A single door to the back seemed the only other passage, and when no one appeared after a minute, she shouted, “Hello, the inn! Is anyone here?”
Quickly, a woman’s voice answered: “Who’s there?”
“Someone in need of a meal and a room,” and muttering more to herself than the disembodied voice, she added, “and a hot bath if that’s possible in this hovel.”
A pinched-faced woman of middle years appeared from the lone door at the rear of the building. She wore plain grey homespun, a stained apron faded to yellow, and a blue scarf over her grey-shot black hair. “What do you need?” she asked in curt tones.
Sandreena felt a sudden urge to turn around, ride back to Krondor, and strangle the Father-Bishop. Biting back a frustrated and angry retort, she simply said, “Something to drink. Ale?”
“No ale,” said the woman. “Beer.”
Sandreena nodded. Not a fan of the lighter brew, she still felt the need to wet her throat before anything else. The mug appeared before her, and she took a drink. It was weak and sour, but it was wet. “Food?” she asked after she drained a third of the mug.
“I have some homush cooking. Should be ready in a few minutes.” Sandreena had no idea what homush was, but she had eaten a wide variety of things in her travels and discovered that if the locals were eating it, it wouldn’t kill you. “I sometimes have mutton, but there was no one here to slaughter a sheep this week. I’m waiting for my husband and sons. They are due back from trading in Dunam.”
Sandreena nodded. She had ridden through Dunam on her way from the port city of Ithra. It was a small trading town halfway between here and Ithra, with a small harbor. She assumed it was where the locals had their goods shipped, which seemed likely if that’s where the innkeeper and his sons went for supplies. She had seen other towns like it, ancient communities left over from the days of coastal sailing, before the big deep-water ships started plying their trade, leaving the smaller stops along the once prosperous trade routes to wither away.
She looked at the older woman and said, “Two-horse rig, with a bay and a dapple grey pulling it?”
“That’s my Enos,” said the woman. “Did you see them?”
“They should be rolling in any time now,” said Sandreena. “I chanced across them on the road a little while back. They were fighting off some bandits.”
“Bandits! Black Caps?”
Sandreena said, “I don’t know about any black caps, but they were a scruffy lot. One of them died, and the others rode off. Your man and the boys are fine.”
The woman didn’t lose her strained expression, but a hint of relief showed in her eyes. All she said was, “Food is almost ready. It is four coppers for the beer. The meal is two.”
Sandreena reached into her belt purse and pulled out a silver real. Kingdom’s silver spent as well as Kesh’s in this part of the world. “I need a room.”
The woman nodded as she scooped up the silver coin. “I have one through there.”
“Bath?”
The woman shook her head. “You can bathe down in the creek. No one will bother you.”
Sandreena rolled her eyes, but said nothing. The bed was probably filled with straw and bugs. Well, it was still better than sleeping on the ground next to her horse in the run-in. “You have any fresh hay or grain for my horse?”
“When my husband gets here,” was the reply. “He went to buy supplies. We were running low on many things.” There was a hint of concern in the woman’s otherwise stern tone, and Sandreena wondered why she sounded that way discussing something as unremarkable as an innkeeper traveling to get a wagonload of supplies for his inn, especially now having been told he was close to arriving safely. Sandreena had been in dozens of villages like this one over the years, and had a good sense of when things were normal and when they were not. Something was very out of place here, and she wondered if it was related to her mission.
“Well,” she said, “I’m for a quick rinse. Will you ask one of your boys to see to my horse when they get here?”
“That will cost extra,” said the woman without hesitation.
“Why am I not surprised,” muttered Sandreena. She took another silver coin out of her purse and put it on the counter. “I may be here for two or three days. If there are more costs, let me know.”
She walked out of the building and past the shed. She retrieved a bundle from her saddle kit, and moved through the small meadow south of the shed. No one had to tell her where the creek was, as she had been north of stream for most of the last five miles along the road into town, and the lands sloped downward in, past the run-in shed. Logic made it unlikely the stream was in the other direction.
She quickly found it and noticed with some satisfaction it was isolated and free from casual observation. Not modest by any stretch of imagination, she still enjoyed her moments of privacy.
She removed her cloak, and the Order’s tabard, letting them both fall to the ground. She removed her heavy leather gauntlets and tossed them onto the cloak. Doffing her helm, she set it down on the ground next to the cloak. The coif and mail shirt were annoying to remove without help, as always, and she knew she must look a sight bending at the waist and shaking them off once she had lifted them as high as she could. There was one advantage to being a temple knight rather than a Knight-Adamant, and that was having a squire at hand to help. Some errant knights had squires, just as some mendicant friars of her order had begging acolytes, but she preferred her solitude.
Stripping off her head covering, tunic, trousers, and smallclothes, she waded into the stream. Snowmelt from the high mountains, the water lingered in a lake above, where it basked in the hot sun before spilling down toward the ocean. She’d bathed in far colder.
As she did each time she found herself bathing outside, she revisited the conflicts and contradictions her body raised within her. In the cloistered baths at the temple, or in the privacy of a tub in an inn, she felt confined but protected, and in the temple the meditative aspect of bathing and steaming also helped her distance her thoughts from her body. Outside, it was the opposite; she felt somehow more exposed yet somehow more fundamental, almost primitive in nature.
She enjoyed being a woman, yet she always felt it a burden. She despised the men who had used her when she was young, but occasionally she longed for a gentle man’s hand on her body. She knew men found her beautiful, so she hid it under armor and arms, rejecting the allures of her former trade. Gone were the unguents and colors, the soft silks and jewelry. Her face was hidden behind a helm’s faceplate as often as not, and her body under armor and tabard.
She sighed in perplexity as she scrubbed at her hair with the very costly Keshian soap she had purchased the year before. The bar was almost gone, and she used it only on her hair and body, letting a pummeling on hard rocks serve for her clothing. She paused and luxuriated as much as possible outside in the cool breeze, in the faint scent of lilacs that the soap-maker had instilled in his product. She knew that on her way back to Krondor she must secure another bar of soap; it was her only indulgence in an otherwise austere existence.
Feeling an unexpected twinge of sadness, she wondered if her life would end in bloodshed and pain, or if she might find another life after this one, perhaps with a good man, being a mother. She shook her head, as much in frustration as to shed water, and pushed aside that often visiting feeling of futility. The Goddess often tested her faithful and doubt was not unexpected, and the priests and priestesses had prepared her for these moments, yet it was difficult.
She put aside her doubts and set about vigorously pounding out her trail-dirty clothing on a flat rock, using the method Brother Mathias had taught her: thoroughly soak the article, twist it as much as she could into a rope, and slam that twisted cloth as hard as she could against the rock; keep soaking, twisting, and pounding until clean. She had no idea why her clothes ended up cleaner, but they did. Then she conceded she had no idea how soap worked in cleaning anything, but was content to just
accept that it did. She spent a few minutes pounding clean her tunic, pants, cloak, and smallclothes, then hung them to drip on a nearby tree branch.
Sandreena ignored the breeze off the mountain, which raised gooseflesh on her body, waiting patiently to dry enough to don her fresh clothing. This was the part she hated most, for now she could do nothing but let the air dry her. Now she wished for a towel and realized she really would have preferred being sent somewhere with at least a tub and hot water.
Finally judging herself dry enough, she put on her clean smallclothes. She pulled on a fresh tunic and trousers, leggings, and clean head-covering she wore under her mail coif to keep her hair from becoming tangled in the metal links.
Once she had clothes on, she audibly sighed and pulled on her boots. Again she wondered about taking a squire as she struggled to get the stubborn things back on.
By the time she was dressed, the clothes hanging on the tree were no longer dripping, though they were still thoroughly soaked. She gathered them up and carried them up the hill to the inn, her helm under her arm and her mace in her left hand.
Reaching the inn, she saw another horse in the run-in next to hers and recognized it as the bandit’s mount the boys on the wagon had seized. She then found the wagon at the back door, being unloaded by the two boys she had encountered earlier in the day. She shouted, “One of you see my horse gets a bag of grain and I’ll give you a copper.”
Both boys looked at one another, as if weighing the offer against what their father might do if they left off the unloading. Silently, they nodded and two fists were raised, pumping up and down twice and on the third pump, one shouted “odd,” and the other shouted “even.” Both boys had two fingers extended, and the one who had shouted “even” smiled and leaped down from the wagon, lifting a bag of grain off the ground and carrying it to the run-in shed. The other boy glowered at Sandreena but said nothing as he continued his work.
Inside the inn, Sandreena spread her cloak out over the back of a chair closest to the fire and put her wet tunic, trousers, leggings, and smallclothes down next to it on the floor.
“Supper is ready,” said the woman as she came out from the kitchen. If she had any objections to the guest drying her clothing before the fire, she did not voice them.
Sandreena put her bag and weapons under the table, but close at hand. Years on the road had taught her that the unexpected was far worse a source of pain and misery than trouble you saw coming.
Glancing around the room, she reaffirmed there were only two entrances: the one from outside, and the one from the back of the building, where she assumed both her room and the kitchen lay, as well as the family’s quarters. As inns went, this wasn’t the worst—that honor went to a hovel in Kesh, which had four walls and a roof. There were no tables or chairs, no bar, and no rooms. Everyone ate on the floor from cooking done before an open fireplace and slept where they ate. But this inn was only marginally better.
When the woman appeared, she was followed by the man from the wagon and the two boys. As food was placed before her, the man said, “You. From the road.”
Sandreena nodded, not entirely sure if that was an accusation or a question.
“You said you’d pay my boy a copper to feed your horse.”
“Yes.”
“Give it to me.”
Sandreena didn’t argue, but pulled out a coin and put it on the table. The man snapped it up. “That is for his work. The oats are two more.”
She put a silver coin on the table and said, “For today and tomorrow. If I stay longer, I’ll pay in advance.”
The man only nodded. “I’m Enos, this is Ivet, and my boys are Nicolo and Pitor. Your room is at the end of the hall.”
Sandreena nodded. “My temple got reports of bandits. I see they were true.”
The man paused as he started to turn away, and then turned back toward her. “Why does your temple know this? Who told them?”
Sandreena was a little surprised at the question rather than a simple admission. The man seemed more concerned with how the information reached the Temple of Dala than with someone arriving to help.
“Does that matter?”
The man shrugged.
“I don’t know. I was simply ordered here by my Father-Bishop. It seems the Empire is too busy elsewhere to protect you.”
“Protect?” said Enos with a bitter, barking laugh. “Those are worse than bandits. The tax men. They come, they take, they leave. They do nothing for us.
“Pirates and bandits. Smugglers and…” He stopped himself. “We don’t need help. We manage.”
Sandreena weighed her words carefully. She said, “I’m sure, and I’m not here to help you.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, as if he didn’t understand, but he said nothing.
“I’m here to get information to take back to my temple.”
“What sort of information?” asked Enos suspiciously.
Sandreena said, “Just why this out-of-the-way village is being ravaged.”
The look of alarm that was barely hidden by Enos and Ivet was noticeable, but the boys positively went white with fear. There was something here that was far from ordinary, and she felt as if she had just stuck a stick into a hornet’s nest.
She didn’t need the sudden look of panic that descended on the family before her to warn her something bad was about to happen. She had too many unpleasant encounters in the last few years to be taken completely unawares, but she had let her attacker get too close.
She stood and, in a single fluid motion, kicked her chair straight back as she lifted the table and turned it over, then kneeling and having her mace in her hand before she was fully turned. The chair had struck a man in the legs, slowing him just long enough that she was ready as he swung his sword at her, trying to remove her head from her shoulders.
He, however, didn’t expect her to move so quickly, and was shocked for a brief instant as he tried to regain his balance, just before her mace slammed into the side of his head. The blow propelled the man sideways and down, landing him in a heap on the floor. It also knocked off a black leather hat he had worn.
Sandreena had seen enough bodies hitting the ground to know this man wasn’t going to answer any questions. She hadn’t intended to kill him, but battle-honed reflexes had taken over.
For a moment she inspected the body. Her would-be assassin wore a dark maroon tunic, black trousers, and black leather boots. He had a black cape, tied with a golden clasp, which looked more a gentleman’s garb for an evening out in Roldem than any sort of serviceable travel wear, so she assumed he had stolen it.
The side of his head was caved in, with blood running from nose and ears, and his eyes were set wide in an expression of surprise. They had been a vivid blue, but there was something about the eyes of the dead that always made them look greyish to Sandreena, no matter what the original color.
She knelt down and inspected him. There was no belt purse, only an ordinary dagger, and no other signs of who he might have been. The only personal item she discovered was a chain around his neck, from which hung a token, a black balled fist made out of iron or some other base metal.
She picked up the leather hat and turned to Enos and his family. “A Black Cap, I presume?”
Enos’s eyes were wide with terror and he seemed unable to speak. He merely nodded.
Sandreena stood, righted the table and chair, and, ignoring the body on the floor, sat down. “I think you need to tell me some things,” she said.
Softly, in a whisper, Enos said, “We are all going to die.”
CHAPTER 11
UPHEAVAL
Gulamendis howled.
A primal sound erupted from his throat as he threw back his head and unleashed his frustration in the only way he could. The sound was quickly engulfed in the endless pounding of waves on the rocks, as the Demon Master of the Taredhel stood on the bluffs above. He knew this moment was coming, but against hope he labored on, seeking the source of the demon sign
s he had encountered.
An emotional people, the Taredhel still knew how to keep within themselves when required. On the rocky bluffs of this wilderness, miles from any sign of habitation, human, dwarf, or anything remotely intelligent, he felt no such constraint. He raised his hand and conjured up a seething mass of mal energy, a writhing ball of mystic black tendrils within a dark purple sphere of light, and hurled it down toward the rocks below.
The ball struck a massive boulder and, in a satisfying display of pyrotechnics, exploded in a purple flame of blinding brilliance. It released dark clouds of smoke and sent a scintillating show of silver and white sparks in all directions, and when the ocean breeze blew away the smoke, all was as it had been before. The only sign of Gulamendis’s outburst was a patch of bare rock, devoid of moss and lichen. Otherwise, the ocean and the rocks below were indifferent.
Gulamendis chuckled at his own childish outburst, and sat down to ponder his next move in this terrible and dangerous game. His original plan was simple: follow the demon sign long enough to establish exactly what it was. He had almost complete certainty that what he detected was a conjuration, for there was a difference, almost as if the lingering residue had a different quality, or flavor, between summoned demons and those that entered this realm unbidden. He had noticed that the first time he had encountered demons along the frontier on Diaziala, when the first conflict erupted in what would be this long and bitter war his people were losing.
He had become intrigued. Who was this summoner of demons, this being who could order them into this realm, as he did? For in his travels, Gulamendis had met few who could, and none who could match his abilities. He would be first to admit he had been lucky over the years, yet he also would take credit for learning what there was luck brought to him. He was an apt student of his craft, as his brother had been with magic of the mind.
He sighed and stood up. The demon was across that sea, and while he had no certainty, he suspected it was a very long way off, perhaps on the other side of this world. He had demons he could conjure that could fly, could carry him, but none could cross such a vast distance.
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