I saw everyone else making their own calculations. “How about we share a little bit of that around?” Dedan said without much hope.
I hesitated, then reached into the box. “Does a royal each seem fair to everyone?”
Everyone was silent as I unwrapped one of the bundles. Dedan looked at me incredulously. “Are you serious?”
I handed him a heavy coin. “The way I see it, less scrupulous people might forget to tell Alveron about this. Or they’d never go back to Alveron at all. I think a royal each is a good reward for us being such honest folk.” I tossed Marten and Hespe a bright gold coin each.
“Besides,” I added, tossing a royal to Tempi. “I was hired to find a group of bandits, not destroy a minor military encampment.” I held up my royal. “This is our bonus for services beyond the call of duty.” I slid it into my pocket and patted it. “Alveron need never know about it.”
Dedan laughed and clapped me on the back. “You’re not so much different from the rest of us after all,” he said.
I returned his smile and pressed the lid of the box closed, hearing the lock click tightly into place.
I didn’t mention the two other reasons for what I did. First, I was effectively buying their loyalty. They couldn’t help but realize how easy it would be to simply grab the box and disappear. The thought had crossed my mind, too. Five hundred talents would pay my way through the University for the next ten years with plenty to spare.
Now, however, they were considerably richer, and they got to feel honest about it. A heavy piece of gold would keep their minds off the money I was carrying. Though I still planned on sleeping with the locked box under my pillow at night.
Second, I could use the money. Both the royal I had tucked openly into my pocket, and the other three I’d palmed when handing out coins to the others. As I said, Alveron would never know the difference, and four royals would cover a full term’s tuition at the University.
After I secured the Maer’s lockbox in the bottom of my travelsack, each of us decided what we would scavenge from the bandits’ equipment.
The tents we left for the same reason we hadn’t brought our own in the first place. They were too bulky to carry. We took as much of their food as we could stow, knowing the more we carried, the less we would have to buy.
I decided to take one of the bandits’ swords. I wouldn’t have wasted the money to buy one, since I didn’t know how to use it, but if they were free for the taking....
As I was looking over the assorted weapons, Tempi came over and gave a few words of advice. After we had narrowed my options to two swords, Tempi finally spoke his mind. “You cannot use a sword.” Questioning. Embarrassment.
I got the impression that to him, the thought of someone not being able to use a sword was more than slightly shameful. Like not knowing how to eat using a knife and fork. “No,” I said slowly. “But I was hoping you could show me.”
Tempi stood very still and quiet. I might have taken it for a refusal if I had not come to know him so well. This type of stillness meant he was thinking.
Pauses are a key part of Ademic conversation, so I waited patiently. The two of us stood quietly for a minute, then two. Then five. Then ten. I fought to stay still and quiet. Perhaps this was a polite refusal.
I thought myself terribly savvy, you see. I had known Tempi for nearly a month, learned a thousand words and fifty pieces of the Adem hand-speech. I knew the Adem were not bashful about nudity, or touching, and I was beginning to grasp the mystery that was the Lethani.
Oh yes, I thought I was terribly clever. Had I truly known anything about the Adem, I never would have dared to ask Tempi such a question.
“Will you teach me that?” He pointed across the camp to where my lute case lay, leaning against a tree.
I was caught off guard by the question. I had never tried to teach anyone how to play the lute before. Perhaps Tempi knew this and was implying something similar about himself. I knew he was prone to subtly layered speaking.
A fair offer. I nodded. “I will try.”
Tempi nodded and pointed to one of the swords we had been considering. “Wear it. But no fighting.” With that he turned and left. At the time I took this for his natural brevity.
The scavenging continued throughout the day. Marten took a good number of arrows and all the bowstrings he could find. Then, after checking to see no one wanted any of them, he decided to take the four longbows that had survived the lightning. They made an awkward bundle, but he claimed they’d be worth a heavy penny when he sold them in Crosson.
Dedan grabbed a pair of boots and an armored vest nicer than the one he was wearing. He also laid claim to a deck of cards and a set of ivory dice.
Hespe took a slender set of shepherd’s pipes and tucked almost a dozen knives into the bottom of her pack with the hope of selling them later.
Even Tempi found some things he fancied: a whetstone, a brass saltbox, and a pair of linen pants he took down to the stream and dyed a familiar blood-red.
I took less than the rest of them. A small knife to replace the one I’d broken and a small shaving razor with a horn handle. I didn’t need to shave that often, but I’d gotten into the habit while in the Maer’s court. I might have followed Hespe’s example and taken a few knives as well, but my travelsack was already unpleasantly heavy with the weight of the Maer’s lockbox.
This may seem a little ghoulish, but it is simply the way of the world. Looters become looted, while time and tide make us mercenaries all.
CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR
Over Rock and Root
WE DECIDED TO TRUST the map we’d found and cut straight west through the forest, heading toward Crosson. Even if we missed the town, we couldn’t help but hit the road and save ourselves long miles of walking.
Hespe’s wounded leg made the going slow, and we only put six or seven miles behind us that first day. It was during one of our many breaks that Tempi began my true instruction in the Ketan.
Fool that I was, I’d assumed he had already been teaching me. The truth was, he had merely been correcting my more horrifying mistakes because they irritated him. Much the same way I’d be tempted to tune someone’s lute if they were playing off-key in the same room.
This instruction was a different thing entirely. We started at the beginning of the Ketan and he corrected my mistakes. All my mistakes. He found eighteen in the first motion alone, and there are more than a hundred motions in the Ketan. I quickly began to have doubts about this apprenticeship.
I also began to teach Tempi the lute. I played notes as we walked, and taught him their names, then showed him some chords. It seemed as good a place as any to begin.
We hoped to make it to Crosson by noon of the next day. But near midmorning we encountered a stretch of dreary, reeking swamp that hadn’t been marked on the map.
Thus began a truly miserable day. We had to test our footing with every step, and our progress slowed to a crawl. At one point Dedan startled and fell, thrashing about and spattering the rest of us with brackish water. He said he’d seen a mosquito bigger than his thumb with a sucker like a woman’s hairpin. I suggested it might have been a sipquick. He suggested several unpleasant, unsanitary things I could do to myself at my earliest convenience.
As the afternoon wore on, we gave up on making it back to the road and focused on more immediate things, such as finding a piece of dry ground where we could sit without sinking. But all we found was more marsh, sinkholes, and clouds of keening mosquitoes and biting flies.
The sun began to set before we finally made our way out of the swamp, and the weather quickly turned from hot and muggy to chill and damp. We trudged until the ground finally began to slope upward. And though we were all weary and wet, we unanimously decided to press on and put a little distance between ourselves and the insects and smell of rotting plants.
The moon was full, giving us more than enough light to pick our way through the trees. Despite the miserable day, our spirits began to
rise. Hespe had grown tired enough to lean on Dedan, and as the mud-covered mercenary put an arm around her she told him he hadn’t smelled this good in months. He replied that he would have to bow to the judgment of a woman of such obvious grace.
I tensed, waiting for their banter to turn sour and sarcastic. But as I plodded along behind them I noticed how gently he had his arm around her. Hespe leaned on him almost tenderly, hardly favoring her wounded leg at all. I glanced at Marten, and the old tracker smiled, his teeth white in the moonlight.
Before long we found a clear stream and washed the worst of the smell and mud away. We rinsed out our clothes and donned dry ones. I unpacked my tatty, threadbare cloak and fastened it across my chest, vainly hoping it might keep away the evening’s chill.
As we were finishing up, we heard the faint sound of singing upstream. Each of us pricked up our ears, but the chattering sound of the stream made it difficult to hear with any clarity.
But singing meant people, and people meant we were almost to Crosson, or perhaps even the Pennysworth if the swamp had turned us too far south. Even a farmhouse would be better than another night in the rough.
So, despite the fact that we were tired and aching, the hope of soft beds, warm meals, and cool drinks gave us energy to gather up our packs and press on.
We followed the stream, Dedan and Hespe still walking as a pair. The sound of singing came and went. The recent rains meant the stream was running high, and the noise of it tumbling over rock and root was sometimes enough to drown out even the sound of our own footsteps.
Eventually the stream grew broad and still as the heavy brush thinned and opened into a wide clearing.
There was no singing any longer. Nor did we see a road, inn, or any flicker of firelight. Just a wide clearing well-lit by moonlight. The stream broadened out, forming a bright pool. And sitting on a smooth rock by the side of the pool....
“Lord Tehlu protect me from the demons of the night,” Marten said woodenly. But he sounded more reverent than afraid. And he did not look away.
“That’s ...” Dedan said weakly. “That’s ...”
“I do not believe in faeries,” I tried to say, but it came out as barely a whisper.
It was Felurian.
CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE
Chased
THE FIVE OF US stood frozen for a moment. The slow rippling of the pool reflected onto the fair form of Felurian. Naked in the moonlight, she sang:cae-lanion luhial
di mari felanua
kreata tu ciar
tu alaran di.
dirella. amauen.
loesi an delian
tu nia vor ruhlan
Felurian thae.
The sound of her voice was strange. It was soft and gentle, far too quiet for us to hear across the entire length of the clearing. Far too faint for us to hear over the sound of moving water and stirring leaves. Despite this, I could hear it. Her words were clear and sweet as the rising and falling notes of a distant flute. It reminded me of something I could not press my finger to.
The tune was the same Dedan had sung in his story. I did not understand a word of it save her name in the final line. Nevertheless I felt the draw of it, inexplicable and insistent. As if an unseen hand had reached into my chest and tried to pull me into the clearing by my heart.
I resisted. I looked away and set one hand against a nearby tree to steady myself.
Behind me I heard Marten murmuring, “No no no,” in a low voice as if he were trying to convince himself. “No no no no no. Not for all the money in the world.”
I looked over my shoulder. The tracker’s eyes were fixed feverishly on the clearing in front of him, but he seemed more afraid than aroused. Tempi stood, surprise plain on his normally impassive face. Dedan stood rigidly to one side, his face drawn while Hespe’s eyes darted back and forth between him and the clearing.
Then Felurian began to sing again. It felt like the promise of a warm hearth on a cold night. It was like a young girl’s smile. I found myself thinking of Losi at the Pennysworth, her red curls like a tumble of fire. I remembered the swell of her breasts and the way her hand had felt running through my hair.
Felurian sang, and I felt the pull of it. It was strong, but not so strong that I couldn’t hold myself back. I looked into the clearing again and saw her, skin silver-white under the evening sky. She bent to dip one hand in the water of the pool, more graceful than a dancer.
A sudden clarity of thought came over me. What was I afraid of? A faerie story? There was magic here, real magic. What’s more, it was a magic of singing. If I missed this opportunity I would never forgive myself.
I looked back again at my companions. Marten was shaking visibly. Tempi was backing slowly away. Dedan’s hands made fists at his sides. Was I going to be like them, superstitious and afraid? No. Never. I was of the Arcanum. I was a namer. I was one of the Edema Ruh.
I felt wild laughter boil up in me. “I will meet you at the Pennysworth in three days’ time,” I said, and stepped into the clearing.
I felt Felurian’s pull more strongly now. Her skin was bright in the moonlight. Her long hair fell like a shadow all around her.
“Sod this,” I heard Dedan say behind me. “If he’s going, then I’m g—” There was a short scuffle ending with the sound of something hitting the ground. I glanced behind me and saw him facedown on the low grass. Hespe had her knee on the small of his back and one of his arms pulled up tight behind him. He was struggling weakly and cursing strongly.
Tempi watched them impassively, as if scoring a wrestling bout. Marten was gesturing frantically in my direction. “Kid,” he hissed urgently. “Get back here! Kid! Come back!”
I turned back to the stream. Felurian was watching me. Even from a hundred feet away, I could see her eyes, dark and curious. Her mouth spread into a wide, dangerous smile. She laughed a wild laugh. It was bright and delighted. It was no human sound.
Then she darted across the clearing, swift as a sparrow, graceful as a deer. I leapt to the chase, and despite the weight of my travelsack and the sword at my hip, I moved so quickly my cloak flared like a flag behind me. Never have I run like that before, and never since. It was the way a child runs, light and quick, without the least fear of falling.
Felurian ahead of me. Into the scrub. I dimly remember trees, the smell of earth, the grey of moonlit stone. She laughs. She dodges, dances, pulls ahead. She waits till I am almost close enough to touch, then skips away. She shines in the light of the moon. There are clutching branches, a spray of water, a warm wind ...
And I have hold of her. Her hands are tangled in my hair, pulling me close. Her mouth eager. Her tongue shy and darting. Her breath in my mouth, filling my head. The hot tips of her breasts brush my chest. The smell of her like clover, like musk, like ripe apples fallen to the ground ...
And there is no hesitation. No doubt. I know exactly what to do. My hands are on the back of her neck. Brushing her face. Tangled in her hair. Sliding along the smooth length of her thigh. Grabbing her hard by the flank. Circling her narrow waist. Lifting her. Laying her down ...
And she writhes beneath me, lithe and languorous. Slow and sighing. Her legs around me. Her back arches. Her hot hands clutch my shoulders, my arms, pressing the small of my back ...
And she is astride me. Her movements wild. Her long hair trails across my skin. She tosses her head, trembling and shaking, crying out in a language I do not know. Her sharp nails digging into the flat muscles of my chest ...
And there is music to it. The wordless cries she makes, rising and falling. Her sigh. My racing heart. Her motion slows. I clutch her hips in frantic counterpoint. Our rhythm is like a silent song. Like sudden thunder. Like the half-heard thrumming of a distant drum ...
And everything stops. All of me arches. I am taut as a lute string. Trembling. Aching. I am tuned too tight, and I am breaking....
CHAPTER NINETY-SIX
The Fire Itself
I WOKE WITH SOMETHING BRUSHING at the edg
es of my memory. I opened my eyes and saw trees stretched against a twilight sky. There were silken pillows all around me, while a few feet away Felurian lay, her naked body loosely splayed in sleep.
She looked smooth and perfect as a sculpture. She sighed in her sleep, and I chided myself for the thought. I knew she was nothing like cold stone. She was warm and supple, the smoothest marble grindstone by comparison.
My hand reached out to touch her, but I stopped myself, not wanting to disturb the perfect scene before me. A distant thought began to nag at me, but I brushed it away like an irritating fly.
Felurian’s lips parted and sighed, making a sound like a dove. I remembered the touch of those lips. I ached, and forced myself to look away from her soft, flower-petal mouth.
Her closed eyelids were patterned like a butterfly’s wings, swept in whorls of deep purple and black with traceries of pale gold that blended to the color of her skin. As her eyes moved gently in sleep, the pattern shifted, as if the butterfly fanned its wings. That sight alone was probably worth the price all men must pay for seeing it.
I ate her with my eyes, knowing all the songs and stories I had heard were nothing. She is what men dream of. All the places I have been, all the women I have seen, I have met her equal only once.
Something in my mind screamed at me, but I was bemused by the motion of her eyes beneath her lids, the shape her mouth made, as if she would kiss me even while she slept. I swatted the thought away again, irritated.
I was going to go mad, or die.
The idea finally fought its way through to my conscious mind, and I felt every hair on my body stand suddenly on end. I had a moment of perfect, clear lucidity that resembled coming up for air and quickly closed my eyes, trying to lower myself into the Heart of Stone.
It didn’t come. For the first time in my life, that cool taciturn state escaped me. Behind my eyes, Felurian distracted me. The sweet breath. The soft breast. The urgent half-despairing sighs that slipped through hungry, petal-tender lips....