Birthright (2 page)

“A covenant, eh? Do you also follow this covenant of your leaders?” Elrik asked her, curiosity lacing his baritone voice. “Because if you do, it’s an odd thing, wanting to travel so desperately to the Womb of a foreign God. I’d think you would be smart and stick to your own Wombs.”

Our own…what?
Blinking, Arasa stared at him. “What did you say?”

“What do you mean, what did I say?” he repeated, pushing away from the wall so that he could stand upright. “I’m just asking why you feel like you have to go visit the temple of a God whose followers would hate you on sight.”

“A Womb…is a
temple
?” Arasa asked him carefully, needing that point clarified. Her heart pounded in her chest at the possibility.

“Of course. We are born of the Gods—even in the Flame Sea, I know they occasionally say it that way,” he pointed out. “So it’s only natural to think of a temple as a sort of spiritual womb. At least, it’s natural to think that way in the lands of Kumron. I’ll admit I haven’t heard anyone actually calling a temple a Womb in the Empire, but then I’m a mage, not a priest.”

“A Womb is a temple,” she repeated, though more to herself than to him. “The Womb is
the
Temple!
Now
it makes sense. Why should I have to go all the way beyond the boundaries of the Flame Sea to some foreign ‘womb,’ when all I had to do was go to Ijesh?! Mother Goddess, I’ve wasted
months
on a fool’s quest—I could
kiss
you for your help, Elrik.
Thank
you!”

He shifted his weight, moving just enough into the light spilling from the open kitchen door for her to see part of his face. She watched him blink a little at her words as he did so, looking a bit stunned. “Well…you’re welcome. And, ah…if you actually wanted to, I don’t think I would be inclined to object.”

She stared at him for a moment, until his meaning sank in: he
wanted
her to kiss him. Grinning, Arasa reached up, cupped his cheeks, and pulled his mouth down to hers. It had been quite a while since she’d last had the time to spare for such things, but she hadn’t forgotten how to kiss a man. He certainly didn’t have any problems returning it, either, wrapping his arms around her within moments and nibbling on her lower lip.

Unsure if it was just desire for the mage that flared through her veins or a combination of relief and desire, she pulled back after a moment. He let her go with a touch of reluctance, but didn’t try to cling. Well, not exactly; he left his hands resting on her waist. Licking her lips, Arasa hoped the light from the kitchen wasn’t bright enough to point out the flushing of her cheeks. “As I said…thank you.”

“May I at least know the problem I solved for you?”

Arasa cocked her head. “Are you trustworthy? Because otherwise, I’m not going to reveal any of my secrets. They’re my own business, after all.”

Releasing her so he could dig into his satchel, he fished out the Truth Stone again. “I am not inclined to give away secrets for gossip or money. Which means I’m mostly trustworthy. Provided the secret isn’t something that would threaten to harm me, of course.” A display of the stone showed that his words were true; conditional, but true. Elrik slipped the piece of marble back into his bag. “So, are you going to tell me?”

She did owe him for helping her solve the riddle. “I have a problem. I have to figure out who was born first, my twin sister or me, so that we can settle a family dispute. Our father said we had to come back with proof, otherwise he couldn’t assign our inheritance to the right daughter. She went off in one direction, and I went in another.”

“How so?” Elrik asked, leaning back against the wall again.

Arasa shrugged. “Her research led her into the laws of the Empire, mine into its customs and legends. I don’t know what she found, if anything, but I found a reference to a situation wherein the inheritor acquired the legacy by making a pilgrimage from ‘the Womb to the Heart,’ to quote the old text. I guessed ‘the Heart’ meant the Heart of the Empire, the capital city of Adanjé-nal, but the term
Womb
isn’t used in the Flame Sea to describe anything anymore. It might’ve been used back at the beginning, but the definition had been lost somewhere along the way. So I started traveling, hoping that I’d find a reference in records kept elsewhere…and that’s when I heard about a ‘Womb of Tarden,’ while I was traveling through the Kumré region, here, albeit in a town lower down the slopes of the Frost Wall than this…place.”

“The edge of civilization?” the mage quipped, humor in his tone. “Yes, it would make sense for the Womb in question to be found in Ijesh, chief temple-city of the Empire, if it deals with a matter of Imperial custom and law. I’ve never been there, but I understand it’s a long way from here.”

“About three hundred sixty
selijm
from here, yes. That’s over a month’s journey on foot, though it’s only three or so weeks on horseback. I’m
very
glad I won’t have to walk all the way from the temple of Tarden, which would be even farther away,” she admitted candidly, relief in her voice. “As it is, Ijesh is a day’s walk from Adanjé-nal. Even to make that much of a pilgrimage is going to be a literal pain in the foot. I honestly didn’t know how I’d be able to walk across the whole length of the Inner Desert, but I knew I had to try.”

“You don’t look sedentary,” Elrik observed dryly. “How do you get around, if you don’t walk?”

“To make a pilgrimage,” Arasa enlightened him, “one must walk barefoot and weaponless. That much of the instructions were clear. For all the Heart of the Empire is in hard-desert, there are still patches of softer soil…and that means sand-demons.”

“
Weaponless?
In sand-demon territory?” he scoffed. “Who came up with that stupid rule? Barefoot is idiotic enough!”

“According to the legends, Djin-Taje-ul, Herself. Mother of Creation. Since it’s the only way I’ve found to resolve the issue, I’ll just have to figure a way around that part…so long as I do it barefoot and weaponlessly, of course,” she muttered.

“What about magic? If someone were to craft you a protective spell for your feet?” Elrik offered.

She considered it. “I don’t know. I’d have to double-check the legend, but given that I found the information for the pilgrimage in the record halls of Ijesh, it’s not out of my way to go and check, since I now have to go all the way back to the ‘Womb’ of the Empire for my starting point.”

“How did you end up in this question of who came first, anyway?” he asked her next. “I thought twins came out one at a time, the same as any other birthing.”

“Our mother died in childbirth,” Arasa told him quietly. “Midbirth. We weren’t cooperating and coming out quietly, and the Healers discovered she had torn and was bleeding on the inside. But they didn’t know that until after it was too late. They had to cut her open to extract us before it was too late for us, and lifted us out together, since our umbilical cords were tangled up together. Once they got us separated out, Father had us named one at a time…but there is some doubt as to whether a naming is what makes someone first born, or if it was being drawn out of our mother’s body and how to define that, or if it was the position of the one closest to coming out the correct way, had our mother survived.”

“It seems like a rather large fuss to go through, just to settle an inheritance. Can’t you just come to an agreement over who gets what, or flip a coin?” Elrik inquired.

She shook her head. “There’s magic tied up in the inheritance. It has to be the firstborn child. The legend I found said that that the firstborn must ‘walk from the Womb to the Heart in pilgrimage,’ and they would be known as the inheritor by the proof of their success. That means I have to return to the center of the Inner Sea, find my sister, and persuade her to take a barefooted walk with me, to see which one of us is worthy.

“I mean, if it were up to
me,
I’d have flipped a coin ages ago and saved us all the trouble,” she admitted with a rough sigh and a touch of her chest. “I could accept the inheritance as firstborn and try to do my best with it, or step back and let my twin handle the matter and be content to just advise her from time to time on how to manage it, should she seek any recommendations from me. I could be just as content finding a lesser niche for myself in the, ah, family business. A manager of some aspect of it.”

“Is that family, as in kin? Or Family, as in Am’n?” Elrik asked her shrewdly. “Not many Shijn-Clans have holdings large enough to need submanagers.”

“Not many, but some do,” Arasa returned calmly, hedging around the question without answering it definitively. She glanced at the doorway; only the sounds from the kitchen could be heard. “I think it’s safe for us to go back in again.”

“Tell me…if this inheritance is that important, and if you can get away with using magic to protect yourself…would you be interested in hiring me to do the job?”

Elrik’s question surprised her. She blinked at him. “Why? I’m headed back to the Heart of the Empire, which is a very long distance from your profitable niche, here.”

“There’s an Academy at Ijesh,” he said, his tone somewhat diffident and reserved. “It’s said to be the best of all the Mage Academies. I’ve never had a reason good enough to travel that far from the Frost Wall—as you say, my niche is profitable so far—but I would like to go there some day, to further my craft. It would be like a hire-sword wanting to go to the Imperial Salle in Adanjé-nal. I don’t even know if I’d be good enough for the teachers at Ijesh to bother with, but I’d like to try. And as your people say, when Djindji-Taje, Goddess of Luck, offers you Her Right Hand, only a fool wouldn’t grasp it.”

He had a point. Without his help, Arasa not only would have been a few coins poorer for that false map, but also would have found herself deep in barbarian lands without any clue of where to go. Lady Luck had touched her with that Right Hand, with this man’s timely presence; it was best if she returned the favor, or risk a whap from the Left. Smiling, she offered her hand. “Why not? Traveling alone gets rather boring, anyway.”

Elrik didn’t take the offered palm. Instead, he cleared his throat. “Well, then…we need to discuss my fee. I have some funds set aside for traveling, but a little income to supplement the journey would be nice. Say, a retainer fee in advance for my services? Nothing much, in case there turns out to be a prohibition against magic…but if nothing else, I suppose I could walk beside you, and stab any sand-demons that burrowed too close to you. I’m not the one who has to make a barefoot, weaponless pilgrimage, after all. There’d be a small charge for that once we get there, if you don’t mind me being mercenary about it, but lessened by the cost of the retainer fee.”

His audacity made her laugh. “No, I don’t mind. You have a right to make a living. And I didn’t read anything against there being any companions on the pilgrimage, though I should double-check that as well. Would a Moon a day on the journey there be sufficient to retain your services? Plus a bonus for any services rendered at the end of the journey, proportioned to the deed in question.”

Wrinkling his freckled nose, Elrik considered the offer. “I suppose that’ll do. It’s a field-laborer’s wage, and not befitting the complex, costly services of a mage…but it would get me to the Academy. And to the fabled city of Adanjé-nal. If you’ve been to Ijesh, did you also visit the capital? I’ve heard stories about its wonders. Buildings as tall as cliffs, waterfalls cascading everywhere, the Great Dome of the Imperial Hall…”

“I’ve been there. You’ll have a chance to see it for yourself, since that’s where my kin live. In fact, if you can help me resolve my family’s dilemma, one way or another, I’m sure they’d be happy to host you while you were in the area, as a thank-you for your assistance.” She flashed him a mischievous smile. “That’ll help save on the cost of an inn, which can be rather expensive in the capital. Deal?”

“Deal.” Now he clasped hands with her, accepting the bargain. “Shall we go inside and risk a meal together? I’m afraid all I have otherwise is journey bread.”

“So long as it’s been cooked thoroughly, I think we could risk it,” she agreed, smiling. “You can tell me about your adventures in Aben-hul while we eat. I’ve never gone there personally, but my twin has.”

Returning to the tavern, they commandeered a table in a corner and started talking. It was the dirty looks and grumbles from the sleepy patrons who were staying in the common room overnight, wrapped up in their cloaks wherever they could stretch out, that finally broke off their conversation some time later. Arasa found herself reluctant to stop talking with Elrik; he was both intelligent and widely educated, yet not full of his own self-importance. Barbarian or Imperial, that was a rare quality in a man. His politeness was also appreciated, for when she reluctantly rose, he gestured at the table they had been using.

“Why don’t you sleep up here? I can take one of the benches nearby.”

She smiled at the offer. “Actually, I’m sleeping out in the stables, tonight.”

His coppery brows rose at that. “Now, why didn’t I think of that? Do you think they’d rent me room in the hayloft, too?”

“I’m sleeping with my horses, not in the hayloft. But I’ll meet you back here for whatever passes for breakfast.”

“Ah. Then I’ll walk you to the stables,” he offered, rising to join her. One of the nearby travelers grumbled a little louder before resettling on his own table. Holding a finger to his lips, Elrik escorted her outside without further protest. The stable-yard was in some ways larger than the tavern, since it was designed for modest-sized caravans of goods being transported over the passes. Like most of the local buildings, the barn was built of wood, not brick or stone. It made Arasa nervous about the possibility of fire, but the two lanterns providing a soft light were carefully enclosed within panes of glass.