from CHAPTER THREE

“I don’t see why you didn’t let me help you at the show you put on last night,” Datun grunted, walking along beside Kalto, the old man’s goods in a large sack on his left shoulder.  The Ista was on the southern end of town and Kalto’s destination was the market place on the northern end.

“In the first place, I didn’t require your assistance.   By arrangement with that miserly villain, Jasco, I offered nothing for sale in the taproom last night.  No spells or spellwards or potions or anything else.  I but summoned up a few harmless apparitions for the entertainment of the paying customers.”

“But that’s particularly what I wanted to see!“

Kalto shook his head.  “They were not the sort of apparitions fit for the eyes of a mere boy.    And how old did you say you were, my good Datun?  Seventeen?”

“Uh . . . sixteen.”

“I’m pleased you were able to remember.”  Kalto chuckled comfortably.  “In any event, the show was a paltry enough affair, if still far too good for the sort of yokel who haunts these benighted parts.  Nothing to compare with the sort of visual feats achieved by the Visioners of Far Isle.  You’ve heard of Far Isle, boy?”

Datun scowled.  “It’s on the other side of the world or something like that.”

“On the other side of the plains, in any event, and beyond the Empire.  It’s the smaller and more distant of the two islands comprising the Kingdom of the Western Isles.   I’ve never been there, unfortunately, but word travels and we magicians keep abreast of what our brothers in far places are up to.   The Visioners, it is said, work in concert with one another to achieve most remarkable spectacles.  Battles, storms, whole cities floating in the air, peopled by ghouls and goblins and the like.”

“I thought goblins were a myth,” Datun said.

“Possibly.  Although, now that I think of it, when we left Mugg a little while ago, he was a goblin.  A-gobblin’ that hay you fed him, I mean.”  Kalto chuckled again, almost wheezing in delight at his own humor.  Where his own witticisms were involved, Datun had discovered, he was an extremely easy man to entertain.   “But what I performed last night. . . .   Faugh!”   He made a gesture of disgust.  “It almost makes me feel ashamed!”

“The men I heard talking about it last night seem to have enjoyed it,” Datun said.  “They said you conjured up a redhead who was the spit and image of Anil, the daughter of Lord Porrin, and that she wasn’t wearing anything.“

“The foulest sort of calumny,” Kalto said sadly, rolling his eyes.  “I shall repeat the same under oath, if necessary.  She looked nothing like Anil, whom I’ve never seen, as far as I can remember, and she was fully clad.  Metaphysically speaking.  Aye, she was a creation entirely of my own ingenuity and far lovelier, I promise you, than any merely mortal wench.”

“And they said you visioned up one of the scullery maids and old Jasco himself and had       them  . . . uh. . . .”

“Lies!  Lies!  Lies!”  Kalto stuck out his head aggressively and glared at Datun.  “And no fit subject matter for tender young ears, Datun.  Indeed, you disgust me with your ribald chatter.  Surely you can find something more . . . .  Ah, is this the market, then?  I was told a stall would be prepared for our coming.”

The principal market of Weira was a four-square-block area in the middle of town.  The market at which Kalto and Datun found themselves was a ruder one, merely a few hundred yards of stalls and barrows and rugs set flat on the grass to entice visitors entering Weira from the north.  Agricultural products were not offered for sale here because the local farmers knew better than to do business at Kevlin’s Market.  A few stalls offered jamson and fizz-water and dried meat for the hungry traveler.

Most of the merchants offered the sort of gimcrack items that might attract the attention of a visiting yokel.  Shawls of a variety of startling hues for the country girl.  Flat-brimmed leather hats for her swain.  Second hand knives and daggers for those who weren’t aware that the bluish tinge to the metal marked it as inferior and who thought that pocks and bubbles on the surface of a blade were of no consequence.  Rugs from Laskil that had not been wholly successful, offered at a preposterous discount.  (“Not a flaw, lady!  That’s the hallmark of a master weaver!”  “It will wash right out lady!  You have my word on it!”)

There were stalls that offered all-purpose spellwards from the Priests of Meri, from the Priests of Kelmat, from the rationalist magicians of Malin and Kherra.  (“A personalized spellward is better, but . . . .”  A meaningful shrug.  “Who can afford it?  And these were made by some of the most powerful magicians in the Vale.  In the whole world, lady.”)

There were stalls that sold mildly obscene paintings or lewd etchings on strips of metal or suggestive figurines from the artists of Sellon.  There were second hand clothes to be purchased.  Stalls that offered unidentifiable and unclassifiable odds and ends, including even a few battered scrolls, although the sort of people who could actually read were not likely to be found in the vicinity of Kevlin’s Market.

“Not a prime location,” Kalto grumped when Datun had set the large bag of trade goods on the ground behind a simple arrangement of planks and uprights.  At least the shaky little structure had an awning of sorts, torn and tattered canvas in a faded orange.

“What’s wrong with it?” Datun asked.  A few onlookers were already gathering, alerted by Kalto’s saffron robe and distinguished countenance to the fact that this was going to be something out of the ordinary.

“We want to be at the north end of this affair, not right in the middle.  By the time people reach us they’ll have passed so many rag shops they’ll have the wrong mind set.  Tomorrow, when we do business at the Great Market, you’ll see the difference.  There people will expect to find something of quality.”

“Why are we here?” Datun asked.  “The sort of people you want . . . .“

“I announced at my show last night that I’d be here.   I expect word of mouth will bring customers.   If it weren’t for the barbarous laws in this district that say you can’t sell your wares at a private entertainment!  As if a magician of my repute would try to implant suggestions in the minds of the receptive!”

By law, Datun knew, at least two members of Kalto’s audience the other night had been town guardsmen who’d remained spellwarded throughout, unable to see the visions Kalto produced and alert to make sure he made no unethical efforts to subvert the will of his audience.  Kalto, judging by the remarks he’d made earlier, hadn’t been offended by their presence; he’d been offended by the fact that they hadn’t had to pay for admission.

Datun finished laying out a row of medallions on the long strips of linen that had been in the bag.  The medallions showed a variety of gods and goddesses and a few conventional hex signs.  None of them impressed him as being particularly well crafted.

“Your work?” he asked.

“I’m not a metalsmith,” Kalto grunted.  “But I performed the rituals that transformed these lumps of lead into first rate spellwards, aye.  By the way, Datun.  I’ve run a few tests.  Purely in the interests of science, you understand.  Your own spellward seems to be an extremely good one.  Ah . . . individually crafted?”  He raised an inquiring eyebrow at the boy.

“My mother knew a seeress at Laskil,” Datun said uncomfortably.  He’d been conscious of the small medallion on his chest growing warm a little while ago, shortly before Kalto suggested that he might like to donate his services, since the experience he’d be gaining, not to mention the honor, was valuable in itself.

Kalto nodded.  “A seeress, hmm?  Not many female mages in the Vale, but some of those few are very good.  Do you happen to know the name of this seeress?  It’s been some time since I journeyed through Laskil, but perhaps I know her.”

“It all happened when I was a baby.  I don’t even remember my own mother.”

“There’s a lot you don’t remember, Datun.  And that spellward . . . .  Oh well, who am I to pry?  Just arrange a few of these bottles along the front of that plank and we’ll be ready for business.”

Datun lifted a tiny vial of a purplish liquid and stared intently at the delicately engraved symbol on the glass.

“A wyvern?  Isn’t that the symbol for love potions?”

“It is.”

“And aren’t love potions illegal?  Besides being ineffective on a spellwarded person, I mean?  And who in the Vale goes unwarded?”

“Love potions are illegal, true enough,” Kalto responded impatiently.  “But there’s no law against drawing pictures of wyverns.  Or etching them.  That liquid is sweetened water of appolonaris with just a dash of glove dye.  Not enough to be harmful, I assure you.  Not in small doses, at least.”

“Then who will buy it?”

“Somebody who doesn’t quite believe me when I assure him or, more likely, her that this is not a love potion.  It’s a sad thing, Datun.”  He shook his head and managed to look momentarily woeful.  “A surprising number of people refuse to believe me on that score.  Alas.”

Other vials held liquid that was not, variously, a truth imperative, a youth restorative, and an erotic dream enhancer.  A rather larger vial, more like a small jug, held a liquid of a pale yellow color.  It claimed not to be a hair restorer.  Datun removed the cork, sniffed at the contents, and then shot Kalto a look of disgusted disbelief.

Kalto shrugged, almost managing to look embarrassed this time but not quite succeeding.

“Mugg, as you well know, has a most capacious bladder.  I sometimes think that might explain the hump.”

“But surely, sir!  You don’t allow you customers to . . . to . . . .”

“They rub it on their heads, Datun, that’s all.  Those who don’t believe me when I tell them that its function is to kill bedbugs.  Which, I might add, it is.  I dropped a bedbug into a container of that very stuff one day.  Poor thing died almost immediately.  Drowned, I suppose, or overcome by the fumes.”

The stall stayed open until the tenth hour of the night when the lengthening shadows finally made it impossible to do business.  Datun packed the few wares that were still unpurchased into the bag, stunned by how easily the people of Weira and environs could be gulled out of their money.  He and Kalto walked home through the darkened streets in companionable silence, the old magician almost radiating a sense of contentment.

“You did very well, Datun,” Kalto said when they parted company in front of the Ista.  He pressed a coin on the boy.  “Tomorrow night I might let you do a little of the selling.  The spellwards only, of course.  You. . . ah, you believe in the spellwards.  You can’t do a good job selling unless you believe in your product.”

“But you sell everything!” Datun protested.  “Even the hair stuff!  Surely, you don’t believe in that!“

“Oh, but I do, Datun.  For the duration of the sale only, of course, but for that short period of time I believe in my product most sincerely.  I can’t explain it, but it’s so.  A gift, I suppose you’d say.  Perhaps someday you’ll acquire it yourself.  In fact, I’ve half a mind to. . . ."

Whatever it was he’d half a mind to do, he reconsidered and fell silent, turning from Datun and stepping up on the veranda toward the open door of the Ista’s taproom, through which came lamp light and the cheerful voices of men who’d managed for the moment to forget their worries.

from CHAPTER ELEVEN

Valeron saw the woman he was looking for.  Unfortunately, she seemed to have struck a bargain with a tall, powerfully-built man whose hard features and erect bearing suggested he was a soldier.  In fact, he seemed so soldierly altogether that Valeron, who had already made the acquaintance of a number of members of the Koromel Irregulars, took another look.  Nothing at all to be seen on that grim visage, but it occurred to Valeron that the woman’s face betrayed more than a little unease, something that might even have been panic, as if it had occurred to her after the bargain was struck that this was not a man with whom she wished to sojourn to a private spot.

Arda was her name, Valeron remembered, and although he hadn’t actually met her, Datun had pointed her out several weeks ago and told him that in an emergency he could go to Arda, who would probably know where Datun was to be found.   And the expression on Arda’s face, he was now certain, was stark terror.  She turned and began to walk stiffly toward an alleyway that led from the far side of Keil’on’s Market to a row of shops and stalls where the sort of business was transacted that required a high degree of privacy.  And, although he couldn’t be sure, it seemed to Valeron that the man’s hand, resting idly on Arda’s back as if he were guiding her, might well have a short blade in it.  Certainly, the sudden jerkiness of Arda’s pace, the panicky glance she threw over one shoulder, argued that her departure from this open square was not voluntary.

Tapping the hilt of his longsword with his left hand, Valeron began to follow Arda and her suitor.  Halfway down the alley, they stopped.  A door opened in a shop whose shutters were closed and the man actually pushed Arda inside.  A moment later, Valeron was at the door.  It was solid pearl wood, he saw, and probably barred on the inside.

He heard a faint cry and then a scuffling sound.  He had his sword already out when he hit the door with his left shoulder, shattering the bar and springing the door off its hinges.  Stepping through, he saw Arda struggling in the grip of two men, one of whom had a hand clamped over her mouth.  The other was using one hand to tear open her blouse.  The man who had brought her  here was standing nearby, just in the act of drawing his own sword when Valeron entered the room.  As small as the room was, it held six more people, three men and two women who sat in a listless stupor on a long bench against the far wall and a pale-face young man to Valeron’s right who was wearing the black and silver robes of a Priest of Aghli.

Valeron’s blade darted out and the hard-faced man screamed and fell to the floor, his sword still not completely free of the scabbard.

“Be careful, Outlander!” an authoritative voice called out.  “These men are Pajuks and they are here to do the da’shin’s bidding.”

Valeron grinned.  “How many Pajuks do I have to kill before it becomes a serious offense, Priest?”

One of the men holding Arda released his grip on her and drew a broadsword from its scabbard.  The room was small enough that a broadsword was the proper sort of weapon, but only if its owner fought with the point and not the edge.  Valeron had never met an inhabitant of the Vale of Sandahr who even gave the impression that he knew his sword had a point.  He buried the point of his own sword in the man’s throat, withdrew it in time to avert a stroke from the third Pajuk.  A second later the man was lying on the floor beside the other two, blood still spurting from a torn artery at the side of his neck.  Even as Valeron watched, the spurting stopped.

Valeron turned to the priest, whose pale features and hard eyes registered anger but not a trace of fear.

“You are known, Outlander,” the priest said.  “And you are doomed as surely as you are damned.”

“They are Pajuks!” a white-faced Arda said shakily.   “We m-must flee!”

“Were Pajuks,” Valeron corrected her gently.  “And I’d find it hard to hide myself in this place of dark-haired men.  Better, I think, to ensure that there are no witnesses left to identify us to the authorities.”

“You can’t kill me in cold blood,” the young priest said.  He gazed coldly at Arda.  “And this whore will find it as hard to hide as you.  Throw down your blade and I’ll speak on your behalf.  You misunderstood the situation.  You thought the wench was being kidnaped and you came to her defense.  The magistrate might be sympathetic.”

“What of these others?” Valeron demanded, gesturing at the five on the bench.  “Why are they just sitting there like that?”

“They’ve been bespelled!” Arda said breathlessly.  “That’s what those men were trying to do when you came in.  Trying to remove my spellward so that this priest could put a spell of volition on me.”

“Divesting a citizen of her spellward before a trial is against the law,” Valeron said, glancing at the priest.  “And spells of volition are illegal at any stage of the proceedings.  In fact, I believe that laying one of them on someone is a capital offense itself.”

On a rickety table near the closest wall were five spellwards, all common metal and obviously mass produced.  The priest took a step forward, found the point of Valeron’s blade at his throat, and stopped.  For the first time, he began to look less sure of himself.

“These five have been lawfully arrested,” he said.  “Fornication in the case of the women and two of the men.  Public drunkenness in the case of the other man.”

“It’s early in the day,” Valeron said.  “But not so early as all that.  These three men I killed are the whole of this complement, not so?”

“There’s Segil,” Arda said.  "I saw him talking to. . . to that one.”  She gestured at the short, swarthy man who had been second to die.  “But the man who brought me here. . . .”  She glanced at the body of the man who had died first and gulped convulsively.  “He said he was a mercenary from Malin and I thought I knew all the Pajuks who frequented Keil’on’‘s by sight and anyway I didn’t believe the stories I heard.  But that man. . . .”  She pointed at the third body, this of a tall, good-looking man in his early thirties.  “He’s the one Jasmil went off with.  That. . . that means that Jasmil. . . .”  She began to weep gustily.

Valeron cast a glance at the door.  There appeared to be nobody in the alley.  One of the nice things about this neighborhood, he found himself thinking, was that the people who frequented it knew how to mind their own business.

“You know which spellwards belongs to which of these five, of course,” he said to the priest.  “Point them out and Arda here . . . .“

“How do you know my name?” Arda demanded, tears still sparkling in her eyes but her voice imperious.

“We have a mutual friend,” Valeron said.

“Putting the spellwards back on these people will avail you nothing, Outlander,” the priest said.  “Once a spell of volition is laid on, it must be removed before a spellward can operate.   I thought even a barbarian would know that.”

“I did know that, in fact,” Valeron said.  “It slipped my mind.”  He glanced musingly at the five, all still in  slumped positions, eyes glazed and heads sagging on nerveless necks.  “Remove the spells.”

“I’ll do no such thing.  These people are felons and I’ll . . . ."

This time Arda clapped her own hands over her mouth to prevent a scream from escaping.  Valeron gazed down at the priest’s body with pitiless eyes, used the man’s robe to clean his sword, and then pointed to the door.  “He neglected to mention the other way a spell can be removed,” he said.  He looked again at the five prisoners.  “They’re coming to and I’d like to be out of here before they start screaming so loudly that they’ll be heard by this Segil you mentioned.  I suppose he’s around here somewhere.”

“I thought he was looking for Datun,” Arda said.  “When I saw him earlier, I mean.  But he’s always hanging around and, as I said, he was talking to one of those men.”  They were already back in the alley, heading toward the far end, away from the teeming market.  Scurrying along at Valeron’s side, Arda was rearranging her blouse and even managing to evince something that could have been good spirits.  “Killing the priest was a good idea,” she said.  “He would have identified us.”

“Those five we left behind will do that,” Valeron said shortly.  “My hair is enough to give me away, and I suppose they all know you by name.”

“Pho!” Arda said indignantly.  “They’ll leave that place as soon as they regain the use of their limbs, and they won’t be found in the vicinity of Keil’on’s Market for months to come.”

“I don’t suppose anyone in a position of authority knows who they are, either,” Valeron said thoughtfully.  He glanced at Arda.  “But if Segil saw you leaving with that man . . . .”

“I’m sure he didn’t,” Arda said.  “I certainly wouldn’t have struck a bargain with someone if I’d known there was a Pajuk lurking nearby, and I looked around very carefully, I assure you.  You said we had a mutual friend.”

“Datun,” Valeron said.  “It’s because I know you’re a friend of his that I came to your assistance.   And also, of course, because I was hoping you could tell me where he went.”

Arda returned his glance with a blank look.  “Is Datun missing?  I saw him just two days ago.”

“Two days ago is when he went missing,” Valeron said grimly.

“He probably had a talk with Vestor.  Vestor’s from Sellon, I found out.  Datun’s gone to look for his precious Khyrra, that’s all there is to it.”