Taking Flight

Chapter Seven

Castle Angarossa was low and broad, spreading out across the land; most of the market and town were actually inside the gates, making the community something midway between an ordinary castle and a walled city.

Kelder had had his first glimpse of it only minutes after leaving the battlefield where the slaughtered bandits lay. He had stopped to stare at its beauty as the setting sun lit the walls a warm gold and the rooftops a deep, rich red, the lengthening shadows highlighting every graceful line. The caravan that had destroyed the bandits was at the castle gates, inching in; he could see a pike on each wagon, a severed ahead atop each pike.

“Come on,” Irith had urged, and he had hurried on, eager to reach the place. Irith was clearly not too annoyed with him, Kelder thought, or she would have flown on ahead; wanting to keep it that way, he was careful not to offend her, and the easiest way to do that was to say nothing, so they did not speak again until they arrived at the gates an hour later.

By then the sun was down, the sky dimming, and most of the light came from lanterns and torches. The shadows had grown, spread, and turned ominous, their edges blurred and their hearts impenetrable. Kelder hesitated, wondering if it was safe to enter the castle of a king who openly permitted bandits to roam his lands, but Irith told him he was being foolish.

“This is the one place in Angarossa where you don’t have to worry about bandits, silly!” she explained. “They know better than to cause any trouble here, where they might get the king angry!”

“Oh,” Kelder said. He was annoyed at himself; his ignorance and excessive caution were both showing far more than he liked. He was looking like a fool in front of Irith. Resolving to do better hereafter, he followed her meekly into the marketplace. “Do you know a good inn here?” he asked.

“Of course,” Irith answered. “But I want to look around the market first.”

Kelder acquiesced, and trailed along as Irith looked over displays of fabrics and jewelry.

Most of the merchants were packing up for the night; people were reluctant to buy anything by torchlight, when flaws were so much harder to spot. Kelder was glad of that, as his feet were tired and sore. Irith would not be able to look much longer.

The caravan they had followed for most of the day was in town; he saw the wagons down a side-alley, pulled into a yard, recognizable both by the bright designs painted on them and by the gory trophies adorning them.

He considered pointing this out to Irith, or going to talk to the people there, but decided against it. He saw no one near the wagons, and besides, he didn’t really want anything to do with that demonologist. At the thought of the black-garbed magician he shuddered slightly.

“Is demonology legal?” he asked, interrupting Irith’s perusal of a bolt of black brocade.

“Where?” she asked, startled.

“Anywhere,” he said.

“Sure,” she said. “Lots of places. All of Ethshar.”

Hesitantly, Kelder said, “I don’t think it is in Shulara.”

“Probably it isn’t,” Irith agreed. “Most of the Small Kingdoms aren’t big on demons. I’m not.”

“What about here?” He gestured at the castle market about them.

She turned up an empty palm. “Who knows?” she said.

“If it isn’t legal, how could that caravan use it?”

“Banditry isn’t exactly legal, either, Kelder,” she said, with exaggerated patience. “Even if the king doesn’t stop it. Lots of people break laws.”

That was hardly news, even to Kelder, but he persisted, his curiosity momentarily overcoming his desire to please Irith. “I thought that the gates to Hell were closed off at the end of the Great War, so how can demonology still work?”

Irith sighed and let the brocade drop. “Kelder,” she said, “do I look like an expert on demonology to you?”

“No,” Kelder admitted.

“Then don’t ask me all these questions about it, all right?” She glared at him, and then added, “But anyway, that just means demons can’t enter the World unless they’re properly summoned. Demonologists can still call them.” She turned back to the display of fabrics.

“Oh,” Kelder said, embarrassed.

He stood silently for a moment as Irith held the cloth up to the light, trying to see it properly; the merchant had already packed away most of her goods, but was waiting to see if this last customer might buy something.

As he stood, he felt, as he had on the battlefield, as if someone were watching him. He looked around the market.

He saw a handful of late customers, a score or so of merchants and farmers who had not yet departed, and a great deal of empty space. The castle wall curved along the far side of the square, and a bored soldier stood on the ramparts, leaning on a merlon and yawning as he gazed out over the countryside. Three or four children were chasing each other back and forth through the open gates; another child, a thin barefoot girl in a ragged blue tunic, was standing to one side.

She was staring at him, Kelder thought, or at Irith, or at the cloth merchant whose wares Irith was fondling. Was that what he had sensed?

Well, there was nothing to be feared from a little girl. He wondered, though, why she was staring like that. It was hard to tell in the evening gloom, but she appeared to have been crying.

Maybe her mother had beaten her, Kelder thought to himself. Maybe she was out here wishing she didn’t have to go home, envying Irith her age and beauty.

Maybe she even recognized Irith; after all, as Kelder had discovered, the Flyer was well-known along the Great Highway. At the moment she had no wings, but how many white-clad blondes were there in Angarossa?

How many blondes were there in all the Small Kingdoms, for that matter?

It suddenly occurred to Kelder for the first time that Irith might not be from the Small Kingdoms at all. Perhaps she was from one of the distant, barbaric realms far to the northwest, beyond the Hegemony of Ethshar — Tintallion, or Kerroa, maybe. It was said blondes were slightly more common in the north.

Wasn’t Tintallion in the middle of a civil war, at last report?

That might explain a great deal. It could explain her references to a war, and perhaps the rules were different there, and she had been able to apprentice at a younger age than twelve, which would explain why she seemed to have done so much for a girl of fifteen. If that was it, then she must have fled to the Small Kingdoms because they were about as far away from her angry master as she could possibly get.

It all hung together.

So Irith was Tintallionese? He looked at her speculatively, listened to her chatting with the merchant in Trader’s Tongue, and wished he knew some Tintallionese himself.

He forgot all about the little girl by the gate and listened to Irith and the merchant, trying to spot clues to the Flyer’s origin. Her accent didn’t sound particularly northwestern to him, but then, he had never actually heard anyone from Ethshar or beyond, only local people imitating them. There was no reason to think that barbarians would have accents much like the people of the northwestern Small Kingdoms.

Irith didn’t seem to have any noticeable accent of her own at all, really; she spoke Trader’s Tongue with the sharp simplicity of an experienced traveler. She spoke Trader’s Tongue better than did the merchant she was haggling with, in fact.

Kelder considered. He could just ask her where she was from, of course. Asking where a person came from was a harmless and natural thing to do.

He would wait until the appropriate time, though, when he had a chance to bring it up in the course of the conversation; she was annoyed enough by his questions about demonology, and asking her out of the blue would be rude.

Irith turned away; the cloth merchant called a “final” offer after her, but she just laughed and walked away, with Kelder close beside her.

“You never did plan to buy anything, did you?” he asked.

She smiled and winked. “Of course not,” she said. “What would I do with a bolt of black brocade on the road to Shan, carry it over my shoulder?” She laughed again, then paused, and added, “If I were staying in town it might be different. It’s good fabric.”

Kelder nodded.

“The inn is down this way,” Irith told him, pointing at a narrow alleyway.

“Really?” he said, dubiously.

“Really,” she replied. “It’s a shortcut, a back way. I’ll show you.”

She led the way, and he followed. A few feet into the passage — for it was little more than that, a corridor between buildings, not a street — he glanced back at the market.

That young girl who had been watching them from the gate was now standing near the cloth merchant’s stall, and still watching them. Something about her made him uneasy.

“That girl’s watching us,” he said to Irith.

She turned and looked, then shrugged and walked on. “People do that sometimes,” she said.

He took another look, and then he, too, shrugged and walked on.

The alleyway opened out into a small kitchen yard; to one side a bantam cock stared at them through the slats of his coop, a well and windlass occupied a corner, and a big gray cat slept on the sill of a candelit window beside a heavy black door. Irith marched directly across and rapped on the door.

A sliding panel opened, and a nervous face peered out.

“Hello, Larsi,” Irith said. “It’s me.”

“The Flyer?” a woman’s voice asked.

Irith nodded.

The panel slid shut, and the latch rattled. The gray cat stirred slightly. Kelder took a look back up the alleyway.

The girl in the blue tunic was running down the passageway toward them.

The door opened, and Irith stepped up on the granite threshold. The person she had addressed as Larsi, a plump woman of forty or so, beckoned for her to enter. “I brought a friend,” Irith said, gesturing at Kelder.

Kelder saw the expression on the little girl’s face as it caught the light that spilled from the open door, and on a sudden impulse he said, “Two friends.”

“You will be a champion of the lost and forlorn,” Zindre had said, and that child certainly looked lost and forlorn.

Startled, Irith turned and looked as the little girl panted into the dooryard. The waif turned pleading eyes up toward the Flyer, and Irith corrected herself.

“Two friends,” she said.

Kelder smiled with relief. Irith could be compassionate toward the living, however callous she might have appeared toward the dead bandits, and Kelder was very pleased to see it. Maybe he could use this miserable creature to draw himself and Irith closer, as well as fulfilling the prophecy.

“Well, come in then, both of you,” Larsi said, beckoning. Kelder hastened to obey, and the girl scrambled after him.

They found themselves in a great stone-floored kitchen, surrounded by blackened oak, and black iron, and stone in a dozen shades of gray. A wooden cistern stood on an iron frame over a stone sink; stone-topped tables lined stone walls between wooden doors. Pale tallow candles shone from black iron sconces. The only touches of color in the entire place were the fire on the great hearth, and the vegetables spread on a counter — orange carrots and pale green leeks and fresh red-skinned potatoes.

“Go on, then, out with you,” Larsi said, waving them toward one of the doors. “You’ve no business in my kitchen, and Irith, I wish I’d never shown you that back way!”

“I’d have found it anyway,” Irith retorted, grinning. “You can see it from the air.”

Larsi huffed, and herded the three of them through the door into the main room.

This was brighter than the kitchen, but not much more colorful; here the dominant hues were black and brown, rather than black and gray. Brown wood tables and chairs, wood-paneled walls, a black slate hearth, and a wooden floor were illuminated by a dozen lanterns and in use by a dozen patrons.

“You’ll have the stew,” Larsi said, as she showed them to chairs at the near end of one of the two long tables that took up most of the space.

Irith nodded. “And that beer you make,” she said.

Larsi threw a significant glance at the blue-clad girl, and Kelder said, “She’ll drink water.”

The girl nodded eagerly.

Larsi snorted, then turned back to the kitchen.

When the door was shut again Kelder commented, “Doesn’t look like much.” He looked around himself at the complete absence of paint, brass, or brightwork of any kind.

Irith shrugged. “It isn’t,” she admitted, “but it’s the best food in Angarossa.” Then she turned to stare at the girl.

Kelder turned his attention to her, as well. Here was his chance to show Irith that he could be kind and understanding and firm, all at once. “Now,” he said, “who are you, and why were you following us?”

The girl blinked, hesitated, and then said, “My name is Asha of Amramion — and I think you killed my brother.”

Kelder and Irith stared at the girl. That was not an answer they had expected.

She stared defiantly back.

“I’ve never killed anyone,” Kelder informed her.

“I don’t think I killed your brother,” Irith said.

Something in the back of Kelder’s mind took note of the fact that Irith hadn’t said, “Neither have I.” He was not happy about the implications of that, and fought down the entire subject, preferring to concentrate on Asha.

At least for the moment.

“Well, somebody killed him,” Asha said, “and you were there.”

“We were?” Kelder asked, startled.

Asha nodded.

“Where?” he inquired.

“On the road this afternoon, a league west of here,” she replied.

“You mean your brother was one of those bandits?” Irith asked.

Asha, somewhat reluctantly, nodded.

For a moment nobody spoke. Then Kelder said, “We didn’t kill anybody; some demons did.”

Asha looked openly skeptical.

“No, really,” Irith told her. “It was really gross, I mean, all these little goblin creatures popped up out of nowhere and started hacking away at everybody. It was really disgusting.”

“Where did they come from?” Asha demanded, clearly not convinced.

“Just pop, right up out of the ground!” Irith said, gesturing broadly.

“A demonologist summoned them,” Kelder explained.

“What demonologist?” Asha asked. “I didn’t see any demonologist. Not unless it was one of you two.”

Kelder grimaced, put a hand to his chest, and raised his eyebrows. “Do I look like a demonologist?” he asked.

Asha glared at him without answering, then pointed at Irith and said, “She was flying, I saw it.”

“Sure,” Irith said with a nod, “I was flying. I can have wings if I want to; I’m a shapeshifter. But that’s wizardry, not demonology. I don’t know anything about demons.”

“Well, how do I know that it wasn’t wizardry that killed my brother and all his friends?” Asha demanded. “All I have for it is your word!”

Kelder looked at Irith and shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess you’ll just have to trust us.”

“Why should I?”

Up until this point, Asha had spoken in a rational and fairly adult manner, despite her diminutive size and voice, but now her voice cracked, and she was obviously on the verge of tears.

“Because we didn’t do it,” Kelder told her. “Honestly, we didn’t.”

“Well, then, who did?” Asha demanded. “I was following Abden, but they were on their horses and I couldn’t keep up, and when I got there they were all dead, and you two were standing there arguing right in the middle, and I watched and I followed and I never saw anybody there but you two...”

Her voice broke completely, and she began to sniffle.

Kelder tried to think of something comforting to say, but before he could, Irith asked, “What would you do if it were us?”

Asha’s tears suddenly stopped, and her face twisted in anger. She reached down under the table and came up with a knife — an ordinary belt knife, not any sort of fighting knife, but quite capable of doing serious damage.

Kelder grabbed her wrists, both of them.

“We didn’t kill anybody,” he insisted. “We were walking behind a caravan, and the bandits attacked it, and rode right into a trap — there was a demonologist there, and I don’t know much about magic, but he had demons appearing out of nowhere in less than a minute, so it must have been all set up in advance, it can’t be that easy to summon them.”

Asha stared up at him and said nothing.

“The caravan went on, and so did we, and we must have just gotten to the... the dead when you got there, so you saw us there — but it wasn’t us, we didn’t kill anybody.”

“What caravan?” Asha said, fighting back sobs. “I didn’t see any caravan!”

“Drop the knife, girl,” Larsi’s voice said, and the tip of a sword suddenly thrust up against Asha’s throat.

The three travelers looked up, startled.

Larsi was standing over them with a laden tray, and beside her stood a young man with a naked sword. The young man was thin and pimply and had his sword against Asha’s neck.

Asha stared, and refused to move; Kelder released one wrist and took the knife away from her. She didn’t resist.

He threw the weapon on the table, and told Larsi, “It’s nothing, really. She’s just upset.”

Larsi glared, then gestured.

The sword was withdrawn from Asha’s throat.

“Fine friends you bring in here, Irith,” Larsi said, in a voice that dripped scorn.

Irith shrugged and grinned. “Just a little harmless excitement,” she said. “Traveling can be so boring!”

“I like it boring,” Larsi said. She waved an arm at the other customers, and for the first time Kelder realized they were all staring at the little group at the end of the table. “My customers like it boring. They don’t like kids screaming and people yelling and blades being drawn, any more than I do. Now, if you three can keep it boring, you can stay, but if there’s any more excitement, out!”

“Yes, Larsi,” Irith said, ducking her head in a sort of nod.

“Agreed, mistress,” Kelder said.

Asha glared.

Larsi glared back, and at last the little girl broke and said, “All right, I promise.”

“Good,” Larsi said.

The young man sheathed his sword and left, while Larsi lowered the tray, displaying three plates of stew, three mugs, and a few other implements.

When Larsi had served out the contents of the tray and departed Kelder took a good look around the room, which showed him that, except for an occasional nervous glance, the other customers had returned to their own affairs.

Thus reassured, he turned to Asha and said, “All right, now, tell us the whole story. What were you doing out there following your brother? Why was he a bandit in Angarossa, if you’re from Amramion?”

Asha was shoveling stew into her mouth with a wooden spoon, and Kelder realized that she probably hadn’t eaten all day. He waited until she paused before repeating his questions.

“Amramion isn’t exactly the other side of the World from here,” Asha retorted. “Two days ago I was still living at home.”

Kelder frowned. “All right, then,” he said, “why aren’t you living at home now?”

“Because I came after Abden.”

“But why? Aren’t you a bit young to be out on your own?”

Asha hesitated. She studied Kelder’s face, and then Irith’s. “I ran away,” she said.

“Go on,” Kelder said.

“I ran away,” she repeated, “and I didn’t have anywhere else to go, I didn’t have any family or friends to stay with, except Abden.”

“And he was one of those bandits?”

She nodded. “He ran away last year,” she said, “and he didn’t know where else to go, so he went east, and he got stopped by bandits, and he didn’t have any money, and he wasn’t worth any ransom, but he was big and strong and knew how to fight, so they let him join. He sent me a message and told me about it.”

“And then they all got killed today,” Kelder said.

Asha nodded again and sniffled.

“But what were you doing?”

“I ran away the day before yesterday,” she said. “I couldn’t... I mean, I wanted to see Abden and stay with him. I found him this morning, and he said that I couldn’t stay there, that they didn’t have any way to take care of me, but I hung around and tried to think of something, because I couldn’t go back home. And then the scout came back and said a caravan was coming, so they all rode out to meet it, and I ran after them, but when I got there they were all dead, and you two were there and nobody else was, and I didn’t know what to do, so I followed you.”

She looked up at him. “And here we are,” she said.

He looked down at her. “How old are you, Asha?” he asked.

She frowned. “Not sure,” she said. “Nine, I think.”

Not sure? Kelder started at that. How could she not know how old she was?

He pushed that aside and said, “Nine’s too young to be out on your own.”

“I know that,” she said. “That’s why I came to stay with Abden!” She sniffled. “And he’s gone now.”

“So shouldn’t you go home, then?” Irith asked.

“No,” Asha said flatly.

Kelder looked at Irith, who shrugged, tossing her hair delightfully.

“What are you going to do, then?” Kelder asked.

Asha looked down at the table. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

“What would you like to do?” Irith asked.

The child looked up again. “I’d like to find that caravan and kill everybody in it! They killed my brother, and he wasn’t going to hurt anybody!”

“You don’t know that,” Kelder said. “Or at least they didn’t know that. And he was going to rob them, wasn’t he? That might well hurt them; they make their livings trading, they could starve.”

Asha glared at him and said nothing.

“Being a bandit is a dangerous business,” Kelder pointed out. “Your brother must have known that.”

She turned away.

“Killing them wouldn’t help your brother any, you know.”

“Nothing can help him now,” Asha said bitterly. “He won’t even get a decent funeral.”

“Well,” Kelder said, considering that, “maybe we could do something about that, the three of us. We could go back and build a pyre for him.” The prophecy was running through his head — a champion of the lost and forlorn, honored by the dead. “We don’t have a theurgist or a necromancer to guide his soul, but at least we could set it free.”

“No, we couldn’t,” Asha said.

“Why not?” Kelder asked, puzzled.

“Because,” she reminded him, “they took his head.”

Kelder had completely forgotten that unsavory detail. Asha was quite correct; as he had noticed, the caravan had taken all the bandits’ heads, impaled on pikes as a warning to other would-be attackers. That was standard procedure for thieves, Kelder knew, but he had never before considered the religious consequences.

If someone died and nobody burned the body, the soul would be trapped for weeks, or months, or even years, unable to fly free and search for a way to the gods of the afterlife. It would be prey to ghost-catchers and night-stalkers and demonologists, who respectively enslaved souls, ate them, or used them to pay demons for their services. That wasn’t just theory; there were enough ways for magicians to communicate with the dead that the exact nature of ghosts was well-established.

And one established fact was that you couldn’t burn a body properly unless you had at least the heart and the head. It was better to have the whole thing, but the heart and head were the absolute minimum.

Cutting off a thief’s head and posting it suddenly seemed like a rather nasty custom.

It also, it seemed, offered an opportunity to do something that was a very clear and definite step toward achieving his promised destiny. If he were to champion Asha, who was undoubtedly lost and forlorn, by freeing her brother’s soul, he would doubtlessly be honored by that dead soul; that was a good part of his fate right there.

It would also impress Irith, which he wouldn’t mind at all. He could be a hero to this little girl and her dead brother, at any rate, and without slaying any dragons or doing anything else all that dangerous.

“Maybe,” he said hesitantly, “maybe we could get his head back somehow.”

“Are you crazy?” Irith said, even as Asha looked up at Kelder with dawning hope in her eyes.

That was not the reaction Kelder had hoped for. “I don’t think so,” he replied, a bit defensively. “I mean, why couldn’t we? They don’t need them all, just for display!”

Irith frowned, opened her mouth, then closed it again.

“You are crazy,” she said.

Kelder glowered at her — this was not at all the reaction he had expected, but he was not about to back down now in front of Asha, after getting her hopes up — and especially not with part of the prophecy at stake. “It wouldn’t hurt to ask,” he said. “What harm could it do? You know that the caravan is here in town, we both saw it...”

Asha suddenly became very attentive indeed, and Irith sighed.

“Listen,” she said, “the whole thing is insane, but if you’ve just got to try it, take some time to think it over, all right? You don’t want to be roaming the streets of Angarossa at night, and I’m not going to tell you how to get there from here. Let’s just wait until morning, and if Asha’s still here and you still want to try it, we can talk then.”

“All right,” Kelder agreed. The idea of dashing out into the night was not very appealing, once he stopped to consider it, and this sounded like an excellent compromise.

“But what do I do tonight?” Asha wailed.

Kelder looked down at her, then across at Irith.

Irith’s hair was gleaming golden in the lamplight; her white tunic had somehow managed to stay clean on the road, and that and her pale skin made her look like an island of light against the dark wood paneling behind her. He and she would be taking a room at the inn, of course — it would use up almost half of his remaining funds, he estimated, but that didn’t seem important. He had been looking forward to sharing a room with her again.

The shapeshifter nodded slightly. Kelder sighed. There were, he now saw, some serious drawbacks to being a champion of the lost and forlorn.

“You can stay with us tonight,” he said, reluctantly.