Touched By Magic (The King's Wolf Saga)

by Doranna Durgin

  A slight twitch stretched the corners of Pa-Farren's mouth, and his voice, when he spoke, was just as heavy as the air. "As you say, son. I can only tell you that you're wasting time to charge off this way—to think you can right whatever wrong was done you. Perhaps when you understand better, you'll be back."

  "I'm not charging off anywhere," Reandn said, his voice hard. "If I had the resources to do that, I'd pay what I owe right now." The tug to return home, to avenge Adela—it was so strong it was almost painful. I'll get there. No matter how long it takes, I'll get there.

  Tanager asked bluntly, "What're you gonna do, then?" and then blushed, looking down his slightly crooked nose to avoid his mother's eye.

  Reandn answered firmly, effectively ending the entire conversation. "What needs to be done."

  ~~~~~

  That night he slept in the hammock under the porch, feeling more secure in the open air than he had in the pleasant little house, even as the distracting sounds and smells of the area reminded him of his circumstances. Flowering vines and potential poisons, upwind bears and even men—what wasn't obscured by the salty, fishy harbor smells succumbed to the heady pines. The constant breeze swaying through those same trees created a breathy, soughing undertone that would easily hide the soft crack of a twig. The only noises that came clearly through the symphony of trees were the evening birds—whose songs he didn't recognize. Reandn was out of his element.

  A Wolf is a Wolf anywhere. The thought failed to comfort him. Nor did the knowledge that the next day would see him venturing into Maurant, barefoot, looking for work.

  Reandn toed the ground beneath his hanging foot and set the hammock swaying. When he quit straining for the little clues hidden beneath the sounds and odor of this place, those sensory intrusions could even be considered soothing.

  But they weren't enough to erase building tensions—the need to move north now. How many more would Ronsin kill before he was stopped? Reandn had no doubt, now, of what had happened to Kavan, and Elyn—and even the long-lost Resiore boy. He just didn't know why...

  Adela's fingers traced over the lines of tension by his eyes and mouth, erasing them, easing his concerns with her touch. Reandn jerked against the sudden shard of memory, memory so real he would have sworn—

  Above him, the upper story door opened with a quiet scrape, and Reandn rested his foot on the ground to stop the sway of the hammock. Hesitant footsteps sounded above him; he closed his eyes as bits of old wood and dirt fell down from between the boards. Then came the sounds of a body settling onto the porch floor, and Tanager's whisper carried down to him.

  "Are you awake?"

  Reandn let the hammock swing again, a barely perceptible movement. "Depends on what anyone wants with me."

  "I just want to talk to you."

  That was better than the alternative, he supposed. "That would be easier if you were down here. Unless you don't care if everyone else can hear."

  "I'm not supposed to be with you," Tanager admitted freely. "I thought I'd see if you'd answer before I put myself where I could get in trouble." He flipped over the edge of the porch and dropped lightly to the ground, a maneuver Reandn wouldn't have attributed to those coltish limbs. Then, as though intimidated by his own boldness, the boy just stood there, arms dangling in an awkward silhouette against the star bright sky.

  Reandn was just about to prompt the boy when Tanager blurted, "I don't understand—" cut himself off, and finished in an abashed and much quieter voice—"any of this."

  Reandn held his own silence until it became apparent no one had heard, or at least, no one was coming out to stop the clandestine conference. Why should you be any different? he wanted to ask. I don't understand, either. Instead he said softly, "What is it you think you're supposed to understand?"

  "Why Pa-Farren's so upset over the way you got here, instead of being glad there's magic left somewhere in the world. Why you won't tell him what he wants to know."

  Reandn hiked his eyebrows in surprise, aware the boy probably couldn't see the movement. "You don't trust me," he said. "Why should I trust you?"

  Tanager stiffened. "You had a knife," he said. "And you've been out of your head more than once."

  "I'm not out of my head now," Reandn said, "and you still don't trust me. Or is that just wounded pride? Consider yourself lucky. I could easily have killed you before I realized you were of no true threat."

  "All right," the boy said sharply. "I was just trying to protect my family. You don't have to rub it in. It's bad enough to get beat by someone who can't even stand up."

  Reandn flashed a grin in the darkness. "It wasn't any better from my end, boy. I think we should call it even."

  "Fine," Tanager said promptly. "Then you'll talk to Pa-Farren."

  Reandn bit back his angry response and said evenly, "Two different things, Tanager. Just because you and I called truce of sorts doesn't mean I trust your grandfather."

  "He's a good man!" Tanager's silhouette shifted aggressively.

  "Your grandfather," Reandn said tightly, "is a wizard."

  Tanager's correction sounded automatic. "Was a wizard."

  "There's no such thing as an ex-wizard," Reandn snapped. "And there's no such thing as a wizard you can trust."

  "That's not true!" Tanager retorted, his adolescent voice cracking. Again, silence as they waited to see if they'd been discovered. When he spoke again, he was subdued, acknowledging the threat of Reandn's anger as well as Lina's. "He wouldn't ask if there wasn't a good reason. If you could just get to know Pa-Farren, you'd see you can trust him."

  "That's not a chance I intend to take." He couldn't keep the animosity out of his voice, and he didn't try very hard. "The best thing I can do for all of us is to get out of here."

  Tanager's dark figure stiffened; he wanted so badly to argue for his grandfather that Reandn could feel it. At last the boy opted for discretion. He jumped up to grab overhang of the porch, drawing himself upward in a practiced maneuver that left Reandn in silence.

  ~~~~~

  Loudly unfamiliar birds woke Reandn early; no one stirred within the house. He wandered the back yard, absorbing the sounds and sights of it all—still soft pines, still the scent of the sea drifting in—and sat on the hammock to slice the knife sheath free of his boot. Laces cut from the soft uppers made ties to secure the knife at his hip, behind his regular belt knife.

  Then he combed his hair back with his fingers, shook the stiffness out of his shoulders, and left Farren's household behind him.

  The narrow alley between the houses spat him out in the street front, the only one within sight—although he expected the harbors were already alive. There, at the docks where the transients would abound and life was less than stable, he thought he might find his best chances of employment—although it would be little better than paid muscle, and that if he was lucky. He knew precious little about sea port life.

  More like nothing at all.

  Sound and odor led him seaward through Maurant. The previous evening he had judged the minor harshly by Jilla, but as he walked through the edges of the town, his opinion of the man improved. It was a neat town, with a minimum of trash and very little sewer odor—and as he passed from the edges to the town proper, the street turned cobbled, lined on either side with gutters to catch waste water.

  Here the dwellings were built closely not only side to side, but back to back—more crowded, even, than his own keep-protected town, if much less protected.

  Level roads ran in even patterns until he neared the docks. There, the land sloped steeply downward, and the orderly streets disintegrated into a jumble of warehouses and dry docks. Reandn eased in against a net repair shop at the crest of the hill, beneath an awning that hid him from the sun and a day already promising heat. The sun broke over a low bank of clouds, scrying the scene into a chaos of bright light and dark shadow.

  The long, narrow port formed the shape of the activity—the fortified extensions of land dropped off from high cliffs o
n either side, making it obvious why Maurant's founders felt secure in their town.

  The docks below held a confusing bustle, a dance whose steps Reandn didn't know. The men below moved from land to ship, loading and unloading, traversing slippery planks with nary a mishap. Just watching the bobbing ships, docked in the vast horseshoe shaped port, Reandn felt slightly queasy. There might be work for him on the Maurant docks, but he would check elsewhere first.

  Beside him, a heavy wagon rumbled to a stop. Two draft mules waited patiently as the driver jumped out and hooked up the check lines to keep the wagon from running up against their haunches. Working with stock, Reandn mused, was something he could do. Of course, scrubbing pots and pans was also something in which he had extensive experience, but he had no intention of going back to it.

  No, he suddenly realized. That's not true. He'd do whatever he had to do get back to King's Keep. If it meant working on a bobbing deck or living inside a steamy kitchen with his hands wrinkling as they had done so long ago, he'd do it.

  He glanced back to see if his gawky shadow still followed. Yes, indeed—there he was, probably secure in his little hiding place and completely unaware that an edge of sunlight had caught the top of his head.

  Surely the wizard didn't really think a Wolf could be fooled by an untrained youth. He'd seemed smarter than that—smart enough to be trouble, if he wanted to be.

  Reandn stood and stretched, easing muscles that still felt too weak, too easily cramped. Checking the heat of the cobbles with a cautious bare foot, he set off down the hill to see what the lower town offered, all too aware of his Tanager-sized shadow.

  The lower town, it turned out, offered a forest-loving Wolf very little. What subtlety of noise the lapping waves didn't drown out, the raucous seabirds did. It left him jumpy and cranky—and, as noon crept on with high heat and no food—not a little light-headed. He headed back up the hill and stopped outside the tavern at the crest of it. Even if it took his only parscores—the ones Farren had refused—he needed a good healing meal.

  Adela could have read the name painted beneath the incompletely rendered unicorn on the tavern sign...not Reandn. He watched the patrons meander in and out and found them neither too seedy for his tastes nor too expensive for his pocket, and so ambled back to the closest alley, leaned against the edge of the tavern, and spoke to the air. "I'll be here all afternoon, so you might as well go get something to eat and tell your grandfather where I am. In case you happen to miss me, I'll be at the outer markets this evening."

  From behind him, an almost sullen reply. "My mother sent me, not Pa-Farren."

  Reandn left the corner before Tanager could muster any other comment. Immediately inside the tavern doorway, he found the reason for the absence of seedy clientele—a hulk of a man, generously decorated with tattoos, lounging against the wall and eyeing people as they entered. For the most part he ignored the customers and they returned the favor.

  Reandn garnered a direct stare. No little wonder, with his northern looks. Most of the men he'd seen wore short sleeved tunics over their trousers; their hair was cut considerably shorter than his own, or else worn considerably longer, and tied back. Reandn's leather vest had no counterpart here; his long-sleeved shirt hung in his hand. His hair, sandy dark and grown out scruffy, brushed just above his eyes in front.

  And of course there were his bare feet.

  None of which he could do anything about. He gave the hulk a cool but civil nod and walked by. Or tried to. The man's paw rested on his arm, and Reandn stopped before there was an excuse to apply pressure.

  "Got a problem?" he asked, too tired to truly take offense. He couldn't afford to take offense, at that; he had no reserves on which to call.

  "You're not from around here," the man observed, as if it was significant.

  "No, but where I come from taverns want their customers inside. Is it different here?" Reandn asked pointedly.

  "No, not different. But I'm here to keep trouble out. And you look like trouble."

  Anything but. At least at the moment. "The only trouble here is what you're causing. So let me either in or out, and we'll both be free of it."

  The man's thick eyebrows lowered into a frown. "Smarting off at me, are you?" he said, and took a step forward. He was, Reandn decided, huge.

  "Hurley!"

  The man halted, quickly assembling his face into innocence. A slight young woman stood in the entry, scowling.

  "Ania," Hurley said. "I was...I was just keeping this fellow from causing trouble. He, uh...he...got rude to one of the ladies!"

  "Is that so?" she asked archly. "Well, I see you harassing a stranger who looks so badly in need of Kelton's food that he can't have the strength to get rude."

  "Kelton told me to keep trouble out of the Forgotten Unicorn," the man said stubbornly.

  "All you have to do to accomplish that is stand there," Ania said scornfully. "And you know what Kelton really said. He said don't let any trouble in—but don't cause any, either! It's not like we're at the Edgerton, where they go in for that sort of thing!"

  "You won't tell him?" the big man said, resentment warring with the realization that he'd been caught out. "I gotta have work, Ania."

  She sighed, glancing at Reandn. "Come inside, meir, and we'll see you fed on the house. It won't be the first such meal Hurley's cost us." She favored the man with a parting frown and led Reandn into the serving room.

  He found it much bigger than the outside had given reason to expect—airy, with a high ceiling—and what from the outside looked like a second floor was in fact just empty space. Several small dogs ran in wheels to turn ceiling fans under the watchful eye of a solicitous handler.

  Reandn found him as much an anomaly as the wide-spaced tables and shaded ceiling windows. In some ways it was a more comfortable place than the Muzzled Fang despite its unfamiliarity; here, the distance between the tables would discourage both eavesdropping and brawling.

  He chose a table near the light wood planks of the back walls and settled in, propping his tired feet on the opposite chair. There he relaxed, looking over the room—quickly finding the three additional exits.

  "Come South for a visit, meir?" Ania was asking him, a question that told him well enough that the port-town Southerners were much more used to seeing Northerners than the other way around.

  "Yes," he answered. "But not a long one."

  "It's hot on you Northies, I know." She smiled, a sympathetic look on her small, fox-like features. The short hairstyle feathered darkly around her face, adding waifish character. "It looks like our sun's got you down, today. How about an ale? Kelton has a deep cellar with a springhouse, and I promise the drink'll be colder than you'd have ever thought possible hereabouts!"

  "That, and a meal—whether or not you meant what you said."

  "About it being on the house?" she asked. Her fine mouth twitched, apparently at the thought of Hurley. "I meant it. We can't have it going about that he's causing trouble. This is our little bribe."

  "Get rid of him and you wouldn't have to make it."

  She shrugged. "It's Kelton's tavern—his choice. And Hurley has changed things for us. Used to be we'd get sailors here, filling their few hours of shore leave. Rough fellows. They don't come here anymore, and nicer folks do. Worth a meal every now and then. So would you like the crab soup, or the roasted flatfish?"

  Reandn made a face that Dela would have laughed at. "Red meat?"

  Her brow wrinkled. "Not usually." Then the smile came back. "Though if I remember rightly, Hurley brought in one of those little marsh deer this morning. Damone—he's our cook—can do wonderful things with marsh deer."

  Reandn nodded. "If it's available..."

  "Yes, meir."

  Reandn tilted his head back against the wall, knowing it would cue her to move on, the sooner to return with the food he needed so badly. He couldn't help his stomach's rumbling oration at the smell of edibles around him, even if it was sea food.

  The gir
l laughed. "Back in a moment with the ale, meir!"

  True to her word, she returned quickly, affirming she'd bring the meal as soon as possible. Reandn took a sip—cold, all right, and considerably stronger than he was used to. He set it aside to wait for the steak.

  Relaxed, waiting for his meal with a patience that belied his angry stomach and lightheadedness, he spent the time tallying the differences between himself and the Southern natives around him—looking for ways to blend in.

  Speech patterns, he could do nothing about. Southern speech was as slow and unconcerned as Southern afternoon lethargy. The men, he found, had uniformly short hair, some of it mere bristles no breeze could stir. Nothing like his own hair, which Adela had cut just the way she liked it. And when Adela cut his hair, it never failed to turn into something more than a few minutes with comb and shears. He wasn't ready to hand that personal task to someone else.

  The easy things first, then. He'd simply stow his long-sleeved tunic to make do with the leather vest. He didn't plan to be here any longer than necessary, after all.

  He toyed with the idea of going to Savill, the town's minor, with blunt truth about his presence there—but decided the risks were greater than the benefits. The man could do little more than outfit him for his journey—and he might also choose to check into Reandn's story, especially if Jilla had followed through on her promise to cause trouble. That would mean delays—and it would mean that King's Keep, Ronsin included, would learn he was still alive.

  He didn't want to give the wizard time to prepare for Reandn's return. Pack First and Pack Leader had the authority to deal out Wolf's Justice, if the situation warranted. Reandn would be held accountable; he'd pay heavy penalties if he couldn't justify his actions.

  But taking his revenge on Ronsin would be worth it—and almost impossible to carry out once Ronsin knew he was coming.