"Ah." Kitiara thought it wise to say nothing else. But Tanis wasn't finished. He seemed driven to say it all and get it over with. His jaw was set, his hazel eyes hard; the hands that clenched Dauntless's reins were white at the knuckles.
"The one behind the attack was not a human," he said. "It was the Speaker's other brother."
Kitiara's eyes widened. "I thought elves were above all that," she murmured. "Elven honor and all."
Tanis pierced her with a stare. "It's not a joke, Kitiara. Honor is important to me. My mother and the man who should have been my father lost their lives because of dishonor." He paused, a sudden flush coloring his cheekbones.
Kitiara nodded soothingly. But to herself, she thought, No, Tanis wouldn't be a good one to help her with the purple gems.
The village had all the charm of stale beer.
Tanis and Kitiara pulled up their horses. The community boasted two short lanes and several faded grayboard houses, some no more than one large room with a thatched roof and a greased-parchment window. One house, larger than the rest, stood out; its owner had stained the exterior planks rich brown. The gray buildings looked dead next to the warmth of the brown one. A picket fence and double row of tall rachel flowers circled the place, the globes of bright pink and purple brightening an otherwise dismal scene. The companions saw no residents.
Kitiara sniffed and pointed at the open front door of the brown home. "Spices and yeast," she said. "Can you smell them?"
Tanis had dismounted and was on his way to the dwelling. "The owner may sell us some bread," he called back. Kitiara's empty stomach growled an affirmative.
Kitiara remained mounted on Obsidian while Tanis hopped onto the porch of the brown house, knocked at the doorjamb, waited a moment, then entered despite the lack of a hail from within. The town had no stable, no public house where a traveler could lift a tankard of ale, but it wasn't that different from dozens of other villages where Kitiara had stopped over the years. Someone in such towns usually was willing to provide refreshment to strangers for the right price.
Yet this community appeared deserted. Doors and shutters had been closed fast. "Anybody home?" Kitiara called. She waited. Obsidian, accustomed to the siege as well as the charge, stood quietly, her only sign of life the switching of her black tail. The place was rife with flies.
Finally a plank creaked. "Why are you in Meddow?" came a woman's strident call from behind a cracked door. "What is your friend doing in Jarlburg's confectionery? We have many men here, all armed with swords and maces. We can defend ourselves. Go away."
Kitiara hid a smile. Defend themselves indeed! They were as frightened as rabbits. She removed her helmet. "We are travelers bound for Haven. We desire food and drink, nothing more. And"-she paused significantly-"I can pay."
Another pause, then a middle-aged woman dressed in the gathered skirt, scarf, and leather slippers of a peasant stepped hesitantly onto the porch of the shack next to the brown building. Her chapped hands held a large wooden crochet hook attached by a strand of green yarn to what looked to be the back portion of a child's sweater. Her hands never stopped moving, looping the handspun yarn; the hook's end bobbed like a chickadee. Kitiara traced the yarn to a bulging pocket in the front of the peasant's skirt. Every few stitches, the woman gave a yank on the yarn, which made the pocket jump and released a few more circles of yarn from a ball in the pocket.
"I can give you water, but I have no food to spare," the woman said edgily. She kept flicking her gaze from Kitiara to the floor of the porch.
"No bread?" Kitiara demanded. "But I can smell the yeast."
"We get… got…" The woman took a deep breath and started again. "Jarlburg…" Her courage fled; she pressed the crochet hook against her quivering lips, then pointed with the implement to the open front door of the brown building. "There." Her eyes filled with tears. "Jarlburg's dead, too. I just know it. One by one, we're all dying."
"Dead, too?" Kitiara repeated and pulled Obsidian back a pace. "What is it-a plague?" Her skin crawled. Kitiara would gladly take on any living foe, but a plague? No one on Krynn knew what caused disease, although some people said that clerics and healers who had followed the old gods, years ago before the Cataclysm, could cure such illnesses. These days, seekers of the new religions said the sick invited their own fate by straying from moral purity.
The woman shook her head. "No, no plague. People just… disappear. I think they go into the swamp." She pointed to the east with a thin hand that, all at once, could barely hold the crochet hook.
"Any signs of a struggle?" Kitiara asked.
The peasant, shaking her head in reply, seemed suddenly convinced that the strangers were not the force behind whatever preyed on Meddow. She ventured from her front door. The woman didn't look at her crocheting; her nervous chatter kept pace with the frenetic movements of the wooden yarn hook.
"We find their doors open in the morning and they're gone," she said tearfully. "I just know they're all dead-Berk, Duster, Brown, Johon, Maron, and Keat so far. And now Jarlburg! We've only three men left, and half a dozen women, and more than a dozen children. What will our babies do if all the parents are taken?" She began to wail, wiping her tears with the crocheting. She gazed at Kitiara through wet eyes. "You appear to be a soldier, ma'am. Can you and your friend help us?"
Kitiara considered. "What can you pay?"
The woman took a step back. "Pay?" she quavered. "We have no money."
"Sorry, then," Kitiara announced curtly. "My companion and I have urgent business in Solace. We cannot delay." She turned Obsidian's head toward Jarlburg's confectionery. The woman burst into fresh tears behind her.
"Wait!" It was the woman again. "I can give you this." She waved the sweater piece at Kitiara. "It will be finished soon. Perhaps you have a daughter or son it would fit?"
"Gods forbid," Kitiara said with a short laugh. "That's all I need!" She refused the peasant again. "I must meet my companion and be moving on. We hope to be in Haven by dark."
The woman's hands ceased their crocheting, fluttered to her apron, and entangled themselves there. As Kitiara turned away, the beseeching look in the peasant's eyes faded. "There's a shortcut," the peasant called to Kitiara. "Follow the path behind Jarlburg's; take it to the east. You will quickly reach a fork at the rose quartz boulder. The left fork winds a bit, but it will take you to Haven."
"And the right fork?" Kitiara turned as she stepped up on Jarlburg's porch.
"It goes straight into the swamp. Be careful."
Kitiara thanked her and entered the brown dwelling.
The peasant turned back toward her shack. "Or maybe it's the other way around," the woman muttered with a humorless smile. "I forget."
Despite the open door, Jarlburg's confectionery was stuffy. A trickle of sweat curved down Kitiara's back. She could detect the odors of cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and something sweet, like flower petals. She heard Tanis moving about in the back room, a huge kitchen, she now saw, with a brick oven at one end and a wooden slab of a table that dominated the center of the room. A sack and a half of wheat flour lay under the table.
Tanis stood near the split door into the alley. The bottom half was closed, but the top was open. "You can smell the swamp from here," he said, adding, "The place is deserted, yet obviously someone was here baking recently."