Taking Flight

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Startled, Irith turned and looked as the little girl panted into the dooryard. The waif turned pleading eyes up toward the Flyer, and Irith corrected herself.

  "Two friends," she said.

  Kelder smiled with relief. Irith could be compassionate to­ward the living, however callous she might have appeared to­ward the dead bandits, and Kelder was very pleased to see it. Maybe he could use this miserable creature to draw himself and Irith closer, as well as fulfilling the prophecy.

  "Well, come in then, both of you," Larsi said, beckoning. Kelder hastened to obey, and the girl scrambled after him.

  They found themselves in a great stone-floored kitchen, surrounded by blackened oak and black iron and stone in a dozen shades of gray. A wooden cistern stood on an iron frame over a stone sink; stone-topped tables lined stone walls between wooden doors. Pale tallow candles shone from black iron sconces. The only touches of color in the entire place were the fire on the great hearth and the vegetables spread on a counter—orange carrots and pale-green leeks and fresh red-skinned potatoes.

  "Go on, then, out with you," Larsi said, waving them to­ward one of the doors. "You've no business in my kitchen, and Irith, I wish I'd never shown you that back way!"

  "I'd have found it anyway," Irith retorted, grinning. "You can see it from the air."

  Larsi huffed and herded the three of them through the door into the main room.

  This was brighter than the kitchen, but not much more col­orful; here the dominant hues were black and brown, rather than black and gray. Brown wood tables and chairs, wood-paneled walls, a black slate hearth, and a wooden floor were illuminated by a dozen lanterns and in use by a dozen patrons.

  "You'll have the stew," Larsi said, as she showed them to chairs at the near end of one of the two long tables that took up most of the space.

  Irith nodded. "And that beer you make," she said.

  Larsi threw a significant glance at the blue-clad girl, and Kelder said, "She'll drink water."

  The girl nodded eagerly.

  Larsi snorted, then turned back to the kitchen.

  When the door was shut again Kelder commented, "Doesn't look like much." He looked around himself at the complete absence of paint, brass, or brightwork of any kind.

  Irith shrugged. "It isn't," she admitted, "but it's the best food in Angarossa." Then she turned to stare at the girl.

  Kelder turned his attention to her, as well. Here was his chance to show Irith that he could be kind and understanding and firm, all at once. "Now," he said, "who are you, and why were you following us?"

  The girl blinked, hesitated, and then said, "My name is Asha of Amramion—and I think you killed my brother."

  Kelder and Irith stared at the girl. That was not an answer they had expected.

  She stared defiantly back.

  "I've never killed anyone," Kelder informed her.

  "I don't think I killed your brother," Irith said.

  Something in the back of Kelder's mind took note of the fact that Irith hadn't said "Neither have I." He was not happy about the implications of that and fought down the entire sub­ject, preferring to concentrate on Asha.

  At least for the moment.

  "Well, somebody killed him," Asha said, "and you were there."

  "We were?" Kelder asked, startled.

  Asha nodded.

  "Where?" he inquired.

  "On the road this afternoon, a league west of here," she re­plied.

  "You mean your brother was one of those bandits?" Irith asked.

  Asha, somewhat reluctantly, nodded.

  For a moment nobody spoke. Then Kelder said, "We didn't kill anybody; some demons did."

  Asha looked openly skeptical.

  "No, really," Irith told her. "It was really gross, I mean, all these little goblin creatures popped up out of nowhere and started hacking away at everybody. It was really disgusting."

  "Where did they come from?" Asha demanded, clearly not convinced.

  "Just pop, right up out of the ground!" Irith said, gesturing broadly.

  "A demonologist summoned them," Kelder explained.

  "What demonologist?" Asha asked. "I didn't see any de­monologist. Not unless it was one of you two."

  Kelder grimaced, put a hand to his chest, and raised his eyebrows. "Do I look like a demonologist?" he asked.

  Asha glared at him without answering, then pointed at Irith and said, "She was flying, I saw it."

  "Sure," Irith said with a nod, "I was flying. I can have wings if I want to; I'm a shapeshifter. But that's wizardry, not demonology. I don't know anything about demons."

  "Well, how do I know that it wasn't wizardry that killed my brother and all his friends?" Asha demanded. "All I have for it is your word!"

  Kelder looked at Irith and shrugged.

  "I don't know," he said. "I guess you'll just have to trust us."

  "Why should I?"

  Up until this point, Asha had spoken in a rational and fairly adult manner, despite her diminutive size and voice, but now her voice cracked, and she was obviously on the verge of tears.

  "Because we didn't do it," Kelder told her. "Honestly, we didn't."

  "Well, then, who did?" Asha demanded. "I was following Abden, but they were on their horses and I couldn't keep up, and when I got there they were all dead, and you two were standing there arguing right in the middle, and I watched and I followed and I never saw anybody there but you two . . ."

  Her voice broke completely, and she began to sniffle.

  Kelder tried to think of something comforting to say, but before he could, Irith asked, "What would you do if it was us?"

  Asha's tears suddenly stopped, and her face twisted in an­ger. She reached down under the table and came up with a knife—an ordinary belt knife, not any sort of fighting knife, but quite capable of doing serious damage.

  Kelder grabbed her wrists, both of them.

  "We didn't kill anybody," he insisted. "We were walking behind a caravan, and the bandits attacked it and rode right into a trap—there was a demonologist there, and 1 don't know much about magic, but he had demons appearing out of no­where in less than a minute, so it must have been all set up in advance, it can't be that easy to summon them."

  Asha stared up at him and said nothing.

  "The caravan went on, and so did we, and we must have just gotten to the . . . the dead when you got there, so you saw us there—but it wasn't us, we didn't kill anybody."

  "What caravan?" Asha said, fighting back sobs. "I didn't see any caravan!"

  "Drop the knife, girl," Larsi's voice said, and the tip of a sword suddenly thrust up against Asha's throat.

  The three travelers looked up, startled.

  Larsi was standing over them with a laden tray, and beside her stood a young man with a naked sword. The young man was thin and pimply and had his sword against Asha's neck.

  Asha stared and refused to move; Kelder released one wrist and took the knife away from her. She didn't resist.

  He threw the weapon on the table and told Larsi, "It's nothing, really. She's just upset."

  Larsi glared, then gestured.

  The sword was withdrawn from Asha's throat.

  "Fine friends you bring in here, Irith," Larsi said in a voice that dripped scorn.

  Irith shrugged and grinned. "Just a little harmless excite­ment," she said. "Traveling can be so boring!"

  "I like it boring," Larsi said. She waved an arm at the other customers, and for the first time Kelder realized they were all staring at the little group at the end of the table. "My custom­ers like it boring. They don't like kids screaming and people yelling and blades being drawn, any more than I do. Now, if you three can keep it boring, you can stay, but if there's any more excitement, out!"

  "Yes, Larsi," Irith said, ducking her head in a sort of nod.

  "Agreed, mistress," Kelder said.

  Asha glared.

  Larsi glared back, and at last the little girl broke and said, "All right, I prom
ise."

  "Good," Larsi said.

  The young man sheathed his sword and left, while Larsi lowered the tray, displaying three plates of stew, three mugs, and a few other implements.

  When Larsi had served out the contents of the tray and de­parted, Kelder took a good look around the room, which showed him that, except for an occasional nervous glance, the other customers had returned to their own affairs.

  Thus reassured, he turned to Asha and said, "All right, now, tell us the whole story. What were you doing out there following your brother? Why was he a bandit in Angarossa, if you're from Amramion?"

  Asha was shoveling stew into her mouth with a wooden spoon, and Kelder realized that she probably hadn't eaten all day. He waited until she paused before repeating his ques­tions.

  "Amramion isn't exactly the other side of the World from here," Asha retorted. "Two days ago I was still living at home."

  Kelder frowned. "All right, then," he said, "why aren't you living at home now?"

  "Because I came after Abden."

  "But why? Aren't you a bit young to be out on your own?"

  Asha hesitated. She studied Kelder's face, and then Irith's. "I ran away," she said.

  "Go on," Kelder said.

  "I ran away," she repeated, "and I didn't have anywhere else to go, I didn't have any family or friends to stay with, ex­cept Abden."

  "And he was one of those bandits?"

  She nodded. "He ran away last year," she said, "and he didn't know where else to go, so he went east, and he got stopped by bandits, and he didn't have any money, and he wasn't worth any ransom, but he was big and strong and knew how to fight, so they let him join. He sent me a mes­sage and told me about it."

  "And then they all got killed today," Kelder said.

  Asha nodded again and sniffled.

  "But what were you doing?"

  "I ran away the day before yesterday," she said. "I couldn't . . . I mean, I wanted to see Abden and stay with him. I found him this morning, and he said that I couldn't stay there, that they didn't have any way to take care of me, but I hung around and tried to think of something, because I couldn't go back home. And then the scout came back and said a caravan was coming, so they all rode out to meet it, and I ran after them, but when I got there they were all dead, and you two were there and nobody else was, and I didn't know what to do, so I followed you."

  She looked up at him. "And here we are," she said.

  He looked down at her. "How old are you, Asha?" he asked.

  She frowned. "Not sure," she said. "Nine, I think."

  Not sure? Kelder started at that. How could she not know how old she was?

  He pushed that aside and said, "Nine's too young to be out on your own."

  "I know that," she said. "That's why I came to stay with Abden!" She sniffled. "And he's gone now."

  "So shouldn't you go home, then?" Irith asked.

  "No," Asha said flatly.

  Kelder looked at Irith, who shrugged, tossing her hair de­lightfully.

  "What are you going to do, then?" Kelder asked.

  Asha looked down at the table. "I don't know," she whis­pered.

  "What would you like to do?" Irith asked.

  The child looked up again. "I'd like to find that caravan and kill everybody in it! They killed my brother, and he wasn't going to hurt anybody!"

  "You don't know that," Kelder said. "Or at least they didn't know that. And he was going to rob them, wasn't he? That might well hurt them; they make their livings trading, they could starve."

  Asha glared at him and said nothing.

  "Being a bandit is a dangerous business," Kelder pointed out. "Your brother must have known that."

  She turned away.

  "Killing them wouldn't help your brother any, you know."

  "Nothing can help him now," Asha said bitterly. "He won't even get a decent funeral."

  "Well," Kelder said, considering that, "maybe we could do something about that, the three of us. We could go back and build a pyre for him." The prophecy was running through his head—a champion of the lost and forlorn, honored by the dead. "We don't have a theurgist or a necromancer to guide his soul, but at least we could set it free."

  "No, we couldn't," Asha said.

  "Why not?" Kelder asked, puzzled.

  "Because," she reminded him, "they took his head."

  Kelder had completely forgotten that unsavory detail. Asha was quite correct; as he had noticed, the caravan had taken all the bandits' heads, impaled on pikes as a warning to other would-be attackers. That was standard procedure for thieves, Kelder knew, but he had never before considered the religious consequences.

  If someone died and nobody burned the body, the soul would be trapped for weeks, or months, or even years, unable to fly free and search for a way to the gods of the afterlife. It would be prey to ghost-catchers and nightstalkers and de­monologists, who respectively enslaved souls, ate them, or used them to pay demons for their services. That wasn't just theory; there were enough ways for magicians to communi­cate with the dead that the exact nature of ghosts was well es­tablished.

  And one established fact was that you couldn't burn a body properly unless you had at least the heart and the head. It was better to have the whole thing, but the heart and head were the absolute minimum.

  Cutting off a thief's head and posting it suddenly seemed like a rather nasty custom.

  It also, it seemed, offered Kelder an opportunity to do something that was a very clear and definite step toward achieving his promised destiny. If he were to champion Asha, who was undoubtedly lost and forlorn, by freeing her broth­er's soul, he would doubtlessly be honored by that dead soul; that was a good part of his fate right there.

  It would also impress Irith, which he wouldn't mind at all. He could be a hero to this little girl and her dead brother, at any rate, and without slaying any dragons or doing anything else all that dangerous.

  "Maybe," he said hesitantly, "maybe we could get his head back somehow."

  "Are you crazy?" Irith said, even as Asha looked up at Kelder with dawning hope in her eyes.

  That was not the reaction Kelder had hoped for. "I don't think so," he replied, a bit defensively. "I mean, why couldn't we? They don't need them all, just for display!"

  Irith frowned, opened her mouth, then closed it again.

  "You are crazy," she said.

  Kelder glowered at her—this was not at all the reaction he had expected, but he was not about to back down now in front of Asha, after getting her hopes up—and especially not with part of the prophecy at stake. "It wouldn't hurt to ask," he said. "What harm could it do? You know that the caravan is here in town, we both saw it . . ."

  Asha suddenly became very attentive indeed, and Irith sighed.

  "Listen," she said, "the whole thing is insane, but if you've just got to try it, take some time to think it over, all right? You don't want to be roaming the streets of Angarossa at night, and I'm not going to tell you how to get there from here. Let's just wait until morning, and if Asha's still here and you still want to try it, we can talk then."

  "All right," Kelder agreed. The idea of dashing out into the night was not very appealing, once he stopped to consider it, and this sounded like an excellent compromise.

  "But what do I do tonight!" Asha wailed.

  Kelder looked down at her, then across at Irith.

  Irith's hair was gleaming golden in the lamplight; her white tunic had somehow managed to stay clean on the road, and that and her pale skin made her look like an island of light against the dark wood paneling behind her. He and she would be taking a room at the inn, of course—it would use up al­most half of his remaining funds, he estimated, but that didn't seem important. He had been looking forward to sharing a room with her again.

  The shapeshifter nodded slightly. Kelder sighed. There were, he now saw, some serious drawbacks to being a cham­pion of the lost and forlorn.

  "You can stay with us tonight," he said re
luctantly.

  Chapter 8

  There were times during the night when Kelder se­riously considered trying to approach Irith, despite the little girl curled up beside the sleeping shapeshifter, but he resisted the temptation. He woke several times, as he was unaccus­tomed to sleeping on a wooden floor; there was only one bed, and Asha and Irith were sharing that. Each time he woke, he thought over the situation and stayed where he was.

  It was easier after the candle had burned out, and he could no longer see the graceful curve of Irith's body on the bed.

  When he awoke for the day, not particularly well rested, Irith was already up and dressed and gazing out the window. Asha was still asleep, curled into a tight little ball on the bed.

  Judging by the light, it was an hour or more after dawn— Kelder felt vaguely guilty about sleeping so late, but then he had certainly not slept well, so perhaps it balanced out.

  "Should we wake her?" Irith asked in a whisper, gesturing toward the bed.

  "No," Kelder said, "let her sleep. The poor girl must have been exhausted. She should be safe at home, not out walking the highway."

  Irith nodded agreement. "It's awful about her brother, isn't it?"

  Kelder nodded in return. "What about breakfast?" he asked.

  "I haven't done anything about it yet," she replied.

  "I'll go see what's to be had, then," Kelder suggested.

  "Do that," Irith agreed.

  Kelder found his way downstairs. In the dining room a dozen people were eating—most of them, he noticed, just fin­ishing up. Larsi spotted Kelder as he looked around. "Are you and the Flyer ready to eat, then?" she asked. "I suppose you worked up an appetite last night."

  Kelder started to make a defensive answer mentioning Asha's presence, but thought better of it. After all, when they had taken the room they had said it was for two, not three, and an extra charge was not inconceivable.

  Instead, he simply said, "No, we didn't." Almost as an af­terthought, he added, "But we'd like breakfast, anyway."

  "Well, you're in luck; the chickens were laying well today, and I've got four eggs left. There's salt ham, and pears, and plenty more. Eggs, ham, and tea for a copper round. Do you want a tray for your room, or will you eat down here?"