"Aiko, no!" snapped Arin. "These are allies. And we are now in their realm. -Show them the eye."
Reluctantly, stiffly, her glare never leaving the eyes of the offending warrior maiden, Aiko dismounted.
The chariot driver murmured a word to the other maid, and that warrior grudgingly leaned her spear away.
Aiko then turned and stepped to the pony and undid the grain sack holding the Troll's eye. She moved to the fore and squatted, setting the sack to the ground and unwrapping the grisly orb.
Both warrior maidens gasped, and a string of words rattled between the two. At last they turned to Arin and Aiko, and the driver said, "We apologize for our doubt, Lady Arin, Lady Aiko, but such a thing has never been."
"We were guided by the hand of Fortune," replied Arin, "else we would not be here speaking with ye."
"Where is the Troll?"
"We left it lying where it fell," growled Aiko, hardly mollified, wrapping up the eye again. "It's not as if we could have hauled such a monster down from the heights on the back of our pony."
Now the charioteer laughed. "Of course, how foolish of me to ask." She turned and translated for the other, and then both broke out in laughter.
"Come," said the driver, smiling. "Come to our camp, and we shall all have some tea and celebrate your astounding deed."
"I would not entangle myself in the disputes of men," declared Arin.
"Nor I in wars I know not," said Aiko. And north and west they fared.
A week they rode and another, and the stench from the rotting Troll's eye became unbearable. And so in a small Jordian hamlet, they sealed the putrescent orb in melted beeswax and honey in a tarred leather bag tightly wrapped.
The days had grown long with the coming of summer, and finally the solstice arrived. And a full moon shone down on Arin and Aiko as they stepped out the Elven rite of celebration, the Dylvana singing and guiding the Ryodoan through the intricate paces of the stately sacrament.
On the twenty-fifth day of June they forded the lower Judra, and over the following two days they rode north until they came to the sheer cliffs above the Boreal Sea. Now they turned along the coastline and rode east-northeast as the surf pounded below, the horses and pony clattering along shieldrock bared in an earlier time.
On the twenty-ninth of June they came to a mighty fjord and turned inland to reach its far tapered source, and they rode up onto mountainous slopes, canted land where their journey was slowed.
The air grew colder the higher they went, and in the twilight of the following day they rode past the foot of a glacier, where small blue flowers nodded in the wind. It was now the thirtieth day of June, and morrow night would mark a full year since Arin had had her vision. And as this penultimate evening fell, they espied the lights of a town down by the water's edge.
Arin gazed at her map and nodded, then turned to Aiko and said, "Let us go down and find a suitable inn…"
They had come to Morkfjord at last.
CHAPTER 32
Egil gazed back and forth between Arin and Aiko, his one good eye wide in amazement. "Together you slew a stone-hided Troll?"
Alos shuddered and seemed to shrink within himself.
Arin glanced at Egil, her heart racing suddenly. Why does it please me so that he finds it astonishing? "Aye," she managed to say, "though 'twas mostly by Fortune's favor."
Aiko shook her head. "Fortune may have smiled down upon us, yet even had that Dame been looking elsewhere, or not looking at all, Dara Arin's aim was true, else we would have filled the Hitokui-oni's cooking pot."
"My arrow flew no truer than thine own cast, Aiko."
"Fortune or no," declared Egil, "the fact is, you slew a Troll."
With shaking hand, Alos poured himself a mug of ale and hurriedly gulped it down, brew running adribble from the corners of his mouth.
Egil rubbed his whiskery jaw. "I thought Trolls nearly indestructible. The stories say that only by a high fall, or by a great rock dropping on them, can they be killed."
Arin held up a hand. "A finely placed thrust, in eye, ear, or mouth, will do them in as well, Egil. Too, it is said they are tender of the sole of foot; a heavy caltrop will pierce them there, should they tread upon one."
Alos groaned and buried his face in his hands.
Arin looked at him. "Art thou well, Alos?"
"Leave me be," he moaned.
Arin looked at Egil questioningly, but he turned up his hands and shrugged, for Egil did not know why the oldster was distressed.
Finally Egil said, "I would hear once again the words of your vision."
Arin intoned:
"The Cat Who Fell from Grace;
One-Eye in Dark Water;
Mad Monarch's Rutting Peacock;
The Ferret in the High King's Cage;
Cursed Keeper of Faith in the Maze:
Take these with thee,
No more,
No less,
Else thou wilt fail
To find the Jaded Soul."
She looked at Egil. "Canst thou help us winnow the answers?"
Slowly Egil shook his head, lost in thought, his lone eye staring at a point unseen. At last he said, "You deem the Jaded Soul to be the green stone, aye?"
Arin nodded but did not speak.
"And to find it you need all the others named in the rede to go at your side… one of whom you believe is now with you: Aiko: the cat who fell from grace."
Again Arin nodded silently.
"And the one-eye in dark water you deem is either Alos or me, right?"
Alos groaned. "This talk of finding green stones and of Wizards and T-trolls-I'm not going!" Quickly he poured a mug of ale, slopping some onto the table in his haste. "The one-eye, it's Egil. Egil, y'hear. Not me. Egil's the one-eye you want."
"It could be this," said Aiko, stepping to Alos and thumping a tightly wrapped leather bag onto the table before him. "The rotting pierced eye of a Troll."
Alos shrieked and recoiled from the bag, and leapt up and bolted for the door, banging it open and stumbling out before any could stop him; and the measure of his desperation to be quit of this mad Elf and her yellow cohort was plain for all to see, for he had left his mug of ale behind and a nearly full pitcher as well.
"Aiko, that was unwarranted," said Arin. "Alos may be the one we need to obtain the green stone."
Unchastened, Aiko shook her head and gestured after the vanished old man. "Dara, for once I agree with that fuketsuna yodakari: Egil is the one we came here to find."
"We cannot be certain, Aiko. We cannot even be certain whether or no it is Alos or Egil or the Troll's eye we need."
Aiko sighed. "If it is your will, Dara, I shall fetch him."
Arin looked at the doorway, the door itself slowly swinging shut on its uneven hinges. She waved a negating hand. "Let be for now, Aiko. 'Tis plain to see he is frightened. Let him ponder it some days, then we shall see."
Aiko returned to her tatami mat, but she left behind on the table the bag holding the Troll's pierced eye.
"What is a, um, peacock?" asked Egil, looking up from his supper.
"A bird," replied Arin, "from far lands to the south and east. I have never seen one."
"I have," said Aiko. "They live in Ryodo and Chinga and Jung… and in the islands to the south. They have long, iridescent green tail feathers which they can fan upright in brilliant display. Each feather is marked with an eye."
"An eye?"
"The likeness of."
"Oh," said Egil, stirring his spoon in his bowl of stew.
Arin waited, but Egil did not speak. At last she asked, "Hast thou a thought?"
Egil shook his head. "I just wondered what they were, for like you, I have not seen such a bird."
He fished up a spoonful of beef and sat in thought a moment, then tipped the meat back into the bowl. He got up from his bed and went to the window and looked out over the courtyard and downslope at the fjord beyond, two longships at dock. "The Queen of Jute," he said.