In the end, Dart changed her mind about leaving her home…and it took her the longest time to pack. Raomar tried to convince her to come with them, but she refused.
“My life…and my destiny…lie within Deverath’s walls,” she told him, glancing past his shoulder to catch Grunwol’s eye. “No matter how we might wish things were different.”
She stepped away from the kevarag and moved to set her pack on the table so she could adjust its straps.
“Not all of us are made to be heroes,” she said, when Grunwol opened his mouth to argue, but there was sadness in her eyes as she swung the pack onto her back.
The Northman sighed. “You don’t need to be a hero,” he told her. “I just want to know you’re safe.”
It was the closest Raomar had ever heard the warrior come to an apology, and he still didn’t know what the pair had argued over in the first place. He turned away to make sure Ghost and Varan were ready, pretending he didn’t notice when Dart moved over to Grunwol and laid a hand on his chest.
“We have refuge here,” she said, and it sounded like she was reminding him of something they’d discussed a long time ago. “And that refuge is safer than the journey you have sworn to undertake.”
Refuge? Raomar wondered. And ‘we?’
He didn’t pursue it, but bent to the task of shepherding the two apprentices up the corridor and into the alley beyond. It was hard to pretend not to hear, especially when he so badly wanted to understand his friends’ pain.
He said nothing as Grunwol helped him load the last of Dart’s luggage into a pony cart the shadow thief had borrowed at short notice. Looking around, he observed the crone had been right about full dark’s arrival.
They had spent more time observing the king’s temple and its halls…and the dark rituals undertaken there, than they’d realized. That and the time spent helping Dart pack and load the wagon meant full dusk was no more than a memory, and midnight had come and gone.
Once Dart’s goods were on their way, she and the others followed the crone through the winding streets and alleyways of lower Deverath. They traveled as quickly as they could, but there were signs that night had almost passed.
The city stirred about them. People lit lamps in the decrepit tenements lining the alleys and narrow streets they traveled. Laborers spoke swift goodbyes to their wives, their boots making city strays skitter out of their way as they left for work.
Night carts rumbled out of service lanes. Porridge and nut bread cooked…or burnt…in the homes they passed, and breakfast dishes rattled. The group moved quietly past each home or establishment, hoping they didn’t draw any attention.
Only once did the crone draw them against a wall, calling on the very shadows to cover them. Several heartbeats passed, and then a twenty-strong watch patrol marched by them, its boots making less sound than they ought. Four times the size of a normal patrol, it looked like it was heading toward Dart’s home.
Raomar felt a gentle touch on his arm and glanced toward it. Grunwol caught his eye and gestured briefly toward the patrol’s captain. Following the gesture, Raomar noted the loose-tunicked figure striding in the midst of the soldiers. Silver brocade flashed on its shoulders and more silver glinted from the brooch pinned to its chest.
Watch-Wizard, he thought, wondering if the crone’s magic would shelter or reveal them.
To his relief, the patrol passed without any sign the wizard sensed the old woman’s magic. The sound of the watchmen’s boots never grew louder than the fog-muffled tramp of a patrol moving through a field of damp grass, and the men said nothing as they marched.
As effective as the crone’s magic was, the patrol was on full alert, and their eyes seemed to comb the street as the traveled through it. Raomar felt the two apprentices crowd closer to him. As the sound of their footsteps faded, the crone signaled for them to move on.
Raomar noticed when Grunwol dropped to the rear of the group with Dart, while Brianda traveled just ahead of them, and the crone kept moving ahead at a pace that seemed too spry for her age. He was pleased to note that, even without magic, their steps were still quieter than those of the Watch.
Behind him, Grunwol and Dart conversed in low voices.
“They must have come from the West Gate,” the Northman murmured. “The king has finished his ceremony and found time to send word.”
“He is going to regret targeting me and mine,” the shadow thief replied, fiercely, adding in softer tones, “Come, let’s get you gone before they find the place empty and close the gates.”
“The gates are already closed to us,” the crone told them, her voice carried on a whisper of wind. “But it doesn’t matter; I have another route in mind.”
Raomar could only imagine the expressions on Grunwol and the shadow thief’s faces, but he didn’t have time for speculation. The crone led them on in an unrelenting pace, leading them without pause through the warren of crowded tenements and unmapped alleys that formed the city’s southern reaches.
Small community squares surrounded by shabby buildings marked the center of each pocket community, and were the sites of most activity. As the sky lightened, the city’s poor and some of its less prestigious classes could be seen readying themselves for the day’s work.
In the square nearest the city’s western wall, an impromptu bazaar was being erected.
The crone led them around its edges, avoiding the lowered boards that transformed a building’s ground level of windows into shop counters. With her staff in one hand, she gathered her skirts with the other, lifting them clear of the scattered piles and puddles of muck littering the square.
Raomar followed, moving as though it was perfectly normal for him to be traveling through that part of the city at that time of day. Behind him, he heard the change of gait as the others followed his lead. There was no point in being furtive here. It would only make those in the square pay them more attention than they might otherwise.
As it was, no one stopped them, or asked where they were going. For all their efforts to look like they traveled this way every day, or like they belonged there, the citizens living near Deverath’s south-western wall knew better—and wanted no part of them.
Raomar wondered how long it would take before one of them thought of the possibility of a reward for passing news of their passage. He wondered just how many of those setting up trestle tables and shop fronts were watching them, trying to discern more detail in the lamp-lit dark…and speculating on the value of reporting them to the authorities.
We reduce the chances of that happening, by looking like we don’t care, Raomar reminded himself, glad to see the crone moving like she owned the square.
The lightening sky brought a soft mist to the city streets, and the crone threaded her way through it, until they’d left the square behind them. Watching her, Raomar thought she looked almost a part of the misty tendrils rising around her.
He led the others in her footsteps, stopping to place a guiding hand on Varan’s shoulders when the boy stopped to observe the filmy moisture with delight. It was as though the apprentice sensed magic in the very fabric of the mist and reached out to touch it with his mind.
As he propelled the boy forward, Raomar saw the mist closest him break apart in a burst of subtle light. Glancing back, he saw Grunwol frown. The big man stepped around the patch of fading sparkle, but the he didn’t so much as twitch toward his sword, and Raomar relaxed. Whatever magic the boy had just wielded, it hadn’t triggered the Northman’s rage as other magicks did.
Just as well, he thought, for we have no time to calm him down.
Raomar continued after the crone, aware of Grunwol and Dart shadowing his footsteps. When the crone stopped at the mouth of the little street she’d used to lead them out of the southern-most square, they crowded close, looking over her shoulder.
Before them, they saw the broad cobblestoned road that ran the inside perimeter of Deverath’s walls. On the other side of it, stood the towering walls themselves.
The crone turned to face them, holding a finger to her lips. Seeing Dart at the back of the group, she gestured for the shadow thief to come forward.
“Here is where we will part ways,” she murmured quietly. “Unless you’ve changed your mind and wish to come with us?”
Dart shook her head, and the old woman sighed.
“Then say farewell to your friends, for it will be some time before you see them, again…if ever you do.”
The shadow thief inclined her head in respect.
“Thank you for letting me share this much of the journey with you,” she said, then turned toward Raomar.
Reaching out to clasp his shoulders, she leant her forehead against his, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck. Raomar mirrored the gesture, curling his fingers through her hair. There were no words to express what he felt, nothing suitable with which to farewell a companion he’d known for more than two decades.
“Travel safe,” he managed, after a moment, and she gave a soft snuffle of laughter.
“You, too, old friend.”
There was nothing more for them to say, so they released each other, Raomar stepping away to give her and Grunwol at least the illusion of privacy. If he’d thought his farewell difficult, he could only imagine how it was for the pair of them. He knew what they’ been to each other.
They’d been lovers, friends, and fighting partners. He watched as Dart looked up to meet the Northman’s eyes, and wondered if some of the droplets clinging to her cheek were tears, and not part of the mist coiling around them.
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As soon as their eyes met, they reached for each other, Grunwol crushing the shadow thief to his chest and lifting her from the ground. She, in turn, wound her arms around him and buried her face against his breastplate, before raising it to catch his eyes.
They stood there like that for a long-drawn breath, staring into each other’s faces as though each of them was trying to commit the other’s features to memory before letting go.
As if they need to, Raomar thought.
“You could still come,” Grunwol murmured, but Dart shook her head.
“You know my destiny lies elsewhere.”
“And what of…” the Northman began, only to have Dart lay a finger over his lips.
“Theirs, too, but I am sure you’ll meet, one day.”
Grunwol drew a breath as though he wanted to say something more. His lips parted, but then he pressed them together, and drew Dart into a hug, before stepping back and offering her his forearm in a warrior’s farewell.
Her lips quivered as she took it, clasping it firmly, before releasing him and moving away.
“I will not forget,” Grunwol promised, as the shadow thief vanished into the mist without another word or gesture to anyone.
The crone softly cleared her throat, drawing their attention. As soon as she had it, she began giving instruction.
“Come with me,” she ordered. “Quickly, now. There is little time.”
She glanced quickly at the walls, and moved swiftly into the street. For someone her apparent age, she was remarkably spry, and they had to hurry to keep up with her. She darted across the mist-wreathed road to the base of the wall, then crouched at its foot.
The others followed, crouching beside her. Raomar worried at the lack of shelter offered by the wall, and the mist’s poor coverage, but the crone ignored his anxious look. Instead, she laid the flat of her palms against one of the great stone blocks forming the wall’s foot.
Raomar heard her mumble something to the stone, but recognized nothing about the rhythm of the words. They contained no sense of a wizard song gathering magic to be molded, or anything a pleading a cleric’s prayer might have held.
Sorcery? he wondered, but cast the idea aside. There was no otherworldly feeling in the language she was using, no sense of power being gifted from another dimension, which, given the king’s activities, gave him a sense of comfort.
It was obvious to Raomar the crone was drawing her power from a different source, which puzzled him, because he thought he was familiar with them all.
He waited, watching the streets, and letting the soft sound of her words continue uninterrupted. All he got from them was a sense of great age, then, before he could savor the sound any further, the crone fell silent, and he got the impression he was waiting. It was as though the very stone was deciding its answer and they were waiting on its pleasure.
Ghost pressed in closer, shivering in the mist. Raomar lifted his cloak and she scampered beneath it. On his other side, Varan was as tense as a drawn bowstring. He’d tucked himself under Raomar’s arm, but was slowly creeping out from under it, his eyes firmly fixed on the crone as if he was trying to see what kind of magic she wrought.
Raomar reached out and gently pulled him back. Once he had both apprentices where he could protect them, he raised his head to study what the crone was doing. As he did so, he sensed something watching him in return.
The feeling made him shiver. It was as though he was under some form of scrutiny, an inspection of not just what he looked like, but what he was. He glanced around, searching for its source. Beside him, Varan quivered with tension.
The feeling passed as power rose to answer the old woman’s call. Raomar stared as the stone moved beneath her hands, sliding away from them like syrup in a bowl.
The crone spread her arms, lifting them over her head, and the stone answered. Drawing its mortar into itself, the stone before the crone’s outspread arms moved away, sliding into the neighboring blocks to form an arch in front her.
Centered on her fingertips, an opening appeared and slowly formed a tunnel ahead of her, stretching into the wall. The crone spoke again, and Raomar caught a sense of the power she summoned.
This time it was the mist that answered. It writhed around them as undercurrents of air rolled through, pushing it into a bank against the wall and drawing more mist into the street to take its place. Before long, the mist covered Raomar and Grunwol’s crouched forms, and the crone was hidden from view.
A chill infused the morning, making it far colder than it should have been that time of year. Moisture formed on the road’s cobbles, and the mist fed on it, making each droplet a part of itself as it thickened and spread along the streets and alleys around them, before deepening along the road beside the wall.
Raomar stared at the shifting mass of white, in awe. He’d seen priests gifted with the ability to manipulate air, or water, or weather, and priests who could work stone or earth, but none who could work across elements, or affect them to the extent he saw, now.
Nor had he seen a priest, or any other kind of magic user who could move mist and air as perfectly as the crone. He wondered why she had answered Dart’s call so quickly…and what advantage she and her mysterious masters saw in assisting them.
Raomar was sure he, Brianda and Grunwol could have left the city unseen. He also believed they could have taken Varan and Ghost with them, and not been caught, but before full sun?
That he couldn’t have guaranteed.
He also wasn’t sure they’d have left once they’d seen what Alessia was facing…or that they’d have been able to get the wizardess and her apprentices out of their predicament. He still wasn’t sure they could do that, but if they did, the crone was their best chance.
He just hoped she hadn’t played them all for fools.
“Come.” The crone’s voice interrupted his speculation. Holding something of the cold and something of the stones, it jerked his thoughts from possibility to reality.
The crone didn’t wait for a reply, but stepped into the arching chasm the stones had created.
Raomar followed, shepherding the two apprentices beside him, while Brianda and Grunwol stayed close to his heels. Both looked as apprehensive as he felt as they entered the tunnel behind him.
Ahead of him, the stone continued to flow and bend, lengthening the tunnel in obedience to the crone’s command. The crone herself, stood aside to let them pass.
“Wait for me at the foot of the wall on the other side,” she ordered. “I will see the way closes behind us.”
Raomar nodded respectfully to her as he stepped carefully past. The passage ahead was smooth-floored and sloped gently downward. At one point, the passage took a sudden dive, the floor forming a set of natural stairs.
Taking us under the inner corridors, Raomar thought, remembering the layout from when he’d crossed the wall, years ago. Back then, he’d entered those corridors and led his friends successfully past the guards inside the walls.
The soft sound of his footsteps whispered around him, and he hoped it didn’t carry to the soldiers moving above. The sound of Ghost’s progress wound itself around him in delicate counterpoint, while Varan’s less sure movement, by contrast, was deafeningly loud.
Raomar frowned at the boy, then became aware of the sound Brianda’s feet were making. He turned, intending to remind her to move quietly, then saw the girl was sacrificing silence for speed, and that Grunwol for all the silence he kept, was also moving quickly.
Looking beyond them, he saw why they chose speed over stealth; the stone was closing behind them, running like molten lead to fill the space they’d left—and the crone moved but a hairsbreadth before it.
Surprised the old woman’s magic still hadn’t triggered his north-lands friend, and trusting it wouldn’t, Raomar quickened his pace, moving into a slow jog until he’d reached the end of the tunnel. There, he came to an abrupt halt, staring at the murky water of the city’s moat.
“Wait,” the old woman’s voice reached him on a whisper of breeze. “I’ll ask the water to grant you passage, and the mud to bear your weight.”
Raomar stepped to one side, crouching at the base of the wall, but still inside the tunnel. His companions joined him without argument, crouching beside him as the crone swept past. To their relief, the closing stone halted, leaving them their shelter.
Without saying a word to them, the old woman knelt at the end of the tunnel, holding her hand palm down over the moat, and addressing it quietly. At first, nothing happened, but then there was a swirl and a gurgle, and the water separated to grant a narrow corridor between two perfect walls.
The crone made another request, and the earth beneath her shuddered, stretching itself into a set of stairs that led to the mud below. There, the crone repeated her palm-down gesture, and made another request.
This one was answered with a series of sucking and crackling sounds softened by the mist. They were followed by something similar to a sigh, and the crone crossed to the other side of the moat, where the earth obeyed her request to form a second set of stairs.
Turning at the foot of them, the crone beckoned for Raomar and the others to cross. Moving half-way up the stairs and leaning on the water as though it were solid, she indicated the narrow band of road that ran the city’s circumference.
“There’s a ditch at the field’s edge,” she told him when he reached her. “Shelter there—and hurry!”
Casting a wary glance at the wall’s top, Raomar quickly climbed the earthen stairs, then dashed across the road to the ditch. Half-expecting to land in a puddle of water, he slid into it, creeping along it until he was hidden by one of the clumps of bushes standing beside the field.
The apprentices, Brianda and Grunwol followed, crouching beside him to look back at the road. Mist floated above it, extending into the field, and he relaxed. The cold, swirling tendrils would protect them almost as surely as the shadow of the wall.
The crone was the last to cross the gap. She didn’t stop to kneel with them, but took the mist, embellished it with more of her magic, and gathered the resulting shroud around them. When it was thick enough to conceal them from the archers patrolling Deverath’s walls, she spoke softly to the grain.
“This way,” she commanded, when the wheat moved aside to form an aisle, and they followed.
Glancing back, Raomar saw the aisle closing as they passed, and knew there’d be no tell-tale runnel through the crop. Once more, he found himself admiring the crone’s command of the natural world…and wondering where she had learned it.
The day brightened around them, and Raomar glanced back. The first ray of sunlight touched the tops of Deverath’s guard towers. Soon the mist would dissipate and they’d be exposed for all to see. He wondered what the crone would do in response to that.
He needn’t have worried. As soon as the mist began to thin, the old woman released her magic, letting the shroud around them drift away in tatters, indiscernible from the rest. Glancing around, Raomar saw his fears were unfounded.
They’d reached a road and would look like any other party of travelers taking advantage of an early start to embark on the day’s journey. There’d be no challenge from the walls, or the inhabitants of a nearby farmstead.
Glancing back at the dawn-drenched walls, Raomar felt a small stab of alarm.
Surely, she means to hide us from the king, he thought. Once they’ve found Dart missing, they’ll start searching the city…and once the gates have opened…
He had no doubts as to what would happen once the city gates opened…and they were still walking in full sight of Deverath’s walls. It wouldn’t take long for the alert to go out.
The road was a four-yard strip of hard-packed earth, kept in good repair by work crews recruited from the city jails, and those owing in their taxes. Stonework marked the approach to the bridges crossing the numerous streams cutting through the surrounding farmland, feeding into the broad river bay on which the city sat.
In the wetter months, sand and stone were laid over the road in a mostly successful attempt to keep the city’s access ways from turning into quagmires.
It’s a good thing there’s no rain, Raomar decided, as the crone raised a hand to greet a passing farmer.
The road was busy for so early in the day, and Raomar knew there’d be no shortage of witnesses to the small group of travelers they’d seen heading away from the city. Fortunately, though, most returned the old woman’s greeting with a disinterested wave as they continued on their way.
None of them seemed to pay any attention to those traveling with her. An old woman returning home with her family, wasn’t interesting…and the cloaks concealing their faces were easily explained by the morning chill.
The farmers were more focused on eating a hasty breakfast of bread and cheese, while keeping their animals moving, or flicking the reins to quicken their pace. It was nothing unusual to meet travelers on this road.
Raomar made sure he kept his cowl pulled low over his head, and his face shielded from view. Most who’d heard of the kevarag reviled them, even if they’d only heard of them in stories. Glancing at Ghost to make sure the girl’s cloak was also in place, he saw she didn’t need the reminder.
She moved beside Varan, her head bent and looking for all the world like a dutiful granddaughter walking with her brother. Brianda moved just behind them, like a hovering mother, and Grunwol, for all his size could have been mistaken for their father.
Raomar gave a mental shake of his head, but had to admire the crone’s foresight. Unless a farmer was looking for a group of escaped thieves, it would be easy for them to pass as a family on the move, a theory that was easily proven when no one seemed to notice them.
No farmer drew back from them in sudden shock, and no teamster raised his whip in threat. The only looks they received were those reserved for any band of travelers moving this early in the day: looks of casual curiosity, and nothing more.
