The Mirror of Worlds (21 page)

Laughing, Garric turned to look at the world he was leaving. The road wound back between the hedgerows and the bright green of sprouted wheat.

His eyes narrowed at the other thing he noticed. "Whoa," he muttered to the gelding, lifting back on the reins to pause before riding down into the forest.

On the northern horizon, probably a good ten miles behind them, was a cloud with a faint golden brightness. Early in the morning he'd have guessed it was mist rising from a pond, but the sun was too high in the sky for that to be the case.

"Shin?" he said. "Do you know what the fog back there is? I don't recall ever seeing something like it before."

"Do you know the story of King Kalendar, Garric?" the aegipan said. He was standing on one leg with the other crossed on it; his hands were on his jutting hips.

"The myth?" Garric said. "Well, I've read Pendill's
Books of Changes
. King Kalendar swore he'd wed Merui, the virgin priestess of the Lady, even though the Goddess forbade the match. He marched on Merui's temple with his whole army, but the Goddess trapped them in a maze of fog in which they marched until they all became spruce trees."

He frowned, trying to get the details right. He liked Pendill, but an
awful
lot of people seemed to have become trees or birds or springs when they got on the wrong side of the Great Gods.

"After it was too late, Merui regretted refusing Kalendar and searched the forest for him," he continued. "Eventually she became an owl and now flies among the trees, calling out in mourning."

"Merui was indeed a myth," said Shin, "and King Kalendar was actually a mercenary leader named Lorun who swore he'd sack the palace of a wizard."

He gobbled laughter.

"A great wizard, I will say. But the fog was completely true. Captain Lorun and his men walk in it to this day."

Garric stared at the aegipan, trying to make sense of what he'd just been told. "Do you mean," he said, "that the cloud I'm seeing behind us is Lorun and his soldiers?"

"No, Garric," Shin said calmly. "Lord Attaper decided to follow you with a troop of Blood Eagles, ignoring my direction and your command. They now march in a maze which will hold them until they're released or the world ends."

Garric went cold. His knuckles were mottled on the hilt of his sword, and his face was as tight as that of the ghost in his mind.

"Release them, Shin," he said. His voice was so thick and harsh that he wasn't sure he could've recognized the words himself.

"In good time, Garric," the aegipan said.

"Now, by the Shepherd!"

"No, Garric," the aegipan said, "but when we're another day or two days gone and beyond any chance of them following us. Then they will be released, perhaps wiser."

Garric lifted his hand from the sword hilt and massaged it with the other. It'd been on the verge of cramping. He didn't speak, and he continued to look toward the glowing cloud.

"It's that, or you may return to Valles now and preside over the doom of your world," Shin said. "The test is for the champion alone."

Garric cleared his throat. "We'd best be riding on," he said. By the end of the sentence, he'd gotten his voice back to where it should've been. He faced around and clucked the gelding into motion.

When they were below the brow of the hill and could no longer see the glowing cloud, Garric said, "Shin? If I hadn't noticed the fog and made a point of it, when would you have released Attaper and his men?"

"You did notice, Garric," the aegipan said. "I cannot predict the future based on a past than did not happen."

"
That's the sort of question you don't want to ask, lad
," said King Carus. "
You might've gotten the wrong answer. It'd be bloody difficult to reach the Yellow King if you'd just chopped your guide in half the way you'd need to then
."

The ghost paused, then added judiciously, "
Mind, it'd feel good at the time
."

Chapter 6

It surprised Garric that the group of buildings in the clearing was an inn, because for over an hour he'd been smelling bacon curing. He'd been right about the bacon, of course—it wasn't the sort of thing you could mistake. Gray smoke blurred out of the last ground-floor window of the right wing and spread slowly through the forest.

There were outbuilding of notched logs, but the timbers of the main structure had been squared with a saw. It bothered Garric to see such a waste of wood when clapboards would've sealed the interior as well, but he'd grown up in Barca's Hamlet which had been settled for thousands of years. There was no need to be miserly with wood in this dark wasteland of trees.

The central part of the main building had a second story with a gallery. Three men sat on a puncheon bench there, looking down at Garric and Shin approaching; they didn't speak. The skull of a great-tusked boar was nailed over the door transom.

A boy squatted on an upended section of treetrunk in front, cleaning a pair of knee boots with a brush of twigs. He watched them for a moment, then slipped inside through the open door taking the boots with him.

Garric dismounted, feeling a mixture of pleasure and pain as the blood returned to pinched muscles. Carus grinned at him.

Because of his ancestor's long practice, Garric could ride as well as any noble from Northern Ornifal, but his muscles were still those of a boy whose personal experience with horses had been limited to walking the beasts to water on a rope halter when a rider arrived. A day spent in the saddle left him feeling as though two of the Sister's demons were chewing the inside of his thighs.

A heavy-set man came out of the inn, wearing a bloody leather apron. He'd dunked his hands in a bucket and was wiping them on the dried pulp of a bottle gourd.

"Good day, sir," he said in a friendly tone. His eyes flicked over Shin, but they didn't linger and his voice didn't change. "I've just been butchering a hog. Will you be staying with us tonight?"

The boy slipped out behind the host and sat on the section of tree bole. He picked up his brush again, but though he made half-hearted cleaning motions, his whole delighted attention was on the aegipan.

"Yes, and glad not to be sleeping rough," Garric said. "You've a stable for my horse?"

"An excellent one, sir," said the innkeeper, pointing to the passage between the left wing and the central portion of the inn. "Around the back. There'll be an extra charge for oats, or will hay be enough?"

"Oats, if you please," said Garric. It was odd to be on this side of a transaction that'd been one of his earliest memories. "And a private room, if you have one."

"Indeed, indeed," repeated the innkeeper. "Will your, ah—"

He made a two-finger gesture toward Shin but didn't look squarely at him.

"This one, that is, be foraging for himself or are we to feed him as well?"

"Porridge for me, Master Hann," the aegipan said. His drawl perfectly mimicked that of a Sandrakkan noble; Garric suspected that it would read as an upper-class accent to the innkeeper. "And turnip greens, raw, as well."

He looked at Garric and added in feigned boredom, "The worst thing about travel is the shifts one's put to for food, wouldn't you say, master? Though I suppose we must be thankful for what the Lady offers."

The innkeeper—who Garric had just learned was named Hann—stared at Shin for a moment with his mouth half open. Then he bowed low and said, "Please come in to my house, your lordships. And, ah . . .?"

"You may call me Shin, my good man," said the aegipan. "Just Shin."

"Lord Shin," the innkeeper resumed, "there are still a few apples from last year's crop. Would you like them in your porridge?"

"I would indeed, Master Hann," said the aegipan with what struck Garric as real enthusiasm. "Dried apples would be an unexpected pleasure."

Garric slung his saddlebags across his left shoulder and untied the heavy cloak bound to the crupper. In his mind Carus grinned and said, "
Our friend Shin can take care of himself, right enough. Watching him move, I wouldn't be surprised if he could teach a cat beast something too
."

More soberly the ghost added, "
Don't underestimate that one, lad
."

I don't
, thought Garric.

Hann's eyes lit on the boy. "Megrin, stable his lordship's horse in the first stall," he snapped. "And see to it he has oats when he's cooled down. Tell the mistress a full pannier, mind."

"I've got Master Orra's boots," the boy said shrilly. "Have Mirri do the horse, why don't you?"

Hann leaned forward with surprising speed and slapped Megrin over the ear. The boy sprawled in the dirt, then hopped up and took the gelding's reins. "Pardon, your lordship," he muttered as he trudged through the passage to the stables. .

Garric kept his face still as he preceded Shin and Hann inside, but he was professionally offended by what he'd just seen. Reise's lessons had fitted Garric and Sharina to rule the Isles. Shouts, insubordination, and violence would've been very bad training, for kingship or for life.

"
Aye, lad
," Carus agreed, "
as I know to my cost. But this is a harder world than your father's was
."

The hearth was on the right end of the common room. A girl younger than Megrin tended three pots, two on cranes and the third among the ashes at the corner furthest from the low fire.

The men from the gallery had come down by the straight staircase to look over the newcomers. Two wore dressed skins, though their breeches from knee down were homespun. They must be trappers who expected to stand in water frequently. Cloth will dry but leather—particularly rawhide—shrinks and cracks.

They didn't speak, but the barefoot third man—presumably Orra, whose boots lay outside where the boy had dropped them—said, "If I may ask, your lordship, where is it you're travelling from?"

"
How do they guess you're a noble?
" Carus said. "
You're wearing plain wool and your tack is no better than any common trooper's
."

Garric would've smiled dryly if he hadn't been concerned that Orra would misinterpret it. His ancestor had no doubt seen his share of peasants, but he'd always been riding past them at the head of an army.

Because I'm wearing a very good sword, your highness
, he said silently.
Which would cost more in ready cash than any of these people, Hann included, will see in a year
.

"I'm Garric or-Reise, sir," he said politely as he settled onto the bench built into the front wall. He was taller than any of these fellows; by sitting down, he made himself less threatening even though that meant he had to tug on his sword belt so that the scabbard could stand upright between his legs. "I'm travelling to see new lands."

He gestured with his left hand. "All this was sea in my day, sirs," he said. "Before the Change, as folk call it in Valles, where I come from."

The innkeeper had stepped behind the bar on the wall opposite the hearth. He returned with a tankard of tarred leather and walked to Garric. "Here you are, milord," he said. "We brew our own cider here at the Boar's Skull Inn. I think you'll say we have a right to be proud of it."

Garric drank deeply and smacked his lips with false enthusiasm. "An excellent pressing, my good host!" he said. That wasn't exactly a lie: it may well have been good, though Garric didn't care either for cider or for the taste of tar. Some did, he knew; his father kept several jacks for travellers who asked for their beer in leather. Folk in the borough, Garric included, generally drank from elmwood masars.

"Ah, and your companion, your lordship?" the innkeeper said, eyeing Shin sidelong. Garric insistence that he was a commoner obviously hadn't done much good.

"I'll drink water from your rainbarrel, Master Hann," the aegipan said. "Were I to become drunk on your strong cider, who knows what might result?"

Garric looked at his companion sharply. Shin certainly had a sense of humor, but that didn't mean his deadpan warning wasn't a warning in fact.

"My name's Orra," said the barefoot guest as he sat down on the bench facing Garric. His breeches and short tunic were of good cloth, but his vest had been cut from the pelt of some spotted cat. "I wonder since you come from Valles—can you tell us anything about the new government?"

"They sent a pair of fellows by on horses like you, your lordship," said the innkeeper. "They told us we were in a kingdom, now. They were just doing a survey, they said, but there'd be other folks coming later. We're concerned about what this new king has in mind."

Carus laughed. Garric smiled wryly and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

"I can't tell you much," he said truthfully. "I believe the government in Valles tries to be a good one. Human beings, even the ones who try to be just and fair, fail part of the time, though. And there'll be taxes I'm sure, but I couldn't tell you what they'll be."

I couldn't even say what this region would use to pay taxes
, he thought.
Apples? Muskrat pelts?

"There's a great danger facing the world," Garric went on aloud. "Creatures that'll destroy all life but themselves. They call themselves the Last. It may be that you as well as others will be called to join the army to face them."

One of the trappers said, "I come out here so I'd not serve nobody. If other folks want to fight, then they can do it without me."

"Your only chance of survival is that men stop the Last," Garric said without raising his voice. "Others will do it for you if you're unwilling to save yourself."

The trappers looked at one another. The one who hadn't spoken said, "Suits me," in a gravelly voice. They turned and went up the stairs again; the treads squealed beneath their weight.

Hann watched them go. "There's so much going on," he said, lacing his fingers. "I've built this place up over the past fifteen years, fifteen! That's what I've invested here. And everything's changing. I'm worried, your lordship, and I don't mind telling you so."

"I'm worried too, Master Hann," Garric said, rising to massage his thighs. "But if everybody does his part, we'll come out of it all right."