The Raven Ring (5 page)

Gralith looked away, pretending not to hear. On the other side of the room, the younger girl laid a half-feathered arrow on the table with unnatural precision. Then, with the same slow carefulness, she reached over and took her brother’s hand tightly in her own. Beside them, Eleret shook her head as if to clear it.

“Now what?” she asked in a quiet voice that was not quite steady. “I mean, what happens next with the Guards and—and everything.”

“They’ll deliver Freelady Salven’s pay to you, as I said,” Gralith told her. “That’s all.” He paused. “If you’d like, I can send a message to our school in Ciaron, and they’ll see that the Guards bring you her personal belongings along with the money.”

“No,” Eleret said. “I—No. Ma wouldn’t have liked strangers going through her things, more than was needed. I’ll go and get them.”

“That ought to be for me to do,” Eleret’s father said.

“Well, you can’t, not with your leg and your head and all,” Eleret replied, her voice strengthening as she spoke. “I can handle it, Pa.”

“Tamm couldn’t.”

The girl at the table raised her head. “Eleret won’t be in the army, Pa. And somebody should go.”

“The Imperial Guard will send you your mother’s things,” Gralith said, a little taken aback by this unexpected development. “There’s no need for any of you to go to Ciaron to get them.”

“Maybe you don’t think so,” Eleret said, “but we do.”

“If this Guard of yours is so willing to help, why didn’t they send Tamm’s things along with the news?” her father added.

“Climeral could only send a brief message,” Gralith said. “It would take a circle of Adepts to actually transport an object.” Then, seeing their blank expressions, he asked, “I’m sorry; did you think the news came by messenger?”

“Oh,” Eleret said. “But you told us Ma died three weeks ago.”

“It took that long for word to get back to the capital,” Gralith said, understanding in turn. “Climeral sent it to me this morning, as soon as he was certain.”

Eleret shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. One of us has to go, and Pa can’t. That leaves me.”

“It’s not an easy trip,” Gralith warned. “You’ll have to go overland, so it will take at least a month. And even in Ciaron you may run into people who…dislike Cilhar intensely.”

“Syaski, who’d rather see a Cilhar dead than not, you mean,” Eleret said, nodding. “We have trouble with them now and again, in spite of the Emperor’s treaty. They’re a little more careful about when and how they raid, that’s all.”

“It’d be harder for them to pull their tricks in Ciaron,” Eleret’s father put in. “Right there under the Emperor’s nose, so to speak. But you pack a full kit anyway, Eleret. Weapons don’t do you no good unless you’re carrying them.”

“Yes, Pa.” Eleret looked over at the two children. “Better get those arrows finished tonight, Nilly; I’ll take a full quiver with me when I leave, and you’ll want replacements.”

“You’re determined to do this?” Gralith said.

“Any reason I shouldn’t be?”

Gralith made a helpless gesture, unable to put his misgivings into words. “There’s some wild country between here and the city. You should at least wait for the spring caravans.”

“I’ve traveled wild country before, and I want to see this finished soon.”

“Very well,” Gralith said, giving up at last. He sighed. “If you have a map, I’ll show you the best route. It’s the least I can do.”

“I’d be grateful for your help,” Eleret replied, and gestured him toward one of the stools beside the table.

ONE

C
IARON SMELLED STRANGE.
It wasn’t the saltwater smell of the sea, or the fishy tang of the docks, though both permeated the air even at the farthest inland edge of the city. No, Eleret thought, the odor that made her nose twitch came from the mingling of coal smoke with frying onions, stale beer, and attar of roses, and from the reek of hot metal, warm horse dung, and sweaty clothes—and all the other smells of too many people living in the same place. She wondered how the folk passing by her managed not to notice, and whether she, too, would adjust if she stayed long enough in Ciaron.

The noise was almost as bad as the smell. Wagons rumbled past, wheels clattering against the gray stone pavement while their loads of jars and barrels clattered against each other. Men and women called out in singsong voices, praising a confusing array of wares for sale. Shouting children ran through the crowd on mysterious errands, dodging people and horses and carts. If she did not listen too closely, the sounds blended into a continuous hum of activity.

A man in a gray cloak pushed by her and Eleret gave herself a mental slap. Sunset was only a few hours away, and if she didn’t get moving she’d have nowhere to spend the night. After three weeks of traveling, she had learned the importance of finding lodging early. She stepped forward, and the fabric of her loose brown skirt wrapped around her calves as she tried to take too long a stride.

Eleret shoved her unbraided hair out of her face and grimaced. She had bought the garment the day before, in a small village some thirty miles east, and she was not yet used to the way it hampered her movements. She was not used to hair in her face, either. But Gralith had insisted that, if she must go to Ciaron alone, she should at least dress in a manner that did not instantly proclaim her Cilhar origins. The idea had sounded reasonable at the time, but she was beginning to wish she had not listened.

After a moment, the skirt unwound. Eleret slipped her left hand into her pocket, groping for the slit she had made in the material. She found it and reached through, to the knife she wore strapped to her thigh. Touching the smooth horn handle reminded her of home and made her feel better. She couldn’t stand in the street all day holding a knife under her skirt, though. The thought made her smile slightly as she withdrew her hand. Shrugging the strap of her kit bag into a more comfortable position, she started slowly up the broad avenue inside Ciaron’s east gate.

The avenue was at least three times the width of the widest street in Calmarten. Gralith had said there were eight such avenues in Ciaron, radiating out from Castle Hill at the center of the city. Eleret wondered whether they were all as crowded as this one. A bearded man on horseback rode by, passing a wagon filled with water jars coming in and another going out that carried crates with a few wilted vegetables in the bottoms. A dark-haired woman in a brown wool cloak argued with a merchant over the price of a small wooden box, glancing up from time to time to watch the traffic coming through the gate. An elderly porter shuffled from one shop to the next, hoping for work. And all around them, people walked, some briskly, others slowly, jostling each other with a cheerful unconcern that set Eleret’s teeth on edge.

The buildings were as oversized as the street. Near the gate most of them were of wood or brick; farther along stood towering structures built of the same dark gray stone as the street. Painted ships and carts decorated a few of the walls, but most were plain. At the far end of the street, the steep sides of Castle Hill rose above the heads of the crowd, with the Emperor’s palace perched on top.

A cart rattled by, piled with chairs carefully roped together and padded with coarse cloth. Its driver, a middle-aged woman in a faded green dress, glanced curiously in Eleret’s direction and gave a little sniff as she passed. Eleret looked after her, more amused than annoyed. She had done nothing that she knew of to deserve the woman’s contempt, and if she had overlooked some local custom, she would find it out soon enough and correct it.

At the next corner, Eleret left the avenue and headed south. “See Adept Climeral at the school first, before you do anything else,” Gralith had said. “He’ll know the best place for you to stay, and who you’ll need to see.” Then, Eleret had been skeptical of the need for such guidance, but five minutes inside Ciaron’s outer wall had convinced her that it would be more useful than she had thought. Ciaron was enormous; she could waste hours or days trying to find an inn that suited her slender means.

Gralith’s instructions were easier to follow than she had expected. Accustomed to choosing a path based on landmarks, even in villages, she had assumed that Gralith was unused to giving directions when he had said only “two streets, then right; three streets, then left.” Now she understood. Ciaron had been carefully planned, the streets ran in straight lines at fixed distances from each other. The narrow alleys at the rear of the buildings were straight, too. It made Eleret even more uncomfortable than the throng of people.

As she drew farther away from the avenue, the crowd thinned. There were still more people on the street than she was used to—a couple wearing matching bright blue capes and hats, a dark-haired woman in a brown cloak, a group of youths swaggering slowly in no particular direction, a pair of muscular men carrying fishnets—but at least now she could walk without bumping into them. She wondered how her mother had felt about the people and the straight streets and square buildings, and whether she had missed the clean quiet of the mountains. But Tamm Salven had been in the army, Eleret reminded herself, stationed out on the western border. She probably had not spent much time in Ciaron.

Preoccupied with her thoughts, Eleret almost walked right past her destination. The Island of the Moon had set up its school in yet another large, plain, square stone building. Eleret had an unexpected attack of nervousness when she saw it. She told herself not to be foolish; a house was a house. Putting her shoulders back, she laid one hand lightly on the hilt of her dagger and went up to the door.

No one answered her repeated knocks. Eleret frowned. This was the official home of the Islanders in Ciaron;
someone
must be in. She stepped back a pace and studied the door. She saw no knocker or bellpull, but at the left side of the door, set in a niche in the stone, was a small brass knob. Feeling foolish, Eleret pulled at it.

A faint chime sounded somewhere inside the building. Eleret smiled. A moment later, a dark-haired girl in a plain gray robe opened the door. She looked as if she might be only a year or two older than Nilly, but she held herself with the stiff correctness of someone much older. “Welcome to our House. What service may I do you?”

“I’m here to see Adept Climeral,” Eleret answered, all her uncertainty returning with a rush at the girl’s formality.

The girl’s eyes widened, and suddenly she looked younger and considerably less dignified. “Climeral? But he’s head of the school; he doesn’t
do
things for anyone, he just directs everyone else. Are you sure you want to see
Climeral
?”

Eleret repressed a strong desire to deny that she wanted any such thing. “Yes. I have a message for him, from Gralith in the Mountains of Morravik.”

“Oh!” The girl gave her a bright, relieved smile. “Then you must be Eleret Salven. He’s been expecting you for several days, even though Nijole said you couldn’t possibly get here before the end of the week.
He
said Nijole hadn’t ever met any Cilhar and didn’t know what they could do. Looks like he was right again. Oh, I’m keeping you waiting. Come in; I’m Prill, and I talk too much.”

To agree would have been unmannerly, so Eleret stepped inside without speaking. As she crossed the threshold, her uneasiness vanished like smoke in a sudden breeze. The stone walls seemed to radiate peace and solid comfort despite—or perhaps because of—their plain, uncarved surfaces. A bar of sunlight fell through a long, narrow window slit above the door, turning a thin stripe of stone to gold and making the high arch of the ceiling seem to vanish among quiet shadows.

“It is something of a mausoleum, isn’t it?” Prill said cheerfully, misreading Eleret’s expression. “Blame it on the Ciaronese. It’s four hundred years since Imach Thyssel fell, or nearly, and they still won’t allow decent windows in any building inside the city walls. Even the Emperor’s palace has nothing but arrow slits on the first two floors. It’s been hundreds of years since anyone attacked Ciaron; you’d think that by this time they’d feel safe enough to allow a few windows. But I was forgetting, you’re Cilhar. You probably approve of buildings that are easy to defend.”

“They have certain advantages,” Eleret replied. She wondered what it would be like to live in a place that no one had attacked for a hundred years.

“Yes, I suppose they do. I’m sorry. I tend to forget that every place isn’t as peaceful as the Island. Still, a city doesn’t have to be completely peaceful to allow big windows. Look at Kith Alunel.”

“Um,” said Eleret. Kith Alunel was just a name to her, a city rich in history which she did not expect she would ever see.

“Exactly,” Prill said. She threw open a door and announced, “Eleret Salven’s come, Adept. And Nijole owes me a tenth piece.”

“I’ll remind her when I see her, Prill,” an amused tenor voice said from the interior of the room. “I’ll also remind her about making wagers with the juniors. Come in, Freelady Salven. I am Climeral of the Island of the Moon, as Prill here has neglected to mention.”

Eleret stopped dead in the doorway, staring at the white-robed man behind the table at the far side of the room. His hair was silver-white and swept back above an unlined forehead; his eyes were a dark gray-green and tilted upward at the corners. He was unmistakably one of the non-Human, semilegendary Shee, and all Eleret could think was that Gralith might have warned her. It was one thing to know that all four of Lyra’s races lived and worked on the Island of the Moon; meeting a Shee magician in person was something else entirely.

“Go on, Climeral won’t eat you,” Prill said.

“I may, however, mark
you
down for some classes in proper conduct,” the Shee Adept said to Prill. “You appear to be badly in need of them.”

“I’m taking two next season.”

“If Nijole is going to put you on door-duty, you had better start sooner than that,” Climeral told her. “Get along with you, child.”

Prill made a face at him, gave Eleret a gamin grin, and disappeared down the corridor. Eleret looked at Climeral uncertainly, half expecting him to scowl. Instead, he smiled. “Welcome, Freelady.”