by Deborah Hale
Sorsha and Newlyn, remarkable? Maura had never thought of them that way. They had been her neighbors and friends, beloved but familiar. Now, Rath’s comment made her appreciate them in a new way. And long with all her heart to see them again.
“Langbard helped them, too,” she said, “once Sorsha convinced Newlyn to trust him.”
She cast her memory back to that time, one of the few brief episodes of turmoil she had known in her quiet life. “There is a weed called freewort. It grows in the mountains. It helps a person resist the slag. Newlyn must have eaten some after he escaped the mines.”
Hearing her own words, Maura gave a little start. “I did not know that.”
“How could you not know?” Rath cast her a glance of puzzled amusement. “You just said it didn’t you?”
“Yes. But I did not know it before that. It must be one of the memories Langbard shared with me during his passing ritual.”
She braced herself for a scoffing reply from Rath, but none came. Could it be that a tiny seed of belief had begun to take root within him?
He was not daft enough to believe most of the things Maura had told him.
Rath stole a glance at her as they emerged from the forest and walked toward a small trading post very much like the one back in Southmark.
No, he did not believe. But more and more with each passing day, he wanted to. The trouble was, a man could not will himself to believe in things like that. Either he accepted them or he could not. No amount of proof could convince him if he doubted. No amount of scoffing could budge his faith if he was lucky enough to believe.
Rath made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Welcome to Westborne, Mistress Woodbury.”
Downhill in the distance, stone fences and hedgerows crisscrossed the gently rolling farmland. A narrow road wound its way north while a river meandered westward to empty into the Sea of Twilight.
Maura stared down at the Great West Plain. “It does not look so dangerous from here.”
Even though he knew better, Rath had to agree. From this distance, Westborne looked fertile and serene. Perhaps it had been that way once. Was it possible the slender young woman beside him had the power to make it that way again? Or was he straying into dangerous delusion?
When Rath recalled some of the improbable things he had seen her do over the past weeks, the notion of her being the Destined Queen did not seem quite so farfetched.
“Come.” He nodded toward the trading post. “Let us see what we can squeeze out of Yorg for some gently used camping supplies. Yorg is the brother of Croll, the fellow we bought all this from. The Waskin brothers trade back and forth these same few packs and pots, rope and bedrolls to travelers crossing the Waste. Yorg has a weakness for a pretty face. Show him a smile and he’ll likely give us a better price.”
Between that and what he had taken off the body of the dead Hanish soldier, they might be able to pay their way at least to Deadwood. Rath would figure out some way to get more by then.
A voice rang out. “Stev retla dar!”
Rath froze. He reached for Maura’s arm, but she had already stopped. Their Comtung lessons practice must be working. Or perhaps she guessed Yorg’s meaning from his tone.
From around the side of the small, tumbledown cabin of undressed timber, Yorg Waskin shuffled out with his bow drawn and aimed at Maura.
“Who be you and what be you wanting?” Yorg called, in Comtung.
“Travelers from Southmark,” Rath called back, “who took a more mannerly leave of your brother Croll, several days ago.” As he spoke, he subtly angled his body to deflect any arrow that might fly toward Maura.
“Is this the way you welcome customers?” He glanced around. “No wonder you are not doing very brisk business.”
“Oh, customers!” Yorg lowered his bow. “Your pardons, goodfolk! Customers are getting scarcer all the time. Fewer folks crossing the Waste. But I am plagued with cursed slaggies coming to steal. I will soon have to sleep with a bow under my pillow. Come in and show me what you have to trade.”
When he got a clearer view of Maura, the trader ran a hand over his sparse hair, while he greeted her with a wide smile that exposed a mouthful of broken, rotten and missing teeth.
“Pardon my rude welcome, Beauty.” Yorg’s eyes gleamed with leering eagerness that made Rath’s fist itch. “If I had got a fair look at you first, I would have been more friendly.”
Maura replied with a tight, guarded smile as she backed a step away from him.
“Very fine, indeed!” The trader’s gaze slid over her.
“She yours, friend?” Yorg asked Rath. “Or did you bring her in for sale?”
Rath wrapped his arm around Maura’s shoulder. “She is mine.”
His heart seemed to swell in his chest as he spoke the words. “And she is not for sale at any price.”
Yorg shrugged. “I cannot blame you. Pity, though. What a price she would fetch in the flesh market at Venard!”
“Speaking of prices...” Rath battled the urge to throttle the lecherous trader. “What will you give us for our gear?”
Fortunately for Yorg Waskin’s thick neck, a question about business diverted him from leering at Maura.
“Let us have a look at what you’ve got.” He beckoned them into the trading post.
The place did not appear to have seen much business of late. Dust lay over a pile of bedrolls and several coils of rope. Cobwebs clung to a shelf lined with pots and kettles.
Rath wrinkled his nose at the smell of the place. He did not want to think about the food Yorg Waskin might be peddling.
In Comtung, he bid Maura to empty her pack onto the long narrow table that was the cleanest thing in Yorg’s cabin.
“We will keep one of the packs,” he told the trader.
In fact, he was tempted to hang onto all their gear. But from what he recalled of Westborne, there were few good spots for camping. Most of those were already occupied by the kind of folk he did not want Maura to meet. Besides, they could use the coin Yorg gave them to pay their way north.
The trader swept a calculating eye over their supplies. “Five silvers for the lot,” he said at last. “Mind, I am being openhanded on account of your pretty lady.”
Five silvers? That would not get them far.
“If that is openhanded, I would hate to see you in a stingy mood.” Rath began stuffing supplies back into Maura’s pack. “We traded your brother a good horse and saddle for all this and our food.”
“I told you, business is bad.” Yorg shook his head. “Croll and me have to make what we can on the few there are. Say, six silvers, then, but I cannot go higher.”
“Sorry.” Rath stuffed the kettle into his pack. “If we cannot get twenty silvers, they are worth more for us to keep.”
“Twenty!” cried Yorg. “You jest! Are you sure you do not want to sell the lady?”
Maura shot Rath a skittish glance.
He shook his head, to reassure her and to set Yorg Waskin straight. “Quite sure.”
In his haste to refill his pack and take their leave, Rath shrugged his cloak back over his shoulder.
“Hold a moment!” cried Yorg, staring at Rath’s belt. “Where did you come by those?”
Rath glanced down. The three flaxen plumes he’d cut from the Hanish soldiers back in Prum hung from his belt. What folly had made him keep them? They were dangerous little trophies to be carting around Westborne for some Han to glimpse.
At least he had not revealed the copper wand that hung from the other side of his belt. That he meant to retain, for it had proven its usefulness. From now on, it had better stay hidden.
“I reckon it would be better for you not to know that.” Rath narrowed his eyes in a look he hoped would discourage any more questions.
He twitched his cloak back in place. “It might be better if you forget you saw anything.”
“Fear you not.” Yorg gave a broad wink. “No one will hear a word about it from me. But you had best think twice abou
t toting those much farther. Somebody might spy them and get the wrong idea.”
Yorg would never believe what had really happened. Looking back, Rath could scarcely believe it himself. “Do not fret about us. We can take care of ourselves.”
“Of that, I have no doubt.” Yorg rubbed his hands together. “But if you would like to rid yourselves of those dangerous trinkets and make a nice coin or two, they are worth a good deal more than that rubbish you carry for gear.”
“What would you want with such things?”
“Not me, friend. The zikary. They will pay for anything that makes them look more like the masters they fawn over.”
The notion appealed to Rath. Make some coin, and a good bit by the sound of it, selling plumes he’d stolen from the Han to those zikary scum.
But he feigned an appearance of barely roused interest. “I might want to get them off my hands for the right price.”
“Five silvers each!” cried the trader, forgetting to curb his eagerness.
Rath thought for a moment, then shook his head. “If you will give me that for them, I can surely get a better price in the first town we come to.”
“If the Han do not spot your bounty and carve you up first,” warned Yorg. “Seven each.”
“Twelve,” Rath countered.
“Twelve?” The trader began to sputter all the reasons that would ruin him.
Rath caught Maura’s eye and jerked his head toward the door. They shouldered their packs.
“Eight!” cried Yorg.
“Ten,” said Rath as he and Maura walked toward the door.
“Done!”
Stifling a smile of satisfaction, Rath stopped.
“Oh, very well.” He pulled the three long hanks of pale hair from this belt, each knotted at the end to hold them together. “I am sick of toting them, anyway.”
He held out his hand. “Let me see that silver, first.”
“You shall!” Yorg scurried off through a curtained doorway.
While the jingle of coins sounded from the room beyond, Maura fixed Rath with a look of mock-reproach. “There are more ways to steal than lifting purses, Rath Talward.”
“You mean Yorg?” Rath pointed toward the curtained door. “He will charge the zikary twice what he gives us. If they are eager to pay it, that cannot be stealing, surely? Or are you feeling sorry for those poor Han, going around with their pretty hair lopped off?”
“Hardly.” Maura plucked some bits of cobweb off the pile of pots and tucked it into her sash. “They were fortunate you did no worse to them.”
Under his breath, Rath muttered. “Oh, I wanted to.”
The curtain over the rear door fluttered as Yorg scurried back holding a little cloth pouch bulging with coins. He exchanged it for Rath’s merchandise with an air of mistrust on both sides.
Once they had made their bargain, Yorg scrutinized the three hanks of hair while Rath counted out the silvers to make certain he had received the promised sum.
“A pleasure striking a bargain with you, Yorg.” Rath tucked the coins into the pouch on his belt. Suddenly he felt far more hopeful about this last leg of their journey. “Any chance you might have a riding animal for sale?”
With a decent mount and coin left over to keep them in food and lodgings, they might make it to Everwood by Solsticetide with days to spare. Rath reminded himself, once again, that it did not matter when they reached Everwood, since the Waiting King would not be there.
Somehow, the need for haste continued to goad him.
Yorg shook his head. “You would not want it if I had.”
“Indeed? Why is that?”
“The Han watch the roads, friend. They don’t favor folks traveling as a rule. The ones as do, they keep a right close eye on.”
“I did not like the sound of that,” said Maura awhile later, as they trudged down the gentle slope away from the trading post. “How are we to get from here all the way to Everwood, with the Han watching travelers?”
“There must still be some folk moving from place to place.” Rath’s gaze roved restlessly, alert for the slightest hint of danger. “Food has to move from the countryside into the cities at the very least. Besides, I am used to making my way around without drawing much notice.”
When he was younger perhaps. Now, Maura could not imagine him easily blending into a crowd. It was not only his size and his rugged good looks, which appealed to her more with each passing day. That air of danger she had first sensed about him was as potent as ever, though she no longer feared it... at least not in the same way.
Something else made him stand out, too. A bearing of command she had first glimpsed back in Betchwood when he’d tried to rally his outlaw comrades.
“I still have some hundredflowers.” Maura tried to muster her optimism. “And I will keep an eye out for more, though I do not know if they grow on this side of the mountains. One thing we must do is get rid of that copper wand while we have the chance.”
She braced for another argument. “If the Han find that… thing on you, the two of us are as good as dead.”
Rath stopped in midstride. “By Bror, you are right!”
“I am?” Maura stopped, too. She did not doubt she was right, but it surprised her to hear Rath admit it.
“Indeed.” He reached around and hauled the copper wand from his belt.
Just looking at it cast a shadow over Maura’s spirit. She recalled the suffocating darkness that had enveloped her when she’d wielded it. Thank the Giver, Rath was finally getting rid of it. If she had her way, they would have tossed it into Raynor’s Rift.
Rath shrugged off his pack.
Perhaps he was trying to unhamper himself so he could hurl the wand a greater distance. Maura did not like the thought of someone stumbling upon it. She opened her mouth to suggest they dig a hole and bury the thing, instead.
But other words burst out when Rath unbuckled his pack and thrust the wand into it. “What are you doing?”
He glanced up. “Just what you suggested. Making sure the Han do not catch me with it. At least, not without a search.”
“Are you daft?” If she could have brought herself to touch the copper wand again, Maura would have wrestled it from him. “Have you not seen how dangerous that thing is?”
“I have felt how dangerous it is!” Rath’s jaw tightened and his hands worked with ferocious strength far beyond that required for closing up his pack. “I have felt what one can do in the hands of my enemies and I have seen how this one countered that attack. I would no more toss it away than I would throw down my blade before a fight.”
“Beware, Rath Talward. That blade has two sharp edges. Do not be surprised if the Xenoth turn it back against you.”
“I would rather chance that than go into combat unarmed.” He shouldered his pack. The stern, resolute look on his face declared the matter closed.
A tense, angry silence crackled between them for the next few hours, as they picked their way down the wooded foothills to the plain. The prospect of making their way through hundreds of miles of that wide, flat expanse gave Maura a feeling of perilous exposure. It galled her to be so dependent upon a stubborn man who scorned everything she believed in.
And yet... she could not deny they had managed to strike a balance between their many differences to forge a formidable partnership.
Daylight had begun to wane when they happened upon a small farm tucked in a shallow scrap of valley between two low ridges. A thin plume of smoke rose from the chimney of the small house. A few fowl scratched near the doorstep. From inside the house came the shrill wail of an infant. In a field nearby, a wiry man and a slender boy turned slats of mown hay with long wooden forks.
Though this place looked far poorer than the snug, modest prosperity of Hoghill Farm, the sight of it provoked a soft ache of longing in Maura. In another few weeks, Newlyn and Sorsha would be making hay. Where would she be by then?
The more she had seen on her journey, the stronger became her desire to
summon the Waiting King, and the greater her realization of the vast challenge that lay before them. Would he even recognize the kingdom he had left so long ago?
“Hail, friends!” Rath called in Comtung. He stopped and held his empty hands out in front of him to demonstrate that he was unarmed.
Maura followed his lead.
The man in the field raised his hayfork in a threatening stance. He spoke to the boy, who scurried to the edge of the field and returned a moment later with a hand sickle. The man called out a wary challenge.
Rath replied with calming reassurance—something about them meaning no harm.
As the two men continued to talk back and forth in Comtung, the farmer appeared to be growing less guarded with every exchange. Rath had a way of winning people’s trust, when he wanted to. After all they had been through together, Maura had to admit, such trust was far better deserved than she had once thought.
While Rath and the farmer spoke, the boy stared at the strangers with undisguised curiosity. Maura met his gaze and smiled at him. After a moment’s hesitation, he smiled back—a wan, pinched smile that looked as though it did not get much use. A moment later, a woman emerged from the house with a fretful baby in her arms, while a young girl clung to her skirts. When Maura smiled at them, the woman’s worried frown only deepened, and the little girl hid behind her mother.
“Rath?” Maura interrupted him. “Can you ask the woman what ails the child? Perhaps I can help.”
The woman started at her words. “You speak Embrian, still?”
Maura nodded. “It is almost the only thing I can speak.”
She edged slowly toward the woman and her children, ready to stop if bidden. Behind her, she heard Rath and the farmer lapse into Embrian as well. Something about this hay crop and a journey north.
“We come from the far side of the mountains,” she told the woman. “We are only passing through on our journey. We mean you no harm. If the little one is ill, I know some healing.”
“You do?” The woman brushed back a few lank strands of hair that had fallen over her brow. “There have been no healers in these parts since Auntie Roon passed over. The Han say the strong will thrive and...”