And when it wore off, it gradually sank in that he had been the victim of a witch’s spell, and Sella had had to use herown persuasive magic on him to prevent retaliation.
Teneria had watched, and had seen how subtly it was done.
She had also, even at that age, seen the hurt and confusion in the candy-seller’s mind, and had felt horribly guilty for the next four months.
She saved up what she could, and finally paid the man back for his losses-but that still didn’t entirely remove the pain.
When people wondered why some witches were so adamant in their refusal to work harmful magic, no matter how much they were paid, Teneria always remembered the empty candy-basket and the baffled expression of the man holding it, the puzzled discomfort of his aura. It wasn’t worth it. Better to just persuade people to go elsewhere for their curses and assassinations-or better still, to persuade them to give them up entirely.
Some witches weren’t so sensitive; some had even gotten involved in some of the petty wars that were a permanent feature of the Small Kingdoms. There were even stories about witches helping the Great Warlock establish the Empire of Vond, a few years back.
Teneria didn’t understand how they could do that.
Finding a runaway, though-that should be no problem. And once found, it would be easy enough to learn his true situation; no one could lie successfully to a witch.
It was unfortunate, though, that he had a two-day head-start. She picked up her pace a little.
She could levitate, she thought, but there wasn’t any point in it. She would just wear herself out. Levitating would be like carrying her ninety-four pounds over her head; walking was far easier, and almost as fast.
And she didn’t need to worry about following his trail, not yet; Sella had seen in Faléa’s mind that Sander the Theurgist had located Dumery of Shiphaven somewhere on the Great River, and a check of Sander’s mind had confirmed as much, so Teneria knew she had to get to the Great River. There was only one road from Ethshar to the river.
She could have gone by sea, of course, and would have preferred to, but Faléa and Doran expected her to follow their son’s path exactly, so that was what she was attempting to do.
It was well after dark, and she was nearing exhaustion, when she knocked on the door of the Inn at the Bridge.
The man who opened the door, Teneria knew immediately, was the innkeeper, Valder himself-she could sense in him the presence of someone far, far older than he looked, and she knew that Valder the Innkeeper, also known as Valder of the Magic Sword, had been enchanted long ago.
He helped her to a table, and had food and drink fetched.
She didn’t need to say a word, nor to even begin to frame a spell; Valder was well-versed in handling weary travelers.
He did pause, though, just before putting her dinner on the table.
“You do have money, don’t you?” he asked.
She nodded; he smiled, and placed the platter before her.
She slept that night in a warm feather bed, too tired to worry about where Dumery might be, or for that matter much of anything else.
At breakfast, however, she pursued her mission, and asked Valder if he remembered seeing a boy of Dumery’s description.
He cocked his head and gazed at her warily, and she began to prepare a small coercion spell.
“Why do you ask?” he said.
“His parents hired me to find him,” she said.
Valder looked at her for another moment, then shrugged.
“He was here,” he said. “The night before last. He looked pretty bad, dirty and frazzled. He didn’t have any money, but I let him sleep in the stable and gave him a bowl of scraps. He looked harmless enough.”
“So he stayed here all night? In the stable?”
“As far as I know, he did,” Valder said. “I didn’t see him in the morning. And I’m not sure how much he ate; there were spriggan tracks all over the bowl I’d left him.”
“Spriggan tracks?”
“That’s right.”
“Excuse me, but what’s a spriggan?”
Valder looked startled. “You haven’t met them yet? Well, maybe you haven’t. We’ve had them here for months now; they hide in people’s baggage, and on wagons.”
“But what are they?” Teneria asked.
“Little creatures about so high,” Valder said, holding his hands out to demonstrate. “They look like frogs trying to be human, sort of, with big pointed ears, and they talk, after a fashion. And they get into everything and make real nuisances of themselves. They come from somewhere in the mountains in the Small Kingdoms, I’m told, and the rumor is that they came about from some wizard’s spell gone wrong, four or five years ago. No one knows how many there are, or how long they live, or how they breed-ifthey breed. They like to play games, though, and they’re always hungry-when one turns up I need to warn the guests and keep a careful eye out, or it’ll be stealing food right off customer’s plates.”
Teneria was fascinated. “I never heard of anything like that,” she said. “How do you get rid of them?”
Valder frowned. “Well, you can kill them, of course-they aren’tthat magical. Run one through with a steel blade and it’ll die, just like anything else. I hate to do that, though-the creatures don’t really mean any harm. When I can, I just catch them and throw them outside and tell them not to come back, and usually they don’t. Most of the time they’ll wander off down the road somewhere. Sometimes if there’s a whole gang of them-we had six at a time, once-they’ll work up their courage and try to slip back in, and I’ll have to get more drastic.”
“More drastic?” Teneria asked. “How? Magic?”
“No, they’re not worth wasting magic on.”
“What, then?”
Valder looked around as if slightly embarrassed, then leaned forward and whispered, “I get them drunk.”
Teneria smiled. “You do?”
“I do. It was my wife’s idea. I put out a bowl of brandy oroushka with cherry syrup in it-they love cherry syrup-and wait. Sooner or later they’ll drink it, and when they do they pass out drunk on the floor-can’t hold their liquor at all, not even as well as a Tintallionese. And they wake up with hangovers. All I need to do is pick them up while they’re unconscious and dump them out by the highway, and when they wake up they’re too sick towant to come back.”
“Always? None of them develop a taste for the stuff?”
“Well,” Valder said, “none have so far, anyway.”
“Are there any around now?” Teneria asked, looking about at the inn’s main room. “I’d like to see one.”
“I haven’t seen any lately, but as I said, there were spriggan tracks in the boy’s bowl.”
Teneria nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
She settled her bill, picked up her pack, and left the inn.
Outside she paused and looked about. From this point on, Dumery had had a choice of ways. He could have crossed the bridge to the east bank, or headed up the highway on the west bank, or gone down to the dock and boarded a boat right there.
If he was on a cattle barge by his second night away from home, boarding right there seemed most likely. It alsofelt right. She wasn’t sure if it was witchcraft causing her hunch, or common sense, or nothing at all, but she decided to trust it. She headed for the dock.
As she walked, she thought about spriggans. She hadn’t heard of them before, at least not by that name.
One of them had gotten at Dumery’s food; did that mean anything?
Maybe it did-and if that spriggan was still around maybe she could learn something from it.