* * *
Haldeth stopped squarely in the center of Craftsman's Alley. "You're mad as a dogfox!" Sea wind whipped his hair against reddened cheeks as heatedly, he continued. "Two silvers won't buy passage as far as the next crossroads, and you claim you're going to lift the Blight of Torresdyr! Neth! Tell me, with what? That quest has killed the best heeled men-at-arms in all the Eleven Kingdoms."
"Watch me," Korendir said. In a gesture unthinkingly casual, he tossed one of his silvers to a beggar who shivered in the gutter.
Haldeth shook his head. "I'd rather get drunk. Daft, that's what you are. Escape the Mhurgai, and you think of nothing but risking your neck. Torresdyr lies a hundred and sixty leagues from here, over mountains, don't forget. Be reasonable and wait till spring. I'll find work at a smithy. If you're still this keen when the weather breaks, I'll go with you."
"No." Korendir met Haldeth's glare with an expression as final as death.
A wagon rumbled into the alley. The carter cursed and brandished his whip at the two men blocking the roadway. Even then Korendir refused to relent.
"Go alone then!" shouted Haldeth. Out of patience, he whirled and jumped clear as the harness team jogged past. Iron-rimmed wheels rang over dirt rutted like stone by winter ice. By the time the wagon passed, Haldeth had disappeared into the tavern across the street. The signboard swung in the gusts, invitingly torchlit, its promise of warmth and comfort depicted in gilt letters and a brightly painted bullfrog with a tankard.
Alone in the windy alley, Korendir stood for a long moment, his face expressionless beneath tangled copper hair. Presently, he grimaced, turned his back on the lighted inn windows, and continued on his way. His last silver bought him worn but serviceable clothing. With the change, he acquired a tired black gelding with ruined lungs; but he had to include his rigging knife to complete the bargain.
The horse trader stroked the fine, Mhurgai steel and spat through broken teeth. "You'll be getting no bridle with the nag, now."
The gelding nibbled at the salty wool of his owner's cloak, and received a mild slap on the muzzle. "I need none," said Korendir.
On his way to the town gate, he begged a length of twine from a wagonmaster and braided it into a hackamore. Then, penniless, weaponless, and saddleless, he vaulted astride his sorry mount and turned north.
* * *
The horse made no speed on the road. Any gait beyond a walk made its flanks heave pitifully as it labored to draw air into scarred tissues. Resigned, Korendir named the animal Snail. Winter wanned into spring, and spring passed, turning the fields rich green at high summer. Korendir made his way across two kingdoms, working at farmsteads to earn lodging and meals; in the wilds between settlements, he hunted and slept in the open. From dusty, travel-worn boots to tangled hair, his appearance grew as unkempt as his mount. Yet no stranger dared refuse him passage. The stern set of his features silenced any ridicule; directions to Northengard were forthrightly given to speed him on his way.
But as his mount shambled out of earshot, heads shook, and laughter flourished. What could an honorless, nameless unknown on a broken-winded hack achieve that had not already been tried, and by heroes well sung into fame? Even the White Circle enchanters would not trifle with the Blight of Torresdyr, and they held more power than any mortal born.
Summer mellowed into autumn, and nights grew brisk with frost. Oak leaves crackled in drifts under the gelding's hooves as Korendir climbed the passes which marked the far border of Northengard. Beyond lay the misted acres of Torresdyr, barren since blight had withered the land.
Korendir journeyed through hills smothered under pallid banks of fog. Thickets sheltered no wildlife. The vegetation hung sere and brown, as if ravaged by early winter. In the valleys, unmended fences bordered fields left fallow, and pastures grew snarls of nettle and thorn. Those few travelers who ventured on the roads turned unfriendly faces upon the stranger and his tired gelding; his coming and his quest offered no cause for hope.
Korendir continued undaunted. Seven nights before equinox, he drew rein beneath moss-caked arches in the courtyard of the royal palace.
* * *
The king granted the stranger's request for audience, saddened by renewed despair. Torresdyr embraced poverty and ill luck indeed, if a rag-tag nobody dared shoulder the burden that had ruined the finest armsmen in the Eleven Kingdoms.
"Let the wretched man in," the king said to his sniggering chamber steward. "We're beggars ourselves, and have nothing to lose but pride."
The royal words were no understatement. In what had once been the richest land in Aerith, the visitor waited in a damp, unheated antechamber, and the servant who admitted him was gaunt beneath threadbare robes of state. Taken to the throne room, Korendir walked past a thousand sockets where gemstones had been pried out of fretwork and furnishings to fund a starving court. The carpet he knelt on was mildewed, and the king he saluted was toothless and hunched with ill health.
Korendir straightened. Quietly he spoke. "Your Royal Grace, I request leave to recover the Wardstone of Torresdyr from the witch Anthei. Your land is dying of curse, and I have need of her riches."
"Anthei murdered every man to challenge her." The king did not bother to suppress contempt. Korendir was every bit as nondescript as the steward described, from creased black cloak to cracked leather boots. Except for the rare combination of bronze hair and gray eyes, he looked like a street thief. "Who are you to demand burial with the bravest blood of the Eleven Kingdoms when Anthei returns your remains?"
In pointed disregard of the insult, Korendir chose his words like a miser spending coin. "I was robbed, once, of everything I valued. That day I swore to hold nothing dear until I possessed means to hold it secure. Should I die, you may feed my flesh to your hunting hawks if you please. I ask only that you tell how the blight was set against you, and give your blessing on my departure."
The king tugged the worn tassels which adorned his throne of state. "There's no virtue left in my blessing. And any beggar in the square would tell of the Blight for a half copper. Why trouble me?"
"Because from you I would hear the simple truth." Korendir shrugged. "That might make a difference."
"How could it?" snapped the king. "My last hawk was slaughtered for the table many a long year past, and my subjects need not be burdened with the task of digging your grave. Be gone from here. I have nothing to offer and even less left to lose."
"I know." Korendir returned a queerly reluctant smile. "In that, Your Grace, we are very much alike."
The ruffian retired from the royal presence. His final bow was offered with a respect reminiscent of better days; the king noticed, surprisingly touched by regret. Once, the royal consent to an adventurer's challenge included great lists of obligations. Torresdyr's treasury had been exhausted serving up weapons, horses and mercenaries to back each separate attempt. Yet Korendir came knowing the vaults were empty. He had asked without demanding so much as a pin, and even ridicule had not driven him to discourtesy. Ashamed for his mean hospitality, the king rose painfully to his feet.
He shuffled from his dais and unlatched the casement. The mullioned frame opened, pattering flakes of gilt into the weeds beneath the sill. Alone in the dusty courtyard, Korendir turned toward the sound. His hand paused on the string which served his mount as hackamore.
"Your Grace?" He waited, watching with stony gray eyes.
The king felt suddenly uneasy. "The guard at the gate will tell you the tale of the Blight. Then go with the royal blessing." Speaking no further word, Korendir vaulted astride and reined across the courtyard. He passed beneath the far archway, unaccompanied and unremarked by fanfares. Left to his despair, the king wiped rheumy eyes and addressed his chamber steward.
"That man hasn't so much as a penknife on him, Neth take his foolish soul. Find a brace of pages. Have them dig a grave, and don't let me see that man's corpse when Anthei sends him back."
III. The Blight of Torresdyr
The gatekee
per of the king's palace leaned against the lichened stone of the barbican. He squinted up at the stranger on the tired gelding and spoke in a voice gone rusty as the hinges he tended. "So, ye would hear the story of the Blight? Why ask here? Any man in the city could tell you."
Unmoved by the sarcasm, Korendir said, "I want the truth, not tales told in taverns by the tap." He paused, aware haste would earn nothing but the gatekeeper's contempt.
At last the old man kicked at the weeds underfoot and gestured toward crumbled stone walls. "Torresdyr was a fair land once. But the old king committed an injustice. Now lord and farmsteader suffer alike." Then, irritation intensified, he accused, "Why care? Ye look to be poor as the rest of us."
Korendir's hand stayed quiet on the rein and his eyes remained expectant.
Discomfortable under that steady gaze, the old man shrugged; in plain phrases he described how the fairest of the Eleven Kingdoms became cursed.
A generation past, when the current king's sire ruled the land, Torresdyr employed a court wizard to provide fashionable wonders for the revels. Iraz of Idmire last held that post. Though his face and one eye had been grotesquely scarred by a miscast spell, he was without dispute the finest master of lesser magic in the Eleven Kingdoms. Not all his spells were illusions. Iraz could make roses bloom at wintertide, and pears grow from thorn branches. His skills became the envy of rival courtiers, and he rose quickly to fame and favor. Quartered like a lord in the palace, he fell in love with the king's second daughter and got her with child.
The king's rage knew no bounds. Rather than grant consent for his daughter to wed a man who was scarred, landless, and untitled, he ordered Iraz imprisoned. The princess was sent to a distant keep to bear her wizard's bastard in shame. On the eve she went into labor, the king's wardens discovered Iraz's cell empty, the steel lock a misshapen ruin. Left in runes on the dungeon wall was a threat that the wizard would marry the princess, else curse all the land to misfortune.
The king mustered his men-at-arms, yet before they could march, the princess died in childbed. Inflamed with grief, Iraz of Idmire claimed both her surviving daughter and the tower for his own.
His walls were defended with sorcery, and weapons in the hands of soldiers could not breach his spells. Fearing Iraz's threat of vengeance, the king appealed to the White Circle, the mightiest enchanters on Aerith and as far beyond the powers of mortal wizards as sunlight above plain clay. To aid the king's cause, the White Circle created a wardstone of tallix crystal. The completed gem was round as a man's fist, each of two thousand two hundred and forty facets angled to deflect one aspect of ill fortune.
"Guard it well," warned the Archmaster when he gave the talisman to the king. "There shall not be another."
Iraz labored seventeen years on his curse against the king. Its final consummation claimed his life, but his illegitimate daughter Anthei survived him. Grieving alone in her tower, she saw a land unspoiled under sunlight. Angered that her father's death had achieved no vengeance, she swore to see his work complete.
On the old king's death, Anthei made her way to court. There, with her beauty and knowledge of Iraz's arts, she beguiled the distraught prince and stole the wardstone away. Secure within her tower, she worked foul sorcery upon the White Circle's defenses and at last limited their virtues to the gardens surrounding her keep.
The Blight of Iraz fell in full measure upon Torresdyr. Crops withered, and starvation shriveled the livestock in pasture and barn. Children sickened with fever, cloth mildewed upon the loom; the sun vanished behind a mantle of mist and did not reappear. Country folk fled over the mountains to Northengard, but the Blight traveled with them, and their farmsteads did not prosper.
Torresdyr's young king issued a proclamation challenging any man of courage to regain the wardstone, great wealth to be awarded the one who succeeded. Seventy-four tried only to fail. Anthei delighted in returning their corpses. Hopelessness and poverty overran the court of Torresdyr and adventurers ceased to appear at the royal gates. The king grew old. Ruined by apathy and misfortune, he offered his crown for recovery of the wardstone, but no man came forward to risk his life for the rule of a desolate land.
"You're the first to answer that challenge in many a weary year," the gatekeeper finished. He spat in the dust. "But don't you know? You ride for a hopeless cause. The king bartered his crown to the traders for cloth. Men say Anthei's tower holds treasure, but wizard's gold carries a bane. Only a fool would chance death for such stakes."
"I'm going anyway." Calm to the point of obsession, Korendir asked questions until the gatekeeper tired of giving answers. Words had no power to unravel Anthei's sorceries; the old man gave vent to annoyance. He turned his back and set his hands to the winches. Chain clanked. The gates which guarded the royal palace began ponderously to close. Yet before the rusted portals completed their groaning descent, Korendir passed through and turned his gelding's wheezing nose northwest. He would persist on his fool's errand to pursue Torresdyr's lost wardstone and no man's argument would deter him.
Anthei's tower rose above the flats on the Jardine Sea. There shone the only sunlight in Torresdyr since the wardstone spared her grounds alone from the Blight. Although blue sky showed intermittently over the surrounding acres, Korendir covered the final league upon roads overgrown with brown bracken; the farmsteads on either side stood abandoned. The gatekeeper claimed children had died of poisoning after tasting the fruit which ripened on the trees near Anthei's walls. Other folk whispered in dread of the guardians that protected her gates.
Korendir rounded the final bend in the hills near sunset. Ahead he saw a great stone keep silhouetted against the gray breakers of the shoreline. Walled round with the famed white agate of Torresdyr, Anthei's gardens were a marvel in the midst of a wasteland. With cold eyes, Korendir studied the beauty of rare blossoms and exotic trees. The wind filled his nostrils with the perfume of flowering vines and the sour smell of salt off the sea; a third scent intermingled with these, a sharp tang of woodsmoke which did not fit.
Korendir drew rein. As his gelding halted, he noticed one other in Torresdyr who had disregarded rumor's warning; a white-haired man crouched over a fire toasting barley cakes almost within the shadow of Anthei's walls. Korendir's frown lifted. He set his heels to the gelding's sides and called out in a rare display of pleasure.
"Haldeth!"
The man by the fire glanced up and shaded seamed features with one hand. Then he stood and grinned until the gelding's walk brought its rider within earshot. "I guessed you'd be along. Hadn't we promised to see this through together?"
Korendir dismounted. He closed the remaining distance with impatience, but when he reached Haldeth's side, his face showed nothing of his earlier welcome. "What changed your mind?"
Caught in that critical gaze, Haldeth felt suddenly exposed. "I hope you like barley cakes," he said evasively. He took the gelding's hackamore and motioned toward the camp. "Eat. I'll tend your animal."
"He's called Snail." Even more spare with words than usual, Korendir sat on a log by the fire. "Let him go. He never strays."
Haldeth slipped the hackamore over the gelding's ears and watched it snuffle the grass and begin to graze. Presently he chose a seat beside his friend. Yet after the surprise of reunion, awkwardness settled between the two men. Haldeth knew better than to press with questions. Instead, he prepared a mix of barley dough and told of a gamble on a card game that had won him employment at a forge. On impulse, he had bought back the fake rubies from the Mhurga galley's figurehead. One he wore set in silver as a belt buckle; the other he kept loose with his coins.
"I wanted the things to remind me." The smith's hands stilled over the flour sack, and his eyes lost focus into distance. "Something by which to recall that the cost of survival came dear."
If Korendir also thought of loved ones left barbarously slaughtered, he ventured nothing in comment. Since time had not blunted his reserve, Haldeth most wisely kept silent.
* * * r />
Perched beside a lancet window beneath the tower's upper battlement, the witch Anthei leaned across the sill and braided a clothyard length of pale gold hair. Intent as a cat, she studied the man recently arrived; this one she knew had come with the king's blessing, his intent to destroy her father's vengeance against the court of Torresdyr. Very soon he would be dead. Anthei had savored the challenge, even toyed with the lives of seventy-four of his predecessors; but this time she did not smile with her customary anticipation. Never before had a man approached her tower unarmed. Now, one had dared. The precedence disturbed her.
Korendir, she heard the white-haired smith call him. The word did not harbor any resonance of power. Yet names could be misleading. Shabby clothing and cracked boots could not hide the bronze hair and cold light eyes, coloring unknown on Aerith except among the blood of White Circle enchanters. Anthei knotted her braid with slender fingers and fretfully started another.
In the campsite, Korendir leaned forward and burned his fingers on a barley cake. He swore mildly, sat back, and blew on his blistered thumb with the chagrin of a common vagabond. Assured now of his mortality, Anthei eliminated the fear that the White Circle had sent an initiate against her. She pulled a blood-red ribbon from her lap and bound it into her hair with langorous enjoyment. She had been left to herself for a very long time. Sage or fool, this man's struggles would amuse her well before he died; the corpse she returned to the King of Torresdyr would hereafter deter even the most destitute adventurerer from fouling her garden air with cooking smoke.
While twilight settled ghostly gray over her tower, Anthei leaned on her elbows and began very softly to sing. Intent on their supper, the mortals below never noticed Korendir's gelding raise its gaunt head, ears pricked taut with attention.