The Empire Stone (16 page)

For a moment he thought of that secret, hidden vale, with the bubbling creek and the pond where the otters sport, and again felt like crying.

Brave heroes, who journey out …

Oh, horseshit!

• • •

He was on the road early, in a sour mood. He’d only gone a short distance when he heard the calling of ravens and saw two, swooping overhead. They followed him, curveting through the trees, and Peirol admired their grace. He appreciated their company, thought they’d give warning if there was danger ahead. But as the day went on, and the ravens showed no sign of turning away, he began to worry, trying to remember if the birds were lucky or unlucky. Vaguely he remembered they were messengers, but for whom, he couldn’t recollect. Giants? Wizards? Demons? Probably not demons — the birds were too full of themselves for spirits to tolerate. He wondered if Abbas had sent them but remembered the wizard had little power in this land.

A road intersected the track, and the ravens swooped up it, back, then up it again. Perhaps he was being led into a trap. Perhaps not. Peirol went up the road. Less than a quarter of a league later, he came on a tiny village. The houses were perfectly kept, recently painted. The village square was as green as if it were summer instead of spring. But he saw no life, not man, not cattle, not even cackling chickens. Perhaps everyone was indoors.

Keeping his staff ready, he went on. He sniffed the air. Very strange. He smelt musk, jasmine, sandalwood, scents never found in the country, smells for incense and magic. The tiny hairs at the base of his spine prickled. The ravens called, dove close, then perched in a nearby tree, spectators for what would come next.

None of the houses on the square were businesses but one, and that had a discreet sign of a man being devoured by some sort of fabulous monster. Attractive draw, that, Peirol thought. I’ll meet you at sundown for a glass of wine at the Dragon Fodder Inn.

“Good morrow,” a woman said. It was easily the most lovely voice Peirol had ever heard, including Kima’s. He jerked around. Standing outside one of the houses was a young woman. Her hair was dark blond, cascading down to her waist. Her face was heart-shaped, and her smile was knowing innocence. She wore a simple peasant woman’s dress, except the dress was made of the finest, shimmering peach-colored silk that held close to her voluptuousness, matching her sandals.

“Welcome to my village,” the woman said. “Welcome to Casaubon. I am Kilia.”

“And I Peirol of the Moorlands.” He bowed low, and one of the ravens squawked.

“I assume those arc yours?”

“My friends,” Kilia said. “My only friends.”

Peirol looked around. “What of the others who live here?”

“There are no others.”

“Then how does it stay so clean, so, well, perfect?”

“Because it wishes to,” Kilia said. “I speak to the wood, to the nails, to the paint, and they listen.”

“I, uh, see.”

“You are alone in your travels. My friends told me that. Where are you going?”

“A far place called Restormel,” Peirol said.

“I know it not. But that doesn’t bother me, for I’m content here, within Casaubon.”

“It’s very lovely.”

“Lovely now,” Kilia said.

“Is that an inn where I might break my fast?”

“You could.” She laughed. “There are fruit juices, barley soup, black bread, and cheeses I’ve … devised.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Peirol said.

“Then come with me.”

The inn was small, as immaculate on the inside as out, the wood paneling gleaming, the brass lamps polished. Peirol sat at a table, and Kilia went into the back and came out in minutes with a tray, as if it had been waiting, which she put before him.

“Could I convince you to join me?”

“No,” Kilia said. “I shall sit with you, but I eat privately.”

Peirol began eating. It was one of the stranger meals he’d devoured. Kilia sat silently, watching closely as he chewed. The food was tasty, except once, when it was as if he was chewing on nothing but the blandest of farmer’s cheese, no more. Then, as Kilia turned back to him, his mouth was filled with the taste of herbs.

“You serve no beer, no wine, in your inn?”

“No,” Kilia said. “Nor meat, fish, fowl, or eggs. I take nothing from the earth that doesn’t give it freely.”

“Cheese given freely?” Peirol joked. “Once, when I was a boy, I helped the wife of a man whose land my father was mining make cheese from sheep milk, and it was one of the hardest jobs I’ve done. Ever since I’ve always respected those with the skill and patience for that job.”

“I find it easy,” Kilia said, indifferently. “Where do you hope to end your day’s travels?”

Peirol shrugged. “Where the sun finds me when it sets, I suppose.”

“There are empty houses here.” She smiled.

Wondering why his skin crawled, he smiled as politely as he could. “I wish I could stay,” he said. “But Restormel grows no closer when I just sit.”

“I sensed that,” she said. “You are one who prefers the real world.”

“I beg pardon?”

“I do not,” she said. “For it has handled me badly.”

“I’m sorry to be thick-witted,” Peirol said. “But I still don’t understand.”

“Do you wish to?” Her eyes were piercing.

Wanting to say no, Peirol said yes.

“You’ve finished your meal. Come outside, and I’ll show you.” Peirol followed her into the sunny square. “I ask again, do you wish to see what is real?”

“I think so.”

“I ask you a third time, do you wish to see the world as it truly exists?”

Peirol nodded. Kilia pointed, moved her arm up, then in two semicircles. The neat row of houses across the square changed to blackened, rain-soaked rubble. There was grass growing through the cobbles, and in front of the largest house were scattered skeletons: half horses, the other human. Kilia moved her hand again, and the houses were bucolic perfection.

“As it was, as it is, as it shall be, as long as I live,” she murmured.

“What happened? Are you a witch?”

“A witch? I do not know. There was one who called herself a witch, before the men came, but she couldn’t stop them.”

“The men?”

“Soldiers. They rode in and began killing, without words, without explanation. I saw my father die, heard my sisters scream, and I ran, ran into the fields. But half a dozen, perhaps more of them, ran after me. They found me, and they dragged me back, threw me on the ground while Casaubon burned around me. Then they hurt me, laughing, said even one as ugly as I was wouldn’t be spared. I lay on the ground, bleeding, their seed inside me, my body torn, wanting to die, and then I knew I would not die, that I’d live, and felt the power come.

“Then
they
died, all of them, died screaming in agonies worse than any they’d brought to me or to my people, and I fed on their deaths, felt the power grow, and all changed, all went back to the way it was before. I healed my body, then decided I would change myself too, I would be as the prettiest ever was, even though she lay dead with a spear through her chest. Am I not beautiful?”

“You are,” Peirol said, honestly, trying to keep his voice from shuddering.

“Is Casaubon not lovely?”

“It is.”

“Why, Peirol of the Moorlands, why do you think, when I’ve offered others a chance to see things as they are not, a few even to join me here, in this paradise that shall last forever, or until I die, if I yet live, none have taken my offering?”

“I don’t know,” Peirol said. “Maybe we’re fools.”

“The road goes on for you now,” Kilia said. “I am sorry you chose that, instead of me.”

“Maybe,” Peirol said, almost in a whisper, “maybe I am, too.”

Kilia laughed gently, and a breeze came across Peirol’s face. When it had passed, there was no one in front of him. The village remained, empty, perfect in its beauty. The only life was the two ravens in their tree.

Peirol realized his stomach was also empty, wondered what, if anything, he’d eaten. He picked up his staff, started back the way he’d come.

“Good-bye, Kilia. I’ll dream of you.”

His words echoed, and one of the ravens cawed, and Peirol felt the world’s sadness in the sound.

• • •

Four days later Peirol reached a small city, whose gates, amazingly enough, weren’t barred. Two guards laughingly challenged him, gravely decided he would be of no harm to the greatish city of Tybee, and allowed him entrance if he promised to wreak no havoc. Peirol, wishing that the myth that dwarves could work magic was true — if it were so, he’d cheerfully change certain sentries into goats — entered Tybee in a growly frame of mind.

He quickly cheered, feeling cobbles under his feet, smelling human ordure and garbage, listening to marketplace shrillings and tavern music. He’d always be a city lad, he decided, and determined to find a peaceful inn, have three or six glasses of good wine or perhaps even brandy, then seek lodging and a bath. He saw a sign for the Inn of the Bare Bodkin, went for it. Two men, rough, dirty, carrying both swords and daggers, half-drunk, blocked him.

“No beggar lads allowed in here.”

“That’s the long and short of it,” the other said, and both bellowed what they thought was laughter.

Peirol looked at their sneering grins, thought of his innate peacefulness, considered what he’d been put through in the last year. One end of his staff caught the first thug on the ankle. He howled, grabbed it, leaped to and fro. Peirol, not pausing, rammed the other end of the staff into the second’s stomach and rapped him hard on the back of the head. That man fell on his face in the muck and began snoring. The first tough saw his mate down, reached for his dagger, and got the staff between his eyes as if it were a lance. Cartilage crunched, and he fell, clutching his face. Peirol let him moan while he quickly searched his unconscious companion, then did the same to the first.

It said something about the district that passersby noted what was going on but made no effort to intervene on anyone’s side.

Peirol ended with a rather nice haul of cutlery and a quarter bag of copper and silver coins to add to his loot from the potato field. He thought of stripping the roughnecks naked but decided he didn’t want to get his hands dirty. Instead, he located an armorer’s. A bit later he came out with a nicely balanced shortsword with a baldric he could use as a shoulder sling, a belt for one of the desperado’s daggers that he fancied for its nicely carved onyx handle and balance, even a dart similar to the one he’d used to kill Libat the eunuch. He’d been offered a brace of pistols, but the price was exorbitant. He was left with a few coins and directions to a public bath and a tailor.

Some time later, clean-bodied and shaven, wearing a hastily cut-down pair of leather breeches and linen shirt, he went back to the Bare Bodkin. Wym’s gold had made the tailor very civil, and two more sets of clothes, plus a cloak guaranteed weatherproof by the best spells, would be ready in a day or so.

The two lummoxes were gone from the doorway, and he entered. The inside was smoky, smelling of lees, spilt wine, sizzling meat, and cheap perfume. Peirol dragged it deep into his lungs, feeling his mood soar. He found a table where he could put his back to the wall, put his new dagger in front of him, and ordered chilled red wine, a snifter of brandy, and two roasted capons. He smelled the brandy happily, sipped at the wine, and began pondering what would come next, after he slept in a real bed.

Again, no idea came but pursuing the Empire Stone, although Peirol thought he was at least obsessed, most likely cracked, given what the quest had brought. But this was adventuring, was it not? Peirol wondered if adventuring wasn’t more comfortable being heard from a bard instead of actually taken part in; he drank more red wine. His fowl arrived, and he ate heartily until nothing but bare bones gleamed, then ordered fruit and ices to finish.

Perhaps the thugs outside were gone, but someone must have noted what happened to them, for he was left severely alone. A wench swayed up and inquired his pleasure.

Peirol thought about it; then, for some unknown reason, Kima’s face intruded. “A bit later, perhaps,” he said, and tossed her a coin. She smiled, showing very bad teeth, and went elsewhere, as did Peirol’s flash of lust.

Stomach full, he allowed himself to drink the brandy, ordered one and only one more, having a very good idea what might happen to a Bare Bodkin patron who drank himself into a stupor.

A rather tattered wall map of the Manoleon Peninsula hung over a nearby table, and he examined it. He grimaced at how far he had to go before even reaching the mainland, let alone Restormel. Then a small name caught his eye. An idea — or more correctly a scheme — came, and he admired himself for its nefariousness as well as its arrogance.

He asked a barmaid about the name and got a shrug, but she directed him to a more traveled person, a man who guarded the merchant caravans up and down the peninsula. He bought the man a drink, and was given a warning to avoid that area as if it were demon-haunted. But his guess about the name on the map was confirmed.

Three days later, well rested, nursing a slight hangover, and wondering if he should feel guilty for having visited a rather plush brothel, Peirol left Tybee, pack full of clothes, cooking gear, and dried victuals.

Four days after that Peirol saw a castle looming menace from a nearby hillside. Just past its turnoff, a peasant was hammering away frantically, repairing a broken cart wheel, his small wagon levered up on a pile of logs. “Help you, sir?”

The man stared suspiciously, then nodded. “I’ll thank you, for I’m cursed, stranded by this den of devils.”

Peirol set his pack down and went to work. He thought it was amusing that both he and the wagoneer made sure their backs weren’t turned to the other.

The wheel repaired and remounted, the man pulled away the lever, and the cart thumped down on its wheels.

“Now I’m far gone,” he said. “Would you ride with me? My nag’s not fast, but it’s quicker than being afoot.”

“Perhaps,” Peirol said. He pointed at the castle. “What’s that over there?”

“The lair of a murdering bastard,” the carter said. “A man without pity or mercy, who holds this land under his thumb, taking what he wants when he wants it.”