Ironcrown Moon (25 page)

He said to Mat, “Tell me about Kilian Blackhorse.”

“He escaped from Zeth Abbey, either late last night or early in the morning, taking three fellow-traitors and a young alchymist named

Vra-Garon Curtling along with him. The Brethren of the abbey have windsearched for them without success. The High King believes that

Kilian intends to meet the two fire-raisers for some nefarious purpose.”

Nefarious indeed, Snudge thought. Especially if Kilian had already learned how to activate the Trove of Darasilo.

But if that calamity hadn’t happened, Snudge realized there was a small chance that he might yet outwit the bastards, given the fact that they would be unable to windwatch him as he pursued them! He had a few other tricks up his sleeve as well, as Conrig was well aware—

although he’d hardly be able to utilize them while dead tired.

And then there was Concealer…

Aloud, Snudge said, “We must do our utmost to forestall a meeting between the thieves and
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Kilian. Fortunately, he and his fellow-traitors were completely stripped of all talent by the iron gammadion, so we need not fear them using sorcery against us. The thieves and this Vra-Garon are perhaps another matter. What was it you said earlier about discarding golden gammadions to foil windsearchers?”

Mattis held up the silver pendant that hung about his neck. “I’m only a novice, and my own gammadion is a mere symbol without magical power. But an ordained Brother of Zeth who wears the sacred pendant of gold gains significant arcane abilities in addition to whatever natural talent he was born with. Also, the gold makes him subject to the commands of his superiors in the Mystical Order.

Among other things, this means that the superiors can easily scry Brothers who wear gold gammadions. Felmar, Scarth, and this fellow

Garon would certainly have got rid of theirs. Keeping them—even for the powerful defensive magic the pendants confer—would have been much too dangerous.”

“So all we have to contend with are the natural talents of those three, plus whatever cover spell Felmar and Scarth have conjured.”

The novice hesitated. “I wouldn’t want you to think natural talents are negligible, sir. My own are rather meager, except for my ability to windspeak. Yet I’m able to hide myself from ordinary folk without much difficulty. I simply compel them not to notice me! The deception doesn’t always succeed— particularly in bright daylight, or when more than two or three people are looking.”

“Hmm.” Snudge pretended to think this over. He himself possessed the selfsame natural ability; but as Mattis had noted, it was a chancy thing—not to be compared to Concealer’s powerful and versatile spell of invisibility. “Well, there are six of us hunters, so we may hope that the quarry won’t escape us… Now go along and tell the others to prepare to ride out.”

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“I’ve already taken the liberty of doing so, sir. The mayor’s lackeys are readying fresh horses.”

“Good. We’ll head for Northway Castle and change mounts again there before cutting west to the lake. Bespeak the local lord’s windvoice and tell him we’ll need the strongest coursers he has, as well as a remount for each of us. It may be impossible to obtain sufficient numbers of good replacement animals in the villages along the lakeshore.”

“I’ll see to it, sir.” The apprentice withdrew and closed the door.

Snudge paced before the parlor window, striving to make sense of the tangled situation. If Kilian had already discovered a way to activate the sigils of the trove, and if Felmar and Scarth managed to reach him and hand over the moonstones, then the peace of the Sovereignty of Blenholme (and perhaps the rest of the known world) would come to an end in a burst of cataclysmic sorcery.

But if Kilian still lacked a vital part of the puzzle—if he and Beynor were still allied, with each one of them perhaps possessed of some essential element the other lacked—then hope remained, at least until the two conspirators linked up with one another.

Where might such a meeting take place? There was no sure way to tell, but it seemed unlikely to occur in the civilized regions of Cathra, where the Sovereignty was strongest and both Kilian and his thieving agents were marked men. The rugged mountains between Cathra and Didion were a far more attractive option—or even the barbarian northern nation itself, where vast tracts of land were little more than a howling wilderness.

Snudge called to mind a map of the Elk Lake area. If he were in the thieves’ place, reasonably safe from oversight but actively endangered by pursuers on land who might recognize him with ordinary vision, he’d take to the water. The big lake provided a perfect way to avoid roadblocks
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and close scrutiny by the law. In addition to the inland manors, which had vast flocks of sheep, there were many small villages along its eastern side, whose people earned a living selling freshwater fish and mussels, livestock, fruits, and vegetables to the large cities of Elktor and Beorbrook to the north. All of those little places were bound to have trade boats willing to carry passengers.

There might even be regular longshore ferry service between the towns, since roads in the area were rather poor. The western side of the lake was more sparsely inhabited, being almost wholly pastoral, but Kilian’s party might well have embarked from a village called Elkhaven, which was only thirty leagues from Zeth Abbey.

Was it possible that the two groups of villains planned to meet somewhere at the head of the lake? Elktor was situated up there; but why risk using the city as a rendezvous when there were uninhabited mountains a dozen or so leagues further north, where the Elk River carved a great gorge before spilling into the lake?

Roaring Gorge, famed in Cathran legends as a haunt of demons…

Might there be a way over the mountains somewhere in there? Snudge had never heard of such a thing, but that meant nothing. The precipitous range that virtually bisected High Blenholme Island was so hostile and impenetrable that only three widely separated passes were used by ordinary travelers. The fugitives would be obliged to avoid the nearest and most heavily used, Great Pass, at all costs because it was so closely guarded. If they were bound for Didion, they’d have to find another route, one not too far from the lakehead, but so obscure it was unlikely to be on any map. The gorge seemed as likely a prospect as any.

And if the renegade Brothers were heading that way, where ordinary search parties would be reluctant to follow, then the Royal

Intelligencer might well be the only one with a chance of finding them. King Conrig’s enigmatic message showed that he realized it, too.

Snudge was too muddle-headed from fatigue and beer to attempt using his wild talent tonight.

He’d try tomorrow, when he and the others reached the shore road and they were presumably closer to the fugitives. It seemed strange that Kilian and his talent-stripped cronies had evaded windsearchers from Zeth Abbey, but perhaps the young alchymist Vra-Garon had learned how to weave the novel cover spell, just as the thieves had done.

Did Snudge and his men on horseback have any chance of reaching the gorge before boats did?

He had no idea, but he had to give it a try.

If the weather stayed fair and there were no serious delays, they might get to Elktor in less than two days, with minimal time given to sleeping. Beyond there, the mountain track would be so bad that horses would do well just to maintain a fast walk. Still, the quarry would probably be riding no faster; they might even be going afoot.

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If fortune smiles, Snudge thought, we might bag one lot or the other— Kilian or the thieves. It was a plan with long odds against its success, but all he could think of in his present weary state.

==========

Subtle Loophole.

Their dispatch-rider masquerade had enabled the pair to travel much faster than their pursuers expected, attesting to the excellence of

Kilian’s advance planning. They commandeered new horses every forty leagues or so with a flourish of their counterfeit royal warrant, and by the eve of the day after Solstice they had
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reached a sizable village on Elk Lake called Pikeport, situated on a bay above the outflow of the Beech River. There they stopped at an inn to switch mounts once again and have supper.

Fortune favored them in that the local windvoice was a wretched draftsman, and the posters he drew carrying their alleged likenesses might have depicted half the men in town.

Their royal livery made the clientele at the White Waterlily standoffish, so they dined alone at a small table in a shadowy corner, while locals sat at the long trestle board and ate family-style from a kettle of fish stew, bowls of new peas, and plates of salad greens with radishes, vinegar, and bacon grease. More men, and a handful of women, were there to drink, whooping and laughing as the potboy kept stoups of ale and beer coming.

Then a trumpet sounded outside.

Nearly a score of the male patrons groaned and uttered obscenities. One of them said, “A whole day’s work draggin‘ for mussels, and now the fockity reeve musters us to posse afore we’ve even et!”

He and the other complainers gobbled what food they could and guzzled the last drops from their beakers before scrambling out the front door. Those left behind were either elderly, less than able-bodied, or not subject to posse duty that year.

The host emerged hastily from the kitchen, cursing up a storm as he ran after the ones who had decamped. “Think ye can run off without payin‘ just ’cause the bugle sounds? I know who ye are!”

One of the remaining diners remarked, “Poor sods. Wonder what the deputy wants with ‘em so late in the day? Any of you lot heard of a kiddie gone missing or other trouble?”

The remaining men gave negative responses. A skinny shabbaroon reached for one of the unfinished bowls of food that had been abandoned and began tucking in.

Felmar caught his companion’s eye. “Outside, if you value your life.”

“You think the alarum’s raised for us?” Scarth murmured.

“We knew it’d happen sooner or later. For the love of Zeth, don’t look like you’re in a hurry.”

They retrieved two leather fardels embossed with the royal arms from under the table and ambled to the stableyard, where the new horses that the landlord was compelled to provide for the royal messengers awaited them. Felmar gave the old ostler a halfpenny tip, then the two thieves swung into the saddle without haste and rode slowly back the way they’d come, activating the magical spell taught them by

Kilian that would make them all but unnoticeable to passers-by and secure from ordinary windsight. The distant trumpet was still sounding Assembly. More freemen trudged along the road toward the center of town, carrying rusty swords, billhooks, fishgaffs, and staves.

“The hunt for us is well and truly on,” Scarth remarked. “I wonder how they pinpointed our position?”

“Who knows? Turn off here.” Felmar guided his horse into a crooked path that led down an embankment towards the shore. At the bottom of the slope the track turned soggy and clouds of biting midges rose up to torment them.

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Like most arcane practitioners, the runagate Brothers were incapable of performing more than one magical action at a time. They opted to deactivate the cover spell and use their talent to shoo away the bugs. They were now well hidden from people on the road, and there wasn’t much chance of anyone wind-watching them amidst the thick brush. They picked their way along the strand until they came to a tumbledown boat shed with a rotting dinghy lying near it in the mud.

“Perfect,” Felmar said. “Unsaddle your beast and bring your things inside. We have a little while
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before anyone thinks to look here.”

From the beginning, they’d been prepared to take on new identities if conditions warranted it.

They carried beggar’s rags and peasant clothing, among other things; but the magnitude of the search presently being organized suggested that only the most ingenious disguise was going to get them safely out of Pikeport.

Hence Pregnant Goodwife and Worried Woodsman Husband.

Scarth, who was tall and brawny and lantern-jawed, portrayed the male member of the duo.

Felmar, being small of stature and fine-

featured, was to be the woman. He needed his companion’s help to get the bodice laced over his hugely augmented chest and stomach.

Then he shaved so closely that his face was nearly scraped raw and arranged his wig and linen cap. All the time this was going on, Scarth suppressed snorts of laughter.

“You’ll laugh out of the other side of your face,” Felmar snarled, “if there’s a more competent resident wizard in the next town, and he puts up decent pictures of us.”

“Don’t bother your pretty head, Felmie dear,” Scarth chortled. “No one will recognize us in this get-up.” He began converting his own neat beard into a scruffy stubble, adding smears of grime to his features.

“They damned well better not,” muttered Felmar. If the pair came under the close personal scrutiny of law officers, they were bound to be recognized. The cover spell’s eye-clouding aspect was only effective beyond a distance of five feet.

Kilian had given instructions to divide the trove into two portions in case they became separated, so each Brother had carried a fardel holding a single ancient book and a leather pouch with fifty-odd inactive moonstones. Now that they were obliged to go on foot, this arrangement was no longer practical.