Authors: Dennis L. McKiernan
Following hot baths and a hot meal they took to their beds, and when morning came Alos was gone.
* * *
“Gone?” asked Egil. “Gone where?”
Delon shrugged and gestured out beyond the windows of the common room, where an early morning fog curled up across the headland and through the streets of Pendwyr. “I don’t know. His bed had been slept in, but
when I awoke he wasn’t there. His goods are gone as well.”
Egil gazed at Aiko, but the yellow warrior merely stared back, her face impassive. Then he turned to Arin. “Fear not, love, we can always find him and cast him aboard the ship.”
Arin looked away from the fire in the nearby hearth, the blaze driving the damp chill away from the room. “Nay,
chier,
let be.” She glanced at Delon, then back to Egil. “To do such to Alos would be no better than clamping an iron collar ’round his neck.”
Egil took a deep breath then let it out. “As you will, love. As you will.”
A serving girl came to the table bearing a great platter heaped with eggs and rashers of bacon and biscuits and honey and a pot of freshly brewed tea. Delon took it upon himself to serve them all, shoveling food onto each of their trenchers and filling their mugs with hot drink.
As they dug in, Egil peered ’round the table. “I suppose our next move is to go to the caer and look for the High King’s cage, eh?”
Delon set his mug aside. “Perhaps it isn’t at the caer at all. Perhaps there’s a garden of beasts elsewhere.”
“It may be that King Bleys doesn’t keep ferrets at all,” said Aiko.
Delon cocked an eyebrow.
Aiko shrugged. “Perhaps the ferret in the High King’s cage is a person, just as you were a mad monarch’s rutting peacock.”
“If I am indeed the peacock of the rede and it’s not that preening bird in her garden,” said Delon.
“Hmm,” mused Egil. “Regardless as to whether or no you are the peacock—though I think in fact you are— still Aiko may be right: the ferret could be a person, too. If so, then the High King’s cage could be the caer itself or a dungeon within the caer or—”
“Or the city jail,” interjected Delon.
“Could be a brig on a ship,” added Egil.
“My songs would have it be a remote tower…with a princess locked away in a chamber at the top.” Delon grinned.
Egil looked at Delon. “Does the caer have a tower?”
Delon shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. Tower or dungeon: I don’t know. I’ve not been here before.”
Egil turned to Arin. The Dylvana had stopped eating and was again staring fixedly into the fire. “Are you well, love?” he asked.
Arin looked at him and sighed. “Nought. I can see nought in the flames. I have had no visions since the one concerning the green stone. Could I but
Egil reached out and laid his hand atop hers.
“Wild magic,” said Arin. “That’s what Dalavar called it: wild magic. It comes at its own beck, and I can do nought to make it occur.” She sighed and stroked his fingers, then freed her hand and took up her knife and began cutting a strip of bacon.
“Well,” said Egil, “I say we need visit the caer and see what there is to see concerning the High King’s cage, and discover what we can about the ferret, whoever or whatever it may be.”
“The jail, too,” added Delon. He scooped up a spoonful of egg and biscuit and stuffed it all into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Finally he took a great gulp of hot tea and said, “If the High King has a ship of his own, we ought to see if anyone is in the brig.”
Arin set aside her knife. “It is so frustrating: all is clouded in mystery. We know not if the ferret in the High King’s cage is even in Pendwyr. Yet, there is this: if Aiko is the cat who fell from grace, and if Egil is the one-eye in dark water—recall, we have four one-eyes to select from, three with Alos gone—and if Delon is the mad monarch’s rutting peacock rather than the bird we left behind, then we are stumbling along the correct path regardless of being blind. And so, we must search Pendwyr for the ferret. Whether or no we truly find what we seek is left up to Fortune’s whims—and may She turn Her smiling face our way. Even so, even if we leave here with the ferret, then we must seek the cursed keeper of faith in the maze,
and we have no inkling as to where to look for whoever or whatever that might be. More than that I cannot say.”
Aiko reached for a biscuit. “Forget not the statue in the hedge, Dara; the keeper of faith in the maze might yet turn out to be the one-handed queen.”
Delon laughed, then sobered as his eyes flew wide. “Say, we’re not going to go back for her, are we?”
“If we do,” replied Aiko, slicing the biscuit with her trencher knife, “then perhaps I’ll bring her along as the queen with no head.”
Arin held a hand palm out. “If she
is
the keeper of faith, then I would think we need her alive to complete the quest.”
The corners of Aiko’s mouth turned down. “Then when this quest is over…” She drew a finger across her throat. As if contemplating Gudrun’s demise, Aiko smiled and calmly spooned honey over the cut biscuit halves.
Arin shook her head. “’Tis the ferret we are after at the moment and not the keeper of faith.”
Egil said, “Surely the ferret is here in Pellar and not elsewhere. I mean, where else would Bleys keep a cage?”
All eyes turned to Delon, and he shrugged. “I hear he has a fortress in Rian. Challerain Keep, I believe.”
Aiko groaned, then asked, “Where is this Challerain Keep?”
Delon shrugged. “I’ve not been there.”
“Rian itself lies along the Boreal Sea,” said Egil. “As to the keep, it must be inland, for it’s not along the coast. In any event, it’s far north from here.”
“Would we had known when we were sailing that ocean,” said Aiko. “It might have saved us a trip.”
They ate in silence for a while, and then Egil said, “Look, ere we go haring off to Challerain, let us first search this city. Perhaps, as Arin says, Fortune will turn Her smiling face our way.”
Arin looked up from her trencher. “We can only hope.”
* * *
As they stepped through the doorway of the Blue Moon and into the cobbled street, Egil said, “Well, I talked to the innkeeper, and the only High King’s cages he knew of
were the kennels where Bleys keeps his hounds and the mews where he keeps his hunting birds. The caer has no dungeons, as far as he knows, but there is a city jail—at the moment filled with cutpurses and thieves and captured Rovers awaiting execution. It seems that when the High King’s fleet broke the blockade, he brought back Rover captains to make examples of. They’re to be hanged at sundown.”
“Huah,” grunted Delon. “Hangings will not stop the Rovers. They come from a nation of pirates: Kistan—its myriad jungle coves providing shelter for the picaroons.”
“Ah, well, that’s neither here nor there,” said Egil. “Our concern is altogether different.” He turned to Arin. “Shall we?”
They set out for the caer.
* * *
As the fog burned away with the coming of the morning sun, they passed through a city made primarily of stone and brick and tile, and of stucco and clay, the buildings for the most part joined to one another, though here and there were stand-alone structures. Narrow streets and alleyways twisted this way and that, the cobblestones of variegated color. Shops occupied many first floors, with dwellings above. Glass windows displayed merchandise, the handiwork of crafters and artisans: milliners, copper smiths, potters, jewelers, weavers, tanners, cobblers, coopers, clothiers, tailors, seamstresses, furniture makers, and the like.
Delon paused at the window of one of the stores. “I need outfit myself with a good set of leathers. Likely I’ll need such ere this venture is done.”
Aiko cast an askance eye his way. “Will you insist they match your belt? If so, I have a feather for your hat.” Delon grinned as Aiko giggled behind her hand, while Egil guffawed aloud. Arin merely smiled, then tugged Egil onward, the other two following.
Pedestrian traffic was light, and heavy, horse-drawn wagons trundled through the streets. At one point, Arin and her companions had to pause while a water wagon maneuvered ’round a twisting turn. As they moved
onward, water wagons in the early morn became a common sight, for Pendwyr was a city without wells, and water was hauled in from the shafts and springs down on the plains of Pellar.
Not that the city was without its own water, for nearly all of the buildings in the city itself had tile roofs, and they were fitted with gutters and channels cunningly wrought to guide rainwater into cisterns for storing. This supply was augmented by the water from the plains.
That a city had been raised on land with no water was an accident of history, for Pendwyr had grown a building at a time as merchants and craftsmen had settled on the headland to be near the fortress. The bastion itself was where the High King had quartered after the city of Gleeds near the mouth of the Argon had been burnt to the ground, an event precipitated long past by the Chabbains from across the sea.
Yet situated where it was, rain came often to Pendwyr, and seldom had the city needed to rely wholly upon water from the plains.
Neither Arin nor Egil nor Delon nor Aiko commented upon this history of Pendwyr, for they did not know how the city had come to be. Instead they strolled along without speaking for the most part, eyeing the richness all ’round.
Past shops and stores, past restaurants and cafés and tea shops, past inns and taverns, past large dwellings and small squares, past greengrocers and chirurgeons and herbalists they strolled. And they crossed through several open market squares, with fish and fowl and meats, with vegetables and fruits and grain, with woven goods and flowers and the like. But Arin and her companions did not stop to finger the wares, though Egil commented that here was the place to come to resupply the ship.
Onward they walked, to pass through a gateway in a high stone wall which ran the width of the narrow peninsula. Beyond the wall the character of the buildings changed, for here were located a great courthouse, a tax hall, a large building housing the city guard with a jail above, a firehouse, a library, a census building, a hall of
records, a cluster of university buildings, and other such—here was the face of government, the agencies and offices of the realm. As they passed through this section of Pendwyr, they heard a loud
thnk!,
and down a side street and in a large, open city square behind a low wall they could see a gallows of many ropes being tested. And even though it was early in the day, street peddlers were arranging their carts in the square, maneuvering into the best positions to sell their wares at the public spectacle.
Arin sighed. “Humans: they make a carnival of death.”
Egil looked at her. “Perhaps, love, it will give others pause. They will think twice ere committing a like crime.”
Arin shook her head. “As Delon said, such spectacle will not stop the Rovers.”
Egil shrugged, and they walked onward.
Ahead, stood Caer Pendwyr itself, the citadel tall with castellated walls all ’round and towers at each corner, enclosing the castle of the High King. As they neared the caer, of a sudden they realized that it sat on a free-standing spire of stone towering up from the Avagon Sea below. The fortified pinnacle was connected to the headland by a pivot bridge, a span which could be swiveled aside by a crew in the castle to sever the fortress from the headland.
A line of petitioners stood outside a low building away from the bridge. After an enquiry or two, Arin and her companions took their place at the end of the line. People turned and gaped at them, for seldom had any seen a Dylvana, and none had ever seen a yellow warrior woman. At the distant door, a warder stepped inside as a whispered mutter made its way up the line. Moments later a soldier dressed in the red and gold of the High King’s guard emerged with the warder, who pointed at the foursome. The warder took his place at the door again, but the kingsguard marched toward the four.
Aiko shifted into a balanced stance as if readying for battle, though she left her swords scabbarded at her back.
“Do you think they know about Gudrun and are coming to arrest us?” whispered Delon.
Egil shrugged. “Not likely,” he responded, yet his hand fell to the axe slipped through his belt.
The kingsguard stepped before them and bowed. “Milady,” he said to Arin, “bring you word of the King?”
“Nay, I do not,” replied Arin. “I am here to see him instead.” As a look of disappointment flickered across the kingsguard’s face, Arin added, “I take it by thy question that King Bleys is not in Caer Pendwyr.”
“He is not, milady,” replied the guard, his gaze flitting to Aiko and back. “Lord Revor presides.”
“We have traveled far to see the High King,” said Arin, “but if he is not here, then we would seek audience with his steward instead. Our mission is pressing.”
The kingsguard shook his head. “I am most sorry, milady, but the lord steward is seeing no one today. He prepares for an urgent journey.”
Arin drew herself up to her full four feet eight. “Tell him that a representative of Coron Remar of Darda Erynian is here seeking aid.”
The kingsguard swept his hat low in an elaborate bow. “Wait here, milady. I will see what I can do.”
* * *
They returned to the caer for the afternoon appointment that the kingsguard had arranged. Within a candlemark, a warder escorted them across the bridge and into the walled castle. They passed among corridors and at last emerged through a postern to find themselves crossing a rear courtyard toward a short suspension bridge a hundred or so feet above the rolling sea. The bridge itself spanned from the castle to another sheer-sided pinnacle on which were low stone buildings—lodgings, said their escort, for the King’s closest advisors.
“When I was a lad in Gûnar,” said Delon, peering down at the sheer stone as they crossed the swaying bridge, “my father and I oft climbed rock faces such as this. Those days in the Gûnarring are long past.”
Looking ahead, they could see a third pinnacle beyond, and another suspension bridge spanning the gulf between this one and that. On the far pinnacle stood the High King’s private residence; they did not cross over to the King’s spire, but instead were taken to a stone dwelling at hand, where they waited in a foyer for another candlemark
or so. Finally, a slight, balding man stepped through a doorway and bowed to Arin. “Milady, I am the Lord Steward Revor,” he announced, “and I understand you have urgent business.”