At pace or so behind her was a second man. Unlike the other two he had no cloak, but rather dressed in mail and leather, sword-armed. But his head was bare also as he cradled a pitted helm on one hip. His features were gaunt, thinned, bitter, his mouth a mere line above a stubborn jaw—Urgell, who had once been a mercenary and now served as swordsmaster in the fortress.
The fourth was strange even in that company, for she was a broad-girthed woman, red of face, thick of shoulder. Her cloak was a matter of patched strips, as if she had been forced to sew together the remains of several such in order to cover her. A fringe of yellow-white hair showed under the edge of a cap covering her head. For all the poverty of her appearance, Forina had a good position in the town, for she was the keeper of the only inn, and any of the Way Wind brought would come to her for shelter.
“What is your wager, my lady?” Osono’s trained bard’s voice easily overreached the whistle of the wind.
Almadis laughed, a hard-edged sound which lacked any softening of humor.
“I, sir bard? Since my last two wind wagers were so speedily proved wrong, I have learned caution. This year I make no speculation; thus I shall not be disappointed again. Think me over-timid of my purse if you will.”
Osono glanced at her. She was not looking toward him but rather down the road. “Lady,” he returned, “I think you are over-timid in nothing.”
After a moment she laughed again. “Bard, life in l’Estal makes for dull acceptance—perhaps that gives root to timidity.”
“There is the priest.” The observation from the mercenary cut through their exchange. He had moved forward, as if drawn by some force beyond his own understanding, to look down at the cluster of townspeople and guards by the gate.
“Thunur,” Osono nodded. “Yes, that crow is well on the hop. Though if he tries to deliver his message to either herdsman or trader, he will not get the better of them. Shut-mouthed they are, and to all of them I think we are Dark-shadowed—they would listen no more to one of us than to the bark of a chained hound.”
Urgell had put his hand to the edge of the parapet wall, and now his mail and leather gauntlet grated on the stone there. Chained hound, Almadis thought, proper term not only for such as this man, but perhaps for all of them. But then a Bard was trained in apt word choice.
“That is one as makes trouble—” Forina had come forward also on the other side of the soldier. “He has a tongue as bitter as var, and he uses it to dip into many pots. T’would be well to keep an eye on him.”
Urgell turned his head quickly. “What stir has he tried to set, Goodwife?”
“More than one. Ask Vill Blacksmith what a pother made his sister sharp-tongue him. Ask of Tatwin why three of those snot-nosed brats he strives to beat learning into no longer come to his bidding, and ask Solasten why she was pelted with market dung. Ask me why the doors of the Hafted Stone are now barred to him. A troublemaker he is, and this is a place where we need no one to heat old quarrels and pot new ones!”
“If he is a brawler, speak to the guard,” Osono suggested. “But I think he is perhaps something even more to be watched—”
“What may that be?” The bard had all their attention now, but it was Almadis who asked that question.
“A fanatic, my lady. One so obsessed with his own beliefs that he is like a smoldering torch ready to be put to a straw heap. We have not an easy life here; there were many old hatreds, despairs, and these can be gathered up to fuel a new fire. Ten years ago, one of his nature arose in Salanika—there was such a bloodletting thereafter as the plains had not seen since the days of Black Gorn. It took full two seasons to quench that fire, and some brands still smoldering may have been scattered to blaze again—”
“Such a one as Thunur, you think?” Almadis demanded. “L’Estal has answers to such—have we not?” The bitterness in her voice was plain. “What are we all but outlaws, and we can exist only as we hold together.” She did not turn her head, but she loosed one hand from her cloak hold and motioned to that dark, ill-fortuned spread of age-hardened timbers which surmounted the wall of the shorter tower. “That has borne fruit many times over.”
“He has a following,” Urgell said, “but he and they are under eye. If he tries aught with the western travelers, he will be in a cell within an hour. We want no trouble with them.”
Certainly they could afford no trouble with the few who came the western road. Such wayfarers were their only real link with a world which was not overshadowed by the walls about them and the past which had brought them here.
The gray-robed priest had indeed been roughly jostled away from the gate. He was making small hops, for he was a short man, trying to see over the crowd the nature of the wayfarer who was now well within sight.
“It—it is a child!” Almadis was shaken out of her composure and came with a single step to stand beside the mercenary. “A child—! But what fate has brought her here?”
The wayfarer was slight, her bundle of travel cloak huddled about her as if it were intended for a much larger and stouter wearer. Hood folds had fallen back on her shoulders, and they saw hair that the wind had pulled from braids to fly in wisps about her face. She was remarkably fair of skin for a wilderness traveler, and her hair was very fair, though streaked here and there by a darker strand closer to the gleam of red-gold.
There was no mistaking, however, the youth of that slight body and those composed features. She walked confidently, and at her shoulder bobbed the head of a hill pony, still so thick with winter hair that it was like an ambling mound of fur.
Bulging panniers rode on either side of a packsaddle. And that was surrounded in the middle by what looked to be a basket half covered by a lid.
Contrary to all who made this perilous way through the high mountains, the girl carried no visible weapons except a stout staff which had been crudely hacked from some sapling, stubs of branches yet to be marked along its length. This was topped, however, with a bunch of flowers and leaves, massed together. Nor did any of them look wilted; rather it would seem they had just been plucked, though there were yet no flowers to be found in the upper reaches where reluctant patches of snow could be sighted.
“Who—what—” Almadis was snapped out of her boredom, of that weariness which overshadowed her days and nights.
As the girl came to the gate, there was a sudden change. The Way Wind died, there was an odd kind of silence as if they all waited for something; they did not know what.
So complete was that silence that the sound Osono uttered startled them all.
“Who—what—?” Almadis turned upon the bard almost fiercely.
He shook his head slowly. “Lady, I have seen many things in my time, and have heard of countless more. There is said to be—somewhere in the western lands—those who are one with the land in a way that none of our blood can ever hope to be—”
The sentries at the gate seemed disinclined to ask any questions. In fact they had fallen back, and with them the townspeople withdrew to allow her a way path. In their doing so, Thunur won to the front rank and stood, his head stretched a little forward on his lank neck, staring at her, his teeth showing a little.
Almadis turned swiftly, but Osono matched her, even extending his wrist in a courtly fashion to give her dignity. Forina, closest to the stairway, was already lumbering down, and behind them Urgell seemed as eager to catch a closer sight of this most unusual wayfarer.
They gained the portion of street just in time to witness Thunur’s upflung arm, hear his speech delivered with such force as to send spittle flying.
“Witchery! Here comes witchery! See the demon who is riding in such state!”
The crowd shrunk back even more as there was a stir to that half-covered basket on the top of the pony pack.
“Fool!” Forina’s voice arose in the kind of roar she used to subdue a taproom scuffle. For so large a woman she moved very fast, and now she was halfway between the slavering priest and the girl, who watched them both serenel
y as if she had no cause to suspect that she was unwelcome.
“Fool! That is but a cat—”
The rust-yellow head with pricked ears had arisen yet farther from within its traveling basket, and green eyes surveyed them all with the same unconcern as that of the girl.
But such a cat. One of those pricked ears was black, and as the cat arose higher in its riding basket, they could see that there was a black patch on its chest. There was such a certain cockiness about it, an air of vast self-confidence, that Almadis laughed; and that was a laugh that had no edge of harshness.
Her laugh was quickly swallowed up by a chuckle from Osono, and a moment later there sounded no less than a full-lunged bellow from Vill Blacksmith.
The girl was smiling openly at them all as if they were greeting her with the best of goodwill.
“I am Meg, dealing in herbs and seeds, good folk. These traveling companions of mine are Kaska and Mors—”
The hair-concealed head of the pony nodded as if it perfectly understood the formalities of introduction, but Kaska merely opened a well-fanged mouth in a bored yawn.
Now the sergeant of the guard appeared to have recovered from the surprise that had gripped them all. He dropped his pike in a form of barrier and looked at the girl.
“You are from—, mistress?” he demanded gruffly.
“From Westlea, guardsman. And I am one who trades—herbs—seeds.’’
Almadis blinked. The girl had moved her staff a fraction. That bouquet of tightly packed flowers, which had looked so fresh from above, now presented another aspect. The color was still there, but faded—these were dried flowers surely, yet they preserved more of their once life than any she had ever seen.
“There be toll,” the pike had lowered in the sergeant’s hold. “A matter of four coppers, and there be a second taking for a market stall.”
Meg nodded briskly. Her hand groped beneath her cloak and came forth again to spill out four dulled rounds of metal into his hand.
Those who had gathered there had begun to shift away. Since this stranger the wind had brought was going to set up in the marketplace, there would be plenty of time to inspect her—though she was indeed something new. None of her kind of merchant had entered l’Estal before in the memories of all.
Only Thunur held his place until the sergeant, seemingly unaware that he was close behind him, swung back the pike, and the priest had to skip quickly aside to escape a thud from that weapon. He was scowling at the girl, and his mouth opened as if to deliver some other accusation when Urgell took a hand in the matter.
“Off with you, crow—you stand in the lady’s way!”
Now the priest swung around with a snarl, and his narrowed eyes surveyed Almadis and the bard. There was a glint of red rage in that stare. But he turned indeed and pushed through the last of the thinning crowd, to vanish down one of the more narrow alleys.
“Mistress,” the mercenary spoke directly to the young traveler. “If that fluttering carrion eater makes you trouble, speak up—his voice is not one we have a liking for.”
Meg surveyed him as one who wished to set a face in memory. “Armsman,” she inclined her head, “I think that here I have little to fear, but for your courtesy I give you thanks.”
To Almadis’s surprise, she saw Urgell flush and then he moved swiftly, leaving as abruptly as the priest had done.
“You’ll be wantin’ shelter,” Forina said. “I keep the Halfed Stone—it be the trade inn.”
Again Meg favored the speaker with one of those long looks, and then she smiled. “Goodwife, what you have to offer we shall gladly accept. It has been a long road, and Mors is wearied. Our greatest burden has been his—sure foot and clever trail head that he has.”
She reached out to lace fingers in the puff of long hair on the pony’s neck. He gave another vigorous nod and snorted.
“If you have spices—or meadowsweet for linens—” Almadis had an odd feeling that she did not want this girl to disappear. A new face in l’Estal was always to be hoped for, and this wayfarer was so different. She had kept stealing glances at the bouquet on the staff. It seemed so real, as if, at times, it had the power of taking on the freshness it had when each of those blossoms had been plunked.
“Your flowers, Herbgatherer, what art gives the dried the seeming of life?”
“It is an art, my lady, an ancient one of my own people. In here”—Meg drew her hand down the side of one of those bulging panniers, “I have others. They be part of my trade stock. Also scents such as your meadowsweet—”
“Then surely I shall be seeing you again, Herbgatherer,” Almadis said. “A good rest to you and your companions.”
“My lady, such wishes are seeds for greater things—”
“As are ill wishes!” Osono said. “Do some of your wares come perhaps from Farlea?”
Meg turned now that measuring look to the bard.
“Farlea is sung of, sir bard. If it ever existed, that was many times ago. No, I do not aspire to the arts of the Fair Ones, only to such knowledge as any herbwife can know, if she seeks always to learn more.”
Now it was her turn to move away, following Forina. Kaska had settled down again in her basket until only those mismatched tips of ears showed. But there were those who had been in the crowd at the gate who trailed the girl at a distance as if they did not want to lose sight of her for some reason.
“Farlea, Osono? I think with that question you may have displeased our herbwife,” Almadis said slowly. “You are a storer of legends; which do you touch on now?”
He was frowning. “On the veriest wisp of an old one, my lady. There was a tale of a youth who followed my own calling, though he was of a roving bent. He vanished for a time, and then he returned hollow-eyed and wasted, saying that he sought something he had lost, or rather had thrown away through some foolishness, and that his fate was harsh because of that. He had been offered a way into a land of peace and rare beauty, and thereafter he sang always of Farlea. But he withered and died before the year was done, eaten up by his sorrow.”
“But what makes you think of Farlea when you look upon this herbwife?” Almadis persisted.
“Those flowers on her staff—fresh plucked.” His frown grew deeper.
“So I, too, thought when first I saw them. But no, they are rather very cleverly dried so that they are preserved with all their color, and I think their scent. Surely I smelled roses when she held them out a little. That is an art worth the knowing. We have no gardens here—the rose walk gives but a handful of blooms, and those are quickly gone. To have a bouquet of such ever to hand”—her voice trailed off wistfully and then she added—” yes, such could even fight the grim aging of these walls. I must go to the market when she sets up her stall.”
Meg did set up her stall on the following day. From the market mistress she rented the three stools and a board to balance on two of them, to form the humblest of the displays. Mathe, who oversaw the trading place, watched the girl’s sure moves in adjusting the plank to show her wares. He lingered even a fraction longer, though it was a busy day, to see her unpack bundles of dried herbs, their fragrance even able to be scented over the mixed odors, few of them pleasant, which were a part of market day.
There were packets also of yellowish, fine-woven cloth which gave forth even more intensified perfumes, and small, corner wrapped, bits of thin parchment such as were for the keeping of seeds. While in the very middle of that board was given honored place to that same bunch of flowers as had crowned Meg’s trail staff.
Kaska’s basket was set on the pavement behind the rude table. And Mors stood behind. The cat made no attempt to get out of her basket, but she was sitting well up in it surveying all about her with manifest interest.
Two small figures moved cautiously toward the stall. Beneath the grimed skin and the much-patched clothing, one face was the exact match of the other. Between them strutted a goat, each of his proud curl of horns clasped by a little, rough-skinned hand.
They proceeded slowly, darting glances to either side as if they were scouts in enemy territory. Only the goat was at ease, apparently confident in his ability to handle any situation which might arise.
“You—Tay—Tod—take that four-legged abomination out of here!” A man arose from the stoop behind one of the neighboring stalls and waved his arms.
The goat gave voice in a way which suggested that he was making a profane answer to that, and refused to answer to the force dragging at him from either side. The boys cowered, but it was apparent they had no idea of deserting their four-legged companion to run for cover.
Meg was on her feet also, smiling as if the two small herds and their beast were the most promising of customers. When her neighbor came from behind his own stall table, a thick stick in his hand, she waved him back.
“No harm, goodman,” she said. “This beast but seeks what is a delicacy for his kind. Which he shall be freely given.” She selected a stalk wrapped loosely around with its own withered leaves and held it out to the goat. For a moment he regarded her and then, with the neat dexterity of one who had done this many times before, he tongued the proffered bit of dried stuff and drew it into his mouth, nodding his head up and down, as if to signify his approval, with a vigor to near shake free the grip of his two companions.
The other tradesman stared, his upraised club falling slowly to his side. But there was a wariness in his look when he shifted his glance toward Meg. Then he withdrew behind his own table, as if he wished some barrier against a threat he did not truly understand.
However, Meg paid no attention to him. Rather now, she reached behind her and brought out a coarse napkin from which she unrolled thick slices of bread with green-veined cheese between—the food she had brought for her nooning.