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“Second, Lanitha was very impressed by both your native intelligence and the education you’ve already received. There are several places where you can probably still use a little polishing, but for the most part, you’re already as well qualified—from the perspective of your knowledge, at least—to teach as any of our present teachers. Do try not to let that go to your head, dear,” the mayor added with a small chuckle.
“And, third,” she said after a moment, in a noticeably different voice, “something happened yesterday which, to the best of my knowledge, has never happened before. Baron Tellian—” even now she did not permit herself the words “your father,” and Leeana’s eyes fell as she felt a pang of pain “— left something for you.”
Leeana looked back up into the mayor’s face.
“He left you the title to your horse, Leeana,” Yalith said quietly.
Leeana blinked, unable to understand for a moment, but then her heart leapt and incredulous joy blossomed across her exhausted face.
“It’s a princely gift,” the mayor continued. “To be perfectly honest, I was tempted to refuse it, because no one else in Kalatha has ever so much as ridden a horse half, or even a quarter, as good as that one, much less owned one. There’s an enormous amount of room for potential resentment in the gift he chose to bestow upon you, Leeana. I want you to be aware of that. But I didn’t refuse it in the end for two reasons. First, and I’d like to think most important, was the fact that I had no legal right to refuse it in someone else’s name, and I wasn’t prepared to violate the law. But, second, was the fact that Dame Kaeritha argued very strongly on your behalf. It speaks well of anyone that a champion of Tomanak should speak so forcefully on her behalf, and I think I’ve seen enough of Dame Kaeritha by now to know that however much she might like you, she would never have argued your case so vehemently if she hadn’t believed you truly deserved it.”
“Oh, thank you—thank you, Mayor Yalith!” Leeana whispered, tears spangling her vision.
“I didn’t do anything,” Yalith replied. “And don’t think that this won’t make problems of its own for you, even if—as I don’t expect for a moment—you should be so fortunate as to find that no one else in Kalatha resents your good luck. Baron Tellian left sufficient funds, also as a gift for you, to pay for your horse’s feed for at least several months. He did not—at Dame Kaeritha’s urging, I might add—leave funds to pay its stable fees. You will have to come up with some way to cover those expenses yourself.”
Leeana looked at her, and Yalith shrugged.
“Dame Kaeritha was there when I worried aloud about possible resentment. She said, and I think she was right, that if you have to work harder and longer than anyone else in Kalatha to keep him, it should go a long way towards defusing the inevitable resentment. And I imagine it will also make you appreciate the Baron’s gift even more.”
She paused, her gaze level as she looked into Leeana’s face.
“Do you understand all of that, Leeana?”
“Yes, Mayor Yalith. I understand,” the exhausted young woman replied, jade-green eyes still glistening with tears of joy.
“I believe you do,” the mayor said, and nodded in dismissal. She turned away herself, then paused and looked back over her shoulder.
“You know,” she observed, “I’m not sure that it’s one I’d like to have received myself, but you could look upon Dame Kaeritha’s insistence that you earn your horse’s stabling fees as a rather profound sort of compliment, Leeana.”
Leeana blinked at her, and Yalith chuckled.
“Of course it is! She wouldn’t have wanted you to have the horse in the first place if she hadn’t felt you deserved it … and she obviously has immense faith in you. She must! If she didn’t, she never would have wished that much extra exhaustion off on you.”
She smiled.
“Goodnight, Leeana. Get some sleep … you’ll need it.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was a strange fog.
It hung like a heavy, motionless curtain over the shallow valley between two isolated hills, frozen in place, yet with an odd, internal swirling movement. Although the spring night was cool, the fog was chill as ice and thick as death, and it ignored the stiff breeze that whispered across the endless miles of grass, as if no mere wind could touch it.
There was no moon, and jewellike stars glittered and gleamed in a velvet sky clearer than crystal. Yet for all their beauty, their light seemed to sink into the fog, absorbed and deadened … devoured.
The night sounds of the Wind Plain—the sighing song of wind, the counterpointing songs and hums of insects, the distant noise of a small stream chuckling to itself in the dark, the shrill squeaks of bats, and the occasional cry of some nocturnal bird—flowed over the grasslands. But all stopped short at the edge of the fog. None penetrated it, or crossed the u
Then new sounds added themselves. Not loud ones. Hoofs thudding into the soft earth made little more noise than the creak of saddle leather, or the jingle of a bridle. A single rider came cantering out of the night, straight towards the eerie wall of fog. But the horseman slowed as he neared it. Not because he chose to, but because his mount balked. The horse slowed, tossing its head, then turned sideways. It fought the reins, ears flat, shaking its head and sunfishing while it whistled its protest.
The rider swore and wrenched his mount’s head back around, trying to force it onward, but the horse planted its hooves, and when he drove in his spurs, it bucked wildly.
The rider was no Sothoii. That much was obvious when he parted company with his saddle and went flying over the horse’s head. Yet however clumsy he might have been on horseback, he displayed an u
A sound came from the dismounted rider then—a snarling, hungry sound, as animallike as any noise the horse had made, but uglier, more predatory—and his eyes blazed with green fire. The horse’s struggles began to weaken, and the rider’s snarl took on a vicious note of triumph.
“Cease.”
The single word came from the fog bank behind the rider. It was not really very loud, yet it echoed and reechoed with irresistible power, and the other sounds of the night seemed to stop instantly, as if terrified into silence by that infinitely cold, infinitely cruel voice.
The rider straightened, snatching his strangling left hand away from the semiconscious horse’s throat, and whirled to face the fog.
“Fool,” the voice said, and it was filled with bottomless contempt. “It is ten miles and more to the nearest habitation. If you wish to walk that far, then finish what you were doing.”
The rider seemed to hover on the brink of saying something in reply, but then he thought better of it.
“Wiser, far wiser, so,” the voice said. “Now come. I will see to it that your beast remains where it is.”
The rider obeyed without so much as a backward glance at the horse which was feebly attempting to climb back to its feet behind him.
He walked into the opaque, blinding fog with the confident stride of one who could see perfectly … and as if the charnel stench which infused it did not bother him at all. The stench grew steadily stronger as he moved deeper into it, and then he stepped out of the fog, crossing a dividing line between vapor and clear air as sharp as the line he had crossed to enter it.