Land of the Burning Sands (32 page)

The yard of the inn in East Metichteran was even busier than the streets had been. Surprisingly busy, indeed, as it could not yet be time for the supper crowd… Indeed, no one was yet ordering supper. The townsfolk and the lingering farmers were instead gathered around the inn’s tables, drinking ale and talking animatedly.

Gereint swung down from his mare and wordlessly moved to assist Beguchren down from his: abnormally weakened or not, that was a tall horse for a small man to ride, and mounting blocks were not really high enough for him.

Beguchren accepted his assistance equally wordlessly, allowed Gereint to take his reins, and stood for a moment, gazing with narrow interest at the gathering around the tables.

“The inn staff must be over there, too,” Gereint commented. He considered, briefly, taking the horses into the stables himself. Then, looking thoughtfully at the tables and the chairs and the jugs of ale, he reconsidered. He whistled instead, loud and sharp.

A startled silence fell across the inn yard. Beguchren gave him a dry look. Gereint only shrugged. “What’s the point of traveling with a court noble if one doesn’t put rank to use?” he murmured, and lifted an eyebrow pointedly at the cluster of youngsters he guessed were the stable boys. He’d guessed correctly, from the way they jumped up and hurried forward.

“Sorry, sorry, honored lord,” muttered a fat, balding man, clearly the innkeeper, assessing Lord Mage Beguchren Teshrichten’s horse and clothing and manner with an expert eye. “We’re all distracted just now, honored lord, but just let me show you and your man to our best table—we
do
set the best table in Metichteran, I promise you—just this way, if you will permit me—”

“Distracted?” Beguchren inquired, in his most neutral tone.

“From the sightings! Griffins, honored lord, all this afternoon!” The fat man’s broad gesture sketched their path, from west and south to the northeast. “Four or five at a time, honored lord, and we’ve never seen griffins down this far south before, not even before, well, I mean to say, not even when there were a gracious plenty over yonder.” This time his vague gesture toward the northwest indicated, by implication, the original sweep of the griffins’ desert prior to their claiming of Melentser.

“I see,” said Beguchren, still at his most neutral. He allowed the innkeeper to evict a crowd from a table under a big oak near the inn’s door and pull the chair at its head out for him. “How many altogether, would you say?”

“Forty, fifty all told! Not that we could say whether they were forty different griffins, you know, honored lord, or the same ones circling about. Penach, he’s my oldest boy, he said he thought it was the same ones each time, but how even young eyes could see so clearly I don’t know. You won’t want ale, honored lord: let me send for wine—our best—local, of course, but it’s accounted fair enough by our guests—” He turned and waved sharply to a hovering girl, who darted away into the inn.

“And tea,” Gereint said firmly. He pulled a chair out for himself and sank into it with a sigh. It wasn’t a particularly well-made chair, unfortunately. Not very comfortable for a man who’d been in a saddle all day. Maybe Beguchren’s chair was better. He glanced at the mage, trying to assess his general condition.

“I’m quite well,” Beguchren assured him, in a mild tone that Gereint did not trust at all.

Gereint raised his eyebrows at the mage. He said to the innkeeper, “And something to eat. Bread with butter and honey. Or berry preserves.”

“Of course, of course, honored sir,” said the innkeeper hurriedly, and waved again to the girl, who’d hurried back with the wine, a pitcher of water, and—no doubt—the inn’s best silver goblets. The man himself, perspiring in the late-summer heat, seemed disinclined to dash back and forth himself. He glanced nervously at Beguchren, who poured a little wine into his goblet, topped it up with water, and sipped. There was no way to tell from the mage’s manner or expression what he thought of the inn’s best local wine.

It actually wasn’t bad, was Gereint’s own estimation, when he tried it. For a locally produced northern wine. Not up to the quality one expected in the south, of course. Perech Fellesteden would probably have dumped it out of his goblet onto the inn’s yard and might have made the innkeeper lick it up from the dirt, but Fellesteden had been much inclined to dramatic gestures, and why was Gereint thinking of his old master at all? Ah. Because he was thinking of Melentser, and the griffins flying among the red sharp-edged spires they had raised among the ruined buildings of the town. He closed his eyes for a breath, opened them, and looked deliberately at Beguchren.

“Perfectly acceptable,” the lord mage told the innkeeper gravely. And to Gereint, “There is no need to hover. I have taken precautions.”

“Precautions, is it? Here comes the bread. I trust you’ll do me the favor of eating a slice or two, with plenty of honey. My lord.”

“Yes, an additional precaution is perhaps not out of order,” Beguchren said, with a barely perceptible glint of humor. He added to the innkeeper, who was looking baffled and worried, “When did the griffins last pass over the town? Can you estimate?”

“Yes, well, yes, that is to say, I suppose it was an hour or so ago, honored lord. Doesn’t that seem right to you?” the innkeeper appealed to the girl, who was laying out plates of sliced bread and crocks of honey and blackberry preserves. The girl looked startled at being addressed, but agreed that this was about right.

“I do believe,” Beguchren said to Gereint, “that it would be wisest to go on to Tashen today.”

Gereint made no comment until the innkeeper and the girl had both bustled away. Then he said, “That wasn’t an easy ride we’ve already had today. It’s so important to travel another fifteen miles or so?”

“The road from East Metichteran to Tashen is better, I believe.”

“It is. Even so… What does it mean, my lord mage, that the griffins are flying over Metichteran? Does it matter whether it’s the same ones over and over, or different ones each time?”

“Gereint—”

“Don’t trouble yourself, my lord. Pretend I never asked.” But Gereint kept his tone mild. He spread a piece of bread with the berry preserves and ate it thoughtfully. “Fifteen miles. However good the road, the horses are tired. That’s four, five, six hours? We won’t manage it before nightfall.”

“I can make a light.”

“Ah. Will it continue to light our way after you’ve collapsed?”

Beguchren put down the slice of bread he’d been holding and regarded Gereint for a moment. “You know, you used to be afraid of me.”

“I’ve given up reminding myself I ought to be afraid of you. My lord.”

Beguchren gave him an unreadable smile. “Good.”

“I suppose I can tie you to your horse, if you fall off.”

“I suppose you can. I think we will arrange for fresh horses here. And perhaps we will leave the packs here. We will not need them in Tashen.”

“I think we should take them. In case we stop a mile short of Tashen. You should eat that, my lord. And you should rest while I arrange for a change of horses.”

Beguchren gave a little wave of his hand, conceding all these points with a casual air Gereint did not trust at all. But the mage only smiled blandly even when Gereint gave him a look of pointed suspicion. Giving up, Gereint, got to his feet and looked around to find the innkeeper. He would inquire about horses that might be for sale, and about the cost to board the black mares… Maybe he should ask Beguchren to let him show the token; that should guarantee the horses would be well cared for… He turned back to ask about the token. Thus, he was looking straight at Beguchren when the little mage suddenly folded bonelessly forward across the table.

Gereint took one long stride back toward the table. Then a horse, not one of Beguchren’s, suddenly reared, screaming. Gereint spun on his heel, startled, as boys flung themselves at its head. They grabbed for its bridle, but the horse reared again, tore itself loose, and raced out of the inn’s yard, hooves thudding dully on the packed earth. Gereint stared after it. But a flurry of exclamations all across the inn’s yard made him look sharply around, and then at last, following the direction of others’ gazes, up. He stopped, transfixed.

Three griffins cut across the cloud-streaked sky, glittering like bronze spear points in the late afternoon sun. They flew barely high enough to clear the trees and the taller buildings of the town. A great silence had fallen. Gereint could actually hear the rustle of the wind through the griffins’ wings. The sound was more like stiff cloth flapping in a hard wind than like the gentler rustling he would have imagined.

He could see every long feather of those wings, even pick out the smaller individual feathers of the griffins’ chests and forelegs. Each feather looked like it had been beaten out by a metalsmith and then separately traced with gold by a jeweler; the griffin’s lion pelts blazed like pure gold. The light flashed across their beaks and talons as across metal. Gereint guessed those talons were nearly as long as a man’s fingers, curved and wickedly sharp; he was struck by a distressingly vivid image of what talons like those might do to a man if a griffin struck him.

Something about the afternoon light had become strange. It took a moment for Gereint’s mind to catch up to his eyes, but at last he understood that the light seemed fiercer and more brilliant around the griffins; each one was limned with it, every feather outlined by it. The sunlight itself seemed to radiate from the griffins as much as from the low sun. And the light that fell across Metichteran was suddenly heavier, deeper, hotter than any light should be, even in late summer. Not quite like the brutal sunlight of the desert, but close, closer than anything Gereint had ever wanted to experience again. The sky beyond the griffins had gone strange, pale, harsh… The very sky seemed to glint like metal. The wind carried the scents of dry stone and hot brass.

The griffins did not look to either side; their flight was arrow straight. They flew from the southwest toward the northeast. Though it seemed to take a long time for them to pass over the town, it could not have taken more than a moment. Then they were gone. The light that lay across the inn’s yard eased once more into normal afternoon sunlight, and the breeze that came across the town from the hills was cool and scented with pine, as well as the normal horse-and-cooking smells of the town.

The silent stillness that had gripped the town ended suddenly, and exclamations and shouts and questions once again filled the air. Men scattered in all directions, or clustered in groups and leaned forward in furious debate about what had just happened and what they should do about it. Stable boys went after the frightened horse, and the fat innkeeper sank, trembling visibly, into a broad chair and mopped his forehead with his apron.

Gereint stared at the innkeeper for an instant, then abruptly, with a shock, remembered Beguchren. Cursing under his breath, he spun back toward the table. The little mage was lying half across the table and half across the bench. His hands were limp, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow and quick, his face very pale.

Gereint reached Beguchren’s side in two hurried steps and caught him, barely in time, from sliding off the bench onto the ground. He had commented, not very seriously, about being able to carry the smaller man. He had not expected to need to. But now he picked him up in his arms, finding his weight a negligible burden. But then he only stood for a moment, uncertain. But, however urgently Beguchren had wanted to press on, Gereint could see only one option now. He went over to the innkeeper, who was still sitting limply on his wide chair, staring up with wide, worried eyes into the empty sky. Gereint had to clear his throat loudly to get his attention. But then the fat man brought his wide stare down at last to ground level, took in Gereint and his burden, flinched, and clambered hastily and clumsily to his feet.

“My lord is ill,” Gereint stated, as though this was not abundantly obvious. “He will need your best room. A good room, at least, if your best is taken. Whatever is quickest.” He emphasized the last word with a flattening of his tone and a direct stare.

“Of course, of course, yes, honored sir, we’ve plenty of room, all our rooms are good, if you could just bring the honored lord this way—” the innkeeper said, all in one breath. He gave Gereint a beseeching look, perhaps imagining that his staff would be expected to nurse an important but delicate lordling and be blamed if anything went wrong—or perhaps imagining the lord might actually
die
in his inn, and envisioning the recriminations that might follow. Gereint fancied he could see those exact thoughts arise, full formed, in the fat innkeeper’s mind. The man asked with clear trepidation, leading Gereint up a flight of stairs, “Is the honored lord
very
ill, do you know, honored sir?”

“I think not,” Gereint assured him. “I will care for him myself, honored innkeeper.” He glanced at the room the innkeeper showed him, approved it with a brief nod, and added, with conscious hauteur, “Have someone bring broth and tea. And a crock of honey. And soft bread, with something off the spit for me, when you have it ready. Have my lord’s horses carefully tended. One of them has a loose shoe. Get a smith to check them all. And don’t let the saddlebags sit out in the stable, have them brought here! Is that all clear?”

“Absolutely clear, honored sir,” muttered the innkeeper, and hastily backed out of the room before Gereint could make any further, possibly more difficult, demands.

Gereint laid Beguchren down on the bed—the linens appeared clean, at least, and he saw no immediate sign of bugs. Then he stood back and just looked at him for a moment. Then laid the back of his hand against the mage’s forehead. Limp and pale and cool, and Gereint was no healer. He could hardly coax the man toward strength and health as he would coax nails to hold or wood to resist splintering. Though Tehre might have managed something. Tehre would probably treat healing magic as a kind of making. In fact, if she treated
everything
as a kind of making, that might go a long way toward explaining why she was so
broadly
gifted.