"Should we stop here for the night?" he asked.
Eriale nodded emphatically. "A warm bed would be worth a handful of gold."
Fineghal hesitated. "I've never been comfortable in such places, but we need the rest, and it would be good to stable the horses someplace warm for a night." He sat up straight in the saddle and muttered a few words in Elvish, drawing his hand over his face. When his hand fell again, Fineghal's elven features were gone, replaced by the careworn, blunt features of a human mercenary nearing his fiftieth year. His elven tunic had become a shirt of sweat-stained ring mail, and he'd even added a slight paunch to disguise his rail-thin build. He turned to Aeron. "You'd be wise to conceal your own features, too," he said. "In my experience, the elves are sometimes not welcome in a house such as this."
Aeron shrugged and worked the same spell. He could not help noticing that he was able to master it with much less effort than it had taken Fineghal; his ability to draw on magic from a source beyond the diminished Weave was a significant advantage as the magic of life and light ebbed away from the world. He settled for masking himself as a plain forester, although his own traveling garb was fairly close to that anyway. "I'm ready," he said. "Let's go in."
They led their mounts into the innyard and stabled the horses themselves, since no servants appeared to help them. After watering the animals and rubbing them down with what little dry straw they could find, they gathered up their saddlebags and headed into the inn's common room, leaving Baillegh outside to watch over their mounts.
It was a dirty room of unfinished wood, rendered almost uninhabitable by a badly made fire that put out more smoke than heat or light. A dozen or so men, farmers and teamsters by the look of them, sat around the room's low tables. In one corner, five mailed swordsmen wearing the insignia of the King of Oslin kept to themselves. Aeron selected an unoccupied table at random and dropped onto one rickety stool, his saddlebags by his knee. He tried to ignore the hard stares the other patrons subjected them to. "Friendly crowd," he muttered to his companions.
"Hard times," said Fineghal. "Strangers always come under suspicion when things aren't right."
They waited a long time before an overworked tavern-maid appeared at their table. She might have been a pretty girl once, but her eyes were dull and glazed and her frame was too lean, as if the life had been wrung out of her drop by drop. "What d'ya care for, gentlemen?" she asked in a mechanical voice.
"Ale," Aeron replied. "The best of what you've got. And we'll need rooms for the night, and feed for our horses."
"That'll be ten gold drakes, in advance," she said.
"Ten drakes!" Eriale recoiled in surprise. "That's a prince's ransom. You must be joking!"
The tired barmaid merely looked at her. "Pay or not, it's your choice. But that's what it will cost you."
"Five drakes should buy us lodging for the week," Fineghal said to the barmaid. "But I've no wish to sleep outside tonight, so I'll give you three now and two tomorrow morning for a place to sleep and a meal."
The woman narrowed her eyes, studying Fineghal for a long moment before agreeing. She turned away to fetch their ale. While she was gone, one of the soldiers rose from his table, sauntered over, and kicked a chair into place beside Eriale. He was a pock-faced man with dense black hair on his arms and a gap-toothed, yellow smile. The soldier offered Eriale a leering wink and said to Fineghal, "I see you're a fellow swordsman. Where're you bound?"
"Mordulkin," Fineghal replied.
"A long way," said the soldier. He leaned back in his chair, folding his hairy arms. "Taking service there?"
Fineghal replied with a shrug. "There's always work to be found in the city."
"Especially with war in the air," the soldier observed. He studied Fineghal, his eyes narrowed. Despite his affable manner, he was not nearly so drunk as he wanted them to think he was. "Who do you intend to sell your sword to?"
"Doesn't matter."
"Stay out of Akanax's service," the soldier said, "unless you want to fight against wizardry." He made a sour face, leaning over to spit on the floor.
Aeron and Fineghal exchanged guarded looks. "Wizardry?" asked Aeron.
"No right man would take up such foul habits," the soldier declared. "It's a sign of the times, I suppose. Dead walking, fields rotting, people forgetting who they are and what they do. It's all the work of wizards, I tell you. We'd be better off without 'em."
"What do wizards have to do with Akanax?" Eriale asked.
The fellow leaned close, whispering in a conspiratorial fashion. "See, the high-and-mighty Sceptanar, he's no fool. He knows that Gormantor of Akanax would beat him in any kind of stand-up fight. So he's looking for a way to break the deadlock. I've heard that he has a coven of sorcerers working for him, silencing the few wizards Gormantor employs, razing Akanax's castles and firing its towns. He's had the Akanaxans on the run all summer."
"Doesn't seem right," Fineghal grunted.
"Well, that's what the king of Mordulkin thought, so he jumped in on Akanax's side. Airspur, too. Forced Cimbar and Soorenar to split their armies, one to march south against Akanax, one to march west along the coast to deal with Airspur, and the third landed by Cimbar's fleets on the shores under Mordulkin's walls." Satisfied with his answer, the soldier moved closer to Eriale as the barmaid returned with their ale.
"Oslin sends her soldiers to fight for Gormantor of Akanax?" Eriale asked. Gereax of Oslin had been Akanax's vassal for decades.
"Of course. If we don't help Gormantor beat Cimbar and Soorenar, we'll all be singing the praises of the Sceptanar by the end of the year," the soldier said. "I'll be damned if I'll call some wizard my king."
Aeron weighed the soldier's words. He had to get to the college to see for himself what was going on. Dalrioc Corynian must have secured Soorenar for Oriseus after all; it seemed likely, based on the course of the war the Oslinite described. Did Oriseus openly flaunt his command of shadow-magic, or did he conceal his role in the sorcerous winter that had fallen over Chessenta? The soldier was only reporting rumors and speculation, but he didn't doubt that there was truth in the fellow's words.
The soldier leaned forward, making a show of pouring Eriale a mug of ale. "Enough politics. What business sets your feet on the road on a cold, lonely night?" he asked her.
Eriale set her face in a stony expression. "I travel with these gentlemen to Mordulkin."
"You mean to find work there, too?" The soldier's coarse laugh indicated the type of work he thought she might be looking for. "Where the armies go, there's always a place for an enterprising woman to earn some gold. Me and my fellows-" he jerked his head over at the other soldiers-"have been riding back and forth across this country for a week now with not a night to relax. Why don't you join our table for a bit?"
Eriale shook her head. "No, thank you. These gentlemen have offered to escort me to Mordulkin. I'll stay with them."
The soldier turned a hard stare at Aeron and Fineghal. "You fellows don't mind, do you?" Behind him, the other soldiers pushed back their chairs, slowly standing. The taproom fell silent as the other patrons felt the tension in the air. Aeron sensed an ugly black flicker in the weak currents of the Weave that flowed through the room. Why would the corruption of magic limit itself to the forces of nature? he realized. Every living creature carries a spark of the Weave in its heart. Could a person's spirit be poisoned just as the fields and the waters have been tainted?