Prisoner of Haven

1

Usha Majere breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the high granite wall surrounding Haven loom ahead. In the hour after sunrise, the granite shone with the new day’s rosy light.

A welcome beacon, Usha thought.

Around her, several of the eight travelers who’d been her companions for the trip from Solace lifted ragged cheers, and the group halted as if by unspoken accord. Usha shifted her seat in a saddle that had become harder and harder each mile of the journey. Others did the same, the two sons of Hann the miller, the baker and his wife who traveled to visit their daughter, an old soldier called Dog along for the pay, and Reetha, a pretty half-elf who thought she would find better work as a seamstress in Haven than in Solace. Rising in their saddles to get blood back into their legs and posteriors, stretching kinked muscles in arms and shoulders and necks, they looked like a more hopeful lot than they had in the last few days of the journey.

Usha turned at the sound of a bridle jingling behind her. Dezra, her husband’s sister, had a positively jaunty air about her, her high spirits infecting her red mare. Dezra controlled her head-tossing mount with a firm hand and a soft word, then cocked a wry grin when she saw Usha settling uncomfortably again in the saddle.

“You’re going to be about as limber as a two-by-four once you get down.”

“That would be a distinct improvement,” Usha murmured.

“Ah, we’re almost there,” Dezra said, pointing. “Our luck held, and not a dark knight the whole way.”

With the forest behind, the road meandered through a small orchard, and out from there to bisect the recently harvested fields of wheat and barley. Beyond those fields lay Haven. Usha looked back to the road and the shadowed forest lining either side, then forward to the walls of Haven. The road between Haven and Solace had become a dangerous one, and the tales of travelers waylaid by the occasional opportunistic robber now mingled with tales of folk harassed by dark knights.

Usha settled the saddle bags across the little palfrey’s withers. Her fingers lingered on the one containing her small store of carefully wrapped charcoals for sketching and the little sheaf of parchment leaves.

“Let’s go,” Dez said, her voice loud enough to carry to the folks at the back of the group.

Usha tugged up the hood of her jade green cloak, settling to let her thoughts drift to the sweeping shadows of clouds on the road. She had an artist’s eye for shape and shaping, and in the shadows she saw dreams and promise. In her mind’s eye she transformed the shapes into the first brush strokes of a painting as yet without form or theme or name.

Dezra did not have eyes for the patterns that shadows made. A sheathed sword hung near her knee, a dagger at her belt, and a skirt’s hem did not hamper her. She rode comfortably in breeches and leather shirt, the heels of her boots the proper height to make a stirrup safe. As she had every day of the journey, she kept a hand near her quiver of arrows and an eye on the way ahead.

Usha watched Dezra’s eyes glance now and then to the right or left, once or twice over her shoulder. She knew Dez didn’t worry too much about robbers. No band existed in Darken Wood these days that was large enough to give a party of their size any trouble. But Dezra and the others who bore weapons worried about dark knights prowling the roads or lurking in the glens and on the forest heights.

“Like they’re measuring the place and getting ready to move in,” Dezra’s father had grumbled when he stood on the breezy porch of the Inn of the Last Home and wished Usha and his daughter a safe journey. As Caramon spoke the porch and the inn itself had swayed gently in the arms of the great vallenwood tree that housed it. Beyond the inn the other houses of Solace, perched in their own trees, did the same, a town sighing in the summer morning. It was a motion that had taken Usha some time to learn to appreciate as soothing. Neither Dezra nor Usha discounted Caramon Majere’s opinion. Few knew the risks and hazards along way between Solace and Haven as well as this old warrior turned peaceable innkeeper. Caramon had lived in Solace most of his long life. It was true enough that, whatever the dark knights’ motive—and who could think it was a good one?—the minions of the dragon Beryl often crossed the racing White-rage River into free Abanasinia.

Usha looked up at fleecy white clouds wandering across a sky the color of a robin’s egg. She wanted to feel a slender brush in her right hand, the weight of her palette of pungent paint in her left. She wanted to change a white canvas into that breathing blue sky and wind-shepherded clouds.

“Stop right there!”

The cry cut through the early morning silence, sudden and loud. Usha’s heart leaped into her throat. The miller’s son reached for a sword, but Dezra stilled him with a sharp gesture.

“You want to get us all killed? And what in the name of dark gods are you going to do with that down here anyway?”

The boy’s face flushed in embarrassment or anger.

Quietly, Usha said, “Put your weapon up, Beren. We’re all right.” She nodded, just as though she believed it, and Beren sheathed the sword with a great show of reluctance.

In the shadow of the Haven wall, before the stoutly barred gates of the city, the little party reined in their horses. Usha glanced at Dezra. They were not kindred spirits, these two, nor kin except by Usha’s marriage to Dezra’s older brother, but neither failed to understand the other. Be still, said Dezra’s gesture, a motion of her hand barely seen in the darkness.

You needn’t worry about that, Usha affirmed with a slight inclination of her head.

Usha’s mount sidled. Behind her, the jangle of bridle iron clashed with the sound of her horse’s distress as the rest of the travelers contained their restive mounts. With a firm hand and soft whisper, she soothed her palfrey. Her hand steady on the reins, she looked up, trying to see who had called down to challenge.

“Oh, Dez, he’s a boy.”

Dezra crooked a grin and lifted her hand to shade her eyes from the glare of the sun.

“Who’s that?” she called. “Rinn Gallan, is that you shouting loud enough to wake the dead?”

Silence, like the pause between drum-beats, and the guard called down: “Dez? Dezra Majere, is that you?”

Usha let go a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

“Yes, and is that such a surprise?” Dezra snorted. “Don’t I always come down to Haven this time of year to get your uncle’s hops before anyone else can? What would my father’s ale be if we made it with any but good Haven hops? Nothing worth talking about. Now, open the gates and let us in, Rinn.”

The boy vanished from sight. Usha exchanged a relieved smile with Dezra as they heard his voice from behind the walls. “Open!” he shouted. “Open to friends!”

Someone cursed the weight of the great oaken beams that made the bars and shouted to others to “get over here and put yer backs into it!”

Usha lifted her face hoping to catch a breeze off the river, but the morning air was still. She was hungry, and she longed for a bath to soothe the aches of the journey.

The trip from Solace to Haven had seemed like a good idea last week. “Come with me,” Dez had said. “Haven is a fine place to be this time of year. Kern the baker and his wife are going down, the miller’s boys too, going to fetch two new wagons for their father. For the company of me and my sword, they’ll carry back what I buy for the inn. And I don’t think we’ll have any trouble convincing old Dog to take his sword down from the wall and come along for a chance to tour the wine shops and taverns. We’ll go get the inn’s supplies for this year, a fine little party of convenience—and have some fun.”

She had not said Usha looked like a woman who needed some time away, even a little fun. Around the Inn of the Last Home no one actually said that, though they all thought so, from Dez herself, to her sister Laura, to their father, dear old Caramon. Saying so would have meant talking about Palin, Usha’s husband long gone from their home. No one liked to talk about that, certainly not Usha whose fears for Palin’s safety mirrored those of his family.

About her private fears, Usha gave not the least indication—that her husband’s prolonged absence, the latest of several, each parting made after bitter quarrels, meant a more personal trouble between them.

And so Usha had been glad to go to Haven with Dez and their friendly little “party of convenience”—or she had been when it seemed they would accomplish the journey quickly. Now, after days of delay caused by the broken bridges and blocked roadways of a road fallen into disrepair, after nights listening to the sounds of the forest and hoping they were not hearing the sounds of bandits or dark knights roaming, the idea of a trip to Haven had lost its luster.

“Ho!” a rough voice called. “Beware the gates!”

Usha backed her little mare, Dezra did the same, and those behind them moved off the road as the broad oaken gates swung outward. One of the gate wardens waved the riders in, and the others surged ahead, leaving Usha and Dez behind as they went to search for inns. The baker and his wife bade them warm farewell, and the sound of their horses faded into the voice of the city as it rushed to meet them. The shrill calls of children mixed with the groan of wagon wheels, the snarling of yellow dogs, and housewives emptying slops out the windows of the shabby little houses huddled inside the walls. Beyond that was a deeper murmuring, like the rise and fall of the sea too distant to make its voice heard here.

Rinn Gallan, freckled face burnished by the sun, red hair thickly curling, greeted Dezra gladly. “Sorry about all the hollering, Dez. It’s hard times on the wall these days, what with them dark knights slinking along the roads and sniffing around Haven itself. Let ’em stay in Qualinesti, I say. Let ’em leave us honest folk alone.”

“Honest elves might have wished as much before the dragon came, Rinn, my friend. But I hear you. Too many strangers on the road. We worried, too, coming down from Solace.”

The boy shrugged. “Everyone’s worrying. But it’s good to see you, Dez. There’s a place at the High Hand Tavern fer ya, same as always and—” He stopped, round blue eyes growing rounder when Usha turned back the hood of her jade cloak. “Lady Usha,” he said, his voice hushed with awe.

Usha knew the hush would be followed by the small intake of breath. Sometimes it was for her, the golden-eyed woman whose hair curled in silver locks around her face and neck—not the silver of age, but an ageless silver even the fair elves had been known to envy. There, with the daylight still new in the sky, she glowed like a fresh-faced maiden and not a woman who had been long years married and the mother of grown children. Sometimes the hush was for her beauty, and sometimes because the person knew of her husband.

Rinn stammered, “It’s ... it’s been a while since we’ve seen you here.”

Usha didn’t remember the boy, not his name or his face. It had been longer than “a while” since she’d been to Haven. Perhaps five years or more, and this youngster, with hardly sixteen years to him, would have been an urchin scrambling in the streets then. Still, she smiled and greeted him, bracing for the next question.

“How is Lord Palin?” Rinn asked. “We don’t much hear about him in Haven these days. Is he well?”

Lord Palin. The son of an innkeeper, Palin Majere had been ennobled for his deeds of courage and magic thirty years before during the Chaos War and for his subsequent leadership of the order of White Mages. His wife had been ennobled by her marriage to the great mage. That same great mage who had not graced hearth and home in many months, nor spoken or delivered the merest word to explain his absence.

Dezra stepped briskly into the answer Usha couldn’t give. “My brother’s been away, Rinn. We think he’s working to heal the broken magic, but... well, we don’t know more than that.” She glanced at Usha, who added nothing to the time-worn family justification. “Well, these years after the gods leaving haven’t been an easy time for mages. Or any of us.”

“That’s truth, Dez. Ain’t but a mage or two left in Haven with the will or the way to work magic anymore. It’s all like a lamp run too low, flickerin’ and spittin’ and doing hardly anyone any good. Poor fellers. Must be hard to fly so high in the hands of the gods, then fall so far when gods up and walk away.”

Then, realizing that he was speaking pityingly of the great mage to Palin’s own wife, Rinn cleared his throat, his cheeks flushing as his young voice betrayed him only a little by breaking.

“But since bad news travels fastest, I guess you can say no news is good news.” Rinn shrugged. “Welcome to Haven, Lady Usha. And I’ll tell ya, it won’t be no easy goin’ in the city this morning.”

Curious, Usha would have asked why, but beyond the boy’s shoulder she saw the answer. A thick crowd clogged the winding road into the city proper, at their head came two rows of riders, six mounted men in the blue and silver livery of Haven’s lord mayor, and after them the same number of soldiers in like colors, their chain-mail burnished, their weapons gleaming.

“A good showing,” Dez murmured. “Who do you think it is?”

“No idea,” Usha said.

The two watched as several carriages came into view—gleaming harness, proud horses, a footman or two to show the folk coming to watch how the wealthy attended a funeral. Usha looked back along the line of the procession and saw people standing on either side of the road, the lines extending far back into the city proper. Humans and dwarves, a few elves, and a minotaur, head and shoulders over the rest. Here, then, was the source of that sea-like murmur they’d heard when the gate opened.

“Who has died?” Usha asked, but Rinn was already scrambling up the nearest ladder in answer to a sharp order from above to return to his watch.

Dezra shrugged. “Someone important enough to bring out the city.” She jerked her head at the procession. “All this is going to keep us here a while.”

The wealthy passed, and the coffin came into view. It was richly carved, covered with a many-colored tapestry, and carried on a broad bier by four stout servants. The woman riding the widow’s darkly-dressed horse came closer. The horse shook its head, disturbing the rider. She moved for balance and her veil slipped aside, displaying her face to the crowds come to honor grief or gather gossip. The parted veil showed a long bony face, like a horse’s someone once said, with teeth which, while white and even, were quite prominent. The skin of her face and neck was as red as though it had been flayed by a sea-wind, and thickly freckled.

“Aline!” Usha breathed.

“Who?”

“Aline Caroel.”

Dezra’s frown still said, “Who?”

Usha glanced at the bier and corrected herself. “Aline Wrackham.”

“Wrackham. That name I know. Huh.” Dez watched the coffined remains of the wealthiest man in Haven, arguably the wealthiest man in this part of Abanasinia, pass by. “That’s not good. There’s going to be a lot of scrambling around in the counting houses if the widow calls in Wrackham’s debts. You suppose she’s as tight-fisted as her husband?”

Usha shook her head. “She is not.”

“You sound like you know her.”

“I do. She married Lir Wrackham because of... because Palin and I asked her to.”

Dez’s eyes widened. “The story gets better and better. My brother never told the family about you two being matchmakers.”

Usha shrugged. There was much Palin hadn’t talked about in the past few years. “Have you heard of Qui’thonas?”

Dez had, but as most people, she knew Qui’thonas only by rumor. The word was Elvish for “the path away.” And, like many, she’d heard whispered tales of a secret organization that helped elven refugees out of captive Qualinesti and saw them safely to freedom in Abanasinia.

Her curiosity piqued, Dez glanced at her brother’s sister. “I’ve heard it’s run by Laurana, the Qualinesti Queen Mother.” She pulled a wry smile. “And I’ve heard it’s funded by humans in Abanasinia.”

Usha watched Lir Wrackham’s widow riding by. “The truth lies somewhere in between, but that woman has fed both the spirit and the purse of Qui’thonas. She gave her life to it, her youth and her heart.”

The line of mourners passed, winding away to the part of Haven where the cemeteries lay on the high ground away from the river. Usha watched it go, thinking how Palin had asked for her help when Qui’thonas was in danger of falling apart. He’d told her no one could ensure that the mission—“The marriage,” Usha had corrected him—would go well the way she could. “You are magic,” he’d said to her, not only then, but later, at night when she went into his arms.

They had been hopeful then. She and her husband had still been lovers, then.

Usha watched the last of the mourners go by until Dezra jogged her elbow, inclining her head toward a tall young man at the edge of the crowd. He wore much-mended clothing, and his boots were scuffed and worn at the heels. He kept to the back of the procession, hanging around the rougher edges of the crowd.

“Looks like he’s up to no good,” Dezra murmured.

At first glance, Usha agreed, thinking he was a pick-pocket looking for a mark in the crowd. A second, closer look and she saw past the beard and the shabby clothing to the high-boned shape of his face, the aristocratic hook of his nose. In that moment, the young man’s intense brown eyes met hers, and Usha felt a shiver of recognition.

“I thought him long gone from Haven.”

The crowd thinned, onlookers drifting back to their homes and businesses now that the grieving and gaudy were gone. Dezra urged her mount forward into the narrow street. “You know him, too?”

Usha looked over her shoulder, but the man was gone, vanished into the shadows of a high wall or down some secret alley. “He is Madoc ap Westhos,” she said. “They called him Madoc Diviner, in the days of magic. He accompanied Aline on her wedding journey from Solace.”

“To guard the bride?”

“And to make sure a wedding gift arrived for the groom from Palin and me. I’d painted a locket portrait for Aline to give her husband on their wedding day, for she was to marry a cold, old man.”

The narrow city street widened, on either side stretches of greensward and garden replaced taverns and humbler homes. Beyond, they saw the high stories of the houses of the wealthy and powerful, balconies on high, broad gardens surrounding. Amid them all, the Old Keep, a tower of granite, rose over the city. It had been built by dwarves from Thorbardin to defend Haven, long ago in the days when pirates ran up the river and lordless folk swarmed in from Darken Wood to raid. Still the proudest building in Haven, Old Keep now stood as an armory for the citizens who kept watch on the walls.

“So,” said Dez, looking around now for the High Hand Tavern. “Your friend Madoc carried a bride and a gift to Haven. Never left, eh? Well, some people don’t. The city’s not for me, not for long, but some people like it just fine.”

“Not Madoc. Madoc is—or was—the kind of man who stays long enough to build up a tavern debt, and never long enough to pay it off. But...”

“But?”

Dez turned her horse’s head down a shaded lane, and Usha followed.

“You know how some of my paintings are just... paintings, and some are ... more?”

Dez nodded. Most people who knew Usha knew that her reputation as a portrait painter was well deserved. Some knew there was more to her art than mere portraiture, something mystical, enchanting, and not wholly akin to the gods-given magic of mages like Palin Majere.

A thin youngster, all legs, skinned knees and pansy blue eyes called to them from the doorway of the High Hand. She shouted something about how her father had been expecting Dez some days ago. “But yer room’s all ready, just like always.”

Dez waved acknowledgement, but absently. The girl in the tavern doorway hopped out into the dooryard as the two women stopped. While Usha and Dez dismounted, she held the reins of each horse.

“This portrait wasn’t just a painting,” Usha said, handing her palfrey over to the care of the landlord’s daughter.

Dez cocked a grin, understanding. “A love token to charm an old miser? Nice. How did it work?”

Usha said nothing for a while, recalling the intense, starved look of Madoc Diviner’s dark eyes. “Very well,” she said at last. “But it worked on the wrong man.”