Wellspring of Chaos

XXXIV

On threeday night, they did not go back to Jeka’s hidey-hole between the tannery and the renderer’s yard. Neither did they reach the river or the river road. Instead, they curled up inside a hedgerow beside the road headed southeast from Brysta-the same road that led to the orchards held by Merayni and Dowsyl. Where Kharl hoped Warrl was safe.

Huddled inside the thick wall of brush, shivering at times, Kharl swallowed at that thought, but there was nothing he could do. Trying to see Warrl again would only make matters worse, and, if the wizard was working with Egen, the lord might well now have spared a guard or two to watch the place. More important, with each passing day, Kharl could offer Warrl even less.

“I’m cold,” mumbled Jeka.

“So am I.” Those were the last words Kharl said before he drifted into a troubled sleep.

He woke in the gray before dawn. The way his body ached when he tried to uncurl, he decided there were worse places to sleep than between renderer’s and tanner’s walls. Much worse.

“You snore,” Jeka said. “Loud.”

“So do you. Soft.”

“Soft’s better ’n loud.”

“Probably.” Kharl crawled out through the brushy tunnel onto the field side of the hedgerow. The wheat had already been harvested, and the brown stubble jutted skyward from the dark ground. The air was chill enough that Kharl’s breath was like fog, and the ground crunched underfoot. The shutters of the hut beyond the small woodlot appeared to be closed. Kharl shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying to loosen tight muscles.

Shortly, Jeka followed him, glancing toward the cottage, then at Kharl.

After a moment, he asked, “You feel the cord thing tugging at you?”

“A little.”

“Frigging wizard,” Kharl muttered. “Moved south. We need to circle around Brysta and get back to your place.”

“So why’d we leave?”

“So that he didn’t catch us there, so he didn’t find out that was the only place you sleep.”

“It is.”

“Not any longer.”

“We can’t keep moving. We can’t get food.”

“You want to end up like Enelya’s sister?”

“No. We can’t keep doing this, either.”

Kharl nodded. She was right about that. “Need to get back and pick up your stuff…if we can. Somehow.” He looked back toward the cottage. At one side of the woodlot, there was a tree, one that looked to be an apple, and despite the thinning leaves, Kharl thought he saw a few fruits hanging. Probably rotten, but they might have good spots.

“Where you goin’?”

“Apple tree.”

“Too many’ll run your guts,” Jeka warned.

“Could be.” Kharl kept moving, as quietly as he could. He reached the tree without any noise from the cottage, less than four rods away, although he could smell the smoke of a cooking fire. All of the fruit was beyond his reach from the ground, but the tree looked sturdy, and he levered himself up. From the lowest sturdy branch, he managed to pluck something, but his hand came away gooey. The entire fruit was spoiled. He had better luck with the next several, tucking them inside his undertunic as he inched out on the branch and stretched upward.

Ruuufff! Rufff! The sharp but deep bark of a dog filled the dawn air, so sudden that it startled Kharl. He had to grab the trunk of the apple tree to keep from falling.

Ruufff…

The barking continued. Kharl scrambled down to the ground, scooped up an apple he’d dropped, and began to run. As he scrambled through the stubble of the field, hurrying back toward the hedgerow, the dog barking behind him, he just hoped that the holder didn’t have a bow.

“Thief! Coward!” came the call from the cottage, but Kharl did not look back before squeezing through a narrow space in the hedgerow, an overgrown gate path.

Jeka waited on the roadside for Kharl. “Real quiet, you were.”

“I was quiet. The dog wasn’t.”

“That’s why they got dogs.”

Kharl shook his head. She was right. He wasn’t a very good thief. He didn’t like being a thief, even of half-rotten apples.

“What did you get?”

He extended two of the apples. “They’re half-good. Better than nothing.”

“You get any for you?”

Kharl forced two on her, then produced two more. “We’d better start walking.”

Jeka nodded, and took several steps. “Need to eat slow.”

Kharl caught up to her. “You feel the wizard?”

“We’re moving away, I think.”

“Let me know if it changes.” Kharl took a small bite from the good part of the apple.

Given the growling of his stomach, Kharl had to force himself to take small bites, and make each last as they walked.

“Need to head east and north,” Kharl said. “Know there’s a ring road ahead.”

“Where? How far?”

Kharl shrugged.

They walked south almost a glass before they reached the ring road that looked to circle east and north. Then, for the next glass or so, they walked back northward along the road, ducking behind the low stone wall, since there was no hedgerow, when wagons or riders neared. The road turned almost due north at another crossroads, and after that, for a time, they saw no one, and there were few tracks in the dust of the narrow road.

“How about the wizard?” Kharl finally asked.

“He’s got to be back there.” Jeka gestured behind them.

“Good.”

After a time, well after the apples were gone, and the sun had cleared the low hills to the east of Brysta, Kharl stopped, looking ahead.

“What is it?” asked Jeka.

“Just thinking. Someplace ahead we’ll reach the pike. We can come into Brysta from the northeast, down the pike, off Angle Road.”

“Lots of road guards, too.”

“Not many, and they’re not under Egen. His older brother, I think.”

“What’s his name?”

“Osgard, Osten…something like that. There’s someone coming.” Kharl eased toward the two thorn-olives before the stone wall, then hurried behind them. Jeka reached cover first, again.

To the north, a narrow wagon drawn by a single horse moved away from them. Farther southward, there was a peddler. Kharl couldn’t tell which way he was pushing his handcart.

After a time, he said, “We can get back on the road now.”

Jeka joined him, glancing back over her shoulder, but the ring road remained mostly empty except for the peddler who was going northward, as they were, but certainly not any faster, and the wagon, which was soon out of sight.

They had covered perhaps two kays, and a hedgerow began on the west side of the road, weedy and sparse at first, but thickening more toward the north.

Another wagon, headed south and drawn by two dark chestnuts, appeared from around a gentle curve to the north and moved quickly toward them. Kharl eased to the side of the road, Jeka moving behind him. Behind the wagon were two mounted guards. A third sat beside the driver, with a cocked crossbow propped beside him. None of the four looked more than once at Kharl and Jeka. As the wagon rolled past, Kharl read the inscription on the side: Tekat amp; Sons, Merchants in Spirits.

“Fancy wagon,” Jeka said. “Wonder what they carry.”

“Spirits,” Kharl said. “That’s what the sign on the side said, anyway.”

“Do all coopers know their letters?” Jeka’s voice held a trace of wistfulness.

“I don’t know. Some do. Some don’t. It helps some.”

“You have any books…I mean, back…” Jeka broke off the sentence.

“When I had the shop?” Kharl laughed, softly, not quite bitterly. “I had a few. Got ’em from my da. Books are dear. Some cost a gold or more.” The thought of Tyrbel’s beautiful books, and the scrivener’s death, washed over him. He swallowed. So many deaths-Charee’s, Tyrbel’s, the assassin’s, the wizard’s guard…and while he could say he knew why, he wasn’t sure he truly understood why Egen, why anyone, could be so vindictive.

Kharl thought he heard something, and he glanced back over his shoulder. A man was riding northward, at either a trot or a fast walk. The late-morning sun showed his burgundy jacket clearly. The cooper looked to Jeka. “You feel…?”

“No. Not any more ’n before.”

“That looks like one of his guards.” Kharl glanced around. “Hide in that patch of weeds. Behind them, anyway.”

“What about you?”

“He’s far enough away that he might not have seen you. He’s probably seen me. I hide, and he looks for us both.”

Jeka scuttled into the weedy patch on the far side of the dried-up ditch. Kharl adopted a more laborious hobble. He covered another five rods before he could hear the hoofbeats on the hard and damp road clay clearly. As they drew nearer, he finally looked back, then, as if in fear, he scuttled well back from the road, watching the rider carefully.

The burgundy-jacketed man reined up but did not leave the road. One hand rested on the hilt of the sabre at his side, but he did not draw it. He looked at Kharl. “Old fellow…did you see a boy running along here. A boy in gray rags?”

“Eh…?” Kharl whined. “A boy, you say…?”

“That’s what I said. If it’s the right boy, there’s a copper or two in it for you.”

“A copper for an old man? A copper?”

“The boy?”

Kharl let his shoulders sag. “Seen no boy. Saw a peddler. Saw a wagon. Saw two.” He peered at the rider. “Copper for a poor old man?”

The rider snorted. “Go and starve somewhere else. Get off the road.”

Kharl looked around, as if bewildered.

“Get off the road!”

Kharl scuttled backward, seeming almost to trip, before scrambling over the dry ditch and looking around as if wondering where he could go.

The rider laughed, then turned his mount northward.

As he rode away, Kharl realized that the guard had not been the one he had seen at the market, but that the man, like the wizard, had shreds of the unseen white fog clinging to him. Did it have to do with wizardry? What? He just stood and waited until the man was out of sight beyond the next low rise in the road. Before long, Jeka rejoined him.

He looked at her. “What did you do to him?”

“Who?” Jeka did not look at Kharl.

“The wizard. Did you lift his purse, or something? He couldn’t be searching so hard for you just to do…whatever he does to girls.” Kharl glanced to the road and at the heavy wagon rolling southward. “Better duck, just in case.”

Jeka dropped flat in the weeds behind Kharl, and the cooper watched as the four-horse team rumbled past, shivering the ground. On the outer side of the road, Kharl could also see three men scything late wheat. Maybe Jeka was right, that they needed to get off the road and follow it from behind the hedgerows. They might run into holders and their families, but it was clear that the wizard had some men patrolling the roads.

Kharl looked down. “You didn’t answer me.”

“Was only a silver…had it in his belt. Goral gave me nine coppers for it.”

“When?”

“Two eightdays back.”

“So he wants you for two reasons. Because you made a fool of him, and also for his wizardry.” Kharl paused. “Why did you steal from a wizard?”

“Didn’t know he was. Just a dandy like all the others. How did you know?”

Kharl paused. How had he known? He’d known from the white flash, but…He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just knew.”

“Takes one to know one, maybe?”

“I’m a cooper. You know that.”

Jeka just shrugged.

“We need to get moving. Away from the road.”

“I told you so.”

“Yes, you did.”

Walking northward along the edge of the fields beside the hedgerow was slower, but since most of the fields had been harvested, they saw few holders there, save for the areas of meadow where youths and children watched small flocks of sheep. People watched them, closely, until they passed, but said nothing.

Once, Kharl would have watched people who looked the way he did. His beard was untrimmed and scraggly, his clothes ragged, and he was certain he smelled rank, if not worse, although he had mostly gotten used to that. He hadn’t gotten used to the itchy skin.

While they avoided any surveillance by not walking the road, going by the hedgerow paths meant it took even longer than Kharl had thought. They also had little to eat, just a few bitter quinces he had retrieved from deep in the thorny branches of an unkempt bush near the hedgerow, and there had been only one small stream that looked clear enough to drink. Both were walking slowly by late afternoon, when they neared the pike and the low ridges through which flowed Souangle Creek. Rather, Kharl corrected himself, the creek flowed into the pond that Vetrad’s grandsire had built and through the millrace that powered the sawmill.

Kharl thought they might be able to sneak into Vetrad’s lumber barn after dusk. It was dry, and a lot warmer than the hedgerow. There was also an orchard beyond it, and there might be a few apples left, discards, partly rotten, and the like. He hoped so. The mill and lumberyard were off the ring road, less than a kay out Angle Road from it on the creek. Kharl had never known why the same road was called the pike inside the ring road, and Angle Road outside, but it was.

He glanced back at the clouds, darkening and gathering out over the ocean, just beyond the harbor, then to Jeka. Her face was pale.

“The wizard?” he asked.

“Thing’s stronger. Stronger ’n it’s been.”

“Where?”

Jeka half shrugged. “I can’t tell.”

Kharl could feel that she was exhausted. He was tired, but he doubted that Jeka could have walked another ten rods without falling over. He wished he had the staff, rather than the stick.

“We’ll rest for a while.” Kharl pointed to a tumbled rock wall bordering the hedgerow.

Jeka slumped onto the rock. “Not much to eat here. There’s more in Brysta.”

“We’re headed back that way. I think I know a safer place to sleep tonight. It’s not too far, a little more than a kay.”

A low rumble rolled out of the west. Kharl looked over the empty fields and the trees beyond. While he could not see the dwellings and structures of Brysta, he knew they were there, and the harbor was beyond-and the growing thunderheads were rising over the harbor, blocking out the late-afternoon sun.

“I don’t think the wizard’s that far away,” Jeka said tiredly.

“Can you walk some more?” Kharl asked.

“I can try.” She stood slowly.

They walked along the narrow path. Kharl let her lead the way, afraid that he might set too fast a pace for her.

“We’re moving away from him,” Jeka said after they had walked another twenty rods toward the spot where Angle Road met the ring road. “Think so, anyway.”

“He’s probably stopped south of us, then.” Kharl could feel the dampness in the air, and the wind began to gust around them.

“Wind feels good,” Jeka said. “Long’s it doesn’t rain.”

A ways farther along, perhaps a quarter kay, Kharl found a break in the hedgerow and squeezed through, watching the road carefully as he did. From beside the hedgerow, he could see Angle Road just ahead, and the old stone bridge where the road crossed Souangle Creek. Two wagons had passed the crossroads, heading out away from Brysta, in the direction of Sagana and Alturan. The road looked clear, and he didn’t see any other easy way to cross the creek, except by the Angle Road bridge.

He turned and beckoned. “We need to hurry.”

“Wizard’s getting closer.” Jeka shivered.

Kharl looked to the south on the ring road. He thought he saw mounted figures. He grabbed Jeka’s arm and stepped up his pace, quickly crossing the ring road and hurrying along the right side of Angle Road, even though every step hurt his already sore feet. He could imagine that every step felt worse to Jeka.

By the time they reached the bridge over the creek, Kharl was almost dragging Jeka, and except for a wedge of blue-green to the east, the sky was filled with gray clouds that seemed to darken more with each moment.

He glanced ahead. There was almost a half a kay to go before they reached the low stone wall that encircled Vetrad’s mill and lumber barns. “We’ll cross and wait under the bridge.”

“Good…need to rest,” Jeka gasped.

Kharl had to half carry her down the weed-tangled slope and under the bridge. They huddled together on a pile of stones amid the mud and debris gathered against the stone buttress on the north side, the only really solid footing. There they waited.

A gust of wind whipped under the span of the bridge, so strong that Kharl had to gather the tattered beggar’s cloak around him to keep it from being blown off him-or so he felt. Then the wind died away. He looked upstream, in the direction of the millrace, but he could not see it. He could see that no rain was yet falling. In the comparative silence after another gust of wind from the oncoming storms, Kharl heard voices.

“…doesn’t know which way she went from the crossroads…”

“…doesn’t know? He always knows…”

“You want to tell him?”

The riders did not stop and look under the bridge, as Kharl would have done. He wondered why. Did they not think of it? Or did they want to cover as much ground as they could before the storm struck?

Kharl and Jeka continued to wait, amid more gusts of wind, and a pattering of rain that came, then went. In time, the pair of riders returned, the hoofs of their mounts echoing on the paving stones of the span above.

“…didn’t go this way…miller was out, and he would have seen them…”

“…tomorrow…maybe…”

So Vetrad was out? Kharl took a deep breath. That meant they’d have to take the way along the creek.

He waited for a time, then crawled up the steep slope and, crouching beside the stone restraining wall of the bridge, studied Angle Road. It was empty. “Come on,” he called down to Jeka.

He waited until she reached him.

“We’ll cross the road. Looks like a path along the creek there on the other side. Just about a half kay…”

“You said that a kay ago…” Jeka attempted a smile.

“Suppose I did.”

The path was overgrown and narrow, but it was also mostly shaded by weedy trees, interspersed with an occasional oak and, surprisingly, at one spot, an ancient black lorken. Another pattering of rain on the leaves overhead came and went, and a series of deeper thunderclaps rumbled overhead.

Finally, Kharl could see the stones of the lower spillway of Vetrad’s millrace. “We’re almost here. Through the berry bushes, and across the narrow meadow to the tall barn.”

“I…hope…so…” panted Jeka.

They stopped at the edge of the berry bushes, stripped of every last berry. The meadow looked empty. An even deeper thunder roll rumbled over them, and the rain began to fall. The first raindrops were fat-and far apart. They hit the ground or the meadow grass slowly, then splattered.

Kharl had not taken four steps when Jeka’s legs gave way, and she sprawled out full length on tannish meadow grass. He turned, then scooped her up. He was amazed at how light she was, even as tired as he felt.

“Can’t carry me…”

“It’s not far.”

From his times of scouting out Vetrad’s stocks, Kharl knew that all the barn doors would be locked, but that the rear door facing the small orchard at the edge of the meadow was low enough, with a gap above it, that they could scramble through. Vetrad wasn’t worried about people. He just didn’t want them taking his timbers and billets, and the doors and locks were more than enough for that. Even so, by the time they huddled under the overhang by the small door, the rumble of thunder was all around them. A bolt of lightning struck somewhere on the ridge to the east of the millpond, so close and so loud that Kharl’s ears rang.

“You just wait here,” he told Jeka.

“Where are you going?”

“Saw some pearapples on the trees. Looked near ripe, and no one’s going to be looking now. Won’t be long.” Kharl hurried back into the storm.

There was more wind than rain, although his ragged cloak was still damp when he returned with almost a half score of pearapples.

“Door’s locked,” Jeka said dully.

“Look up.” Kharl picked Jeka up and lifted her so that she could scramble through the opening above the doorframe. Then he tucked the fruits into his trousers as best he could and jumped, catching the edge and slowly levering himself up. Going down was easier.

Jeka stood waiting in the dimness.

“This way,” he said, leading her along the wide space between the stacks of rough timbers, until they reached the ladder to the oak lofts. “Up there.”

Once he reached the top of the ladder, Kharl led them along the catwalk to the left and to the space just under the eaves behind the last row of red oak billets. Kharl hadn’t remembered it as that large, but compared to where they had been sleeping, it was spacious, a good five cubits by five, although it was only three in height. “No one comes here. Too dry to cure the oak properly. Dries too fast, uneven.”

Jeka sank onto one of the planks, covered in shavings, sitting there.

“They should clean out the billet shavings, but they never have. It’s not as hard as it looks.” Kharl extended a pearapple. “Eat. There’s a place where we can get water, if the rain keeps up.”

“Don’t feel the wizard at all,” Jeka said after several bites of the fruit.

“Not at all?” questioned the cooper as he finished his own pearapple, far better than the poor apples that had begun the day.

“Nah…” She cocked her head to the side, gaminelike. “Not since it really started raining.”

Kharl frowned. Rain? Could rain do that? Running water was supposed to slow wizards. He wasn’t sure that it did, but what was rain but water running down from the skies?

“Feels good.” Jeka yawned. “Can we go back tomorrow?”

“We’ll see.” Kharl found himself yawning.

Later, as the rain streamed down, coming off the roof of the lumber barn in thin sheets, for the first time in days, Kharl fell asleep immediately.