The Sorcerer's Widow

CHAPTER FOUR

Kel was embarrassed to realize, when Ezak’s shaking awoke him, that he had dozed off. He lay propped against a wagon-wheel in the night-shrouded stableyard behind the Golden Rooster, the only inn in the village of Shepherd’s Well, and until he started out of his slumber his head had been slumped on his shoulder.

He and Ezak were outdoors in the chilly dark, instead of inside the nice warm inn, because they had not had the money to do otherwise. They had claimed they were going to take turns guarding the wagons, to explain why they didn’t take a room; Ezak did not want to admit they couldn’t afford a room.

Dorna and Irien, of course, had taken a room. At the time Kel had not seen anything odd about that, but now, as he sat up and looked around in the dark, he wondered about it. Irien had told him that the women didn’t trust them, so why had they been allowed to stay out here with the wagons? Something didn’t feel right about that.

“Come on,” Ezak said. “Get up. I want your help with this.”

“With what?” Kel asked, struggling to see his surroundings. Ezak was holding a shuttered lantern, and the stars were out, but neither moon was visible, leaving most of the yard in deep shadow.

“This mounting block.”

“This what?”

“This mounting block! Come on, sleepyhead!”

It took Kel a moment to remember what a mounting block was-a big block of wood or stone that a young or otherwise undersized rider could stand on to make it easier to climb onto a horse. When he did recall it, he asked, “What do you want a mounting block for? I didn’t see any horses.”

“There aren’t any horses. I intend to swap it for that big boxy thing in the sorcerer’s collection.”

Kel remembered the device, or talisman, or whatever it was, that Ezak was referring to. The second-largest of all the magical objects Dorna had loaded into the wagon, it was mostly made of something that gleamed like silver, but was not quite the right color for silver. It was more or less rectangular, but had several odd ribs protruding along its long sides, and dozens, maybe hundreds, of little square inlays in every color of the rainbow were set into its smooth top. “Why?” Kel asked. “What does that one do?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, but Kel, a hunk of magic that big must be worth a fortune! If we can get it out, and put the mounting block in its place, the sorcerer’s widow will never know it’s gone. We can bury it or hide it somewhere and come back for it later.”

Kel hesitated. “Wouldn’t it be safer to steal a few little ones?”

“It might be safer, but it wouldn’t be as profitable. Come on, Kel, give me a hand.”

With a sigh, Kel got to his feet and followed the dim glow of the lantern to the corner where the mounting block sat. There he and Ezak stooped down, each of them taking one side of the stone block, and lifted.

It came up easily. “It’s not as heavy as it looks,” Kel said.

“Heaving it over the side of the wagon without smashing anything is the hard part,” Ezak said. “Come on.”

Carrying the block between them, they made their way back to Dorna’s wagon, where they paused. “Put it down,” Ezak said. “I’ll get the talisman out, and then we’ll put the block in its place.”

“All right,” Kel said. He and Ezak set the block down, and then Kel stepped back and watched as his friend climbed up into the wagon. He saw Ezak open the lantern shutters a little so that he could see his surroundings more clearly, then set the lantern down on the driver’s bench.

Then Ezak started untying the ropes that secured the canvas cover that protected the contents of the wagon, and a sense of foreboding crawled up Kel’s back and seemed to pull his shoulders inward. “Ezak?” he called.

“Sssh!” Ezak replied. “I’m trying to find…ah, there it is!” He flung back a corner of the canvas, then reached down into the wagon.

A high-pitched, inhuman voice screamed, very loudly, and kept screaming. Kel clapped his hands over his ears and turned to look at the door of the inn, expecting to see a dozen armed guards spilling out.

No one emerged; the inn remained quiet and dark. Meanwhile, Ezak was saying, “Hush! Shut up! Stop it!” He was bent down, his hands flailing wildly at something Kel could not see.

Then the screaming stopped, as abruptly as it had begun. Kel blinked, his ears ringing. “What was that?” he asked. His words sounded very faint in his own ears, in marked contrast to the unearthly wail that had just ended.

“I don’t know,” Ezak said. “It started when I touched the…the whatever-it-is, so I thought maybe I could make it stop the same way, so I just kept hitting it-”

An unfamiliar voice interrupted him, and Kel and Ezak both stopped talking as this new voice said half a dozen incomprehensible words, then fell silent.

For a moment after it finished no one spoke, but at last Kel asked, “What was that?”

“The…it’s the same thing,” Ezak replied. “The big talisman.”

“What did it say?”

“I don’t know,” Ezak said. “I don’t even know what language that was.”

“Ezak, how can a talisman talk? It doesn’t even have a mouth!”

“I know. I mean, I know it doesn’t have a mouth, I don’t know how it can talk. I didn’t see anything move, but I’m sure that’s where the voice came from.”

“But how?”

“Magic, of course,” Ezak said, regaining some of his confidence. “It must be sorcery. That should bring a good price!”

“Why? We don’t know what it said!”

“Well, if we find someone who does-”

The talisman spoke again. Kel thought it repeated the exact same words it had said before, and once again, when it had completed its single sentence it stopped.

“Maybe that’s all it knows how to say,” Kel said. “That’s not very impressive. I saw a wizard do something like that once; he made a mouth appear on a piece of cloth and say six words. But they weren’t words in any known language, and the wizard’s apprentice told me it always said the same six words, but not always in the same order.”

“Maybe,” Ezak said. He was leaning over, staring down at the talisman. “But some of those little squares on the top are glowing. Blue ones.”

Kel hesitated, torn between curiosity and caution. “Do you think it’s safe? It won’t…turn us into lizards, or something?”

“How should I know?” Ezak said. “But it hasn’t hurt us yet, and I was whacking it all over when it was screaming at us.” He reached over the side of the wagon, and tapped the big talisman.

There was a sudden clatter, and Ezak jumped back, falling off the bench and tumbling awkwardly over the wagon’s tongue to the ground. Kel started to run to his friend’s aid, then froze where he was and stared.

The talisman was climbing out of the wagon. The ribs on its sides had unfolded into black-clawed, spider-like legs, and it was pulling itself up over the wooden side. It looked utterly monstrous in the dim light and deep shadows, the orange lantern light gleaming from its metallic sides while a faint blue glow shone from its top, and Kel had to clamp his jaw to keep from screaming.

When he trusted himself to speak, he exclaimed, “Ezak, what did you do?”

“How should I know?” Ezak said, lying sprawled where he had fallen. He pushed himself up on one elbow and watched as the thing lowered itself to the ground, hanging by two of its many legs until three or four of the others were solidly braced on the hard-packed earth. Both men fell silent and merely watched, unmoving, as the talisman, or creature, or whatever it was, arranged itself on earth of the stableyard. Kel counted twelve legs, each ending in several fingers-not the same number on each, nor for that matter the same shape. Some were big crablike claws, others were long needles, and others were a variety of other shapes he could not make out clearly. He was not entirely sure of the number of legs; he thought the low light might be hiding one or two more.

Then the thing spoke again, still in that unknown language but different words, and then it began running. It did not run like a spider, or like anything else Kel had ever seen; its legs seemed to dance, and then it was moving.

It moved fast. Before Kel could really get a good look at it, it was out the stableyard gate into the night.

Startled, not thinking about any danger, Kel ran after it, but quickly gave up-it was already a good fifty yards away, visible only as a cluster of faint glowing blue dots vanishing down the road in the distance. He turned back, and saw that the inn door was open. A woman was standing there, holding a lantern-and looking at him.

He hung his head, but did not attempt to hide, or pretend he did not know why she was there. He could not see her face in the dark-she was not holding the lantern in such a way as to illuminate it-but he judged from her height that it was Dorna, rather than Irien. He walked slowly back to the inn.

She stood in the doorway and watched, and when he had drawn close enough that she had no need to shout, she said, “Which one was it?”

He blinked. “What?”

“Well, judging by the sound, someone disturbed some of Nabal’s magic, and here you are, Kel, looking as if you were chasing something but couldn’t catch it. I’m guessing that one of the talismans woke up and flew off somewhere. Which one was it?”

“It didn’t fly,” Kel said. “It ran.” She stepped out of the doorway, and he noticed that she was fully dressed, in a good green dress; that was probably why she had not come running out sooner.

Her tone, which had been fairly casual, turned more serious. “Damn,” she said. “Which one?”

“I don’t know what it’s called,” Kel said. He held out his hands about a foot and a half apart. “It was about this big, and it grew a dozen legs and crawled out of the wagon and ran away.”

“Did it have lots of little colored squares on top?” Dorna asked. She sounded worried now.

“Yes,” Kel said. “Some of them were glowing.”

“Oh, blast! Why did it have to be that?” She seemed to be talking to herself, but then her attention returned to Kel. “Glowing yellow? Or red?” He could hear tension in her voice.

“No; blue.”

“Just blue? All of them were blue?”

“Yes. Well, all the glowing ones.”

“Oh.” She relaxed slightly. “That’s not so bad, then.”

“It’s not?”

“No.” She held up the lantern and peered about at the empty road and the sleeping village. “I don’t know how in the World you woke it up as safely as that, though.”

“I didn’t touch it!” Kel protested, before he realized what he was doing.

She turned to look at him. “Oh,” she said. “It was Ezak?”

“I don’t know,” Kel mumbled, looking down at his feet.

“Oh, of course you do,” Dorna replied. “Huh. If he managed to properly wake up a fil drepessis, maybe he really is a sorcerer. Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Kel said-more or less truthfully, this time.

“He’s still in the stableyard, isn’t he? Probably stuffing talismans in his pouch.” She sighed. “Come on.”

Kel followed her as she marched through the gate into the stableyard.

Ezak was nowhere to be seen, but that did not surprise Kel; his friend was good at hiding. Kel thought Ezak might still be there, concealed in some dark corner, or he might have fled, but at any rate he was not sitting on the wagon, or standing in front of it.

Dorna stamped across the yard to the wagon and held the lantern up above her head, lighting the immediate area, but Ezak was still not visible.

“Idiot,” she muttered. Then she climbed up on the driver’s bench step and looked down into the wagon, poking at the flung-back cover and shoving some of the talismans about. She fumbled with one about the size of a dinner plate, then set that aside and pulled out a golden object roughly the size and shape of a man’s boot-heel. “Here we go,” she said.

“We do?” Kel asked.

“Yes, we do,” she said, looking at the thing in her hand. “Kel, go inside and tell Irien I need to talk to her.”

“But it’s the middle of the night!”

Dorna looked up and turned to glare at him. “Do you think anyone is still asleep after all that noise?”

“Oh,” Kel said. “Probably not.”

“Then go get Irien.”

Kel went.

He found Irien, the innkeeper, and the innkeeper’s son sitting at a table in the common room, looking half-asleep-but only half. A single thick candle burned in the center of the table, lighting their faces, so Kel could see their expressions; they did not seem pleased to be there. They looked up as he stepped in, but did not say anything.

“Dorna wants to talk to you, Irien,” Kel said. “She’s in the stableyard.”

Irien stood up, and looked as if she was about to say something, but then thought better of it and simply marched out the door, shoving past Kel without a word.

Kel hesitated, gave the other two a quick glance, called, “I’m sorry we disturbed you,” then followed her out.

Dorna was still in the stableyard, but now had a large canvas bag slung over one shoulder, and was carefully choosing talismans from the wagon and putting them in the bag. She looked up.

“Good, you’re back,” she said to Kel, before turning to her friend and saying, “Irien, these fools have sent one of my husband’s devices rampaging about the countryside, and I’m going to go retrieve it. I would very much appreciate it if you could stay here and watch our belongings until I return.”

“How long will that be?” Irien asked.

“How should I know?” Dorna snapped. Kel cringed at the anger in her voice.

Irien frowned. “Right. I hope it won’t be too long.”

“It shouldn’t be. I can track the fil drepessis with this.” She held up the boot-heel thing.

Irien nodded. “When are you leaving?”

“Immediately,” Dorna answered. “If we’re very lucky, we may be able to catch it quickly and be back in a few hours.”

“We?” Irien looked at Kel.

“Yes, ‘we.’ I’m taking Kel and Ezak with me, to make sure they don’t cause any more trouble.”

“You are?” Kel said, startled.

“Yes, I am. Now, go fetch Ezak out of the tack room, grab those packs of yours, and let’s get going.”

“Tack room?”

“Over there,” Dorna said, pointing at a door in the corner of the stableyard that Kel had not really noticed before. “You really didn’t know where he hid?”

“I really didn’t,” Kel said. “How did you know?”

“Sorcery. Now, get him out here, and let’s get moving. You interrupted my sleep, and I’m not going to be able to get back to bed for some time, so I don’t have much patience for your stupidity.”

“Sorcery?”

“Just get him out here!”

Kel ran for the tack room door.

The little room beyond was dark and smelled strongly of leather and oil; Kel peered into the gloom, trying to make out what was inside. As his eyes, already used to the night, adjusted, he saw walls hung with oxbows and harnesses-and sure enough, Ezak was crouching in a corner, behind a rack holding a couple of saddles.

Ezak held a finger up to his lips.

Kel hesitated.

Dorna called from behind, “Tell Ezak that he really doesn’t want me to come in there after him. My late husband provided me with magical weapons to protect myself when he was away, and I have one of them in my hand right now.”

“Did you hear that?” Kel whispered.

Ezak sighed. “I heard,” he said, getting to his feet. “You know, if you had told her I wasn’t in here, instead of whispering to me, she might have believed you.”

“Oh,” Kel said. “I didn’t think of that.”

“I know,” Ezak said. “You never do.” He straightened his tunic, lifted his chin, and said, “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”