Land of the Burning Sands (11 page)

Amnachudran gave a serious nod. “It is, unfortunately. We really must do something soon about all the brigands. So you’ll go with Sicheir, then? Good, then. I do hope you will find yourself able to work with my daughter.”

Gereint let his mouth crook. “I’m sure it will be impossible for her to offend me.”

Lady Emre smiled at him warmly, and Amnachudran laughed. He waved his fork in the air. “‘Three imperturbable things there be: the indifferent sky, the sums of mathematics, and a man too wise to be proud.’ Though I always thought that
pride
was not quite the concept Teirenchoden wanted there.”

“Vanity, perhaps,” Lady Emre offered. Her wry glance Gereint’s way suggested her suspicion that life had taught him the dispensability of vanity. Gereint lowered his eyes before her too-perceptive gaze.

“Very likely,” agreed Amnachudran. He leaned back in his chair. “Now, Gereint, I have some coin for you; enough for you to get to Breidechboden and then through the gates. Breidechboden is not a kind city to the indigent; if you do any work for Tehre, make sure she remembers to pay you what it’s worth.”

“You’ve already been very generous—”

“‘My friend, if I am too generous, I can only hope you will forgive me and believe I don’t intend to compel you with the bonds of gratitude.’”

Gereint blinked. He said at last, “Banrichte Maskeirien. Some epic or other…”

“Yes, the Engeieresgen cycle; very good.” Amnachudran paused. Then he said kindly, “I would not dare try to improve upon Maskeirien’s words.”

Gereint considered the older man. “If I am compelled by the bonds of gratitude, it is because I choose to be.”

Amnachudran was silent for a moment. Then he stood up, came to Gereint, and laid two fingers on Gereint’s cheek where the scar of the brand had been. “As long as I do not regret this. I think I can trust you for that.”

“You can,” Gereint promised him. He met Lady Emre’s wry gaze, including her in that promise.

G
ereint traveled with Sicheir Amnachudran and half a dozen men-at-arms. From Amnachudran’s house, it was twelve miles south to Tashen. Because they did not leave the scholar’s house until noon and were not pressed by any need for haste, they stayed the night at an inn in the town. No one paid Gereint any attention: Travelers passing through Tashen were nothing worth comment, no doubt especially after the flood of refugees from Melentser had passed through. That perfect lack of interest was even more to be treasured than a comfortable bed.

From Tashen, it was only about fifteen miles south to Metichteran, all on a good road. There, the northernmost bridge across the Teschanken River led from East Metichteran to West Metichteran. Gereint looked down with interest at the bridge as they crossed the river.

This bridge had been built so that that Casmantium, invading Meridanium, could send half its army down from the north upon the Meridanian forces. Casmantian builders had flung the bridge across the river in a single night and a day, according to Sichan Meiregen’s epic, and the Casmantian soldiers had come down upon the armies of Meridanium like reapers upon wheat. Meridanium had lost its king and its independence and had become merely one Casmantian province among many. Then, in the more peaceful era that followed, there had been time for towns to grow up and roads to be built… but nothing that had been built in the north had stood longer or more solidly than Metichteran’s bridge. Though Gereint sincerely doubted any account that claimed a night and a day sufficient for its building, no matter how great the general or how gifted his builders. It was a very solid-looking bridge.

Then they headed south again through the low, rocky hills along the river road. Here the road was narrow and rough, and though there were obvious signs of large numbers of recent travelers, there were few now on the road. This was a stretch of farmless backcountry where brigands might well wait for vulnerable travelers, but theirs was too large a party to tempt any brigands who might have been watching the road. They passed other travelers, slow-moving refugees who had left Melentser only right at the deadline. Those travelers had also been warned about the brigands, clearly. Very few of them traveled in parties smaller than Sicheir’s, and those that did looked decidedly anxious.

From Metichteran, they traveled thirty miles south along the Teschanken River to Pamnarichtan, where the swift little Nerintsan River came out of the hills to join the wider Teschanken. The inn at the confluence was not very impressive, but the confluence itself was a great sight. The upper Teschanken flowed clear and swift from the north, and the Nerintsan came down in a quick, cheerful dash from the steep hills, but the lower Teschanken that resulted from their joining was very different in character from either northern stretch of river. It was broad and deep, colored a rich brown with sediment, seemingly lazy but treacherous, its currents running in unexpected directions. No one would try to build a bridge across the South Teschanken, but there was a ferry to Raichboden, southernmost town in the once independent province of Meridanium. Riverboats appeared here where the Teschanken was navigable; inns were crowded with boat crews as well as accommodating travelers off the road.

“Can’t we try a boat?” asked the youngest of the men-at-arms, Bechten, craning wistfully to look after one that floated past.

“Oh, to be sure. The price will be high with all those folk crowding south from Melentser. But you can sell your horse for passage and walk on your own legs from Dachsichten back home,” one of his elders answered, not unkindly. “No, boy; the road’s a good one and the weather’s fine, so don’t tempt the sky with a grumble, eh? Besides, see, the river’s running low. You wouldn’t think it, looking at the water here, but once they get farther down, those boats will be snagging up and pressing even their paying passengers to get them over the bars.”

So they rode at an easy pace, and the weather held fair; they came to Dachsichten six days after leaving Eben Amnachudran’s house.

Dachsichten collected important roads that ran from the north and the south and the west. It was not a pretty town, but it was crowded and busy; the roads around Dachsichten thronged with respectable carters and farm wagons, with drovers and merchants’ convoys, with the slow-moving wagons of families resettling from Melentser, and the carriages of the wealthy, and swift-horsed couriers.

“There won’t be trouble with brigands from here,” Sicheir commented to Gereint. He was standing on the tiny balcony of their room at the inn, looking out over the crowded city streets. It was not a good inn, but the only one they had found with rooms still to let: Many of the refugees from Melentser still lingered in Dachsichten while they decided where to go. Some would stay, probably. Especially the less well-to-do. Dachsichten was not a pretty town, but it was prosperous; folk looking for work might well find it here.

But it left the inns crowded. With Sicheir on the balcony, there wasn’t room for Gereint to even set a foot on it. That was well enough; it was, no doubt, extremely unlikely that anyone from Melentser would happen to glance up and recognize him, but why take the chance?

“The men can all go back north in the morning, and we’ll part company,” Sicheir added. The young man looked over his shoulder at Gereint. “I’ll be sorry for that. You’ve a good memory for the odd tale out of the histories. I see why my father thought you might work well with Tehre.”

Gereint murmured something appropriate. He was distracted by a sudden desperate temptation to declare that he’d changed his mind, that Breidechboden was no longer his destination. He could head west to the pass at Ehre with Sicheir, test once and for all the notion that crossing the border would break the
geas
magic, avoid any possible encounter with any previous master or cousin or anyone else in Breidechboden who might recognize him.

Of course, if he did that, he would never find Reichteier Andlauban, never have the opportunity to ask the surgeon mage to remove the
geas
rings. Even if the
geas
itself broke crossing the border, Gereint knew that the physical presence of the rings would fret him for the rest of his life. He could endure that. There were far worse things than carrying merely the
symbol
of bondage. Even so… Gereint wanted the rings gone with an intensity that ached through all his bones.

And he had promised Amnachudran he would go to his daughter’s house.

Gereint had spent years learning to disbelieve in the existence of true kindness. And then Eben Amnachudran and his family had effortlessly demonstrated that all the painful lessons he’d worked so hard to learn had been wrong. It had been as though the world had suddenly expanded before him, reclaiming all the generous width he remembered from his distant childhood. And Gereint had realized, gradually—was still realizing—that he’d spent all those years wanting nothing more than a reason to believe in that generosity. And Amnachudran had given him that reason.

So in the morning Gereint said nothing, but swung up on his borrowed horse and rode with Sicheir only so far as the western gate of Dachsichten. Then he left the younger man with a handclasp and a nod and rode south without looking back, through a pearly morning mist that drifted across the city and glittered on the slate roofs of the houses and cobblestones of the streets.

The mist turned into a cold rain before he even reached Dachsichten’s southern gate, and then the rain stayed with him as he rode south. The road was too well made to go to sloppy mud; water simply beaded on its surface and ran away down its sloping edges. But the persistent rain got down the collar of his shirt and made the reins slippery in his hands, and he rode with his shoulders hunched and his head bowed. He tried not to take the rain as a sign of things to come.

The character of the countryside changed south of Dachsichten, becoming flatter and richer. Gereint rode now through a tight and tidy patchwork of fields and pastures and orchards, with woodlots few and much prized. The river rolled along on his left, the color of muddy slate, rain dimpling its surface. Boats with brightly painted trim slid past him, running downstream at a pace no horse could sustain. But as the man-at-arms had suggested, Gereint not infrequently saw one or another boat snagged up, the men of their crews cursing as they worked to free it.

There were few inns south of Dachsichten, but far more farms that offered travelers meals in their huge, busy kitchens, and the hospitality of a clean, hay-sweet barn or an extra room for those who wished to barter coin or labor for a night’s comfortable rest. Gereint, disgusted by the continuing bad weather, halted early his first evening out from Dachsichten, when he came to a particularly pleasant-looking farm. He stayed there an entire extra day, watching the rain fall and setting his hands to small tasks of mending and making that had proven beyond the limited skill of local makers. He even borrowed the small portable forge the farmer owned and showed the farmer’s twin sons, both moderately gifted, how to repair worn pots and skillets.

It occurred to Gereint for the first time that even bearing the
geas
rings, he might not need to go to Feierabiand to find a new life; that he might trade his skill as a maker for a place at almost any normal, peaceful farm and disappear from the sight of anyone who might wish to find him. Unless, of course, someone someday caught sight of the rings. Then that new life would vanish in a heartbeat… No. He set his face south when the rain finally stopped and went on.

The sun came out at last, and Gereint’s horse strode out with a will in the clean air, happy with its rest and with the generous measure of grain the farmer’s sons had measured out for it. The most common travelers on the road were now farmers with small dog-carts and teams of wagonners with six-horse teams of enormous horses. The carts were for local travel, but the wagons were heading, loaded, to Breidechboden, or returning empty to their farms.

It had been years since Gereint had lived in Breidechboden, and he had neither intended nor wished to return. Nevertheless, a strange feeling went through him when, two days later, he finally saw the Emnerechke Gates rise up before him: great stone pillars that marked the beginning of the city proper. It was foolish to feel he’d come home. Breidechboden was not, could never again be, his home. But even so, the feeling was there, surprising him with its intensity.

A wall had once run between each of the four hills that framed the city, encircling the valley that lay in their midst. That wall had been two spear-casts thick and six high, faced with stone and huge timbers from the heart of the great forest, heavy with builders’ magic so that it would stand against even the most powerful siege engines.