Lhind the Thief (18 page)

When they were done, she mounted wordlessly and clucked at
her pony to pick up its pace. I tried again once we’d reached a long downward
slope that afforded us a view of gentle hills and wide valleys.

“Where are we?” I asked. “I’m lost.”

“South,” she said over her shoulder. “In Forfar.”

“That I guessed, but where exactly?”

“That mountain back there marks the border between Zhin and
Forfar.”

“So we’re not anywhere near Imbradi?”

“We are west of it,” she said. Not surly, not friendly.
Just—flat.

“So when will we reach Letarj?”

“If we reach the border by tomorrow tonight—that’s the river
Fara—we should make it to the harbor in three days.”

“Do we have to go all the way down to Letarj?” I asked,
recalling the lines on the map, and trying to calculate distance in my head. “I
know it’s a big harbor, but wouldn’t it be quicker to follow the Fara and find
some kind of transport at Fara Bay?”

She snorted. “Obviously you know nothing about Fara Bay,”
she said. “It’s a terrible place, a pirates’ haven.”

She kicked her pony into a trot, and that was that.

I jolted along behind her, never quite catching up. The
scenery changed slowly to a sameness of low brush and occasional copses of
spreading oak. Twice gazelles sprang gracefully across our path, running toward
the dark line of forest to the east. Kee kept her eyes forward and her mouth
closed.

So I decided to use this opportunity to practice shimmers.
I’d never been able to make them while doing something else—like moving—and my
recent adventures had shown me that I needed them most when I was on the run.
So I sat squarely on my pony, tried to shut out the grassy hillside moving
slowly past, and made rainbow bubbles.

Two things startled me, making the bubbles blink into
nothingness.

One: the colors were brighter and the sizes much bigger than
I had intended, which was something I’d never experienced.

And two: something at my waist glowed warmly, like a shaft
of sunlight through glass. Casting a distracted glance at Kee, whose back was
squarely to me, I yanked my tunic up and pulled out my stash. I ran my fingers
through the loot until they discovered a fading warmth in the diamond stones of
Kressanthe’s necklace.

I pulled them free and held them up against the sky. The
half-circle of stones swung glittering from my fingers, the colors dancing in a
curiously compelling way. It took an effort to pull my gaze away. I slipped the
thing about my wrist and made another shimmer—and the stones against my wrist
warmed.

I held the necklace up. Deep within each of the gems on the
sides of the central big one colors darted, like crazed fireflies. The big
one—the one you’d expect to throw the most rainbows of light—shone steadily
like a prism on a cloudy day. Except the center, in which gleamed a tiny
pinpoint of blue, almost like an eye.

As I watched the blue faded out. When I made more bubbles,
the blue leaped into life, burned coolly and bright, then dwindled out.

So I tried a big shimmer, almost as big as that fake ship
I’d made to scare away the Skull Fleet from Rajanas’s yacht. A thousand
butterflies swooped against the sky, all colors from pale lemon to
velvet-black.

The pony took one look and shied, snorting fiercely.

I tried to catch myself, but the pony was too fast. I found
myself looping through the air, the wind whistling past my ears. Instinct made
me curl up in a ball. When I landed I somersaulted a ways down the path, coming
to a stop in a prickly bush.

Fast hooves thumped near, stopped, and Kee’s head blotted
out the dizzily circling sky. “Are you all right? What happ—” Her breath
caught, her gaze on something near my head.

I turned, saw the diamonds blazing with color a hand-span
from my nose.

“What’s that?” she breathed.

“Necklace,” I muttered.

Her mouth opened, then her gaze hardened. “Oh. I see.
Something you stole, no doubt?”

“What do you know about it?” I muttered, getting to my feet
and trying to dust myself off. My limbs trembled like water had replaced my
bones, but otherwise I was unhurt.

“Nothing. And I don’t want to,” she said. “I just know I’d
rather starve than steal.” And when I said nothing, she added flatly, “I’ll
fetch your pony.”

She rode a little ways off, and I walked slowly down the
path. My mood of experimentation had given over to a vast, angry discontent.
Why was I here anyway? I didn’t need this sniff-nosed girl, or her
thorn-tongued prince either, for that matter. What’s to keep me from cutting
and running, I thought irritably as I restored the necklace to the sash, and
made sure Nill’s thick brown tunic was pulled well over it.

I stopped, and scanned the eastern horizon longingly.

Thus I spotted the speck against the sky a moment before a
panic-driven mental flash blasted its way into my mind.
Slavers, the slavers will have Hlanan. You must go fast,
Tir’s cry
ripped through my aching head.

And both ponies shied when Tir swooped out of the sky,
cawing in distress.

“The Scribe’s aidlar,” Kee cried, struggling to regain
control of both ponies.

I ran to catch the dragging reins of my mount. Tir flapped
about my head, cawing in distress.
Slavers!
Slavers!
Tir’s panic stabbed into my mind again and again. Frightened by
the bird, the snorting pony reared, and Kee hovered nearby demanding to know
what was wrong.

I dropped the reins and clapped my hands over my ears. “Tir!
Kee! Wait a moment,” I yelped.

Kee clamped her mouth shut and once again got the ponies
under control. Tir sailed close by, settling onto a boulder. The ruby eyes
jerked back and forth agitatedly. I sat down in the middle of the road, drew a
deep breath, then said, “All right.”

“What—” Kee started.

I raised a hand. “Tir’s got a message for me. I can’t hear
anything else while I’m getting it.”

Kee blinked, her eyes going round with surprise, but she
kept her lips closed.

At once Tir’s thought speared into my mind, and I saw a
distorted, color-drained memory-view of Geric Lendan facing several humans in
unfamiliar dress. On the floor lay Hlanan, unconscious, bound by rope.

The smiling prince spoke.
Take him at once. You can get him safely to Fara Bay before he regains
his wits, if you keep him dosed with liref.

The bird’s image ended with the two men reaching for
Hlanan’s limp body.

“Slavers!” the bird squawked.

Kee said, “What is it?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Tir saw something nasty concerning
Hlanan.” And I described the bird’s memory-image.

When I was done, Kee frowned. “Were those men dressed in
brown, short jackets, long boots? Pointed steel hats?”

“That’s it,” I acknowledged, nodding.

“Then Tir is right.” She scowled. “Those men are agents for
Fara’s ruler, who not only sells all their criminals to Shinjans for use in
their galleys, but will take—for an enormous fee—criminals from neighboring
lands. They require official verification of the crimes, but,” she enunciated
with disgust, “that’s somehow always easy to provide.”

“Does Rajanas get rid of his troublemakers that way?”

“No,” she said. “Nor does he trade with Fara. His
grandfather used to, but that was one promise his highness made to us when
Grandmother helped him regain the throne. Not that he wasn’t already against them.
Few know it, but he and the Scribe were on one of those galleys,” she finished
in a low voice. “I think . . .” She cast a quick glance at the
aidlar, then shook her head.

But Tir shrieked on a high, terrible note. “Slavers! Kill!”

Kee sighed, her shoulders jerking up and down. “Then Tir
already knows.”

“Knows what?” I demanded.

“The Shinjans always put a tattoo on their galley-slaves. If
any escape, and are later recaptured, that mark earns them an instant death.”
She looked very much like her grandmother as she added flatly, “A convenient
way for Lendan, accursed be his name, to get the Scribe killed without being
directly associated.”

Tir flew up again, sailing back and forth before me. A
barrage of images and words bombarded my mind until I forced that inner-eyelid
down, and closed them out. At once the bird went into a frenzy, squawking and
cawing.

“What is wrong?” Kee yelled.

“Wants us to rescue him,” I cried back.

“But we can’t,” she said. “We have to get to Letarj, we
promised—”

“WAIT!” I yelled my loudest. “Let me think,” I added more
normally, as Tir and Kee both fell silent.

My first thought was not about the problem at hand, but
about Tir. I wondered if the creature had ever rested; it must have flown off
directly from seeing me safely in Kuraf’s tree hideout to Imbradi, to find
Hlanan, and then from there to find me.

I remembered the vow the bird had made aboard Rajanas’s
ship. A vow of loyalty to my kind. But its feeling for Hlanan was much
stronger. This sense came through very clearly.

This feeling the aidlar had for the Scribe was very close to
the very emotions I so despised. Distrusted. Only wasn’t this bird
demonstrating the very essence of trust?

Lhind help, Lhind
help!

I’ll help, I’ll help,
I thought to the agitated bird.

But how? Short of magic—

“Magic.” I rubbed my eyes. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of
it before?”

“We can’t turn from our mission—”

“We can if it will speed us,” I said.

“What?” she replied shortly, not hiding her suspicion.

“Hlanan is a magician of sorts. He got us from wherever it
was we’d been ambushed, to Imbradi, with some kind of spell,” I said,
remembering the old woman who’d helped him to shift us from the river all the
way to Imbradi. “
Transportation
magic.
Wouldn’t it save us lots of time if we went straight from Fara Bay to
Erev-Li-Erval in an instant?”

Kee chewed a knuckle, her brow creased with thought. “Fara
Bay is dangerous,” she said. “Some say that they even allow pirates to trade
there.”

“Tir will find him for us,” I said, “so we won’t have to
search. We just get in. Stay hidden until we reach him. I’m good at that. And
as for danger, it seems to me we’re going to find it anywhere we go. If you
want to turn back . . .”

Her cheeks reddened and her chin lifted. “I will not turn
back.”

“So let’s rescue Hlanan, and travel by magic. Everybody gets
what they want that way.”

She brought her chin down in a decisive nod. “All right.”
She shot a glance at the bird, hesitated, then clamped her lips shut on
whatever she’d been about to say.

“Hear that, Tir? We’ll get him out, but you have to find him
for us. Soon as you can.”

The aidlar flooded my mind with a bright splash of joy that
sent tingles through me to my fingertips, then it sped off, soon to disappear
against the clouds forming on the horizon.

Kee mounted her pony, then wheeled it toward the west. “The
bay is this way,” she said.

By nightfall we were riding in a slashing downpour. This
didn’t much bother me, but Kee’s face in the sporadic flashes of lightning was
pale and miserable. When I offered to find shelter so we could wait out the
storm she spurned the idea with a curt “No.”

I stopped talking, mentally resigning myself to an
unpleasant journey unless Hlanan could get us to the capital fast. For
something to do, I went back to trying shimmers, this time experimenting with
wind.

My ready magic knowledge was limited to shimmers, and wind
pushing, and the ones Hlanan had called Voice-cast and Mind-cast. Each of
those last two I’d discovered in dire situations: the first when I was about to
lose my life, and the second, one terrible day in Thesreve. They scared me too
much to try practicing them. Easier to harness a hurricane.

But wind-pushing was easy, if impractical for much besides
blowing out inconvenient candles. I couldn’t cause much breeze—hardly more than
a stir—and it didn’t go much farther than I could toss a heavy stone. Still, it
was this one that I tried now, aiming the push somewhere right over Kee’s head,
so the wind drove the rain either in front of her or behind. It was hard to
keep it up, and my aim wasn’t always good (for I had to aim each push), but
after a time I not only noticed that it was slightly easier to aim, my pushes
had more force.

Then I became aware of a steady, warm glow from the
necklace.

The impulse to put the necklace on was purely for the heat.
The air had grown steadily more chill, and although I much prefer cold to hot,
and indeed rarely feel cold as long as my fuzz was dry, being soaked to the
skin makes me feel chilled after long enough. And wet chill isn’t comfortable
for anybody, excepting maybe fish and sea serpents.

So I pulled the necklace free. Though the day was gloomy,
the necklace sparkled with inner lights, almost as if eyes twinkled and
blinked. I fixed it around my neck. The big diamond settled between my collarbones,
an eerily perfect fit. Then I made my push.

Whoosh! The rain parted like a curtain for an instant, and I
almost fell off my pony.

Do not be afraid,
a voice said in my head.
I am helping
your focus.

What? Who?
Only my
experiences with Tir’s mind-contacts kept me from squawking out loud.

I, Faryana. I am
prisoned in the stone you wear. Usually I can only sense the emotions of the
wearer. Your thoughts, when you make your magic, come clearly, and I have aided
you as you cause no harm. Who are you?

Lhind,
I thought
cautiously.

Why do you fear to
tell me? I cannot harm you. But perhaps I can help.
And there came a
projected image.

Instinct made me close down the inner eyelid. At the same
time, a gasp from Kee brought me back to the here-and-now. The rain, no longer
diverted, poured down on her in a sudden deluge. I flung up my hands and made
the breeze again, scarcely comprehending as Kee looked around in mute misery.