by Shannah Jay
‘Oh, can’t I?’
‘No. Of course you can’t. Besides, I need to start retrieving my notes. If you can find some way to travel with them, I’ll come with you - as long as you don’t object to that, Karialla?’
More and more, they were treating her as if she were in charge. She tried sometimes to refer them to Deverith, but he seemed to be in league with them, and would just refer them to her. Now he turned his back on the three of them and strolled out of the room.
‘I don’t mind if you go with her,’ Karialla said. ‘Why should I? But we’ll not only have to look for a wagon, we’ll need to ask Peto’s advice about how you can best defend yourselves and the wagon while you’re on the road. Let’s get the wagon sorted out first, hmm? Without that, we can do nothing. We’ll send out word that we need one.’
The following morning, as soon as it was light, the two deleff moved purposefully out of the garden. Sarann saw them set off and dragged Niam with her after them, afraid her worst fears were about to be realised. They followed the two deleff along the street, but this time Risslin and Mazar didn’t make for the town field.
‘Oh, no!’ Sarann clutched the other woman’s arm. ‘They are leaving.’
‘That’s not the way out of town,’ Niam whispered.
The two deleff turned into the streets behind the inn, where the occasional new domain stood cheek by jowl with older warehouses and small workshops.
‘What’s happening?’ Sarann whispered, puzzled.
The two women followed quietly behind the huge animals, not even noticing the passers-by turning to stare at them.
And when the deleff led them to a warehouse, what they found made Sarann shriek for joy and sent her running back to the healers’ house.
A short time later, as Heth was setting out bread, fruit and soft nerid-milk cheese for breakfast, Sarann erupted through the door of the kitchen. ‘We found it!’ She grabbed Karialla’s arm and tugged impatiently. ‘Come and see!
Quick! We found ourselves a wagon. In the old artisans’ quarter.’
Karialla allowed Sarann to hustle her along the street. They found Niam standing inside the gates of a half-ruined
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warehouse facing Rojan, who looked as if he was threatening her. Behind her, in the warehouse itself, there was indeed a traders’ wagon - big square canopy furled to reveal the inside. The wood looked sound, but the wagon was totally empty.
‘This is my warehouse,’ Rojan was saying. ‘I’ve told you once to get out and I meant that. Now leave before I fetch some of the Elders and cry trespass upon you.’
Niam shook her head. ‘I’m not going till Karialla comes. She has to see this.’
All the colour and happiness went out of the day for Karialla as she entered the warehouse. Rojan again. Always it seemed to be he who stirred up trouble for them. And since no one had been able to prove who had warned the raiders, he was still free to harm them and their cause.
Sarann strode forward to stand beside Niam, and jerked her head towards Rojan. ‘What’s the matter with him?’
‘He rushed in here and pushed me away from the wagon, told me to get out and won’t even tell me why. He keeps saying it’s his wagon and it’s no one else’s business what he does with it.’
Rojan cast a look of triumph towards Karialla. ‘It is my wagon. And my warehouse. I have a perfect right to protect my property. And you people have neither reason nor right to be here.’
Sarann’s face was closed and expressionless, and you suddenly saw the strength behind her cheerful facade. ‘Your property? How can you own a trader’s wagon?’
He folded his arms. ‘I found it and brought it back here, kept it safe. So it is mine. Its former owners had no more need for it. They were dead.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘They were already dead when I found them, so they couldn’t tell me what had happened, but it was obviously the work of raiders. Some of the goods were missing, others tumbled all over the place. And there was no sign of their deleff. Not very loyal creatures, are they?’
‘Then the wagon isn’t yours,’ Sarann said slowly. ‘By law, it belongs to the traders’ relatives.’ She went across to study the wagon and the remains of its awning. ‘It comes from the north. They paint pictures on their awnings like that.’
Karialla moved forward to stand next to Sarann. ‘If you merely found the wagon, then you don’t own it, Rojan.’
He smiled triumphantly. ‘On the contrary. We passed a law in Tenebrak during the Discord Wars that if people were killed and had no relatives left, or the relatives couldn’t be found within a year, then the property they’d owned would belong to whoever retrieved it, as long as that person made an open declaration of possession and paid tithes on it to the Council of Elders. I did all that officially with this wagon. So it is mine. Quite - legally - mine.’
Karialla wondered suddenly how many other things Rojan had ‘retrieved’. And how he’d found them. There had to be some explanation for his affluent appearance. ‘Will you sell this wagon to us, then?’
‘No.’
She could only stare at him. ‘Why ever not? You can’t use it.’ Only deleff could draw wagons and she knew with utter certainty that no deleff would ever draw a wagon for this man.
His smile was malicious. ‘Because I want to keep it.’
Niam’s voice was just as puzzled as Karialla’s. ‘But you’re not a trader. That doesn’t make sense.’
‘I’ve got draught nerids. They’re pretty strong. I might try them with the wagon once I’m sure the roads are more peaceful.’
Sarann gave a scornful laugh. ‘Not nearly strong enough to pull a trader’s wagon.’
‘A team of nerids might do it.’
‘They wouldn’t fit against the harness rail.’
He shrugged. ‘I can change that, can’t I? And since it’s my wagon, it’s my choice of what to do with it. I can leave it here to rot, if I want to. I could even set fire to it, if I so choose.’ He was obviously relishing denying them the wagon.
‘Why are you behaving like this, Rojan?’ Karialla asked.
He folded his arms. ‘Because it’s my business. I’m protecting my property and as this is my warehouse, I’ll ask you all again to leave. Now.’
The three women looked at each other, then walked outside into the street. ‘Draught nerids can’t pull a wagon like that, believe me, they just can’t,’ Sarann said. They’re not built right, as well as not being strong enough. The harness is designed for deleff to walk into and out of at will, and the wagon itself isn’t balanced right for smaller animals to pull.’
‘It does seems illogical behaviour on Rojan’s part,’ Niam agreed.
Karialla stared at the warehouse. ‘He’s doing it to get back at me, I think. I suspect he wants to rule this town and sees me as a threat.’
‘You are a threat,’ said Niam.
The three women were very quiet as they walked back home.
‘It was a lovely wagon, too,’ Sarann mourned.
When they arrived at the house, they found Risslin and Mazar had returned to their usual haunt, in the back of the
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garden. But they weren’t lying quietly in the shade - today they were moving around, looking agitated. Deverith was out on a visit to an outlying farm and Karialla longed for him to return. Twice she nearly went to see Evril, as an Elder of the town, to protest against Rojan’s unfair attitude, but each time decided to confer with her husband first, for he was a mentor to her in more ways than healers’ lore.
As the morning passed, the deleff began trampling up and down, from their tree to the front of the house and back again. From time to time, they would raise their snouts to trumpet their annoyance, not making their usual soft calling sounds, but uttering high, piercing notes that hurt the ears.
A few times, Sarann went out to try to quieten them, but in vain. She came back to snatch a hurried meal, then went
outside again, worried that they’d simply walk away if she wasn’t with them.
‘Is there nothing we can do to help her?’ Karialla asked Deverith, when he returned.
‘Nothing that I can think of for the moment. It’d make matters worse if I went to see Rojan. And deleff behave as they wish.’
‘But we can’t just wait around,’ Karialla clenched her fists and beat at the air in frustration. ‘We can’t let Rojan spoil everything for Sarann. She needs that wagon and he doesn’t. It’s not as if we couldn’t pay for it.’
‘Sometimes there’s nothing one can do about a situation, lass, however fair or unfair it is. You’ll learn patience as you grow older.’
‘I’m not exactly young now.’
‘You seem young to me.’ When she left him to attend to a client with a badly cut hand, Deverith sighed and murmured, ‘Very young sometimes.’ His weakness after the fight with the raiders was still slowing him down and that was irking him greatly.
An hour later, Risslin trumpeted even more loudly, the noise going on and on till people held their ears. Then the deleff left the garden and led the way down the street, with Mazar stamping along behind her. If ever creatures looked angry and purposeful, these two did now.
Sarann rushed into the kitchen to yell that she was going after them and Karialla decided to follow as well.
The two deleff trampled along the street, still making their strange bugling calls. People got out of their way and a few began to follow, curious to see what was going on.
Risslin led the way into the market square, and stopped in the very centre. She raised her head, as if searching for something, then turned to face the One Circle building and began to trumpet again. The noise she and Mazar made was so loud that people clapped their hands to their ears.
‘What’s happening?’ Karialla had to mouth the words at Sarann, because no human voice would be heard above that cacophony.
‘Never seen deleff acting like this before,’ Sarann mouthed back.
The two huge creatures continued moving, stopping every few paces to trumpet loudly. Then they went right up to the One Circle building, heads shaking from side to side. The loud calls had stopped, but they were now grunting and whistling through their nostrils. It was plain to everyone they were angry at something connected to the meeting house.
Rojan came out and yelled something at Sarann, but his words were lost in the noise.
The deleff clearly wished to communicate with him, but as Risslin moved towards him, Rojan retreated hastily into his house and slammed the door shut on them.
With a sudden shriek of ear-tearing sound, the deleff rammed her shoulder into the pillar that supported that end of the large shady porch. Mazar moved to the next pillar and followed her example. Part of the porch sagged then fell slowly down.
The spectators moved prudently backwards.
Rojan opened the door and gesticulated furiously at Sarann, telling her to get the deleff away, then, when she spread her hands helplessly, he went inside again and slammed the door.
The rest of the porch, a flimsy structure meant only to shelter people from the heat of the sun or from sudden showers, crashed to the ground in ruins, then the two deleff turned again, trampling across the market square, with Sarann, Karialla, and a crowd of sightseers following at a safe distance.
Evril and Peto, who had come out of the inn to watch in amazement, joined Karialla, ‘What caused all that?’ Evril asked.
She shook her head. ‘We have no idea. They suddenly left our garden and came here. We followed to see what they were doing.’
‘You didn’t set them on to do this?’
‘Why should we?’
‘Why indeed. And you couldn’t have stopped them, could you?’ The innkeeper spoke half to himself and half to Karialla as they walked on. ‘I mean, no one can make deleff do anything they don’t want to.’
Peto grinned. ‘I enjoyed watching them chase Rojan. They seem to be angry with him. How can that be? Such a
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lovely fellow, our Rojan.’
‘I couldn’t even say that in joke.’ Evril said glumly.
‘The deleff wanted to communicate with him, but he refused,’ Karialla said. ‘Yet he must know they don’t hurt people.’
As the deleff turned into a side street and it became obvious where they were heading, Karialla turned to Sarann, a questioning look on her face.
The younger woman shook her head and shrugged.
‘Do you know where they’re going?’ demanded Evril.
Karialla explained what had happened the previous day.
Perrissa, who had joined them unnoticed, chimed in afterwards. ‘I remember that wagon. He found it quite early in the Discord Wars, when Farran was Faction Leader. He had to pay a fine to Farran as well as a tithe to the Council of Elders to keep it. We wondered then what he wanted with it.’
‘He says he’s going to use it for trading.’
‘But he hasn’t got any deleff.’
‘He says it’s his and he can let it rot if he wants.’ Sarann thumped one clenched fist against her thigh. ‘Curse the fellow! That wagon would have been ideal for us. And we’d have paid him for it. We didn’t ask him to make us a free gift of it.’
‘Hmm.’ Perrissa gave her a wicked little grin. ‘Do you think the deleff will knock his warehouse down, as they did the meeting house porch? I almost hope they do.’
Sarann stopped dead in her tracks for a moment. ‘I hope they don’t! That’d only cause more trouble.’
‘Good thing I’m here, then, to bear witness that you’ve got nothing to do with this.’
‘Nothing to do with what?’ Sarann was puzzled.
‘Unless I miss my guess, your two large friends are about to take the wagon by force.’ She jerked her head in the direction of the warehouse, just as the deleff disappeared one by one into the wide front entrance. She grasped Sarann’s arm and swung her round to face her. ‘As an Elder of this town, I’m asking you this question formally. Evril, come here and bear witness.’
Evril came to stand beside them. ‘As a witness I stand here.’
Perrissa was still speaking formally, ‘Sarann, did you have anything to do with these deleff going on a rampage?’
Sarann’s reply was indignant. ‘No, of course not. I’d never do anything like that.’
‘Did you send them to take the wagon?’
‘I’d never take anything that didn’t belong to me. I value my good name too highly.’
Rojan came into sight, striding through the crowd into the warehouse area. He slipped in via a side gate and came out on the inside of the fence. As Perrissa took a step towards him, he slammed the two big gates shut in her face, then disappeared back inside.
Everyone stared, not understanding what he was trying to do, for the deleff were still inside with him.
Suddenly there was a roar of anger and they heard Rojan shouting, but could make out none of the words, for the deleff were trumpeting again.
Then there was a loud crashing noise and the side wall of the warehouse burst outwards. As debris cascaded everywhere, the two deleff emerged from inside it, covered in dust and sneezing vigorously. They looked across at Sarann, as if expecting her to join them, then turned back into the warehouse and walked into the harness. Slowly, they began to draw the wagon out through the gaping hole. More pieces of the flimsy wooden walls creaked and broke off as the wagon passed through the gap.
Behind them, Rojan was gesticulating and shouting, his face red with fury. ‘That’s my wagon!’ he roared, rushing forward then stopping abruptly. He seemed afraid to get too near the deleff and when one of them raised its snout and bugled at him, he jumped hurriedly backwards again. Someone nearby tittered and he glared at the onlookers.
He pointed a finger at Sarann. ‘I accuse this woman of stealing my wagon!’
Everyone in the crowd fell silent, Sarann included.
‘And,’ he smiled nastily, ‘I in
sist she be brought before the Council of Elders at once to answer the charges. Don’t try to get away, you! People in Tenebrak pay for their crimes nowadays.’
She could only stare at him in shock.
CHAPTER 26
For a moment the people standing near the warehouse remained silent, for this was a serious accusation in a town where, before Discord, theft was a rare thing and people were used to leaving their property where they wished,
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knowing it would still be there when they returned.
Perrissa laid a hand on Sarann’s arm and shook her head to prevent the younger woman from speaking before turning to say to Rojan, ‘She hasn’t touched your wagon.’
‘They’re her deleff and everyone here can see they’re stealing my property, so it amounts to the same thing.’ He folded his arms across his chest and looked down his nose at them.
‘Go and stop them, then,’ called Evril. ‘I’ll make sure Sarann doesn’t get in your way.’
Rojan’s expression grew even more thunderous. ‘You know full well that no one can stop deleff from doing something once they take it into their heads. If I tried to interfere, they’d trample me underfoot, like they trampled the porch of the meeting house. And what’s more, you owe the One Circle the price of a new porch, Sarann, as well as owing me a new warehouse.’
‘I do not! And anyway, I couldn’t pay, even if I did. I don’t have any coin at all.’
He smiled. ‘You have those precious stones.’
‘They’re not mine! They’re Deverith and Karialla’s.’
His smile turned even nastier. ‘Well, they probably egged you on to do this. If we find there’s been collusion, they’ll be fined, too.’
‘Deverith and Karialla had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with this,’ she insisted, terrified that he’d find a way to steal her friends’ one source of money for building the temple. ‘And deleff don’t belong to anyone, not even traders.
How could they when they’re free beings, just like we are. And even if they weren’t, I’d never set them on to destroy anything. Why should I?’
‘Then if indeed you didn’t start this, I declare deleff to be dangerous uncontrollable creatures and from now on, they won’t be allowed into the town. Why, people might get hurt by them. I’ll call a meeting of the Council of Elders about it at once. We’re responsible for peace and order in this community, after all.’