"Has there been a request for ransom?"
Harken shook her head.
"Then how do we know he didn't leave of his own free will?" Tedor was fifteen, so this struck me as not impossible. Horok was still in his forties, possibly even younger, and it may have looked to the boy like a long wait before he could hold the kind of power his inheritance and experience must have shaped him to expect. There were places in the world where such a young man might be welcome. Places, even, where he might find a pleasanter life than the one he'd eventually inherit here. Monsara was a reasonably rich country, but there were others richer.
Harken gave me a long look. "That had occurred to me," she agreed. "And there's no evidence of a struggle, which one might suppose Tedor would have offered an out-and-out kidnapper. On the other hand, there were things left behind that he'd surely have taken if this were something planned. My thinking is that Tedor left under his own power, but not of his own will. Almost surely by enchantment."
"And you want me to go to Maal. What makes you think he's there?" I pushed one of Harken's chairs around to face her and sat down in it.
She didn't object. Her eyes narrowed, however, at my question, and she said nothing for a moment.
I went on. "Maal would mean Maltuk, the Red Prince. And that would mean the Red Prince's witch, of course. The Lady Orath. There were signs of enchantment?"
Harken blinked, surprised, I guessed, that I'd said the name out loud.
Orath. The Red Prince's witch.
Orath was a good part of the reason for Maal's bad reputation. I'd never heard anything specific about her, actually, even from Taso Raym when I'd been his student, and Raym was the only one I'd ever heard name her without also raising his hand in a sign against evil. Most people--even witches--have a little spark of superstition lurking somewhere, whether they want to admit it or not, and like the old adage says, Naming summons. Nobody wanted to summon Orath.
"None of out-and-out enchantment," Harken said finally. "But signs of the Lady, yes. Her glimmer, not shielded and, to me, not anonymous. She's been at Horok's Hall, or near it. If she didn't take the boy herself, she's involved in his going at least, and she must know that I know, so she'll be watching for me. That's one reason why I can't be the one to go after him, you see. She and I have known each other for a long time and she would feel me coming even if I were well shielded. You, she may not feel."
A cold finger touched my spine. Her glimmer... So that's what I'd felt a little while ago at the bridge.
At least Harken was being honest about the danger. We both knew it would be a big mistake to let Orath sense either of us coming to oppose her. It was an admission that Harken's powerful self-esteem wouldn't have let her make about anyone else.
My own self-esteem wasn't entirely lacking, but a confrontation with the Red Prince's witch was not something I was eager to experience, especially now that I'd felt her glimmer. An alternative course of action did occur to me. How would Horok know we hadn't looked for his son if we told him we had? I didn't say it out loud, but Harken sensed my thought and smiled icily. "One of us must go. You do understand this. The High King will withdraw his support for Ladygate if the boy is not returned. Or his remains, if he's not alive. And strong as we are, that would be disastrous for us. We might survive a move, but after so many centuries on this ground we would not survive unscathed."
I nodded my understanding.
She finally got to the point. "Your chances of succeeding are better than mine, as I've pointed out. But mine are not nonexistent. If you should think of not going to Maal, you might ask yourself if you wish to incur my very great displeasure, even at those odds."
I nodded again. I detested Harken, but it occurred to me there was a reason she was in charge here. She was a powerful witch in her own right, and it would be a mistake to take her too lightly.
"Very well." She clapped her hands, as if to put a period to our conversation. "You will leave at sunup tomorrow. I'll see that you're furnished with money for your journey. Now I shall tell you what I know of the Lady Orath, and of Maltuk. You will wish to visit the king's palace for further information about young Tedor."
What she knew about Maltuk and his witch wasn't a lot, but she told me and I listened. The Red Prince, like his father before him, had ruled in Maal for many years, and again like his father before him, he wasn't a nice man. His recipe for governing was to keep his country's population on the brink of starvation and his armies and navies well rewarded. Not surprisingly, Maalians were generally unhappy but there wasn't much they could do about it. A few early uprisings had been nipped in the bud, and not gently, so nobody had tried another for a long time. Instead his subjects quarreled among themselves, often with violence.
Orath had been Maltuk's court witch from the beginning of his reign. She was widely feared, apparently because she was more than pleased to be of service in his marauding. Not only in that, either, for Harken said they had been, and perhaps still were, lovers.
"Oh, yes," she said, when I raised my eyebrows at this. "For some of us, virginity is not requisite to the exercise of great guile. Although hers, of course, may still be technically intact." At any rate, Maltuk had Maal firmly under his thumb--and Orath, it seemed, had Maltuk firmly under hers.
When Harken finished her recital, she dismissed me.
As I stood to go, my conscience tapped me on the shoulder. It may have been prompted by a sense of self-preservation. I looked over her head at the wall behind her. "Harken, there's something you need to know. When you admitted me to the community, I told you I'd accomplished the Great Shift. And," I added hastily, "I wasn't lying. I have taken a true form, not human, and held it for a day. Several hours, anyway. But to be perfectly frank, I had help."
She smiled unpleasantly. "Most of us must, the first time. And, of course, it's not something one wishes to do frequently. Nor is that ability a requirement for membership in our sisterhood. If it were, we would number exactly three now. Or perhaps two, as I doubt that Keln is still up to it. Who helped you? Surely not your first teacher, not Katra."
She was right, of course. Katra had been a mother to me, and I'd loved her dearly. But it was true that she'd never been a terribly accomplished witch.
I forced myself to meet her eyes. "Taso Raym. He helped me to assume the form. And to get out of it, too, I'm afraid. There was something I couldn't get quite right about that part."
"I see. Then we have Raym to thank that you're not still a dragonfly or a nanny-goat or whatever it was. Perhaps you should make a short visit to him again, after you've been to Heart Hall, if you think that might help you to get that part right.
"Vivia," she added with a smirk as I was leaving, "before you undertake the Shift again, I'd suggest you choose the form of something long-lived enough to accommodate your efforts to release yourself."
CHAPTER TWO
I went back to my room, made the bed, swept and dusted, and started filling my backpack with things I thought I would need. There wasn't much, only a light blanket, a couple of changes of clothes, a rain hat--I'd never been able to master the guilish trick of walking dry in a storm--sandals, and a nightdress into which I folded the only piece of jewelry I owned. My father had given the pendant to Katra in payment for taking me as an apprentice when I was twelve and my guile had shown itself, much to his and my oldest brother's dismay.
After a moment's thought, I got out from under my pillow the ragdoll I'd had for as long as I could remember. I'd carried her for ten years on my family's travels, never letting my father or brothers see her, never playing with her, but feeling her comforting presence. Her name was Seena. She was given to me by the woman who nursed me in Storm Village for the two years between my mother's death and Father's retrieval of me, to be carried along his summer trade routes until I was old enough to walk behind him with the boys. Seena was small and grimy, dressed in a ragged shift, and she smelled faintly of silver polish, a reminder of those long summer days. I gave her a qu
ick kiss, embarrassing myself in complete privacy, and dropped her into the backpack.
The last thing I packed was Taso Raym's herbal, which he'd written and Katra had illustrated with fine ink drawings when they both were still in their late teens, teacher and student. I didn't suppose this journey would require me to identify any medicinal plants--although one never knew--but somehow I didn't want to leave the herbal behind.
For nearly two years I'd alternated between keeping the book on my desk in plain sight and shoving it to the back of a bottom drawer, as my feelings about Raym ebbed and flowed. One winter day I'd even thrown it onto the fire, and then reached in quickly and snatched it out, burning my hand in the process. Maybe, I thought now, another meeting with Raym would allow me to treat the book with the respect it deserved, as a wise and useful source of knowledge and not some sort of emotional object with a power over me far greater than its actual value, which was great enough.
I'd just tucked the herbal down into the side of the pack when a knock came at the door. When I opened it Charras was standing there, looking troubled.
"Mother Harken gave me this for you." She pulled a small leather bag from her tunic pocket. "She said to tell you to...to husband it prudently."
Experimentally, I weighed the purse in my hand. I'd have to be very prudent indeed if this were going to take me any distance at all. "Thank you, Charras," I said. "Won't you come in and have a cup of tea? I've just been packing for a trip." I expected her to say no, but to my surprise she scurried through the door and pulled it closed. I set a kettle of water on the stove and got a teapot and two cups down from the bookshelf. Never before had I occasion to use both cups at once.
She still looked worried. "Lady Vivia--"
"Oh, just Vivia, please, Charras."
Obediently, she bobbed her head. "Vivia. I couldn't decide whether to tell you this or not. I don't like to...to gossip. And maybe you already know. But if you don't, I thought maybe--"
I let her talk herself into silence. "Go on," I said. "I promise not to repeat what you tell me. Ever. I know you don't carry tales, Charras."
"Well..." She looked everywhere but at me. "It was only what Mother Harken told me, when she gave me that little purse for you. She said you were going on a long journey, and I thought it wasn't very much for that, but of course I didn't say it out loud. But then--and this is what I thought I should tell you, if you didn't know--then she said that I should say goodbye to you if I cared to, because you likely wouldn't be coming back."
She looked up at me. "Vivia, she had such a strange look, a strange smile, when she said it. And, you know I'm not very good at sympathy, so I can't often tell what someone is feeling. But she--her feeling was so plain I couldn't help but sense it."
"What was she feeling, Charras?" I said after a moment.
"Triumph. Like she'd won something that made her very happy. It was an awful feeling."
I poured our tea and handed her a cup. So Harken assumed I'd take the opportunity to run away with this little bit of money. She believed I'd be scared enough of the Red Prince's witch that I'd leave Ladygate--and maybe Monsara--for good and she'd be rid of me without offending Raym.
"She was wrong," I said. "Wrong, wrong, and more wrong. I'll be back, Charras. It may take a while, but don't worry. I'll be back, so we won't say goodbye. Now, I have a jar of honey. Would you like some in that tea?"
* * * *
Dusk was approaching two evenings later when I realized I'd not be able to get to Raym's cottage before nightfall. I was traveling under a small shift, disguised as a thunderous-looking boy of about sixteen with a knife-scar like a knotted cord running from left temple to right jaw. I'd dragged my oldest tunic and trousers through mud and stones near the stream, so they were ragged and extremely dirty, and I was extending vibrations of pure malice in all directions. The roads near Heart Hall are relatively safe, but the farther away you get, the less safe they become, especially for a woman walking alone.
With my disguise, though, any lone traveler would have to be insane to come close enough to discover my sex and suicidal to try anything if he did. I could paralyze an assailant with guile--anyone not insane or entirely depraved, that is. Moreover, I was armed with two sharp knives, one at my waist and the other in my right boot, and I was keeping my eyes and ears open, so I'd be able to duck into the trees if I should hear someone moving in my direction. The small shift is an illusion, really, set in the witch's own mind firmly enough to affect the minds of those who see her. It doesn't allow for any real physical changes, so I was still not very tall and my stride was as short as usual.
The two days of travel had been exhausting. At dawn on the first morning I'd been at the back gate of Heart Hall, already in my shifted guise but minus the malicious aura and most of the dirt. I was prepared as well as possible to be given entry, having brought a fat salmon, caught only a few minutes before, cleaned and scaled. I refused to give it up to the guardsman at the gate, saying I was traveling and wanted to trade my catch for bread. I'd made the scar as hideous as possible, so he didn't look too closely but pointed the way to the kitchen. There the old cook took pity on me and gave me breakfast and some information.
Young Tedor's disappearance, it seemed, was a catastrophe of great moment to the entire household, for the boy was a favorite of everyone high and low, especially of the cook, who was more than willing to tell me about him. I opened by saying I'd met Tedor in the forest on my last trek near the town and that he'd promised me a meal and a day's work. Safe enough to say, since Harken had told me the boy was a hunter and often went out unguarded.
The old woman burst into tears. "Ahh, the poor little soul. My poor boy. He was so sweet and good!" She threw back her head and howled. "A damned old boar got him, I know it. I've heard there's boars in them woods would eat you alive, and now they've eaten him, my sweet little Tedi!"
"Ah, no, Mother! I heard he'd run off. Nobody's found a trace of him, they say, and it's certain a boar would've left something." Actually, I've heard boars will eat bones, buttons, and all, but I didn't think a boar had eaten Tedor. Better if it had, maybe, for as I'd approached the hall, and intensely after I was inside its gate, I'd picked up traces of the glimmer that Harken must have sensed, identifying it as Orath's. It was the same one I'd felt the previous morning.
Every guilish person has her--or his--own unique glimmer. The first time I'd felt such a thing was when I'd met Katra. Her glimmer was a sweet, shimmering kind of atmosphere that danced in the air around her, a gentle exhilaration that came through all the senses and none of them. At twelve I'd recognized what it was and known that those without guile did not. Various glimmers were all over Ladygate, a chorus of different notes, sometimes harmonious but oftener discordant and peevish.
The glimmer here at Horok's hall, now quickly dwindling, was deep and appalling, a single, echoing knell of darkness. Not anonymous, Harken had said. It signified, I knew, the too-recent presence of a very strong, very evil witch. And Orath had taken no pains to hide it, meaning that she expected us to feel it and expected Harken--if what Harken said was true--to recognize it. Did she intend it to scare us off, then? Or to lead us on?
But now, although it disturbed me still, the glimmer faded in the face of the old cook, who turned with something like fury, her dim old eyes streaming tears. "Run off?" she cried. "I should say not! He'd never have run off without a goodbye, to me and to my lord Horok too. They may've had their scraps sometimes, men and boys being what they are, but he'd never have left without a word." Sniffling, she took a pan of smoking loaves from the big stone oven and slammed the door shut.
I decided to prod her. "Tedor told me the High King was a good man," I ventured. "I'd have thought they didn't scrap at all, the way he talked."
"Ahh, it was a girl caused their only trouble, as they will, as they will. A woman I should say. She was older than my poor little sweetie, though maybe not by much." She gave a fierce poke to the mutton turning on the spit, and the f
at jumped and sizzled. "Little minx she was, but he treated her like a lady, for all she was dressed common and gobbled up her meat like a young wolf."
"When was this?" I let guile flow over her so she wouldn't be able to resist the question.
"A day before he was gone," she said. "Or two. I think it was one, but times blur into each other nowadays."
"And his father didn't like her?"
She looked confused--a confusion that had been planted, maybe, with whatever mild enchantment had caused Tedor's departure.
"His father never saw her, far as I know. He brought her here to me. She was dressed in rough clothes, like I said, and dusty."
This was something. "What was her name, Mother?"
"Ah, name. Who remembers a girl's name?" She jabbed the mutton again with a kind of contempt. "Afrok," she said at last. "Afrok, Afron, something like that. Who remembers girls' names."
I smiled to myself, but at the same time I was thinking about Orath's glimmer and how awful it was, even now that the witch had been gone for days. If I'd had a faint hope of finding a way out of facing her up close, that hope had just popped like a bubble. Afron, Harken had told me, was the name of the Red Prince's daughter.
"You're right, Mother. It's the girl he's followed off, no doubt, but summer loves are over by leaf-fall." It was two hours past sunup before I convinced the old woman that the boy wasn't dead but merely suffering from a bad case of puppy love, that he'd be home by autumn, and that all this was her idea, not mine. By the time I'd scoured and polished the bottoms of her copper pots in return for a loaf of bread and a chunk of yellow cheese, it was close to noon.
I'd made my escape at last, but now it was sunset a day later. Raym's cottage was still an hour's walk away by the dark of the moon. I could have made a witch-light, but I didn't feel up to the effort. Moreover, I didn't want to appear at Raym's door at this late hour, tired from walking, and maybe less on my mental toes than I ought to be. Leaving the road, I cut green branches for a mattress and spread my blanket over them. I ate what was left of my cheese and bread, drank half my remaining water, rolled up in the blanket, pulled two or three more branches over the top of me, and went to sleep.
A Glimmer of Guile Page 2