Limits (16 page)

“Sparthera?”
He rubbed the side of his face and laughed dryly.
“Oh, ho.
The last time we saw one another you threw things at me. I think I still have a scar somewhere. You wouldn’t care to see it, would you? Ah, well, I thought not.”

He cocked his head to one side and nodded. “You’re still beautiful. Just like you were when I found you in that haystack.
Heh, heh, heh.
I like you better with hair, though. What happened to it?”

“I swore an oath,” she said shortly, wondering a little at what passing time could do to a man. He had been a good thirty years old to her fourteen when they met. Now she was twenty-six, and he was potbellied and sweaty, with a red face and thinning hair and lecherous little eyes. He wore felt slippers with toes that turned up, and five layers of brightly striped woolen
robes. He scratched now and then, absentmindedly.

But he still had the big, knowing
hands,
and strong shoulders that sloped up into his neck, and hadn’t he always scratched? And he’d never been thin, and his eyes couldn’t have shrunk. The change was in her. Suddenly she hungered to get the matter over with and leave Shubar Khan to the past, where he belonged.

“I’ve come on business. I want you to fix something for me.” She held out the piece of bronze. “It’s supposed to be a pointer, but it doesn’t work.”

A small dirty hand reached for the pointer. “I can fix that!” Sparthera spun around, reaching for her knife.

“My apprentice,” Shubar Khan explained. “How would you fix it, boy?”

“There’s a storm coming up.” The boy, hardly more than twelve, looked at his master with sparkling eyes. “I can climb a tree and tie the thing to a branch high up. When the lightning strikes—”

“You short-eared offspring of a spavined goat!”
Shubar bellowed at him. “That would only make it point to the pole star—if it didn’t melt first—and if it were iron instead of bronze! Bah!”

The boy cringed back into the gloom of the hut, which was filled with dry bones, aborted sheep foetuses, and pig bladders stuffed with odd oin
t
ments. There was even a two-inch-long unicorn horn prominently displayed on a small silk pillow.

Shubar Khan peered at the silver runes. He mumbled under his breath, at length. Was he reading them? “Old Sorcerer’s Guild language,” he said, “with some mistakes. What is it supposed to point
at
?”

“I don’t know,” Sparthera lied. “Something buried, I think.”

Shubar Khan unrolled one of the scrolls, weighted it open with a couple of bones, and began to read in a musical foreign tongue. Presently he stopped.
“Nothing.
Whatever spell was on it, it seems as dead as the gods.”

“Curse my luck and your skill! Can’t you do anything?”

“I can put a contagion spell on it for two pieces of silver.” He looked her up and down and grinned.
“Or anything else of equal or greater value.”

“I’ll give you the coins,” Sparthera said shortly. “What will the spell do?”

Shubar Khan laughed until his paunch shook. “Not even for old time’s sake? What a pity. As to the spell, it will make this thing seek whatever it was once bound to. We’re probably lucky the original spell wore off. A contagion
spell is almost easy.”

Sparthera handed over the money. Gar’s treasure had already cost her far too much. Shubar Khan ushered her and his apprentice—loaded down with phials, a pair of scrolls, firewood, and a small cauldron—to a steep crag nearby.

“Why do we have to come out here?” Sparthera asked.

“We’re just being cautious,” Shubar Khan said soothingly. He set up the cauldron, emptied a few things into it, lit the fire the apprentice had set, and handed the apprentice the bronze teardrop and one of the scrolls. “When the cauldron smokes, just read this passage out loud. And remember to enunc
i
ate,” he said as he grabbed Sparthera’s arm and sprinted down the hill.

Sparthera looked uphill at the boy, “This is dangerous, isn’t it?
How dangerous?”

“I don’t know. The original spell isn’t working, but there may be some power left in it, and there’s no telling what it might do. That’s why magicians have apprentices.”

They could hear the boy chanting in his childish treble, speaking gi
b
berish, but rolling his Rs and practically spitting the Ps. The clouds that had been gathering overhead took on a harsh ominous quality. The wind came up and the trees whipped and showered leaves on the ground.

A crack of lightning cast the entire landscape into ghastly brightness. Shubar Khan dove to the ground. Sparthera winced and then strained her eyes into the suddenly smoky air. There was no sign of the boy. Thunder rolled deafeningly across the sky.

Sparthera ran up the hill, heart thumping. The top of the crag was scorched and blackened. The iron cauldron was no more than a twisted blob of metal.

“Ooohhh!”

Shubar Khan’s apprentice pulled himself to his feet and looked at her with huge eyes. His face was smudged, his hair scorched, and his clothing still smouldered. He held out a blackened fist with the bronze piece still in it.

“Did,
did…
did it work?” he asked in a frightened croak.

Shubar Khan retrieved the pointer and laid it on his palm. It slowly r
o
tated to the right and stopped. He grinned broadly and patted the boy heartily on the shoulder.

“Excellent! We’ll make a magician of you yet!” He turned to Sparthera
and presented the pointer to her with a bow.

She tucked it inside her tunic. “Thank you,” she said, feeling a little awkward.

Shubar Khan waved a muscular red hand.
“Always pleased to be of service.
Spells, enchantments, and glamours at reasonable rates.
Maybe someday I can interest you in a love philtre.”

Sparthera rode back down the mountain trail with the bronze teardrop tucked in her tunic, feeling its weight between her breasts like the touch of a lover’s hand. Just above Tarseny’s Rest she reined up to watch a small herd of gazelle bound across a nearby hill. Someday she would build a house on that hill. Someday, when she had Gar’s treasure, she would build a big house with many rooms and many fireplaces. She would have thick rugs and fine furniture, and there would be servants in white tunics embroidered with red leaves.

She spurred her horse to the crest of the hill. Down below were the river and the town, and across the valley were more hills, leading away to distant mountains.

“I’m going to be rich!” she yelled. “Rich!”

The echoes boomed back.
“Rich, rich, rich!” until they finally whi
m
pered into silence.
Twilight nickered and pulled at his reins. Sparthera laughed. She would have many horses when she was rich.
Horses and cattle and swine.

She could almost see the hoard trickling through her fingers in a cascade of gold and rainbow colors.
Money for the house and the animals and a dowry.

The dowry would buy her a husband: a fine, respectable merchant who would give her fat beautiful children to inherit the house and the animals. Sparthera took a last lingering look at the countryside before she swung herself back into the saddle. First, find the treasure!

She cantered back into town, put Twilight into the stable behind the lodging house, and went to her room. It was a tiny cubicle, with a pallet of cotton-covered straw and some blankets against one wall. Rough colorful embroideries hung on the wattle and daub walls: relics of the days at home on her father’s farm.
Another embroidery
was thrown across a large wooden chest painted with flying birds, and a three-legged chair with flowers ste
n
cilled on the back stood in one corner.

Sparthera uncovered the chest and threw open the lid. It was packed with odds and ends—relics of her childhood—and down at the bottom was a small pouch with her savings in it.

She opened the pouch and counted the coins slowly, frowning. The search might take weeks or months. She would need provisions, extra clothes, and a pack animal to carry them. There wasn’t enough here.

She would have to borrow or beg an animal from her family. She gr
i
maced at the thought, but she had little choice.

It was a four-hour ride to her father’s farm. Her mother was out in the barnyard, feeding the chickens, when she rode in. The elder woman looked at her with what might have been resignation.

“Run out of money and come home again, have you?”

“Not this time,” Sparthera said, dismounting and placing a dutiful kiss on her mother’s cheek. “I need a horse or an ass. I thought maybe father had one I could borrow.”

Her mother looked at her distastefully. “Always you dress like a man. No wonder no decent man ever looks at you. Why don’t you give up all those drunkards you hang around with? Why don’t you…”

“Mother, I need a horse.”

“You’ve got one horse. You don’t need another horse.”

“Mother, I’m going on a trip and I need a pack horse.” Sparthera’s eyes lit with suppressed excitement. “When I come back, I’ll be rich!”

“Humph. That’s what you said when you ran off with that no-good pot mender. If your father were here, he’d give you
rich
all right! You’re lucky he’s in the mountains for a week. I don’t know about horses. Ask Bruk. He’s in the barn.”

Her mother tossed another handful of grain to the chickens, and Spa
r
thera started across the dusty barnyard.

“And get yourself some decent clothes!”

Sparthera sighed and kept moving. Her next-older brother was in the loft restacking sheaves of last season’s wheat.

“Bruk?
Have you got an extra horse?”

He looked down at her, squinting into the light from the open barn door.
“Sparthera?
You haven’t been here for two months. Did you run out of pockets to pick, or just out of men?”

She grinned. “No more than you ever run out of women. Are you still
rolling Mikka in her father’s hay ricks?”

He climbed down from the loft, looking a little glum. “Her father caught us at it twelve days ago and now I’ve got to trade the rick for a marriage bed and everything that goes with it.” He was a big man, well muscled, with a shock of corn-colored hair, dark eyes, and full sensuous lips. “Lost your hair, I see. Well, they say that comes of not enough candle-wick. Find yourself a man and we’ll make it a double celebration.”

Sparthera leaned against a stall and laughed heartily.
“Caught at last!
Well, it won’t do you any harm, and beds aren’t as itchy as piles of hay. You ought to be glad. Once you’ve married you’ll be safe from all the other outraged fathers.”

“Will I though? They may just come after me with barrel staves. And I hate to cut short a promising career. Oh, the youngest daughter of the family in the hollow has grown up to be…”

“Enough, Bruk.
I need a horse. Have you got an extra one?”

He shook his head. “Twilight pulled up lame, did he?”

“No. I’m planning a trip and I need a pack animal.”

Bruk scratched his head. “Can’t you buy one in town? There are always horse dealers in the market square.”

“I know too many people in Tarseny’s Rest. I don’t want them to know I’m taking this trip. Besides,” she added candidly, “I don’t have enough money.”

“What are you up to, little sister?
Murder, pillage, or simple theft?”

“Oh, Bruk, it’s the chance to make a fortune!
A chance to be rich!”

He shook his head disgustedly. “Not again. Remember that crockery merchant?
And the rug dealer?
And that tink—”

“This time it’s different!”

“Oh, sure.
Anyway, we haven’t got a horse. Why don’t you steal one?”

This time it was Sparthera’s turn to look disgusted. “You can’t just steal a horse on the spur of the moment. It’s not like a pair of shoes, you know. You have to do a little planning and I don’t have the time. You’d never make a decent thief! You’d just walk in, grab it by the tail and try to walk out.” She pulled at her lower lip. “Now what am I going to do?”

They both stood there, thinking. Bruk finally broke the silence. “Well, if you only want it to carry a pack, you might make do with a wild ass. They break to a pack saddle pretty easy. There are some up in the foothills. I’ll
even help you catch one.”

“I guess it’s worth a try.”

Bruk found a halter and a long rope, and led the way across the cultivated fields and up into the hills. The landscape was scrubby underbrush dotted with small stands of trees. There were knolls of rock, and one small stream that ran cackling down the slope.

Bruk stopped to study a pattern of tracks. “That’ll be one…spends a lot of time here, too…yup, I’ll bet it hides over in that copse. You go left and I’ll go right. We’ll get it when it comes out of the trees.”