Wandering Lark (33 page)

Turlough looked as though he had swallowed a rotten prune. Thera bit her tongue to keep from laughing. She glanced down at her hands, folding them carefully in her lap.

“By your own law, Lord Magister, I assert my rights as a servant of Diancecht and demand that one of my superiors be present at my questioning,” she said.

Turlough snarled an oath under his breath and glowered at Lorymer. “Well,” Turlough said. “Send for one of her superiors, then, and be quick about it.”

Lorymer nodded and slipped away. Turlough turned his glower on Thera.

“You will regret this,” he muttered before he left the chamber himself.

They rode in silence for most
of the morning after they left the farmstead.  Vagner’s stomach was empty, and the demon was wishing he had been given the opportunity to feed. But Alaric seemed distracted. So did the woman Talena. Ronan was the only one who cared.

“Soon enough,”
Ronan said softly as though fearful that Alaric would hear them. But Vagner had noticed that there was a corner of Alaric’s mind where he and Ronan could speak freely. Yet as soon as they left, Vagner would forget what they had spoken of. For that matter, there were holes in his own mind that he could not understand.

“You said that this morning,”
Vagner retorted in his thoughts.
“I’m starving. Soon enough is not soon enough now...”

“He has to let you go,”
Ronan said.

“And why can’t you? After all, you often seem to exert more control over me than he does...”

Vagner stopped in that thought. Why had that come to him?

“Nonsense,”
Ronan said.
“It’s Alaric’s body. He is in charge.”

“No he isn’t,”
Vagner said.
“Not always. Like last night.”

Images flashed before Vagner’s inner eyes. Something about Ronan and the woman.

“Careful, demon!”
Ronan hissed.  He sang Vagner’s True Name and veiled the images so that they flitted away, forgotten.
“There are things you must not remember.”

Vagner shook his head. Alaric’s rubbed the demon’s neck in absent thought.

“Poor Vagner,”
Alaric suddenly said inside the demon’s head.
“I didn’t let you feed, did I?”

“No, you did not,”
Vagner thought back.

“We’ll remedy that soon enough,”
Alaric said.

“See,”
Ronan said in that secret corner again.
“He is in charge, and he remembers. So stop worrying, demon. Your freedom will be at hand very soon...and soon, I will have a task for you as well...”

“A task?”
Vagner thought.

“Remember not,”
Ronan whispered.

And Vagner forgot.

“We need to stop,”
Lark called forward.

Talena had ridden a little ahead since the road had narrowed down through the trees to little more than a path. They were moving back into forested territory, and she felt the need to lead the way in case they met something wild or they were attacked. Of course, she did so mostly because Kessa seemed less jumpy if the little mare was ahead of the big yellow horse instead of behind.

“Stop?” she called back. “Why?”

“The horses,” Lark said. “We should let them rest and feed a while.”

Talena shrugged. “I think I see a wider clearing ahead. We’ll stop there, all right?”

“Fine,” Lark said.

Talena rode on. The roadway did widen, and she quickly saw why. It was one of the old stopping places. A camp clearing next to a stream with a stone trough for watering horses and a bit of a shelter crudely maintained. No one else was there, for which she was grateful. They would soon be reaching the more isolated sections of the eastern lands. Travel in those parts was less frequent these days because of the war.

Lark dismounted as soon as he rode into the clearing. To her surprise, he pulled his pack from the saddle then threw the reins over the saddle horn, petted the yellow horse, and said, “Go on...behave.”

The yellow horse bolted into the forest and disappeared from sight. Talena blinked.

“Did I just imagine that,” she said. “Or did you just let your horse run away?”

“He’s going to feed,” the bard said with a smile. “He’ll be back when he’s fed.”

“Right,” she said and dismounted. “You do realize that if he doesn’t come back, you’re walking because Kessa will not carry two. In fact, you have not only lost your horse, but you have lost your tack as well...”

“He’ll be back,” Lark said and settled down on a stone flat enough to act as a bench.

His self-assurance of that remark surprised Talena. She shook her head and rolled her eyes, and started to wonder about his wits. Were all heretics mad?

“You seem pretty sure of that,” she said as she tied Kessa to the nearest available point of anchorage and checked the depths of the water trough. It was floating autumn leaves at the bottom. She’d have to fetch fresh from the stream.

“I know my horse.”

“After only two days?” Talena took the old wooden pail down to the bank of the stream and filled it as she looked back over her shoulder at the bard. And froze. Was it a trick of the light filtering through the leaves, or did he have a glamour about him, like foxfire. She blinked and the light disappeared. Frowning, she finished filling the bucket.

“It’s the breed, actually,” Lark said and pulled out his water skin to take a slug. “Highland Haflingers.”

“Never heard of them,” she said. She returned with the pail filled, settling it so Kessa would drink. Then she walked over to where Lark sat.

“That’s because they’re quite rare in this part of the world,” Lark said and smiled at her. “They’re very intelligent animals, but they like to feed alone. That’s why he didn’t eat any of the hay. There were other horses watching...”

Talena burst out laughing before she could stop herself. “You’re having me on,” she said. “This is one of those bard tales, right.”

He smiled. “I suppose. But he will be back.”

“Two silver farthings say you’re wrong,” Talena said. She reached into her belt pouch and drew out two silvers, laying them on the stone at his side.

He looked up at her and grinned. “All right, you’re on,” he said, and digging into his pack, he drew two matching coins.

Talena could see them as he laid them down. They were Garrowye mint, but they were quite old. “Don’t see many of those,” she said as she claimed a seat on the other side of the coins.

“A bard sees many things in his travels.”

“Including horses that return after they run away?” she asked.  

“Including horses that return,” he said.

Ronan was growing restless again
. Alaric could feel the bard’s spirit shifting warily inside him.

Will you settle down,
Alaric thought.
Vagner will be back...

“It’s not Vagner that disturbs me,”
Ronan said.
“It’s her.
Why does she have to come so close to us?”

Alaric took a deep breath.
What’s wrong with her coming near us, apart from the fact that she feels like magic?
I’m used to feeling strange magic, having a demon for a horse and you in my body has made me all the more aware of it.

“We should never have allowed her to come along,”
Ronan said.
“She will be trouble, mark my words.
Even now, she sees that the coins are old.
Sooner or later, she will have to be left behind.”

Fine accusation, coming from the one who has caused me more trouble than I ever wanted to know in my life.
Even friendship with Fenelon never brought me this much grief.

“Look,”
Ronan said.
“We do not need her.”

That is for me to decide—or have you forgotten your promise not to interfere?

“I promised not to interfere so long as it did not put us in danger,”
Ronan said.
“But the moment you invited her along...she will bring us danger and ruin and will interfere in our mission.
As long as she is here, we cannot go to an Elder, and if we cannot go to an Elder, we cannot save your friends.”

Oh, sing another song, Ronan,
Alaric thought sharply.
I am growing tired of your ranting and raging.
I would not be here at all if you had not done what you did to me, and don’t think for a minute that I have forgotten.

“I can make you forget,”
Ronan said softly, and his tone hinted of a threat.

What?

“I...”
Ronan hesitate as though realizing what he had just said.
“I said, I can make you forget me.
I could go away.”

Go where?
Alaric asked.

“Into the darkest recesses of your mind,”
Ronan replied.
“Where you would never notice me at all. Is that what you want?
For me to go away?”

Alaric tried not to frown. Admittedly, he thought that was the whole reason for coming here, to rid himself of Ronan as well as the demon.

Would I forget how to speak your tongue?
Alaric asked.

“Probably,”
Ronan said.

Then I’d best keep you around a little longer, I imagine.

“That’s more like it,”
Ronan said, and there was laughter in his words.
You could keep me around for an eternity.”

Alaric started to say that he would not live so long, but he heard the thump of hooves and sensed that Vagner was near. The demon had turned back into his horse form with his tack intact, and came strolling out of the woods with a bit of a bulge wobbling his belly.

“Well, I’ll be a toad,” Talena said.

“I can teach you a spell so you can make her one,”
Ronan whispered to Alaric.

Alaric merely smiled at Talena. “I believe these are mine,” he said as he scooped up the four silver farthings.

Talena just stared.

Wendon had never seen anything
quite like it in his life. The small village was built up inside the center of the willow where its fronds branched out. Platforms jutted from the main structure, comfortable little cottages above the ground. The willow must have been a hundred feet across at the trunk alone.

“She once told me that giant trees are quite common in Ross-Mhor,” Shona said in a whisper.

Once Etienne had found him some clothes in the market, they had taken a room in a small inn. Etienne was exhausted enough to fall asleep on one of the floor pallets while he and Shona sat and marveled at their view.

“But this...is something beyond what we know as large trees,” Wendon said. “Do you suppose it is magic that makes them grow so large?”

“We’ll have to ask Etienne when she wakes up,” Shona said with a shrug. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I sense a lot of magic in this tree,” he said.

Shona nodded. “Yes, I feel something too. In Keltora, willows are said to walk when they tire of one place. One almost wonders if this willow is alive.”

Wendon frowned. He would hate to think what a tree this large walking across the moors would look like. But there was definitely a strong essence of life, stronger than any he had encountered in ordinary trees. “Trees are alive,” he said. “They grow, they die...”