“There,” Atheris said quietly, interrupting her thoughts, and Peri glanced up again, startled.
“What?” she whispered as quietly as she could. She must’ve missed some comment, some explanation.
“The horses,” Atheris said, gesturing a little impatiently. “Orren said they were the best for sale in town. You wanted to look at them before the owner knew we were buying. There they are.”
Peri grimaced, remembering the conversation now.
Bright Ones, Perian, pay attention! You’ll look a pretty fool if you trip over your own feet and fall face-first in that stinking gutter, won’t you?
She looked at the horses in the pen across the square and grimaced again. Not a one of them would have made it past Danber’s first and most superficial cull. Even in Agrond most merchants wouldn’t have thought these lifeless beasts worth the trouble of taking to market.
“What about the bay near the gate?” Atheris suggested after Peri’s extended silence pronounced its own judgment.
“It’s half-blind,” Peri whispered.
“The brown-and-white closest to us?”
“Going lame in the near hind,” Peri said, shaking her head. “Couldn’t outrun a sick turtle. All right. The gray gelding at the water trough and the buff mare at the east end.”
“That foul-tempered thing?” Atheris protested as the buff turned and nipped savagely at her neighbor.
“I can handle ‘that foul-tempered thing,’ “ Peri muttered. “The gelding’s for you. Now listen. When you go in, don’t ask the merchant about either of them; go look at that black-and-white gelding in the middle. That’s his showpiece. Show some interest, then try to talk him down to half of whatever he asks. He won’t go that low. When that doesn’t work, shake your head and ask about the dark brown gelding, the one with the white patch over his eye. When the merchant quotes you a price, act like you’re interested. Then look in the brown’s mouth, give the merchant the nastiest look you can manage, and start walking away. Don’t say a thing. He’ll stop you and offer you a decent price on the gray and the buff. Offer him three-fourths of what he asks. He’ll take it.”
“How do you know he’ll do all that?” Atheris asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Because you’ll have proven to him you know what you’re doing, and he knows those two are the only horses he’ll have even a chance of selling you. The kind of buyers he’s getting are too green to take that nasty buff mare, and the gray’s just too flat-out ugly for an easy sell. Trust me. He’ll go for it. Make him have both of them reshod. The gray’s about to throw his right front shoe. And tell him to deliver them to Orren’s stable so nobody notices us with those horses before we leave.”
Atheris shook his head, but walked away, giving Peri a skeptical glance over his shoulder. She ignored it and turned away, wandering among the stalls. There was no excuse for someone looking like her to be hanging around the horse pens, not unless she wanted to be mistaken for a horse thief.
The aroma of relatively fresh food cooking was sweeter than perfume in this decaying city, and Peri followed her nose. A vendor was frying meat-and-turnip pies in a kettle of hot oil, and after days of no meat except the leathery trail food, Peri wasn’t inclined to inquire too closely what animal had given its life to fill those pies. The vendor appeared less than pleased by the appearance of his swathed and silent customer, but coin was coin and at length Peri walked away poorer by two copper coins and richer by four hot pies.
Walking back toward the horse pens, she nearly collided with a smugly smiling Atheris.
“Did you get them?” Peri whispered, handing him two pies.
“Just as you said,” Atheris admitted, chuckling. “He said he would have the horses reshod and at Orren’s stable tomorrow before sunset. And I thought I was the mage.”
“There’s no magic to it,” Peri said, after glancing around to make sure nobody was close enough to hear. “Horses lose their value fast penned up like that—they founder or get hoof rot and their muscles soften up. Pretty horses sell easy to stupid marks. Ugly sound ones—I wish I could say good horses, but not these two—only sell to horsemen. That was you. So he jumped on the sale.”
Atheris grunted, biting into a pie.
“I still say it was magic,” he muttered, his mouth full. He raised his eyebrows. “Hmmm. I see you found the horses that failed to sell.”
“Oh, good,” Peri said, glancing at Atheris out of the corner of her eye. “I was afraid it might be dog or rat or something.”
To her disgust Atheris only gazed at her gravely, although the corner of his mouth twitched.
“No,” he said seriously. “Rat is much gamier.”
They made their way back to the other end of the market to look at saddles and bridles; there Peri dared not send Atheris in alone. Fortunately she had proper Sarkondish clothing now, and while a swathed and presumably disfigured warrior helping to purchase tack for two horses was certain to attract attention, a filthy and presumably disfigured pilgrim buying the tack would have seemed a great deal more suspicious.
Peri was surprised to see what appeared to be a large number of pilgrims in the city, judging from the bundles of belongings they carried; there certainly were no large temples in Darnalek from what she’d seen. When asked, Atheris explained that the pilgrims were likely here to join the next pilgrimage to Rocarran, and that surprised her even more. Why, the last pilgrimage had hardly passed by here. If the pilgrims felt safe in waiting here in the city for the next group, instead of hurrying northwest to catch up with the others, such pilgrimages must occur with amazing frequency. Even in Agrond Peri hadn’t seen such activity except during large religious festivals or other significant occasions. She tried to press Atheris for a further explanation, but from his brusque and often vague answers she quickly realized that it was an uncomfortable subject for him. Of course, he’d served in a temple himself. Obviously it was painful to be reminded constantly that he’d been cast out of the little world that had been his whole life, declared a heretic. Peri let the subject go and Atheris seemed vastly relieved.
As they walked back, Atheris stopped abruptly, so suddenly that Peri barely avoided colliding with his back. He was staring at something across the street. Peri herself saw nothing remarkable, only a few shabby shops—a baker, a fortuneteller, a potter.
“What?” she asked as loudly as she dared. “What is it?”
Atheris was silent a moment longer, then abruptly started walking again.
“Nothing,” he mumbled. “I thought I... felt something. But I was wrong.”
The sun slowly lowered in the west, and reluctantly Peri followed Atheris back to Orren and Lina’s house carrying their goods in coarse sacks. She hated this gray and lifeless city, hated the unhealthy stench and the silence of it, but at least while she walked the foul streets with Atheris she could avoid talking to him and facing him. In the privacy of their loft there would be no more excuses.
To her surprise Atheris seemed reluctant, too, dawdling in the stable after they’d told Orren of the impending arrival of their horses, then lingering scraping his boots at the door, until Lina appeared on the threshold, gazing pointedly at the setting sun. In the loft, Peri busied herself settling their tack in a corner, lighting the brazier. Atheris took an unusually long time fetching their supper, but when it came, the stew was fresh and hot and floating with dumplings, and there were even chunks of meat in it, and Peri gratefully took the food as another excuse to postpone the inevitable confrontation.
“So tell me,” she said, picking out another tough chunk and chewing vigorously, “what’s this, dog or rat?”
“Goat, actually,” Atheris said, chuckling.
“Oh, yeah?” Peri bit into some vegetable she neither recognized nor liked, grimaced, swigged bad ale to wash away the taste, and grimaced again. “How do you know? Not gamy enough for dog?”
“Hardly,” Atheris said wryly. “Yesterday when I asked Orren about the horses, he mentioned that he had t
aken two rather elderly goats in exchange for stabling a merchant’s horses for a month. Knowing that the goats were not worth the money to feed them, I merely applied the same sort of magical deduction you made.” He shook his head. “Meat twice in one day. The south must be finally recovering, despite appearances.”
Peri seized eagerly on the subject.
“Yes, what happened here?” she said. “There couldn’t possibly have been any magical attacks this far north during the war or the earth would be blasted like it is near the border, and I can’t imagine magical taint from the Barrier could reach this far—it certainly didn’t in Bregond. But I’ve never seen anything so unhealthy as this land. Everything here seems dead.”
“Not dead,” Atheris said softly. “Lifeless.”
Peri raised her eyebrows.
“There’s a difference?” she said.
“Oh, yes.” Atheris glanced down at his bowl almost guiltily. “Do you remember what I told you about men’s magic?”
“Right, death magic,” Peri said, trying to remember what he had actually said. “Or—no, magic that takes life, uses it, right?” Then realization struck her silent for a long moment as she digested the implications.
“You mean,” she said very slowly, “somebody just... sucked all the life out of every living thing here?”
“More than living things,” Atheris said softly. “During the war our battle mages wielded such potent magics that they drew all the life out of the very soil, deep down into the bones of the land. Few crops can grow because the soil, even the water, is utterly barren of life.”
He made a vague gesture at the loft.
“Do you know how Orren and Lina live so prosperously?” he asked. “Not because of the income from what few boarders they take in. Not from the stabling fees few here can afford to pay. No, Orren makes his money selling the manure and old bedding from the horses to farmers to spread upon their fields.”
Peri remembered the noticeable lack of dung in the streets and grimaced. On a good market day in Tarkesh she wore her highest boots just to walk down the streets. Fostering in Bregond, she’d never taken for granted the lush fertility of Agrond’s soil, but—
“Why would they do it?” she asked softly. “Why would Sarkond’s mages suck their own land dry of life?”
“Because of a prophecy,” Atheris said, sighing and closing his eyes as if it pained him to utter the words. “A prophecy of our god, Eregis, He Who Sleeps. We were promised that when He woke, His power would deliver us from poverty and hunger, that we would dwell thereafter in lands of plenty. Our priests said that meant that we would conquer the rich lands to the south, and they believed that time had come. The Sign had come to pass, you see—or so we were told by our sources south of the border.”
“The Sign?” Peri asked uncomfortably. Sources south of the border? Traitors. Bregondish or Agrondish traitors. There were whispers in Bregond of a great scandal among the temples shortly after the war. She had asked her mother about it, but High Lady Kayli couldn’t—or wouldn’t—explain.
“The Harbinger,” Atheris said very softly. “Born to nobility, destined to walk between two worlds, embodying both life and death—well, no matter.” He shook his head. “Our priests believed it was the Lady Kayli of Bregond, she who wed to unite Agrond and Bregond and wielded the most potent and lethal fire magic, who fulfilled this prophecy. But she was not the one, and it was not the time, a mistake our warriors and priests did not realize until far too late. Eregis did not wake, and Sarkond was defeated—more, nearly destroyed. By Agrond’s and Bregond’s magic, yes, but even more so by what our mages had done to our country in the hope of that victory.”
Atheris was silent for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was flat and tired.
“Were we betrayed by our god or by our own misunderstanding?” he said. “No one knows. The people could only wait and hold on to the hope of the prophecy, that the Sign had not yet come, that the promise was yet to be fulfilled. And the temples have kept the faith alive. They—we—have ...”
Atheris’s voice trailed off and this time the pain was visible in his eyes.
“And you thought the prophecy was wrong,” Peri said as gently as she could. “You went looking for some other hope for your people, some other answer. And they called you a heretic for it.”
Atheris closed his eyes again and nodded silently. At last he opened his eyes but stared at the floor, not facing Peri.
“Before He slept, Eregis was once called the Father of Waters,” he said. “I thought the answer lay in a symbolic, not a literal interpretation of the prophecy. That by combining the polarities, the magic of man and that of woman, a great power could be wakened to bring life back to our land, just as the joining of man and woman brings new life. My cousin Amis shared this belief, and she was powerful in her healing magic. We hoped to make rain in a desperately dry land—only a first step, but a tangible one, one that must be recognized.”
He grinned rather bitterly.
“I understand your ambition to create a qiva,” he said, shrugging. “What Amis and I attempted was no less presumptuous, and utterly forbidden as well. Not only is the magic of life forbidden to priests, so is the act of life itself.”
“What, sex?” Peri said, taken aback. What a notion! Why, her brother Estann’s Awakening had been celebrated with a festival throughout most of Agrond.
Atheris only nodded, still gazing resolutely at the floor.
“I thought such restrictions mere dogma,” he said. “I was wrong. We raised a power indeed, Amis and I, but not as we meant to do. She summoned up the energies from within her, but I—I did not know how to share, only how to take. I nearly killed her.”
Peri grimaced. Bright Ones, no surprise that only disaster came of a system of magic and religion that so twisted and distorted the natural order of the world. Men’s magic and women’s magic indeed!
Atheris met Peri’s eyes at last.
“Our joining last night was a mistake,” he said quietly.
“It certainly was,” Peri said flatly.
“I have no excuse,” Atheris said, shaking his head. “Eregis forgive me, I should have known better. But Amis was so quiet and tender, vulnerable—and you were so different, strong and full of life, and it felt—”
“—right.” Peri sighed, her skin shivering into gooseflesh and her heart pounding hard at the memory. “Like our fight. Blade meeting blade, not needing to hold back, able to take a chance without having to worry about a misstroke—”
“—or to fear giving harm or receiving it,” Atheris said, his eyes sparkling. “Only the dance—”
“—the kiss of steel—” Peri breathed, her hands trembling.
Slowly, almost unwillingly, Atheris leaned closer.
“—in flesh and—”
And Peri groaned, lost and damned, and pulled him to her.
Late in the night, Peri roused to a faint sound. She lay still, her hand creeping to the hilt of the dagger under the edge of her pallet. There was only a little light from the cooling coals in the brazier, and it took her a moment to realize that the figure moving stealthily through the loft was Atheris. Peri held perfectly still, kept her breathing even. What in the world could he be doing?
He pulled the pouch of gold out from under his pillow, and Peri heard the clink of coins as he withdrew a handful, shoving them into his pocket. He moved to one of the windows, opened the shutters. He climbed quietly out onto the stable roof, closing the shutters behind him but not latching them.
Peri sat up, alarmed, but a quick glance in the corner showed that their packs and sacks were still in place. They had no horses yet; he hadn’t taken anything but his weapons and the gold.
Peri hurried to the window, opened the shutters just a crack. Atheris had climbed down the side of the stable and was working his way up the street toward the market, trying to be stealthy about it, darting from doorway to alley to doorway, but he obviously didn’t know much about cover and evading�
�rather than fleeing—pursuit. To anybody who had ever done any night hunting he might as well have rung bells as he moved.
Peri quickly retrieved her sword and dagger, pulled on her boots, and slipped out the window. Orren and Lina barred their door, but apparently they’d never considered the possibility of somebody climbing the roof, because it was a simple matter to drop down from the stable roof and wouldn’t be too much more difficult to climb back up.
She set off down the street after Atheris. The streets were empty, eerily so—she’d expected guards, beggars, whores, drunks returning from taverns, or at the very least pilgrims too poor to pay for a room and opting to sleep in doorways instead. But there seemed to be nobody about. Or was there? Once or twice Peri heard scuffling noises from the darker alleys, sounds that she hoped were made by rats or stray dogs but seemed somehow too large—and besides, she’d already noticed the lack of such animals in the city. She peered down one of the alleys and thought she saw someone duck furtively around a corner, but the light was too poor for certainty. Peri took a deep breath and continued on. She couldn’t afford to delay if she wanted to keep up with Atheris.
Speaking of her quarry, he’d nearly reached the market at the center of town. He slowed now, glancing around him nervously, and Peri had to mind her cover as the wider streets and open market area provided more light.
To her surprise, Atheris stopped near the point where she’d almost collided with him, quickly crossing the street; amazingly he approached the fortune-teller’s shop, where the windows were still lit. Peri stopped where she was, blinking in astonishment. He’d done all this, sneaked out here in the middle of the night just to get his fortune told? But sure enough, Atheris knocked on the door, and shortly thereafter it opened, a middle-aged man conversing briefly with him, then stepping aside to let him enter.
Peri waited until the door closed behind Atheris, then crossed the street as quickly as she could. Because of the light in the windows, she was far too visible in the front, and the shops on either side were both closed. She glanced around and saw an alley that looked promising, and ducked into it.
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