An Unexpected Apprentice

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “To do what? There is no forage here.” The captain turned to Edynn. “I am sorry, honored one, for the inconvenience. It will be remedied as soon as is possible. At present,” she said, with a sharp look at Serafina, “there is no convenient inn to stop in and say, may we please have a bed for the night? And what’s in the pot for supper?”

  “I smell food,” Tildi said drowsily, cuddled up against the cloth that rested over the pad of thick hair that ran down the middle of Rin’s spine. It was more comfortable than any pillow she had ever used. “I smell roast beef and potatoes, and berry pie …”

  “Nonsense,” said Serafina. “Your nose is beginning to go to sleep. I will try to bring a spell about us and make it warmer.”

  “No, she’s right,” Rin said, flaring her nostrils expressively. “I am not hallucinating, and I smell it, too.”

  “It’s a trap,” Teryn said. “Another of our quarry’s ruses to lure us to our deaths!”

  “Perhaps not,” Edynn said, essaying out of the folds of her cloak with her staff. “I do not sense enchantment here.”

  “It’s probably dwarves, you know,” Lakanta announced. “Dwarf burrows can be found in nearly every mountain range in the world.”

  “We could ask them for help,” Tildi said hopefully. She was certain now that she smelled baking potatoes, and possibly roast chicken.

  “Dwarves are,” Lakanta said firmly and very loudly, “the stubbornest folk in the world. Almost all of them are bad-tempered, humorless gumps who would cut off their noses to spite their faces, who would eat a bag of sweets right in front of you and never offer you a one.” Her voice echoed against the stone walls, but was soon swallowed up by the gale.

  “The dwarves,” Teryn said, annoyed. She made a dismissive gesture. “They care nothing for our mission. They will not care if we perish here.”

  “Let us try anyhow,” Rin said.

  “Oh, why not?” Lakanta said with resignation. “Just because they might not care for our task does not mean decency is beyond them. I have been through these parts many times over the years. They might be grieved, or at least annoyed, to find my corpse decaying upon their doorstep come spring, whenever our book thief lets it turn over into spring.”

  “How can you jest at the notion that we could die here within reach of help?”

  The small woman regarded Serafina with sympathy in her eyes. “Child, I have been around a lot of years, and if you don’t laugh, you cry.”

  She slipped off her pony’s back and disappeared among the bare stones. The movement brought the packed snow on the rocks above tumbling down upon them. Rin stamped a hoof and twitched.

  Teryn herded the rest of them over to one side of the canyon, under a broad stone outcrop that momentarily sheltered them from the snow. Tildi climbed down to let Rin shake out her blanket cloak. Edynn held out her hands. They were trembling.

  “I’m not sure I can keep going, my friends.”

  “I can make a fire for you,” Tildi offered. She held out her hand, and a green blaze burst out on her palm. She looked around for something to set it on.

  “Don’t use that, Tildi,” Serafina snapped. “It’ll attract more of our foe’s lurkers. We are at a disadvantage in a fight at the moment.”

  “I am sorry,” Tildi said, abashed at her impetuousness. “I forgot the wards.” She drew them swiftly, pleased at her own expertise. Her experience had grown over the last weeks, and with it, her confidence. No malign creature would use it as a portal to harass them now. “This fire doesn’t need any wood, you see. My brother used it to kill thraiks. It’s just as warm as real fire.”

  “So I see,” Edynn said with gentle amusement. Tildi set the blaze down on a nearby rock. The others gathered around it, glad of the heat. Tildi automatically felt in her pack, and came up with a dusty packet of tea.

  “Would anyone like some?” she asked. Teryn couldn’t hide the smile as she found the kettle among their luggage, filled it with snow and set it to boil over the leaping green flames. Shortly, steam began to rise. Tildi poured the tea and handed Edynn the first cup. The elder wizardess drank it gratefully.

  “Whatever we may find after this,” she said, “nothing could be as delicious as this little kindness of yours. Thank you, Tildi.”

  Tildi bridled with pleasure as she offered the hot beverage around. The compliment warmed her as well as drinking the tea did. Her nose thawed out enough to run, but she felt better. Once the tea was gone she filled her cup with hot water to hold between her cold hands and touch to her cheeks. Though the snow continued to fall just inches from her, she no longer noticed it as much.

  Edynn bowed her head. “Friends, I am sorry. I apologize for my weakness. I did not foresee that our quarry would use the book against us. More fool I. He laid a trap for us, and we have walked straight into its snares. If I could have held out longer we might have been able to find a more hospitable place to stay. Now I fear trying to fly against this weather.”

  “It is not your fault, Mother,” Serafina fretted. She paced up to the growing wall of snow at the edge of the lip of stone. The horses danced nervously as she passed them. Morag’s eyes rolled with fear. She glared at him, making him step backward. At last she burst out. “Where has she gone? She has tried to turn us the wrong way ever since we set out from Silvertree.”

  “What are you talking about?” Rin asked sharply. “Lakanta is our true friend. She is trying to aid us. I hope she is not wrong, but I applaud her making the attempt.”

  The young wizardess’s eyes were wild. “She’s a spy. She’s gone to lead the enemy to us.”

  “How could she? He’s miles ahead of us.”

  “Then she is abandoning us. She knows where the dwarves reside, and she will live with them until this cursed storm goes. By then we will all be dead.”

  “In my home,” Tildi said in her calmest and most friendly tones, doing her best not to sound accusatory, “we have a saying that the truth usually comes out in time. Why not just wait?”

  Serafina could not seem to settle. Tildi now understood why she was so concerned, but there were no doors here to shut. It was not her mother’s fate to die in these circumstances, so the chances were good that the rest of them would survive, too. Tildi knew well that there was no point in explaining her theory to Serafina. They simply had to wait, and watch her pace up and back through the melting puddles of snow.

  After what seemed like forever, they heard threshing noises outside. Rin’s sensitive ears went up as the horses’ did, and the peddler woman appeared, walking very slowly because of the huge bundle in her arms. Teryn sprang forward to help, followed by Morag and Tildi.

  “Easy there,” Lakanta said. “The top one will slosh. I’ve already had a faceful of soup. Go on, now. Put that over the fire to warm up again. There’s a deeper cave up ahead, one that will hold all of us. But that can wait until we’ve eaten. I’m starved.”

  “Where did you get this?” Serafina demanded as the others relieved the short woman of her burdens. Each of the dishes was beautifully made, either fancifully painted earthenware, or gleaming gold or gemmed silver. Tildi didn’t care what they looked like, as long as the dishes contained food.

  Lakanta grinned over the top of a covered platter encrusted with winking jewels. “There was a dwarf hall below our feet. I recognized one of the entrances back on the last turning but one. I thought that fallen scree looked as though it was too neat for Mother Nature to have tumbled it that way. You would not have noticed. You were not meant to have noticed it. They have been tracking our progress all this time.”

  “You mean you have been telling them where we are,” Teryn said.

  “Not at all. Here, take this. It’s most of the knuckle end of a roast. And here is a cheese. These are dates stuffed with jam. Very sweet and very sticky. Ah, there, you can just lick your hand.” She unloaded more packages from the capacious pockets of her cloak and handed them around.

  “We mustn’t eat this food! It might be poison
ed,” Teryn cautioned them.

  “Don’t be a fool and starve to death!”

  “I can wait until we find a source I trust,” the captain said stoutly.

  “Ah, but can the noble lady here?” Lakanta asked, nodding toward Edynn. “You know that answer as well as I. That was part of the logic I used to get it, you see.”

  “How do we know the dwarves have goodwill toward us?” Serafina asked, more reasonably.

  “Ah, now that is a good question,” Lakanta said, and paused.

  “Well?”

  “I don’t let this get out much,” Lakanta said very hesitantly. “There are many good reasons, and you may guess most of them.”

  “What is it?” Tildi asked, becoming alarmed. Had her new friend a dark secret, as Serafina had accused her of having?

  “I think I know,” Edynn said with a smile. “They would not grudge provisions to a cousin.”

  Lakanta looked relieved. “That’s it, you see. And you don’t mind, though I think these two do.” She nodded toward the soldiers.

  “You’re a dwarf?” Teryn asked in disbelief. “But you look like a human.”

  “Bite your tongue. In spite of what Olen told you that still doesn’t make it a compliment.”

  “My apologies,” Teryn said humbly. “This is a gracious feast, and we are grateful.”

  “Aye,” muttered Morag.

  “Indeed we are,” Edynn agreed.

  “Can we not go into the halls?” Serafina asked suddenly. “You can see how the storm is affecting my mother.”

  “No, no,” Lakanta said, holding up her hands. “This is all the aid they would offer. Except for some blankets, and fodder for the horses, which you may find back there about a hundred paces. I couldn’t carry them all the way and still keep the food from falling out of my arms.” She nodded with her nose in the direction from which she had come. “They have fed you and given you what you need to survive. Consider that all you need. They like their privacy. Heavens, if every nosy traveler could just fall into the halls, then their lives would be over, as they see it.”

  “Come on,” Serafina ordered Tildi. “We will follow her trail back to the dwarf hall. They will not refuse us shelter. You stay here,” she said to Lakanta.

  Tildi tucked her cloak tightly around her and followed the young wizardess into the twilight. At that moment the wind had died down. She followed Serafina’s billowing cape around the bends of the canyon.

  There was no difficulty in finding Lakanta’s footsteps. The snow had come up to the middle of her thighs. She had plowed her way through, leaving twin trenches punctuated by deeper holes where her feet had pressed. Tildi inched along through one track, unable to see past Serafina.

  The young wizardess stopped abruptly. Tildi cannoned into her legs and sat down in the snow.

  “Curse them!” Serafina exclaimed.

  “What is the matter?” Tildi peered around the woman’s skirts at dark heaps to either side of the trail. “The blankets are here. And a bag of oats.”

  “And nothing else.” Serafina flung out a hand at the landscape. Tildi did not understand what she was meant to see until she realized there was nothing to see. Beyond the piles of blankets the trail ended. The drifts of snow seemed untouched. “Did she rise out of the earth at this point, or do her dastardly relatives know the Cold Magic, and can call in winter at will, like our thief? What will happen to my mother?”

  Tildi felt sorry for her. To think that she had ever envied Edynn the gift of the prophecy. Serafina could not see how her fear of the future made it impossible to enjoy the present. Shaking her head, she gathered up as many of the fallen blankets as she could hold, and stumped back along the narrow trail to where the others were waiting.

  Teryn was still trying to make her case. “But do the dwarves not believe in our mission? They will suffer the same as we will if we can’t get the book back.”

  “Of course they believe in it!” Lakanta said. “They can’t bother to do anything about it themselves, but they believe in keeping their way of life safe, the way it’s always been. That’s why they’ve given us their best. Plus these lovely blankets. Oh, and see? There are linens in between. We shall sleep soundly and well in these. Best weaving in the world—except for what your people produce, my dear,” she said to Tildi. “Ah, and look here. There’s a hat for you.”

  “For her?” Serafina asked.

  “Well, who else would it fit?” Lakanta demanded, holding up a wool hemisphere. “It fits across my palm, that’s all. Unless you want to fit one ear into that, honorable lady, I believe it’s a gift for Tildi. Yes, they’re willing to give us whatever we need, but out here, please.”

  “No matter,” Teryn said stolidly. “We’ll make do with our own camp. Now that we have fire. And provisions.”

  Lakanta nodded extravagantly. “That is what I have been trying to tell you. Once we’ve had some good, solid food inside us, we’ll see things in a much more reasonable light. Now, let’s eat before everything gets cold!”

  “I wish I could see the halls,” Edynn said, as the guards reluctantly began to serve the soup. “I did once, long ago, before humans and dwarves fell out so permanently. They were beautiful. The carvings were worth a lifetime of study.”

  “I wish I could see them, too, Mother,” Serafina said wistfully. “I wish we could go there together.”

  Edynn patted her fondly on the hand. “Now, child, you’ll have your own experiences to tell your children about. Don’t live through me. My stories are my gift to you.”

  Tildi was simply grateful for what she had at the moment. The stout pottery tureen holding the soup kept it piping hot until it was dished around in everyone’s bowls. Tildi closed her eyes to breathe in the steam, partly to warm her nose, and partly to absorb the luscious aromas. What a lot she had learned how to do without in just a few short months! First her hair, then her home, then a roof over her head at all. Bathing had become an occasional luxury. But here she had food, lots of it, and it smelled delicious. She also knew a secret, one that made her new friend even more interesting a companion than she had been.

  She opened her eyes to see Lakanta’s bright blue ones gleaming at her. The dwarf woman winked at her and leaned close, her voice muffled by the roar of the wind at their backs. “Maybe some time I’ll get you a tour, lass. But not these big bunglers. My kin don’t want anyone bumping around and knocking the lamps askew. Not that even Rin is tall enough to touch the buttresses down below in this place,” Lakanta added thoughtfully. “My heavens, I thought my homeland was a picture and a half, but that below us is a whole gallery.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  In the morning the party steeled themselves to riding out against the snow. The wind had not lessened, but the sky had lightened considerably with the rising of the sun. The footing had improved, as the snow had frozen during the night. Rin tested it gingerly and pronounced it suitable for the horses. Tildi renewed the spell upon the map. She felt forlorn as she saw how far away the book was. The thief was moving so fast that the dot flowed visibly on the broad parchment. He was still traveling north by northeast.

  The dwarves were evidently in favor of the continuation of the quest. Outside the cavern where they had sheltered, covered dishes waited upon a flat rock. Lakanta was as astonished as the others. There wasn’t a single footprint or disturbed wreath of snow to show from whence the generous bounty had sprung. Tildi squinted at the outcroppings of rock, trying to distinguish a door or a place of concealment, but she could not.

  “There’s no telling,” Lakanta said, helping to bring them inside. “I called them stingy, so they’re falling over themselves to be generous to us. I think they’re just being contrary, but I’m grateful, no doubt about it.”

  Tildi, replete with a proper smallfolk’s breakfast of hot porridge and sausages, felt as if she was fit to continue, though the snow was now pouring sideways past the door of their cave. Rin lifted her onto her back. Tildi bundled herself up in her cloak
and one of the dwarven blankets.

  “What will we do with the dishes?” Edynn asked with a glance at the pile of beautiful platters and tureens, looking like a treasure trove from a fairy tale.

  “Oh, just leave them here,” Lakanta suggested casually. “They’ll come back for them when we’ve gone.”

  “I would like to thank them,” Edynn said. “Is there a way I can do that?”

  “Not personally. They don’t want to meet you. If we accomplish what we have set out to do, they will consider that thanks enough,” Lakanta said. “They won’t help us directly, they’ve said that already, but they won’t hinder, and they will not assist the enemy, though they believe, as we do, that he is already far ahead of us.”

  “Nevertheless, I owe them the gesture.” Edynn rode out into the blowing storm.

  “Friend dwarves!” she called out, holding her staff on high. “We are grateful for your hospitality. Thank you for sustaining us. Farewell! I will seek to repay the kindness if it is ever in my power.”

  “They’ll just ignore you,” Lakanta warned her.

  Edynn turned to her. “No matter. They’ve saved our lives. I know I feel years younger because of their bounty.”

  The party set out at a near crawl. The wind was so harsh that Tildi only peeked out of her nest of woolen clothes now and again. The scene was nearly the same every time: a view of Rin’s back, straining forward and half-covered with snow. Before them, the faint dark shape of Teryn, gamely leading them onward. Of the canyon she could see little past the pellets of snow that whipped by them. The canyon seemed to be narrowing, and the speed of the wind seemed to increase in response.

  They stopped frequently to catch their breath and to rest the horses in one of the many overhangs that offered themselves in the sloping stone walls. As she was the only one whose fire was not immediately extinguished by the gusts and snow, Tildi was designated as provider of water for the steeds. The animals, whose eyes were crusted with ice crystals, drank thirstily. She patted the legs of the huge beasts with sympathy. She was grateful they were strong enough to help carry the party forward in the storm. If she had had to walk on her own feet, she would have quit after barely a hundred yards. Climbing down from Rin’s back and gathering snow was heavy enough work. Her legs felt like lead weights.