“No. Should they?” she shot back.
“There are some who would have heard them spoken before, that is all.”
“I suppose there are some who have heard of most anyone as loud and quarrelsome as you two are.”
Quentin rankled at the girl’s sharp tongue. “You have not told us your name, though we have given ours,” he said crossly.
“I give my name to whom I choose. And I choose to be known only by my friends.” She shook her limp, wet hair and turned her face away.
“If you knew who it was that spoke to you . . . ,” Quentin began hotly. His temper was rising at the haughty spirit of this obstinate young woman.
“If you knew who it was you mistreated . . .” She turned on Quentin again and, quick as a cat, leaped at him with claws extended.
Toli caught her by the arms once more, saying, “Peace! What Quentin is trying to tell you, my lady, is that we are sworn to protect all subjects of the realm. We are at your service.” He spoke softly and released her when she grew quieter.
“Well, you need have no care for me,” she returned in a more subdued tone. “I am not one of your king’s subjects.”
“Not of Mensandor? Ah, now we are getting somewhere,” Quentin remarked sourly.
The girl looked up at each of them from beneath dark lashes, as if sizing them up. “Very well, I will trust you—but only because Toli has a mannered tongue.” She glanced darkly at Quentin. “I am Esme. My home is Elsendor.”
“Then you are very far from home. What brings you to Mensandor and to this modest village yonder?”
“The village was not my destination, I assure you, sir. But my tale is not for your ears, worry me though you will.”
“And who might best hear your tale if not king’s men?” Quentin asked.
“The king himself!” She folded her arms over her chest and glared at them both.
“Then allow me to offer you the king’s protection until you shall obtain audience with him,” said Toli, bowing low. Esme smiled triumphantly and nodded. Quentin rolled his eyes heavenward.
“I accept your protection; it seems a woman needs it in this rough land.” She straightened her clothes and looked at them squarely. “Take me at once to the king, I charge you.”
“Toli is right to offer you the king’s protection, and we will ride to the king—but not yet. We have a charge placed upon us by the king himself and cannot return until it is accomplished.”
The young lady frowned and seemed about to lash out angrily once more, but again Toli interceded. “Quentin speaks the truth; were it not for the urgency of our errand, we would gladly conduct you directly to the castle itself. We return there ourselves as soon as we can.”
“Then I will go myself. With or without your protection, my mission must not wait.”
“How will you go? In your boat? That would take far longer than you might think. The current of the Herwydd is strong; going against it is not easily done, and Askelon is far. Or perhaps you would walk all the way?”
“Or you could give me your horse,” she answered.
“Quentin is suggesting prudence, my lady. Our errand is perhaps of an end not many days hence. We have good horses that can reach Askelon swiftly at need. Come with us”—he hesitated—“for your protection and so you may reach the king the sooner.”
The fiery young lady stared from one to the other of them before she made up her mind. “Very well, I will go with you. There seems no better choice.”With that she turned and began walking back toward the abandoned village of Persch.
Toli and Quentin followed behind, and upon reaching the village square, Esme turned to them and announced, “I will attend directly.” She then disappeared into one of the dwellings.
“I will wait here for our proud companion,” announced Quentin. “Fetch the horses, and we’ll leave as soon as she returns.”
Toli brought the horses and set himself to redistributing small items of their traveling effects.
“What are you doing?” asked Quentin, looking on.
“I assumed that you would not care to have the lady share your mount, so I am making ready mine.”
“I will take responsibility; it is my place.”
“How so? It was my tongue which placed this burden upon your back. Therefore, I will help bear it.”
“If it pleases you, Toli, you shall carry her in your arms all the way. Have it as you will.”
“I am ready,” called a voice behind them. They turned to see a very different young woman from the one they had fished from the sea. She had gathered back her hair and bound it in a leather thong. She wore riding trousers, but of a finer cut and fit than a man’s, and embroidered with intricate designs along the seams. She wore a short cloak thrown over one shoulder; it, too, was carefully embroidered and matched her trousers. The cloak was a deep blue, as was the soft tunic under it. A thin belt of new leather held a long dagger at her waist. Soft leather boots covered her feet and reached almost to her knees.
A more remarkable transformation could hardly have been anticipated. Toli and Quentin blinked in wonder. Esme looked like a warrior princess, but such things were unheard of in Mensandor.
“Which horse will I have?” she demanded.
“Toli has agreed to share his with you.”
Without another word they climbed into their saddles. Toli reached a hand down and drew the lady up to sit behind him on Riv’s broad back. They soon left the silent village behind.
As the declining sun lengthened their shadows upon the green hills, they stopped for the night in a stand of thin aspens near a trickling brook. Quentin and Toli routinely began making camp, while Esme planted herself on a grassy knoll and drew her knees up to wait. Only when Toli had meat on the spit and broth bubbling in the shallow pot did she approach.
“We will eat better tomorrow, perhaps,” remarked Quentin. “We did not have the opportunity to gather provisions as we would have liked.” He inclined his head in the direction of Persch.
“It appears a banquet to me,” said Esme, her eyes glowing as she watched Toli turn the spits. “I have not eaten in two days.”
The confession shamed Quentin, who colored deeply. “I . . . I must apologize for my behavior back there, my lady. It was not right of me to judge you so.”
“And I have misjudged you,” she admitted. “But perhaps you will grant me my error. A woman must sometimes discourage untoward advances by strange men. I thought you would take advantage of me.”
“I would pity the man who tried.”
“No harm will come to you while you remain with us, my lady,” said Toli earnestly.
“I thank you, good sir.” When their eyes met, Toli looked away quickly and finished preparing the meal.
When it was ready, they sat down together. Toli handed a plate of meat around and filled their bowls with broth. He broke some crusts of hard bread that they each dipped into the broth to soften it for chewing. Esme ate with a most unladylike appetite that Quentin and Toli made certain not to notice.
“You are most kind not to scold my ill manners. The food does so warm an empty stomach.”
“How could we scold what we ourselves indulge?” asked Quentin. “Have more; you are welcome.”
“I have eaten quite enough, thank you. Toli, your way with simple fare is praiseworthy. I would care to see what you could do with more exotic victuals.”
Toli said nothing, but merely smiled mysteriously.
“Would you now tell us what you were doing in the village alone?” Quentin asked after some time.
Esme looked into her bowl of broth as if the answer might be read there. She cocked her head to one side and said, “That I was alone was no fault of my own. I went there, as you would surmise, to obtain the clothes you first saw me wearing. I found the village empty as you did; so I helped myself to the garments.”
“You wished to disguise yourself—why?”
“I have already told you—a woman cannot be too careful when tra
veling alone. It was a poor disguise, I know. But I thought it might serve until I could discover another or until”—she smiled broadly—“disguises were no longer necessary.”
“Do you know so little of Mensandor, then, that you think every man a rogue?”
“It is not Mensandor’s subjects that I fear, though I did not propose to put them to the test. But tell me of your errand. Something tells me that we may be of closer purpose than seems first apparent.”
“We go to see comrades long overdue,” offered Toli. “They were sent to—”
“To derive the truth from certain rumors now growing in the land,” said Quentin tactfully.
Esme’s brow became suddenly troubled. “They rode to the south, your friends?”
“Yes; south along the coast. Why?”
“Good sirs, I greatly fear for your friends.” Her voice held a note of sharp concern. “I do not wonder that they are long overdue. It is possible they will not return at all.”
Quentin leaned forward in keen attention. Toli laid aside the utensils as he watched Esme carefully. “What do you know about this?” asked Quentin calmly enough, but there was no mistaking his anxiety.
“Only this . . .” Esme saw the effect her words had had on them and chose her way carefully. “It was between Dorn and Persch that I lost my companions two days ago.”
12
There you are,” said Quentin softly as he moved quietly up to stand at Toli’s shoulder. “I should have known you would be stargazing.”
“I could not sleep, Kenta. The star is growing.” The light of the late-night sky gleamed on the Jher’s upturned face.
“It looks the same to me,” Quentin said without conviction. “It will be dawn soon; perhaps we should make ready to leave. Our new companion’s words have troubled me; it would ease my mind to be on our way. I would not like to think that Theido and Ronsard were trapped because we didn’t warn them and prevent it.”
“Yes, the star grows each night, and evil increases,” replied Toli. He turned and looked at Quentin, his large, dark eyes filled with a light Quentin had rarely seen. “I will make ready the horses and wake the lady. I fear the day is already far spent.”
He slipped away noiselessly to leave Quentin pondering his words and peering up at the star glowing brightly in the east. Quentin heard a soft tread behind him, light as a shadow, and Esme came to stand beside him.
“So you know about the star too,” she said.
“We have been watching it, yes—though what it betokens is not certain.”
“There is no need to spare me your worst suspicions. Our priests are well acquainted with heavenly signs and the reading of portents. I know what they say about the Preying Star. But I am not afraid.”
“Then you are braver than I, my lady. For I must admit that I sometimes feel very much afraid when I look upon it.”
Toli brought the horses, and the three mounted up. They left the shelter of the aspen grove, slipped out into the waning night, and moved across the starlit hills. Behind them rose the cragged walls of the Fiskills and the narrow trail beside the sea. They had come through the pinched corridor late in the afternoon and had pushed up into the sloping foothills on the other side to find their camp for the night.
Although extremely curious about his new charge, Quentin had not pressed her for details of her story. She did not seem inclined to talk about the loss of her companions, nor about the mission that took her to King Eskevar. But her fearful thoughts on the safety of Theido and Ronsard had unsettled him, for he had been feeling a vague uneasiness regarding them himself. She had put words to his doubt and had made it real and urgent.
“They must have gone south toward Halidom,” Quentin had reasoned as they sat around the campfire after their supper. “Otherwise, Esme and her party would have met them on the road between Dorn and Persch.”
“But why would they go so far?” Toli had asked.
Quentin had shrugged. “I will ask them that when next we meet. Perhaps they saw something which took them there. These empty villages are mystery enough for me.”
They had lapsed into silence and uneasy rest. Quentin’s restive mind gnawed at his unanswered questions like a hound with a twice-picked shank. He felt better now that they were moving again.
He listened to the cadence of their passing in the deepest part of the night. Soon the horizon would begin to lighten in the east as the sun rolled back the darkness for another day. But now they rode as night’s children, slipping unseen through the sleeping world.
Quentin struck out once more along the coastal road, a wide, rock-strewn path that linked the seaside villages. If Ronsard and his knights were to be found, it would likely be along this road, although there were other, more infrequently traveled routes to the north through the brown Wilderlands. These were tracks that the traders used to traverse the vast and empty Suthlands and bring them to the more populated regions of the north.
The empty villages—first Persch, then Yallo and Biskan—had greatly troubled him; though he sought time and again for a logical explanation, none was forthcoming. He wondered if Theido and Ronsard had discovered them as well. They must have if they had passed through, or the towns might have been abandoned after the knights had ridden on. There was no telling how long ago they had traveled the road, where they might have stayed, or who they might have seen.
Quentin hoped, though reason told him six armed knights were a match for anything, that they had not encountered whatever it was that had overtaken Esme’s party.
They rode for an hour or more, following the rising and falling trail as it climbed and descended the gently undulating hills along the coast. At each crest they could see the great sea, lying dark and still in the distance. Gerfallon was not troubled by the mere vexations of mortal men; he slept in his deep bed, and his creatures with him. Quentin stopped at the crest of the next hill and waited until Toli, with Esme sitting behind, hands on thighs, had drawn up beside him. Blazer jigged sideways, impatient with the delay.
“What do you think it could be?” asked Quentin, nodding in the direction of the northern hills. A faint, leaden smudge could barely be seen glowing in the sky far away. “If I did not know better, I would say that the sun was coming up in the north today. A false sun that would be.”
“I have seen such false sunrises, and you may suspect some misfortune is at hand.”
“What is it?” asked Esme.
“Fire,” said Toli.
“Are you certain? It does not look like fire to me,” said Quentin, leaning forward in his saddle for a better look. “Why, it would take a pile of wood the size of a—”
“Village.” Toli supplied the missing word.
“You do not think . . . ,” cried Quentin with growing alarm. “Illem lies in that direction!”
“Yes, a league to the north, I would say.”
“Then we waste time talking,” said Quentin as he turned his horse toward the glow in the sky. “We may be of some help. Let us go!”
“Hold tight, my lady,” said Toli as he snapped the reins. Riv leaped from the track and bounded after Quentin’s gliding shape.
As the horses galloped at full speed, the glow on the horizon brightened and spread. At half a league it covered the far hills and deepened with an ugly, reddish hue. The hanging gloom of smoke could be discerned against the darker curtain of night.
In the east the sky had grown pearly with the coming of the dawn, making the glow ahead seem ever more ominous and unnatural.
Quentin reined to a halt at the bottom of a deep ravine. In the spring the thaw from the Fiskills filled the dry bed with icy water. Now it was filled with weeds and brush, the waters having long since emptied into the sea.
“I think Illem lies just beyond the ridge,” said Quentin. The ravine curved its way through a long trough of a valley bounded on three sides by low ridges. From the bottom of the dry streambed, the sky to the north shone as rust, and the smoke rolled away on the landward wind.
“The fire rages,” said Toli. “I advise caution until we discover what caused it—or who.”
“I agree,” said Esme. “We are only three against—who knows how many.”
Quentin looked at her with surprise. She evidently counted herself as one of the protectors rather than the one protected. “Why must there be an enemy? Surely you don’t think . . .” Quentin stopped; he knew Toli’s uncanny instinct well enough to know that even his slightest whims should be taken seriously. He had seen them proven true too often to dismiss them lightly. “Very well, we will continue along the valley until we draw even with the town. Then we can climb out below it in the shelter of the ridge.”
They started off again, but at a more measured gait. Quentin led the way, scanning the tops of the hills for any signs of unusual activity. They had proceeded only a little way when the course wound around a sharp bend. “Wait!” said Toli in a sharp whisper. “Listen!”
Just around the bend could be heard an odd muffled sound, as if a large animal were rooting in the soft soil of the dry streambed. It shuffled along, breathing heavily, with an airy, bristling sigh. Blazer and Riv lifted their ears at the sound.
“What can it be?” wondered Esme, her whisper almost lost in the quickly growing intensity of the sound.
“Whatever it is, it is coming this way,” said Quentin. “Over here!” He spurred Blazer toward the near bank to escape the path of the oncoming beast.
But he was too late. As Blazer jumped forward, the thing came churning around the bend. Quentin had a glimpse of a vast, rippling body— shapeless and ill defined. The creature saw him too, and let out a yelp that seemed to come from a dozen throats at once. It was then that Quentin knew what it was.
“Hold!” shouted Quentin, laying the reins hard to his mount’s side, so that Blazer reared on his hind legs and wheeled about. His command echoed from the far bank. Toli was instantly at his side.
The beast screamed and broke into a hundred separate pieces, each one darting in a different direction. The strange beast was, in fact, the townspeople of Illem, fleeing their burning homes en masse. The sound had been that of many feet hurrying through the dry brush and the murmur of fear as they fled.
The Dragon King Trilogy Page 44