Chapter 6
1008 Words
CHAPTER 6
“Where is he? What direction?”
At Zandaril’s urgent whisper, Penrys pointed again, like a hound aligning her body along a scent trail. They were striding through the evening camp, back toward the horse herd, as quickly as they could without attracting attention.
“How can you be sure he isn’t just from some border family?” she asked.
“The horses… This expedition would be useless if something happened to the horses. Bad place for him to be, if he is really Rasesni.”
He spared her a glance as he all but dragged her along. “I have to see what he’s doing.”
“Don’t you think you could use a little help?” She gestured at the bodies by the campfires all around them.
His mouth quirked, just visible in the reflected firelight. “Well, and I may be wrong.”
He pulled at her sleeve. “You find him again.”
“I could show you how to do it.”
“No time.” His stride lengthened as the campfires became more sparse, and she had to stretch her legs to keep pace. They left the conversations and laughter around the supply wagons behind, and the tents, glowing from inside, were fewer. She had to watch her step now, the pools of darkness on the ground hiding ankle-turning hummocks. She concentrated on the mind she’d picked out from Zandaril’s wagon.
If I could stop a moment and catch my breath, I might be able to find out more about him.
“Slow down. Give me a chance to think,” she said, and dug in her heels.
Reluctantly, Zandaril stopped, peering off into the darkness as if he could see their target.
She bent over at the waist and breathed deeply. When she straightened up, she concentrated on the Rasesni-speaking mind. Horses, he understands horses. What else? The turns of his knowledge seem familiar—what is it?
Then she realized—he reminded her of Vylkar, the wizard who had found her. It was wizardry this mind knew.
“Hurry up,” she said, and trotted past a surprised Zandaril.
They crouched together outside the picket of riders walking their quiet circuits around the grazing herd. Zandaril peered through the darkness.
“That’s him,” Penrys whispered. “On the gray.”
The horse glimmered faintly in the starlight. There was nothing suspicious about the scene, but what was a wizard, of any sort, doing riding night watch?
“Now what?” she said.
“Don’t know. Didn’t think that far,” Zandaril whispered back. “He’ll have to change horses, to give the one he’s on a rest. We can stop him then.”
“Just the two of us? What do you plan to use for weapons?”
He made no reply.
She persisted. “Why not tell Chang and have him do it right, with a mounted squad?”
He gave her a frustrated look.
Oh. Of course. If he fetches Chang, that leaves me on my own. Or, worse, able to contact a possible enemy. If he sends me, maybe I’ll just escape. If we both go, this horseman may vanish. If we both stay, how does he know I won’t side with the enemy?
She chuckled. “You have yourself quite a problem,” she said, and he glared at her.
*We will wait until he goes to swap horses and confront him ourselves.*
The horse shied, as if its rider had jerked on the reins, and his head went up. The guard turned to face them, then took off, away from the herd, at a gallop.
They stood up and watched him vanish, the hoofbeats drumming on the soft turf until lost in the distance.
“Can you follow him? Track him?” Zandaril asked, frustration and chagrin in his voice.
“Not forever. He’ll be out of range soon enough, if he doesn’t stop.”
They lingered there for several minutes. The scents of the quiet night and the peaceful shifting of the dozing horses filled in the gap where the horseman had been.
Finally, Penrys sighed. “He’s gone.”
“There aren’t any others? You’re sure?”
Chang was not pleased with them. Penrys spared a bit of sympathy for Zandaril, who was withstanding the worst of the Commander’s wrath, currently in full spate. He’d admitted his fault, that he’d been more eager than prudent, and he was now standing, head bowed, waiting for the flood to pass.
“I couldn’t find another native Rasesni-speaker in the camp,” she said, diverting some of Chang’s ire.
He eyed her as if considering an appropriate punishment, but passed on to the Horsemaster, whom Zandaril had had the foresight to fetch along with them before reporting the disaster.
“What was a Rasesni doing with the herdsmen?” Chang thundered.
The short, stocky gray-haired man said, “And how was I to know? He had no accent, and he was willing to stand night watch. He called himself Mu Wenjit—good Kigalino name. There’s no way to screen all the civilians. And a hard time we have getting them, too, sometimes. Not everyone wants to hire away for months.”
It’s tough to tell if Chang’s actually grinding his teeth, with that bit of a beard in the way.
She fought to keep the smile off her face.
“It’s clear he was up to no good, by the way he fled after he heard us,” she said.
“Not ‘us.’ Me,” Zandaril muttered. “My mind-speech, he heard.”
“We don’t know that.”
Zandaril looked at her and rolled his eyes. “We do now.”
He turned to the Horsemaster. “What did he look like?”
“I don’t know—ordinary. Um, I remember one eye drooped a little lower than the other.”
“Menbyede, from the mirror,” Chang said. “Maybe you’re right, Zandaril-chi. Maybe this is a big bluff.”
Penrys watched him drop into intense consideration, all the frustrated anger forgotten. No one moved, hoping to avoid notice. She tried to yawn surreptitiously, her mind on the bedroll Hing Ganau had fetched for her, back in Zandaril’s tent near his wagon. I’m not used to riding all day like this.
Chang turned back to her. “You think he was a wizard. Like Zandaril.”
“No, not like Zandaril. Like one of the Collegium,” she said.
“What’s the difference?”
“I haven’t met other Zannib but the books said, and Zandaril’s like that, too, that the Zannib wizards are famous specialists in beolrys, the mind-skills. The Ellech are more interested in raunarys, the thing-skills, controlling physical objects.”
Chang stared at her blankly.
“Moving things, binding things, destroying things.” In exasperation, she continued. “That’s why there are devices, to amplify or control that. It’s what much of the Collegium is for, the study and development of that craft. Anyway, it leaves a different flavor in the mind, as a baker and a brewer do, though both are concerned with the transformation of grain using yeast.”
In the silence that followed, she seized her opportunity. “I want to examine that mirror. Maybe it can tell me something.”
- Writer
