The Well-Favored Man

by Elizabeth Willey

  However, in that he was little different from Gaston, who had more than once killed to protect Freia and, though theft and falsehood were foreign to his character, sorely missed her. Between them, they had all the determination and ruthlessness to accomplish anything, even reincarnation.

  Had they, in fact, done so?

  I turned and stared at the rough wooden ceiling.

  Suppose, I thought, suppose Ulrike was a constructed body. Suppose Dewar had made her and Gaston reared her—not troubling much over her, for she was nothing but a vessel to be filled with better matter—and then sent her to Argylle, where his sorcerer partner would complete the work. It would explain her vacant personality, her vagueness, and Gaston’s absence. Naturally, he would claim she was Freia’s daughter in order to get her to the Spring. Perhaps Ulrike suspected something of this; that would explain her reluctance to approach it.

  I wondered what was involved in the process of extricating Freia from the Spring. Was it as simple as her enthrallment? As simple as falling in? What would happen to Ulrike—would she become part of the Spring, then, in Mother’s stead? It could not be so neat as that—or could it? No. I recalled that Freia had told Dewar that the one who followed her would be truly dead, not merely trapped. So since Ulrike was a blank construct, it wasn’t murder: it was restoral.

  If I had but known all this when first she entered the Citadel, I’d have taken her to the Spring at once and freed Freia. No one would have been the wiser, and Freia would be with us, and Gaston and my uncle would return, and all would be well, and I would have none of these problems that gnawed me now.

  My sleep was uneasy. I woke again and again, thrashed around trying to get comfortable, and finally lay on my back miserably waiting for day. When light greyed the interior of the hut, I got up stiff and unrested and tottered off to saddle my horse. My stomach’s knotted and sour state made me forgo breakfast.

  At least I had something new to think about while I rode. On the one hand, Virgil was a creature of Argylle, and closer to the Spring in his way than I, more sensitive to and tolerant of its powers, and moreover I owed my uncle any help I could give him. On the other hand, I had a clear duty to Argylle’s citizens not to fail them at this critical moment.

  Yet. If I weren’t going to listen to my familiar, why was I keeping him? I knew he was usually right. In all truth, I could not think of a time when I had solicited his view or used him to make a decision when he had been wrong.

  Virgil himself sat behind me clutching the saddlebags, impassive, dreaming the half-dreams of an owl’s half-sleep. I had soaked a lot of the dried meat from my food supplies and stuffed him with it last night and this morning. He didn’t care for it, but it was better than starving.

  I went slowly, looking in every direction at once, as I entered the Border Range. My preoccupation with Virgil’s advice was given a frisson of urgency by my fear that the dragon might attack me at any moment. We were climbing toward a saddle, a long slanting gradual ascent, and I could see far along the sheer-seeming sides of the mountains. There was nothing untoward in sight. It was a normal trip thus far.

  It continued normal while I seesawed back and forth about where my duty lay. When I found myself trying to frame explanations for Prospero and Walter for haring off down the Road looking for Kavellron and the Battlemaster, I realized that I was committing myself to that course little by little.

  By then we were going down the other side, overlooking the serene Valley where a big caravan could be seen making its almost-imperceptible progress along the wide stone-paved road (a hair-fine line from here). There seemed to be a darkness in the Valley far, far away. Distance is difficult to judge there, so I couldn’t be sure what it was or how far off it was. It was unusual: I was sure of that much.

  I watched Hussy’s footing, shifted my weight around to help her, and whistled under my breath. Her ears twitched back at me from time to time, letting me know she was paying attention. On the last long, shallow part of the track, Virgil rode on my shoulder, which meant he wasn’t in a snit about my indecision. To amuse him and myself I sang a gory old ballad from Errethon. Hussy’s ears swivelled around to listen too.

  I sighed as we entered the grassland at the valley bottom. “All right, Virgil,” I said, “I’m thinking about it still. If nothing happens with the dragon on our way home and nothing has happened there when we get there, then … I will try to find the Battlemaster.”

  Virgil made a prrrrut sound, pleased with himself. Hussy snorted. I nudged her and she blew out noisily and picked up her feet. We made it to the three barnlike structures that would be our resting place for the night long before dark.

  After giving Hussy a thorough grooming and putting her in a stall away from the henza pens, which the caravan would fill when it arrived, I had a wash myself and went in and threw my saddlebags on a bunk. Virgil settled on the end of the bed for a nap. I looked up the caretakers, who were having fragrant hot tea in their quarters.

  They were short, bipedal, and rust-furred, with long blackish claws and four agile digits on each hand. Their muzzles were nearly furless, studded with wiry black whiskers that curled tightly at the ends. Their clothing was of embroidered and studded leather. They knew me by reputation, though we hadn’t met before.

  “Dark Horse,” said one, nodding to me. A cane rested beside him, carved and silver-inlaid blue wood. Names in the Border are of this sort, descriptive and sometimes derisive, often loaded with extra meaning.

  “That’s right,” I said, bowing slightly. “I’ve a different horse today, though.”

  “Three Legs,” the other introduced himself, rising stiffly and bowing also, “and this is Rough Going.” Rough Going grunted and sipped the tea, not getting up. We spoke the Border creole.

  Rough Going eyed me and nodded to a cushion. I nodded and sat down, accepting a hot metal cup of tea. It was good that I’d gotten here before the bustling caravan; it would give me time to get the news out of the caretakers without interruptions.

  “Big caravan headed this way,” I observed.

  “Had a dry spell there,” said Rough Going.

  “Oh?”

  They both looked at me.

  I felt my cheeks color slightly. I thought of the peculiar darkness down the Valley from here. “Tell me about it,” I suggested. “Trouble?”

  The only humans who pass the Border are our family. It is well-known there that we come and go from places Beyond or Outside, as they call them, and we are regarded as not-entirely-natural and not-entirely-normal beings. The Border folk have an inkling that all the world is not as what they see, and some are curious about it sometimes, but they do not trouble themselves with it as a group.

  “Strange things from Outside,” said Rough Going, his eyes hard on me.

  “A silver cloud, a golden cloud,” said Three Legs. “A terrible storm of fire …”

  I tasted the tea. It was flowery and slightly sweet.

  “Fire and thunder near Five Ways.” Rough Going nodded. “The fire burned four days’ journey in each direction, near Five Ways. It is black now there.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “Some say those were animals not clouds,” Three Legs said, “but there are no animals as big as clouds.”

  “Unfortunately there are,” I said.

  “Hah,” said Rough Going, with a satisfied grunt. “Clouds don’t eat people.”

  “Fortunately they don’t,” I agreed.

  Three Legs clicked his teeth three times, impatient or displeased at being proven wrong.

  I hadn’t thought about what to tell the Border inhabitants. I supposed the truth would do.

  “There has been a large beast, a dragon, silver and purple and blue in color, hunting about,” I said, “and making a nuisance of himself, killing many people Outside and now evidently here.”

  They looked at me, wrinkling their faces.

  “Why here?” demanded Rough Going.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I enco
untered him myself,” and I told them how Ulrike and I had been attacked in the pass, and how the Gryphon had fought Gemnamnon. Time is a slippery thing in the Border; I wanted to find out if Gemnamnon had been seen thereabouts since then, so I asked them how recently they had heard of the dragon.

  “Last caravan to come through told of the fires,” said Rough Going. “Then no traffic for days. You’re the first traveller through since.”

  “Caravan coming in is coming from up the Valley,” pointed out Three Legs.

  “Dragon,” Rough Going coughed the new word, “was down the Valley.”

  Maybe I’d better continue down the Valley with this caravan and see the damage. I might find Gemnamnon waiting. On the other hand, if the last travellers to come through had reported fires but no dragon, perhaps the Gryphon had routed him. Ulrike and I had seen no evidence of fires when we stood in the pass—most likely the fires were a by-product of that fight.

  I sat with them awhile longer and finished the tea, then thanked them and went to my bunk. I suspected that Gemnamnon would have preyed more widely along the Valley floor if he were here. I told Virgil that we were going to be travelling along the Valley for a few days more at least. He fluffed and shot me an impatient glare.

  “I’m not going back on my word,” I said.

  Virgil settled down again, mollified.

  The henza caravan arrived. It was from far, far up the Valley and the merchants therein had heard only rumors, fairly factual ones without too much exaggeration. None had heard of any other dragon trouble in the Valley. Before going to sleep I talked to the leader, Polished Jade, about joining the group for a few days; he agreed genially and asked after Prospero, known here as Hard Fist.

  “He’s well,” I said.

  “Haven’t seen him in a long time,” he observed.

  “Things have been busy.”

  Polished Jade twitched his left ear and nodded once. “See you in the morning, Dark Horse.”

  “Good night.”

  The sounds of singing and laughter in the other building carried faintly to this one. I lay awake listening awhile, catching snatches of melody, and never noticed that I’d fallen asleep until I was awakened by the bustling of the merchants getting up and getting their gear together for the day’s journey.

  It took three days to reach the blackened area. To my eye, it appeared that Gemnamnon had started a grass fire which had run unchecked through the Valley until it reached a broad, Valley-wide swamp where water soaked the ground and the damp vegetation hadn’t caught easily. We sat on one side of the swamp in the track and looked across its green lushness at a cinder-colored monochromatic desert.

  “Won’t cross it sitting on our henzas here,” Polished Jade said at last, having taken in the sight and pondered it. “What do you think, Dark Horse? Is this safe?”

  “I don’t know if the dragon is ahead or not.” I looked ahead, squinting, and shook my head. “I’m going to ride on ahead, Polished Jade.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. Thanks for your company thus far.”

  “Let me send a couple of the—”

  “No, they couldn’t keep up with me.” I smiled. “But thanks.”

  “Safe journey then,” he said, an expression he’d picked up from Prospero.

  I lifted a hand in farewell and nudged Hussy’s sides. She, who had been bored silly by the stately pace of the henza caravan, took off like a shot, and I crouched low at her neck, enjoying the speed myself, grinning with the wind in my face. She raced across the swamp on the causeway and into the charred grassland. I pulled my cloak up over my nose and mouth to protect my face from the ashes and bits of cinder which a light wind kept suspended in the air.

  A waystation became visible ahead of us after a long, flat-out run. I pulled gently on the reins, making Hussy slow down gradually, and we approached it at a trot. The caretakers came out, hearing us approach.

  “There’s a caravan behind me,” I said. “Be here tonight.”

  “Good,” said one.

  “What happened here?”

  “Fire. Burned the grass,” said the other.

  I nodded. “Anything odd since then?”

  “No traffic from down the Valley.”

  Of course, that would be strange.

  “I’m going on down then,” I said.

  They shrugged. “Whose caravan?” asked the first.

  “Polished Jade.”

  “Hah,” he said.

  I got Hussy to gallop again without difficulty. Virgil was entirely put out by the rough ride and hunched himself down as close as possible to the saddlebags. We made it to the next waystation before the sky dimmed.

  Disturbingly, this one was unattended. It was not unknown for the big stations to be without caretakers, but it was unusual. While light remained I looked around for signs of dragon-caused damage and found nothing conclusive. The stone buildings were all empty; I slept in the barn, up in the hayloft. Virgil flew up to a niche in the rock and stayed there, his head swivelling around hopefully. In the morning I set out down the Valley again and made the next station by midday.

  This one was a ruin. There were two buildings here, one a barn, and outdoor holding pens for henza. The pens held charred henza bones. The dismantled and scattered condition of them suggested that the dragon had indeed dined here. I studied the skeletons carefully and concluded that the dragon had done so before the fire. The damage was consistent with that, with his jaws and claws crushing and ripping. Animals which are burned to death are not dispersed so, and there are no scavengers in the Valley to have done it.

  I went into the barn, one corner of which had collapsed. Virgil swooped ahead of me, silently reconnoitering. We found nothing alive there; I supposed that any henzas that had survived Gemnamnon’s depredations had panicked and stampeded in the fire. There was a pile of luggage and goods, consistent with a small caravan of ten or twelve pack animals. That would mean three or four people with the caravan, probably. I left the building and looked at the long, low bunkhouse.

  This was greatly damaged. It had been crushed or forcibly collapsed at one end and then partially excavated, stones lying far-scattered in disorder. Having seen the dragon go after Ulrike, I could easily believe he had done this.

  My neck prickled. I looked up, back, around, from Range to Range. Silence and motionless stone.

  I entered the upright part of the building cautiously, but I found no remains; there was only a pile of pack-bags by a set of bunks.

  “I see no dragon here,” I said to Virgil, who rode my shoulder now.

  He closed his eyes.

  “We’ll go on to the next station,” I decided.

  We arrived there at nightfall. Two buildings, charred grass around them. I looked into the henza pens as I rode by and saw no signs of bone or carnage. A light glimmered by one of the buildings.

  “Ho!” I called.

  “Ho!” shouted back the light’s bearer. “From up or down?” he asked.

  “Up,” I said. “I am glad to find someone here.”

  “Come in,” he said, a stumpy, grey-muzzled old guy with pure white ears. “Put your animal in the barn.”

  “See you inside then.”

  There were eight people there. The dragon had not been seen since the fight with the Gryphon and the fire which had followed it. He had attacked a couple of caravans before that, in addition to the waystations I had found empty. About twelve people were thought to have been killed altogether. This indicated to me that the dragon had not lurked here for long before Ulrike and I met him: had he been waiting for us?

  They told me that the fire damage extended about two days’ travel further ahead of me (one day for Hussy) and that the stations there had not been attacked.

  Given this, I decided I could leave the Valley floor and get on with my trip back to Argylle.

  Accordingly, the following day I left the lateral track that runs along the Valley like an artery and rode toward the Argylle side of the Bord
er. Halfway up I paused for a look around. This was not the pass where Ulrike and I had been caught. I thought that one might be the next one down the Valley, judging from the positions of various of the peaks on the Landuc side.

  At the top of the trail, another met it and there was a hut at the junction. The remaining good light was insufficient to get me out of the Border altogether, so I stopped.

  Virgil was visibly impatient. I was feeling impatient myself now that I had the information I’d intended to get. The dragon Gemnamnon was not here now. He had not been here, apparently, since the Gryphon had fought him. I had found no close eyewitnesses to that fight, only the same nebulous account that Rough Going and Three Legs had given me.

  The next day I left the Border Range behind me and found a Ley to follow toward a Nexus which put me on another Ley which led me to the Road. I sighed with relief as I rode onto that first Ley; the feeling of contact with the Spring was reassuring, and as soon as we were in a place with adequate fuel I stopped, built a fire, and opened a Way to the City: home.

  I left Hussy at the stables with my heartfelt thanks, told the man who took her in to spoil her rotten, and went up to my quarters with Virgil, where I undressed and stretched out on the bed. Moments later I was asleep.

  18

  MY ROOMS WERE COLD. SOMETIME DURING the day I woke up enough to feel cold myself and pulled my cloak across the bed for extra warmth, too sleepy to get another blanket from the chest. When I awoke in truth, it was pitch-dark and chilly. I lay enjoying being in my own bed for a few minutes, and then I moved up from that primitive level of cognition to a higher one.

  Virgil watched me expectantly from the foot of the bed. Time to make good on my promise.

  Kavellron. How could I compose a spell of passage for a place I’d never been and about which I knew nothing? One couldn’t leave the destination vague in these things; that was an error made just once, at the end of one’s career.

  I could ask Prospero and other family members about it, but as I looked that idea over it occurred to me that to do so would require some explanation.