Mage-Guard of Hamor

XCI

The next five days varied little. Third Company scouted, and First and Second Army followed after the scouting. There were no signs of rebels or mages or mage-guards, but there were fewer and fewer foodstuffs available from the local steads and growers. Because he was assigned to Third Company, Rahl was nowhere close to Deybri-or Fieryn and Dhoryk-during the course of the day. He usually managed a few words with Deybri in the morning, but only once in the early evening. As she had predicted, because there were too few healers for First and Second Army, she seldom returned to wherever Taryl had set up his headquarters for the night before Rahl had already reported and departed. Rahl had tried twice to wait for her, both times unsuccessfully, and resigned himself to their brief morning meetings.

Eightday morning, Rahl entered the less-than-impressive Growers' Inn on the main square in Gherama-a town known for onions so powerful that there was a regional description about them: "so hard-hearted a Gherama onion wouldn't bring tears to his eyes." While the inn seemed clean enough, the oak of the plank floors had been scrubbed and cleaned and washed-and then oiled-so much that the golden grain was lost behind years of labor and oil that left the floor a nondescript and shimmering brown. The glass of the windows was so old that looking through the panes, clean as they were, left Rahl with the impression of seeing the stable yard as through a fog-despite the fact that the morning sun was pouring light down through a clean blue-green sky.

Taryl had commandeered a corner of the public room and was talking to Commander Muyr. He looked up as Rahl entered. "Rahl… if you'd wait outside, the commander will let you know when we're done."

"Yes, ser." Rahl stepped back and glanced around the foyer outside the public room. There was not even a bench to sit upon, and the space felt uncomfortably warm, perhaps because he was wearing his riding jacket. Besides, waiting there might give the impression he was eavesdropping.

After a moment, he crossed the foyer and pushed open the door to the side porch. Once outside, he took the bench on the right end, the one farthest from the street and closest to the spice garden-as well as across the yard from the inn stable. As he sat there, letting his order-senses gather in impressions, he gained an increasing sense of the two Triads approaching. Could he observe them without being seen or detected… or at least without their realizing what he was attempting?

He tightened his shields and let a certain concern about scouting and what might lie ahead in Sastak swirl about above them. He added a worry about having to wait to meet with Taryl. Before long, Dhoryk and Fieryn strolled beyond the board fence on the back side of the spice garden, heading toward the stable.

Both held firm shields, but Rahl gained impressions of amusement, supreme self-confidence, and concern. He felt that the concern was focused on Taryl, but he had no way of actually determining that, and that feeling might well have been what he thought the concern might be, rather than what it was.

As the two reached the end of the board fence and began to cross the stable yard, Dhoryk's eyes flicked back to Rahl and the porch, but Rahl ignored the glance, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. Then the faintest of order-chaos probes touched him, and he ignored it, letting Dhoryk take in his worries about scouting and about why Taryl was making him wait. After several moments, the probe vanished.

Rahl let his order-abilities extend the sharpness of his hearing.

"He's more worried about Taryl than anything. Not all that many other thoughts in that head…"

"More than you might think, Dhoryk. Taryl has little patience for ignorance or incompetence."

"He's a more-than-competent scout and city mage-guard, and that makes him better than most mage-guards in this force-except for our assistants, of course."

"How could it be otherwise?"

"It could have been," Dhoryk replied, "if Taryl had cared more about himself."

"We're fortunate he didn't, but there's little point in speculating on what might have been…"

At that point, the two Triads had walked beyond Rahl's order-ability to catch their words.

If Taryl had cared more about himself? More about himself than what? The Emperor? The Empress? Hamor?

Behind and to Rahl's left, the door to the inn opened, and Commander Muyr leaned out. "The overcommander is ready to see you, Majer."

"Thank you, Commander." Rahl stood and headed for the inn doorway and the day's scouting assignment, not that it would vary much until they were closer to Sastak-and that was still at least three days away, according to his calculations.