The Master's Chair (The Chronicles of Terah) (29 page)

“Rolan told everyone that Tsareth passed away in his sleep, but the truth of the matter is Rolan killed him. Rolan demanded that Tsareth resign and pass the seat on to him. When Tsareth wouldn’t do it, Rolan challenged him.” Taelor took a deep breath and exhaled it in a long sigh. “That was a dark day for Brendolanth. I just wish one of Tsareth’s other sons or daughters was strong enough to defeat Rolan.”

Taelor put some more wood on the fire and watched the flames dance. After a while he said, “There might be one person who could defeat him. Tsareth had a daughter born after most of his other children were grown. She inherited his magic as well as his red hair. She looks more like Tsareth than Rolan does. I’m not sure that she and Rolan have ever even met. I know that they were never at the castle at the same time. She should be twenty-three, twenty-four by now. She probably hasn’t even begun to train yet. I wonder where she is.”

Taelor stared into the fire for a while as if it could answer his questions. “Rolan might have already had her killed, but if she’s still alive, she might be able to defeat him one day.” Taelor was talking to himself more than he was talking to Karl at this point. “Wish I knew where she was fostered. We were friends a long time ago, even though I was a slave.” Taelor stood up, stretched, and said, “Think I’ll go check on the horses.”

Karl had a lot of questions, beginning with the name of the younger daughter, but he was afraid to show too much curiosity. He was trying to decide just how much he could ask when Taelor returned. “I didn’t know that Tsareth had a daughter who had the gift for magic,” Karl said. “From what I’d heard, Rolan was the only one of Tsareth’s children to have inherited his magic.”

“Several of Tsareth’s children have the gift, but Rolan is the strongest so far. Tsareth was pretty sure that Landis was going to be more powerful than Rolan, but I don’t imagine we’ll ever know now. Tsareth isn’t around to arrange an apprenticeship for her, and I can’t see Rolan doing anything to help her. If she’s even still alive,” Taelor said quietly. He was afraid he might have already said too much.

They both became quiet, lost in their own thoughts for the remainder of their watch. At midnight, Taelor wished Karl a good night and headed for his bed in the back of the wagon. Karl woke Darrell and Steve and waited for them at the fire. As soon as they had a cup of hot coffee in their hands, Karl told them good night and headed off to his tent to join Joan.

Darrell waited about an hour to be sure that Taelor was asleep before he quietly told Steve about Rolan and the assassination squads. Then he chuckled and said, “Assassins, bounty hunters, slavers, bandits … I feel like we need a scorecard just to keep track of who’s trying to kill us. It’s almost funny.”

“I know what you mean,” Steve agreed, “but I’m not going to ask for credentials before I defend myself.”

“I’ll just be glad when we get to Glendymere’s. At least we’re going to stay put for a while. I feel so exposed traveling like this.”

“Maybe so, but remember, we’re hiding in our roles. Keep thinking of yourself as a minstrel. Don’t even think of the other stuff. You never know who might be tuned in to your thoughts.”

“I guess that’s something we should sort of keep in mind, isn’t it?” Darrell said quietly. “You, know, that’s like the ultimate invasion of privacy.”

“Yes, and one that we never had to worry about before we came here.”

They spent the rest of their watch talking about plans for their time in Nandelia and before they knew it, their watch was over and it was time to wake Chris and Kevin.

After Chris checked on the horses and Kevin got a fresh pot of coffee going, they sat down next to the fire to wait for the coffee to perk. After Chris told Kevin about Rolan and the assassination squads, Kevin didn’t say anything for a while, and Chris was afraid that the idea had spooked him.

“Look, don’t worry about it,” Chris said. “We knew this was going to happen. It’s why all of us are so well armed and why we’ve spent so much time practicing. We’ll handle whatever comes our way.”

“No, it’s not that. I was just trying to decide how much to tell you about something else,” Kevin said slowly. “Do you remember the other morning when you woke me up and I jumped up like a madman? I told you that I’d had a nightmare? Well, Xantha had come into my dreams that night and told me several things, including the fact that Rolan had sent out two death squads. But from what Xantha said, we don’t really need to be too concerned about them. They headed straight for Camden.”

“That’s good news. What else did he tell you?”

“Rolan isn’t the only one who’s sent out assassination squads. Quite a few death squads are out there, roaming around looking for Myron, and there are also a few protection squads looking for him, too.”

“Great! Then all we need to do is find one of the protection squads, link up with them, and let them worry about the assassins. At least it proves Myron has some friends on the council. Right?”

“No, not really. According to Xantha, the sorcerers who sent out the protection squads are so sure that they can defeat Myron in a sanctioned challenge that they want to make sure he assumes his chair as soon as possible, and the squads that they sent out are charged with delivering Myron to Badec’s castle in Camden immediately, with no side trips to Glendymere’s. The ones who sent out assassination squads are a bit leery of challenging him, afraid of being defeated, so they want to kill him before he can get to the castle. So, no, I wouldn’t say that any of this implies that Myron can look to anyone on the council for help.”

“Oh. And Xantha told you all of this the other night? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“For one thing, I wasn’t positive that it wasn’t just a dream. I mean, after all, I was asleep the whole time. But what Taelor said about Rolan backs up what Xantha told me, so I have to assume that the conversation really did take place, and that I didn’t just dream it all up. And that’s really scary.”

“I have the strangest feeling that there’s something you haven’t told me. What is it?”

Kevin paused, trying to decide how much to tell Chris. Finally he shrugged and said, “I don’t know if I should say anything about this or not, but according to Xantha, Glendymere isn’t a human sorcerer.”

“Well, in a way that makes sense. If he’s as good as Kalen and Duane say he is, he would be on the council if he were human. So what is he? An elf?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well??”

“Glendymere’s a dragon.”

“Whaaaaat?!?” Chris’s eyes popped wide open, like white saucers with little black holes in the center. His jaw dropped and his face slowly drained of blood, turning a ghastly shade of white.

Kevin nearly laughed at the look on his face. “Shh! Don’t wake the others.”

Chris slowly closed his mouth, frowned, and stared straight through Kevin.

“I hadn’t planned to tell anyone yet,” Kevin said in a hushed tone, “and I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it to you, but I sort of wanted someone else to know. Now be quiet!”

“Okay,” Chris gasped. “I’ll try. Did you say a dragon?”

Kevin nodded.

“Do you know if a dragon on Terah is the same type of thing we’re thinking of?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s what you’re thinking of all right. Big, with lots of big sharp teeth. Looks a lot like a huge lizard with wings,” Kevin sighed.

“How do you know?” Chris argued.

“Xantha showed me a mental image of Glendymere. His scales are golden by the way, and he has green eyes.”

“Oh,” Chris said slowly. Then he asked, “What do we do now?”

“We keep going,” Kevin answered. “What other choice do we have? Besides, he’s the one who’s supposed to teach me how to defend myself, remember?”

“Are you going to warn the others?”

“I don’t think I want to mention it yet. Let’s wait a while. I’ll tell everyone before we get there, but there’s no need to worry anyone else with the news right now.”

“Why not?”

“From what Xantha said, we won’t be living in his cave, just nearby. I’ll have to go to him everyday, but they probably won’t see much of him.”

“Oh. So you’re the only one who’ll have to deal with the fact that he’s a dragon.” Chris nodded his head, relieved.

“Not exactly,” Kevin said hesitantly. “One other person will have to be around Glendymere everyday. I have to have an assistant. Xantha told me that, too.”

“And you’re telling me about all of this now.” Chris paused and looked deep into the fire. “Why do I get the feeling that I’m going to be that assistant?”

“I’d like for you to be, but you don’t have to,” Kevin said quietly. “I could ask one of the others.”

Chris groaned, shook his head, and said, “I didn’t say that I wouldn’t do it, but how about letting me think about it a bit and sort of get used to the idea? We’ll talk about it some more later.”

“Okay, but for now, let’s just keep this between us.”

“Sure. Fine. Who would I tell anyway? A dragon you say? I wonder if he can fly.” Chris said as he drifted off into his own thoughts about dragons and magic.

Kevin smiled to himself. He felt good about his decision to ask Chris to be his assistant. He had the feeling that Chris would end up viewing life with a dragon as just one more adventure.

Then he put thoughts of Glendymere and magic out of his head. They were too distracting, and at least one of them needed to concentrate on keeping an eye on things around the campsite.

They spent the last hour of their watch gathering firewood. Around daybreak, Joan and Theresa got up and sent Kevin and Chris back to bed for a few hours. The evening before, the two women had decided to give the guys a chance to sleep in for a while so that they could get some things done without interruptions. Joan hung several pots of water over the fire, and by the time the men woke up, both Theresa and Joan had had their baths and had started on the laundry. By lunch, everyone had had a bath and the laundry was hanging on tree limbs and bushes to dry.

 Theresa and Taelor headed out to gather herbs, and the others spent the afternoon practicing with their weapons and sparring with each other. While Joan prepared dinner, the guys brushed down the horses and checked their legs and feet. Shortly after dinner, everyone except Kevin and Chris went to their tents and quickly fell into an exhausted sleep.

Chapter 24

Trouble in the Night

Kevin and Chris were so tired that evening that they were afraid they’d fall asleep if they didn’t stay on their feet, so they walked the perimeter of the camp, loop after loop. Shortly before midnight, Kevin realized that Chris had jumped at every sound all evening, so he asked Chris if anything was wrong.

“I’ve had a bad feeling all day, like there’s someone out there, watching us. And it’s getting stronger,” Chris said, glancing back over his shoulder.

“Do you think it’s tied in to the stuff we talked about last night?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Chris said. “I don’t know how to describe it, but I’ve had this feeling before, several times.”

“And did something happen when you had this feeling?”

Chris nodded, and glanced around nervously. “Oh, yes. The first time I had it, I was about sixteen, and I got beat up by some punk who wanted my jacket. The next time I was around eighteen and on my way to my date’s apartment. I got mugged. The third time I felt like this, I didn’t hang around to see what was going to happen. I walked into the nearest store to wait for it to pass. So what happens? A couple of guys burst into the store behind me, waving guns around and yelling for all of us to empty our pockets. That was about four years ago.”

“Okay,” Kevin said slowly. “Have you ever been jumped, mugged, or robbed when you didn’t have that feeling?”

“No. I always thought of it as New York radar, ‘picking up vibes from the street’ type of thing. But out here … no New York … no streets … just that feeling closing in on me. Man, it’s getting strong.”

“That’s good enough for me. Let’s get the others. Now. But quietly,” Kevin said.

Chris ran down to Karl’s tent to wake him and Joan up while Kevin headed over to Darrell’s tent to wake Darrell and Steve. Within a couple of minutes they were all on their feet and armed. Then Joan woke Theresa and told her that they thought there was someone in the woods. Theresa said that she’d wake Taelor and get some woundwort ready, just in case.

When Theresa got to her wagon and drew back the canvas flap, she saw that the floor of the wagon was empty. Taelor was nowhere to be seen and his bedroll was gone. But before she could react to his absence, she heard swords clanging. She whirled around just in time to see the startled faces of the five intruders as they realized that instead of sleeping victims, the people at the campsite were awake and ready for a fight. A couple of them actually looked panicked, like they hadn’t expected to meet armed resistance and weren’t quite sure what to do about it. Even though the light from the campfire was fairly dim, Theresa had the distinct feeling that she’d seen some of those faces before, she just wasn’t sure where. A sudden yelp as someone got cut shook Theresa out of her trance and sent her scrambling into the wagon for her herbs and bandages. By the time she got everything she needed and climbed back out of the wagon, the battle was over. The invaders had turned tail and were running back towards the stream.

Then she heard Karl yell, “Catch one of ‘em! We need to find out what’s going on!”

Darrell dropped his sword and sprinted after the intruders, tackling the last straggler before he made it to the water. Darrell pinned him to the ground and waited for Karl and Chris to get there. Karl grabbed the man’s sword while Chris placed the point of his sword at the man’s throat. Darrell slowly got up off of the man and dragged him to his feet while Chris kept his sword ready at the man’s chest. As soon as Darrell took a couple of steps back from the man, Karl handed Darrell the man’s sword. They could hear the other invaders sloshing through the water as they made their way upstream towards the road.

“Well, looks like they’ve gone and left you behind, doesn’t it?” Darrell said.

“Turn around. Head over there. Towards the fire. Now!” Chris said as he poked the man with his sword. Then Chris took up a position behind him and held the point of his sword at the man’s back.

Once they were all back around the fire, Joan whispered to Karl that she had seen the man before, in the dry goods store in Billows.

Karl took a long look at him and asked, “Why did you attack us?”

“For your money,” the man growled.

“Money? What money?” Kevin asked

“I saw the gold coins you gave the shopkeeper. We figured there had to be more where that came from,” the man said with a snarl. “Why should the likes of you gypsies have gold coins when us hard-working farmers never have any? It isn’t right! You probably stole it off somebody yourselves!”

“I don’t believe this,” Theresa said in exasperation. “We had those coins because that’s what your town director gave us for holding the healing clinic, you idiot!”

“What were you planning to do?” Steve asked. “Kill us and go through our pockets?”

“Well, we hadn’t really talked about it, but yeah, I guess so,” the man said defiantly.

“Just how did you plan to get past my pendant?” Theresa asked.

“We figured those things aren’t half as dangerous as people say, especially once you’re dead,” the man said with a sneer. “I figured I’d give it to my wife.”

“You’re crazy! Stark raving mad!” Joan said in disgust. “That thing would have killed you in a heartbeat. When you get back to your wife, tell her she has a fool for a husband.”

“I hope you guys are better farmers than you are thieves,” Karl said with a laugh as he put his arm around Joan.

“Who would have thought a band of singing gypsies could fight?” the man said in a loud voice, almost yelling. “You should have been easy to take!”

“Go, get out of here, before we come to our senses and kill you,” Darrell said as he pointed towards the river with the man’s sword.

The man looked at Darrell like he had just grown horns or something. He couldn’t figure out what Darrell was planning. He didn’t know whether to make a break for it, or just stand there and wait for them to kill him. Finally he took a few hesitant steps towards the stream. When no one came after him, he broke into a run and was going so fast by the time he reached the stream that he slipped and hit the water with a loud splash and a curse. He jumped up and half ran, half stumbled up the stream until finally the sounds of his footsteps splashing through the water faded away.

Theresa suddenly noticed that Steve’s tunic sleeve was soaked in blood.

“Steve, you’re hurt. Can you get your tunic off? Here, let me help you,” she said as she led him to the back of her wagon. As Steve sat on the tailgate, Theresa lifted his tunic over his head and eased it off the injured arm.

“It looks a lot worse than it is,” Steve said as Theresa started to wash his arm. “I think most of the blood belongs to someone else. I did get cut, but only a scratch.”

“You’re right. There’s no way all that blood came from this cut,” Theresa said as she turned to look closely at the others to see if any of them had been injured.

“I think it’s from one of the bandits,” Steve said. “I got in a few solid hits before they started running. I might not have been so aggressive if I’d known they were just a bunch of petty thieves, but I thought we were up against bounty hunters or assassins.”

“They may have been just a bunch of thieves, but they’d have killed us just the same if they’d had the chance,” Chris said. “Dead is dead, whether we’re killed by part-time bandits or full-time assassins.”

“Oh, I’m not feeling guilty, Chris. They opened the door to violence when they attacked us. They can’t complain if more violence came back through that door than they were expecting,” Steve replied. He felt a warmth seeping into his arm, and after a moment he felt a tingling sensation. “What’s going on, Theresa?” Steve asked as he looked down at his arm. Theresa’s hand was about an inch from his arm, directly over the wound.

“I’m closing the wound,” she answered. “I’ve finished cleaning it and I want it to close before I put the bandage on.”

“I had no idea,” Steve said slowly. “Have you always been able to do that?”

“No. My grandmother could put her hand over a cut and the bleeding would slow down, but I’d never see a wound close like this until we came to Terah,” Theresa explained. “Drusilla said that my healing powers became stronger when I passed through the Gate.”

“Just like our athletic ability,” Darrell said with a nod.

“I hate to change the subject here, but Taelor’s missing,” Theresa said as she finished bandaging Steve’s arm. “He left before the attack. The wagon was empty when I ran over here to get some woundwort and bandages.”

“Think I’ll go check on the horses,” Karl said as he started off towards the grassy clearing on the other side of the stream.

“Hold up a moment. Let me get my sword and I’ll go with you. We don’t know for sure that all the bandits are gone,” Darrell said. He still had the bandit’s sword in his hand. He tossed it down and grabbed his sword up off the ground where he had dropped it when he started running after the thieves. Then he ran towards the stream to catch up with Karl.

“Why would Taelor leave?” Chris asked.

“Maybe he heard us talking about waking up the others and figured that the bounty hunters had tracked him here,” Kevin said.

“And if those guys had been bounty hunters, that would have been his best move, for us as well as for him” Steve said. “Of course, we won’t really know why he left until we talk to him.”

A few minutes later, they heard Darrell and Karl come back across the stream.

“One of the spare horses is gone,” Karl said. He turned to Chris and asked, “When was the last time you checked the horses?”

“Actually, I was the last one to check on the horses,” Kevin said. “And I checked them about forty-five minutes before we woke you up. I counted just to be sure none of them had managed to get outside the ropes and wander off. They were all there. And I walked around the perimeter too, to make sure the ropes were okay.”

Karl nodded, “He probably left as soon as you started waking us up. At least he was careful. He tied the rope back so none of the other horses could take off.” Then Karl thought about it for a moment. “If he had headed towards the road, someone would have heard him in the stream.”

“Not if he waited until the fighting started,” Chris said. “An army could have ridden through the water then and none of us would have heard it.”

“True, but if he thought they were bounty hunters, he wouldn’t have wanted to ride past them and take a chance that one of them had hung back, waiting for him to make a run for it,” Darrell said. “I bet he went away from the road, farther back into the woods.”

“Tomorrow morning I’ll take a look around and see if I can find any horse tracks leading out,” Karl said with a sigh. He wasn’t at all sure that Taelor had left because of the bandits. Karl was wondering if he had taken off to try to find Landis. “It’s just a few minutes past 1:00. Why don’t we try to get a little sleep? We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow. Steve, why don’t you lie down for a while? I’ll stand watch with Darrell.”

“No, I’m fine, really. Anyway, it wasn’t my sword arm that got cut. You go ahead and get some sleep. We’ll wake you around 3:30. Joan, are you going to stand watch with Karl?” Steve asked.

Joan nodded. “Well, if you’re sure you’re okay, we’re going to bed. Come on Karl.” She took Karl’s hand and led him off towards their tent.

“Guess we’ll turn in, too, but wake us up if you feel like something’s going on. I’d rather lose sleep than wake up dead,” Chris said as he and Kevin headed off towards their tent

“I’m going to stay up with you two for a while. I’ll put on a fresh pot of coffee,” Theresa said. Then she walked off towards the fire circle, mumbling, “The least he could have done was say good-bye.”