Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [238]
The stoneyard gate was closed and barred. Cauvin didn’t have the strength to scale the wall. He rang the bell and waited for someone to let him in. The yard dog set up a racket, but there was a second dog in the chorus.
Vex.
If Vex was in the stoneyard, then Bec was, too. Since he’d come to on the steps of the Thunderer’s temple, Cauvin hadn’t allowed himself to think anything else. Soldt swore the dog was dependable, but Soldt also insisted that Cauvin had to go to the palace before he went home.
Vex was barking. Vex was here. Bec was home. Bec was safe. Cauvin slumped against the wall and began to shiver. He straightened up as the gate swung open, but couldn’t stop shaking. Grabar looked Cauvin over in silence and made him feel like a ghost—an unwelcome ghost. Grabar had come to the gate with a stone mallet in his hand, and he wasn’t about to let his foster son cross the threshold.
“Bec?” Cauvin asked, suddenly fearful that he’d leapt to the wrong conclusion when he’d heard a second dog barking.
“Here,” Grabar answered. “The boy said you’d gone over to the Hand. That your woman had been over for years.”
Mina, standing beside Grabar, added, “You struck him. You knocked him down and made him bleed.” Her look said she would never forgive Cauvin for that.
That was more injustice than Cauvin intended to bear. He pounded his fist against the gate planks. Mina jumped back in surprise, while Grabar tightened up on the mallet.
“I was trying to save his life!” Cauvin complained. “Bec wouldn’t go. He wouldn’t leave without me unless I scared him or hurt him or both, so I hit him. I hit him good, and he started running.” The inheritance assured Cauvin that his plan was nothing to be ashamed of, it didn’t assure his foster parents. “froggin’ sure, I’m sorry I hit him. Shite for sure, I thought I was going to die, and you froggin’ know I’m not made much for thinking.”
Neither Mina nor Grabar was convinced.
“The boy said you’d gone over to the Hand,” Grabar repeated. “Don’t see how we can trust you.”
“I froggin’ didn’t go ’over to the Hand.’ I told Leorin I’d submit to the froggin’ Mother, so she’d take me to their lair. I told the froggin’ Whip I’d submit, so he’d let Bec go. I froggin’ told Bec, so he’d get the froggin’ hell out of there. I didn’t think I was getting out of there alive, but, no froggin’ way did I go ‘over to the Hand.’
“Shite for sure, didn’t Bec tell you that Soldt was there, too? That’s Soldt’s damn dog I hear barking! Soldt put an arrow through the skull of the Hand’s high priest. There was a magician there, too—maybe Enas Yorl himself—lobbing fire left and right. If I’d froggin’ known they’d be there, I’d have done froggin’ different. When Soldt and I made it out, we went to the froggin’ palace first—I’m sorry about that, too; I froggin’ should’ve come here—but Arizak believed me. Arizak’s got the guards and his Irrune building a wet-wood fire in the Temple of Ils. Go up to the froggin’ Promise right now if you don’t believe me—”
Grabar lowered the mallet and let Cauvin into the stoneyard—over Mina’s scowled objection. “We only know what the boy knew.”
“Shite.” Cauvin could have dropped to the ground and slept for a week, but he couldn’t, not yet. “Where is he? Where’s Bec? Where have you got the Torch laid out? Arizak’s sending a cart for the body. There can’t be another funeral, but he’s claiming it just the same.
“Comes now, it comes early. Lord Torchholder’s not dead yet.”
“Frog all?”
Cauvin spun toward the work shed just in time to see Bec coming out with the Torch’s big black staff in both hands. The staff was longer than the boy was tall. When Bec tried to point it, spearlike, at Cauvin’s heart, the amber finial bobbed unsteadily. Cauvin wrenched it effortlessly from Bec’s grasp.
He asked, “Do you know what this is? What it does?” because Cauvin knew that the Savankh Lord Serripines kept in his Land’s End vault was the Savankh of Sihan in the northeast