He stopped at the next farmstead they came to, hoping to beg a few herbs and some linen. The old wife there took one look at Seregil and disappeared back into her kitchen, returning a few moments later with a basket containing yarrow salve and aloes, clean linen rags, a flask of willow bark tea and one of milk, fresh cheese, bread, and half a dozen apples.
“I—I can’t pay you,” he stammered, overwhelmed by such generosity.
The old woman smiled, patting his arm. “You don’t need to,” she said in her thick Mycenian accent. “The Maker sees every kind deed.”
The countryside fell away into gentle slopes as Alec drove westward toward Keston. By the following afternoon they came down into more settled country.
There was a different scent on the breeze here. It was a water smell, but with an unfamiliar tang. Gulls wheeled overhead, much larger than the little black-headed ones on Blackwater Lake. These birds had long yellow beaks and grey wings tipped with black. Great flocks of them flew overhead or picked their way over empty fields and rubbish heaps.
Topping a rise, Alec saw in the distance what could only be the sea. Awestruck, he reined in and stared out over it. The sun was low. The first golden stain of sunset spread a glittering band across the silver-green water. A scattering of islands lay like knucklebones cast along the coastline, some dark with trees, others bare chunks of stone thrusting above the waves.
The road wound on down to the coast, ending in a sprawling town that hugged the shore of a broad bay.
“You must be an inlander.”
An old tinker had come up beside the cart. Wizened and bandy-legged, the fellow was bowed nearly double under the large pack he carried. What Alec could see of his face beneath the brim of his battered slouch hat was dark with stubble and dust.
“You’ve the look of an inlander finding the sea for the first time. Sitting there gape-mouthed like that, you couldn’t be nothin’ else,” the old relic observed with a rusty chuckle.
“It’s the biggest thing I ever saw!”
“Looks even bigger when yer in the middle of ‘er,” the tinker said. “I was a sailor in me youth, before a shark took me leg for dinner.”
Twitching his dusty cloak back, he showed Alec the wooden peg strapped to the stump of his left leg. Cleverly carved to resemble the limb it replaced, the end of it was made in the shape of a wooden clog that neatly matched the real one on his other foot.
“Trampin’ all the day, I don’t know which foot gets more sore. Might you offer a fellow traveler a ride into town?”
“Climb up.” Alec reached to aid him.
“Much obliged. Hannock of Brithia, at your service,” the tinker said, settling himself on the bench. There was an expectant pause.
“Aren. Aren Silverleaf.” Alec felt a bit silly giving the old man a false name, but it was becoming a habit.
Hannock touched a finger to the brim of his hat. “Well met, Aren. What happened to your friend in the back here?”
“A bad fall,” Alec lied quickly. “Tell me, do you know Keston town?”
“I should say I do. What can I do for you there?”
“I need to sell this cart and find passage to Rhíminee.”
“Rhíminee, is it?” Hannock rubbed at his bristly chin. “By the Old Sailor, you’ll be damned lucky to find passage this close to winter. It’ll come dear, too. More than you’re likely to realize from this contraption and a spavined pony. But don’t fret yourself, boy. I’ve a friend or two in most any port you can name. Leave it to old Hannock.”
Alec was soon glad of the tinker’s company. Keston was a bustling town, full of rambling streets laid out with no rhyme or reason that he could make out; the lanes that Hannock directed him down were little more than broad pathways between the tenements that stood cheek by jowl with warehouses and taverns. Gangs of sailors, reeling with high spirits of one sort or another, jostled in the dark alleyways and snatches of songs and curses seemed to come from all directions.
“Yes, I’ve still a friend or two along the quays,” said Hannock as they reached the waterfront. “Let me ask around a bit and I’ll meet you back at the Red Wheel. You con the sign yonder? Two shops down from that, at the next warehouse, there’s a drayman, name of Gesher. He’ll probably take this rig off your hands. It’ll do you no harm to mention my name in the bargaining.”
Hannock’s name notwithstanding, Drayman Gesher ran a bleak eye over the cart, the exhausted pony, and its equally exhausted driver. “Three silver trees, not a penny more,” he said gruffly.
Alec had no idea what the relative worth of a silver tree might be, but was happy enough to unload the rig and be done with it. With the understanding that they would close the deal when Alec brought the cart back, he hurried off to the Wheel. Leaving Seregil well covered, he went inside.
He found the old tinker seated at a long table joking with a weathered man in seafaring garb.
“Here’s the lad himself,” Hannock told his companion, pushing a pot of beer Alec’s way. “Sit down, boy. Aren Silverleaf, this is Captain Talrien, master of the Grampus. As fine a mariner as you can hope to find on the two seas, and I should know. We first sailed together with Captain Strake, me as mate and him but a green slip of a cabin boy. He’s agreed to work out a passage for you and your unfortunate friend.”
“So you’re short on jack, eh?” Talrien grinned, getting right to the point. His skin, brown as an old boot from salt and sun, contrasted sharply with his pale hair and beard. “How much have you got?”
“I can get three silver trees for the pony and the cart. Is that a good price?”
Hannock shrugged. “No, but it’s not a bad one, either. What do you say, Tally? Will you take the lad?”
“That’s scarce a single passage. Mighty important that you get to Rhíminee, is it?” Talrien drawled, settling back in his chair. When Alec hesitated a moment too long, he laughed, holding up a hand.
“Never mind, then, it’s your own business. Tell you what I’ll do. I’m short a man this time out; for three silver I’ll take your friend and you can work your passage. You’ll have to bunk in the hold, but you’re in luck there, for the cargo is grain and wool. Last voyage we carried granite cobbles. If that’s agreeable to you, let’s cross palms on it and call it done.”
“Done it is,” Alec replied, clasping hands with him. “Many thanks to you both.”
Talrien had a longboat moored at the quay. After loading in his few remaining possessions, Alec and Talrien carefully lifted Seregil into the bottom of the boat.
Seregil was paler than ever. His head lolled limply from side to side as wavelets nudged the longboat against the stone footing of the quay. Tucking a wadded cloak behind his friend’s head, Alec looked down at him with a pang of fear. What if he dies? What will I do if he dies?
“Don’t you worry, lad,” Talrien said kindly. “I’ll see to it he’s made comfortable. You go sell your wagon and I’ll send the boat back for you.”
“I—I’ll be here,” Alec stammered, suddenly reluctant to leave Seregil in the hands of strangers. But what else was there to do? Clambering into the rickety cart for the last time, he flicked the reins over the pony’s dusty rump.
Mycenian silver trees turned out to be rectangular lozenges of silver, each with the rough shape of a tree struck into it. Clutching the coins, he ran back as fast as he could to the docks.
As he came within sight of the deserted quay, a sudden thought stopped him in his tracks. Before they’d left the Darter, hadn’t Captain Rhal spoken of Plenimaran press-gangs working the ports?
“By the Maker,” he groaned aloud, dread settling like heavy ice in his belly. In his haste and weariness, had he handed Seregil over to a clever pair of rogues? Cursing himself, he stamped up and down in the cold, squinting into the darkness for any sign of movement. He hadn’t even thought to ask Talrien which of the ships was the Grampus!
It was a still night. Waves lapped gently against the quay. The faint sounds of men singing happily ov
er their mugs in nearby taverns made his vigil all the more lonesome as he stood in the darkness. A bell sounded aboard one of the ships at anchor, its tone muted and distant.
He was just calling himself ten kinds of fool when he caught sight of a light moving toward him over the water. It disappeared for a moment, obscured by the hull of some ship, then reappeared, still bobbing steadily his way with the splash of unseen oars.
A wiry, redheaded sailor scarcely older than himself brought the little craft neatly alongside the dock. Alec didn’t know much of press-gangs, but this didn’t have the look of one.
“You the new hand for the Grampus?” the boy inquired, shipping his oars and looking up at Alec with a brash grin. “I’m Binakel, called Biny by most. Haul in then, ‘less you fancy spending the night on the jetty, which I don’t. By the Old Sailor, it’s colder’n a cod’s balls tonight!”
Alec had hardly clambered down onto the stern bench before Biny was pulling away. He talked a steady stream as he rowed, needing no prompting or encouragement as he rattled on with hardly a pause for breath. He had a tendency to jumble one topic in with another as things occurred to him, and a good deal of it was profane, but Alec managed to sift out enough to set his mind at rest by the time they drew alongside the sleek hull of the Grampus. Captain Talrien was a good-tempered master, according to Biny, whose highest praise was that he’d never known his captain to have a man flogged.
The Grampus was a coastal trader. Carrying three triangular sails on tall masts, she could deploy twenty oars on each side when need be, and ran regularly between the port cities of Skala and Mycena.
The crew was in a fury of preparation on deck. Alec had hoped to speak with Talrien again, but the man was nowhere to be seen.
“Your friend’s down here,” Biny said, leading him below.
Seregil lay asleep in a deep nest of wool bales. More bales and plump sacks of grain were packed into the long hold for as far as Alec could see by the light of Biny’s lantern.
“Mind the light,” Biny warned as he left. “A spark or two in this lot and we’ll go up like a bonfire! Keep it on that hook over your head there, and if ever we meet with rough seas, be sure to snuff it.”
“I’ll be careful,” Alec promised, already searching for fresh bandages. Those covering Seregil’s stubborn wound were badly stained.
“Cap’n sent down food for you, and a pail of water. It’s there around the other side,” Biny pointed out. “You ought to speak to Sedrish tomorrow about that hurt of your friend’s. Old Sedrish is as good a leech as he is a cook. Well, g’night to you!”
“Good night. And give my thanks to the captain.”
The bandage lint had stuck to Seregil’s wound and Alec carefully soaked it loose, lifting aside the stained pad to find the raw spot looking worse than ever. There was no evidence that the old woman’s salve was doing any good, but Alec applied it anyway, not knowing what else to do.
Seregil’s slender body had quickly failed to gauntness. He felt fragile in Alec’s hands as he lifted him to wrap the fresh bandage. His breathing was less even, too, and now and then caught painfully in his chest.
Laying him back against the bales, Alec brushed a few lank strands of hair back from Seregil’s face, taking in the deepening hollows in his cheeks and at his temples, the pallid whiteness of his skin. A few short days would bring them to Rhíminee and Nysander, if only Seregil could survive that long.
Warming the last of the milk over the lantern, Alec cradled Seregil’s head on his knee and tried to spoon some into him. But Seregil choked weakly, spilling a mouthful down his cheek.
With a heavy heart Alec set the cup aside and stretched out beside him, wiping Seregil’s cheek with a corner of his cloak before pulling it over both of them.
“At least we made it to a ship,” he whispered sadly, listening to the labored breathing beside him. Exhaustion rolled over him like a grey mist and he slept.
—a stony plain beneath a lowering leaden sky stretched around Seregil on all sides. Dead, grey grass under his feet. Sound of the sea in the distance? No breeze stirred to make the faint rushing sound. Lightning flashed in the distance but no rumble of thunder followed it. Clouds scudded quickly by overhead.
He had no sense of his body at all, only of his surroundings, as if his entire being had been reduced to the pure essence of sight. Yet he could move, look about at the grey plain, the moving mass of clouds overhead that roiled and churned but showed no break of blue. He could still hear the sea, though he could not tell its direction. He wanted to go there, to see beyond the monotony that surrounded him, but how? He might well take the wrong direction, moving away from it, deeper into the plain. The thought froze him in place. Somehow he knew that the plain went on forever if you went away from the sea.
He knew now that he was dead and that only through Bilairy’s gate could he escape into the true afterlife or perhaps out of any existence at all. To be trapped for eternity on this lifeless plain was unthinkable.
“O Illior Lightbringer,” he silently prayed, “shed your light in this desolate place. What am I to do?”
But nothing changed. He wept and even his weeping made no sound in the emptiness—
13
INQUIRIES ARE MADE
“Oh, yes, they was here all right. I’m not soon likely to forget them!” the innkeeper declared, sizing up the two gentlemen. The sallow one would try and stare it out of him, but the comely, dark-complected gentleman with the scar under his eye looked to be a man who understood the value of information.
Sure enough, the dark one reached into his fine purse and laid a thick double tree coin on the rough counter between them.
“If you would be so good as to answer a few questions, I would be very grateful.” Another of the heavy rectangular coins joined the first. “These young men were servants of mine. I’m most anxious to find them.”
“Stole something, did they?”
“It’s a rather delicate matter,” the gentleman replied.
“Well, you’ve missed ’em by nigh onto a week, I’m sorry to say. They was a bad sort, I thought, when first I laid eyes on ’em. Ain’t that so, Mother?”
“Oh, aye,” his wife assured them, eyeing the strangers over her husband’s shoulder. “Never should have taken them in, I said after, empty rooms or no.”
“And she was right. The yellow-haired one tried to murder the other in the night. I locked me’self and the family in the storeroom after I caught ’em at it. In the morning they was both gone. Don’t know whether the sickly fellow was living or dead in the end.”
The innkeeper reached for the coins but the dark man placed a gloved fingertip on each of them.
“Did you, by chance, observe the direction they took?”
“No, sir. Like I said, we stayed in the storeroom ’til we was certain they was gone.”
“That’s a pity,” the man murmured, relinquishing the coins. “Perhaps you would be so good as to show us the rooms in which they stayed?”
“As you like,” the innkeeper said doubtfully, leading them up the stairs. “But they didn’t leave nothin’. I had a good look ‘round right after. It was damned odd, that boy wanting the key to the outside of the other’s door. Locked him in, I guess, then took after him in the dead of night. Oh, you should have heard the noise! Thumpin’ and caterwauling—Here we are, sirs, this is where it happened.”
The innkeeper stood aside as the two men glanced around the cramped rooms.
“Where was the fight?” the pale one asked. His manner was not so obliging as that of his companion, the innkeeper noted, and he had a funny sort of accent when he spoke.
“This here,” he told him. “You can still see a few dibs of blood on the floor, just there by your foot.”
Exchanging a quick look with his companion, the dark man drew the innkeeper back toward the stairs.
“You must allow us a few moments to satisfy our curiosity. In the meantime, perhaps you would be so kind as to carry ale an
d meat to my servants in the yard?”
Presented with the opportunity for further profit, the innkeeper hustled back downstairs.
Mardus waited until the innkeeper was out of earshot, then nodded for Vargûl Ashnazai to begin.
The necromancer dropped to his knees and took out a tiny knife. Scraping at the spots of dried blood scattered over the rough boards, he carefully tapped the shavings into an ivory vial and sealed it. His thin lips curved into an unpleasant semblance of a smile as he held the vial up between thumb and forefinger.
“We have them, Lord Mardus!” he gloated, lapsing into the Old Tongue. “Even if he no longer wears it, with this we shall track them down.”
“If they are indeed those whom we seek,” Mardus replied in the same language. In this instance, the necromancer was probably correct in his assumptions, but as usual, Mardus made no effort to encourage him. They all had their roles to play.
With Vargûl Ashnazai trailing dourly behind him, Mardus returned downstairs and gave the innkeeper and his wife an eloquent shrug.
“As you said, there is nothing to be found,” he told them, as if abashed. “However, there is one last point—”
“And what would that be, sir?” asked the innkeeper, clearly hoping for another lucrative opportunity.
“You said they fought.” Mardus toyed with his purse strings. “I am curious as to the cause. Have you any idea?”
“Well,” replied the innkeeper, “as I said, they was at it hammer and tongs before I got up there at all. Time I got the lamp lit and found my cudgel, the young one already had the other fellow laid out. Still, just from what I saw looking in, it ‘peared to me they was fighting over some manner of necklace.”
“A necklace?” exclaimed Vargûl Ashnazai.
“Oh, it was a paltry-looking thing, weren’t it?” the wife chimed in. “Nothing to kill a fellow over!”
“That’s right,” her husband said in disgust. “Just a bit of wood, ’bout the size of a five-penny piece, strung on some leather lacing. Had some carving done on it, as I remember, but still it didn’t look like anything more than some frippery a peddler would carry.”