They rode up over a rise.
“—there,” Kethry finished.
It certainly looked that way. In the valley below, in what looked like a temporary camp, was a woman. A particularly ageless-looking woman with a relatively unlined face despite a coiled mass of silver hair fastened in place with pins, a little plump, but otherwise in very good physical shape. There was no way of telling what she was from her costume, a well-made set of brown riding leathers with a split skirt rather than breeches or trews. There were three horses with her, all with saddles. There were two ominous mounds of earth off to the side of the camp.
She looked up and spotted them at the top of the ridge line, and regarded them thoughtfully.
Tarma knew what she would see: sitting on a matched pair of ugly gray horses, big-boned and big-headed, were two women. The one in the buff-colored traveling robes (also with a split skirt) or a sorceress of the White Winds school, had a pretty, soft face, a mass of amber-colored hair pulled back into a tail—and the end of a sword sticking up over her right shoulder. The other, in the all-black leather and armor of a Shin’a’in Swordsworn, had the hawklike features, black hair, prominent nose, and golden-tanned skin typical of her race. Her hair had not yet grown out, and only brushed the tops of her shoulders; it was held in place by a leather headband to keep it out of her eyes. A sword hilt also protruded over her right shoulder, there was a quiver hanging from her left hip, a bow in a bow sheath at the saddle, and probably far more knives than the woman even dreamed possible both hidden and openly sheathed on Tarma’s person. Beside Tarma was Warrl, a kyree, a creature who came from this part of the world. About the size of a young calf, with a wolfish head, but a body more like that of one of the big, speedster hunting cats of the Dhorisha Plains, Warrl was a small army in and of himself.
Whatever was wrong, the woman did not appear to be in immediate danger. That was probably why Need hadn’t been prodding Kethry with the goad of pain into speeding down the road at a breakneck speed.
She also wasn’t intimidated by them. Which was interesting. Although there were not many female bandits, such things weren’t unknown. Which implied that, whoever or whatever she was, the woman thought she could handle herself against two armed people and a large and dangerous beast.
They looked down; she looked up. Finally, she spoke.
“So,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’re for hire?”’
They rode down the slope slowly. Tarma was all for saying “Yes!” then and there, but Kethry, for once, was more cautious. “What happened here?” she asked.
The woman sighed. “I’m on my way to keep an appointment with a—colleague. I had two temporary fighters with me. While I was off taking the horses to water them, I left them here to set up camp, and something attacked them, I heard the commotion, but by the time I got back here, it was too late.”
Tarma did not bother to ask “what,” because clearly if the woman had known, she would have told them.
“Signs?” she asked instead.
“Something large with a lot of teeth and claws,” she replied. “Magic; the aura was all over the place. And it didn’t want to face me, so magic probably was its one vulnerability.” She glanced away from them, up the road leading deeper into the Pelagirs. “I’ve been here before. That condition isn’t going to hold for long.”
Sensible, too. Once again, Tarma almost said. “we’re available” when Keth forestalled her.
“Conditions of employment?” she asked coolly.
Well, that was a change. Need’s prodding must be nothing but a little nag in the back of her head. The woman started to answer when Tarma’s stomach announced to the universe just how hungry she was.
The woman looked startled, then laughed.
“First condition is that I feed you,” she said, with a shrewd smile. “I’d much rather negotiate with the sleepy and satisfied than the lean and hungry,”
It was trail food: dried beef, bread you could drive a nail with.
Tarma didn’t care. At this point she would readily have broken teeth into order to get something to her stomach. Her stomach wasn’t objecting either. Negotiations and meal concluded about the same time; the woman drove a hard, hard bargain. Nothing up front; fee to be paid only at the conclusion of the journey.
On the other hand, what did they have to spend coin on out here? And finally they got their employer’s name. Nanca Jente. Sorceress who claimed no particular affiliation.
“How do you feel about riding in the dark?” Nanca asked, as they shook hands on the bargain. “Full moon tonight, and I’ve lost most a lot of time here.”
The two exchanged glances. “I’ve got no objections,” Tarma said, “But I’m not the one that makes the decision on whether or not to move in the dark.” And she cast a significant look at Hellsbane and Ironheart.
Nanca followed her look, and raised one silver eyebrow. “All right,” she said. “If your horses refuse to move, we stop.”
And as it happened, the moon rose large and bright, and though the warsteeds slowed their pace to an ambling walk, they were able to see well enough that they didn’t actually object to moving through the night. At least until the moon began to descend. And at that point, both mares snorted and made their objections to going on in pitch dark known.
For her part Tarma was nodding off in the saddle, and though Nanca groused and grumbled, she didn’t do so for long. The “camp” that they made was sketchy at best; they only unpacked their bedrolls, arranged the horses around them, and crawled into the blankets in the dark
They were on their way again at dawn. Tarma got the impression of a certain amount of urgency, as if their employer had a deadline she had to meet. So she pushed the warsteeds a little more than she might otherwise have done, and with three mounts to switch off, Nanca was well able to keep up.
And so it was that they reached their goal on the second day, just as the sun began to set. Which was about at the point where Tarma gave serious thought to walking on their deal.
Because their goal was a Gate.
“You didn’t say anything about a Gate,” Kethry said, as the three of them stared down into the little valley. The thing was alive and active, too; the pillars on either side shimmered with energy, and the strange blackness that was the hallmark of any active Gate pulled and tugged on the eyes in a way calculated to make whoever was looking at it feel sick.
“You didn’t either,” their employer pointed out. “Is it an issue?”
“You don’t know where those things come out,” Tarma objected, with a glance at her partner.
“Ah, but I do,” Nanca replied, with the faintest of smiles. “It comes out in the place where I am supposed to meet my colleague.”
Of course it did. “And then what?” Tarma demanded.
“Then you continue to do what I contracted to you for. You guard me and fight off anything physical that comes to attack me and I deal with anything of a magical nature, until we reach my colleague, and once we are there, I pay you and he provides the exit point, which will drop you through another Gate relatively near the Dhorisha Plains.” Nanca shrugged. “After that, where you go is your business.”
That was another thing. Granted, Kethry was probably not the magician that Nanca was—but why forbid her to work magic at all?
Unless it was because the nature of what lay on the other side of that Gate was of such a strange nature that Nanca didn’t want a sorceress unfamiliar with it meddling with it.. . . .
Tarma and Kethry exchanged another glance. And finally Tarma fingered the mind-bond that held her to Warrl.