Master of the Cauldron (28 page)

As they approached, Ilna walked a little ahead of the men flanking her. Chalcus could be charming, but looking harmless was completely beyond him. Davus, she'd begun to realize, wasn't any better in that respect, for all that she couldn't have asked for a more polite and pleasant companion.

The gate creaked inward, then jerked open farther. The tall leaves hogged, so the inward corners plowed curving furrows in the ground. Two horsemen with swords and quivers of short javelins rather than arrows hanging from their saddles rode through. They pulled up just outside the enclosure, trying to look menacing, while the four men who'd opened the gate remounted and followed them.

When all six were in a line, a man so fat that Ilna felt sorry for his poor horse—he'd have done better on an ox—came out, keeping carefully behind the others. This last fellow wore a sword, but he looked as though the horse would be more dangerous wielding it.

He was overdressed and badly dressed, both. His cloak was of blue wool dyed in several different lots, and his black tunic had started to fade in patches. Both were embroidered with gold thread. The seamstress who'd worked on the left side of the garments was skilled enough to receive Ilna's silent approval, but that only served to point out the childish incompetence of the two different hands who'd done the rest of the embroidery.

The leader of the six horsemen wore a mail shirt and trailed a red pennant from the peak of his helmet. He looked at the fat man, then glowered at Ilna, and said, “Get on with you! Lord Ramelus doesn't allow vagabonds on his land!”

Ilna smiled faintly. She was thinking of how this flunky in armor would look dangling by his own intestines from a limb of one of the chestnut trees growing beside the manor house.

“We're travellers, not vagabonds,” she said in a mild voice, hoping that her smile had been misinterpreted. “We'd appreciate a little food and drink, but we're more than willing to work for our keep.”

She glanced at her companions, keeping her face bland. Chalcus grinned engagingly at a pair of the mounted men; Davus was digging at the ground with his big toe. To a stranger he'd look embarrassed, but Ilna noticed that he'd uncovered a wedge-shaped shard of limestone. A piece like that could very nearly decapitate a man if it was well thrown.

The chief guard glanced again to the fat man, who was obviously Lord Ramelus. Ramelus frowned, then said in a squeakier voice than his bulk suggested, “They can have water, Gallen. We don't need their labor—or their presence here, either one.”

“All right, Lord Ramelus says you can have water,” Gallen said, twisting to get the skin of water slung from the back of his saddle where it balanced the sheaf of javelins.

Ilna smiled again, her fingers weaving a pattern of cords. It struck her as amusing that Lord Ramelus and his flunkies were just as safe as they thought they were, but only because she and her companions didn't
want
to kill them all. It would've been quite simple, at least if Davus was what she thought he was; and possible even if he wasn't, given Chalcus' skills and her own.

But they weren't going to do that. There were far too many men—and women too, hurling loom weights and wielding turnspits—in the community for the three of them to take their simple needs by force, even
if they'd killed the leader and his immediate guards. No, there were better ways to get food and something better than a drink of water from a sheepskin bottle.

The horseman leaned forward, holding out the skin. Ilna reached up, but instead of taking the water from him she spread the pattern she'd just knotted, saying, “I can weave a hanging that will make everybody who sees it feel better about themselves and their neighbors.”

“Oh!” said Gallen, staring transfixed. The waterskin slipped slowly forward, forgotten in his amazement. “Oh, milady, that's wonderful—”

“What is?” Lord Ramelus demanded. “What are you doing there, Gallen? Seifert, what's Gallen doing?”

Ilna folded the pattern between her palms. It was a little thing, nothing of lasting effect, but Gallen groaned when it vanished.

“I can weave a hanging that will make your subjects happier, milord,” Ilna said, stepping around the head of Gallen's mount so that she could meet Ramelus' eyes. The horse whickered; she touched its muzzle with her left fingertips. “For that we'll have food and drink while we're here, and another portion of food and drink to carry us on our way when I've finished the task to your satisfaction. Do you agree?”

“What is that?” Ramelus demanded. “The thing in your hands—show it to me!”

Ilna walked through the line of guards, stretching the pattern between her thumbs and forefingers again. Ramelus squinted, but he was apparently nearsighted. He leaned slightly forward in the saddle; he was too heavy and awkward to bend down the way a more supple rider might've done. “Hand it up!” he ordered in irritation.

Ilna frowned minusculely. “It only works if I keep the tension correct,” she said. “The one I'll weave for you will be larger. It'll be able to hang in the open air and still have its proper effect.”

Ramelus glared at her, then dismounted with a degree of care worthy of masons lowering a keystone into an arch. Wheezing slightly, he stepped around his horse and peered at the pattern in Ilna's spread hands.

For a moment, Ramelus' expression became hostile, even angry. It softened but almost instantly shifted to one of shielded cunning. Ilna folded her pattern and, by straightening, implied a greater separation between them than the distance itself involved.

The quickly knotted design lost its positive effect on a spectator who'd stared at it for a few minutes, but Ilna really could weave a larger panel that
would act more subtly and for as long as it hung. Of course she could do that: she'd said she could, hadn't she?

“You're a wizard,” Ramelus said, breathing hard and looking at her with an expression she couldn't read—couldn't read and probably didn't want to read.

“No,” Ilna said. “I'm a weaver. If your women will loan me a loom—”

All the garments she saw were homespun, with the possible exceptions of the lord's own cloak and tunic.

“—I can do a thing like this—”

She held up the hank of cords that her fingers had already picked out again.

“—on a larger scale. For our keep while we stay here, a day or so should be enough; and for supplies to go off with, which we'll do as soon as I've finished the design to your satisfaction.”

The horsemen had crowded together to hear their commander trying to describe what he'd seen in Ilna's pattern. In fact he hadn't seen anything, for all that he was waving his hands to suggest shapes and objects. All it'd been was a feeling of bliss and beauty, the sort of pleasure some people said they remembered from dreams.

Ilna wouldn't know of her own experience, of course. Mostly she didn't remember dreams at all, and when she did they were of a very different sort.

“Food and drink for you, that's your price?” Ramelus said. “That's what you said.”

Ilna looked at him without affection. The landowner reminded her of her uncle Katchin, the wealthiest man in Barca's Hamlet and easily the most disliked. Katchin had boasted of his own dignity and importance; but in his heart he'd known he was a joke to his neighbors, albeit a joke they told behind his back for fear of his malice.

“Food and drink for the three of us,” Ilna said in a cold voice, seeing the cheat in the words. That was like Katchin also: the letter of the law, but by policy veering as far from justice as that law permitted him. “Space in a manger to sleep if you choose, though we can do without that. And food and drink for the three of us when we go off—tomorrow, I would hope, but whenever that is.”

“Done!” Ramelus said. He clasped hands with her to seal the bargain. He looked around him at his guards. “You're all witnesses!”

In gripping the landowner's hand, Ilna let her fingertips caress the embroidered sleeve of his tunic.
He's going to cheat us,
she thought.
For no reason other than to prove to his tenants that he can cheat a stranger and get away with it.

She backed away, dusting her palms together and smiling as she watched Ramelus struggle to mount his horse. Ramelus planned to cheat, and she planned to keep her word. And there was no doubt in Ilna's mind that she would have the better part of the bargain.

 

Either the dome of Ronn's vast Assembly Hall had become perfectly clear, or it'd somehow been slid off to the sides since Cashel was there that morning. The moon was overhead and looked bigger than he was used to seeing it. Nobody had a better chance to study the night sky than a shepherd. Maybe that had something to do with the dome, if the dome was still there.

“Citizens of Ronn!” said the female wizard. She seemed to've become leader of the Council of the Wise for all intents and purposes. The old man hunched in his chair, his limbs drawn up to his body like a dead spider. “We and our city face the greatest danger of all time!”

Mab, at this moment a slender, gray-haired woman, sniffed, and said tartly, “Councillor Oursa is getting a little above herself if she believes she knows what the future will bring. And if she means, ‘the greatest danger in the past thousand years,' that's true only because of our weakness, not the enemy's strength.”

“The images of the Heroes no longer protect our walls,” Oursa said. “We must protect ourselves!”

Cashel tried to imagine Oursa and the other Councillors waving swords as the Made Men charged across a field at them. The thought made him smile, which seemed to bother the people nearby in the big hall. For some reason everybody around him and Mab was looking at them instead of up at the stage.

The Councillor's voice sounded from the air like she was standing just arm's length away, the way all the speakers had in the morning levee. The light was the same way, kind of: everything in the room, the walls and floor and even the air itself, glowed. No part of it was brighter than a firefly's tail, but from everything together Cashel could see all over just the same as he would during daylight.

There was a whisper of sound, nothing that the room picked up so that everybody could hear, though. Suddenly a voice rang out, “How can we protect ourselves?
We
don't know how to fight!”

Cashel saw the Sons of the Heroes coming toward him and Mab through the crowd. Herron turned toward the stage and shouted a reply. His words vanished in the great room, smoothed away by the air—though as close as the boy was, Cashel figured he should've been able to hear normally. He wondered just what—or who—decided what was said that was worth other people listening to.

Mab slashed her right hand through the air in a gesture that suggested more than it showed. A dazzle of wizardlight the same sapphire color as her nails struck skyward, calling the attention of everyone in the chamber to her. In a ringing voice, she cried, “Your homes still hold the weapons and armor of your grandfathers' grandfathers. Go back to your hearths. Get the swords and spears of your forefathers and face the Made Men!”

In place of the night sky, the air above the hall showed giant images of what'd happened on the ramparts earlier: the Made Men coming on, and Cashel knocking them down with short, quick strokes that each ended an opponent with the certainty of a thunderbolt. Cashel'd never seen himself moving like that, from the outside. His lips pursed. He wasn't one to give himself praise—but judging what he saw with a critical eye, the first thing that went through his mind was that
he
wouldn't look forward to fighting somebody as good as the fellow he was watching.

Again there was a whisper of response, the brilliantly clothed folk of Ronn talking among themselves. The Sons clustered around Cashel and Mab, their expressions a mix of hopeful and frightened. Cashel understood: this was the big chance they'd hoped for, trained for; but they must have a good notion, at least since he'd taken them apart with his quarterstaff that afternoon, that they weren't up to the job they'd set themselves.

“We don't know how to fight!” the voice of the Assembly said. The Council of the Wise remained silent on the stage, the woman still standing but none of them trying to lead the discussion. “The big stranger fought the Made Men. Will he fight them for us again?”

Cashel gripped his quarterstaff harder. Everybody was looking at him. Everybody: the floor of the assembly hall wasn't flat anymore, it sloped up in every direction like a bowl with him in the center, and Duzi knew how many people staring. He supposed it was some trick of the light, or else the
Councillors were more powerful wizards than he'd been thinking they were. Regardless, it was happening, and he sure didn't like it.

“Tell them, Cashel,” Mab said with her cool smile. She spoke to him alone, her hands tented before her. No matter what the rest of her appearance was, Cashel could always tell Mab by those dazzling fingernails. “Tell them what you think.”

This is none of my business!
Cashel thought. But because he was more angry than he was embarrassed, he blurted aloud, “You people can fight these Made Men yourselves! You saw them up there—”

He waved his left hand toward where the images had stepped and swung; the moon was back now.

“They can't fight, they're no more real soldiers than you are. If you've got swords, get them. When the Made Men attack you just
fight
. That's all you have to do.”

“We need a leader,” the assembly said. Some
body,
some individual, had spoken the words, but they were what the whole huge gathering thought. “In the past, the Heroes led the citizens of Ronn. Give us a Hero. Let the stranger lead us!”

Cashel looked at the faces, the tense and frightened faces, staring down at him. Suddenly he smiled. The answer was simple and so obvious that he didn't need the verbal push Mab was opening her mouth to provide.