by Ryk E. Spoor
“Your business?”
“Guild Adventurer.” Tobimar displayed his shoulder patch, and the guard’s eyebrows rose.
“Zarathanton Guild, too.” He verified the patch and saluted. “Well, sir, I can’t say there’s no work for you here. Been all sorts of goings-on in the past month or so.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear there might be some interesting adventures; sorry to hear of the trouble that leads into them, though.” Tobimar’s walking that stretched rope between sounding like a problem-solving adventurer and, well, what some people accuse us of, being like carrion birds.
They began passing through the guard post and the relatively short, high-walled gantlet that could be sealed off in the case of attack. Something on the wall caught Poplock’s eye, and he tugged slightly on Tobimar’s hair.
It was a notice on the wall, carefully written and spelled against weather, defacement, or unauthorized removal (well, Poplock couldn’t be sure about the last one, but he’d have bet three darterflies on it). It was a simple request for any qualified bounty-hunters and adventurers to inquire at the Temple of Myrionar in Evanwyl—the capital city of the country itself.
“That does look promising,” Tobimar agreed. They were still following the “look without looking” strategy to some extent, which worked for Poplock since he figured that since they now knew there were monstrous forces trying to keep secrets from Tobimar’s family, they’d be more confused by his actions if he wasn’t apparently trying to find out stuff. And this way Poplock would get to see more places and do more fun things, which was, after all, the point of adventuring.
Evanwyl—the city—was still about a hundred miles away, and it looked like there wasn’t all that much population here. A small village right near the guardpost, probably because of the guardpost, and a few farms around it, and that was it. By evening, there wasn’t a trace of human habitation other than the road itself.
“Where will we camp tonight?”
Tobimar frowned. “I hate to get in the way of anyone . . . but it’s never a good idea to get far off the road.”
Poplock bounced off his shoulder to the ground. “Well, they don’t seem to get much traffic through here, do they?” He scuttled around, checking the markings. “I don’t see anything very fresh. Maybe a few walking through, but this isn’t one of the Great Roads.”
Tobimar glanced down at him. “You can read that on this hard-packed stuff?”
“I spend an awful lot of time down here. You learn to tell that kind of thing really fast, especially when missing little details might get you killed.”
“I guess so. You certainly showed what you could do back with the demon ambush. So on the road it is.”
Nothing bothered them that night, which was a pleasant surprise. Maybe not so surprising; this is just down the road from a permanent guardpost.
That seemed to be the case; the next couple of days did have some “exciting” incidents. Well, one actually exciting one, when their sleep was interrupted by a very hungry striped worm—about twenty feet long and a ton or more of land-crawling eating machine. That was a good five minutes of serious running, stabbing, slashing near-death experiences. The one the next night could have been pretty exciting, but the three flame-ant scouts turned tail and ran when he bounced into view. It was rather odd that even very large insects seemed to have an instinctive fear of his people. Tobimar was not very sympathetic to his disappointment, pointing out that they no longer had Xavier with them and that flame-ant scouts often meant a lot more flame-ant warriors not too far away. They’d moved another mile or two down the road before camping again.
The fourth day, just as the shadows were getting long and Tobimar was starting to cast uneasy looks at the trees around them, they suddenly emerged into a cleared area.
The foothills of the Khalals rose in deep blue-and-purple majesty in the distance, and in the twilight shadows lights were starting to appear. The clearing around them showed areas of cultivation. Far ahead, a much larger collection of buildings was visible, straddling the shores of the Evaryll River.
“That must be the city.”
Poplock bounce-nodded. Evanwyl didn’t compare with Zarathanton, of course, but it was a lot bigger than Pondsparkle—more than big enough to call it a city. The thought made him curious about how his friend viewed it. “So how’s that compare to your home?”
“Hm? Oh, you mean compared to Skysand? It’s . . . not much, actually.” He pointed to a fortress-home perched on a ridge not far off. “Things like that look like their biggest buildings, and they wouldn’t be a dust-devil next to a sandstorm compared to the Towers. But it’s still a good-sized town, and for a small country . . . well, I wouldn’t expect anything bigger.”
Tobimar quickened his footsteps, which Poplock had rather expected; while he wasn’t really bothered much by sleeping outdoors, he knew his friend very much preferred comfortable beds when they could be found, and where there were large towns, there would be comfortable inns.
The road widened and occasional patches of crushed stone, packed rubble, and such gave way to carefully maintained pourstone; not nearly as tough and enduring as the ancient god-spelled Great Roads, but still a far better surface for travel than even the hardest-packed dirt. For the first time in many weeks, Tobimar’s boots clicked out a sharp and energetic rhythm along a real road.
People stopped and studied them—sometimes covertly, sometimes openly staring. Apparently strangers were rare here. Not surprising, considering how much of a pain in the feet it was to get here.
Ahead, a bright lightglobe hung above a wide sign that showed a somewhat irreverent symbol: a sword impaling a roast, with the pans of a set of scales balanced on its point holding a tankard on one side and a mess of vegetables on the other. The predictable name was emblazoned below: “The Balanced Meal.”
“Obviously the seat of the faith,” Tobimar murmured with a slight smile.
“I like a sense of humor in a religion. But that isn’t the temple, I’d guess.”
The Prince couldn’t quite restrain a snort of laughter. “Ha! No, I don’t think so.”
The building was more solidly built than the homes surrounding it, and taller, at least two stories; the aged look of the timbers and slight rounding of the granite showed the inn had been there for many, many years. Tobimar pushed open the door and entered. The Balanced Meal was a well-lit inn, with an actual dining hall off to one side, a watch and registrar station just in front, and stairs to what Poplock presumed were rooms for rent ascending on the other side. Must be the place the locals come to eat and chat, too; they sure aren’t making their living from travellers!
“Welcome to the Balanced Meal, sir.” The man behind the desk was much older than Tobimar, with gray hair shot through with a few remaining black strands; the width of shoulder showed he had probably been either a warrior or heavy laborer when young, but the width of his gut told a tale of many more years of heavy eating. “My name’s Kell; how can I be of help this evening?”
“Thank you for the welcome, Kell. A meal and a room, in that order; I’ve been traveling a long time.”
Kell nodded, with a surprised smile. “If I know my accents, a longer time than most. That’s a Skysand lilt, or my ear’s gone bad.”
Poplock could tell that surprised his friend. “You’re exactly right, Kell, but that’s . . . amazing. You can’t have had many visitors from my country here.”
“No, indeed, not many.” Kell rose with a grunt and escorted them into the dining hall, seating Tobimar at a corner table and calling over a server. “But years back, I was a wanderer, adventuring—never guilded, but never dishonored the name, I like to think—and I stopped in Skysand for two years. Went to the mines, did a few weeks helping there, found myself a handful of sparklies, circled the whole desert back to the coast and its cities.”
“Well, it makes me feel a little more welcome. Thanks. I’m Tobimar, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Tobimar. Ro
om and meal’s one Scale.”
Tobimar nodded, dug into his belt pouch and pulled out a small gold coin. “Here’s five Scale, keep it; I’ll probably be here a few days anyway.”
The inn owner (the way the other employees reacted to him confirmed it for Poplock) grinned in the manner of any businessmen being paid in advance. “Well, thank you and the Balance be in your favor, Tobimar.” Kell’s gaze rested for a moment on Poplock, who blinked back, looking as stupid as possible; the man glanced down and noticed the patch on Tobimar’s shoulder. “Guilded. So you’ll be wanting the Temple tomorrow morning.”
“You know anything about that?”
Kell frowned. “Might. But it’s not my place to say, not now. Let them tell you. If you have questions after that, I’ll tell what I know, or what I think.” He gave a quick nod and headed back to the front hall.
Tobimar ordered and ate; Poplock, maintaining his cover, simply snagged any small insect that flew by and stayed quiet. They could talk when they got to the room; in the meantime, Poplock listened carefully.
Some of the conversations were interesting.
Once in the room—corner room, windows with locking shutters, the sort an adventurer would prefer—Tobimar went around carefully, pausing and closing his eyes, casting out his senses in the way the old mage Khoros had taught him. Poplock waited patiently, having seen this several times before. He’d already done his check while Tobimar was unpacking.
Finally Tobimar opened his eyes and nodded. “All clear. No scrying or prying magics active.”
“Good. You know how hard it is for me to keep quiet!” He bounced up onto the bed as Tobimar sat down. “You catch what everyone was saying down there?”
“Not much of it; I was eating, and that tends to make sound through your head, you know.”
“Yeah. Well, sounds like something’s got them worried, and it’s connected with Myrionar’s champions, those, um, Justiciars. Sounds like people have gotten killed or something.”
“Fits. That’s why the temple’s the one calling for adventurers. And I did think the dining hall was pretty empty for a place like this.”
Poplock bounced his assent. “And that means it’s an ugly problem . . . and it’s got something to do with the gods.”
“Which is just the kind of thing we’ve been wondering about, ever since everything started coming apart when we were in Zarathanton. It can’t be coincidence. We’re following a trail and a pattern. If something’s causing all these disasters, it’s probably not overlooking Evanwyl . . . and if Evanwyl was connected to our homeland, then maybe—just maybe—whatever’s here is connected to our enemies.”
“And if not,” Poplock observed, “at least it’s the kind of problem we should be looking at anyway.”
Tobimar laughed. “Yes.” He started to prepare the bed. “Maybe we’ll find out tomorrow what we’re looking at.”
“Maybe.” The Toad moved under the bed; he preferred sleeping under things closer to his head than human-sized rooms, which felt uncomfortably like open air. “But my guess is we’ll just get ourselves in someone else’s mess again.”
“Are you complaining?”
“No. That’s what we’re really out here for, isn’t it?”
A pause. Then another low chuckle. “You know, I think it really is. I mean . . . I haven’t given up on my search—you know I won’t, ever—but I’ve been doing this for years now, and it . . . feels right. Mother knew I never really wanted to sit in the Throne, or even be a Ruling Prince in one of the other cities. That old Khoros, I guess he knew that too.”
Poplock scuttled back out from under; the tone of Tobimar’s voice showed he wasn’t really sleepy, and—truth be told—neither was the little Toad. He bounced up to the bed. “So what do you think about him, anyway?”
“Khoros?” Tobimar sat up and frowned, then shook his head, looking out the window to where the last purpling of the sky was fading to black. “I did some poking around into that before we left—well, you know some of it—”
“But not all. I was running around town doing some preparations of my own. And visiting old Barkboat.”
Tobimar’s smile was sympathetic, and Poplock shuffled uncomfortably; he’d spent a long time making that carefree exterior and doing things like giving all his money away to the refugees—Toads and others—endangered that reputation. Not that it bothered him, exactly, but he preferred to be approved of for his more spectacular actions, not charities.
“And,” Tobimar said, letting him off that hook, “we’ve done a lot of talking with Xavier. That’s given me perspective on the old mage.”
“Oh?” Poplock knew some of those conversations had taken place when he was doing other things—scouting the area, or sleeping while the others were on watch. “I heard part of it, but what’d you learn?”
“Khoros apparently has spent a lot of time on Zaralandar as well as on Zarathan, and manages to get his power to work there as well. According to Xavier, the two girls in their group—Nike and Aurora—had both met, or heard of, Khoros before they arrived here.”
“The one girl didn’t seem to like him much.”
“No—Xavier says he had tampered with her family somehow, made sure she was raised a certain way, and it made things very hard for her. In fact, he said that he’s pretty sure Khoros didn’t just watch their lives, but made sure their lives went in a certain direction.” Tobimar looked pensive. “I really don’t like some of what I’m hearing. I liked Master Khoros. He seemed very wise, and skilled, and very much sympathetic to people’s needs. It’s hard to imagine he could be capable of something that coldly calculating, even if I accept that he needed these people to do something for him.”
“I wouldn’t know, really. He was nice enough to me, but I was already going in the right direction, I guess.” Poplock heard a faint scuttling noise, bounded off the bed and snapped out his tongue, snaring a beetle. “Mmm. But you know, the scary thing about this is that if they’re right, he somehow either knew we’d bump into each other . . . or he was able to arrange that, without anyone knowing.”
Tobimar was silent for a while—a long while, so long that Poplock started to think his friend might have fallen asleep. “That . . . is frightening. But . . . it’s possible. I can sometimes see—sometimes sense—where sword blows are about to fall, when a branch is going to give way, that kind of thing. And sometimes I can extend my soul and push, and change what’s going to happen. It’s very crude, but legends of Khoros go back a long way, Poplock. I found references to him, with Toron’s help, in stories surviving at least three Chaoswars.”
Three? Snakes and quicksand! That’s . . . “That’s . . . that means he’s, what, forty thousand years old?”
“Or older. If I can do this kind of thing when I’m not even twenty, I suppose someone like him might be able to sense or guide results of events that are days, weeks, even months or years in the future.”
“And would be playing a game up on the level of the gods, if he could manage that.” Poplock climbed back up onto the bed, thinking. “So we’re connected with whatever Xavier’s group is. If that’s all true, anyway.”
Tobimar winced. “You mean that this is all one plan?”
“Maybe with a lot of pieces, but doesn’t that make sense?”
“Too much sense,” the Skysand Prince said after a moment. “He wants to break the Great Seal, reopen the connection between the World of Magic and the World of Knowledge, and if Kerlamion were to guess what he was up to, I’d bet that the King of the Hells could stop it now. So whatever Khoros’ plan is, it has to be not just subtle but almost unrecognizable until it all comes together. And he’s probably fighting against whatever’s doing all these attacks, too. So he’s trying to take care of all those events with some huge, overarching plan that involves getting a lot of different people to do things in a precise order.” He made a face. “But that really bothers me. It’s like I don’t have any choice, that everything’s preordained.”
&
nbsp; “Not quite that bad, though. He can try to get people to follow his plans, but he can’t have contact with the enemy, and any choices they make . . . well, he still has to hope the choices made work for his plan, no matter how good he is at predicting, because anything they do may change what we do.”
Tobimar nodded after a moment. “I . . . I guess, yes.” His tone grew firmer. “Yes, I’m sure you’re right. I can foresee a blade strike, but if my opponent has the right skills, he can counter that. My predictions, my senses, are based on what is, and what could be, and what I could do. If I’m against someone with equal or greater powers, they can change that prediction. And Khoros isn’t greater than Kerlamion or the other gods, I don’t think, so it’s still a . . .”
He broke off and suddenly smacked himself in the head. Poplock looked up with concern. “What’s wrong?”
“The Nomdas!” Tobimar shouted, remembering the cryptic words of the High Priestess of Terian in Zarathanton. “She practically told us!” His brow wrinkled as he concentrated. “What was it . . . she said, ‘There is too much at stake for those who are already a part of this great game to abandon their places.’ That was it.”
“A game. Like . . . like battlesquares?” Poplock asked, thinking of the strategy game he knew a lot of the older warriors played, with different pieces on a large carven board representing different types of combat units.
“Exactly like battlesquares,” Tobimar said, excited yet grim at the same time. “Exactly like it, except the pieces are real people . . .”
“. . . and losing the game costs you a lot more,” Poplock finished. The two looked at each other through the gloom for several minutes.
Then Tobimar shrugged. “And I guess there isn’t much we can do about it.”
Nothing we can do . . . Poplock suddenly laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s not exactly like battlesquares at all,” he said, and the amused excitement rose in his voice. “Don’t you see? This is what the gods are doing all the time, right? But the gods are playing each other, and using each other! If it’s a game, it’s a game where the pieces get to play too!”
