Taking Flight (Ethshar)

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  It took him several minutes to calm the old man; during that time, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a small, graceful black cat hurrying away, dashing between legs and scampering around boots. He saw the cat turn and deliberately wink at him before disappearing into an alley.

  Ezdral did not notice the cat; he was too distraught to remember Irith's other shapes. Kelder supposed that if he had seen the cat, he would have been in love with it—with her—but that had not happened.

  Which was all for the best.

  Eventually, Ezdral did calm down, and stood, drooping and silent, by Kelder's side. “She'll meet us tonight,” Kelder assured him.

  Ezdral nodded dismally, and without a word headed for the nearest wineshop.

  Kelder watched him go, and then looked around, realizing that he was alone in this pleasant and interesting place. He would have preferred Irith's company, but he saw no sign that she was returning, and could not see any way to be with her out in the open without having Ezdral along—and he did not want Ezdral along, fawning over Irith, following her everywhere as closely as he dared, constantly lusting after her. The old man was terrible company.

  Alone, then, in Krithimion—that wasn't so terrible. He smiled, threw Asha a glance and a wave, and set out toward the castle with the intention of exploring the town a little before finding work.

  An hour or so later, after he had had his fill of window-shopping, Kelder arrived at the castle gate, which seemed as likely a place as any to ask for employment. The gate was open, and two guardsmen were chatting idly in the archway.

  "Hai," Kelder called in Trader's Tongue, “excuse me!”

  The guards turned to consider him. They did not speak, giving him no clue as to whether or not they knew the language in its unadulterated form. Here on the Great Highway, though, they really ought to know it, Kelder told himself. He forged onward.

  “Hello,” he said, approaching to a polite distance and still speaking Trader's Tongue. “I'm passing through, and a little short of cash; would you happen to know of any way I might earn a little money around here?”

  “There must be a dozen merchants in town...” one soldier began, in the same language, but his companion's hand on his arm startled him into silence.

  “You're looking for a way to earn money?” the other asked, grinning.

  Not pleased by the grin, Kelder nodded. “That's right,” he said.

  “Well, it just so happens,” the grinning soldier said, “that I know of a wizard who said he'd pay well for some help.”

  Kelder did not like the guard's attitude at all, but on the other hand he remembered that Irith had been paid in silver for her errand in Ophera. Wizards did have money, generally, and were free enough with it.

  He suspected he had been badly underpaid for the work he had done in the last few towns, but as a beggar, to all intents and purposes, what could he do about it?

  Here, though, he had a chance to do better—maybe.

  “What sort of help?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Oh, just help,” the guard said, exchanging a smirk with his comrade.

  It couldn't hurt to check it out, Kelder thought. “Where?”

  “Senesson of Yolder, on Carter Street,” the guard said, pointing. “Down the hill here, turn left at the little blue shrine, turn right on the second cross street, and look for the shop with the green tile over the door.”

  “Green...” Kelder said. “Green what?” He had never encountered the word for “tile” in Trader's Tongue before.

  “Green roof,” the guard said.

  That Kelder understood. “Thank you,” he said, with a polite half-bow.

  Down the hill he went, strolling slowly until he spotted the blue shrine—it was a fountain, built into the outside corner of a bakery, with a bright blue ceramic glaze lining it and a small golden statuette of a goddess, no more than a foot tall, set into the wall behind it. The gold leaf on the idol had flaked a little, and the water that sprayed from beneath the goddess’ feet was slightly discolored. He turned left, between the bakery and an iron-fenced garden.

  The first cross-street was a muddy alleyway, but he counted it anyway, and turned right onto a narrow, deserted byway. He had gone almost three blocks, and was just deciding that he should not have counted the alley, when he spotted a shop with a rather complex facade. A five-sided bay window, its innumerable small panes hexagonal in shape, took up most of the ground level front, while the upstairs displayed turrets and shutters with elaborate carvings. The front door, just beyond the bay window, was of oiled wood bound in brass, with designs etched in the metal and monstrous faces carved in bas relief on the wood.

  And above this door was a small decorative overhang, and on top of the overhang were three rows of curved green tile.

  There was no signboard, and the window display was an incomprehensible array of arrangements of silver wire, but it looked like the right place, and when he stepped up to the door he found that the design etched into the brass bar at eye level included a line of Ethsharitic runes reading, “Senesson of Yolder, Wizard Extraordinary.”

  Kelder was about to knock when the door swung open; before he could react even enough to lower his fist, a girl charged directly into him, knocking him back a step.

  “Get out of the way, stupid,” she snarled in Ethsharitic.

  “Excuse me,” Kelder said in the same language, “but I wanted to work...”

  “So did I, but I won't do it here!” She tried to push past him, and Kelder stepped back, but then he reached out and caught her arm.

  She whirled, aiming a punch at his belly, but he sidestepped in time to miss most of it, keeping hold of her other wrist. She was short and thin, her strength unremarkable, so maintaining his grip was not particularly difficult.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, inadvertantly slipping into the Trader's Tongue he had been using almost exclusively for more than a sixnight, “I need to talk to you.”

  She yanked her arm free, and he let it go. “I don't speak that,” she said, still in Ethsharitic, “whatever it is.”

  “Sorry,” he said, switching back to Ethsharitic. “I need to talk to you.” For the first time it occurred to him that she might have been speaking the Krithimionese patois—but then she would have understood Trader's Tongue, surely.

  “No, you don't,” she said, turning away.

  “Wait!” he called. “What's wrong with working here?”

  She took one step, then stopped and turned back. “You don't know?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Are you from around here?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I'm from Shulara.”

  “I never heard of it,” she said.

  There was definitely, he noticed, something a little different about the way she spoke Ethsharitic; she spoke slightly faster than he had heard it before, and slurred the consonants a bit. It was not at all like the Krithimionese he had heard spoken around town. “It's southeast,” he said. “Where are you from?”

  “None of your business,” she said.

  He raised his hands, conceding the point. “All right,” he said, “but what's wrong with the work?”

  She glowered at him, standing with her hands on her hips, considering, and then snapped, “You don't know?”

  “No,” he said. “The guards at the castle told me I could earn money here. That's all I know.”

  She snorted. “They were joking,” she said. “Either that, or they were trying to insult you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” she said, her tone turning sarcastic, “you probably don't qualify for the job.”

  “Why not?”

  “Senesson isn't looking for workers,” she explained. “He's buying materials.”

  “What materials?” Kelder asked, still puzzled.

  “Virgin's blood,” the girl said angrily.

  Kelder blinked, and looked the girl over.

  She was roughly his own age, he guessed, des
pite her diminutive stature; she had long black hair that flowed down across her shoulders in flamboyant masses of darkly-shining curls, a heart-shaped face and a long straight nose, a full bosom, narrow waist, and lush hips.

  “It's none of my business,” he said, “but...” He stopped.

  He had intended to ask if she qualified any more than he did, but that hardly seemed like an appropriate question to ask a stranger.

  If she did, he thought, he'd be surprised. She was no incredible beauty, certainly not in Irith's class, but she was attractive enough.

  “You're right,” she said, “it's none of your business.”

  He smiled. “You're right,” he said. “I'm sorry.” He turned away from the brass-trimmed door.

  “Aren't you going to knock?” the girl asked.

  “No,” Kelder said, “I don't think so, not if that's what he wants.”

  She stared at him for a moment. “I could be lying,” she said. “You don't have to take my word.”

  “No, I believe you,” Kelder said. “Do you know of anywhere else I might find work?”

  She shook her head.

  “Where are you going, then?” he asked.

  “Back to the market square,” she answered.

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “All right,” she said, and together they strolled up the street, away from the shop with the green tile overhang.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It was half an hour before he got around to asking her name.

  “Azraya,” she said, throwing another pebble at the dove by the fountain, “Azraya of Ethshar.”

  The bird fluttered up into the air, then landed and turned to peck at the pebble, seeing if it was edible.

  “You're from Ethshar?” Kelder asked, leaning back on the bench.

  “I just said so, didn't I?” Azraya snapped.

  “No,” Kelder replied mildly, “you said that was your cognomen, not that you came from there.”

  “Same thing,” Azraya said, only slightly mollified.

  “I suppose it is,” Kelder agreed. “Sorry.”

  They were still speaking Ethsharitic, having discovered that Azraya spoke no Shularan, Trader's Tongue, Aryomoric, Uramoric, or Elankoran, and that Kelder spoke no Tintallionese or Sardironese. Neither of them spoke Krithimionese, but Azraya could sometimes follow it, and Kelder, knowing both its constituent tongues, understood it pretty well. Still, Ethsharitic was the only language they had in common.

  “So what's your name?” Azraya asked.

  “Kelder,” Kelder said. “Kelder of Shulara.”

  She looked at him doubtfully for a moment, not an unusual reaction to Kelder's name, and eventually decided that he was telling the truth. Either that, or that the truth didn't matter.

  “Kelder,” she said, watching the dove. “All right.”

  “You're heading east, on the Great Highway?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “West, then? Back to Ethshar?”

  “Probably. Which way are you going, back to Shulara?”

  “No, to Ethshar.”

  She nodded. “So this is where you hit the highway, coming from Shulara?”

  “No, I reached the highway in Hlimora at first, and went east to Shan on the Desert. Now I'm heading west.”

  She looked up, interested. “You've been to Shan?”

  Kelder nodded.

  “What's it like?”

  He shrugged. “We didn't stay long,” he said. “I think it's seen better days.” He was becoming more comfortable speaking Ethsharitic, now that he'd had a little practice.

  “Oh,” Azraya said, disappointed. “What about the other towns along the way?”

  “Well,” Kelder said, “this place, Krithim, is the nicest I've seen yet.”

  “Oh,” Azraya said again. She tossed another pebble, and the dove flapped wildly for a moment, then wheeled into the air and flew away. “I guess I'll be going back to Ethshar, then.”

  “Why were you traveling in the first place?” Kelder asked.

  “None of your—oh, damn it, it doesn't matter.” She slumped forward, chin on her hands, elbows on her knees.

  At first, Kelder took this to mean that she was going to answer his question, but after a moment it became clear that she wasn't going to say anything without further urging.

  “Maybe it doesn't matter,” he said, “but I'm curious.”

  She turned her head to glare at him around an errant ringlet of hair. “Why?” she demanded.

  “Oh, I just like to know things,” Kelder said rather feebly.

  She turned back to staring at the cobbles.

  “When I was eight,” she said, “my parents died of a fever.”

  Kelder, realizing he was about to get the whole story, nodded encouragingly.

  “We couldn't afford a theurgist to pray over them,” Azraya continued, “or a witch to hex them, or a wizard to cast spells on them, so they died. Two of my brothers died, too, and my older sister—the neighbors were all so afraid of catching it that they wouldn't come near us, they shut up our house with us inside. That left me, and my younger sister Amari, and our baby brother Regran. I was the oldest, so I tried to take care of them, and I would sneak out of the house and steal food and things for them. And when the fever was gone, I took the boards off the doors, and then the tax collectors came and took the house away because we couldn't pay, we didn't know where our parents had hidden their money—if they had any.”

  Kelder made a sympathetic noise.

  “So we all went to the Hundred-Foot Field and lived there, with the beggars and thieves,” Azraya went on, “in the block between Panderer Street and Superstition Street, in the Camptown district. Our house was in Eastwark, but our old neighbors ... well, we thought we'd do better in Camptown, and the Hundred-Foot Field goes all the way around the city.”

  Kelder had no idea what this meant—he had never heard of the Hundred-Foot Field or anything else she mentioned. Interrupting to ask for an explanation did not seem like a very good idea, however, so he let her go on.

  “I didn't steal,” she said, “not after we lost the house. I think Amari did, but I didn't. I begged when I had to, and ran errands for people when I could—one good thing about Camptown, the soldiers usually had errands we could run, taking messages to their women, or fetching things from the Wizards’ Quarter for them, or even just standing lookout when they were supposed to be on duty and wanted a nap, or a little time in bed with someone, or a game of dice.” She took a deep breath. “Regran died when he was two, just before my tenth birthday,” she said. “I'm not sure what he died of, he just got sick and died. Somebody had kicked him, maybe that did something, I don't know. We'd done everything we could for him, even found a wetnurse and paid her half what we earned for a few months, but sometimes babies just die. After that, Amari and I didn't stay together much any more, and I lost track of her after awhile. I haven't seen her in a couple of years now. She might be dead, too.” She paused, remembering.

  Kelder wanted to say something comforting, but before he could think of anything and phrase it in Ethsharitic, Azraya resumed her story.

  “I told you we lived near Panderer Street,” she said. “Well, the panderers noticed me, after awhile, and I started avoiding them. And by the time I was thirteen I didn't run any more errands on Pimp Street or Whore Street, either.”

  Kelder did not recognize the Ethsharitic words for panderer, pimp, or whore, but he could make a guess what she was saying.

  “And after awhile, I decided that I was tired of it. I was tired of the Hundred-Foot Field, the mud and the flies and the lunatics talking to themselves and the thieves going through your bedding every time you were out of sight, and I was tired of being harassed by the pimps, and I was tired of the soldiers and their errands—they were propositioning me, too, by this time. So I went to the markets to find work, but I didn't find anything at first, just mo
re pimps, and slavers, and farmers who wouldn't take me as a field-hand because I'm not big enough. I was too old to apprentice—I should have found something when I was twelve, but I didn't, I missed my chance.”

  Kelder nodded in sympathy. Maybe he should have found an apprenticeship on his own, regardless of what he parents wanted—but he hadn't.

  “Anyway, eventually I got to Shiphaven Market, and I thought I would sign up to be a sailor, but there was someone there looking for volunteers to join a dragon hunt in the Small Kingdoms, and I thought that would be wonderful. It was a way out of the city, and I may be small, but I'm not stupid, and I'm stronger than I look—I thought I might help in a dragon hunt. So I signed up.”

  “A dragon?” Kelder looked at her with renewed respect. She was brave, anyway—either that, or crazy.

  She nodded. “The reward was a thousand pieces of gold, he said. I knew I couldn't kill a dragon myself, but I thought maybe I could help out and get a share.”

  “Where was this dragon?” Kelder asked. “How big was it?”

  “It's in a place called Dwomor,” Azraya said, “south of here. I don't really know how big the dragon is—as far as I know, it's still there.”

  Kelder had heard of Dwomor; it was one of the larger Small Kingdoms, up in the high mountains in the central region. If one was looking for a dragon, that was a likely place to start, he had to admit. “You didn't kill it?” he asked.

  “I didn't try,” Azraya said.

  “Why not?”

  She sighed.

  “They signed up a whole boatload of us,” she said, “and we all sailed off across the Gulf of the East, and up a river to Ekeroa, and then they loaded us in wagons and took us to Dwomor, and we all got introduced to the king, and it all looked good, nobody bothered me, nobody tried to touch me, all they cared about was the dragon, I thought. Dwomor wasn't exactly beautiful, but it was different, anyway. The whole castle was full of dragon-hunters, and they were forming into teams, and I thought I'd be able to join a team and get a share—and then the Lord Chamberlain took me aside and explained a few things.”