He had eaten well, and soon enough would sleep; but someone was coming, and for that Silent would wait.
His boots scuffed the stone floor. It had been three years before that Silent had found this cave, and he'd known at once that it wasn't natural; the opening was too rounded, the floor too smooth and level. No. This was the work of man's hands.
But it suited his purpose admirably. A roof against the rain, refuge from the wind and snow, shelter from the invading Saurian hordes. Perhaps the world outside was ravaged, perhaps it was destroyed; he could not tell. Up here, and in the village below, time passed in near stillness, as it had passed for five hundred years.
The glassy smoothness of the floor was broken by an indentation—a shallow pit hewn out, Silent guessed, by previous inhabitants—in which a fire glowed, popping and crackling merrily, its leaping flames casting flickering shadows on the walls, lending a faint orange glow to Silent's dust-colored feathers and silvering brown hair.
For a long moment, almost impassively, the dust-colored drake watched the play of light on skin; then, sinking gracefully to the floor to sit cross-legged, he extracted an ebony-handled stiletto from one boot and a whetstone from a pocket, and began to sharpen the steel.
And he waited.
He was polishing the blade against his jeans, holding it up to the firelight to admire the fineness of the honed edges, when there was a footfall at the mouth of the cave and a shadow fell across his line of vision. Silent held himself motionless, though his pale-silver gaze shifted from the blade in his hand to the newcomer.
The stranger was a drake much younger than himself, tall and heavily muscular,
with pale brown feathers and shrewd dark eyes. Seeing Silent, he dropped to one knee and began to deliver an elaborate greeting in broken Anatin—a decent approximation of the villagers' tongue. "Favored one—"
"Save it." Silent slipped the stiletto back into his boot and got to his feet. "You're adulterating a fine old language—and you're late."
"The terrain is bad," the younger man said. "They told you—in the village—that I was coming?"
"They told me someone was coming," Silent answered. "Yes."
"But how—"
"This is a remote place. But we aren't entirely cut off from the rest of the world." Silent smiled mockingly. "News travels."
The newcomer stared at him curiously, then extended a tentative hand. "Shouldn't we be better acquainted? I'm Canard Thunderbeak."
"Who I am," Silent answered silkily, "doesn't matter." He turned away. "And if you don't want to sleep with that pack on, boy, you'd better take it off."
Canard Thunderbeak frowned, obviously flustered at being called "boy," but he slid his bulging knapsack off and dropped it. "You knew I was coming. Do you know why I'm here?"
Silent shrugged. "I have a fair idea. You want the Mask of Drake DuCaine."
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Canard's eyes glittered. "It's our last hope."
Silent regarded him coolly. "Come again?"
"I'm with the Resistance," Canard answered quickly. "The Saurians are taking everything we can throw at them and acting like it doesn't faze them. But if we had the Mask—if we could see through their cloaks and their defenses—we could find their command center and bring them down."
"Can't your technology do that already?"
Silent spoke jokingly; but for the first time the younger man looked nonplused. "No."
"Shame," the older drake answered. "If they can't even do something as simple as—oh, never mind. It's obvious the Resistance could spare you. What makes you think the Mask is even here?"
Canard rummaged through his knapsack and came up with a thick, battered leather-bound book. "The Writings—all the old texts—they say it's here. And I was told in the village that there's a temple at the summit, a temple to DuCaine, where the Mask was housed."
"No." Silent took his stiletto out and began to polish it again. "I went up to the summit, years ago, with some men from the village. There's no temple there—it's a ruse for the odd tourist. But what there is, is a tomb in a cave, perhaps another two thousand feet up. They showed it me."
Canard's eyes lit up. "DuCaine's tomb?"
"I can't say. It seems unlikely that a planetary hero would be buried in a cave."
But the young drake's enthusiasm was undeterred. "But is the Mask there?"
"They say it is. I don't know." Silent sighed. "A superstitious lot, these people. I couldn't get them to take me inside—something about disturbing the dead."
"I take it you're not superstitious."
"Mr. Thunderbeak—"
"It's Lieutenant, actually."
"Very well, Lieutenant." Silent looked askance at him. "I have nothing to do with religion. It has nothing to do with me. That's how I want it."
He tried to turn his attention to his blade, but Canard's tone was suddenly accusing. "You don't believe in him."
"Drake DuCaine? I don't disbelieve." The corners of Silent's mouth were touched with a faint frown. "That he was a man, a hero, worthy of statues and epics, that's all well and good. But a saint, Lieutenant? A saint in the Church, with temples and prayers and days of obligation—practically a god? No." Silent had to stifle a sudden urge to laugh at the young man's continued discomfiture. "That's a bit much."
Silence fell then, thick and leaden, until Canard nodded at the stiletto in Silent's hand. "Nice piece of work there."
"This?" Silent turned the blade, regarded it. "Yes."
Silence again; and then almost casually Canard said, "Assassin?"
"Maybe." Silent smiled; and the look of revulsion on the younger man's face told him it was ghastly. "If you have need of one."
But he tucked the blade away again and pulled back the edge of his jacket to reveal the machete at his hip, the silver hilt twinkling in the firelight. "I'm a thief, when it pleases me. Down Jathai way—" and he pronounced Jathai in such a way that his accent was unmistakable.
"You're an islander," Canard guessed. "With the Alliance."
Silent let his jacket fall back into place. "You've heard of us."
"I—" Canard frowned. "This isn't getting us anywhere."
"No," the dust-colored drake agreed, "it isn't." He sat down again, motioned for Canard to do the same. "Tell me—Lieutenant—why it is that you want the Mask."
"I did tell you. To penetrate the Saurian defenses."
"That's why the Resistance wants it," Silent countered, "which is rather noble of them. But you. Why do you want it? To be a hero?"
"Maybe," Canard confessed at last. "But what of it? If a little self-service on my part turns out to be for the greater good—"
"'The greater good.'" Silent mocked him. "You sound like Djelkarith the Martyr."
"I thought you weren't religious."
"I'm not. But certain things can be useful in a place like this." Silent yawned, peered past Canard at the darkness spreading outside. "But go on. You're going to find the Mask and be a hero. Then what?"
"I don't think you're taking this seriously," Canard snapped suddenly. "People are being enslaved. People are dying. Even now the Saurians are in the foothills."
"They won't come further," Silent told him. "In this country drones are awkward, and altitude becomes a problem. As for the people—boy, if these are the same people that I've seen rob, and cheat, and murder—let them be enslaved. Let them die."
"Considering all the help that the Alliance has given to the Resistance, you don't seem to have much faith in people."
"Faith?" Silent scoffed. "Lieutenant, I've no faith at all—I just take certain things for granted." He scowled. "The Saurians killed my woman, in Khavastra Hai. I came up here to get away from the world, not to save it."
"Are you going to help me find the Mask or not?" Canard demanded. "I can always ask someone else—"
"You can only ask the people in the village, and they won't go. Yes," the ash-feathered drake sighed, "I'll help you. Only because it appeals to my sense of purpose—I don't want to be a hero."
"Fair enough," Canard said grudgingly. "When can we start?"
"At first light. I trust you have equipment and provisions?"
"Yes."
"Good." Silent nodded; he was beginning to feel his tiredness. "You can sleep"—he gestured at the opposite wall—"over there."
As usual he was awake long before dawn. It was the matter of a few minutes to stoke last night's embers into crackling flame again, a few minutes more to heat water and make tea. When he'd drunk his fill Silent went out into the cold clear air of morning, observed the sky black and starlit. He walked round the ledge outside the cave mouth, and turned his back to its edge, and looked upward to where the tomb lay. Two thousand feet. A day's climb if this Canard Thunderbeak had any stamina; maybe two if he didn't. Two thousand feet, and possibly—just possibly—the Mask of Drake DuCaine.
Why am I doing this? Silent asked himself. It's not as if I care. This Invasion is a thing of the lower world—it doesn't touch me here.
He smiled sourly. Maybe there's faith in me after all.
The sky was turning pink at the horizon. He went back inside and awoke Canard with a well-placed boot to the side. "Get up."
Canard hoisted Silent up onto the ledge and for a long moment the two stood panting in the thinning air.
Then Canard saw the tomb in the rock before them, its opening square, outlined with chiseled knotwork. They were close enough to scent the staleness of the air within, and in the chill wind the place looked bleak and forbidding. But—
"This is it," Canard said hoarsely. "This is it—" and he took a step forward, and stopped.
"Something wrong, Lieutenant?" Silent asked sharply.
"Just thinking," the younger man panted. "About what you said—about disturbing the dead."
"The dead are dead, Lieutenant," Silent said blandly. "They will do us no harm."
He took the pale-feathered drake by the collar and pulled him into the aperture.
They stood in some kind of foyer. Walls and floor and ceiling were all plain, smooth stone; the play of their flashlight beams yielded no spectacular secrets. But a pair of vast iron doors indicated the presence of at least one other chamber; and though the metal was thick, it was so rusty and flaked that Silent was able to pry one door half-open with his saber, just enough for the two of them to slip through.
Again there were no treasures, no bounty; but there was writing carved into the walls of this small inner space, and a lidded stone sarcophagus in the middle of the floor.
Canard flicked his flashlight over the carving. "What language is this?"
Silent looked hard for a moment, thought, looked again. "I'd say it's Anatin. But not the pure tongue—a dialect of some kind. Probably close to the dialect of this region."
"Can you read it?"
"Afraid of ancient curses, Lieutenant?" The black drake smiled. "I can try."
"Ia khel nairoth," he began, "in the time of the hunger—famine—is dait, Sa'arith, e djelka'asi—" Silent paused. "He said, Go to, I make—no, I will make—"
The light flickered and he turned round, frowning. Canard had his battered leather book out again, and was fanning pages excitedly.
"It's the Writings!" he crowed. "The Book of St. DuCaine!"
"Which, if I may remind you," Silent said dryly, "only trail their namesake by some five hundred years. Do you want me to keep reading? Then hold the light steady."
He cleared his throat; the musty air was uncomfortable. "Let's see. I will make—tola quil kha saohali-darai. Ugh. 'A means by which their workings may be made known.'"
He turned back to Canard. "That's all, Lieutenant, there's no more. What does your book say?"
Canard lowered his light to the page. "'And he went down, and did fashion a Mask, a most holy object, to vanquish the enemy and drive them forth.'"
"Admirable. Admirable. Are you still so sure that what you look for is here?"
"Yes."
"Then come over here"—Silent pointed to the sarcophagus—"and help me shift this thing."
It seemed to take hours. The stone lid wasn't particularly heavy, but its reluctance to yield showed that it had been moved very little. But at last they were able to rock it; and then, with a great shifting groan, it came free.
Canard was the first to his feet when they'd laid the stone aside, and he dashed to the open sarcophagus. He looked in—and with a yell he dropped his flashlight, the bulb shattering on the stone floor.
"Dammit." Silent flicked his own light over the vault, but wasn't close enough to see inside. "What's this about, Lieutenant?"
"I thought—" Canard made an odd sobbing noise. "I thought you said this wasn't DuCaine's tomb."
"I merely said that it was unlikely, not that it was impossible—" Silent began; and then he saw the stone coffin's interior, and he too stopped dead.
A corpse. More to the point, a skeleton, its coverings rotted away to reveal only long-bare bones, and on the skull—
A golden Mask.
The Mask of Drake DuCaine.
It had been several minutes before the trembling Canard could be persuaded to take his prize; indeed it had been Silent himself who'd lifted the Mask from the grinning face of its previous owner. When he'd done so, the skull had crumbled into powder—and Canard had bolted for the exit, screaming.
Silent walked back through to the outer opening, where Canard stood pale and still trembling. The Mask was still in his hands. "You came for it, Lieutenant. Best you take it."
Canard turned away, muttering; and Silent caught the word "sacrilege."
He frowned. "DuCaine is dead, young man, and even if he weren't—" He shook his head. "Quite a feat, to find DuCaine's Mask and his tomb. Fate has smiled on you, Lieutenant." He pressed the Mask into the younger drake's hands. "Maybe even DuCaine himself has smiled on you. Be flattered."
Canard nodded slowly, turning the thing in his hands curiously. "It's real."
"It would seem so."
"Then—" Canard stopped, looked hard at Silent. "Will you come down?"
"I think not. I've been here four months." Silent drew a lungful of knife-cold air. "I think I'll stay a bit longer—besides," he repeated, "I don't want to be a hero."
Canard nodded again, though his expression was one of puzzlement; but his attention was quickly drawn again by the Mask. "Do you—do you think it will work?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps not." Silent shrugged. "Who can tell? But you've got what you came after—now come," he said; and without looking back he began to make his way back down the mountain.