The Magic of Recluce (18 page)

…ppeeeeepppp…

The sound of the insects or frogs or whatever it was reminded me that I had heard very little, certainly no birds at all, since I had arrived in Candar.

We crossed a low mound that stretched across the end of the meadow, and I knew that it had once been a homestead—but long, long before.

The brook narrowed as we continued and angled more to the left, southward, than I would have liked; but most of the space was open meadow, rather than brush or straggly cedars.

Another kay and the brook was barely a cubit wide, and angling back toward Hrisbarg.

“All right, we go over the hill.”

Gairloch shook his head, spraying mist on me, and we started up the gentle slope, taking less time to reach the crest than it had to circle the second hill, even though Gairloch's steps grew edgier and edgier as we neared the crest.

I could sense nothing—neither heat nor cold, but an emptiness, a lack of even nothing.

Wheeeeee…

As we came through the mist to the hilltop, I shivered.

A pile of whitened and glazed stones graced the hilltop. Two of the pale white-granite monoliths remained standing, although their crowns were melted like candles left in the sun. Surrounding the chaos-circle was dead-white bleached gravel. Outside the gravel was a whitish clay that slowly darkened until it merged with the scraggly grass.

Wheeeeee
…Gairloch shied from that whiteness.

Less than a handspan from my face, my own staff began to glow with a black light that urged me away from the stones.

Even with the age of the destruction, even after all the years that had passed, I didn't even look at the twisted patterns, but edged Gairloch around the dead-white stones.

Beyond the hilltop, north and west of us, I could see the hilltop where the border station lay, and the angle of the road descending toward Howlett—away from us, of course.

Not until we reached the bottom of the hill and turned back west did I remember taking a breath.

“Whuuuuuuhhh…”

My knees were shaking. For someone who had questioned magic and chaos, that ancient structure had been pretty convincing. The whole hill had radiated destruction. No wonder people didn't live nearby.

That was the worst. After that, the scattered brambles, and the wind that got steadily colder—all those seemed merely natural. The road itself was also a natural disaster, churned half-frozen mud, but somehow Gairloch mushed on.

Someone had to have seen us, but we saw no one, not until we were back on the road to Howlett, watching the scattered flocks of black-faced sheep, and their shepherds bundled against the cold. Then we passed a slow-moving wagon heading in the same direction, and an old coach headed toward Hrisbarg.

Neither driver gave me more than a passing glance.

D
USK WAS FALLING
by the time we struggled—with stops for water for Gairloch, and vain attempts to stretch out the permanent cramps in my legs—along the quagmire that was called the road to Howlett. Even from the outskirts I could tell that Howlett made Hrisbarg look like Imperial Hamor. Hrisbarg had rough wooden sidewalks; Howlett had none. Hrisbarg had defined streets; Howlett had a rough clump of structures. Hrisbarg's buildings had peeling paint; Howlett's had none.

But the rain had begun to fall as ice-needles, and the wind howled in from the north, freezing my cloak as solid as plate armor.

Almost at the edge of Howlett was a careless building, accompanied by another not much better than a large shack—the Snug Inn and its stable.

Wheeee…eeee
, was Gairloch's only comment as I led him inside the stable.

“Three pence, and he'll share a stall with the other mountain pony,” commanded the heavyset man by the sliding stable door.

I looked at the small stableboy racking a saddle while the big man collected. The stableboy shrugged.

In the open space to the right stood an unhitched wagon and a coach—that same golden coach that I had seen on the road to Freetown. I looked back at the heavy man to catch what he was saying.

“You stable him…” added the man. “…damned ponies, kill anyone not their master…”

I handed over the three pennies.

“At the end. There's another one like him there.”

I led Gairloch along the narrow way toward the back, and eased open the stall door, holding it so that it didn't fall off the worn wooden hinge-pins, then glancing at the bleached and cracked support timbers of the stable itself, still wondering about the golden-finished white-oak coach.

Wheeee…eeee
…The whinny of the other pony subsided as I let Gairloch take his own time.

Both sniffed the air, while I wanted to sneeze.

In time, I got him in and unsaddled. I quickly stowed the staff in the straw, along with my pack, and searched until I found an old brush. By then, the stableboy, not the collector, was watching.

“Any grain?”

He gave me a wary look, and I produced a copper penny. The boy produced a battered bucket, and I split it between the two, although I gave Gairloch the largest share.

Finally, I felt Gairloch was settled enough for me to chance the inn.

Once inside, the odor of unwashed herders, rancid oils, stale perfumes, and smoke left my eyes stinging. Squinting through the haze, I peered over the crowded tables. Those in the back, toward the narrow but drafty door through which I had entered, were long trestle tables with benches. Beyond them were square tables, of a darker and polished wood. Between the two types of tables ran a flimsy half-wall with three wide openings for the inn's servers.

Everyone on the road to or from Howlett seemed stranded in the same inn. On my side of the half-wall, men and women were shoulder to shoulder at the trestle tables. A few of the tables for the local gentry, or whoever the privileged ones might be, had vacant chairs around them, but none of the tables were unclaimed.

The Snug Inn, despite its name, was not snugly built.

Uncle Sardit would have listed in detail all the faults in the construction. While I scarcely had his experience, there were some poor design features evident even to me. The outside eaves were not long enough to keep the wind from blowing underneath and into the upstairs rooms. Likewise, the stone facing of the front wall had been built for style and was beginning to pull away from the heavy timbers that framed the side walls. The curves in the rough beams that framed both side and front walls showed that they had not been properly treated or cured.

Inside was worse. The hallway dividers separating the common and gentry sections had been carelessly sawed and nailed together with small spikes, needlessly splitting the wood. After my short tenure with Uncle Sardit, I could have done better and probably done it quicker than whoever had built them. The gentry's tables were square, sharp-edged, and probably gave the inn's servants bruises. Again, a few minutes with a plane or even a shaping saw would have produced a better and more serviceable table.

The common tables were green-oak trestles, sawed or split before the wood had cured. With the amount of red oak, black oak, and even maple available in Candar, I wondered why the tables were green oak.

I looked over the mass of people, wincing at the din. Though I had stood there for what seemed a long time, no one even looked at me.

Finally, I made out a space on the bench next to a man in a rough brown coat, halfway across the back of the commons area. I edged toward it.

“Watch it…”

“Young pup…”

“My apologies,” I offered to the man whose elbow I had jostled, even as I ducked past him. He glared over the edge of the chipped ceramic mug he held to his beard-encircled mouth.

“Won't bring back the mead…worthless time for a storm…
Lass!
More mead!”

From the smell, whatever mead was, I didn't have any desire to taste it. Nor did I have much desire to stay in the Snug Inn, except that I was hungry. Since I hadn't learned how to eat hay or oats, that meant entering the inn.

I looked at the space beside the man in brown, then shrugged and eased myself into place, wishing somehow I had brought the staff, but knowing it was safer in the straw of Gairloch's stall. I still didn't like leaving it.

“You?” asked the brown man, bearded and hunched over his mug of steaming cider. From his muscles and his belt, I would have guessed a carpenter.

Of course he didn't know me. I hadn't told him. “Lerris, used to be a woodworker before I left home.” All of which was true enough.

“Woodworker? Too damned fair for that.” He glared at me.

I sighed. “All right, I was an apprentice woodcrafter—never got further than benches and breadboards.”

“Hah! Least you're honest, boy. No one would admit that, weren't it true.” Then he glared back at his cider, ignoring me.

Left to my own devices, I waved at the serving-girl. A black-haired and skinny thing, she wore a sleeveless brown leather vest and wide skirts. She ignored me as well. So I began to study the people while I waited for her to get close enough for me to insist on something.

At the table closest the hearth sat four people—a woman veiled below her eyes, wearing a loose-fitting green tunic over a white blouse, and presumably trousers. She was the only veiled woman I had ever seen. But if her lower face were unknown, her clothes were tight enough to reveal that her figure, at least, was desirable.

Her forehead was darkish, as were her heavy eyebrows and her hair, bound with golden cord into a cone shape. Over the back of her chair was a heavy coat—of a white fur I had never seen.

Two of the other men were clearly fighters, wearing surcoats I could not identify and the bowl-cut of hair worn under a helmet. One fighter was older, white-haired and grizzled, but his body seemed younger. His back was to me and I could not see his face, though I would have guessed it was unlined, despite the white hair. The other fighter was thin, youngish, with a face like a weasel and dark black hair to match.

Between them, across from the woman, half-facing the fire, was a man in spotless white. Even from that distance, more than ten cubits, I could see his eyes were old, though he looked more like Koldar's age, perhaps a trace older, perhaps even into his third decade. But the eyes had seen more, and I shivered and dropped my glance as he turned in my direction.

The man in white smiled. His smile was friendly, reassuring, and everyone in the dining area of the saloon relaxed. I could feel the wave of relaxation, and I fought it off, just because no one was going to tell me what to feel. Was he the one who rode in the golden coach?

“You in the back. I see you are cold. Would you like some warmth?” I felt he was looking at me, but his fingers pointed at three figures huddled against the timbered wall behind me and to my left. The two men and the woman, all clad in the shapeless gray padded jackets that marked them as herders of some sort, ignored the question and looked down.

“Fine,” said the man in white. “I can tell you have come in from the blizzard's chill. The warmth is on me.” He gestured, and in our corner of the long room, I could feel the dampness and chill dissipate, though we were far from the fire.

The woman looked away from the wizard, for that was clearly what he had to be, and made a motion, as if to reject the heat. The two men looked down.

Me…for the first time since Gairloch and I had ridden out of Hrisbarg, I felt comfortably warm, as if the long table where I sat were the one before the hearth, rather than the farthest from the fire. Yet the heat thrown by the wizard chilled me as well, inside, and it felt familiar, as if I too could have called it forth, though I did not know how. Nor did I want to try.

At a small table in the corner nearest the hearth sat another man, the only person in the crowded inn sitting alone. He wore a dark-gray long-sleeved tunic, belted over similar trousers by an even darker belt. A dark-gray leather cloak lay over the chair beside him.

His hair was a light brown that seemed gray, though from my distance he did not appear old.

“The man in gray…” I mumbled to the carpenter.

“Arlyn, call me Arlyn.” His eyes were glazed, not with alcohol, but as if he had been looking somewhere else. “Lass! More cider.” Arlyn waved the brown mug in the air. Several drops of cider splashed across my face.

After wiping off the cider with the back of my hand, I asked, “Arlyn, who's the man in gray?”

“Justen. Gray wizard. Almost as bad as the white one. Antonin. Antonin will take your soul and your body. So they say.” He waved the mug again.

This time the serving-girl turned toward us.

“What's for a traveler?” I made my voice hard.

Her eyes turned to me from the mug she had lifted from Arlyn's hand, running over my dark cloak, sandy hair, and fair skin. “Perhaps you should join the dark one, young sir.”

Arlyn looked at me again.

“I doubt I could afford such luxury.”

The girl, for she could not have been much older than I, actually flashed a quick smile before her face turned cold and professionally false again. “Two pence for the fire, and five pence for the cider. Mead is ten pence a mug.”

“Food?”

“Cheese and black bread is ten pence; cheese and bear and black bread is twenty.”

“Cheese and black bread with cider.”

“Twenty-two pence.” She paused. “Now.”

I shrugged. “Half now, and half when I get the food. Someone will take the cider.”

Her face looked bored and tired already. “Fine. Twelve now. For fire and cider. Ten when you get the bread and cheese.”

I fished twelve pence from my belt, glad in this surly lot that I had managed some change in Hrisbarg. “You'll break a traveler in this weather.”

“You could stay outside.” She slipped the coins through a narrow slot into a locked and hardened leather purse on an equally heavy leather belt, and handed me a wooden token. Then she was picking up mugs and coins all the way along the table, passing out tokens as she stacked the empty mugs on the heavy wooden tray.

The door behind me opened, and another rush of cold chilled the back side of the common room again.

A pair of road soldiers stood there, wearing heavy short riding jackets, swords, and carrying long-barreled rifles—used in peace-keeping, not in warfare, not when the smallest of chaos-spells destroyed their effectiveness.

A thin man, wearing a greasy brown apron and waving a truncheon, waved toward the pair. “Areillas, Storznoy!”

The bigger soldier—four cubits tall, with as much flab as muscle—jabbed the other, a man not much taller than the serving-girl. Then the two walked toward the innkeeper and the kitchen.

Conversations dropped off to whispers, or less, as the two made their way toward the innkeeper.

The heavier soldier said something to the thin innkeeper, who looked puzzled. The soldier raised his voice.

“…said…demon horseman seen on the Duke of Freetown's deadlands…” repeated the smaller soldier.

The innkeeper shrugged. “Demon weather anyway.”

“Roaches…” mumbled Arlyn the carpenter.

“Why?” I asked, wondering about the demon horseman.

“Paid by the Montgren Council to keep the road safe between the border and Howlett…paid by the Thieves' Guild for an exemption…” Arlyn looked for the serving-girl. “Where's the cider?”

The road soldiers went through the wide stone arch into the kitchen and the serving-girl came out, holding high a tray of mugs, somehow not spilling a one. Vapor whispered from the hot cider as she neared the chilly end of the common area where we sat.

Thunk
.

Thunk
. The dark-haired server avoided my eyes as she set the mug down before me and the next before Arlyn.

Thunk
.

“Look!” I yelled in Arlyn's ear, pointing toward the wizard in white.

The carpenter started, and I switched mugs with him.

“Look where…just Antonin…”

“He pointed this way,” I tried to explain.

“Yell not at me…youth…” Arlyn growled.

“I am sorry…” And I was, but not because I had yelled.

Arlyn looked at the cider, but did not drink immediately.

I took a sip of mine. “Oooo…” The searing of my tongue and throat explained why the carpenter had waited.

A hush dropped over both the gentry and common areas of the Snug Inn. I saw that the man in white was standing, looking over at Justen, the gray wizard, whatever a gray wizard was.

“A deed more than a deed…” said Justen, so softly that I could not hear all of his words.

“A deed is a deed. Do appearances really deceive, Justen the Gray?” Antonin stood by his table.