Taking Flight

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  "I don't want to stay in Shan all day," Irith said resentfully.

  "This place has really gone downhill since I was here, you know that? It's a dump now—ruins everywhere, half the ar­cades deserted . . ."

  "You're just mad about the Crystal Skull," Kelder said.

  "Yes, well, so what?" Irith snapped. "What difference does it make why I don't like it here? I don't like it here; I want to go."

  "We're not going anywhere until we at least try to get Abden's head back," Kelder told her.

  "Fine, then let's just get it over with, shall we?" Irith dropped her fork and turned to Asha, then stopped and gig­gled.

  Kelder turned to see why Irith was laughing, and found Asha sound asleep, her cheek resting on the oily potato slices. He smiled, then carefully lifted her head from her plate and transferred it to a folded napkin on the table.

  "All right," Irith said, before Kelder could say anything, "we get some sleep. But we don't need to wait all day—why don't we get up really, really early, maybe two hours before dawn, and . . . and do it then? And then we can still get out of town before anyone from the caravan wakes up, and they'll probably be too busy doing business to come after us right away even if they notice it's gone and figure out where we went."

  Kelder considered that for a moment, wishing he wasn't quite so exhausted himself; his fatigue made thinking diffi­cult.

  "All right," he said at last. "That will give us about four hours' sleep, I guess, which is better than nothing."

  Irith smiled at him, her first real smile since that morning. "Oh, good!" The smile vanished. "It's going to be really yucky, you know, pulling that head off that pike."

  Kelder grimaced. "I guess so," he said. "You have to do it, though; you're the only one who can fly."

  "I know." She sighed. "Let's go get some sleep."

  They went and got some sleep. They had to carry Asha to the room Irith had rented, Kelder taking her under the arms, Irith taking her feet.

  It was only at the very last moment, the candle already ex­tinguished, that Kelder realized they were not going to wake up until midday without outside help. He staggered back downstairs and promised the night watchman six bits in cop­per if he got them up on schedule.

  The watchman agreed.

  Kelder did not even remember returning to his bed; the next thing he knew was that someone was shaking him, none too gently, and someone with beery breath and a strange ac­cent was telling him, in Trader's Tongue, to wake up.

  He was too tired to think in Trader's Tongue at first, and in Shularan he advised whoever it was to go immediately to Hell, and to speak Shularan on the way.

  The shaker said, in Ethsharitic this time, that he spoke no Quorulian. This completely inappropriate response brought Kelder awake, as he tried to figure it out.

  He sat up, blinking, and recognized the night watchman.

  "It's not Quorulian," Kelder said. "It's Shularan."

  "I don't speak that, either," the watchman said in Trader's Tongue, shrugging.

  "Right," Kelder said. "Thank you for waking me."

  "Eight bits," the watchman said, holding out a palm.

  "Six," Kelder said. "When my friends are awake and we've checked the time."

  The Shanese shrugged again. "Six," he agreed. "I wait."

  Kelder glared at him for a moment, then reached over and shook Irith awake.

  Five minutes later the three of them were making their way, rather blearily, through the streets of Shan. The watch­man, richer by six bits of Irith's money, was back in his reg­ular post at the inn.

  "So I just fly up and take the head off the pike, and then we go, right?" Irith asked, stumbling over an empty bottle and narrowly avoiding whacking her head against a stone pillar.

  Kelder nodded. "That's right," he said.

  "And what are you two going to be doing?"

  "Standing watch, I guess," Kelder replied. Then he corrected himself. "No, they've probably got guards. We'll be distracting the guards."

  "Oh," Irith said. "All right."

  "There!" Asha said, pointing. "There it is!"

  "Shh!" Kelder and Irith both hushed her.

  She looked up at them, startled, but said no more.

  "Do you see any guards?" Kelder asked.

  Irith shook her head. "They must be there, though." She sighed. "Tell me again why I'm doing this."

  "Because," Kelder told her, "you promised Asha."

  Irith looked unconvinced.

  "Because I asked you to," Kelder suggested.

  Irith sighed again, nodded, and spread wings that had not been there an instant before. She flapped them once.

  Kelder started to shush her, then caught himself.

  "Just testing," she said. "They're a little stiff; I haven't flown much these last few days."

  He nodded. "Look," he said, "we'll meet you at the city gate, all right?"

  "Fine." Her wings stretched gracefully upward, flapped, and she rose toward the night sky.

  Below her, the youth and the child watched for a moment. Then Kelder shook himself out of his momentary daze and said, "Come on." Asha followed obediently as he crept to­ward the caravan, moving as silently as he could and trying to keep to the shadows as much as possible.

  The wagons were in a line along one side of an arcade that was significantly higher and wider than most, and open on both sides. Torches were mounted on each vehicle, but most had burned out, and those that remained were hardly more than stubs. What little light they cast mingled with the orange glow of the greater moon, and with light spilling over from the central square, but even so, the arcade was shadowy and dim, the caravan's bright colors reduced to scarcely more than flame yellow and shadow gray.

  Most of the wagons were closed, their shutters latched and doors barred, awnings and banners furled and stowed. Steps and benches were folded away, brakes set, wheels blocked. The draft animals and outriders' mounts had all been un­hitched and taken elsewhere for stabling, the yokes and traces and other gear all neatly tucked out of sight. Each one of the wagons had a pike held to one corner by iron loops, and atop each pike was a bandit's head.

  At first glance, Kelder saw nothing moving but the flicker­ing shadows. Then something yawned loudly.

  Kelder felt Asha tugging at the back of his tunic, but he ig­nored it as he looked for the source of the sound.

  He found it; a big, burly man in a dark tunic and kilt was leaning against a pillar, whittling. A sword hung from his belt and a long spear stood within easy reach, propped against a stone upright. There could be no doubt whatsoever that he was standing guard.

  The knife he was carving with glinted in the torchlight for a moment and a curl of wood-shaving spiraled to the pave­ment. He was awake, but not exactly intent on his job.

  The mere fact of his presence, and wakefulness, was enough to make the whole job more worrisome, though. "Damn," Kelder muttered to himself.

  "Kelder!" Asha whispered urgently.

  He turned, finger to lips, and said, "What is it?"

  "Where's Abden?"

  Kelder looked at her blankly for a moment.

  "I mean, where's Abden's head?"

  Annoyed, Kelder turned to point. "The head's right . . ."

  He stopped.

  Slowly he turned back to Asha.

  "I don't know," he said. "What does . . . what did your brother look like? That one," Kelder said, pointing to the nearest pike. "Is that him?"

  "No," Asha said. "That's Kelder—I mean, the other Kelder, Kelder the Lesser, they called him."

  "Well, I knew it wasn't me," Kelder snarled sarcastically. "What about the others? Which one is he?"

  Asha took a minute to peer up at those heads that were visible from where they stood. "I don't see Abden," she said at last.

  The head was not right there, Kelder realized.

  "Damn!" he said again.

  Chapter 16

  "Now, how many heads are there?" Kelder asked himself as he scanned t
he skies for Irith. "Nobody's about to take a severed head inside his wagon at night, not if he's sleeping there—that would be too creepy, just asking to be haunted." He glanced down at Asha, hoping for some useful suggestion, but all he saw was that she was on the verge if tears. He quickly turned his gaze upward again.

  "No one would take one inside," he said, still addressing himself, "so they're all out here on the wagons, and it's just a matter of finding the right one, right?"

  Asha made a muffled noise of agreement.

  Kelder frowned. It was just a matter of finding the right one, but Asha was the only one who could do that, since she was the only one who knew her brother's face.

  Irith must have realized this by now—so where was she? Why hadn't she come back for further instructions? All he could see was a small bird, silhouetted against the lesser moon as it climbed the eastern sky.

  He shrugged and looked down at Asha. "We'll have to sneak up as close as we can and see if we can find the right . . . uh . . . the right pike. Then we'll tell Irith which one it is . . ."

  There was a sudden flapping of wings, and Irith was de­scending, a few feet away.

  "Kelder," she said angrily, "I don't know which head!"

  "We just thought of that," Kelder agreed.

  "So what do we do?"

  "Can you carry Asha when you fly? Then she could point it out."

  Irith looked the girl over, considering, then shook her head. "No," she said. "Not a chance."

  Kelder had expected that. "All right, then," he said, "We sneak Asha up as close as we can on foot, and let her look until she finds the right one,"

  "Maybe Irith could get all of them?" Asha suggested. "Then we could go back and burn all the bodies . . ."

  She realized that both Kelder and Irith were glaring at her, and her voice faded away.

  "No," Irith said. "Just one."

  "All right," Asha said. "I'll go look. But I can't go alone."

  "Of course not," Kelder agreed.

  Irith glanced over at the wagons, the patchwork of light and shadow, the big man scraping away bits of wood with his knife.

  "You two go ahead," she said. "I'll wait here."

  Kelder started to agree, then paused. Irith was the one who had to know just where the head was, after all. But it wasn't worth the argument. "All right," he said. "Come on, Asha."

  Together the two crept closer.

  There were a dozen wagons; the guard stood beside the seventh in line, by Kelder's quick count, and they had ap­proached near the ninth. "This way," he whispered, beckoning Asha toward the front of the column.

  After all, there were more wagons in that direction, even if it was farther to go.

  The head on the eighth wagon was facing the opposite di­rection, but Asha shook her own head no; the hair was wrong.

  The next faced them, but again, Asha indicated that it was not the one they wanted. They were both tiptoeing now; if the guard happened to look up from his whittling, and if he wasn't blinded by the tangle of shadows and torchlight, he would be looking right at them.

  The head on the sixth wagon was facing away, and Asha was not completely sure, but didn't think it looked like Abden.

  Kelder was beginning to think they should have turned the other way and checked the tail end first when Asha made a strangled noise.

  "That's it," she said, pointing. "That's Abden."

  The fifth wagon was green trimmed with gold, and the Ethsharitic runes on the side said something about someone named Doran of someplace—Ship-something, safe place for ships, something like that; Kelder did not bother to puzzle the whole thing out. It was obviously the name of some Ethsharitic merchant. The pike at the front corner displayed the head of a young man, and Kelder thought there might be some resemblance to Asha, but he wasn't sure he wasn't just imagining it.

  "All right," he whispered. "Let's go back and tell Irith."

  Asha nodded, turned, and began to scamper back.

  Her bare feet slapped on the paving stones. Kelder started after her and had taken perhaps three long steps when some­thing registered.

  He turned, and saw that the guard had lowered his knife and carving and was peering out into the gloom, following the sound of Asha's footsteps.

  Kelder decided that he didn't want to be seen just yet. He fell back into a nearby shadow, under the overhang of a two-story shopfront.

  "Irith?" Asha called. "Where are you?"

  Kelder hissed to himself with exasperation.

  "Irith?" Asha called again, more loudly.

  She was standing, Kelder thought, at about the spot where they had separated, plainly visible in the light of the two moons. The guard was watching her intently now.

  What's more, another guard, whom they had not previously seen, had heard the sound and was peering between the wag­ons from the other side of the caravan. This one was tall and thin, with a black beard that needed trimming—it straggled messily down onto his chest.

  There was no sign of Irith.

  A cat meowed nearby, and Kelder turned for an instant, looking for the animal, but didn't see it. He turned quickly back to Asha.

  "Kelder!" a breathy voice said behind him, quietly.

  He started and turned to find Irith standing there, finger to her lips.

  "How did you .. ." he began.

  "Which one?" Irith whispered hoarsely.

  "Which what?" For a moment he thought she was asking something about the two guards, and he tried to figure out what she wanted to know.

  "Which wagon, stupid?"

  "Oh," Kelder said, collecting his wits. "The green one, right there." He pointed.

  Irith nodded and spread wings that had not been there an instant before. "You go distract them," she said.

  Then she launched herself fluttering upward.

  Kelder blinked and looked up, watching her ascent.

  "Irith?" Asha wailed. "Kelder?"

  Kelder frowned; the best distraction was probably the sim­plest, he decided. He stepped out of the shadows. "Over here," he called. He trotted toward the little girl, who was standing alone in the street, on the verge of panic.

  The first guard had stepped away from the pillar and tucked his carving under his belt. Now he slid his knife into its sheath and picked up the spear. The other guard was be­tween two of the wagons now, facing away, scanning the little plaza on that side of the arcade.

  Kelder tried hard not to be seen looking at either of them as he came up to Asha and said, a little more loudly than nec­essary, "Here I am, Indra."

  Indra was the first girl's name he could think of, other than Asha or Irith.

  "Kelder!" She spotted him and dashed toward him, arms out.

  At least that was one advantage of having the most com­mon name in the World, he thought; nobody was ever going to track him down by using it.

  He met Asha halfway and picked her up in a big embrace, then spun her around—which gave him a chance to look at the nearer guard without seeming to.

  The man was standing, watching the two of them. He was not looking at the green and gold wagon. Kelder forced him­self not to look at it, either. He lowered Asha to the pavement and then glanced casually at the guard.

  That individual was now looking either way along the row of wagons. He might, Kelder thought, have guessed that this little scene was being played out to distract him.

  At least, that was why Kelder was doing it; Asha had ap­parently lost track of what she was supposed to be doing and was acting on impulse. In her excitement over finding Abden's head she had completely forgotten everything else about the plan. That was fine, really; she was doing an excel­lent job of being a distraction and probably acting far more naturally than she would have if she had remembered.

  They did not, however, want the guard to realize he was being deliberately decoyed.

  The other guard, Kelder noticed with a twinge of concern, was not in sight at the moment.

  Spear in one hand, his other hand on the hilt
of his sword, the visible guard was peering into the darkness.

  "Looking for something?" Kelder called.

  Startled, the guard turned to look at him silently for a sec­ond and then shook his head. He said nothing.

  "I've lost my wife," Kelder said, pressing on. "The girl's sister. She's tall, with black hair, wearing a green tunic and a brown skirt—have you seen her?" He tried very hard to ig­nore Asha's expression of surprise as she heard him tell such lies.

  The guard shook his head again.

  "You're sure?" Kelder insisted.

  "Haven't seen anybody," the man said in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. "Except you two."

  "Well, if you do . . ." Kelder began.

  "Excuse me," the guard said, interrupting, "I've got rounds to make." He began walking along the line of wagons, stoop­ing every so often to peer under them, occasionally poking his spear into the shadows. He called something Kelder didn't catch and was answered by a deeper voice from the other side.

  Kelder was very relieved indeed to see that the near-side guard had started out toward the back of the line, rather than the front. He hoped the other one had, as well.

  "Well, if you see her," Kelder shouted after them, "tell her we'll meet her at the inn." Then he turned away, taking Asha by the hand and pulling her along.

  "Kelder," Asha said, starting to protest.

  He jerked viciously at her wrist, and she followed without further objection.

  He led her quickly around a building, into an alley, and out of the guards' sight. Then he stopped, held a finger to his lips, and peered cautiously back around the corner.

  "What is it?" Asha asked.

  Kelder waved a hand at her, and she fell silent.

  The heavier guard had reached the last wagon; the one with the sloppy beard met him there, and the two exchanged a few words—Kelder could just barely hear their voices, and could not make out any at all of what was said.

  Above the arcade, orange moonlight shone briefly on a fluttering white wing, and a shadowy shape rose toward the heavens, something vaguely round cradled in one arm.

  Kelder smiled.