Sword and Sorceress 28

by Unknown

  What hope had I of avenging my brother’s death, I who was not even a mediocre sword fighter?

  Clothing rustled, drawing my attention. Herel, who lay nearby and close to the fire, propped himself on one elbow. “It is not defeat, my lady, for we will fight another day.”

  With what weapons—against a dragon? I thought bitterly. And then, “my lady”?

  He must have seen the surprise on my face, for he continued, still keeping his voice low, “Your brother did not have a twin, and you are as like to him. Yet in this you are unalike. Hatred, not love of home and lord, drives you.”

  I did not waste my breath with false denials. “You think I should have stayed at home, embroidering holiday shirts? Should I throw down my knife and crawl to whatever lord will give me sanctuary?”

  “I think you will not rest until you stand before the Dragon of Sharaya, no matter what I say.”

  I sat up straighter. Here was a man who would tell me the truth. “What is she, this Dragon? Is she even human?”

  Herel studied me for a long moment, perhaps weighing the guilt of sending me to certain death. “Her name is Rayzel, daughter of the Duke of Sharaya. It is said she bears a magical talisman, a proof against all bodily harm. If that is true, it is a miracle we resisted her this long. My own father told stories of the old Duke, her grandfather. Or maybe her great-grandfather, who can tell? No foe could stand against him, but he sought only to protect his own lands. Lady Rayzel...”

  I had seen her face, so lacking in human emotion. Perhaps the talisman granted her invulnerability of the heart as well as the flesh. “She would see the entire world in flames.”

  He nodded, as if I had spoken his thought. I tried to remember when the war had changed from traditional raiding to this campaign of annihilation. Before Joram was killed, it had seemed far away and happening to someone else. Certainly, he had been able to spare an afternoon now and again for his secret courtship.

  My only chance would be to take the talisman from her, most likely by trickery or stealth. My size, which had served me poorly in combat, might yet be my greatest asset. Few swordsmen took me seriously, but I could move quickly and silently. I’d make an excellent thief.

  “Tell me about this talisman,” I said to Herel. “What does it look like? Where does she carry it?”

  “It is said to be a Pearl of surpassing beauty, in appearance like none other. When roused by blood, it glows like fire-licked bronze. Or so it is said,” he added, his voice made hoarse by weariness.

  “So it is said,” I repeated. “Have you yourself seen it?”

  He looked away, into the shadows. I regretted stirring sorrowful memories, but I needed to know. “I have seen...something. I am not sure what. But Rayzel of Sharaya does wear a silver chain about her neck. That much I have seen with my own eyes.”

  Hope flared, the first I’d known since the day Joram died. This Pearl might render its wearer invulnerable to sword and spear, but it was a physical item, a bauble. And once it hung around my own neck, Sharaya would pay.

  ~o0o~

  Those few of us who survived the fall of Eaglehurst lived as outlaws in the remote areas of brush and forest, never staying long in any campsite, always looking over our shoulders for fear we would see the Dragon, her sword gleaming like red-gold, coming after us. Herel died the first winter of a lung fever, and some looked to me as the next leader. I wanted no obligation, no loyalty to anything but my own vengeance. By this time, even the few veterans acknowledged my skill. I had earned a place with them not by bloodline—for none of them knew who I truly was—but by blood.

  I still wore Joram’s clothing, although with each passing season, it became more worn and less like the garb of a nobly-born youth. I suppose I became tattered and weathered as well. Certainly, it seemed that the men treated me as one of them, as my brother would have been. Sometimes I felt as if I were carrying on with his life and not my own, fighting and fleeing, speaking the names of the dead around the evening fires. I would remember why I was here instead of him, and what quarry I hunted, and why I must never rest.

  After a time, we gained a measure of respite from Sharayan patrols. I took this as a sign that I might now resume my own hunt. We dared to emerge from the broken lands and scrub forests where we had hidden ourselves. The others were weary of constant vigilance and poverty, of cold and poor food and rarely a song. So we made our way back towards Eaglehurst, to the lands we once had known. We went warily, not only out of fear of discovery but because we did not want to bring retribution on any village that aided us.

  At one of these places, the largest and most prosperous we’d visited, we ventured into the single inn and traded our few coins for ale and new-baked bread. The villagers and a few travelers regarded us with mild interest and, when they were satisfied we offered neither threat nor the promise of exciting tales, went back to their own business. I settled on a table next to the least taciturn of the travelers. He was of Herel’s age, grizzled but not mean-eyed, a trader in small metal items like pans and sewing needles.

  “What news from the road?” I asked. “We’ve been a-forest so long, there’s much we’ve not heard.”

  His gaze swept over me, but lightly. He took me for an unbearded youth, and I did not disabuse him of that notion. “Like there’ll be peace for a time.”

  “Why is that? Has Sharaya run out of enemies to pick a quarrel with?”

  The traveler shook his head. “It’s called Greater Sharaya now, and any man fool enough to go up against her is long since food for worms. Seems the new Duke’s got no stomach for campaigns and prefers to sit home, toasting his toes.”

  One of my company, overhearing our talk, moved closer. “Might as well, with the Dragon on guard.” He looked as if he’d like to spit the bitterness out of his mouth from speaking the name.

  “Word is,” and here the trader lowered his voice and leaned close, “the Dragon’s gone as well.”

  “Gone?” I echoed.

  “Gone?” the Eaglehurst man said. “What happened to her? How can she just disappear?”

  She wasn’t dead, that much I was certain, because I was destined to kill her. For the first time in my exile, I felt afraid that she might have gone beyond my reach.

  Where? Where? The thought rampaged through my skull. The trader drew back, and I realized I’d been glaring at him, as if I could wrest the answer by the force of my will.

  “If Sharaya is appeased and the Dragon is gone,” my comrade said, clearly turning over the notion in his mind, “then we can go home again.”

  Home, someone else repeated, or perhaps I heard it only in my heart. “Go home,” I told my company. “Be at rest.”

  Where would she have gone and why? The reason did not interest me, only the direction, and I sat long in the inn’s room, gazing into my half-drunk tankard, wondering where to begin.

  ~o0o~

  I ventured into Sharaya itself, working when I could and picking pockets when I must. I used the money to buy ale for anyone who would gossip, and after a time, I put together bits of stories. A woman fitting Rayzel’s description had been seen bargaining for fare on one of the boats that followed the river down out of the mountains. As I followed her path, I puzzled over what could have brought her to leave behind family, home, safety, the privilege of a noble birth. These things had been taken from me, but she had chosen to walk away. There was no current threat to Sharaya, nor was there likely to be. Was this a sort of expiation, a penance? The very idea was so beyond reason as to be laughable. And yet, I saw a bizarre justice in her wanderings. Everything I had wished for her, a redoubling of my own exile and suffering, she now took upon herself.

  But it was not enough. It would never be enough.

  The mountains fell away into sloping pastures and then fields of millet and barley. At every town, every crossroads, I asked after her, always dreading the discovery that I had either lost the trail or my quarry would turn out to be someone besides Rayzel, some poor woman driven fro
m her home, perhaps a mercenary looking for employment. So far, my luck held.

  The way led south, across the withered, rock-strewn badlands. I stood on the outskirts of the last trading town, little more than a collection of tents clustered around an ancient well, and looked out over the caravan route. This far, I had trusted to my own sturdy feet, with an occasional ride on a farmer’s cart. Hot wind stirred the sand that had blown up from the desert. My lips were already parched. I had a little money, but not enough to buy a camel, and no horse could cross such an arid, desolate place. This same wind would scour my corpse. For a moment, the image of dry bones half-buried in sand rose up in my mind, only they were not mine. They were hers, and yet I felt no exultation, no relief that the desert had been my executioner.

  As I turned back toward the town, I reminded myself that such thoughts were fruitless, not to mention self-indulgent. I would have to find a means of earning money or a caravan willing to hire me. Tracking and petty theft would undoubtedly not be in high demand, but I wasn’t afraid of hard work.

  Now and again I’d seen women on the road, tall and strong, swords slung over their backs, but I’d been traveling as a youth for so long now, no one questioned my disguise, and I felt it safer to continue. As I looked for employment, I gave my name as Joram, in part to keep my own purpose alive. Because I had experience with horses, I found a position at one of the stable yards, with room and one meal a day in addition to my trivial pay. Best of all, I had a good reason to strike up conversations with the caravaneers, if not the masters then their assistants. We talked about the roads, the weather, the state of their beasts, where they were going, and all the best gossip from afar. Sooner or later, I would casually ask whether a swordswoman had taken passage with them across the sands.

  No, no, and no were the responses as the moon changed in her phases and one day became much like the others. One day, when the question had become wearisome in its repetition, yes.

  A camel-boy and I were sitting on the worn step behind the kitchen of the adjacent inn, sipping warm ale as the sun dipped toward the west. Yes, they’d sold a camel to a woman of such a description. I must have just missed her departure, so the time was right.

  “Where did she go?” I asked.

  “Only one place to go, ’cross the sands—Ixtalpi, it’s called, the city where madmen and demons mingle on the streets. And gamblers. It sits at the foot of the Viridon Mountains, that spew forth fire and ash, or so it is said.” The boy spat into the dust.

  It sounded like the perfect place for the Dragon of Sharaya.

  “It is said?” I repeated, an idea nudging my mind. “You have not seen these marvels for yourself?”

  The boy shook his head, and I saw that he was even younger than I’d first thought. Young and far from his own home.

  Carefully, least I disturb the luck that at last seemed to be coming my way, I gave him to understand that I very much wished to see such sights, if only there might be some other to take my place here, with its warm bed and daily meal. Before we’d finished our ale, we’d struck a bargain to swap places. The caravan-master was only too happy to exchange a frightened, homesick boy for the strapping youth I appeared to be.

  ~o0o~

  The mountains were everything the boy had intimated, dark and jagged. Black mists curled about their peaks, but whether they were natural fog or some demonic vapors, I could not tell. Ixtalpi itself was a warren, its buildings huddled at the base of the slopes. The afternoon was wearing into dusk when we arrived, and a lurid red light tinged the western horizon.

  I collected my wages and ventured into the town. Not wanting to squander my meager purse, I selected an inn that was neither ostentatiously luxurious nor overly dilapidated. The price of a single room was more than I expected, but I dared not share one with half a dozen men, all of us jammed into one bed and the floor, and likely a few of them interested in a closer intimacy with a beardless youth. The inn keeper might have thought my modesty laughable, but he accepted my coin. I had come too far to risk failure from something as simple as being exposed as a woman, and yet I could not bring myself to discard my disguise. In some way I barely understood, I had become Joram, and to set that aside now felt like a betrayal.

  The overpriced room came with a meal, so I settled in the common room, pretending to focus on the trencher of surprisingly spicy shredded meat, pickled vegetables, and a grain I did not recognize. All the while, I listened to the conversations around me, trying to sense the temper of the town and the best way to inquire after another traveler. That first night, I heard nothing of any value, except that my quarry was evidently not the only woman with a sword in this part of the world. What she might do if she suspected someone was on her track, I could not imagine. All the way, I’d been far enough behind her and so well-disguised, it was hard to imagine she’d detected me. And why should she? Eaglehurst was destroyed, any man capable of standing up to Sharaya long dead.

  By day, I strolled through the markets and stockyards. I didn’t expect to hear anything of value, and therefore was not disappointed. My real work took place at night, when I drifted from one tavern to another. As often as not, a round of cheap ale would yield an hour’s gossip, tales from the road and far-off places, and also not a few stories of doings within Ixtalpi itself. I dispensed my coin slowly, for I had no idea how long I must make it last. I heard stories of horse races, knife fights, snake-wrestling contests, and the birth of a two-headed camel calf. Most of the reports of gambling were either so exaggerated or so dull I paid them little attention. Then, on the third night, I heard something that piqued my interest.

  A game of castles and dice...a young couple from Raë on the Western Sea, mercenaries by the sound of them...a woman with a sword, “a hard one, that”...

  Bets rose as one by one the other players dropped out, and the couple won and won. The woman with the sword played as if she cared nothing for winning, as if she had nothing worth losing.

  Then, when it seemed the game was over, one final bet: a gem bound in silver wire, hanging on a chain around the swordswoman’s neck.

  “Glowed like a bed of coals, it did,” my storyteller said.

  “Aye,” said his companion. “I’d not touch the thing, for all I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” As he said this, he made a sign to ward off evil.

  “What happened?” I asked in the silence that followed. “Who won?”

  “Why them young couple, of course. Took off the next day to who knows where, proud as peacocks. Up to no good, but so long as they keep their trouble to themselves, what do I care?”

  “Just as well,” his friend agreed.

  I stared into my half-empty tankard, unable to believe what I’d just heard. She’d lost the Pearl? In a game? What kind of madwoman was she? Or maybe she wasn’t mad at all, but so sickened by what she’d done, she no longer cared for living? Had she, after all these years and so much bloodshed, developed a conscience?

  Or was I the fool to think that was possible?

  “Where...” I began, my throat suddenly dry, “where did she go?”

  My two informants exchanged shrugs and glances, as if to say that anyone mad enough to follow that woman deserved whatever ill fortune they brought upon themselves. The friendlier of the two unbent enough to suggest that if it had been him who lost such a pretty bauble, he’d be on his way to get it back, one way or another. This made as much sense to me as any other aspect of the whole fantastical story. I paid for another round for the two of them and returned to my own inn, where I settled my account and told the owner I would be departing before dawn. I might have a long way to go, but instinct told me that at last I was nearing my quarry.

  ~o0o~

  The trail led me downslope, out of the Viridon Mountains and through a crossroads. I’d heard it said that the doors to the lands of the dead swing open at such places during certain times of the year, and as I searched the dry ground for a sign of her passage, I felt a breath, a whisper on my face. It felt as if J
oram urged me toward the less-traveled road. His guidance proved good, for before long, I spotted the print of a boot I now knew to be hers. She’d stepped out of the center of the trail, and so the track had not been overlain by others.

  There had been little enough traffic on this road as it narrowed, soon only wide enough for a single line of mules or a small cart. I followed slowly, attending to the story left in scuffed dust, bent leaves, the moisture remaining in the animal dung, the occasional depression left by a boot when the wearer had strayed into the looser soil to either side. I knew this game well, and I was very good at it. I read what had gone before, not only the beasts and men but the order in which they had passed. First had come the narrow-wheeled cart and three ponies, one of them unshod, and as many men. They traveled at a pace so as not to overtax the animals: a trading party about their ordinary business. Two sets of footprints overlay those of the cart and ponies, one smaller and lighter than the other. They paused behind brush at turns where they might be seen by the traders. As they went on, their pace hastened, as shown by the depth of the heel strikes in the dirt. They became bolder, less wary.

  At first, I wondered if one of them were Rayzel of Sharaya, until I saw a third set of prints. They were clearly made by a tall, strong woman...and she was following the couple, who in their turn were on the trail of the trading party. Their lead was two days but no more.

  I straightened up from examining the overlapping prints. In a fair game or a crooked one, she’d lost the Pearl. Now she wanted it back. She was stalking the young couple even as they hurried after the traders. To the west, the sun was rapidly slipping behind the forested hills. Dusk would come early in this place. Although it galled me to think that Rayzel might even now be lengthening the distance between us, I found a place to rest for the night. I had waited this long. I could wait a time longer.