“Caden and I are good friends. That’s all. If he wants to tumble every female between here and the edge of the world, I wish him a strong back. But Durgan moves like he knows how to use that sword. I wouldn’t want any trouble.”
Karina had no reply to that, and to Jael’s delight, they rode in silence until they sighted the camp ahead. A fire was already burning, and there were not one, but two spiral-horned plains deer roasting on spits. Apparently Tanis had managed to shoot one of them, for he strode around the fire to meet them as proudly as if he had slain a dragon.
“Good hunting,” Jael greeted him, sliding down from the wagon seat. “Which one’s yours?”
“That one.” Tanis indicated the closer of the two deer, then grinned sheepishly. “Cesanne drove it practically into my bow. If I’d missed at that range, I don’t think I could have held my head up under the shame.”
Jael was glad to see that Tanis was neither too proud of his kill nor too smitten with Cesanne to help her set up their camp. They did not camp under a wagon; after what had happened with the last caravan, Jael thought it prudent to set their tent a bit apart. Karina refused to have her cheese unloaded to clear space to sleep in any of the wagons, but she used a cunning arrangement whereby the waxed cloth of her tent fastened to the wagon top and formed a lean-to against the side of the wagon, comfortably large enough for her to lay within it the straw and feather mattresses she had brought with her.
By the time the camp was finished, the roasting deer were seared to juicy perfection. Durgan sent out the guards in short shifts so each of them had time to eat their fill of the hot, strong-flavored meat, roasted tubers brought from Westenvale with Karina’s cheese melted over them, and a pot of early spring greens the cook had managed to gather while the others had set up the camp. There was wine, too, but Jael had no desire to ruin a good meal with the sick belly wine always gave her, so she filled a pot with water and brewed some of the black tea she’d brought with her.
The rich, aromatic flavor of the tea, although it had come from Calidwyn, not Allanmere, reminded Jael of home. Mother, Father, and the twins would be at supper now, too, possibly wondering how Jael was faring.
Tanis was almost embarrassingly attentive to Cesanne over supper, jumping up to cut her a slab of meat or fill her cup of wine as soon as it was empty. Cesanne rewarded him with the sort of smile Jael had seen Aunt Shadow use to devastating effect on a few occasions. Jael sighed to herself, but said nothing. Once Jael’s eyes met Durgan’s over the fire. Durgan glanced at Tanis and Cesanne, then back at Jael, the corners of his lips turning up slightly and his eyes twinkling as if he and Jael shared a private joke. Jael was vastly relieved; at least he wasn’t roaring with anger and drawing his sword. But when supper was finished, Durgan stood and took Cesanne’s hand, leading her toward
their tent, which they had pitched at the far end of the camp.
Tanis, rather disgruntled, finally followed Jael back to their own tent, but there he sat and brooded rather than curling up comfortably with Jael as he usually did.
“Come on, don’t be foolish,” Jael said at last. “She’s only toying with you, like the noblewomen flirt with the young lords. She doesn’t mean anything by it.”
“Oh, I know that,” Tanis said rather crossly. “Look, I’m not going moon-mad over her. She’d be a grand feast of a tumble, that’s all. I’m not all that interested in her. It’s just that—well—”
“Well, what?” Jael prompted, grinning. “You can’t plead a long fast, can you, after your games last night almost made us miss the caravan?”
“Oh, please,” Tanis groaned. “If you hadn’t given me that potion, I think I’d have cut off my own head just to be rid of the ache. Can you just imagine, bouncing around on that wagon seat all morning?”
He chuckled in spite of himself, and Jael joined in.
“Well, there’s plenty more of that potion, so if you want to whore yourself sick every time we reach a town, go ahead,” Jael said, chuckling. “At least that’s safer than a quick night’s tumble in the grass with a woman who can use sword and bow, and whose lover is the guard captain of the caravan.”
“He’s not her lover,” Tanis protested.
“I’ll wager you five Suns they are,” Jael countered. “Want to creep up on their tent and listen?”
“No!” Tanis flushed. “The guards would see us before we got close enough.”
“I don’t have to be very close,” Jael told him. “But it doesn’t matter, really, if you’re ‘not that interested,’ does it?”
“I suppose not,” Tanis said, sighing. “Look, just leave it be, will you please?”
“All right,” Jael said, relenting. “Let me look at your arm, and then we’ll go to bed.”
The long slash was still ugly to look at and painful when touched, but Jael pronounced it to be healing cleanly, and Tanis could move his fingers freely, although he admitted that pulling his bow had made the wound ache ferociously. Jael cleaned and dressed the wound and fetched Tanis a cup of wine, and he was quickly asleep. Jael smiled to herself as she curled up against Tanis’s warmth; having such a wound cleaned and probed was enough to take any man’s mind off a woman, no matter how fetchingly her breasts might bounce.
The next two days were much the same. The weather stayed fine, and the caravan made good progress. Gradually the endless rolling plains were broken by lone trees, then stands, then small woods. By the third day they were nearing the edge of a large forest. There were no more farms now, although Karina told Jael that they were no more than another three days’ travel from Gerriden; Gerriden’s farmers had settled farther north and west, where they did not have to clear seedlings and stumps from their land and where the river had deposited rich soil.
On the second day of the trip, Cesanne had made excuses to ride back to Karina’s wagon often—she wanted another taste of that cheese, she needed to tell Karina of deep ruts in the road ahead, and perhaps those clouds meant more rain was on the way. Each time she would linger to chat with them, her remarks increasingly directed at Tanis. When she would ride away, Tanis would stare after her, and Jael would stifle a sigh.
By the third day Tanis frequently abandoned his seat on the wagon and rode with Durgan and (more importantly) Cesanne, although he excused himself from the second day’s hunting trip, stating truthfully that pulling the bow overtaxed his wounded arm. Jael thought to herself that nothing but pure luck had let him make his shot on the first hunt, and Tanis was reluctant to risk ruining the impression he’d made of himself to Cesanne as a great hunter. Still, Tanis did not go out of his way to pursue Cesanne, and Jael was grateful that he showed that much common sense. Soon they’d be in Gerriden, where Tanis could find safer tumbles than with guardswomen with swords and bows and formidable brothers.
By and large, Tanis’s absence left Jael the unhappy audience for Karina’s unending chatter. Jael tried to guide the conversation into channels somewhat more interesting than cheese, and found that Karina was in fact a wealth of stories garnered from trade cities east to west. To Jael’s delight, Karina had heard of the Kresh, though not by that name.
“Ah, the invisible people,” Karina answered Jael’s query, nodding sagely. “I spoke to a man once who’d seen one, a woman filling a waterskin at a stream. He said she looked at him and vanished before his eyes, leaving no tracks behind her except two footprints in the mud of the riverbank where she’d stood.
When I first heard that, I thought he’d swallowed a skinful himself, and not water, either. But a couple years later I met a warrior who’d seen one of their camps—like any camp it was, firepits and trampled grass and flat spots where they’d likely pitched tents. He showed me an arrowhead he’d found there, half hidden in the weeds. It was the oddest metal—pale and light so the arrow had to be weighted with clay rings, I’d wager, and sharp as a fishwife’s tongue.” She showed Jael a scar on the pad of her thumb. “Cut myself near to the bone just testing the edge. Since that time I’ve heard t
ales hereabouts. It wasn’t so easy to laugh after I’d seen that arrowhead.”
She had heard tales, too, of the Book of Whispering Serpents.
“Duranar the Pale passed through, aye, and bearing such a book, or so it’s said,” she said. “I’ve heard it told he rode on the back of a demon horse whose coat shone like gold and whose feet were claws instead of hooves. But he went south and disappeared into the wilderness there. None’s heard from him since, not that I’ve been told. Some say he went south all the way to the sea, but I’d wager he met his end in a shifter’s or a dragon’s belly long before that, and likely his book moldered into dust.”
Jael nodded agreement, but privately she disagreed. Any mage powerful enough to bind demons would come to no such ordinary end.
There was plenty of game near the forest, but the hunting trips became less frequent as Karina would not allow the guards to leave their posts. A forest offered too much cover for highwaymen. Unfortunately, as they neared the forest, the ground dipped and became quite swampy, forcing the group to camp nearer the trees than Karina would have liked. Because of the increased danger, Karina insisted that Jael and Tanis camp near the wagons so that the guards would not have to widen their perimeter.
This time Durgan included himself in the night watches but not Cesanne, stating that as his sister had more forest experience, on the morrow she would command the guards and would need to be fully awake and alert. Jael imagined that Cesanne gave Tanis a significant look when Durgan said this, and Tanis blushed and quickly looked away. Jael thought to herself that she probably had more forest experience than all the guards in the caravan combined—though doubtless Cesanne had far more experience in finding private, cozy thickets—but there was no point in saying that to these guards, who would certainly follow one of their own rather than some half-grown elf; besides, Jael’s knowledge of combat certainly did not include group command.
Jael personally found the night noises of the forest familiar and soothing, but everyone else was nervous and sat around the fire later than usual; at last there was only Jael, Tanis, and Cesanne. Jael resignedly excused herself, but was surprised when Tanis politely said good night to Cesanne and accompanied Jael back to their tent.
When they reached the tent, however, Tanis reached into one of the packs and pulled out one of the bottles of Bluebright.
“Have you had any of this since that night more than a year ago?” he asked, gazing thoughtfully at the syrupy blue liquid inside the bottle. He spoke very softly so that his voice could be heard only inside the tent.
“Uh-uh. Father doesn’t like me to use it.” Jael lay back on her bedroll. “Why? Were you wanting to try it? It won’t hurt you. Mother and Father have both tried it.”
“It cures you, doesn’t it?” Tanis asked, tilting the bottle and watching the liquid roll slowly. “Makes your soul whole for a while, right?”
“Something like that.” Jael shrugged. “Father says some potions can temporarily create a sort of balance inside, like the el-ven dreaming potion. I don’t know if it actually does anything to my soul, or just makes my soul think there’s nothing wrong. I don’t understand how such things work. All I know is when I drank it, I could shape stone. Not very well, but that’s just because I hadn’t had practice. But at least I could do it.”
“Did it cure your other problems, too?” Tanis asked her. “So that you could use your beast-speaking, for example?”
“I don’t know.” Jael shrugged again. “We never had a chance to test that. As I said, Father doesn’t like me using it. After the demon was killed, Father took all the Bluebright and kept it. He and Mother have tried it a few times, and he’s tried to learn how it’s made, but he’s never let me have any of it back until I started packing supplies for this journey.”
“When you drank it with Urien,” Tanis asked slowly, looking at the Bluebright instead of Jael, “did it make you want him?”
“Gods.” Jael sighed. “Tanis, is that still itching under your skin? I swear, Urien and I never did anything, even when I was silly drunk on Bluebright.” The memory of that night made Jael flush with embarrassment; she had gotten pretty silly, Urien feeding her tidbits and whispering compliments while she simpered and giggled like a fool. And they “never did anything” not out of any fortitude of Jael’s, but likely because Urien had no intention of risking his greater plan.
“But you could have, couldn’t you?” Tanis asked deliberately. “When you drank the Bluebright, you could have if you’d wanted to. And you could want to, too, couldn’t you?”
Startled by something in Tanis’s voice, Jael peered at him through the darkness. His face was turned away from her, but his fingers clutched the bottle so tightly, like a shield—or a weapon.
“What are you saying?” Jael asked slowly. “Are you wanting me to take a potion to make me want you?”
“It’s not the same,” Tanis muttered. “It’s not like a love potion or something. If all this stuff does is make you whole, and then you want me, what’s wrong with that?”
Jael sat up.
“Tanis, at the risk of making you more jealous than you already are, when I drank some of that Bluebright I wanted Urien, too. For all I know the stuff is a love potion of some sort. Either that or—” Or she’d been an awfully easy mark, as Aunt Shadow would say. It was embarrassing to think she could be that undis-criminating, or that stupid, either.
Tanis might have followed the rest of her thought, but he kindly said nothing. He sat silently, holding the Bluebright and gazing at Jael in the darkness. At last he tucked the bottle back into the pack.
“Forget I asked,” he said rather remotely. “It was a bad idea.” He lay down, turning his back to Jael.
Jael flopped back on her bedroll, sighing. Now what should she do? What could she say? She couldn’t tell Tanis the real reason she’d been reluctant to use the Bluebright. What if, even with her soul whole, she still didn’t desire Tanis? What would he do if he learned that he’d stood by her all this time for nothing? But, gods, was she being fair to him? Didn’t he deserve to know—and didn’t she deserve to know, too?
But what if he learned she didn’t want him and decided to leave her? Much though Jael might admire Aunt Shadow, Jael herself was no such wily traveler; she might as well turn back for Allanmere and hope she could make it even that far alive. But at this rate, with Tanis getting so upset, maybe he’d just leave her anyway.
He’d promised to be patient, knowing Jael couldn’t give him any promises in return. He’d promised. But he could promise to stop the sun rising, too; that didn’t mean he could necessarily do it. Gods, what harm could there be in one night’s illusion, even if it was nothing more than that, even if it dissolved like dew in the sun’s light?
Jael hesitated, looking from the pack to Tanis’s back. In that moment of hesitation, Tanis sighed, sat up again, and crawled out of the tent without a word.
Jael sat up, too, listening. Maybe he’d just gone to use the privy pit. Maybe—
Tanis’s voice, low. The crackling of the fire. Cesanne’s voice, soft and rich. Then footsteps and laughter.
Then silence.
Jael turned over, pulling Tanis’s blankets and her own over her. All right, this wasn’t quite the same as a tumble with some whore in a brothel. But Tanis was sensible, practical—usually more practical than Jael herself. He knew better than to let a strange woman on the road become too important to him, even if she was tall and well favored and so very, very whole. This changed nothing.
Jael pulled her head farther under the covers and shivered. There was, of course, nothing to worry about. But fear was a bitter taste in her mouth, like tears.
Green. Green.
Jael’s spirits lifted as they moved through the forest, although this was not the Heartwood she knew so well. Many of the animal sounds were different, and different plants lined the edge of the trade road, different leaves arched over the wagons, but the warm, rich spring smell of damp earth and growing p
lants was
the same, and the filtered afternoon sunlight trickling through the
leaves made familiar emerald-stained patterns on the ground. Jael pulled the packs and saddle from her horse and rode beside the wagons, singing elven ditties for Karina’s entertainment.
Tanis had ridden ahead with Durgan and Cesanne to try to find a suitable campsite. He’d ridden with them all day. That fact, and the fact that he’d hardly said a word to Jael as they’d loaded their horses that morning, was all that marred Jael’s joy at being in the forest again—any forest at all.
Jael’s singing faltered as she thought of Tanis. Karina sighed.
“That was lovely,” she said. “Sing another.”
Jael grimaced, but obediently began “New Leaves.” She’d barely finished the first verse, however, when searing pain speared through her, choking off her voice. Jael reeled on her horse’s back, barely clinging to the mane to keep her seat. The piercing agony continued only a moment longer, gradually fading, but it was some time before Jael was once more aware of her surroundings. She gasped for breath, realizing that the caravan had come to a halt and that Karina was standing beside her, steadying Jael on her horse and peering at her with a concerned scowl.
“Are you well, youngling?” Karina asked worriedly. “You didn’t get a bellyache from my cheese, did you? Zanafar help me, I inspected every single cheese in this shipment myself. We don’t have a healer in the train, but if—”
Jael rested her forehead on the back of her hands, still gripping the horse’s mane tightly, and breathed in the comforting scent of the horse: dirt and hair and sweat.
“I’m all right,” she said. It was true; she was well enough now. “I’m sorry I frightened you. I take these fits sometimes.” She couldn’t tell Karina the true reason for her “fits”; most folk had never heard of beast-speaking, and such an ability would make Jael very memorable indeed. And Karina spoke very freely to anybody who would listen.
“Well, if you choose to take another,” Karina said, disgruntled, “best take it in the wagon, else you’ll split your skull.”
Dagger's Point (Shadow series) Page 10