“Very kind of you, my lady. I’d be honored, but there’s Emeline to think of, and my child.” Khirro shifted in his chair, the muscles in his neck tensing as he waited to see if he offended his hostess.
“This Emeline must be quite a woman for you to pass this up.” Despina cupped her enormous breasts and jiggled them at him.
Quite a woman. He turned his eyes toward the table, picked at the grain of the wood with his fingernail rather than look at the others. She deserves better than the likes of me.
Leigha reentered the room, saving him from further embarrassment and interrupting his guilt.
“Leave the poor man alone, Despina. Can’t you see you’re scaring him?”
The tight bun was gone from her hair, leaving her tresses hanging to her waist; she must have chosen the dress she wore for the way it showed her generous curves. She crossed the room and threw her arms around Khirro’s neck, brushing his cheek with hers.
“You can take my hammock. I won’t be needing it tonight.”
She kissed him hard on the cheek then released him. Unconsciously, Khirro’s hand went to the spot she kissed and the corners of his mouth struggled into a smile.
Leigha waved her fingers as she sauntered out the door, hips swinging a wide arc. “See you in the morning.”
“Bah,” Despina said with a laugh. “I guess I’ll be sharing my bed with you again, Elyea. You best behave yourself, trollop. No freebies for the likes of you.”
“And none for you either, old one. Don’t think I owe you because you fed me.”
Khirro and Elyea helped Despina finish tidying while Ghaul and Aryann retired to the only private room. When he finally lay down in the borrowed hammock, sleep didn’t come immediately, though Khirro was as tired as if it was the middle of harvest season. Too much had happened in the last few days for sleep to be easy: too many worries, too many questions about Elyea, Athryn, and what lay ahead. As he finally quieted his racing mind and started to doze, the hut’s thin walls proved his nemesis. Aryann sounded to be taking full advantage of the opportunity to practice, and made no secret of it. Khirro lay in the dark, listening, partly curious, partly embarrassed. Khirro shifted onto his side, facing the wall, and put his hand to his ear and allowed memories of Emeline to claw his heart.
Someone quite cunning had taken great pains to hide the building. They were only a dozen yards from the windowless stone walls before Khirro noticed it.
The plain gray walls rose unexpectedly out of a stand of cottonwood trees shedding their fibers in a soft white veil dancing in the sun. Branches nuzzled the keep’s walls in the slight morning breeze, each movement of leaf and twig giving the illusion the structure disappeared only to reappear again a second later. Khirro blinked hard to dispel the illusion, but it remained until they drew closer. Elyea led them toward the south wall which showed no window or door.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“This is where the cult of magic resides.”‘
Khirro stopped in his tracks.
“There’s no such thing.”
Besides dragons, giants and ogres, the bedtime stories Khirro’s mother told her young son had included wizards and the cult of magic. But they were stories, tales of renegade practitioners hiding their talents from the law as they performed evil acts against the innocent.
“Yet, here we stand.” Ghaul pulled him by the arm. “Let’s go. You’re the one who said it couldn’t hurt to come.”
Khirro resisted, thinking of the things little boys had been turned into in his mother’s stories: frogs, lizards, goblins, stone. They were fanciful tales and myths but, in his heart, he believed a little. Bushes rustled a few yards from them, startling Khirro. He tensed, expecting a wyvern to take flight, or an ogre to charge them, but it was a partridge breaking cover, making for the blue sky. He took a couple of hurried steps to catch up to his companions.
Pitted by time and blackened by flame, the huge oak door set in the center of the wall hung on brass hinges showing a patina of verdigris. Khirro clenched his teeth, jaw muscles knotting. The door wasn’t there a moment ago.
How can a door appear out of thin air? The small part of him that believed his mother’s stories stirred.
The strange appearance didn’t give Elyea a moment’s hesitation as she stepped up to the door, placed her hand on a stone to the right of it, and closed her eyes. Birds chirped, the air stirred. Nothing happened for ten seconds, then wood grated against stone and ancient hinges creaked. The door swung inward onto a dark hall where there stood no one to pull it open.
“How did you…?” Khirro began.
“I’m no magician, Khirro. I asked the door-keeper for entrance and he granted it.” She patted the rock upon which her hand still lay. “We are old friends, he and I.”
“But there’s no one here.” Khirro rubbed his temple, his fingers finding a droplet of sweat.
Elyea stepped through the doorway. “There is, but he’s not what you’re used to. Imlip has been door-keeper so well for so long, he has become one with the stone. He gave his life to protect this sanctuary.”
She held her hand out, beckoning. Ghaul stepped across the threshold, but Khirro hesitated.
“Come, farmer. There’s nothing to fear but your own thoughts.”
Not long ago, being called ‘farmer’ had made him proud, but the word felt different now, made him bristle with feelings of inadequacy. Had he changed so quickly? Or was it because the words came from her?
He stepped up to the doorway, staring hard at the stone to the right. It was gray and coarse and unmoving like every other stone in every other wall. As he moved through the door, he brushed his fingertips against the spot where Elyea had laid her hand. His fingers found the surface fleshy and soft but firm, and it was warm-not like it had been warmed by the sun but as though heat radiated from within. He pulled away with a gasp and stepped through the doorway to retreat from this Imlip. The old hinges creaked shut, trapping them in the dimly lit hall.
Chapter Fourteen
Elyea led them down the hall and through another oaken door into a sparsely furnished room lit by an opening in the ceiling forty feet overhead. Shadows crouched in the corners where the sun didn’t reach, making Khirro uneasy.
They moved to the sunlit center of the room where the illusionist lounged on an overstuffed couch, a white cloth with holes cut for eyes and mouth covering his face instead of the silvered mask he wore during his performance the previous day.
Why doesn’t he want anyone to know who he is?
The little man sat on a wool rug at the illusionist’s feet, quill in hand and a pot of ink at his side as he scribbled on a piece of bark. He wore doeskin breeches and a loose cotton shirt instead of a jester’s motley; he didn’t interrupt his task to look up at them.
“I am Athryn. The little one is Maes,” the illusionist said rising from the sofa and crossing the room to Elyea, embracing her. “You were wonderful yesterday, little bird. As always.”
“It was fun.” Elyea smiled and stepped aside, moving like she’d introduce her companions, but Athryn spoke before she could.
“Let me see it, Khirro.”
“How do you know me?” Khirro stepped back, hand moving unconsciously to his chest.
“I have known of you since you made company with Bale. And I know what you carry.”
“Bale.” Khirro spoke the word as though it was foreign. A vision of the Shaman’s blood-spattered, ashen face flashed through his mind. “The Shaman.”