“Nothing short of my own death will keep me from seeing justice done. You will submit to the emperor’s judgment. If you harm anyone else, nothing will prevent me from taking your life-and it won’t be easily done! You’ll die by moments, traitor! I promise you!”
With that, he managed a wild swing of his sword. It swept through the campfire and into the figure with the mismatched hands. There was no sensation of striking cloth or flesh. The blade passed through the specter as through smoke.
Tol lost his balance and pitched headfirst into the fire. He clenched his eyes shut, expecting to feel searing flame.
With a jerk, he came awake. He was sitting upright under his blanket, Number Six cold across his legs. The fire had died to a few glowing embers. By this feeble light he saw his kender companion curled up across from him, frost heavy on his blanket. The horses drowsed nearby, standing so close together their sides touched.
The quiescent horses as much as the undisturbed dirt around the fire told Tol that no one had been present. The millstone was safe in its pouch in the waistband of his smallclothes. Had it been only an ordinary dream, or was Felryn truly warning him?
He stood and stretched his stiffened limbs. With the constellations as his guide, he looked back in the direction of Daltigoth, out of sight below the horizon. Did Valaran sleep peacefully tonight? Were Kiya and Miya well? Would Egrin be safe?
Early shifted in his sleep, snorting as he settled back into deeper slumber. Tol added wood to the fire and listened to his companion’s steady breathing.
Ah, to be a kender and never fret about anything.
As dawn began to brighten the eastern sky, they broke camp and reached the Dalti River just as the sun was clearing the tops of the trees. The simple dirt track they followed, used by cattle herders and itinerant peddlers, ended at the broad, slow-flowing Dalti. There was no bridge, only an anchored ferry. The ferryman’s hut stood on a knoll overlooking the waterway. It was surrounded by empty cattle pens and a ramshackle stable. Smoke seeped from the hut’s chimney. Tol rode up, dismounted, and knocked on the door.
The ferryman was a centaur. Gray-bearded, with a seamed, leathery face, he emerged from the snug house pulling a blanket over his shoulders. His horse’s body was a brown roan color.
“Early,” he grumbled, wiping sleep from his dark eyes.
“That’s me,” replied the kender.
The centaur looked confused. “Early to be travelin’,” he clarified.
Early nodded vigorously, “I am, and this is my partner, Lor-”
“Name’s Loric,” Tol said loudly, not wanting to announce his identity to all and sundry. “My kender friend’s Early.”
“You both are,” the centaur answered, stamping a hoof.
Tol let it drop. They followed the centaur into the ferry station.
The station had been built for a human operator, but the centaur, whose name was Edzar, had long occupied it. The house now resembled a horse barn, devoid of any furniture, its packed dirt floor covered with hay. A fire burned on the hearth, and two iron kettles bubbled there. Edzar offered them oat porridge and sweet cider. Tol gladly accepted the cider. Early had both.
The centaur clamped a gnarled hand around the handle and lifted the cider pot off the fire to fill Tol’s clay cup. Tol was amazed. The twisted iron bale was hot enough to raise blisters on a human hand.
“Where you headed?” asked Edzar.
Fortunately, Early was spooning gray porridge in his mouth and couldn’t answer. “Caergoth,” Tol said.
“Soldier, eh?”
An obvious assumption, what with his war-horse and sword, so he nodded. “Reporting back to my horde in Caergoth.” Edzar’s meager curiosity was satisfied.
He told them they couldn’t depart right away hut must wait to see whether others might come wanting to cross the river. As it was winter and traffic was light, no one else had arrived by midmorning, so the centaur agreed to ferry them alone.
The ferry was ten paces square, worn from many years of use, but a sturdy craft. Still, Tetchy snorted and shook his black head, nervous about leaving solid ground. Early’s mount moved closer to him, and Tetchy quieted instantly. Tol was amused to see the muscular war-horse walk docilely aboard beside the much smaller pony. Longhound obviously had a calming effect.
Edzar watched them from the cupola of the station. Thick cables linked a treadmill on which he stood to pulleys on the far shore. The cables were also attached to the ferry, so as the centaur walked, the craft was drawn across the river.
During the crossing, Early pointed ahead to a thin rim of clouds on the eastern horizon.
“Gonna snow,” he said.
“Are you a weather seer as well as an official taster?” Tol asked.
“Nope. Just know snow clouds when I see ’em. Gonna snow.”
So it did. The plain west of Caergoth was largely empty, as crops had been harvested and herds driven in for the winter, and they made good progress all day. However, the low line of clouds grew steadily until the sky was uniformly gray and furrowed like a farmer’s field. Snow began to fall in late afternoon. Darkness came early, hastened by the heavy pall of clouds.
They camped on the lee side of an outcropping of boulders. Tol rigged a canvas fly to keep the snow off. They built a fire and pooled their simple rations: salt beef from Tol and “go-far” from Early. This was a concoction of potatoes, carrots, onions, peas, and other things which had been lightly cooked, then pounded into a lumpy paste. It could be fried in a pan, or simply eaten as it was. Tol found the kender rations surprisingly tasty.
As they ate, Early talked about his forebears (whether these were Stumpwaters or Thistledowns or Foxfires, Tol wasn’t sure). They hailed from Balifor originally, he said. His great-great-grandfather had been the right-hand kender to the famed Balif.
“So what was the truth about Balif-was he kender or elf?” Tol asked, biting seared beef from a skewer.
“We do not speak of that awful tragedy.”
Tol blinked at the uncharacteristically laconic response. A subject kender would not speak of? He was intrigued and tried to wheedle the tale out of Early. Surprisingly, the kender would not be persuaded.
Early soon succumbed to slumber, leaving Tol to watch the soft flakes of snow falling in the still air. The blanket of white was already ankle-deep. At this rate it would be knee-high by morning.
Tol found himself reluctant to sleep. His dream of the night before (if dream it was) filled him with a dread of closing his eyes. Stupid and illogical, of course. If Mandes meant mischief, he could do it whether Tol was asleep or awake.
Still, he kept his eyes off the fire, the dance of flames being notoriously hypnotic. Leaning back, with Number Six resting across his lap, he propped his head on the cold boulder behind him, the canvas fly keeping the snow off his face. His eyes were gritty with fatigue, so he blinked to clear them.
A gray-wrapped figure appeared between one blink and the next. It stood a little ways off in the snow, at the very edge of the campfire’s circle of light.
Not taking his eyes from the gray figure, Tol called out to rouse Early. The kender snored on. Tol pushed himself to his feet, pulling his saber from its sheath, and presenting the point to the phantom.
“Name yourself, stranger!” he said hoarsely.
I have stopped his mouth.
Tol whirled. The words had come from behind him. Much closer to him, directly over the sleeping kender in fact, stood an identically garbed phantom.
Go back to Daltigoth.
“Go to your grave, trickster!” Tol shouted.
He leaped over the fire and slashed through the Mandes phantom with his saber. His blade passed harmlessly through the specter. Tol kept moving forward, arms spread wide, intending to let the millstone’s influence disperse the spell. Sure enough, as he passed through it, the image disappeared.