He nods gratefully as the platter and the chiltach vanish into the kitchen. Shortly, Faya sets before each diner a small cup filled with a single golden orb—honey-brandied peaches.
“This is excellent.” Brede finishes his in three bites.
Dorrin has used his knife to spray honey on his fingers and the table in attempting to cut the fruit into smaller sections. He continues to eat small sections long after Brede and Kadara have finished.
“We will not keep you, travelers,” says Freidr, rising. “It has been a long day for you.”
Dorrin swallows the last of the redberry in his mug and stands, following the others to their feet.
“Thank you.” Kadara’s soft and warm voice is echoed by Brede, and finally by Dorrin.
Then, with Brede leading, the three ease away from their chairs and file toward the warehouse, and the stableboy’s room. Liedral slips behind them, but stops at the doorway from the quarters to the stable. The trader’s warm fingertips touch Dorrin’s shoulder, squeeze briefly, and drop away. “Try not to mind Freidr. Things aren’t always easy for him.”
“Because he’s from a trading family, and he doesn’t like trading? Or because he’d like to be on the council or whatever advises whoever rules this place, and he can’t?” Dorrin licks the last of the honey off the corners of his lips after he speaks.
“He likes governing, and traders can’t, especially not us.”
“I see…I think. We’ll be going in the morning, I think.”
“Good. So will I. We can travel to Kleth together.”
“What makes you think we’re going there?”
“You don’t have much choice, Dorrin.” Liedral smiles. “Your friends don’t want to head west to Gallos. That means you either head over the hills to the south toward Hydolar or you go north to Rytel and northwest to Kleth—unless you want to go back to Tyrhavven…or go cross-country, which I wouldn’t advise.” The trader steps back, half shutting the door. “So we might as well travel together.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
Dorrin shakes his head as he walks toward the fourth stall—empty except for laundry—where he has placed his bedroll on the straw. Sleeping near Brede and Kadara will not make for a restful night. He senses too much, and is reminded too often of the red-headed girl he once kissed in the spice garden.
“You look troubled.” Kadara emerges from the second stall, brushing straw from her hands.
“The trader is coming with us tomorrow to Rytel.”
“You don’t like that?”
“Liedral knew, and I didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” Kadara’s voice is soft. “We thought you understood. Freidr made it pretty clear, and after that incident in the square…”
Dorrin waits.
“We didn’t think it was a good idea to stay in Certis or head toward where the White Wizards are working…and we wanted to get to the Westhorns.”
“And that means heading toward Spidlar along the northern route?” Dorrin finishes.
“Yes. It’s better for you, too. You could go the other way, if you want.”
“Me? I can’t even carry a blade or stand up to a White Wizard. I may not have much choice, Kadara, but I’m not stupid. Slow…but not totally stupid.” He walks past her and into the stall that holds his bedroll, where he sits on the blankets and strips off his boots, ignoring Kadara until she looks down and turns away.
XXIX
The road angles up and down over the low rolling hills of Certis, paralleling the Jellicor River toward Rytel. The creak of the cart and the clop of hoofs are almost lost in the whine of the spring wind. Dorrin leans toward the cart, his staff in his left hand. “Would you have left this soon if we weren’t headed this way?”
Liedral shifts her weight on the cart seat. “I wasted too much time in seeing Fairhaven, and I’m not sure it was wise.”
“Seeing Fairhaven or wasting time?”
“Either. Freidr’s worried about the White Wizards, but he’s too comfortable with Midala to go check himself. Besides, I need to get to Kleth to pick up the stuff from Jarnish. Some came from Diev.”
Dorrin has heard of Kleth, but not the other names. Still, he has another question. “Your brother…he doesn’t seem quite like a trader.”
“A trader?” Liedral snorts. “He went to Rytel once. He lost more than if he’d dropped the whole cart in the Jellicor and watched it wash all the way down river to Tyrhavven.”
“Then…”
“Politics.”
“Oh.” Dorrin understands. The Whites hate the Legend, or women who control anything. He considers the trader’s apparel and manners before asking another question. “Who’s Jarnish?”
“What about politics?” asks Brede belatedly.
“Jarnish is a factor in Kleth, but he doesn’t travel.”
“Where’s Diev?”
“Right at the foothills of the Westhorns. It’s about as far north and west as you can go without entering the mountains. Small three-season port, but not all that much there. Lumber for Spidlar, but Axalt and Sligo are better for anywhere else.”
“When you talk about Spidlar,” mentions Brede, who has ridden the gelding closer to the trader’s cart so that he and Dorrin are on opposite sides of the trader, “all you do is talk about trade. Doesn’t anything else happen there?”
“Spidlar’s still an independent trading country. There’s a Council of Traders that runs things. They were the only ones in eastern Candar to avoid the mess that created Recluce, and their Council tries to avoid conflict.”
“No duke, or viscount?” Brede leans forward, untangling the gelding’s mane.
“What about the wizards?” Dorrin straightens in the saddle and twirls the staff, happy that he can finally do the simple exercise.
“Careful with that!” snaps Kadara from behind him.
“Sorry.” He replaces the staff in the lanceholder. “You did say that I needed to practice.”
“Dorrin…”
“What about Spidlar?”
“Is that Rytel over the hills there?” interrupts Kadara, pointing toward a low wall rising out of a flat expanse of brown and green.
“What’s that?”
A thread of silver winds from the south toward the walls.
“The river? That’s the Jellicor. We’ve been following—”
“No,” explains Brede. “The line of trees across there.”
“That’s the Estal. It meets the Jellicor on the other side of Rytel, and the Jellicor flows into the Northern Sea at Tyrhavven, not that it gets much bigger or that Tyrhavven’s all that great a port. It’s a lot better than Diev, though Spidlaria’s the best.”
Liedral flicks the reins to get the cart moving again, and the four begin the downhill trek toward the still-distant town.
Dorrin slaps at his neck. The mosquitoes are out, and they seem to prefer him to the others. Unlike the fleas, the mosquitoes move too fast for him to persuade them to move elsewhere—and there seem to be clouds of them.
“Healer?”
“Dorrin,” he corrects.
“Try this. Smear a little on your neck. It might help.”
Dorrin takes the leather pouch and squeezes the ointment into his palm. His senses tell him it is faintly order-based, and he rubs it across the back of his neck. “Thank you.”
“Sometimes, simple potions are more helpful than complicated magic.”
So, Dorrin believes, are relatively simple machines—but he seems to be one of the few raised in order that thinks so. He frowns. He never did hear any more about Diev, although Liedral had been hinting at something.
XXX
Dorrin leans sideways in the saddle to avoid banging his head into the rocky ledge as Meriwhen carries him around the switchback. Then he wipes his forehead, clearing an accumulation of sweat and cold rain that has splattered off the canyon walls and onto his face. Behind him the cart creaks, and the inside wheel s
crapes on a boulder.
“Darkness…” mumbles Liedral.
Dorrin swallows as he glances at the fifty-cubit dropoff to his left.
“It’s worse in the Westhorns,” Liedral says cheerfully.
Ahead, Brede hums, in perfect pitch, a Temple hymn.
“Would you stop it?” snaps Kadara.
“Ooofff.” Dorrin’s grin is wiped away as his staff bangs the side of his face, knocked there by an ice-covered root protruding from the canyon wall—just high enough for the three to ride underneath, just low enough to catch the tip of Dorrin’s staff. He pushes the staff back into place and concentrates on the narrow winding road before him.
Three more descending switchbacks bring them to a narrow canyon that seems to wind due west, although it is so narrow that the three ride in shadows, ice still filling the crevices on the left side of the road, and the light of the midday sun only apparent on the clifftops when Dorrin looks straight up. Kadara wraps her cloak about her more tightly.
“Up ahead are the guard towers. Keep your hands away from your weapons,” explains the trader.
“Guard towers? We’re still in the mountains,” Kadara says.
“Who said a town had to be on the plains?” asks Liedral.
Shortly the canyon widens to reveal a stone wall rising nearly a hundred cubits, punctuated by an iron-bound gate. A handful of soldiers with crossbows are stationed on the ramparts, and several weapons are trained on the travelers. Outside the gate, beside a stone sentry box, stand two men in quilted gray uniforms.
Liedral reins up the cart and waits. So do the three from Recluce.
“Ah…Trader Liedral. Who are your companions?” The tall man with the high-pitched voice and shoulders even broader than Brede’s marches over to the trader, who has climbed from the cart seat.
“Two guards and a healer.” Liedral nods to Dorrin.
“Well, he does have a staff and that look about him. And they are definitely guards. And you, and your father before you, have always been truthful. Such a pity. It has been a such a long time since my men were able to practice on real targets. Even the White guards do not venture down our canyons.”
“They will, sooner than you think, Nerliat.”
“So said your father.”
“He was a little premature. They took Hydlen first, and Kyphros.”
“There are no mountains to block their passage into Spidlar.”
“True. We will see. May we enter the secure haven of Axalt?”
“There is the matter of the road tariff, trader.”
“Ah, yes. The tariff.” Liedral’s hands do not move toward a purse.
“Since the guards are armed, that would be two coppers each. A copper for you, and nothing, of course, for the healer.”
“Could I claim the guards were students?”
“Liedral…even as students of the blade, it would be two coppers.”
“Ah, well, Nerliat. Five coppers it must be, I suppose. Did you know that the great wizard of chaos is raising mountains in the high plains between Gallos and Kyphros?”
“Tales without substance,” snorts the squad leader.
“I wish it were so. I have seen the new mountains, smoking lumps of black rock, burning on the horizon.”
“Kyphros is far from here.”
Liedral shrugs. “The Kyphrans thought Fairhaven was far, too.”
“Five coppers, trader.”
“As you wish.” Liedral removes the coins from the purse.
Nerliat gestures, and the outer gate rumbles open to reveal an inner portcullis, which, in turn, lifts almost silently. Liedral climbs back onto the cart and flicks the reins. Dorrin follows the trader, and Kadara and Brede follow Dorrin through the fifteen-cubit-high gate.
Once through the walls, nearly forty cubits thick at the base, Dorrin looks at the third set of gates, already swung open. Behind them the portcullis drops and the outer gate closes.
“How long has that stood?” asks Dorrin. “No army could take that wall.”
“Longer than my family has been trading, and the western gate is just as imposing. But it doesn’t matter. How could it stand against a wizard who could raise or topple mountains?”
“I don’t understand that,” asks Brede. “Why would a White Wizard waste all that power raising mountains? What’s the purpose?”
“Who knows?” snorts Kadara.
Dorrin frowns. “That would take a great deal of ability and power. Anyone with that much ability probably wouldn’t do it frivolously.”
“Perhaps it’s to prove his power,” suggests Liedral, turning the cart to the right and down a stone-paved and inclined road. Beneath them, still a hundred cubits lower, the town sits in the midst of a valley still covered primarily with patches of snow punctuated with gray and brown.
“It’s just because he’s more evil, and wants to destroy things. At least that’s what your father would claim, Dorrin,” suggests Kadara.
“I suppose so.” Dorrin gently rubs his cheek, which aches from where his staff thumped him. Why does his father insist that the Whites are so evil? Certainly the White Wizard who tracked them is powerful—so powerful that Dorrin felt almost like a fly about to be squashed. But…there hadn’t been an evil presence, just the white of chaos. And is chaos evil—or merely chaotic?
“So would Lortren,” adds Kadara, shifting in her saddle as the four ride around another descending turn in the wide stone road that leads downward into the valley.
Only a hundred or so dwellings dot the wide valley surrounded by the steep cliffs. To the west there is a single gap in the cliffs. “This place looks like it was created by magic.”
“I know!” exclaims Brede. “It makes perfect sense.”
“What does?” The squeak of the cart wheels punctuates Kadara’s question as Liedral guides the cart around another wide descending turn.
“The wizard. Why would a wizard want to show his power, but not use it on a town?”
“I don’t know,” snaps Kadara. “I’m hungry. Just answer your own question.”
“If he uses it on a town, then he’s destroyed the town.”
“So what else is new?”
Liedral and Dorrin grin at each other.
“The White Wizards have enough problems with chaos spilling over and tearing down things. You can’t run a kingdom if you have no kingdom to run. What happens if he raises mountains and shows that he can level a city—and then asks the Spidlarians or whoever to submit to Fairhaven? They still have the city and the taxes or goods or whatever.”
“Hmmmmm…” muses Liedral. “That’s fine for the Kyphrans, but the Spidlarians are pretty stiff-necked. So are the people here.”
“Still—whatever battles the Whites don’t fight…” suggests Brede.
Brede has a point. Then, Brede has always been quick to understand.
“This is mighty Axalt?” asks Kadara.
“This is Axalt,” affirms Liedral, “and, believe it or not, it will only cost a few coppers for a good room at the inn—and they’ll have enough rooms. They like to encourage travelers.”
“What about drink?” inquires Brede wryly.
“Wine, mead, brandy—probably half silver a mug.”
“That’s more than the cost of the room.” Dorrin flushes as he realizes he has declared the obvious.
“There had to be a catch,” Brede muses. “And I suppose everyone’s thirsty? What about water?”
Liedral grins, and Dorrin smiles at the trader’s expression. “The water’s free, and good. But neither blades nor traders are fond of water.”
Liedral turns the cart through the last switchback and directs it toward the pair of two-storied buildings ahead. The one on the right side of the road bears a sign with the image of a tan mountain panther. The one on the left bears the image of a horned black mountain goat. “We’ll stay at the Black Ram. It’s quieter.”
“Is there any real difference?” Kadara rides up alongside the trader.
“Not much—except the clientele. Even the stables are similar.” She drives the cart past the stable and turns into the yard behind the Black Ram.
Two stableboys bounce out onto the clay.
“Is the front corner stall free?” The trader’s light baritone is hard.
“Yes, ser.”
“I’ll take it, and anything near for my party’s horses.”
“Would you like grain, too, for the horses?”
“How much?”
“A copper a cake, ser.”
“Two cakes a copper, and we’ll take four cakes.”
The two look at each other, then nod. “In advance, if you please.”
Liedral climbs from the cart. “You bring the cakes, and I’ll come up with the coppers.”
The cakes appear almost as quickly as the trader speaks, even before Dorrin can dismount, although Brede and Kadara are already following the one stableboy toward the stalls.
“Saddles you can leave,” advises Liedral.
Dorrin leads Meriwhen after the others, toward the stalls. He manages to get her unsaddled and the saddle and blankets racked not much after the others, just in time to gather his gear and staff up and trudge after the trader into the inn.
Inside the pine-framed doorway is a foyer ten cubits square. On one side is a counter that sits before a curtained arch, and behind the counter stands a bald man with a long face and a white pointed goatee. The goatee and white eyebrows are the only hair upon his head.
“Trader Liedral. You would like your usual room? Alas, that corner is taken, but the north corner is available.”
“The north would be fine. What do you have for the healer, here, and a room for two blades?”
“Two or three rooms?”
“Two,” states Brede.
Dorrin purses his lips.
“Two more I can do. Three would be hard.”
“You’re that crowded? Since when, Wistik?”
Wistik raises his eyebrows. “It does happen. Some Sligan shipwrights are here.”
“Timber?”
“Rumor has it that Fairhaven is commissioning another fleet, perhaps two.” Wistik looks at the three from Recluce, then inclines his head to Dorrin. “Your pardon, healer.”
The Magic Engineer Page 14
