War in Tethyr (13 page)

Chenowyn drew herself up to all her not-slight height. "I'm not a kobold," she said. "I'm a
girl."

"You could have fooled me," the mare said. "In fact you did."

Chen's eyes bulged as it struck her that she'd just been addressed by a horse. "It talks!"

"Goldie, meet Chenowyn," Zaranda said. "She'll be staying with us for a while. I just know you two are going to get along."

Goldie rolled an eye at the girl, then peeled her upper lip away from her front teeth and bobbed her head in the universal horse gesture for
you stink.
"Goldie!" Zaranda said sharply. Then to Chen: "Don't take it to heart. She's not civilized this hour of the morning."

Chen was staring at Goldie, with the expression one would wear looking at a captive Hook Horror. "It's sunset," she said.

"That's Goldie for you."

Goldie produced a gusty horse sigh. "I can see you've been terribly busy out hunting up strays to adopt. I suppose it's no great surprise you haven't been by earlier to find out that a patrol had come round to arrest your pet orc."

"Nooo," said Goldie. "I didn't say that. I said, a patrol had come
by
to arrest him."

"How come it talks?" Chen demanded. "Horses don't talk."

"I do," Goldie said with great dignity.

"What happened?"

"Now, now, Randi, you're sounding almost petulant. Whereas you really should be very grateful to me. If it weren't for me, complete and total disaster would have been the order of the day-no thanks to certain parties I could name…"

"Goldie!"

The mare's flanks swelled and a vast sigh rushed from her flared nostrils. "Not appreciated, never appreciated, but isn't that a horse's lot in life? Bear another's burden all day, with never a 'Goldie, do you feel like walking about in the hot sun all day whilst I loll about your back?'-there, there, Zaranda, don't get that dangerous gleam in your eye. Your orc is fine. So is the ranger, and so am I, if you happen to care."

Zaranda took a deep breath and tried to remember the spell for casting lightning bolts. She'd never been able to quite get her mind around that one. Trying to was always good when she needed distracting.

"Goldie," she made herself say calmly, "will you please tell me what
happened?"

"I would've long since, had it not been for your constant magpie interruptions. Along about the sixth bell after dawn a party of blue-and-bronzes came by, looking like so many cheap Calimshite knock-offs of Lantanna mechanical soldiers. They claimed to have information you were harboring an 'unnatural monster,' as their leader put it. Fortunately, one of the grooms saw them coming up the street and ran in to tell everybody. Divining their purpose in that incisive way I have, I quickly sent Shield off to the roof to impersonate a gargoyle. Stillhawk went along, since you'd told him not to take his eyes off the orog. The guardsmen came in, blundered around for a while, and left."

"Where's Shield now?"

"Oh, he's still being a gargoyle. I took a turn in the yard about noon and had a look at him. He does a really creditable gargoyle, by the way; wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Torm had finally revealed his true calling to him."

Zaranda darted into the stableyard and looked up. No, she thought, Goldie's mistaken. There's only one exceptionally large and ugly gargoyle up there… exceptionally large, ugly,
wingless
gargoyle…

She started back inside. Then she stopped. Zazesspur was a city in which gargoyles on the roofs of hostelries wouldn't strike anybody as odd, but she didn't remember seeing
any
on the Repose's roof before.

She looked up again. Crouched on the roof's very verge, clawed hands on knees, cowl thrown back and mouth held wide to reveal what even from four stories down was very impressive dentition, was unmistakably Shield of Innocence.

"Gods!" Zaranda breathed, and raced inside.

"He's been up there all day?"

Goldie nodded.

"Where's Stillhawk?"

"So far as I know, he's up there too. But then, of course, no one tells me anything; I'm only a beast of burden."

"How did you know," Chenowyn asked with disarming innocence, "that when the guardsmen said they were looking for 'an unnatural monster,' they didn't mean you?"

Goldie opened her mouth. Then she shut it, and her eyes popped wide open.

"Congratulations," Zaranda told the girl. "You must have magic: that's the first time I've seen her rendered speechless." Then she was racing for the stairs.

Sitting with his back against a dormer and his booted feet braced on the red hemicylindrical roofing tiles, Stillhawk furrowed his brow, his equivalent of an angry outburst. Like Farlorn, he still doubted the orog, and it in particular troubled him to hear an evil being referred to as
paladin.
Though the paladin's path was in many ways as inaccessible to a man of the ranger's character as it was to an orc of unrepentant stripe, he served the same ideals.

Shield's massive shoulders shrugged. "How can one serve Light if one fears the Burning Face?" he asked, using a common orcish name for the sun.

"Easily," Zaranda said. "Don't you think good deeds need doing at night? Besides, you can wear a cowl."

"Have you ever seen a cowled gargoyle?"

Zaranda stopped with a gob of ointment on her fingertips. "Was that humor? That was humor, right?"

"I did what must be done. If I suffer, it is no more than my sins have earned." He frowned. "Though it gripes my soul to have fled from minions of the law. Did I do wrong? May Great Torm judge me harshly."

"May Great Torm not be such an ass!" Zaranda burst out. "Those men intended you harm, and it had nothing to do with anything you've done, or even who you are. It was what they
thought
you were, and your innocence would have meant nothing to them. Is that what the law is all about?"

"Still, laws are laws," the great orc said with childlike conviction. "We must obey."

"It is against no law in Tethyr to be an orc," Zaranda said. Of course, that was because for Tethyrians, such a law would be like outlawing venomous serpents or spiders. This didn't seem the time to mention that fact. "And besides, those weren't minions of the law; they were the servants of the city council. The city police serve the law of Zazesspur. The guard is something else again."

"Oh," Shield said.

Zaranda drew in a deep breath, released it in a soundless sigh. She glanced aside at Stillhawk. The ranger was rubbing the dark bristle that covered his chin if he went more than four hours without shaving. He shook his head. Well, sophistication wasn't his strength either.

"There," she said, putting the finishing touches on the orog. The white ointment made Shield's face, a great pitted, tusked, and snouted moon, a truly terrifying sight, like a mask Dalelands children might put on to frighten homeowners into giving them treats at Highharvestide. "That's done. And now-"

She turned to look at Stillhawk. "Now the two of you must leave. Right this minute. Get outside the walls and make yourselves scarce in the countryside. The scullions have packed food for you, and in the unlikely event that it runs out before I come to join you, there's no better huntsman in Tethyr than Vander Stillhawk of the Elven Woods."

Both her companions spoke at once, which was at least quieter than most such multiple outbursts. "I serve you," Shield of Innocence said. "I will not leave." For once in accord with the great orc, Stillhawk signed to the same effect.

"You cannot serve me here, Shield. What can you do for me if you're rotting in the dungeons that surely lie beneath that vast ugly slab of a palace Baron Hardisty has built? All you can do here is increase the risks for me. So indulge my cowardice and go."

She reached out to touch a scarred and pitted cheek. Her flesh still quailed from the contact, but only a little. "For me, Shield. Please."

Pouting-which his tusks made a truly alarming sight-he nodded his huge head. Zaranda stood and faced the ranger.

Why
-
?
he started to sign.

"Because someone has to keep Shield of Innocence out of trouble," she said. "The countryside's less risky for him, but only just. Something's going to break soon, old friend, and whichever way it falls, I'll have need of all the help I can get. His as well as yours."

Stillhawk raised his head and managed somehow to look even more grimly stoic than usual-his form of outraged protest and reproach. I cannot tell you the real reason, old friend, Zaranda thought. In my selfishness I brought you here among these gray stone walls you hate. And here you can do nothing but pace like a wilderness beast condemned to a cage, feeling the pressure of those walls like acid on the skin. The least I can do is redeem my misdeed. But of course she could not say she did this for his benefit, or he would refuse to go.

"Please, I ask that you do this for me. If you would help me, this is the best way."

Stillhawk's brown eyes gazed deep into Zaranda's smoke-gray ones. Then he nodded and turned to pick up his bow, which leaned against a chimney with a beaten-tin cover shaped like a wizard's peaked hat. Shield resumed his cowled robe and strapped on the harness that held his scimitars crossed over his back. After a moment's debate by eye, he slithered over the edge of the roof and swung in through the hallway window Zaranda had left open and under Chen's guard. Stillhawk followed.

Zaranda stood, stretched, gazed up at the stars, treasuring an evanescent moment alone with them. The sullen light-froth from tens of thousands of candles and lanterns, the smokes of the city, and high tattered clouds skidding across the sky from the Trackless Sea hid most of them from her sight. She wished she were alone in her tower at Morninggold, with nothing to impair her intimacy with the stars, neither in the sky nor in her future.

I'll be doing well to keep my freedom out of all this, she thought, much less Morninggold and my astronomy tower.

But she wasn't yet dead, which meant, on principle, that she refused to give up. She turned and made her cautious way down.

"Farlorn," she said, shifting without thought to interpose herself between the half-elf and Chenowyn. "Where have you been?"

He caught her in an embrace that lifted her off the floor-though he'd inherited the delicate appearance of his mother's people, he also had the strength of his father's. "Zaranda! I'm terribly sorry. I came as soon as I heard."

"About what?" Zaranda said. It took her a moment to make the decision to disengage herself from his arms after he had set her down again. Damn him! she thought. Or, perhaps, damn me.

"About the orc and Stillhawk! How the guard arrested them."

"Stillhawk?"

He shrugged. "I know the ranger well. He cared as little for the beast as I, but he'd die before he'd fail your trust. They cannot have taken the orc without having him as well."

"They took neither," Zaranda said. "Both hid. I've sent them outside the city."

The half-elf's huge hazel eyes blinked. "But that's wonderful news," he said, "at least so far as Vander Stillhawk's concerned, though I cannot say the same for the evil creature you insisted on adopting."

As Zaranda wound up to unload on him, he lifted his head so that his pointed ears made him resemble a wary forest creature, sniffed the air in the hallway, lit amber by an a single ancient fly-specked lantern hung on the wall. "Whatever is that smell?" he asked before Zaranda could speak. "It's truly prodigious. You must ask for new quarters, Zaranda; a rat-a giant one, by the whiff-has crept among the rafters and expired."

The hair at the back of Zaranda's neck rose.
Something
was gathering behind her. It reminded her of the first time she had ever
felt
dweomer, mustering her first halting spell under the gentle but exacting eye of Alshayn, her mentor. This was similar, yet not the same. It was power, and it was menace.

"Farlorn," she said, taking her new charge by the arm and feeling the hairs on her own arm rise in response, "I'd like you to meet Chenowyn. She'll be staying with us for a while. Chen, this is Farlorn Half-Elven, called the Handsome."

Farlorn shied back, a look of distaste on his face. "Indeed? This ragamuffin's the source of the smell, I warrant. Have you decided to open your own museum of grotesques, Zaranda?"

"Don't take what he says to heart, Chen," Zaranda said. "He's a bard, and bards love the sound of their own voices too well. He doesn't mean anything by it."

"I don't like him," the girl said.

"Where have you been the past few days?" Zaranda asked, interposing herself between the two.

"I was visiting among my mother's people. Do you know, that darkling I slew the other night matched the description of a Moon Elf maid from Tethir Forest who vanished six weeks ago? Her people were much grieved to learn of her fate."

"Did they say where she'd vanished, or what she was doing at the time?"

"All they knew was that she went abroad on the streets at night upon some errand, and was seen no more."

"So the darklings enslave their victims somehow?"

"That was no slave I fought. Her thirst for my blood was genuine. Would a slave fight with such will?"

"Enchanted, then. Perhaps." She shrugged. "Well, we've troubles enough of our own. Good night to you, Farlorn, and I'm glad to see you well."

"Need you rush away?" He took her shoulders in his hands and began to knead her neck muscles with fine, strong fingers. "I was thinking we might share a bottle of wine together. Perhaps I could sing you a song to soothe your cares."

She disengaged herself deftly from his grasp. "Just now I need a balm more powerful even than your words, and that's sleep. Good
night."
She undid the lock, guided Chen inside, and shut the heavy wooden door on his frustration.

She turned then, slumped against the wall, allowed herself to slide down until her rump touched the rush-strewn floor. "Damn him."

Chen stood to one side, looking as out of place as a dragon in the tidy if threadbare chamber, with its modest furnishings, its whitewashed walls and dark-stained wood trim. "Why do you curse him?"

Zaranda shook her head. "To keep from cursing myself." She picked herself up. "Now what we need to do is summon the help and have them bring round a straw pallet and some bedding for you. Also a tub and plenty of hot water."

"Why?"

"Because you're long overdue for a bath, my fine young friend."

Chen straightened and in defiance shook back her clotted strands of hair. When she did that, she looked as if she might conceivably be pretty beneath that coat of grime. "Why should a mage be concerned with such matters?"

"A mage may do whatever she wishes," Zaranda said. "And so can you. But, if you wish to stay with me-much less become my apprentice-you'll have to be less a burden on my nose. Farlorn was right about the state of your hygiene."

Chen scowled thunderously. Angry lights danced at the backs of her amber eyes, and sparks seemed to gather at the roots of her hair. Zaranda felt that ominous force gathering itself again.

She crossed her arms. "Go ahead, strike me to a cinder," she said. "I won't stop you. But you'll never master magic if you can't first master yourself."

Chen glared at her with wild fury in her eyes, and for a moment Zaranda thought she had overplayed her hand. What alarmed her most was that she wasn't alarmed.

Then Chen exhaled explosively, and it seemed her anger passed forth as well as her breath, leaving her small, wilted, and vulnerable. "I'm sorry," she said, then began to cry.

"Poor dear," Zaranda said. She opened the door to call for a servant.