“Olen, your mind must be wandering,” Edynn said, walking over to look up at the smallfolk. “She can ride that way, but what happens when she needs to get down? Is your groom coming along with us? Did you include a rope ladder?”
“Of course not, Edynn,” Olen said with some asperity. “But my apprentice needs a horse. Sihine knows her. He will carry her faithfully.”
“Don’t you have one more suitable for someone her size? A pony?”
Rin snorted. “A pony could not keep up with us if we had to retreat from some danger, Edynn.”
“I cannot believe none of us discussed this matter before,” Edynn said, shaking her head.
“There have been many more important matters,” Rin assured her. “I, too, have been more concerned with where our book thief has gone to. How we will follow him scarcely entered my mind.”
Serafina looked haughty. “Well, you cannot expect my mother or me to carry her. Our steeds are accustomed to our weight. One of the guards, perhaps?” She looked pointedly at Captain Teryn.
“Not my orders, honored one,” Teryn snapped out. “I follow the instructions of King Halcot. In order to provide proper defense, we must ride as unencumbered as possible.”
“It’s all right,” Tildi said sadly. “I’d rather walk.”
“And why not?” Lakanta said, swinging out of her saddle. “Melune would be happier if I walked, as I often do,” she added pointedly, looking up at Serafina.
“Oh, stop bickering,” Rin said impatiently. “You shall ride with me. I should be honored. Come.” She reached down one long brown hand for Tildi’s. Before she knew it, the smallfolk was astride the warm, striped back in front of the band that held matching packs of red leather. Another band held a small pouch and a coiled whip around Rin’s waist. “You can hold on to my mane.” She pointed at her spine. The red silk
blouse she wore parted to allow a narrow band of thick, wavy black hair more than a foot in length to flow freely. She stamped a hoof and shifted from side to side. Tildi felt herself falling, and buried her hands in the crisp tresses. They felt like washed sheep’s fleece, a soothing and confidence-inducing texture. Suddenly, she was no longer afraid of being so high up. Rin smiled at her and flared her nostrils. “That’s better, is it not? Your pack will fit in one of mine. Are we ready?”
There was no excuse left not to go. Tildi touched hands with everyone still in the courtyard, princes, wizards, scholars, and all. Edynn gave the word, and they trotted out of the courtyard. The last glimpse Tildi had as she passed the gate was of Olen standing on Silvertree’s doorstep, waving her good-bye.
“I have never seen anything like that, Olen besotted over an apprentice,” Serafina said, as they clattered over the cobblestones up toward the city limits. “He’d never have made that kind of mistake with one of those idiotic boys who usually come to learn from him.”
“He is worried,” Rin said. “As are we all.”
Tildi said nothing. Serafina’s words couldn’t be meant to wound, but they felt to her like an accusation that she was putting more burdens upon the search party than they needed. Teryn and Morag rode stolidly at the rear of the party, not speaking, even to each other. Tildi tried offering them friendly glances, which were returned without any emotion at all. She felt lonely and unimportant.
“I agree with you, Rin,” Edynn said. “I have never been as worried about anything in my life! We have no time to think about that. Tildi, you are the leader of this expedition. Take us back to where you saw the glowing runes.”
R
iding a centaur was not at all like sitting on the back of Sihine, either before or behind Olen. Rin kept twisting her upper body around to talk to her, and she frequently made a comment when Tildi shifted. That there was no saddle between them also made Tildi keenly aware that she was wearing heavy shoes and coarse trousers.
“I’m sorry,” Tildi said. “If I’d known I’d be on your back I would have asked for softer clothes.”
Rin laughed, a musical whinny. “It’s not your trousers or your boots, little one. You fidget like a fly. I swear to you I will not drop you, but it is difficult for me to concentrate on making my way when you move around so much.”
Tildi let out a gasped apology, which made Rin laugh again.
“You are so serious! I have known this of the smallfolk. Ride with the rhythm, and you will find everything will go much more smoothly.”
The centaur exaggerated her walk for the next few minutes, making Tildi tip from side to side. It was like trying to sit in a rocking chair that was also bobbing up and down. Tildi was all too aware that it was more than twice her height to the ground from where she sat.
Rin increased her pace a tiny bit at a time.
Gradually, the smallfolk discovered that her hips naturally rocked in the direction of Rin’s forward foot. Before long, she let her spine relax and follow the centaur’s gait. By the time Edynn spoke to her again she was able to reply without thinking about how she was going to hold on.
“The last time I saw the runes so bright?” she echoed Edynn’s question. “It was not long before I came into the city. I wasn’t paying a good deal of attention to the road. I was riding in a chicken cart—”
“Of course you were riding in a chicken cart,” Serafina said with an impatient exhalation. Lakanta chuckled.
“Well, just because you wouldn’t be caught dead or dying in one, Miss High Horse.”
“Be kind to my daughter, peddler,” Edynn said, a little smile on her lips. “She has not been out in the world much, and she has a great deal to learn.”
“Ah, I see. Forgive me, then,” the little blond woman said gravely. “I will always forgive youth and innocence.”
That forgiveness seemed to upset Serafina more than Lakanta’s displeasure. She sat on her horse with her back very straight, and met no one’s eyes while they rode.
Tildi hid a small smile. Edynn’s daughter was abrasive, but Tildi thought it wasn’t so much to offend as deflect. She was afraid of something. Tildi could well understand that. She was afraid for herself and the rest of them. The more that she thought about it, the more she was astonished at herself for having put up her hand to volunteer. What did she know about the world beyond the one road she’d trodden from the Quarters? What did she know of magic and wizards beyond what she had read in storybooks? She had fallen lucky to have been in Olen’s care.
Lucky, indeed. That was part of the reason she had put herself forward. She had been lucky since she was a child. Lucky not to have fallen victim to the thraik, not once, but twice. Lucky that the fragment of the book had come into her hands in a manner that allowed her to build up
an immunity to its power. She would be selfish not to put her good fortune at the service of, well, the world. She almost blushed at the conceit of it all, but smallfolk had always gone by the adage that if you had the right tool for the job, you used it. If you were a weaver, you wove. If you were a carter, you drove. If you were a farmer, you tilled.
And if you were a Summerbee,
Tildi thought, changing the last line of the old song,
you filled the job that needed to be filled.
She told her knees that was the reason they must stop knocking.
T
he sun blessed them as they traveled southward along the main road. There were many more travelers than before, all of them staring openly at the small group, and especially at Tildi. She didn’t know whether her cheeks were flushing from the heat or the endless scrutiny.
Once they were out of sight of Overhill, Captain Teryn took the lead. She rode at the front of the party, her head held high and her hand on her sword hilt to forestall anyone who might approach them casually. Not that anyone would. Awe of the two robed wizards kept the eager children away, even if they would dare to pass the shining Pegasus of Rabantae resplendent upon Teryn’s tunic. The stares flustered Tildi, but she remembered that she had an important task to perform. It was easier to shut out the curious gazes once she began to concentrate upon studying her surroundings, seeking any trace of the runes that had been so plentiful on her trip northward. Even the rune that had been gilded upon the glowing solar orb had paled into obscurity. She began to wonder if she had imagined them, and she had never thought of herself as the fanciful type.
“Any signs?” Edynn inquired after a few miles.
Tildi appreciated the senior wizardess’s patience. They must all be thinking that the logic that had thrust Tildi into the search party was flawed. She had to produce some sign that she had not been mistaken, or lying. How could the runes have vanished?
Tildi held fast to Rin’s mane as she squinted at the nearby trees. Nothing looked very familiar, but then, she had had a rooster to contend with, as well as all the questions fired at her by her kindly host on her previous journey.
“I see nothing here,” Serafina said.
“They must be farther along,” Tildi said, much embarrassed. The trees and fences all looked so
ordinary.
“I recall a big oak tree whose rune I could read very well. I saw plenty of runes, I promise you!”
“Did the carter see them, too?” Lakanta asked.
“I didn’t really ask. I assumed he could,” Tildi admitted. “I thought everyone outside the Quarters saw them. Everyone seemed so much more familiar with magic than we smallfolk are. I started seeing runes as soon I had crossed over the mountains, and I thought that it was an ordinary event, not worth mentioning.”
“That goes along with what Olen and the other wizards suspect,” Serafina said with a sage nod. “The book came from the south. It must have passed along, or close to, the road you, er, walked.” She still didn’t credit that anyone ever traveled between towns on foot.
“But how?” Rin asked. “No ship reports having carried a wizard with such a burden. It would be difficult to hide its passage. Where did he come ashore?”
“He or she would not need a ship,” Edynn reminded them. “Whoever carries the book commands the waves, the wind, the earth herself. He could cause the water to be solid under his feet, then soften as soon as he had passed. He could have come ashore in the belly of a beast that he caused to hold him. I heard a rumor of a creature split in two, down south near Tillerton. That could have been his carriage, as heartless as that sounds.”
Split in two! That brought a vivid memory back to Tildi.
“A thraik fell to earth, cut in half,” she said, seeing it all in her mind and shuddering afresh. “It was a few days before I reached Master Olen’s. It fell on a man. Everyone had stopped to look at it.”
“A thraik, actually riven in half?” Lakanta asked. “Whew, a marvel! I’ve never met the warrior who could strike such a blow.”
“It would take a wizard,” Serafina said. “Thraiks are powerful, but there are spells that could do what you describe.”
“Could our thief have done such a thing?” Rin asked.
“It would be no effort for the bearer of the book,” Edynn said solemnly. “He would not even have to touch the creature, merely slice through its rune. He could have used a pen, a knife, or the tip of a finger.”
They all shivered at the thought of such power. Tildi felt the frisson race through the hairy back under her legs, and Rin’s thick mane switched nervously.
“And you didn’t think to mention such an important thing to Olen?” Serafina asked, glaring at Tildi.
Tildi flushed.
“I thought he must already know about the thraik. He always seemed
to hear news before messengers arrived with scrolls. He reads the glasses in his study.”
She didn’t want to talk about thraik, and was sorry she had brought it up, nor did she like the disapproving glance from Serafina.
“That wasn’t the thought uppermost in my mind. I was about to undertake my apprenticeship, and all my attention was on presenting myself in the best possible manner,” Tildi added defensively.
“I understand that, dear,” Edynn said with an amused little smile, but Serafina wasn’t going to let the subject drop.
“Didn’t you think more of it than that?”
“I was glad it was dead,” Tildi said firmly. “Thraiks have been in the Quarters many times in my lifetime alone. They killed my entire family. I’m the only Summerbee left.”
The others fell silent at Tildi’s outburst.
Rin broke the silence with a gentle
sn-sn-sn.
“I am sorry for your loss, smallfolk,” she said. “We have had many thraik incursions, and many brave centaurs have died. It would seem that all of us share that enemy.”
“We do, too,” Lakanta said. “The lost ones are named in our Day of Sorrow remembrance every Year’s End.”
Serafina had her lips pressed together.
“My apologies,” she said, but the words seemed to come with a distinct effort. “I had no idea of your history. How far from here was the dead thraik?”
“More than two days’ ride,” Tildi said.
“But you
did
see runes after that?”
“Oh, yes, for a long while.” The young wizardess looked around, and the disapproving set of her nose made Tildi begin to feel desperate. Would they take her back to Olen and tell him she had failed?
“Can we be sure that the book did not go back along this road?” Lakanta asked. “You only think that the thief came north. He might have started out somewhere quite different and gone south to Tillerton. We ought to travel there and see if we can find fresh clues.”
“No. Why would you suggest that?” Serafina asked suspiciously.
“Do you want to miss this thief?” the peddler countered. “I thought the idea was to run him to ground, and swiftly!”
“Peace, please,” Edynn said, more gently, holding up a hand to still the two of them. “Tildi’s dead thraik is more recent than the beast found in Tillerton. That shows that it was coming northwards, at least at that
time. We will see if we can pick up the trail from here, and hope that it does not die out past tracing while we pursue it. Our thief has had a long head start on us. Our other attempts to trace him have failed. Who knows where he is by now?”
Tildi interrupted them with a shout.
“Wait! That gnarled tree! I remember that!”
She pointed to an ancient oak at the top of the next hill. Its bark, instead of being combed neatly like furrowed earth, was twisted and puckered. “I remember it because it looks so much like an old man’s face. Its rune was like a wart on the nose.”
Lakanta laughed, gaining Serafina’s instant disapproval.
“Is this matter funny to you, peddler?” the younger wizardess asked.
The small blond woman wiped tears of merriment out of her eyes. “Oh, child, let it be. Tildi made an association that helped her keep a memory. Can I help it if it’s a funny one?”
Serafina, exasperated, looked at her mother for support, but Edynn was smiling, too.
“You did see it there, Tildi?”
“Oh, yes,” Tildi insisted. She was sure of it now. The tree was as unmistakable as a face. “Rin, will you bring me to it?”
“My pleasure.” The centaur broke into a smooth trot.
“It looks ordinary to me,” Serafina said, bringing her mare’s neck close to the centaur’s flank.
It did look ordinary. The rune was still there on the “nose,” but far less distinct than it had been.
“The marking is fainter than before. I guess they fade in time,” Tildi said, dismayed.
“Yes, but no,” Edynn said, as they drew nearer. “Do you see, Serafina? Watch!”
“Yes!” the young wizardess said, her eyes widening. The rune seemed to lighten slightly, making it more prominent against the dark bark. “Touch it, smallfolk.”
Tildi brought her hand out to the tree. The rune paled still further.
“Bless me,” Edynn said. “This is an extraordinary event.”
“It’s only the residual effect of her own exposure,” Serafina argued.
“I think not, daughter.”
“I see nothing,” Rin complained.
“Wait a moment more,” Edynn said. “Tildi, do you have your fragment of the book to hand?”
Tildi thrust her hand into her belt pouch. Olen had told her to keep the page near her, and not to let it fall into anyone else’s possession. The moment she brought out the roll of parchment, the rune on the tree turned golden. “There! That’s a little like the way I recall it.”
“It is enough,” Edynn said. She nodded slowly, studying the effect. “Remarkable.”