Alanna: The First Adventure (2 page)

While Thom climbed into a riding skirt, Maude took Alanna into the dressing room. The girl changed into shirt, breeches and boots. Then Maude cut her hair.

“I've something to say to you,” Maude said as the first lock fell to the floor.

“What?” Alanna asked nervously.

“You've a gift for healing.” The shears worked on. “It's greater than mine, greater than any I have ever known. And you've other magic, power you'll learn to use. But the healing—that's the important thing. I had a dream last night. A warning, it was, as plain as if the gods shouted in my ear.”

Alanna, picturing this, stifled a giggle.

“It don't do to laugh at the gods,” Maude told her sternly. “Though you'll find that out yourself, soon enough.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind. Listen. Have you thought of the lives you'll take when you go off performing those great deeds?”

Alanna bit her lip. “No,” she admitted.

“I didn't think so. You see only the glory. But there's lives taken and families without fathers and sorrow. Think before you fight. Think on who you're fighting, if only because one day you must meet your match. And if you want to pay for those lives you do take, use your healing magic. Use it all you can, or you won't cleanse your soul of death for centuries. It's harder to heal than it is to kill. The Mother knows why, but you've a gift for both.” Quickly she brushed Alanna's cropped hair. “Keep your hood up for a bit, but you look enough like Thom to fool anyone but Coram.”

Alanna stared at herself in the mirror. Her twin stared back, violet eyes wide in his pale face. Grinning, she wrapped herself in her cloak. With a last peek at the boy in the mirror, she followed Maude out to the courtyard. Coram and Thom, already mounted up, waited for them. Thom rearranged his skirts and gave his sister a wink.

Maude stopped Alanna as she went to mount the
pony, Chubby. “Heal, child,” the woman advised. “Heal all you can, or you'll pay for it. The gods mean for their gifts to be used.”

Alanna swung herself into the saddle and patted Chubby with a comforting hand. The pony, sensing that the good twin was on his back, stopped fidgeting. When Thom was riding him, Chubby managed to dump him.

The twins and the two servants waved farewell to the assembled castle servants, who had come to see them off. Slowly they rode through the castle gate, Alanna doing her best to imitate Thom's pout—or the pout Thom would be wearing if he were riding to the palace right now. Thom was looking down at his pony's ears, keeping his face hidden. Everyone knew how the twins felt at being sent away.

The road leading from the castle plunged into heavily overgrown and rocky country. For the next day or so they would be riding through the unfriendly forests of the Grimhold Mountains, the great natural border between Tortall and Scanra. It was familiar land to the twins. While it might seem dark and unfriendly to people from the South, to Alanna and Thom it would always be home.

At midmorning they came to the meeting of
Trebond Way and the Great Road. Patrolled by the king's men, the Great Road led north to the distant City of the Gods. That was the way Thom and Maude would take. Alanna and Coram were bound south, to the capital city of Corus, and the royal palace.

The two servants went apart to say goodbye and give the twins some privacy. Like Thom and Alanna, it would be years before Coram and Maude saw each other again. Though Maude would return to Trebond, Coram was to remain with Alanna, acting as her manservant during her years at the palace.

Alanna looked at her brother and gave a little smile. “Here we are,” she said.

“I wish I could say ‘have fun,'” Thom said frankly, “but I can't see how anyone can have fun learning to be a knight. Good luck, though. If we're caught, we'll both be skinned.”

“No one's going to catch us, brother.” She reached across the distance between them, and they gripped hands warmly. “Good luck, Thom. Watch your back.”

“There are a lot of tests ahead for you,” Thom said earnestly. “Watch
your
back.”

“I'll pass the tests,” Alanna said. She knew they were brave words, almost foolhardy, but Thom looked as if he needed to hear them. They turned
their ponies then and rejoined the adults.

“Let's go,” Alanna growled to Coram.

Maude and Thom took the left fork of the Great Road and Alanna and Coram bore right. Alanna halted suddenly, turning around to watch her brother ride off. She blinked the burning feeling from her eyes, but she couldn't ease the tight feeling in her throat. Something told her Thom would be very different when she saw him again. With a sigh she turned Chubby back toward the capital city.

Coram made a face and urged his big gelding forward. He would have preferred doing anything to escorting a finicky boy to the palace. Once he had been the hardiest soldier in the king's armies. Now he was going to be a joke. People would see that Thom was no warrior, and they would blame Coram—the man who was to have taught him the basics of the warrior's craft. He rode for hours without a word, thinking his own gloomy thoughts, too depressed to notice that Thom, who usually complained after an hour's ride, was silent as well.

Coram had been trained as a blacksmith, but he had once been one of the best of the king's foot soldiers, until he had returned home to Trebond Castle and become sergeant-at-arms there. Now he wanted to
be with the king's soldiers again, but not if they were going to laugh at him because he had a weakling for a master. Why couldn't Alanna have been the boy?
She
was a fighter. Coram had taught her at first because to teach one twin was to teach the other, poor motherless things. Then he began to enjoy teaching her. She learned quickly and well—better than her brother. With all his heart Coram Smythesson wished now, as he had in the past, that Alanna were the boy.

He was about to get his wish, in a left-handed way. The sun was glinting from directly overhead—time for the noon meal. Coram grunted orders to the cloaked child, and they both dismounted in a clearing beside the road. Pulling bread and cheese from a saddlebag, he broke off a share and handed it over. He also took the wineskin down from his saddle horn.

“We'll make the wayhouse by dark, if not before,” he rumbled. “Till then, we make do with this.”

Alanna removed her heavy cloak. “This is fine with me.”

Coram choked, spraying a mouthful of liquid all over the road. Alanna had to clap him on the back before he caught his breath again.

“Brandy?” he whispered, looking at the wineskin. He returned to his immediate problem. “By the Black
God!” he roared, turning spotty purple. “We're goin' back this instant, and I'm tannin' yer hide for ye when we get home! Where's that devils'-spawn brother of yours?”

“Coram, calm down,” she said. “Have a drink.”

“I don't want a drink,” he snarled. “I want t' beat the two of ye till yer skins won't hold water!” He took a deep gulp from the wineskin.

“Thom's on his way to the City of the Gods with Maude,” Alanna explained. “She thinks we're doing the right thing.”

Coram swore under his breath. “That witch
would
agree with you two sorcerers. And what does yer father say?”

“Why should he ever know?” Alanna asked. “Coram, you know Thom doesn't want to be a knight. I do.”

“I don't care if the two of ye want t' be dancing bears!” Coram told her, taking another swallow from the skin. “Ye're a girl.”

“Who's to know?” She bent forward, her small face intent. “From now on I'm Alan of Trebond, the younger twin. I'll be a knight—Thom'll be a sorcerer. It'll happen. Maude saw it for us in the fire.”

Coram made the Sign against evil with his right
hand. Magic made him nervous. Maude made him nervous. He drank again to settle his nerves. “Lass, it's a noble thought, a warrior's thought, but it'll never work. If ye're not caught when ye bathe, ye'll be turning into a woman—”

“I can hide all that—with your help. If I can't, I'll disappear.”

“Yer father will have my hide!”

She made a face. “Father doesn't care about anything but his scrolls.” She drew a breath. “Coram, I'm being nice. Thom wouldn't be this nice. D'you want to see things that aren't there for the next ten years? I can work that, you know. Remember when Cook was going to tell Father who ate the cherry tarts? Or the time Godmother tried to get Father to marry her?”

Coram turned pale. The afternoon the tarts were discovered missing, Cook started to see large, hungry lions following him around the kitchens. Lord Alan never heard about the missing tarts. When the twins' godmother came to Trebond to snare Lord Alan as her next husband, she had fled after only three days, claiming the castle was haunted.

“Ye wouldn't,” Coram whispered. He had always suspected that the twins had been behind Cook's hallucinations and Lady Catherine's ghosts, but he had
kept those thoughts to himself. Cook gave himself airs, and Lady Catherine was cruel to her servants.

Seeing she had struck a nerve, Alanna changed tactics. “Thom can't shoot for beans, and I can. Thom wouldn't be a credit to you. I will, I think. You said yourself a grown man can't skin a rabbit faster'n me.” She fed her last piece of bread to Chubby and looked at Coram with huge, pleading eyes. “Let's ride on. If you feel the same in the morning, we can turn back.” She crossed her fingers as she lied. She had no intention of returning to Trebond. “Just don't rush. Father won't know till it's too late.”

Coram swigged again from the skin, getting up shakily. He mounted, watching the girl. They rode silently while Coram thought, and drank.

The threat about making him see things didn't worry him much. Instead he thought of Thom's performance in archery—it was enough to make a soldier cry. Alanna was much quicker than her brother. She rarely tired, even hiking over rough country. She had a feel for the fighting arts, and that was something that never could be learned. She was also as stubborn as a mule.

Because he was absorbed in his thoughts, Coram never saw the wood snake glide across the road.
Alanna—and Coram's horse—spotted the slithery creature in the same second. The big gelding reared, almost throwing his master. Chubby stopped dead in the road, surprised by these antics. Coram yelled and fought to hold on as his mount bucked frantically, terrified by the snake. Alanna never stopped to think. She threw herself from Chubby's saddle and grabbed for Coram's reins with both hands. Dodging the gelding's flying hooves frantically, she used all her strength and weight to pull the horse down before Coram fell and broke his neck.

The gelding, more surprised than anything else by the new weight on his reins, dropped to all fours. He trembled as Alanna stroked his nose, whispering comforting words. She dug in a pocket and produced an apple for the horse, continuing to pet him until his shaking stopped.

When Alanna looked up, Coram was watching her oddly. She had no way of knowing that he was imagining what Thom would have done in similar circumstances: Her twin would have left Coram to fend for himself. Coram knew the kind of courage it took to calm a large, bucking horse. It was the kind of courage a knight needed in plenty. Even so, Alanna was a girl. . . .

By the time they arrived at the wayhouse, Coram
was very drunk. The innkeeper helped him to bed while his wife fussed over “the poor wee lad.” In her bed that night, Alanna listened to Coram's snores with a wide grin on her lips. Maude had managed to fill the wineskin with Lord Alan's best brandy, hoping her old friend might be more open to reason if his joints were well oiled.

Coram woke the next morning with the worst hangover he had ever had. He moaned as Alanna entered his room.

“Don't walk so loud,” he begged.

Alanna handed him a steaming mug. “Drink. Maude says this makes you feel better every time.”

The man drank deeply, gasping as the hot liquid burned down his throat. But in the end, he
did
feel better. He swung his feet to the floor, gently rubbing his tender skull. “I need a bath.”

Alanna pointed to the bath already waiting in the corner.

Coram glared at her from beneath his eyebrows. “Go order breakfast. I take it I'm to call ye ‘Alan' now?”

She yelped with joy and skipped from the room.

Four days later they rode into Corus just after dawn. They were part of the stream of people entering the
capital for the market day. Coram guided his horse through the crowds, while Alanna tried to keep Chubby close behind him and still see everything. Never in her life had she encountered so many people! She saw merchants, slaves, priests, nobles. She could tell the Bazhir—desert tribesmen—by their heavy white burnooses, just as she spotted seamen by their braided pigtails. She was lucky that Chubby was inclined to stay near Coram's gelding, or she would have been lost in a second.