The Bronze of Eddarta Page 3

  “I think you and I must ‘stand’ apart, for now.”

  She walked away, leaving me feeling uncertain as to whether something had been settled … or begun.

  The next morning, Tarani and I walked downhill to the market area of the city, and bought the few supplies we thought we would need. We were still Molik’s guests, though the coins Tarani had grabbed out of his lockbox after Thymas had killed the roguelord were dwindling fast. I had been wishing that we could buy some extra clothes to take along, but it looked as though we couldn’t quite afford it.

  Tarani was holding the parcels which contained bread and dried meat. When she saw me counting, she said: “You are welcome to use Volitar’s money.”

  I pulled the drawstrings of the pouch and tucked it into my belt. Then I picked up my parcels—fruit and the roast fowl we would eat on the first night—and led her away from the market stall.

  “Thank you, Tarani,” I said, “but I don’t think that’s wise. Why didn’t your uncle—”

  “My father,” she corrected me, with sudden sharpness.

  “Why didn’t Volitar spend them?” I asked, after a second or two. “You said yourself, he never lived more than comfortably.”

  “They are Eddartan coins,” she said. “Perhaps they were a memento of …”

  Her voice trailed off, and I knew she was thinking about the mother she had never met. It was a romantic notion, that Volitar had kept that wealth secret, in memory of Zefra. It seemed to be a romantic story, what we knew of it. I knew Tarani believed she would meet her mother in Eddarta. I hoped, for Tarani’s sake, that such a meeting would live up to her expectations.

  “Volitar showed his love for Zefra in much more concrete ways, Tarani. I think he held on to those coins because spending them would be dangerous.”

  “But I have seen many Eddartan coins in Dyskornis, Rikardon.”

  “Gold twenty-dozak pieces? Bearing Pylomel’s likeness?” I asked.

  “I haven’t seen many of the gold pieces, but … no, now that I think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen coins like the ones we found with Zefra’s letter. Do you think Volitar was afraid he could be traced here, if he spent the coins?”

  I nodded.

  “Then what shall we do with them?”

  “Take them with us.”

  We were still in the marketplace, and just then I spotted a stall with leather goods and tanned, uncut skins.

  “Here, hold these a minute,” I said, and walked over to the leather dealer, who was seated under an awning supported by thin poles. On the ground around him were his wares. The worked goods—boots, belts, baldrics, vlek harnesses—were displayed on colored cloths. The skins—taken from glith, the deer-size food animal—were laid out in long lines, overlapped slightly so that a portion of each skin was visible. I walked around, bending over to look at the skins. When I found what I wanted, I sat down.

  The dealer, who hadn’t said a word (although he’d kept a wary eye on me), suddenly came to life.

  “Yes, sir, how may I serve you this morning?”

  I touched the glith skin I’d selected, asked him the price, and we started haggling.

  “Sorry I took so long,” I said, when I got back to Tarani with my new purchase. I took some of the bundles back, and we started walking northward, heading back to Volitar’s shop. Tarani took the skin, which the dealer had rolled and tied, and looked it over skeptically.

  “This is ugly,” she said finally. “Thin and discolored—surely you could have afforded a better one. What are you going to do with it?”

  At that moment, we were moving through the shopping crowd. “That’s going to give me something to do along the way,” I said. “Let’s hurry, shall we? If we don’t get back soon, Thymas is liable to leave without us.”

  She laughed at that, and I took pleasure in the sound of her laughter.

  But I hadn’t been far wrong. Thymas was waiting, with Ronar, at the downhill entrance to the living quarters attached to Volitar’s shop. He had our saddlebags and backpacks laid out on the ground, open and ready for packing.

  “Half the day is gone,” he complained, reaching for the food parcels. “Is this all we’re taking?”

  “Put the food in the backpack, Thymas. You can put this—” I handed him the leather. “—in your bags with the cargo net. Tarani, if you don’t mind, may we take some of Volitar’s clothes along? And will you bring down the things in Volitar’s chest?”

  She paused at the door. “All of them?”

  “Yes, the duplicate Ra’ira, too. Gharlas wanted it badly enough to kill Volitar for it. That makes it valuable to us.” When she had gone in, I turned to Thymas.

  “How are you doing—and tell me the truth.”

  He started to say something, stopped, and began again. “I still have some pain,” he admitted.

  Probably hurt you more to say that, than your side hurts you, I thought.

  “Ronar will be suffering for a while, yet, too. To start out, Keeshah will carry Tarani and me, and the heavy supplies. You and Ronar can have both sets of sidebags, with the lighter stuff in them. We have three days of supplies here, and we’re going to take all that time to get to the nearest town—Krasa, I think it is. We’ll restock there. We’ll stop when I say so. Agreed?”

  “I’ve already agreed,” he snapped. “How long before we’ll reach Eddarta?”

  “I figure it at around eighteen days—we should be a full seven-day ahead of Gharlas.”

  “And what then?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “We have eighteen days to think about it. The more we rest, at the beginning, the greater our strength will be when we get there.”

  Thymas concentrated on his packing for a few seconds, then sat back and rubbed his hands across his trousers in a rare display of nervousness. But his voice was steady as he said: “A second rider is a strain for a sha’um during a long trip. When Ronar is feeling stronger, Tarani can ride with me half the time.” He paused. “If she wants to.” He paused again. “Will she want to?”

  Tarani came out, carrying Volitar’s chest in her hands, several tunics and trousers over one arm.

  “Ask her, when the time comes,” I said. “Now, let’s get packed and on our way.”

  4

  The map showed Krasa to be a little over six man-days—I figured a man-day to be around thirty miles—away from Dyskornis. In good health and at top speed, a sha’um could cover the same distance in a third of a man’s walking time, but I had meant what I said to Thymas. We took it easy, rising after dawn, camping well before night, and taking long rests for the midday meal. Tarani put Thymas and Ronar to sleep each night; Tarani, Keeshah, and I shared the watch.

  I might have relied on Keesah’s more efficient senses to alert us to any danger, but I felt more comfortable with a self-involved security plan.

  You might say I was feeling paranoid.

  Thanks to our noisy encounter with Gharlas and the greedy thief who had tried to kill me, the entire rogueworld of Dyskornis knew who I was. Worfit’s reward for my death, and the acquisition of Serkajon’s steel sword, were strong incentives for someone to follow us.

  I was looking for danger up ahead, too. I believed we were doing the right thing, or we wouldn’t be doing it. But the possibility that Gharlas knew what we were doing was a constant worry, no matter how often I told myself that worrying wouldn’t solve anything.

  Direct telepathy between Gandalarans was nearly unknown—but Gharlas said that the Ra’ira granted that power. I had to believe him. He’d said he had learned about the locked room where the Ra’ira was kept by reading Thanasset’s mind. He had known about Rikardon without being told—I assumed that he had tried to read Markasset and had sensed the change.

  I was fairly sure that he couldn’t read me, or Tarani. She had proved in Dyskornis that her power could resist his. But that didn’t let out the possibility of his being able to locate us, merely by the difference of our mind-patterns, or wha
tever. And it didn’t protect us from Gharlas reading Thymas, who was more susceptible than either one of us.

  So, useless as it was, I worried that Gharlas had traps laid for us ahead.

  But I didn’t waste my time worrying. By the time we reached Krasa, I had cut strips from the thin piece of leather to fashion a belt. I worked the coins into the long pocket one at a time; when no more would fit, we buried the rest of them.

  I was wearing that fortune in gold around my waist when I walked into Krasa to renew our supplies. The weight was a burden at first, but it gave me a feeling of satisfaction, that I had devised a way to conceal those coins. I wasn’t entirely sure why I felt it necessary to take them to Eddarta, but I hadn’t questioned the impulse.

  We had left green, hilly forests behind in Eddarta, and spent nearly two days in what I can only describe as scrub brush—not quite desert, but close. As we neared Krasa, the growth had turned green again, and I was walking through a lightly overgrown forest. There were wild dakathrenil here, the curly-trunked trees which, near Raithskar, were trained to an umbrella shape slightly taller than a man. Left to themselves, these wild ones sprawled on the ground like woody vines.

  There were other kinds of trees here, too, and a variety of vines and flowers that I couldn’t identify. I felt a familiar frustration over Markasset’s disinterest in anything besides fighting, gambling, and Illia. This was a beautiful area, no less dramatic because it stood close in the shadow of the Great Wall.

  I had already learned that the Great Wall was more or less a convention of Gandalaran thinking. Behind Raithskar, there was actually a wall—a sheer escarpment that vanished into overcast sky. Here, however, there were merely impassable mountains, and those not noticeably steeper than the Korchis west of Dyskornis. Yet these mountains were considered to be a continuation of Raithskar’s barrier, and the Korchis a range of mountains.

  I was learning to accept those conventions, just as I had accepted the physical aspects of my situation. My body wasn’t human—Homo sapiens would have been desiccated in hours by the intense desert heat that I hardly noticed anymore. I could accept the fact that I would probably never find out how Ricardo had been transferred to this world. But there was one mystery that returned to plague me again and again: Where was Gandalara?

  I took so many things for granted in Gandalara that I often wondered why I couldn’t just let this mystery lie, why the question circled around at the back of my mind and popped up at idle moments. I supposed it was this world’s physical character, and its intriguing similarities to, and differences from, Ricardo’s earth.

  The evolution of such similar species on two different worlds seemed impossible. It was coincidental, too, that Gandalara had a single moon and a twenty-eight-day lunar cycle. Yet Gandalara had too high levels of salt in its soil, and too little access to iron. And there was definitely no physical feature like the Great Wall anywhere in Ricardo’s world.

  Today I resolutely set aside the puzzle, so that I could enjoy my walk through the woods.

  I heard a hooting call, and looked up to see Lonna, Tarani’s bird companion, flying overhead. She swooped down and settled carefully on my shoulder, her big wings folding so that their tips crossed at the base of her tail. She was heavy, but I didn’t mind—in fact, I was pleased that she had chosen me for company. I stroked the feathers on her breast as I walked, and she made a sound that was both mournful and contented.

  *You don’t mind if I make a friend of Lonna, do you, Keeshah?* I asked.

  *Girl is my friend,* he pointed out, reminding me of a best-forgotten period of unrecognized jealousy. *Bird, too.*

  Lonna left me when Krasa came into sight through the trees. It was a small town, built mostly of wood and baked clay—the sort of place where you’re a stranger until your family has lived there for three generations.

  I had all the supplies I planned to buy, and was leaving a bakery with fresh meat pastries, when someone behind me called my name.

  “Rikardon?”

  The voice wasn’t familiar; the man it belonged to was walking toward me. He was short but stocky, with prominent supraorbital ridges, not much nose, and a whole lot of scars on his arms and face.

  I had heard no threat in his voice, but I turned around and kept my hand near my sword as I answered.

  “I am Rikardon. May I ask who you are?”

  The scarred face creased into a smile. “You can ask me, or anyone in Krasa, son. My name is Ligor, and I’m what passes for the Chief of Peace and Security in this city. I have a message for you—from Zaddorn. And some free advice—from me. Join me for a drink?”

  “Sure. How about that place on the corner?”

  “Good choice,” he said, and we moved along the packed-dirt surface of the street toward what Ricardo would have called a diner. It served light meals that could be eaten on the premises or taken outside, provided you left a deposit on the dishes. It also served faen, the Gandalaran equivalent of beer, as did almost every restaurant.

  It was just past midday, and there was a late-lunch crowd keeping the help busy. The number of people surprised me, and I resolved never to judge a town by its appearance again. Krasa looked to be a pretty lively place.

  Ligor caught the eye of one of the workers behind the service counter, and two earthenware mugs of faen appeared on a table at the back of the room, even before we could work our way through to it.

  I was impressed.

  “Zaddorn doesn’t even know I’m in Krasa—yet,” I said, thinking of the message I had sent from Dyskornis. Thanasset would tell Zaddorn where I was, so that he wouldn’t be expecting me any day, to fill the job he had offered me.

  “True,” Ligor said. He opened a pouch at his belt, and took out a fragile-looking letter. The thin paper had been folded umpteen times, obviously in order to be suitable for a maufa to carry it. “Read this,” Ligor said. “Easier than my telling you.”

  I unfolded it, and leaned toward the window to get more light on the angular Gandalaran characters.

  Ligor, old friend, I need your help. A caravan master named Gharlas stole something important, something you’ll recognize if you see it. He’s a dangerous man, and it’s imperative that he be stopped before he reaches Eddarta. I doubt that he’ll come by your way, but if you hear anything at all of his movements, please let me know.

  There’s another person you might encounter, a fellow named Rikardon. You’ll recognize him, too—you knew him as Markasset. He left Raithskar today, and he may be following Gharlas. If you see him, trust him and help him all you can. And tell him, for me, that he’s got the job, like it or not. I’m telling all my contacts to give him full cooperation.

  Terrific, I thought. Now I’m a deputy sheriff.

  “So this is the message,” I said. “Now what’s the advice?”

  “Just this, son. Don’t rely on any of that help he promised. Zaddorn doesn’t know anything about this side of the world.”

  “How do you know Zaddorn? And—I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you.”

  “Not much reason you should. It was always Zaddorn tagging after me, not the Supervisor’s son.” He took a sip of his faen. “I used to have Zaddorn’s job.”

  “He mentioned he took office just after Ferrathyn succeeded Bromer as Chief Supervisor.”

  “Yeah. Ferrathyn fired me.”

  I searched Markasset’s memory for Raithskarian law. “He couldn’t do that himself, could he?”

  “No, it was all proper, with unanimous approval of the Council. But it was Ferrathyn who started it. I bear no grudge, mind you—it wasn’t just because the old man and I didn’t get on well, though that was for sure true. Mostly it was because I didn’t fit the Peace and Security image the Council wanted for Raithskar. I did my job, but I didn’t do it …”

  He struggled to find the right word, and I provided one that seemed to fit: “Gracefully.”

  He laughed and slapped the table. “That’s it, exactly.”

  “I didn’t
mean—”

  “Don’t worry about it, son. I know what I am, and what I’m not. Graceful, I’m not. I’ve got a lot of blunt edges. Zaddorn’s a good man, keen as a sword. He cuts cleanly what I’d bruise to death.

  “But, to get back to that free advice, he’s got his limitations, too. One is, he trusts too much.”

  “Zaddorn?”

  “Oh, not people in general. Nobody works in our business without getting to be naturally suspicious of everybody. But he thinks every Peace Officer is respected, and has the kind of authority he has, with the Council to back him up.”

  “And you’re telling me he’s wrong?”

  Ligor lifted his empty mug, and the same waiter appeared to refill both our drinks. The crowd was thinning out, and we could converse more comfortably.

  “I’m telling you just that. He has his little list of Peace and Security Officers, and he writes to them, and he expects them all to be as conscientious and powerful as he is. He’s got a security force of better than two hundred men. How many men you think I got working for me?”

  I didn’t have to think hard; he’d already telegraphed the answer. “None,” I said, and he nodded.

  “And I’m one of the good guys, the ones who try. Zaddorn’s other contacts’— some of them have moved, or they’re dead. Some of them might try to stop Gharlas, all right. They’ve got their own ‘contacts’ that can sell any … important thing they might find on his body.”

  “Say it straight, Ligor,” I said, a little impatiently.

  “All right. What Zaddorn did, with letters like this,” he tapped the parchment I still held in my hand, “is warn the whole countryside that you’re on your way to Eddarta. Stay away from those Peace and Security people. If they cooperate with anybody, it will be Worfit.”

  “The reward.” In a flash vision, I saw the bloody face of the man who had tried to kill me for that same reward. I remembered the resistance against my sword as its blade passed through his body. I closed my eyes to block the vision.

  After a moment, Ligor said: “You still going?”

  “To Eddarta? Yes.” I drained my mug, stood up, and reached for my pouch. He put his hand out to stop me.