That was an idea. She stepped off the path onto the green, lush grass of early spring, and settled down, cross-legged, her skirt spread around her. She rested her hands on her knees and filled her mind with thoughts of warmth and affection, good food and soft fur and friendly smiles; she held those thoughts while she watched the sunlight dancing on the river, projecting them in all directions at once.
A fieldmouse wandered up, walked onto her skirt, curled up, and fell asleep. A rat eyed her warily, but didn’t approach-which was just as well, as she didn’t like rats.
Some of the people down on the dock were starting to glance in her direction; she realized she was radiating a littletoo much warmth.
Then the grass rustled behind her, and she turned to see a peculiar little figure, seven or eight inches tall, standing there. It was green and had spindly little legs and an immense belly, which did give it a froglike appearance, but its feet and hands were not webbed, and its oversized head was fairly human in appearance, if one ignored the big pointed ears and complete lack of hair.
“Hello,” she said quietly, trying not to startle it.
“Hello, hello!” it said back, in a squeaky, rather irritating voice that was not quiet at all. “You like spriggans?”
“Yes, I do,” she said.
“We have fun?”
“If you like.”
“We havefun!” it emphatically replied.
“All right,” Teneria agreed, “we’ll have fun. But I’m looking for a friend of mine, first. We could have more fun if we found him. Maybe you can help.”
“Friend?” The spriggan looked puzzled.
“Yes, a friend. His name is Dumery of Shiphaven. He slept in the stable up at the inn there the night before last-a half-grown boy with black hair and brown eyes. Did you see him?”
“Saw him, saw him,” the spriggan said, bouncing up and down as it spoke. “No fun. No fun at all. Went on boat, went away.”
“On a boat?”
“Cow boat, went that way.” The spriggan pointed at the river, then waved a hand in a vaguely upstream direction.
“I see,” Teneria said. “Then I’m afraid I’ll have to go after him.”
The spriggan looked suddenly crestfallen, and Teneria had to smother a laugh even as she wanted to cry at the thing’s misery. “You go, too?” it asked.
“Yes,” Teneria said. “But we can have fun when I get back.” She smiled.
The spriggan didn’t care. “You go?” it asked, its voice cracking. “Got to? Can’t stay?”
Teneria couldn’t stand it; the thing wasso woebegone that her witchcraft-heightened senses could not face it. Besides, she realized that she had a use for the little creature, a very important use. It had seen Dumery, probably talked to him. Stupid as it appeared to be, it might provide a psychic link that she could use.
“Listen,” she said, “I could take you with me.”
“Go with you?” The spriggan’s woe vanished. “Oooooh, fun!” it burbled. “Go, go! Yes, yes, go!” The change was overwhelming; black despair had transformed instantly into golden delight. Teneria burst out giggling.
“Yes, go,” she said. “Come on; we’ll hire a boat.”
Chapter Sixteen
By his third day on the barge Dumery no longer noticed the smell as he worked, nor the stickiness. His feet still hurt, and his back ached, but he was able to do his work without giving it much of his attention, which left him free to admire the scenery-what he could see of it. Most of the time the grassy banks were too high for him to see much of anything from his place down in the bottom of the barge.
Sometimes, though, the river spread out a little, or the land flattened, and he could see farms and fields, pleasant little villages, and, on the western bank, traffic along the highway that paralleled the river. People on foot, ox-carts, even full-sized caravans passed along that road, bound upstream and down.
Since the barge stayed mostly toward the eastern shore, though, Dumery could make out none of the details of these fascinating figures; the wagons were squares of bright color, the people like walking twigs.
Docks were a frequent sight along the river, even where the banks were high.
Some were no more than rotting remnants, while others were large and clean and relatively fresh. Some, Dumery could see, were there to service villages, and those might be individual docks or entire rows of them; others seemed to be alone, out in the middle of nowhere, perhaps serving local farmers or fishermen.
Trails down to the riverbank, where livestock could come and drink, were also commonplace, and every so often one of these would be in use by cattle. The herd on the barge and the herd on the shore were likely to start lowing on such occasions, calling to one another, and Dumery would have to watch carefully for the stamping hooves of the disturbed animals.
There was traffic on the river, as well, of course-boats and barges of every description, from flat-bottomed fishing skiffs that drifted idly by the banks to sharp-prowed express boats that plowed past Dumery’s barge as if it were motionless, leaving behind a wake that thumped rhythmically across the barge’s underside.
And as if these sights weren’t enough, every so often, starting late on the third day, the barge passed a castle, the stone towers and walls brooding heavily over the countryside. Dumery assumed, when he saw the first and finally figured out what it was, that the barge must have left the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, where by the unanimous decree of the ruling triumvirate no castles or other fortifications were permitted outside the walls of the three capital cities.
Dumery decided, however, when he had had a bit more time and had thought the matter over a little more, that although they were at least very near the border, they might not have actually crossed it. He noticed that the castles were always on the east bank of the river, and always set well back from the water. Perhaps the west bank and the river itself were still in the Hegemony.
This came to seem more likely not long after, when the river’s curves found them traveling west again, rather than north. The “east bank” was now on the north, the “west” on the south-that meant the occasional castle was to the north.
Sardiron lay to the north of the Hegemony, as everyone knew. This stretch of river, Dumery thought, made a perfectly reasonable border.
He was encouraged by this. He was eager to get to Sardiron and catch up with the man in brown, but on the other hand there was something rather frightening about leaving the Hegemony, and he preferred to put it off as long as possible.
And the third day passed.
That evening, when the sun was down, the barge tied up to a tree. Each evening it had tied up to a tree or a rock. Even when two of the crewmen had waded ashore to buy more provisions, a mere hundred yards from a village pier, the barge’s towline was secured not to the pier or a dock, but to a great oak. It was on the third night that Dumery finally got up the nerve to ask why they never used the docks.
“Trees don’t charge fees,” Kelder told him.
It was around mid-morning of the fourth day that the barge passed under a bridge, the first bridge they had encountered since Dumery came aboard. The whole structure was built of wood, raised into a great arch above elaborate framework, and the central opening was easily wide enough for two barges to pass-though in fact there didn’t happen to be another in sight just then.
The roadbed across the bridge, Dumery judged, was wide enough for a wagon-but just barely. He wondered what happened if wagons arrived from both ends at once; how did they decide who would wait while the other crossed?
He was so interested in the bridge that they were well out into the lake beyond before he realized therewas a lake.