The town was veiled by sheets of rain and mist. Most of the windows were shuttered, and only an occasional figure hid in a doorway or struggled along the muddy street. The light that managed to escape through cracks was cheerless and uninviting. Tralane was well up along the main street before he found a lively-looking tavern that was both welcoming and suitable for distraction.
A stable boy appeared and hurriedly took the reins of his thort. Tralane dismounted, removed his pack, bow, and arrows from the saddle and ran to the shelter of the doorway. He hesitated before entering, listening to the voices and snatches of conversation drifting down into the street from the windows above. For a moment, he had an urge to stay outside and listen all night, piecing together involuted life histories from the overheard conversations, and letting his imagination introduce him to people far more interesting and complicated than the speakers themselves. It was a childhood habit that had entertained him during Mathi's infrequent visitations, and which had gained him renown and notoriety as a gossip in courts.
But his shivering body refused to allow him the luxury of fantasy. He entered the tavern, wiping his nose on his drenched shirt sleeve as he closed the door behind him.
He found himself in a wide hall with a low ceiling. The space was hazy with smoke and thick with aromas. Wind and string instruments played against one another as numerous musicians, some unprofessionally drunk or otherwise incapacitated, practiced their trade at tables across the room. The buzzing undercurrent of laughter and speech was occasionally broken by sharp-tongued serving maids putting to rest lewd suggestions and advances that sprinkled the talk like overripe spice, while gamesters and debaters rose above the din with shouts of disgust and curses. The atmosphere of revelry, with drunkards vying with entertainers for the attention of the general public, cheered Tralane. Already, the clouds of weariness and depression were parting, allowing good humor to prevail.
He stopped a passing servant with a grab and pull, and inquired after the proprietor. He received an inarticulate reply and a wave toward the opposite end of the hall. Following the servant's vague instructions, Tralane maneuvered his way across the width of the hall until he reached a heavy-set man with enormous hands and forearms, whose massive solidity was the equal of Oram's giant proportions. The servants roaming the hall were well protected.
The owner was busy administering draughts of wine, ale, and liquors to anyone who held out a coin to him. Tralane fished through his pouch until he found a coin of similar weight, though with different markings, and held it out. It was immediately snatched from his hand and replaced by a mug of ale.
Before the man could move away, Tralane blurted out, "I'm looking for a room—"
"See my wife," growled the innkeeper, thrusting an elbow in the direction of a door further down the hall. He had not even glanced at the youth.
The bard nodded, picked up his belongings, and jostled his way toward the door. His ale was gone by the time he reached his destination, and he could only hope whatever bugs and creatures that survived the stomping of so many feet enjoyed what he had spilled on the floor. He knocked on the door and, when no one answered, he entered.
A woman sat on a stool, engrossed in the task of peeling vegetables, which she threw into a large cauldron hanging over a roaring hearth fire next to her. A few servants were sleeping on beds of dried grass, stuck between piles of produce, dried meats, and neatly stacked barrels. Tralane closed the door and walked up behind her.
"Greetings," he introduced himself. "I am a bard, in need of shelter. I'm willing to pay with coin or, if your prices are too high, with tales and entertainments." He was about to launch into a brief but concerted summary of the courts he had performed at, knowing that the mention of nobles and ladies usually cut off protestations before they were started. However, her startled expression and paled complexion stilled his tongue.
She glanced at the door with wide eyes, then whispered harshly, "Are you a fool to return here so soon?"
Tralane was at a loss to respond. At last, controlling his surprise, he replied, "I beg forgiveness, Madame, but I can assure you I've never traveled in these parts before."
The woman stood, spilling the peelings that had gathered in her lap. Beneath the layers of sweat, dirt, and soiled garments, she was youthful and full-bodied. He found her deep-set brown eyes and sensual lips attractive.
She ran to the door, opened it a crack, and looked out. After a few moments, she turned and looked him over worriedly.
"You're out of uniform, and you look as if you've spent a month out in the middle of nowhere. That's why they didn't recognize you. Those clothes! Where have you been and what have you done that you had to wear such finery into rags? Gods, but it's lucky you didn't get a knife in the back out there!"
Tralane thought it wise to correct her mistake before an unfortunate scene occurred. The idea of being held responsible for mischief that was none of his doing struck him as unpalatable.
"My dear one, not only have I never been in these parts before now; but, until quite recently, it was utterly impossible for me to have even known you. I've never honored any army by wearing their uniform, since the services I rendered them did not require I do so. As for my clothes, they are those of a courtier-turned-bowman, and have seen better days. And by the way, who would be so anxious to plant a knife in my innocent back?"
"My husband, you idiot! Have you downed too much wine, or taken a blow on the head? Have you forgotten our pledge of love, my husband's jealousy, and your oath before the town chief never to see me again on pain of death?" Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Have you been raiding the caravans again? Is that why you joined the Golden King's forces, to run the escorts and caravans into your traps?"
Tralane was silent, unable to express his stupefaction. The mention of Wyden's Eye and its power might make him the target of unscrupulous conspiracies, yet he could not remove the burden of another man's identity without explaining why it was impossible for him to be other than what he was. At the last, he found the needless complications that had arisen out of his simple search for shelter mildly amusing. But his laughter would not satisfy the woman. He sighed, crossed his hand over his eyes and looked down at his feet. He was twisting and turning the facts to form a suitable story when she left the door, pushed a panel on the far wall, and stood aside as a trap door opened from above and a ladder descended. The noise of the mechanism caused the servants to turn and mutter in their sleep.
"Up with you, quickly," she said, her shock and anger having regressed to annoyance with a favored but disobedient child. "You can hide upstairs in the loft until the place quiets down, and then you can explain the reasoning behind this new escapade of yours."
Accepting the lodgings that were at last being offered, Tralane climbed the ladder. The notion that the woman was mad suddenly occurred to him, and he felt sorry for her and the innkeeper. There could be no reasoning with her, and he felt foolish for having been taken in by her delusion and fighting against it. If she thought that he, a stranger, was her banished lover, then why not let the farce continue? He had evaded eyes made sharper by jealousy than the innkeeper's, and the danger of discovery only made the affair more attractive.
He was still climbing when his thoughts had run their course. The journey took longer than he had anticipated; when he finally reached his room, he found it to be nothing more than an attic with dried grass and dust spread liberally on the floor, a chamber pot in a corner, and a burning candle in a holder hanging from a roof beam. Beneath the candle sat an emaciated, bald-headed old man with veins tracing their way along his arms and legs like starving rivers in a pale desert. He wore a soiled breech cloth and sash and the remnants of a pair of sandals.
"Welcome, young man," he said, his voice dimmed and cracked with age. "There's plenty of room for two refugees."
Tralane dropped his pack, bow, and quiver in a corner of the room. He nodded sullenly at the old man, unhappy over sharing a room with a stranger. Then he heard th
e trap door slide shut below him, and he realized he was in a secret room above the tavern.
The old man laughed drily. "I am Gibron the Mage, weaver of potent spells and lasting charms."
Tralane stiffened defensively, the sight of Agathom wrestling with a demon bursting into his memory.
"And I am Tralane, bard and bowman currently without employment." His reply was not steady.
Gibron's eyes seemed to gleam and twinkle as he passed his gaze over Tralane. "A bard, eh? You have an aura about you that makes me think you've had some experience with magic. Were you a disciple once?"
"Yes, but my teacher was a poor one, and I left him to follow my own path."
"And your parents, did they have dealings with beings of power, or with death?"
Tralane shook his head and almost sneered. "I don't know; I never knew them. My teacher was also my guardian—it is his influence you sense. My own magics were never very effective or successful." He refrained from mentioning Wyden's Eye, afraid its power might tempt the old man. "But you said something about being a refugee?"
The mage cackled, as if he knew something Tralane did not. "Young ones are always so secretive with their elders. Well, no matter, I have no secrets. I am fleeing Sagamourin, the Golden King who rules half these southern lands and is extending his borders even further. I am his enemy now, because I would not help satisfy his imperial dreams. He is a sorcerer of the material. His passions are power and rule. My goals are merely spiritual, as I seek transcendence through transformation. His riches and knowledge would not help me escape the cycle of life and death that binds even the gods, and so I was not tempted to his cause. And those with power who do not serve the Golden King must die."
Tralane appreciated Gibron's honesty, since he himself was not always so ready to offer his problems up for public scrutiny. He also understood Gibron's refusal to serve. Like Mathi, Gibron was engaged on a private quest for the sorcery that could save the individual soul, shaped by a lifetime of experience into an identity, from being hurtled by death into the formless Sea, there to be crushed, torn apart, and used once again in the making of a new, fresh life. The comforts and pleasures of the flesh did not interest those who sought to escape the final price of having flesh.
"I managed to escape," the mage continued, "and after many days of traveling, deceiving the searching spells and spirits Sagamourin has sent after me, and surviving as best I could as far from the main roads as possible, I arrived here in Fargouet on the Golden King's most distant border. I'm now waiting for a guide, to be procured by the kind owner of this tavern—a man named Rimskiel—and with the guide's help I hope to journey across the plains and find some new, unknown lands. Perhaps I'll cross the seas and find some new continent. Whatever happens, I will be far removed from Sagamourin's ambitions, and free to pursue my goal."
The rise of a sorcerous power in Gibron's world seemed to parallel the events of Tralane's home. A stone had been cast into an infinite pool, sending ripples of disturbance across parallel worlds.
"I wish you well," Tralane said, breaking off his musings when he noticed the silence that had fallen over the attic. "As for myself, I've somehow managed to involve myself with that madwoman downstairs. I take it she's Rimskiel's wife. I pity the life he must have with such a frantic mate."
"You mean Marzen?" The mage shook his head with a smile. "Her mind is whole and sharp, like the edge of an assassin's blade. She and I have often talked since I came here. I would trust her with my life." He stopped, seemed surprised, and laughed. "I have done so."
"But there must be some mistake," Tralane protested. "She took me for her lover and sent me up here so I could hide from her husband."
"I am new to these parts, so I cannot swear if what she says is true. But I have heard her speak at some length of a rascal she calls Detrexan, and she seemed quite in her wits, if bitter, when on that subject. If I were you, I would not dismiss the situation as her madness."
"But I've never seen her before. It's quite impossible."
"Perhaps in another town—"
Once again, Tralane withheld the knowledge of Wyden's Eye. "No, no, it cannot be—I know, I'm sure."
Gibron studied Tralane closely, with penetrating intensity. The bard turned away, annoyed over displaying such unaccustomed agitation. The mage's suspicious attention was the antithesis of the reaction Tralane had usually received from Mathi, whom he had always considered easy to deceive. Gibron seemed as wise and powerful, and yet more humane than any practitioner of the arts he had ever met. Tralane shrank from the elder's gaze.
"It would seem the fates have much in store for you," Gibron said at last, closing his eyes and leaning back against a wall. Soon, his breathing fell into the steady, shallow rhythm of sleep.
Chapter 5
Though weary from traveling, Tralane had difficulty sleeping that night. The comforts and company he had received so far were not those he had anticipated. Secrets stirred in his mind, prompted by his spirit.
He had nightmares. He was pursued by demons—hideous creatures formed from beasts and men, drooling blood, with misplaced eyes and mouths leering at him and shouting curses after him as he ran. Their slavering jaws nipped at his heels; their claws clutched at strands of his hair. He fell to the soft, moist earth. His legs would not carry him. He lay quietly, drinking in the soft warmth. He was embraced by the rich, nurturing soil that molded itself so willingly to the contours of his body. He merged with the warm darkness and knew he had escaped. He looked behind him and saw the demons dancing madly over him. They tore off his limbs, smothered and crushed him beneath their weight. They ate his flesh and drank his blood. He shrieked, as the warmth fell away and their cold, hard touch lifted him into the sky. Then he woke.
He lay trembling in his corner of the attic, listening to his heart beating wildly, pounding against the silence. It was the third time he had been thus visited that night. His condescending smile and scoffing dismissals of the feelings of remorse and guilt did not steady his hands nor pump back the strength to his arms and legs. After a concerted effort, the sharp talons and angry eyes of demons gave way to mortal steel and jealous hearts. He sank into the present, into the moment. He welcomed Rimskiel's anger and the dangerously precarious position he was in, and applied himself to escaping it. The ghosts would vanish as easily as the physical threat, by the simple expedience of danger.
He had to move on, as quickly as possible. Whatever conflicts had been renewed by his arrival would just as suddenly be forgotten by his rapid departure. He would go someplace where a gifted bard and talented archer was appreciated, perhaps to the Golden King's court; he seemed by Gibron's account to be the destined ruler of the world. From there, Tralane would have the opportunity to plot out his future along the familiar lines of court politics. Once settled into a familiar pattern, he would have time to explore the possibilities Wyden's Eye offered to those with wit to see them.
He was enumerating the promises life had made to him when he had stolen the amulet when the noise of the trap door mechanism creaking into service snapped the thread of his thoughts. He tensed and waited for the shouts and angry voices of vengeful men to burst up the passage. But there was only the sound of a single pair of feet treading softly up the ladder.
Marzen appeared, holding a candle in her left hand and a sack in her right. She placed the sack and light on the floor and climbed up the rest of the way. She had washed and changed into a more comely dress. Tralane smiled appreciatively.
"Ah, you're not sleeping," she whispered. She glanced at Gibron's sleeping form, then continued. "It must be your sins that keep you awake. You should follow the old man's example. He doesn't let anything worry him."
"I was only thinking, Marzen. People do that late at night."
"Why? Because they're ashamed to do it in the day-time?" She gave him a facetious smirk and placed the bag in the middle of the attic. "Well, at least you remember my name. That's a good sign. There's food in the sack, which you'll h
ave to share with the old man. And I brought some sheremain nuts. You see, I remember what you like."
Tralane opened the bag and inspected the contents. There was a loaf of bread, a ball of cheese, some smoked camulet strips, fruit, and a cluster of branches from which hung small, round nuts. He picked one, cracked it with a knife he also found in the bag, and sampled the meat. After a few chews, the room began to sway from side to side, and the walls seemed to move away from him. He found it too bitter and potent for his taste and spat the meat out.
"I'm afraid this is going to upset you, Marzen, but in all my eighteen winters, I've never tasted anything like this before." He dropped the branches and knife back into the bag. "Nor have I ever seen you before this night. I learned your name from Gibron, who also informed me you were not mad. But if he's right, why do you insist on calling me your lover? Mind you, it's not an unpleasant proposition, but I'd prefer a more straightforward approach."
Marzen sat close beside him. Her fresh scent made him conscious of his own odor and, as the effects of the sheremain nut quickly wore off, the cramped confines of the room they were in. Her body was hard with the years of her service in the inn, but her face was softened by wide, sensuous lips that were parted, as if ready to speak, and by the long, brown curls that fell to her shoulders. Her skin was smooth and her hands were calloused by hard work, so he could not tell her age with too much accuracy.
As he studied her, lines of anxiety arched across her forehead.
"Don't you remember anything?" she asked, leaning closer to him. "Please, don't jest, not now."
"All right," he acquiesced, curious to see why she was so adamant. "Tell me about myself."
She placed the candle in front of her and locked her fingers together on her lap. She smiled as if he was playing a game with her, but she could not look long into his eyes and glanced frequently at the flame. She drew in a deep breath and began.
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