“Unless someone was after helping them to die.”
“Exactly,” Tothas repeated. “So when My Lord Duke’s daughter showed early signs of talent, he was terrified for her. He had to send her to the Axemen-and quickly and in secret-if he wanted her to live.”
“And Lady Zarantha? How was she feeling about it?”
“She wanted it, Bahzell. She wanted it with all her heart and soul, and not just for the power of it. She wanted to come home, build our own mage academy under Duke Jashân’s protection. If we’ve been so poisoned by black sorcery that it can reach out and kill the talented while they’re still helpless, we need our own magi. Her father begged her to stay with the Axemen where she’d be safe, but she- Well, she’s a mind of her own.”
“But why overland? Why not by ship?” Brandark asked.
“My Lady had a . . . a feeling .” Tothas shook his head. “One of her talents is something called ‘precognition.’ I don’t understand how it works, and it’s one of her weaker talents, erratic and hard to control. But it’s let her see the future a time or two, and she dared not pass through the Lands of the Purple Lords. She thought that was the source of the wizardry, and the Purple Lords control all shipping from Bortalik Bay to Robanwar in the East Weald. If she’d gone by ship-”
Bahzell nodded. If one of the half-elven Purple Lords was killing magi, the last thing Zarantha could have done was pass through their hands.
“But was she going to try to sneak home with no more than three armsmen?” Brandark asked.
“No. We were to come down through the Axemen’s South Province and meet our escort in Kolvania. Fifty men should have been there at least a month before we arrived, but no one had heard of them when we got there. We waited another week, and then My Lady got another ‘feeling’ and we took ship to Riverside. I think she was already considering hiding her identity and trying to get home unrecognized, but then the dog brothers killed Arthan and Erdan.”
“Dog brothers?! ” both hradani exclaimed, and Tothas nodded miserably.
“I know she told you it was illness, but it was poison, and wicked stuff. They ate before me-I was waiting upon My Lady and came to supper late-and that saved my own life, for the symptoms came on them first. It was too late for them, but My Lady’s a healer. I don’t know how she kept me alive-I was out of my head and raving-but she and Rekah got us into that miserable place you met us in, and the two of them nursed me through the worst of it.”
“And the dog brothers missed you?” Brandark said skeptically.
“Aye. My Lady’s a powerful mage, with three major talents and two minor, and one of the minors lets her confuse the eye. She hid our going, then made certain no one looked closely at her whenever she left the inn. Rekah and I stayed hidden while she made her way about town, searching for a way to get home. I didn’t like it, but the strain of hiding more than one person is wicked, and she wouldn’t let me come with her.”
“So why didn’t she just ‘confuse the eye’ all the way home?”
“It only confuses the eye. It won’t work if there’s no one else to direct it to, and out on the high road-” Tothas shrugged again, unhappily, and looked at Bahzell. “That was why that scum cornered her in the alley, Bahzell. She was alone on the street when they spied her.”
The Horse Stealer nodded, and Tothas sucked in another deep breath.
“After that-with ni’Tarth hunting her as well as the dog brothers-she dared not stay in Riverside. She’d used a name no one would recognize, but if ni’Tarth was part of the Assassins Guild, they were bound to realize who she truly was when he set them on her.”
“But why didn’t she just tell us the truth?” Brandark asked.
“My Lady’s no telepath, no thought-hearer. She’s an empath. She could sense your feelings, knew you for honest and honorable men, but she couldn’t hear your thoughts, and we’d been in hiding for over three months . She’d . . . forgotten how to trust, I think, and when we knew we could trust you, she’d thought better of it. There’s a trick some wizards have-Phrobus, for all I know all of them have it!-that lets them pluck thoughts from unguarded minds. They can’t do it to a mage, and Rekah and I were taught a way to block against it in Axe Hallow, but there was no time to teach that to you. All it would have taken would be one wizard to see her identity in your mind, and-”
“And it’s dead we’d all have been,” Bahzell said grimly.
“Dead, indeed,” Tothas agreed.
“And when she found the dog brothers were after us? ” Brandark asked.
“What could she do but go on? Tomanāk knows I’d die for her-I’ve been her personal armsman since she was a babe-but I’m not likely to live out the journey,” Tothas said, and Bahzell’s eyes softened. “She knows it as well as I, but she dared not leave me behind, nor would I have let her. Yet she needed you two, needed your guts and loyalty as much as your swords. And at least we knew the dog brothers hadn’t realized who she was, or they would have killed her first, while she was unguarded upstairs, before trying for Bahzell.”
“Aye, that’s sense, but why the forged passport, Tothas? Why not be telling that border guard captain the truth and ask an escort home?”
“Because My Lady’s asked after our escort in every village we’ve passed through, and no one she’s asked yet ever saw them. That means they never got this far, that whatever happened to them is still ahead somewhere. I knew those men, Bahzell. I’d’ve taken Sword Oath nothing could stop them-not all of them-but something did, and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t have stopped another fifty men. Aye, or a hundred for all I know!”
Bahzell nodded and leaned back in his too-small chair, ankles crossed and ears lowered in thought, and Tothas watched him in taut silence. He and Brandark could almost feel the intensity with which the Horse Stealer’s mind worked, and, finally, Bahzell gave a slow nod and straightened.
“All right, Tothas. You’ve told it, and I’m thinking Lady Zarantha had the right of it all along. Yet something’s happened to her now, and it’s in my mind that means something was after changing here in Dunsahnta.”
“Here?” Brandark asked. “Why not somewhere back along the road?”
“Because whatever could take her from a locked room-aye, and half-kill Rekah in the way of it, without our hearing a sound-could have done the same thing in the night on a lonely road. No, something here gave her away.”
“But what?” Tothas asked hopelessly.
“Well, as to that, I’ve no certain knowledge, but were either of you after watching that greasy little landlord when he first arrived?”
Bahzell eyed his companions keenly, and they shook their heads.
“I was,” he said grimly, “and it was white as snow he went, even before that door came down.”
“You think he set them on us?” Brandark asked in an ugly voice, and Bahzell shrugged.
“It might be, and it might not, but what I am thinking is that he’d guessed what had happened from the start. And for that, he had to be knowing something .”
“Ah?” Brandark murmured evilly, and Bahzell nodded.
“Ah, indeed,” he agreed, and stood. He dragged on his aketon and scale mail and reached for his sword, and his face was bleak. “If yonder wee toad is after knowing a single thing, I’ll have it out of him one way or another, and when I’ve done, it may just be we’ll know where to start looking.”
“But what can we do against sorcery?” Tothas asked, and Brandark smiled at him.
“Tothas, we’re hradani. We know what wizards can do, but none of us would ever have made it to Norfressa without learning a trick or two.”