"There." Ingharr pointed toward the center of the school grounds. "Leave here through the gate. Follow the road straight. Turn right after the second building, and you'll find the entrance to Astryd's garden on your left."
"Thank you." Taziar trotted down the pathway. The rapid motion jogged pain through his side, but he wanted to leave the garden before Ingharr found more errors in his story.
"Manebjorn, stop!"
Reluctantly, Taziar turned.
Ingharr came up beside him. "Don't move, young fool.
You nearly ran into another of my wards. Didn't the arch-master teach you how to avoid them?"
Taziar shook his head, covering his ignorance as well as he could. "He said so much, master. I can't recall."
"Then I will remind you." Comfortably, Ingharr slipped back into his teaching role. "The wards become visible if you don't look at them. What do you see before you?''
Taziar stared. "A dirt roadway, master," he admitted.
"Now." Ingharr inclined his head toward the center of the garden. "Look there."
"I see a shabby-looking statue."
"Hey!" Kirbyr protested the insult to what was, apparently, his magical artwork.
Ingharr loosed a snort which Taziar suspected was a politely suppressed laugh. "What do you see here?" He indicated the roadway.
Gaze fixed on the stone figure, Taziar studied the path from the edge of his vision. Just before him, glimmering, narrow bands crossed the walkway in an intertwining pattern. Smaller, less dramatic wards hovered throughout the garden. Taziar recalled the difficulties he had had locating the magics on the wall stones. Now, it all made sense. He knew Ingharr's revelation would serve him well. "Thank you, Master Ingharr," he said with genuine gratitude and left the garden as quickly as possible.
After Taziar's run-in with the Dragonrank mages, dodging spear-toting sentries in the roadways seemed like play. Under normal circumstances, he would have enjoyed the simple challenges eluding guards demanded. But the left half of his body alternated between numbness and excruciating pain, making his usually careful dodges seem unprofessional and clumsy. The pathways outside the gardens contained no magical wards, and Taziar suspected the Dragonmages did not permit the guardsmen in their private gardens. That would explain why the sorcerers trap their gardens so thoroughly, and yet the sentries can still move freely.
Four flawless, clean, stone walls enclosed Astryd's residence. Taziar found the gate where Ingharr had told him to look for it. But a complicated ward filled the entry way like a huge, glimmering spider web. It seemed odd to Taziar that anyone would create a gateway, only to render it unusable. As he clambered painfully over the granite wall, he wondered how Astryd entered and left her own garden.
Once inside, Taziar studied the garden from the corners of his eyes and memorized the pattern of Astryd's wards. Skirting them, he followed a winding pathway to Astryd's home. The soil beds on either side sported plump vegetables of varieties Taziar had never seen. He paid them little heed. Born and raised in a crowded city, he knew nothing of the farmer's livelihood. Cullinsberg's food supply came from trade with neighboring towns, hunting, and the bakers' skills with grains from the city's holdings.
At the center of Astryd's courtyard, Taziar paused to examine its single statue. An alabaster horse supported a rider dressed in a simple tunic and breeks. A wine glass in the figure's hand spouted water into a basin on the ground between the animal's dancing forelegs. Taziar could not imagine a carving tool which could have rendered the fountain's surface as smooth as it appeared. But what impressed him most was the rider's features. The face bore a striking likeness to his own. He stared, wondering if this was Astryd's idea of a tribute. Though, surely, she never expected me to see it. Flattered, he continued toward Astryd's building.
As Taziar reached the doorway, anticipation filled him with eager excitement. More than a month had passed since he had last seen Astryd, but he recalled her features as if she had departed only yesterday. She stood smaller than him, an asset few women and fewer men shared. She sported the taut, lithe frame of a young swordsman or a dancer. She had a boldness and cunning beyond that of any person Taziar had known since his days with the street gang. Though plain, her face was in its own way attractive; it had become the standard by which he measured beauty.
As Taziar raised his hand to tap on Astryd's door, doubts assailed him. What if she's forgotten me? What if time has allowed her to realize it was her ranks tone, not
my charm, which made her fall for me? He rejected his questions as they arose. She knows that already, and she claimed it didn't matter. And her fountain would suggest she still cares for me. He knocked as his fears of rejection turned his thoughts to raving paranoia. Unless she uses my likeness for target practice.
Before Taziar could pursue the idea, the door swung open. Astryd stood in the doorway. She wore a faded pink sleeping gown which in no way revealed the gentle curves of her figure. Her blonde hair hung in tangled disarray. As she stared, her eyes lost the glaze of slumber and filled with open astonishment. Her jaw sagged.
Taziar spoke with matter-of-fact politeness. "Good evening, Astryd."
"Shadow," she whispered. Suddenly, she caught him by the arm and jerked him into the hallway.
Caught by surprise, Taziar staggered. He heard the door slam shut behind him as Astryd seized him around the waist and half dragged him past several curtained or open entry ways and into a room at the farther end of the hall. Again, he heard a wooden door close. Astryd swept him into a hug.
For some time, they clung in a silent embrace. Astryd's closeness filled Taziar with warm desire. He caught her lips in a passionate kiss, assessing the layout of the room over her shoulder. Behind Astryd, a bed lay, rumpled from sleep. Closed wooden trunks lined the walls on either side, and a shelf at the farther end held a jumble of bric-a-brac, including a transparent pitcher filled with water. Beside it, an oil lamp bathed the room with light.
The bedroom, Taziar guessed. How convenient. He maneuvered Astryd down against the wrinkled sheets and blankets.
Astryd resisted, scrambling out from beneath him to face him from across the bed. "Shadow, stop it! Not now. We need to talk. Why? How?"
Taziar smiled. Here with Astryd, all his pain seemed unimportant. "Could you be more specific?" he asked.
She cocked her head and placed her hands on her hips with mock sternness, studying him in the lamplight.
"How did you get by…" She broke off with a gasp. "Shadow, you're hurt."
"Just a scratch," Taziar lied, dropping his left arm into the shadow of his body.
"Take off your shirt."
Not wanting to worry Astryd, Taziar protested. "But I don't need…"
"Take it off, Taziar Medakan. Or, I'll rip it off you."
"That sounds like fun." Taziar joked, trying to downplay his injuries. The entire left side of his body throbbed, and the exertion of climbing and running had begun to wear on him. Obediently, he removed his ruined shirt. The linen scratched the blisters on his arm and ribs, reawakening the sharp agony of his burns. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he sat on the edge of the bed.
Astryd took a seat beside him and reached for the raw and swollen areas of his skin.
Taziar flinched away.
"Just a scratch," Astryd mimicked in a wry singsong. "So why did you try to jump off the bed when I looked at it?"
Taziar said nothing. A half blind beggar could see the jagged red burn which ran from his shoulder nearly to his hip, splotched yellow-white with fluid-filled blisters.