Just as abruptly as it had begun, the feeling of fear drained away, to be replaced by a calmness. Tildi felt at peace. She uncurled and peeked out from between her hands. The patrons had stopped shouting, and were slapping one another on the back. That seemed unnatural to Tildi. She glanced around, and saw Wim Cake spreading a cloth over a lumpy object
before he put it back underneath the bar. A rune shone through it, one she did not recognize.
Danyn and the boy-of-all-work, who would have looked to Tildi to be ten years old if he hadn’t been almost two feet taller than she was, swept in with mop, bucket, cleaning cloths, and a huge pail of sawdust. In no time the tables were cleared, and Wim Cake was pulling another round for the table. Danyn handed her a rag, and she blotted her clothes with it.
“Sorry, small one,” the stout man said. “Don’t know what I was thinking. My apologies. Danyn, give this little one a fresh drink on me.”
“No, don’t trouble yourself,” Tildi said. “Truly. No more for me.”
“But I insist!”
“Well …” She hated to refuse a gift from a human man, for fear of offending him.
“He doesn’t have to have any more beer if he doesn’t want it, Paldrew,” the publican said, thumping on the bar to get their attention. Tildi pulled herself erect and tried to look alert, but the beer and exhaustion were taking their toll on her. Mr. Cake appeared to be surrounded by a haze. “Well,
young man
, you’ve had plenty of adventure for one day, haven’t you? Perhaps you’d like to get some rest? We have no empty room your size, and I’m not going to put you in a room with us big folks. You’d get walked on when these drunken louts stumble up to bed. But we have my daughter’s bed from when she was little. The potboy will put it in the corner room for you. I’d hate to have someone roll over on you in the night, so you can have it to yourself.”
“Many thanks,” Tildi said with relief. “It sounds perfect to me, but I’d also be longing for a bath. And a chance to wash my clothes.” She held out the sleeves of her sodden tunic.
One of the publican’s red eyebrows rose on the creased forehead. “Aye? Well, the bathing room’s generally empty
from half-past eleven until just before midnight
, if you want a soak before you go to bed. If you’ve been on the road a few days that’d be a treat.”
“Indeed it would,” Tildi said fervently.
“Aye,” the barmaid said. “Then you’ll have one, if that is what you wish. I’ll make sure the boiler’s full. Half-past eleven, mind. That’s when the room will be empty. Am I not right, fellows?” Danyn asked pointedly. “No one is ever in there then.” Tildi glanced at her fellow patrons.
“Aye,” they chorused.
The drinkers could hardly look at her.
They must simply not be comfortable
around smallfolk,
she thought.
Or bathing.
But she could hardly think of anything else but scrubbing the road dust and the sudden deluge of beer off her skin.
“Well, then, it still lacks a half hour ’til then. How about having a song?” the man at the bar said, nodding at the big clock. “We’ll all sing, so no one can hear a false note, eh? Do you know ‘The Sailor and the Dolphin Lass,’ smallfolk?”
Tildi did. It was a slightly ribald tune about a lonely fisherman who sees a smooth-skinned form floating in the water and decides it’s his own true love. After some determined and cleverly phrased wooing, the dolphin accepts him as a suitor. The Tillerton men produced from their dirty rucksacks a squeeze-box and a metal flute. The eldest started the beat off with a one-two-three tap on the table, and his companions began to play the lively air. The rest of the room joined in.
Oh, I have been on rolling seas forever and a day,
And I would seek a lusty lass to join me at my play,
The kind of girl who’s not afraid to sit upon my knee,
With whom a lonely sailor lad won’t miss the rocking sea!
It was an immodest song, but Tildi didn’t want to be the only one sitting silent.
Teldo would sing,
she told herself firmly. She couldn’t manage the humans’ range, but joined in an octave above their voices. By the time they got to the verse about the wedding, with humans on one side and the dolphin’s family on the other, Tildi was laughing with her fellow patrons.
“That’s a fine voice you’ve got there,” the fat man said. “High and pure, like a girl’s.”
“I’m no girl!” Tildi protested, alarmed.
“Ah, of course you’re not. That’s just how your kind sounds, ain’t it? Thin little pipes. No offense,
young man
.” He shared a grin with his fellows. “One day you’ll grow a beard, and your voice will change. No hurry, is there?”
“Right,” Tildi said with mock seriousness. She slapped the table in emphasis. “My voice will change the very day I grow a beard. Count on it!”
That suddenly struck her as inordinately funny. It’d be true that if she could grow a beard her voice would drop, and one was just as likely to happen as the other. She laughed heartily at her own witticism, and
her new friends joined in. The first pot of beer was empty, so she began on one of the remaining two, oops, three!
“Good beer, this,” she said, after a deep draught. “Herbs in it, give it a spicy flavor. Must ask the brewer what she uses.”
“Aye, she’ll tell you with pleasure,” Wim Cake said. “My wife is always glad to talk about her work.”
“Have another on me, smallfolk,” the old woman said. “You’re a nice little creature.”
“Thank you,” Tildi said, beaming at her. She waved the mug, which slopped a little. She wiped up the spilled beer with her sleeve. “You are all very nice, too.” They cheered her. She toasted them all.
She decided that big folk were rough but friendly. She never did get a chance to meet many in the Quarters, except during meetings. When her brothers took produce or handwork down to the port city to sell, they never took women with them, and when human peddlers came through, she and the other women stayed away from the hard bargaining. Gosto would bring her cloth, needles, and other goods to have a look, far from the summing eye of the visitor. She’d send beer and cakes out with a brother if the dealing went well. Often she had just a glimpse of the human travelers through the shutters. To be among so many made her feel as if she had gone back to her childhood again, when everyone towered over her. Still, they offered her drinks and larded their language with salty expressions, not the way they would treat a child in company. She hoped no one had noticed how much she was blushing at the rude jokes. On the other hand, she knew she was getting rather tipsy. She wondered how she could ask the genial Mr. Cake to give her a milder brew.
“One more song!” the fishermen called.
Tildi suddenly felt cold. Eyes were boring into her from some quarter. She glanced idly around at her new acquaintances. The elf was staring at her. Those deep-set, dark eyes were peering into her very soul. In spite of all the beer she had drunk Tildi was as sober as a cat now.
“I … my voice is worn-out, good folks. Thank you for a fine evening. I think I’ll go up for my bath now.”
She climbed down from the tabletop and went to retrieve her pack from the pile near the window. Danyn gave her a grin and waited before she was halfway up the stairs before calling out, “Give me a shout if you need me to wash your back now!”
The men in the bar laughed heartily. Tildi breathed a sigh of relief. It
meant that her disguise had fooled them all. She bolted the door on the bathing chamber. The boiler was, as promised, full. The bath was enormous and furnished with huge white linen towels and a round cake of soap that smelled equally of lanolin and lavender. Tildi slid into the steaming water and had a good long soak, thankful to get all the dust of travel out of her hair. It was much easier to deal with her locks cut short. No wonder men rarely grew their hair out. Since she had experienced the novelty, it was difficult to think of going back to long tresses that either had to be plaited or tangled, tore out when combed, and got in the way of every task she undertook, not to mention as a lure to every kitten ever to sit in her lap. She rinsed and wrung out her beer-soaked garments, then, wrapped in her cloak for a dressing gown, she found the lumber room, its door standing hospitably ajar, with a candle burning inside.
A bed just the right size, spread with a light quilt, had been set up among the stacks of unused chairs and tables. Tildi spread her washing on the protruding legs. At the top of the house it was much warmer than below. Most likely everything would be dry by morning. She surveyed her accommodations. The single candlestick sat on an upturned pail beside the bed’s pillow. There was also a bowl and pitcher set before a small looking glass on a box near the wall.
Almost as good as home,
Tildi thought sleepily. The Groaning Table was as good at hosting guests as she would have been herself. Humans were kindly, and not as stupid as smallfolk traders made them out to be.
She sorted through her pack for a fresh chemise to use as a nightgown, and her soap and comb to have them ready for the morning. But they were not where she expected to find them. She blinked at the packet of Teldo’s papers and books, which were stuffed down among the personal items. Surely she hadn’t left them in that place, where they might get daubed with soap or insect repellent. She realized with a shock that her pack had been searched. Who could have done it?
When
was no problem: the bag had been out of her sight against the wall all evening long. But who? And why? Nothing was missing. Her bag of money contained exactly the number of coins she had had when she left home. What were they looking for?
Perhaps the searcher was waiting until she was asleep to rob her. There was no lock on this side of the door. With some difficulty, Tildi hoisted a heavy, human-sized wooden chair and hung it on the iron latch to prevent it being lifted. It wasn’t much of a protection, since it could
be shaken loose with a couple of sound kicks to the door, but it gave her a feeling of security.
She lay down and watched the candle make shadows on the ceiling. As tired as she was, the questions nagged at her mind. The bed was comfortable, she was clean and nearly dry, but she couldn’t relax. She was safe, wasn’t she? Wim Cake and his employees would come running if she screamed for help, she was sure of it.
Her practical nature demanded that if she wasn’t going to sleep, she might as well do something useful, such as mend her clothing. She pulled off the maligned shirt and in the light of the single candle looked at the black rips in the shoulders, even more bedraggled from the constant rubbing of the pack over the last day and a half’s walking. What a ruin of good fabric! She could make the torn places look like pleats, but those would be uncomfortable under the rucksack’s straps. Better to fold them over and stitch them flat, no matter what it ended up looking like. She caught a glimpse of her pale reflection in the little glass and snatched the discarded shirt up to the breast of her camisole.
Then, interested, she took a closer look at herself. Her dampened hair was settling into soft curls, making her look more like Teldo than ever before. How she missed him! Could it only be a few days since the thraiks had carried him and the others away?
While she sewed, she recounted the evening to herself. She thought of the avid looks on the faces of the humans in the room, enjoying her storytelling and her singing. Suddenly, she was filled with shame. The beer, much stronger than what she normally drank at home, had made her uninhibited, and she had forgotten herself, performing in public like a clown. No smallfolk woman should ever have put herself on show like that in mixed company! What if word got back to the Quarters? She’d never be able to show her face in decent company again!
Ah, well,
she thought, tying off the thread and biting it off between her teeth,
they weren’t going to want to bother with a girl who had run away to be a wizard anyhow.
She would just make sure not to push herself into the spotlight again like that. But it
had
been fun. She understood why Gosto loved telling his stories. There was an … energy in it. It felt almost as good as making spells. When they worked, that was.
A thread of moonlight peeped in through the shutters, and Tildi reminded herself it wasn’t that many hours until dawn. She could still hear voices down in the bar, including one upraised in off-tune song, and
some loud splashing and swearing that told her the bathing room was again in use, now that it was past midnight. She wasn’t alone. The people below were her friends, now, most of them. She would just have to accept that whoever went through her belongings would remain a mystery.
She dreamed that the thraik were searching everywhere for her, and they had paid a sheep to search her pack for her brothers. Across the face of the moon was a rune, the same one she had seen in the lord thraik’s eye.
T
ildi all but crept down to the main room the next morning before sunrise. Most of the other guests were snoring heartily in their rooms, but she was wide-awake.
“I’m sorry for the spectacle I made of myself last night,” she said to Danyn, while the serving maid dished up a plate of eggs and sausage for her.
“What?” Danyn exclaimed, leaning back with hands on hips. “Why, you were fine! It’s not every guest that can come in here with a fresh story that no one has heard before. Except for that elf, of course. She never acts surprised at nothing. ’Course, she might be a thousand years old. No one can tell with elves. They could be the same age as your grandmother, or older than the mountains. Did someone say something to you?”
“Er, no. I just hope I didn’t give offense.”
Danyn grinned, her widely spaced white teeth brilliant. “You are the most inoffensive thing to come through here ever, I might just say. You’re going to need to grow a little gumption if you’re going to stick up for yourself with your fellow students, is what I think.”
“Oh.” Tildi had never considered whether Olen might have more apprentices than herself.
“Would you like me to fix you some provisions?” Danyn asked. “It’s two days on foot to the next inn, maybe three for someone your size.” Tildi nodded eagerly, and Danyn moved over to the bar, where she filled a bottle with beer and smacked a cork into the neck. “Three more beyond that to Overhill, but you won’t have to worry once you reach the Eagle, just over the border into Melenatae. It’s a busy road, and there’re guest houses and inns in plenty past the province marker and on near where the road forks for the city. Now, it’s the left fork, remember. The right will take you into Rabantae, and you’re not going that way. It’s well marked. You can’t miss it.”
“I’m grateful,” Tildi said. “I couldn’t have asked for better directions.”
“Ah, well,” Danyn said with a grin, handing her the bottle and a wrapped packet. “I meet a lot of first-time travelers, and they never know what it is they
should
ask. The experienced ones can always tell me they know already. Good journeying to you, Teldo Summerbee. Whatever it is that you’re going to—or going away from—I hope you accomplish what it is you wish.” Tildi felt for her belt purse, but Danyn shook her head and held up the coins Tildi had given her the night before. “Keep that generous heart of yours beating now.”
“My thanks,” Tildi said, touched by the girl’s solicitousness. She stowed the food away and shouldered the pack resolutely.
“Come back to us when you become a famous scholar,” Danyn called to her.
Fortified with a good breakfast and fresh linen, she felt prepared for what might be a five-days’ hike. Tildi marched out into the thin light of dawn, touching the lintel for thanks as she departed.
She was reluctant to leave the relative safety of the Rushet inn. More than the night before, the sky seemed infinitely open and empty. If the thraik in her dreams was to return, she was vulnerable. Still, now she knew the measure of time it would take her to reach her destination. Five days was bearable.
Other folk had roused and were preparing to depart for the north at the same time as she.
Few of the guests were preparing to depart then. The three fishermen had gone to bed with a wineskin apiece to keep them going through the long hours until dawn, and Danyn had had no idea when she would see them surface. The fat man, a carter, had declared the night before that he was staying on until after lunch. No hurry, he had said, as his load of copper ingots wasn’t likely to rot, and he prefered to travel in the day and avoid thieves. The old woman was waiting at the Groaning Table for her son-in-law to come over on the ferry from the other side of the Arown.
Tildi started off alone; others caught up to her, but with their long legs they soon outdistanced her. The last of her fellow patrons gave her an apologetic glance over his shoulder and a wave as he loped out of sight. Tildi, burdened with her pack and much shorter legs, shook her head and bent to covering ground. No matter; she would have plenty of company at the next coaching inn, and her magic studies to occupy her mind when she reached Olen’s home. If the road stayed this empty, she might even get in a spot of magic practice.
“May I walk with you?” A voice startled her out of her reverie. She glanced up into the honey-colored eyes of the elf. “I am Irithe.”
“Yes, of course,” Tildi said, surprised but pleased. “Glad to meet you.”
“Are you sure? You are new on the road. You ought to know that you can’t trust every fellow rambler just because they seem to be going in the same direction as you are.”
“I …” That was unanswerable. Tildi had been inclined to trust Irithe just because she
was
an elf. But what would one of the woodkin want of her? “I’m sure you’re right.”
“But you wish to stay by me anyhow.”
“I’ve run into thraiks and—what did you call them?—
heurens,
” Tildi said. “I’d say they were a common enemy of anyone who traveled these roads.”
“So you think of the common defense against more powerful enemies,” the elf said. “Curious. But not everyone will have your altruistic outlook. I just give you my advice, for what it is worth. I’ve lived a long time not trusting too readily.”
“Thank you,” Tildi said thoughtfully. “I wonder why you want to give me such a warning, when I am a stranger, and, as you say, you have your own outlook.”
“Because you have secrets,” Irithe said. She smiled. “You are illequipped to protect them unless you protect yourself.”
“Secrets!” Tildi exclaimed. “I have no secrets!” It was an impulsive outburst, and even as she made it she knew how feeble it must sound. She did have secrets. She did not dare to ask her new companion which ones she had discovered.
“How about the apprenticeship to which you are making your way?” the elf asked, keeping her long stride slow so Tildi could stay level with her. “I noticed how careful you were never to tell anyone you were going to study with a wizard.”
“How … ?”
The elf regarded her with large, solemn eyes. “You reacted to Wim Cake’s peacemaking spell, not by calming down, but by looking around for the source. That’s not the reaction either he or I would have expected of those like you. He’s not a magician, as you must have surmised. He only knows that uncovering the amber stone stops brawls. Fortunately, those were simple folks with us in the inn, and none of them paid attention. Because you have faced thraiks and
heurens,
do not underestimate the danger posed by people who are frightened.”
“With so much magic in the world, why would people be frightened of it?” Tildi asked seriously.
Irithe smiled again. “Because they do not see it, and if they did they wouldn’t embrace it. Keep that in mind, too. You must have been very sheltered where you grew up not to know that.”
“I did know it,” Tildi said softly. So humans were very much the same as smallfolk after all. If that was the case, then she must never let anyone know she was a girl.
“Don’t let anyone ask too much of you. You’re inclined to give freely, but it might not always be the right choice. I noticed that when you offered Danyn silver. Err on the side of caution. The askers will expect a prudent response, and you won’t be giving offense. Remember, some secrets are worth keeping, even at the cost of your life, and others are not. You will learn to tell the difference, if you live so long. Truth is the best path, but there are many kinds of truth. That, too, you will learn.”
“I’m grateful for the reassurance,” Tildi said, though she was troubled by some of the elf’s words. She would have a lot to think about later.
“Good. Then let us enjoy the fine weather.”
They walked together for two days. Tildi asked Irithe questions, which the elf might or might not answer. She just looked at Tildi when she asked about the animal that ran by them one afternoon that looked
like a deer but whose head was larger in proportion than seemed normal. The elf frequently outpaced her on her long legs, leaving Tildi alone with her own thoughts, but made conversation with many humans they met along the busy river road, when they stopped to buy or trade for food or a place to sleep. Tildi had never met anyone like her.
On the morning of the third day, they passed a milepost that said IVIRENN on the near side and MELENATAE on the other.
“What is Ivirenn?” she asked Irithe.
“That is the human name for your homeland and the provinces around it. Humans have a great penchant for naming places and things that do not belong to them.” The thin lips tightened in an expression as close to a smile as she ever wore. “I leave you here, meadow child. Good fortune go with you.”
“And with you,” Tildi said. “Thank you.”
Irithe nodded. She walked up the slope and into the trees at the left side of the road. The branches rustled around her, and Tildi lost sight of her at once. Their mother had said the elf folk were one with the trees. They could hide among them like branches, and never be seen unless they wished to be.
Well, that was a wonderful experience she never would have had if she had remained in the Quarters, or Ivirenn, as she must now think of it, being a woman of the world. She settled her pack on her back and began walking toward the white haze hanging in the air. From the border it was at least two days’ walk to Overhill. How vast must the city be if the smoke from its chimneys could be seen that far away!
Many more wayfarers had joined the road. Humans taking their rest on the wayside hailed her with a friendly shout.
“Good day for walking, friend!”
Joining in the spirit, she shouted back.
“A fine day!”
“Going far, little master?”
“To Overhill. Where are you bound?”
“To Tillerton! You’ve just missed the spring wine festival! Pity you weren’t two days earlier! Do you want a drink?” Several of them held out bottles.
“Thanks, but no. Farewell!”
“And to you, little master!”
Tildi waved and walked on. She had never known any society but the one in which she had grown up, so she was surprised to discover a kind
of fellowship among those who traveled from one place to another. People met and chatted as if they were neighbors, offering news from the places where they had been, gossiping about common acquaintances, the weather, the latest outrages, though it was hard to tell until she listened closely if they were over serious matters or not.
The world was full of celebrations she had never heard of, kinds of people she had never seen, animals as big as houses. Everywhere lay fresh wonders. And more magic than she had ever dreamed: the mystic runes that existed only on paper in her homeland seemed to be everywhere now. In fact, they were so commonplace that no one ever commented upon them. No one, that was, save for Irithe.
Travelers on this big main road all troubled to acknowledge their fellow wayfarers, whether by a solemn nod or a friendly hail. Tildi had seen no other smallfolk thus far, so she continued to be an object of curiosity among those who passed her coming or going. A wagonload of passengers bound for Rushet warned her of a blind patch a few miles ahead where the road turned sharply to avoid an ancient oak tree. The place was a notorious hideout for brigands who jumped out at lone travelers.
“Especially one your size,” they assured her.
“Brigands?” Tildi asked, alarmed.
“Get in with a big group,” advised a woman, peeling an apple with a small knife and feeding the slices off the blade to a man lying with his head in her lap. “Safety in numbers. There’s strange things abroad, you know.”
B
y the time she got to the dangerous stand of woods, the brigands were not in a mood to attack smallfolk or anyone else. Six rough-looking humans were among a crowd pointing and gawking at a stinking, black hulk that lay among smashed trees.
“It fell down here several hours back,” a short, freckle-faced man confided to Tildi as she came up to get a look. “No one knows what it is—or was. Horrible, isn’t it?”
Tildi shed her pack and scrambled up onto the seat of a nearby wagon and peered down at the mass of rotting flesh, from which the crowd was keeping a healthy distance. “It’s a thraik,” she said in amazement.
“How would a pip-squeak from the country know that?” asked one of the men she presumed to be a brigand temporarily reformed by fear, lifting an unshaven face to hers.
“Because they attack my country,” Tildi shot back, surprised at her own boldness. “I’ve seen them. I’ve
fought
them.”
“Aah,” the man said, waving a hand disbelievingly.
“What happened to it?” asked a woman.
“It just came flopping down on us,” the unshaven man said. “Landed flat on Harn, there.” One of the men sat on the side of the road, looking dazed. He was covered with black blood, and some of his own. “He’s out of his wits. Been that way since it happened. We had to move it off him. It was greasy. It … fell apart when we touched it.” Tildi realized that the thraik seemed to have been split in two pieces. Her heart almost stopped in her body. What could possibly have done that to a
thraik?