by Guy Antibes
She giggled at the end. Asem was very happy that the women were currently walking through the streets, stretching their legs. Kulara knew a bit of Santasian and the other two would just smile and nod if they had to. The woman quickly gathered his supplies and presented him with the map. He gave her a one-kiss bonus and left the store.
Kulara stood out in front with her hands on her hips. “What was that all about?”
Asem felt his face flush a bit and gave her a smile. “Do you ladies want to sleep on dirt tonight or in a cabin along the way?”
“What do you think?” his wife said.
Asem waved the map in front of her. “Five kisses for a warmer night’s sleep. If we sleep well, then we can reach Gorinza by midday tomorrow.”
They rode out of town. Valanna looked back and Asem followed her gaze.
“I shivered when I passed the Magicians Guild.”
“As well you should,” Rasia said. “If I had a tiny bit of magical ability I wouldn’t have wanted to travel through that town.”
“Didn’t you put us to sleep when you captured us?” Valanna said.
“Not me, but one of my fellow scouts. I lead and they spell.” The woman smiled for maybe the first time on their journey.
“Let’s get to that cabin and cook some dinner. We might have to be on our guard. The lady said that less savory people use it from time to time.”
Rasia loosened the sword in her scabbard and Asem did the same. “You two be prepared to jump from your horses and strike a pose or two for us.” He grinned.
They traveled for nearly two hours when Asem noted the branch in the road flanked by two very large trees. He turned east into the woods. It didn’t take them too long before they came to the cabin. A number of horses were hobbled, munching on the grass that grew around the place.
“We should turn around,” Rasia said. “If these are robbers, there are too many.”
Asem glared at the woman. “Are you afraid of spilling a little blood?”
Rasia pursed her lips and stared at him as she slipped her sword out of her sheath. “No.”
“I’ll go to the door and see if they are coming or going.”
He walked to the door and knocked. He waited a few moments and when there was no response, he looked through the window and found bodies lying on the floor. The door was barred shut.
“Kulara,” he said. “I need a little help. Could you break down the door? There are bodies in there.”
“I will if you will draw your sword. It might be a trap,” she said. “Rasia? You come too.” She assumed a pose and spoke a word and the door broke into pieces.
“Now just how will we close up the door tonight?” Asem said.
She peeked inside and didn’t see a threat. “That’s your problem, dear.”
Asem walked in and found two people with shreds of ropes around their wrists and ankles. There were five men who appeared to be sleeping, but none of them moved when he nudged them with his foot.
“Dead? All of them dead?” Valanna said, alarm plainly in her voice. She looked at the two bodies bound. “Honor! Trak!”
Kulara examined the men and Honor and Trak. “Spell shock,” Kulara said, shaking her head.
“What can we do?” Asem said. “I know a few poses, but nothing for that.”
Kulara put her hand to her chin and thought for a few minutes. “There is a word for spell reversal, but I’m not sure what it is. I was told never to use it.”
“Probably for good reason,” snorted Rasia.
Kulara glared at their guide while Valanna knelt and examined the raw wrists of Trak and Honor. “Look at this. Trak has scratched the word ‘worry’ into the inside of his arm.”
“Let me look at that!” Kulara said. “That’s the word, I knew it was a simple word in Pestlan.”
Asem pursed his lips. “These people seem to have been under for some time. I don’t want any spell waking up Honor’s captors. Let’s drag the Bluntwithe boy and Honor outside.” He glanced at Valanna. “I’m glad you came. I wouldn’t have recognized either of these two.”
Rasia snorted. “I know Honor well enough.”
He shook his head. The woman had no tact.
They dragged the pair outside twenty paces or so from the cabin. “Stand back,” Kulara said. “I may end up like this pair. I don’t know the pose, but I think you just say it thinking of power.”
Valanna put her hand on Kulara’s shoulder. “Didn’t you say I’m more powerful than you?”
Kulara looked at her with narrowed eyes. “It is risky.”
“I’m not so soft,” Valanna said, looking at Kulara, and then turned her eyes on Rasia.
“Do it,” Kulara said, stalking away.
Asem took his second wife by the upper arm. “Let her try. She needs to do something positive, I think,” he said quietly to his wife.
~
Valanna looked down at the comatose pair and took a deep breath. She closed her eyes and tried to accumulate power the way her father had taught her long ago when she first started to learn magic. She was terrible at posing at the time.
“Worry,” she said and felt power flow out of her body. She staggered for a bit but regained her balance. She looked down and didn’t see any kind of a change.
“You did something,” Kulara said running up to her. “I could feel a pulse of power from here.” She bent down and looked up at Kulara. “They are still alive. We might have to wait.”
“Then let’s bind the kidnappers and move them outside,” Asem said. “First these two go back inside the cabin.”
When everyone was transferred, Valanna sat by Trak and Honor. Asem went looking for tools to cobble together a replacement for the door. The kidnappers were bound hand and foot and to each other. They still hadn’t stirred.
Trak gasped and sat up. He looked at Valanna. “Am I dead?”
“I doubt it,” Valanna said. For some reason she felt a flood of relief and couldn’t help but laugh at him. He had saved her once and now she had saved him. It made her feel good.
He rubbed his hands and feet. “The spell worked.”
“Too well,” Kulara said. “We found everyone unconscious. When did you invoke the spell?”
“At night, in the dark.”
“It’s nearly twilight now,” she said.
“Oh,” Trak said, his voice showed disappointment. How could that be? He had subdued his kidnappers and whenever he had revived, he was free from his bonds. “How is Honor?”
“Honor still has a headache,” Honor said as she put her hand to her head. “At least your spell broke our bonds.” Honor rose and looked at Rasia, Kulara and Valanna. “Valanna, how did you get here?”
“I rode here, of course, to save you two,” she said. “Trak wrote the power word on his wrist. I used that.”
Honor looked at Trak, her face in a smirk. “And if a Magicians Guild member saw that, you’d be back under their spell with a bandage on your arm where they carved that word out of your skin.”
Trak shrugged. He didn’t have anything to say, but Valanna knew better. “And you’d still be comatose along with the criminals that waylaid you.”
Asem walked up. “Weren’t there three of you?”
“Malena!” Trak said.
Malena? Who was she? Valanna thought. They didn’t find another woman. A flash of jealousy ran through her. Why would she be jealous? She looked at Trak and couldn’t deny that seeing him again had warmed her up a lot more than she expected. What did he think of her? She had betrayed him by leaving Honor’s studio and the tutoring. She felt her face flush with embarrassment.
“Malena?” Asem looked at Honor.
“She was how you knew we were captured.”
Asem shook his head. “I have some bad news to tell you. Sunbeam spies for two sides. Your abductors got their information from her.”
Trak snapped his finger. “I wondered about that.” He got to his feet and began rummaging through the pile of weapons and grinn
ed when he found his sword and knife. “I have a little justice to administer.”
Trak’s vocabulary surprised Valanna. “You speak so much better.”
“And I can talk Santasian, as well. I had to learn for hours a day, Val.”
No one had ever called her Val before Trak did. She followed him out of the cabin and to the line of bandits.
“Who shall I start with?”
“You can’t kill them while they are out!” Valanna said. She had never taken Trak for a violent person.
Trak nudged one of them with his boot. “They killed, or thought they did, Malena, a Colcanan who helped me escape from the Magicians Guild—“
“They caught you?”
Trak nodded and then grinned. “I placed really high with them with Honor’s tutoring. I know about seventy poses.”
“You do?”
He laughed. She liked the way he looked, now that he had relaxed a bit more since he stalked out to their prisoners. Time had matured his looks. “But less than thirty power words.”
She saw the way he drew his sword. “Don’t kill them! If you do, you’ll be no better than they are.”
That immediately stopped Trak. He looked down on them. Valanna couldn’t read the emotions that played out on his face, but he came to a conclusion. Could she stop him from murdering the men? At last he sheathed his sword and pulled out his knife.
“Don’t hurt them.”
“They would kill you for a copper coin or two. They thought they killed Malena and just dragged her further in to the woods, laughing as they did it.” He leaned down. “I won’t kill them.” Trak looked back up at Valanna. But I won’t let them forget what they’ve done. He knelt at the head of each of them and cut a Santasian letter in each forehead. “It will stand for killer and it will remind every person they see what kind of dirt they are.”
Valanna could see the emotional tension well up in him as he performed his grisly task, but then the shuddering breath that he took told her that the act had taken a toll on him. Perhaps these truly were bad men. Trak went back into the cabin, passing Honor on the way out.
Honor looked down at Trak’s work. “I expected him to do something much worse. He was quite shaken by the casual way they treated Malena and me. Did you talk him out of killing them?”
Valanna nodded, not trusting herself to say anything.
Honor closed her eyes for a moment. “Good, at least he’ll recognize these scum if he happens upon them again.”
“Would you have killed them?”
Honor stared at the men. “Might have, but I would have used magic. Trak does things differently than your typical magician. Dalistro taught him swordsmanship along with his friend, Neel Cardswallow, who taught him many military forms. You remember Neel, don’t you?” Valanna nodded, Trak’s friend from his village. “Trak practiced for hours and hours when he worked at his father’s inn. He might have told you.”
“He told me something like that, but I don’t think I paid much attention.”
A grim smile came to Honor’s face. “With his obsession of working those forms exactly right, his poses are as perfect as I’ve seen. He’s only just begun his education.” She spied one of the men and kicked him in the head. “I get a little payback, too.” She turned around and left Valanna alone looking at her go back to the cabin.
Valanna wiped a tear from her eye. The men must have been truly cruel to generate such hatred. She had seen it enough times in Balbaam. If she found Prince Nez lying comatose on the ground, would she kick him? It frightened her a bit to realize that she likely would. The thought gave her shivers and she joined the rest of the party.
She entered the cabin and joined in rummaging about for food and picking out Honor, Malena and Trak’s things that had been spread among the bandits.
“We should be on our way at first light, if not before,” Asem said. “Honor, do you know if Trak’s spell will wear off?” He glanced outside towards the men lying on the dirt.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Trak tried something new that I thought up. We didn’t have much of an alternative.” She gave Valanna a sharp look. “Don’t try any spells you haven’t learned precisely, young woman. It shredded the bonds, but put us all out. We might have died if you hadn’t come along.”
Honor had lost none of her prickliness and somehow that reassured Valanna. She puttered around looking for food and wondered if she should take one of the wicked looking long knives in the pile of weapons. There was one longer than the meal knife that she carried.
She picked it up and drew it from the sheath.
“A bit of a pig sticker, isn’t it?” Asem said as he walked over to her. “Kulara can show you how to use it a bit more aggressively.”
Looking at the pile of shredded rope next to the wall, she nodded. “No posing from horseback. Look what happened when Trak tried something when bound hand and foot.”
Asem nodded grimly and put his hand around hers on the knife’s hilt. “Take it and Kulara might give you a few ideas of where to stash it. She always carries a few knives on her.” He squeezed her shoulder, and then swept up an armful of supplies, talking them outside.
Although they rescued Trak and Honor, Valanna hadn’t liked their time at this place. She looked at the cabin and stepped outside, shivering as the sun dropped beneath the trees. She didn’t know if she was hard enough for all of this. Perhaps Rasia spoke the truth about her softness, after all.
~~~
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“THIS WILL BE OUR LAST BREAK before we arrive in Gorinza,” Rasia said as she brushed breadcrumbs from her hands. “Perhaps we should have a strategy before we just walk into Sunbeam’s place.”
“I’ll not be caught on horseback, again,” Honor said.
“I’ve got my sword, so it doesn’t matter as much to me,” Trak said.
Honor glared at him. “A lot of good that did a few days ago.”
“I saved us, didn’t I?”
Asem put his hands out to stop the bickering. “We are a team at this point. Valanna broke the spell. Rasia led us here. I’ve done my humble part.”
“Humble is hardly the correct term, my dear,” Kulara said.
Asem shrugged. “I fixed the door, didn’t I?” It was time for him to assert some leadership again. “I think that Trak and Honor should enter Sunbeam’s establishment from the back, assuming there is a back way into the restaurant, shortly after we enter. Honor, is Sunbeam a powerful magician?”
“Kulara and Valanna can distract her enough for you, I think. She’s stronger than Malena, but much weaker than Trak or me,” Honor said. “We need to be concerned about any magicians being close by. Someone was coming to the cabin to retrieve us. Remember the spell reverse word of ‘worry’. Don’t be afraid to use it.”
Trak nodded. “If you are under their spell, coming out of it can become disorienting, but it’s better than staying under their control.”
“Let’s hope they haven’t recaptured your friend,” Asem said as he rose and sought out his horse.
Half an hour later they split off, with Honor and Trak heading along the west side of the town and Asem, Rasia, Kulara and Valanna traveled along the main road that split the town right down the middle. Rasia knew the location of the restaurant, so she could just point when they got there without having to speak any Santasian.
It would be nice for them to find Malena helping Sunbeam with the dishes, but ‘nice’ rarely happened in Asem’s experience. He told all three of the women to be very observant. Honor had reminded them that it wasn’t a rule about members of the Magicians Guild having to wear robes outside of their guild houses and the bandits that abducted Honor and Trak weren’t the only sellswords in Santasia.
He unscrewed the bolt that held his sword in place as they entered the town. Everything looked normal so hopefully they wouldn’t be fighting a battle to get to Sunbeam’s establishment. Rasia poked him in the arm and pointed. Two horses were tied up to a rail in front. He ex
pected guards inside.
“Act nonchalant,” he said as he pulled his horse up. Asem tied his horse to the rail and did the same for each of the three women, earning a scowl from Rasia. She had refused to wear a dress in town and, on first glance, someone might think she was a man—short with soft features, but a man nevertheless. Asem smiled to himself. He would never make such a mistake. She didn’t walk like a man, he thought, as she spit in her hands and rubbed them together. It was too bad something had twisted her badly to be so angry.
He opened the door to Sunbeam’s place, after taking a deep breath. “Ladies,” he said letting Kulara and Valanna inside. He noticed that Rasia stayed behind him. He shrugged his shoulders and followed them in.
Three men and two women took up two of the restaurants eight tables. All of them flinched a little when they walked in, but settled back down. Maybe they didn’t see an immediate threat. Asem pointed to the table closest to the kitchen, in case they had to defend each other. Asem bent over and faked scratching his leg by his boot, ready to grab a throwing knife.
No one looked very comfortable. These were guild members, he was sure. They would have known Honor by sight. A gray-haired woman, prematurely gray from the smoothness of her features, walked in with a tray of drinks for the guild members. This had to be Sunbeam.
“Oh, I didn’t notice you come in. We are actually closed for the day,” Sunbeam said.
“If you can serve them, then you can serve us,” Asem said. “We’ve come a long way today, all the way from Mozira. Dreadful place.”
“A few of us live in Mozira, foreigner,” one of the men said.
Asem wished he would try to stand. He was tired scratching his leg and slipped the knife up his sleeve while Sunbeam inadvertently distracted them by serving their drinks. He wondered if Honor and Trak had finally made it to the back door. Rasia looked like she was ready to fight. Valanna sat, just about immobilized. Kulara smiled at him and kissed him on the cheek, her eyes not leaving the other party.
Sunbeam took the tray through the back door. “I’ll be back to take your order,” she said. Her eyes shifted around. She would likely be bolting out the back if there were a clash with Honor and Trak.
