Limits by Larry Niven (tohfa e dulha read online TXT) 📗

She said, “We must be very near the treasure. The pointer led me back the way we came…straight into your arms, in fact.”

Sung chuckled. He fished the silver box out of his saddlebag. He opened it, took out Sparthera’s counterfeit bronze teardrop, hesitated, then dropped it on the rug. He stood up with the genuine object in his hand.

Sparthera cried, “Stop! That’s—” Too late. Sung had flung the genuine pointer into a grove of low trees.

“I’ll keep yours,” he said. “It’s only for the benefit of people who think a box has to contain something. Now watch.”

He pressed down on the silver box in two places and twisted four of the small stone ornaments. The box folded out flat into a cross-shape with one long arm.

“You see? There never was a spell on the bronze lump. You took it to a spell-caster, didn’t you?” Sparthera nodded. “And he put some kind of contagion spell on it, didn’t he?” She nodded again. “So the bronze lump sought what it had been a part of. The box. It’s been in there too long.”

Sung pulled the faded red lining off of the surface. Underneath, the metal was engraved with patterns and lettering. Sung stroked a finger over the odd markings. “It looks like a valuable trinket on the outside. No casual thief would just throw it away. I might have a chance to get it back. But a magician turned robber would take the pointer, just as you did.”

She’d had it in her hands! Too late, too late. “When can we start looking for Gar’s treasure?”

“Tomorrow morning, if you’re so eager. Meanwhile, the afternoon is growing cold. Come here and warm my heart.”

“Sung, dear, just how cl…” Sparthera’s words trailed off in surprise. She had walked straight into Sung’s arms. She had behaved like this with no man, not since that damned tinker. Her voice quavered as she said, “I don’t act like this. Sung, what magic is on me now?”

He pulled back a little. “Why, it’s your own oath!”

“I feel like that puppet you showed me! This isn’t what I meant!”

Sung sighed. “Too bad. Well—”

“I don’t mean I won’t share your bed.” Her voice was shrill with near-hysteria. “I just, I want power over my own limbs, damn you Sung!”

“Yes. I tell you now that binding yourself to me does not involve becoming my concubine.”

She pulled away, and turned her back, and found it was possible. “Good. Good. Sung, thank you.” Her brow furrowed suddenly and she turned back to face him. “What if you tell me different, later?”

She might have guessed that Sung’s answer would be a shrug. “All right. What was I trying to say earlier? Oh, I remember. Just how close is the King’s Way? We don’t want that caravan camping next to us. Somebody might get nosy.”

Sung agreed. They had moved a good distance down the King’s Way before they camped for the night.

In the morning Sparthera saddled Twilight and loaded Eagle while Sung packed his gear on the unicorn. The wingbeast caught his attention.

“Where did you get that creature?”

“Near my father’s farm. It was running wild. I think it’s some sort of magic beast.”

Sung shook his head sadly. “No, quite the opposite. In my grandfather’s day there were flocks of beautiful horses that sailed across the sky on wings as wide as the King’s Way. He rode one when he was a little boy. It couldn’t lift him when he grew too big. As time went on the colts were born with shorter, weaker wings, until all that was left were little beasts like this one. I used to catch them, when I was a boy, but never to fly. Enchantment is going out of the world, Sparthera. Soon there will be nothing left.”

It was a mystery to Sparthera how her companion read the talisman. It looked the same to her, no matter which way he said it pointed. Sung tried to show her when they set off that morning. He set the flattened-out box on the palm of her hand and said, “Keep reading it as you turn it. The runes don’t actually change, but when the long end points right, the message becomes ‘Ta netyillo iliq pratht’ instead of ‘tanetyi lo—’”

“Skip it. Just skip it.”

In any case, the pointer continued to lead them straight down the King’s Way.

They reached an inn about dusk, and Sung paid for their lodging. Sparthera watched him setting the spells against thieves. Sung was not secretive. Quite the contrary: he drilled her in the spells, so that she would be able to set them for him.

Though he had freed her from the obligation, the magician seemed to consider lovemaking as part of their agreement. Sparthera had no complaints. The magician was adept at more than spells. When she told him this, she expected him to preen himself; but Sung merely nodded.

“Keeping the women happy is very necessary in Sung House. How much did I tell you about us, that first night?”

“You were the immortal Sung. You abdicated in favor of your son.”

“I was bragging.”

“What were you? Not the stablehand, I think.”

“Oh, I was the immortal Sung, true enough. We rule a fair-sized farming region, a valley blocked off by mountains and the Yellow River. We know a little magic—we keep a herd of unicorns, and sell the horn, or use it ourselves—but that’s not what keeps the farmers docile. They think they’re being ruled by a sorcerer seven hundred years old.”

“The immortal Sung.”

“Yes. I became the immortal Sung when I was twenty. My mother set a spell of glamour on me, to make me look exactly like my father. Then I was married to Ma Tay, my cousin, and set on the throne.”

“That’s…I never heard of glamour being used to make anyone look older.”

“That’s a nice trick, isn’t it? The spell wears off over twenty years, but of course you’re getting older too, looking more and more like your father, magic aside. When I