The Death of Chaos (42 page)

GAIRLOCH ALMOST PRANCED as I saddled him and strapped my gear in place. I took my staff and a few tools, including a small saw.

   When I walked Gairloch out into the yard, I didn't see Guy-see, but Jydee and Myrla sat on the crude bench outside their cot. I had to admit that they kept it clean-even the jakes that Wegel had built, although he'd grumbled about where I'd insisted it be. I wasn't about to have it too close to the house, even if the water were piped from the hillside spring.

   Jydee gave me the smallest of waves as I led Gairloch over to the house, where I had left the bag of provisions by the kitchen step. Wegel stood outside the shop door, broom in hand. I didn't even have to ask him to keep the shop clean anymore, and I'd left him with the responsibility for another travel chest and the design for the dining set, plus whatever he could provide to Jahunt. I'd also suggested he think about a window for his room. It probably wasn't enough, but it was all I could think of, and I didn't want to commit us to making too much when no one except Antona was buying.

   “G-g-good l-l-luck, s-s-ser.”

   “Thank you, Wegel. I'm not sure luck is really the answer. I probably won't be back in less than an eight-day, and it could be longer, much longer.” After strapping the provisions bag behind the saddle, I glanced at Rissa. “You have enough to keep things going?”

   “Now that we have chickens, and eggs, if I can't keep this place going for two seasons on ten golds, you should have me hung, Master Lerris.” She gave me a smile. “Some goats or a cow, and I could make my own cheese.”

   I shrugged. “How much for some she-goats?”

   “He's worried, boy.” Rissa looked at Wegel. “When a crafter doesn't fight against his housekeeper spending hard-earned coins, he's worried.”

   “You do have a good sense of when to ask me.”

   “And I'd not be the woman I am if I didn't.”

   “How much?”

   “She-goats are cheap, and the cheese is the rank stuff.”

   I got the message, dismounted, and tied Gairloch to the post outside the shop. In the end, I gave her ten more golds to see if she could find someone who could spare a heifer that could become a milk cow. Knowing Rissa, I suspected she could. Somehow, things kept getting more complicated. The two girls pretty much watched the chickens and gathered the eggs for Rissa, and Guysee helped clean the house, and she'd even started mucking the mare's stall. I'd never asked her, but she felt better doing it, and it certainly had left Wegel more time for helping me.

   I finally managed to get back on Gairloch.

   “You be careful, Master Lerris,” Rissa warned.

   “I'll try.” I wasn't that confident about my success in being careful, not the way things seemed to be headed in and around Kyphros, nor with the ideas I needed to talk over with Krystal and perhaps the autarch.

   “Try,” snorted Rissa. “That was what Faras said.”

   I didn't answer, since it was the first time she'd mentioned the name. I wondered if Faras had been her consort, the one murdered by bandits. Instead, I smiled and waved, guiding Gairloch across the yard and toward the road.

   Like all my recent trips in Kyphros, I began by riding into Kyphrien. The marketplace was perhaps half-full, less noisy than usual.

   “... and I said to her, Hezira, how could you expect to keep that high house and all those gowns? She only had her face and a narrow waist and smooth skin, and all of that goes when you eat rich foods and have children. So, I said, Hezira, best you get that figure back, or you'll be on your back at the Green Isles working for Madame Antona...”

   “... a lady Antona is now...”

   “... such a lady, with a mind like a blade...”

   “... best sweet breads in Kyphrien...”

   “... all she sees is a ready smile and blue eyes... can you expect of a girl... who will bring in the coppers for the bread... and coppers be getting hard to find these days...”

   “... spices... preservatives for your larders... work even in the heat of summer... spices... preservatives...”

   “... old bread, hard bread, but good bread! Half copper a loaf! Just a half copper!...”

   “Steel! Good steel blades...”

   “.... said the sundevils hold Jellico now... won't be long afore they're looking this way, autarch and her wizards or not...”

   “... mighty wizards they are, though...”

   “... 'gainst cold steel devices?”

   I didn't feel like a mighty wizard, and what I did hear in the marketplace didn't cheer me that much, nor did the sight of the autarch's palace on the hill with the windows I knew were dark. At least, Liessa hadn't shuttered them.

   The gate to Ruzor was the south gate, really the southeast gate, that led to the river road. A boat would probably have been faster, at least to Felsa, and the cataracts there, but the Phroan River was too shallow for most of the way for larger boats or barges broad enough to carry cargoes-or mountain ponies. So how would I have gotten back without paying a fortune?

   Most of the river road was metaled, but narrow, with the width of the paving stones barely enough for two wagons to pass side by side. Then, except in the winter, the roads in Kyphros were seldom muddy.

   Dust was another question. I tried to keep Gairloch on the stones, but even in the center of the road, dust rose with each step, and the fine red powder hung in the air and clung to everything.

   Even before we reached the first bridge, less than twenty kays along the road, where the Mildr joins the Phroan River, the old square from a work shirt that I used for a handkerchief was more red mud than the clean gray cloth I had put in my belt that morning.

   Red mud streaked my cheeks, the result of dust and sweat. Even though I washed hands and face, and my kerchief, what seemed every few kays, my reddish muddy sweat clung everywhere, even though we saw almost no one on the road, save for an occasional farm wagon, usually empty, headed away from Kyphrien. Only the olive groves seemed unchanged, with their leaves greened out, but olives seemed to outlast everyone.

   Gairloch snorted and snuffled, but carried me southward.

   The first night found me at a waystation below a town called Hipriver. From what I could tell, few had visited the waystation recently. There were only a scattering of tracks in the dust on the road, and since we hadn't had any rain in more than a handful of eight-days, the weather hadn't destroyed the evidence of travelers. More likely, there were few indeed in recent days.

   Sometimes, fear of violence is more deadly than the violence itself.

   After long, steady riding, I reached Felsa around noon on the fourth day. Felsa sits on an arrow-shaped point of hard rock where the Phroan River is joined by the little Sturbal River. Right below Felsa the Phroan plunges through the Gateway Gorge and down onto the delta plains.

   Although Felsa's walls are not that high, they don't have to be, not to defend against attacks from the water, since the cliffs are almost twenty cubits high and made of sheer, but crumbling, rock. Supposedly, parts of the walls have to be moved and rebuilt every few years, and the town is said to be nearly two hundred cubits narrower today than when it was ruled from Fenard.

   The north walls, guarding the road from Kyphrien, were higher and thicker, but they wouldn't stop an army. Then, in more than ten centuries no one had marched an army downriver. That wouldn't stop Leithrrse, though.

   A single guard nodded as I rode Gairloch through gates that seemed rusted open.

   The market, like the one in Kyphrien, was more than half deserted. Unlike Kyphrien, there was little chatter, just a few murmurs here and there. After stopping in the shade of the public fountain and rinsing my face, I took Gairloch to the watering trough. Then I remounted Gairloch and took the east gate out over the bridge.

   From Felsa, there are two roads to Ruzor-the mountain road, which winds along the north side of the gorge and then the high cliffs, and the water road, which circles the gorge on the south and then follows the twists of the river on the river plain where a strip of fruit orchards separates the river from the grasslands that stretch west and south, getting drier and higher each kay from the river.

   I decided to follow the general rule, even though I had never traveled either road before. Since it was summer, I took the mountain road, a winding strip of paving stones barely wide enough for a single wagon except for a scattering of turnouts.

   Despite the clear sky, mist rose out of the gorge from where the river was threshed by the rocks, seeping up almost like fog. It shrouded parts of the road-a welcome relief from the heat I had encountered all the way from Kyphrien. Kyphrien is actually cooler than Felsa or the grasslands, something I had heard. Finding it out in person was a dubious pleasure.

   Once I left the gorge behind, the mist vanished. The sun continued to beat down, and the dust rose, but the air was so dry that the dampness from the mist left my clothes before the dust could even reach me.

   Because the High Desert rises right off the cliffs on the east side of the river below the Gateway Gorge, the road got hot- and hotter, and I went through the water in both bottles before long. There was only one waystop that whole afternoon and evening, and to get water there, I had to use a bucket and a rope that must have been nearly fifty cubits long-twice, once for me and once for Gairloch. And I had to orderspell both buckets' worth.

   I finally stopped in the second waystop, barely before full night. My legs ached, and Gairloch was plodding. He drank two buckets of water, but I didn't let him gulp them down all at once.

   The next morning we set out again, finally reaching the outskirts of Ruzor around mid-afternoon.

   Ruzor sits on the east side of the river, a city seemingly backed against the cliffs that contain the High Desert and keep its sands and waterless rocky hills from spilling into the Southern Ocean. The road wound down from the cliffs onto a lower plateau, fortified by recently repaired and extended stone walls. A small section of the city was lower still, barely above the waters of the bay.

   The upper gates had a pair of guards, who only nodded at me. What harm could a single dusty traveler on a pony do? From there I found the main square and asked an off-duty trooper where the Finest were quartered. “The Finest?” I nodded.

   “The green devils. Ah, you want the green devils and their commander. The demons help you, fellow. Still, I'd not gainsay a man a choice of his death. Aye, and death it will be when the sundevils bring their iron ships and death cannons to the bay and send their thundershells into poor Ruzor.”

   “The Finest?” I prompted.

   “The east road, by Haras's place-the Golden Cup-stay on it until it nears the seawalls and look for the iron gate and the mean-looking women with their blades. Yes, mean-looking, and if you tarry too long, I'll be behind you, little as I like it, for I'm as much a fool as ye.” He laughed, loudly. “For I'm as much a fool as ye.”

   “I thank you.”

   “Don't be a-thanking me, fellow.” He bowed, with an exaggerated sense of care, then winked before straightening.

   With a nod to the trooper, I turned Gairloch toward the sign of the Golden Cup, trying not to frown. Was Ruzor as doomed as the trooper thought?

   I tried to extend my senses in and around the city, but found no chaos, no disruption-more a sense of calm, or peace, bolstered by the order of the reinforced walls and the discipline of the Finest.

   I couldn't help frowning as I rode Gairloch eastward toward the seawall, noting little of the laughter and chatter common to the towns and cities of Kyphros.

   “... way for the cart...”

   “... sea salt, fine sea salt...”

   “... way for the cart...”

   I doubt I could have missed either the iron gate or the heavy gray stone walls of the barracks, or the banner of the autarch flying from the building farther up the hillside from those barracks.

   At the gate was a single broad-faced and dark-haired guard. I dismounted and walked up to him, leading Gairloch. He didn't acknowledge that I was standing there, and I'd never seen him. He looked right through me, as if I didn't exist. While I might have been dusty, I was certainly there.

   “My name is Lerris, and I'm here to see the commander.”

   “No one sees the commander without a pass.”

   I nodded. “Who gives out the passes?”

   “The commander or the district commander.”

   “I suppose the district commander is Yelena.”

   “Leader Yelena to you.”

   I decided I hadn't learned enough patience, because I wanted to pick up my staff and thrash the idiot. I didn't. Instead, I asked politely-at least I thought it was politely-“Where might I find Leader Yelena?”

   “You need the permission of Subofficer Thrilek.”

   I wiped my forehead. Why did these sorts of things happen to me? “And where do I find Subofficer Thrilek?”

   “Serjeant Hissek might know.”

   “All right. Where is he?”

   “He's in the main hall.”

   I started forward.

   “You can't go in there without a pass.”

   “Look. The commander happens to my consort, and I've fought in more battles than you've clearly seen. I'd really appreciate seeing someone like Yelena.”

   “I don't know you, and you're not going in.”

   “Could you call someone?”

   “I can't do that. I'd have to leave my post.”

   “To call someone?”

   “I'm not yelling just because you say so. You're just some tradesman, anyway.”

   “All right.” I stepped back and pulled the staff out of the lanceholder. “Do you know what this is?”

   “It's a long piece of wood.”

   I shook my head. “It's a staff. It's the third one I've had since I came to Kyphros. I broke the first one against a white wizard. The second one got burned to a cinder against another white wizard.” I tried smiling. “I'm not a tradesman. My name is Lerris, and I'm the commander's consort.”

   “I don't care what it is or who you say you are. You're not going into the barracks without a pass.”