“I can make arrangements to smuggle him out of Nexis,” Hargorn put in. He turned to the others. “And sorry though I’ll be to lose you so soon, I think you’d better go with Grince. Neither Eliseth nor Miathan are here, Aurian—you must seek them elsewhere. And with Pendral running the city, you’ll be better off away from here before you draw the wrong kind of attention. Jarvas is right: Pendral’s men won’t be in a hurry to search this place—in fact I doubt that they’ll search here at all. They value the Unicorn far too highly—it’s their haven away from the barracks. They won’t want to risk offending me.”
Grince felt the cold hand of fear close around him at the idea of leaving the city for the first time in his life. “But where can I go?” he protested. “How will I live?”
Hargorn grinned. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The Night-runners will take good care of you. They can probably use someone with your talents.”
Aurian was grinning. “You sly old fox! That’s where you get your spirits, isn’t it?”
Hargorn looked injured. “Of course it is! What do you take me for? Did you think I’d be daft enough to pay that bastard Pendral’s levies? What’s more, I have a consignment coming in this very night.”
Aurian’s heart had leapt at the mention of the Nightrunners. “Hargorn—what about Wolf? Have you seen him? Is he all right?”
The innkeeper’s expression clouded. “Parric told me about Wolf,” he said softly. “I’m sorry, Aurian, Forral. Wolf is not with the Nightrunners, I’m afraid. On the day you left for the Vale, the wolves that were guarding him vanished with the cub. No one has seen them since.”
For an instant, Aurian’s heart stopped beating. It felt as though the earth had opened up beneath her feet. “No,” she whispered.
Unseeing, she felt Forral take her hand. “It’s all right, love.” The Mage heard a catch in his voice. “We’ll find him, never fear. He’s a tough little lad by all accounts, and you got him safely through all the dangers that beset you when you were carrying him. You didn’t go through all that to lose him now.”
“You don’t understand,” Aurian cried. “His foster-parents were southern wolves, lost in a strange country and far from their pack. They had no territory of their own and no other wolves to help rear a cub. It’s likely that the native wolves would kill them—and Wolf along with them.”
Forral squeezed her hand so tightly that it seemed the bones would break. “Now listen,” he said firmly. “Likely isn’t certain, and I refuse to believe my son is dead until events prove otherwise. Remember, love—I told you, many years ago, to do the first thing first and the rest would follow?”
Without looking at him, Aurian nodded.
“Well, that’s what we’re going to do. First we’ll get to the bottom of what’s been happening in Nexis, then we’ll rescue Parric. Then we’ll find Wolf—and after that, we’ll deal with Eliseth and the grail. How does that sound?”
Aurian took courage from his words. She took a deep breath, and gave him a grateful smile. “When you put it like that, it sounds like a superb plan.”
Forral did not let go of her hand. “It will be all right, love,” he said in a low voice. “You’ve got to keep believing that. All the time I was haunting Death’s domain, I never saw anyone like Wolf pass through. It’s my guess he’s still alive—and so long as he’s alive we’ll find him, if we have to look behind every blade of grass from here to the northern ice.”
The Mage could not help but be cheered by the magnificent meal that Hebba had prepared, with soup, a roast goose, root vegetables, and greens, all washed down with peerless ale from Hargorn’s barrel. Everyone sat around the large kitchen table, save for the cats, who were in the nearby scullery making short work of a pig that had been slaughtered especially for them by the generous Hargorn.
After the first few mouthfuls, Hebba, who had begun the meal in a strained and watchful silence, with many dubious glances toward Hargorn’s unnerving collection of visitors, soon found herself beaming and blushing beneath a barrage of compliments. Aurian gave her wholehearted attention to the food on her plate. It seemed an endless age since she’d eaten a decent meal—and she hadn’t eaten one as good as this since Queen Raven’s coronation feast.—Finally, as Hebba was clearing the empty plates away, Hargorn filled their tankards with more or his excellent brew. “Now,” he said. “Let’s see if we can find you all some gear—clothes, blankets and the like, to tide you over. We can always talk during the journey.”
“What?” Aurian exclaimed in delight. “You’re coming with us?”
“Only as far as the Nightrunners,” he told her. “I have some folk there I want to see in any case, and I’ll probably escort Dulsina back here.” He looked significantly at Hebba, who was busy bustling back and forth, and laid a finger to his lips. Aurian realized, with a sinking heart, that the old warrior was thinking about picking up his sword once more. Hargorn had no intentions of returning to the Unicorn.
15
Ketr and Hostage
Maya was awakened by the sound of voices and many footsteps passing by Licia’s shelter. “What’s happening?” she asked drowsily.
“It’s the laborers,” the lacemaker told her. “They’re home for the night.”
“What?” Slowly, the warrior’s sleep-fuddled wits returned to her. Scrambling to her feet, she peered out of the shelter to see a ragged trickle of weary workers trailing past her door. As Maya scanned the passing faces, a small, familiar figure caught her eye. For a moment she could not believe it.
“Parric?” Filling her lungs, she summoned the battleground bellow that Forral had taught her. “PARRIC!”
Down the street, there was a stir among the crowd. “Get out of the bloody way, will you?” Maya grinned as she heard that familiar testy voice. “Gods blast you to perdition, let me through!” Then two burly laborers went staggering, one to either side, and the short, wiry form of the Cavalrymaster came bursting through between them.
Parric stopped dead when he saw her, his face blank with shock. Then without a word he ran to Maya, and caught her up in an embrace that almost broke her ribs. They stood there for a long time, without speaking, too deep in the emotions of their reunion for speech.
The Cavalrymaster shared a dormitory cavern with two dozen other laborers, so for privacy they retired to Licia’s shelter. The lacemaker was very good about it. “If we can’t help one another now and then it’s a poor lookout. Why, we’d be no better than those steel-eyed cold-blooded bastards who call themselves our masters.”
Maya shook her head reprovingly. “Licia, to look at you a person would never imagine that you knew such language.”
The lacemaker blushed, and gave a sheepish shrug. “Well as a matter of fact I didn’t. Back in Nexis I was just an old maid—prim, proper, and plain—before I wound up here and started mixing with these reprobate warriors.”
“Anyway, being stuck here with these whoreson Phaerie would make anybody swear,” Parric added in support.
Since it was the hour of the evening when the food would be handed out, Licia offered, with kindly tact, to leave them alone for a time while she went to fetch the rations for all three of them. Parric told the warrior of Vannor’s insane behavior, and the disastrous campaign with the Phaerie that had followed, then Maya quickly sketched the details of all that had happened since she had left Nexis so very long ago, to take D’arvan to the Vale. She then brought him up to the present with the tale of her reemergence with Aurian through the gate in Time, and the abduction of herself and D’arvan by the Forest Lord.
When she had finished, Parric gave a long, low whistle. “You spent all that time as a unicorn? It beggars belief!”