[Meetings 05] - Steel and Stone

by Ellen Porath - (ebook by Undead)

  "Didn't you say you'd 'acquired' eleven others?" Tanis asked.

  "Yes, but I sold them to buy wire. Nearly a year ago. To a mage. Before I knew what technological promise they held." The gnome mused, "Perhaps I could buy them back . . . but I have no money."

  "You could always steal them back," Tanis said spitefully, and he began to back out from under the wagon. Speaker Sungear looked reproachfully at him, and the half-elf relented. "Why don't you just tell

  people your important news? Wouldn't that be just as efficient under the circumstances?" he added tactfully.

  "Yes, but. . ."

  "So stand on the street corner and holler."

  The gnome looked aghast. "Do it myself?"

  Tanis nodded.

  "Me, a town crier," Speaker muttered. "If my mother could see me. So unscientific. So inefficient."

  "So necessary."

  With another reproachful glance, Speaker Sungear crawled out from under the wagon. Ignoring the throngs of people who'd gathered to watch the fire burn itself out and without so much as a glance back at the smoldering heap of wreckage that used to be his laboratory, the gnome started toward the busiest corner of the market. Tanis trailed behind. Speaker took up a stance. "Hear ye, hear ye!" the gnome bellowed. No one listened.

  Tanis sidled up to Speaker. "You need a platform of some kind," he advised.

  The gnome looked about. "I could build one," he conceded. "An automatic gnome-lifting trans—"

  In reply, the half-elf scooped up the gnome and set him on one wide shoulder. "Now, town crier, spread your news."

  "Oh, this is so . . . manual," Speaker murmured, clutching the half-elf's auburn hair to keep his balance. Then he waved the other hand and bellowed "Hear ye, hear ye!" again. This time several people turned to listen. "I have news . . ."

  He recited his litany of news—only three items, it turned out, but one drew Tanis's attention. "The heads of the Haven agricultural consortium, meeting in an emergency session, have offered a reward of fifteen steel to the person or persons who kill the ettin that's been slaying farm stock south of Haven," Speaker trumpeted.

  "What's an ettin?" a man shouted from the back of the throng.

  "An ettin is a creature, twelve or thirteen feet tall, with two heads, usually native to cold, mountainous climates. It is related to the trolls, and in fact is sometimes called a two-headed troll."

  The crowd murmured. The man in question shook his head and moved away, followed by several others. Speaker continued, "The ettin eats only meat. In fact, this one has slaughtered and devoured fully a half-dozen cows, several dogs, numerous chickens, and a dozen sheep. Last night it came upon and attacked a shepherd south of Haven. The man assayed to stop the beast from raiding his flock and paid with his life."

  The remaining listeners blanched and hurried away. Speaker said a few more words, then halted. His audience was gone. "Was it my delivery?" he asked the half-elf.

  "No, my friend. It was the ettin," Tanis said good-naturedly.

  Tanis bid the confused gnome good-bye and minutes later was taking the steps of the Seven Centaurs two at a time. He didn't see Wode sit up suddenly on a bench across the street.

  "How would you feel about hunting down a monster for pay?" Tanis said without preamble as he entered his and Kitiara's room.

  The swordswoman was dressed but pale. The empty tankard of tea, with crumbs of toast next to it, stood on a tray on the chair by the door. "Pregnancy tea, my foot, half-elf," Kitiara said with a growl. Then she caught what he'd said. "Kill a monster? For how much?"

  "Fifteen steel."

  She whistled.

  "Ever hear of an ettin?" he asked.

  Kitiara stood stock-still. "A two-headed troll?" Two lines appeared between her eyes; she seemed to look deep within. "No, it's impossible," she murmured to herself. Aloud, ignoring Tanis's quizzical look, she said, "My last employer had an ettin slave. I know something about them. They're dangerous but stupid and, like most stupid things, very, very loyal."

  "Feel like trying to slay one?"

  Kitiara didn't react with the immediate enthusiasm Tanis had expected, but the half-elf put that down to her probable hangover. "We'd take care of your debt to Mackid, send him on his way, and have five steel left over," he said.

  Kitiara gazed at him. "Why are you doing this, Tanis?" she asked softly. "You don't owe Caven Mackid anything. An ettin is a dangerous beast."

  Tanis began folding his few belongings into his pack. He didn't speak for a few moments, and when he finally did, his face was averted. "You saved my life back there with the will-o'-the-wisp," he said.

  Kitiara's expression was a study in suspicion.

  "We worked well together then," the half-elf continued at last. "We could do so again."

  He said no more. After standing for some time in apparent indecision, Kitiara shook her head and also began to pack. "It's your skin, half-elf. At any rate," she said quietly, seemingly to herself, "I'd rather take on the ettin here than in Solace. I don't want to draw the creature near home."

  Tanis looked up from his pack, surprise on his face. "Why would we draw it toward Solace? What are you thinking of, Kit?"

  But Kitiara would say no more. Moments later they were astride Dauntless and Obsidian, heading for the trail that led south out of Haven.

  * * * * *

  "What is it?" Tanis asked an hour later. He heard nothing but rustling foliage.

  "Someone is following us." Kitiara bit her lip and moved her hand to her sword.

  In response, Tanis clicked his tongue at Dauntless; the big gelding, used to the ways of the road, was already heading for cover along the path. Kitiara and Obsidian melted into the vegetation at the other side.

  Soon two horsemen hove into view, galloping with a fever that left their horses lathered. Kitiara and Tanis, recognizing the followers, moved back onto the trail. Caven pulled up his black stallion with such abruptness that the horse reared, showering Tanis and Dauntless with sweat and towering so high that Mackid's black hair brushed against the pine and maple branches. Behind him, Wode eased a wheezing nag to a halt and remained several paces back, out of reach of the stallion.

  Caven's steed was a raw-boned hulk, coal-black except for the whites of his eyes, a star on his forehead, and the gleaming teeth that snapped even with a bit in his mouth. Dauntless was large, but the stallion dwarfed him.

  "I knew you'd try to slink away, Kitiara!" Caven shouted.

  Kitiara didn't reply at first. Then she drawled, "Posted a spy, did you, Mackid?"

  "With good reason, it seems. Where are you going? This isn't the way to Solace. Trying to throw me off the trail, aren't you?"

  Tanis spoke up. "We're off to win your money back, Mackid."

  Caven's face reflected disbelief. "How?" was all he said.

  "To catch an ettin. For the reward money."

  "An ettin?" Caven's black horse danced back and forth, apparently as impatient as its rider. The other three horses stamped, too, responding to the big stallion's agitation. "Then why not tell me so?"

  Tanis looked at Kitiara, an unspoken question in his eyes. The swordswoman sighed and shrugged. "I told the half-elf I would leave you a message."

  "That . . . ?" Mackid snapped.

  "That we'd be back in Haven in a week with your money."

  Mackid gazed at Kitiara. "Doubtless you forgot," he said, irony oozing from each word. Then he smiled at Tanis. "I warned you. Don't trust her, half-elf."

  Tanis only grunted and frowned at the swordswoman.

  "Anyway," Mackid added, "the message is unnecessary. I'm going with you."

  "We don't need your help," the half-elf said.

  Caven Mackid laughed. "Do you think I'd let Kitiara get away again? What's to stop her from collecting the reward money and slipping away from us both?" He reined in the stallion, then guided the horse between Dauntless and Obsidian, who edged away. Wode, looking bored, took up a position at the rear. "Let's go," Mackid said.

/>   There seemed to be no recourse. The four rode on in silence, speaking only when Caven's stallion nipped at the other horses when they drew too close.

  "Where did you get such a beast?" Tanis finally asked.

  "On Mithas." Mithas, on the far side of the Blood Sea of Istar, was the home of the minotaurs, the half-man, half-bull creatures noted for their ferocity in warfare and their willingness to fight for pay.

  Caven grinned and answered the unspoken question. "I won Maleficent in a game of bones. From his minotaur master." Mackid threw back his head and laughed. "As if anyone could be master to Maleficent! The creature barely tolerates me, and that's only because he knows I'm as stubborn and black-hearted as he."

  Minotaurs were notorious for slaying outsiders. The man had taken the ultimate risk in challenging a minotaur, even in something as seemingly harmless as a game of bones.

  Caven nodded at Dauntless. "Where'd you get that . . . carnival pony, half -elf ?" Tanis felt annoyance rise like a boil. Dauntless had taken the half-elf through dozens of encounters, facing all manner of dangers, from highwaymen to goblins. If he also was gentle enough to trust with children, what of it?

  But the four would have to keep some peace if they were to bring back the ettin. Thus Tanis didn't respond to Caven's jibe; he merely nudged Dauntless into the ragged gait that passed for the gelding's canter and moved into the lead.

  It was time to find an ettin.

  Chapter 8

  The Portent

  "Dreena."

  Kai-lid struggled in the web between sleeping and waking. The voice that spoke was ghostly, as if it could belong to either world.

  "Dreena."

  She knew the voice, or one just like it. She'd heard it as a large-eyed child learning simple spell-casting at her mother's knee. But Kai-lid's mother was dead.

  Still the voice persisted. Kai-lid opened her eyes to total darkness. Sitting up partway on her cot in the cave and striving to see through the blackness, Kai-lid could smell something large and warm-blooded moving near her, sensing but not touching her. The being was magical, but incompletely so. Kai-lid moved her lips to begin a light spell, but the voice sounded first. "Shirak."

  Silver light streamed over Kai-lid and over the tall creature whose head brushed against the ceiling of the cave. The spell-caster gasped.

  It was a unicorn.

  White light bathed the platinum hide of the imposing creature. The unicorn was tall, its muscles well defined, its intelligent eyes the liquid blue-white of ice. But the voice was gentle. "Hello, my Dreena." That whispering sibilance. Surely Kai-lid had heard it before.

  "Mama?" The question came in the quavering voice of the five-year-old Dreena ten Valdane, not the husky tones of the grown-up who'd fled from her father and renamed herself Kai-lid.

  Kai-lid/Dreena remembered fleetingly the sad woman who had reared her through infancy, then disappeared—died after giving birth to a stillborn baby brother, her father's aides had said. For a long time before her death, that woman had cried in pain and sadness.

  Rumor had it that the Valdane had ordered his mage to ease his wife out of life with some post-pregnancy complication. The Valdane had convened a state funeral with a closed casket—which sparked more rumors. But the common folk believed Dreena's mother had fled one night, that a fleet-footed silver horse had met her at the edge of the wood outside the castle.

  "Mama?" Kai-lid repeated now.

  The unicorn dipped its head and touched the tip of its horn to the ground before Kai-lid. "If it helps you to think of me as your mother, let it be so, Dreena."

  "But are you?"

  The unicorn didn't answer, and when Kai-lid asked again, the creature said simply, "We have no time. There is trouble, Dreena."

  "I came here because my mother grew up near here," Kai-lid persisted. "My father married here during his travels as a young man."

  "I know. You cannot hide—here or anywhere—any longer," the unicorn said. "Your father has fled to the Icereach. There he is amassing an army."

  "Surely he cannot be a threat to me all the way from the Icereach," Kai-lid protested.

  The whisper continued, almost hypnotic in its effect upon the young woman. "He and the mage have a powerful artifact."

  Kai-lid shivered. She pulled her robe tighter around her. "Janusz believes I'm dead. He'll never think to scry for me. Here I am safe. I don't want to leave."

  "I know." The unicorn dipped her horn once more and began to back out of the cave. "But there is no time."

  "Wait! What should I do?" Kai-lid cried.

  Instead of answering directly, the silvery creature stood in the cave's mouth. "Remember this, Dreena. It will help you."

  "But. . ."

  The unicorn began to chant:

  "The lovers three, the spell-cast maid, The winged one of loyal soul, The foul undead of Darken Wood, The vision seen in scrying bowl. Evil loosed with diamond's flight.

  "Vengeance savored, ice-clenched heart Seeks its image to enthrone Matched by sword and fire's heat, Embers born of steel and stone. Evil cast with jewel's light.

  "The lovers three, the spell-cast maid, The tie of filial love abased, Foul legions turned, the blood flows free, Frozen deaths in snow-locked waste. Evil vanquished, gemstones might."

  As the last line resonated in the night air, the light around the unicorn began to fade. The creature pivoted toward Darken Wood. "Wait!" Kai-lid called again, lunging from her cot and racing barefoot over the stone floor. When she reached the opening, the unicorn was gone.

  The night was silent. Kai-lid heard no stamp of hooves, saw no gray shadow slip into the woods. A mist enveloped the scene.

  Then suddenly she was back in her cot, her blanket on the floor, and she was shivering in the predawn chill.

  * * * * *

  "It was a dream," Xanthar insisted moments later, when she'd finished relating what had happened.

  "No," she insisted. "It was real."

  They were in their favorite spot for talking—two branches, one above the other, jutting out of a dead sycamore. "If you flew very high," Kai-lid said sullenly, "you might still spot her. But you're too stubborn."

  "Legend says that if a unicorn wants to be seen, it will be. If not, no amount of searching or wishing will help. Anyway, I've never heard of a unicorn venturing out of Darken Wood."

  "My cave is very close to the woods." Her voice rose. "You're so obstinate. It was my mother, I tell you."

  Xanthar fluffed his feathers and shifted on his perch. "Since when is your mother a unicorn? Anyway, you told me your mother is dead."

  "When I was little, she told me she came from north of Haven. That could mean Darken Wood."

  The owl snorted and muttered, "Hardly," but Kai-lid went on, carried away by her story.

  "I used to think she was a unicorn in human form, that she fell in love with my father and married him and went away to Kern with him. When life grew unbearable, she resumed her unicorn form and returned home. I never told anybody. But she would know what is in my heart."

  "It's romantic nonsense, Kai-lid, a dream born of eating something you shouldn't have in Haven yesterday."

  "I saw my mother."

  The discussion circled on itself until both owl and mage grew weary. Each sat wordless, stubbornly silent at first and then merely lost in thought. Finally, as the sky was growing light in the east, Xanthar spoke again as though no time had passed. "And you believe it, that your father will attack from the south?"

  Kai-lid hesitated. Then she nodded. The owl nodded, too. "Then we must act," he said softly.

  "We?" she asked, sitting up. Her hood fell back. "You can't go far from Darken Wood. You'll lose your magic."

  "We don't know that for a certainty. The rules of Darken Wood may vary. They say that travelers who enter much of Darken Wood find their weapons have disappeared—but not here. They say ghosts prevent travelers from entering—but not here. I may be able to go farther away than we have thought."

 
; "You've said . . ."

  "We must stop the Valdane."

  "We're safe here."

  The giant owl was silent for a time. Then he said, "No one is safe anywhere." Kai-lid remembered Xanthar's dead mate and nestlings.

  "You are his daughter. You can't hide from him if he is determined to find you."

  Kai-lid turned her back on the owl. Her voice was tight. "He forced me into a marriage I didn't want, hoping to gain control of the Meir's kingdom. Then, when the Meir and I fell in love and barred him from our land, he attacked. He killed my husband. Should I forgive that?"

  "I'm not telling you to forgive anything. I'm telling you that you have to stop him. You alone may be able to."

  Kai-lid slid from her branch to a lower one, then to the ground. She glared up at the owl. "I won't do it."

  "You escaped because your lady's maid went back, you said."

  Kai-lid's face went white. "Stop it."

  But Xanthar continued. "Lida went back," he said. "You told me this yourself, Kai-lid. Lida went back; she dressed in your clothes, realizing your father would destroy the castle, and knowing that only if they found a body they believed to be Dreena ten Valdane's would they stop from coming after you."

  The owl's voice was relentless. Kai-lid put her hands over her ears. The bird switched to mindspeak.

  She was your friend. You grew up together; her mother reared you both. And she died for you. Whether you are Dreena ten Valdane or Kai-lid Entenaka, can you be selfish now?

  The spell-caster began to cry.

  Recall that morning, Kai-lid. Recall it, Dreena.

  Against her will, the spell-caster remembered fleeing the castle with Lida. The servingwoman balked halfway down the escape tunnel, saying she had to go back for something and asking if Dreena wanted to leave her wedding pendant with the Meir in his coffin as a final gesture of love.

  Memories from that hasty predawn exchange still haunted Kai-lid. Lida's shadowed face, resolution and fright alternating in her features. The damp of the stones that walled the corridor. The musty smell of the earthen floor. The sound of water dripping. And over it all, the booming of the enemy's drums, mimicking Dreena's heart. She'd removed the pendant, kissed the broad green stone, and placed it in Lida's hand. She half-guessed what her faithful friend had in mind, but she made no protest. Dreena told Lida to meet her in a cave beneath a copse of trees west of the castle. Then the servingwoman threw her arms around Dreena, kissed her, and whispered "My sister" before hurrying back through the corridor.