The mare, whose name was Golden Dawn, abruptly twitched her long, well-shaped ears and laid them back along her neck. From behind, one set of hoof noises de-tached itself from the rest and grew louder.
"Behave, Goldie," Zaranda hissed under her breath.
"Our fat father needs to wash his ass," the mare replied quietly. "The bandy-legged little brute stinks abominably."
"I think Father Pelletyr regards the smell as some-thing of a penance."
"The best kind," the mare said. "That which doesn't interfere with stuffing his belly."
The ass in question drew alongside, trotting to keep up with the longer-legged mare's walking stride. Zaranda Star twitched a nose that, while still long and fine, had been broken once in the past, and reset ever so slightly askew. The beast's rank smell made itself apparent even over sun-heated rock and the stink of man- and beast-sweat, leather and weapon-oil from the caravan behind. In truth, the priest's mount could have been kept cleaner. But the father had a wondrous way with healing magics, and for one in Zaranda's line of business, that counted for much.
"Ah, Zaranda, child," said the priest. "How much far-ther through these beastly mountains, do you think?"
She laughed. She had a good laugh, and strong, white teeth to laugh with, though she often thought her lips were on the thin side. There were even those who had thought them cruel, but most such had been ill-in-tentioned to start with.
"Many hard years have passed since I've been a child, Father," she said. "And in answer to your ques-tion, not much farther at all."
"That's good to hear. The men and beasts are suffer-ing in this heat." In truth, the day's heat had filled the chasm much more quickly than its light had.
"You're suffering, you mean," Goldie said. "You'd be best advised to go easy on the elf-bread, Father."
She gave him a meaningful sidelong look. The father was a man of substance, much of which was rhythmi-cally jiggling inside a threadbare gray robe. He had a big florid face with a prominent nose and white hair ra-diating like the petals of half a sunflower from around the ample tonsure Nature had granted him, atop which was perched a gray skullcap, now mottled with sweat. A golden pendant bearing the bound-hands symbol of Ilmater hung around his neck by a strand of thumb-thick duskwood beads.
He made a mournful face. "Ah," he said, "surely such a noble beast as yourself would not begrudge a mendi-cant servant of Ilmater the modest pleasures of his table?" He had never entirely adjusted to the idea of conversing with an apparently normal mare, but then Faerun was a realm of wonder, and Ilmater a tolerant god.
"Of course not," Goldie said in a honeyed tone that instantly made Zaranda's eyes narrow. "But still, I can-not help thinking of the burden on your poor mount's legs."
Father Pelletyr's face collapsed like a souffle in an oven around which an ettin has just commenced a drunken clog dance. He began to fiddle with his beads and cast guilty downward looks at his ass. In so doing he neglected to keep switching at her flanks with the little fir bough he carried for the purpose, and
the beast fell behind the longer-legged mare.
"Goldie!" Zaranda said sotto voce. "Now you've made the poor man feel guilty."
"Can I help it if he's oversensitive?"
The priest caught them up again. The trail had begun to wend downward. Ahead, it bent right, around a knee of granite with a twisted scrub-cedar perched on its top.
"Was it really needful," he asked in mournful tones, "to take such a strange and circuitous route? Surely there are easier roads into Tethyr."
It was a fair question. The secret path through the mountains had been rife with precipices and rockslides. At a higher elevation, an avalanche had swept two mules and their packs away, but no men had been lost, and the loss of goods had been minimal. Withal, the mountain crossing had been much easier than what Zaranda and her companions had gone through to get the most valuable of the goods they carried.
"Surely there are," she replied, "and in consequence they're better attended by bandits and marauders of every stripe. I'm a merchant, Father. Trading away danger for discomfort strikes me as a favorable bargain."
"But surely—oh, dear."
This last was directed down the trail. Zaranda and the Ilmater priest had come around the granite knee to where they could see the end of the narrow defile, open-ing onto foothills rolling quickly away to the flat green landscape of Tethyr.
The way was blocked by heaps of boulders, one to each side, and between them a dead fir sapling lay across the path as a barricade. Behind the barrier sev-eral polearms could be seen waving tentatively, like metal-tipped branches.
"Oh, no," Goldie said. "Not another adventure."
Reins and fir branch alike dropped from Father Pel-letyr's hands. Like most of Ilmater's ilk, he was no fighting priest. With plump fingers, he began to fumble at his medallion.
"O Holy Ilmater, O Crying God, Succorer of Tyr the Blinded God, who suffered for us upon the rack, friend to the oppressed, aid us your children now—"
From behind his little ass came the crunch of weighty hooves on granite pebbles. The little beast scrambled to the side of the path with an agility that be-lied its burden to avoid being shouldered out of the way by a rangy blood-bay gelding.
The gelding's rider, like the horse itself, was tall and spare, with long muscles that seemed to have been carved of oak and weathered dark. He wore a leather tunic laced up the front with a rawhide thong, trousers of muted leaf-green, knee-high boots of soft doeskin with fringed tops turned down. Across his back was slung a quiver and a strung longbow. His right forearm was encased in a leather armlet. Guiding his horse with his knees, the tall man touched the priest's arm gently with his left hand, while his right traced the elven signs for Bide, Father. Father Pelletyr nodded, swallowed, and interrupted his prayer. The newcomer gave him a grim smile.
It was the only kind of smile he was equipped for. He was handsome in a heavy-browed, brooding way, with long black hair bound at his nape, a broad jaw shad-owed with stubble the sharpest razor could prune but never clear, brown eyes dark as the woods around the Standing Stone of the Dalelands. He carried the twin messages of serenity and menace.
With the silent man at her elbow, Zaranda rode to the barricade and stopped. Goldie tossed her head and danced a bit to let her rider know she was not happy. Ignoring her, Zaranda dismounted and strode forward, glad of the chance to stretch her longs legs; unlike most folk who, like Father Pelletyr, favored their ease, Zaranda preferred to be in motion, working the muscles of her lithe, pantherish body. The tall dark man fol-lowed, unslinging his longbow.
Zaranda stopped ten feet shy of the abatis and stood to her full height, which was considerable—greater than that of most human men of Faerun. The wind off the Tethyr plains stirred in her hair, which was dark, a brown that was almost black save for a blaze of white over her right brow. It was a heavy, unruly mane, cur-rently caught up in a simple bun in back and hanging square-cut before. The white hairs of the blaze refused to be tamed and tended to stand up in a lick. She had a long-boned athletic frame that spoke of power, grace, and resilience, much in the way of the yew longbow her ranger companion carried.
Her face she would have called handsome and most others beautiful despite the broken nose. Her beauty was of the worn sort that resulted from seeing more of the world than was good for her.
For a span of heartbeats she simply stood. From be-hind the barrier came a twitter of small voices.
With a certain ostentation, she adjusted the saber she wore across her back, hilt projecting above her right shoulder for easy access, then dropped hands to hips. At last she deigned to speak.
"Who dares impede the return of the Countess Morn-inggold to her home?" she called in a clear voice.