by Eve Forward
A muffled groan escaped as Sam tried to scrape some of the fluff off his tongue, then a sigh.
“Arcie, one of these days I’m going to throttle you. Luckily for you, I’m already on an assignment. All right. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
Arcie padded out, shaking his head.
It was well after dawn when the three mismatched persons assembled at the eastern wall of the city. Kaylana was waiting with barely disguised impatience, reminding Arcie of a wren, as the two rogues walked up. Kaylana greeted Arcie coolly and did not even look at Sam.
“We must not delay any longer,” she said. “The Gypsies even now prepare to move on. We must speak with them before they go.” She turned and strode briskly down the dirt road toward the Gypsy encampment, her oak staff tap-tapping on the hard ground as she went.
Arcie nudged Sam as they followed.
“Secure your pouches, Sammy,” he cautioned. The Barigan had already tucked his main coin pouch down inside his shirt. Sam began carefully transferring his few pouches to inner loops inside his tunic and cloak. He looked ahead at the marching figure of the Druid.
“Should we tell her as well?” he wondered. Arcie shook his head.
“She’s the one as suggested it, she must know what she’s about.”
Out of curiosity, Sam left one of his pouches, empty, on the outside of his clothes, hung snugly from his belt in a way that would have been normal and safe in any city.
Arcie shook his head. The assassin would find out, soon enough.
And, in fact, Kaylana knew very well what she was doing. The Gypsies were one of the few groups of people she’d had any contact with in her long self-imposed hermitage.
They would sometimes stop by her forest, and she would emerge to speak with them. Their ancestors had known the power of the Druids, and they did not wish to cross her.
They walked into the Gypsy encampment-the two men warily, Kaylana with her usual cool confidence. All around them were the exotic wooden wagons, with their painted trim and windows, and fringes of tiny bells along the edges that tinkled in the early morning breeze. Horses and ponies, fat and well cared-for, cropped the sparse grass of the hollow that sheltered the encampment or nickered at the sense of excitement in the air. The Gypsies themselves moved among the wagons and horses; handsome, fox-faced people, with brilliant white teeth that flashed in smiles across their dark skin. They chattered in a strange language among themselves, with a rich, rhythmic cadence. The children, swift and nimble as swallows, ran about with bundles of packing, or chased each other, laughing. The adults watched the newcomers with bright eyes that learned all and told nothing.
Kaylana moved on, and spoke in the strange language to an old man who sat on the tail of his wagon smoking a long curved pipe. He flashed his teeth at her, then at Sam and Arcie. Sam had decided he liked the Gypsies. They were as happy as the whitewashed townsfolk, but they were not whitewashed ... he could see that in the sharpness of their eyes, the quick restlessness of their children, and the fact that Arcie had told him to secure his pouches. As if hearing his thoughts, Arcie spoke to him in a low voice.
“They move around so much, and are so wary ... they’ve escaped the fate that our comrades met with. Aren’t it fine?”
Sam agreed silently. He watched the children playing in the light of a new day and felt a thrill in his heart to see them so wild and free, growing up to follow their spirits, free of the shackles of law and other people’s standards of right and wrong. But if Kaylana spoke truth, these youngsters might not live to adulthood ... At that moment one of the grinning children, a little boy, surely not more than five summers old, tugged on his cloak. Sam looked down into the mischievous face and was surprised to be handed his own leather pouch back. He took it, with a look of surprise, and murmured a confused thanks. The boy’s smile flashed, and he gave a low bow before springing off on some other pursuit. Sam watched him go, and no longer questioned why he was trying to undo the imbalance of the Victory; it was for the sake of that boy, and others like him, including a young assassin who once had to fight for his life and his living every waking moment. Darkness, he realized, takes courage, whether you fight it or live it.
Meanwhile Arcie had moved ahead and was beckoning him.
“Come along, laddie! We’re to talk with their wisewoman.”
Sam glanced at the lettering on the side of the wagon Arcie indicated and stifled a groan.
“A fortune teller?”
Inside the wagon was cramped and dim, but scrupulously clean and tidy. Tapestries and rugs covered the walls and floor, a bead curtain separating this half of the wagon from the other, which, Sam assumed, probably was the sleeping quarters of the ancient woman who sat before them now. She seemed lost in her embroidered robes and hiding in her black and gray hair, which was braided and plaited over and around a pair of polished black cow’s horns, holding the odd decoration in place.
She nodded silently to Arcie and Sam as they walked in; Kaylana was already seated on one of the tattered cushions on the floor before the woman’s low five-legged table. The smells of incense and game stew lingered in the air. The Druid looked up at the two as they entered. Her face was grim.
“Ill news, villains. The Gypsies have wandered for all this year and report that nowhere have they found any further trace of members of the populace such as you.”
“Madame Shoria sees many strange things ahead for you,” cackled the old woman, peering into her crystal ball. Her voice was heavily accented, and her bright eyes glittered. “A long journey, a dark stranger ...”
“And for this we paid all that gold?” whispered Arcie to Sam. Sam hushed him.
“A great river, gold light in a dark place... blue water and sandfire.” Madame Shoria looked up at Arcie.
“With you, small one, I see red blood in a swamp, and a lifeline from darkness by light that you must not trust.”
“Spinywell,” said Arcie, looking over the fortune teller’s shoulder to see if the wagon had anything interesting worth taking. The woman turned to Kaylana.
“And you, Druid... I see a man on horseback, and the sign of the Dragon. Hold fast and you may survive.”
Kaylana nodded respectfully. Then Madame Shoria glanced at Sam, then back to her crystal ball, and cackled.
“Yes, this is very clear. I see one who searches for you, a wizard of great power ...” said Madame Shoria, running her wrinkled fingertips over the surface of the crystal ball. Sam nodded. So what else is new? he thought.
“Yesss ... a wielder of magic, seeking, planning ... great magic...”
Suddenly the room grew dark. Three heads snapped up, stared at a figure posed in the doorway, leaning against the frame. The figure smiled. White teeth, terminating in delicate points, shone out of the depths of a cowled hood.
“Somebody mention me?” The voice was female, dark and rich as old honey. On the figure’s shoulder, a familiar glossy raven clucked to itself contentedly and fluffed its feathers.
Sam was on his feet before he realized it, sending cushions flying. Arcie, ever-stalwart in a crisis, melted like summer snow into the shadows and vanished. Kaylana got to her feet with regal dignity and glared at the stranger.
Madame Shoria looked up at the figure, then back to her crystal ball, puzzled. She tapped the globe with a ringing sound, saying thoughtfully, “No, that’s not the one ...”
“Too bad,” replied the figure, stepping into the wagon.
“I see you have the sense enough to stand in my presence ... that’s very clever. I can see we’ll get along, provided you keep this up.”
As she stepped out of silhouette, the dark outline resolved itself into the figure of a woman. Young?-Old?
Impossible to tell. She was certainly strikingly beautiful, wearing a black clinging garment that showed off her shapely form. The black cloak she wore, lined with crimson, was cut along the edges to resemble bat-wings. She lifted up a long-fingered hand at the end of a very pale arm and pulled back her hood. A w
ave of midnight blueblack hair fell down about her shoulders and around a perfectly sculptured face, pale as marble, and almost as hard, her beautiful features set in a cold smile. Her eyes were unusually large, and the irises glowed an eerie violet.
Her eyebrows arched like an Elfs, and her facial structure echoed those fairest of folk, but those sharp pointed teeth ...
“Nathauan,” hissed Sam in surprise, angry at being startled. The raven hissed back at him, and the woman turned and regarded him from beneath one arched eyebrow.
“Something wrong with that, assassin? You’ve got good taste in clothing, but it looks like you don’t take very good care of it. Really should do something about your hair, too.” She turned away from him to face Kaylana. The fortune teller was watching them all with glittering eyes, her gaze not shifting as she reached behind her with her cane to whap Arcie’s hand sharply as he reached for a chest of drawers.
The Nathauan extended her hand to Kaylana, saying in her honeyed poison tones, “You must be the clever girl who’s keeping these two rapscallions in line. Well done, dear. I am Valeriana Ebonstar, Sorceress, and I’ve been watching your progress with considerable amusement and interest.”
Kaylana looked at the proffered hand. The pointed fingernails were long and lacquered black and shiny. She didn’t move. Valeriana drew her hand back with grace and used it to scratch her raven, continuing, “You’ve a good grasp of the sense of things, dear, but no concept of the physics of how to go about anything. I’ll attribute it to living in a briar patch.” She turned away from the fuming Kaylana and flashed an icy smile around the cluttered room. “I know how you can accomplish what you seek, and for my own personal reasons it suits me that you do so.”
Arcie appeared in a corner of the room, his hand on his morning-star. “Oh aye?” he retorted. “And what about our own personal reasons? We don’t even ken who ye are ... Why should we even bother to listen to ye?”
For an answer, Valeriana extended one of her hands and pointed an ebony fingernail out the open doorway of the wagon. Her eyes flashed, and she spoke a harsh phrase. There was the faintest sense of a sudden painful warping chill in the air as the sorceress bent the very fabric of reality to her will for an instant.
A blip of something too fast to see shot from her fingertip, out the doorway, and hit a gnarled apple tree to which was tied a sleepy bay horse. There was a rocking explosion as the tree burst into fragments of splintering, burning wood and droplets of molten sap. The horse screamed and bolted, and shouts erupted throughout the encampment. The fortune teller, shrieking angrily, leaped spryly out the door in pursuit of her horse.
Kaylana muttered an oath and followed her, her Druidic instincts fearing for the animal. Arcie and Sam, hands on their weapons, stared at Valeriana in shock. She blew a puff of smoke from her fingertip and smiled like a shark.
“I’m sure you’ll find it wise to listen to me notwithstanding, gentlemen,” she said.
II
The two rogues, one Druid, and one sorceress rode south, away from the little town. Valeriana kept her cloak pulled close around her and the hood pulled over her face, protecting her fair skin from the climbing sun. A disgruntled band of Gypsies could barely be seen, heading north. Kaylana had seen to the horse; it had only been frightened, but she still glowered in silent fury at the new addition to their party, who was riding on a liverchestnut gelding tacked in fine black leather with silver trim.
Kaylana knew that this “Valeriana” person was certainly an agent of darkness, far more so than the two insufferable men, and thus Kaylana was bound to ally with her against the unbalance ... but that didn’t mean she had to like her. She was also angry at the assassin for his remark of the previous night, and she didn’t trust the Barigan any farther than she could throw him, which was probably about five feet, six maybe, with a good footing.
All in all, she felt, it would be a miracle if they could manage to keep the group together long enough to do anything.
At least the threat of suffering the same fate as that poor tree seemed to be keeping the two males compliant, but she didn’t like to think what they must be plotting in the dark reaches of their minds.
In fact, Sam was brooding over what Mizzamir might be up to now. He knew he couldn’t run from the white wizard’s magic and had no idea where to find him so as to get the first strike, so he was just waiting, waiting, always ready. He’d let himself get careless in the town, getting drunk and then hung over, so he hadn’t noticed Valeriana’s approach. Never again, he vowed, his head still sore and his mouth still tasting poorly. He wondered why it was that he, an assassin, could consume rue and bee agaric and dimondfish oil and other poisons that would kill a strong man and yet still fall so easily under the spell of the grape, or the hop, or whatever it was. His body would move in the ways he’d trained it, just as it had with his fancy dart shots last night, but the fire was dimmed, dulled. If drunk or hung over, he’d stand no chance against Mizzamir.
Arcie, for his part, hadn’t decided what to think about this sorceress. A mage was certainly useful to have around, he decided, even if she had more or less threatened to blow them into tiny, tiny bits if they crossed her.
He felt sure he could outsneak her and get away, though, if it came to that. Sam and Kaylana would have to take care of themselves. Sam had accosted him earlier and demanded the return of the large emerald Arcie had given him as a deposit on the contract, and after a few harsh words about thieves and people who couldn’t look after their property, and Sam doing the annoying thing of picking one up by one’s neck, Arcie had relented and given back the stone. Now, as they rode away from the abandoned Gypsy encampment, he tallied up the newcomer’s apparent possessions and their relative worth after fencing costs. All still in her possession, of course; his few covert theft activities had been instantly detected by some means he was not sure of and after a warning shot of magic from the sorceress’s finger put a smoking hole through his cap, he had chosen to leave her alone.
But it helped to pass the time to silently evaluate what might be a fairly profitable haul if he could ever get it.
He’d gotten as far as the silver-and-ruby dragon-motif dagger on her belt: Probably ceremonial, she doesn’t seem the type to do much hand-fighting. I’d guess it’s modern Shadrezarian, nice gems, make it about forty gold, fifty if the blade’s any good... when she turned around, looked back at the party, apparently judging they were far enough from town now, and called a halt.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve got you all here today ...,” she began.
“Yes!” Arcie snapped.
“Not really,” Sam commented drily. Kaylana was silent, mounted on her stag, which had met them in the hills outside town as the Gypsies departed.
Valeriana drummed her shiny long fingernails on the pommel other expensive saddle. The raven, sitting on her shoulder, hissed. “All right. I suppose I’ll have to explain everything to you peasants. Might as well do it now and save time.” She indicated a copse of dark trees not far off, with a wave of a black-gloved hand through which the nails emerged like claws. “We’ll go there and be able to talk out of this beastly sun.”
They made their way to the copse and stopped their mounts in the shade of the trees. “Make yourselves comfy, sunlanders, I’ll speak slowly so you can perhaps get the sense of my words through your thick skulls.”
Valeriana’s teeth flashed in the darkness of her hood, and her three fuming captives dropped their reins and sat back, keeping a wary eye on the sorceress as she began speaking.
“Nightshade here,” she said, scratching the raven on her shoulder, as it blinked sleepily at them, “told me that this dear Druid has told you of the imbalance, and how it threatens the lives of everyone, good as well as evil. What she obviously doesn’t realize is how far things have gotten already, how long it will be before the imbalance is irreversible, and what to do about it before that happens. Well, I know those things, and that’s why I went through all the tedi
ous bother of looking you up.
“You see, I’m a sorceress, not a backwoods grubber. I don’t believe in all of this nonsense about light and darkness needing each other. I’d personally love to see this world taken over and suppressed by hordes of trolls. But that didn’t happen, and when everyone else had the Victory, we lost. The Heroes found the legendary artifacts that allowed the forces of Light to win the war. The armies of darkness were routed right royally. Why? Because the Heroes had also destroyed many of the Darkportals through which the energies of darkness flowed.”
“What’s a Darkportal?” interrupted Arcie. Valeriana glared at him.
“I was coming to that, Barigan. Outside our world exist dimensions of power, of matter and antimatter, light magic and dark magic respectively. The Darkportals, you see, were gateways to the plane of darkness and evil. There are Lightportals, too, linking this world with the plane of goodness and light, positive energy against the dark’s negative energy. When all was working normally, the portals’ conflicting charges kept life balanced, as your Druid might say. The magic of the world was fed by these portals, with the white wizards, good dragons, benevolent spirits, and the like drawing energy, directly or indirectly, from the forces of the Lightportals, and the black sorcerers, evil dragons, undead, and suchlike drawing on the Darkportals.
“But with all the Darkportals closed or destroyed by the Heroes or those that came after them, most of the evil creatures died or were easily slain, creating a vacuum in the world. The only thing that could fill that vacuum was Light, and Light energy, for most of the Lightportals were still functioning. With their source of existence cut off, the armies of darkness were easy prey. The few that survived the Wars, the once great and powerful but now weakened and wounded, were driven by the forces of Light to the Darkgate.”