A Cast of Stones

by Patrick W. Carr

  “Do you mean to kill me this time?”

  Merodach’s eyes narrowed as he continued to stare down the shaft of his arrow. “I could have killed you anytime I wanted, boy. Now get your horse.”

  Errol shook his head. He would gladly leave, but not like this. “I am the first in the caravan of Naaman Ru.” He stood his ground, met Merodach’s gaze. “And my name is Errol Stone, not boy. It will never be boy again.”

  A ghost of a smile touched his rescuer’s lips. “Well spoken, Errol Stone. Now please get your horse.”

  Errol turned to Ru and bowed with as much irony as he could summon. “Master Ru, I regret that I must resign my position. I have pressing business elsewhere.” He took a few steps toward where Midnight stood in the picket line before turning back. “And Ru . . .”

  The caravan master looked at him, deflated now and wary.

  “I joined your caravan under false pretenses and brought you some good . . . but even more trouble—for that you have my apology. You taught me many things in our travels. But you do not own me. In fact, I hold your life in my hands. If you come looking for me, I’ll let every trading house from Stelton to Weir know how you cheated them.”

  Once out of the camp, they galloped their horses until they were out of sight of Ru’s caravan, then switched to a canter. Errol had almost forgotten how good it felt to be on Midnight’s back. Merodach checked often over his shoulder for pursuit. After an hour, all of it spent in silence, he called for a halt.

  “Why are we stopping?” Errol asked.

  Merodach fixed him with a stare as sharp as Ru’s sword. “Because I’m not going with you. Follow my instructions exactly. Ride west through Four Crossings until you get to Port City. Buy passage on the first boat headed for the isle and Erinon. I don’t care if it’s the leakiest tub in the harbor.”

  Errol shook his head. “If you weren’t trying to kill me, why did you shoot at me?”

  The watchman paused, his head tilted as if considering. “I learned the sacramental bread in your pack was poisoned. I tried to catch up to you, but you were faster across the river than I expected. I tried to separate you from your pack by herding you into the water. When you came up out of the river with the pack still on your back, I gambled on shooting for the pack.” His mouth pulled to one side. “You’re either extraordinarily brave or very stupid, Errol. Either way I failed.”

  Errol felt his mouth go dry, recalling how close he’d come to dying. “Why can’t you come with me? Everyone thinks you were trying to kill me.”

  Merodach nodded. “And you need to go right on letting them think that. I wouldn’t have put my nose into Ru’s camp except at the utmost need.”

  “What will the church do to him?”

  The watchman snorted. “The church doesn’t care about some merchant’s ambition, but if they ever find out you cast lots for money, no matter the reason, you’ll wish you’d stayed back in that village you came from.”

  Errol shrugged. “Most times I wish that anyway.”

  Merodach nodded. “No one would gainsay you on that, but mind what I said and get to the conclave as quickly as you can. There’ll be some protection there, but keep your eyes and ears about you. Danger treads the halls of the royal compound, and I won’t be there to help you.”

  Errol watched Merodach ride east. He didn’t start for Erinon until the watchman disappeared over a distant hill. Since meeting the nuntius in Callowford he’d said more good-byes than he thought possible. As he kicked Midnight into a canter westward he tallied the friends he’d left, friends he’d probably never see again. The list started with Cilla and ended with Rokha, and in between, dozens of faces stuck in his memory.

  The next morning he passed through Four Crossings with the smell of the sea calling him west, and he urged Midnight on. By midday he reached the coast and for a league rode a path along the edge of a cliff by the ocean’s edge, marveling at the sight of so much water. Having lived so far inland all of his life, he’d never imagined anything to compare. Green waves struck the shore, cresting in their hunger, attacking limestone cliffs that remained oblivious. Farther out to sea, the water turned a deep blue, hinting at greater depth.

  The road he traveled split Port City neatly in half. On his right lay the town proper. The din of a large open-air market drifted to him from inside the city wall. The smell of fish—fresh, salted, and pickled—hung in the air. Mindful of Merodach’s admonition, Errol turned left and headed for the docks lining the shore of the enormous crescent-shaped harbor.

  The compulsion that had thrummed in the back of his head for so long began to fade. Now he only felt eager and nervous. What would Luis and Martin think when they saw him? He fingered his staff. And Cruk and Liam? Reader or not he would challenge both men to a bout at the earliest opportunity. Let them see how he’d grown.

  The breeze lifted the hair from his forehead. The sky glowed azure in the afternoon light.

  Far across the strait his destination waited. Erinon.

  I’m coming.

  23

  CHALLENGES

  THE REDOUBT CAPTAIN surveyed the tide over Errol’s shoulder as they began negotiations. No matter how Errol moved, ducked, or bobbed to force the captain to look him in the eye, Jonas Grim continued to survey the seascape over one of his shoulders.

  The captain’s jaws worked for a moment, and then he spat a brown stream of liquid onto the deck. “I hate horses. The strait scares them half to death and they mess up the hold.”

  Errol looked the length and breadth of the Redoubt and considered waiting until morning, despite Merodach’s admonition. The watchman had said ship, and though Errol didn’t know the difference between a ship and a boat, he guessed that if the captain’s vessel was indeed a ship, it barely qualified.

  He jingled his purse. “I’m willing to pay, as I said. I need to get to the isle as soon as possible.”

  Grim looked him over without managing to meet his eyes and spat again. “What for? It’s not going anywhere.” He put a hand on a curved dagger belted to his waist. “If you bring trouble to my ship, I’ll gut you for fish bait.”

  Errol shook his head. “I have friends at Erinon I’m supposed to meet, and I’m months late.”

  The captain blinked several times in rapid succession. “Hmmm. Very well. Two gold crowns. Passage for you and the horse.”

  The price made Errol’s eyes hurt. If he met the captain’s price he would only have two gold and eight silver crowns left. “Five silver crowns,” he said. “I’m buying passage, not the ship.”

  For the next fifteen minutes, Errol strove to keep the captain’s piracy to a minimum. In the process Grim made use of an extensive vocabulary. The captain swore Errol’s parsimony would endanger the health of his wife, who suffered from a mysterious ailment for which the doctors could find no cure. If a woman existed who could tolerate Jonas Grim, Errol wanted to meet her, and he very nearly said that aloud. He hoped Merodach was serious about needing to take the leakiest tub if necessary. Errol was sure he’d found it.

  He took a deep breath. “Captain, before I arrived, you were getting ready to sail without any passengers. I’m offering nine silver crowns to get to the isle. That’s nine crowns you won’t get if I decide to wait until tomorrow morning.” He pointed to a much larger vessel docked farther along the quay. “There seems to be a lot more people leaving Erinon than going to it, Captain. Empty ships don’t make much money, do they?”

  With a curse and a dark look for Errol and his horse, the captain waved them aboard.

  Errol spent the next few minutes coaxing Midnight across the gangplank and into the hold. He rubbed his mount’s nose often and made soothing noises until step by short step, Midnight came aboard.

  His exultation at winning passage lasted until the boat cleared the breakwater. Then, open to churning waters that flowed through the Beron Strait, the ship bobbed like a cork in a barrel. Midnight’s terrified whinnies came to Errol as interludes between bouts of seasicknes
s. He clung to the railing and threw up in time to the ship’s rising and falling with the swells.

  “Ha,” Grim said as he walked by. “That’s what you get for taking advantage of a poor old sailor.”

  Errol fantasized about thumping the captain with his staff until Grim either passed out or made eye contact. He could do little else. The cramps in his stomach forbade movement in any normal sense. Ten leagues. He had to make it ten leagues across the strait, and according to Grim the passage would take three hours. He blinked. Even that hurt. If he ever saw Martin again, he would ask the priest what fate the condemned suffered after they died. There was surely a boat and an ocean involved.

  An eternity later, slumped facedown on the deck, he felt a jarring bump as the Redoubt glided into dock. Strong hands gripped his arms and dragged him across the plank to deposit him on the wide pier. He lay there with his eyes closed. The clop of hooves announced the arrival of Midnight a few moments later. Someone—he had no idea who—bent down and looped the reins around one of his wrists. A wooden clatter to his left announced the arrival of his staff.

  “Ya see, mate,” Grim said. “The sea just don’t care for some people.”

  Errol could hear the smile in the captain’s voice.

  “Aye, Cap’n. Truly spoken, that.”

  The sound of footsteps faded as Grim and his first mate left him to recover on his own. Midnight nuzzled his face, rocking his head from one side to the other. The movement made him throw up again.

  Errol forced his aching stomach muscles to contract and sat up. He pulled himself hand over hand up the reins until he achieved a more-or-less standing position. A line of people waited to board a dozen ships headed for the mainland. Merchants in fine clothing jostled peasants in gray homespun, who kept their distance from noble families in their finery. Yet to a man their eyes were tight, and they leaned toward the nearest ship as if afraid of being denied passage.

  A man wearing a long dark coat walked past him. He held a small writing board in one hand and counted the crowd out loud, marking a tally at each score. At the end of the line, he spoke to the waiting captain, who gave a curt nod and began waving the press of people aboard.

  “Sir,” Errol called. His voice sounded distant to his own ears. He couldn’t seem to get the sound of the sea out of them. “Sir?”

  The man turned, noted his pallor and clothing, and gave a knowing nod. “First time on the sea, lad?”

  Errol nodded, then wished he’d elected to speak instead. “And hopefully my last. Can you tell me how to get to Erinon?”

  The dockmaster grunted at this and gave a fleeting smile. “It’s not as if you could miss it. They say every road on Green Isle leads to the City of Kings, and they’re not wrong.” He pointed. “Once you get away from the docks, follow the main road. You can’t miss it.” Eyes the color of the sea looked him up and down. “What brings you to the city?”

  Errol was too sick to even offer an evasion. He clambered onto Midnight’s back. “I’ve come to be a reader.”

  The dockmaster’s face closed, and his gaze grew cold. “You’ll find the people of the city have little patience for such humor. I’d suggest you change it.”

  Errol blinked, not understanding what had raised the man’s ire. He decided to change the subject. “How far is it?”

  “Fifteen leagues.”

  The late afternoon sun made his decision for him. “Where’s the nearest inn?”

  The King’s Pleasure needed paint and repairs to the roof, but it offered food, which Errol declined, and a bed for one silver crown a night. After tending to Midnight, he climbed the rough-hewn oak stairs to his room and fell into a slumber. The floor seemed to buck and pitch like the deck of Grim’s ship. He knotted his fists in the rough woolen blanket of his bed until sleep claimed him.

  The next morning, true to the dockmaster’s word, he found the road to Erinon. Broad and paved with close-fitting cobblestones, the route boasted more traffic in both directions than Errol believed possible. Supply caravans moved toward the city even as a relentless stream of families and individuals moved away from it.

  As a caravan carrying salted fish passed by, he pulled his horse in line just behind. Only four men wearing blue livery guarded the thirty wagons, a fraction of what Ru would have used on the mainland. Errol rode close and hoped that any casual observer would consider him one of the guards. The closest guard spared him a brief glance and then ignored him for the rest of the trip.

  The silence and the slow pace wore on him, but traveling in anonymity seemed safer than a headlong rush to the capital. He twitched the reins, and Midnight trotted up to the next guard, a portly man in his midthirties whose paunch stretched the fabric of his livery.

  The man’s bulbous nose and heavy eyebrows advertised his Einlander bloodlines. His gaze wandered over Errol, noting his weapon, but his countenance remained open.

  Errol nodded in greeting. “I’ve never been to Erinon before.”

  The man nodded.

  “Can you tell me something about the city?”

  A shrug stretched the blue cloth almost to the breaking point. “What do you want to know?”

  He’d decided to avoid the subject of readers if at all possible. “I have a friend in the city, a priest from my village. How would I find him?”

  The man chuckled. “There are more priests in the city than rats. What order is he in?”

  Order? Martin had never mentioned being in an order. “I don’t know.”

  Another shrug. “Then be prepared to spend the next few years of your life searching for him. Erinon is the capital of the church as well as the kingdom. You’ll find benefices by the score and priests without number. What’s more, the church has scheduled a Judica. Any churchman entitled to wear more than burlap is coming to Erinon.”

  Errol digested the information in silence, holding his tongue against Martin’s name. Prudence dictated he withhold everyone’s identity until he knew whom to trust, and he would mention his connection to the conclave, however tenuous, only at the utmost need.

  The clop of hooves on stone punctuated his next question. “Where would I go to join the watch?”

  The guard pressed his lips together and smiled in a line of suppressed mirth. “The barracks of the watch are attached to the palace of the king.” A breathy chuckle escaped him. “Do you mean to pick up the king’s gauntlet, then, boy?”

  The guard’s attitude grated on him, but he needed information, not a fight. “What would happen if I did?”

  The laughter faded, though the smile remained. “Ah, well. I never felt the desire to tie myself to the palace.” He puffed out his chest. “Though I think the captains of the watch would find me worthy. I’ve handled a sword for more than a few years.” His gaze drifted to the staff held against Midnight’s saddle. “If you’re serious, you’ll want to trade that stick for a real weapon.”

  Now it was Errol’s turn to laugh. “I’ve beaten more than a few swordsmen with this stick.”

  The guard stiffened. “No true swordsmen, I’ll warrant.”

  Errol shrugged. “I have no idea how true they were. Most of them were caravan guards and they fought for money.” Skorik’s face flashed in his mind. “Some were truer than others, but they were among the most dangerous men I’ve met.”

  “Pah! Caravan guards. Drunkards that run at the first sign of danger.” A blue-sleeved finger pointed at Errol’s chest. “If that’s all the experience you have, you’ll want to save yourself the embarrassment of standing before the captains of the watch.”

  Errol forced a smile. This blue-clothed turtle of a man wouldn’t last five seconds against Skorik. “I’ll remember the advice.” With another twitch of the reins he let Midnight drift back to his former spot at the end of the caravan. The first guard acknowledged him with a nod but still didn’t speak.

  That suited Errol—he preferred silence to idiocy.

  The next day, the villages came closer and closer together until the beginnin
gs and endings could no longer be discerned. “Are we in Erinon, then?” he asked.

  The guard on his left spoke, his voice conversational. “Not for some miles yet, though the people here would say different. The city proper is surrounded by Diran’s Wall. It was intended to be the defense of the city in case of a siege when it was built five hundred years ago, but the area outside the wall holds more people now than the inside.”

  An hour later, Errol’s senses were overwhelmed by the size of the city. How did so many people manage to live in one place? A year ago he would have laughed at the tale of it. Now he could only shake his head in wonder. Yet the bustle held a furtive undercurrent, and more than one merchant or goodwife cast nervous glances over their shoulder as they went about their business. At the sight of the guards a chorus of voices raised a clamor.

  “The king can protect his fish,” an old woman screeched. “Why can’t he protect those of us in the poor quarter?”

  A burly man snarled, showing broken and missing teeth. “Aye, there’s that, there is. Even the king’s city isn’t safe anymore.”

  The guard next to Errol set his gaze ahead and refused to answer, his face carved from planes of stone. Errol had been in few cities, but the tension in the streets of the capital was unmistakable.

  They passed a low building with a sign of the sheaf and pestle denoting it as a healer’s. A handful of people waited out front, placid and calm, in stark contrast to the crowds he had just passed through. It was the first time he’d seen people in the city that weren’t squawking or jostling for position. The healer, dressed in his white robes, came to the door accompanied by an older man, bent by age, and leaning heavily on a cane.

  “You’ll have to stay off that leg when the weather changes, Dane,” the healer said. He called back into the shop. “Dorrie, bring Dane that bag of lamb’s ear and soulsease tea.”