Oh yes, she was magnificent. Her face no longer seemed so tired, and her cheeks, smooth as alabaster, had gained a bit of color. Now that he was close, he could distinguish small, previously unnoticed details, such as a constellation of tiny beauty marks on her long, proud neck and the unusually steep, bold sweep of her eyelashes.
Egert stood and gazed at her. The girl slowly raised her head and, for the first time, Egert met the gaze of her serious, slightly aloof eyes.
“Good day,” said Egert, and he sat down in the spot vacated by the student. “Does the lady object to the company of a humble worshipper of beauty?”
The girl did not become confused or frightened; she only seemed somewhat taken aback. “Excuse me, you are?”
“My name is Egert Soll.” He stood, gave a short bow, and again sat down.
“Ah.” It seemed she was about to smile. “If that is so, then we should thank you.”
“Not at all!” Egert seemed dismayed. “It is we, the humble citizens of Kavarren, who should thank you for the honor you have bestowed upon us—” He had to pause and fill his lungs with air to finish the florid phrase. “—bestowed upon us, by favoring us with your presence. How long may we shower you with hospitality?”
The girl smiled, and at that moment, Egert wanted nothing more than for that smile to never leave her face.
“You are very obliging. We will be here for a week, perhaps a bit longer.”
With a proprietary gesture, Egert produced the first bottle from the basket and adroitly uncorked it. “Please allow me to fulfill the duties of hospitality and offer you some wine. Do you have any relatives in Kavarren, or perhaps some friends?”
She managed to shake her head no, but just then the student returned and the girl smiled at him, and her smile was so joyful that it completely overshadowed the smile she had just given Egert. Egert noticed this and an unpleasant feeling slid into his soul, a feeling that almost resembled jealousy.
“Dinar, this is the Lord Soll who so generously presented us with all these marvels. Lord Soll, allow me to introduce my fiancé, Dinar.”
The student nodded to Egert, but he did not offer his hand, which was lucky because Egert would die before shaking that bony paw, unaccustomed to weapons and stained with what appeared to be darkened spots of ink. Up close, the student seemed even more despicable and awkward, and Egert felt like crying out to Heaven at the grievous wrong of allowing both the student and his wondrous companion to sit at the same table.
However, at the moment, the beauty and Egert were the only ones sitting at the table. As there were only two chairs, the student could only hover nearby.
Paying him not even the slightest bit of attention, Egert again turned to the girl. “Pardon me, but I don’t even know your name.”
The girl and the discomforted student shared a look, directed at Egert, who was lounging in his chair. The girl answered as if by rote. “My name is Toria.”
Egert repeated her name as if he were examining the taste of it. In the meantime, the student had come to his senses and dragged a third chair, which had been lying vacant nearby, to the table.
“You have neither relatives nor friends here.” Raising himself up a bit, Egert bent over Toria’s wineglass, and his hand, in a seemingly natural fashion, touched hers. “Or rather, you didn’t have any, but now the entire city, I believe, will want to make your acquaintance. Are you simply traveling for pleasure?”
The student, frowning slightly, took a glass from the serving girl and poured himself some wine. Egert smirked with the corners of his lips because the noble beverage hardly filled a third of the student’s glass.
“We are traveling,” confirmed the girl in a slightly restrained manner, “but not for pleasure. Here in Kavarren, many centuries ago, lived a man who interests us from an academic point of view. He was a mage, an archmage, and we are hoping that he left some sign of himself in the ancient archives, manuscripts, and chronicles.”
With every word, she became even more passionate, forgetting her momentary consternation. Some moldy papers were dearer to her, apparently, than her own brothers would be: at the word
archive
her voice trembled with reverence. Egert raised his glass. It was all the same to him what evoked enthusiasm in the woman, just so long as it gave fire to her eyes and flush to her cheeks.
“A toast to travelers who search for manuscripts! But I don’t think there ever were any chronicles in Kavarren, and there certainly aren’t now.”
The student puffed out his lips. Without any expression, he said, “There is an extensive historical library in Kavarren, in the Town Hall. Is this news to you?”
Egert refused to trouble himself by entering into conversation with him. Toria, it would seem, was able to appreciate good wine; her eyes had closed with delight after the very first sip. To afford her more opportunities for pleasure, Egert took the next bottle out of the basket.
“Note this wine; it is the pride of Kavarren’s wine cellars, the offspring of southern vineyards, Serenade Muscatel. Would you like to try it?”
As he once again filled her glass, he inhaled the scent that emanated from her. It was the scent of a perfume, of insistent tart herbs and flowers. Then, caressing her warm, twitching hand, he put a tiny slice of rare brisket on her plate. The student sullenly twisted the bottle cork in his long fingers.
“So, what is it about this lucky fellow that interests you even after so many centuries?” asked Egert with an engaging smile. “If only I were in his place.”
She willingly proceeded to tell him the long and entirely uninteresting history of the mage, who founded some kind of order and called them an army. Egert did not understand immediately that she was talking about the Sacred Spirit Lash, to whom some people somewhere, he supposed, really did pay homage.
“Yes, and after he died, his followers claimed he was a god. Historians think that in the end of his life the great mage went mad, and his insanity infected the Order. Can you believe that they’re still sitting around waiting for the End of Time?”
Egert listened to Toria, and the girl’s words flowed past his ears, but her voice, her sweet, uncommon voice, fascinated him. Her velvet lips opened smoothly, allowing her white teeth to flash through; Egert broke out into a sweat, imagining the kiss these spectacular lips could give.
He wished that the girl would talk forever, but she paused, having glanced in passing at the student. He was sitting with his cockles raised like a wounded bird and was looking at her reproachfully.
“I beg you to continue,” said Egert ingratiatingly. “I find this extremely interesting. So this Order of Lash still exists?” The student glared eloquently at Toria and then raised his eyes to the ceiling. Egert was not blind; he had no problem reading in this action the student’s utmost contempt for his academic knowledge. However, to take notice of the behavior of this ratty, pitiful student was beneath his dignity.
Toria smiled in embarrassment. “I would be quite happy to talk to you about it, but we are very tired from the road, so I suppose it is time for us to go.” She stood up smoothly, leaving her glass of wine unfinished.
“Mistress Toria!” Egert jumped up with her. “Perhaps it may be that you will allow me to fulfill my duties as a host tomorrow? If you are really interested in the local sights of interest, I am considered an expert on them, the best in the entire city.”
Egert considered Kavarren’s sights of interest to consist mainly of taverns and the paddocks of the fighting boars, but the credulous Toria was taken in by his utterly unartful trap. “Is that so?”
The student groaned heavily.
Not paying him the slightest attention, Egert nodded energetically. “Without a doubt. Will you permit me to know your plans for tomorrow?”
“They have yet to be determined,” the youth answered morosely. Peering at him through narrowed eyes, Egert noted with amusement that students were capable of becoming angry.
“Mistress Toria”—Egert turned to the girl as if there had never been a student born into the world—“tomorrow I ask that you plan for a sightseeing tour, dinner at the finest establishment in Kavarren, and an evening excursion on a boat. The Kava is an extremely picturesque little river, did you notice?”
She somehow seemed to deflate. Her eyes darkened and now they seemed like twin pits beneath a troubled sky.
Egert smiled as charmingly, as sincerely, and as vulnerably as he could. “I didn’t understand half your tale. I would truly like to ask you a few questions about this, um, gentleman, who gave the world the Order of Lash. And to show my gratitude for the tale, I, your humble servant, will arrange everything for your pleasure. Everything that you require will be laid at your feet. Until tomorrow!”
He bowed and left; the tall, middle-aged guest followed his exit with a weary gaze.
* * *
The custodian of the Town Hall delayed and shook his head for a long time: the book depositories were in a useless state; a large portion of the books had been destroyed in a fire, which had occurred about thirty years ago. He worried that a beam might very well fall on the heads of the young people. The researchers, however, were adamant, and in the end they were allowed access to the treasures they wished to see.
Of those treasures, however, there remained only pitiful crumbs: those very few that the fire had spared had become fat with an entire generation of rats. Raking through the rubbish and litter, the researchers kept exploding into exclamations of despair. Egert, appearing in the book depository with an enormous bouquet of roses, found the young couple just at the moment when, amidst the general ruin, they finally found a corner that had survived more or less intact.
They completely ignored Egert’s arrival. The student was hanging somewhere under the ceiling, swaying on a broken-down stepladder; Toria was craning her neck to watch him, and in her pose Egert saw something akin to worship. Tufts of spiderwebs were tangled in her hair, but her eyes were shining and her soft lips were half-open with delight as she listened to the student, who spoke without ceasing.
He was bursting with words like a fountain bursts with water. Reading out incomprehensible passages from a book, he interpreted them for Toria in the same breath. Long, outlandish names rolled off his tongue while he floridly reasoned out runic texts, and from time to time he switched over into some language that Egert did not know. The girl took a heavy, dusty volume from his hand, and her tender fingers caressed its binding so reverently that Egert experienced a moment of irrational jealousy toward the book.
He stood there for nearly half an hour without being honored by so much as a single glance. Annoyed, he placed the bouquet in the nearest corner and left. His wounded pride pricked unpleasantly at his soul.
The young guests returned to the inn just in time for supper, but once that was over Toria did not leave her room, nor did she answer the courteous note Egert sent her.
On the following day, the custodian of the Town Hall had an appointment with the beneficent Lord Soll, and so the young researchers, who turned up for their books, received a bewildering refusal: it was entirely impossible today; the stairs were under repairs; the keys were under guard. The student and Toria, astonished, were forced to return to the inn. Egert sat in the dining room the entire day, but still Toria did not descend the stairs.
It rained all night long. The rain drenched the student, who departed for the Town Hall in the morning and again returned defeated. It was well after dinner when the clouds finally dispersed and the sun began to peek down upon the drenched city; the young couple, having been so inactive for the past two days, decided to go out for a walk.
As if they were afraid to walk very far away from the inn, the student and his fiancée turned back and forth several times along the drying street, completely unaware of how many attentive eyes kept watch over them through the windows of the Faithful Shield. One noted that the student watched over his fiancée far better than the merchant Vapa watched over his wife; another noted that the wife of the merchant could not hold a candle to the visiting beauty; yet another began to laugh.
Then Karver appeared in the path of the two promenaders.
The spectators, glued to the windows of the Faithful Shield, watched as Karver, as if by chance, grazed the student’s shoulder and then bowed apologetically, almost to the ground; the student bowed as well, and Karver joyfully started a conversation with him, and after asking most humbly for Toria’s permission, led the young man to the opposite side of the street. Waving his arms about, he had herded the student still farther along the street, almost to the corner, when Egert emerged from the doors of the tavern.
Toria answered Egert’s formal greeting with a polite yet reserved nod. She did not seem bewildered or fearful; her eyes, as detached as before, looked at Egert attentively, fearlessly, and with patient inquisitiveness.
“Well, you’re a cunning one, aren’t you,” said Egert with rough reproach. “You made a promise, you did. I waited for the continuation of your tale, and you never came down even once!”
She sighed. “Tell the truth. You’re not the least bit interested in that.”
“Me?” erupted Egert.
Toria looked over her shoulder, searching for her fiancé; catching that tense glance, Egert scowled and began speaking in a low voice.
“What is the point of your seclusion? Are you really preparing yourself for the role of the humble wife, and for such a tyrannical little husband? What’s so terrible about a little conversation, or perhaps a stroll? What’s wrong with having dinner together, or taking a boat ride? But perhaps I’ve offended you somehow. Or maybe you don’t belong to yourself?”
She turned away from him; Egert feasted his eyes on her profile.
“You are so persistent,” she said reprovingly.
“And what would you have me do?” Egert marveled sincerely. “The most beautiful woman in the world is visiting my town.”
“Thank you. You have peculiar notions of hospitality. But I must leave you.” Toria took a step in the direction where the garrulous Karver had ensnared the student.