The Towers Of the Sunset (12 page)

Creslin follows the other’s eyes toward a corner table where a slender man dressed in white sits beside a dark-haired woman. Even through the smoke, Creslin can sense the allure of the woman. He can also sense the white wrongness that surrounds both of them and spills over onto the two armed men seated at each side. The armed men do not eat, but watch the other diners.

“Let’s have those coins, pretty boy,” rasps the waitress as three metal tankards come down on the battered wood.

Derrild surrenders the coins reluctantly. “Let’s have those meals, pretty woman,” he roars back.

“If I were younger, I might believe you.” She smiles briefly, revealing blackened teeth.

Creslin lifts the tankard of redberry juice. His eyes catch Hylin’s. “When we rode in, you said something about beliefs, and why the prefect has to stay in Fenard…”

Hylin finishes a slow mouthful of the wine. “Ah, better than that mountain ale. Much better.”

Creslin waits, and Derrild says nothing.

“Oh… about the prefect. I don’t know-”

“You’re right. You just know blades,” interrupts Derrild, his voice surprisingly soft and low. “There’s another reason why the prefect won’t leave Fenard, another prophecy in the Book.”

He pauses for a gulp of wine, then wipes his mouth with a large cloth he has pulled from his belt; it might once have been fine white linen. “The Book says something like the Plains of Gallos will stay united under one ruler until long after they are split by the mountains of the magicians, when then they shall be ruled by a woman with a sword of darkness who will hold the highlands of Analeria and the enchanted hills.” He shrugs. “So one prophet says the prefect has to stay and the other says he can’t lose the southern plains anyway. I mean, mountains in the middle of the plains… how could that ever be? And who’d ever want the highlands, anyway? Goats ruled by princes from round tents, that’s all Analeria is. Damned foolishness.”

A chill touches Creslin, and he looks past the trader toward the man in white at the comer table, who smiles a knowing smile, not at Creslin, but at Derrild’s back.

Three heavy, chipped crockery platters drop on the table, a bent and battered tin spoon resting in each.

“See, pretty boy? I always deliver. It’s you men who can’t deliver when you get up there in years!” Creslin smiles in spite of himself.

Hylin grabs the spoon and begins to slurp up the stew.

Derrild shakes his head at the broad backside of the serving woman. “… still can deliver, thank you.”

Creslin eats slowly, methodically, wondering about the pervasive whiteness of the city, the White Wizard in the corner, and the white birds that have trailed him, on and off.

He watches, absently sipping the redberry, as Hylin smiles at a woman on the far side of the room. She sits with other women, and even Creslin does not need to see their painted cheeks to appreciate the women’s looks and expertise. But only to appreciate them from afar. The last thing he needs is to be involved with another woman.

Megaera… who is she, and why is she still on his mind? The images tell him- But what do they tell him?

He shakes his head as Hylin looks from him to the women and back. “Not tonight. Not now.”

“Wise man,” rumbles Derrild as Hylin winks and leaves the table.

“Him or me?”

“You. Can’t buy love. Can’t even buy real sex.” Derrild raises his heavy arm. “Another wine, pretty woman!”

Creslin sips his redberry, pursing his lips. How much he has yet to learn.

“Another wine, pretty woman!”

ONE OF THE mules swerves and plods through the mud at the edge of the road.

“Gee… ah!” Hylin methodically herds the pack animal back onto the road. “Damned mud. Slows everything.”

“How much farther?” Creslin again glances at the rolling hills that will in a day or so, according to Hylin, lead them to the western edge of the Easthorns. The horizon is dark. Looking over his shoulder at the hills behind, he sees the orangish-pink glow that reminds him of the towers of the sunset, those incredible sunset clouds seen from the Roof of the World.

But there are no towers on the eastern plains of Gallos, just fields and hills and occasional orchards, interspersed with rain and mud. The afternoon has been clear and still, almost springlike steamy as the sun has heated the puddles and quagmires resulting from the morning downpour. Creslin has sweated most of the afternoon, and his tunic is as loose as he can get it, though he must brush away the gnats and flies even more often.

Hylin and Derrild still wear their jackets. Whhhhnnnn… Smaackk.

Creslin removes from his forearm the pulped remains of the mosquito that has plagued him for more than a kay in the still and humid air. Whhnnnn…

Should he call up the slightest of breezes now that they are well away from the white presence around Fenard? Smmackk! Whhhnnnn…

“Shit,” he mutters. No one had talked about the mosquitos when they mentioned the fertile plains of Gallos or the eastern lands. Nor the flies. Nor the stink of the back alleys of both the cities and the towns. Whhnnnn…

A flicker of white catches his eye, and he turns toward the southern sky, but the bird, if it is a bird, has vanished. Whhhnnn… Smacckk! Wwhhnnn…

“Don’t like the little buggers? They sure seem to like you,” Hylin observes.

Smmackk!

His exposed neck is sore, but the mosquito population of the Gallosian plains is one fewer. “How much farther?”

“Another couple of kays. Just far enough that it will be dark when we get there.” Hylin’s voice is dry.

“Be good to stand up,” rumbles the trader from the cart. “You two don’t have to sit on hard wood.”

Hylin looks at Creslin. Both have remarked upon the thick cushion that insulates the trader from the seat about which he is continually complaining.

Whhnnnnnn…

“How far is this place?”

“That might be the kaystone ahead… if we’re lucky.”

The orange-pink glow has faded, and the oblong stone is a light gray against the darker gray of a fast-falling twilight by the time Creslin reins up the gelding to make out the characters.

“Perndor. It says three kays. Is that where we’re headed?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“You think so?”

Whnnnnnn…

“He’s giving you the knife, youngster.”

Hylin grins, despite Derrild’s explanation.

Smaacckkk… Creslin sways in the saddle, off balance after his attempt at the latest attacker. Then he flicks the reins.

Squuusshhh… squuushhh. Mud flies from the gelding’s hooves as he carries Creslin back onto the highway’s stones, mud-coated but far firmer than the clay shoulders of the road.

“Shouldn’t be that much farther.”

Whhnnnn…

The silver-haired youth-sweat dripping down the inside of his shirt and insect welts rising on his neck-sighs. Before too much longer, they come to another gray stone, which says simply, “Perndor.” A tumbledown hovel looms off the road behind an equally decrepit railed fence.

The stones of the highway vanish, to be replaced with local clay… and worse. While the rain has long since stopped, the road remains filled with mud and water.

Creslin continues to sweat, even in the gloom of the cool twilight that is fast becoming night. He dare not shift the winds to cool himself or to keep the insects away, not with the skeptical trader and the sharp-eyed Hylin riding almost next to him.

“Hate being this late.” Hylin’s hand reaches up and touches his sword hilt.

Creslin merely shifts his weight and throws his senses out upon the light breeze that seems to have sprung up from the west, from behind the trader’s mules, and toward the dark shapes of unlit buildings before them.

“Anyone live here?” he asks as they pass another deserted hovel.

“Supposed to have an honest inn.”

Creslin sees a single bright light perhaps half a kay ahead.

Clink… whuff…

Creslin stiffens at the sounds and the feelings of mounted men gathering behind an abandoned barn beyond and to his right, then reaches and flips the sword from his back sheath.

At the same time, he can feel the bow being drawn, and in desperation, twists the winds and the moisture in the air and flings them into the face of the bowman.

“Bandits!” rumbles Derrild unnecessarily, snatching at least twice for a heavy nail-studded club.

Dropping flat against his bony mount, Creslin spurs the gelding toward the half-dozen riders, blade ready.

“HYYYYYY!”

“Bastard!”

His blade flashes once, then again, as he ducks and lets his body follow the patterns drilled into him.

“Devil! Where is he?” Creslin gathers the now-wailing winds and flings them once more, even as his mount starts to crumple. He leaps, using his momentum to drive the sword through the throat of the heavy bandit, who has tried to back away.

“Go! There’re more! They got Frosee!”

“Hell…” he mutters as he tries to unseat the dead man.

Hylin reins up beside him.

“Who’s coming?” Creslin asks.

“No one. Just me.” Hylin’s face is pale, even in the dim light.

“Where’s Derrild?” Creslin succeeds in toppling the dead man.

“On his way to the inn, as fast as he can drag the mules.”

“What?”

“We’re paid for this. Remember?”

“Oh… yeah.” Creslin looks around. Besides the heavy man lying facedown in the mud, two other bodies sprawl on the ground… and the gelding that had carried him for so many kays.

“You got one more, but he’s dead in the saddle.” Hylin’s voice is flat.

Creslin shakes his head, as much to stop the quaking of his hands and body as to deny what Hylin has said. “Couldn’t be. I rode through just twice.” He sees one bowman lying on his back, his face covered with ice. How can there be ice? How can there possibly be ice? The evening is cool, but not that cold. Creslin swallows, not wishing to think about how he has called the winds from the Roof of the World.

The other man, smaller, and in dark tunic and trousers, lies with his face in a puddle.

“I don’t know what you are, Creslin, and I don’t want to find out.”

Creslin shakes his head again. “I’m nothing… nothing at all.” He wipes his sword on a fragment of cloth dangling from the saddle, then automatically replaces it in the sheath.

“So is death, friend.” Hylin drops off his mount, bends over the bandit chief, and slashes. He comes up with a heavy leather purse and tosses it at Creslin. “Put that away.”

Creslin slides it into his pack, numbly, as the other man remounts.

“Shift your bags, and let’s get on with it. We need the locals to clean up the mess. They can at least do that.”

Creslin hands the reins of the well-muscled black horse to Hylin, wondering how it happened so quickly. One moment the archer was about to spit him with an arrow, and the next, four men, if he can believe Hylin, are dead. “I couldn’t have done that…” He shakes his head again, then wades through the ankle-deep mud to the gelding. Dark blotches streak the dead horse’s muzzle. Whether they are mud or blood, Creslin knows not, nor does he care as he retrieves the mud-smeared bags. He ties the saddlebags and his pack in place quickly, behind a far better saddle than Derrild had provided.

He touches the black, trying to reassure it, and the horse steadies as he swings up into the saddle in close to a fluid motion, as close to fluid as his tired legs permit.

From somewhere, thunder rolls, and unseen clouds begin to mass.

“Hard to believe you’re not one of those devil guards… so at home on a horse, and you fight just like them.”

“They trained me.” He might as well tell some of the truth.

Hylin keeps his face turned from Creslin. “… believe that now… still don’t understand that bowman.”

Neither does Creslin, exactly, but he knows well enough that it was his doing. He takes a deep breath as they make their way toward the inn. He does not want to talk about the bowman, not tonight. With each new action, he discovers that he knows himself less. He shivers in the saddle, though he is not cold.

Whnnnn…

He shakes his head tiredly. Some things don’t seem to change.

The rain begins to fall again, cold drops-unlike the morning rain.

CRESLIN GLANCES TO the right of the trail-rock and more rock, interspersed with patches of old ice, in the deeper crevices. Although the Easthorns are not nearly so high as the Westhorns, they are more barren, with fewer trees and bushes, and drier, as if the snows that fall on the Roof of the World never quite reach across the plains of Gallos.

Yeee-ahhhh. A black vulcrow’s shriek echoes along the narrow trail, followed by the flapping of wings as the scavenger retreats farther eastward down the winding road that leads to Jellico. Creslin feels the white wrongness about the black bird without even extending his sense. At least in the mountains, there are no mosquitos, no flies, and the chill is welcome.

Although Creslin’s parka is full open, Derrild huddles under a heavy fur coat as he sways on the seat of his cart. Hylin’s fur-lined jacket is closed.

The black, more spirited than the bony gelding, sidles edgewise for a moment. Creslin pats the mount’s neck. “Easy.”

The cart wheels almost scrape an outcropping of stone as they round a sharp turn. A wagon would have far more trouble then Derrild’s two-wheeled cart.

“Isn’t there a wider road across the Easthorns?” Creslin calls to Hylin.

“The southern road is nearly twice as wide.”

“Why don’t we take it?”

“It takes almost five days longer,” rumbles Derrild. “Five more days I have to pay you, pay inns, and five days that I cannot sell goods.”

“Oh…” Creslin’s voice trails off. His pay is cheap, but Hylin probably draws a silver a day. At five days each way, plus the inn and food costs…

“Don’t forget, silver-head,” shouts the trader, “that I can make more trips, or run the shop in Jellico, if each trip takes less time.”

Creslin takes a deep breath, wishing he had never raised the issue.

“And,” rumbles the trader’s voice from the cart behind him, “this road is safer because all the fat caravans take the southern road. Sometimes we don’t see a single bandit. That’s not often, but…”

Hylin turns in the saddle and grins, then looks forward and nudges the chestnut to widen the gap between cart and guard.

“… and I’m not in this for the thrill, not at my age,” Derrild rumbles on. “A man has to do something when he has a wife and three daughters and but one son. Besides, should I sit in a shop and nod and grow fat? But the travel-at times, I never want to sit upon a horse or a cart ever again.”

“What about the roads?” Creslin asks desperately.

“The roads!” snorts the trader. “What roads?”

The cart scrapes around another switchback, and the road dips toward the plains of Certis.

“These aren’t roads,” the trader continues from atop his cushioned seat. “The only real roads are the ones from Lydiar to
Fairhaven, and from
Fairhaven to the Easthorns. The wizards build good roads.”

“So why don’t we take them?”

“Because, young idiot, there’s no money in taking roads that everyone travels. You do what everyone does, and you’re poor. Look, you’re a blade. If you’re just as good as the average blade, you’re dead. Right?”

“I suppose so,” ventures Creslin.

Yeee-ahh… The vulcrow flaps on down the gradually widening stone-lined valley to perch somewhere out of sight.

“You have to be better, do things others don’t do. That’s true with anything. More skill and more risk-that’s where the rewards are. And,” adds the trader, “more speed. You understand that, I know, by the way you use that sword. That’s why we’re not stopping and trading along the way. It’s all worth more, much more, the quicker we can get it east.”

Creslin nods, looking ahead toward Hylin’s back.

“And another thing, that’s being honest…”

In spite of himself, Creslin listens. He has always heard that traders are among the most corrupt of the merchants.

“Honesty pays, boy. Not in any darkness-loving, mealy-mouthed way. No… it pays in cold, hard cash. People trade with you. They hold goods for you, because you keep your word. Good guards work for you, because you pay what you promised. And the other thing is, if you’re honest with yourself, then you don’t lie to yourself, and you don’t try and tell yourself you can do something that’s stupid. Lying to yourself’ll kill you, if it doesn’t ruin you first.”

Creslin frowns, looking ahead. Now that he thinks about it, Derrild has been foolish once or twice. He has been loud. He has bargained hard, but he has never tried to cheat anyone.

“But it’s still hard, with all the travel…”