Teri McLaren
"Thanks very much, good sir. We have broken even, a life for a life. Although yours, it might seem, is worth far more to the Schreefa than mine," said the beggar, wringing out his robes.
"The least I could do," replied Cheyne, thinking he should find another place to get a drink of water.
After a moment of awkward silence, the beggar bowed gracefully, deeply, and introduced himself. "My name is Ogwater Rifkin."
" Cheyne."
Ogwater bowed again, ignoring Cheyne's lack of a surname. "Pleased. For the price of a bottle of raqa, Cheyne, I would be even more pleased. Drowning is hard and thirsty work."
Cheyne smiled bleakly. "Muje Rifkin-"
"Og." The beggar smiled hugely, revealing many perfect, very white teeth.
Cheyne began again. "Og, what money I have must go toward paying a guide and provisions. I'm sorry."
The beggar shrugged, his face falling. "No harm. A guide, you say…?"
Cheyne nodded. Og's smile slowly returned.
"Muni? You'd better come out here…"
Muni awoke thrashing again, his dreams full of the evil djinn, the voice in his ears unfamiliar. He sat up on the low cot, fumbling for a lamp before he swung his feet onto the floor, the precaution ingrained by years of habit. Before he could find the strikebox and the tamp, Kifran lifted the tent door, a torch in his hand. Muni instantly came awake when the light struck him and he focused on the guard's grim face.
"Muje Javin did not come this morning. I waited for him until first light, then came to find him. He lies ill in his bed, and he asks for you."
Kifran let the tent flap drop and waited for Muni to pull on his robes and boots. In another moment, they
SONG OF TIME 9 j
were both running toward Javin's tent, Muni reaching it first.
"My old friend… what happened?" Muni rasped, his voice heavy and the words coming hard. His old friend opened his gray eyes and tried to smile. Javin's face burned with fever, his flushed, sun-darkened skin drawn tautly over his angular features.
"How do you fight vermin?… They were here," he said softly, barely lifting his hand and pointing toward the corner of the tent. Muni followed the gesture to a single scorpion lying dead on the dirt floor.
"Scorpion? Javin, when? When?" Muni shook his friend back to consciousness.
"I don't know. All night, I could not move. I fought them in my dreams." He shuddered and fell silent.
Muni calmed himself, pushing down the thoughts of the irate Fascini, of the dig closing before they had found the Collector, of Javin dying here and now, and of his own helplessness to heal his old friend.
"No, no, Javin, you cannot die. We have too much to do, and you owe me a game of chess," he assured, trying to smile.
Then he turned to Kifran, who still held the torch at the door. "Where is Cheyne? Find him and go with him to fetch the doctor in the city."
Kifran bowed, lit a lamp for Muni with the torch, and disappeared.
That's not ordinary vermin, thought the linguist, who was something of an unwilling expert on the subject, as he moved to examine the creature. The dead scorpion, a large brown one, lay curled into a ring, its poisonous tail embedded in its own head.
Ah. The Ninnites. So they have found him again, Muni raged silently, understanding the symbol. The scorpion had been magically summoned, a creature from some other realm, not the kind that roamed the site, or hunched in the dark crevices of walls in the city. A creature out of its element. The Ninnites had tracked Javin from one end of Almaaz to the other,