The Hero's Lot (24 page)

The sounds and smells of the village urged him forward as he neared the outskirts. A woman's alto, sultry and intimate, sang words to a song that just evaded comprehension, but the good-natured laughter that accompanied it brought a smile to his lips and quickened his feet.

He walked through the broad open doors to the smell of roasting mutton and beer. The common room boasted two large fireplaces, cold and unlit in the late autumn warmth of Talia. An array of lanterns hung from the ceiling provided cheerful lighting, and in between the two hearths a small raised dais served as a stage for the evening's entertainment.

He edged his way through people clustered around tables like overripe grapes. At the bar he caught the innkeeper's attention and jangled his purse. The Talian, heavy and with the dark coloring and olive-tinted skin of his province, bustled over. “What can I get for you, good sir?”

Errol smiled, enjoying the company of folks with small cares. “Whatever you've got cooking in the kitchen and some water.”

A frown creased the innkeeper's face and his mustache drooped. “We serve the best ale in northern Talia, good sir. It would be a shame for you to pass it by.”

Errol nodded his agreement. “I'm sure it's excellent. Why don't you bring me water, and I'll pay you as if it were ale?”

The innkeeper brightened at the prospect. Before he could leave, Errol swept his arm in an arc to take in the crowd. “Is it always so busy?”

The Talian's face turned toward the singer. “It has been ever since she came here. I don't usually care for the Gitan—too many of the wandering people are thieves—but this one's different. I'll be seeing to your food now, good sir.”

Errol listened to the song, a familiar tune sung in every province about two lovers from rival families who manage to overcome every obstacle in their quest for each other. He roared his approval and sang along with the refrain like every other patron in the inn, but deep inside, where he could almost ignore its existence, a little voice said,
If only . . .

Evening wore on, and the locals started to drift away by ones and twos toward their beds in order to rise with the sun. A pair of merchant masters in opposing colors of blue and red haggled over the price of wine at a far table. By the windows a young man whined and wheedled a girl with jet-black hair and large brown eyes. He couldn't make out his words, but the young man's tone of voice and pleading features proclaimed his intent.

Errol's gaze swept across the room, acknowledging those few who noticed him. A man in the corner—tall, with hands and wrists that protruded from his sleeves—started as Errol made eye contact. With a smile the man rose and approached from across the inn, walking the planks as if he were a hundred feet tall. He leaned against the bar and gave Errol a smile that set his teeth on edge. It reminded him too much of Weir.

“She's not bad for a Gitan,” the man said.

Errol took a sip of his water. How could he rid himself of this man? “She's not bad for anyone.”

The man laughed as if he thought Errol's comment uproarious, but the notes of strain in his voice made it sound forced. “Such a belief in equality. You don't look like you're from Gascony, though.”

What? Errol decided not to comment. It would only encourage the man to stay. He turned his attention back to the singer.

The man refused to leave. He made no further attempts at conversation, but he stayed by Errol as if the two were old friends sharing a night out together. The inn continued to empty. At last, the singer bowed to enthusiastic but sparse applause and stepped down from the dais.

To Errol's surprise she came straight toward him, her black hair and fair skin glowing in the soft lamplight. Her eyes, blue with a violet tinge, danced with laughter.

She stepped around Errol and draped an arm around the man, reaching up to run a slender forefinger down his jawline in a way that made Errol wonder if he should leave. She gave Errol a speculative look. “So, Rader, who's your companion?”

The man laughed as if the woman had made a joke. “I hardly know him, Sahra, but he took suitable offense to a slight against your people.”

Sahra tapped his lips with her finger. “You're a pig, Rader. Why do I put up with you?”

He smiled a hungry wolflike grin. “Because I'm the best at what I do.”

“Humph,” she said. Sahra stepped around Errol and linked an arm through his. “Men often flatter me even as they revile my people. Why don't we go someplace where we can talk?” Her eyes glowed, catching flickers from the torches.

“I can't. I probably shouldn't have stayed this long.” Errol moved to step away, but her arm tightened, and the man stepped closer, hemming him in. A long, thin dagger appeared in the man's hand, its point against Errol's ribs.

The woman cooed in his ear. “You really shouldn't turn me
down, Errol Stone. Rader dislikes it.” The man's smile grew, and the point of the dagger wormed its way through his tunic to his skin.

Fool!
The man's behavior should have warned him. Stupidity and bad luck had combined to dump him right in Valon's lap. “I have friends nearby,” Errol said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “If you start running now, you might actually get away.”

The woman's eyes danced, and she purred. “Ooh, how very brave, but if you want to live past the next minute, you'll come with us.” Rader's dagger pressed against his skin to punctuate her point.

“Where are we going?”

“Just out back.”

“Why?”

She caressed his cheek in a gesture identical to the one she'd given Rader earlier. “I told you, dear boy—so we can talk.”

Rader herded Errol with his knife out through the kitchen and into the stable yard behind the inn. Any hopes of escape were dashed when Rader and Sahra kept him so close no one could see the dagger pressed against his side. When they entered the yard, Errol noted it was deserted . . . of course.

The woman turned to face him, businesslike, the smile and flirtations gone. “My master wants to make you an offer, Errol Stone. Whether or not you live depends on whether or not you accept it.”

Errol stared. “Valon has been trying to kill me for months. Why should I believe he would be willing to let me live?”

Sahra laughed. “I never mentioned Valon, dear boy, though I'm sure the scarecrow wants you dead. You're a threat to him and his circle.”

The singer's eyes danced as she teased him with his ignorance. In the dim light of the stable yard they alternated between focusing on him and staring through him. Something about her seemed . . . off.

“How did you find me? Valon hasn't been able to attack us for weeks.”

She laughed again, amused, but a thread of hysteria wove a note of discord in the sound, as if Sahra stood on the edge of anguish. “Gold loosens tongues, and Rader doesn't mind killing horses. We tracked you to the Arryth, but I didn't find you, dear boy. You found us quite by accident.” Glee stretched her smile. Her eyes flickered. “I will be highly exalted by my master.”

She flicked a finger at Rader. The dagger twisted. “It's time to choose, boy.”

Errol licked his lips. He needed time. Someone must have noted his absence by now. “And what will your master give me?”

Sahra caressed his cheek, her hand unnaturally warm. “The mountains of far southern Merakh run yellow with gold, boy. An omne could name his price. My master would set you above Valon. Anything you desire would be yours.” Her voice became low, cunning. “And you'd be free from the church.”

The thought tempted him. “No more compulsions?”

She shook her head, her eyes practically vibrating now. “No.”

“What about Adora?” Errol asked. He looked away, as if embarrassed by his own question. The yard and walls remained empty. By the three, where were they?

Sahra shrugged as if his question were of no importance. “You will be able to own any woman you wish, boy. If the women of Merakh are not enough for you, the princess is yours.”

He tried to school his features to stillness, but his neck twitched in refutation and his mouth twisted. “And what makes you think Adora would ever love a traitor?”

The singer's eyes rolled and fluttered, mocking him. “Love? Why would you be satisfied only with her love when you could own her body and soul, boy? Don't you understand what I'm offering you? You could have power over others. Haven't you danced to others' tunes long enough? Women are fickle,” Sahra purred. “Why depend on the princess's mercurial affections when you could simply own her instead?” Her voice dipped. “And if that is not enough for you, Errol Stone, there are ways of securing her devotion.”

The back door of the inn banged open, and a hunched figure
bearing two large wooden buckets slouched into the yard. For an instant, Errol had hoped for rescue.

“No one's coming to save you, boy,” the woman said. “Choose.”

He did his best to ignore the eager look on Rader's face. “You said I could secure her devotion.”

Her eyes lost their focus, appeared to wander in different directions. “All you have to do is open yourself to them, boy.” Even as she said this, the woman's mouth narrowed to a rictus, and for a fleeting moment, horror that chilled Errol to his core shone in the depths of Sahra's eyes.

The servant with the buckets shuffled closer as he made for the stables. The tops of carrots peeked out over the edge of the buckets. He limped, dragging one foot behind the other.

Errol tried to recoil from the loathsome thing looking out through the woman's eyes, but the dagger halted him.

“Going somewhere, boy?” Rader asked.

The singer's face twisted into a look of gleeful hunger, her lips drawn tight against her teeth. “He's made his choice, kill him.”

Rader nodded toward the hunchback with the buckets. “What about him?”

Sahra pulled a dagger that gleamed wetly. “Leave him to me.”

 23 
Marked

T
HE YARD DESCENDED INTO CHAOS.
The flex of tendons in Rader's arm gave Errol his only warning. He threw himself back, away from the dagger, but pain exploded in his side, sharp and fiery. Errol rose, but instead of coming on, Rader smiled and backed away.

A wet chopping sound, like the hack of a knife into a watermelon, erupted. Errol turned to see Sahra, her smile gone, replaced by shock at the sword that had cut halfway through her side. The Gitan crumpled, her eyes focused on the man before her: Merodach.

The thrum of a bowstring, followed by the sound of a body hitting the dirt sounded behind Errol. He spun. Rader lay on the ground with half a yard of arrow sticking from his chest. His eyes had already emptied.

Errol pressed a hand to the cut in his side. Cold seeped from the wound, and the area around the cut throbbed. Gial Orth jumped from the roof of the tavern into the yard as Merodach reached him.

“Are you well?” the captain asked.

Errol nodded, then shook his head. The pain in his side moved from a throb to a tear, forcing him to speak through clenched teeth. “Get the man's dagger. I think it was poisoned.”

Merodach snapped and pointed.

Orth scooped up Rader's dagger and sniffed. “It smells foul. There's a yellow tinge to it.”

The pain in Errol's side continued to grow, and he growled to keep it at bay. He forced his eyes open. “The woman's dagger—did she mark you with it?”

Merodach shook his head.

A cry tore itself loose from Errol's lips, and he teetered. Merodach scooped him up as if he were a child and carried him back into the inn yelling for the innkeeper with each step.

The innkeeper came running down the stairs, lantern in hand, his mustache bristling. His face wavered through Errol's tears of pain.

“I don't like trouble in my inn,” the innkeeper said. “You'll have to take him outside.”

Merodach frowned in Orth's direction, and a sword appeared as if by magic at the innkeeper's throat. “You will get us a healer now,” Merodach said, his voice all the more terrible for its quiet. “Lieutenant Orth will accompany you.”

Orth's flame-red hair swam before Errol as if the lieutenant were on fire. “We need the caravan master's daughter as well. She might know this poison.” He waved the yellow-tinted dagger for emphasis.

Merodach nodded, a movement Errol felt as searing agony in his side. “Ru is down the street loading supplies. Send him. I need a room with a bed, master innkeeper. I'll not risk moving him.”

The innkeeper's drawling Talian wavered in the air. “Take mine, top of the stairs.”

Merodach turned. Errol could hear the man's heartbeat, slow and steady, as though nothing of import had happened. The jolt of the captain's first step pulled a whimper from Errol. By the time they were halfway up the stairs his screams ripped through the inn. Consciousness faded before they reached the top.

He came to in agony as Merodach laid him on the bed. Screams tore his throat as pain ripped through him. Footsteps pounded in the hall. Errol felt the vibrations as knives of agony. Merodach's voice, harsh now, emptied the inn.

The sting of his sweat tore through him like the pulling of quills. Physical sensations magnified to the point of excruciating pain. The sensitivity grew worse with each second. He tried to hold himself still in a vain effort to minimize the torment, but the pressure against his back as he lay on the bed brought him to convulsions he couldn't stop. Before long he would die, thrashing and screaming.

He hoped it would be soon.

It wasn't. Errol spent an eternity trapped in searing pain. Crimson light filled his mind. Awareness of everything around him—the bed, the inn, even his screaming—disappeared into the unbearable heat of his growing pain.

Sometime after his ability to measure the passage of time had ceased, a new sensation intruded into his awareness. Cold. A chill deeper than of the Sprata's winter melt enveloped him. Shivers wracked him, turned his muscles into a quivering mass that vibrated against the convulsions of the poison. A semblance of awareness returned. Someone forced a stick between his teeth and liquid flowed down his ravaged throat.

The crimson light diminished, shrank from the size of the sun to a pinpoint, then winked out as he lost consciousness.

“Errol.”

He passed without transition from black unconsciousness to pain. The rocking motion of a wagon sent spears of torture through him, but restraints kept him from thrashing to death. The effort of opening his eyes daunted him. He quit trying. There seemed to be enough muted light around him to indicate daytime. He couldn't be sure. Cold—thin and sharp like a dagger—covered him. Why was he so cold?

“Where?” The effort of that one word made him whimper. He tasted blood from the ruin of his throat.

“Oh, Errol.”

Adora's voice. Broken. “We're headed toward a . . . a friend. The poison won't kill you as long as we can keep you still.”

“Cold.”

“We have you covered in ice we took from the inns. Rokha says we have to give your body a rest from the papaverine sap.”

Papaverine . . . ?
Where had they found that?

Adora's voice provided warmth to his hearing. “We've been covering you in ice to keep your convulsions at bay, but . . .”

A male voice broke in—Rale's. “But we have to let you warm up, Errol, or you'll freeze to death. We're trying to get you to a healer. Rokha thinks that if we can keep you alive long enough, the poison will pass from your system.”

Chills shook him. Underneath the tremors he could sense the convulsions waiting. “How long?” He didn't like speaking. The red light in his mind flared and grew with the pain in his throat. His arms and legs twitched in warning.

“I'm not sure what you're asking, son. It's been three days since you were poisoned. We're making less than ten leagues a day. We headed west into the mountains so we would have enough ice to keep you alive.”

Son.
Rale hadn't meant it as Errol would have wished, but the word awoke an ache deep in his chest even as it warmed him. The cold surrounding him started to fade. Water flowed along the hair on his arms, his legs. A convulsion shook him, his back arching. The crimson light in his head exploded. Someone wedged the stick between his teeth again and a sticky-sweet liquid caressed his sore throat as he sank into oblivion.

Errol woke to darkness so black and unrelieved he thought ice had seeped into his chest, stilling his heart. The flare of red behind his eyes had receded to a pinpoint, leaving him lucid. He lay entombed in lightlessness, afraid to move lest the convulsions returned. His back ached as if someone had snuck up behind him and beaten him with punja sticks.

He was warm.

That last surprised him. He had come to associate any clarity of thought with a cold so deep it defied sun or fire. Was he dead? Months in Erinon had left him ignorant still of the simplest theology. What happened when a man died? He longed to speak, to have his loneliness relieved, but if he still lived and lay alone somewhere without help, the convulsions would kill him.

He didn't want to die. A thought occurred to him. If he still lived, the church's compulsion still lay on him. Errol turned his attention inward, seeking. Yes, there it lay, like a knot deep in his mind. He lived, warm and clear at the same time.

Why was he alone?

Or was he? He held his breath in an attempt to hear breathing other than his own, but the labored beating of his heart prevented him. With a deep breath, he tried again, with no better results.
Caution,
he told himself. He hadn't used any in the village, and a poisoned dagger to his side had been the price. As much as he wanted to know whether or not he lay alone, the answer wasn't critical.

And he was tired. His feeble efforts exhausted him. For the first time in an eternity of pain, he fell asleep without the use of drugs.

Errol opened his eyes an instant or days later. He didn't know which. A thread of sunshine shone through a thin gap in the curtains of his room. Adora sat in a chair at the foot of his bed. Dark circles of exhaustion rimmed her eyes, giving her a frantic look, as if she'd witnessed dire portents of the future. The light failed to catch the gold in her hair, and she slumped under burdens Errol couldn't see.

She blinked at him, her gaze going through him, and he shivered, remembering the eyes of the woman in the village. “Your Highness.” His throat ached as though the entire conclave had used polishing cloth on it.

Adora's eyes came into focus, and she rose. Like a child, she tottered as she walked first to the door to lock it and then to the side of his bed. She knelt, her head with its glory of golden hair scant inches from his face. The patter of tears on the marble
floor of his bedchamber came to him like the sound of rain on the rocks of the Sprata.

“Errol, will you forgive me? I should never have sent you away. You are the best and noblest man I have ever met.”

He tried to clear his throat to speak. “Water?”

She rose, head still bowed, and filled a cup from a pitcher that sat on an ornately carved table across the room. She held the cup for him and he drank, tasting salt. His throat would take time to heal.

He closed his lips after a few gulps, ignoring what flowed down his cheeks. “You didn't send me to the village. That was my foolish idea.”

“An idea you wouldn't have had except for my stupid pride,” Adora said.

“Don't take burdens that don't belong to you, Your Highness. When I'm better I'll tell you just how many mistakes I made that night.” Errol thought back. “It's a long list.” He flexed the muscles in his legs, surprised at their obedience. “Can you help me up? I'd like to see Rale.”

“I'll bring him to you,” Adora said, moving toward the door.

He shook his head. “I want out of this room, even if it's to a chair just outside the door.”

The princess smiled, her lips tight. “I'll get someone to assist you.”

“You don't want to help me?”

The smile grew. “Earl Stone, in order to keep you cool, it was necessary to remove your clothes.” She paused. “All of your clothes. You are quite naked beneath that sheet.” The princess arched her eyebrows at him. “Do you still want my help?”

For a moment he considered teasing her in turn, but he considered the implications of his current state. Who had undressed him? He didn't want to know. “Uh, no thank you, Your Highness. Could you send someone else to assist me?” She turned to the door, and he remembered Rokha was the closest thing to a healer the caravan had. “Someone male, please,” he called after her.

Conger came in a few minutes later. “Good to see you're still on this side of eternity, milord.”

Errol shook his head. The room spun with the motion. “Call me Errol. How long since I was poisoned?”

“Seven days, mi—Errol.” Conger helped him to a sitting position, then fetched a set of unfamiliar garments from a wardrobe in the corner and began to dress him as if he were a young child. “We had to cut your clothes off. It was the only way to get you into the ice without moving you too much.”