“Great things, sir. Great things. Give you strength, it will. Strength, and wisdom. Strength and wisdom beyond any normal mortal man.”
Oba grinned. “I already have that.”
The man was at a loss for words for only a moment. He looked over each shoulder, making sure no one was close before he leaned in closer, pushing against Oba’s side, in order to speak confidentially. He winked up at Oba.
“These magic charms will help win the girls for you, sir.”
“Women already can’t get enough of me.” Oba was losing interest. This magic promised only what he already had. The man might as well say that the charms would give Oba two arms and two legs.
The filthy little man cleared his throat, thick with phlegm, as he leaned close again. “Well, sir, no man can have enough wealth or the most beautiful—”
“I’ll give you a copper penny if you can tell me where I can find the sorceress Althea.”
The man’s breath stank. Oba pushed him back. The hawker lifted a crooked finger. His wiry eyebrows rose as well.
“You, sir, are a wise man, just as you said. I knew I saw something keen about you. You, sir, have ferreted out the one man in this market who can tell you what you need.” He thumped his chest. “Me. I can tell you all you need to know on the subject. But, as a man of your wisdom will no doubt realize, such obscure and privileged information will of necessity cost you a great deal more than a copper penny. Yes, sir, a great deal more, and worth it.”
Oba frowned. “How much more?”
“A silver mark.”
Oba grunted a laugh and started walking away. He had the money, but he didn’t appreciate being played for a fool.
“I’ll ask around. Decent people can offer such simple help as directions to the sorceress and they will expect nothing more than a tip of my cap.”
The hawker scurried along at Oba’s side, eager to renegotiate, speaking hurriedly as he struggled to keep up. Loose ends of his ragged outfit flapped like flags in the breeze as he dodged people dodging Oba.
“Yes, I can see you’re a wise man indeed. I’m afraid I’m no match for you, sir. You’ve bested me—that’s the simple truth of it. But there are more knotty matters you don’t know about, matters a man of your rare sensitivity should know, things which could very well mean your safety in such a dangerous venture as I think you may be about to undertake, things which not many folks can tell you true.”
Oba was sensitive, that much was true. He gazed down at the man shuffling along sideways, like a dog begging for a scrap. “A silver penny, then. That’s all I’m offering.”
“A silver penny, then,” he conceded with a sigh, “for the valuable information you need, sir, which I warrant you will hear nowhere else.”
Oba halted, satisfied that the man had caved in to the superior intellect. Hands on his hips, he stared down at the hopeful fellow licking his cracked lips. It was against Oba’s nature to part with money so easily, but he had plenty, and something about this intrigued him. He fished around in his pocket, slipping two fingers into the leather purse he kept there, and drew out a silver penny.
He flipped it to the scruffy fellow. “All right, then.” As the man caught the coin, Oba caught the hawker’s bony wrist. “I will give you the price you ask. But if I don’t think you’re telling it true, or if I suspect that you’re holding back on me, I’ll take back the coin, and I’ll have to wipe your blood off it before I return it to my pocket.”
The man swallowed at the dangerous look on Oba’s face. “Sir, I’d not cheat you—especially not once my word is given.”
“You’d best not. So, where is she? How can I find Althea?”
“In a swamp, she lives. But I can tell you how to get in to her, for only—”
“Do you think I’m a stupid oaf!” Oba twisted the wrist. “I’ve already heard that people go to see this sorceress, that she receives visitors in her swamp, so something more than the way in to her place had better be included in the fair price I’ve given you.”
“Yes!” The hawker gulped in pain. “Of course it is.” Oba eased up. Still wincing, the man was quick to go on. “I was going to say that I will tell you the secret way to get to her through her swamp for the generous price you’ve already paid. Not just the regular way in, which folks know, but the secret way in, as well. Few, if any, know of it. All included in the price. I’d not hold anything back from a fair man like you, sir.”
Oba glared. “Secret way in? If there is a regular way, a way people use to see Althea, why would I care about this other way?”
“People go in to see the sorceress Althea for a telling. She’s a powerful one, this sorceress.” He leaned closer. “But you must be invited before you can go see her for a telling. None dare to go without being invited. People all go in the same way, so as she can see them coming—after she’s invited them in and withdrawn her bloodthirsty beasts that guard the path.” A sly smile spread on the man’s twisty face. “It seems to me that if you were invited in, you wouldn’t need to ask people how to get there. Have you been invited, sir?”
Oba gently pushed the reeking hawker back. “So, there is another way in?”
“There is. A back way in. A way to sneak up on her, if you’re of a mind, while her beasts guard the front door, as it were. A smart man might not choose to approach a powerful sorceress on her terms.”
Oba glanced to the sides, checking that people weren’t listening. “I don’t need to go in a secret back way. I’m not afraid of the sorceress. But as long as I’ve already paid for it all, I’ll hear it all told. Both ways in, and everything else about her, too.”
The man shrugged. “If you’re of a mind, you can simply ride due west, as the folks who was invited to Althea’s place do. You travel west across the plains until you come to the largest snowcapped mountain. Beyond the mountain, you turn north and follow along the base of the cliffs. The land goes lower until it finally enters the swamp. Just follow the well-kept path on in through the swamp. Stay on that path—don’t wander off. It leads to the home of the sorceress Althea.”
“But the swamp would be frozen, this time of year.”
“No, sir. This is the wicked place of a sorceress and her menacing magic. Althea’s swamp does not bow to winter.”
Oba twisted the man’s wrist until he cried out. “Do you think me a fool? No place is a swamp in winter.”
“Ask anyone!” the man squealed. He swept his other arm around. “Ask anyone and they’ll tell you Althea’s place doesn’t bow to the Creator’s winter, but is hot and boggy all year round.”
Oba let up on the man’s wrist. “You said there was a back way in. Where is it?”
For the first time, the man hesitated. He licked his weather-cracked lips. “It’s difficult to find. There are few landmarks, and they’re hard to spot. I could tell you how to find the place, but you might miss it, and then you’ll think I lied to you when it’s only that it’s tricky to find by directions alone if you’re not familiar with the land in these parts.”
“I’m already thinking about having my coin back.”
“I’m only looking to your safety, sir.” He flashed a quick, apologetic smile. “I don’t like giving a man like you only part of what he needs, for fear I might live to regret it. I believe in giving the full measure of my word.”
“Go on.”
The hawker cleared his wet throat and then spat to the side. He wiped his mouth with the back of his filthy sleeve. “Well, sir, the best way to find it is if I take you there.”
Oba checked an older couple passing nearby, then pulled the man by his wrist. “Fine. Let’s go.”
The hawker dug in his heels. “Now hold on there. I agreed to tell you, and I can do that. Like I said, though, it’s hard to find. But I can’t be expected to give up my business to go off as a guide. It’s a number of days I’d be away from an income.”
Scowling, Oba leaned down. “And how much is it you want to guide me there?”
The m
an took a heavy breath as he considered, muttering to himself as if toiling at tallying up numbers in his head.
“Well, sir,” he said at last, lifting a finger on his free hand that stuck up through a short stub of a knit glove. “I guess I could be gone for a few days if I were to be paid a gold mark.”
Oba laughed. “I’m not giving you a mark—gold nor even silver—for the work of guiding me for a few days. I’d be willing to pay you another silver penny, but that’s all. Take it or give me back my first silver penny and be gone.”
The hawker shook his head as he mumbled to himself. Finally, he squinted up at Oba with a look of resignation.
“My charms aren’t selling well, of late. To tell the truth, I could use the money. You have the best of me again, sir. I’ll guide you, then, for a silver penny.”
Oba released the man’s wrist. “Let’s go.”
“It’s across the Azrith Plains. We’ll need horses.”
“Now, you want me to buy you a horse? Are you out of your mind?”
“Well, walking is no good. But I know folks, here, who will give you a good deal on a couple of horses. If we treat the animals right, I’m sure they’d agree to buy them back once we return—less a small fee for their use.”
Oba thought it over. He wanted to go up into the palace to have a look around, but he thought it best if he visited Lathea’s sister, first. There were things to learn.
“That sounds fair.” Oba gave the hunched hawker a nod. “Let’s go get some horses and be off, then.”
They moved out of the quieter side route into a main road thick with milling throngs. There were a number of attractive women about. Some of them looked Oba’s way, the invitation and longing clear in their eyes. They met his gaze, hungry for him. Oba gave them smiles, a token suggesting the possibility of more, later. He could see that even that much thrilled them.
It occurred to him, though, that these women roaming the market were probably lowly peasants. Up in the palace were likely to be the kind of women Oba wanted to meet: women of station. He deserved no less. After all, he was a Rahl, practically a prince, or something comparable. Maybe even something more than that.
“What’s you name, anyway?” Oba asked. “Seeing as we’ll be traveling together.”
“Clovis.”
Oba didn’t offer his name. He liked being called “sir.” It was, after all, only fitting.
“With all the people,” Oba said as his gaze swept the crowds, “how is it that your charms aren’t selling? Why is it that you’re having hard times?”
The man sighed in apparent misery. “It’s a sad tale, but it’s not your burden, sir.”
“Simple enough question, I think.”
“I suppose it is.” He shielded his eyes from the sunlight with a hand, partly covered in a knitted fingerless glove, as he peered up at Oba. “Well, sir, a time ago, back in the thick of winter, I met a beautiful young woman.”
Oba looked over at the hunched, wrinkled, disheveled man shuffling along beside him. “Met her?”
“Well, sir, truth be told, I was offering her a charm . . .” Clovis’s brow twisted curiously—as if he’d suddenly come across something quite unexpected. “It was her eyes that seized you. Big blue eyes. Blue like you rarely see . . .” Clovis ogled up at Oba. “The thing is, sir, her eyes looked very much like yours.”
It was Oba’s turn to frown. “Like mine?”
Clovis nodded earnestly. “They did, sir. She had eyes like yours. Imagine that. Something about her—about you as well—that looks . . . somehow, familiar. Can’t say as I know what it is, though.”
“What does this have to do with your hard times? Did you give her all your money and fail to get between her legs?”
Clovis seemed shocked by the very notion. “No sir, nothing like that. I tried to sell her a charm—so she would have good fortune. Instead, she stole all my money.”
Oba grunted skeptically. “I’d bet she was batting her eyelashes and smiling at you while she had her arm in your pocket to her elbow, and you were too eager to suspect what she was really doing.”
“Nothing like that, sir. Nothing like that at all.” His voice turned bitter. “She set a man upon me and he took it all for her. He did it, but it was at her word—I’m sure of it. The two of them stole all my money. Robbed me of everything I had earned all year.”
Something tickled Oba’s memory. He scanned his mental lists of odd and unrelated things. Some of those things began to come together.
“What did this woman with the blue eyes look like?”
“Oh, she was beautiful, sir, with thick ringlets of red hair.” Even if this woman had robbed the man of his savings, the distant look in his eye told Oba that he was still clearly taken by her. “Her face was like a vision of a good spirit, it was, and her figure was enough to take your breath away. But I should have known, by that bewitchingly evil red hair, that there was something more devious to her than her beauty.”
Oba halted and seized the man by the arm. “Was her name Jennsen?”
Clovis offered only a regretful shrug. “Sorry, sir. She never gave me her name. But I don’t imagine there are many women that look like her. Not with those blue eyes, her exquisite looks, and those ringlets of red hair.”
Oba didn’t think so, either. The description fit Jennsen perfectly.
Well, wasn’t that just something.
Clovis pointed. “There, sir. Down there is the man who can sell us horses.”
Chapter 36
Oba squinted into the gloom under the thick vegetation. It was hard to believe how dark it was in under the towering trees, down at the bottom of the crooked spine of rock, when it had been such a bright sunny morning up in the meadow above. It looked wet ahead, too.
He turned from the way leading in under the vines and hanging trailers of moss, to look back up the steep rocky incline, toward where he had left Clovis by a warm fire, watching their horses and gear. Oba was glad to finally be free of the jumpy little man. He was wearing, like a pesky fly buzzing around all the time. All the way across the Azrith Plains, the man jabbered on and on at length about everything and nothing. Oba would have rather been rid of the hawker and gone alone, but the man had been right about how difficult it would have been to have found this place down into the back of Althea’s swamp.
At least the man had no intention of going into the swamp with Oba. Clovis had seemed nervous and edgy about making sure that his customer went in, though. He was probably worried that Oba wouldn’t believe him and was eager to prove himself. He waited at the top, watching, shooing with hands covered in tattered, fingerless gloves, impatient for Oba to go in and see that he was being given his money’s worth.
Oba sighed and started out again, slogging ahead through the underbrush, stooping beneath low branches. He tiptoed across roots where he could, and waded through standing water where he had to. The air was still and as stagnant as the water. It felt wet, too, besides smelling foul.
Strange birds called from far off through the trees, back in the shadows where light probably never reached, back beyond vines, thick clumps of leaves, and rotting trunks leaning drunkenly against stalwart companions. Creatures moved through the water, too. What they could be, fish or reptile or conjured beast, there was no telling. Oba didn’t like the place. Not one bit.
He reminded himself that there would be a myriad of new things to learn once he got to Althea’s place. Not even that cheered him. He thought about the strange bugs and weasels and salamanders he’d seen so far, and the ones he was likely yet to see. That, too, failed to cheer him; he still didn’t like the place.
Ducking under branches, he swept spiderwebs aside. The fattest spider he’d ever encountered fell to the ground and darted for a hiding place. Oba, quicker yet, squashed it good. Hairy legs clawed the air in death before going still. Oba grinned as he moved on. He was beginning to like the place better.
His nose wrinkled. The farther in he went, the worse it smelled, reek
ing with a strange, pungent, dank rot. He saw steam rising off through the trees, and began to detect an odor something like rotten eggs, but more acidic. Oba was beginning not to like the place, again.
He plowed onward, unsure if it had been a good idea to go to see Althea, especially by the route suggested by the hand-wringing hawker. Oba sighed as he slogged through thick brush. The sooner he got in and had a chat with Althea, the sooner he could be out of the disgusting place.
Besides, the voice had stirred, restless that he continue.
The sooner he was finished with Lathea’s sister, the sooner he could visit his ancestral home, the People’s Palace. It would be wise to learn what he could, first, so that he might know what to anticipate from his half brother.
Oba wondered if Jennsen had been to see Althea, yet, and if she had, what she had found out. Oba was more and more convinced that his fate was somehow linked to the Jennsen woman. Too many things kept leading back to her for it to be a meaningless connection. Oba was very careful about how things on the lists he kept connected. Other people weren’t so observant, but they didn’t have to be—they weren’t important.
Both he and Jennsen were a hole in the world. Possibly even more interesting, they both had something in their eyes that Clovis had noticed.
What it was, exactly, the man wasn’t sure. Oba had pressed him, but he couldn’t say.
As the morning wore on, Oba made the best time he could along the twisted tangle of roots that passed for a path, until it sank lower ahead of him into an expanse of still, dark water. Oba paused, panting, sweat streaming down his face, checking to the sides, searching for another way across to where the ground looked to rise up again. It appeared that the way ahead tunneled on through the thick, steamy growth. But first, he had to get across the water. Hot as he was, that didn’t sound half bad.
He saw no vines hanging down that might steady him, so he quickly cut a stout limb and stripped it of branches to make himself a staff to help him balance as he crossed the low place.
Staff in hand, Oba waded out into a stretch of water. It wasn’t as much of a cooling relief as he had hoped; it smelled awful and was full of brown leeches. As he moved through the water, trailing a wake that dislodged debris from the banks, he had to keep brushing the clouds of biting bugs from his face. He kept checking, but unless he backtracked to look for another way, he saw that it was the only way to dry land beyond. That thought alone convinced him to keep going.
The Pillars of Creation tsot-7 Page 38
