Son of Avonar (52 page)

“To the best of my understanding, that is the case.”

“So we've come to the end of another road.” Disappointment hit me like a bludgeon, bringing with it the effects of constant worry and long traveling, lack of sleep, and the high emotions of the day. What in the name of sense were we going to do now? I could not even begin to consider it.

D'Natheil stretched out his long limbs on the filthy floor, yawned, and stuffed his cloak under his head for a pillow. “You'll think of something.”

Before I could make a proper retort, he was snoring.

Baglos shared cheese and raspberries he'd bought in the market that morning, and then, before the light was completely gone, he curled up by the door and fell asleep as quickly as had his master. I, though still unsettled and confused, churning inside about Tomas's dreams and Graeme Rowan's accusations, was only a breath behind.

 

Shouts and screams and the shattering of glass yanked me from the depths of sleep. D'Natheil crouched beside the window, his back flattened against the wall. I hurried to join him, heeding his gesture of caution as I ducked under the sloping roof and dropped to my knees beside him. Baglos stood by the bolted door, his short sword drawn and ready.

I peered out onto a scene of chaos. The bright colored awnings were in shreds, and cloth, fleece, and spools of yarn were scattered and trampled in the muddy street. At least three people lay unmoving in the street muck, while foot soldiers flailed whips at the pressing, shouting crowd. Two soldiers dragged a young man from the dye shop across the lane toward a mounted troop of heavily armed soldiers guarding a roped cluster of men. A young woman clutching an infant ran out after them. A whip cut cruelly across her face, and she fell to her knees screaming. Several women surrounded the fallen girl and her child, restraining her while the soldiers kicked and slapped the struggling man, shoving him into the cluster of captives and fastening his roped hands to the others.

“A conscript gang,” I said. I had known of forced military service all my life, believing it an unfortunate necessity of Leiran dominance. Karon had been the first to tell me of its cruelty and of the poverty and desperation left in its wake. I had never witnessed a conscription for myself. Soldiers didn't come for men in the streets where I had lived.

“They feed.” D'Natheil was pale. Revolted. “This that we see. They feed on it, on the fear, on the wrongness of it.”

It took me a moment to grasp his meaning. “The Zhid feed on it? Is that what you mean?”

“Not the Zhid. Their masters. I've felt the masters' hunger through all our travels—at the professor's house, and again on the night of the fire. I just didn't understand what it was. But seeing this, hearing it, feeling it, today I know. The masters devour the cries and the anger, the fear and the pain, and it makes them powerful. And their power creates and nurtures the Zhid.” The Prince's voice overflowed with loathing.

The masters . . . the Lords of Zhev'Na, Baglos had called them. Merely thinking the name seemed to darken the day.

With the crack of a lash and the snarls and curses of the soldiers, the “recruits” were herded away. The wails of the bereaved echoed through the near-deserted street, mourning both the living and the dead. Little difference between the two—the living and the dead—I thought, for there was little chance the conscripts would ever come home. Even if the poor bastards survived their five years of service, they would likely be released somewhere hundreds of leagues from these streets where they'd spent their whole lives. They might spend the rest of their days trying to find their way home.

Never had I felt so small in the world, so alone in a hostile universe.
Home
. Somehow at that moment, the need to go home swept through me, a hollow craving so powerful, so physically real, that I had to press my hand tight across my mouth to keep from crying it aloud. For all the love and kindness that had blessed me there, Jonah's cottage was not home. I had never belonged there or in Dunfarrie. Nor was home the place of my childhood, the ancient keep where Tomas believed I could somehow protect his child from his nightmares. My home was in ashes, and I was alone, more even than the Writer, the itinerant Healer who always found his way home. . . .

“Home”—an idea flitted past like dandelion fluff on the wind of useless sentiment—“he always went home. . . .” I whirled about abruptly. “Tell me Baglos, where was the Writer when he drew the diagram?”

Baglos lowered his small sword, puzzling over the question. “It is my impression that he was at his residence. In this village called—”

“—Tryglevie,” I said.

“Yes. In a very small house with a wife and six children—very noisy and undisciplined—and a pig, and a goat, and sixteen chickens, and a cat that wandered in from time to time.”

“Karon and I looked at a number of maps of Leire and Valleor, but found no mention of Tryglevie. But doesn't it make sense that his route to the stronghold would begin at his home? Baglos, is it possible that you know something of Tryglevie?”

Baglos looked at D'Natheil, and the Prince gave him the proper command. After a moment of meditation, the Dulcé looked up in amazement. “Indeed, woman, I can guide you there!”

“We must go south of this city, but north and far to the west of your home, to a countryside of rocks and hills and fields. No forest there, no trees.” So Baglos described the way to Tryglevie. “The village has changed its name through the years and is now called Yennet. It is very small and appears on no map, but there is a ruin nearby—it was in a description of the ruin in the professor's library that I learned of this village. I can tell you no more at present.”

We set off within the hour. I left a message at the ale shop by the west gate, telling Jacopo that we had found a lead and were off to chase it. I also warned him stay clear of Graeme Rowan, who had accused him of treachery. He was my friend. I could not leave him exposed.

Close onto midday, I rode into a village to buy supplies and fill our water flasks, leaving Baglos and D'Natheil waiting under a tree. When I returned, the road was deserted, the dust of my passing the only movement. But mingled with the buzz of locusts came a hiss from a blackberry thicket which led me to a cowering Baglos.

“We were followed,” whispered the foolish Dulcé, as if any watcher would not have noticed me holding back the prickling vines to speak to him. “D'Natheil sensed the enchantment. He has led them south, away from our course, toward your village. We are to proceed on our way, and he'll meet us tonight west of the river at Fensbridge.”

Baglos and I gave our horses free rein to gallop westward in the dusty heat, crossing the narrow arch of Fensbridge in late afternoon. The sunset had transformed the sluggish, weed-choked Dun into a river of molten gold. On the far side of the river we found a clearing where we could observe the bridge and the roads from the west, as well as the forest track that followed the river's west bank—the route we ourselves had taken up from Dunfarrie a month before. As we waited for D'Natheil, we built a small fire.

I sat, chin in hand, watching the day's last travelers straggle in from the western roads and cross the bridge into the town, seeking beds for the night. Without me or the Dulcé to slow him, the Prince should be able to evade any ordinary pursuit. The extraordinary, too, I hoped.

Baglos pulled the Writer's journal from his pack and sat down beside me. He had said he wanted to study it further, that he hoped to find some insight we had missed. He turned it over in his small hands several times. “Tell me, woman, what happened to the Exiles? You've said so little of them. Only that they were hunted and executed. Perhaps if I knew more, I could understand these writings better. Would you tell me of your husband?” His almond eyes glowed in the waning light. He was waiting to consume Karon's life as he had consumed Ferrante's maps.

No reason to refuse the Dulcé's request—to tell Karon's stories, to share the past that had spread itself so vividly across my mind's landscape since D'Natheil had invaded my life. I picked up a long stick and poked it in the fire, rearranging the coals as I cracked open the door of waking memory and peered backward. But a dull ache settled in my stomach and spread quickly to my chest. Even my newfound acceptance—this admission that some greater purpose might have been served by our personal horror—could not ease it. The fire popped, shooting sparks upward into the night. Suddenly nauseated, I threw down the stick and turned my back to the flames. “No, Baglos. Not tonight.” Not ever. Some things were too difficult. I slammed the door shut once more.

Just at dusk a party of hunters, three young nobles decked out in velvet doublets with voluminous sleeves trailing silken ribbons, came dashing down the road toward the bridge. With great whoops and shouts, they paused at our clearing, circling on their quivering mounts. “Hey, you, woman,” shouted a young man with an eagle feather in his cap. “Tell us where is the nearest public house. We have a thirst that is the desert.”

“The desert in summer,” chimed in one of the others.

“The most frightful noontime desert in summer,” drawled a third, prompting the other two to break into giddy laughter entirely out of proportion to the wit displayed.

“Well, goodwife, speak up,” demanded the man with the feather, his excited horse prancing closer to Baglos and me.

“Just over the bridge is a tavern that might suit,” I said. “And I believe you'll find at least four more between the river and the Montevial road, so you needn't take a dry step.”

Two of the men dashed off with raucous bellowing, but the man with the feather stayed behind. “Are we not a bit lacking in proper respect, woman? I hear no courtesy of address and see no attitude of humility before your betters.”

Quickly and awkwardly I dipped my knee and cast my eyes to the trampled grass. “My apologies, Your Honor, sir. My eyesight is none too good in the dark time.”

The rider nudged his horse close enough that I could feel the beast's warm breath, and then he used the end of his riding crop to lift my chin. His long, straight nose, full lips, and receding chin reminded me of a number of young aristocrats I had known—the type it would be wise to approach with caution. “Why do I think your heart does not support your tongue, goodwife? You need a good beating. Is this your man who cowers so cravenly by the fire?” He rode closer to Baglos, his horse churning dust and ashes into our eyes. “And what's this? A book? Have our peasants got themselves learning? Here, give it over. Let me see what tract amuses you.” His pale fingers were banded with jewels.

“This is certainly not my husband, sir,” I said, crowding in between Baglos and the horse. How stupid of me to let things get so dangerously out of hand. “He is but my companion in service. Our master's fallen ill with plague and, as his wife is already dead and needs no service, he sends us to Montevial to serve out our bond in his brother's house. We left the town just before they sealed the gate. We're mortally afeared of highwaymen, sir. Perhaps we could join with your party and serve you on the way, so to earn your protection from thieves.”

At the mention of plague, the rider backed away hastily, his voice but a thready echo of his sneering command. “We've no need of company or service. Our own servants follow us. You, man, tell your new master to beat this woman twice a day until she has a softer tongue.”

“Aye, lordship,” said Baglos, bowing and touching his forehead as I had told him was the custom when addressing a “better.”

The man spurred his mount viciously and raced away after his friends.

“I did not like him,” said Baglos, gravely, as he watched him go.

“Nor I,” I said with a shivering laugh, vowing to bridle my shrewish tongue.

A short time later, a party of three heavily laden servants plodded into view. They asked after the hunting party, and I directed them across the bridge. Trailing slightly behind them was a lone rider, his head drooped on his chest, his horse walking slowly as if he had all the time in the world. He seemed to melt into the gray light. One had to look twice to make sure he was not some mind's contrivance of limb and leaf and shadow. Only when his horse meandered into our clearing did I realize he was D'Natheil. The Prince dropped from the saddle.

“We should go at once,” he said, as he drained a waterskin Baglos had ready for him.

“Are you still followed, then?”

D'Natheil wrinkled his brow, glancing over his shoulder toward the junction of the road and the dark path through the trees. “I shook off the two who trailed us from the city.”

“They were Zhid?”

He shrugged. “They were constant, like a hound, but never close enough to identify. I was able to elude their enchantments a short way from your village.”

“But something still worries you.”

“I rode from the village up to your dwelling so I could find my way back to this path. Ever since, I've felt someone else following me. But I'm not sure. It's not so powerful a presence as the two—more like a flea than a hound. And no sorcery. We should go on. I'll catch him up.”

The damnable sheriff, no doubt. I should have let D'Natheil kill him.

As we struck out west into the trees, the full moon beamed through the overhanging branches, transforming the road into a grillwork of light and shade. We rode fast and without conversation, as if now that the peripheral matters were taken care of, the true urgency of our mission could take hold.

Sometime near midnight, D'Natheil pulled up, motioning Baglos and me to ride on ahead. “The flea,” he said softly, and then he melted into the dappled shadows at the side of the road. The Dulcé and I continued on our way without changing the cadence of our passing. After some quarter of an hour, we heard the brisk clop of hooves on the road behind us. Two horses. We reined in and held wary at the side of the road.