Taking Flight

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Irith's wings fluttered, stirring Kelder's hair, and he turned his gaze on her. "What were those things?" he asked.

  Irith shrugged prettily. "I don't know," she said.

  "You didn't learn about them when you were an appren­tice?" said Kelder.

  She stared at him as if he had said something exceptionally stupid; when it sank in that indeed he had, she replied haugh­tily, "I was a wizard's apprentice, not a demonologist's!"

  Her disdain was actually painful, and Kelder tried to re­cover by asking "But didn't you learn about the other kinds of magic? To keep up with the competition, as it were?"

  "No," Irith said. "Just learning wizardry was hard enough!" Her tone softened. "Besides, nobody around where I lived knew anything about demonology back then."

  Kelder blinked. She was doing it again, speaking as if her apprenticeship had ended years ago, when it couldn't possibly have. "When was that?" he asked.

  She glared at him, obviously annoyed, but he was unsure why.

  "Ages ago," she said. Then she turned away and pointedly ignored him for a few seconds.

  "Oh," he replied feebly, after a moment. She turned back. "Let's get going," she said. He nodded, and they began walking. Irith's wings vanished after a few paces.

  Five minutes later they reached the first of the dead ban­dits. Blood had sprayed across the highway and the neighbor­ing grass, but it was already dry and brown, no longer red. The corpse was absolutely ghastly-—pieces were scattered about, while the main mass was unrecognizable. And of course, the head was gone completely. A score of other corpses, all equally mutilated, were scat­tered along the roadside ahead, interspersed with the carcasses of an equal number of horses. Flies were settling on them all, crawling across the faces.

  Kelder's stomach cramped, and he fought to keep down his breakfast. He had seen death before—in farm animals and sick old people who died at home in bed. He had never seen anything at all like this carnage.

  "Ick," Irith said, stepping carefully across one of the dried streaks of blood.

  "Ick?" Kelder stared at her. "Is that all you have to say?"

  She looked at him, startled. "What else should I say?" she asked.

  "I don't know," Kelder snapped, irritated. "But something a bit more respectful than 'ick'!"

  "Respectful?" She looked at him in honest puzzlement. "How is 'ick' disrespectful?"

  "You don't think the dead deserve something a bit more . . . more . . ." Words failed him. He was unsure he could have found the right phrase even in his native Shularan, and in Trader's Tongue or Ethsharitic it was hopeless.

  "Oh, the dead?" Irith said. "I thought you meant you!"

  "Me?" Kelder was taken aback. He had expected to earn Irith's respect eventually, but had hardly presumed he had it already. "No, I didn't mean me, I meant the . . . the corpses."

  "What do they care?" Irith asked. "They're dead, they don't care if I say 'ick.' And they're really yucky. I don't like blood."

  "I don't, either," Kelder said without thinking. Then he caught himself and said, "Can't you be a little more . . . more compassionate? I mean, these were people, with homes and families, probably."

  Kelder was struggling with an internal conflict; Irith was so incredibly beautiful, so obviously magical, and so widely knowledgeable, that he kept expecting her to be noble and pure and perfect in every way. Wheneve 'she demonstrated that she wasn't, he balked at the incongruity.

  Besides, he expected his wife to be caring and compassion­ate, and Irith was destined to be his wife.

  Irith shrugged. "Well, I didn't kill them," she said.

  "Doesn't it bother you, seeing them like this?" he asked, still hoping to restore her to her pedestal.

  Her expression turned to outrage.

  "Of course it bothers me!" she yelled. "That's why I said 'ick'!"

  Kelder felt as if he were trapped, somehow, in a web of wrong words and misunderstandings. He didn't want to argue with her; quite the opposite. In fact, looking at her, he was overwhelmed anew by her beauty and found himself unable to argue with her.

  Maybe it was he who was imperfect. "I'm sorry," he said, surrendering. "I just never saw any­thing like this before. It's got me upset, and it seems as if you should be more upset than you are, too."

  "Oh," Irith said, looking around at the corpses. "Oh, I guess I see what you mean, if this is your first time on a bat­tlefield. But it's not the first time for me; I saw lots of dead people in the war, you know? I mean, this is really gross, but I used to see other stuff that was just about as bad."

  "You did?" Kelder looked around and struggled to hold down his rising gorge.

  "Oh, yes," she said. "There was one time when a spell backfired and these people got all ripped to pieces . . ." She saw Kelder's expression and concluded apologetically, "But I guess you don't want to hear about that."

  "No," he agreed, "I don't think I do."

  "Well, then," she said reasonably, "let's not talk about it, let's just get out of here."

  Kelder nodded. When Irith did not immediately move he took the hint, turned away from her, and started walking.

  Irith looked at the blood, the flies, the debris, and made a small noise of disgust. Then her wings reappeared, and she flew on ahead, avoiding the mess.

  As Kelder stumbled past the last of the corpses, he found himself wondering what war Irith had seen. There were al­ways border wars going on somewhere in the Small Kingdoms—wars were inevitable when you had two hundred and some separate governments jammed into an area the size of the Small Kingdoms—but he hadn't heard about any par­ticularly bad ones recently. And the kingdoms along the Great Highway supposedly tried harder than most to avoid fighting, since it cut down on traffic and therefore hurt business. Re­portedly, the kingdoms along the road were generally signif­icantly smaller than the regional average because of this—rulers were slower to put down secessions or to go empire-building here than elsewhere.

  So what war had Irith been talking about? Had she studied under a master wizard in Korosa or Trothluria or some other land that had recently fought a war? Had she been involved in the war somehow, that she saw the battlefields? Had that been part of why she fled?

  But the Small Kingdoms didn't use magic in their wars—at least, most of them didn't, though there were stories about the new so-called Empire of Vond in the far south, where just last year some warlock had reportedly used his magic to conquer everything in sight. A wizard's apprentice wouldn't be al­lowed near the battlefields in Korosa or Trothluria.

  Irith had said a spell had backfired, though. Where could that have happened? Vond?

  Just where was she from? He still hadn't asked her di­rectly; he suspected she wouldn't answer, would avoid the is­sue somehow. It was all very mysterious, and he wondered about it, but looking at Irith, who was waiting for him a hun­dred yards up the road, he decided not to ask her about it.

  Not yet, at any rate.

  And maybe, he admitted, never. She didn't look as if she wanted to talk about wars she had seen, and he wasn't sure that he did, either. He was interested in Irith's past, all right— but he was much more interested in her future. Forgetting about the dead bandits would probably be the best solution all around.

  He trudged onward, intently not looking back—but then his steps slowed.

  Had he heard something move? Did he feel someone watching him?

  Irith had turned back and was watching him, waiting for him, tapping a foot impatiently, but even so he paused and glanced back over his shoulder.

  Nothing was on the road behind him but dust and blood; nothing moved among the dead but flies. He glanced to either side and saw nothing but rolling grassland. He looked harder.

  Was that someone, on the northern horizon, crouched in the tall grass?

  No, it wasn't, he decided. He was just spooked. He turned east again and marched ahead, calling unnecessarily to Irith, telling her to wait.

  CHAPTER 7

  Castle Angarossa
was low and broad, spreading out across the land; most of the market and town were actually inside the gates, making the community something midway between an ordinary castle and a walled city.

  Kelder had had his first glimpse of it only minutes after leaving the battlefield where the slaughtered bandits lay. He had stopped to stare at its beauty, as the setting sun lit the walls a warm gold and the rooftops a deep, rich red, the lengthening shadows highlighting every graceful line. The caravan that had destroyed the bandits was at the castle gates, inching in; he could see a pike on each wagon, a severed head atop each pike.

  "Come on," Irith had urged, and he had hurried on, eager to reach the place. Irith was clearly not too annoyed with him, Kelder thought, or she would have flown on ahead; wanting to keep it that way, he was careful not to offend her, and the easiest way to do that was to say nothing, so they did not speak again until they arrived at the gates an hour later.

  By then the sun was down, the sky dimming, and most of the light came from lanterns and torches. The shadows had grown, spread, and turned ominous, their edges blurred and their hearts impenetrable. Kelder hesitated, wondering if it was safe to enter the castle of a king who openly permitted bandits to roam his lands, but Irith told him he was being foolish.

  "This is the one place in Angarossa where you don't have to worry about bandits, silly!" she explained. "They know better than to cause any trouble here, where they might get the king angry!"

  "Oh," Kelder said. He was annoyed at himself; his igno­rance and excessive caution were both showing far more than he liked. He was looking like a fool in front of Irith. Resolv­ing to do better hereafter, he followed her meekly into the marketplace. "Do you know a good inn here?" he asked.

  "Of course," Irith answered. "But I want to look around the market first."

  Kelder acquiesced and trailed along as Irith looked over displays of fabrics and jewelry.

  Most of the merchants were packing up for the night; peo­ple were reluctant to buy anything by torchlight, when flaws were so much harder to spot. Kelder was glad of that, as his feet were tired and sore. Irith would not be able to look much longer.

  The caravan they had followed for most of the day was in town; he saw the wagons down a side alley, pulled into a yard, recognizable both by the bright designs painted on them and by the gory trophies adorning them.

  He considered pointing this out to Irith, or going to talk to the people there, but decided against it. He saw no one near the wagons, and besides, he didn't really want anything to do with that demonologist. At the thought of the black-garbed magician he shuddered slightly.

  "Is demonology legal?" he asked, interrupting Irith's pe­rusal of a bolt of black brocade.

  "Where?" she asked, startled.

  "Anywhere," he said.

  "Sure," she said. "Lots of places. All of Ethshar."

  Hesitantly Kelder said, "I don't think it is in Shulara."

  "Probably it isn't," Irith agreed. "Most of the Small King­doms aren't big on demons. I'm not."

  "What about here?" He gestured at the castle market about them.

  She turned up an empty palm. "Who knows?" she said.

  "If it isn't legal, how could that caravan use it?"

  "Banditry isn't exactly legal, either, Kelder," she said with exaggerated patience. "Even if the king doesn't stop it. Lots of people break laws."

  That was hardly news, even to Kelder, but he persisted, his curiosity momentarily overcoming his desire to please Irith. "I thought that the gates to Hell were closed off at the end of the Great War, so how can demonology still work?"

  Irith sighed and let the brocade drop. "Kelder," she said, "do I look like an expert on demonology to you?"

  "No," Kelder admitted.

  "Then don't ask me all these questions about it, all right?" She glared at him and then added, "But anyway, that just means demons can't enter the World unless they're properly summoned. Demonologists can still call them." She turned back to the display of fabrics.

  "Oh," Kelder said, embarrassed.

  He stood silently for a moment as Irith held the cloth up to the light, trying to see it properly; the merchant had already packed away most of her goods, but was waiting to see if this last customer might buy something.

  As he stood, he felt, as he had on the battlefield, as if someone were watching him. He looked around the market.

  He saw a handful of late customers, a score or so of mer­chants and farmers who had not yet departed, and a great deal of empty space. The castle wall curved along the far side of the square and a bored soldier stood on the ramparts, leaning on a merlon and yawning as he gazed out over the country­side. Three or four children were chasing each other back and forth through the open gates; another child, a thin barefoot girl in a ragged blue tunic, was standing to one side.

  She was staring at him, Kelder thought, or at Irith, or at the cloth merchant whose wares Irith was fondling. Was that what he had sensed?

  Well, there was nothing to be feared from a little girl. He wondered, though, why she was staring like that. It was hard to tell in the evening gloom, but she appeared to have been crying.

  Maybe her mother had beaten her, Kelder thought to himself. Maybe she was out here wishing she didn't have to go home, envying Irith her age and beauty.

  Maybe she even recognized Irith; after all, as Kelder had discovered, the Flyer was well known along the Great High­way. At the moment she had no wings, but how many white-clad blondes were there in Angarossa?

  How many blondes were there in all the Small Kingdoms, for that matter?

  It suddenly occurred to Kelder for the first time that Irith might not be from the Small Kingdoms at all. Perhaps she was from one of the distant, barbaric realms far to the north­west, beyond the Hegemony of Ethshar—Tintallion, or Ker­roa, maybe. It was said blondes were slightly more common in the north.

  Wasn't Tintallion in the middle of a civil war, at last re­port?

  That might explain a great deal. It could explain her refer­ences to a war, and perhaps the rules were different there, and she had been able to apprentice at a younger age than twelve, which would explain why she seemed to have done so much for a girl of fifteen. If that was it, then she must have fled to the Small Kingdoms because they were about as far away from her angry master as she could possibly get.

  It all hung together.

  So Irith was Tintallionese? He looked at her speculatively, listened to her chatting with the merchant in Trader's Tongue, and wished he knew some Tintallionese himself.

  He forgot all about the little girl by the gate and listened to Irith and the merchant, trying to spot clues to the Flyer's or­igin. Her accent didn't sound particularly northwestern to him, but then, he had never actually heard anyone from Ethshar or beyond, only local people imitating them. There was no reason to think that barbarians would have accents much like the people of the northwestern Small Kingdoms.

  Irith didn't seem to have any noticeable accent of her own at all, really; she spoke Trader's Tongue with the sharp simplicity of an experienced traveler. She spoke Trader's Tongue better than the merchant she was haggling with, in fact.

  Kelder considered. He could just ask her where she was from, of course. Asking where a person came from was a harmless and natural thing to do.

  He would wait until the appropriate time, though, when he had a chance to bring it up in the course of the conversation; she was annoyed enough by his questions about demonology, and asking her out of the blue would be rude.

  Irith turned away; the cloth merchant called a "final" offer after her, but she just laughed and walked away, with Kelder close beside her.

  "You never did plan to buy anything, did you?" he asked.

  She smiled and winked. "Of course not," she said. "What would I do with a bolt of black brocade on the road to Shan, carry it over my shoulder?" She laughed again, then paused and added, "If I was staying in town it might be different. It's good fabric."

  Kelder nodd
ed.

  "The inn is down this way," Irith told him, pointing at a narrow alleyway.

  "Really?" he said dubiously.

  "Really," she replied. "It's a shortcut, a back way. I'll show you."

  She led the way, and he followed. A few feet into the passage—for it was little more than that, a corridor between buildings, not a street—he glanced back at the market.

  That young girl who had been watching them from the gate was now standing near the cloth merchant's stall and still watching them. Something about her made him uneasy.

  "That girl's watching us," he said to Irith.

  She turned and looked, then shrugged and walked on. "People do that sometimes," she said.

  He took another look, and then he, too, shrugged and walked on.

  The alleyway opened out into a small kitchen yard; to one side a bantam cock stared at them through the slats of his coop, a well and windlass occupied a corner, and a big gray cat slept on the sill of a candelit window beside a heavy black door. Irith marched directly across and rapped on the door.

  A sliding panel opened, and a nervous face peered out.

  "Hello, Larsi," Irith said. "It's me."

  "The Flyer?" a woman's voice asked.

  Irith nodded.

  The panel slid shut, and the latch rattled. The gray cat stirred slightly. Kelder took a look back up the alleyway.

  The girl in the blue tunic was running down the passage­way toward them.

  The door opened, and Irith stepped up on the granite threshold. The person she had addressed as Larsi, a plump woman of forty or so, beckoned for her to enter. "I brought a friend," Irith said, gesturing at Kelder.

  Kelder saw the expression on the little girl's face as it caught the light that spilled from the open door, and on a sud­den impulse he said, "Two friends."

  "You will be a champion of the lost and forlorn," Zindré had said, and that child certainly looked lost and forlorn.