by Sharon Shinn
Tayse’s eyes had gone to the raelynx, sitting a few feet away in the snow, looking bored. “What do we do about him?” he asked. “I don’t know that we can bring him into any inn with us.”
“I’ve been worrying about that a bit,” she admitted. “But I think I might be able to smuggle him inside, if someone else books the room and there’s a back way in. And I create a certain sense of—misdirection.”
“Invisibility, you mean,” Kirra retorted.
Senneth smiled. “I told you, I haven’t perfected that yet. But I’m thinking I might work on it while we’re riding and I’ve got nothing else to think about.”
“How is invisibility a gift from the sun goddess?” Tayse wanted to know. “Because it would seem—if what you’re good at is fire and heat and those life forces—”
“I know,” Senneth said. “It seems like a contradictory skill. But I think what it will take is”—she made a gesture, as if smoothing away rough patches in the air—“turning people’s attention away from that life force. So, for instance, if you’re looking at Kirra, and I’ve found a way to direct your thoughts away from the heat and energy that is Kirra, you look at her but you see nothing. Because the life force is not evident.”
Tayse shook his head. “I’m a soldier,” he said. “All of this is mysterious to me.”
Justin addressed Kirra. “Why can’t you just turn the raelynx into something else?” he said. “Like a kitten or a mouse.”
Kirra looked as shocked as if he’d asked her to strip naked and dance in the snow. “I can’t do that!” she exclaimed. “You can’t—it’s forbidden—it’s impossible to turn one creature into another!”
Justin looked both puzzled and irritated. “You change yourself into wolves and cats and I don’t know what-all,” he said. “Every day.”
“Yes—myself, of my own volition,” she said patiently. “And things—I can turn swords into butter knives and trees into rose-bushes. But I can’t take another creature and turn it into another creature. I just—I can’t.”
Tayse found himself interested. “Can’t or won’t?” he asked. “You don’t have the skill or—you said it was forbidden.”
Kirra glanced at Senneth, who merely smiled. “It is a thing generally accepted by all mystics with the power to change shape that they will only try those tricks on themselves,” Kirra said. “The tutors I had—the mystics I’ve talked to since—all of them, every one of them, believes that rule as a basic tenet of magic. In fact, I don’t know that I could turn you into a toad or a warthog, much as I’d like to, but I certainly don’t know the spells for changing a man into another creature. And I wouldn’t do it, even if I knew how. It’s—that’s just—it’s just wrong,” she ended lamely.
Tayse glanced at Senneth. “Back to honor,” he said. “When you told Justin you would not turn your talents against him in the middle of the night.”
“So now you can sleep serene,” she said, “knowing that when you wake up in the morning you will be a shape you recognize.”
“That still doesn’t solve the problem of the raelynx,” Tayse said. “And even if it’s possible to sneak it into a small inn in a backcountry town, I imagine you’ll have trouble parading him through the city that encircles Rappen Manor.”
“I know,” Senneth said. “I’ve been thinking about that, too.”
She didn’t say what solution she had come to. Tayse dusted crumbs off his hands, pulled his gloves on, and pulled his horse back to the road. “If we’re going to find an inn by nightfall,” he said, “we’d better be moving.”
They traveled onward for another three hours. It annoyed Tayse that, no matter how often he glanced backward to check on the other members of his party, sometimes they were with him and sometimes they were not. He had almost gotten used to Donnal’s sudden appearances and disappearances, but today Kirra was also missing, and Senneth and Cammon were each leading one of their horses. He was not even going to bother to comment on the absences until, late in the afternoon, Senneth called a sudden sharp halt.
Tayse wheeled about, expecting trouble, but it was merely the usual strange activities of this particular crew. Kirra and Donnal had appeared from nowhere, wildness in their eyes and blood on their hands, and were crouched in the snow, feeding a pair of squirrels to the raelynx. The young cat was ripping through the mangled fur to gulp down chunks of raw flesh, then pausing every once in a while to give the humans nearby a menacing stare. Kirra wiped her hands in the snow, stood up, and walked back to her horse.
Senneth must have caught Tayse’s look of disgust. “I thought it would be easier to keep him content if he’d fed well before we tried to take him to town,” she explained. “Make him less likely to eat pet dogs and small children.”
“A point is going to come when you’re going to have to abandon him along this journey,” he said shortly.
She gave him a calm and level look. “When there is a safe place to leave him, I’ll do it.”
Naturally, no such safe place presented itself in the next few miles—but something even more welcome appeared around the bend about half an hour later. A crossroads town, bustling even despite the recent blizzard, and looking rather picturesque with the snow laying a white piping along every steeple and eave. The streets had been fairly well cleared, and plenty of people were riding or walking through the middle of town.
“May the Pale Lady grant us an empty room for the night,” Kirra prayed. She glanced sideways at Senneth. “Or the Bright Mother.”
Senneth nodded. “My unfriendly pet and I will wait here on the outskirts while you go in and investigate. A small place with a back entrance would work best for us—but even then, I am not sure this will succeed. If we’re booted out, I’ll sleep in the woods tonight while the rest of you enjoy civilization.”
Tayse frowned at her. “We all sleep safe, or none of us do.”
She laughed. “Trust me, I will be perfectly safe.”
But in the end, they were all able to take shelter that night under a sound roof when they found two rooms at a small, pleasant inn. Senneth and the raelynx came creeping in the back door while Tayse and Justin guarded the hallways, and they were able to leave the animal drowsing in the women’s bedroom while the rest of them went down for a meal.
The inn served a hearty if not particularly flavorful dinner, their rooms were comfortable enough to encourage a good night’s sleep, and they left in the morning much as they had entered the night before. One thing was immediately obvious as they set out: The temperature was considerably warmer than it had been the past few days, and the snow was already beginning to melt. Good in some respects, bad in others. In the long stretches of road that had been paved by local enterprise or royal decree, travel became easier. Where the way consisted only of hard-packed earth, mud became the enemy. Tayse made a mental note to never again travel in winter, and led the party forward.
This day, he ranged ahead of the group for a few miles, checking to see if there were any hazards along the road, then came back to ascertain whether those under his care were still unmolested. Likewise, Justin fell to the rear to make sure trouble didn’t threaten from behind. They passed quite a few travelers this day, people who had been stuck longer than they expected at their last layovers and were eager to complete their journeys. In one of his forays ahead of his group, Tayse spotted a small troop of armed men who had paused for lunch beside the road. He did a quick count and turned his horse back the way he’d come.
This time, when he pulled up in front of his own party, he found three unmounted horses and Cammon talking to empty air.
“Where’s Senneth?” he demanded. “Where’s anybody?”
Cammon gave him a look of mild bewilderment and glanced at the horse coming to a halt beside him. Where Senneth suddenly hazed into view, slouching relaxed in the saddle. She appeared both surprised and pleased with herself.
“So you couldn’t see me?” she asked. “When you rode up?”
“No,” he sa
id shortly.
She was regarding the other rider. “But Cammon could. I thought my spells weren’t working, because he just kept talking to me as if I was sitting right there.”
“I don’t seem to be the best one to try out such skills on,” Cammon apologized.
“No, it seems to be impossible to dazzle you with magic,” she answered.
Tayse tried to shake off his exasperation. “What about Kirra and Donnal? There’s a troop of military riders coming this way.”
Her expression sharpened. “Could you tell whose?”
“Wearing maroon sashes, so I assume from Rappengrass. There were about twelve of them.”
“We’re probably safe if they’re Ariane’s men,” Senneth said. “Though it might look odd to have so many empty saddles.”
“Just my thought,” he said somewhat acidly.
She smiled. “I don’t think they’ve gone far. Justin’s roaming, too.”
He wanted to tell her that that was an entirely different thing, but perhaps in her eyes it wasn’t. He thought soldiers should guard the mystics; mystics thought they should reconnoiter for themselves. Not for the first time, he wondered why the king had thought it so important to have Riders along on this journey. Senneth and her friends seemed very well able to take care of themselves.
“Maybe we should pull over a moment and regroup,” he said.
But it didn’t take long for Justin to catch up with them, and Kirra and Donnal came striding up from some secret hiding place just a few minutes later. “Military guard ahead,” Tayse said briefly. “Looks like Rappengrass. Senneth doesn’t think there’s a problem, but I thought we should all ride on together.”
Kirra swung into her saddle and glanced at Senneth. “And should we be anyone in particular as we pass them by?”
Senneth shook her head. “Just travelers along the way, I think.”
Indeed, they could not have looked more ordinary when they encountered the Rappengrass troop a few minutes later. The head rider nodded at Tayse, recognizing an armed guard when he saw one, and appeared to quickly pick out Kirra as the wealthy member of the party who might need protection along the road. But that was automatic; any decent soldier would make those assessments almost without conscious volition. Tayse nodded back and rode on.
By midafternoon, they were starting to ride through countryside that was fairly populated—small farms here, a cluster of cottages there, then a crossroads that featured a tavern and an inn and what looked like a shop or two. Clearly they were not far from the town that called itself Rappen Manor after the major estate situated at its heart. Tayse wondered if Senneth’s plan was to ride straight through to the grand house itself without calling a halt.
He asked her that when they stopped in late afternoon to take a break from riding. “No,” she said. “I was hoping we could spend the night with a friend. She lives somewhere on the fringes of the city, but I haven’t recognized her house yet. I suppose it’s possible she’s moved away.”
“Her house would still be there,” Tayse said, puzzled.
She grinned and glanced at Cammon. “I put that wrong,” she said. “I know she’s here somewhere, but I don’t know where. I thought Cammon might be able to feel the pull of her magic.”
He wanted to roll his eyes in a sort of mild disbelief, but he’d seen enough of their mental connections that he could not discredit what she said. Still, it made him uncomfortable.
“And if we do not find her?”
“Then I suppose we try one of these inns along the way, and use the tactics that were successful last night. But I very much hope we’re able to locate Aleatha. Soon.”
He resigned himself to a few dreary hours circling the countryside, hunting up a phantom mystic, before they at last succumbed to the lure of a commercial bed. But in fact, twenty minutes after they resumed travel, Cammon jerked upright in his saddle.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, and pointed somewhere off the road to the right. “That way. Another hundred yards or so.”
“Another sorceress,” Tayse observed. “I can hardly wait.”
THE woman named Aleatha was delighted to see her old friend Senneth. While the others waited respectfully back by the front gate, Senneth approached the house and called out a hail. Before the door opened, Tayse took note of the well kept property—winter-brown now, of course, but clearly maintained with a great deal of care. The cottage itself didn’t look like it encompassed more than three rooms, but there was a sturdy barn in back and what looked like a garden beside it. He imagined that a mystic was able to keep vandals and predators at bay, and for the first time found himself thinking that magic might be an agreeable talent to possess.
Then the door opened, and the white-haired old woman gave Senneth a delighted embrace, and even Tayse could feel the welcome in the air.
Less than an hour later, the horses were stabled, the raelynx was locked in a toolshed, and the six travelers were eating an absolutely wonderful meal as they all crowded together in the small front room.
“No, Ariane has spoken out publicly against Halchon Gisseltess and his persecution of mystics. I don’t think she’s about to turn on us,” Aleatha said as they munched on baked chicken and butter-drenched bread. “For the moment I feel safe. But Gisseltess men ride through all the southern provinces in the dead of night, and they are no respecter of boundaries. I have not heard of anyone living in Rappengrass who has been assaulted in her home. But now and then—there have been stories—of atrocities that have been visited upon mystics traveling on the roads through Rappengrass. They were not protected. Some of them have gone missing.”
“Have these attacks been reported?” Kirra demanded.
Aleatha shrugged. “Not by me. And if they have been—well, what then? Is Ariane ready to start a border war with Halchon Gisseltess over the lives of a few miserable mystics? She is not so rash. Here, Justin, is it? Would you like more of these potatoes?”
“I would, please,” Justin replied, his voice a little muffled by the food still in his mouth. Tayse had to hide a smile. Justin’s instinctive distrust of mystics had been trumped by their hostess’s kindness and excellent cooking.
“She could tell King Baryn,” Kirra said.
“And she may have. But is the king himself prepared to engage in a war over magic?”
“He might be,” Senneth said, “if the war is about more than magic. If it’s about power.”
“And from what I can make out, that’s what you’re touring the countryside to discover,” Aleatha said. “Tayse? Some potatoes? Maybe a little more bread? Or there’s pie in the oven, if you want to wait for that.”
“Bread,” he decided. “And pie.”
“It disturbs me that even on Rappengrass land, mystics aren’t safe,” Senneth said.
Aleatha gave her a sharp look from blue eyes that seemed not at all dimmed by the fact that she must be at least eighty years old. “Mystics have never been entirely safe,” she said. “Not in Ghosenhall, not in Brassenthwaite. Not even, till young Kirra here was born, in Danalustrous. And I do not know that even Malcolm Danalustrous would shed blood to protect any of them except his own daughter. That’s the truth of it.”
“What of Coralinda Gisseltess?” Senneth asked. “What do you know of her?”
Aleatha soaked another piece of bread with honey and handed it to Cammon. “Only what everyone knows. She is recruiting young women to join her order. She is spreading to all the Houses her doctrine of the Pale Mother and her hatred of magic. She has not lost any of the force of her personality. I have to admit I fear her a great deal.”
“Where is she basing her new evangelism?” Senneth asked. “Is she living in Gissel Plain?”
“Oh no. There’s the old Lumanen Convent some miles east of here—you must know what I’m talking about—it fell into ruin a hundred years or so ago, but it was quite massive. She restored it sometime in the past few years, and they say it’s quite beautiful now. All this smooth white stone that reflects ba
ck the silver light of the moon. There must be more than five hundred rooms in that place, and they say that all of them are full with Daughters of the Pale Mother who have joined the order in recent years. Filled with the Daughters—and their protectors.”
Tayse looked up at that. “She has a civil guard?”
Aleatha nodded. “And not all supplied by her brother, from what I hear. Men cannot join the order, you know, but that does not mean men cannot have strong feelings of piety. They say there is a barracks of soldiers who have styled themselves an army of the goddess. They dress in silver and black livery and wear moonstone pendants around their necks.”
“And perhaps some of these men have carried out the deeds that have been credited to Halchon Gisseltess’s troops?” Senneth murmured.
Aleatha raised her eyebrows. “I had not considered that. But you may well be right.”
“I have a lot of questions to ask Ariane Rappengrass tomorrow,” Kirra said in a dark voice.
Aleatha glanced at her. “You are lucky. She is in residence. But perhaps that is not luck so much as—” She opened her hand palm up in a gesture of uncertainty. “Perhaps she feels now is not a time to travel far from her own lands.”
“I have two favors to ask of you,” Senneth said. “Can you keep my raelynx in your shed while Kirra and I go pose questions to Ariane Rappengrass? I do not expect you to try to control him while I am gone, but I would think a good door and a strong lock are all that are required.”
“My dear Senneth, I will be happy to hold him for you! As long as I don’t have to feed him or try to make him mine.”
Senneth grinned. “No. Just contain him. Second—” She glanced at Cammon. “This one fell under my protection not so very long ago, and I have had no time to train him as he deserves. I don’t know what your plans were for tomorrow, but if you had time—a few hours even—”
“Indeed, yes! I would be happy to see what skill and knowledge I will be able to impart in one short day,” Aleatha exclaimed. “He is a reader, is he not?”