by Jenna Rhodes
Sevryn nodded.
“Home that way. Wise old women tell.”
He realized he was going to hear a tale that only the shamans of the clans told. He put his hand on Rufus’ arm. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“Hear me. Learn,” Rufus answered firmly, as if Sevryn might be an impatient and squirming child. Sevryn hid his smile and settled back, his mind smoothing out the Bolger’s painstaking and halting words.
“Our home is south. Another land from long ago. It is wild, new. Hard to live for farmers, easier for hunters. We hunted the big worms, and they hunted us. Our father’s fathers knew them well. (Rufus indicated a long stretch of time that Sevryn knew meant longer than two generations and nodded his understanding.) It was our home. Marshes, hills, forests, valley, lakes. We knew only this because it was the way things were, as the sun rises on one side of the land and sets on the other. But times change. A great sickness ran through the pigs and large rats that the worms ate and the snakes found themselves without easy food. The lives of our father’s fathers became even more difficult. Still, it was our home. Perhaps things would change again. We waited.
“Their prey died off. We lost the animals we hunted, and we became the worms’ only food. They began to sicken, too, and poisoned our lands and our rivers. The worms turned on each other. Their battles destroyed much. We could not stay. We took our lives, our tools, and we left. Moved north across deep water. Many died, many lived. Strange country, strange peoples, strange Gods. It is not our home. It is only where we must live. We are not liked. (Rufus shrugged.) But we know the sign of the worm when we see it, yet it is good these are old signs, older even than our father’s fathers. We know the worm is gone, but we know our old enemy well. We know how to use its trails and dens. Often we hide in the shadow of the old enemy from the new ones. Then the Mages came. They laid their magic on the worm trails. It sinks into the rocks. It grows and spreads, even to where the Mages did not see, could not even guess what lay along the paths of the great worms. We felt it. We know. We watched as the Mages turned on each other like the serpents did. Magic spilled out like poison. We would have laughed, but we were afraid their war would ruin our new land. It almost did. But the peoples here fought back, and the Mages died, and there is still much good land here. Some of it is bad. Most is good. Like its peoples. We stay as long as we can. Some of us returned to our home, but they never sent word if they could live or not. So we endure.” (Rufus shrugged again and turned both of his great, leathery hands palm up, signifying the end of his tale.)
Sevryn nodded his head several times. “You have great courage, and now I realize your wisdom is even greater.”
Rufus tilted his head slightly, brow wrinkling deeply, and then he grinned. He beat his chest. “About time.” He stood, his joints popping faintly as he did so. “Get fancy boot. We go.”
The horse disliked the method of travel, but the mule seemed used to it, or perhaps he just had the level head that most mules had. His calm eventually soothed Pavan over the course of their journey, and they emerged from the stony, dank confines of the worm trails just above Hawthorne and not far from the cliffs that had once held the great Jewel of Tomarq. Sevryn realized as they walked their mounts out and the sun shone fitfully through wispy spring clouds that the Bolgers could have, if their clans united, overrun most of the fortifications along the coast through those same trails and wondered why the Bolger wars had been lost by Rufus’ people. It had been the Vaelinars who’d stopped them and the thought trailed fitfully through Sevryn’s mind, along with a myriad of others, that the Bolgers might have pulled back when they faced magic once again and, fearing its horribly destructive ends, had given themselves up to defeat. But it was only a flickering thought and one he did not voice aloud as they mounted up to gain Hawthorne’s bridges and city streets.
They caught Bregan in one of the outermost disreputable bars at what Rufus called “the stinking end” of the city.
RUFUS GRUNTED. His heavy head swung about, and he moved into a trot, hauling Sevryn after him, his broad nose wrinkling as he caught wind of their prey. “We find,” he told Sevryn as if an explanation was needed, and protesting in every muscle and bone, he followed the Bolger.
Coursing through the evening dark of the port brought its own challenge in broken and wavering streets, ramshackle buildings, and surly townsfolk who thought little of a Bolger and a Vaelinar shouldering their way through their population. Rufus answered angry growls in kind with his own. Finally they came upon a building that seemed to be more inn than drinking hole, and Rufus shoved Sevryn inside first, following on his heels. The Kernan innkeeper swung about, wiping his beefy hands on his stained shirt and lowering his eyebrows at the sight of Rufus. His mouth twisted on the words he might have been going to utter and he told Sevryn, “Long as th’ beast’s with you.” He jabbed a thumb toward the common room. “Fire and chow in there.”
And so was a slumped trader prince, head in hands, looking moodily at the hearth. Sevryn crossed the floor in four strides, clenched a fist, and swung before Bregan even knew he was in the room.
Bregan held a small cut of prime red meat to his swollen face, watching Sevryn ruefully with the other eye. They sat in a small corner of the bar, little more than a hut in this sea harbor city. Whatever privacy could be extended to them had begun when he hauled Bregan’s limp form into the corner. It would have to do. Awake now, the trader looked as rough as Sevryn felt, clothes torn and hanging, bruises and gashes on every bit of exposed skin, and swelling now going purple despite the cuts of meat to take the heat from them. Most of the damage had been inflicted long before Sevryn found him. Bregan spat to the side, a pink blob of froth, and poked his tongue at his teeth.
“Don’t fuss at them if they’re loose.”
Bregan rolled his eye. “I know that.” He adjusted his makeshift compress. “I just don’t know if you loosened them or . . . or. . . .” He left off talking and just shrugged.
“Does it matter? You deserve to not have a tooth left in your head. You set me up and, worse, left the heir to the Anderieons open to assassination.”
Rufus grunted his agreement with Sevryn, the Bolger hunched over in the corner behind them, his back against the wall.
“I assure you that was by mere coincidence.”
“Coincidence?”
“The Kobrir, I knew about. I thought I knew about them, that is—I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t told everything. As for the ild Fallyn or whoever tried a strike at the Dweller lass,” he dropped the meat from his eye and peered at Sevryn. “It was bound to happen sooner or later, but I had no inkling of when or where.” He curled his arms up over his head. “I’m a dead man. I know that. Kill me now and end it. I could do nothing other than what I did because the Gods sent me to betray you.”
“Gods? What do you know of Gods?”
Bregan uncurled a bit. “Ironic, I know. I made a fortune on listening shrines, did I not? Listening to Gods everyone thought had gone deaf centuries ago. But now I’m struck with a truth I cannot forget or dodge. The Gods of Kernan are awakening. I’m not certain I want to be alive when They become fully aware again.”
“Keep talking in circles, and I’ll be able to solve that one for you.”
Bregan dropped a hand down to the back of Sevryn’s wrist. “You think you’re threatening me, but all I hear are promises to take me out of my misery, and I’m thankful for it.”
Sevryn shook off his hand. “You’ve gone mad.”
“Do you think so? I agree.”
“Even a madman needs friends.” Sevryn sat back, baffled by Bregan’s behavior.
The other shuttered his one open eye momentarily before looking back to Sevryn. “You think you need to tell me that? Garner Farbranch, nearly your brother, is my friend. Indeed, he is probably the only friend I have ever had who does not think of cozying up to the traders’ guild. Do you think I wished to b
etray that? What profit would come to me from hearing the Gods, eh? They bring nothing but trouble. Yet I did. I had but to walk close to one of those cursed shrines, which I designed and pandered by the hundreds to mobs hungry for the words of the Gods when and if They ever began to talk to us again—and I heard. It reached out and grabbed me, held me transfixed, so that I could not move until I had heard every hallowed word. The only shrine ever to do so, I might add. If a curse would make me deaf, then blight me. I would accept it willingly!” He dropped the cut of meat to the table, leaning forward in earnest, his face lopsided with his injury, his eyes both blazing. “I heard Them, I tell you, and They told me to bring you to the knives of the Kobrir.”
“Just me?”
“As if you are not enough? Should the Gods have thrown in all who remain of Lariel’s court as well? Yes, just you. Why, I cannot say because I have no inkling.”
“Well, then,” Sevryn commented mildly, keeping a hold on his concern and his temper. “The Kobrir must have heard Them as well. They were waiting, were they not?”
Rufus leaned on the knuckles of one hand.
Bregan’s battered mouth opened and shut without sound, gaping like a fish out of water and floundering on a riverbank, before he got out. “Must have. Must have done. How else could they have been here? Why did I not think of that?”
Sevryn found a cold, fresh cut of meat, put the point of his dagger into it and tossed it at Bregan. “Because you did not think.”
He caught the hunk neatly and applied it. “There is that. If I have been used, at least it was not for your death. You sit there very much alive.”
“That scarcely excuses you.”
“No, and I will be in your debt for the rest of my life, however long it shall be.” His free hand moved uneasily upon the tabletop. “One does not serve the Gods easily and with impunity.”
Sevryn noted that Bregan worked with the spoken word as a craftsman did a tool, even as he himself did with his Talent of Voice, but he couldn’t discern any malice or deception as he listened, only true remorse and puzzlement. He had not told Bregan of the message itself, only that one had been delivered. He would not divulge that to anyone else except for . . . his thoughts caught and stumbled. He had been about to tell himself Jeredon, but his friend was beyond all confidences now. He felt a small pang not only for himself but for Trader Bregan who had just come to understand the true worth of a good friend.
He did not doubt that Bregan thought he knew what he’d heard, but he doubted the origin. He lifted his wine mug to hide the expression on his face as he mulled over what Bregan had told him. A cryptic message did not sit well with him. He was still of a mind not to let the Kobrir get away with it, but night had fallen well and truly and he doubted he had little chance tracking shadows in the dark. So, for the moment, his only source of information was the man who had betrayed him and who, from what had been said, was as surprised at the ambush as Sevryn.
The Gods, it appeared, had not spilled any of their secrets.
Bregan had been told to bring him, and he had. Sevryn’s need to accompany a caravan for some protection and disguise had merely fallen in well with the trader’s needs. As he sat across the table, expressions of confusion and guilt filtered across Bregan’s face, to be shut aside quickly and replaced with a trader’s carefully neutral and studied look.
Sevryn put his mug down. The wine of this hole in the ground was strangely passable, unexpected in this rustic place. Perhaps there were men of money who had laid a cellar down here, coming in from time to time. He had never been a fisherman himself, but there were men of estates who enjoyed an empty coast and good fishing waters from time to time. To think of it, he had never been a man of any estate. His only worldly goods were those the queen held for him, and his actions had now forfeited that. The Queen’s Hands seldom retired. They usually died with their boots on.
As he had nearly done.
“Tell me where you heard this voice.”
Bregan flinched slightly, his good eye widening at Sevryn. “Where? At a shrine, as I told you.”
“But where?”
“Ah. On Temple Row. The lanes there are rife with them,” Bregan added ruefully.
No surprise there. “Would you know this one particular shrine again if you came across it?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“It rather made an impact on me,” Bregan told him dryly. “And the owners tend to decorate them, make them their own, put family signs on them and so forth, stock the incense bowls with their own herbs. Unless it has been taken from Temple Row, I can find it.”
“Good.”
Bregan drew his legs under him with effort. “Are we leaving tonight?”
“Morning will be good enough. I’ve sent for a healer who should be here sometime before then.”
“I thank you for that, then.”
“Will you thank me if I can prove to you it was not the Gods who spoke?”
Bregan’s face went white under the crimson-and-purple mottling, making his bruises stand out starkly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that any hedge wizard, with the right trappings could make you see and hear things as he wished you to. The only question I have is . . . why.”
Bregan slumped back in his chair, defeated. “Why, indeed? Why would I think that, after centuries of silence, the Gods would deign to speak to me? I have never been a paragon of anything except trading.”
“Except that whoever did speak to you knew that you could speak to me, and I would listen.”
“If the Kobrir wanted you or me to be dead, we would be.” Bregan dropped his meaty compress to the table. Rufus took it up to spear on a cooking fork and thrust it into the small hearth’s fire, adding it to the other steak, which he already had roasting.
Sevryn watched as the trader wrung his hands together. He cleared his throat, and Bregan fixed his gaze on him once more. “And after we find out who convinced you to betray me, I need to hire your caravan out.”
“Oh.”
“And you with it, of course.”
Bregan licked his lips as if they’d suddenly gone dry. “And I would do this for what amount of money?”
“I don’t intend to give you any.”
“I see. Well, under the circumstances, I suppose that is fair enough.” Bregan hitched a short breath before leaning over the table intently, his voice low, his words sharp. “I will give you that debt as paid if you do something for me.”
“And that would be what?”
“Teach me magic.”
“What? You have gone mad.”
“Not yet, not quite fully. You’re Vaelinar. You know the workings of power. Teach me.”
“I can’t teach you what isn’t born in you.”
Bregan reached out with both his hands to grab Sevryn by the wrists. “This is a genuine bargain, Sevryn Dardanon. I will give you a caravan and guide it into the very mouth of hell for you, but you must teach me about magic on the way. Do we have a deal?”
Sevryn stared into the other’s eyes. He saw desperation rooted deeply in their gleam. “I will try. I can’t make any promises.”
“Noted. Our deal is struck, then.” Bregan let loose of him and leaned back, exhaling in a long, shaky sigh.
Temple Row was even more crowded than he remembered. It had always drawn the desperate looking for luck and the rich paying to keep it, but the throngs of everyday folk he saw as he threaded the street amazed him. A smell of incense mingled with the siren smell of the sea. It fused with the noise of the street, with the chanting of the priests and their acolytes from the various temple and chapel facades, the hawking of the street vendors, the prayers and arguments of the throng. Sevryn wove his way through, his senses plucking at the threads of the street even though the sensations rose in an overwhelming tide. Concentrate, Gilgarran would have r
ebuked him. He opened his mind and then closed it, bit by bit, searching for that one thread, that one jarring note that he remembered, that singular thread which would lead him where he wanted to be. A baker shoved him aside with a massive shoulder, his burly form still smelling of the rising dough and the wood ovens. A textiles worker, a bundle of fabric samples hanging from his belt, worked his way against the tide, anxiety etched deeply into his brow. Sevryn nearly knocked a very pregnant mother of three off her feet, righted her, and dusted her off even as he dodged the man.
Bregan had little more luck with the masses, and finally both fell in behind Rufus who cleared a tolerable path with his Bolger presence and irritated growl. But all these people . . . congregating here, in the middle of their workday as if they were searching for something, something tangible, something vital they seemed to feel was missing from their lives and that, Gods promised, it would be provided here. He had never found it to be so. When he ran on the streets, chanting a God’s name had never protected him from flying fists and feet, or any pestilence of nature. He had only had himself to rely upon. He could understand it more if the current held a sense of hope, of optimism, but all he could feel here was one of desperation. Desperate, harried people in search of comfort and a turning of the tide which carried them. He found that cold and frightening. Sevryn shrugged deeper into his coat.
Bregan tugged on his sleeve. “There is a shrine,” he shouted near Sevryn’s ear. “Women swear by it. It grants love and children. You should stop by it while you are here and drop a coin and a bit of scent stick.”
“Are you sure they swear by it? Mayhap they swear at it,” Sevryn remarked as he dodged a herd of children tumbling by like puppies in a pack.
“Do you not wish to make her happy?”
“She is happy.” And Sevryn sincerely doubted anything from this crowded street of pilgrims in despair would improve Rivergrace’s lot. Rufus snarled ahead of them, whether in response to Bregan’s query or at a tall, weed-thin butcher who blocked their way, he could not tell.