The Sealed Citadel Page 8

  "We'll go back," he said. "And we'll get back the book."

  He assumed this declaration of intent might provoke a hearty cheer of some kind, or at least a roguish, bloodthirsty grin. Instead, the look on Rowe's face seemed to be one of relief.

  ~

  No sooner had they turned around and reversed course toward the Bowl of Seasons than Cally decided he had made a huge mistake. Yet he couldn't imagine bringing himself to tell Rowe as much.

  Besides, without a mission to attend to, Rowe would probably head off on his own—and perhaps stick an arrow in Cally's back as he took his leave. Much better, then, to carry on, and hope that the Lannovians had already left the scene of the crime and were too far gone to follow.

  The east turned purple, then gray. The air smelled of dew on the grass and the earth that was still damp from the day before.

  "You know how to raise sixers?" Rowe said.

  Cally swung his head about. "Sixers?"

  "Scouts. Dead ones."

  "Oh! You mean the insects and such, like the Masters use."

  "Right."

  "No. Not at all."

  Rowe's eyes tightened. "They'll have lost hours searching for us. Maybe all yesterday. But they'll be on their way now and we'll have long miles to catch up. We need horses."

  "Horses," Cally said. "Yes. From where?"

  "A place with horses."

  "But we don't have any money. Do we?"

  "Bring us to a farm. Or a road. Find a road, and it will bring you to horses."

  Cally wasn't sure he liked the sound of this, but it was true that they weren't likely to catch up to the Lannovians without borrowing some mounts. Besides, if he disobeyed Rowe, again, the arrows in his back.

  "I don't remember precisely where we are," he said. "But if we can get to a piece of high ground, I might be able to send us in the right direction."

  "Are you asking my permission?"

  "I suppose I'm more explaining. What we're doing."

  "Unless you don't know what a hill looks like, just take us to high ground."

  "Yes, sir," Cally said by habit, then immediately felt like a fool: he was an apprentice and Rowe was just a soldier, meaning Rowe was subservient to him. Yet it certainly didn't feel that way.

  He brooded on this a little as he identified and summited a suitable hill. From its top, the forest stretched in all directions, with a blue smudge of mountains far to the east. He did not, however, see any roads.

  Rowe nodded southeast. "Smoke that way."

  "I was just about to point that out," Cally said, though he hadn't been.

  He eyed the landscape, doing his best to fix the thin pillar of smoke against it, then hiked swiftly through the forest toward it. After a bit of wandering around, Rowe caught the scent of the smoke—firewood, as he'd thought—and followed it to a homestead carved out of the woods. It was little more than a shack built around a chimney, with a small plot of land cleared for potatoes, squash, and onions, and a small grove of apple trees, the ripe fruit shining from the boughs like enchanted orbs.

  Rowe watched it for close to a minute, then shook his head and retreated back the way they'd come in. He did detour, however, to one of the apple trees, where they both picked fruit until they ran out of space in their pockets and at least one of their hands.

  They moved on, heading for another hilltop, eating apples as they went. Cally's stomach had gone into the sort of hibernation it always did during his fasts, but now roared back to life. Fearing an upset of the balance of his bowels, however, he limited himself for the time to two of the fruits.

  He tossed a well-gnawed core into a shrub and glanced back toward the homestead. "Why didn't we ask him for help?"

  "No help to be had."

  "He didn't have any horses. But he had to have had other things we could use, if only by virtue of the fact we have nothing but our clothes and our names."

  "There was no help to be had."

  Cally pressed, but Rowe would say no more. It was clear the soldier had seen something that he didn't like, which only made it more annoying that Cally hadn't been able to see it and that Rowe wouldn't tell.

  He still didn't actually know where they were, and his guilt was starting to get the better of him: if he was just leading them in a random direction, then surely it would be better to confess to that, and let Rowe take over and put his woodcraft to use.

  Fortunately, Cally was saved from having to do the right thing when they reached the top of the hill and looked down on a little valley where the forest was broken up by the clearings of multiple small farms. Rowe watched it for a while, scowling vaguely (although that seemed to be his default expression), then took the lead.

  They picked their way downhill through the woods until arriving with impressive and unerring accuracy at the fringe of one of the farms. This one owned a wheat field of several acres, and two other open patches that even Cally could tell had been recently harvested. The land bore a proper house, a barn, and a little grain shack propped up on blocks to save it from moisture and vermin, at least as much as such a thing was possible to do.

  Rowe did some more examining of the terrain. In the distance, an axe was attacking a tree, but the farm itself was perfectly quiet. Rowe crossed to the barn. He rolled open the door, unleashing the friendly smell of animals and the somewhat less friendly smell of their dung.

  There were several empty stalls and four that contained horses. Through a set of criteria that was entirely obscure to Cally, Rowe quickly assessed which of them he favored.

  "We're taking these two." He motioned to the back of the barn, where various tack hung from the wall. "Go get the saddles."

  "What do you mean, 'taking'?"

  "I mean go get the saddles."

  Cally stood there, as if his refusal to move comprised an argument, then rocked on his heels, and feeling quite bad about himself, went to fetch the gear. The saddles smelled leathery and horsey and they were lots heavier than he expected. He would have dragged them back if he hadn't known exactly how Rowe would react to such weakness.

  He looked up from his toils just in time to see a burly ogre enter the barn door. At first he thought the man was another frightening creature of the wilds like the norren, but then he realized the fellow was just extremely ugly.

  He had a bow in his hands, and it was pointed at Rowe. "What in all of the hells d'you think you're doing?"

  Rowe had his arm over the stall door, and he patted the brown horse there on the nose. "Just getting out of the weather."

  "The weather? You're thievin'. Worse, you're thievin' from me. Get your hands in the air and keep 'em there."

  Cally dropped the saddles to the ground, instantly regretting his mistreatment of them in front of their owner, and threw his hands high above his head. Rowe turned to face the farmer and casually lifted his arms above his head, showing his empty hands.

  "You're not from here," the farmer deduced. "So maybe you don't know that the penalty for thievin' horses is to be hanged unto death."

  "I have a better idea," Rowe said. "Why don't you let us go, and tell us the name of your worst enemy?"

  "Why on my life would I do that?"

  "So we can go visit his barn instead."

  The farmer's face went as red as the apples in Cally's pockets. "A man like you was born to nothing. Ought to shoot you right here." It sounded like the sort of thing a man said to puff himself up before actually doing something much less dramatic than his threat, but the farmer moved his eye behind the fletching of his arrow, sighting in on Rowe.

  "The boy's a sorcerer." Rowe tilted his head toward Cally. "You should shoot him first."

  The man's eyes widened. He trained the bow on Cally, then jerked it back toward Rowe. "Either he's no sorcerer, or he's so poor at it you're not afraid to betray him. Only question I got is whether I bother to turn you over to the sheriff, or save the poor man the bother and judge you right here myself?"

  "Can't answer that. All I can tell you is
this: if you shoot, don't miss."

  In preparation for saddling the horses, Rowe had propped his bow against the stall beside him. Somehow, Cally could see his intention to snatch it up and put the farmer's aim to the test. The thought of the barn floor being stained with blood—whether theirs, as robbers, or the farmer's, as an innocent man—brought the taste of bile to his throat.

  "Please," he said. "Surely we can be reasonable, and reach an—"

  "Shut your mouth," both men said at once.

  Cally's ears burned. Keeping his hands high, he brought the nether winging to his fingers. He spent one brief moment shaping it, then slung it into the eyes of the farmer—and into Rowe's eyes as well.

  The farmer shouted and loosed his arrow at Rowe. Rowe was already throwing himself flat, scrabbling for his bow; the arrow rapped into the stall inches above his head. He nocked an arrow and launched it. Even firing blind, he would have hit the farmer square in the chest if not for the fact the man had staggered to the side while swiping at his own eyes.

  "Devilry!" the farmer bellowed, patting his face. "You blinded me!"

  "It's not permanent." Cally snapped his fingers, dropping the gobs of nether from both of their eyes—but restoring them just as quickly. "But I will make it permanent unless we can have a reasonable discussion."

  "What's there to discuss? How you're reasonably making to rob me of my livelihood?"

  "We're not here due to the evil of our hearts, but because of an emergency. I am quite sure that my…guide, here, intended to pay you a fair price for these two horses."

  The farmer got a good laugh from this. "Now you intend to pay me? Let's see the shine of your coin."

  "Sadly, we've run into a problem. You see, the problem with our coin is that we don't have it."

  "Are you about to offer to pay me in credit? Too cowardly to rob me with a blade, so you'll try to do it with words!"

  "We're not going to rob you. We are devout members of the Order of Healing Shadows!"

  "So I seen. When I could see anything."

  At the horse stall, Rowe lifted his head; Cally twitched, expecting an arrow was about to sear through the air and strike the farmer, but Rowe was just scowling again.

  "We are in dear need of horses," Cally said. "Supplies, too. I swear before Arawn that the Order will make good on our debt. All that is left is for you to tell us what you paid for the animals and gear."

  The farmer still looked furious—although perhaps that was just the natural contortion of his features—but a look of calculation crept next to the anger, as if he was at last admitting to himself that he had lost all element of surprise, and was now outnumbered. Not by drunken horse thieves, either, but by a soldier and a sorcerer.

  The former folded his arms. "Which ones?"

  "The, ah…" Cally knew there were many distinctions of horse, and that he knew none of them.

  "The red roans," Rowe said.

  "Yes. Those."

  The man tucked his chin to his chest, ruffling his black stubble. "Twenty lorens. Each."

  It was quite a lot of money, but Cally supposed that horses must be expensive. Anyway, surely the Order could afford it. "Well enough. Then we will pay you a sum of forty lorens."

  "No, forty's what I paid. That doesn't account for all the training I gave 'em. Or for the crops I won't be able to sow or reap without them in the meantime. You will pay two hundred."

  "Steep, but I suppose that's only fair."

  Rowe laughed. "Like hell it is. You could almost buy a pair of chargers for that much. These are workhorses. They're worth no more than ten together."

  The farmer reddened. "You son of a bitch, that's—"

  "Even so, if you include saddles, and food, and travel clothes, and accounting for the inconvenience, we'll pay you forty lorens. That's enough for even a bastard as ugly as you to find a wife."

  Cally expected more roaring and insults, yet the farmer narrowed his eyes. "Forty? How do I know you're good for your word?"

  "I'm not," Rowe said. "But the boy is. Draw up an agreement and he'll sign."

  "I can't write."

  "Then he'll draw it up."

  "And cheat me!"

  "Lyle's balls, do you really think he just saved your life from me so he could cheat you out of your money?"

  "Forty lorens." The farmer tasted the words. "What's this 'emergency' of yours, anyway? Something that involves steel blades?"

  "Most likely."

  "And what happens if you find yourself on the wrong end of them?"

  "If we don't come back by spring, ride out to Narashtovik. Take our agreement with you. They'll pay you what they owe. Say what you will about the Order, but they abide by their word."

  They shook on it. The norren had relieved Cally of his ink and parchment and the farmer, whose name he gave as Bartle, suggested spelling out their agreement in blood, the better to bind it before the gods. Cally had seen gray birches just past the border of Bartle's land, however, the peeling bark of which made a fine substitute for parchment.

  Even so, Cally was afraid they were going to have to use their blood to write out the contract until Bartle remembered that he actually had a bottle of ink. He claimed he'd won it years ago in a game of dice, which Rowe seemed skeptical of for some reason. It was a bit sludgy, but Cally mixed it back into shape, and set about drawing up three copies of the agreement (Bartle insisted on getting two for himself). The farmer may have been illiterate, but he knew his numbers well enough to confirm that he would receive forty of something, and after a final bit of hemming and hawing, he put his name to the sheets.

  This done, Bartle went to gather food and clothes while Rowe dressed the horses. The cloaks Bartle brought for them smelled old and as if they'd been sweated in without being washed. Cally suspected them of harboring fleas, but Rowe was very insistent that they take them.

  "Suppose I should wish you luck," Bartle said as they prepared to ride out. He watched them closely, suspicious of some last trick. "Well, get back here soon, will you?"

  "As soon as we can," Cally said. "You're a good man, and I look forward to honoring my half of our deal."

  Rowe said nothing.

  Cally wasn't an experienced rider, but the horses were quite docile, and ambled southward without any stubbornness. It seemed to Cally to be an unsurpassably pleasant autumn day, and the birds in the trees wholly agreed with him. Bartle's property vanished into the trees behind them.

  "The world is always so quick to want to spill blood," Cally said. "But that's because the world has been corrupted ever since the fall of Arawn's Mill. You see, when we resist the urge for bloodshed, we also resist the corruption that—"

  The blade was against his neck before he knew it had even been drawn. The steel felt so cold that it felt like drowning.

  Rowe's voice was no less icy. "If that man had had a friend watching his back, or a brother, we'd both be dead right now. And all your little beliefs and platitudes would be dead with you."

  He waited, but the sword's presence silenced Cally as totally as if it had cut his throat.

  "Never touch me with the nether again," Rowe said. "Never impede my ability to fight and to kill again. Or you will die. Do you understand me?"

  Cally gave the smallest of nods.

  "Say the words out loud!"

  "I understand." The words were like dry corn kernels in his mouth. "I won't do it again."

  Rowe watched him, then sheathed his sword and rode on as if nothing had happened. As the Order taught them all, Cally had always believed that all people, even the worst bandits and murderers, could be redeemed, brought back to innocence, with the right blend of mercy, education, and prayer.

  For the first time in his life, he was no longer sure this was true.

  8

  They rode throughout the rest of the day, saying almost nothing to each other until they neared the Bowl of Seasons. Rowe told Cally to stay put while he scouted ahead on foot. The sun set and the air grew cold, then colder ye
t, the worst it had been that season, threatening to glaze the grass with frost.

  As the darkness came, Cally stood by his horse, who he'd taken to calling Junie—in his mind, at least; he hadn't spoken her name out loud. In time, his legs grew tired and he sat. Shivering, he was obliged to drape Bartle's smelly cloak over his own. What would he do if Rowe didn't come back? Search for him, in case he'd been wounded? And if he'd been killed, what then? Pursue the Lannovians in the ludicrous hope he could retrieve Merriwen's manuscript from them by himself? No. If he tried that, he would just die, and no one would even know what had happened at the Bowl.

  Then again, if Rowe didn't return, that didn't mean he'd been hurt or killed. It might also mean that he now had a horse and food, and no longer needed to pretend to care about the life of a stupid apprentice.

  A shadow appeared ahead. Cally sucked in air and grabbed for the nether, but recognized Rowe's silhouette a moment later.

  "They're gone," the soldier said. "Left hours ago. Maybe even last night. Can your magic track them?"

  "No. It's no good after an hour."

  "Then we'll have to wait until morning. Do it the old-fashioned way."

  "Good," Cally said. "Or not. How are we going to find them?"

  "By looking for them."

  "I suppose it was too much to hope that they'd be so pleased with their success that they'd spend the next week drinking themselves unconscious in the Bowl."

  "Give me your cloak."

  The request came out of nowhere, but Cally shrugged off the musty garment. "Happily."

  "Not that one. The one that marks you from the Order."

  "My cloak? Why?"

  Rowe held out his hand.

  Cally sat in defiance, then shed his black and silver cloak and passed it to Rowe. "What do you need it for?"

  "I'm burning it."

  Cally gawked. "You might have mistaken it for firewood—easy to do, as firewood can also be worn about the shoulders, or neatly folded up and stored in a dresser—but that's my cloak!"