“Good morning, gentlefolk. I see you are traveling, and traveling is what I am about. Ah, who’s this? Why, if it isn’t the young woman from yesterday! Having once availed yourself of the services of my splendid travel log, madam, wouldn’t you like to try it again? Picture yourself and your companion journeying swiftly up the headwaters of the Cashflow River to the ancient scenic city of Gorequartz. See the sparkling rivers cut through the mysterious magical valley, feared by the most acquisitive of merchants. See the shining sacred temples of many-hued glasses. See the priests float in stately procession down flower-strewn canals in the glamorous barges of the rainbow god, following their quaint, centuries-old custom of parading through the city before presenting to the massive godhead guarding their harbor the human sacrifices that have made Gorequartz a byword to those trafficking in raw magical force and power.”
Carole missed part of the speech, for her heart was still beating a hard tattoo in her ears, but she recognized the speaker. “Rupert, the woman in the marketplace said this man might be a slaver—”
“Nonsense, lady. I am a freeborn man, a traveler, and a slaver of no man as I am slave to none. Indeed, you should know as much and so should the woman of whom you speak, for you did no more than gaze at my travel log before it caused the women to provide you with that which I promised it would deliver: the best route, the most scenic and expeditious mode of travel to your destination. If you will but mount upon my travel log once more, this time while it lies atop other materials awaiting us in yonder river, you will once more experience the wonderful convenience and economy of my marvelous device.”
Rupert looked down at Carole, dismayed. “Human sacrifice? But Alireza said it was such a nice place.…”
The travel log rolled back and forth in the bottom of a small boat. The boat also boasted a pair of sturdy oars to augment the log’s magic, but despite Rupert’s most powerful efforts, progress was slow. The boat kept drifting back toward the grated gate regulating river traffic in and out of the city.
“I thought the log was going to spirit us away,” Carole complained, squirming.
“And so it shall,” the merchant said, “just as soon as you start singing to the boat and dance it up river for us.” And he lay back nonchalantly against the bow—or perhaps it was the stern. They both looked the same since the boat was sideways in the water.
Carole complied, but crossly. Her whistle was whistled out from the long night of herding watery images. Her lips still tingled from orchestrating the dance in the marketplace.
Rupert was no more pleased than she. “It was ill of you, sir, to offer desperate folk magical aid where you had none to give.”
“Ah, but you’re wrong. I had it, of course. I knew where the river was, which was more than you did, and between my log and this boat, I had all that we needed, save one missing ingredient. The power of my log attracted it—or her, as you see. The rest of what I promised, the so-charming detailing of the wonders of the journey, I shall be happy to personally, enchantingly provide.”
“You’ve been this way before then?” Rupert asked.
“Would I offer you such expert guidance if I had not?” the man asked, sounding both wounded and distinctly evasive. By way of diversion, he launched into his narrative at once. “You have here, for instance, some very fine banks,” he began expansively, throwing his arms out to embrace each side of the river.
“Let’s forget the banks for a moment,” Rupert interrupted. “Tell us more about this place we’re heading, this Gorequartz, and why anyone would want to practice human sacrifice.”
“As to the last question, my dear fellow, you seem to have me confused with a theologian. If you want me to give you proper guidance, you must let me do so in my own inimitable way, to describe for you each noteworthy landmark in its time, to give it full glory.”
Carole stopped, gasping, her cheeks aching with whistling, her lips buzzing from humming. “Who said we wanted such useless services? The boat would move upstream far more quickly if it had less to carry. Its in my mind that unless you prove very valuable very soon you would be of far more use to us dancing back to shore with your log in your pocket.”
The man’s eyes widened with terror, but not at her threat. Pointing behind her left shoulder, he gulped and asked, “How valuable would you consider it, madam, if I were to point out that at this very moment your lamentably neglected spell is singing us into the path of another very large craft?”
Carole followed the pointing finger of their self-proclaimed guide to see a huge, bulge-sided boat bearing down on them. “Oh, Mother,” she groaned, but wasted no other useless words before breaking into a shrill if exhausted whistle at a fast clip. Her song was copied from that of wild running rapids, though she was fairly certain rapids never ran upstream.
No sooner had she begun to sing their craft away from the big boat than a squad of mercenaries burst through the town gate and onto the left bank of the river. They brandished spears, bows, and in some instances, lightning bolts, which they hurtled at the smaller boat. This seemingly uncalled-for belligerence did not please the occupants of the larger boat, which had so far failed to notice the true target of the aggression. Archers on the deck of the big craft fired back. Unfortunately for Carole, Rupert, and their guide, their own small boat was far more susceptible to the rain of arrows than were the attackers on the riverbank.
Carole dipped and dodged, ducking arrows so vigorously that breathing was chancy and whistling nearly impossible. Meanwhile the bow of the greater vessel loomed ever nearer, while the smaller boat wallowed from side to side as its occupants sought to evade the variety of missiles hailing down upon them.
Rupert threw up his shield, but Carole could make no use of it while trying to sing her spell, however erratically. Just as she thought she could not tweet another note, the little boat scuttled like a water spider to the lee of the larger craft, which began crawling past, its bulk protecting the smaller vessel from the attackers landside. This left the mercenaries to concentrate their fire on their unintentional targets in the large boat while their original quarry crept upstream.
Carole heaved a deep sigh, rolling her eyes upward in time to see yet another feature of the Miragenian landscape so far unheralded by their guide. The underbellies, necks, pluming tails, and beating wings of a herd of flying horses swooped overhead. Every horse was mounted and every rider armed. These airborne assailants were not deceived by the cover of the larger boat and began chucking spears at the smaller boat with aim sufficiently accurate to pin Carole’s skirt to the deck, through which the haft sank to half its length.
Another spear chunked past Carole’s nose. As she lunged violently sideways, so did the boat, which flipped over. She splashed into the water and kicked free. The spear held the stout wool of her skirt and jerked her back. The last thing she saw before her head slammed against the side was Rupert and the merchant tumbling toward the bottom in a haystack of plunging spears and arrows.
Chapter VI
Rupert found that although his arms were very long, suddenly he hadn’t enough of them. The shield broke his fall when he plummeted into the water, but the travel log seller had grabbed onto him while still clutching the allegedly magic log. Since the panic-stricken merchant held the log against his body with his arm instead of using it to help him float on the surface, the combined weight of water-logged log and water-logged merchant threatened to sink Rupert, merchant, log, and all.
Carole’s skirts and hair canopied over them like a large jellyfish, the woman attached to them floating flaccidly in their folds, alarmingly unlively. Rupert stopped his plummet with a hard kick toward the surface. He was very strong and it cost him little effort to move. To his surprise, he found holding his breath under water no strain at all. It felt almost natural.
He grabbed Carole’s skirt, jerking. She bounced upward and he kicked after her, releasing the hold on her skirt to gain a hold on her waist while angling up between the shadows cast by the boats.
The arrows still hissed into the water on all sides of him as he raised his face to breathe. Carole drifted listlessly, supported by one of Rupert’s arms, but the log-laden merchant climbed Rupert’s other arm, dragging Rupert lower and lower, while he tried with decreasing success to continue kicking to stay afloat. If only the merchant would unhand his arm, he could raise the shield and use it to buoy them up, but the merchant continued to claw at Rupert. Fingernails and log-bark bit through Rupert’s tunic sleeve, pulling him off balance.
An arrow whizzed by Rupert’s ear and the merchant howled into the same ear. In that instant, the iron grip on Rupert’s arm loosened, replaced by a clawed hand groping for his eyes and nose. Rupert ducked backwards. The hand grasped his throat in a stranglehold.
His breath was knocked from him and he stared upward at the circling wings of the flying horses, the great vessel looming over him, the arrows plunging toward him. Rupert knotted his muscles, bracing them against each other to shrug off the merchant with a heave of his shoulders, but he waited, for he wanted to give the travel-logger as long as possible to come to his senses and allow Rupert to help him in a way that wouldn’t get them both killed. Closing his eyes tightly, Rupert entreated the Mother to take literally his prayer to deliver him from fools, and heaved. Whether it was the heaving or the praying that did it, at that moment the hand at his throat relaxed.
He opened his eyes, shut them, and reopened them, for a rosy glow pulsed toward him, thrumming in a familiar way, the glow dissipating as the thrumming grew louder.
The arrows turned magically aside as a strong wind chilled the Prince’s wet hide to the bone. Against him the merchant shook convulsively.
Suddenly, the water exploded upward behind them as if something large had dropped into it. Rupert felt teeth graze the skin of his back and buttocks as warm breath and cold water touched his bare skin at once. He was hoisted by the seat of his pants into the air, through the arrows, through the horses, the merchant still clawing at one arm while Carole hung from the other. The leather belt with which he had closed his robe cut deep into his middle where the dragons teeth pulled it tight, away from his back. He felt the material of his britches strain treacherously. It was sturdy cloth, but not that sturdy.
As if things weren’t bad enough, Carole struggled to wakefulness just as the dragon lifted them up through the herd of hostile horsemen. His pants loosened another fraction as he adjusted his grip to hold onto Carole while she squirmed. He thought his arms would burst from their sockets, for he was already overburdened without her making matters worse.
Fortunately, she quieted quickly, most intelligently taking in the situation almost as soon as she woke. She moved not at all except to shake her head, spraying water, and twist it slightly as if to listen to something. She adjusted her grip so that she clung more securely but with less encumbrance, tight against Rupert’s chest and shoulders.
The merchant fought Carole’s hands and she batted at him, causing the wind to increase at Rupert’s backside, the belt to tighten so that, breathless, the Prince issued a whuffing grunt.
“Be still, you cheese-head, and cooperate,” Carole told the merchant. “If you keep causing my lord cousin to make such pitiful noises, the dragon will burn us both from the sky to save him further discomfort.”
The wings beat her voice away from their hearing, but the merchant reared attentively and painfully against Rupert’s arm. “Eh? Dragon?” he shouted into Rupert’s ear.
The Prince groaned again and the muzzle pressed against his hindquarters trembled with a deep ominous rumble.
In his other ear, Carole shouted, “Grippeldice wants to know if you’re safe and shall she set us down somewhere?”
Rupert nodded with a necessary economy of motion that nevertheless contained an abundance of passionate enthusiasm for the dragon’s proposal.
The three of them dropped sickeningly as the dragon swooped low, skimming the water quickly. The line of scrubby greenery separating desert and river blurred past them. Ahead the desert floor dropped and rocky hills rose sharply from the flatlands, breaking into austere red-striped rock slabs, backed by higher slopes sparsely dotted with dark green, followed by wave upon wave of misted blue mountains with white ridges bleeding down into spiderleg veins.
Into this landscape Grippeldice carried her live cargo. For a time she still followed the river, which narrowed somewhat beyond the first few mountains where various streams fed into it. Past the second set of slopes, she veered abruptly away from the river and down a long narrow valley, walled on both sides by heavily forested slopes. All of this speed and motion did Rupert’s britches and his sense of security no good whatsoever and he rapidly decided that he couldn’t be responsible for everyone’s welfare. When Grippeldice passed the next particularly abundantly leafed tree, he would drop the merchant into it and relieve some of the strain on his own midsection and trouser seat. The merchant would simply have to hope for the best.
He did not give up, after all, however, for his pants beat him to it. He cried out as he felt rather than heard the rip as cold air rushed against tender parts. The three of them dropped, dizzyingly, for half a heartbeat before dangling by the remaining strip of his belt. The invisible dragon sought to reduce altitude and potential injuries with all possible haste. When the belt gave way and the three of them were pitched to earth, it was blessedly not too far down and they rolled harmlessly onto the grass.
Rupert, having made sure that he rolled onto his back before collapsing, gave in to the searing pain in his arms and middle and to the generalized aching of his entire body. He sobbed.
Carole sat up and rubbed her head, a luxury she had had to forego while hanging on for dear life and being carried aloft. The ground cover between Rupert and her suddenly crushed itself flat and a piece of ragged double-woven woolen cloth spewed out of nowhere, drifting gently down to cover one of Rupert’s ankles.
“Ptui,” the dragon said in Pan-elvin, then, more elegantly, “Will he live, the one who warms my heart?”
Carole examined the heartwarming party in question critically. “Barely, I think. He’ll need some mending.”
“Hist!” the dragon said. “Something’s cooking.”
The horse’s wing beats seemed light as a bird’s after listening to the heavy drumming of the dragon’s flight. High overhead it soared as its rider cautiously patrolled the valley, slowly circling, scouting. The merchant rolled his eyes back in his head and covered them with an arm. Rupert looked past caring. The horse was far beyond them when suddenly it reared, whinnying, and galloped upward, wings and hooves working double time to gain altitude. The rider hung on for dear life. Clearly the animal was running away from him. As the horse sailed over their heads, a curse echoed downward from the rider and a thunderbolt streaked from his hand into a low-hanging cloud, the impact crackling through the treetops.
Ominous rumbling followed close on the initial crack, clouds obediently gathered, the wind freshened and whipped the trees, the sky darkened even further, and soon icy rain slanted through the pervasive shadows.
“That is just what I dislike about Miragenians,” the merchant complained. “No sense of fair play. His miserable companions could not find us, he could not find us, but does he give up and go away peacefully? No, he has to make things miserable for this whole valley, whether he thinks we’re in it or not.”
“We are, though,” Carole grumbled argumentatively, not because she didn’t agree with him but because being knocked out and dragged through the air was not the sort of thing that brought out the good side of her naturally uneven temperament.
“We might not have been,” the merchant said stubbornly.
Carole sighed and stretched with her hands on the small of her aching back. Rupert groaned and she abruptly felt ashamed of herself and began to wonder if there wasn’t something she could do about him. He was writhing, arching his spine and trying to rub it. Judging from her own soreness, which did not compel her to contort herself in nearly s
o extreme a fashion, Rupert’s must be nearly unendurable. She turned to the merchant. “See if you can get that log of yours out of the rain and dry the river water off it somewhat, will you? As soon as the weather clears a little, we’ll need to build a fire, which should be easy enough with Grippeldice here. I’ll try to find some kindling.”
She gathered the kindling by hand, trying to move quickly enough to keep warm, a process hindered by her protesting muscles. Ordinarily, had she been feeling lazy, she might have used her magic to save herself the physical effort but her music was spent from her efforts of the day and previous night. She shivered with the dank drizzle and marveled at the abrupt transition from searing Miragenian sunlight to this dim chill, but reminded herself that part of the abruptness was magically induced by the thunderbolt. The spell would probably wear off soon.
While she searched for kindling, she kept her eyes open for a certain flower from which a painkilling tea could be brewed for Rupert. She had had her doubts about him from time to time, true, but he quite literally hadn’t let her down when she most needed him and clearly needed help in return now. She spied a cluster of the helpful bell-shaped white blossoms a ways further through the trees and started picking her way toward them.
The sticks she carried snagged in the trees as she passed, breaking and tumbling from her arms, scattering on the ground. Bending her aching back again to collect them, she felt like lying down beside them and crying. Slowly, she retrieved the wood, but decided emphatically that she could not juggle two things at once and returned to the spot where she had left her companions.
Rupert huddled into himself, shivering. The merchant, to Carole’s surprise, was finally showing some concern for someone other than himself and was piling bits of his own sodden tatters on top of the moaning prince. Carole stashed her kindling with the log under a protecting bush and retraced her steps to find the flowers again.
The Christening Quest Page 10