Страница 59 из 87
Beldrune stared at the man's back for a moment. "I think you misunderstand our talents, sir. We're not...' His voice trailed off as he saw what was being drawn in the hearth ashes.
The nondescript man had plucked up a kindling stick from beside the fire and was drawing a harp between the horns of a crescent moon, surrounded by four stars.
The man turned his head to make sure that both of the elderly mages had seen his design, then hastily raked ashes across it until his design was obliterated.
Beldrune and Tabarast exchanged looks, eyebrows raised and excitement tugging at the corners of their jaws. Tabarast leaned forward until his forehead almost touched Beldrune's and murmured, "A Harper. Elminster had a hand in founding them, you know."
"I do know, you dolt...I'm the one keeps his ears open for news, remember?" Beldrune replied a trifle testily, and turned to the Harper. "So who do you want us to find for you, anyway?"
"A wizard by the name of Elminster. Yes, our founder, that Elminster."
The pupils, had any returned to spy on the hearth with the same attention they'd paid to the windows, would at that moment have witnessed their two elderly, severe tutors squealing like excited children, hopping and shuffling in front of the fire as they clapped their hands in eagerness, then gabbling acceptances without any reference to fees or payments to the down-at-heels merchant, who was calmly returning the stick to where he'd found it in the center of the happy tumult.
Beldrune and Tabarast ran right into each other in their first eager rushes toward cupboards, laughed and clawed each other out of the way with equal enthusiasm, then rushed around snatching up whatever they thought might come in remotely useful on an Elminster hunt.
The worn-looking Harper leaned back against the wall with a smile growing on his face as the heap of "essentials" rapidly grew toward the rafters.
"What befell, Bresmer?" The High Duke's voice didn't hold much hope or eagerness, he wasn't expecting good news.
His seneschal gave him none. "Gone, sir, as near as we can tell. One dead horse, seen floating by fishermen. They took Ghaerlin out to see it, he was a horse tamer before he took service with you, lord. He said its eyes were staring and its hooves and legs all bloodied, he thinks it galloped right down the cliff, riderless, fleeing in fear. The boat guard report that the Ba
Horostos nodded, hardly seeing the wineglass he was rolling between his fingers. "Have we found anyone else willing to take us on? Any word from Marskyn?"
Bresmer shook his head. "He thinks everyone in Westgate has heard all about the slayings...and so does Eltravar in Reth."
"Raise what we're offering," the High Duke said slowly. "Double the blood price."
"I've already done that, lord," the seneschal murmured. "Eltravar did that on his own, and I thought it prudent to confirm his offers with your ducal seal. Marskyn has being using the new offer for a tenday now ... it's the doubled fee all of these mercenaries are refusing."
The High Duke grunted. "Well, we're seeing the measure of their spirit, at least, to know who not to hire when we've need in future."
"Or their prudence, lord," Bresmer said carefully. "Or their prudence."
Horostos looked up sharply, met his seneschal's eyes, then let his gaze fall again without saying anything. He brought his wineglass down to the table so hard it shattered into shards between his fingers, and snapped, "Well, we've got to do something! We don't even know what it is, and it'll be having whole villages next! I..."
"It already has, lord," Bresmer murmured. "Ayken's Stump, sometime last tenday."
"The woodcutters?" Horostos threw back his head and sighed at the ceiling. "I won't have a land to rule if this goes on much longer," he told it sadly. "The Slayer will be gnawing at the gates of this castle, with nothing left outside but the bones of the dead."
The ceiling, fully as wise as its long years, deigned not to answer.
Horostos brought his gaze back down to meet the eyes of his expressionless, carefully quiet seneschal, and asked, "Is there any hope? Anyone we can call on, before you and I up shields and ride out those gates together?"
"I did have a visit from one outlander, lord," Bresmer told the richly braided rug at his feet. "He said to tell you that the Harpers had taken an interest in this matter, lord, and they would report to you before the end of the season...if you could be found. I took that as a hint to tarry here until at least then, lord."
"Gods blast it, Bresmer! Sit like a babe trembling in a corner while my people look to me and say, There goes a coward, not a ruler'? Sit doing nothing while these mysterious wandering harpists murmur to me what's befalling in my land, and to stay out of it? Sit watching money flow out of the vault and men die still clutching it, while crops rot in the fields with no farmers left alive to tend them, or harvest them so we won't starve come winter? What would you have me do?"
"It's not my place to demand anything of you, lord," the seneschal said quietly. "You weep for your people and your land, and that is more than most rulers ever think to do. If you choose to ride out against the Slayer come morning, I'll ride with you ... but I hope you'll give shelter to those who want to flee the forest, lord, and bide here, until a Harper comes riding in our gates to at least tell us what is destroying our land before we go up against it."
The High Duke stared at the shards of the wineglass in his lap and the blood ru
"Aye, one thing more," Bresmer murmured. "Be careful where you do your hunting, lord."
A chill, chiming mist dived between two curving, moss-covered phandars, and slid snakelike through a rent in a crumbling wall. It made of itself a brief whirlwind in the chamber beyond, and became the shifting, semisolid outline of a woman once more.
She glanced around the ruined chamber, sighed, and threw herself down on the shabby lounge to think, tugging at hair that was little more than smoke as she reclined on one elbow and considered future victories.
"He must not see me," she mused aloud, "until he comes here and finds the runes himself. I must seem... linked to them, an attractive captive he must free, and solve some mystery about, not just how I came to be here, but who I am."
A slow smile grew across her face.
"Yes. Yes, I like that."
She whirled around and up into the air in a blurred whirlwind, to float gently down and stand facing the full-length, peeling mirror. Tall enough, yes ... She turned this way and that, subtly altering her appearance to look more exotic and attractive...waist in, hips out, a little tilt to the nose, eyes larger ...
"Yes," she told the glass at last, satisfaction in her voice. "A little better than Saeraede Lyonora was in life ... and yet...no less deadly."
She drifted toward one of the row of wardrobes, made long, slender legs solid enough to walk, it had been a long time since she'd strutted across a dance floor, to say nothing of flouncing or mincing.
The wardrobe squealed as it opened, a damp door dropping away from the frame. Saeraede frowned and went to the next wardrobe where she'd put garments seized recently from wagons...and victims...on the road ... when there had still been wagons.
Her smile became catlike at that thought, as she made her hands just solid enough to hold cloth, wincing at the empty feeling it caused within her. To become solid drained her so much.