The Ladies of Mandrigyn

by Barbara Hambly

  “You knew it was Ari.”

  Gobaris looked surprised. “Of course it was Ari,” he said. “He was standing within a yard of me, wasn’t he? Facing the lamps of the inn.”

  Ari was waiting for Starhawk at Sun Wolf’s tent when she came back from the city. The camp was alive with the movement of departure, warriors calling curses and jokes back and forth to one another as they loaded pack beasts with their possessions and loot from the sacking of Melplith. Starhawk, being not by nature a looter, had very little to pack; she could have been ready to depart in half an hour, tent and all. Someone—probably Fawn—had begun to dismantle Sun Wolf’s possessions, and the big tent was a chaos of tumbled hangings, their iridescence shot with gold stitching, of disordered camp furniture and cushions, and of mail and weapons. In the midst of it, on the inlaid ebony table where their armor had rested last night, sat a priceless rose porcelain pitcher in which slips of iris had been rudely potted. Beside it was a small leather sack.

  Starhawk picked up the sack and weighed it curiously in her hand. She glanced inside, then across at Ari. The bag contained gold pieces.

  “Every grain of gold he contracted for was delivered,” Ari said somberly.

  The Hawk stripped off her rain-wet coat and threw it over the back of the staghorn chair. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “Gobaris says he saw you, too. Though if it were a setup...”

  Ari shook his head. “I had the tents of all the men on that detail searched. Little Thurg wasn’t the only one, either...” He leaned out the tent door and called, “Thurg!” to someone outside. The doorway darkened and Big Thurg came in, making the small room minuscule by his bulk.

  Big Thurg was the largest man in the Wolf’s troop, reducing Sun Wolf, Ari, and Penpusher to frailty by comparison. The absurd thing about him was that, although he and Little Thurg came from opposite ends of the country and were presumably no relation to each other, in face and build they were virtually twins, giving the general impression that Little Thurg had somehow been made up from the scraps left over from the creation of his immense counterpart.

  “It’s true, sir,” he said, guessing her question, looking down at her, and scratching his head. “We all saw him—me, Long Mat, Snarky, everyone.”

  “A double?” Starhawk asked.

  “But why?” Ari threw out his hands in a gesture of angry frustration. “They paid us!”

  Outside, someone led a laden mule past, the sound of the creaking pack straps a whispered reminder that time was very short. Big Thurg folded enormous hands before his belt buckle, his bright eyes grave with fear. “I think it’s witchery.”

  Neither Starhawk nor Ari spoke. Starhawk’s cold face remained impassive, but a line appeared between the thick fur of Ari’s brows.

  Big Thurg went on. “I’ve heard tell of it in stories. How a wizard can take on the form of a man, to lie with a woman the night, and her thinking all the time it’s her husband; or else put on a woman’s shape and call on a nurse to ask for a child. When the true mother shows up, the kid’s long gone. A wizard could have seen you anywhere about the camp, sir, to know who you were.”

  “But there aren’t any wizards anymore,” Ari said, and Starhawk could hear the fear in his voice. Even among the mercenaries, Ari was accounted a brave man, for all his youth—brave with the courage of one who had no need for bravado. But there were very few men indeed who did not shudder at the thought of dabbling in wizardry, She and Ari both knew for a fact that there was only one wizard alive in the world—Altiokis.

  Starhawk said, “Thank you, Thurg. You can go. We’ll have the guards let Little Thurg go, with our apologies.” The big man saluted and left. When she and Ari were alone, she said quietly, “The Chief got an offer the other night to go against Altiokis at Mandrigyn.”

  Ari swore, softly, vividly, hopelessly. Then he said. “No. Oh, no, Hawk.” Around them, the camp was a noisy confusion, but the steady pattering of the rain against the leather tent walls and in the puddles beyond the door came through, like a whispered threat. It would be a long, beastly journey north; there could be no more waiting. Ari looked at her, and in his eyes Starhawk saw the grief of one who had already heard of a death.

  She continued in her usual calm voice. “It would explain why the President sent us our pay. He knows nothing of it. The woman who came and spoke to the Wolf here was from one of Altiokis’ cities.”

  For a time Ari did not speak, only stood with his head bowed, listening to the noises of the camp and the rain and her soft-spoken words of doom. The fading afternoon light laid a gleam like pewter on the creamy brown of his arm muscles; it winked on the gold stitching of his faded, garish tunic and on the jewels among the braided scalps that decorated his shoulders. His gold earrings flashed against his long, black hair as he turned his head. “So what are we going to do?”

  Starhawk paused and considered her several courses of action. There was only one of them that she knew she could follow. Knowing this, she did not inquire of herself the reasons why. “I think,” she said at last, “that the best thing would be for you to get the troop back to Wrynde. If Altiokis had wanted the Chief dead, he would have killed him here. Instead, it looks as if he spirited him away somewhere.” A dozen tales of the Wizard King’s incredible, capricious cruelty contradicted her, but she did not give Ari time to say so. She knew that, if she accepted that explanation, she might just as well give Sun Wolf up for dead now. She went on. “I don’t know why he took him and I don’t know where, but the Citadel of Grimscarp in the East is a good guess. I know the Wolf, Ari. When he’s trapped by a situation, he plays for time.”

  Ari raised his head finally, staring at her in horrified disbelief. “You’re not going there?”

  She looked back at him impassively. “It’s either assume he’s there and alive and can be rescued—or decide that he’s dead and give him up now.” Seeing his stricken look at the coldness of her logic, she added gently, “I don’t think either of us is ready to do that yet.”

  He turned from her and paced the tent in silence. On the other side of the peacock hangings, Fawn could be heard moving quietly about, preparing for departure. Sun Wolf’s armor and battle gear still hung on their stand at one end of the room, a mute echo of his presence; the feathers on the helmet’s widespread wings were translucent in the pallid light from the door.

  Finally Ari said, “He could be elsewhere.”

  She shrugged. “In that case, it’s short odds that he can get himself out of trouble. If Altiokis has him—which I believe he does—he’ll need help. I’m willing to risk the trip.” She hooked her hands through her sword belt and watched Ari, waiting.

  “You’ll go overland?” he asked at last.

  “Through the Kanwed Mountains, yes. I’ll take a donkey—a horse would be more trouble than it was worth, between wolves and robbers, and it wouldn’t add anything to my time. I can always buy one when I reach the uplands.” Her mind was leaping ahead, calculating the campaign details that could be dealt with—road conditions, provisions, perils—to free herself from the fear that she knew would numb her heart.

  There’s nothing you can do right now to help him, she told herself coldly, except what you are doing. Feeling fear or worry for him will not help either him or you. But the fear smoldered in her nevertheless, like a buried fire in the heart of a mountain of ice.

  Ari asked, “Whom will you take with you?”

  She raised her brows, her voice still calm and matter-of-fact. “Who do you think could be trusted with the news that we might be messing with Altiokis? I personally can’t think of anyone.”

  As he crossed the room back to her, she could see the worry lines already settling into his face—the lines that would be there all winter, maybe all his life. Morale in the troop was going to be hard enough to maintain in the face of the Wolf’s disappearance, without dealing with the added panic that the Wizard King’s name would cause, and they both knew it.

  She went on. “A lone traveler is l
ess conspicuous than a small troop, especially in the wintertime. I’ll be all right.”

  The echo of a hundred nursery tales of Altiokis was in Ari’s voice as he asked, “How will you get into the Citadel?”

  She shrugged again. “I’ll figure out that part when I get there.”

  Ari was the only one to see her off that night. She had delayed her departure until after dark, partly to avoid spies, partly to avoid comment in the troop itself. Her close friends in the troop—Penpusher, Butcher the camp doctor, Firecat, and Dogbreath—she had told only that she was going to help the Chief and that they’d both be back at Wrynde in the spring. Altiokis was not spoken of. After packing most of her things to be sent back to Wrynde, she had spent the afternoon in meditation, preparing her mind and heart for the journey in the silence of the Invisible Circle, as they had taught her in the Convent of St. Cherybi.

  Ari was quiet as he walked with her down the road toward the dark hills. By the light of his torch, she thought, he looked older than he had this morning. He was in for a hellish winter, she knew, and wondered momentarily if she ought not, after all, to remain with the troop, for she was the senior of the two lieutenants and the one who had more experience in dealing with the town council of Wrynde.

  But she let the thought pass. Her mind was already set on her quest, with the calm single-mindedness with which she went into battle. In a sense, she had already severed herself from Ari and the troop; and in any case, she was not sure that her own road would not be the harder of the two.

  “Take care of yourself,” Ari said. In the sulfurous glare of the torch, the coat of black bearskin he wore gave him more than ever the look of a young beast. The hills stood before them, tall against the sky; above the sea to their backs, the clouds rose in vast pillars of darkness, the winter storms still holding uncannily at bay.

  “You, also.” She took the donkey’s headstall in her left hand, then turned and put her right hand on Ari’s shoulder and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I don’t know who’s in for a worse time of it.”

  “Starhawk,” Ari said quietly. The wind fluttered at his long hair; in the shadows she could see the sudden jump of his tensed jaw muscles. “What am I going to do,” he asked her, “if someone shows up sometime this winter, without you, claiming to be the Chief? How will I know it’s really him?”

  Starhawk was silent. They were both remembering Little Thurg, speaking to Ari’s double in the square of Kedwyr.

  Sweet Mother, she thought, how will I know it’s the Chief when I find him?

  For a moment, a shiver ran through her, almost like panic; the fear of magic, of wizards, of the uncanny, threatened to overcome her. Then the face of Sister Wellwa returned to her, withered in its frame of black veils; she saw the hunched back and tiny hands and herself, as a curious child, helping to sort dried herbs in the old nun’s cell and wondering why, of all the nuns in the Convent of St. Cherybi, Wellwa alone, the oldest and most wrinkled, possessed...

  “A mirror,” she said.

  Ari blinked at her, startled. “A what?”

  “Put a mirror somewhere, in an angle of the room where you can see it. A mirror will reflect a true form, without illusion.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I think so,” she said doubtfully. “Or else you can take him out to the marshes on a night when there are demons about. As far as I know, Sun Wolf is the only man I’ve ever met who could see demons.”

  They had both seen him do it, in the dripping marshes to the north of Wrynde, and had watched him following those loathsome, giggling voices with his eyes through the ice-bitten trees.

  “It may be that a wizard can see demons, too, by means of magic,” Ari said. “It was said they could see through illusion.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed. “But the mirror will show you a fraud.” It occurred to her for the first time to wonder why Sister Wellwa had kept that fragment of reflective glass positioned in the corner of her cell. Whom had she expected to see in it, entering the room disguised as someone else she knew?

  “Maybe,” Ari echoed softly. “And what then?”

  They looked into each other’s eyes, warm hazel into cold gray, and she shook her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”

  She turned away from him and took the road into the darkness of the hills. Behind her and to her left lay the dim scattering of lights visible through the broken walls of Melplith and the collection of red sparks that was the mercenary camp. By dawn tomorrow, the camp would be broken and gone. Kedwyr’s Council had smashed its rival’s pretensions, and the overland trade in furs and onyx would return to Kedwyr, high tariffs or no high tariffs. Melplith would sink back to being a poky little market town like those farther back in the hills, and what had anybody gained? A lot of people were dead, including one of Gobaris’ brothers; a lot of mercenaries were richer; a lot of women had been raped, men maimed, children starved. The wide lands north of the Gniss River were still a burned-over wasteland in which nuuwa and wolves wandered; demons still haunted the cold marshes in whistling, biting clusters; abominations bred in the southern deserts, while the cities of the Peninsula fought over money and those of the Middle Kingdoms fought over religion.

  The raw dampness of the wind stung Starhawk’s face and whipped at her half-numbed cheeks with the ends of her hair. She’d meant to crop it before leaving, as she did before the summer campaigns every year, but had forgotten.

  She wondered why Altiokis had wanted the Chief. Sun Wolf had obviously sent Mandrigyn’s emissary packing—and had himself vanished without a trace the following night.

  Revenge? She shuddered inwardly at the tales of Altiokis’ revenges. Or for other reasons? Will Ari, during the course of the winter, find himself faced with a man who claims to be Sun Wolf?

  On the hillside to her left, the slurring rush of the wind through the bracken was cut by another sound, a shifting that was not part of the pattern of harmless noise.

  Starhawk never paused in her step, though the burro she led turned its long ears backward uneasily. In this country, it would take a skilled tracker to follow in silence, even on a windy night. The ditches on either side of the hard-packed dirt of the highroad were filled with a mix of gravel and summer brushwood, and the sound of a body forcing passage anywhere near the road was ridiculously loud to the Hawk’s trained ears. When the track wound deeper into the foothills, the ditches petered out, but the scrub grew thicker. As she walked on, the Hawk could identify and pinpoint the sound of her pursuer, thirty feet behind her and closing.

  Human. A wolf would be quieter; a nuuwa—if there were such things this close to settled territory—wouldn’t have the brains to stalk at all. The thought of Altiokis’ spies drifted unpleasantly through her mind.

  To hell with it, she told herself and faked a stumble, cursing. The scrunching in the brush stopped.

  Limping ostentatiously, Starhawk hobbled to the side of the track and sat down in the dense shadows of the brushwood. Under cover of fiddling with her bootlaces, she tied the burro’s lead to a branch. Then she slithered backward into the brush, snaked her way down the shallow, overgrown ditch, and climbed up onto the scrubby hillside beyond.

  The night was clouding over again, but enough starlight remained to give her some idea of the shape of the land. Her pursuer moved cautiously in the scrub; she focused on the direction of the popping of cracked twigs. Keeping low to better her own vision against the lighter sky, she scanned the dark jumble of twisted black trunks and the mottling of grayed leaves.

  Nothing. Her shadow was keeping still.

  Softly her fingers stole over the loose sandy soil until they found what they sought, a sizable rock washed from the stream bed by last winter’s rains. Moving slowly to remain as quiet as she could, she worked it free of the dirt. With a flick of the wrist she sent it spinning into the brush a few yards away.

  There was a satisfactory rustling, and part of the pattern of dark and light that lay so dimly before
her jerked, again counter to the general restless movement of the wind. The vague glow of the sky caught the pallid reflection of a face.

  Very good, the Hawk thought and eased her dagger soundlessly from its sheath.

  Then the wind changed and brought to her, incongruous in the sharpness of the juniper, the sweet scent of patchouli.

  Starhawk braced herself to dodge in case she was wrong and called out softly, “Fawn!”

  There was a startled shift in the pattern. The shape of the girl’s body was revealed under the voluminous folds of a mottled plaid cloak—the dull, almost random-looking northern plaid that blended so deceptively into any pattern of earth and trees. Fawn’s voice was shaky and scared. “Starhawk?”

  Starhawk stood up, clearly startling the daylights out of the girl by her nearness. They stood facing each other for a time on the windswept darkness of the hillside. Because they were both women, there was a great deal that did not need to be said. Starhawk remembered that most of what she had said to Ari had been in Sun Wolf’s tent; of course the girl would overhear.

  It was Fawn who spoke first. “Don’t send me away,” she said.

  “Don’t be foolish,” Starhawk said brusquely.

  “I promise I won’t slow you down.”

  “You can’t promise anything of the kind and you know it,” the Hawk retorted. “I’m making the best time to Grimscarp that I can, over some damned dirty country. It’s not the same as traveling with the troop from Wrynde to the Peninsula or down to the Middle Kingdoms and back.”

  Fawn’s voice was desperate, low against the whining of the wind. “Don’t leave me.”

  Starhawk was silent a moment. Though a warrior herself, she was woman enough to understand the fear in that taut voice. Her own was kinder when she said, “Ari will see that you come to no harm.”

  “And what then?” Fawn pleaded. “Spend the winter in Wrynde, wondering who’s going to have me if Sun Wolf doesn’t come back?”