Taking Flight

Chapter Twenty-Six

The town surrounding Krithimion Keep actually had a name of its own, to distinguish it from the kingdom it dominated; it was the town of Krithim, with no ending.

Krithimionese, Irith explained as they neared the town, was a patois of Ethsharitic and Trader’s Tongue; if there had ever been a distinct native tongue, which she doubted, it was now extinct, or perhaps spoken by a few stubborn farmers somewhere.

“When I was a little girl,” Irith added, “people didn’t have all these silly languages. There weren’t half so many, and everybody knew Ethsharitic even if they didn’t speak it at home.”

“That must have been convenient,” Kelder acknowledged.

Krithim was the largest community he had seen since leaving Shan on the Desert, and a closer match to his original expectations for the Great Highway than anywhere else he had yet visited. The king’s castle stood almost half a mile to the south of the highway, and the entire distance from castle to highway appeared to be a network of streets and gardens and houses and shops. A few of the major avenues were even paved.

The Great Highway itself was not paved, but it was lined with plank sidewalks, inns, taverns, brothels, and shops, and three broad flagstone boulevards connected it to a generous market square that lay one block to the south.

An elaborate fountain occupied the center of the square, with a basin of red marble surrounding a white marble column topped by a statue of a woman pouring water from a jug, water that flowed endlessly. Smaller carvings of various sorts adorned the rim. Kelder was not accustomed to this sort of civic display.

For a moment he wondered if Krithim constituted a “great city,” but despite the urban niceties he decided it was just a large town — or perhaps a small city, but not a great one.

Children were running about the market in a vigorous game of tag, ducking out of each other’s reach, dodging back and forth. One of them took a short-cut through the marble basin, splashing wildly, and Kelder shouted a protest, but no one else seemed to mind, and the boy ignored him, so he let it drop.

Asha was watching the carefree game enviously; Ezdral was eyeing the wineshops. Kelder’s own feet were sore; they were out of the hills now, but the road from Ophera had been rocky in places.

“Oh, Hell,” he said, “I guess we’ll stay here today and go on tomorrow.”

Irith smiled radiantly at him.

“Where’s a good inn?” he asked.

“There are a couple of good ones,” Irith said thoughtfully.

“A cheap one,” Kelder suggested. “We still don’t have much money.”

“The Leaping Fish,” Irith declared.

“The Leaping Fish?” Kelder asked dubiously. “Why would they name it that?”

Irith shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, “but they did.”

“Are we near the sea?”

Irith giggled. “No, of course not!” she said. “It must be fifty miles to the sea from here!”

“A lake, then, or a stream?”

Irith shook her head. “They just call it that,” she said. “It’s over that way, on the Street of Coopers.” She pointed to the west.

Kelder nodded, and looked at the others.

It seemed to him that they had all seen quite enough of each other for awhile. “Asha,” he said, “you go on and play, if you like, but be at the inn for supper. The Leaping Fish, it’s called, over that way — if you can’t find it ask someone for directions.”

“All right, Kelder!” She ran off, and a moment later she was shouting and playing with the other children.

Kelder looked at Irith and Ezdral.

Ezdral was eyeing the wineshops — but he was also watching Irith. The love spell had as strong a hold as ever, and he wasn’t going to leave her side, not even to get liquor. Kelder sighed, trying to think what he should do.

Irith, however, had also seen the situation, and had her own solution. She vanished.

“Irith!” Ezdral screamed, “Irith, come back!”

People turned to stare at the green-clad old man, standing in the middle of the square, whirling about as if trying to look in every direction at once, groping madly with his arms outstretched, as if he were blind and searching for something.

“Ezdral,” Kelder shouted, grabbing one flailing arm, “Ezdral, it’s all right! She’ll be back! She’ll meet us tonight at supper, at the Leaping Fish!”

It took him several minutes to calm the old man; during that time, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a small, graceful black cat hurrying away, dashing between legs and scampering around boots. He saw the cat turn and deliberately wink at him before disappearing into an alley.

Ezdral did not notice the cat; he was too distraught to remember Irith’s other shapes. Kelder supposed that if he had seen the cat, he would have been in love with it — with her — but that had not happened.

Which was all for the best.

Eventually, Ezdral did calm down, and stood, drooping and silent, by Kelder’s side. “She’ll meet us tonight,” Kelder assured him.

Ezdral nodded dismally, and without a word headed for the nearest wineshop.

Kelder watched him go, and then looked around, realizing that he was alone in this pleasant and interesting place. He would have preferred Irith’s company, but he saw no sign that she was returning, and could not see any way to be with her out in the open without having Ezdral along — and he did not want Ezdral along, fawning over Irith, following her everywhere as closely as he dared, constantly lusting after her. The old man was terrible company.

Alone, then, in Krithimion — that wasn’t so terrible. He smiled, threw Asha a glance and a wave, and set out toward the castle with the intention of exploring the town a little before finding work.

An hour or so later, after he had had his fill of window-shopping, Kelder arrived at the castle gate, which seemed as likely a place as any to ask for employment. The gate was open, and two guardsmen were chatting idly in the archway.

“Hai,” Kelder called in Trader’s Tongue, “excuse me!”

The guards turned to consider him. They did not speak, giving him no clue as to whether or not they knew the language in its unadulterated form. Here on the Great Highway, though, they really ought to know it, Kelder told himself. He forged onward.

“Hello,” he said, approaching to a polite distance and still speaking Trader’s Tongue. “I’m passing through, and a little short of cash; would you happen to know of any way I might earn a little money around here?”

“There must be a dozen merchants in town...” one soldier began, in the same language, but his companion’s hand on his arm startled him into silence.

“You’re looking for a way to earn money?” the other asked, grinning.

Not pleased by the grin, Kelder nodded. “That’s right,” he said.

“Well, it just so happens,” the grinning soldier said, “that I know of a wizard who said he’d pay well for some help.”

Kelder did not like the guard’s attitude at all, but on the other hand he remembered that Irith had been paid in silver for her errand in Ophera. Wizards did have money, generally, and were free enough with it.

He suspected he had been badly underpaid for the work he had done in the last few towns, but as a beggar, to all intents and purposes, what could he do about it?

Here, though, he had a chance to do better — maybe.

“What sort of help?” he asked suspiciously.

“Oh, just help,” the guard said, exchanging a smirk with his comrade.

It couldn’t hurt to check it out, Kelder thought. “Where?”

“Senesson of Yolder, on Carter Street,” the guard said, pointing. “Down the hill here, turn left at the little blue shrine, turn right on the second cross street, and look for the shop with the green tile over the door.”

“Green...” Kelder said. “Green what?” He had never encountered the word for “tile” in Trader’s Tongue before.

“Green roof,” the guard said.

That Kelder understood. “Thank you,” he said, with a polite half-bow.

Down the hill he went, strolling slowly until he spotted the blue shrine — it was a fountain, built into the outside corner of a bakery, with a bright blue ceramic glaze lining it and a small golden statuette of a goddess, no more than a foot tall, set into the wall behind it. The gold leaf on the idol had flaked a little, and the water that sprayed from beneath the goddess’ feet was slightly discolored. He turned left, between the bakery and an iron-fenced garden.

The first cross-street was a muddy alleyway, but he counted it anyway, and turned right onto a narrow, deserted byway. He had gone almost three blocks, and was just deciding that he should not have counted the alley, when he spotted a shop with a rather complex facade. A five-sided bay window, its innumerable small panes hexagonal in shape, took up most of the ground level front, while the upstairs displayed turrets and shutters with elaborate carvings. The front door, just beyond the bay window, was of oiled wood bound in brass, with designs etched in the metal and monstrous faces carved in bas relief on the wood.

And above this door was a small decorative overhang, and on top of the overhang were three rows of curved green tile.

There was no signboard, and the window display was an incomprehensible array of arrangements of silver wire, but it looked like the right place, and when he stepped up to the door he found that the design etched into the brass bar at eye level included a line of Ethsharitic runes reading, “Senesson of Yolder, Wizard Extraordinary.”

Kelder was about to knock when the door swung open; before he could react even enough to lower his fist, a girl charged directly into him, knocking him back a step.

“Get out of the way, stupid,” she snarled in Ethsharitic.

“Excuse me,” Kelder said in the same language, “but I wanted to work...”

“So did I, but I won’t do it here!” She tried to push past him, and Kelder stepped back, but then he reached out and caught her arm.

She whirled, aiming a punch at his belly, but he sidestepped in time to miss most of it, keeping hold of her other wrist. She was short and thin, her strength unremarkable, so maintaining his grip was not particularly difficult.

“Wait a minute,” he said, inadvertantly slipping into the Trader’s Tongue he had been using almost exclusively for more than a sixnight, “I need to talk to you.”

She yanked her arm free, and he let it go. “I don’t speak that,” she said, still in Ethsharitic, “whatever it is.”

“Sorry,” he said, switching back to Ethsharitic. “I need to talk to you.” For the first time it occurred to him that she might have been speaking the Krithimionese patois — but then she would have understood Trader’s Tongue, surely.

“No, you don’t,” she said, turning away.

“Wait!” he called. “What’s wrong with working here?”

She took one step, then stopped and turned back. “You don’t know?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Are you from around here?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m from Shulara.”

“I never heard of it,” she said.

There was definitely, he noticed, something a little different about the way she spoke Ethsharitic; she spoke slightly faster than he had heard it before, and slurred the consonants a bit. It was not at all like the Krithimionese he had heard spoken around town. “It’s southeast,” he said. “Where are you from?”

“None of your business,” she said.

He raised his hands, conceding the point. “All right,” he said, “but what’s wrong with the work?”

She glowered at him, standing with her hands on her hips, considering, and then snapped, “You don’t know?”

“No,” he said. “The guards at the castle told me I could earn money here. That’s all I know.”

She snorted. “They were joking,” she said. “Either that, or they were trying to insult you.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said, her tone turning sarcastic, “you probably don’t qualify for the job.”

“Why not?”

“Senesson isn’t looking for workers,” she explained. “He’s buying materials.”

“What materials?” Kelder asked, still puzzled.

“Virgin’s blood,” the girl said angrily.

Kelder blinked, and looked the girl over.

She was roughly his own age, he guessed, despite her diminutive stature; she had long black hair that flowed down across her shoulders in flamboyant masses of darkly-shining curls, a heart-shaped face and a long straight nose, a full bosom, narrow waist, and lush hips.

“It’s none of my business,” he said, “but...” He stopped.

He had intended to ask if she qualified any more than he did, but that hardly seemed like an appropriate question to ask a stranger.

If she did, he thought, he’d be surprised. She was no incredible beauty, certainly not in Irith’s class, but she was attractive enough.

“You’re right,” she said, “it’s none of your business.”

He smiled. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He turned away from the brass-trimmed door.

“Aren’t you going to knock?” the girl asked.

“No,” Kelder said, “I don’t think so, not if that’s what he wants.”

She stared at him for a moment. “I could be lying,” she said. “You don’t have to take my word.”

“No, I believe you,” Kelder said. “Do you know of anywhere else I might find work?”

She shook her head.

“Where are you going, then?” he asked.

“Back to the market square,” she answered.

“Me, too,” he said.

“All right,” she said, and together they strolled up the street, away from the shop with the green tile overhang.