by Lisa Smedman
Out in the street, a member of the city guard called the All’s Well. Larajin glanced nervously at the gate, even though she knew the guard couldn’t see in to where they were standing. Across the courtyard, the sound of singing stopped, as the Song of Sunrise ended.
“I have to go,” she whispered. “The clerics I’ll be traveling with are leaving now.”
Tal’s eyes ranged up and down the crimson vestments Larajin was wearing and lingered on the freshly painted eye of Sune upon her midriff.
Hesitantly, he asked, “You’re not just … making this up as an excuse to follow some cleric on a quest, are you?”
Larajin’s anger flared at his over-protectiveness, but then she realized he was only asking because he cared. Tal wasn’t the one who had sent men after her to force her back to the city, when she’d tried to follow Diurgo Karn on his abortive pilgrimage to Lake Sember eighteen months past. Despite Tal’s animosity with the Karn family and his own personal dislike for Diurgo, he had defended Larajin’s right to follow the dictates of her heart—and of her budding religion. It had earned him stony silence from his father for several days afterward.
“Nothing like that, Tal. The Hulorn’s wizard really did recognize me. The danger’s real enough.”
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“North, to Ordulin,” she answered, giving him a partial truth.
“Ordulin?” Tal gaped. “Why there? That’s where our armies will be mobilizing, if war comes. It’s no place for—” He paused abruptly at the look Larajin gave him, then changed his approach. “Why not go to ground here, in the temple, and let me deal with the Hulorn’s men? Wouldn’t that be safer?”
“Tal,” she said carefully, “I can’t tell you exactly where I’m going, or why, except to say that I feel the goddess calling me. There are some secrets that have to be kept, even from …” She paused, choosing her words more carefully. “Some secrets that can’t be shared, even between a brother and sister. Can you understand that?”
To her surprise, he nodded. “I suppose we all have secrets,” he muttered.
His gaze shifted to something behind her. Turning, Larajin saw the Heartwarder and four novices heading toward them. She gave his arm a squeeze.
“I love you, Tal. If it comes to war, take care of yourself.”
“You too,” he said gruffly, then he turned and left through the gate, without looking back.
As the clerics shouldered their luggage, chattering brightly about the five-day carriage ride that lay ahead of them, Larajin’s thoughts were grave. She’d known there was tension between Sembia and the elves to the north. She’d heard of caravans being attacked—had known that this was not the best time to be traveling to the Tangled Trees—but she hadn’t realized that Sembia was on the verge of war. If it came to that, the Tangled Trees wouldn’t just be a strange and foreign land, it would be behind enemy lines.
Larajin made her way through the streets of Ordulin, navigating by three buildings at the city’s center that rose above all the rest: the Great Hall where the Merchant Council sat, with its gilded dome that shone golden in the late afternoon sun; the crenellated Tower of the Guards that housed the city’s soldiers; and the so-called Guarded Gate—in actuality, an enormous stone-walled and column-fronted warehouse that housed the Sembian mint. Just beyond them lay the Trader’s Quarter, starting point for the caravans that fanned north, east, south, and west through Sembia, carrying the goods of Ordulin’s many merchants.
Though Ordulin was smaller than Selgaunt, its streets were more crowded. Nobles rode past in gilded carriages, with servants holding parasols to shade them from the blaze of the sun. Merchants in elaborately patterned hose and quilted doublets walked the streets, their only concession to the muggy heat being their lace-sleeved shirts, designed to allow the non-existent breezes through. The common laborers had no such pretensions. A gang of stonemasons setting the foundations of a house sweated bare-chested in the heat, while serving women gathering water from a well in the street splashed water onto their reddened faces and bare arms.
High overhead, the tressym wheeled and circled, occasionally disappearing from sight behind a building. So far, no one had noticed her, perhaps thinking her a hawk or an eagle. Larajin hoped it stayed that way.
Throughout the five-day journey to Ordulin, Larajin had remained in the crimson vestments of Sune, but now she wore what she thought of as her “adventuring garb”: serviceable boots, her trouser-skirt, and a lightweight shirt. She still wore the crimson scarf of Sune in her hair, however, and the brass heart hung from her wrist. She might be trying to look nondescript, to blend in, but she would not forsake her devotions to the goddesses—both of them.
As she walked along, Larajin’s ears were filled with the noise of the streets: the clatter of carriage wheels on cobblestones, the calls of merchants from their shops, and the clip-clop of horse’s hooves. She stopped to ask a driver who was lounging on his carriage, waiting for his master, the way to Thread Street, the four-block-long collection of tailor’s shops where Habrith’s friend had his shop. The driver pointed at the next street and indicated she should turn the corner to the right. Thanking him, Larajin walked in that direction.
As she drew closer to the corner, she could hear a commotion. There was laughter and shouting … and the sound of heavy thuds and breaking glass.
Rounding the corner, she saw a knot of people at the side of the road, in front of one of the tailor shops. Its window had been smashed, and a burly man was kicking the front door with a heavy boot. The door crashed open, and the crowd surged inside. A moment later, several heavy bolts of cloth came flying out through the broken window. Laughing, the people outside scooped them up and staggered away down the street, carrying as many as they could under their arms. In front of the shop, two women each grabbed an end of the same bolt of cloth—a green fabric heavily embroidered with the outline of gold leaves—and began squabbling over it like a pair of angry chickens.
Shocked, Larajin realized these people were looting the shop. She looked around, searching for the city watch. She spotted three of them just up the street, lounging on their horses. Not one of the chain-mailed guards made a move for the bow at his pommel, however, or for the mace that hung from his belt. Instead one pointed at the looters, and the other two chuckled.
As she skirted around the mob, crossing to the other side of the road, Larajin noticed a symbol, painted on the door of the looted shop in a blaze of red: a vertical oval, with triangles jutting out of the top of it, like a face with horns. She wondered what it signified. Surely not a symbol of disease, with all of those people so willingly entering the shop. Perhaps the tailor had been convicted of a crime, and this was his punishment?
From inside the shop came the sound of blows and grunts of pain. Larajin hesitated, wondering if she should intervene, then she reminded herself that this was not her quarrel—that she was a stranger in Ordulin with trouble enough of her own. She didn’t need to go shouldering someone else’s burden, especially if the recipient of the mob’s wrath was a criminal. Wincing, she tore herself away. She’d come back to Thread Street later, when the commotion had died down, and seek out the Harper agent.
She strode instead toward the Trader’s Quarter, which lay just ahead. The smell of manure, hay, and axle grease assaulted her nose as she walked through an arched gate into a wide plaza fronted on all four sides by enormous stables. At its center was a notice board; on it was a document bearing the same symbol Larajin had seen on the tailor shop the mob had just looted. Curious, she decided to take a closer look.
She wove through the crowd of people and horses, sidestepping piles of dung that dotted the cobblestones. The notice bearing the horned oval turned out to be an official proclamation—one that sent a chill through Larajin as she read it, despite the heat of the sun on her shoulders. It reminded the citizens of Ordulin that the ten-year-old ban prohibiting elves from entering Sembia was still in effect. Not only that, but the ban now had
been extended to half-elves, as well.
Dated less than a tenday ago, the proclamation ordered all half-elves living in Ordulin to leave the city immediately or face retribution at the point of a sword. It further ordered that all homes and businesses belonging to half-elves were to be marked with a sign warning the citizens of Ordulin against doing business with the enemy. An example of the symbol used to designate the property to be confiscated was printed at the bottom of the notice. It was a crude representation of an elf’s face—an oval with pointed, triangular ears.
Sickened, Larajin turned away from the notice board. She realized now that the tailor she’d heard being beaten inside his shop hadn’t committed any crime, other than being born a half-elf. He was probably the man Habrith had told her to contact. Only an agent of the Harpers would tarry so long in a city that was hostile to his race. Was it too late to run back and offer him whatever healing she could—or had the mob that had looted his shop also carried him away … even killed him?
Larajin nervously fingered an ear. Were people looking at her, noticing her too-slim build? If the scales of fate had tipped only slightly differently, giving her the pointed ears of her mother’s race, Larajin could have been the one receiving that beating.
In one corner of the plaza, a dozen men in civilian clothes practiced with pikes, taking turns thrusting at a wooden dummy under the eye of a member of the town guard. They were the militia, no doubt only recently mobilized. Larajin once again was confronted by the oval-and-triangles symbol. This time, it had been painted on the practice dummy.
Ordulin no longer felt like a safe haven. She was in as much danger there as she had been in Selgaunt. She needed to leave the city as soon as possible, to keep moving north. She’d have to try to find the Harper agent in Essembra on her own.
She scanned the notice board, looking for a suitable caravan, but while the notices advertised caravans bound for Yhaunn, for Highmoon, to Archenbridge, and back south to Selgaunt, the only caravans bound for Essembra had departed more than a tenday ago.
“Looking for a caravan, Mistress? Where to? If it’s north, I c’n help you.”
Larajin could smell the man before she turned around. His breath had the fetid odor of a bad tooth, and his appearance matched the smell. His hose had a tear in the knee, and his leather doublet was stained under the arms. One hand rested on the hilt of a sword, which hung in a rust-spotted scabbard at his hip. The man’s scalp was shaved but he wore his beard long. Flecks of what must have been his lunch still clung to it. His eyes kept darting to the money pouch that hung from Larajin’s belt. One cheek puckered as he sucked on his bad tooth.
Larajin wanted nothing to do with him, but she did want to find out more about any caravan headed north—if one existed. The fact that no such caravan was advertised on the notice board made her wary. She wasn’t going to venture down any back alleys with this lout. She rested a hand casually on the dagger she’d belted at her hip.
“North to where?” she asked him.
“To Featherdale and Essembra, and, if luck holds, all the way to Hillsfar. It’ll prob’ly be the last one heading north ’fore the road closes. We’ll have to wait out the war in Hillsfar—not that I mind.”
Larajin looked him in the eye. “How do you know about this caravan?” she asked. “It’s not posted on the board—and you’re no trader.”
He guffawed, and Larajin winced at the smell.
“Course it’s not posted! You want some halfie reading it and telling his savage cousins in the trees we’re coming through?” He shook his head. “You got one thing right, though, I’m no trader. I’m a sellsword. Name’s Enik.”
He waited for Larajin to volunteer her name. When she didn’t, he shrugged and continued, “I been hired to protect the caravan.” He stroked the hilt of his sword. “You come north with us, and me and my steel will be what’s standing between you and them wild elves, missy.”
Larajin didn’t like the way he was rubbing the hilt of his sword. It was all too suggestive of something else. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to see if this caravan really existed. If it was the only one headed north, it might be her only chance to reach the Tangled Trees. From her readings of the Master’s books, she knew they lay more than one hundred and fifty miles to the north. She could hardly travel all that distance on foot.
This man was only a sellsword and as such could be expected to be rough and unsavory. She could at least see if the traders driving the caravan were decent folk.
“Where is the caravan assembling, and when?”
Enik gave her a twisted grin, still sucking his bad tooth. “That’ll cost you a raven. Fer all I know, you’re a halfie spy.”
Larajin froze, feeling the blood drain from her face. He hadn’t guessed that…
No, he hadn’t. Enik, still grinning, gave her a broad wink. He hadn’t spotted the elf blood in her, after all. It had just been his idea of a joke.
“Tell you what,” Larajin said carefully. “You give me the information, and when it’s proved to be accurate, you’ll get your raven—but not until we’re under way. Deal?”
Enik sucked on his tooth, considering it.
“All right.” He pointed at a warehouse just beyond one of the arches leading out of the plaza and said, “The caravan is loading its cargo of wine there, at the Foxmantle warehouse. They’ll be at it all night. Come first light, it’s away. You want to be on one of the wagons, you meet me there just before dawn.”
Larajin nodded. If what Enik was saying was true about this being a Foxmantle caravan, things were looking up. The Foxmantles might be loud and brash, their wild young daughters prone to scandalously foolish exploits, but the family was a firm friend and ally to the Uskevren—they were people Larajin could trust. All she had to do was show the head driver the dagger with the Uskevren crest on it and claim to be Mistress Thazienne. With luck, he wouldn’t have met Thazienne, and she’d have nothing to worry about.
She eyed Enik. Nothing, that was, except making sure this lout didn’t try anything during the journey north, but the dagger would also see to that.
She nodded to him, patting the money pouch at her hip. “Dawn it is, then, at the Foxmantle warehouse,” she said. “I’ll see you there.”
She kept the smile on her face as she watched him leave but let it drop the moment he was out of sight. Making her way out of the plaza, she took a circular route through the side streets that would lead her to the Foxmantle warehouse. She wasn’t going to go trustingly to meet a lout like Enik in the murky light of dawn, down some back alley behind a warehouse. Instead she’d make her own arrangements with the caravan’s head driver while the wagons were being loaded. If she liked what she saw, she’d arrange for her passage north—and worry about traveling with Enik later.
Larajin coughed as a tendril ofmist drifted back down the road toward the caravan, stinging her lungs. Beside her, on the driver’s seat of the lead wagon, Dray Foxmantle dabbed a monogrammed handkerchief to his eye.
“Gods curse that fool of a wizard,” he muttered. “Why couldn’t he have waited until there was a wind to blow the stuff away?”
Still in his early twenties—about Larajin’s age—Dray was blessed with perfectly straight teeth and dark hair that hung in tight spirals to his shoulders. His beard was trimmed to a thin line that exactly traced the bottom of his jaw, in the prevailing fashion, and a heavy gold hoop hung from one ear. He wore the family blue and purple, and a silver ring on the little finger of his left hand that bore the Foxmantle crest: three diamond-pupiled eyes, set in a diagonal line.
Dray had been flirting with Larajin ever since the caravan departed from Ordulin eight days ago, telling her how pretty she was—ignoring the fact that the long, hot journey had left her dusty and sweaty. Truth be told, she didn’t mind the flattery, though she wondered if much of it wasn’t business, rather than pleasure. Dray kept hinting, with every second breath, about a possible merger of the Foxmantle and Uskevren vineyards.
Still,
she enjoyed his company. He was playful and fun and was blessed with a beautiful singing voice, as she’d found out one night around the campfire when he broke out his mandolin and sang a ballad for her. He would have made an ideal candidate for Sune’s priesthood. He even reminded her, a little, of Diurgo.
Now, however, he seemed oblivious to the possible danger of the wizard’s magical conjuring. Larajin peered nervously at the thick mist that swirled above the road a short distance ahead, hoping Klarsh knew what he was doing. The caravan had stopped—for the third time this day—so the wizard could clear away some choke creeper that had grown across the road. Even though Klarsh was well ahead of their wagon, Larajin felt nervous. The trees on either side of Rauthauvyr’s Road were enormous, forming what felt like a steep-walled canyon to either side, and the underbrush on the forest floor was thick—too thick to pass through at anything but a struggling walk. If the poisonous mist spread beyond the wizard’s control, the caravan drivers, soldiers—and Larajin—would all be killed.
Behind them, five other wagons had also pulled to a halt. The horses hitched to them snorted and pawed at the road, nostrils flaring and ears flicking nervously in response to the acrid smell of the magical mist. The drivers called out to soothe them, occasionally tugging on the reins to restrain a team as it tried to jerk a wagon forward, causing its cargo of wine bottles to rattle and clink inside their wooden cases.
The two dozen sellswords hired to protect the caravan lounged on either side of the road, glancing at the forest only every now and then. Like Enik, they were a scruffy-looking lot—tough enough and well armed, but not nearly as disciplined as Larajin would have liked. She supposed that, with nearly all of the able-bodied fighters in Ordulin being conscripted into the militia, these were the only men Dray could find.
They were nominally under the leadership of Paitar, a capable-looking man in his late fifties with iron-gray hair and eyes to match. Walking with a slight limp that he’d gained earlier in his career as a soldier, he glared at the sellswords, tersely ordering them to keep an eye on the forest, but was answered only by grunts and shrugs. Paitar kept glancing back at Dray, as if waiting for a supporting word, but none was forthcoming.
