Curdled to distrust, Dakar stared until he tracked the elusive discrepancy: a striking, indefinable tension infused the Shadow Master's presence. Stripped of the shadows he had used to veil his features, his poise reminded of a wildcat set to stalk.
'This coin is riddled with spell-wards,' he opened, his flexible voice inquiring. 'I hear them. But without more experience, I couldn't unravel the purpose behind their harmonics.'
Dakar squatted, rifled the nearest canvas bundle and fished out a wrapped loaf of bread. Guardedly wary, he settled on his hams and broke the crust. 'If Asandir left that to pay the black's stabling, it's rotten with magecraft, sure enough.' Through a bulging mouthful, he qualified. 'You'll see that bit of gold get passed from hand to hand, from ostler to horse trader, and the stud, whether sold or rented to post riders, will find his way back to his master. He'll be where Asandir next has need of him, glossy and fit, and have not a whip mark on him.'
Arithon's interest turned rueful. 'My worry was wasted, I see.'
The sailing instruments; Dakar kicked himself for lapsed wits. With Arithon bound seaward, a horse would be useless as tits on a fish. Disgusted to find the bread as unpalatably stale as the ship's biscuit he heartily detested, the Mad Prophet stamped off to the stream to wash down the crumbs and relieve himself.
Arithon used the interval to pack the small camp and scatter the dead embers of the fire. When Dakar puffed back uphill, he was waiting, the black stallion's bridle reins looped through one hand. Spattered green-gold in new sunlight, his black hair thrown back from angled cheekbones, the prince who was Master of Shadow appeared absorbed by the trill of the woodlarks that flitted through the boughs overhead; except the eyes he turned upon Dakar stayed emerald-hard and measuring as a trap cocked and baited to draw blood.
The Mad Prophet stopped. Determined to stay nonchalant, he hitched chubby forgers in his belt. 'You plan to ride'
'To Ship's Port, I think.' The invitation casual, Arithon added, 'We'll take turns in the saddle, if you wish.'
The rage rose thick and hot, until Dakar felt he might strangle. 'Do as you please. I'm not going.'
'I'd thought not.' Arithon slipped a thong at the saddlebow; a canvas packet slithered loose. He flicked a neat wrist and tossed it.
Slammed in the chest by the bundle, Dakar staggered backward, gasping into the smoke-tainted cloth reflexively clutched in his arms.
'That's your share of our stores.' Over his shoulder as he vaulted astride the tall stallion, Arithon finished, 'Don't waste the coin on cheap doxies.'
'Bastard! You planned that I wouldn't be coming.' The last imprecation flurried the woodlarks away on scared wings. 'You insufferable son of a bitch!'
'Yes, to the first, who denies it?' Touched to a wicked edge of laughter, the Shadow Master raised his eyebrows. 'But the last? Dakar! How unfortunate for Lysaer.' The black stud snorted and shouldered ahead at the brush of his rider's heels. 'We did after all share a mother.'
Jostled aside, then dealt a buffeting sting by the whisk of the black's departing tail, Dakar kicked a log and howled insults until his ears rang. The fit gained him no satisfaction.
Sometimes fate seemed to dog him like the fury of an unpaid whore. Never mind the small blessing that the rain had dried up; from the moment the Mad Prophet set off hiking, the day grew perversely less pleasant.
South of Jaelot, the coast road jagged inland, to the east hemmed by rock-slashed ravines capped in fir, ruched and ruffled like a widow's collar around the stripped peaks of the Skyshiels. To the west, in summers when storms stayed mild, rolling meadowland quilted the hills in a sun drenched patchwork of hayfields. Between pocketed hollows where the farmers' crofts clustered, blooming larkspur twined sprays of indigo amid daisies, and yarrow splashed in drifts like white foam. Under wide, cloudless sky; across broad, windcombed acres, any spirit escaped from an onerous duty might revel in new-found freedom.
Yet Dakar took no joy from leagues of magnificent scenery. By noon, his eyes itched and his nose ran; country air had never agreed with him. Each step he took reminded him how much he detested travel on foot.
The nap he snatched to refresh himself became spoiled by the diabolical placement of an ants' nest. Scratching and twitching and shaking out his clothing, he sought second refuge by a streamlet. There he fell asleep in comfort, only to discover as twilight came on that foraging muskrats had ripped open his pack and devoured every crumb of his food.
Too lazy to regret the ward-spells he might have set to protect himself, Dakar flagged a ride with a merchant's drover bearing candles and beeswax. Since the heat of full day would damage the wares, the wagon travelled to market by night. The Mad Prophet tucked into a niche behind the buckboard, contentedly primed to share gossip.
At midnight, beaten down by judicious wheedling, the drover shared his meal of barley bread and ham. Dakar cheerfully stuffed his belly, only to waken shortly afterward, doubled over and moaning with cramps.
The meat had likely been spoiled. Far too crafty to voice such suspicion, the Mad Prophet rocked and clutched his belly. 'That stream water must have been tainted.'
The drover met the excuse with the same sappy nonsense he used to soothe his draught mules. Self-absorbed in a misery that spiked like white fire through his groin, Dakar missed the moment when his benefactor's sympathy changed to shouted imprecations.
His next clear sensation was the dry jab of weed stalks prickling into his cheek. A pungency of road dust and pepper grass made him sneeze, a detail which forced recognition: the uncharitable drover had pitched him out on the verge. Dakar sweated through the bothered conclusion. He might languish of bellyache until crows came to peck out his eyes; not precisely the plan he had intended to escape his obligation to Asandir.
Too wrung by discomfort to care, the Mad Prophet closed his eyes. Small use to dwell on dying when he could dream more pleasantly of hot, lusty tavern girls and foaming tankards of ale.
He got instead a disruptive intervention by brisk hands that first rolled him over, then latched his armpits in a grip like torture and peeled him up from the ground. Sunlight hit his face and his eyes like a slap, while the world upended and spun.
After disjointed thoughts, he unriddled the indignity that he dangled face down over somebody's saddlebow. The shoulder of the horse that bore him was sweat sheened and black; the girth unfocused inches from his nose had been stitched with sigil patterns to discourage wear.
After centuries of being collected comatose from binges, Dakar knew precisely where he was. He groaned at the gouge of the pommel in his gut until unconsciousness mercifully reclaimed him.
The most vile hangover he had ever suffered hounded him back to awareness. He sensed darkness and a fire. A demon rode his skull, one that wore spurs a half an inch long and delightedly stabbed heels through his eye sockets. Clear-minded enough to bemoan the unfairness, since no drop of spirits had passed his gullet, he clamped sweaty hands to his temples. 'Gaaah,' he grated through parched tissues. 'I feel all ground into ruts by the wheels of Dharkaron's filthy Chariot. Where in Sithaer am I?'
A rapid-fire shower of lyranthe notes drilled like bodkins through his ears.
'It appears we came to share the saddle after all,' observed Arithon from some unseen place beyond the embers. 'Since you asked, you are currently sprawled on dry oak leaves, halfway down the road to Tharidor.'
The Mad Prophet ripped out a scatological epithet, then winced at the sting of his own vehemence.
'It could be worse.' Athera's new Masterbard dampened his instrument, careless of the string that sawed out a sullen buzz against the white-gold setting of his signet ring. Amused by Dakar's flinch, he added, 'You might still be lying in a ditch, abandoned to the crows and the insects. Do you get migraines often? The wax merchant's drover decided you had plague. He carried on about pestilence until you're lucky the northbound couriers didn't overhear. They'd have rousted the watch back out of Jaelot with faggots to burn your diseased carcass.'
&n
bsp; 'Never migraines.' Dakar sniffed in corrosive irritation. 'I got indisposed from eating spoiled ham.'
He covered his ears, whimpering and uncommunicative. Though his sour stomach relented by morning, he maintained an offended silence throughout three days of hard travel. Since the man was a fool who risked the temper of any s'Ffalenn prince, Dakar sneaked away by night and begged passage into Tharidor on the slats of a salt merchant's cart.
By noon, a whistle on his lips, he kicked open the door of the city's most commodious tavern. Blinking through the fusty murk of pipe smoke, he breathed in the smells of acid oak casks, unperfumed humanity, and thicker odours of hot grease and chicken meat roasting on spits in the kitchen.
The inevitable pack of idlers clustered by the hearth. Dakar nodded greeting and chose a bench between a group of whispering merchants, fastidious in their summer silks and lace, and a foursome of sun-cured deckhands. 'Beer,' he demanded to the bar wench who scoured the stones by the hob. 'The best brew the house has to offer, and also, a plate of spiced chicken.'
The deckhands renewed their squabble over a dice throw made by a cheater, while Dakar's order arrived.
He licked his lips as the head foamed over clean glassware, then raised the tankard to catch the thick stream in his mouth, eyes closed in beatific anticipation.
The taste hit his tongue, bitter enough to scour the linings of his sinuses. He huffed and slammed backward in recoil that rattled the floorboards. His eyes bulged. Tears streamed down the flushed apple curves of both cheeks and he choked through a spray of expelled droplets.
'Fiends alive!' snapped the sailor across the trestle. 'If you're minded to sprinkle, do it elsewhere, matey. Or else, understand, I'll see your stinking lard carved up and stewed into lamp oil.'
Through a half-strangled fit of pure rage, Dakar spat into his tankard. Too husky to shout, he beckoned to the barmaid. 'Look here, what's this? The drink you serve is vile. Pure lye.' His tirade gained volume as the pucker in his throat began to loosen. 'Do you habitually try to poison customers?'
Drawn from the kitchen by the commotion, the landlord appeared, a meat spit clamped in hand like a battle mace. 'I won't have this!' He strode past the flabbergasted merchants and shook his iron implement at Dakar. 'My establishment serves the finest fare in Tharidor.'
'Oh?' Dakar folded his arms in mulish challenge. 'Then standards hereabouts must need a boost to lick the belly of a snake.'
The spit banged into the trestle and stuck there quivering, a hair's-breadth from Dakar's planted elbow. The landlord loomed over him and bristled with both fists cocked on his hips. 'You've no cause to sling lies and insults. If you can't handle a man's brew, go back to drinking fresh cider.'
Wide eyes averted from the metal that skewered the table, Dakar coughed into his cuff. 'Well, look, you try this.' He gave the tankard a shove with his forearm. 'I'll be fair and admit to poor manners if what slops inside doesn't scald your mouth to perdition.'
The sailhands' dice clicked and stopped in suspended stillness. By the hearth, the greybeard idlers leaned forward in fascination as the landlord scooped up the glass. The merchants looked on, more discreet in curiosity, as he quaffed the contents in one draught. Then he sighed, his features hard with animosity as he licked the foam from bearded lips and thumped the drained vessel rim downward beside the upright meat fork. 'You have a lively imagination, the sort that makes trouble I don't like.'
A jerk of his chin called two enormous thugs from the one dim cranny Dakar had neglected to watch. These grasped his elbows in bruising, cruel fingers and forcibly pitched him out.
* * *
Hours later, parked on his rump in the gutter with three knuckles skinned and one side throbbing to the ache of bruised ribs, the Mad Prophet ran tender fingers over a swelling black eye and conceded to woebegone defeat. He had sampled beer vats and wine shops the breadth of Tharidor and found not a potable drop. The town tosspots making their evening rounds singled him out for ridicule, until the last tavern he visited paid heed to rumour and as firmly as though he was afflicted or insane, turned him away at the door.
The meat from the sausage stall he visited as consolation caused his belly to churn and rebel. Wary by now of offended proprietors, Dakar stilled his complaint. As his sensitized innards clenched into fierce cramps, he squeezed back tears of aggravation, paid for his scarcely touched meal, and turned his back on the puzzled vendor to sit by the gutter to regroup.
In dark thought and vile temper, the Mad Prophet weighed the temptation to ease his troubles between scented sheets in a bawdy house. But even the thought of a paid doxy's comforts shot an unpleasant, warning tingle through his crotch.
Bearded chin propped morosely on the knuckles folded over his knees, his hair stuck like crimped yarn to his brow by the stifling, seaside humidity, Dakar began serious cogitation. While elegant, lacquered carriages and dusty drays rolled to whip cracks and jingling harness past his perch, his stumbling thought met enlightenment.
'Ath!' His burst caused an alley cat to streak behind a stack of barrel hoops. A street-child clad in motley stopped scavenging hand outs to regard him with startled eyes. Dakar paid neither any mind. 'Fiends plague that interfering sorcerer, what I really need is a herb witch!'
The street-child sidled nearer and gave him a winsome smile. 'Master, I know such a person. For a half-silver, I'll take you to her cottage.'
Dakar glowered at the waif, whose bare feet and rags masked a disingenuous, well-fed frame. 'Miserable robber.' But hunger and thirst overcame his will to haggle, and he grudgingly doled out the coin.
* * *
The herb witch brazen enough to practise her craft in Tharidor kept a squalid shack in the alley behind the tanner's yard. Shown to her sagging entry by the streetwaif, who bolted immediately afterward, Dakar pinched his nose with sweaty fingers and regretted his need to continue breathing. The reek that drifted from the tanner's was overpowering, even without the witch's rain barrel, heaped under in desiccated entrails and alive beneath a sun-caught swirl of flies. The eyes of scavenging rats gleamed from the shadow under the footings, then flashed in darting retreat at his irritable rap on the door.
The warped, unpainted planks cracked to a squeal of tin hinges. Fingers curled around the edge, the nails ragged and rimmed with dried blood. 'Who calls?' came a scabrous whisper.
Gagged beyond speech from the stench, Dakar jingled his wallet.
His name and his origins now a moot point, the herb witch opened her door.
Daylight struck through into clutter and darkness, and roused a dusky rustle of wings. A sleepy rooster crowed, answered by a second, while a stinging billow of herbal smoke and incense swirled out into the street. The woman who straddled the sill peered outward with redrimmed eyes. Her hair was a nest of pale, unwashed hair, stuck with thyme sprigs and a white fluff of breast feathers that looked to have drifted and caught there. She wore deerhide painted with sigils and food stains, and her skin was blue with ingrained soot.
'What're you wantin'? A love-knot? A health philtre?' She stabbed a knotty forefinger at the bulge of her visitor's gut. 'Must be a philtre, yes? Woman left you for someone more strapping, is it? Acting shy won't change the truth.'
Dakar blinked and coughed out bad air in affront. 'Actually, I need to have a geas lifted.'
The crone cackled as coarsely as her hinges. 'Some girl's put the come-hither on you, then? Ach, that's a pretty enough lie. You expect me to believe it?'
'This has nothing to do with problems concerning a woman!' Dakar snapped. 'Besides, if you have to slit open chickens to work an unbinding, I've certainly picked the wrong party.'
He spun to leave, but a pale hand shot out and clamped the wrist holding the money bag. 'Such hasty thinking, foolish man.' A breathy exhalation cracked into another wheezing laugh. 'And as for slitting chickens, some clients expect it, which is all to the good if they pay. But one does tire of stewed fowl for supper.'
Too late for trepidation, Dakar was je
rked face-about and dragged inside by a grip like steel pincers.
The herb witch pushed him down on a chicken crate, and kicked her rickety door shut with the back of a bare, bony heel. She then bent her elbows and drummed skinny fingers on her hips, while surveying her newest client through a twining maze of incense smoke.
The reek of tanner's vats and offal crept undaunted through the musk of perfume. Breathing in tortured, shallow gulps, Dakar realized that, except for the chicken coop he sat on, the cramped little cottage was clean, if oddly furnished. Crates and cages for pigeons and barnyard fowl supported a trestle table, and a cot bright with woven shepherds' blankets. Bundles of herbs dangled from the rafters, their thrown shadows entangled with talismans sewn of felt and glass beads, and the dried, yellow claws of mummified birds' feet.
'My wares,' the crone admitted in brittle amusement. She bent, scrounged up a cloisonne tin of incense, and lit a fresh stick with a snap of her nail and a cantrip ripped out in burred consonants. Then she blew on the tip to fan the ember and fluttered her fingers toward the artefacts. 'Mostly charms to ward drowning for sailors. Waste not, want not, I should say, and the hens' feet add a nice touch of mystery.' She shrugged. 'Tharidor's fashionable types aren't big on spending for spellcraft.'
Pecked on the buttocks by the birds cooped up behind the slats where he perched, Dakar fidgeted. He looked everywhere else but at the woman, who shuttled and wove around his person, muttering and tracing odd, red symbols with her incense. Smoke trailed from the ember like demon writing, distorted and erased on the draughts. The gloom clearly outlined to mage-sight the haloes of warped spells entangled in each gruesome little charm bundle. The witch worked her craft in blood-magnetism and the deep, earthy mystery that sang through the roots of eldritch plants. The draw of the moon infused the wards over her shack and less clean things, which made the knotted seals that Koriani enchantresses amplified through crystal seem clear and straightforward by comparison.