by Lynn Abbey
Orders had been given—orders the Lion-King had intended to give Pavek from the beginning, no doubt. Hamanu began to walk toward the wall and a door Pavek hadn't noticed before. Acting on impulse, which had gotten him into trouble so often before, Pavek called out to him: "Great King—"
"My friends—Ruari, Zvain, and Mahtra—what happened to them?"
"If you spent half as much time thinking about yourself as you think about others, Pavek, you'd go farther in this world. Your friends escaped from Codesh before I arrived. They went to Farl. Five days ago, Ruari sold the staff I gave him to a herder; since then, I do not know. You know my dilemma, Pavek: magic hastens the dragon. I will not risk Urik to find any one man—not Kakzim, not a friend of yours. If it suits you, you may search for them after we've raised the guardian."
"It suits me, Great King," Pavek said to the great king's back.
* * *
With the purse Ruari had gotten from Pavek before he died, the silver he got in exchange for his staff, the handful of coins Zvain insisted he "found" beneath a pile of rubbish in a Farl alley, and the three silver coins Mahtra got he-didn't-ask-where, they had enough money to purchase three unimpressive kanks from the village pound and outfit them with shabby saddles, peeling harnesses, and other supplies of dubious quality.
Six days west of Farl, they were down to two kanks. Tempers were short, and they spent a part of each day arguing whether any of the landmarks they passed matched those on their white-bark map. If it weren't for Ruari's fundamentally sound sense of distance and direction, they'd have been hopelessly lost. Each time they set off in a direction the three of them eventually agreed was wrong, he'd been able to get them back to a place they recognized.
The sun was at its height in the heavens and there wasn't a sliver of shade anywhere—except in the lee of the same three boulders where they'd camped last night.
"I told you these rocks matched the three dots," Ruari grumbled as he dismounted. He hobbled the bug before offering a hand to either Mahtra or Zvain, who rode together on the other one.
"They're awfully small," Mahtra said.
"All right, they don't match the three dots—-and we've followed Kakzim's damned map into the middle of nowhere. In case you haven't noticed, we're running out of land!" Ruari swung his arm from due north to due west where the horizon was a solid line of jagged peaks. "The circle is north of here, between us and those mountains, or it's not anywhere!"
"You don't have to shout," Zvain complained as he jumped down from the kank's saddle.
Mahtra tried to make peace. "We'll go north next. We always go two directions before we settle on one."
"At least two."
Ruari got the last word as he hobbled the second kank and let it go foraging. The surviving kanks were doing better than their riders. Bugs could eat just about anything that wasn't sand or rock; people were more particular. They'd run out of village food two days ago. Ruari didn't consider it a serious problem; he'd had little trouble hunting up a steady supply of bugs, grubs, and lizards—more than enough to keep the three of them healthy, but Zvain was fussy, and Mahtra truly seemed to become ill on the wriggly morsels. She'd sooner forage with the kanks—which she did, after Ruari rationed out their water.
It was midafternoon before they were remounted and headed north. Ruari wasn't as well-organized as Pavek, and certainly wasn't as effective getting Mahtra and Zvain moving; he owed Pavek an apology—
The half-elf closed his eyes and pounded a tight fist against his thigh. Pavek's name hadn't crossed his mind since sunrise. He was ashamed that he'd forgotten his friend for so many hours and was grieved by the memories, once they returned. The downward spiral between shame and grief hadn't ended when Mahtra and Zvain both called his name.
"Look—" Mahtra extended her long, white arm.
Wisps of smoke rose through the seared air. They could be mirages—the sun's pounding heat made everything shimmer by late afternoon. But the smoke didn't shimmer, and it wasn't long before they saw other signs of habitation. Zvain prodded their bug's antennae, urging it to greater speed; Ruari did the same thing—until he got his kank far enough ahead to force the other one to a halt.
"Not so fast! We don't know what's up there, who's up there, or if they're going to be friendly to the likes of us." Wind and fire, he was sounding more like Pavek every time he opened his mouth. "This could still be a trap. We go in slow, and we go in cautious. Stay close together. Keep your heads down and eyes open. That's what Yohan would say—" Pavek, too, but by unspoken agreement, they didn't mention his name. "Understand?"
Still, their kanks could outrun all but the fastest elves. Ruari prodded his bug to a halt and let the strangers come to them.
"What brings you three to Ject?" one of the humans asked.
Before Ruari could voice a suitably cautious answer Zvain announced: "We followed a map!" and Mahtra added: "We're looking for two halflings, and a big black tree."
Chapter Thirteen
So much for keeping their heads down and their mouths shut.
Mahtra didn't know any better. She evidently thought when someone older asked her a question, she had to answer. But Zvain—? Ruari couldn't excuse his human friend for blurting out their secrets. Zvain knew the wisdom of discretion and outright deceit. He'd advised it often enough while they were still in Urik's purview. Once they were on the barrens, though, following that scrap of bark Ruari still devoutly believed was a trap, Zvain's common sense and wariness had evaporated.
The woman who'd asked them their business gave Mahtra and Zvain another eyeballing before returning her attention to Ruari. She was human and standing; he was half-elf and mounted on a kank's high saddle, yet she successfully looked down her nose at him, conveying a wealth of disdain in the arch of her brow.
"You look a tad underprepared for the mountains and the forests," she said dryly. "Do you even know where you are?"
Without hesitation, Ruari shook his head. Maybe there was more of Mahtra in him than he'd thought.
"Ject," she said.
He wasn't sure if that was her name, the name of the settlement, or a local insult—until he remembered someone had greeted them with the name as they rode up.
She grabbed his bug's antenna and got it moving forward. He could have seized the bug's mind with druidry, thwarting her intentions without twitching a muscle of his own. That would have been almost as stupid as mentioning the map or the halfling they were looking for. There was an aura around magicians of any stripe, an indefinable something that set druids, priests, defilers, and even templars slightly apart. Ruari didn't get that feeling from any of the strangers around him. He'd need a better reason than stubborn pride before he gave his own limited mastery away.
Ject was about Quraite's size, counting the buildings or people, but similarities ended there. Costly stone and wood were common here on the edge of the Tablelands. Ject's buildings looked as solid as Urik's walls, yet seemed as hastily thrown up as any wicker hut in Quraite. Striped and spotted hides from animals Ruari couldn't name cured on every wall. Skulls with horns and skulls with fangs hung above every door or window. Weapons, mostly spears and clubs, stood ready in racks outside the largest building. Taken with the hides and the skulls, they gave Ject the air of a community engaged in perpetual conflict.
And perhaps it was. The people of Ject had to eat, and there were no fields or gardens anywhere, just barrens and scrub plants up to the back walls of the outer ring of buildings. Ruari had heard tales of four-fingered giths who ate nothing but meat and the gladiators of Tyr who feasted on the flesh of those they defeated, but most folk required a more varied diet to remain healthy. If the Jectites were like most folk, they had to be getting their green foods and grain from somewhere else, possibly from a forest, if not from a field.
The human woman had mentioned mountains, which Ruari could see, and forests, which he could not. Beyond the mountains, there might be forests where the Jectites got their food, where the creatures whose
hides and skulls were fastened to Jectite houses lived free, and where trees with bark smooth enough and pale enough to serve as parchment might grow.
For the first time since they'd left Codesh, Ruari thought they might have come to the right place. He wished Pavek were with them to savor the triumph—and to negotiate with the Jectites for the guide they'd need for the next step in the journey. But Pavek wasn't here. Ruari stared at the mountains oblivious to everything else and waiting for the ache to subside.
"Kirre," the human woman said when Ruari became enraptured by an eight-legged leonine captive.
The kirre had windswept horns to protect the back of its head as well as the more usual leonine teeth, a double allotment of claws, and wicked barbs protruding from its tail. Its fur was striped with black and a coppery hue that matched Ruari's skin and hair. Similar hides were curing on the front walls. Ruari imagined the strength it took to slay such a beast, the skill it took to capture one, but mostly he imagined the feel of its fur beneath his fingers and the throaty cumble of its purr.
"They're the kings of the forest ridge," the woman elaborated. "Are you so sure you want to climb up there looking for halflings and black trees?"
Ruari forgot to answer. As a half-elf, he had one unique trait he owed to neither of his parents: an affinity for wild animals, which his druidry complemented and enhanced. At that moment, deep in the throes of his own grief, he was especially vulnerable to the mournful glare in the kirre's eyes. Had he been alone, he would have been off his bug and reaching fearlessly inside the pen to scratch the cat's forehead.
But Ruari wasn't alone, and he wrenched his attention away. When he did the kirre threw itself against the walls of its pen and made an eerie sound, neither a growl nor a roar, that raised bumps all over Ruari's skin.
The woman gave him a contemptuous glance. "Half-elves," she muttered with a shake of her head. "You and your pets. Don't even think about cozying up to this one. She's bound for the games at Tyr. Turn her loose or tame her, and we'll send you instead."
Ruari's mortification turned to anger, though there was nothing he could do for himself or the kirre who was doomed to bloody death at a Tyrian gladiator's hand—and to be eaten thereafter. The thought sickened him and hardened him. Grabbing the nearly empty packs from behind the saddle, Ruari swung down from the bug's back and led the way toward the front of the large building.
In Quraite, he kept a passel of kivits, furry and playful predators about the size of the kirre's head. He kept them hidden in his grove where few ever witnessed the half-elven affection he lavished on them. When he returned to his grove, he'd still cherish them and care for them, but as he left the keening kirre behind, Ruari vowed that he'd return to Ject some day to bond with a kirre—and set one free, if he could.
The largest building in Ject turned out to be a tavern open to the sunset sky and vast enough to seat every resident, with benches to spare.
"We're traders and brokers," the woman explained. "And you've come at a slow time. Our stocks are down. Most of our rangers are out hunting. All our runners are out making deliveries and taking orders. If you're from the cities and you want something from the forest, we can get it. If you're from the forest and you want something from the cities, we can get that, too. There's nothing we can't provide, for the right price. But for ourselves—we stay here year round, and this is all we need."
She swept an arm around. Huge casks were piled in a pyramid against one wall. Long tables and benches filled the tavern's one room.
"What about you, my copper-skinned friend? What do you need? Supplies? You're looking a mite empty."
She prodded the packs he had hanging down from his shoulder and, not accidentally, ran callused fingertips along his forearm. He'd have gotten smacked hard, on the hand and probably on the cheek, if he'd been so brazen with a Quraite woman, but when the tables were turned, Ruari was too astonished to do or say anything.
"A guide? I know my way around."
She headed for one of the tables and clearly intended that Ruari follow her. He paused before committing himself and turned back toward the open door.
Mahtra had her arm around a mul whose shoulders were so heavily muscled that his head seemed to rest on them, not his neck. The mul was twirling the long fringes of Mahtra's black gown through his thick fingers. She'd done the same thing in Farl the one night they stayed in that village, but no matter how many times Ruari told himself that Mahtra was eleganta, and that she could take care of herself better than he or Zvain, the sight made him uncomfortable.
What was it that Pavek had said to him the night Mahtra arrived, in Quraite? You're too pretty. You wouldn't survive a day on the streets of Urik. Ruari was hoping he'd survive an evening in Ject. The woman beckoning him to the empty bench opposite her had already said she'd trade anything, anywhere for the right price. She was sending the kirre to Tyr, but she'd threatened to send him in its place. Ruari wondered where else she might send him for the right price and resolved that he'd drink nothing in this place, not even the water.
"Pleasure first; trade later. What'll it be?" she asked.
"Ale? Broy? The halflings make a blood-wine that's sweet as honey and kicks like a molting erdland."
Ruari whispered: "Ale." He couldn't stomach the thought—much less the sight—of the other two beverages, even if he wasn't going to drink them.
The woman snapped her fingers loudly and shouted for two mugs of something that didn't sound like ale. He felt betrayed, but said nothing. They stared at each other until the bucket-sized containers arrived in the fists of a weary, one-eyed dwarf. The human woman smacked her mug against his, sloshing some of the foamy brew onto the table, then she took a swig. Ruari pretended to do the same.
"So—you've got a map that shows the way to a black tree? Even with a map, there's a lot of treacherous country between here and there, especially for a lowlander like you. Kirres may be the kings of the ridge, but there're a lot of other ways to die up there. And the halflings themselves—"
Suddenly she was jabbering away in a language—Ruari supposed it was Halfling—that was full of chirps and clicks as well as singsong syllables.
"Didn't think so," she proclaimed and took another long pull at her mug. "Negotiating with halflings is a tricky pass, if you know their tongue—which you don't. You're going to need a guide, my coppery friend. And not just any guide, someone who knows the ridge well. Let me see your map, and I might be able to tell you who to hire."
It appeared that Mahtra and Zvain weren't the only ones who thought the map was real. Ruari decided he must look very young and very naive. Did she think he didn't remember the looks she'd given him while he was still astride the bug, or her threats? But even as his pride raised his hackles, he could fairly hear Pavek's voice at the base of his skull, telling him that some battles could be won without a fight. At least without an obvious fight.
He fumbled with his mug. "Would you?" he asked with a nervous smile. The smile was forced; the nervousness wasn't. There were no taverns in Quraite, and he'd learned his knavery from his elven cousins, who'd misled him many times before. "It's so hard to know who to trust. I guess I have to start somewhere—" The mug overturned, drenching him from the waist down in a sticky, golden brew— which was not anything Ruari had intended to do, though it worked to his advantage when the woman drained her own mug before demanding refills from the tapster.
After a certain point and a certain amount of ale, a human mind—or any other mind—became as suggestible as a kank's. Ruari had a lot to learn about mind-bending and druidry both, but he'd had a lot of experience lately with bugs. A few rays of sunlight still streaked the open sky above their table when Ruari caught his first predatory thought and wove it back into the woman's mind. The stars were bright from one roofbeam to the other and there were two empty pitchers between them on the table when Ruari figured he'd learned as much as he could.
She laid her head atop her folded arms when he stood up. The tapster caught his
eye. Ruari joined him by the pyramid of casks.
"The lady—" He pointed to the woman whose name he hadn't learned. "Take care of her, please? She said she'd pay for everything."
"Mady?" the tapster replied with evident disbelief.
"On my honor, that's what she swore."
The tapster's eyes made the journey from Ruari to the woman and back again. " 'Tain't like her."
Ruari shrugged. "She said she wasn't feeling well. I guess the ale didn't agree with her."
"Aye—" the tapster agreed, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe so. Didn't give you no problems now, did it?"
"Not at all," Ruari said and hurried out the door where he figured his problems would begin in earnest. "Zvain? Mahtra?" he whispered urgently into the darkness.
With what he'd learned from the woman, Mady, Ruari thought that a bit of druidry and his innate ability to follow the lay of the land could get them through the mountains and into the forest. He was less certain about the halflings. Mady had said the local halflings weren't cannibals, they merely sacrificed strangers to appease the forest spirits, and held celebration feasts afterward if the sacrifices had been accepted. It was too fine a distinction for him to swallow comfortably, but he'd deal with halflings when he had to, not before.
"Mahtra? Zvain?"
The world was edged in elven silver as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Ordinary colors vanished, replaced by the shimmering grays of starlight. Ruari could see the buildings with their hanging hides and skulls and brilliant candlelight seeping through cracked shutters. He could have seen anything moving from his feet to the farthest wall of the farthest building, but he couldn't see Mahtra or Zvain.