Burning Tower (9 page)

Chalker ushered them to chairs and asked about drinks, while Sandry excused himself and went out.

He returned with a frail lady, splendidly dressed. She wore a large necklace of bright gems and polished gold. They all stood as she entered. She walked slowly, clutching Sandry's arm, but her eyes were sharp as she examined each of them in turn.

“Mother, our guests,” Sandry said. “Wagonmaster Green Stone, Shaman Twisted Cloud. The pretty one is Burning Tower. And this young man has the improbable name of Nothing Was Seen.”

“Colorful,” Lady Whalani said. “An interesting name. Welcome to my home. Is it difficult to be a Wagonmaster?”

“It is not always easy,” Green Stone said.

“No, I wouldn't have thought so.” She turned and looked closely at Burning Tower. “Shanda keeps telling me about a girl with your name. I can't imagine that could be anyone but you. Sandry said you were pretty. Yes, definitely, he's not mistaken there. Lovely, and you don't use too much paint. How did you get that name?”

Burning Tower blushed slightly at the scrutiny. “My mother had a dream before I was born, My Lady. And thank you.”

Lady Whalani turned to Sandry. “Very pretty. Polite, too. Good manners.” She turned back to Twisted Cloud. “A shaman. That's like a wizard, isn't it?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Twisted Cloud moved to her and took her hand. “May I?”

“Certainly, but you won't see anything. None of them can.”

Twisted Cloud stared for a moment, then fingered a feathered stone hung round her neck. She stared again at the frail hand, then nodded.

“I haven't long to live, of course,” Lady Whalani said.

“Longer than you think. You will live to see your son face a great trial.”

“My. Will he be successful?”

Twisted Cloud shook her head. “That is never revealed, not to me and I think not to anyone. But you will be proud of him no matter the outcome.”

“That sounds frightening. But you have told me more than the wizards have.” She smiled thinly. “Of course, it is not startling that a mother would be proud of her son no matter the outcome of his trial.”

Twisted Cloud looked amused.

“Well. I would like to be a wizard. I wouldn't know how to start, but I think I would be better than the ones we have hired. Of course they don't let women be wizards here. We're supposed to be quiet and let the men do everything, until they make such a mess of it that they need us. Sandry, I'm very tired tonight. I hope our guests will excuse me if I don't join them?”

“Of course, Mother.”

“It has been very pleasant meeting you. Burning Tower, you're very pretty and very young, and I see why Sandry likes you. I think I like you, too. I hope you're determined enough. You'll have to be. Now if you will all excuse me.”

Everyone stood as Sandry led her out of the room. Burning Tower felt her knees shaking as she sat again. Determined? I'll show them determined!

 

Sandry came back alone, looking sad. “I'm sorry Mother can't stay,” he said. “She's not very strong.”

“No,” Twisted Cloud said. “But she works hard at overcoming it.”

“Did you see anything in her palm?”

“What I told her. And that she spent the entire afternoon preparing to receive your guests.”

Sandry nodded. “She does that, but of course it tires her.”

“No,” Twisted Cloud said. “Not as you think.”

Sandry looked thoughtful.

“I like her,” Burning Tower said.
Now why did I say that?

Sandry smiled.

That's why.

Sandry said, “I didn't want to ask in front of her, but did you see any way to help her, shaman?”

“We grow old, if we do everything else right. There's not enough manna to work a youth spell here. They are difficult to maintain in any event, more so in my lifetime than in my father's. I fear I can do nothing. Perhaps the Great Wizard.”

“Egmatel? A Great Wizard?”

“He wears the amulet and sash of a great one,” Twisted Cloud said. “Everyone knows their meaning.”

“Oh. He has never said that. So he would believe we know also?”

“Of course. You're more isolated than I thought.”

“Anyway the Great Wizard has seen my mother,” Sandry said. “I learned no more from him than you, but it cost me.”

Twisted Cloud shrugged. “The great ones have their ways,” she said.

“Yes. Shaman, will that spell rid my house of ants also?”

“Your house and any other, Lord Sandry,” Twisted Cloud said. “It is no great magic.”

“So why hasn't Egmatel done that for us?”

“It's like knowing how to make soap. Something to make roadside life easier. Perhaps it is beneath his notice. Much of the small magic of the Hemp Road is not known to the great ones.”

Maybe they're so busy calling themselves great they don't have time to learn,
Burning Tower thought.
But Cloud is really impressed by that wizard….

“Do you have parchment and honey?” Twisted Cloud asked.

“Oh yes,” Sandry said. “Oh yes.”

“Then if you will bring them here—”

“Wait,” Sandry said. “If you please. Until we are in Aunt Shanda's home.”

Burning Tower noted the sly grin Sandry was wearing.
This may be fun,
she thought.

A
well-dressed girl, no more than twenty, came from the back gardens and entered without knocking. The girl was fair, with light brown hair elaborately waved, and Burning Tower wondered how that yellow linen would look with her own coloring. The girl looked at each of Sandry's guests, then smiled at Lurk as if greeting an old friend.

Roni,
Burning Tower thought. She had seen her only once, a year before, when she accompanied her mother to Peacegiven Square.
She looked like a child then. But so did I. Neither one of us looks like a child now.

“Aren't you going to introduce me?” Roni said.

Sandry stood. “My cousin Roni,” he said. “We grew up together; she lives next door. One of my oldest friends. Some of you met her last year.”

“Hi,” Roni said. She inspected Burning Tower closely. “Well, hello. I don't think we were able to talk last year.”

“Not that I remember.”
Cousin. Are we rivals? Do cousins marry in Lordshills? They do in Tep's Town. Mother has friends who married cousins. She's pretty. Fit too. I wonder how she got those calf muscles.
“Of course we were busy with the fair, and I had to help Morth.”

“And walk a rope,” Roni said. “Eight feet up.” She grinned. “Sandry saw you too.”

“I take it dinner is ready?” Sandry said.

“Well, dinner isn't, but Mother says you should come over now.”

Sandry nodded and started toward the back garden.

“No, not that way! Through the front door.”

Sandry eyed Roni with a frown. “All right.”

What was that about?
Burning Tower wondered.
Something about hospitality rules? But good—I'll get to see another Lord's house. It can't be nicer than this one, though.

 

The door was massive. The servant puffed as he manhandled it aside. Sandry unobtrusively held his guests back until it was fully open.

Tower let Green Stone take the lead while she tried to guess who was whom.

A woman swept toward them with the power and mass of a wagon and team of bison. She moved slowly, for the sake of her elderly companion. Lady Shanda would have been formidable commanding a travel nest. She was formidable now. Her eyes raked the four merchants, judging.

Tower felt herself dismissed, and Lurk too. Shanda extended her hands unerringly to Green Stone. “Welcome to Lord's Town, Wagonmaster! This is your host, Lord Quintana.”

Her companion didn't have her strength, though he had certainly been a warrior once.

Green Stone looked like a big Lordkin. He dressed in stiff leathers: armor. “Lady, my brother leads the main caravan this trip. These are Burning Tower, my sister…Twisted Cloud, our shaman…Nothing Was Seen.”

Quintana's eyebrow went up as his eyes brushed Lurk in his porter's garb. Quintana introduced Lord Qirama and the wizard Egmatel, but not his two apprentices.

Lady Shanda led them down into a…travel nest, Burning Tower guessed, though it looked very different. A rectangular pit three shallow steps below the main floor. Blankets, cushions and little tables, and a fireplace. A place to relax, talk, eat a variety of interesting little mouthfuls, drink tea, make deals, run civilization.

Tower sipped a tea moderately rich in cannabis. She'd have to watch her tongue, she thought. Green Stone sipped, then proffered a small package. “Lady, Lord, we also brought tea. Would you taste something exotic?”

Lady Shanda made to speak; Lord Quintana caught her eye. Instead she clapped her hands and gave quick whispered orders to the servant who appeared. The servant took Green Stone's tea away to be prepared.

There was to be no suggestion that a guest might poison his host.

“I hope you like it. I've tried it myself, of course,” Green Stone said. “The Spotted Coyotes got it from halfway around the world. I was ordered—no joke, Blazes—
ordered
to buy it at the price they set, on instructions from Coyote himself.” He grinned at his sister but spoke for his hosts. “The Spotted Coyote tribe—that's a few hundred people who live twelve to fifteen days north of the Firewoods in a wild place ordained for them by Coyote.”

Lady Shanda asked skeptically, “That's the god? Not the animal?”

“The god, yes, though he can act through the animal. The Spotted Coyotes sell hospitality to passersby, mainly to caravans. Well, Coyote commanded them to sell us an entire batch of tea that came their way via Carlem Markle, and told them what price we'd pay!”

Lord Quintana asked, “Can they do that?” and didn't ask,
Can we?

“Not often. If the Spotted Coyotes overstep, everyone regrets it. Remember the Toronexti? It would be like that.” Green Stone grinned. “But we paid. We don't want to offend Coyote, and he doesn't demand much.”

Of those present, Sandry had met only Burning Tower and Nothing Was Seen. He asked after others he'd met. Some had been killed by wounds inflicted in the battle with the Toronexti. Others had recovered, had retired, or were with the main caravan. Had married…

It was not a subject you could avoid. Roni's amusement was evident. She asked Green Stone about marriage customs, and Green Stone spoke of dowries.

My brother's mind is never off money,
Burning Tower thought. She said, “The caravans always keep a few bonehead ponies around—”

Lady Shanda and Green Stone tried simultaneously to change the subject but got confused. Into the resulting silence they heard Roni telling Burning Tower, “Sandry isn't spoken for. Believe me, I'd know. I'd hear it from my mother.”

“I see. What about you?” Tower asked.

Roni named a handful of eligible males. Lady Shanda and Lord Qirama discussed their merits, to Roni's annoyance, until Sandry praised one man's behavior during the Pizzles' attack. An animated discussion of firefighting ensued.

Tea arrived, with a pyramid of honey cakes.

An apprentice whispered to Egmatel. Egmatel said, “Wale is right. The manna is drifting back to Lordshills, one way and another. We know little of Coyote here, but—he could not come while the fire god was in place, but might he visit us now?”

Twisted Cloud smiled. “He is here if he wants to be, Sage.”

Burning Tower caught Egmatel's sneer, instantly hidden. The man didn't believe in Coyote, or perhaps in Twisted Cloud.

And he must have seen something in Tower's face and Green Stone's. He said, “Spells involving Zoosh protect me from interference from other gods. I've wondered sometimes what that has cost me. A god may not consider the welfare of the human being he rides—”

“But he leaves knowledge behind,” Twisted Cloud affirmed. “Whandall Feathersnake carried Coyote the night we conceived Clever Squirrel. He brushed cheeks with death that night, but Whandall can tell tales and lore known only to Coyote.”

For an instant, Egmatel gaped like a boy seeing his first bull roarer. Then his eyes lowered and he was himself again.

The guests and hosts sipped Green Stone's tea and praised the flavor. Sandry held his peace while several chose honey cakes and brushed off the ants to eat them. Then he said, “Aunt Shanda, why don't we get rid of these ants?”

Shanda, Quintana, Egmatel and both apprentices, and two servants gaped at Sandry. Sandry smiled, but he caught Green Stone's glare.

So did Twisted Cloud. “We're guests, Wagonmaster,” she said reprovingly, “and this is common enough. No great proprietary secret.”

Lady Shanda was holding her peace with some difficulty. Egmatel…what was he thinking? Tower couldn't tell.

Lord Quintana asked, “You can get rid of ants?”

The shaman said, “Not rid. Can you find me a sheet of parchment? And pass the honey.”

“I'll get parchment,” Roni said. She stood with conscious grace.

They awaited her return. Then Twisted Cloud mixed honey with crushed charcoal and wrote in tiny letters, extensively. She painted honey around all four edges of the parchment and set it on the hearth, next to the honey cakes and squarely in the path of the ants.

Sandry held any ridicule out of his voice, but Burning Tower sensed his disbelief. “You're making them a gift?”

“For the queen ant, and sending her a message. Your ants, they've been deaf and mute for too many years, while Yangin-Atep was consuming every trace of local magic. They need reminding.”

Roni laughed, “So do we!”

Twisted Cloud looked at her doubtfully, then at the Sage Egmatel, who was holding a perfect poker face. “Well. The god was Logi or Zoosh or Ghuju, depends on who's speaking. His tribe didn't like to clean up after themselves. Men tired of the women's complaints, and leftover bones got too much attention from coyotes and other predators. Logi made a tiny creature to clean up after them, to carry garbage away. But ants are supposed to stay out of sight, and they're not supposed to swarm over food that's ready for the evening meal!”

Roni said, “So you send a message. And what if they don't take the hint?”

“I send a stronger message,” the older woman said grimly.

Sandry asked, “Will you write me another of these ant-messages? For my mother?”

The ants were all over the message, but of course they were still on the food too. The caravaners brushed them off as Sandry did, but those who weren't annoyed were amused. Burning Tower noted that Lady Shanda was not amused at all. Guests had criticized her hospitality for, of all things, ants!

She'd given some kind of signal. Now servants took away the honey cakes and other delicacies, then brought a cauldron of beef and vegetables cooked with corn. A silence fell while they wandered among the guests, serving them. Caravan folk carried their own bowls, but Shanda's servants were offering fine, fragile ceramic. The meat dish was unfamiliar, touched with spices Burning Tower couldn't identify. Caravan cooking would have been different: less bland.

Hunger appeased, the guests relaxed and sipped a wine Green Stone would have sold cheap. Lord Quintana said, “I have not had a chance to visit the market myself. Green Stone, do you carry carpets? And those little bottles?”

“Oh, yes. Here, I brought these. I hope they please you.” He distributed them among those present: tiny bottles of glass blackened by cold iron, the side effects of Morth's year-old war. “They sold well last year.”

“And you have an interest in horses?”

“If the price is right.”

“Horses are expensive,” Quintana said. A bit defensively he added, “Ask around; you'll find it's true.”

“Pity.” Green Stone's face gave nothing away.

Burning Tower suddenly noticed that Lurk was gone. She tried to catch Green Stone's eye, gestured with her nose at his empty place, and got a grin. Then Quintana asked, “Wagonmaster, how did you find the Gate facilities at the Deerpiss?”

Green Stone said, “Much changed,” and laughed aloud.

The corners of Quintana's mouth twitched upward; they were both remembering the battle with the Toronexti, the Lordkin tax collectors Waterman had replaced. Now he asked, “Have you dealt with the Captains at Condigeo?”

Hesitation. “My brother has. He'll be in conference with them now.”

“The Council of Captains rules Condigeo. They rule the trade routes too, of course; it's their major interest. They still control whatever reaches Tep's Town by ship. Before the caravan came here through the firewoods, they owned us. Now they don't, quite. I'm very serious when I ask you: Do you have any complaints whatever about what you found at the Gate? You're Waterman's first real test.”

“Ah. Well, he took out some birds for us. That counts for a
lot.
His men were badly battered, not up for much, but they had water and fodder for our beasts. Otherwise, we dealt with Lord Sandry and his men, and they gave us some help at Peacegiven Square.”

“Everything all right there?”

“Very nice. Everything was in place yesterday evening. We've had a profitable day, sir.”

“Good! Now, I know everyone around Lordshills who raises or keeps horses. Is there anything else you'd like to find? Anything marketable, I mean.”

“I would like to find those cursed birds gone,” Green Stone said.

Sandry grunted agreement.

“I don't want to be misunderstood, Lord,” Green Stone said. “I know how much effort goes into tending boneheads. Bison aren't much better.
Of course
horses will be expensive. If you ask too much, we'll buy something else. Whatever you're selling, we'll take it or buy something else and count our costs at the end of the year and make our decisions.

“But our costs this year include damage done by flocks of terror birds, and four men dead, and a girl. They've never come in flocks before. They seem to come from the south and east. We approach Tep's Town and Condigeo from the north. If the birds are…well, migrating…some of my wagonmasters are thinking of opening new routes further north. We can't keep losing people to the birds.”