by Ellen Porath
His fingers moved agitatedly over one of Kai’s sandals, repairing a strap, but his voice rattled on. The man had gone on and on about the denizens of the Darken Wood. Kai-lid had no doubt that much of what he said was true. At times when she entered the woods in search of herbs and other things useful for magic, it seemed to her the trees were not quite where they’d been on earlier forays. Occasional strands of wild songs—like Plainsmen’s death cries—came to her on the wind. And some nights, hoofbeats clattered to a halt just out of sight of Kai-lid’s home.
“I have no fear of the dead. I’ve seen worse behavior from the living,” she had said to the leatherworker. Her blue eyes had deepened to purple, and the questioner had had the common sense to change the subject.
Kai-lid knew the man would have been aghast to learn that she hadn’t even bothered to fashion a door to her home, a cave whose gray granite matched the hue of her woolen robe. Only a curtain of Qualinesti-woven silk covered the opening, and that covering was usually tied back. Kai-lid loved the feel of open air around her. Even in those few instances when hail or snow pounded the area, she let the wildness enter without restriction.
Now, however, an unusual sound came to Kai-lid’s ears. She halted and gazed around her in the dark. Nothing. She took a few steps, then heard it again—a clicking, as of a mandible opening and closing. A giant ant? It was difficult to know what was fact and what was fiction in the tales of Darken Wood. For example, spectral minions were rumored to prevent intruders. Yet Kai-lid came and went without molestation.
With one hand on her spell-casting materials, she expanded her light spell and looked around her more closely. Kai-lid saw nothing noteworthy. A sycamore, common around here and five times the height of the tallest building in Haven, stood off to one side, casting a craggy shadow in the green magelight. An opening at the very bottom of the wide tree showed it to be hollow, and Kai-lid knew that a family of raccoons had taken up residence there. Bracken ferns stood up from the damp earth, fleshy fronds swaying in a breeze that Kai-lid felt now for the first time. The area was rich with the scents of fertile soil and dampness and plants, and Kai-lid could detect no hint of danger.
Then she heard another sound—a thrumming, as of a huge heart, beating quickly but with each beat distinct. And a whooshing, as of deep breathing. Whatever caused those sounds was relaxed, that was clear from the pattern: inhale, exhale, pause … inhale, exhale, pause. She detected an odor—a dusty smell, like straw, not unpleasant. Kai-lid sensed a rustling, as of something shifting, something massive. Then the clicking again.
Suddenly a voice came to her, making no sound but entering her mind directly, and Kai-lid knew who lurked in the trees.
I am a fierce, evil monster come to eat you alive.
“Stop it, Xanthar,” Kai-lid answered wearily. “I’m too tired for games. I need to think, and I need to do it alone.” All clicking, whooshing, and rustling stopped; the being was still. “And please don’t sulk.”
The mage resumed walking and followed a curve in the path until she saw the mouth of her cave, its blue curtain still tied back, in a clearing before her. The shadow of a huge bird was hulked over at the top of another dead sycamore, rejection apparent in every drooping feather. The mage paused and surveyed the bird affectionately.
Finally, as she knew it would, the soundless voice resonated in her brain again. It’s time for your mind-speaking lesson, Kai-lid Entenaka. You’re late. I’ve been worried.
Kai-lid dipped her head and apologized. “I was in Haven, Xanthar.”
The voice in her mind carped, You know I don’t like it when you go into Haven alone. I should accompany you.
“We’ve had this discussion before, Xanthar,” Kai-lid said calmly as she moved across the clearing and paused under the sycamore. “Your magic will diminish if you go too far from Darken Wood. Besides, giant owls sleep during the day, remember?” Her voice held suppressed laughter.
But the other voice hadn’t finished yet. And you should remember that I can go that far from the woods, at least. A few hours’ lost sleep won’t kill me. From what you’ve told me, no city is safe for you. You might meet someone from Kernen.
“I did.”
The owl clearly was unprepared for this reply. After a shocked delay, it rose to its utmost height and flapped great wings, with a span twenty feet wide, against the night air. The dead sycamore creaked and groaned, and gouts of wind sent the mage’s hood flying back and her hair whipping about her face. A screech rent the clearing, and Kai-lid, cringing, expanded her light spell until she could see the owl.
“Xanthar, they didn’t see me,” she hastened to say. “I was careful.” Despite her exhaustion, Kai-lid smiled at the giant owl.
Xanthar finally folded his wings against his sides. He nestled his golden beak, the length of Kai-lid’s arm, into the beige fluff at his neck. His face was speckled brown and gray and black, with a patch of white over his left eye, which gave him an endearingly rakish air, Kai-lid thought. Black and brown feathers were scattered across his creamy breast. His legs were feathered, too, right down to the mahogany scales on his strong feet, each toe tipped with a deadly claw. Xanthar’s wings were mahogany-hued, verging into dark gray toward the tail. The wing tips were beige. He turned his plate-size eyes, each with a huge pupil of depthless ebony, toward the spell-caster and surveyed her with mingled concern and annoyance. His feet clenched and unclenched on the sycamore branch, betraying his agitation.
Why are you smiling? This is serious. They could be seeking you.
“I’m smiling because you are the most beautiful bird I’ve ever seen, not to mention the most beautiful I’ve ever talked to.”
You make me sound like a pet parakeet. Anyway, you should be practicing your mind-speaking.
The creature’s mind-voice was pettish, but Kai-lid knew he preened at her compliment; his lids drooped lazily across orange eyes and he arched his neck, affording Kai-lid a better view of his beaky silhouette. Suddenly exhaustion pulled at her. She sat on a broken limb near the bottom of the sycamore.
You are tired.
Kai-lid nodded.
Whom did you see? Tell me in mind-talk; this is an opportunity for you to practice.
Kai-lid leaned against the trunk and groaned. “You never give up, do you, Xanthar? One species wasn’t meant to communicate telepathically with another species.”
I can. At least, he amended, I can with you.
“You have special magic, Xanthar, powers I’ve not heard of in any others of your race.” She paused. “Speaking aloud is so much easier for me.”
Typical human. The giant owl, still grumbling, stepped carefully from the top limb to a lower one, and then to another still lower, until he was only ten feet away, although still above her. He leaned over and examined her with softly glowing eyes. Whom did you see in Haven?
“A captain in the Valdane’s mercenary forces—Kitiara Uth Matar. And another soldier. I don’t know his name, but I saw him often with the captain at the siege. They were with a half-elf tonight. Him I didn’t recognize.”
Xanthar whetted his beak against his perch in annoyance. I should have gone with you.
“You know that’s not wise.” Giant owls fetched great prices in the marketplace. Xanthar had lost his mate and their last clutch of nestlings to poachers years ago. The great birds mated for life, and Xanthar had remained solitary, in and near Darken Wood, ever since.
What will you do now? When Kai-lid looked up questioningly, the giant owl continued. Will you go back to Haven to watch this Matar person and the other two?
“I won’t have to.” Kai-lid felt a question quiver in her mind, but no words. In reply, she held up the button. “I can watch them magically.”
Chapter 7
A Gnome and a Jewel
TANIS AWAKENED BEFORE DAWN THE NEXT MORNING to find Kitiara on her knees in the dark, retching into the empty chamber pot. He rolled over in bed and watched her wordlessly.
“Either offer some
help or stop staring, half-elf,” Kitiara said. She sat up on the braided rag rug next to the bed. The movement sent her clutching her temples. “By the gods, I ache all over.”
“Too much ale.” Tanis’s lips curved.
“Don’t be a prude. I can drink any man under the table and wake up to fight a hundred hobgoblins the next morning.” She moaned suddenly and leaned over the chamber pot again. Her skin was clammy and ashen.
Tanis took his time swinging his legs out of bed. “You came in rather late.” He kept his voice deliberately neutral.
Kitiara, still kneeling with her head down, surveyed him with bloodshot eyes. “I thought you were asleep. Anyway, I had to put Caven Mackid off our trail.”
“Oh?”
“Get me a blanket, will you? I’m freezing.”
Tanis didn’t move. “Perhaps you should have worn something to bed,” he said laconically instead.
“And perhaps you should—”
“Mmmm?”
Kitiara didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, she crawled over to the bed and, when Tanis shifted aside, hoisted herself back in. “By the chasms of the Abyss, I’ve never felt like this. Maybe I’ve caught something.” She collapsed with a groan, facedown on the feather mattress.
“And maybe you’re getting too old to drink like that.”
“That’s fine advice from someone who’s over ninety.” She reached back, still facedown, and pulled the down comforter up over her head. The bedding muffled her voice. “I spent the time telling Caven all sorts of lies to put him off our track. We can sneak out of town and never see him again. He thinks we’re staying at the Masked Dragon, the gullible idiot.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” Tanis padded over to a chair near the door and pulled on his breeches.
Kitiara rolled over with an effort.
Tanis slipped on his fringed leather shirt.
“Which means …?” She tried to sit up but fell back against the pillow with a mild oath.
Tanis groped under the chair for his moccasins. “Which means I think the results of that faro game may not have been left entirely to chance. Which means I think Captain Kitiara Uth Matar, under certain circumstances, is entirely capable of ‘acquiring’ a man’s savings and disappearing.”
Kitiara changed the subject. “Where are you going, half-elf?”
“To have the kitchen boy bring you some weak tea and something to eat, and to walk about Haven thinking up ways we can earn ten steel to pay back Caven Mackid.”
Shock registered on Kitiara’s features. “Pay him back?”
“One thing I’ve learned in my ninety-odd years,” he said smoothly, “is that it’s a bad idea to leave debts unpaid. They always come back to haunt you.”
“You damned moralist.” Kitiara was smiling, however, her arms crossed against her bare chest.
“Besides,” he continued, “if we repay Mackid, then we’re rid of him for good, and you and I can be on our way to Solace.”
Then he was out the door.
* * * * *
Stopping in the kitchen on his way out, Tanis found the scullery boy dozing on the hearth. The lad leaped to his feet when the half-elf entered the room. “Kin I help y’, sir?” His sandy blond hair was tousled, his hazel eyes crusty with sleep.
“Have you made tea yet this morning?”
The lad nodded and gestured toward a pot steeping atop the mantel. A slice of bread leaned against the pot. “One. For the missus—the innkeeper’s wife. Herself is w’ child and can’t start the day w’out her tea and dry toast. And,” he added, as if warming to an old grievance, “it’s gotta be winterberry tea with rosehips and peppermint. Herself says some herbalist told her it’ll help the unborn babe, but I think it’s just ’cause she likes the taste of it and it causes more work for everybody. But to tell the truth, once she drinks it she don’t upchuck no more, so maybe …”
Tanis, visions of Wode dancing in his head, interrupted the lad’s monologue. “Send some of that up to my room, will you? With more toast.”
The boy got busy pouring hot water from a kettle, which was setting on an iron spider placed over the fire, into a second pot, next to the steeping one on the mantel. “Y’ have a lady w’ you, true? One mug or two?”
“Just one. I’m going out.” Tanis handed the boy one of the few coins he had left. “Oh, and one more thing.”
“Eh?”
“Make sure the lady knows the tea is especially good for pregnant women, but don’t tell her that until she’s drunk a good bit.”
“Ah! The lady’s w’ child, then?” The youth looked wise.
“No,” Tanis replied.
The boy grinned. “A joke, then. I see.”
Tanis smiled down at the lad and nodded. “Just make sure you’re standing near the door when you tell her.”
“Ah,” the lad repeated. “A temper?”
The half-elf laughed.
The lad winked. “I’ll be careful.”
* * * * *
Wode looked on as Tanis paused in the Seven Centaurs’ doorway, filled his lungs with soft morning air, then strode toward the center of town. Wode had been watching the front door of the inn since Caven had trailed Kitiara there after she pretended to enter the Masked Dragon. The mercenary had a pallet behind Maleficent’s stall, back at the livery stable. Wode looked about, momentarily uncertain. Should he follow the half-elf? No, Caven had said Kitiara, not Tanis, was the one to watch, and she had not left the Seven Centaurs. The lad settled back on the bench, pulled Caven’s cloak up around his shoulders, and waited.
* * * * *
“Great Reorx at the forge!”
Heading down the main street of Haven toward the marketplace, Tanis heard the oath, one of Flint’s favorites, before the half-elf actually saw the creature responsible for the racket. The voice was too high, too nasal to be dwarven. That left one possibility. Early-morning vendors and traders were giving a wide berth to an abandoned stable from which lantern light spilled. Tanis waited. Soon a small explosion cracked, seeming to surprise no one, and a short, round figure, trailed by rolling gears and a great deal of smoke, tumbled end-over-end through the building’s open door. “Hydrodynamics!” cried the figure in midroll.
No one but Tanis moved to help him. Instead, three Haven men ran to put out the small fire that licked a corner of the building. Tanis squatted, which put him on eye level with the figure, and dusted off the gnome. “Are you hurt?” the half-elf asked gently.
The creature, sitting on the sandstone that made up this stretch of Haven road, looked dolefully up at Tanis through violet eyes. Soft white hair, dusted with bits of ash, festooned the gnome’s head and chin and upper lip. His skin was rich brown, his nose lumpy—no doubt the result of earlier experiments—and his ears were rounded. He was dressed in typical mismatched gnome fashion—baggy silk pants in purplish pink, teal-colored linen top, brown leather boots, and a gold scarf shot with silver threads. “Are you hurt?” the half-elf repeated.
“Itmusthavebeenthehydroencephalatorbecausel’d-alreadygoneoverthedrive—” the gnome replied. “Thechaininhibitorandthegearratiowereexactlywhat-mycomputationssaidtheyshouldbeexceptofcoursethe sunhasn’trisenyetandperhapsthere’saluminary-quotienttherethathasn’tbeeninvestigatedyet.… Yes! Aluminary quotient!”
Then the gnome jumped up and, ignoring the half-elf, dashed back into the building, paying no heed to the humans, now numbering nearly a dozen, who were dashing in with buckets of water. The half-elf followed. “Shouldn’t you stay out until the fire’s extinguished?” he asked the gnome. The fellow clambered onto a tall stool placed before a contraption that stretched from wall to wall and from the floor two stories up to the rafters.
The gnome glanced back at the opposite corner. Flames no longer flickered, but smoke streamed from blackened boards that occasionally glowed orange and red. “Perhaps,” the gnome said, “afireinhibitorymechanismwhichlcanseewouldhavetohave—”
Tanis interrupted. “Speak more slowly.”
T
he gnome looked up from the computations he was already scrawling on a slip of parchment. “Eh?”
“Slowly,” the half-elf repeated.
Light dawned in the gnome’s face. With a visible effort, he interjected a half-breath between every word. “I’m … sorry.… I … forget … I’m … not … among … my fellows.” He inhaled deeply. Obviously it took more energy for him to speak slowly than to blurt out the unending sentences that marked the speech of the gnomes. Gnomes, who could talk and listen at the same time, believed continuous speech by all conversants was more efficient than the balky give-and-take chatting of the other races.
Tanis introduced himself. “What’s your name?” he added, then saw his error too late. “Wait!” “Speaker-SungearsonofBeamcatcherSungearillustriousinventoroftheperiluminohighspeedelevatorand-grandsonof …”
The rest of the name—gnomish names, which included genealogical history stretching back dozens of generations, could go on for hours—was muffled by Tanis’s hand, clapped over the gnome’s mouth. The piping tones trailed off, and the creature glared up at Tanis. Behind them, the last bucket of water extinguished the last of the blaze with a splash and a hiss, and the grumbling fire fighters left.
“What do humans call you?” the half-elf asked in the sudden silence, releasing his hand gingerly.
“Speaker … Sungear,” came the reply. “Of the Communications Guild.”
Gnomish workers were divided into various guilds—agricultural, philosophical, education, and many others. “I haven’t heard of the Gnomish Communications Guild,” Tanis observed.
“You will, once I’m through here,” Speaker said, turning back to his project. Speaking slowly seemed to come easier now that the excitement of the fire was past. “I’m going to form it as soon as I perfect this mechanism.”
Tanis looked up at the contraption, fashioned of gears of all sizes, wire in three colors, and a gigantic horn shaped like a morning glory blossom. The horn’s tip fit into a small box the size of the half-elf’s thumb. “It seems a bit large to call it a mere mechanism,” the half-elf observed.
