by Deborah Hale
By the time the first feeble rays of daybreak light had begun to steal in the tiny window, Maura had made her decision. Not easily or without many misgivings, but one she could live with.
Quietly she rose, then stood for a moment staring at Rath, his rugged features softened in sleep. Langbard had believed he’d been sent by the Giver to aid her. Though he had seemed a strange choice at first, Maura was now inclined to agree.
No doubt he would scoff, even take offense, at the idea that he was employed by a power in which he did not believe, for a cause he disdained. One day he might come to see the truth—but she and her quest could not wait for that day.
A chill of dismay rippled through her at the thought of going on alone, without being able to draw on Rath’s well-honed survival skills. But memories of what she had learned from him, and all she had faced and overcome so far on her journey, stoked her waning courage.
Though she longed to bestow one last caress of silent thanks for all his help, she did not dare wake him. For he would surely try to discourage her from what she meant to do. Her newborn resolve might be too weak to resist.
With an effort of will, she turned away and tiptoed toward the door, where she lifted her cloak off the hook.
“Going to fetch me breakfast?” Rath’s voice rumbled behind her.
Maura did not turn to face him, but she heard him yawn and stretch. She could picture the ripple of his lean muscles.
“I knew I should have sprinkled some dreamweed over you so you would not wake.”
“Too late, now.” The wooden bed frame creaked as Rath sat up. “If not to fetch breakfast, where are you bound for at this hour? Or is that none of my business?”
Though she told herself not to, Maura looked back. “What does it matter where I am bound or what I mean to do? The time has come for us to part ways. I will be no further burden on you.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “I never claimed you were a burden.”
“No.” Maura twitched her cloak over her shoulders. “You did say you refused to care for anything but your own survival. My company has put you in danger too often.”
“Aye... well...” His hand roamed over the crown of his head to scratch the back of his neck. “A body can grow used to a change quick enough, and I have got... used to... minding that you are all right.”
He looked so awkward and earnest—the opposite of his usual cockiness. Maura found it strangely endearing.
“Are you saying you will worry about me?” The thought made her smile.
“Perhaps I am.” Rath scowled. Did he think she was laughing at him for a show of weakness? “Nothing wrong in that, is there?”
Maura shook her head. “Nothing at all. Though I have faith in your ability to look after yourself, I shall wonder about you, too, and how you are faring.”
“Then do not be so mysterious.” Rath perched on the edge of the bed and pulled on his boots. “Ease my mind by telling me what you mean to do.”
He would give her no peace until she did, Maura could see that. The sooner she confessed, the sooner she could be on her way. She could not afford to waste time.
“Very well. I am going to search for the Waiting King, map or no map. Langbard told me I have until Solsticetide. I will not give up until that time, if it means combing every inch of forest I can find between now and then.”
“Are you mad?” Rath retrieved his blade belt from the floor, then rose from the bed to gird it on. “You would be lucky to search the whole of Aldwood in that time and it is only one of many forests in Embria. Why, the Hitherland has little but trees!”
“I knew you would try to discourage me.” Maura headed for the door. “That was why I did not want to tell you. That was why I tried to steal away before you woke. Farewell, Rath. May the Giver go with you, whether you wish it to or not.”
She unbarred the door and tried to pull it open, only to find it would not budge. After tugging on the handle without success, she glanced up to see Rath’s hand holding it shut. She could feel him hovering behind her.
“Heed me, Maura. If you had years to comb every forest in the kingdom, it would not matter. There is no one for you to find. You would be wasting your time.”
Part of her wanted very much to heed him... but not all. She spun about to find him looming over her, close and compelling.
“It is mine to waste, if I choose!” Her back pressed against the door as she tilted her head to meet his gaze. “What better way would I spend it? Every moment working and planning to keep bread in my mouth and avoid notice of the Han?”
“That would be a good start!” Rath leaned closer. A few inches more and his face would be pressed against hers. “How are you to search the country without food to keep you on your feet? Without any means of protection?”
She had to escape the bewildering force that drew her toward him! “I did not expect you to understand.” She squeezed between Rath and the door, retreating toward the bed. “Part of me wants to think as you do. Then I could abandon my task without reproach.”
Rath turned, keeping himself between Maura and the door. His brow furrowed as if to ask what prevented her from following the sensible course.
“It is something I must do.” She tried to explain in a way he might understand. That proved difficult since she was not certain she understood herself. “Just as you felt you must see me safe to Prum. Even after you had no further obligation to me. If there is the smallest chance I can find the Waiting King, I must pursue it... for the people of Embria and for myself.”
She reached into a pocket of her sash and pulled out a tiny ball of spider silk. “Now, will you move away from the door and let me get on with what I have to do? Or must I put a binding spell on you?”
“Save your cobweb.” Rath stepped away from the door, crossing his arms over his chest. “If you are that set on your folly, go. I will not stand in your way.”
“It may be folly,” said Maura. “But I am set on it.”
Somehow, Rath’s opposition had strengthened her resolve—another favor he’d done her, even if he had not meant to.
She walked the few steps to the door quickly, half-fearing Rath might change his mind at the last moment and try to stop her after all. But he did not.
Relief and disappointment battled within her as she pulled open the door and strode through into the narrow hallway.
She was closing it behind her when Rath’s voice rang out. “Hold a moment.”
“What now?”
“A suggestion, if you will stay long enough to listen.”
It vexed her to realize how much she wanted an excuse to linger in his company. “If this is some trick to detain me...”
“No trick... I swear.” Rath crossed back to the bed and sat down, holding up his hands. “But step this way and close the door, so the whole inn does not hear what I have to say.”
If he had meant to stop her, he could have done it before this, Maura decided. But if he truly had some advice to offer, she would be foolish not to listen.
She reentered the room, shutting the door firmly but quietly. “What is this suggestion you have to offer?”
“Just this—if you are looking for one special leaf, it will be easier to find by concentrating on a single tree than by combing the whole forest.”
“You might have a brilliant future as an oracle, Rath Talward. Would you care to tell me what this leaf riddle means?”
“Think for a moment,” he snapped. “If there was a map, which I still do not believe, who is to say it was destroyed? If this Exilda creature was a wise woman in more than name, I doubt she would have left something so important lying around her cottage.”
That made sense. Maura chided herself for not considering the possibility. “You think Exilda might have told someone if she hid the map elsewhere?”
“It hardly matters. Even if you have to search every inch of Prum, it will be quicker to find a map hidden in one small town, than a grove hidden in a large kingdom. Les
s dangerous, too.”
Maura mulled over his advice. “You are saying this to keep me out of trouble.”
“What if I am?” Rath acknowledged her charge by thrusting out his lower lip. “That does not make it any less true.”
“Perhaps not,” said Maura. “Either way, it may not matter. But it does make sense to exhaust all possibilities here, first. Have you any other wise words to share before I go?”
“Only two.” Rath rose from the bed and made the gesture of parting, touching the tips of his fingers to his chest, then sweeping his arm outward. “Be careful.”
“I will.” Maura returned the gesture of parting. “I always am.”
As she hurried away, she whispered to herself, “Too careful, sometimes.”
In that spirit of caution, she sprinkled herself liberally with hundredflower petals and chanted the spell before crossing the threshold of the inn onto the street.
Now that she no longer had to keep up a determined front before Rath, Maura had to admit her bones ached and her head felt as if a cold fog had penetrated it. Her stomach squealed and rumbled in protest at having gone empty so long. Commitment to her cause would not take her far if her body failed from hunger, exhaustion or the illness they were sure to breed.
She must eat, Maura decided, setting off down a cramped, crooked lane toward the village square. And to eat she must work, beg or steal.
The scent of fresh bread lured her to a small bakeshop.
“Is there work I could do here in exchange for food?” she asked the stout motherly-looking woman behind the counting bench.
“Bless me, no, love!” replied the woman. “I have more younglings than I can keep in work. But if it’s hungry you are, go ’round to the ovens and tell the lass there I sent you. We have a loaf or two burnt on the bottom you’d be welcome to.”
Maura opened her mouth to thank the woman and to ask if she knew of anyone else in Prum who might be looking to hire. Before she could get the words out, however, several customers crowded in and began talking.
Stealing back out of the shop, Maura followed a narrow alley that took her to the ovens. When she peeped in through the open top of the half-door, she spied a girl tossing sticks into the oven. The girl worked awkwardly, using her left hand. Her right was bound with a strip of linen.
“Excuse me,” called Maura. “I am newcomer in town, looking for work. The woman out front told me I might have one of your burnt loaves for the asking.”
“So you may if you want it.” The girl fished one out of a basket in the corner and handed it to Maura.
Despite the charred odor, Maura’s mouth watered. She wanted to grab the loaf and tear into it, but the bakers had done her a kindness.
“Did you burn your hand?” she asked. “If you have a bit of fat handy, I can make you a salve to soothe it.”
“Could you?” The girl threw open the bottom half of the door and beckoned Maura in. “Be obliged, I would. We get so many burns around this place, we’ve used up all our last batch of salve. With Exilda gone, there’s nobody to make more.”
The mention of Exilda almost made Maura forget the bread in her hand.
“Gone?” She tried to make her tone sound as guileless as Rath Talward’s when he was lying through his teeth. “Will she be coming back soon?”
The girl pressed her hand to her mouth and glanced over her shoulder. Apparently satisfied that no one had overheard her, she lowered her fingers enough to whisper, “I forgot. Mam said not to speak of Exilda anymore.”
She pointed to a pair of crocks on a high table beside the door. “We have lard and tallow, whichever you fancy for salve-making. I’ll fetch you a bowl and spoon.”
With some difficulty, Maura stifled a sigh. She had stumbled upon a potential rich source of information only to find the door shut in her face.
“What brings you to Prum?” The girl set a tiny clay bowl and small wooden spoon on the table by the fat crocks. “We get strange men passing through all the time looking for work, but not often women.”
Maura spooned some tallow into the bowl, then mixed in a pinch of merthorn from her sash. “My uncle died and I have no other family, so I thought I would see a bit of the kingdom.”
The girl stared at Maura’s sash. “You are a healer? Why, you could earn your living that way.”
“Perhaps.” Maura took the girl’s hand and removed the wrapping. She winced at the raw, red flesh. “Do you reckon I would be welcome in Prum? The Han do not hold with such things. This Exilda you are not to speak of... was she a healer?”
After an instant’s hesitation, the girl nodded.
A smile tugged at the corner of Maura’s lips. Here might be a way to get the information she needed, without making the girl disobey her mother.
“Did the people of Prum drive Exilda out of town?” With a gentle touch, Maura rubbed a dollop of salve onto the burn. “I would not want that to happen to me if I began dispensing cures.” The girl shook her head so forcefully her white cap fell askew.
“Then she left of her own accord?” Maura wound the linen back around the girl’s hand in a way that would make the bandage less apt to move and chafe the healing skin.
Again the girl shook her head. When Maura feigned confusion, she cast another anxious glance around the oven room then whispered, “She died. Her cottage burnt.”
“Oh, dear!” Maura did not have to feign her dismay. “What a horrible way to die!”
The girl leaned close to Maura. In a barely audible voice she whispered, “I do not think Exilda died in the fire.”
“Where abouts would I find her cottage?” Maura tried to sound no more than vaguely interested. “There... might... be some herbs still growing on her property that I could use.”
“No!” The girl’s gaze seemed to fix on someone behind Maura. “I have said more than I ought, already. If Mam finds out, she’ll thump me! You’d best go.”
Maura whirled about to see what had frightened the girl. All she glimpsed through the open top of the door was a flying wisp of black. When she blinked and looked again, it was gone. If it had ever been there, except in her fancy.
“Do not forget this.” The girl picked up the loaf of bread where Maura had left it. Then she grabbed the whole basket of burnt bread from the corner and thrust it into Maura’s arms. “Take it all and do not come back.”
Maura staggered into the alley. Both halves of the door slammed behind her, followed by the ugly rasp of metal bolts being slid shut.
“Oh well,” she muttered under her breath as she followed the alley back out to the street, “at least I will not go hungry for a while.”
She paused for a moment to take her bearings and decide where to go next.
The street bustled with villagers going about their business. A tall, raw-boned woman strode past with a basket of eggs in one hand. Two boys ran by, chasing a third. A swarthy man wearing the broad-brimmed hat of a herdsman led a lame horse toward the smithy. Not one of them so much as glanced her way.
Yet Maura’s neck still rippled with gooseflesh.
And the certainty that someone was watching her.
Chapter Fifteen
THE SENSE THAT she was being watched haunted Maura as she roamed around Prum that day. Was it only her imagination, fueled by her fears?
When she sat beneath a flowering sunfruit tree on the outskirts of the village to eat some of her bread, a nearby clump of bushes rustled. Was someone crouching there, spying on her? Or was it only a small animal, waiting for a chance to feast on the crumbs she left?
Later, while she wandered the streets of Prum trying to learn her way around, she glanced back over her shoulder and thought she saw someone quickly duck into the door of a tavern. She slipped around the corner of a small tannery across the road. From there, she could keep an eye on the tavern.
Quite some time passed before anyone came back out the tavern door, and when they did it was only two village men talking and laughing together, not taking the sligh
test notice of anyone around them.
Maura let out a shaky chuckle at her overblown fears. Between a lifetime of Langbard’s warnings and the recent perils she and Rath had faced, it would be easy to let them run away with her. But if she spent every moment jumping at shadows and looking behind to see if she was being followed, she would have no time to search for the Waiting King.
Determined to rein in her runaway imagination, she looked around to decide which way she should go next.
Then she saw it.
Nestled on a modest plot of land on the fringe of the village, surrounded by a great swath of yellow hundredflowers, stood the gutted frame of Exilda’s cottage. It reminded Maura so fiercely of her own ravaged home back in Windleford that an ache of longing gnawed at her heart.
Even the well was situated in the same spot as the one by Langbard’s cottage. The sight of it reminded Maura how thirsty she was after eating all that bread. Grasping the rope, she hauled the heavy wooden bucket up from the cool depths. Then she cupped her hands and took drink after drink. Leaning against the hard rounding of the stones, she listened to the sweet springtime trill of the birds. Her heavy eyelids slid shut, and for a moment she could almost believe herself back in Windleford again, with few responsibilities and even fewer cares.
“You, there!” A shrill voice shattered Maura’s sweet reverie. “What are you doing, hanging about here?”
The scolding tone reminded Maura of the woman she and Rath had overtaken on their way into town. She turned to find the woman bearing down on her.
“Your pardon.” She shrank back. “Does this well belong to you? I was thirsty and thought no one would mind if I drank.”
The woman’s small, close-set eyes fairly snapped with hostility. “If you’ve drunk your fill, be off!”
“So this is your property?” Maura feigned ignorance. “I am sorry about your house.”
“’Tisn’t mine. I live yonder.” The woman pointed to a house up the road from the tannery.
“If the land does not belong to you,” said Maura, “what gives you the right to order me away?”
What had made her say such a thing? she wondered the instant the words left her mouth. It was a fair question, but not one that was apt to win her aid or goodwill.