The Smoke-Scented Girl (40 page)

Nothing happened. He strained at the ropes
again, but they gave only a little. He groaned. The ropes weren’t
brittle enough for
frigo
to affect them.
“Frigo,
” he
said again anyway, and again nothing happened. He needed to make
them dry enough to snap, and maybe if he’d had a few days he could
have invented a spell for that, but as it was he knew nothing that
would turn damp rope dry and breakable.

But that wasn’t entirely true, was it? There
was a spell that would do just what he needed. Evon’s palms went
damp with sweat. Quickly, before he could talk himself out of it,
he snapped his fingers and said, “
Forva.
”

Excruciating pain circled his wrists and sent
tongues of fire up the backs of his hands. Evon gritted his teeth,
counted a slow three, then ground out,
“Desini.
” The fire
went out—at least, he hoped it had, because while the heat was
gone, his wrists still felt as if they were on fire. He shook
tears, these of pain, out of his eyes, and said,
“
Frigo
.”

With a crack, the fibers of the rope
separated, and Evon’s hands flew apart. Shaking, he brought them
around to examine them. If he’d permanently damaged his hands—there
were burns like black-red bracelets around his wrists just where
the ropes had been, and streaks of red ran up the backs of his
hands, but he could flex his fingers, and that was all that
mattered. He started prying at the knots binding his feet, feeling
sweat prickle his armpits and bead up on his forehead despite the
chill. It wasn’t too late. He could still catch them, and—and do
what, exactly? Snatch Kerensa off Alvor’s horse and ride very fast
with her in the opposite direction? And then four legendary heroes
would probably kill him, leave his body behind and take Kerensa off
to her doom. He needed a better plan than that.

The knots loosened, then came apart. Evon sat
rubbing his ankles and panted from his exertions. The first thing
was to catch up to them. He would figure out the rest when the time
came.
You’re out of time
, the cruel voice said. He grabbed
at the edge of the feeding trough and hauled himself upright. In
the next stall, the horse regarded Evon with a kind of offhanded
curiosity. Evon reached out and stroked its nose while he waited
for his legs and feet to stop tingling. The sensation reminded him
of
vertiri
and
trattuci
, of the blue spell-ribbons
flowing away from Kerensa and twining themselves around his body.
If only he could have made the fire leave her so readily.
Something
had to make it leave her, if it had passed from
host to host over the generations—

That electric jolt struck him again, leaving
him breathless. Of course. It was so damned obvious he felt like an
idiot for not having seen it before. But—
could
he save her,
was it even possible? Evon headed for the stall door. It might be
possible. It would take perfect timing, and he would need every
ounce of magical power he possessed, and it still might not work.
But it was more of a chance than he’d had before. And he was
certain he could convince Alvor to let him try.

The stall door seemed very far away—too far.
Evon looked back and saw he’d moved only a foot from where he’d
started. He took another step toward the door. It was no closer
than before. Evon took a few more long strides, then began running.
It felt as if he and the door were both moving, the door always
three steps beyond his reach.
Dania.
He stopped to catch his
breath. It was almost a compliment, that they’d assumed they would
need more than one deterrent to keep him from following them. Now
that he knew what to look for, he could see the heat shimmer where
the trap was triggered by Evon stepping into it. Evon moved
backward—at least Dania’s spell allowed him to do that—and pulled
out his quizzing glass, wincing as his burned wrist brushed the
edge of his coat. “
Epiria,
” he said, passing his hand over
the lens.

Tiny violet bursts of light shone out on both
sides of the stall door, clustering along the hinges and the latch.
Evon raised his left hand, began to speak, then shut his mouth
hard. He shouldn’t have cast
epiria
. He could not afford to
use any more of his reserves; if they didn’t replenish in time, it
could mean he wouldn’t have enough for the sequence of spells his
subconscious mind was working out. There had to be another way.

He turned the lens to examine the rest of the
stall. The violet lights diminished the farther he went from the
door, leaving the back third of the stall free from the spell’s
effect. Evon dismissed
epiria
and backed up until he was
pressed against the feeding trough. He looked at the horse again.
It was a brown mare with a white blaze on her forehead. She nodded
at him as if in encouragement. She seemed a good deal more
intelligent than his last horse, though that couldn’t have been a
very high bar to meet. “If Piercy had set this trap, he would have
extended it to cover the stalls on either side of me,” he told her.
“Let’s hope Dania isn’t as cunning as Piercy.” He clambered up to
balance on the feeding trough, which creaked a little under his
weight, got one leg over the side of the stall, then swung his
other leg around and dropped heavily to the ground next to the
horse. Slowly, feeling a little superstitious that Dania’s spell
might notice him and figure out what he was doing, he approached
the stall door and let out a deep, relieved breath when it opened
easily. Evon turned and eyed the horse again. “Let’s you and I save
a life, shall we?” he said.

He saddled the horse quickly and furtively,
not sure what he would do if the mare’s owner emerged from the inn.
Beat him senseless, probably, with how keyed up he was feeling at
the moment. The mare stood patiently as Evon mounted and obediently
moved forward when he urged her into the street beyond.

The crowds had gone from frightened to
panicked in the time Evon had taken to free himself. Wagons stood
crosswise in the center of the street, their owners shouting at
other wagoners trying to go the other way. Nervous animals made the
air fragrant with the stench of their bowels. Children clutched at
their parents and screamed or sobbed. In one place, the traffic jam
was caused by a fully loaded wagon that had been abandoned in the
center of the road whose owners had decided that fleeing was harder
when they had all their possessions with them. The wagon’s shafts
rested empty on the ground, and three large men were trying to
shift the heavy load without the help of horses. It felt to Evon as
if the crowd were trying to sweep him away backwards out of the
town, as if the refugees were stepping into his path on purpose,
just to slow him further. A few of the men and women who approached
him looked as if they were considering separating him from the
horse, but the occasional forceful application of his boot saw him
clear of the town and out on the open road heading south and
east.

Here, on the great plains below the
mountains, snow had not fallen so heavily and the road was clear,
if still frozen. Hard as it must be on the horse’s hooves, at least
it wasn’t mud churned to soup by the passage of thousands of
refugees. Evon held on to the reins and prodded the horse into a
gallop. He had no way of knowing how close the Despot was, couldn’t
even tell how far Kerensa had gotten, had nothing but the scent of
smoke in his nostrils and a terrible burning anxiety in his chest.
She only had to come close to the Despot and the weapon would do
the rest. Having met Alvor, Evon had no doubt the man would be able
to get Kerensa as close as she needed. Then it would be over.

A few miles down the road, the way forked,
but Evon discovered that Alvor and Kerensa had struck out across
country, into the hills. He guided his mount the same way. It was
both intelligent and docile, not a combination he expected to find
in a horse, and he felt a momentary guilt at having robbed someone
of what must be a rather valuable animal. Call it assisting in the
war effort.

Fifteen minutes after leaving the road
behind, he felt as if he must be the only man left alive in the
world, the plains were that empty. He looked north, wondering if
Dalanine’s army was close enough to see, but a long, low arm of the
mountains hemming in the plains northward obscured his vision. He
ought to be hoping for Alvor’s success today; it would spare
thousands of lives. Thousands of lives saved at the cost of the
only life that mattered to Evon. He definitely wasn’t a hero. He
gritted his teeth and urged the mare to run faster, following
Kerensa’s trail as if it were penciled across the landscape.

Low gray clouds massed overhead, and more
billowed thickly across the horizon. Evon looked again and realized
those clouds were smoke. His heart pounded faster for a few beats
before he remembered that the weapon would likely not make that
much smoke, or any smoke at all, and that he was not too late, he
couldn’t be too late now that he’d figured it out. He could feel
the horse straining beneath him; she was already running as fast as
she could, and forcing her to greater effort would only kill her
and leave him stranded in the middle of these wide plains. He
glanced up. Would it be rain, or snow, that fell from those clouds?
Either would be the kind of delay he could not afford.

Thunder cracked, high and sharp, nearby, and
something passed his ear with a whining hum. He turned around and
saw another mounted figure coming up fast behind him. The rider’s
hood was pulled well forward over his face against the cold, but
his red beard was easily visible even in the dim light.
Valantis
. Where in the hell had he come from? He waved
something that gleamed in the dim light at Evon—a gun?—and kicked
his horse’s sides. Now Evon could hear him shouting, and although
the words were unintelligible, there was no mistaking the fury in
the man’s voice. Evon leaned forward over the horse’s neck and
wished he knew a spell that would make it move faster. He wouldn’t
have dared use it even if he did. He glanced over his shoulder.
Valantis was gaining on him. He could smell Kerensa’s trail
preparing to turn left to avoid—nothing, there was nothing there,
no reason for the path to change, but he didn’t have time to wonder
about it. There was nowhere to hide on this barren plain, nothing
to save him, but all Evon could think was
I’m not going to make
it in time
. He had no way to fight Valantis, neither weapon nor
spell, and his horse was tiring, and—Evon felt despair rising in
him again and kicked it back into the dark corner of his mind it
had come from. It wasn’t over until…he refused to finish that
thought.

“Stop or I’ll shoot you dead, Lorantis,”
Valantis shouted over the noise of both their horses’ hooves. He
was only yards away. Evon pulled up and turned to face Valantis,
whose hood was still pulled low over his face.

“It’s too late,” he said. “Kerensa is near
the Despot’s army now. If you ride after her, you’ll only be
killed.”

“It’s not the girl I want,” Valantis said. He
pushed his hood back, and Evon’s shock at the man’s appearance
transmitted itself to the horse, who took a few sidelong steps
until Evon calmed her. Valantis’s red hair and beard were streaked
with white, and wrinkles were carved into his face like wind-worn
channels. He looked nearer sixty than the forty Evon had guessed
his age to be. “I wandered for
years
in that Godsforsaken
place thanks to you.” His voice was still raspy, but weaker than it
had been.

“It can’t have been years,” Evon said without
thinking, “or your clothes would have fallen apart.”

Fury swept across the big man’s face, and he
leveled his gun at Evon’s heart. “Taunt me, will you?” he
shouted.

“I’m sorry,” Evon said, not meaning it. He
looked furtively around for something that would get him out of
this. Kerensa’s scent was strong now; he had to be close to her,
and maybe there was still time.

“You’re going to fix it,” Valantis said.
“Right now.”

“I don’t know how,” Evon said.

“Figure it out.” Valantis’s hand was
trembling with either age or fury, not that it mattered, since
either would be enough to make him squeeze the trigger by
accident.

“Ah….” Evon looked around again and was
startled to see an unexpected shimmer only a few feet away,
directly athwart Kerensa’s trail where it made that inexplicable
turn. If Valantis hadn’t attacked him, he’d have run right into it.
Perhaps Dania had a little of Piercy’s cunning, after all. He
certainly hadn’t thought to be looking for more traps. He edged the
horse in that direction, then stopped when Valantis waved the gun
at him.

“Don’t move,” he said, “and don’t think about
running. I’m not so desperate to have this reversed that I won’t
enjoy watching your blood water this earth. Do it. Now.”

“Put the gun down first. You don’t want to
shoot me before I’ve restored you,” Evon said. The horse moved a
few more steps. If he could put the trap between himself and
Valantis….

“I said
don’t move
!” Valantis shouted,
and fired the pistol just as Evon kicked his horse in the direction
of the trap. The shot went wide, and Valantis swore and yanked on
his horse’s reins to bring it around. Evon swerved to avoid the
trap, swerved back to put it between himself and Valantis, and
prayed to whichever of the Twins was listening that Valantis’s
bigger and faster horse was also less agile than Evon’s stolen
mount. At that moment he heard something large hit the ground, and
turned around in time to see Valantis, caught by
desini
cucurri
in mid-shout, catapult from his fallen horse’s back and
land face-down in the frozen turf. The horse had dropped in
mid-stride and looked like a toppled statue; Valantis, with his
knees bent and his rump in the air, just looked ridiculous.
He’s
going to come after me again,
Evon thought
,
but that was
the only thought he had time for. He shouted at his horse, who
plunged into a gallop, and they were off again on Kerensa’s trail.
He was beginning to feel as if all he had ever done in his life was
follow Kerensa across Dalanine. Well, if he could reach her in
time, that would stop.
It will stop if you
don’t
reach
her,
the cruel voice said. He wished he could make it shut
up.