Kelder nodded, pleased that she seemed to have missed his accidental suggestion.
"That would be great!" Irith said. "I don't like the idea of that awful old man thinking about me all the time." She paused. "Do we all need to go?"
"Well," Kelder said, "we probably need to have you there so the wizard can see how your spell works, and we need Ezdral so we can use the counterspell on him, and Asha doesn't have anywhere else to go except with us, and I want to see that everything works out all right."
Irith nodded. "I don't like the idea of being around him," she said, "but I guess I can stand it as far as Ethshar."
"Why do we have to go all the way to Ethshar?" Asha asked plaintively.
"Because that's where all the best wizards are, of course," Irith told her.
"There are wizards in other places besides Ethshar, aren't there?" Asha asked.
"Of course there are," Kelder agreed, "and we'll look them up along the way—we'll ask in every village and castle along the Great Highway. I've always heard, though, that for real, serious wizardry, the best place to look is Ethshar of the Spices." Besides, Zindré's predictions clearly implied that he would see Ethshar before returning home; what other great city was there? The Great Highway ran between Shan and Ethshar, it didn't go to Sardiron of the Waters or Tintallion of the Coast or any other important cities.
"You can find good magicians in any of the three Ethshars, really," Irith said, "but Ethshar of the Spices is supposed to be the biggest and best, and it's certainly the closest. I've never been to the other two." She sipped her ale and added, "And I haven't been to Ethshar of the Spices in ages!"
"There are three Ethshars?" Asha asked in a pitiful little voice.
"Four, actually," Irith said, counting them off on her fingers. "There are the three in the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, of course—Ethshar of the Spices, Ethshar of the Rocks, and Ethshar of the Sands—and then there's a place that calls itself Ethshar of the Plains that's one of the Small Kingdoms, one of the smallest, over to the southeast of here, just south of Thuth. It split off from Dria right after the Great War ended, I think. Or maybe even before the war ended."
"I didn't know that," Kelder remarked. "I thought there were just the three big ones."
Irith shrugged. "Well, nobody knows all the Small Kingdoms," she said, "or at least I don't think so. There are more than a hundred in all, and who could remember that many? But I know a lot; I've traveled all over the northern half of them, not just along the Great Highway."
"Well," Kelder said, lifting his ale in salute, "you've certainly had time for it."
Irith eyed him, trying to decide whether he meant anything insulting, and decided that he did not. She smiled at him and sipped her ale.
Kelder watched her, wondering whether her enchantments could all be broken, whether she would be any different if they were, and whether, if both of those were the case, the changes would all be for the better.
Chapter 22
The first sign that Ezdral was finally waking up was when he let out his breath in a long, loud whoosh and stopped snoring.
Kelder and Asha turned to watch him; Irith, sitting by the window brushing her hair, paid no attention.
The old man had not stirred, his eyelids had not so much as flickered, when the three of them had carried him inside, hauled him up the stairs, and dumped him unceremoniously on the little rag rug in their rented room. He had slept the night through without complaint.
Fortunately, his snoring had not been constant, so that the others were able to sleep, as well.
Now he smacked his lips noisily, wheezed slightly, and then blinked.
His eyes opened, widened, and then closed again. His hoarse breath stopped for a moment. He made a guttural noise and brought one clawed hand up to wipe at his gummy eyes. Then he slowly, carefully, lifted his lids.
He was looking at a tidy little rug, a well-swept plank floor, and one corner of the featherbed Kelder and Irith had innocently shared. Kelder had wished that they hadn't been quite so innocent, but with Asha in the cot nearby and Ezdral on the floor, he hadn't pressed his point.
The old man turned his head and spotted first Asha, and then Kelder. He blinked, and slowly, cautiously pushed himself up into a sitting position. He made a noise that might have been construed as "Good morning" by someone who spoke archaic Mezgalonese, then cleared his throat and said the same thing, more clearly, in Trader's Tongue.
Then he turned and looked around the room—or at least, he started to.
When his gaze fell upon Irith, sitting by the window humming to herself, it was as if he had been struck. His mouth fell open, his eyes widened; his shoulders tensed, jerking his hands up off the floor, and he swayed unsteadily.
"Irith," he said hoarsely.
"Good morning, Ezdral," Irith said, not looking at him.
"Irith," he said again, his voice stronger now. He started to rise.
Irith turned to face him and announced, "If you touch me, Ezdral, I'll be out this window and flying away before your fingers can close, and I swear by all the gods that if that happens, you'll never see me again."
Ezdral froze as he was, crouched on one knee, staring at her.
"And don't stare at me," Irith said pettishly. "It's rude."
Ezdral quickly averted his gaze, looking at the rug instead.
"Irith," he said, "it's been so long . . ."
"Yes, I know," she said. "I guess it must have been pretty awful."
"I love you," Ezdral said.
"I know," Irith replied. "You can't help it."
"I'll always love you," the old man insisted.
"Well, maybe not," Irith said. "We're hoping to fix that."
Ezdral blinked and risked a quick look at Irith.
The window faced southeast, and the sun was pouring in behind Irith, turning her freshly brushed hair into a halo of golden fire, outlining her in light. Ezdral gasped in awe.
"Kelder," Irith said beseechingly, "you tell him." She looked away, out the window.
"Tell me what?" Ezdral asked, still staring at Irith. Kelder could see him trembling at the sight of her.
"Ezdral," Kelder said gently, "do you know why you love Irith so much, even after she deserted you and you haven't seen her in so long?"
"Because she's the most perfect, beautiful creature in the World . . ." the old man replied, before his voice trailed off uncertainly.
"No," Kelder told him uneasily, "it's because she enchanted you."
Ezdral frowned and glanced quickly at Kelder before turning back to his object of worship.
"She enchanted you, Ezdral," Kelder insisted. "She used a love spell on you, a charm called Fendel's Infatuous Love Spell, and it's permanent, and she didn't know how to take it off! It's all magic! It's just a spell, a trick!" His voice rose until he was shouting as he concluded, "That's why you love her!"
Ezdral frowned again.
"No," he said, "that can't be it. I mean, maybe she did, but I'd love her anyway, I know I would. By all the gods, just look at her! Have you ever seen anything so radiantly lovely?"
Involuntarily, Kelder looked and had to admit to himself that in fact no, he had never seen anything else so radiantly lovely—but he didn't say it aloud. That didn't matter. Ezdral was enchanted, and besides, looks weren't everything.
She certainly was beautiful, though; Kelder had to swallow hard before he could continue.
"It's a spell, Ezdral, really. Maybe you would have loved her anyway, but it probably wouldn't have been such an obsession. Anyway, we talked last night, and we all agreed that it wasn't right for you to be enchanted like this, and we're all going to take you to Ethshar of the Spices and find a wizard who can break the spell. Or maybe we'll find one on the way."
"You don't need to do that," Ezdral said, his gaze still fixed entirely on the object of his adoration. "I'm perfectly happy like this."
"But you wouldn't be," Kelder said desperately, "if Irith wasn't her
e."
Ezdral's head snapped around. "She's not leaving, is she?" he asked. It snapped back. "Irith, you aren't leaving?"
Irith put down the hairbrush and let out a sigh. She stared helplessly at Kelder.
"No, she's not leaving," Kelder said, "as long as you agree to come with us to Ethshar and get the spell removed."
"All right," Ezdral said. "Whatever you want, Irith, I'll be glad to do it. If you want the spell off, that's fine."
"I want the spell off," she said, "and don't stare at me like that!"
Ezdral's gaze instantly dropped to the floor again.
"Whatever you want," he mumbled. "Anything, Irith, anything at all—just don't leave me again."
Kelder watched this display of utter devotion with growing dismay. Ezdral was so abject, so docile, so completely at Irith's disposal.
No one, Kelder thought, should ever be so much in someone else's power.
If this was what a love spell did, he told himself, they shouldn't be allowed.
Chapter 23
Before they left the inn, Irith decreed that Ezdral must be cleaned up; Irith refused to go anywhere with him in his filthy, bedraggled state. Ezdral yielded to this without protest, and while the girls ate their breakfast, Kelder and two members of the inn's staff set about the task.
Hair and beard were trimmed; a comb was brought and promptly lost in tangles. Hair and beard were trimmed again, and the comb recovered and put to use.
One assistant cook tackled that, while the other took away the tunic and breeches to see what could be done with them.
Kelder drew a bath and vigorously applied washrags and sponges to the old man's back while Ezdral addressed the front himself.
Once dried, Kelder thought, he might be almost presentable.
Then the old man's clothes were returned.
The breeches had come apart; the thread holding the seams was rotten and had given way under the stress of cleaning.
The tunic was still in one piece, but looked worse than ever—some of the stains had come out, but others had darkened, and yet others had bleached, giving the garment a much wider range of colors than it had had before. Threadbare patches were more obvious with the protective layer of grease removed.
Kelder looked at the fabric in despair.
"Now what do we do?" he said. "You can't go marching down the highway naked!"
The assistant cooks conferred quietly, the female one casting occasional smirking glances at Ezdral's nudity.
"Do you have any more money?" the male asked.
Kelder looked up at the young man, then at Ezdral, who shrugged. "I don't know," Kelder said, "Irith might."
"Well, I've got some old clothes I'd sell," the cook said. "They ought to fit."
"I don't have any better idea," Ezdral said.
Irith did have money, and the clothes did fit.
"This is getting expensive," she complained as the four of them trudged away from the inn.
Kelder glanced at Ezdral, who was now neatly clad in a light-green tunic trimmed with yellow and a dark-green kilt with black embroidery at the hem. The old man was barely recognizable as the drunk who had accosted them in Shan.
"Isn't it worth it, though?" Kelder said. "And I think you owed him something."
Irith didn't reply.
Due to their late start they didn't reach the village of Sinodita until midafternoon, and by then both Asha and Ezdral were too tired to continue. They settled in at the Flying Carpet and rested.
Kelder apologized to Bardec the Innkeeper, but even so, that gentleman insisted that Irith pay for the room and meals in advance.
Irith grumbled but paid, and Kelder spent the remainder of the afternoon looking around the town for odd jobs whereby he could earn a few coins. By sunset he had accumulated seven bits in copper and a pouch of dried figs by chopping wood, stacking it, and helping capture an escaped goat. He had also heard scandalous gossip about the company Queen Kiramé kept in her bedchamber, gripes about the idiocy and malevolence of King Caren of Angarossa, theories that Irith the Flyer was actually a minor goddess in disguise and her presence an omen of good fortune, and considerable discussion of the prospects for the coming harvest in the richer farmlands to the south, and what the effects would be on markets and the local livestock-based economy.
It was rather pleasant, really, to hear the everyday chatter of ordinary people, to listen to voices other than Irith's velvet soprano, Asha's high-pitched whine, and Ezdral's oushka-scarred muttering. When he joined the others for supper he was tired but in high spirits.
Kelder was too tired even to mind particularly when he discovered the sleeping arrangements—the larger bed was too narrow to hold two adults, so Irith and Asha shared that, while he took the other bed and Ezdral got a pallet on the floor.
They made better time the following day, passing Castle Angarossa at midday and coming upon the battlefield early in the afternoon. Abden's cairn was undisturbed, but the other corpses were gone—none of the travelers could do any more than guess at what had become of them. Kelder's own guess was that some of the local inhabitants had been sufficiently public-spirited to remove such an obvious health hazard.
The hard part of their self-imposed task proved to be finding enough combustibles to build a proper pyre; with the highway tidied up there was very little to be found, and in the end Kelder resorted to knocking at the door of a nearby farmhouse and paying far too much of Irith's money, as well as all his own seven bits, for a wagonload of stovewood and some flammable trash. Pleas that it was needed for the humanitarian gesture of a proper funeral were countered with remarks about the expense and effort involved in obtaining the wood in the first place and the discomforts of eating undercooked food or sleeping in a cold house.
Several wagons and a full-blown caravan passed during the period between their initial arrival at the cairn and the eventual lighting of the pyre, and none of them stopped or provided any assistance at all. In the end, though, Kelder struck a spark, fanned it into a flame, and stepped back as it gradually spread through the pile on which Abden's mutilated remains lay.
"I wonder if we'll see the ghost," Asha said, staring.
"You probably won't," Irith said. "People usually don't, especially after so long." She paused, then added, "Sometimes I do, though, because of the magic."
"Tell us if you see him," Asha said. "Tell me if he's smiling."
Irith nodded agreement, then leaned over and whispered to Kelder, "He's probably gone mad by now, being trapped in two places for so long."
Kelder frowned and whispered back, "If he has, will he recover?"
Irith shrugged. "Who knows? I'm no necromancer."
It took the better part of an hour before the corpse was consumed, and Irith did not have the stamina to watch constantly; finally, though, she glanced up and started.
"There!" she said.
The others looked, but saw nothing more than rising smoke and crackling flame.
"Was he smiling?" Asha asked eagerly.
"I didn't see," Irith said. "He was facing the wrong way, and I just caught a glimpse." She hesitated. "I'm not really sure I saw anything." She noticed the expression on Kelder's face and added, "Really!"
"He's gone, then?" Ezdral asked.
"I guess so," Irith said.
Kelder noticed that Asha was crying silently, tears running down her cheeks, her chest heaving.
"I guess we can go, then," Ezdral said, with a look at the descending sun. "Which way? Back to Castle Angarossa?"
Asha looked up at him. "Why would we go back there?" she asked through her tears.
"For someplace to sleep," Ezdral said. "It's the closest place."
"But it's the wrong direction," Kelder pointed out.
"It's pretty far to Yondra Keep," Irith responded. "We couldn't get there before dark."
"We can sleep outdoors, then," Kelder said.
Irith considered that as Kelder turned away fro
m the pyre and set out westward. She ran after him and said, "Listen, Kelder, maybe we could find a wizard in Castle Angarossa who could break Ezdral's enchantment . . ."
"Are there any good wizards there?" Kelder asked, cutting her off.
"Well, not that I know of," she admitted. "But I mean, I don't really know . . ."
Kelder didn't answer; he simply walked on, away from Castle Angarossa.
"Look, you like to do good things for people, right?" Irith persisted. "And all this trouble with Asha's brother was King Caren's fault, right? So maybe you could do something about it . . ."
"Like what?" Kelder demanded. "I'm an unarmed traveler without so much as a bent copper bit in my pocket, and he's a king, with a castle and guards." Championing the lost and forlorn had to have limits; a child and a drunk were quite enough. The people of Angarossa and the traders who used the highway did not strike Kelder as being sufficiently lost and forlorn to merit his attention; he couldn't tackle everybody's problems.
"Well, but I have my magic . . ."
"So you can do something about King Caren?"
Irith didn't like that idea at all.
"Oh, all right," she grumbled. "I suppose one night outdoors won't kill me."
Chapter 24
The rain trailed off to nothing a little after midnight, and half an hour later Irith finally stopped complaining and telling the others that they should have gone back to Castle Angarossa.
When they arose and Kelder saw Asha shivering in her sopping blanket, he felt mildly guilty about his insistence on continuing westward, but he set his mouth grimly and said nothing.
Damp and miserable, they set a slow pace at first, but the clouds burned off quickly, their clothing dried, and they gradually picked up speed, reaching Yondra Keep shortly after midday. As they ate a late lunch in a little cafe in the village, Asha asked, "How far is the next town?"
Taking Flight Page 17
