Neq the Sword by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony [Anthony, Piers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Google: DZSSZwEACAAJ
Amazon: B000F3FUPW
Publisher: Corgi
Published: 2012-07-13T04:43:28+00:00

His interest intensified. "You know of Helicon?"

"I know my husband laid siege to the mountain, because she was there. She has his bracelet and his name."

"She lives?"

"I do not know. Do any live—who were there when the fire came?"

"Yes," he said. Then, quickly: "Or so it is rumored."

She was on the slip immediately. Sola had never been stupid; she had taught the warriors counting and figuring. "If any live, she lives. I know it. Seek her out, tell her I would meet her. Ask her—ask her if my child—"

Neq waited, but she only cried silently.

"You must go to the crazies," he said finally.

"Why not? I have nothing to live for."

"This woman of the Weaponless—what name does she bear?"

"His old name. Sos. The one I would have had, had I not been a foolish girl blinded by power. By the time he was mine, he was not mine, and he was nameless."

"So she would be Sosa. She would know if the Weaponless lives?"

"She is -with him if he lives. But my child—ask her—"

Neq made a connection. "Your child by Sol? Who went with him to the mountain?"

"More or less," she answered.

He thought of the skeletons he had swept from the underground halls. A number had been small—children and babies.

Yet there had been several exit passages such as the one Dick the Surgeon had used. There had been some unburned caverns as well as the little wagon-tunnels to scattered depots. Some adults had escaped, perhaps many; no one knew how large Helicon's population had been. Some children could have...

"I have one more name for you," Sola said. "Var—Var the Stick."

Neq had some vague recollection of such a warrior, a helper to the Weaponless who had disappeared at the same time.

"He will know where to find the Weaponless?"

"He must know," she said fervently. "He was the protege of my husband, and sterile like him."

Neq wondered how she could know such a thing. But he remembered the rumors about this woman, and how she had gone to Sos's tent in the badlands camp, and wondered again. "I will seek Sosa," he said. "And Var the Stick."

"And my child—Soli. She would be thirteen now, almost fourteen. Dark-haired. And—" She hesitated. "You remember the way I used to be?"

"Yes." Her figure had stimulated him many times, fifteen years ago.

"She favors me, I think."

Soli would be a beauty, then. Neq nodded. "I will send them all to the crazies—if they live."

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