The Burning City (57 page)

“I remember when dragon nip grew taller,” Hermit said. It was morning, and he wasn't likely to be interrupted. Morth and Whandall were eating.
“Thousand years ago. I think it learned to grow shorter than what dragons could pull up. Plants do fight back, you know.”

The pot was clean. Whandall licked his bowl. He wondered if he was being rude, but the Hermit was amazingly rude, and so what?

Morth asked, “What did you tell them, down there?”

“Nothing,” Whandall said.

“They'll be going crazy. I'd better send a message.”

The rainbow-colored crow came at his call. It settled on his shoulder, listened to a whispered message, then winged away.

Morth said, “We should be going too.” He didn't stand up.

Hermit picked up a hollowed-out ram's horn. He asked, “Want to ride down?”

“Ride?”

The Hermit blew into the horn. Morth and Whandall winced away from a blast of sound, the sound of Behemoth screaming. Faintly an echo rose from below. No, wait, that wasn't…

From behind a granite mass too small to hide him, Behemoth stepped into view, and
reached.
Whandall threw himself flat beneath nostrils big enough to swallow a wagon. “I believe I'll walk—”

“Yes, indeed,” Morth babbled, “but thank you
very
much—”

“Come visit any time,” Hermit said. “People
do
visit. They never hurt me or rob me. It's getting rid of them, that's the trick. They taught me to be rude.”

“They did not,” Morth said immediately.

The Hermit snickered. “Well. No, but I get tired. The cursed
language
changes every few years and I have to learn to talk all over again. I do get lonely, though. Come again.”

The wagon was in sight, and Green Stone was closer yet and climbing. Morth said, “It wasn't just different customs. He's crazy.”

Whandall smiled. “Likable, though. He keeps giving things away. Anyone who comes here for the spices will
have
to climb, I think, and be glad he did.”

Then Green Stone, gasping too hard to speak, was nonetheless demanding where they'd been for two days and nights.

Three bison-drawn wagons were in view, way off down the road.

When Whandall's wagon reached the flats, they were closer yet. His own bison were glad to stop and graze while they waited. Whitey loped off west to make contact.

Feathersnake's other wagon and two Puma wagons pulled up around
sunset. Carver told him, “We were worried. A talking bird isn't a message we could verify.”

“Did bandits give you any trouble?”

“No. This last village, there wasn't anyone in it. You didn't—”

“I never touched them! They just ran away. Must have thought you'd bring Behemoth down on them.”

The two Puma wagons rolled past the New Castle's gate. The Feathersnake wagons stopped. Green Stone helped Lilac down. Whandall waved Morth back before Morth could join them.

Where was everyone? “We sent the cursed bird,” he said.

“We'll take care of it,” Green Stone said. “Go on, Father.”

“Tell Willow that I have brought Morth of Atlantis and will take him to Road's End. He will not be coming in.”

“Right.”

Whandall set his own wagon moving and looked behind to see Carver's wagon following. They had left considerable cargo in Green Stone's care. He didn't intend to pay storage and tax on all of this!

Every wagon fit to roll was gone from Road's End. The two Puma wagons were on their sides, stripped of their covers and their wheels. Puma guarded stacks of cargo. Carver went searching for the repair crew. Chief Farthest Land's men had to be found to open the warehouses—

“I could do that,” Morth said.

“Better if they don't know it. Hello, that's…” Whandall called,
“Twisted Cloud!”

“Whandall Feathersnake!” Twisted Cloud made her way toward them, but she was limping. Two boys ran ahead of her. “You're back in good time!”

“Yes, but why aren't you with the caravan?”

“I broke an ankle. Patch of mud wasn't dry yet. It's almost healed, but I
couldn't stand at all when the caravan rolled. I had to send Clever Squirrel.” Her daughter, Coyote's daughter. Whandall's daughter, some would say. An obligation if Twisted Cloud cared to make it one, but she never had, beyond the wagon Whandall had bought for her daughter. “The wagon's hers, and she's old enough now.”

“She was born old enough. Twisted Cloud, this is Morth of Atlantis, of whom you've heard tales. You're both wizards—”

“Yes, I can see the glow,” Twisted Cloud said.

“And you, there's a familiarity. Like Whandall. A god has been in you?”

She blushed. “Well… yes.”

The boys watched and listened with interest. Boys would not be introduced until they discovered their names… as Green Stone found malachite in a cave, or as his father's tales of the Black Pit shaped Saber Tooth's dreams.

“Did you come to join the caravan?” Twisted Cloud asked.

Morth said, “Yes, to reach the Burning City.”

Whandall said, “I fear Morth has been sniffing raw gold—”

“Whandall, I can't tell you more! Your mind is open to too many gods, and the gods of fire and trickery all seem to be related.”

Twisted Cloud said, “But the wagons are all gone!”

Whandall said, “Yes. Morth, they left when we did, as soon as the Hemp Road became passable. You'll be here until spring. That gives you most of a year to come to your senses!”

“And then the caravan goes only as far as the Firewoods,” Twisted Cloud said.

“Curse,” Morth said. “I'd lose all the power I gained on the mountain.”

Whandall noticed that the band around the Puma wagons had grown. “I need to do some business,” he said.

“I'll scrape up a meal for us,” Twisted Cloud offered.

“Here, I brought back some spices.”

Chief Farthest Land's men made meticulous records as Whandall stored his gatherings. They took a percentage of the estimated value. It was worth it to most traders, and to Whandall too, up to a point. The New Castle was the only hold in these parts that could be called safer than the Chief's safehouse.

Then again, like the Spotted Coyotes, or the Toronexti in Tep's Town, Chief Farthest Land
insisted.

No doubt the Chief knew—
very
likely his clerks knew—that not everything Whandall brought home came this far. He had never made a point of it, and Whandall didn't abuse the privilege.

Whandall completed arrangements for repairs on his own wagons. Puma had arrived first; their wagons would be repaired first. Give them
Morth's preserving box full of Whandall's spices to carry to Great Hawk Bay. They'd be back before the autumn rains.

He returned to Twisted Cloud's fire and a rosemary-flavored bison stew.

Morth's youth, restored in the Stone Needles, had gone to hale middle age. Twisted Cloud had put on some weight since their encounter with Coyote, and birthed six children too, four still alive. Still a good-looking woman, she had a round face made for laughter.

“The tribes just don't get it,” she chortled. “They think I should have seen it coming and walked around the mud patch!”

“It's like looking at the tip of your own nose,” Morth agreed. “Your own future is all blurred. I saw the great wave from the sinking of Atlantis and missed the sinking itself!”

“Got clear, though.”

“Lucky. Fated. Whandall told you? But there are things he couldn't have known….”

There were three guesthouses at Road's End: low pits with tents over them. Rutting Deer and Mountain Cat ran these and lived in one. In the absence of her wagon, Twisted Cloud was using one. Her boys had moved Morth's baggage into the third while he took care of some business matters.

Now the wizards were verbally dancing around each other, each trying to learn what the other knew, hoarding secrets for later trade. Whandall tried to follow their talk, feeling more and more left out. Presently he went off to his travel nest to sleep.

Without a wagon and team it was only a four-hour walk home. Whandall and Carver didn't hurry. Evening fell, and a long twilight. It might be the last peace they saw in some time.

The pile of goods was gone from the New Castle's gate. They parted there. Carver went on to the Ropewalk. Whandall went in.

The New Castle was a household disrupted by sudden marriage. Willow had put Green Stone and Lilac in the guesthouse. Stone's room wasn't enough to house two, and the noise… well, newlyweds were
expected
to be noisy. It was hours before Whandall and Willow could retire.

The bird had returned to Willow. “He's a good messenger,” she said, “but next time,
you
speak the messages. I still flinch from Morth's voice.”

“I will. And we have a wish coming.” Whandall grinned in the dark. “Yes, we have a wizard's boon. There were two, but I used one. You awake?”

“Tell it.”

He launched into his story. “Morth blessed Lilac and Green Stone's marriage,” he concluded. “Now we've reached Road's End, so he owes us a second wish. He'll find someone to take him to Tep's Town. He'll die there, I think. We should collect before he goes south, but that won't be before spring.”

“What shall we wish for?”

“Something for Saber Tooth? If he was affianced I wouldn't even hesitate,
but we've got a married daughter now. We can give the wish to Hawk In Flight, or her firstborn. Too bad we'll never get our third wish.”

“Our
lives are perfect?”

“Yeah.”

“Just asking.” Willow stirred in his arms. “I thought of asking Morth to leave our family alone forever.”

“That's easy magic.”

“A waste. Some gift for our children's children? Ask him if he can do that.”

Hawk In Flight had never been happier than when planning her own marriage. Now, seven weeks a wife, she entered the field as an expert. She and Willow began planning a formal wedding for Lilac and Green Stone when the caravan returned.

The celebrants were seen only at mealtimes.

Whandall kept himself occupied.

The bison had been well kept, but they needed exercise. The men who worked the New Castle had complaints they could not bring to Willow. He must hear them out and make judgments. Two must be married. Two needed a shaman's attention (and six
thought
they did). A woman must be put on the road. Her man went with her, and now they'd need a new blacksmith.

Whandall went up to the graveyard by day to pull weeds and tend flowers. Willow visited the hives nearby. Whandall didn't go with her. Willow must keep treaty with the queen bees; they didn't deal well with men.

“But you didn't get stung?”

“No,” said Willow. She showed him bees still exploring her hands.

“Well, rumor says the Tep's Town bees are above First Pines this year. They mate with local queens, and then all the worker bees grow little poison daggers. Twisted Cloud calls them
killer bees.”

He went to the graveyard again at midnight to keep his peace with the dead, lest they grow restless. It was always freshly surprising, how the dead accumulated over a man's lifetime. Old friends; two children; no other family, and that was rare.

Whandall talked to them, reminiscing, while they hovered around him. It was hard to tell their thoughts from his own.

The twisted ghosts from Armadillo Wagon had raged at him for years after that business at the Ropewalk. Tonight they were not to be seen. Ghosts did fade… or perhaps the fools had tired of his jeering.

Three days of that, and then Lilac joined her prospective mother and sister. The servantwomen were drawn into that circle. The servantmen and
Green Stone showed the same sense of abandonment that Whandall could feel nibbling at his own composure.