The Towers Of the Sunset (15 page)

He manages to get his boots and trousers off before he collapses. The lamp snuffs out with a tongue of the breezes he calls, and he sleeps, dreamlessly.

CRESLIN PICKS UP his pack, slings it over one shoulder.

“Well, young fellow, I wish I could afford your like,” Derrild rumbles softly. “But trading’s a thin business.”

Creslin nods. “I appreciate the thought.” Derrild cannot afford him for more than one reason, one being the blond girl in the next room. He shifts the pack and puts it over both shoulders, the sword harness where he can still reach the hilt. “You think Gerhard is the best bet?”

“Gerhard’s the only one who travels regularly to
Fairhaven, the only one who makes money at it. Demons know how, so watch your step. But it’s a sight faster than walking, if he’ll take you on. Or cheaper than paying wagon rates.” Derrild shrugs. “Take care, young fellow.” He eases toward the doorway.

Creslin takes the hint and follows.

“Father?” Lorcas steps down the stairs from the kitchen. “Is Creslin leaving now?”

“Yes,” Creslin answers, to spare Derrild the admission. “It’s time to go.” His eyes rest on her as he remembers how soft and warm she had felt.

“Then I need to say good-bye.” She steps around her father and up to Creslin, hugs him and kisses him, full on the lips and hard enough that Creslin starts to kiss her back before he remembers that her father is standing there.

Creslin is still blinking when she lets go of him.

“Good-bye…” Her voice is soft, telling him she knows that any platitudes about seeing each other again would be false.

“Good-bye.” His throat is dry, and his throat catches. He does not move until she steps back toward the staircase. “Good-bye,” he repeats.

She darts up the stairs.

“Well, best you be going.”

Creslin nods mutely and almost stumbles out the doorway onto the street.

“Try Gerhard.”

“I will.”

Click…

The door shuts before he is two paces away. He looks toward the house but can see no faces in the windows.

“Go see Gerhard,” Derrild has suggested, and having no better ideas himself, Creslin starts down the street; as good as the trader has been, he knows that his welcome will become thin indeed should he attempt to remain.

Hylin has not returned, and there is no point in leaving a note, since Hylin could not read it in any case.

Although his breakfast was as hearty as his dinner, although the sky is a clear blue, and although Lorcas has bestowed upon him a good-bye kiss that was not the most chaste of farewells-his steps lag, and when he whistles, the notes are coppered silver notes that do not quite materialize, notes that tremble upon the morning. At the end of the first block, he turns left, heading downhill, recalling what Derrild had not said about Gerhard.

Down in the yards next to the winding stream that flows into the river, he finds Gerhard. Unlike Derrild, who is big, Gerhard is fat, bulging out over his wide, brown-leather belt.

“Much as I would like the added protection, I cannot pay for another guard.” Gerhard shrugs.

Creslin knows that the man is both lying and telling the truth, but he cannot tell which half is true. “Fine. I need to get to
Fairhaven. You need another guard. You pay a token wage-say, a copper a day-and I’ll go with you.”

“That’s still too much. You have no horse, and you probably eat like one. You thin men are all alike, all appetite.”

Creslin shrugs, begins to turn away.

“All right. Take the dun mare at the end. You’ll have to put the bags on the main wagon. But you don’t get paid if you break anything.”

Creslin nods. He fully expects Gerhard to find some way not to pay him, but his main consideration is to get to
Fairhaven, to see the eastern wizards, and to observe quietly. There may be a place for him there. Cost is not nearly the consideration it once was, not with the nearly dozen golds he found in the dead bandit’s purse. Before he had left Derrild’s, he had slipped two of the coins into Hylin’s pack, hoping they would help the thin man.

His thoughts turn back to
Fairhaven. Can he discover what he is there? Or what his destiny might be? Or is he still just blindly running from Westwind? He shakes his head. If not
Fairhaven, then where can he turn? Certainly not back to Sarronnyn, but the Duke of Montgren might welcome any help.

As he unstraps the extra packs from the dun mare, another man approaches. He is heavy like Gerhard, and sloppy to boot, with stains covering a leather vest worn over a woolen shirt so faded that the original colors have melted into grays.

“You the extra guard?”

Creslin turns. “Creslin.”

“I’m Zern. You answer to me. Why are you unstrapping the packs?”

“Because Gerhard told me to. Told me to put them on the wagon, and to use this horse.”

“All right. You start up front with me as soon as you finish. We’re late already.”

Creslin’s expression is sober as he looks around the assemblage, taking in the two overloaded wagons, two pack mules, and the two other guards.

THE PALE-GRAY granite surface of the road does not glitter, although, from certain angles in full sun, the stones look nearly white. Each massive stone block is fitted to the next more smoothly than the fine marble floors of many palaces. Broad enough for more than two wagons abreast, this road stretches so precisely east and west that at high noon no shadows fall upon its surface, even where it drives between the ridges of the Easthorns and the not-quite mountains to the east and west of Fairhaven itself.

Gerhard’s wagons roll onto those granite blocks from the packed clay of the Certan road, past the toll station manned by white-clad road guards.

Derrild had not mentioned tolls, but the economics of the wizards’ efforts and the military implications are clear enough. The road is a weapon in itself, enabling cavalry and supplies to travel through the mountains and across the rolling plains and fields far faster than otherwise, even faster than on the flat and winding roads that cross Certis and Gallos. But the road has not spanned the Easthorns yet, although rumors indicate that the wizards continue to press forward, boasting of the not-too-distant day when it will and of the time when they will at last challenge even the mighty Westhorns.

But why has Certis let the wizards construct such a road? Creslin asks Zern.

“Who knows? Gerhard told me once, but I forgot. Something about the viscount getting a tithe. He gets some sort of cut and the free use of the road for his troops… something like that.” Zern’s face screws up, almost as an afterthought. “What’s it to you, pretty boy, anyway?”

“Not much. First time I’ve seen anyone charged to use a road.”

“Bet they don’t have roads like this where you come from.”

“You’re right,” Creslin agrees. “I’ve never seen a road like this.” He hasn’t, and while the engineering and the stonework are magnificent, he has that familiar sense of white wrongness shrouding the area. Not the road itself, but the rock walls flanking the sections where the road passes through the hills.

“Bet they don’t have much of anything where you come from.”

“Not much,” Creslin answers absently.

“Can you use that toy on your back?”

“I have, once or twice.” Creslin studies the almost unnoticeable grade of the stones and observes that the road is much lower than the surrounding hills, almost as if it were designed to rest on the underlying solid rock.

“For who? Some spice merchant with a private army?”

“A merchant named Derrild.”

“Who’d you work with?”

“Hylin.”

“Oh…” Zern’s heavy face screws up as though he is trying to remember something. “Wait! Is he a thin man, long nose, who just finished a run from Suthya?”

“Yes. I joined them on the way back.”

“Shit. Forget I said anything, all right?”

“Fine,” Creslin agrees, still preoccupied with the road and the white wrongness behind and around it.

Zern drops back… slowly, until he is even with the lead wagon, where Gerhard sits next to the driver on the high bench.

Creslin, puzzled by the sudden change in Zern’s attitude, extends his senses on the light breezes, fighting his way through the unseen white mist.

“… know who he is. The killer… the one I told you about. Took all of Frosee’s band single-handed.”

“… thought he might be-”

“… dangerous.”

“… Hardly. Dangerous to anyone who attacks us. Good cheap protection.” Gerhard laughs.

“… attack us? When has-”

“Forget it.”

Creslin, absently, widens the gap between himself and the wagon. Already the fields of southeast Certis have given way to forested hills that rise on ^ach side of the road, which is climbing, though less steeply than the hills, so that the roadbed almost seems to dig deeper into the rock from which it has been carved.

Feeling eyes upon him, he glances overhead but sees no white birds flying, nor any other bird.

The guards ride mechanically, and the wagons creak eastward on the hard granite, rolling solidly toward the white city, bearing sacks and boxes of who knows what from who knows where. In time, the guard named Pitlick rides up and suggests they trade places. Creslin then rides behind the wagons, still feeling the eyes of an unseen watcher, or watchers, upon him.

MUCH AS THE wagons rolled onto the wizards’ road and past the toll station, they roll off. Except that this time there is a paved road, also of smoothed granite blocks, leading at right angles to the main highway.

Gerhard is talking to the toll collector, another of the guards dressed in white and wearing white armor. Whatever the trader has said, the collector appears interested, nodding his head before waving the merchant on.

Creslin looks at the gentle slope upward. Beside the road grows only a thin, crawling grass, not even bushes or low trees-just grass, reaching halfway up the slopes of the hills.

The road-building is something that Creslin still fails to understand. Why does the road tend to be slightly lower, straight and fine as it is, rather than higher than the ground around it? But the builders have taken the runoff problem into account, as shown by the continuous stone-lined drainage ditch on the right-hand side.

He frowns. The military uses of the road are obvious. But why build a road where an enemy could hide above it in some cases? He almost gathers the winds to cool him as he ponders, for they tend to blow above the road rather than upon it.

Then he nods. The wizards do not fear archers. They fear other wizards, those who can lash fire-presumably-at an exposed target. Even Creslin has trouble in directing the breezes onto the road.

Still, he suspects that either Heldra or Aemris would have little difficulty in turning the road against its builders.

“Straight ahead,” Gerhard bellows. “The trade stop is straight ahead.”

Creslin nudges the dun mare in the direction indicated by the fat trader’s voice, letting the sun warm his back as he rides northward. In less than a kay, he reaches the top of a hill from where he can see before him tents of all colors and sorts, many of them patched with odd-shaped and off-colored cloth.

“Pitlick! Get on up there and scout out a site. You know what we need. Damned wizards. Rules…” Gerhard’s voice drops off.

Creslin tries to discern the meaning behind the mutter-ings, but there is neither meaning nor coherency.

“Zern!”

“Yes, ser!” The guard leader drops farther behind Creslin and matches pace with the trader’s wagon. He leans toward the trader as he rides.

“… once we get passes… Pitlick… location… pay off silverhead…”

“… before we set up?”

“… not until you get Turque…”

Creslin strains to pick up the words passing between the two men, but with the low pitch of their voices, and the squeaking and rumbling of the wagons, he is unsuccessful.

“… pay him… agreed, plus a silver as a bonus.”

“… a silver! I… we…”

“… you want to be in his boots, Zern?”

“… Turque… I wouldn’t bet-”

“… you want Turque… after you?”

“… all right…”

Creslin is not surprised, but wonders who or what Turque is. In the meantime, he rides the dun mare toward the tents, toward the dust and the noise of trade.

Zern eases his horse up beside Creslin and his mount. “Why don’t we go straight to
Fairhaven?” asks Creslin. “We can’t. Only food gets traded in
Fairhaven, unless you live there. They don’t like traders in the city.”

“You can’t even go into the city?”

“Didn’t say that, young fellow!” Zern’s booming laugh sounds hollow. “They’ll take your money. You’ll see. They don’t talk to outsiders, not much anyway. So all the young fellows like you-I’ve seen’em walking through the streets, and the streets are… you wouldn’t believe them-but none of the old-timers go into
Fairhaven. It’s no fun there, no one to drink with, no games, and the local girls… forget that, too.”

“Everything is here?”

“Everything you’ll need.”

Not everything he will need, but Zern will not understand that. Creslin is silent as they stop by yet another gate for Gerhard to pay still another fee, mis one to permit them to enter the trading grounds.

“Pull the gate!” calls the gatekeeper, and the single beam swings wide.

Creslin follows Zern, trying not to sneeze at the fine dust that sifts upward with each step of the horses. After traveling for several hundred cubits down a snaking path between tents, Zern points to a red-and-gold flag waving on a slight incline at the north side of the grounds. Waving the flag is Pitlick, and the wagons roll up to him.

Within instants, Gerhard is on the ground, bellowing. “Get the tent, the big one, unrolled…”

Zern joins him, leaving his reins and mount to Creslin. In turn, Creslin ties his mount and Zern’s to the post where Pitlick’s mount is already tethered, then unstraps his pack.

He checks his gear, debates unsaddling the mare, then decides against it, since he does not know where the saddle and blanket should go.

The site Pitlick has chosen is to the north and perhaps three cubits higher than most of the rest of the trading grounds. A stream winds lazily across a field on the other side of a rail fence that marks the boundary of the traders’ activities.

Creslin surveys the vast spread of tents and listens to the sea of voices; he hears nothing except the sounds of greed and trade.

“…the best sea emeralds this side of the Westhorns.”

“… spices! Spices! Every spice you can imagine.”

“… fire wine, get your firewine here.”

The former consort wipes his damp forehead and looks toward Gerhard’s wagons. The trader still gives orders, but Zern is headed toward Creslin with a bag in his hand. “This is… where we… Creslin.” Zern’s voice stumbles, as though he has tried to rehearse what he says but has forgotten the script.

“The job’s over?”

Zern nods. “There’s a half-silver bonus there.”

“Very generous. I should go thank Gerhard, or was that your doing?” Creslin tries to keep his face blank, although his stomach twists at his words implying that he does not know.

“His doing.” Zern clears his throat. “Anyway… good luck.”

“Thank you.” Creslin affixes the sword harness to the pack, then shoulders both pack and sword. Zern watches as he adjusts the pack.     ‘t

Before he steps away from Gerhard’s wagons, where Pitlick is beginning to unroll a shapeless heap of canvas that will soon become a tent, Creslin slips his pay into the inner pouch of his belt, glad enough for a few more small coins. At least he will not have to show the golds from Frosee or convert the gold links of the cabin into coin. Not yet.

“… famous pots from Spidlar. The best purple glazes of Suthya.”

“See the copper as hard as steel.”

Creslin snorts at the boast of the armorer. No bronze could match good Westwind steel. He raises his eyes and surveys the tents and the men and women coming and going. Not ten cubits from him, a black-haired woman, shapely and garbed in almost transparent silksheen, trails a thin man with a huge curled mustache. She wears sadness and a set of chains, light iron shackles, almost decorative in nature. Her eyes catch his, fall on his silver hair. She shakes her head minutely and mouths words he cannot catch before a jerk on the chain sends her reeling toward the mustached man, who has not even looked back.

Creslin sees the whiteness trapped behind the cold iron, and swallows. Seeing beyond the merely visible gives him more than chills at times.

“… raw woods. Cedars from Hydlen. Hard pine from
Sligo.”

“… ointments for any ill! Any ill at all!”

He has taken no more than several dozen steps, crossing behind a wagon filled with lengths of lumber, when a white-blond woman, enormously endowed, revealing those endowments through silksheen that hides nothing, steps forward. The white-blond goddess of love is followed by a man who, at first glance, stands more than a cubit taller than Creslin. Creslin’s second glance also catches sight of wrists as thick as roof beams.

“A western man…” Her voice is a throaty whisper meant only for him, and her smile is an invitation. She steps closer, and the scent of ryall and woman enfold him. She takes another step.

Creslin waits, his eyes taking in the erect nipples on the high, full breasts, the delicate collar bones, the not-quite-full and pouting red lips…

Idiot!

From whence comes the thought, Creslin does not know, but he blinks and forces himself to look beyond his eyes.

He swallows, nearly retching. While the woman is not ugly, the whiteness that swirls around her, suffused with angry red, reeks of evil, and the white-blond hair is merely white, the eyes promising another kind of oblivion.

“So… he can more than see.” The words are still throaty, whispered but rasping, like those of a speaking snake.

No one seems to notice them; a heavyset guard walks by less than a cubit away, oblivious to their presence.

“But they cannot-”

He starts to step back, but his muscles do not seem to move.

The giant behind the white-shrouded woman steps forward, and each step vibrates the hard ground. The only saving grace Creslin can see is that the man carries a broadsword big enough to use as a lever for boulders. A sword… perhaps. Except that Creslin cannot each reach for his own sword. He reaches for what he can-his thoughts-and they grasp for the high winds overhead, for the thin line that ties them to the storms and thunders that rule the Roof of the World.

“Struggle, little silver-head. I love to watch men struggle.”

The giant pauses, his hand on the hilt of the massive sword.

Creslin strains, bending the high winds down… down… grasping for the water, for the ice within the air.

… wwwhhhssssSSSTTTTT!

Around him, Creslin can hear the canvas of the tents begin to flap in the wind and sense the haze forming in the air above.

The woman’s mouth turns into an “O,” but her movements seem gelid as Creslin seizes the winds and flings them across the whiteness that infuses her.

Lightning flares somewhere, and hailstones begin to patter down on canvas and traders alike.

Aeeeüi… The cry is snuffed out, and the whiteness vanishes.

Creslin jerks out of his paralysis. So does the giant, who takes in the ice-covered figure on the ground and brings forth the broadsword. Creslin darts back, grabbing his own sword, shrugging out of his pack, and moving fast.

The big man is quick, very quick, and Creslin cannot try to reestablish his hold on the winds, not if he wants to survive beyond the instant. So he dodges, parrying. Blades caress, for Creslin knows that he can do no more than slide the other’s blade.

Cling… clunk. His whole arm rings, but he steps inside, twisting…

The giant tries to swing the sword for a last time, but Creslin’s arm blocks the swing at the locked wrists. The man looks stupidly at him and collapses into a heap.

“What’s that?”

“Turque and her man!”

Creslin replaces his sword without wiping it clean. Then he sweeps up his dropped pack with one hand and hurries away, twisting behind tents, hastening toward the road, betting that more than a few traders will not be displeased to see the giant dead. Turque is another question, but he did not seem to have a choice.

A silent question strikes him, and he looks overhead just in time to see the wide-winged white bird vanish into empty air, air that swells into more than the brief hailstorm Creslin has called.

The wind continues to whip through and around the tents, and the warm air has already begun to cool as Creslin reaches the road. He swallows, thinking of the white bird. Megaera? Had she voiced the warning? Why? Who is she, and what does she want? He shivers, feeling colder than the ice he has flung around the White Witch called after him by Gerhard.

Is it wise to go to
Fairhaven?

But where else can he discover who and what he is?