Waterdance (16 page)

Chapter Five

“I know,”   Atheris   said   quietly,   “I   was shocked, too. I still somehow expected it would not be so bad.”

Peri glanced up hastily, guiltily; then she realized he was talking about the marketplace and bit her lip to stifle a sigh of relief.

Atheris had cause for shock. Back in Agrond, the great market in Tarkesh was a marvelous place, so huge and full and noisy that it seemed like one great yearlong festival. Bregond had nothing to rival it, of course, but even tiny towns too poor to manage more than a few carts at the center of town once a week were lively places where friends gossiped and laughed or argued with each other and haggled with the merchants.

Darnalek’s market was gray and all but silent; the loudest sounds were the creak of cart wheels and the clop of hooves or boot soles against hard-packed dirt. A few listless men and women made a cursory attempt at bargaining with equally apathetic vendors, then paid or walked away just as indifferently. No wind ruffled the drab garments hanging out windows to dry. No urchins or thieves or dogs ran the streets. No beggars called out to passersby. Peri couldn’t even hear the rustling of rats from the alleyways.

The market stank of decaying garbage and emptied chamber pots, and under that a less definable but no less discernible smell, the same odor that Peri had detected in the water—a flat, stagnant, dead smell. Every piece of wood seemed riddled with worm tunnels or crumbly with dry rot. The very stones of the foundations seemed to be rotting away. The few vegetables and fruits for sale were not only wilted but strangely colorless and withered. Even the air seemed somehow gray.

And it matched Peri’s mood.

Battle heat, she thought resolutely. Danber warned me about it, the firing of the blood after a good fight. All my sword instructors warned me.

Maybe last night, relaxed and sated and unthinking, she’d had no regrets. This morning she’d had plenty of time to think. Plenty of time to regret.

If she’d thought her parents—not knowing of her “arrangement” with Danber, of course—less than approving of her sneaky tumble with Loris, she didn’t even want to imagine what they’d think of this. She hardly knew Atheris; he was practically a stranger—worse, a Sarkondish stranger. Even Danber’s understanding didn’t stretch that far, and battle heat seemed no excuse at all, even to her. Nobody she knew could possibly understand, much less condone, such disgraceful conduct.

Peri stifled a groan, glad the rags hid her burning face. What in the world could she have been thinking? Well, she hadn’t been thinking, unless it was with her loins; that was plain enough! She hadn’t felt like a trollop after her night in Loris’s bed—just vaguely disappointed. All this fuss for THAT? But today she felt so—so—

And the horrible thing about it was that last night it had felt so right. Loris, probably trying to be considerate of her inexperience, had been gentle, careful, slow, almost polite.

Kind of like the way most Bregonds think of Agronds, Peri thought with a sigh. Where’s the LIFE in these people?

With Atheris it had been different, hunger meeting hunger, strength meeting strength.

Ithuara, “steel’s kiss.” That was us, steel meeting steel. She shivered at the memory. Would it be that way with another warrior? With Danber, if he’d wanted me? Or was it just battle heat after all?

She shook her head disgustedly. Atheris had seemed troubled over breakfast this morning, too, quiet and pensive as if he, too, didn’t quite understand what had happened.

Atheris wants something from me. What, I don’t know. It all seems so complicated. Last night for a little while it seemed simple for once—we both wanted something, and we took it. I felt more MYSELF than I’d felt in a long time, strong and sure and free, like I used to feel riding with the clan or working out tricky qivashim with Danber. But it wasn’t simple at all. Just stupid.

She bit her lip.

Oh, Mahdha, Breath of Bregond, blow me home. I’ve lost the trail and I’m riding blind.

“There,” Atheris said quietly, interrupting her thoughts, and Peri glanced up again, startled.

“What?” she whispered as quietly as she could. She must’ve missed some comment, some explanation.

“The horses,” Atheris said, gesturing a little impatiently. “Orren said they were the best for sale in town. You wanted to look at them before the owner knew we were buying. There they are.”

Peri grimaced, remembering the conversation now.

Bright Ones, Perian, pay attention! You’ll look a pretty fool if you trip over your own feet and fall face-first in that stinking gutter, won’t you?

She looked at the horses in the pen across the square and grimaced again. Not a one of them would have made it past Danber’s first and most superficial cull. Even in Agrond most merchants wouldn’t have thought these lifeless beasts worth the trouble of taking to market.

“What about the bay near the gate?” Atheris suggested after Peri’s extended silence pronounced its own judgment.

“It’s half-blind,” Peri whispered.

“The brown-and-white closest to us?”

“Going lame in the near hind,” Peri said, shaking her head. “Couldn’t outrun a sick turtle. All right. The gray gelding at the water trough and the buff mare at the east end.”

“That foul-tempered thing?” Atheris protested as the buff turned and nipped savagely at her neighbor.

“I can handle ‘that foul-tempered thing,’ “ Peri muttered. “The gelding’s for you. Now listen. When you go in, don’t ask the merchant about either of them; go look at that black-and-white gelding in the middle. That’s his showpiece. Show some interest, then try to talk him down to half of whatever he asks. He won’t go that low. When that doesn’t work, shake your head and ask about the dark brown gelding, the one with the white patch over his eye. When the merchant quotes you a price, act like you’re interested. Then look in the brown’s mouth, give the merchant the nastiest look you can manage, and start walking away. Don’t say a thing. He’ll stop you and offer you a decent price on the gray and the buff. Offer him three-fourths of what he asks. He’ll take it.”

“How do you know he’ll do all that?” Atheris asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Because you’ll have proven to him you know what you’re doing, and he knows those two are the only horses he’ll have even a chance of selling you. The kind of buyers he’s getting are too green to take that nasty buff mare, and the gray’s just too flat-out ugly for an easy sell. Trust me. He’ll go for it. Make him have both of them reshod. The gray’s about to throw his right front shoe. And tell him to deliver them to Orren’s stable so nobody notices us with those horses before we leave.”

Atheris shook his head, but walked away, giving Peri a skeptical glance over his shoulder. She ignored it and turned away, wandering among the stalls. There was no excuse for someone looking like her to be hanging around the horse pens, not unless she wanted to be mistaken for a horse thief.

The aroma of relatively fresh food cooking was sweeter than perfume in this decaying city, and Peri followed her nose. A vendor was frying meat-and-turnip pies in a kettle of hot oil, and after days of no meat except the leathery trail food, Peri wasn’t inclined to inquire too closely what animal had given its life to fill those pies. The vendor appeared less than pleased by the appearance of his swathed and silent customer, but coin was coin and at length Peri walked away poorer by two copper coins and richer by four hot pies.

Walking back toward the horse pens, she nearly collided with a smugly smiling Atheris.

“Did you get them?” Peri whispered, handing him two pies.

“Just as you said,” Atheris admitted, chuckling. “He said he would have the horses reshod and at Orren’s stable tomorrow before sunset. And I thought I was the mage.”

“There’s no magic to it,” Peri said, after glancing around to make sure nobody was close enough to hear. “Horses lose their value fast penned up like that—they founder or get hoof rot and their muscles soften up. Pretty horses sell easy to stupid marks. Ugly sound ones—I wish I could say good horses, but not these two—only sell to horsemen. That was you. So he jumped on the sale.”

Atheris grunted, biting into a pie.

“I still say it was magic,” he muttered, his mouth full. He raised his eyebrows. “Hmmm. I see you found the horses that failed to sell.”

“Oh, good,” Peri said, glancing at Atheris out of the corner of her eye. “I was afraid it might be dog or rat or something.”

To her disgust Atheris only gazed at her gravely, although the corner of his mouth twitched.

“No,” he said seriously. “Rat is much gamier.”

They made their way back to the other end of the market to look at saddles and bridles; there Peri dared not send Atheris in alone. Fortunately she had proper Sarkondish clothing now, and while a swathed and presumably disfigured warrior helping to purchase tack for two horses was certain to attract attention, a filthy and presumably disfigured pilgrim buying the tack would have seemed a great deal more suspicious.

Peri was surprised to see what appeared to be a large number of pilgrims in the city, judging from the bundles of belongings they carried; there certainly were no large temples in Darnalek from what she’d seen. When asked, Atheris explained that the pilgrims were likely here to join the next pilgrimage to Rocarran, and that surprised her even more. Why, the last pilgrimage had hardly passed by here. If the pilgrims felt safe in waiting here in the city for the next group, instead of hurrying northwest to catch up with the others, such pilgrimages must occur with amazing frequency. Even in Agrond Peri hadn’t seen such activity except during large religious festivals or other significant occasions. She tried to press Atheris for a further explanation, but from his brusque and often vague answers she quickly realized that it was an uncomfortable subject for him. Of course, he’d served in a temple himself. Obviously it was painful to be reminded constantly that he’d been cast out of the little world that had been his whole life, declared a heretic. Peri let the subject go and Atheris seemed vastly relieved.

As they walked back, Atheris stopped abruptly, so suddenly that Peri barely avoided colliding with his back. He was staring at something across the street. Peri herself saw nothing remarkable, only a few shabby shops—a baker, a fortuneteller, a potter.

“What?” she asked as loudly as she dared. “What is it?”

Atheris was silent a moment longer, then abruptly started walking again.

“Nothing,” he mumbled. “I thought I... felt something. But I was wrong.”

The sun slowly lowered in the west, and reluctantly Peri followed Atheris back to Orren and Lina’s house carrying their goods in coarse sacks. She hated this gray and lifeless city, hated the unhealthy stench and the silence of it, but at least while she walked the foul streets with Atheris she could avoid talking to him and facing him. In the privacy of their loft there would be no more excuses.

To her surprise Atheris seemed reluctant, too, dawdling in the stable after they’d told Orren of the impending arrival of their horses, then lingering scraping his boots at the door, until Lina appeared on the threshold, gazing pointedly at the setting sun. In the loft, Peri busied herself settling their tack in a corner, lighting the brazier. Atheris took an unusually long time fetching their supper, but when it came, the stew was fresh and hot and floating with dumplings, and there were even chunks of meat in it, and Peri gratefully took the food as another excuse to postpone the inevitable confrontation.

“So tell me,” she said, picking out another tough chunk and chewing vigorously, “what’s this, dog or rat?”

“Goat, actually,” Atheris said, chuckling.

“Oh, yeah?” Peri bit into some vegetable she neither recognized nor liked, grimaced, swigged bad ale to wash away the taste, and grimaced again. “How do you know? Not gamy enough for dog?”

“Hardly,” Atheris said wryly. “Yesterday when I asked Orren about the horses, he mentioned that he had taken two rather elderly goats in exchange for stabling a merchant’s horses for a month. Knowing that the goats were not worth the money to feed them, I merely applied the same sort of magical deduction you made.” He shook his head. “Meat twice in one day. The south must be finally recovering, despite appearances.”

Peri seized eagerly on the subject.

“Yes, what happened here?” she said. “There couldn’t possibly have been any magical attacks this far north during the war or the earth would be blasted like it is near the border, and I can’t imagine magical taint from the Barrier could reach this far—it certainly didn’t in Bregond. But I’ve never seen anything so unhealthy as this land. Everything here seems dead.”

“Not dead,” Atheris said softly. “Lifeless.”

Peri raised her eyebrows.

“There’s a difference?” she said.

“Oh, yes.” Atheris glanced down at his bowl almost guiltily. “Do you remember what I told you about men’s magic?”

“Right, death magic,” Peri said, trying to remember what he had actually said. “Or—no, magic that takes life, uses it, right?” Then realization struck her silent for a long moment as she digested the implications.

“You mean,” she said very slowly, “somebody just... sucked all the life out of every living thing here?”

“More than living things,” Atheris said softly. “During the war our battle mages wielded such potent magics that they drew all the life out of the very soil, deep down into the bones of the land. Few crops can grow because the soil, even the water, is utterly barren of life.”

He made a vague gesture at the loft.

“Do you know how Orren and Lina live so prosperously?” he asked. “Not because of the income from what few boarders they take in. Not from the stabling fees few here can afford to pay. No, Orren makes his money selling the manure and old bedding from the horses to farmers to spread upon their fields.”

Peri remembered the noticeable lack of dung in the streets and grimaced. On a good market day in Tarkesh she wore her highest boots just to walk down the streets. Fostering in Bregond, she’d never taken for granted the lush fertility of Agrond’s soil, but—