The Magic of Recluce (27 page)

S
URPRISINGLY, AFTER ANOTHER
ten kays or so of trudging, when even the untiring Gairloch was flagging and I had dismounted to struggle alongside him on foot, the road began to descend, not much; or perhaps it only leveled out.

We rested and shuffled on, and rested and shuffled on, and I marveled, when I wasn't puffing and panting, at the contradiction between the lack of any place to stop or even rest, and the clearly maintained rock walls supporting the roadbed and the arched stone bridges. Guard rails? There weren't any. Nor were there road-markers or signs. But there was also no sign of chaos, only solid stonework.

Coming around a wider curve than I had seen so far, the road opened into a small valley, leading through a snow-dusted meadow of browned grass toward a group of three low stone buildings. Plumes of smoke rose from two of the three, the two on the right. I climbed back on Gairloch.

The stone road-marker at the edge of the meadow read “Carsonn.” No explanation, just the name. The faintest of mists covered the valley, bearing an odor I could not place, not of brimstone nor of fire. Finally, after weaving a shield around the big provisions sack but not my saddlebags, I shook my head and chucked the reins.

A rail-thin man waited by the central structure, under a peeling sign bearing a line drawing of a cup. “Welcome to the Golden Cup, traveler.” His voice was neutral.

The center building was entirely of stone, even to the peaked slate roof, except for the roof beams, doors, and narrow windows—built to withstand storms and a heavy winter. Yet the meadow grass bore a touch of green, and the snows along the road, though it was still early winter, had not yet been that deep.

I glanced behind the innkeeper to catch the crossbow leveled at me from the stone embrasure flanking the closed double doors of weathered white oak. “Not exactly the friendliest of welcomes.” I nodded toward the quarrel.

“Not everyone from Certis is friendly, and not all travelers claiming to come from Certis are from Certis.”

I ignored the veiled reference. “A room and some hot supper?”

“Three golds for you, a silver for your horse.”

“What?”

“We have to bring the food either from Jellico or Passera.” The innkeeper shrugged. “You can travel on, if you like. Or camp in the meadow for a silver.”

In my shape, and in poor Gairloch's, the alternatives weren't exactly wonderful.

“For three golds, I'd hope for a hot bath and the best of repasts. And more than hay for my horse.”

The innkeeper finally smiled…faintly. “Hot water we do have. Even real soap.”

The stone-walled stable was almost empty, though the stalls were clean. Two mules were at one end, next to a black mare. A tall bay whuffed as I led Gairloch past him and two more empty stalls.

Tired as I was, I brushed Gairloch until his coat regained some shine, letting the innkeeper, who seemed to double as ostler, bring a wooden bucket of grain. He, too, for all his bluster, kept a distance from Gairloch.

In the meantime, I racked the saddle and tucked the provisions and my staff into a corner above the stall where, invisible as they were, no one would likely run into them either.

“Little enough food there for you to travel another four days to Passera, especially for your horse. There's not much forage.”

“I might need to buy some grain cakes, then…” I suggested.

“Half-silver for two…”

I shook my head. Commercial extortion, or so it seemed; but I wasn't thinking all that well and said nothing.

“Supper first,” I indicated, “then a bath and bed.”

“Whatever you wish, but we take payment in advance.” Most innkeepers made a pretense of affability, but not this one.

Supper, taken alone in a smallish dining room with a warm fire and only five tables, was provided by a plumpish woman wearing a stained white apron. It consisted of spiced brandied apples, a thin pepper-laced potato soup, and thick slices of tough mutton with even thicker slices of brown bread. I ate it all, and drank three glasses of redberry.

“Quite a lot for a slender fellow,” observed the woman, whom I took to be the innkeeper's wife. The innkeeper himself had vanished.

I shrugged. “It's been a long cold trip.”

“Mountain weather's been warmer than usual.”

“It was warmer than the blizzard on the hills of Certisice, thunder, and snow up to my knees.”

A puzzled look crossed her face, then passed. “Would you like anything else?”

“Directions to my room, and then the bath.”

“The bath room is at the end…that way.” She pointed in the direction of the stable. “I'll show you your room.”

I barely glanced at the room, apparently the smallest of a half-dozen, if the doorways and spacing between them meant anything, and left only cloak and saddlebags there. My coins were in the openly-displayed purse and in the hidden slots in my boots and belt. Then we walked back toward the bath, down the stone-walled corridors. Even the interior walls were of stone, saving the doors themselves.

Hot water they had, flowing from some sort of spring. The stone-walled room had been built around the spring, clearly, and the source of the faint metallic odor in the valley was definitely from the hot springs, of which there had to be more.

Metallic-smelling water or not, bathing in the rock tub chiseled from the stone was wonderful, loosening aches I hadn't even recognized. I didn't leave that healing flow of heat and relaxation, and dry myself with a thick brown towel, until I resembled a prune.

I also took the liberty of washing my undergarments and wringing them out. After all, for three golds I deserved a few extras, and neither the innkeeper nor his wife said a word when I walked back toward my room barefoot and wearing just my trousers, with the rest of my clothes draped over my arm.

The room, with a single narrow window looking out on the back meadow that I could not see in the darkness, contained a bed, a narrow wardrobe, and a candle in a sconce above the bed. The window, two spans of real glass on a pivot frame, was wedged shut.

The bed, narrow as it was, actually had sheets and a worn coverlet. I thought about blowing out the candle. Certainly my eyelids were heavy enough, but the paper corner, protruding from the belt pouch recalled the letter or note I hadn't even read.

So I sat on the bed and unfolded the heavy paper. The reversed images of some letters where the two sides had been folded together told me that, despite the careful phrasing, the words had been placed on the heavy linen paper in haste.

Since the gray wizard had been right more than once, I levered myself off the bed and pulled
The Basis of Order
from my pack. Then I slowly thumbed through the end sections until I found “Wards,” taking several deep breaths to keep my yawns from overpowering me.

I didn't quite understand the theory, but the mechanics were less difficult than healing that damned woman or even weaving my weather-net. The interesting part of the wards were that they would work without my conscious direction. The bad part was that they didn't do much besides warn.

I thought there might be more, but if so I wasn't in shape to learn it. So I slipped the door wedge and bar in place, put my knife under my pillow, and blew out the candle. My eyes closed before the light died.

I woke with a jolt from a dream of endless mountain trails. The room was dark, black, yet a ring of light from the wards surrounded the door.

…iiiittt…chhh
…

I tried to get the sleep out of my mind, reaching for the knife, then almost laughed.

“Anything I can do for you?” I called.

The sounds stopped but no one answered, although I could feel two bodies on the other side of the rough plank door.

I waited, and they waited.

…iiiitttch
…

“I really wouldn't, if I were you,” I added casually, wondering what I would do if they attempted to break the door.

The prying noise stopped again, and I tried to think, when all I really wanted to do was sleep.

The wedge wouldn't hold up long, not against a determined attack. The whole sneaky effort meant the innkeeper was only after the weak.

I walked across the cold stone floor and let my feelings examine the door and the frame—solid oak set in stone, with the hinges on the outside, swinging into the room.

Then I shook my head. Idiot, idiot…the innkeeper didn't want into the room. He was placing a bar through the iron handle on the other side to keep me from going out. The stone walls, the narrow window, all made sense. The innkeeper just didn't like direct violence.

I checked again. The two were gone, now that they were convinced I was safely captured.

Lighting the candle, I stood up and walked to the window. If the wedges came out…Finally, I nodded and began to dress, wincing at the chill undergarments. They were still damp, but I could only hope my body heat would take care of that.

Then I went to work on the window as quietly as I could, thanking Uncle Sardit silently the whole time. Not easy, but the exertion warmed me up. The chill and heat had taken their toll on the glues, and with a little help here and there, I managed to slide the whole window into the room.

Out onto the frozen grass went my pack, cloak, and saddlebags. If I had been a pound heavier I wouldn't have made it through the narrow opening.

Getting the window back in place I cheated, using some of the sense-weaving order-strength, but even by my father's lights, using power to fix something wasn't tempting chaos.

Then, I walked slowly, cloaked in darkness, to the stables. Gairloch was fine, munching on some sort of grass.

Setting another round of wards, I recovered my bedroll and curled up on some straw in the stall next to Gairloch.

The first hint of light woke me, not the wards, which I dropped. I saddled Gairloch, listening for the innkeeper and hearing nothing. Then I used an old staff to pry open the storage closet and took six grain cakes, which I stuffed into the provisions sack. I really wanted just to take them just to pay the innkeeper back. Besides, with the provisions from Justen, I wasn't even certain I would need them. But the Easthorns looked cold, and Gairloch had saved my neck already and then some.

In the end, I left four coppers, probably too much, but that was the least my wonderful innate and growing sense of order would let me leave. After all, despite his dubious hospitality, the innkeeper had bought them somewhere, and leaving the coins made me feel better.

After sliding open the stable door, with the reflective cloak around us, Gairloch and I stepped out into the silence of the winter dawn.

…thunk…thunk…thunk
…

Less than a kay across the meadow, we came to a brook. I dropped the shield, looking for signs of pursuit; but the inn remained dark, without even a plume of smoke from the chimneys. After Gairloch drank, I replaced the cloak of reflected light until we reached the road and the marker that featured an arrow and the name “Passera.” The edges of the road contained drifted snow, often up to Gairloch's knees, but the wind kept most of the road clear, almost as if it had been designed that way.

Still, more than once we had to flounder through crusted and drifted snow gathered in the most sheltered elbows of the road.

Not knowing who or what to trust, and how, I avoided the next inn, instead finding a sheltered cleft up a canyon from the road. Getting to the cleft and concealing our tracks was more work, in the end, than fortifying an inn room would have been, but I slept more soundly, even on the narrow, rocky, frozen ground out of the wind. And it didn't cost me three golds or the equivalent duke's ransom, though I did wake up with the tip of my nose nearly frozen.

Climbing the eastern walls of the Easthorns wasn't quite as draining—not quite—as surviving the winterkill storm. While it had taken two days to escape the storm, it took nearly two days more after Carsonn just to get to the top of the southern pass. In that whole time, I passed three other groups heading toward Certis, all of at least four riders, and all heavily armed. They had made my passage possible, in one instance having shoveled through a small snow avalanche across the road.

They never saw me or Gairloch, not when I heard them from a distance and removed us from the road and their sight.

The weather never changed—cold, cloudy, with gusty winds sweeping in and out of the canyons and carrying fine dry snowflakes. What's more, at the top of the southern pass, there wasn't even any view, just a crest in the road that ran between two nearly sheer rock walls. At one instant, I was riding uphill; and the next, downhill.

Not until I reached the top of the foothills overlooking Gallos, another day, and another night spent under an outcrop shivering even within my bedroll, did I find a view.

For nearly three kays the trail down was nothing but an open ledge slanted against a blackish granite.

Halfway down I stopped, able to see anyone approaching in either direction, and guided Gairloch into an alcove back from the road. I climbed up to a flat overlook to look out over Gallos under the first full day of winter sun since leaving Jellico.

Gallos didn't look much different from above than I imagined Certis might have, just mixed and muddy browns, divided by thin gray lines that had to be stone walls or fences, and infrequent gray-brown and wider curving lines that were doubtless roads.

Down toward my right, to the north, where the road broke away from the rocks and entered a line of forested hills that separated the meadows and hedgerows and stubbled fields from the Easthorns, I spotted an interweaving of smoke plumes in a cultivated valley. What I could see of the valley looked small, in any case. Passera, I guessed.