by R. D. Henham
Worver sank down into an armchair with a groan. His little pet, Tsusu, snatched up a circus program and began to fan him with the edge, making the ringmaster’s curled black mustache quaver. “My poor girl. My poor circus! I’m going to faint. I think I’m going to just drop dead right here in the wagon. Water, please?” Jace quickly poured a glass from a pitcher nearby, and Worver drank it down with a choking sort of gulp. Belen pressed the ringmaster’s hand between hers.
The White Robe watched all of this in surprise. “Well, I must admit, I’m not used to trusting criminals, or letting them go—even temporarily—once I’ve found them. Still, this situation is highly unusual, and silver dragons have never been known to be violent toward innocents.” He stared down at the woman in silver glitter, his fingers tapping against the sleeve of his robe. He wrinkled his lip and tilted his head in internal debate.
“Very well,” the wizard said at last. “I will remain here with the circus. Should you flee, abandon your purpose, or in any case not turn yourself in on the third day from today, the circus will pay a hefty penalty. I can assure you, the cost will be so many pieces of steel that it will put this circus completely out of business.”
There was a small moan from Worver, who dropped the empty water glass.
“All the performers—the animals—the tents! We’d have to sell everything, let everyone go,” the ringmaster gasped. “We’d be ruined!”
“Don’t worry, Master Worver,” Jace said, his heart leaping even as Ringmaster Worver shrank further into the chair. “We won’t let you down.”
CHAPTER THREE
hree days?” Cerisse, the juggler, tugged on her long auburn braid as if she might pull herself around in circles. Her face was long and sorrowful, filled with indecision. “Only three days? It will take a day to get to the village and back, so you’ll only have two days to snoop around. What if there’s nothing there?”
“This one must agree.” The purple-robed mesmerist crossed his arms regally. His voice was strange and flowing, the unfamiliar syllables of Jace’s language fumbling on Ebano’s tongue. The mystic spoke only a little bit of Common, mostly restricted to the pat phrases that Worver had made him memorize for his act. Ebano could go on and on about the “movement of the stars” or the “shrouded future,” but when he had to communicate on his own, he was pretty well stumped. He also couldn’t figure out the word “I,” so most of the time he used his own name or just “this one.” Like all the other strange folk in the circus, Jace just took Ebano in stride. The foreigner was an excellent hypnotist, and that’s what kept the crowds coming in—not his conversational skills. “This one thinks … how you say? … danger.” Ebano’s voice changed, took on the deeper timbre of stagecraft as he intoned one of his rote lines. “I see dark clouds in your future.”
Jace rolled his eyes. “Yes, Ebano, I know. Dark clouds. You’ve said that three times.” Jace continued stuffing bread rolls and a bit of sausage into his travel sack and checked his water skin to be sure it was full. Belen had gone back to her tent to change clothes and pack. Jace shared his wagon with Cerisse and Ebano. They’d followed him back and refused to leave, wringing the story out of him drop by drop. Forced to talk while he packed or lose valuable time, Jace ducked around them while he struggled to remember anything he’d need in the woods. “We have to go. If we don’t, Belen is put on trial without any evidence to prove her innocence.”
“Jace, I’m just saying, how do you know you’ll find anything?” Cerisse ventured, shifting from foot to foot. When Jace glared at her, she stomped one foot and waved her hands to ward him off. “I’m not saying Belen’s guilty! I’m just saying that it’s been five years. What if there’s no evidence left to find? You shouldn’t risk yourself—”
“Belen’s going,” he growled, “so I’m going. We’ll find something.”
Ebano lifted his hand and passed it through the air, pausing to show them a card that had suddenly appeared between his fingers. “Ah.” He muttered rapidly in his strange, chirping tongue. Working to find the words, the tall, thin man fumbled for the lines he used on stage and came up with, “Much danger in your future. Dark clouds.”
“Ebano, I know. I know how to fight—a little—and for the most part we should be safe. There’s nothing out there, remember? Mysos said the village was abandoned.”
“But what if … I mean … she’s … the village …” Cerisse shook her head, her braid swinging about like a striking serpent. “What if she remembers and it’s not good? The dragon that attacked the village ate the people in it!”
“You think Belen would hurt me? Hurt any of us?” Jace snatched one of his clean shirts and stuffed it in the knapsack. “Not a chance.”
“Ah.” Ebano hummed, brightening. “I have it. Not go alone. This one goes also.” He dropped his voice and intoned dramatically, “The gods have decided.”
“What?” Jace nearly dropped the bag. “You can’t—”
“That’s a good idea, Ebano!” Cerisse brightened. “I’m going too!”
“You … hey!”
“Don’t be jealous, Jace,” Cerisse sniffed. “Belen is our friend as well as yours. She watches my little brothers and sisters while I practice. I wouldn’t be able to juggle seven flaming boatswain pins at once without her help! And Ebano here”—Cerisse thumbed toward the gangly man in his mystic robes—“wouldn’t even be able to speak our language if she hadn’t tutored him. Besides,” Cerisse tossed out, “I can’t stand thinking of you and Belen alone. In the woods. The cold … dark … woods.”
“Cerisse! Ebano! Have either of you ever camped out in a forest? There are monsters there, and snakes, and poisonous plants—all sorts of dangerous things.” Jace struggled to think of more, but ran dry. “You might get hurt—or die!” The more he tried to convince them to stay, the more he started thinking maybe this whole thing was a bad idea. Best to stop that line of thinking right now.
Cerisse puffed out her chest in mock anger. “My mother is a Qualinesti elf. I was born to run around in the woods. And Ebano traveled here from Far Kundalaria.”
“Oh, he did not. You and I both know that’s just what Worver says for the crowd during Ebano’s act! There’s no such place as Far Kundalaria.”
“Well, he came from somewhere, and he’s here, so he must have traveled somehow.”
Ebano stared down at them, barely noticing that the conversation centered on him. Jace groaned and shoved another shirt into his backpack. The excitement of spending three days alone with Belen was dwindling right along with his temper. “Ebano.” Jace tried to reason with the tall, thin mesmerist. “How did you get here? How … here?” He tried hand signals. Sometimes, those helped.
“Walked.” Ebano smiled serenely. He flexed his fingers, letting each knuckle crack in a sharp sequence like softly exploding popcorn. “Walked the sands. Walked stone. Traveled the underworld. Now, go with you. Yes.”
Jace rolled his eyes. “I can’t talk either of you out of going with us?”
“‘Going with us?’” Belen’s bright voice from the doorway made Jace duck and look around Ebano’s shoulder. She stood in the sunlight witha small bundle at her feet. “That’s a wonderful idea! Are you really?”
Jace groaned. No use now. What might have been a wonderful, romantic trip through the forest was now turning into a big sleepover. Cerisse hugged Belen while Ebano peered down his overlong nose at Jace’s scowl.
“Of course we are.” The half-elf juggler smiled. “We aren’t going to let you perform without a net.” The reference made Jace wince.
Despite herself, Belen smiled. “Thank you. There’s a mystery to be solved, and it means a lot to me that you’re willing to help me find out what happened. I can’t stay here like this, even if Mysos would let me.”
“What do you mean? Was someone mean to you? I’ll—” Jace bristled. Cerise elbowed him and he gasped. She offered a quick apology and mumbled something about the wagon being too narrow, and Jace let it go.
; “No, just the opposite.” Belen continued, swallowing hard. “Everyone was very nice, offering me water or a place to sit, asking how I was, telling me that they don’t believe the accusations or that they’d never let the White Robe take me anywhere against my will. Old Fodger, the escape artist, offered to teach me how to get out of wrist ties. Magical Marvin the Marvelous, the one who saws the girl in half, told me that if I needed to disappear he knew just the place. Really, they’re being very nice.” She hesitated, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. “Pitying, but nice. I expected people to be afraid of me once they heard the rumors.”
“What, that you’re a dragon?” Cerisse grinned. “Are you kidding? That’s good for business! Worver must be dancing in his wagon right now at the thought of all that good, hard steel pouring in once people find out. We’ll put it up on all the signs. The Amazing Celestial Circus of Light has a real dragon! That’ll pack them in!” She smiled, but then the edges of her smile faded. “That is, if you’re haven’t decided that you’re too good for us, now that you’re reptilian royalty.”
Although Cerisse’s tone was teasing, Belen paused and cocked her head to the side. “Do you think that?” she mused. “Do you think dragons believe they’re better than anyone else? I don’t feel better. If anything, I feel smaller than the rest of you. At least you know who, and what, you are. If Mysos is right, I’m not really human at all.” She held up her hand and squinted at it. “I’m something strange.”
“Maybe he’s wrong. Did you ever think of that?” Jace asked, tucking the flap of his bag closed and tying the strings tightly together. “Maybe Mysos is crazy, and you’re just a herdsman’s daughter with a gift for dancing. Don’t let that wizard’s arrogance make you think he’s knows everything.”
“I guess.” Belen’s face pricked into a thin smile.
Jace took her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
She sighed. “I will be, once we find something to prove that I’m innocent.”
“If we don’t find something, we’ll make something up.” Cerisse poked her head up from her pile of belongings, tossing a pair of socks into her already bursting travel sack. “Don’t worry.”
“Cerisse!” Jace thumped the cot, shaking some of her loose items down on her. “We can’t just invent evidence and give it to the White Robes!”
“Why not? He’s not coming with us. How would he know if we did?”
“He’s a wizard. He’ll find out,” Jace said.
“Aha.” Cerisse shook her finger at him. “So your problem isn’t using false evidence, it’s getting caught?”
“Wait, I didn’t say that!”
“Close enough. Don’t worry.” Cerisse winked. “I’ll handle it.”
“Cut it out, Cerisse. We won’t have to make anything up,” Jace said between gritted teeth. “Belen’s innocent.”
“I’m sure she is, whether or not we find something to prove it. Therefore, ta-da and va-voom, we will find something, even if we don’t find anything. You trust that she’s innocent, right? So no matter what, we come back with something that says so.”
Cerisse’s argument was pretty good. As much as Jace hated to admit it, the goal was to prove Belen’s innocence. After five years, any evidence that might have been left behind was probably long gone, and they might have to resort to less than honorable methods in order to prove that Belen wasn’t responsible. As long as Belen really was innocent, what was the harm in creating “evidence”? Lying was better than coming back empty-handed and letting Mysos take her away. Still, it didn’t feel right. “We’ll see when we get there,” he said finally, shirking the whole thing. He didn’t have to think about it now.
Belen shook her head. “I’m glad that you trust me, Cerisse, but what if you’re wrong? What if I did hurt a lot of people and I just don’t remember it? I don’t know much about dragons, but I do know they are very powerful. If a dragon is angry, who knows what harm it could do?”
“Belen, you aren’t the kind of person who would—” Jace started, but she cut him off.
“I’m not that kind of person now. Who knows what kind of person—or dragon—I was then? I might have been very different.” She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “I might have been mean.”
“Hard to imagine, Lady I-Don’t-Even-Like-To-Step-On-Bugs.” Cerisse chuckled. “Don’t worry. Even if you turn mean, Jace here will snap a whip and hold up a hoop for you just like Worver does when he’s taming the lions. He’ll do anything for you. It’ll be fine.” Jace felt his face flush at Cerisse’s teasing. And he was going to have to spend three days in the forest with her? He’d wring her neck before it was over!
Belen rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Cerisse, that’s a wonderful image. Will the circus be keeping me in a cage and feeding me raw meat as well?”
“Why not? Might improve your temper,” Cerisse teased.
“Be serious!” Belen thrust her fists on her hips, glaring.
“I am! Well, partly. Look, Belen, nobody can see the future. Not me, not Jace, not even … well, maybe Ebano can, but nobody understands what he’s saying. We’ll just go and see and worry about it then.” Cerise dug under her bed for a few more things, overturning her footlocker to shove the last of her stuff into an already filled-to-the-seams bag. “Back to business. I don’t need my tights or my heavy juggling hoops. Do you think I’ll need these rubber balls? My silk scarves, I’ll definitely need those—oh, and my bandoliers …”
Giving up on the half-elf, Jace turned to face the tall mystic. Ebano Saham stood at the center of the whirlwind, tapping the ends of his fingers together. When he saw Jace staring, the willowy man smiled and made a graceful gesture.
“Ebano, are you even going to pack?” Jace asked.
“Pack?” The mystic stared at him, uncomprehending.
Jace sighed and tried again. “Pack, Ebano. Clothing in bag? To travel?” He mimicked the action, holding up his knapsack. “You know?”
“Ah.” Smiling, Ebano folded his arms into his sleeves and bowed slightly. “This one saw stars moving, writing on the sand of forever. All things one, all place here, all time now.” He nodded, reciting the lines as he’d been taught and leaving Jace even more confused than before.
“Ebano, what does that mean?”
The mystic’s purple eyes sparkled. “Packed before.”
CHAPTER FOUR
he woods were dark and cold. A rich fall wind pressed the branches and tossed the hems of the circus folks’ traveling cloaks. The four of them had left the circus heading south around noon, and by dinner time they’d found a small path with a broken sign marking the way to the village. Jace knelt to brush the dirt away from the placard with one hand. “Angvale,” he read, looking up again at the faded path. “This must be the road to the village.”
“Not very well traveled, is it?” Cerisse pushed back some thorns and creeping vines that had grown over the edges of the path. “This must have been wide enough for wagons once, but now there’s hardly room for us to go one at a time.”
“The correct path is not always the easy one.” Ebano fluttered one hand behind Cerisse’s ear and pulled out a violet. He handed it to her with a bow.
Jace shook his head and sighed.
“At least it’s clear enough to travel.” Belen’s voice was soft, hardly rising above the whistle of wind. She looked up at the scraps of gray, cloudy sky visible through the rustling branches of the tall trees. “We should hurry. It looks like that storm will start soon, and we’ll need a place to camp out of the rain.”
Cerisse went first, the others following her surefooted steps. Slowly, the storm gathered, bringing the false twilight of gray clouds. “Mysos said that there were still ruins where the village stood. If we find them, maybe some of the buildings are in good enough shape to provide shelter. We can start our investigation in the morning, when it’s drier.”
“Is that going to bother you?” Jace asked Belen. “Staying in the village?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t feel anything here, Jace, other than nerves. No memories, no flashes of insight. Nothing. It’s as if I’ve never been here before.” Ahead of them, Cerisse pushed aside a long, tangled spray of vines falling from a low-hanging tree limb, and Belen suddenly fell silent. There, beyond the brushy limb, lay the fallen village of Angvale.
Beyond, the moss-covered stubble of small buildings lay nestled among rocky outcroppings in a lovely forest dell. The houses had been made of gray stone, with thatched roofs and thin cobblestone steps leading from one to another down twisting, soft loam paths. A little brook with an arched stone bridge marked the center of the village square, where the people might have held market on sunny days. Even ruined, the village still held a certain beauty. Today, however, the storm blotted out the sun and made Angvale look somber, spoiled, and a little bit eerie.
The walls of the buildings had been torn apart, roofs pushed over as if by some mighty wind. Through the remnants of the thatching, long rend marks could be seen, as if a row of four massive swords had slashed through wood, straw, and all. The paths were ruined, both overgrown and caved in by a great weight pressing down on them. The stone bridge had fallen to the side, foundations crushed and waterlogged by the little stream. The unmistakable marks of heavy, clawed footsteps were etched into the stone terraces of the dell, despite time and the moss’s efforts to reclaim them, and entire houses were misplaced, wrapped around the bases of ancient trees by the icy wind of a dragon’s breath.
Not a creature stirred, nothing broke the silence. The village was completely empty.