Winds Of Fate

*Chapter Eleven ELSPETH

Skif peered through the foggy gloom of near-dawn, wishing he had eyes like a cat. He watched for possible trouble, as Elspeth stood-literally on her saddle, trying to read the signpost in the middle of the crossroads.

Gwena stood like a stone statue; a distinct improvement over a horse in a similar situation.

Before they had left Bolthaven, Elspeth had taken Quenten's advice quite literally-and very much to heart. For one thing, she'd consulted with him about disguises, in lieu of being able to ask Kerowyn. Now they wore something more in the line of what a pair of prosperous mercenaries would wear. "Mercs would be best," Quenten had decided, after a long discussion, and taking into consideration the fact that no amount of dye would stain the Companion's coats. "Tell people who ask you've been bodyguards for a rich merchant's daughter, and that's where you got the matched horses. If you say you're mercs, no one will bother you, and you can wear your armor and weapons openly. just put a coat of paint on those shields, or get a cover for them." They'd given him carte blanche, and a heavy pouch of coin. He'd grinned when Skif lifted an eyebrow over the selection of silks and fine leathers Quenten's agent brought back from the Bolthaven market, clothing that was loose and comfortable, and so did not need to be tailored to them to look elegant.

"We want you two to look prosperous," he'd said. "First of all, only a prosperous merc would be able to afford horses like yours, even if you did get them in the line of duty. And secondly, a prosperous merc is a good fighter. No bandit is ever going to want to bother a mercenary who looks as well-off as you will. The last place a merc puts his money is in his wardrobe. If you can afford this, you're not worrying about needing cash for other things." ' ' But the jewelry," Skif had protested. "You've turned most of our ready cash into jewelry!"

" A free-lance merc wears his fortune," Quenten told him. "If you need to buy something, and you don't want to spend any of those outland gold coins because it might draw attention to you, break off a couple of links of those necklaces, take a plate from the belt, hand over a ring or a bracelet. That's the way a merc operates, and no one is going to turn a hair. Very few mercs bother with keeping money with a money-changing house, because it won't be readily accessible. In fact, only about half of even bonded mercs have a running account with the Mercenary's Guild, for the same reason. Where you're going, every merchant and most good inns have scales to weigh the gold and silver, and they'll give you a fair exchange for it." Skif thought about what he said, then sent Quenten's agent back to the bazaar to exchange the rest of their Valdemaran and Rethwellan gold and silver for jewelry. He had to admit that the ornaments he got in exchange, a mixture of brand new and worn with use, were a great deal less traceable than the Valdemaren coin. He felt like a walking target-his old thief instincts acting up again-but he knew very well that when he was a thief, he'd never, ever have tackled two wealthy fighters, especially when they walked with their hands on their hilts and never drank more than one flagon of wine at a sitting. Quenten had been right; a wealthy, cautious fighter was someone that tended not to attract trouble.

Still, he'd complained to Elspeth their first night on the road that he felt like a cheap tavern dancer, with his necklaces making more noise than his chain-mail.

Elspeth had giggled, saying she felt like a North-Province bride, with all her dowry around her neck, but she had no objections to following Quenten's advice.

He still resented that, a little. He'd made a similar suggestion-though he had suggested they dress as a pair of landed hill-folk rather than mercs-and she had dismissed the notion out of hand. But when Quenten told them to disguise themselves, she had agreed immediately.

Maybe it was simply that he'd suggested plain, unglamorous hill-folk, and Quenten had suggested the opposite. Skif had the feeling she was beginning to enjoy this; she was picking up the kind of swaggering walk the other well-off mercs they met had adopted, and she had taken to binding up her hair with bright bands of silk, and some of the strands of garnet and amethyst beads Quenten had bought. There were eyecatching silk scarves trailing from the hilt of Need, and binding the helm at her saddlebow. She looked like a barbarian. And he got the distinct impression she liked looking that way. Her eyes sparkled the moment they crossed into a town and found a tavern, and she began grinning when other mercs sought them out to exchange stories and news. One night she'd even taken up with another prosperous female free-lance, Selina Ironthroat, and had made the rounds of every tavern in town. the gods only know what they did. I don't even want to think about it.

At least she came back sober, even if she was giggling like a maniac. If half the stories those other mercs told me about Selina are true, her mother would never forgive me.

Not only that, she took the inevitable attempts at assignations with a cheerful good humor that amazed him.

He'd expected her to explode with anger the first time it happened.

She had been the center of a gossiping clutch of Guild mercs, but as the evening wore on, one by one, they'd drifted off, leaving her alone for a moment. That was when a merc with almost as much gold around his neck as she wore had tried to get her to go off with him-and presumably into his bed.

He readied himself for a brawl. Then she'd shocked the blazes out of him.

She'd laughed, but not in a way that would make the man feel she was laughing at him, and said, in a good approximation of Rethwellan hill-country dialect,

"oh, now that is a truly tempting offer, 'tis in very deed, but I misdoubt ye want to make me partner there feel I've left 'im alone." She'd nodded at Skif, who simply gave the merc The Look. Don't mess with my partner. And turned back to his beer, with one cautious eye on the proceedings.

"He gets right testy when he thinks he's gonna be alone, truly he does," she continued, a friendly grin on her face, her eyes shining as she got into her part. "Ye see, his last partner left 'im all by 'imself one night, and some sorry son of a sow snuck up on im when he wasn't payin' attention, an' hit im with a bottle. ' Her face went thoughtful for a moment.

"Twas sad, that'e not only took it out on 'is partner, gods grant th' puir man heals up quick, 'e took It out on th' lads as took the puir fellow off. He hates havin' no one to watch 'is back, he truly do." The other merc looked at Skif, who glowered back; gulped) and allowed as how he, too, hated having no one to guard his back.

"Then let's buy you a drink, lad!" she'd exclaimed, slapping him so hard on the back that he'd staggered. "When times be prosperous, 'tis only right t' share 'em. No hard feelin's among mercs, eh? Now, where are ye bound for?" Oh, yes, indeed, she looked, and acted, the part; a far cry from the competent but quiet princess of Valdemar, who never had seen the inside of a common tavern in her life.

As he waited for her to decipher the sign, he wondered, as he had wondered several times before this, if she wasn't enjoying it a bit too much.

She dropped down into her saddle by the simple expedient of doing just that, her feet slipping down along the sides as she fell straight down and he winced. That was one of Kero's favorite tricks, and it always made men wince. '"We're on the right road if we go straight ahead," she said. "That's "Dark Wing Road," and we don't want it; it's going into the Pelagiris Forest in a couple of leagues, and it doesn't come out until it hits the edge of the Dhorisha Plains. No towns, no inns, no nothing. We want this one; it's still the Pelagiris Road, and in a while it'll meet the High Spur Road, and that takes us to Lythecare." On the map, this "Dark Wing Road" had looked to be a very minor track, but it was just as well-maintained in reality as the High Spur Road they expected to take. Of course, now that she'd pointed out what it was, it was obvious that it went in the wrong direction, but with all this dark mist confusing his senses-"I'm all turned around in this fog," he complained.

"That's what you get for being a city boy," she replied, ridiculously cheerful for such an unholy hour. "Get you off of the streets, and you can't find your way around." She sent Gwena to join him, then took the lead. His Companion followed after with no prompting on his part, the fog muffling the sounds of hooves and the jingle of harness.

His nose was cold, and the fog had an odd, metallic taste and smell to it. He hated getting up this early at the best of times; the fog made it that much worse.

"You're just as much city-bred as me," he countered, resentfully, a harder edge to his voice than he had intended. "Since when did you get to be such an expert on wilderness travel?"

She swiveled quickly and peered back at him, hardly more than a dark shape in the enshrouding fog. "What's wrong with you?" she asked, astonishment and a certain amount of edge in her voice as well.

"Nothing," he said quickly-then, with more truth-"Well, not much. I hate mornings; I hate fog. And there's something that's been bothering me-you're different. It's as if you're turning into Kero." Or even Selina Ironthroat.

"So what if I am?" she countered. "Who would you rather have next to you in trouble-Kero, or mousy little princess Elspeth, who would have let you try and figure out where we were going and what we were doing? What's wrong with turning into Kero? That's assuming that I am; I happen to think you're wrong about that." Now it was his turn to be surprised. He'd never heard her refer to herself as a "mousy little princess" before. And while she had sometimes railed about things to him, she'd never turned on him before.

"Uh-" he replied, cleverly.

"Or is it just that I won't let you take care of me? Is that the problem?" He heard the annoyance in her voice that meant she was scowling.

"You've been sulking since we left Bolthaven, and I'm getting damned tired of it. As long as I let you make all the decisions, everything was fine-but this is my trip, and I'm the one with the authority, and you know it. I pull my own weight, Skif. I was perfectly capable of doing this trip by myself, in fact, I was ready to. I admit I didn't think about disguises-and you were right about that idea. But the fact is, if I'd been able to go on my own, I was intending to travel by night and hide by day. And if anyone saw me, I was going to pretend I was a ghost-rider and scare the blazes out of him."

"It's not that you're making the decisions. It's just the changes in you. You're so-hearty," he said feebly. "You're kind of loud, actually.

Everybody notices us, wherever we go. I thought the point was to keep from drawing attention to ourselves." She snorted, and it wasn't ladylike. "You think these costumes aren't going to draw attention to us? Come on, Skif, we're walking advertisements for the life of the merc! Sure, I'm loud. That's what a woman like Berta would be. Like Selina Ironthroat. I spent that night studying her, I'll have you know. I'm competing for men's money in a man's world, and I'm doing damn well at it, and the more I advertise that fact, the more jobs I'll be offered. In fact, I've been offered jobs, quite a few of them; I turned them down, saying we were going off to take another job with a caravan we were picking up at Kata'shin'a'in."

"oh," he replied, feeling overwhelmed. Admittedly, he hadn't thought much about the part he was supposedly playing. Certainly not the way she had. She had everything; motives, background, character-even an imaginary job that would give them an excuse to turn down any other offers.

"Don't cosset me, Skif," she said, her voice roughened with anger.

"I'm sick to death of being cosseted. Kero wouldn't, and you know it.

This is exactly the kind of job she'd love. She'd be right beside me, slapping those drunks on the back-and if she had to, I bet she'd be hauling them off to bed with her, too."

"Elspeth!" he yelled, before he thought.

"There!" she said triumphantly. "You see? What's the matter, don't you think I know about the simple facts of a man and a woman? An ordinary man and woman, not Heralds, the kind of people who are driven by the needs of the moment? just what, exactly, are you trying to protect me from? The idea that drunk strangers grab each other and hop into strange beds and proceed to forn-" He tried, but he couldn't help himself. He emitted an inarticulate moan. each other's tails off?" she finished, right over the top of him.

"And I deliberately didn't use any of the ten or so rude words I know for the act, just to avoid bruising your delicate sensibilities. I can swear with the worst of the mercs if I have to, and I know hundreds of filthy jokes, and furthermore, I know exactly what they mean! I've spent lots of time with Kero's Skybolts, and they treated me just like one of them.

Skif, I grew up. I'm not the little sister that you used to leave candy for.

And I don't need you to shelter me from what I already know!" A pause, during which he tried to think of something to say. "Stop treating me like a child, Skif. I'm not a little girl anymore. I haven't been for a long time." And that's the problem, he thought, unhappily. She wasn't a little girl anymore, and he wasn't sure how to act around her. It wasn't that competence in women bothered him-he loved Talia dearly, and he looked up to Kero as to his very own Captain, for she was one of the few at Court to whom his background meant nothing in particular. It was seeing that confidence in Elspeth that bothered him. He couldn't help but think that it wasn't confidence, it was a foolish overconfidence, the headiness of freedom.

The warnings Quenten had given him had made him wary to the point of paranoia. Every time someone approached her, he kept examining them for some sign that they weren't what they seemed, that they were really blood-path mages stalking her, like a cat stalking a baby rabbit.

"She just doesn't understand," he confided to his Companion, thinking that she, at least, would sympathize. "there're all those mages out there Quenten warned us about. She doesn't even think about them, she doesn't watch for them, and she's not trying to hide from them."

"But you warned her about everything Quenten said," Cymry said, answering his thought. "You told her everything you knew. She may be right about hiding in plain sight, you know. Why would a mage look for someone like her to have Mage-Gift? Everyone knows mages can't be fighters. Besides, don't you think she's as capable as you are of telling if someone is stalking her?" Yes, but-"

"In fact," she continued, thoughtfully, "it's entirely possible that she would know sooner than you. She does have mage abilities, even if they aren't trained. Quenten said that power calls to power, and she's keeping a watch on the thoughts of everyone around her. Don't you think she'd know another mage if one came that close to her?"

"Yes, but-: He lapsed into silence. Because that wasn't all, or even most, of what was bothering him.

She'd grown up, all right. She was no longer anything he could think of as a "girl." And whether it was the new attitude, or the new clothing, or both-he couldn't help noticing just how much she had grown up.

Certainly the new clothing, far more flamboyant than anything she wore at home, enhanced that perception. It seemed almost as if she had taken on a new life with the new persona.

Maybe it was also, at least in part ' the fact that no one was watching them together. There was no one to start rumors, no one to warn him that she was not exactly an appropriate partner for an ex-thief; no one to wink and nod whenever he walked by with her, no one to ask, with arch significance, how she was doing lately. The friends had been as annoying as the opponents.

But now both were gone, far out of distance of any gossip. And he was free to look at her as "Elspeth" instead of The Heir To The Throne.

And he was discovering how much he liked what he saw. She was handsome in the same vibrant way Kero was-and, admit it, he thought to himself, you're more than half in love with Kero. Clever, witty, with a ready laugh that more than made up for her whiplash temper. Oh, she was a handful, but a handful he wouldn't mind having by his side...Dear gods. A sudden realization made him blush so hotly he was very glad that the fog was still thick enough to hide it. It wasn't outraged sensibilities that made him yelp at the idea of her entertaining one of those mercs in bed-it was jealousy. The very last emotion he'd ever have anticipated entertaining, especially over Elspeth.

He didn't want her running off with someone else, he wanted her to run off with him.

He must have been giving an ample demonstration of his jealousy over the past few days; surely she had guessed long before he had.

But now that he thought about it, she didn't seem to notice anything except his increasing protectiveness- "mother-henning," she called it.

This wasn't the first time she'd complained about it.

But it was the first time she had done so at the top of her lungs. She might not have noticed his attraction, but she had certainly noticed the side effects.

I guess she's really mad, he thought guiltily. And cleared his throat, hoping to restart the conversation, and get it turned back onto friendlier ground.

She didn't say anything, but she didn't turn around and snap at him, either. The growing light of dawn filtered through the fog, enveloping them both in a glowing, pearly haze-and it was a good thing they were both wearing their barbaric merc outfits; the Companions just faded into the general glow, and if they'd been wearing Whites, they'd have lost each other in a heartbeat. This kind of mist fuddled directions and the apparent location of sound, too. He peered at her fog-enshrouded shape up ahead of him; it looked uncannily as if she was bestriding a wisp of fog itself.

Try something noncommittal. Ask something harmless. "Did Quenten say why Adept Jendar is living in Lythecare, when the school he founded is all the way back up near Petras in Rethwellan?" he asked, trying to sound humble.

" Don't try to sound humble, Skif," she replied waspishly. "It doesn't suit you." Then she relented and unbent a little; he thought perhaps she turned again to make certain he was still following, and hadn't halted his Companion in a fit of pique. "Sorry. That wasn't called for. Ah-he did tell me some. Jendar wants to be down here in jkatha so he's somewhere nearer his Shin'a'in relatives, but he doesn't want to be in Kata'shin'a'in, because it's really just a trade-city, and it practically dries up and blows away in the fall and winter."

"What did he mean by that?" Skif asked, puzzled. "I should think a trade-city would have anything he'd want." She paused. "Let me see if I can do a good imitation of Quenten imitating jendar." Her voice shifted to that of a powerful old man's, with none of the querulousness Skif expected.

""I want fabulous food! Carpets! Hot bathhouses and decent shops!

Beautiful women to make a fool of me in my old age! Servants to pamper me outrageously, and merchants to suck up to me when I'm in the mood to buy something!"

" Skif chuckled; Elspeth did an excellent imitation when she was in a good mood-and from the sound of it, she had shaken her foul humor.

I have the feeling I'm going to like Kero's uncle as much as I do her.

"I think I'm going to like the old man," she said, echoing his thought.

"Quenten also said that there were two reasons Jendar didn't retire in Great Harsey, even though the school and the village begged him to.

The first was that Great Harsey is a real backwater, too far for a man his age to travel to get to Petras, even if it is less than a day's ride away.

The other is that he said that if he stayed, the new head would never be a head, he'd always be 'consulting' with Jendar and never making any decisions for himself. He thought that would be a pretty stupid arrangement." Her voice shifted again. ""Let the youngster make his own mistakes, the way I did. You certainly haven't been hanging on my coattails, Quenten, and you're doing just fine."

" She paused again, and said, significantly, "Jendar obviously believes in letting people grow up."

"I get the point," Skif muttered. "I get the point."

It wasn't far now to the turnoff, but Elspeth was beginning to wonder if she'd make it that far. And she wondered also what happened to a Herald who murdered his Companion... Once in a while, she wished there was such a thing as repudiation by the Herald, and this was one of those times. The summer heat was bad down here; it was worse, without trees to give some shade. The Pelagiris Forest lay somewhere to their right, but there wasn't a sign of it along this road way, except for the occasional faint, fugitive hint of pine.

"Well, you're certainly smug today," Elspeth finally said to Gwena, when, for the fourth time, a sensation as of someone humming invaded the back of her mind. She pushed her hat up on her forehead and wiped away the sweat that kept trickling into her eyes.

"what?" Gwena replied, her ears flicking backwards. "What on earth do you mean?"

"You were humming to yourself," Elspeth told her crossly. "If you were human, you'd have been whistling. Tunelessly, might I add. It's damned annoying when someone is humming in your head; it's not something a person can just ignore, you know."

"I'm just feeling very good," Gwena replied defensively, picking up her pace a little, to the surprise of Cymry, who hurried to match her, hooves kicking up little clouds of dust. "Is there anything wrong with that? It's a lovely summer day." Oh, really? "A candlemark ago you were complaining about the heat."

"Well, maybe I'm getting used to it." Gwena tossed her head, her mane lashing Elspeth's wrist, and added, "Maybe it's you. Maybe you're just being testy." Her mind-voice took on a conciliating tone. "Is it the wrong moon-time, dear?"

"No it's not, as you very well know. Besides, that has nothing to do with it." Elspeth snapped, without thinking. "Skif is being a pain in the tail..

"Skif is falling in love with you," Gwena replied, dropping the conciliating tone. "You could do worse."

"I know he is, and I couldn't do worse," she said, conscious only of her annoyance. "I'm not talking about differences in rank or background, either.

And don't you start playing matchmaker. He's a very nice young man, and I'm not the least interested in him, all right?" All right, all right," Gwena said, sounding surprised at her vehemence.

"Forget I said anything." Gwena closed her mind to her Chosen, and Elspeth sighed. It wasn't just Skif and his problem that was bothering her-or even primarily Skif.

It was something else entirely.

It was a feeling. One that had been increasing, every step she rode toward Lythecare. The feeling that she was being herded toward something, some destiny, like a complacent cow to the altar of sacrifice.

As if she were doing what she "should" be doing.

And she didn't like it, not one tiny bit.

Everything had fallen into place so very neatly; she could almost tally up the events on her fingers. First, Kero showed up, with a magic sword. Then, Elspeth, having seen real magic at work, firsthand, just happened to get the idea that Valdemar needed mages.

Then, Kero just happened to back that up, having had to deal with mages herself in her career.

All that could have been mere coincidence. But not the rest. Why was it that within a month, she was attacked by an assassin who may have been infiltrated into Haven magically, there was a magic attack on a major Border post-manned by Kero's people, so an accurate report got back, and the Council, for some totally unknown reason, seemed to be forced into letting her go look for mages?

And lo, as if in a book, Kero just happened to have kept up contact with her old mage, who happened to have kept up contact with his old teacher, who happened to be Kero's uncle and doubly likely to cooperate.

No one had stopped them on this trek, no one had even recognized them as far as Elspeth knew. Everyone was so helpful and friendly it was sickening. Even the mercs seemed to take her stories at face value. There was no sign of Ancar or his meddling. Everything was ticking along quietly, just like it was supposed to occur.

They were barely a candlemark away from the turnoff for Lythecare.

And the Companions were so smug about something she could taste it.

Gwena was humming again.

And suddenly she decided that she had had enough. that is it.

She yanked so hard on her reins that Gwena tripped, went to her knees, and scrambled back up again with a mental yelp-and Cymry very nearly ran into her from behind.

She turned to look at him; he stared stupidly back at her, as if wondering if she had gone mad.

"That's it," she said. "That is it. I am not playing this game anymore. ) "What?" Now Skif looked at her as if certain she had gone mad.

"I am being herded to something, and I don't like it," she snapped, as much for Gwena's ears as his. "I did want to do this, and Valdemar certainly needs mages, but I am not going to be guided by an invisible hand, as if I were a character in a badly-written book! This is not a foreordained Quest, I am not in a Prophecy, and I am not Playing this game anymore." With that, she dismounted and stalked off the side of the road to a clearing. Like seemingly all wayside clearings in this part of jkaroughtha, it was a bit of grass, surrounded by fenced fields of grain, with a couple of dusty, tall bushes, and a very small well. She sat down beside the well defiantly and crossed her arms.

Skif dismounted, his expression not the puzzled one she had expected but something she couldn't read. He walked slowly over to her, the Companions following with her reins trailing on the ground.

"Well?" she said, staring up at him.

He shrugged, but the conflicting emotions on his face convinced her that he knew something she didn't.

"I am not moving," she said, firmly, suppressing the urge to cough as road dust went down her throat. "I am not moving, until you tell me what you know about what's going on." He looked helplessly from side to side; then his Companion whickered, and looked him in the eyes, nodding, as if to say, "You might as well tell her." I thought so. She glared at Gwena, who flattened her ears. "You should have told me in the first place."

"It-was the Companions," Skif said, faintly. "They, well, they sort of-ganged up on their Heralds, when you first wanted to go looking for mages. The Heralds that didn't want to let you go, like your mother-well, they kind of got bullied."

"They what?" she exclaimed, and turned to Gwena, surprise warring with other emotions she couldn't even name.

"It had to be done," Gwena replied firmly. "You had to go. It was important."

That's not all," Skif said, looking particularly hangdog. "For one thing, they absolutely forbid you to be told what they were doing. For another, they're the ones that suggested Quenten in the first place. They said he was the only way to an important mage that they could trust."

"I knew it!" she said, fiercely. "I knew it, I knew it! I knew they were hock-deep in whatever was going on! I knew I was being herded like some stupid sheep!"

She turned to Skif, ignoring the Companions. "Did they say anything about the Shin'a'in?" she demanded. "If I'm going to do this, I am by damn going to do it MY way.,,

"Well," he said, slowly, "No. Not that I know of."

"We don't know anything about the Shin'a'in Goddess," Gwena said, alarm evident in her mind-voice. "She's not something Valdemar has ever dealt with. We're not sure we trust Her."

"You can't manipulate Her, you mean," she replied angrily.

"No. She could be like Iftel's God; She could care only for the welfare of Her own people. That's all. We know some of what She is and does-but it's not something we want to stake the future of Valdemar on." Gwena's mind-voice rose with anxiety. Elspeth cut her off.

"What do you have to say about this?" she asked Skif. "You, I mean.

Not the Companions."

"I-uh-" he flushed, and looked horribly uncomfortable. "I-don't know really what the Companions think of it." He's lying. His Companion is giving him an earful.

"But I-uh, from everything Kero's said, the Shin'a'in probably could give you the teaching, and if they couldn't, they would know someone who could." He gulped, and wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. "Kero trusts them-not just her relatives, I mean-and so does her Companion, I know that much." Gwena snorted. "Of course Sayvil says she trusts them. Contrary old beast, she'd say that just to be contrary." Elspeth ignored the waspish comment. "Fine." She turned to stare into Gwena's blue eyes. "I am going to Kata'shin'a'in, and I am going to see if the Shin'a'in know someone to train me." She turned the stare into a glare. "That is where I am going, and you are not going to stop me. I'll walk if I have to. I'll buy a plowhorse in the next village. But I am not going to Lythecare. And that is my final word on the subject." She raised her chin and stared defiantly at all of them. "Now, are you with me, or do I go on alone?" Less than a candlemark later, they passed the turnoff to Lythecare, heading straight south, to Kata'shin'a'in.

And Gwena was giving her the most uncomfortable ride of her life, in revenge.

But every bruise was a badge of victory-And I hope I'll still believe that in the morning when I can't move.