The Smoke-Scented Girl (38 page)

“Then prove this to us,” Carall said,
approaching Evon, his bony head thrust forward, menacing. “Prove
that we have traveled outside our time. Prove that you are not
liars sent by the Enemy.”

“Carall—” Dania began.

“There’s no sky here,” Kerensa began, “no sun
I mean, and probably no stars, but when we step outside this place,
Wystylth will recognize that the stars aren’t in the right
places—they’ve moved in the last thousand years. And Dania, you
likely realized that we speak your language, only a much altered
version of it. I’d ask Evon to dismiss the translation spell and
prove it,” she added with a grin, “but I don’t want any confusion
that might end up with people being dead.”

Carall looked at Alvor, who said, “We have
tried to find a way out of this forest without success. How do you
propose otherwise, Kerensa who is strangely well informed about our
abilities?”

Kerensa glanced at Evon. “To be honest, I’m
not sure we’ll be able to leave, either,” she said. “But we have a
spell to find the Despot—that’s the Enemy’s host in our time—and I
hope it will lead us to somewhere we can exit this place. And if
it’s capable of tracking the Despot from in here, that might mean
we’ll come out close to our own time. So if you want to throw in
your lot with ours....”

“Then let us be going,” Alvor said. He
mounted his horse in a swift, fluid gesture completely at odds with
his bulky appearance. “I look forward to doing battle with our
Enemy again.”

“You can’t,” Evon said without thinking.

Alvor looked down on him. He’d washed most of
the blood off his face, but enough clung to his beard and the
creases of his skin that he looked savage. “You do not tell me what
I cannot do,” he said.

“The spell Kerensa is carrying will destroy
the Enemy forever, not just for a thousand years,” Evon said. “You
must allow us to complete our task.”

“We saved this country—no, belike we saved
the world,” Alvor said, raising his voice. “Dare you tell me that
our work was in vain?”

“Alvor, your work gave the world a thousand
years of peace,” Kerensa said, laying her hand on Alvor’s calf and
making Evon want to grab her and drag her out of his reach. “But
this spell was made by magicians in your time who were willing to
sacrifice anything to see the Enemy destroyed forever. Don’t let
their work be wasted. Help us use it against the Enemy.”

Alvor sat back in his saddle. His eyes looked
out over the clearing, rapt in memory. “Free us from this place,”
he said finally, “and we will speak more of this.”

Kerensa nodded and took a step back. Carall
and Dania mounted, and the three of them looked at Kerensa for
directions. Wystylth, on the other hand, kept his eye on Evon, and
Evon thought he saw the shadowy face smile. He looked away, trying
to seem unconcerned, but wondering what interest the man, or
whatever he was, might have in him.

Kerensa took out the coin and closed her
fingers over it, then turned in a slow circle until she was facing
the direction Alvor had arrived from. “This way,” she said, and
shouldered her bag and began walking. Evon quickly picked up the
other bags and followed her, trailed by four people out of history
and myth. He walked close beside her and said, in a low voice,
“This is not good.”

“What are you talking about? This is
amazing
. I just spoke to Alvor! You traded spells with Dania
and Wystylth nearly cut your throat! I have so many things I want
to ask them all. Some of the myth
has
to be wrong, you know.
Passing down stories from generation to generation, they must have
gotten some of it wrong.”

“Kerensa, this is not the time for planning
an attack on the Alvorian canon. If they decide to head off after
the entity, I can’t stop them.”

“Maybe we should let them do it.”

“What?”

Kerensa wouldn’t meet his eyes. “We still
don’t know how to remove the fire and keep it a weapon. Wouldn’t it
be easier to just let the heroes take care of the entity?”

“Kerensa, if they kill the Despot, you’re
doomed to carry that fire for the rest of your life. You’ll go on
burning to death and being resurrected and that cycle will never be
broken.”

“If you figure out how to take this fire out
of me—”

“
When
I figure it out.”

“All right, when you figure out how to take
this fire out of me, couldn’t you transfer it to someone else?
Someone evil?”

“I’m not comfortable judging the comparative
evilness of other people. And you ought to know better than anyone
that good people die because of this weapon too.”

Kerensa ducked her head lower. “I don’t need
a reminder.”

“I’m sorry. But you know it’s true. Besides,
even if we let Alvor kill the Despot, we’ve already seen that his
solution isn’t permanent. In a thousand years the entity will
return and someone else will have to endure what you have. It might
even be your descendant. Can you really condemn someone else to
that fate?”

Kerensa sighed. “You’re right. But it was
nice, for a few minutes, to pretend it was all over.” She stopped
and turned around. “We should probably join hands, or something,”
she said. “I’ve heard that sometimes people cross the borders of
these places and end up separated. Sometimes separated in time as
well as location. So we shouldn’t take any chances.”

Alvor nodded. Kerensa stood between Alvor and
Dania and hooked her elbows around their ankles so she could hold
the coin as she walked between their horses. Evon wrapped his
fingers around Carall’s ankle and then, hesitantly, held out his
hand to take Wystylth’s. This close, he could see that Wystylth was
definitely smiling. His mouth was slung forward a little, like the
muzzle of a cat, though he didn’t have the fangs Evon half expected
to see. Wystylth’s palm was rough like sandpaper, but the back of
his hand was smooth, almost silky. The ivory claws were fully
retracted, giving his fingertips a bare, unsettling look. “I don’t
bite,” Wystylth said in a low voice, and bared his teeth. They were
perfectly normal human teeth.

“I didn’t expect you to,” Evon said,
embarrassed that his voice had a little quiver in it. He remembered
the sharp claw pressed against his throat and was extremely
conscious that both his hands were occupied. Would he dare use
magic against a legendary hero? Absolutely.

They began walking forward again, somewhat
less gracefully now. Wystylth’s walk was a sort of bob, as if he
weren’t used to walking on two legs. “Your woman is beautiful,”
Wystylth said into the silence, his smile growing broader.

Fear for Kerensa made Evon forget fear for
himself. “Stay away from her,” he hissed. “I can make you wish
you’d never been born, or however it was you came into this
world.”

Wystylth looked at him for a long moment. “I
left my lady wife behind the day we rode off into this place,” he
said. “The Gods only know what she thinks happened to me. I meant
no disrespect.”

Evon wanted the earth to swallow him whole.
“I apologize,” he said. “That was...by the Gods, I am so sorry. I
thought....”

“I know what you thought,” Wystylth said. “It
is what everyone thinks. And I did threaten to slit your throat.”
He smiled again, and Evon realized, looking more closely into the
shadowy hood, that his eyes were merry. “You have the look of a man
newly in love and not entirely certain what he did to deserve it.
She is an unusual young woman. One who tries to help a man who
attempted to kill her.”

“She is extraordinary,” Evon said, wishing he
had Kerensa’s hand in his right now instead of Carall’s too-thin
ankle and a hand that wasn’t quite a paw. “And I am lucky.”

“I had a feeling, all these weeks, that I
would not return home to Merenna,” Wystylth said. “But it is not
the same as learning she has been dead for a thousand years. Still,
we were ten years together, and that is better than no years at
all.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. I think you understand a little
of what I feel. You will have to tell me, ten years from now,
whether you understand better.” Again that flash of a smile. Evon
felt as if his world were being rearranged so quickly that if he
let go with either hand, he would tumble to the ground.

“I think—” he began, and the world jerked,
and his foot came down not on bare, cold earth, but snow that
crunched beneath it.

Evon stumbled a little bit, and Wystylth
grasped his hand more firmly and kept him from falling. It was a
clear, starry night, the still air several degrees colder than it
had been just a moment before. Evon dropped Wystylth’s hand a
little faster than was polite and saw the man grin at him; he
returned the grin sheepishly. He let go of Carall’s ankle and
suppressed the desire to wipe his palms on his trousers.

“Wystylth?” Alvor said.

Wystylth took a few bobbing steps forward,
scanning the sky. “We are not in our own time,” he said. “But the
sky is not so much changed that I cannot see we are still in
southern Dalanine.”

“I don’t see Valantis, or his men,” Kerensa
said. “Evon….”

Evon looked around. It was dark enough that
he couldn’t tell if they were anywhere close to where they’d
entered the place of power, and he had no way of knowing whether
they had emerged the same day, or weeks later, or even years.
Inspiration struck him, and he took out his mirror.
“Eloqua
Piercy Faranter,” he said, and the mirror frosted over. He waited;
no response. Alvor and his companions moved forward, talking
quietly among themselves. Evon followed them, his attention
absorbed by the mirror. If they were so many years in the future
that Piercy was dead...or if the Despot had destroyed all of
Dalanine....

“There are signs of other horses passing this
way,” Wystylth said. He was crouched low now and examining the
ground. Evon saw nothing but drifts of snow, but Wystylth leaned
down until his nose was less than an inch from the drifts and said,
“Three horses. Their tracks end here, as if they too passed into
the place of power.”

“Look there,” Kerensa said, and ran forward,
her steps slowed by the snow-covered ground. Evon looked up to see
her pointing at a dark hump on the ground. “It’s our horse. Poor
thing, they killed it.” At that moment, the mirror cleared, and
Piercy’s familiar face filled its small circle.

“Good evening, dear fellow, and how goes the
hunt?” he said.

“Did I speak to you yesterday evening?” Evon
demanded.

Piercy’s eyebrows went up. “Have you
forgotten already? I was not aware that love could so disorder your
faculties.”

“Did I?”

“Yes, Evon, why are you so agitated? Do you
have news?”

Evon glanced over at where Alvor and Carall
were having a low-voiced but intense argument. “I...no news yet. We
may not be going to Nystrantor after all. I’ll tell you as soon as
I know what our plans are. Do you know where the army is? Our army,
I mean?”

“North and east of your position, based on
where you were last evening. I’m told they will engage the Despot’s
army in two or three days. You ought to be able to circle north of
them, but I have to say, Evon, my confidence in your plan is
waning.”

“It...might not matter. Things have
changed.”

“Evon, you sound shifty. Are you keeping
something from me? Because you know that never ends well for either
of us.”

“I’ll tell you everything, Piercy, as soon as
I understand it myself.”

Piercy made an exasperated noise. “You had
better do,” he said, and vanished.

Evon put the mirror away and looked around
again. If Valantis and his men had followed them into the magic
place, it was impossible to know where, or if, they would emerge.
They needed to move on immediately, though even as he thought that
he had a brief image of Valantis face-to-face with Alvor, and it
made him smile despite his anxiety. He went to join Alvor and
Carall, who had finished their argument but were still, as Evon saw
when he approached, angry about something. “We thank you for
bringing us out of that place,” Alvor said.

“Though Dania’s Glass would no doubt have
done the same, had we waited a little longer,” Carall muttered.

“They deserve no less thanks for all that,”
Alvor said sharply. “Now I would have you explain why we should not
pursue the Enemy as we have done before.”

The abruptness of the question startled Evon.
“Ah,” he stammered, “I mean no offense to you, but if you kill the
Enemy as you did before, it will only come back again centuries
from now.” He explained what he had learned about the spell and the
inferences he’d made about the nature of the entity. Alvor
listened, his face a dispassionate mask. Carall kept putting his
skeletal hand to the pommel of his short sword, his eyes watching
Alvor instead of Evon. Dania’s eyes were closed in thought, her
head bowed. And Wystylth watched Evon closely, all traces of the
smile gone. The more Evon spoke, the more dispassionate Alvor’s
face became, and Evon began stammering under the weight of his
scrutiny.

“So is the young woman to die in order to
destroy the Enemy utterly?” Alvor asked, after Evon’s explanation
trailed off.

“I won’t let that happen,” Evon said.

“And yet you do not know how to prevent
it.”

“Not yet.”

“Possibly not ever.”

“As I said, I won’t let that happen.”

“So you will wander until you discover a
solution, while your Despot continues to ravage the land? And you
consider
my
solution an impermanent one?”

“Your solution condemns Kerensa to a life of
suffering and some future generation to the depredations of the
Enemy.” Evon felt his voice shake.

“We should not stand here arguing with the
boy,” Carall said.

“He’s not a boy,” said Dania. “Alvor, his
argument has merit.”