“Not a thing,” replied Therbin, his fairer, smaller companion, a skinny, pug-nosed man of neater habits. He glanced over his shoulder at the beaten-earth road behind them. “Are they still following us?”
Olgrun held out his hand. A bee flitted out of the bright sky and lit upon it. Olgrun twitched his head in what looked like a series of nervous tics. The bee walked over his palm, its bottom twitching back and forth in reply. He nodded, and the insect flew off.
“Not a one. They’ve all dropped back toward the village.”
“Well, thank the Maker,” Therbin said, with a sigh. “I didn’t think they would let us leave.”
“How can they hold us? We belong to the road. Everyone in Rede knows that.”
“There are some who would break the king’s covenant,” Therbin said.
“Are your fingers healed yet?” Olgrun asked solicitously.
“They will be. Never again will I agree to spin the whole of a flax harvest, no matter how close to financial ruin a town falls! Can you spare a spoonful of honey for them?”
“All you want!” The honeywalker stopped under the nearest tree and swung his heavy rucksack around to set it upon the ground.
Magic didn’t grow common in Rede. A wizard or two might turn up every generation, but the average man or woman could only dream of the gift. A bit more common were the in-between talents, those who could do a spell or charm a beast, but none of the great workings. To Olgrun, that was well enough. He made a good living traveling from place to place charming bees and their kin, according to the wishes of those who lived in the twenty towns and countless villages and hamlets of the kingdom. Ordinarily, inbetweens went solitary. He had always counted it lucky the day that he and Therbin had chanced upon the same town on the same day. You could hear the bards sing songs about true friendships as if they were as mythical as fairies and sea serpents, but he and Therbin had struck up the real thing. They had known it from the moment they started talking over a beer at the inn, when they laughed at the same jokes, and started singing the same song in the same verse—and gotten the same words wrong, or so the bard in the corner said. The two of them ended up sitting up by the fire all night, telling each other their life stories. In the morning, they set out side by side. Olgrun and Therbin swore that while they plied the road, sharing their talent with the folks of Rede, they would never be parted.
It used to be a lonely way, but with Therbin, he was never lonely anymore. King Hadrun could offer him wealth and position, and a wizard’s tower with a pension, but he’d trade it all for another hour on the road with his friend at his side. Oh, neither of them was perfect, naturally not. Therbin came from a good family, and he was a fidgety sort of person about his things. His talent was spinning and weaving any thread, no matter how small or how uncooperative, and make it do amazing things. He couldn’t ever stand for things to be in a muddle. It worried him, until he could straighten it all out. Olgrun was a brewer’s fourth son. He learned the speech of bees before he could talk human talk. His mother’s kitchen garden was the talk of the village, and the hops that went into his father’s brew were larger, sweeter, and more plentiful than any ever seen. He could make possets and potions from honey, knowing what they were good for as surely as any hedgewife or doctor. Sure enough, he had to go out from his home and give other people access to his talent, though he made sure to swing around home when the plants were in bloom. He didn’t understand the fuss about orderliness. His clothes and his hair were as he found them in the morning. If they were clean, that was all he cared about. He could always jolly Therbin out of his sour moods with a joke. They had the same ribald sense of humor.
“What lies along this road?” Therbin asked, once his aching fingers were daubed with honey and wrapped in fine bandages he had woven himself from spider silk.
“We’re about a day from Scoter,” Olgrun said. “Nice enough place.”
“Scoter! The tanner there promised me a pouch, green with my initials on it,” Therbin said, gleefully. “It’s been six months. He ought to have finished it by now.”
“And I want to see if Shelline is still serving beer at the Wheatsheaf,” Olgrun said, with a wink.
“It’s her beer you’re interested in, is it?” Therbin asked, clapping his friend on the shoulder. Olgrun laughed.
“Well, to start with! Did I ever tell you about the first time I ever tried to brew bitter ale by meself?”
The story carried them a good long way down the road, and when it was finished, Therbin had another tale, just as involved, that got them to the top of the high hill that overlooked the dark green expanse of the Fivefold Forest. Beyond it they saw smoke curling out of the chimneys of Scoter.
“Hurry up!” Olgrun said, nudging Therbin in the ribs. “We’ve got a warm welcome waiting down there.”
SMACK!
The barmaid’s hand left a clear red imprint on Olgrun’s cheek. Shelline stalked away, leaving the big man clutching his face and wearing an expression of bemusement.
“That was warm, all right. Wasn’t there supposed to be some tickle with that slap?” Therbin asked, wryly. “In my experience they’re hand in hand.”
“I don’t get it,” Olgrun said. He looked at the coins in his other palm. “And she charged us double for the beer on top o’t.”
“Drink up, then,” Therbin said, mildly. “We’ll get my pouch.”
The epidemic of bad temper seemed to have spread to the tanner as well. They visited his workshop on the southern edge of the village square.
“Deerhide pouch!” the man sneered. He had thin lips and a long nose, suited to sneering. “With initials, no less! You’d have to do twice as much weavin’ to be worthy of any of my work. My three-year-old could do better than the gap-threaded fishnetting you left me.”
Therbin was stung. “That’s not what you said before.”
The man’s face went red and he sprang to his feet. “Well, you’re hearin’ it now! Clear off out of my shop before I get the constable!”
“Funny, people are so touchy,” Olgrun said, as the door slammed behind them, leaving them standing in the sunny town square. He put a friendly hand on Therbin’s shoulder. The spinner flinched a little.
“There’s bad magic here. I can see it. But what caused it? Did someone passing through lay a curse on this place? And why?” Therbin asked, looking around. Women dragging unwilling children through the cobblestoned streets sneered at the carters who shouted at them for blocking their way. Dogs snarled at one another. “You never saw such innocent, decent folks in your life. Now look at them. No one has a civil word for one another, or the least amount of patience.”
“Wait,” Olgrun said, tapping Therbin in the chest with the back of his knuckles. He leaned close and spoke in an undertone. “Do you see the bees?”
“Bees?” the spinner echoed, looking puzzled. “Bees are your department, my friend, not mine. What are they doing?”
“It is what they are not doing that’s interesting. See them veer around them purple flowers?”
Therbin squinted. The center of the square was dominated by a handsome green filled with sheep cropping the grass. At the corners were dense, triangular gardens overflowing with flowers of every kind. With difficulty, he picked out the small striped dots of Olgrun’s particular favorite insect. Indeed, they were not landing on the purple flowers.
“What about it?” he asked. “Perhaps they’re not the right bees to harvest those flowers.”
Olgrun shot him a look of exasperation. “Those bees don’t miss a single flower in their territory. The taste of their honey varies everywhere in the country because they just ain’t too fussy.”
“Out of my way!” An angry voice interrupted them. They looked over their shoulders at a stripling, no more than fifteen, driving a herd of goats. “You have no right to be here!”
“All right, all right,” Therbin said, soothingly. “Fine goats you have there, lad.”
The boy’s face went red with fury. �
�Don’t you call me lad! I ain’t your lad!” He swung the crook in his hand. Olgrun intercepted it with one meaty hand.
“Easy now, we’re moving. Go about your ways.”
“Here, mind your own business!” a butcher said, charging out of his shop at them. “Leave him be!”
“You be quiet! Why are you interfering with strangers?” a stout woman asked shrilly, challenging the butcher.
“Women like you should be at home cooking and raising the children!” a prosperous merchant said, standing so he towered over the angry woman.
“What’s it to you where I am any hour?”
“Let’s let them work this out for themselves,” Therbin whispered.
“Aye. I want to get a closer look at them flowers,” Olgrun said.
Back to back, they edged toward the greensward. Townsfolk gathered toward the argument, paying little attention to the pair of strangers sidling cautiously toward the green.
Therbin leaned over the flowerbed. “They all look the same to me. I mean, they are all different kinds of plants, but they look ordinary.”
“Aye,” Olgrun said, “but see how many of the purple ones are there? And if the bees ain’t pollinating them, they’re spreading someway on their own.”
Therbin leaned over to give a half-blown blossom a sniff. As he did, the flower opened up. A puff of yellow powder issued from its throat. Therbin got a noseful of it and stood up in a hurry.
“Ha-choo!”
“Well, there’s your answer,” Olgrun said, with a grin. “It’s curious people like you who spread them around.”
“You think that’s funny?” Therbin said. His thin face went red.
“A bit.”
“You try it, and see how amusing it is!” The spinner plucked a handful of stems and shoved the flowers in Olgrun’s face. The honeywalker recoiled, but not quickly enough. At least one of the blossoms opened and discharged its cloud of pollen in his face.
“Wha-cha!” He swiped his nose with the back of his hand. He couldn’t believe it! His best friend had humiliated him, right in front of all them strangers! Why, the skinny little fool! “What did you do that for?”
“Think you’re so smart, knowing all about bees,” Therbin growled. “If you had had a real education you might have learned that physical humor is considered low.”
“Low! I would have supposed that someone with your high and mighty position wouldn’t know nothing about theater and comedians, hey? But maybe your father wasn’t no more than a juggler, and your mam danced in circuses!”
Therbin’s face went from red to white. “How dare you insult my parents! You don’t know a thing about quality, you ruffian!”
Ogrun felt his face flush. He clenched his fists. “Ruffian! The king recognized me as a talent years before you. He employs no ruffians. Maybe you should think again about who you ply the roads with, then!”
“Maybe I ought to,” Therbin said. “I certainly know better than to associate with the likes of you.”
He turned his back on Olgrun and shouldered his way through the yelling crowd.
Olgrun watched him go, feeling bereft. His words surely hadn’t come out of his mouth the way he had thought them, but he couldn’t help himself. And Therbin just misunderstood them. It was wrong. He sat down on the ground next to the flowerbed to think. The flower’s curse had affected him and his best friend just as it had the townsfolk. Olgrun had learned a lot from his bees over the years. Sometimes he found them wiser than people. One thing they knew was what the plant poisons, the honey will cure. Bees supped from bad flowers, then they raced back to the hives and ate of their sweet nectar to make themselves better. Apothecaries learned this skill, too. These people here in Scoter needed a cure worse than any folk he had ever come across.
He studied the bees. Some of them must have tried the pollen so as to know to tell their pals not to take anymore. That pollen would have made it back to some hive, somewhere.
“Let’s see, where is it?”
Olgrun closed his eyes and felt out with all his senses. Since he was a boy, he could find any hive, no matter how small or remote. A hundred bees’ nests were around him, within a few hours’ walk. Only one of them felt wrong, uncomfortable with itself. He edged around the crowd, the argument now breaking up a bit, and followed his nose north out of town.
Scanning over the fields and meadows that flanked the roads, he knew right away he was on the track. The purple flowers were spreading like the plague they were. Once a living creature spread the pollen, the flowers seemed to pop seeds as fast as frogs spawned. Where they fell, they sprouted. By the time he passed, the newly sprouted seedlings had two leaves, then four. He broke into a run. The plague must be ended!
In the midst of a field humming with bees, there was one big, old, dead tree that had no activity around it at all. Olgrun swung himself up on the only branch within a man’s height of the ground. Hugging the rough bark, he scrambled upward until he came to the source of the uncomfortable feeling. He pulled away dead leaves and branches that cluttered the crutch of the tree and realized he was looking down into a pool of gloom. The comb was dark in color, and all the bees left in the hive were dead. Olgrun turned over the small bodies, feeling sorrowful, then worried. What was bad for bees was eventually bad for man. Olgrun realized that the longer the flowers spread through Scoter, the more they would poison the people and animals. Pretty soon they would die. Passersby might pick the pretty flowers and take them along to their next destination, not knowing they were carrying a plague—a soft, sweet-smelling, harmless-looking plague, but a plague none the less. The purple flowers had to be wiped out, but first he must cure the victims.
Honey flowed toward him at his command. Instead of a golden thread snaking in between the ridges of rough bark, it was a dark, sluggish throb like a silted river. He held out a clean wineskin, and ordered the sticky, sweet mess into the spout.
“Better test it,” he said sternly to himself. He tipped up the wineskin and gulped down a mouthful. Instead of the heady sweetness of healthy honey, this tasted bitter and rotten. Still, the moment he had swallowed it, he felt the anger leave him. The flowers didn’t know any better. They were just trying to propagate themselves, same as any natural creature. Better get some of it into the townsfolk, and especially Therbin.
Therbin came to a halt in a dead-end passage and looked behind him. “Just like the big oaf to abandon me,” he said, aloud. His voice echoed off the closed windows and doors around him. “Let me go off by myself, will you?”
He retraced his steps to the village square, but saw no sign of Olgrun. The few townsfolk who remained denied having seen the honeywalker, let alone spoken to him. Therbin felt sour, wishing his friend had left a note or a message before haring off like a hunting dog. “When there’s a problem to be solved, he’s off into the wilderness.”
Ah, but that wasn’t fair. He had been the one to march off first, and he hadn’t told him where he was going. Olgrun had always been there for him. The big man must have an idea.
Therbin didn’t like feeling peevish. He prided himself on having an even nature, always ready to think the best of people. Olgrun was his best friend. The bonds that tied them were not to be broken by a fit of temper on either of their parts. The tanner was a good fellow, too, but something had turned him into a grouch. It had to be the pollen. The moment it had hit Therbin in the face, he had felt changed.
And why shouldn’t he feel as he felt? he asked himself indignantly.
Because it isn’t natural, he replied to himself. And I would bet that there is worse to come.
The best thing to do was to get rid of it. If people were no longer breathing the poison in, they might get over their grouchiness. Then there would be time to figure out a long-term solution to the overabundance of flowers. He knew just the thing to collect it all. Now, where could he find some spiderwebs?
The smell of leather and manure drew him toward the widest street leading off the square. The local sta
ble was the best place, where there were no tidy housewives to sweep them down.
“Hello?” he called through the dark archway. He peered into the dusty, cool darkness. A couple of horses whinnied in reply. “Anyone there?”
“Shut up, you!” a voice bellowed.
“Me, shut up? You hold your tongue! Who thinks he is king, eh?”
The unmistakable sounds of a scuffle drew Therbin to the far end, where two youths of twenty or so rolled on the floor, kicking and punching one another. The fight, or perhaps the pollen, was making the horses uneasy. They danced from side to side in their stalls.
Therbin ducked a backward kick from a big bay horse to get to a tremendous web that stretched halfway across the back wall of the stall. The black arachnid at the center ran for the edge as he started undoing the fine net.
“Sorry, ladies,” he said to the spiders, as he began to wind the nearly invisible threads around his left hand. “You can spin more. I need this now.” He jumped over the wooden side barricade, cursing the splinters that stuck in his palm. The pale gray female in the next stall shied away from him. He ignored her as he plucked down the webs from her walls as well. Soon he had a thick, white ring around his wrist.
From his pack he drew a skein of the lightest, thinnest thread he had ever made, no more than two strands of linen thick, but strong and true. Working as quickly as he could, he wove a gossamer net, big enough to catch a sea-serpent, but fine enough for much more elusive prey. With his magical skill, he made two tiny balls of thread stretch for yards and yards.
The wind was blowing from west to east. Therbin hurried to the east side of town, and flipped open the net. It spread out for hundreds of feet and filled with wind like a sail. Immediately, it started to take on a yellowish tint as flying pollen stuck to its weave. He guided it up the street, pulling it away from walls and eaves as it tried to adhere. A man walking with a dog headed straight for it.
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