by Dorian Hart
Burning Candle dropped a little grassfowl wing, and a look of pure horror spread across her face. She made a quick sign, fingertips touching and then quickly flipping downward, as though she dashed water from her hands. “Why…why would you want to know such a thing?”
“Because we need to find the—” Tor glanced quickly at Grey Wolf. “To find something, and someone at the shrine of Dralla knows where it is.”
Candle made the finger-gesture again. “Please, do not say that name so loudly. Better that you not speak it at all.”
“Why not?” asked Ernie.
The girl looked down at the table, her voice subdued. “She whom you name is the scourge of night, the mother of monsters. She is the daughter of Death. Hers is the name invoked to scare misbehaving children, to curse ill fortune, to wish harm upon another. You would be better to look elsewhere for what you seek.”
“But that’s our only clue!” said Ernie.
Candle shook her head emphatically. “No. You have been misled. She you have named has no presence in Djaw, no temple, no shrine, no one who would give her worship. The followers of Kemma would not allow it. Long before my birth, the church of the sun goddess burned out every den, every hive, every dark hole where she held sway.”
For several heartbeats no one spoke. Tor glanced at the others; surely this wasn’t the end of their quest! Grey Wolf seethed. Aravia was only half paying attention; she obviously had a book on her lap below the table.
“Right,” said Dranko. “Then let’s try it this way. Imagine for the moment that Dra—that Monster Lady still has some secret lair in Djaw, one that no one else knows about. Who in the city would you suggest we speak to, who might know where that is?”
Burning Candle looked down at her plate and pushed the bones idly with her fingers. Her eyes flicked back and forth, as though she were having an internal debate.
“If it helps,” said Dranko, “I think I know why you’re hesitant. You have someone in mind, but they’re not the sort of person a nice girl like you would normally associate with. I sympathize. We’ll give you our word to involve you as little as possible in our business. Don’t do anything you think will land you in hot water.”
Candle looked up and nodded her understanding. “I will need to…make inquiries. Tomorrow, with Kemma’s blessing, I will be able to help you.” She stood. “Now, I must humbly ask my noble masters to make their decision of what you feel is the worth of my services. Understand that to succeed in what you ask of me may require additional coins.”
“How much do you normally get paid?” asked Tor.
Candle kept a neutral expression. “It is not unknown for travelers to feel I am worth a mirac at the end of each day.”
A mirac, they had learned, had about the value of two silver talons back home, and in his time spent away from his father’s castle Tor had discovered that was quite a lot for a couple hours of work, not to mention all the food Candle had eaten at their expense. But she had been useful, and she seemed nice, and they were flush with coins after cashing in Dranko’s opal. A mirac sounded reasonable.
“Tell you what,” said Dranko. “Here’s ten miracs. If you have something useful to tell us by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll double it for you.”
“Noble Dranko, who is as wise as he is wealthy, I will try to be worthy of your extreme generosity.”
But she still wasn’t smiling, not as she quickly swept Dranko’s coins into a small bag, not as she stood and bowed with her hands to her forehead, and not as she hastily made her exit from the Jeweled Crow.
Kibi stood. “Right. Well, we oughta get a good night a’ sleep. With luck, she’ll come back tomorrow with directions.”
Grey Wolf snorted. “With luck, she’s not on her way out of town with our miracs. The thought of that monster goddess has her scared out of her wits.”
“She’ll be back,” said Dranko. “When you’re a kid living on your own, fear is no match for the promise of a big payday.”
Aravia snapped her book shut. “I know it’s late, but I need to take a walk. I’m feeling restless.”
Tor saw his chance. “I’ll go with you. It could be dangerous!”
Aravia smiled. “I won’t be gone long. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“I think Tor’s right,” said Ernie quickly. “I know things seem quiet, but it’s still possible Lapis has been through Djaw and left us another surprise like the one in Trev-Lyndyn. It’s just common sense that none of us should go out alone. Take Tor along.”
Aravia stroked Pewter, who had jumped up to her shoulder after staying inconspicuous beneath the table throughout the meal. “I suppose. Tor, let’s go.”
She didn’t sound enthusiastic about it, but that hardly mattered, and Ernie grinned like a cat who had swallowed a sparrow because his comment had obviously been a ploy to get Tor and Aravia alone together.
Tor shot Ernie a grateful look and jumped to his feet. “After you, Aravia.”
The two of them—well, three of them if you counted Pewter—exited the Jeweled Crow, stepping out onto a street as wide and crowded as the busiest marketplace in Tal Hae. The tall streetlamps were so bright and numerous that it felt as though the city was celebrating some sort of holiday, and Aravia stood in that soft yellow light looking as brilliant and beautiful as ever.
“Are we going anywhere in particular?” he asked.
She glanced at Pewter; Tor sensed they were speaking mind to mind, and he tried not to feel jealous.
“No. We just find the night a natural time to be prowling about.” She smiled at her cat. Pewter frisked around her neck, then jumped to the street and dashed away.
“I guess we’re going that way?” he said.
“It does look that way.”
She took his arm. She took his arm! His stomach felt cold and tingly. For the first minute they walked in silence, but only because Tor was busy wracking his brain trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound stupid. What would Aravia like to talk about? What did she usually talk about? Aha! How she solved problems!
“You’ve said a few times that you’re working on how we’re getting back to Charagan. Once we have the Crosser’s Maze, I mean. Do you have any ideas? I’m sure you must have. What are they?”
Aravia looked startled that he had spoken. “Oh. Yes, I’ve been thinking about that a great deal. My first thought is simply to try teleporting us home. I think that if I increase the circular draw-cycles and repeat certain words at varying tempos, I can expand the displacement distance at a greater than one-to-one ratio.”
He must not have been able to keep the confusion from his face because she added, “I mean that if I spend longer casting, I can teleport us farther away.”
Maybe getting her to talk about magic hadn’t been such a good idea since it showed off so starkly how much less intelligent he was.
She pulled up short, then shook her head and clucked her tongue.
“What is it?”
“Pewter. He’s warning me about rats again.”
“Rats?”
“Kivian cities seem to have much larger rat populations than Tal Hae, and rats make Pewter nervous. And I cannot stand the creatures.”
“Strange,” said Tor. “Djaw is so clean for such a huge place—at least the part we’ve seen. You’d expect fewer rats, not more.”
“I wish that were true,” said Aravia. “The problem with teleportation, as I was saying, is that it will only work if one can use magic to cross the sea in the first place. The Kivian Arch certainly allows it, but if the Uncrossable Sea truly earns its name from a dispute between two gods of the oceans, it becomes impossible to know what limitations they have set on their prohibition.”
“And what if it doesn’t work?”
“Then we’ll have to return the same way we arrived—through the arch. We cannot count on the Delfirians activating it for us, so we’ll have to think of something else. I have been pondering using illusion to disguise all of us as Delfirians, and also
ways I might activate the arch myself. Both solutions have their difficulties, of course.”
The reminder that they couldn’t get home without Aravia only reinforced his belief that she was the most important member of Horn’s Company.
“We sure are lucky Abernathy picked you to be one of us.”
Aravia tightened her arm around his. “The same is true of you, Tor. How many times would we have been killed so far, if not for your fighting skills?”
Aravia had not, as far he as could remember, ever directed so clear a compliment towards him. The odd feeling in his stomach intensified. A wild hope rose up inside him that maybe Aravia wouldn’t be averse to him courting her, but there had never been an appropriate time for her to say as much, and would this be a good time for him to bring up the possibility? He had a tendency to speak and act without thinking things through, true, but the slight weight of Aravia’s shoulder against his side tied his tongue in a terrible knot, and his heart thumped harder than when they had first teleported into the Delfirian encampment, which made sense because he was in much greater peril right now than he had been then.
“I never had any siblings,” she said. “Do you?”
The question took him by surprise. “I have a brother, Alomayne. He’s going to make a much better ruler of Forquelle than I would have.”
She still hadn’t commented on his admission of royal blood, and he was sure she’d say something now, but her next words lanced his heart like a spear through a trout.
“Tor, you are what I always imagined a brother would be like. You’re so instinctively protective and unfailingly brave.”
The sensation in his innards took on an entirely new and unpleasant meaning. He felt sick.
“You’ve saved all of our lives, too,” he said, feeling as though he ought to reply. And then, stupidly, “I never had a sister, either.”
She readjusted her grip on his arm. “Well then, we are certainly good for each other, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” he said faintly.
She stopped again and gave a little yelp, as if something had pinched her. “Pewter! He’s in trouble!”
He was saved the embarrassment of asking, “How do you know?” as she released him and took off running down the street, and all feelings of disappointment drained right out of him, replaced with a desire to catch up and help save Aravia’s cat.
Passersby turned to watch the two of them sprinting past, boots pounding on the close-set paving stones, and because Tor’s legs were so much longer he quickly caught up with Aravia just as she turned a corner onto a smaller, lesser-used street.
Up ahead, something large and furry came rolling out from a side alley—no, wait, it was a whole bunch of somethings, but there wasn’t as much light here, so he had trouble making out exactly what he saw.
“Gods, Pewter!”
Aravia stopped in her tracks and began to cast. Pewter rolled around, claws and teeth slashing madly as dozens of rats swarmed over him, and droplets of blood flew every which way from the maelstrom of little bodies. The squeaking and caterwauling was hideous.
Tor drew his knife as he ran forward, and behind him Aravia shouted and three of the rats flew away and upward into the dark, but that wasn’t going to work, there were too many rats. He hoped Pewter wasn’t too badly hurt, and as he reached the tumbling, screeching melee, the rats scattered away from the cat, who was scratched and bleeding but didn’t look as if he was about to die. Yet just as Tor thought his mere presence and maybe Aravia’s spell had scared the rodents off, the awful truth became apparent: The rats had left off attacking Pewter in order to swarm toward Aravia instead! They rushed around his feet, ignoring him entirely in their furious advance; he pivoted and saw Aravia backing up, eyes wide, face stricken with terror.
“Aravia!” A red rage flooded through him at the sight of Aravia under assault, for by the time he reached her a boiling frenzy of rats had surrounded her, biting at her ankles, clawing their way up her body, raising an ungodly racket, and she cast another spell (how could she concentrate?), sending a few more rats spinning away through the air. But that didn’t deter the rest of them at all, and Aravia sagged a bit before trying fruitlessly to pluck the rodents away.
Tor wasn’t sure of the best way to save her, so he tried everything at once, stomping all around her and feeling little bodies crunch beneath his boots, slashing at rats with his knife with one hand, and grabbing and flinging with the other. He couldn’t count them, and a distant part of his mind realized that this wasn’t a random attack, that Lapis must have somehow compelled these rats to violence and to assault Aravia in particular, knowing how vital she was to the company’s success.
Torn and bloody, Pewter soared over his shoulder, landed on Aravia, and started mauling every rat he could reach. Aravia waved her arms and moved her fingers as though she were casting again, but nothing happened other than the effort sapping her of her remaining strength, and she fell to her knees, calling for help in a weak little voice, and gods her face was bloody and gashed and her kirtle rent in a dozen places. Tor and Pewter continued to smash, slash, bite, claw, throw, but it was hopeless—there must have been a thousand rats, and they’d never be rid of them all, but eventually Tor found himself grabbing and throwing and stepping only on corpses because all of them were dead.
Pewter was a wreck, his gray fur matted nearly black from all the blood, though it was impossible to know how much of that was his own. Tor himself had a few bites and scratches as well, though he could easily ignore the pain. But Aravia…
She had curled up into a whimpering ball on the hard street, in the center of an obscene nest of rat bodies, and it broke Tor’s heart to see her that way, the wizardess who was so cool and dauntless, so unflinching in the face of danger. Gently he scooped her up, never mind the blood, and cradled her in his arms. Pewter gave a sad little meow, and Tor bent low enough that the injured cat could hop up and flop down on Aravia’s midsection.
“Kemma preserve us. What happened? Are you hurt?”
A man and a woman, both bronze-skinned natives by the look of them, stood not far away, taking in the scene with horrified eyes.
“Rats,” said Tor. “My friend and her pet were attacked by rats. I need to get her back to Dranko.”
The man shook his head. “So many rats, in the citrine district? I’ve not seen anything like it!” He gestured to Aravia. “You should take her to the Sunwardens of Kemma right away.”
“My friend is a healer,” said Tor. “And he’s not far; just a few blocks away at the Jeweled Crow.”
Aravia’s weight was nothing to him. He ran all the way back.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
These folks had a way with marble, and no mistake about it.
Kibi craned his neck to peer at the vaulted arches, white and golden stone carved to look like twisted braids of rope hanging loosely from the ceiling. He’d love to get up there on a scaffold, or even onto the high balcony, take a closer peek, see how they’d done it. Painstakingly and over many years, he’d reckon. Round windows dotted the roof, deftly slanted to direct rays of the sun down upon the heads of a half-dozen statues.
And this was just in the guest hall, where visitors could wander between towering marble angels while awaiting audiences with the priests. The statues were sure something, majestic, imposing, and possessed of such detail one could imagine they had been living beings transformed in an instant into stone. How could a person with a hammer and chisel create that kind of realism, with muscles and veins and the texture of skin and all the rest? The gods did have a way of inspiring sculptors and architects, here in Djaw just as they did back home in Charagan.
But damn if he could properly admire the room right now, after the awful attack on Aravia last night. Dranko had done what he could for her and had wanted to channel to fix her up, right then and there in the Jeweled Crow, but given that he’d barely recovered from his last few times healing, Kibi and the others had talked him out of it. Aravia was in a bad
way for sure, but even without Delioch taking a hand, Dranko had his salves and was a wonder with needle and thread when it came to stitching up the worst of the girl’s gashes.
This morning, though, Aravia had the shakes and a terrible fever, and couldn’t even keep a cup of water down. Dranko declared that the bites of the rats must have infected her with disease, but he couldn’t know for certain how bad it was or what might cure it. The innkeeper at the Jeweled Crow said that all churches of Kemma, the sun goddess, had healers among their clergy, and that it wasn’t uncommon for folk to bring them their sick and injured. He warned that the Sunwardens of Kemma expected hefty donations, since otherwise the churches would be overrun, but given the windfall from Dranko’s opal that didn’t seem like an obstacle.
So here they were, forty miracs lighter and waiting to hear what the healers of Kemma had to say about Aravia’s condition. Grey Wolf paced nervously back and forth while Ernie and Tor engaged in some earnest, whispered conversation. Tor was utterly distraught, probably because the boy was sweet on Aravia, though that wasn’t any of Kibi’s business. Dranko had insisted on staying with Aravia, partly because he was a healer, and partly because as safe as the church of Kemma seemed to be, they all agreed that since Aravia had been specifically targeted, she shouldn’t be sent off alone into unknown hands. Morningstar had stayed behind at the Jeweled Crow. She said someone ought to in case Burning Candle showed up with information about the shrine of Dralla, though Kibi figured she might be a bit nervous about stepping onto the holy ground of a sun goddess.
A melodic sound of bells rang out high above, signaling the hour and filling the vaults of the guest hall. Kibi closed his eyes and let the ringing calm him a bit. He sat on a marble bench, good solid white stone with only a few swirls of clay, and that calmed him further.
For a quick instant two little pinpricks of light shone through his closed eyelids. His eyes snapped open, but there was nothing.
A scuff of brisk footsteps mixed with the fading echoes of the bells. A woman approached, long golden hair unbound and flowing, the hem of her gold and white robe whispering against the marble floor.