The Curse on the Chosen (The Song of the Tears Book 2) (35 page)

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘It’s just aftersickness. I haven’t suffered it in years,
and it hits me very hard in this new body. After making two portals in a row,
it’s amazing that I can still stand up.’

‘Will it get worse?’

‘I hope not.’ He turned to Maelys, who had hesitated in the
muddy road, feeling shy. ‘Something the matter?’

‘I’ve never been in an inn before.’

‘You astonish me. I’ve stayed in thousands and they’re all
the same – dirty linen, bedbugs and food I wouldn’t feed to my dog. In
some inns, the food
is
dog.’

‘I thought the scrutators had the best of everything.’

‘They
could
have
the best of everything, if they chose to, and many did. Personally, I’ve never
found that a good way to rule. To know what the common people think, you’ve got
to live amongst them.’ He reflected, then added, ‘Well, some of the time. There
are limits.’

‘I hope the food isn’t dog here,’ said Maelys. ‘I’m
starving. I don’t feel as though I’ve eaten proper food in weeks.’

‘You haven’t; we were in the Nightland for the best part of
a month, Santhenar time.’

‘What?’ She stared at him. ‘You’re making it up.’

‘I’m not. I asked the date when we bought the horses.’

‘It only felt like a few days to me.’

‘Time runs faster there, evidently.’

Not for poor, lonely Emberr, she thought.

He rapped with the knocker, and shortly the door was opened
by a short, bald man, so pale that it looked as though he’d never been outside.
He had transparent eyebrows and unnervingly pink eyes. ‘You’ll be wanting a bed
at this time of day,’ he said in a flat voice.

‘Three beds, taverner.’ Flydd pushed through into a foyer
lined with coat pegs, most of which were occupied by dripping cloaks or heavy
coats. Maelys followed, standing behind him and feeling uncomfortable. ‘There’s
three of us.’

‘You want a bed
each
?’
exclaimed the innkeeper. ‘Can’t be done. You’ll have to share.’

‘We’ll have two rooms, at the very least, with no one else
in them. Just us and your fattest bedbugs.’ Flydd laughed.

The innkeeper looked hurt. ‘Mistress puts oil of turpentine
in the wash. No bedbugs here.’

‘Excellent, taverner. We’ll have your freshest, cleanest
sheets as well.’

‘They were only changed a month ago.’

Flydd clinked two coins in his pocket, meaningfully.

‘If you want to pay for fresh sheets,’ said the innkeeper,
beaming, ‘that’s different. Don’t get many through here as do.’

‘I don’t suppose you get many visitors at all, in these
empty lands,’ said Flydd.

‘More than you might suppose, lately. Some nights we turn
people away to the stables, but a large party left this morning, hurrying west.
Come in.’

Flydd stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. ‘What’s west
of here?’

‘Just rocks and trees, but these folks were the sort you
don’t ask questions about, if you take my meaning.’

‘Bandits?’ Flydd said, almost too casually. ‘We’ll want to
keep well away from them.’

‘Not bandits,’ said the innkeeper out of the corner of his
mouth. ‘God-Emperor’s men; soldiers
and
scriers
. Come through – you’re letting a draught in.’ He bustled
away.

‘Just wipe my boots first,’ said Flydd, closing the door
behind the taverner.

He took Maelys’s arm. ‘Why do you suppose a party of the
God-Emperor’s people are hurrying west?’ he said softly.

Her heart lurched. She looked up into his fierce eyes; he
wasn’t so different from the old Flydd after all. ‘They can’t know we’re here.
They just can’t!’

‘Jal-Nish soon will. I’ve underestimated him badly; I should
have known better. He leaves nothing to chance, and his humiliation at Mistmurk
Mountain will only have stiffened his resolve. I deliberately chose our destination
at the last possible moment to make the portal difficult to track; I dare say
that’s why you went astray.’

‘Then why are they here already?’

‘They’ve had a month, remember? From the instant we fled the
plateau, Jal-Nish’s spies and record-keepers would have been set to work,
tracing our every connection so as to work out all the places we might have
gone, and sending people to every one of those places to intercept us the
moment we appeared. He would soon have discovered that Colm’s family came from
Gothryme, and that he was heir to the manor. Jal-Nish, or one of his tellers,
would have remembered the connection to the
Tale
of the Mirror
and the treasure left to Karan Kin-Slayer in a cave in
Elludore. A treasure that could give me the power I so desperately need,’ he
said in a low voice. ‘Only Colm knows where the cave is, but Jal-Nish’s scriers
–’

‘What’s the matter?’ said Maelys.

‘I thought I heard something.’ He put his ear against the
inner door, then the outer, listened and shook his head. ‘Wipe your feet. We’ll
talk later.’

Maelys heard footsteps coming up the outside steps. ‘That
must be Colm now.’

She opened the door. It wasn’t Colm, but a tall and
extremely buxom woman in her middle thirties, with flaming red hair and a lush,
scarlet mouth curved into an enigmatic smile. She stopped on the step below
Maelys, but still looked down into her eyes.

‘What have we here?’ she said. ‘A little door boy?’ She
reached into her coat as if to tip Maelys, who coloured and stepped backwards.

‘I’m a g-guest here.’

‘Really?’ said the woman. She looked up, saw Flydd, and her
dark eyes widened momentarily.

He nodded absently to her, his mind on other matters, but
she brushed past Maelys and extended her hand to him, smiling. ‘Bellulah Vix,
but
you
can call me Bel. What’s your
name? You don’t look as though you’re from these parts.’

‘I’m Lorkentyne Pumice,’ lied Flydd in an accent so neutral
that it would have been impossible to tell where he came from. He took her hand
and his eyes went blank momentarily, then shook it, wincing at the strength of
her grip. ‘Just taking the air for a day or two. And you?’ he added politely.

‘Buy me a cup of mead and I’ll tell you everything.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve other business to attend to, Bel.’ Flydd
looked as though he regretted having to say it.

‘Nonsense, Lorky,’ said Bel, as though the decision had been
made and there was nothing more to say. ‘You’ll do your other business all the
better for spending a relaxing hour with me.’

Flydd looked taken aback; surely no one had ever spoken to
him in such a confident and familiar way before. ‘Another time,’ he said with a
greater degree of reluctance.

‘Right now.’ She linked her arm through his and turned him
around. Flydd looked back almost pleadingly, as if to say, ‘Get me out of
this,’ as Bel led him inside, flipping a coin over her shoulder to Maelys.

‘My bags are outside, lad. Treat them as delicately as you
would a lady.’

She laughed heartily and the door banged behind them. Maelys
stared at it. Bel’s profile, as she turned to go through the door, had been
vaguely familiar. Where could she have seen her before?

 
TWENTY-SIX

Maelys, who had caught the copper coin without
thinking, limped down the steps and carried in Bel’s bags, which were extremely
heavy. She could not have said why she did it, save that the woman had a
natural authority which, because of Maelys’s upbringing, she found difficult to
defy. But how could Flydd be taken in by her? Was he really that low from
aftersickness?

A blast of aromatic heat struck her as she entered the
tap-room, which appeared to occupy most of the ground floor of the inn, though
it was lit only by a pair of lanterns above the counter and a smoking open fire
on the other wall. The floor-boards were strewn with dried ferns and pungent
thyme, several long trestle tables ran down the centre of the taproom, and
there were smaller tables in the shadows to either side.

Two of the trestles were occupied by groups of men and women
sitting around steaming jugs of mulled drink; a gaggle of small children played
hide and seek between the legs of the trestles. The tables near the fire were
also full, though the ones along the rear wall were empty.

Flydd and Bel stood at the counter, Flydd ordering drinks
from a thin barmaid. Bel slipped off her grey cloak to reveal a clinging
crimson gown, quite unsuitable for this weather, which displayed the most
voluptuous figure Maelys had ever seen. The older woman was positively bursting
out of her stays – or would have been if she were wearing any. A common
tart, Maelys thought sourly.

Bel folded the cloak and laid it over Flydd’s arm as Maelys
staggered up with her bags. Flydd said something to her and they both laughed.
Maelys scowled, thinking they were laughing at her, but Bel turned and smiled,
saying, ‘Thank you, lad,’ in such a warm and welcoming way that Maelys was
disarmed. Still a tart, but a good-natured one.

Bel’s gaze slipped to Maelys’s chest momentarily before she
turned back to Flydd, and Maelys felt a spasm of panic. She knew! It was much harder
to fool a woman about such matters.

‘I’ll have your best room, taverner,’ Bel said in a carrying
voice.

‘Sorry lady, we’re full tonight.’ The albino looked at
Flydd. ‘Unless the gentleman …’

‘We’re not sharing,’ said Flydd. ‘But we’ll be gone at first
light.’

‘You can have a room tomorrow,’ the taverner said to Bel.
‘You’ll have to sleep in the stables tonight.’

‘Damned if I will,’ said Bel. ‘What do they need two rooms
for? They can have one and I’ll take the other.’

‘We need both,’ said Flydd, though less firmly than before.
He glanced at her bust, swallowed and looked away.

‘All right. You and the fellow with the horses can have one;
I’ll share the other with the lad. I’m sure my virtue will be in no danger from
such a little chap.’ Bel gave a throaty chuckle.

‘His virtue might be in danger from you, though,’ said a
red-faced fat man, sitting by the fire and tapping a long-stemmed pipe on the
hob.

The whole room laughed, and Bel as loudly as any of them.
She ordered drinks for everyone and bestowed a knowing smile on the taproom.
‘I’m fixed up for the night, as it happens. Bring our drinks to the table by
the back door, bar lass. Lad, take my bags up to our room.’ She tossed Maelys
another coin.

Maelys caught it, quivering in fury. What was the matter
with Flydd? His eyes slid across Bel’s splendid bosoms again, which were
practically exploding out of her gown, then back, lingeringly. A leg of ham
could be concealed in her cleavage and you’d never know, Maelys thought
spitefully. Coarse, vulgar strumpet – how could Flydd be taken with
someone like her?

Because he’d been a lusty man, even into his sixties, until
the scrutator’s torturers had cut his manhood from him. Maelys had seen enough
during his renewal to know that Flydd had got it back and, after so many years,
perhaps his male urges were irresistible. Having grown up in a female
household, men had always been a mystery to Maelys, but the aunts had never
stopped talking about their base, wicked and unquenchable lusts.

She looked helplessly at the taverner. ‘Up the stairs to the
top and go right, all the way to the end,’ he said. ‘Would you like a hand?’

‘I can manage, thanks.’ She hauled Bel’s bags up the steep
and creaking stairs.

The room at the end was small, cold, and half of it was taken
up by a rustic cabinet bed with sliding wooden sides. It was common for
travellers of the same sex to share a bed, but Maelys had slept alone since she
was little and couldn’t bear to lie with a stranger, especially one as loud and
coarse as Bel; there was no choice but to sleep on the floor. It was a
miserable prospect, for the boards were bare and a chilly draught blasted under
the door.

On the way downstairs, she saw Colm at the counter, scowling
into a large tankard. His face was drawn; he looked as though he’d suffered a
bitter blow. ‘Where the blazes did she come from?’ he muttered, as though Bel
was Maelys’s fault.

‘How would I know?’ she hissed, perching on a stool beside
him. ‘She just latched on to Flydd. She won’t take no for an answer.’

‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ he muttered. ‘She’s a land
lamprey if ever I saw one.’ Bel leaned towards Flydd, her bust swaying as
though desperate to escape its moorings, and Colm said stiffly, ‘Oh, I see.
Want a drink?’

Maelys had occasionally tasted the mild small ale brewed for
the labourers at Nifferlin, but had only touched proper drink once before, when
Phrune had given her the drugged liqueur in Tifferfyte.

‘Yes, I do. A big one.’

Flydd and Bel were leaning across the table towards each
other and the air between them was sizzling. Maelys felt infected by it too,
though the other patrons were talking and drinking as though nothing unusual
had happened. Perhaps Bel regularly plied her trade here.

Colm looked at her sideways. ‘A big drink? Are you sure?’

She nodded vigorously. The barmaid tapped a large mug from a
barrel and set it on the counter in front of her. The beer was a deep brown,
with a myriad of bubbles bursting through a deep capping of foam.

Maelys took a long draught without tasting it, gasped and
banged the mug down on the counter. Nifferlin small ale had a sweet, nutty
flavour, but this drink was so bitter that it puckered up her mouth.

‘How can anyone drink that stuff?’ she said, wiping her
mouth on her grubby sleeve and streaking chimney soot across her face.

Colm managed the ghost of a smile. ‘If you drank enough
you’d come to like it.’

‘Why would I want to?’ She checked on Flydd and Bel. She was
holding his broad hand across the table, staring down at it as if reading his
palm. ‘We’ve got to do something, Colm.’