Taking Flight loe-5

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “I want the spell off,” she said. “And don’t stare at me like that!”

  Ezdral’s gaze instantly dropped to the floor again.

  “Whatever you want,” he mumbled. “Anything, Irith, anything at all — just don’t leave me again.”

  Kelder watched this display of utter devotion with growing dismay. Ezdral was so abject, so docile, so completely at Irith’s disposal.

  No one, Kelder thought, should ever be so much in someone else’s power.

  If this was what a love spell did, he told himself, they shouldn’t be allowed.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Before they left the inn Irith decreed that Ezdral must be cleaned up; Irith refused to go anywhere with him in his filthy, bedraggled state. Ezdral yielded to this without protest, and while the girls ate their breakfast, Kelder and two members of the inn’s staff set about the task.

  Hair and beard were trimmed; a comb was brought, and promptly lost in tangles. Hair and beard were trimmed again, and the comb recovered and put to use.

  One assistant cook, male, tackled that, while the other, female, took away the tunic and breeches to see what could be done with them.

  Kelder drew a bath, and vigorously applied washrags and sponges to the old man’s back while Ezdral addressed the front himself.

  Once dried, Kelder thought, he might be almost presentable.

  Then the old man’s clothes were returned.

  The breeches had come apart; the thread holding the seams was rotten, and had given way under the stress of cleaning.

  The tunic was still in one piece, but looked worse than ever — some of the stains had come out, but others had darkened, and yet others had bleached, giving the garment a much wider range of colors than it had had before. Threadbare patches were more obvious with the protective layer of grease removed.

  Kelder looked at the fabric in despair.

  “Now what do we do?” he said. “You can’t go marching down the highway naked!”

  The assistant cooks conferred quietly, the female one casting occasional smirking glances at Ezdral’s nudity.

  “Do you have any more money?” the male asked.

  Kelder looked up at the young man, then at Ezdral, who shrugged. “I don’t know,” Kelder said. “Irith might.”

  “Well, I’ve got some old clothes I’d sell,” the cook said. “They ought to fit.”

  “I don’t have any better idea,” Ezdral said.

  Irith did have money, and the clothes did fit.

  “This is getting expensive,” she complained as the four of them trudged away from the inn.

  Kelder glanced at Ezdral, who was now neatly clad in a light green tunic trimmed with yellow, and a dark green kilt with black embroidery at the hem. The old man was barely recognizable as the drunk who had accosted them in Shan.

  “Isn’t it worth it, though?” Kelder said. “And I think you owed him something.”

  Irith didn’t reply.

  Due to their late start they didn’t reach the village of Sinodita until mid-afternoon, and by then both Asha and Ezdral were too tired to continue. They settled in at the Flying Carpet and rested.

  Kelder apologized to Bardec the Innkeeper, but even so, that gentleman insisted that Irith pay for the room and meals in advance.

  Irith grumbled, but paid, and Kelder spent the remainder of the afternoon looking around the town for odd jobs whereby he could earn a few coins. By sunset he had accumulated seven bits in copper and a pouch of dried figs by chopping wood, stacking it, and helping capture an escaped goat. He had also heard scandalous gossip about the company Queen Kirame kept in her bedchamber, gripes about the idiocy and malevolence of King Caren of Angarossa, theories that Irith the Flyer was actually a minor goddess in disguise and her presence an omen of good fortune, and considerable discussion of the prospects for the coming harvest in the richer farmlands to the south, and what the effects would be on markets and the local livestock-based economy.

  It was rather pleasant, really, to hear the everyday chatter of ordinary people, to listen to voices other than Irith’s velvet soprano, Asha’s high-pitched whine, and Ezdral’s oushka-scarred muttering. When he joined the others for supper he was tired, but in high spirits.

  Kelder was too tired to even mind particularly when he discovered the sleeping arrangements — the largest bed was too narrow to hold two adults, so Irith and Asha shared that, while he took the other bed and Ezdral got a pallet on the floor.

  They made better time the following day, passing Castle Angarossa at midday and coming upon the battlefield early in the afternoon. Abden’s cairn was undisturbed, but the other corpses were gone — none of the travelers could do any more than guess at what had become of them. Kelder’s own guess was that some of the local inhabitants had been sufficiently public-spirited to remove such an obvious health hazard.

  The hard part of their self-imposed task proved to be finding enough combustibles to build a proper pyre; with the highway tidied up there was very little to be found, and in the end Kelder resorted to knocking at the door of a nearby farmhouse and paying far too much of Irith’s money, as well as all his own seven bits, for a wagonload of stovewood and some flammable trash. Pleas that it was needed for the humanitarian gesture of a proper funeral were countered with remarks about the expense and effort involved in obtaining the wood in the first place, and the discomforts of eating undercooked food or sleeping in a cold house.

  Several wagons and a full-blown caravan passed during the period between their initial arrival at the cairn and the eventual lighting of the pyre, and none of them stopped or provided any assistance at all. In the end, though, Kelder struck a spark, fanned it into a flame, and stepped back as it gradually spread through the pile on which Abden’s mutilated remains lay.

  “I wonder if we’ll see the ghost,” Asha said, staring.

  “You probably won’t,” Irith said. “People usually don’t, especially after so long.” She paused, then added, “Sometimes I do, though, because of the magic.”

  “Tell us if you see him,” Asha said. “Tell me if he’s smiling.”

  Irith nodded agreement, then leaned over and whispered to Kelder, “He’s probably gone mad by now, being trapped in two places for so long.”

  Kelder frowned and whispered back, “If he has, will he recover?”

  Irith shrugged. “Who knows? I’m no necromancer.”

  It took the better part of an hour before the corpse was consumed, and Irith did not have the stamina to watch constantly; finally, though, she glanced up and started.

  “There!” she said.

  The others looked, but saw nothing more than rising smoke and crackling flame.

  “Was he smiling?” Asha asked eagerly.

  “I didn’t see,” Irith said. “He was facing the wrong way, and I just caught a glimpse.” She hesitated. “I’m not really sure I saw anything.” She noticed the expression on Kelder’s face and added, “Really!”

  “He’s gone, then?” Ezdral asked.

  “I guess so,” Irith said.

  Kelder noticed that Asha was crying silently, tears running down her cheeks, her chest heaving.

  “I guess we can go, then,” Ezdral said, with a look at the descending sun. “Which way? Back to Castle Angarossa?”

  Asha looked up at him. “Why would we go back there?” she asked through her tears.

  “For someplace to sleep,” Ezdral said. “It’s the closest place.”

  “But it’s the wrong direction,” Kelder pointed out.

  “It’s ten miles to Yondra Keep,” Irith responded. “We couldn’t get there before dark.”

  “We can sleep outdoors, then,” Kelder said.

  Irith considered that as Kelder turned away from the pyre and set out westward. She ran after him and said, “Listen, Kelder, maybe we could find a wizard in Castle Angarossa who could break Ezdral’s enchantment...”

  “Are there any good wizards there?” Kelder asked, cutting her off.<
br />
  “Well, not that I know of,” she admitted, “but I mean, I don’t really know...”

  Kelder didn’t answer; he simply walked on, away from Castle Angarossa.

  “Look, you like to do good things for people, right?” Irith persisted. “And all this trouble with Asha’s brother was King Caren’s fault, right? So maybe you could do something about it...”

  “Like what?” Kelder demanded. “I’m an unarmed traveler without so much as a bent copper bit in my pocket, and he’s a king, with a castle and guards.” Championing the lost and forlorn had to have limits; a child and a drunk were quite enough. The people of Angarossa and the traders who used the highway did not strike Kelder as being sufficiently lost and forlorn to merit his attention; he couldn’t tackle everybody’s problems.

  “Well, but I have my magic...”

  “So you can do something about King Caren?”

  Irith didn’t like that idea at all.

  “Oh, all right,” she grumbled. “I suppose one night outdoors won’t kill me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The rain trailed off to nothing a little after midnight, and half an hour later Irith finally stopped complaining and telling the others that they should have gone back to Castle Angarossa.

  When they arose and Kelder saw Asha shivering in her sopping blanket he felt mildly guilty about his insistence on continuing westward, but he set his mouth grimly and said nothing.

  Damp and miserable, they set a slow pace at first, but the clouds burned off quickly, their clothing dried, and they gradually picked up speed, reaching Yondra Keep shortly after midday. As they ate a late lunch in a little cafe in the village, Asha asked, “How far is the next town?”

  “Only a league,” Irith said, before Kelder could remember.

  Asha nodded. “What about the one after that?”

  Irith had to stop and think about that. “From the town of Amramion to Hlimora Castle must be, oh... three leagues? Four?”

  “Amramion?” Asha asked. “Are we near Amramion?”

  “Of course,” Irith said, startled. “I think it’s less than two miles to the border.”

  “Maybe I should go home,” the little girl said uncertainly, peering down the highway.

  “What about your father?” Kelder asked quietly.

  Asha looked down at the table, and began to pick carefully at a protruding splinter. She gave no answer, and the subject was dropped.

  They ate in silence for a moment, and then Asha said, “At least it’s all over for Abden. He’s out of it all.”

  No one said anything in response to that.

  “I think we’ll stop at Amramion for the night,” Kelder said, breaking the silence.

  That was what they did.

  They were questioned briefly by the guards at the border post, but they knew Irith, and could see no harm in an old man and a child. Kelder they had reservations about, but eventually they took Irith’s word that he was harmless and let him pass.

  The party reached the village of Amramion a little past midafternoon, where they stopped at the Weary Wanderer and took a room; Irith admitted after they left the building that her funds were now running low, and they would need to find some way to obtain more, or else would need to start relying on charity or theft.

  With that in mind, the party split up; Kelder went to look for work in the village, while the other three climbed the little hill to the castle and knocked at the postern gate, seeking a consultation with the king’s wizard, Pirra the Mage. Irith was recognized immediately, and the three of them ushered in.

  Kelder heard about it that night at supper, as he massaged sore muscles and wondered why the only work he seemed to get was chopping wood. It wasn’t work he enjoyed at all.

  Of course, he knew that was why he was able to get it — nobody else liked it either. And it was simple — anyone with strong arms could do it, and you didn’t need to worry about coaxing hostile animals or tying knots wrong or anything like that. It was something you could trust to a stranger who might be clumsy or half-witted.

  Of course, since it meant giving him an axe, you didn’t want to ask a stranger who looked dangerous to chop your wood.

  Thinking that through, he only half listened to the tale of how everybody at the castle had recognized Irith, and how Pirra had been eager to talk to her, and then had been really disappointed when she discovered that Irith didn’t remember how to prepare all the spells she used.

  “...and she’d heard of Fendel’s Whatever-it-is Love Spell,” Asha said, “and she was pretty sure there’s a simple countercharm, but she doesn’t know what it is. She knows a different one of Fendel the Great’s love spells, Fendel’s Aphrodisiac Philtre, and she knows one that’s a lot like Irith’s, but it’s Cauthen’s Remarkable Love Spell, and it’s different, it uses mare’s sweat and stallion hairs, and she says that there are two countercharms for that that she knows, but she doesn’t know any for Irith’s spell.”

  That caught Kelder’s attention.

  “Did she say what the two countercharms are?” he asked. “Maybe we could try them — if the spells are alike, they might work.”

  “I don’t think so,” Irith said.

  “Well, would it do any harm to try?” Kelder persisted. “Did she say what the charms are?”

  Irith and Asha exchanged glances; Irith let out a sigh.

  “Yes, she said,” the shapeshifter admitted, “but Kelder, I don’t think we want to try them. Not until we know they’re the right ones.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, because they’re difficult,” Irith said.

  “What are they?”

  “The easy one,” Irith said, “is for the victim to drink a cup of virgin’s blood each night at midnight, for four nights. A full cup. Without spilling a drop, or choking, or throwing up. And he has to go to sleep immediately afterward; if he speaks a word or sets foot on the ground, it won’t work.” She grimaced. “Have you ever drunk blood? The hardest part has to be not throwing up. And all the blood has to come from a single fertile virgin human female who has never been enchanted — no mixing blood from different people, or anything.”

  Kelder looked at Asha, who shook her head and said, “I’m too young.”

  “No,” Kelder said hurriedly, “I know that, I didn’t... I just... I mean, is that really what Pirra said? I know Irith has trouble remembering magic...” He trailed off, flustered.

  “It’s right,” Asha said. “And that’s the easy one.”

  “What’s the other?” Kelder asked, though he didn’t really expect it to be any better.

  “It’s just one drop of blood on the back of the tongue,” Irith said. “Dragon’s blood.”

  “Well, what’s so difficult about that?” Kelder asked, puzzled. “I thought wizards used dragon’s blood all the time.”

  “They do,” Irith agreed, “but there’s another requirement. The blood has to come from a gelded dragon.”

  Kelder thought about that.

  “Oh,” he said. He sighed. “Maybe we could find someone...” he said.

  “Kelder,” Irith said, “that’s a quart of virgin’s blood — if she’s as small as I am or smaller, I think that taking that much could kill her, and we don’t even know if it would work. It probably wouldn’t; it really is a different spell, and I already told you that magic doesn’t make sense. You can’t use phosphorus for brimstone and still work Thrindle’s Combustion, and I don’t think you can break Fendel’s Infatuous Love Spell with virgin’s blood.”

  “Well, maybe if you got a young enough dragon...”

  The others just stared at him.

  “You’re right,” Kelder admitted. “It’s not the same spell. So it’s on to Ethshar, then.”

  “On to Ethshar,” Irith agreed.

  And that, Kelder thought as he took a bite of pear, wasn’t really anything all that terrible. It would be exciting to see Ethshar — the largest city in the World! Another city, and another prophetic phrase
satisfied.

  But it would have been nice, he thought as he watched Ezdral down a large mug of wine, if they’d been able to break the love spell that much sooner.

  The meal continued in silence, for the most part. Asha seemed to be thinking about something; Ezdral was drinking heavily and alternately staring at Irith and forcing himself not to look at her. Irith grew increasingly uneasy under his gaze, quickly becoming too nervous to talk — not that she had anyone to speak to anyway, as Kelder was too tired.

  When they had all eaten their fill, and a drudge had cleared away the plates — but left the wine bottle, which Ezdral guarded — Asha leaned over and asked Irith quietly, “Could you do something for me?”

  Relieved to be able to talk to someone who wasn’t Ezdral, Irith asked, “What is it?”

  “Could you fly home... I mean, to my father’s house, and tell him about Abden? And that I’m all right?”

  Irith’s relief vanished; she bit her lower lip and looked at Kelder worriedly.

  “Go ahead,” Kelder told her. “He won’t hurt you; he doesn’t even have to see you.”

  “I’m really sort of tired...” the Flyer began.

  “Oh, do it!” Kelder snapped. “I’ve been out chopping wood to earn a lousy copper, which your old boyfriend there just drank up — I think you should earn your keep!”

  “Don’t you speak to me like that!”

  Kelder started to say something else, but then a shadow fell over him. He turned to see Ezdral standing over him, fists clenched, the neck of the wine bottle in one of them.

  “You don’t talk to Irith like that,” he said hoarsely.

  For a moment the four of them were frozen into position, Kelder and Irith sitting on one bench, Asha on the other, the three of them gaping at Ezdral standing at the end of the table brandishing the bottle.

  “No, it’s all right,” Irith said, breaking the impasse. “He’s right, I’m not really tired. I think it’s really sweet that Asha’s worried about her father, and I’d be glad to go tell him.”