Seeklight

“What d’you mean? It’s the palace. Isn’t it?”

Shaking his head with exaggerated weariness, Lessup said, “You father’s palace wasn’t in the city.” He waved a vague hand.

“It’s way out in the forest, somewhere. Other side of the city. All ’bandoned and everything.”

“Is that right?”

Lessup refilled his glass and took a swallow. “You see,” he continued, “this palace here is just the old government building, that the Regent moved into after the coup. The old palace was never used again.”

A sharp current of thought cut through the alcoholic haze in Daenek’s mind. My father’s palace … everything that’s still hidden… maybe there—

“Kind of a shame, too,” broke in Lessup’s beery voice.

“Supposed to be a whole mountain of gold out there.” He pulled on his glass.

“Gold?” said Daenek, puzzled.

“Yeah. Something to do with some kind of machinery.

Technologiker reasons. Plating or insulation or something.

Anyway, a bunch of it.”

“How come nobody goes and gets it?”

Lessup looked at him in exasperation. “Because it’s lost?

“The gold?”

“The palace.”

Daenek slammed his glass on the table. “How can you lose a palace?” he shouted.

“It was kind of hidden to begin with. There was never any road to it—everything came and went by helicopter. You know, up in the sky? Nobody knows what happened to that, either. Or at least I couldn’t find anything about it when I used to snoop around the Academy data banks. Anyway, the forest was always pretty dense, and its gotten worse since then.”

“Yeah, but still—a whole palace. You could look for it.”

“Sure.” Lessup rolled his eyes. “If you wanted to take the time to cross-hatch the area. That’s the only way. But you’d get killed by the bad priests doing it.”

“Bad priests? What’ve they got to do with it?”

“Damn forest’s got several of ’em. Congregate there. You go wandering around in there and you wind up with your throat ripped out.”

Daenek leaned onto the table and kneaded his brow with one hand. Lost, he thought. Bad priests… but if you knew right where the palace was… maybe you could get in and back out before—“Gold,” he said, sitting upright.

“Wha?”

“Gold,” he repeated. He got to his feet and found them a little unsteady. “Come on. We’ve got to find Rennie.”

It was evening before they did. Rennie was seated at a table in another tavern, trying to explain in sign language the rules of a card game to one of the city-dwellers. Lessup stayed outside as Daenek pushed his way through the crowd to her. As he approached, the citydweller smiled in bafflement, shrugged and got up to rejoin his companions at another table. Rennie shuffled her cards moodily, then looked up at Daenek standing before her. “What do you want?” she asked coldly.

Daenek explained as briefly as he could. Everything, including the bad priests of which Lessup had spoken. She listened without stopping the cards moving through her hands. The slight noise made the headache Daenek had gotten from the ale worse.

When he finished talking, she laid the cards on the table and reached down to her pack beside the chair. She straightened back up with the seeklight in her hand. For a moment she sat rubbing its smooth ovoid shape with her thumb and staring into the space in front of her.

“How long?” she said at last.

“Lessup said it’d probably take two days walking to get to it.

Depends upon where it is exactly.”

She fell silent again for a few seconds, then looked straight into his eyes. “All right,” she said evenly. “I’ll go with you. But all the gold’s mine.”

“Fine,” said Daenek. “I don’t want it.”

While Daenek and Lessup waited inside the deserted building, Rennie went back to the occupied part of the city to buy the necessary supplies. No moonlight penetrated the dark interior.

Daenek heard an odd, liquid noise from the other side of the room. He lifted his head from his pack and flicked on the flashlight Rennie had left behind. In its beam was Lessup, casually emptying one of several flasks that he had brought from the last tavern without Daenek or Rennie knowing. The ex-sociologist’s throat worked as he drained the bottle.

A wave of anger made Daenek’s face burn. “Hey,” he snapped.

“How about knocking that off? We’re going to be moving out in a few hours.”

Lessup took the bottle from his mouth. “No reason not to—enjoy the trip, is there?”

“This is just a big lark to you, isn’t it?” Daenek’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

“Maybe it is.” Lessup sat the bottle down on the floor. His face was altered by some new emotion. “Maybe it is. But then, I’m not quite so lucky as you, am I?”

“Lucky?” The word surprised Daenek. “Hey, I’ve been through a lot—”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Lessup’s voice swelled with bitterness.