
desire for some act of violence and retribution, with a vague idea that he
could expiate his shame and redeem his self-respect.
    Perhaps there
would come an opportunity in the promised war between Coramonde and Freegate,
if things actually went that far. No major war had been fought in or by
Coramonde in nearly a generation, but Fania—and Yardiff Bey—seemed set on
starting one. There were many and diverse substates under Coramonde; to greater
or lesser extent internal friction was a constant. It wasn’t beyond conceiving
that Springbuck could find support for an attempt at wresting back the Crown.
    But there came
to him the lines from the Old Tongue, impressed upon him with admonishments by
his father, regarding civil war:
     
    He should pause
and search his heart well
    Who thinks to
go Doomfaring
    In the War that
is war between brothers.
     
    A single house
bleeds with
    Every
internecine fall of the sword
    And the
abattoiral axe.
     
    Could such wounds to Coramonde be justified? The Prince was
unsure.
    Still, if
armies were waging war on the far side of the Keel of Heaven, the situation
could come full ripe for the dislodging of Fania and Strongblade.
    And Yardiff
Bey.
    Springbuck
thought again of the look that had passed between the Queen and the sorcerer in
the throne room, that of vassal to Lord,
    Bey in command?
    How much, after
all, did anyone know about him? The archives had it that he’d first appeared in
Earthfast over half a century earlier. Since then he’d been away often, for as
long as ten years at a time. He’d come back from one such sojourn, twenty years
earlier, with the bizarre ocular in place of his left eye, object of cautious
speculation.
    Rumors about
him were inexhaustible: that his sword Dirge dealt wounds which couldn’t be
healed, that he had an enchanted flying vessel concealed in the mountains of
the Dark Rampart, that some of his hidden conspiracies and secret liaisons led
ultimately to the distant south, to Shardishku-Salamá, where oldest magic still
worked against men.
    But little was
known of Bey for sure, and few dared pry.
    The Prince
called to mind the one time that he’d seen Yardiff Bey betray emotion. On that
occasion, six months earlier, the wizard Andre deCourteney had come to an
audience with Surehand, bringing with him the madman Van Duyn, who claimed to
be from another universe, or some such.
    Bey had scorned
Van Duyn as demented, but appeared to regard Andre deCourteney as a threat, not
so much to his position as councillor extraordinary to the Ku-Mor-Mai as
to his very well-being.
    But, with Van
Duyn making his outrageous claims and propounding his scandalous ideas for a
government by plebiscite, Surehand had hardly needed Bey’s urgent prompting to
banish the two from Earthfast, provoked as he was by their heresy.
    As far as Springbuck
could determine, Van Duyn and deCourteney had gone to the little village of
Erub, to the northeast, to