Upon This World of Stone (The Paladin Trilogy Book 2) (13 page)

CHAPTER 11

Confrontation on the Plains

Shannon was re-thinking her love of flying.

Four days ago, she had sailed through the air with Jhan on the back of Gil-Gal-Som, one of the mightiest of the Pegasus, on their way to Llan Praetor, and she had gloried in the sheer joy of flight, sailing through the clouds at speeds of which she had never dreamed.

That, however, had been in the care of a skilled aerial creature who had born them willingly. Now she was clinging to the sides of a magical devise that was being controlled by an inexperienced driver who seemed to have no knack at all for flying.

“Blasted thing must have been made by a man,” growled Adella as the boat swooped upward once again. “Refuses to listen to a word a woman says.”

“Can…can we just land?” asked Jhan from the other side of Shannon. He was holding on to the boat’s side with a deathgrip and had not opened his eyes since they had taken off. “We can surely walk wherever we need to go.”

“We’re making marvelous time,” Adella retorted as the boat leveled off again, though now at a dizzying height.

“Towards our graves,” Jhan muttered.

“We are now over the plains,” Shannon said, trying to sound reasonable. “I would think we can now make good progress on foot.”

A gust of natural wind caught the little craft and heeled it over again, sending it plunging down to the right, and it took a moment before Adella could compensate and find the magical breeze again.

“If I set this thing down on the Plains, I doubt I’ll be able to get it launched again,” she warned. “I barely got it air-born this morning, even with launching off that plateau.”

“We never intended to fly all the way to Nargost Castle, did we?” said Shannon as the wind-boat slid off to the right again. “This is hardly the way to approach the castle unseen.”

“Not the way,” agreed Jhan.

Adella seemed to consider this for a few moments, and then she grunted once. She eased off on the control line just a fraction, and the nose of the wind-boat dropped accordingly.

“We’ll have to make a long, slow descent if we’re to avoid the excitement of our last landing,” she said.

“Long and slow is fine,” Shannon assured her.

The winds, however, had different plans for them. A huge gust hit the little craft and sent it tumbling onto its side, sharply increasing the angle of descent. Adella had enough experience to ease the tiller and right the wind-boat, but she couldn’t pull hard enough on the control rope to get the vessel’s head up again.

Shannon lunged again to help raise the bow, but they were already too low. Then, without any warning, Adella abruptly put the tiller hard over, sealing the vessel’s fate. It surged to the left, tilting at an alarming angle that threatened to dump them all over the side, and Shannon barely grabbed the mast to save herself. But Adella had gained some mastery of the craft over these past hours, and at the last moment, she pulled up hard with the bow rope and avoided a direct collision with the earth. Even as the bow came up, the stern of the wind-boat hit the ground, stealing the speed it needed to climb, and a moment later, it crashed down hard for the last time, jolting all three of its occupants.

Shannon blinked and swallowed, trying to adjust the unnatural state of stillness. Jhan was already crawling out of the boat, apparently having suffered the least of the three of them and the most desperate to be back on solid ground.

“Why in the name of wonder did you do that?” she demanded of Adella while rubbing a bruised right shin. “We would have come down well enough if you hadn’t put the tiller over.”

Adella, however, was moving swiftly, and said over her shoulder, “Horsemen. Two score or more off to the east. I wanted to put as much distance between them and us as I could.”

“You think they saw us?” Jhan asked.

“If they didn’t, they’re the first group of blind men ever to ride horses,” she said, already walking away from the wind-boat. But she was walking eastward, the very direction from which the horsemen would be coming. Shannon and Jhan grabbed their backpacks out of the vessel and hurried after her.

They caught up with her at the top of a small rise, over which she was carefully peering. Cautiously, they followed her example, and there, riding hard directly towards them, were at least three score cavalry.

“Plainsmen, that’s clear enough,” she said softly, mostly to herself. “Possibly soldiers, though they’re spread wide for a military patrol.”

“How can you be sure they’re not Northings?” asked Shannon, peering at the distant figures.

“From the way they sit their horses,” Adella explained. “Northings are mountain folk who force animals to do their bidding, and it shows. Plainsmen treat their horses as friends, and they move and fight as one. I think we should have a little talk with these good fellows. Though not, perhaps, quite like this.”

To their shock, she produced a white scarf from her pouch and with three deft folds, turned it into the head-shawl of one of the Blessed, the order of holy women who dedicate themselves to the Church. She took her cloak, spun it around, and clasped it modestly at her neck and waist, the black lining completing the disguise.

Adella pushed a hand out through the arm slit of the cloak and held up the three spread fingers in the standard blessing.

“Let us greet these strangers properly and cordially,” she told them with a smile. And then to Jhan in the exact same tone, “If you don’t get that look off your face, my son, I’ll wipe it away with my sword.”

Jhan hastily composed his features and exchanged a worried glance with Shannon who could only shrug with a bemused look. Adventuress, thief, warrior, and now a Matron of the Blessed. But despite her doubts, she couldn’t suppress a surge of excitement at trying to fool a group of armed strangers.

“Here, Shannon,” Adella said, producing another scarf. “Let me wrap this around your hair. You’ll be my novice, and Jhan, you’ll be our servant. No, not a servant. A fellow refugee helping two stranded women. Leave the rest of the talking to me. Understand?”

Both nodded, though they clearly still had doubts.

“Follow my lead, my children,” she said sweetly, “and keep your wits about you. These horsemen are not to be taken lightly.”

The horsemen were closing the distance rapidly, a few fanning out to the right and the left, showing a proper caution when approaching strangers on the plains. The horses were at a half cantor, and many of the men were carrying spears, held at the half-ready where only the smallest effort would level them for a full charge. It was unsettling to be the objective of such a force.

“I don’t like this,” Jhan muttered. “The truth is the straight path that will never lead you wrong. That’s what my Father always taught us.”

“Spoken like a man who doesn’t know how to lie,” Adella answered through a smile. She was studying the approaching horsemen, reading the details. “Plainsmen, as I said, and soldiers as well. But I count three separate uniforms, mostly Kargos and Nargosia. Take my eyes, I never thought to see those birds in a single flock.”

The warriors were upon them now, and Adella stepped forward to reveal the habit of one of the Blessed and holding up her hand in greeting.

“The blessing of Mirna be upon you, Plainsmen!” she called out as the riders reined in their mounts.

There was a long silence as the horsemen slowly took their measure. The men were ragged, their uniforms rent many times, voiceless testimony to the tattering the flesh beneath had endured.

“Who are you?” demanded a tall man in the middle of the riders. He wore an eye patch, and there were silver stripes on the arms of his coat, a sign of rank in some army now long forgotten.

“My name is Cleon, a Matron of the Blessed of Mirna, and this is Daughter Shannon, an acolyte of my Order,” Adella said primly.

“My name is Zarif. Matrons and acolytes don’t normally flit about the Plains in a flying boat,” the man said in the same voice, throwing a leg over his saddle as if to dismount, his hand laying lightly on the hilt of his sword. “That’s a wizard’s tool.”

“Indeed it is,” agreed Adella. “We were lost in the Mountains when this young man found and rescued us. What he lacks in flying skills he more than makes up for with courage and enthusiasm.”

Jhan opened his mouth to make some reply, but inspiration failed him. He had just enough sense to keep his face composed, but Shannon could tell from the Plainsman’s face that he was sensing a coming lie.

“He is Jhan, a wizard’s apprentice,” Adella said, touching his shoulder lightly as if bestowing a blessing. “And we are greatly in his debt.”

The touch seemed to steady Jhan even more than the words, and taking a small breath, he said stiffly, “It…it was nothing…really…I…did nothing…”

Shannon could read the subtle shift in Adella’s mood as she, too, came over and half-embraced the young man. With her emotions keyed to their highest state, Shannon suddenly realized that it was not wise to appear too weak to these rough-looking riders.

“You are far too modest, Wizard,” Adella admonished him gently. “Show him at least your Wand of Power.”

Puzzled, Jhan reached into the pouch indicated by the woman, and to everyone’s surprise, he pulled out a thin wand of dark brown wood Adella had used to lift the boat back in Llan Praetor.

“An apprentice, say you?” Zarif repeated, still somewhat skeptical. “And where did you get these wondrous items?”

“I won them in a gamble,” Jhan said with a glint in his eye.

“From who?”

“The Wizard Trexler.”

Too late he saw the warning sign from Adella. There was a rasping of steel as a dozen swords were drawn at the name.

“Trexler?” snarled the Horseman. “You were apprentice to that black…?”

“Hold, Good Sir,” Adella interjected hastily. “I beg you to hear the full story before you act.”

Zarif’s expression didn’t change, but he paused long enough to say, “What was the wager?”

“I bet that I could bury my dagger in his belly before he could fry me with his lightning,” Jhan said evenly.

Zarif’s eyebrows went up in surprise, “You are the slayer of Trexler?” He studied the boy, his face hardening again, and he asked suspiciously, “Where did the black-hearted son of a goblin die?”

Jhan’s eyes flickered to Adella who seemed to adjust her headdress, her hand making the tiniest capping gesture.

“In the mountains,” he answered slowly, trying to sound reluctant, as if the memory were painful. Adella’s hands slipped down to her knees, making a small slashing movement reminiscent of a kilt.

“Close to the Highlander’s Pass,” Jhan continued. “I had had my fill of his evil, and even though he was my master, I followed the lead of my conscience.”

“And how long ago was this?” Zarif asked.

Adella discretely held down four fingers

“Four months ago,” Jhan answered promptly, assuring himself their hatred would not have been so hot if it had been four years. “I left his body for mountain wolves and the carrion crows.”

There was a tiny murmur of approval from the Horsemen, and one of them said, “I recall Sercis telling me that accursed sorcerer rode some kind of flying device when he burned the village of Talmil last year. He said the bastard could out-fly arrows on it. This might well be the same.”

“And from the way they were flying,” observed another, “it’s clear the boy’s had little tutoring in its use.”

“True enough,” Zarif said slowly, but Shannon could read in his face that he saw through the deception. Jhan, he knew, had never killed any one, let alone a powerful and deadly wizard.

Adella, too, saw their ruse was penetrated. She took a step forward and said calmly, “We can all rejoice in the death of a monster like Trexler. And honor the one who delivered us from his hated shadow.”

Warrior stood facing warrior now, the head-shawl and cloak nothing, the man quite certain he was indeed facing the slayer of the Wizard Trexler.

“Whither are you bound…Matron?” Zarif asked with narrowed eyes.

“Nargost Castle,” she answered, staring straight at the man without blinking.

“Nargost Castle is broken, and it houses not but invaders now.”

“It houses more than Northings and rock goblins,” Adella said evenly. “In a blessed vision, the truth was revealed to me. Nargost Castle is where Regnar has chosen to keep the hostages he has taken from the ruling houses of the Plains States.”

Silence greeted her, but more warriors came forward, suddenly attentive to this woman, looks and unspoken words exchanged.

“You are sure of this?” Zarif asked quietly.

“Very sure.”

“Then the rumors are true,” one of the soldiers said softly to Zarif. “That must be why they maintain such strength near the castle.”

“It makes good sense,” said another. “Many of the hostages are old and would fare poorly dragged along with the main army. Even breached, Nargost Castle is still one of the strongest points in all the Plains.”

“The hostages,” mused a third. “If they could be freed from the Northing grasp…”

“The states of the Plains would rise up in Regnar’s rear,” finished Shannon. “They would be caught between a hammer and the anvil of Jalan’s Drift.”

Zarif, however, slowly shook his head. “A small hammer at best it would be. There is little left of Kargos and Nargosia to rise, regardless of the fate of the hostages. And Strallia has joined with the invaders, looking to feast on the bones Regnar leaves, and their treachery will bind them closer than fear for their kin.”

“Surely some of the states would rise,” interjected Jhan. “Why else would Regnar keep their hostages?”

Zarif said nothing, his silence eloquent with doubt, and Shannon’s eyes blazed. She stepped forward and said, “Regardless of why Regnar holds them, they are innocents whose lives are at risk. The three of us are bound to set them free, even though they be not our people. If you haven’t the courage to join us, then at the least leave us at peace! We have enemies enough already!”

The reaction she received, however, was not what she expected. Far from an angry response, the leader stopped and looked out over the land, cocking his head slightly as if listening.