Wellspring of Chaos (17 page)

On threeday night, they did not go back to Jeka’s hidey-hole between the tannery and the Tenderer’s yard. Neither did they reach the river or the river road. Instead, they curled up inside a hedgerow beside the road headed southeast from Brysta—the same road that led to the orchards held by Merayni and Dowsyl. Where Kharl hoped Warrl was safe.

Huddled inside the thick wall of brush, shivering at times, Kharl swallowed at that thought, but there was nothing he could do. Trying to see Warrl again would only make matters worse, and, if the wizard was working with Egen, the lord might well now have spared a guard or two to watch the place. More important, with each passing day, Kharl could offer Warrl even less.

“I’m cold,” mumbled Jeka.

“So am I.” Those were the last words Kharl said before he drifted into a troubled sleep.

He woke in the gray before dawn. The way his body ached when he tried to uncurl, he decided there were worse places to sleep than between Tenderer’s and tanner’s walls. Much worse.

“You snore,” Jeka said. “Loud.”

“So do you. Soft.”

“Soft’s better ‘it loud.”

“Probably.” Kharl crawled out through the brushy tunnel onto the field side of the hedgerow. The wheat had already been harvested, and the brown stubble jutted skyward from the dark ground. The air was chill enough that Kharl’s breath was like fog, and the ground crunched underfoot. The shutters of the hut beyond the small woodlot appeared to be closed. Kharl shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying to loosen tight muscles.

Shortly, Jeka followed him, glancing toward the cottage, then at Kharl.

After a moment, he asked, “You feel the cord thing tugging at you?”

“A little.”

“Frigging wizard,” Kharl muttered. “Moved south. We need to circle around Brysta and get back to your place.“

“So why’d we leave?”

“So that he didn’t catch us there, so he didn’t find out that was the only place you sleep.“

“It is.”

“Not any longer.”

“We can’t keep moving. We can’t get food.”

“You want to end up like Enelya’s sister?”

“No. We can’t keep doing this, either.”

Kharl nodded. She was right about that. “Need to get back and pick up your stuff… if we can. Somehow.” He looked back toward the cottage. At one side of the woodlot, there was a tree, one that looked to be an apple, and despite the thinning leaves, Kharl thought he saw a few fruits hanging. Probably rotten, but they might have good spots. “Where you goin‘?”

“Apple tree.”

“Too many’ll run your guts,” Jeka warned.

“Could be.” Kharl kept moving, as quietly as he could. He reached the tree without any noise from the cottage, less than four rods away, although he could smell the smoke of a cooking fire. All of the fruit was beyond his reach from the ground, but the tree looked sturdy, and he levered himself up. From the lowest sturdy branch, he managed to pluck something, but his hand came away gooey. The entire fruit was spoiled. He had better luck with the next several, tucking them inside his under-tunic as he inched out on the branch and stretched upward.

Ruuufff! Rufff. The sharp but deep bark of a dog filled the dawn air, so sudden that it startled Kharl. He had to grab the trunk of the apple tree to keep from falling. Ruufff…

The barking continued. Kharl scrambled down to the ground, scooped up an apple he’d dropped, and began to run. As he scrambled through the stubble of the field, hurrying back toward the hedgerow, the dog barking behind him, he just hoped that the holder didn’t have a bow. “Thief! Coward!” came the call from the cottage, but Kharl did not look back before squeezing through a narrow space in the hedgerow, an overgrown gate path.

Jeka waited on the roadside for Kharl. “Real quiet, you were.”

“I was quiet. The dog wasn’t.”

“That’s why they got dogs.”

Kharl shook his head. She was right. He wasn’t a very good thief. He didn’t like being a thief, even of half-rotten apples. “What did you get?”

He extended two of the apples. “They’re half-good. Better than nothing.”

“You get any for you?”

Kharl forced two on her, then produced two more. “We’d better start walking.”

Jeka nodded, and took several steps. “Need to eat slow.” Kharl caught up to her. “You feel the wizard?”

“We’re moving away, I think.”

“Let me know if it changes.” Kharl took a small bite from the good part of the apple.

Given the growling of his stomach, Kharl had to force himself to take small bites, and make each last as they walked.

“Need to head east and north,” Kharl said. “Know there’s a ring road ahead.”

“Where? How far?”

Kharl shrugged.

They walked south almost a glass before they reached the ring road that looked to circle east and north. Then, for the next glass or so, they walked back northward along the road, ducking behind the low stone wall, since there was no hedgerow, when wagons or riders neared. The road turned almost due north at another crossroads, and after that, for a time, they saw no one, and there were few tracks in the dust of the narrow road.

“How about the wizard?” Kharl finally asked.

“He’s got to be back there.” Jeka gestured behind them.

“Good.”

After a time, well after the apples were gone, and the sun had cleared the low hills to the east of Brysta, Kharl stopped, looking ahead.

“What is it?” asked Jeka.

“Just thinking. Someplace ahead we’ll reach the pike. We can come into Brysta from the northeast, down the pike, off Angle Road.”

“Lots of road guards, too.”

“Not many, and they’re not under Egen. His older brother, I think.”

“What’s his name?”

“Osgard, Osten… something like that. There’s someone coming.” Kharl eased toward the two thorn-olives before the stone wall, then hurried behind them. Jeka reached cover first, again.

To the north, a narrow wagon drawn by a single horse moved away from them. Farther southward, there was a peddler. Kharl couldn’t tell which way he was pushing his handcart.

After a time, he said, “We can get back on the road now.”

Jeka joined him, glancing back over her shoulder, but the ring road remained mostly empty except for the peddler who was going northward, as they were, but certainly not any faster, and the wagon, which was soon out of sight.

They had covered perhaps two kays, and a hedgerow began on the west side of the road, weedy and sparse at first, but thickening more toward the north.

Another wagon, headed south and drawn by two dark chestnuts, appeared from around a gentle curve to the north and moved quickly toward them. Kharl eased to the side of the road, Jeka moving behind him. Behind the wagon were two mounted guards. A third sat beside the driver, with a cocked crossbow propped beside him. None of the four looked more than once at Kharl and Jeka. As the wagon rolled past, Kharl read the inscription on the side: Tekat & Sons, Merchants in Spirits.

“Fancy wagon,” Jeka said. “Wonder what they carry.”

“Spirits,” Kharl said. “That’s what the sign on the side said, anyway.”

“Do all coopers know their letters?” Jeka’s voice held a trace of wistfulness.

“I don’t know. Some do. Some don’t. It helps some.”

“You have any books… I mean, back…” Jeka broke off the sentence.

“When I had the shop?” Kharl laughed, softly, not quite bitterly. “I had a few. Got ‘em from my da. Books are dear. Some cost a gold or more.” The thought of Tyrbel’s beautiful books, and the scrivener’s death, washed over him. He swallowed. So many deaths—Charee’s, Tyrbel’s, the assassin’s, the wizard’s guard… and while he could say he knew why, he wasn’t sure he truly understood why Egen, why anyone, could be so vindictive.

Kharl thought he heard something, and he glanced back over his shoulder. A man was riding northward, at either a trot or a fast walk. The late-morning sun showed his burgundy jacket clearly. The cooper looked to Jeka. “You feel…?”

“No. Not any more ‘n before.”

“That looks like one of his guards.” Kharl glanced around. “Hide in that patch of weeds. Behind them, anyway.”

“What about you?”

“He’s far enough away that he might not have seen you. He’s probably seen me. I hide, and he looks for us both.”

Jeka scuttled into the weedy patch on the far side of the dried-up ditch. Kharl adopted a more laborious hobble. He covered another five rods before he could hear the hoof beats on the hard and damp road clay clearly. As they drew nearer, he finally looked back, then, as if in fear, he scuttled well back from the road, watching the rider carefully.

The burgundy-jacketed man reined up but did not leave the road. One hand rested on the hilt of the sabre at his side, but he did not draw it. He looked at Kharl. “Old fellow… did you see a boy running along here. A boy in gray rags?”

“Eh …?” Kharl whined. “A boy, you say… ?”

“That’s what I said. If it’s the right boy, there’s a copper or two in it for you.”

“A copper for an old man? A copper?” . “The boy?”

Kharl let his shoulders sag. “Seen no boy. Saw a peddler. Saw a wagon. Saw two.” He peered at the rider. “Copper for a poor old man?”

The rider snorted. “Go and starve somewhere else. Get off the road.”

Kharl looked around, as if bewildered.

“Get off the road!”

Kharl scuttled backward, seeming almost to trip, before scrambling over the dry ditch and looking around as if wondering where he could go.

The rider laughed, then turned his mount northward.

As he rode away, Kharl realized that the guard had not been the one he had seen at the market, but that the man, like the wizard, had shreds of the unseen white fog clinging to him. Did it have to do with wizardry? What? He just stood and waited until the man was out of sight beyond the next low rise in the road. Before long, Jeka rejoined him.

He looked at her. “What did you do to him?”

“Who?” Jeka did not look at Kharl.

“The wizard. Did you lift his purse, or something? He couldn’t be searching so hard for you just to do… whatever he does to girls.” Kharl glanced to the road and at the heavy wagon rolling southward. “Better duck, just in case.“

Jeka dropped flat in the weeds behind Kharl, and the cooper watched as the four-horse team rumbled past, shivering the ground. On the outer side of the road, Kharl could also see three men scything late wheat. Maybe Jeka was right, that they needed to get off the road and follow it from behind the hedgerows. They might run into holders and their families, but it was clear that the wizard had some men patrolling the roads.

Kharl looked down. “You didn’t answer me.”

“Was only a silver… had it in his belt. Goral gave me nine coppers for it.”

“When?”

“Two eightdays back.”

“So he wants you for two reasons. Because you made a fool of him, and also for his wizardry.” Kharl paused. “Why did you steal from a wizard?”

“Didn’t know he was. Just a dandy like all the others. How did you know?“

Kharl paused. How had he known? He’d known from the white flash, but… He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just knew.”

“Takes one to know one, maybe?”

“I’m a cooper. You know that.”

Jeka just shrugged.

“We need to get moving. Away from the road.”

“I told you so.”

“Yes, you did.”

Walking northward along the edge of the fields beside the hedgerow was slower, but since most of the fields had been harvested, they saw few holders there, save for the areas of meadow where youths and children watched small flocks of sheep. People watched them, closely, until they passed, but said nothing.

Once, Kharl would have watched people who looked the way he did. His beard was untrimmed and scraggly, his clothes ragged, and he was certain he smelled rank, if not worse, although he had mostly gotten used to that. He hadn’t gotten used to the itchy skin.

While they avoided any surveillance by not walking the road, going by the hedgerow paths meant it took even longer than Kharl had thought They also had little to eat, just a few bitter quinces he had retrieved from deep in the thorny branches of an unkempt bush near the hedgerow, and there had been only one small stream that looked clear enough to drink Both were walking slowly by late afternoon, when they neared the pike and the low ridges through which flowed Souangle Creek. Rather, Kharl corrected himself, the creek flowed into the pond that Vetrad’s grandsire had built and through the millrace that powered the sawmill.

Kharl thought they might be able to sneak into Vetrad’s lumber barn after dusk. It was dry, and a lot warmer than the hedgerow. There was also an orchard beyond it, and there might be a few apples left, discards, partly rotten, and the like. He hoped so. The mill and lumberyard were off the ring road, less than a kay out Angle Road from it on the creek. Kharl had never known why the same road was called the pike inside the ring road, and Angle Road outside, but it was.

He glanced back at the clouds, darkening and gathering out over the ocean, just beyond the harbor, then to Jeka. Her face was pale.

“The wizard?” he asked.

“Thing’s stronger. Stronger ‘n it’s been.”

“Where?”

Jeka half shrugged. “I can’t tell.”

Kharl could feel that she was exhausted. He was tired, but he doubted that Jeka could have walked another ten rods without falling over. He wished he had the staff, rather than the stick.

“We’ll rest for a while.” Kharl pointed to a tumbled rock wall bordering the hedgerow.

Jeka slumped onto the rock. “Not much to eat here. There’s more in Brysta.”

“We’re headed back that way. I think I know a safer place to sleep tonight. It’s not too far, a little more than a kay.”

A low rumble rolled out of the west. Kharl looked over the empty fields and the trees beyond. While he could not see the dwellings and structures of Brysta, he knew they were there, and the harbor was beyond—and the growing thunderheads were rising over the harbor, blocking out the late-afternoon sun.

“I don’t think the wizard’s that far away,” Jeka said tiredly.

“Can you walk some more?” Kharl asked.

“I can try.” She stood slowly.