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Horses' Move, 1


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#1 Guest_Ananke_*

Posted 11 May 2007 - 06:23 PM


Part III: Horses’ Move


(1)


The eight day of Mirtul, 1369, on the road to Trademeet
It’s a dark and stormy night.
We’re sitting in some damp cave


“What are you doing, sister?”

The voice of the man—given what man we are concerned with—was surprisingly kind; devoid of its customary harshness and haughty arrogance, and tinted in their stead with a slight tinge of curiosity, it sounded almost pleasant.

Imoen considered the silhouette flickering on the wall in the dim light of the small fire they had managed to strike up. “Writing a diary,” she replied truthfully.

“Go to sleep, sister. I’ll take the first watch,” her brother replied from his post by the opening of the cave; and Imoen, having considered the request, nodded, closed the small book lying in her lap, and put it away, together with the quill and the ink bottle, into her saddlebags.

The ground of the cave was hard, and there was almost nothing for her to cover herself with; only the travel cloak Sarevok had given her when they had been leaving the city—but it was not what was bothering her as she curled up to preserve body heat and put the saddlebag under her head to serve as a makeshift pillow.

No; what was bothering her was the dream she would be dreaming that dark and stormy night.

-----


The little horse was pink.

The little horse was a mare and a jennet; wise, patient and sure-footed as all jennets are—and, technically, as the man told her, rose grey. She had belonged to the daughter of some puissant noble long before Aran Linvail had found her in the putrid stable of a byroad inn, half-starved and worked like a common household animal instead of the purebred creature that she was.

All this rolled by Imoen’s ears entirely unheeded as she watched the little mare and vowed to herself that, if, or, better said, when, Sarevok’s and her paths diverged again, she would be taking the horse with her if she must steal it. She was, after all and among other things, a thief. And a good one, at that.

The stables were located near the gates of Athkatla, in a part of the city Imoen had never visited before; Gaelan Bayle’s territory. Here Aran Linvail, the collector of all things exquisite, kept his flock of horses; and, though the man himself would not know where the crown jewel of his assemblage was and whither he was headed, the man who worked his stables, most peculiarly, did.

“I need another one,” Sarevok demanded of the middle-aged thief as soon as Imoen and he crossed the threshold of the place and shed their invisibility. “Saddled for riding. For the lady,” he said, nodding at the girl; who, on her part, was looking around with an expression of wonder on her face. So that was how Sarevok was planning to reach Trademeet before nightfall!

“For the lady,” the man repeated, leering askew at Imoen; who suddenly noticed that the man’s left eye was gone, replaced by a very nasty scar. “And how well do you ride, miss? Have you ever ridden a horse before?”

“Once or twice,” Imoen replied; sincerely, to the very best of her memory. That had been in Candlekeep, and the horse was tall, dark, old and tired, she remembered; not suited for riding, really, and usually used only for pulling a cart with crops and vegetables.

Horses were expensive, of course; and horses for riding, doubly so. They ate much, required grooming, and were a favourite target of thieves and bandits. Only the nobles ever used them as a matter of course; everyone else, city dwellers, countrymen and adventurers alike, travelled on foot.

Well, the wizards teleported themselves wherever they wanted. But they were wizards, of course. Perhaps, one day, she, too, would be able to open dimension doors like Edwin could—

The return of the man and the two young boys his helpers broke the unhappy train of Imoen’s thoughts. The man was leading the reins of two horses, one in each hand; the boys were carrying the saddles, which they shortly started to put on the two animals.

Sarevok’s horse was a massive golden beast, of the kind bred specially to carry mounted knights into a fight; he had a graceful head he carried high and proudly, a long, dark tail, a short-cropped mane, and large, intelligent eyes; and, to Imoen, looked suspiciously like a—

“—a paladin’s horse,” Sarevok was telling the man. “I don’t want a beast which will deem itself fit to deal out moral judgements of my behaviour.”

“Worry not, my lord,” the man replied. “It belonged to a prince, true, but a layman. This one,” he said, pulling the second horse’s reins, “was his daughter’s.”

The little horse was pink, Imoen noticed; and, for a moment, was lost to the world.

-----


They put on the saddle and made her try and see if she fit well in it; then, put on the saddlebags into which she had put her possessions. She had a bow and a quiver; a short sword and a dagger; books, potions, scrolls, gems and personal sundries; and, finally, amongst the latter, Khalid’s helmet, which she had left with herself more as a memento of other, different times than for any sensible reason. She really should have sold it; it was bulky, heavy and unwieldy, and took entirely too much place in her bags. But it was too late to do it now. In Trademeet, perhaps.

The contents of Sarevok’s saddlebags, she would not ask about; all she noticed was that her brother, too, would be travelling lightly. He pulled out a pair of thick leather bracers from his luggage—Imoen’s newly magically-trained eyes promptly detected a strong magical aura around them—and strapped them, quickly and efficiently, to his forearms; then, he reached to the bags again; halted half-way through the move; and, stating a fact rather than asking, said, “You don’t have a cloak.”

“I’ll put up the hood of the armour,” Imoen replied, surprised. “It’ll be fine.”

“No, wait,” her brother answered; and turning around, said, “Jareth. Is there anything like a decent cloak anywhere in this pigsty?”

Presently, a cloak was encountered and recovered: an affair in wool, shadow and black, the likes of which the Thieves routinely worn on their longer assignments and a much smaller replica of Sarevok’s own; and mildly enchanted with protective magic. Imoen put it on and put the hood up; they both mounted; and, not half an hour later, were outside of Athkatla’s city gates.

There, the horses settled into an easy trot; and the siblings headed down the road to Trademeet.

-----


It was a wonderful feeling, to be out of the city again, Imoen decided.

Later, of course, she would be all sore from the riding, unaccustomed to it as she was—and, even if she had ever been used to it, a week of freedom was definitely not enough to recover strength and stamina lost during five months of imprisonment. But for now, it did not matter. The day was fine, if slightly too warm for now; and she was out of the city, riding a horse wise enough to understand that she was dealing with a rider inexperienced at best. The only thing she might wish for was a different company.

Sarevok was riding next to her, wrapped in his own dark cloak and in silence as she was; they had nothing to tell each other, and Imoen sensed distinctly that there were limits to her brother’s patience—and that singing, for one thing, would not be condoned. Not that it mattered, much; the day was fine; and Amn, she discovered, was beautiful.

The road first took them through the little hamlets outside Athkatla, whose inhabitants lived from supplying produce to the city; then, the villages and the fields grew much fewer and further between, and the road much less used; and what prevailed were the forests and meadows.

These were not unlike those further in the north, near Baldur’s Gate; but this familiarity was perhaps even better than any novelty would be in its stead; and Imoen started to recall what little she remembered of Kivan’s and Jaheira’s all too frequent, and usually missed on her, lessons.

The stinging nettle is used to help young mothers give milk for their babies. Flogging with it lessens arthritis pains. And you can use its fibres for paper and clothes.

A poultice of plantain leaves is used for insect bites, rashes and some snakebites—


“—the road goes on and on,” she heard suddenly, and realised that she was singing, after all, quietly and atonally, to herself; and that Sarevok had spurred his horse, and was now riding far in front of her.

Stuck-up idiot, she thought, feeling a sudden urge to stick out her tongue at her brother; and then, remembered of whom she was thinking, and what the man had done to her.

There was such a thing as too much familiarity.

-----


They rode on and on, stopping only briefly and encountering few other travellers on the way; once, they met a caravan of carts, horses and oxen heading from Athkatla to Trademeet. The convoy parted before them when Sarevok, entirely unmindful of the people and beasts crowding the road, spurred his horse lightly and, imperious as a prince, rode full-speed in between them. Imoen shrugged, prodded her own mare and followed in his wake; and was herself in turn followed by oaths and curses of the angry ushers. She turned around, smiled and waved to them before she lost them from her sight.

Soon, though, the horses, well-bred, well-fed and well-exercised as they were, started to tire as the eve approached and the siblings approached their destination; and Imoen started to feel the aches she had known were inevitable. The armour and the saddle, however well-adjusted, started to chafe; and fatigue started to settle in.

They were now riding through a dense forest of birches, and ashes, and maples, and oaks, and rowans; there were all sorts of bushes and thickets growing by the side of the road; and the road itself, for some reason, was no longer level and paved with stones, but earthen and uneven, with large stones sticking out of it. Imoen frowned: this was a major road, and Trademeet could not be far away. The druids must be really powerful here, she thought.

At that moment, the storm started.

It started as a light shower; but almost immediately it turned into a heavy downpour, complete with thunder and lightning. Against the backdrop of the dark, overcast sky above, the tree crowns shook and bent; the dead leaves rose from the ground, hoist by the violent wind. The large raindrops were cold and so heavy that they hurt Imoen whenever they hit her; and since the wind was in the face, they hit often, blinding her. Even the twigs of the bushes and the saplings growing by the road started to lash at the girl and her mare; finding their way often; all too often for the girl’s taste; almost as if by intent.

Through the heavy curtain of rain, she could see the gold of Sarevok’s horse, now not five horse-lengths from her; her brother, too, had slowed down his pace almost to a stop by now. She prodded her mare and caught up with him. “We must find cover!” she yelled out over the wind as her mare danced under her. “We’ll get lost!”

There was no answer; or, at least, no answer that she heard; but this did not disturb her, because at that point, she saw—or thought she saw—something by the side of the road.

She squinted; then, quite inconsiderately, elbowed Sarevok to get his attention; and, once she did, showed him what she saw.

A cave.

-----


The cave was low—definitely too low for the horses, even for Imoen’s mare; fortunately, the rock in which it lay overhung its opening, and this would provide at least some cover against the wind and the rain for the creatures.

By mutual and, of necessity, tacit agreement, Sarevok occupied himself with tying and unsaddling the horses while Imoen stole into the cave to see if it had some occupant in need of prompt eviction; thankfully, there was none.

The cave was small, but—in spite of all the drama Imoen would later attempt to insert into her breathtaking nascent narrative—quite dry and rather clean; there were only some leaves and twigs on the floor, which they would later use to kindle the fire. The girl looked around, liked what little she saw in the near complete darkness, and returned to the torrent outside.

There, Sarevok had finished tying the horses; and soon, they carried the saddlebags, with all the books, scrolls, gems and sundries contained within, into the cave. Imoen gathered the leaves into a heap in the centre of the room, and, with a simple spell of burning hands, kindled the small fire.

Then, they arranged their belongings, in silence; and then, they supped on provisions pulled from Sarevok’s bags—also in silence; or rather, since complete silence proved impossible, using words sparsely and picking them with great care. Through some unspoken covenant, they had divided the cave between themselves, Imoen taking the back, and her brother the front half of it; and so they sat in silence, watching each other carefully again, as they had been watching each other in Irenicus’ dungeon; much akin to two cats stranded on an ice float in the middle of a thawed river, each keenly aware of the invisible border demarcating their suddenly reduced territories. Sarevok’s question were the first nonessential words either directed at the other since entering the cave.

Imoen fell asleep; and dreamt.

-----


“Murder.”

The Imoen who had spoken was taller, and tougher, and prettier than the Imoen who was listening; and there was murder in her eyes. This Imoen, it was clear, would suffer no fool. She would kill him.

They were standing over Viconia’s body, in Edwin’s laboratory, in a dream; and Imoen was listening, captivated, as the other Imoen—the one without the scars and with the dagger made of bone—elaborated curtly, speaking in efficient, clipped sentences:

“Murder is control. Order.”

She swept her hand over the room and its neatly arranged stacks of documents.

“The ability to end a life is the ultimate power a being can possess over another. Thus, order.”

She scanned the room with cold, unfeeling eyes.

“Murder,” she repeated.

“Murder is chaos. Release.”

The stacks all fell down, covering the floor with layer upon layer of disarrayed papers.

“It gives an outlet to frustrations and pent-up sentiments, setting them free upon an unsuspecting world. Thus, release.”

Her eyes focused on the Imoen who was listening. “It felt liberating to kill that traitorous bitch.” It was not a question.

“Murder,” she repeated again, after waiting a heartbeat. “I am Murder. And, since I am Murder, so are you. We are the same. Like father, like child.”

“—no,” Imoen stammered out through parched throat.

“No?” The other Imoen seemed to be genuinely curious. “What else are you then, if not me?”

“—me,” Imoen replied; perhaps because this was enough; but, more probably, because she physically could not say a word more.

“You? You,” the other Imoen said, with such contempt that Imoen at once felt like a failure, to be immediately eradicated for the common good, “are nothing but a collection of blunders, errors and weaknesses. Look at me and dare tell me that I am not what is best in you. What is better than you.”

“And, as you ponder the futility of rebellion and the reward of obedience,” the other Imoen finished, smiling a cold, private smile, “remember to consider this: Why, even now, as we speak, are you murdering your brother?”

The dreamscape vanished; and Imoen found herself back in the cave, killing Sarevok.

-----


How she had managed to incapacitate him in the first place, she would never learn; though later, upon closer consideration of the issue, she decided that a stunning dart suspiciously gone astray amongst her possessions, fortuitously discovered at the precise moment when it had been in demand, and thrown with the accuracy of a thief and a Daughter of Murder at a man who, fresh to wizardry and tired after an eventful day, may have let his guard down, and forgotten that magical protections are in need of periodic renewal—

—However it had happened, the deed had been accomplished; and her brother was now slouched half-sitting, half-leaning against the cave wall, stunned and watching through wide open eyes as Imoen was killing him tenderly against the backdrop of the rain and storm outside.

It really did feel great, the girl mused as she watched the point of her dagger pierce the man’s clothes and skin between the fifth and sixth left rib; and a small trickle of blood flow out and stain the golden silk. It felt great: being the one in control, the one winning, the one finally on top; and the one about to be released and liberated from a constant, oppressive presence in her life. This was murder at its most private, its most intimate, carried out between a killer and a victim as familiar to each other as—precisely that: members of a family; or, possibly, as lovers. This was what murder should be. Not the impersonal, rash way her brother preferred.

Reluctantly, with a large dose of regret and a feeling that she was committing the greatest foolishness of her life, she started to pull the dagger out; and found that she could not. The tip of the dagger was still moving forward, pushed by her suddenly unresponsive right hand.

She put her left hand on the right, and tried to withdraw the dagger again. It would not budge.

“No! Not…like…this!” she gasped, fighting against her instinct and against the presence which had possessed her body; and, with a tremendous effort, managed to shift the tip of the dagger slightly so that it slid on a rib, dodged narrowly the heart and pierced the lung instead.

She collapsed, blinking, dazed and gasping for breath; then, pulled out the dagger—which now gave way without trouble—and promptly started to heal Sarevok, in one move reaching for a healing potion bottle, uncorking it with her thumb and pouring the potion straight onto the blood-spewing wound; once she saw that the makeshift remedy had worked and that the injured tissues had healed, she promptly rose and crossed over the exhausted fire to her part of the cave.

Having done the senseless thing and spared the life of a murderer, it was now high time to do the sensible thing and save herself. Her armour and most her other things must stay here; but, even groping blindly in the darkness, she found her sword and her bag of gems right where she had left them. Money and weapons; all else was of secondary importance.

She was already again by the exit when Sarevok caught her by the back of her clothes and dragged her to the ground.

“Oh no,” he said. “You don’t.”

She managed to pull out her sword as she was falling down; but, after half a minute of general chaos and jostling around in the darkness, she was forced to admit the man’s win.

She was looking at his eyes as he was pinning her to the ground and took away her weapons: a golden glow in the complete darkness. They had lost their fear-provoking quality long ago. Now, they were only an easy target.

“You know, brother,” she hissed out. “This was the third time I saw you beaten in as many weeks. The golems, I understand. Aran’s people, too. But now, you’ve let yourself be beaten by me. The plain, old me. Your little sister. You’re really letting yourself go.”

She felt the clamp-like pressure on her chest increase slightly. “Little sister,” Sarevok growled out in the darkness. “Do you take me for a fool incapable of interpreting correctly the import of what has just occurred here?”

“No. I know that you’re an evil bastard fully capable of misinterpreting it on purpose!”

The pressure lessened a fraction. “A good point,” her brother admitted. “Even if not entirely conducive to discussion.”

There was a moment of silence on both parts. Eventually, Sarevok said cautiously, “Sister. Yesterday, you made a request of me. Do you remember it?”

Imoen grimaced. “Yeah,” she answered warily. “You’re to respect me.”

“I would now like to honour it. In return, I would have the same thing of you.”

“And if I promise I do, you’ll—what? Let me go, right?” Imoen asked sarcastically, still trying to wriggle herself out. Perhaps she could—

“In particular,” Sarevok continued, ignoring her, “I would ask of you that you refrain from careless chatter. I am in a foul mood. And you have tried my patience already.”

Imoen snorted, and immediately felt how the pressure on her neck increased to a point where it almost crushed her windpipe.

“Sorely, I might add.”

The pressure disappeared completely; Imoen felt herself roll across the still-warm hearth to her side of the cave.

A moment later, as she was already on her feet and searching blindly for something with which to defend herself, a small, red light appeared in the middle of the cave. Sarevok had rekindled the fire.

She froze, as if she had been a novice thief caught red-handed during a robbery; but her brother was paying her no heed. In fact, he wasn’t even looking at her, fully concentrated instead on searching through his own saddlebags.

“I had no idea that I had such a strong effect on you,” he said thoughtfully, without looking in her direction.

He pulled out a potion bottle; and then, after a momentary consideration, another. “Here,” he said, sliding the second flask towards Imoen; that, and after that, in turn, both her weapons.

The girl looked at the man in the dim light. There were rips and tears, some surrounded by dark stains, in more than one place of his once-exquisite silken shirt; and a gash on his cheek. She had managed to get to him, after all.

Of course, there was no telling how many bruises she would soon have herself; or how many bones Sarevok had broken. She felt around herself. Her ribs seemed intact, and she felt no major pain anywhere; still, she uncorked the potion and started to drink thirstily.

When she was done, she wiped her mouth with her hand, and considered her brother’s earlier allegation.

“No idea? You knew it perfectly—”

—you bastard, she wanted to add; but in the end, did not. The sentence remained unfinished, hanging in the air, forever in anticipation of that final phrase which would complete it.

Sarevok still wasn’t looking at her. “I know that you hate me,” he said slowly, possibly more to himself than to Imoen. “I remember how paranoid you were about my person in the dungeon. And I do not dispute the merit of your reasons for either. There is a history and a future between us such as cannot be altered or amended. If no other sibling or outsider meddles in our affairs, we will end up fighting again; and, let it be made clear, I do not underestimate your skill, sister. As you have demonstrated sufficiently tonight, the outcome of our confrontation will be determined by a convergence of factors impossible to anticipate. It may all depend on who strikes the first blow—”

He frowned, obviously considering how to approach the delicate subject matter. “But, forgive me… I believed, especially in view of our yesterday’s talk, that you have… grown out of me. That matters between us have become less personal. A matter of kin, of prophecy, of necessity; of vengeance. Or your idea of justice, perhaps. But I clearly underestimated the depth of your sentiment, if you were willing to subject yourself to our Father’s manipulation just to get rid of me. This resentment and bitterness, pouring out of each crevice of your little, black, tainted heart—Why, I feel that I have grown to the rank of a symbol, almost.”

“I didn’t finish,” Imoen reminded him coldly.

Suddenly, Sarevok looked straight at her. “No. You did not. You were there, all splendid and glorious in your pink and black fury—” Suddenly, he smiled lightly, as if at some private joke, “—as beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night, as the elven queen put it—and yet you did not finish. Curious. Almost as curious as your words. ‘Not like this?’”

“‘Not for now?’,” Imoen shot back. “It’s a matter between Father and me.”

An amused golden look measured her over the hearth. “Is it? Really? Forgive me, but I was to be the victim of that murder.”

“You know,” her brother added, suddenly irritated, drumming his fingers on his knee, “if what we call Father weren’t only a barely sentient residue of our dead sire’s essence, incapable of thinking at any level but the most atavistic and instinctive, and certainly unable to act on its own, let alone coordinating its actions between different bodies… I’d almost say that—”

“—it used me to get at you,” Imoen finished, frowning. She did not enjoy the implications of this idea.

“I was about to say, ‘resented me even more than I had suspected’. But yes, yours is perhaps the better way to put it.”

The girl did not have much time to consider before her brother added, “Travelling in your presence has suddenly become ever so more interesting, sister… Although I would like to ask what you intend to do about it.”

“What I intend to do about it?” Imoen asked, bewildered. “What is there to be done about it?” She shrugged. “I mean, this thing’s possessed me while I was sleeping. What am I supposed to do about it?”

She did not expect an answer; and none came.

“And, by the way,” she added as the thought occurred to her, “I don’t think that you’re in the habit of falling asleep on a watch, either.” She frowned as she reached the end of her train of thought. “What did you do to wind him up, anyway?”

On the other side of the cave, Sarevok laughed. “This, my fair sibling, is a matter between Father and me. Wine?”

“Err… Come again?” Imoen asked, confused by the sudden change of topic; and not in any small measure by the sudden novel epithet in her brother’s repertoire.

“Wine? I have a bottle in my bags for some or other acquaintance of Aran’s who may, I believe, easily do without it. And I doubt either of us is going to get much more sleep tonight. It’s still raining, by the way—although I saw to the horses before, as you were just kind enough to remind me, I fell asleep on my watch. They were just fine.”

-----


Half a wine-bottle later, the mood in the cave was decidedly improved.

“I mean,” Imoen, stretched on her side of the small fire, was saying, “I know that you’re the light and centre of attention wherever you go, but isn’t this taking it a bit too far?”

“What?” her brother replied, laughing, from his side. “Is it envy I hear? If you decide to stay anonymous in the shadows of those who do not equal you, sister, that is your choice. I, on the contrary, prefer to take my rightful place over my clear inferiors.”

Imoen scowled weakly in his general direction. “Your rightful place— You’re so full of it, brother, you’re even worse than Edwin.”

“Edwin—? Ah. Our late brother, I take it?”

“Yes. But I don’t want to talk about him.”

Sarevok shrugged lazily. “As you will. More wine?”

“No, thanks. Still have some. It’s probably one of these very expensive things that you know everything about, and I nothing, too, isn’t it? But, I mean,” the girl said as her mind obstinately refused to abandon the previous topic, “Edwin… He at least had the decency not to be able to deceive people so that they would follow him.”

Her brother took a swig from his own water flask-cum-wine goblet. “I will not apologise for having been born a leader as well as a demigod, sister.”

“A duke of Baldur’s Gate. Almost a duke, that is,” Imoen snorted. “Anishai, after meeting you once, looked like she wanted to—to have your child! And, yesterday, what you did to those thieves—”

The man frowned. “What did I do to them? I rather thought I saved that vermin’s lives.”

Imoen turned her head to look at her brother. He seemed to be genuinely perplexed.

“You,” she said pointedly, “don’t care for their lives. Unless as a future sacrifice.”

“No,” her brother agreed. “I don’t.”

Imoen, satisfied, pressed her point on, “You make people follow you. Love you. Want you, even. And then die for you. You, brother, are a cruel god.”

“Yes, I am,” Sarevok replied candidly before adding, “So are you, sister, even if you refuse to recognise this yet. Such is the fate of a Child of Murder: we bring death to all we touch: to those we hate and those we love alike.”

“Except that some of us do it less metaphorically than others, I guess?” Imoen retorted, indignant at how lightly her brother was taking the topic; and, in no small measure, at herself for not being able to let go of it.

Sarevok evidently chose to ignore her comment. “They love me, you say,” he said; then, smirked, and added, “Love me and despair.”

He took another swig of wine, and, resting his head against the cave wall and looking at the ceiling, repeated thoughtfully, “Despair, when they find out that they cannot stop me, cannot cage me, cannot control me; cannot have me as their own. That a prophecy cannot be averted.”

Imoen found herself staring at him. “Is that how you justify that girlfriend of yours to yourself, brother?” she asked coldly. “Is this what you’re planning for Aran, too?” she added when she received no answer, more out of spite than for any other reason. “A death when you decide that he stands in the way of your destiny?”

“Aran,” she heard suddenly, “is a fool. An extremely sly, extremely cunning, extremely intelligent… fool. However, little sister,” Sarevok added, and Imoen suddenly found herself once again treated to an amused golden gaze, “I will not discuss the exact nature of my liaison with your superior with you.”

A terse silence followed; broken only when Imoen’s brother, suddenly irritated, asked abruptly, “How did my journals fall into your possession?”

Imoen blinked, surprised by the unexpected reference to such ancient history. “The diary? We found it in the Iron Throne building. On the body of another of your mistresses,” she added, for good measure.

“Not the diary,” her brother replied soberly. “The journals of my research into Alaundo’s prophecy. They were in your room in the guild. Or—” His face changed. “Our brother. Of course.”

Imoen suddenly understood. “Two books? In leather? Made of some sort of loose parchment? They are yours?”

Sarevok watched her curiously. “I see that you are aware of their existence after all, sister.”

“Well, yes,” Imoen replied, wrinkling her nose. “I saw them. Edwin had them brought by someone. Some merchant. Marcus. A fat lout. But that’s all I know.”

Sarevok nodded slowly; then, stood up and stretched as much as he could in the low cave; and, having approached the opening and looked out, told his sister, “It’s come dawn, and we’re an hour’s ride from Trademeet. And the rain has stopped. I suggest we be on the move.”

-----


They emerged from the cave into a much more subdued world.

The grey light of pre-dawn filtered through the dense foliage above; it was cold, and Imoen immediately wrapped herself tighter in her dark woollen cloak.

The earth had turned to mud, and travelling would be difficult; but the first mating calls of birds could already be heard, and the air smelled magnificently of wet earth and ozone.

The horses were gone.

An involuntary cry to that effect escaped Imoen’s lips when she saw what had happened. Only the remainders of the leather straps with which Sarevok had tied the beasts were still there, dangling sadly from the small tree to which they had been strapped.

Sarevok picked them up to inspect them. Their ends were cut neatly and slightly scorched. “Some sort of a flame blade,” he decided.

Imoen nodded; she had reached the same conclusion. “Druids. And we’ll never find them now,” she added, looking at the earth turned mud. “The rain wiped off all the traces.”

A spike of anger crossed her mind. The druids. The thieves. How dared they. How dared they take her horse, her mare, with her long, warm neck and her small ears she pricked when something interested her, and—

Suddenly, she noticed that Sarevok stopped raising his head, just for a moment, before smoothly continuing the move; and that his eyes, just for the same moment, narrowed and glimmered. She turned around, as casually as she could, to see what he had seen.

A man was standing between the trees, tall and handsome, with blue tattoos on his face and feathers in his long, black hair; clad in a dark green cloak which looked as if woven from leaves and moss and grass themselves, and leaning against a staff which was not smooth and elegant, but rough and wild, almost like a tree living still. He looked very much at home in this place—much more so than Imoen and Sarevok; he seemed, somehow, an integral part of the forest, his essence inseparable from its own.

He was looking straight at them; but, lost to some meditation of his own, appeared to pay them no heed.

“Wait,” Imoen hissed to her brother; and, not waiting for the answer, started to make her way through the forest, trying to get round and behind the man so that she could catch him if he tried to escape. She was two-thirds of the way there when Sarevok, too, started to move towards the man slowly, in a prowl-like walk; timing his steps so that they would both arrive by the druid at exactly the same moment.

They were both nigh on him when the druid slowly came out of his meditation. “Excuse me,” he said in a fairly pleasant voice, looking from the one surprised face to the next and smiling. “For a moment there, I was lost in the differences between the male and the female oriole… But, tell me— Did I hear correctly that someone stole your horses? And that you think some druids did it? If you are right, then this is unsettling news, indeed. The druids in this region have always strived to live peacefully with the city dwellers, and have never taken their property. I wonder what could have changed that— However,” he said suddenly, perhaps aware of the irritation growing on Sarevok’s face. “Don’t let’s linger, crow-like, on the fringes of the problem, but let us instead, as the wolf does, head for the kill. I am Cernd, and if it is the local druids you are looking for, then I know where you can find them. As a matter of fact, I’m heading that way myself.”




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