Parasite Soul (10 page)

Although he’d lost his prayer stone, he nonetheless murmured a plea
to Vanyon, begging the god to preserve his father from danger and to forgive
Niu her blasphemies. It upset him that if she persisted in her heresy,
the Jynn handmaiden would be denied access to the Afterworld. Could he change
her mind? He thought it might offend her if he tried, but wasn’t
preserving her eternal soul worth risking her rancor?

If someone or some
thing
was patrolling the barn it didn’t
bother them during the night. Neither Simon nor Niu slept well. Niu
remained jumpy and alert until dawn, dozing only infrequently, a kitchen knife
close at hand. Simon dreamed of returning to the uncomplicated life he’d
so strongly desired to escape. Why had he been so dissatisfied? He
could barely remember now.

Morning found them weary and ill-tempered. They spoke
little. There was nothing left to eat, but thankfully a sluggish old
stream bisecting the forgotten field provided water. Somewhat refreshed,
Simon was impatient to get moving. Only Vanyon’s Parade and a valley
stood between himself and home.

Of course, that was a big
only
, with the King’s men looking
for him.

Niu found some disturbing tracks in the soft soil near the stream –
fresh and man-sized. Simon was forced to admit that someone had, more
than likely, been prowling around the barn in the night. When Niu drew
his attention to them, he grunted ungraciously.

“Just a villager, probably,” he said. “A farmer, or a
tramp. A hunter, maybe.” But in his heart, he shared her suspicion
that someone was keeping an eye on them.

A half-hour’s walk through long-uncultivated land brought them to
the crest of a hill, allowing them a view of Vanyon’s Parade. A ring of
tidy dwellings surrounded a large market square, the town’s primary attraction,
at the center of which rose an ancient, badly weathered statue of its towering
namesake. As the main trading hub between northern and southern
Cannevish, inns and warehouses sprouted up in greater proliferation than homes,
and likewise travelers and merchants outnumbered locals. Twin wooden
guard towers, gated, sealed the entrance to both the town and the valley
beyond. He and Niu would either have to brave the checkpoint or hike into
the mountains to circumvent the town, which would add days to their travel
time.

“The best choice,” Niu decided, “Would be to travel with – or at
least appear to be traveling with – a group of people. The guards are
looking for a man and a woman.”

This seemed like a shaky plan to Simon, relying on a certain degree
of stupidity and carelessness on the part of the soldiers, but he couldn’t
think of another way that wasn’t prohibitively time consuming.

“Where are we supposed to find a group who won’t just turn us over
to the guards?” he asked.

She reached beneath her cloak and produced a small drawstring bag.
It clinked as she tossed it in the air and caught it.

“Where did you get that?”

She smiled slightly. “Clothes and food are not the only the
only things I have been borrowing.”

Simon thought it over.

“Well,” he said at length, “It’s true, we could probably bribe our
way into a merchant caravan or something. But what’s to stop whoever we
pay taking our money and then turning us over to the guards? There’s bound to
be a bounty on our heads.”

“Not necessarily,” Niu said. “The royals desire to - what is
your saying? - sweep their mess under the rug. They may be leaving the
matter in the hands of local authorities rather than alerting the
people.”

“Can we take that chance?”

“We need not.” The handmaiden gestured meaningfully toward the
flanking mountains.

“
You
need not,” Simon emphasized meaningfully. He’d
been thinking about Niu and all she’d done to help him, despite the trouble
he’d brought upon her head. “Find someplace safe and stay there.
It’s likely I’m going to my…” He hesitated, unable to bring himself to
say
death
. “Capture. There’s no need for you to get captured
too. Let’s agree on somewhere I can meet you in a few days if I…”
Survive.
“Don’t get myself caught.”

Niu smiled again. For the first time, it almost seemed
genuine.

“Stupid,” she said. “You would not survive without me.”

Simon was mildly put out that she considered him so hopeless. “I
fought a dragon and survived.”

“Mm-hmm. I will come with you.”

“You don’t blend in. You’ll be spotted immediately.”

“We shall see.” Without further discussion, she tugged her
hood down, Niu set off downhill toward the small but bustling hub. Simon
hurried to keep up with her.

“Do you really think we’ll get through the checkpoint?”

“Only one way to find out.” She quickened her pace.
“Remember. Appear confident.”

“Confident,” Simon repeated with as much self-assurance as he could
manage.

He hoped Niu would change her mind and choose a route which secreted
them into town under the cover of the surrounding foliage, but she took the
road. She kept her hood low but not
too
low, and moved with poise
and composure. He strove to match her, but felt conspicuous and oafish
trailing in her wake. Eventually, after weaving around a succession of
slow-moving ox carts, the two of them found themselves surrounded by foot
traffic. Niu elected to press close to a scruffy band of actors and
minstrels who looked nearly as worn and travel-weary as Simon felt. She
slowed her pace to match theirs, and if they noticed, none of them concerned
themselves with her motives.

“Niu,” Simon said nervously, trying not to catch the eye of
merchants and travelers intermittently spilling from the city gates in the
opposite direction. A bubble of anxiety swelling in his gut, he
continually expected a startled exclamation of recognition, a cry for the
guards, but it never came. Few people even gave them a second
glance. “I really don’t think we can get through.”

He gestured, as inconspicuously as he could, toward the town
gate. It wasn’t nearly as heavily guarded as the valley mouth, where the
watchtowers stood, but there were still several of soldiers on duty. In
most instances, they lazily waved travelers past, although occasionally they
stopped some random unfortunates and drew them aside for questioning.
This interchange generally ended, Simon noted, with coins changing hands and
their victim continuing on just a bit lighter.

“If we turned around now, we would attract attention to
ourselves. Remember… confidence,” Niu reminded him. “But not
arrogance. Behave in a carefree manner, if you can, as though this is a
journey you have made many times and you expect no trouble.”

“Well… I have been here before.”
And only scant days ago, at
that,
he thought, on his way to the base camp where he would meet up with
his fellow aspiring dragonslayers. The town had appeared friendlier, more
welcoming then. Less like a trap. He made an attempt to recapture
his high spirits during that first journey, and while he wasn’t wholly
successful, he was able to inject a little bounce into his step.

“Stick close to the group in front of us,” Niu hissed. “As
close as you can without arousing their suspicion.”

As luck had it, just as Simon and Niu were approaching the gate –
Simon’s heart in his mouth – one of the soldiers stopped a rotund bald man who
was traveling alone. This fellow, clad in a ratty approximation of
merchant’s robes, had a nervous aspect about him, a mincing step which had drew
the guards’ eyes. They hauled the protesting man off to the side and
began to interrogate him. The unfortunate fellow began to gesticulate
wildly as he negotiated with the soldiers, two of whom were frowning
forbiddingly, one of whom was grinning openly. The guards made him empty
his pockets and rifled through an endless succession of hidden purses and
drawstring bags concealed about his person. Simon didn’t know what the
various herbs and powders that the soldiers kept emptying out onto the ground
were, but their agitated owner was clearly terrified; sweating profusely, he
repeatedly proclaimed himself a “legitimate” businessman, and made repeated
mention of his family, who were supposedly relying on his continued good
health.

Whatever his story, the rotund man’s plight was the distraction
Simon and Niu needed. The troupe of entertainers was waved through the
gate with only the most cursory of glances, Simon and Niu with them.
Behind them, the quaking detainee had been thrown over a barrel and
cuffed. Simon heard one of the guards laughingly taunt that it was ‘the
rope’ for him ‘for sure’.

That could easily have been me
, he
thought, a little ill.

“See?” Niu asked when they were safely inside. “That was not
so hard.”

“The guards were distracted,” Simon muttered.

“Much of life is luck.”

“No.” Simon shielded his eyes against the bright morning sun and
pointed toward the distant market square. The weatherworn statue of great
Vanyon, rising above the sea of canvas, seemed to be looking directly down upon
him. “We had Vanyon’s protection.”

Niu raised an eyebrow. “Sad, then, that he did not think to
protect the man before us.”

“I think that man was a smuggler.”

“And we are fugitives; we have stolen and possibly killed.”

Simon shuddered, thinking of the women they’d trapped with the
wendigo.

“He’s guarding us,” he said stiffly. “Tonight I will thank him
with prayer and offerings.”

“What kind of offerings?”

“Wine.” Simon’s father had once told him that, centuries ago,
wine had replaced blood as Vanyon’s preferred offering. Prior to that,
the god had only accepted sacrifice. The change had occurred during the
reign of King Ferrath, considered by historians and commoners alike to have
been Cannevish’s wisest, most progressive ruler. Certainly, he’d been
much more sympathetic to the troubles of his people than anyone in the House of
Minus, who had obliterated his family line and retained their stranglehold upon
the throne for nearly two hundred years. No one even knew what Ferrath
looked like anymore, so thoroughly had Princess Tiera’s ancestors wiped him
from recorded history.

“Can he not make his own? And how do you get this wine to
him?” Niu inquired, faux-innocently, interrupting Simon’s train of thought.

“You pour it onto…” Simon began, then shook his head angrily.
He wasn’t going to engage Niu on the topic of his religion again. He
wanted nothing to do with her subversive Jynn beliefs. “What’s our next
move?”

“An inn, perhaps. We may find a merchant traveling north whose
pockets we can fill.” She glanced around at the buildings, which curved
like protective wings about the nucleus of the central market. “Do you
have any ideas?”

“Well, there’s… on my first visit, I stayed at an inn called The
Charging Boar.”

“We cannot go there then, as they would certainly recognize you.”

“Of… course.” Simon cursed himself for not thinking of that.

“I will find some place.”

She led Simon down the right wing of the town. The market was
bustling with people, and while Simon saw each and every one of them as a
potential threat, few of them showed interest in return. Those who did
consider him momentarily were merchants, speculating on how much coin he might
be worth then passing him over as a penniless vagrant. Consequently, none
of the various vendors attempted to hawk their wares to him. Simon grew
increasingly bitter with each dismissal: he knew he looked a bit rough,
unshaven and unkempt as he was, but his pride nagged at him regardless.
He was nothing in the eyes of these traders; neither a dragonslayer nor a
wanted man, just some flotsam drifting through the town, unworthy of their
attention. Now that he was an outlaw, was that all he would ever be?

If the town ringed the marketplace, then the stalls worshipped at
Vanyon’s enormous stone feet. The god stood tall and stern, surveying the
town with flaking eyes. The wings on his great helm, now worn to stubs,
had once speared the sky. A vast beard spilled down the statue’s scarred
chest, obscuring the One Wound, which the God had received in vanquishing the
demon Phthalam. At the base of the great monument, some men were erecting
a wooden platform. Simon wondered what might be about to take place –
theater, perhaps, or feats of strength, sword-swallowing and magic.
Whichever the case, Simon wished he could join the onlookers, carefree.

Niu tugged at his arm, drawing his attention to a message board
which was plastered with notices, alongside familiarly-formatted Wanted
posters. At first, he was afraid that she wanted him to read the notices,
and he was reluctant to draw her attention to his embarrassing inability.
Following a quick perusal, however, he took her meaning: neither of their faces
stared back at them. Her earlier speculation that only the king’s men had
been forwarded a description of the fugitives was likely true, then.
Thereafter, Simon felt slightly more at ease in the crowd.

Weaving through waves of hawkers and pedestrians, the two of them
struggled around the perimeter of the marketplace. At times, the gauntlet
of bodies, carts, stalls, and pack animals was suffocatingly dense. Simon
narrowly avoided a blow which might have shattered his knee as an ornery mule,
protesting at its master’s persistent nagging, lashed out at the world at
large. While the guard presence was largely centered near the
construction of the platform, he and Niu were occasionally forced to
inconspicuously redirect their steps to avoid patrols.