Kingmaker's Sword (Rune Blades of Celi) (19 page)

“You were no help,” I said.

He shrugged. “Aye, well,” he said. “Mayhap it’s because I thought she might be right this time.”

I made a disgusted noise and went to sit by the fire.

Kerri had been gone a little over two hours when I began to get twitchy. The nagging sense that something somewhere was seriously wrong drove me restlessly to my feet, forced me to pace fretfully back and forth across the small clearing around our campfire. Telling myself Kerri would be furious if I went into Frendor after her did not help. Neither did telling myself that, if she were in trouble, she had no one to blame but herself. If anything, it made the unsettled feeling in my belly worse.

Cullin sat by the fire, cleaning and honing his sword, and watched in amusement as I did a creditable imitation of a caged mountain cat. He said nothing when I walked over to the horses and stood with my hand on Rhuidh’s withers, staring for several minutes down the road where Kerri had disappeared.

The fidgety unease increased, as did the feeling that something was drastically wrong. Kerri was in trouble, trouble she could not handle by herself. The second time my jittery pacing took me to where the horses were picketed, Cullin sheathed his sword and came across the clearing to join me.

“She’s going to be furious with us,” I said, picking up Rhuidh’s saddle and settling it firmly onto his back.

“Aye, she will,” he agreed, buckling the girth of his saddle around the bay.

“She’s likely to see how close she can shave me with that great sword of hers.” I slipped the bridle over the sorrel’s ears and fastened it. “Or she’ll make a determined effort to shorten my height by a head.”

“Most assuredly,” he said, fitting the bit gently between the stallion’s teeth. “One or the other. Or perhaps both concurrently and simultaneously if not consecutively.”

I gathered Rhuidh’s reins and mounted quickly. “I’m being foolish again, I expect.”

“I expect so.” He grinned and mounted.

“And you’re humouring me,” I said.

“No.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen you so agitated. I think you’ve cause.”

“She’s in trouble,
ti’vati
.”

“She must be. Let’s go, then, shall we?”

***

Frendor was less than a quarter the size of Honandun. Its only reason for existence was that it lay on the caravan route for trade goods going east from the coast, or west from the Great Salt Sea, and it was a convenient stop over for merchant trains to replenish their supplies. Its Lord, the nephew of the Ephir in Honandun, had grown wealthy from the business of the merchant trains. His house, perched on a bluff overlooking the city, well away from the din and squalor of the marketplace, showed evidence of the wealth. The rest of the city did not. The taverns and inns that lined the streets displayed all the tawdry finery of a town dedicated to relieving a traveller of every last coin it could squeeze out of him by catering to every common vice, and more than a few uncommon ones.

It started to drizzle as we reached the city, and we rode with the hoods of our cloaks drawn up over our heads to hide our hair and mask our faces. The rain served us well. No one would question the hoods in the rain.

We left the horses at the edge of the market square at a small stable. The stablemaster demanded three copper coins apiece to care for them, displaying a mouth full of gold teeth in a wolfish grin. Cullin handed the man the stallion’s reins and returned the smile.

“If this horse is not here when I return for it,” he said in High Isgardian, “I shall be pleased to extract its worth from your mouth, my friend. Directly after I cut out a slice of your liver to feed my dogs.” He flashed a grin at me. “And my cousin here delights in carving his initials on the rear cheek of people who annoy him.” He glanced at me again, then lowered his voice confidentially as he spoke to the stablemaster. “He tends to be a bit clumsy at times, especially if he’s been drinking mead. He’s been known to slip and remove some rather delicate portions of the anatomy.”

The stablemaster displayed his dental wealth in a nervous smile. “No fear, my lords,” he said hastily. “They be safe with me as in your own stable.”

“I’m sure they are,” Cullin said graciously.

I had not seen Kerri’s black mare in the small pen. “We are looking for someone,” I said. “A tall, blonde woman or her servant, a small plump woman dressed in brown with dark hair.” I took two coppers from my purse and tossed them casually from hand to hand. “They had a black mare with a white blaze down its face. The dark-haired woman might have been riding it.”

The stablemaster’s eyes never left the glinting coins. Reluctantly, he said, “I’ve not seen ‘em, my lord. But if I do—”

I flipped him the coins. He snatched them deftly out of the air, and they vanished into a pouch around his neck almost too quickly for the eye to follow.

“You’ll certainly tell us when we return for our horses, will you not?”

“Aye, my lord. I will, my lord.”

We turned away and began walking toward the market square. The goods in the stalls were clearly second or third rate. The woollen yard goods were poorly dyed in dull and muddy colours, and if they felt as scratchy as they looked, would be highly uncomfortable against the skin. The silver buckles and cloak pins looked flimsy, as if they contained a large percentage of tin. The fruits and vegetables, piled high on tottering tables, were spotty and withered, and thoroughly unappetizing.

In dismay, I surveyed the thronged square, wondering where to start looking. Frendor was not big, but it was more than large enough for one woman to lose herself completely within it. What had seemed so simple back at our campsite now loomed as an impossible task.

“This is going to be fun,” I murmured. “We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

“I wondered when that might occur to you,” Cullin said.

I glanced at him. “You didna have to come just to indulge me in this foolishness.”

“No,” he agreed. “But this is better than watching you wear a path in the ground.”

Two women, dressed in bright diaphanous robes designed to display their charms rather than hide them, spilled out of an open tavern door and clutched at Cullin’s arms.

“You look like a man who appreciates a good woman,” one of them said. Her make-up was garish in the wan light.

Cullin smiled at them and gently detached their hands. “I am such a man,” he said. “And that’s why I’ll decline your gracious offer.” He glanced up the street, then suddenly put his arm around one of the women. “But on second thought—”

I followed the direction of his gaze and saw six Maeduni soldiers shouldering their way down the rickety sidewalk toward us. I put my arm around the other woman, and we ducked into the tavern. The inside was lit to the brilliance of a Falian tin mine at midnight. The one window in the place was dirty and streaky. We stood huddled with the women close to it until the Maeduni soldiers had passed. We extricated ourselves and went back out onto the sidewalk, followed by the hurled imprecations of the women who thought themselves brutally and unjustly deprived of an hour’s income.

“We surely canna just wander around these streets,” Cullin said as we began walking briskly. “Is there no way you can find her? If you can tell she’s in trouble, can you no use that same sense to tell us where she might be?”

I hadn’t thought of that. And I wasn’t sure it would work. I ducked into a dirty alleyway, drawing him with me, and drew my sword. I had invoked its magic once. I might be able to do it again. I only hoped I could control it if this worked.

The alleyway was filthy. It smelled of rotting food from a midden heap behind a tavern, stale urine and excrement. But it was well shielded from the street. Ignoring the stench, I held up the sword and cleared my mind to ground and centre myself. I became suddenly conscious of strange flows of energy, currents in the very earth beneath my feet, in the air around me, that I had never been aware of before. I tried to disregard the odd streams of energy swirling and eddying all around me and concentrated on the sword. I had worked its magic once before, but had no clear idea how to do it again. Cullin watched me sceptically as I frowned at the sword.

“Lead me,” I said. “You did it before. Do it again.”

The harsh glare of brilliance from the blade illuminated the dirty walls around us like a hundred torches flaring to life all at once, startling me badly. The sword tugged sharply in my hands, and the sudden wrench spun me around so abruptly, the blade clanged on the slimy stone of the wall behind me. I swore softly. Northeast. It had swung me northeast again.

“Not that way, you mindless piece of tin,” I snarled. “We’ll go there later. First, find Kerri.”

The sword trembled in my hands. Almost like a question. Or puzzlement.

“Find Kerri,” I told it.

Again, the only response was a quivering that itched and tingled against the palms of my hands.

“The woman, you ill-crafted, misbegotten excuse for a sword,” I growled. Then, on sudden inspiration: “The bearer of the Rune Blade Whisperer. Find her.”

The nature of the tremor changed and a sudden sense of purpose infused the sword. Slowly, it turned me to face the mouth of the alley. I sheathed the sword to quench the brilliant gleam, but it still quivered against my back, urging me back out onto the street. I turned to Cullin who was pale beneath the shadow of the hood of his cloak.

“Are you all right?” I asked, startled. I had never seen him look completely undone like that before

“Aye, well,” he said softly and shook his head. “I’ve naught against the idea of magic, ye ken. But I dinna like it performed right before me like that. I find it somewhat unnerving.”

“
You
find it unnerving,” I muttered. “Gods. I
hate
magic. And I hate this.” I stepped out into the street. “The stupid sword says this way.”

***

The sword on my back was like a phantom hand on my shoulder. Nudging this way and that, it led us through the confusing warren of streets. After a while, it became apparent it was leading us surely and unerringly toward the elegant houses belonging to rich merchants that nestled at the foot of the embankment below the Lord’s fortress manse. Twice, we had to duck into an alley to avoid Maeduni mercenaries wearing Lord Balkan’s blazon. Obviously, the Ephir’s nephew was not one of the Isgardians who viewed the Maeduni as a danger to the country.

The streets became marginally wider and cleaner as we approached the walled houses of the merchants. The guiding tugs of the sword on my back were more urgent now, and I began to feel a sense of foreboding I was afraid it meant Kerri was not only in trouble, but in acute danger.

A man stepped out onto the street from behind a wall ahead of us. Every hair on my body tried to rise up and sudden nausea churned in my belly. Even over the wet stench of the rain swirling in the garbage on the street, I smelled the gagging reek of magic surrounding the man. He was dressed as an affluent Isgardian merchant, but his hair and eyes were the black of a Maeduni. As he closed the gate behind him and walked toward us, I swung Cullin into a narrow side-street and hunched, shivering, into my cloak.

Gods, I had never felt magic that strong before, nor smelled so clearly the overlying stench of blood and death with it.

“Magic?” Cullin asked quietly.

Unable to speak, I stopped and nodded, weak and shaken by the nausea, my legs trembling with it. I could feel the man’s eyes on my back as he walked past the entrance of the side-street. Cullin pretended to consult a slip of parchment from his pocket and looked around as if checking an address, his face calm but his eyes gleaming brightly, alert and ready for any trouble.

“It’s all right,” he murmured a moment later. “He’s gone past. I fancy we look well-dressed enough to have business here.”

My legs still trembled as we made our way back to the main thoroughfare. The Maeduni merchant was nowhere in sight as we turned back on our original course. Cullin paused momentarily in front of the gate the merchant had come through and I saw him make a mental note of the name etched into the stone above the gate.

The sword tugged urgently. I stumbled forward a few paces, muttering a curse. The sword yanked at me again.

“All right,” I mumbled. “I’m coming. I’m coming. Dinna get yourself in such a dither.”

We were coming to the end of the street of houses, and still the sword led on, deviating neither right nor left. It began to rain harder as we passed the last walled house. The road before us turned sharply to lead up the back slope of the bluff toward Lord Balkan’s manse.

“This could become verra interesting,” Cullin murmured, wiping the rain from his face.

Tall trees lined the road up to the manse, their leaves gleaming wetly in the grey light. Lush grass interspersed with bushes grew thickly in the spaces between them. In the sun, it would be a pleasant park, but drenched and dripping with rain, it merely looked dreary and bleak.

A sudden flash of lightning bloomed in the west, followed by a growling peal of thunder. Cullin glanced up, then shook the water from the hood of his cloak.

“I would suggest we take to the trees if that sword insists on going up there,” he said. “I wouldna want a reception committee awaiting our arrival.”