I grinned, waved, and ducked through the main doorway, yanking on my cloak as I did so. While the majer and Natasha looked for me by the fire, I dashed through the rain to the stable, glad I had brought the pack with me.
Sploosh, sploosh… sploosh, sploosh, sploosh… My boots sloshed through the puddles in the courtyard clay.
The wide sliding door was ajar. The stableboy was nowhere to be seen as I scurried toward Gairloch.
Rain or no rain, storm or no storm, I needed to put some distance between me and Freetown’s finest. While they might be persuaded that I was not a blackstaff, something told me that the majer was under orders to round up anyone who might be from Recluce. The questioning would not be gentle. I would have liked to see whether Annalise had anything in mind besides flirting… but that was out now. Besides, she only had played up to me to avoid Herlyt, or because any man with a horse was bound to have money.
Trying to saddle Gairloch in the dim inn stable was a joy, knowing that I didn’t have much time. First, I got the saddle blanket on sideways. Gairloch whinnied at that, but he didn’t actually buck until I threw on the saddle.
Thunk. The saddle slammed down on my feet and onto the planking.
“All right, you miserable beast.” I rearranged the saddle blanket, then eased the saddle into place, but could barely get the cinch closed.
Gairloch, gray-looking in the gloom, skittered but did not make a sound as I fumbled with the closures. Something… Finally, I reclaimed my staff from the straw and placed the black wood firmly, but gently against the pony’s forehead.
“Whufffffff…” When he let out his breath I yanked the cinch tight. I suppose I could have kicked him, the way the saddler in Freetown had, but using violence unnecessarily bothered me… besides being boring. The staff trick worked, although why the pony would pay attention, I still didn’t know. That bothered me, too, but not as much as kicking him would have.
I had trouble with the hackamore, until I slowed down and forced myself to be calm. All that left was tying my pack in place and putting the staff in the lance cup. Then I untied Gairloch and walked him to the sliding door of the stable. “Hallo! Hallo, the inn!”
That voice was too hearty for my liking. Even behind the stained beams and planks of the stable door, I could picture yet another duchy cavalry officer, dripping rain from his shiny blue or gray waterproof, looking for a warm brew and a solid stew, or for the majer with even worse news or more punitive orders.
“Damnable innkeeper… no stableboy on a morning like this…”
Realizing he was coming in, stableboy or not, I tied Gairloch to the beam fronting the first stall, then swung the door open.
“You… keeping an officer in the rain…” The officer, wearing a gold leaf on his collar, had been reaching for the door. He stood at least a half-head taller than me, and his horse made Gairloch look like a toy. “My apologies, officer. But the stableboy is ill…”
“Leave that pony, man, and take care of a real horse!”
“Yes, sir,” I answered. “The end stall on the right is the only one free. It’s dry and clean.” While I wanted to clunk the arrogant bastard on the skull, I doubted that I could have reached the staff before ending up spitted on his saber.
“That’s fine, but make sure he gets a rubdown and a brushing… and no cold water, or I’ll drown you in it.” He thrust the reins at me.
“Yes, sir.” I took the damp leathers and chucked them. The horse was better-trained or less stubborn than the ones I’d seen at Felshar’s. He actually followed me. The cavalryman watched to make sure I was headed where I said. “Who has the pony?”
I did not turn, but gave a shrug. “Young fellow, not much older than me.”
“I’ll be back in a shake, man, and don’t forget it.” Sploosh… sploosh… His steps toward the inn were quick.
I wrapped the reins around a post, tying them in a quick knot that I yanked tight. Then I dashed for Gairloch, untying his leathers, and scrambled into the saddle right inside the stable. I remembered to duck as we stepped into the downpour. I was still trying to get on my gloves as he stepped through the open doorway. Whhnnnnn… Clearly, the cold rain on his face did not please him, but when the latest cavalry officer and the majer got together, I definitely didn’t want to be around.
I kicked Gairloch gently with my heels and he began to walk, then trot. I grabbed his mane to steady myself, but let him move. The rain, like icy needles, lashed at my unprotected face and head, since I hadn’t bothered with the cloak’s hood.
I was lucky I’d even remembered the cloak, the way things were going.
Guiding Gairloch around the small lake that covered half the road in front of the dry-goods store, I looked ahead, trying to make out the turn where the road to Hewlett began. Supposedly Hrisbarg was one of the wool towns, the only one inside the duchy. Hewlett was a wool town, too, but it was across the border in Montgren, another duchy, except it was ruled by a countess who didn’t like the duke.
I chucked the reins again once we were back into the more solid mud.
“Halt! In the name of Candar! Rogue wizard! Rogue wizard!”
We were turning onto the lane that stretched ahead to the Howlett road. I kicked Gairloch in the flanks again, and he began to run, but only for perhaps a hundred cubits before he settled back to a quick walk. Clang! Clang!
For all the shouts by the cavalry officer and the chimes on the alarm, no one followed us, at least not immediately and not that I could tell. It seemed pretty stupid. I mean, just because someone thought I was a blackstaff from Recluce, and just because I left in a storm, the idiot was trying to rouse the whole town of Hrisbarg.
Then again, I had been lucky, damned lucky that I looked so young. Why was everyone on the entire continent out against anyone from Recluce? Just what had happened in Freetown?
I kept looking over my shoulder, trying to feel whether anyone chased us, but could not see or feel anyone. All I felt was the rain, the ice, and the cold.
The road was empty, at least as far ahead as I could see through the mist and the rain. As Gairloch settled into a walk, I leaned next to the staff, nearly brushing it with my cheek before drawing back from the heat.
Trying to feel what might be around, I reached out with my feelings, my thoughts, trying to get a sense of chaos… anywhere. Other than a vague sense of unease connected with the road ahead, I could find nothing.
The staff cooled as we rode westward through the mud and rain. Traveling the road to Howlett was worse than the road from Freetown had been. Water slopped out of the sky and froze in chunks on the browned and dead grasses. The rain coated the oaks with ice sheaths, and turned the thorn bushes that twisted from the shardstone road walls into a tangled crystalline barrier.
The road itself-half ice, half black mud-squuushed with every step Gairloch took. Once again, I missed the desolate wizard’s road that had covered most of the distance between Freetown and Hrisbarg.
Each step of the pony made my stomach churn, and with every other step, the wind gusted and threw the icy rain under my cloak. I worried about his hooves and fetlocks, or whatever they were called; but I worried more about me. So we kept going.
As I shivered in the saddle, I recalled fondly the heat of the day when I travelled to Nylan, at least in comparison to the chill that had already numbed my legs from boot-top to thigh. My buttocks remained painfully unnumbed.
My staff rested in the lance cup of the old cavalry saddle. That meant I swayed into it every so often, since it protruded well above the saddle. Flexing the reins every so often split the ice off them, but I had to keep brushing ice off the saddle and my cloak. The only thing the rain refused to freeze to was my staff.
The staff had saved me at least twice, and made me a target of everyone in Candar, or so it seemed. This last time, I had managed to escape without even using the staff, or letting anyone know I had it, but they were still after me.
We stopped twice, both times to let Gairloch
drink and to let me stretch the kinks out of legs that felt like permanent cramps.
In time, close to midday, the rain stopped, the wind picked up, and ice began to form on the remaining puddles. Then I began to sense warmth in the staff again, as the road straightened and began to climb toward a low hilltop. Through the mist I could make out some sort of building.
“Oh… of course.” Since the duke and the countess didn’t like each other, the building was a border station… and another damned problem, since someone might well have warned the guards. I shrugged, pulled off my left glove carefully, and touched the lorken-hot enough to melt ice, and that meant some sort of danger.
“Well, Gairloch, they said you were a mountain pony… how much of a mountain pony?”
He didn’t answer, didn’t even flick his head, just kept walking.
I tried to think it through. Probably no one had warned the road guards. But even if they hadn’t, word would get out that someone from Recluce had entered Montgren, and no one seemed to be very friendly to anyone from Recluce, especially blackstaffers.
In the end, the answer was simple-avoid the border checkpoint. Accomplishing such a simple answer was more difficult. Tangled low brush sprang from the roadside at every point, and most of it was ice-covered.
Reining Gairloch to a halt off to the side of the road by a higher patch of brush that would shield us from scrutiny, should any of the guards possess a spyglass, I tried first to study the slopes and the land around us, low rolling hills covered with sparse clumps of bushes and an occasional cedar, with white oaks along the watercourse lines between the hills.
Few people in the duchy lived alone, or away from the towns. On the hillside that sloped away to my right, a black line ran nearly perpendicular to the road-the uncovered remnant of a stone wall nearly buried by the meadow turf. But no trees. As I stared, I could sense the same wavy heat lines that concealed the black ships of Recluce, except these were older and fainter and tinged with unpleasantness.
In a way it was too bad the wall wasn’t headed where I was, but the disorder bothered me.
I shrugged. We couldn’t stand behind the bushes forever.
Whheeee… eeeeuhhh…
“I know… I know…”
So I turned around and let Gairloch pick his way downhill to where the road turned out of sight of the border post, nearly half a kay. As I recalled, there was another brook that looked like it meandered down in the same general direction as the border post, but with the hill between us and the post.
I chucked the reins and Gairloch stepped across the flowing water and out onto the meadow. Keeping the hill to my right, we began following the watercourse, roughly parallel to the road.
… ppeeeeepppp…
The sound of the insects or frogs or whatever it was reminded me that I had heard very little, certainly no birds at all, since I had arrived in Candar.
We crossed a low mound that stretched across the end of the meadow, and I knew that it had once been a homestead-hut long, long before.
The brook narrowed as we continued and angled more to the left, southward, than I would have liked; but most of the space was open meadow, rather than brush or straggly cedars.
Another kay and the brook was barely a cubit wide, and angling back toward Hrisbarg.
“All right, we go over the hill.”
Gairloch shook his head, spraying mist on me, and we started up the gentle slope, taking less time to reach the crest than it had to circle the second hill, even though Gairloch’s steps grew edgier and edgier as we neared the crest.
I could sense nothing-neither heat nor cold, but an emptiness, a lack of even nothing.
Wheeeeee…
As we came through the mist to the hilltop, I shivered.
A pile of whitened and glazed stones graced the hilltop. Two of the pale white-granite monoliths remained standing, • although their crowns were melted like candles left in the sun. Surrounding the chaos-circle was dead-white bleached gravel. Outside the gravel was a whitish clay that slowly darkened until it merged with the scraggly grass.
IVheeeeee… Gairloch shied from that whiteness.
Less than a handspan from my face, my own staff began to glow with a black light that urged me away from the stones.
Even with the age of the destruction, even after all the years that had passed, I didn’t even look at the twisted patterns, but edged Gairloch around the dead-white stones.
Beyond the hilltop, north and west of us, I could see the hilltop where the border station lay, and the angle of the road descending toward Hewlett-away from us, of course.
Not until we reached the bottom of the hill and turned back west did I remember taking a breath.
“Whuuuuuuhhh…”
My knees were shaking. For someone who had questioned magic and chaos, that ancient structure had been pretty convincing. The whole hill had radiated destruction. No wonder people didn’t live nearby.
That was the worst. After that, the scattered brambles, and the wind that got steadily colder-all those seemed merely natural. The road itself was also a natural disaster, churned half-frozen mud, but somehow Gairloch mushed on.
Someone had to have seen us, but we saw no one, not until we were back on the road to Hewlett, watching the scattered flocks of black-faced sheep, and their shepherds bundled against the cold. Then we passed a slow-moving wagon heading in the same direction, and an old coach headed toward Hrisbarg.
Neither driver gave me more than a passing glance.
XXIII
DUSK WAS FALLING by the time we struggled-with stops for water for Gairloch, and vain attempts to stretch out the permanent cramps in my legs-along the quagmire that was called the road to Howlett. Even from the outskirts I could tell that Howlett made Hrisbarg look like Imperial Hamor. Hrisbarg had rough wooden sidewalks; Howlett had none. Hrisbarg had defined streets; Howlett had a rough clump of structures. Hrisbarg’s buildings had peeling paint; Hewlett’s had none.
But the rain had begun to fall as ice-needles, and the wind howled in from the north, freezing my cloak as solid as plate armor.
Almost at the edge of Howlett was a careless building, accompanied by another not much better than a large shack-the Snug Inn and its stable.
Wheeee… eeee, was Gairloch’s only comment as I led him inside the stable.
“Three pence, and he’ll share a stall with the other mountain pony,” commanded the heavyset man by the sliding stable door.
I looked at the small stableboy racking a saddle while the big man collected. The stableboy shrugged.
In the open space to the right stood an unhitched wagon and a coach-that same golden coach that I had seen on the road to Freetown. I looked back at the heavy man to catch what he was saying.
“You stable him…” added the man. “… damned ponies, kill anyone not their master…”
I handed over the three pennies.
“At the end. There’s another one like him there.”
I led Gairloch along the narrow way toward the back, and eased open the stall door, holding it so that it didn’t fall off the worn wooden hinge-pins, then glancing at the bleached and cracked support timbers of the stable itself, still wondering about the golden-finished white-oak coach.
Wheeee… eeee… The whinny of the other pony subsided as I let Gairloch take his own time.
Both sniffed the air, while I wanted to sneeze.
In time, I got him in and unsaddled. I quickly stowed the staff in the straw, along with my pack, and searched until I found an old brush. By then, the stableboy, not the collector, was watching.
“Any grain?”
He gave me a wary look, and I produced a copper penny. The boy produced a battered bucket; and I split it between the two, although I gave Gairloch the largest share.
Finally, I felt Gairloch was settled enough for me to chance the inn.
Once inside, the odor of unwashed herders, rancid oils, stale perfumes, and smoke left my eyes stinging. Squinting
through the haze, I peered over the crowded tables. Those in the back, toward the narrow but drafty door through which I had entered, were long trestle tables with benches. Beyond them were square tables, of a darker and polished wood. Between the two types of tables ran a flimsy half-wall with three wide openings for the inn’s servers.
Everyone on the road to or from Hewlett seemed stranded in the same inn. On my side of the half-wall, men and women were shoulder to shoulder at the trestle tables. A few of the tables for the local gentry, or whoever the privileged ones might be, had vacant chairs around them, but none of the tables were unclaimed.
The Snug Inn, despite its name, was not snugly built.
Uncle Sardit would have listed in detail all the faults in the construction. While I scarcely had his experience, there were some poor design features evident even to me. The outside eaves were not long enough to keep the wind from blowing underneath and into the upstairs rooms. Likewise, the stone facing of the front wall had been built for style and was beginning to pull away from the heavy timbers that framed the side walls. The curves in the rough beams that framed both side and front walls showed that they had not been properly treated or cured.
Inside was worse. The hallway dividers separating the common and gentry sections had been carelessly sawed and nailed together with small spikes, needlessly splitting the wood. After my short tenure with Uncle Sardit, I could have done better and probably done it quicker than whoever had built them. The gentry’s tables were square, sharp-edged, and probably gave the inn’s servants bruises. Again, a few minutes with a plane or even a shaping saw would have produced a better and more serviceable table.
The common tables were green-oak trestles, sawed or split before the wood had cured. With the amount of red oak, black oak, and even maple available in Candar, I wondered why the tables were green oak.
I looked over the mass of people, wincing at the din. Though I had stood there for what seemed a long time, no one even looked at me.
Finally, I made out a space on the bench next to a man in a rough brown coat, halfway across the back of the commons area. I edged toward it.
The Magic of Recluce Page 18
