Barrenlands (The Changespell Saga) (16 page)

"Maybe," Ehren said, finding himself more amused than alarmed. Whatever world this wizard spent most of his time in, it didn't seem to be Loraka. "What are you looking at?"

"What?" Completely baffled, the man merely stared at him a moment. "Oh! Pardon me. You're wearing something around your neck. I was wondering if I could see it."

The ring.
"It's personal."

"Oh, not to worry. I won't be able to read the spells themselves. I just want to examine the definition of the layers. It's rare to see such workmanship— I can tell that from here. It's a significantly recent process, just out of Loraka the city, and can only be done with a certain class of spells."

New. Just out of Loraka the city.
Varien, it seemed, kept his hand in. Ehren closed his hand over the ring. "Layers?"

"This object has two kinds of spells— three that operate separately from one another, and a fourth that's nested in one of the others. Trigger that one spell, and the nested spell follows. One of the individual spells is operating right now, while the other two— including the one that will trigger the nested spell— is quiescent." The man sounded like he was lecturing an apprentice, and he must have realized it, for he broke off and gave another sheepish grin. "Sorry again. As I said, it's a fascinating piece."

Four spells
. He knew of the finding spell; he knew of the spell that would identify Dannel's family. But what of the other two? Ehren hesitated no longer; he pulled the ring over his head and held it out.

"Nice ring," the man said absently. "It seems to have a history behind it."

Ehren had seen Varien's sly works, and he'd seen cottage witchy work. He'd never come across a working wizard who was immersed in his craft on a daily basis, yet treated it so offhandedly.

After a moment, the man sighed and handed the ring back. "Yes, indeed. I thank you. This has helped to clarify some questions I've had."

Ehren didn't wait for the wizard to enumerate those questions. "What of the spells? What can you tell?"

The man blinked a little. "I said I wouldn't be able to read the spells, and I can't. They've been laminated with energy. As I said, a very nice ring."

"Were they all set at the same time?" It
had
been Wilna's ring, after all... a spell of affection set on it when she gave it to Benlan wouldn't have been out of the ordinary for a royal budget.

"Oh, yes. They have to be, or the stone won't take them. It's very tricky. There
was
a separate spell— on the metal instead of the stone— placed earlier in the ring's life, but it's mostly obliterated by the new ones. Those, I'd say, are but six months old."

"Six months?" Ehren repeated in surprise. Varien had this ring ready for six months? Why, late winter had been filled with most of Ehren's successes in his search for Benlan's killers. It was a time when he firmly believed he was following the trail to its head, and would soon have all of the conspirators in hand. It was also the time of the first attempt against his life— although all of those could certainly be dismissed as random acts of attempted theft.

If
the thief was exceedingly stupid, and screened his victims on the basis of how well armed and horsed they were— and then chose the best of those instead of the worst.

"Six months, give or take a few weeks," the wizard said modestly. "I take it you know little of this ring's history."

"Some of it I know," Ehren mused darkly, "and some of it I obviously don't. Is there any way to find out?"

"Aside from triggering the spells? No. Though I could probably do that for you, if you don't know the trigger keys."

Ehren stared down the dark road, and thought it no darker than the road Varien had sent him on. "No," he said. "This is not the time or place."

The man shrugged, obviously disappointed, and returned the ring. "Well, then, any good wizard could do the same."

A murmur of conversation broke the silence that followed— Laine and Shette, still no more than vague shapes in the darkness as they walked up the road. "Ehren!" Laine called. "Sorry we're late. It's Shette's fault."

"Hey!" Shette said, along with the sound of a damp sisterly smack on the arm. "You splashed me first!"

Ah. Horseplay, not trouble. Ehren relaxed tension he hadn't been aware of, and dropped the ring back around his neck, tucking it carefully away. "Thank you," he told the wizard. "You've been of help."

"Think nothing of it," the man said. "It was a pleasant diversion to the night's work." He nodded and moved on down the road, his walking stick glowing softly as a hazy red counterpoint to the moonlight, and Ehren watched him go.

The information was, he knew, far more than nothing.

~~~~~~~~~

CHAPTER SEVEN

"My family's lived in Therand for many years," Unai said.
Talking. Finally talking.
"Long enough to be adopted into Clan Shahinian. But we came from Solvany. And there was a reason we left it." It was the first time he'd strung more than two strong sentences together since they'd met, and he seemed a bit taken aback by the accomplishment.

"Go on," Ehren suggested, although Laine heard steel backing his quiet tone.

For the first time in far too many days, Laine felt clean and cool... since the camp where they'd found Shette, he decided. His shirt hung over the window sill, catching the breeze to dry; the exposed cut on his arm was red-edged and angry, and reminded him of that afternoon every time he caught a glimpse of it.

He didn't want to think about that afternoon. It'd taken days to get his head fully clear, and now that he'd found his wits again he wanted to keep them.

Unai sat on one of the two beds, his satchel clutched to his chest. Shette curled up at the head of the other, Ehren sat at her feet, and Laine sat cross-legged on the floor by the end of the same bed.

At Unai's hesitation, Ehren grew more still, more focused. "Tell us what you know, and we can quit one another's company. You've made it plain that's what you want."

Unai shifted with reluctance. "I could be killed for what I know."

 Ehren stood, an abrupt and sudden teetering of his temper. "And
will
be, if you don't talk!"

In the stunned silence that followed, Ehren's voice became more quiet, but no less intense. "The sooner you stop being the
only
target to aim for, the safer you'll be." He towered over the man, seemed to realize the intimidation was only prolonging matters, and sat down again with obvious effort.

"Once I give this to you," Unai said slowly, "I'm through with all of this. I'm going back to Grettlingdon to raise sheep with the rest of my family." He gave his satchel an odd look, and slowly held it out to Ehren.

Maybe, Laine thought, Unai did better as a sheep farmer than an adventurer. The Guides knew he wasn't cut out to take on the adventures he'd faced.

"Benlan's death," Ehren grated, ignoring Unai's offering. "Tell me about Benlan's death."

Unai's reaction was totally unexpected, and completely unfeigned. "Benlan's death?" he said. "Who said I knew anything about
that
? Other than the fact that it happened, of course, and thankfully before I met him and not
while
I was supposed to meet him. Finding Benlan's killers is up to you, Guard, and I'll be a lot better off myself once you do."

Utter silence fell over the room. Ehren went stiff— and, Laine thought, very dangerous.

An assumption... they'd all made the same assumption.

"Just what
do
you know?" Ehren asked, and that implacably hard edge was back in his voice.

"I traveled the length of the Trade Road to tell this story," Unai said. "And then before I could, just moments before I could pass this story on, Benlan was killed." His gaze bounced off each of them in turn and settled somewhere between Laine and the door. "Two generations back, one of my ancestors was a servant at Therand's court."

Ehren waited.

"Her name was Hetna," Unai said, after an uneasy moment. "She was only there a short while before she was frightened into leaving. And then she was killed— supposedly an accident. But she'd left her journal with the family, and no one else knew she'd written it."

"
That's
what you've got," Shette said. "You've got the journal!"

"Yes."

Ehren seemed to need a moment to take it all in. "But you've been on the run for a year. That timing is no coincidence; you're tied into Benlan's death."

Unai didn't deny it; he shrugged. "I may well be. The day he died, he was coming to meet me."

Ehren nodded slowly. "The official story was that he went out to inspect his favorite hunting lodge after winter. But it was never clear to those of us in the Guard if that was really true, even before the high number of escort assignments came through." He seemed to be lost in thought. After a moment he came back to the here and now, and said, "I want details."

Unai gestured with the satchel again. "Take it. It's all in here."

This time Ehren accepted the book. He set it on the bed beside Shette's feet, unopened. "After all this time, your family finally decided to let the Solvan monarch know what had happened to Hetna at Therand's court."

Unai met his gaze, uncharacteristically forthright. "I'm the first to have reading and writing since Hetna died," he said simply. "The journal survived merely as a memorial to her, and not because anyone realized it held the key to her death— or to things awry in Solvany. It took me quite a long time to work up to bringing it here. Now I wish I hadn't. Hetna is long dead, Benlan is dead, and whatever the past problems, they're long done with."

"No," Ehren murmured. "They're not."

Shette moved to her knees, kneeling in front of the wrapped journal, and running her hand over it. "What do you mean?" she asked, not looking at Ehren now that she was this close to him.

Ehren's voice came distantly, his expression lost in thought. "Unai, who knew about your meeting with Benlan?"

"I have no idea," Unai said, waving Ehren's question away with his hands. "And I'm not speculating. I paid a boy to approach him on one of the Days of Hearing, and to give him a note. Arrangements were made through the same boy. I told no one else, and the boy couldn't read."

Ehren took the journal out from under Shette's hands. "What's in here?" he asked. "What made you come so far, and risk so much?"

"Read it," Unai said bluntly. At the look on Ehren's face, he relented slightly. "Hetna was almost sure there was treachery in the court. She... did some prowling she shouldn't have. I don't understand the subtle things— the ruling structure is much different than Therand's— but there was, at the least, black market smuggling going on. Therand goods."

"That doesn't make sense," Laine said. "You're talking about the highest Levels, right? They've already got wealth— what's smuggling going to get them, besides in trouble?"

"Some people always want more," Ehren said.

Unai said sourly, "Don't ask
me
to justify it. All I can tell you is that someone was involved in it, and that Hetna was so frightened she wouldn't write down details; she called the smuggled goods
ML
. She left the court and in short order fell in front of a runaway timber wagon. The documentation is in the journal, what there is of it. It wouldn't be half as convincing if Hetna had gone on to live a long life."

Silence fell over the small room, flickering like the candlelight against the wall. Ehren stared at the journal in his hands, Shette stared at Ehren, and Laine, for whatever reason, found his thoughts drawn to the image of a man's watching eyes. Finally Unai said, "Is that enough, then? Can I go, and the grey with me?"

"That's it," Ehren said simply.

Shette said, "Can I read it?"

Unai snorted. "It'll make little sense to you."

"I can get as much from it as you did," she shot back at him.

"When I'm done with it, perhaps," Ehren said, cutting the argument short.

"There
is
one thing in there that the clans have already begun to suspect on their own." Unai stood, reaching for his small bundle of belongings. "A hundred years ago, a sect of the Upper Levels wanted to find a way to nullify the Barrenlands in order to wage war. To appease them, Coirra— she was the court wizard, then, and Varien her apprentice— smuggled herself into Therand and put a curse on the firstborn of the ruling Therand clan. Hetna seems to think this was tied in with the smuggling somehow, but I don't know why. She was pretty cryptic. I do know that since the position of the T'ieran changes clans much more frequently than your monarchy, there have been quite a few blind children born in Therand in the past hundred years."

Shette gasped. "That's horrible! How could anyone do that to
babies
?"

"How could anyone snatch a young girl off the road to sell her for slavery?" Ehren said briefly. Shette made a face and subsided.

But Laine was thinking that smugglers would want the border kept closed— and they wouldn't want a war interfering, either. Such a curse must have seemed a perfect solution— stopping the hostilities without truly resolving them.

And that would mean the smuggling was a long-standing tradition, from before Hetna's day and back to the time of the curse, Coirra's time.

Unai made good his chance to quit their company. He gave them a stiff nod, muttered them a wish for good travel, and left the room.

"I guess we can hope he won't try to take any of the other horses," Shette said.

"I tied them on the other side of Ricasso." Ehren eyed the satchel-encased book. He said, more to himself than Laine and Shette, "If Benlan really
was
killed because he was about to get his hands on this book, then there may be more to this than just long-gone history."

"Be a lot simpler to have killed Unai, if someone just wanted to keep anyone from learning what was in the journal," Laine said, matter-of-factly.