Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories (17 page)

Then Irissa pushed past them and ran out into the
street, and they hurried after her.

Outside, Cylides was just swinging down off a horse, a
mare from the Andrien stable. The crowd had backed away from him, but was still
lingering close enough to listen. His face was covered with dust from the road,
and streaked with tears. Irissa stopped in front of him, and said, almost
calmly, “Ranior died.”

“Yes.” Cylides took a breath, looked from her to
Giliead, then to Ilias. “Not long after you left. He never woke. It was quiet.”

Irissa’s jaw set, and she blinked once, then
controlled it. She turned to Giliead, hard as stone. “We’re going with you. You
can’t stop us.”

Giliead said, quietly, “I won’t try to stop you.”

* * *

Giliead picked up Delphian’s curse traces at the
stable where he had borrowed a horse, and saw that they led out of the city
toward the hills, not the coastal road. They rode all day, and camped that
night high in the hills, pushing themselves and the horses until it was too
dark to travel. They found a spot sheltered by trees and a big rock, and built
a small fire. Macritus and Cylides had offered to come with them, but Giliead
had sent them home. Karima would need someone to help her at the house, and
both men had been close to Ranior for a long time.

After they camped, Ilias made himself eat some dried
meat and bread, travel rations hastily collected before they had left. Giliead
and Irissa just sat and stared at the fire.

Ilias knew Giliead had been waiting for this moment
all his life, his first wizard hunt. Well, it was finally here, and happening
in the most terrible way possible. Ilias hadn’t thought they had had any
illusions about what a Chosen Vessel’s life was like -- a wizard had tried to
kill Giliead when he was a boy, had been ready to kill Ilias, Irissa, Karima,
everyone in the house. It had killed a friend of Ranior’s, who had been helping
to guard them. After that, Ilias had counted them all as somewhat experienced. Now
he was starting to realize how foolish that had been.

And he was still wondering about the panpipe, had been
wondering about it on the long ride. Now he said, “Delphian didn’t curse
everyone at the party, did he? They all thought he told such a wonderful poem,
everybody but us. What if the poem was a curse?”

Staring bleakly at the fire, Giliead stirred. “I don’t
think it worked like that. That would have been too obvious. Maybe the curse
just made his poem more...attractive, to everyone who was listening. Like the
wizards who make themselves beautiful, to lure people in.”

That seemed a likely curse for a mediocre poet to
want. “It wouldn’t work on you, because you’re a Chosen Vessel. But why didn’t
it work on me and Irissa?”

“You were sitting next to me,” Giliead said, then his
expression froze. He added, “It couldn’t have been a very strong curse.”

There was an old unfunny joke, ‘Never sit next to a
Chosen Vessel.’
This didn’t happen because of you,
Ilias wanted to say,
but couldn’t. Denying it aloud would sound like Ilias believed the opposite and
was trying to convince himself otherwise.

“Why did he choose Ranior?” Irissa poked at the fire
with a stick. “Why not Erinni, Bythia, Halian...” She had wept while they were
riding, quietly, without any noise, the tears streaming down her face. Now in
the firelight her nose was red and her eyes looked bruised.

“Something must have made Ranior suspicious.” Giliead’s
voice was slow and thoughtful. “Delphian said he came from Syrneth, and Ranior’s
been there several times. Maybe Delphian said something about it that Ranior
knew was wrong.”

“Maybe it was because he was your father,” Ilias said.
He realized a moment later, when Giliead’s shoulders tensed, that it was a
mistake. But it was said now and there was no way to take it back. He rubbed
his eyes, and said helplessly, “He knew you were the Chosen Vessel. Maybe
Ranior was supposed to go mad and kill you.”

Giliead didn’t say anything. Irissa shook her head,
and said bleakly, “It’s not your fault, Giliead. Ranior knew the risks. He was
Menander’s friend long before you were Chosen. Ranior could have left us, let
his family buy him out of the marriage, and gone to live somewhere else. He
stayed because he wanted to be with us.”

Ilias wasn’t sure that made things any better.

* * *

The rain started before dawn the next morning. It
would have been devastating if they had been trying to follow Delphian by his
horse’s tracks, but it didn’t disturb the signs the curse had left. It led them
further up into the hills, and in the afternoon they reached an isolated
farmstead. It was just one rambling wooden house and several outbuildings, with
pens and a poorly maintained garden patch.

“He went there,” Giliead said, frowning at the ground
as they reined in in the muddy yard. “But I don’t think he’s there now.”

They swung down off the horses, tied them at the
trough, and went to the door of the house.

It stood partly open and Giliead pushed in first,
stepping sideways to give the others room to enter. Ilias pulled his hood back,
shedding rainwater as he shook his head vigorously.

“Who are you?” someone called out. “What do you want
here?”

Ilias looked up at the man suddenly looming over him. He
lifted his chin, facing him aggressively. “To get out of the rain, what does it
look like we want?”

Irissa shoved past Ilias, yanked her hood back and
fixed the man with an angry glare. “Who are you?”

He stepped back, chagrinned. A woman’s presence meant
that they were respectable travelers. “Sorry, didn’t see you there. We’re
careful of strangers here.”

If Delphian had been here, they hadn’t been careful
enough. Ilias knew isolated communities should be wary of men traveling alone,
men who weren’t the traders or hunters they were accustomed to seeing. But
Delphian might have used curses to ease his way.

Giliead scanned the room. There was a step up to a
raised stone floor, and a fire in a center hearth banishing the damp. A
half-dozen or so people sat around it on couches or stools, in various states
of dampness, all staring at the newcomers. A couple of children played on the
floor, and Ilias could smell wet wool and leather, and meat cooking in olive
oil.

A woman, with sun-faded blond hair and a gold wrap
still damp from the rain came forward, eyeing them appraisingly. She asked
Irissa, “Your husbands?”

“Brothers,” Irissa corrected. She threw a look back at
Giliead. “Anything?”

“He’s been in here,” Giliead said, his voice flat.

Irissa turned to the woman. “We’re looking for a poet
called Delphian. He may be using another name. He was traveling from Cineth, on
horseback.”

The woman smiled, and someone in the back laughed. “Oh,
he’s been here, though he didn’t have a horse. He called himself Verites, and
said there might be someone after him. He said he warmed the wrong bed, down in
Cineth.”

Giliead stepped forward. “Did any of you touch him?” They
stared, uncomprehending, and he said, “I’m Giliead of Andrien, Chosen Vessel of
Cineth.” His voice turned to ice. “Did any of you touch him?”

The woman stepped back, shaken. “No, not... No. He
traded a poem for food, and a room to sleep in. He told us not to tell--”

“What room?”

The others scattered out of the way as she led them to
a door at the back of the house. Curious faces peered out at them from the
little thatched outbuildings as the woman led them to one on the edge of the
yard.

She reached for the door, and Irissa caught the back
of her robe and yanked her back. The woman stumbled, staring, startled at
Irissa’s determined strength. Giliead stepped up to the door, as Ilias reached
for an arrow. But Giliead shook his head. “I don’t think he’s in there.”

Giliead kicked the door and it slammed open. Ilias
peered past him to see a little room, with a low bed piled with red and gold
woven blankets, a basin and brazier on the floor. The brazier still had hot
coals, steaming gently in the damp air. “He knew we were coming.” Giliead
frowned. “Maybe he can feel us now, too.”

Ilias exchanged a worried look with Irissa. He hoped
Giliead was wrong about that. She shook her head and let the woman go. “Get
back inside,” Irissa told her. There was an unspoken
I’ll deal with you
later,
in her voice.

Backing away, the woman said, “We didn’t know. I swear
we didn’t know.”

As she hurried back into the main house, Giliead
walked to the edge of the yard to survey the wet fields. Ilias put in, “He has
to be making for the forest. It’s the only cover.”

Giliead nodded. He turned to Irissa, looking down at
her, regretful and serious. “We’re close, and he must know it,” he told her. “You
have to stay behind now.”

Irissa started to speak, and he added, “If it goes
wrong, you’re all mother will have left. The village, everyone on the farm, the
ones like Cylides who have nowhere else to go. All of it will depend on you as
heir.”

She winced. After a moment, she said reluctantly, “All
right, yes, you’re right.” She added, “What about Ilias?”

“I’m expendable,” Ilias said impatiently.

Giliead rounded on him so fast, Ilias skipped back a
step. “That’s not funny,” Giliead snapped.

It hadn’t been a joke. But Giliead couldn’t do this alone,
and Ilias didn’t think he wanted to. Ilias just stared him down, until Giliead
said, “We’re wasting time.”

* * *

Ilias and Giliead walked uphill in the failing light,
the rain lessening to a light drizzle. They had left the horses behind, since
they could move faster through the dense forest without them. They didn’t find
Delphian’s horse, but found the spot where he had hidden it, not far from the
farmstead in a wet copse of trees. There had been horse dung and tracks in the
high grass, though the dung had smelled odd. Ilias wasn’t sure why Delphian had
bothered to hide the horse. To throw off pursuit, perhaps, but revealing that
he was a poet had identified him more surely than the horse would have. Though
maybe the strange smell of the dung meant the animal was ill, and he had
thought the farmers would refuse to have it in their pen. Whatever the reason,
the tracks only confirmed what the curse trail was telling Giliead.

It was deep twilight when Giliead stopped, and said, “There.”

Ilias saw it a heartbeat later. On the forested slope
above the meadow, branches thrashed, barely visible in the dark. Something
moved through the trees, something large, about half again as tall as Giliead. Ilias
still couldn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, but the night had taken on a
weird hushed quality he didn’t like. It felt like the forest was holding its
collective breath, avoiding the attention of the creature passing through the
trees. Ilias whispered, “It’s not him. It’s a curseling. He must have sent it
after us.”

Giliead nocked an arrow, frowning uncertainly into the
dark. “I don’t know. There’s something about this that doesn’t--”

Then the shape broke out of the forest and headed
toward them. Ilias tensed, gauging the distance, trying to get a good look at
the shadowy creature-- “It’s not a curseling, it’s a man on horseback. It has
to be Delphian.” He felt a flush of embarrassment, mistaking a horseman for a
curseling. It didn’t reflect well on his ability to help Giliead.

But as the form moved closer, he made out more detail.
He caught the gleam of metal and realized the rider wore armor. A helm and
chest piece maybe, and metal bracers and shin guards, barely discernible in the
bad light. “Wait, maybe it’s not Delphian.” Unless Delphian had stolen the armor
in Cineth and no one had noticed the theft.

Giliead just shook his head. He lifted the bow again. Raising
his voice to a shout, he hailed the rider, “Stop there! Who are you?”

The approaching figure continued toward them and Ilias
couldn’t hear hoof beats, just the soft pad of something striking the grass. Giliead
drew the bow, aiming toward the man. He shouted again, “Speak, or I’ll shoot!”

The wind changed and Ilias caught the smell of decay
on the breeze, heavy and sickly sweet. An instinctive fear crept right up out
of the wet ground and into Ilias’ bones, and he felt the skin on the back of
his neck prickle. Since Ranior had been cursed, Ilias had felt nothing but numb
despair and bitter anger; now he felt afraid. “Shoot him, Gil,” he said
quietly.

Giliead let the arrow fly.

It struck the man square in the chest, the force of
the powerful bow driving the arrow through the chest piece. The man jerked with
an impact that should have knocked him off the horse. Then he surged forward,
urging the horse into a charge.

The cold chill settled into Ilias’ stomach. He said
under his breath, “At least now we’re sure it’s a curseling.” He drew his sword
and tossed the scabbard aside.

Giliead nocked and fired another arrow, just as the
curseling drew a short sword. And again, the arrow rocked him but didn’t knock
him off the horse.

Giliead dropped the bow and drew his sword. Then the
curseling was on them and Giliead dodged one way, Ilias the other. Giliead used
his sword like a club, swinging it up to unseat the curseling. A man would have
been flung to the ground, but this creature took the blow, swayed and was past
them, leaving Giliead staggering with the force of his own momentum.