“It isn’t the honors or wealth he misses,” Kiya noted. “It’s her. She belongs to his enemy, the man who had him beaten and humiliated, and it eats at him like a festering wound.”
“He must return with me. There’s no one else who can lead the hordes to victory against the nomad and bakali. No one else commands the respect he does. No one has his vision, or his…”
Egrin groped for the proper word. Kiya supplied it: “Luck. He’s lucky.”
“No longer.”
They turned. Tol stood in the dark doorway behind them.
“My luck is gone,” he said flatly. “I used it up when I left to pursue my private vengeance against Mandes. I was the Emperor’s Champion, but I abandoned Ackal IV to the evil plots of his brother. Nazramin staged everything like a playwright, and I handed him the throne of Ergoth as if I’d been magicked to do so.”
Egrin rose and gripped Tol’s shoulder. “Luck isn’t wine, drunk up then regretted! Come back with me, Tol! Only you can save Ergoth. Do so, and the emperor will have to make amends!”
Tol removed his old friend’s hand. “It’s not my fight any more. Let the empire fall.”
Chapter 3
From the sparse woodland, the town of Juramona wasn’t much to look at. An agglomeration of buildings, some stone but most wooden, clustered around the base of a large, man-made earthen mound on which stood a palisaded citadel. The town wall was weathered timber, strengthened at intervals by squat stone towers. Here and there outside the walls were piles of rough-hewn granite blocks. Grass grew tall around the stones. While marshal of the Eastern Hundred, Egrin Raemel’s son had begun to convert Juramona’s wall to stone. After he was forced from his post by Ackal V, his successor allowed the ambitious plan to languish. Given the current state of things, no one was likely to disturb the blocks any time soon.
Crouched at the base of a leafing poplar, Zala surveyed the scene. Her journey from Daltigoth had been nightmarish. The countryside between the Caer River and Juramona was infested with roving bands of nomads. Too many times she had to watch from concealment as marauders laid waste to farms, sacked caravans, and put hapless Ergothian captives to the sword. It grieved her, but she could not risk entanglements that would delay her progress.
She stared at the gates of Juramona and pondered how best to enter the town. Night offered the best concealment, but it was only now midmorning. She dared not waste an entire day waiting for darkness. Not only did her commission require speed, but the nomad warbands were gathering nearby. Juramona might be attacked at any moment, making her mission that much more difficult.
Eventually fate, the gods, or sheer luck provided what she needed. A convoy of wagons came thundering down the western road, together with an escort of half a hundred cavalry. The wagons were drawn by teams of horses rather than the more usual bullocks or oxen. Horses meant speed. The convoy must be carrying something vital. Zala noticed the escort was bunched together at the head of the caravan. No one was paying attention to the rear of the procession.
When the last wagon passed her, Zala raced from cover and swung herself into its canvas-shrouded box. She was under cover again in the space of a few breaths. The wagon was filled with assorted casks and crates, all firmly nailed shut.
Once the speeding caravan was inside the city wall, Zala’s wagon pulled hard to the left and stopped, throwing her to the floor.
“Close the gate! Close it!” bawled a hoarse masculine voice.
Zala peered out. Clouds of dust, churned up by the wagons, roiled high into the air. Taking advantage of this cover, Zala slipped out of the wagon and quickly vanished into the unfamiliar streets.
Juramona was preparing for a siege. Lanes nearest the walls had been cleared of obstructions, and the roofs of the houses were covered by green cowhides that could resist fiery arrows. Buckets of sand or water were placed at every corner, and everyone-men and women, youths and oldsters-wore helmets, but there seemed to be few real warriors present. Zala kept her own head firmly covered by her hood, to conceal her upswept ears. One never knew how humans would react to the sight of even a half-elf.
The skills she employed to travel invisibly through field and forest worked just as well in town-perhaps even better, because the town-dwellers were not so in tune with their surroundings as country folk. Many humans credited elves with the ability to make themselves invisible. This was legend, but enjoying the advantage such beliefs gave them, no elf would deny this supposed power.
Zala’s techniques were simple, but required great dexterity. To follow someone unseen, she matched their footfalls so no stray noise would betray her. When standing still, she turned edge-wise from people and, whenever possible, moved toward the left. Most folk, being right-handed, tended to look to the right first before setting out. Taking advantage of this habit allowed a stealthy tracker to keep from being noticed. When looking around trees (or here, the corner of a building), she kept low. People expected to see heads or faces at their own eye level, not close to the ground.
In this way Zala passed like a ghost among the anxious Juramonans. Not till she reached the location described by the empress did she relax her woodland stealth.
The house before her was old and looked long abandoned. Shutters were closed, and crossed timbers were nailed over the front door. Concealing her true purpose, Zala hailed a passing laborer and asked if the house was available for rent.
The youth shifted the hod of bricks he carried off his shoulder and regarded her in wide-eyed astonishment. “The barbarians are coming!” he cried. “Who needs a house at a time like this?”
“I do. Does anyone live here?”
“No! No one’s lived there since Lord Tolandruth left it, before I was born!” The fellow hurried on, shaking his head at the stupidity of strangers.
By such oblique queries, Zala gleaned information about her quarry’s rumored whereabouts. In one street she pretended to be a soldier’s wife seeking news of her husband. In another, she was a peddler trying to collect a debt, and further along, a healer searching for a delirious patient.
As Empress Valaran had surmised, Tolandruth was not in Juramona and hadn’t been for years. However, an intriguing bit of gossip kept coming up. Several people mentioned a man who was said to know Tolandruth well. No one spoke his name; he was referred to as “Tolandruth’s captive,” “the special prisoner,” and most frequently as “the unsightly gardener.”
Inquiring into this mysterious person’s whereabouts, Zala was directed to a rather squalid part of town. She arrived at a row of houses buried beneath the frowning shadow of the High House. Although the day was waning, a few shafts of sunlight still pierced the scattered clouds. At the indicated door, she knocked. No one answered.
The narrow street was empty except for herself and a bony cur gnawing at something dead in the gutter six doors away. Zala inserted her knife in the gap between the door and frame, lifted the latch, and slipped inside.
The room beyond was dark and uninhabited. When her eyes had adjusted, she crept through the room toward the rear of the house. An open window framed a swatch of green and brought the scent of flowers to her nostrils. Remembering the fellow had been called a gardener, Zala slipped warily out the back door. What she saw stopped her in her tracks.
In the small area behind the house, where most folk would have a chicken coop, pig pen, or privy, there was indeed a garden, and no mere kitchen plot for herbs or root vegetables. A verdant carpet of jade-colored grass covered what soil was not already filled with flowers. And such flowers! Sunflowers taller than Zala herself with heads so heavy they had to be supported by strips of ribbon tacked to the lath wall behind; roses, with blooms large as soup bowls and the color of ox blood, filled the air with their dense perfume. Creamy white lilies were beginning to close for the day. Cornflowers, yellow daisies, irises in bold purple and pale gold, violets, and marigolds stood in serried ranks like perfect soldiers. Most remarkable of all was a stand of enormous dandelions, with puffy white heads as big as Zala’s own.