The Phoenix Endangered (12 page)

Kareta was nowhere to be seen.

“Huh,” Harrier said, sitting back down again. That was odd. He would have been prepared to swear that she intended to stick to him until he read those Books and memorized every line. Instead, she’d vanished without a single word. There wasn’t much he could do about it, though, so he concentrated on finding his way to where he was supposed to go. As he knew from experience, it wasn’t all that easy; the Elves might be able to tell a farmhouse from a stables from a drying shed, but to Harrier, the buildings all looked pretty much alike. Fortunately Tiercel was there to greet him, along with an Elf he introduced as Aressea, the mistress of Blackrowan.

“Be welcome in my home and at my hearth, Harrier son of Antarans. Stay as long as you will, and when you go, go with joy,” she said, bowing as he stepped down from the wagon’s bench.

“To be freely welcomed is to be made doubly welcome,” Harrier answered, bowing in return. “It would be good to know, of your courtesy, where I might see to my horses before I bathe.”

He knew he wasn’t being in the least presumptuous by assuming that a bath would be the first thing on the menu. Elves were fanatical about cleanliness when it was at all possible to be so, and Harrier knew perfectly well that cold baths in rushing streams weren’t nearly as good as hot soaks in Elven bathhouses for getting a person clean.

Aressea waved her hand dismissively. “It would be a poor hostess indeed who asked a guest to labor. Siralcar will see to your horses while you refresh yourself. Come.”

As another Elf appeared—seemingly out of nowhere, but Harrier had gotten over his astonishment at the way Elves mysteriously appeared out of “thin air” long before he’d left Karahelanderialigor. Once Siralcar took charge of the horses, Harrier turned and followed Aressea and
Tiercel along a path through the trees. He knew, since he’d driven the wagon past the main house already, that he was already in the middle of the farm, and if this had been a farm in the Delfier Valley, he would have expected to see an open farmyard, with open fields and low hedges surrounding the farmstead. But he’d long since gotten used to the idea that the Elves did things differently.

“I believe you shall find all that you require within,” Aressea said, stopping at the door of the bathhouse. “Afterward, perhaps it would please you to come to my kitchen to take tea, and let it be known how Farm Blackrowan can best be of service to House Malkirinath.”

Harrier bowed again. “It will indeed be my pleasure to take tea, and to share with you all that I know.”

Aressea bowed again and walked off.

“How do you do that?” Tiercel muttered, shaking his head.

“It isn’t any harder than calming down a boatload of Selkens who’ve convinced themselves that Da wants to cheat them on the Port fees,” Harrier said. “And anyway, I
had
to learn to talk like that. Elunyerin kept hitting me if I didn’t.”

Tiercel shook his head again. “I guess there’s just something about you that makes people want to hit you, Har. Because—remember?—Roneida kept hitting you, too.”

“Don’t remind me,” Harrier muttered, rubbing his arm in reflexive memory. He pushed open the door to the bathhouse and stepped inside.

The interior of the bathhouse was much the same as the others he’d been in, even the one in House Malkirinath, though that one had been inside, rather than a separate building. Tiled walls and a tiled floor, one of the traditional ceramic stoves nestled in the corner (something neither of the boys had seen outside of museums before they’d come to the Elven Lands, as they hadn’t been used in the Nine Cities in centuries), benches along the walls, small wooden tubs, and, filling most of the room, a deep tub filled with gently steaming water. Piled on one of the benches was a
stack of fabric: scrubbing cloths, drying cloths, and a large soft house-robe for Harrier to wrap himself in when he was done (a nice gesture, but he was damned if he was going to go wandering around the farm wearing nothing but a house-robe). There was also a pair of wooden sandals tucked neatly beneath the bench, and Harrier noted with faint surprise that they were actually large enough to fit him. He wondered if other humans had visited here, because he’d never yet seen an Elf with feet as big as his.

“You can make yourself useful, you know,” he said to Tiercel as he sat down on the bench to remove his boots. “Go out to the wagon and bring back a set of clean clothes for me.”

Though he’d lost a shirt (actually his favorite shirt) in the stream when he’d met Kareta, it had been an annoying loss rather than a calamitous one, for House Malkirinath had sent them off more lavishly supplied than their own families had for the trip to Sentarshadeen. Of course, then they’d been taking a pack-mule for a fortnight’s trip to another city, not a wagon for a trek to the end of the world, but thanks to Idalia’s openhandedness, Harrier could actually afford to lose his shirt more than once—and his pants as well, if it came down to it.

“Sure,” Tiercel said. “I think Aressea would even let us do the laundry while we’re here, if you asked her.”

“Beats banging the stuff on rocks in a muddy stream,” Harrier agreed. “Maybe you can make something glow in the dark for her. That’s always nice.”

Tiercel snorted rudely. “Ancaladar will let me know if there’s anything she’d like, but… I think the whole idea is that they do things for us, and then they get to ask House Malkirinath to do things for them. Isn’t it?”

“Of course it is,” Harrier said with a sigh. He shook his head. There were times when he wondered if Tiercel had actually grown up in the same city he had. “And even if—” He stopped, but there really wasn’t any way to be tactful about it. “Even if House Malkirinath doesn’t have an Elven Mage anymore, I bet a lot of Elven Mages still owe
them favors. So House Malkirinath will pay back everybody who helps us with magic—which I bet is what they’ll want—and then they can call on those other Elven Mages for help. So it’s not like either of us needs to worry about taking charity in any of these places, because we aren’t. Everything we get is being paid for.”

“Just not by us,” Tiercel said.

“Oh, we’re paying for it,” Harrier answered darkly.
By going off on this crazy-bordering-on-suicidal quest that’s going to get us both killed.

Tiercel frowned, as if he’d just thought of something. “I didn’t see … Where’s Kareta?” he asked cautiously.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Harrier said, shrugging. “She was there when I turned off the main road. At least I think she was. Then I looked around and … she wasn’t. What? You think I murdered her? Tempting as the idea is, Tyr … no.”

“You think she just left?” Tiercel asked.

“I
hope
she just left,” Harrier answered. “Probably too good to be true, though.”

He tucked his boots under the bench beside the sandals and stripped off his tunic and shirt. He was still annoyed at the loss of his favorite shirt—they never had managed to find it. He wadded up his tunic and tossed it at Tiercel.

“Go on. Make yourself useful. Unless the High Magick has spells for cleaning clothes.”

Tiercel laughed, throwing Harrier’s tunic over his shoulder, and walked out of the bathhouse closing the door behind him as he went.

There was a large ladle in one of the tubs, and Harrier picked it up and used it to scoop several dippers of water from the bath into the tub. Once he’d gotten the rest of his clothes off and folded them neatly out of the way, he stood in the tub with the scrubbing-cloth and the soap and washed himself all over quickly—Elven baths were more for soaking than for scrubbing, as he’d quickly learned. Once he was fairly clean, he stepped into the big tub, sinking down until the hot water covered him to the chin.

Half a year ago he wouldn’t have even noticed things like this—hot baths, and soft beds, and hot meals (cooked by other people) and served on plates, at tables, where you sat on chairs. Half a year ago he’d been living in Armethalieh, with nothing more pressing to consider than the fact that he was going to be a really bad Apprentice Harbormaster. He’d taken all the comforts of his soft settled City life for granted.

It wasn’t
precisely
that he missed them now. He missed his parents, of course, and his brothers, and (oddly enough) the hot ginger cider and roasted chestnuts that they sold down at the docks in the winter, and it hurt to know that in a few more moonturns he was going to miss being at home for his Naming Day celebration, and there was no way he could imagine that he could send a letter home to his family to tell them that he and Tiercel were still all right. But he didn’t really miss the rest of it.

He would, he knew, if he were
actually
cold and hungry and really dirty, but so far he hadn’t been any of those things—or at least not for long. And he was realistic enough to know that he would probably be all of those things before all this was over, and to still hope it wouldn’t happen.

After he’d been in the bath for about a chime, Tiercel came back with a set of his clean clothes. “Aressea says she’ll be happy to do our laundry,” he said, setting them down on the bench, “and before you ask, no, I didn’t
ask
her. I just said we looked forward to the opportunity—if possible—to get everything clean before we left.”

“Huh,” Harrier said. “Did you not-ask her how far to the Veil?”

Tiercel flopped down on the bench and ran a hand through his hair. “That would be a question,” he pointed out. “And I know you told me what to say, but, well…”

Harrier sighed. “Fine. I’ll do it. For the Light’s sake, Tyr, they’re only Elves.”

Tiercel grinned at him. “Oh, listen to Harrier Gillain, the great traveler! ‘Only Elves’! Nothing to concern yourself with!”

“Come over here and I’ll hold you under water until you start making sense,” Harrier invited.

“I’ve already got more sense than that,” Tiercel said cheerfully. “Hurry up and come out of there and get dressed. They eat early here.”

Harrier didn’t need any more invitation than that.

Five

The Books of the Wild Magic

A
T THE
R
OLFORT
house in Armethalieh, the family ate in the dining room and the servants ate in the servants’ hall. In the Gillain household, the family and the apprentices ate together in the dining parlor, and the servants ate in the kitchen. It was the difference between the organization of a Noble household and a Tradesman household.

In the Elven Lands, while both boys were fairly sure there
were
servants—or at least Elves who served in the households they’d guested in—it didn’t matter whether the household was as grand as House Malkirinath, or as humble as a simple farm: at meals everyone gathered around the same table, and no distinctions were made between servant and master. Harrier had never found out if there even
were
servants and masters among the Elves, simply because he’d never figured out the right way to phrase the not-a-question.

The Blackrowan household gathered for its evening meal around two long wooden tables in a room just off the kitchen. The simple elegance of every item in the room, from the furnishings, to the serving bowls, to the elegant frescoes on the walls, would have marked this as the dwelling of one of the most aristocratic families in
Armethalieh, rather than as the home of simple country farmers. But—Harrier reflected—these “simple country farmers” had had centuries to think about how they wanted things to look and to be, so it was no wonder that everything looked as if it had been polished and tended for generations. It had been.

At least he didn’t have any more to worry about than just regular Elven politeness. He didn’t know whether it was because he didn’t notice, or they made allowances for him not being an Elf, or they just didn’t have the same kinds of differences among them that humans did, but he’d never seen any difference between the highest Elven households and the lowest. So all he really had to worry about was his table manners (which were excellent, since his ma had raised four boys with a long spoon and a quick hand) and not saying anything that resembled a question. And after Elunyerin’s similarly forceful tutelage in Elven manners, Harrier was excellent at that as well.

As befit farmhouse fare, the food was hearty and filling, although Harrier still found Elven food odd. Fruit, in his opinion, did not belong in soup, and the meal began with a creamy soup that was thick with rice and cherries. By now Harrier had eaten weirder things without comment, though, and it wasn’t as if it was actually
bad.
The main part of the meal was more to his liking: roast pork and roast fowl, served with an assortment of breads, some stuffed with vegetables and spices (and fruits) and some plain. There were other dishes as well: vegetables and stewed fruits and hot and cold pies—it was obvious that if you left the table hungry, it would be your own fault.

Once the meats were on the table, it was the signal for general conversation, and both Aressea and Aratari—who was probably Aressea’s husband, though the Elves rarely specified relationships when making introductions—were happy to tell Tiercel and Harrier a great deal about the farm over the course of the meal. Just as Kareta had said, the main crops that Blackrowan produced were silk—which
meant silk-houses where both the insects and their food was cultivated—and fruit cordials, which meant orchards as well as stillrooms.