'Well enough. Time will come, and then you can come back and tell me.'
'Forgive me,' Herewiss said, 'but how did you know who I am?' 'I've been in your saddlebag.' 'It had a binding on it.'
The cat smiled, and after a moment Herewiss smiled back at it.
Cats, the legend said, had been created second after men, and had a Flame of their own, one which they had never lost.
'The very fact of a binding,' M'ssssai said, 'made me slightly suspicious. I could smell it from down here, and know you for its author. And the contents of the bags settled the matter. Only two men alive wear that surcoat, and you're too young to be one of them, so you must be the other.'
'Granted.'
'What are you doing with those grimoires in your bags?'
Herewiss made a face. 'Isn't it said of my Line that there's no accounting for us? I'm a sorcerer. A part-time sorcerer, out seeing the world.'
M'ssssai half-closed his eyes again. 'Sorcerers usually stay at home unless they have something in hand. And you're more than just a sorcerer, prince. I know the smell of Flame.'
'I have no Focus,' Herewiss said, very softly, 'and no control. I can't use a Rod.'
'The innkeeper's daughter,' said the cat, 'is a dabbler; she has just enough Flame to be able to smell it herself, though she has no focus either, and no control. But she's looking for a way to free her Power, and I dare say she's noticed at least part of what you are. If I were you, I'd keep the shields up around your bags tonight, or else sleep lightly. She's a brewer of semi-effective love potions, and she throws her curses crooked. She has a most undisciplined mind. Not to mention that she'd probably try to drain you—'
'A vampire?'
'In the bedsheets; she's acquired a taste for it. I see too many people going out of here looking lost and drained in the morning.'
'M'ssssai, I thank you.' Herewiss scratched behind the cat's ears.
'But why are you telling me all this?' The cat smiled. 'You have good hands.'
M'ssssai stood up, stretched, arching his back, his tail straight up in the air. 'Mind her, now,' he said, and jumped down from the table, vanishing into the forest of trestles and benches.
Herewiss looked up cautiously. The innkeeper's daughter had just come down from upstairs, and was going through the kitchen door. He took his opportunity and eased out from behind the table, heading hurriedly for the protection of the shadows of the stairway. He took the stairs two at a time, sloshing ale in all directions, pausing at the top of the stairs to get his bearings; it was quite dark up there. Then he headed softly down the hail, trying to keep the floor from creaking under him, his breath going up before him like pale smoke in the chill air.
His room door was ajar. He listened at it, but heard nothing. A swift cold draft was whispering through the crack. Gently he put his weight against the door; it opened with a low tired groan. There was no-one inside.
He went in, still moving carefully, and bent down by the window to check his bags. The surcoat was ever so slightly mussed, unfolded just enough to clearly show the Phoenix charged on it; and the lockshield around the bags was parted cleanly in one place, an invisible incision right through the spell, big enough for a cat to put a paw through.
Herewiss laughed and got up. With flint and steel he lit the room's one candle, a stub of tallow in a smoky, cracked glass by the big four-poster bed. Even in the glass, the flame bent and bobbled wildly until Herewiss closed the shutters at the window. For a few seconds he regarded the worm-holed old door.
'All right,' he said softly. 'Let her think I had a bit too much to drink.' He crossed to the door and closed it without shooting the bolt, then flicked a word and a gesture back at the bags and dissolved the lockshield.
Herewiss pulled back the faded, patched coverlet and sat down on the bed. Immediately there was a sudden sharp feeling in the back of his head, a nagging feeling like a splinter, or the dull hurt of a burn. He got up again hurriedly, stripping the covers all the way back and feeling about the sheets. When he lifted up the pillow, there it was
- a little muslin bag, with runes of the Nhairedi sorcerer's- speech crudely stitched on it, and a brown stain that was probably blood.
Herewiss took his knife from the sheath at his belt and lifted the little bag on its blade, carrying it over to the table where the candle sat. It took him a little while to poke a large enough hole in it without touching it directly, but when he did, and shook out the contents, he nodded. Asafetida; crumbs of choke-pard and wyverns-tooth; a leaf of moonwort, the black-veined kind picked in Moon's decline; and also a little lump of something soft — a bit of potato from his plate at dinner. He scowled. Elements of sleep- charm and love-charm, mixed together — with the moonwort to befuddle the mind and bind the sleeper to someone else's wishes.
What does she think I am? She must not know I'm a sorcerer or she wouldn't try something so ridiculously simple—
Shaking his head, Herewiss laid the steel knife down on the little pile of herbs. 'Ehrenie haladh seresh,' he said, and spat on the blade. When he picked it up again, the moonwort had shriveled into a tight black ball, and the warning pain in the back of his head was gone.
He set the cloth bag afire with the candle flame, and carried it still burning to the window, opening the shutter and throwing the bag out along with the bits of herbs. Then he went back and stretched out on the bed, reaching for the mug. The ale was getting warm. He made a face, put the mug aside, and lay back against the headboard, crossing his arms and sighing. It was going to be a long wait.
At sometime past one in the morning Herewiss was listening wearily to the sound of some patron of the inn wobbling about in the courtyard, singing (if that was the word) the old song about the King of Darthen's lover. The inn's good ale seemed to have completely removed any fears the drunk had ever had of high notes, and he was squeaking and warbling through the choruses in a falsetto fit to give any listener a headache. Herewiss had one.
The man had just gotten to the verse about the goats when Herewiss heard the door grunt a little, and saw it scrape inward a bit. He lay back quickly, peeking out from beneath lowered lids. There was another soft scraping sound, and in stepped the innkeeper's daughter, wrapped in a blanket against the cold. She looked long and hard at him, and it was all Herewiss could do to keep from grinning. After a few moments, satisfied that he was asleep, she smiled and crossed the room quietly to where his bags lay.
The one she peered into first was the one with the surcoat. Slowly and carefully she pulled it out and spread it wide to look at the device. There was no light in the room but the pale moonlight seeping in through one half-open shutter, and the dim glow of the torches down in the courtyard. It took her a while to make out the Phoenix in Flames, but when she did she bit her lip, then smiled again, and folded up the surcoat.
Deeper down in the bag she found the book bound in red leather, the unsealed one, and drew it out carefully. The innkeeper's daughter sat down on her heels and muttered something under her breath. A weak reddish light grew and glowed about her hands, clinging to the book's pages as she turned them. For a few minutes she went through the book, turning the leaves over in cautious silence. Then suddenly she stopped, and across the room Herewiss could hear her take in breath sharply. He watched her as she traced down one page with a finger, moving her lips slowly as she read.
That's a bad habit, Herewiss thought. Let's see if I can't break you of it.
The girl was holding the book closer to her eyes, and speaking softly. 'Neskhaired ol jomeire kal stoi, arveya khad—'
Herewiss breathed out in irritation. I might have known. Doesn't she know it's all illusion-spells? She can't know much about what real sorcery is, or what it does. And Goddess knows she would pick that one. She needs a lot more to be beautiful on the inside than she does on the outside. It's not going to work, of course. She's not making any passes, and she's set up no framework inside her head. Dark! I'll teach her to mess with things she doesn't understand—