"It'll be enough," Tarma assured her. "Now -- you've got it all straight -- at moonrise you raise the hue and cry after us; you offer fifty gold to the man who brings back our heads, and you turn the lads loose. They're going to hear the word 'gold' and they won't even stop to think -- they'll just head out after us. You do realize this is going to cost you in horses -- they'll take every good mount in your stables."
Lady Gorley shrugged. "That can't be helped, and better horses than lives. But can you lay a trail that will keep them following without getting caught yourselves?"
Tarma laughed. "You ask a Shin'a'in if she can lay a trail? No fear. By the time they get tired of following -- those that I don't lose once their horses founder -- they'll have had second and third thoughts about coming back to Viden. They'll know that you'll never keep them on. They'll think about the kings' men you've likely called in -- and the good armsmen of your neighbors. And they'll be so far from here that they'll give it all up as a bad cause."
The innkeeper nodded. "She's right. Lady. They drifted in; they drift out just the same with no easy pickings in sight."
"What about that little rhymester?" Tarma asked, nodding back at the tavern door. They hadn't noticed the minstrel trying to make himself a part of the wall until it was too late to do anything about him.
"I'll keep him locked up until it's safe to let him go," the innkeeper replied. "If I know musickers, he'll have a long gullet for wine. I'll just keep him too happy to move."
"Very well -- and the gods go with you," Lady Gorley said, stepping away from the horses.
"Well, Greeneyes," Tarma smiled crookedly at her partner.
Kethry sighed, and smiled back. "All right, I'll geas them. But dammit, that means we won't be seeing beds for months!"
Tarma nudged Ironheart with her heels and the battlemare sighed as heavily as Kethry had, but moved out down the village street with a faint jingling of harness. "Greeneyes, I didn't say you should geas them to follow us now, did I?"
"Then who--"
"Remember that loudmouth, Rory Halfaxe? The one that kept trying to drag you into his bed? He's in Lyavor, and planning on going the direction opposite of this place. Now if we double back and come up on his backtrail -- think you can transfer the geas?"
Leslac slumped, nearly prostrate with despair. His head pounded, and he downed another mug of wine without tasting it. Oh, gods of fortune -- do you hate me?
He couldn't believe what he had seen -- he just couldn't!
First -- that -- farce with the broomstick. He moaned and covered his eyes with his hand. How could anyone make a heroic ballad out of that? "Her broomstick flashing in her hands--"? Oh, gods, they'd laugh him out of town; they wouldn't need the rotten vegetables.
Then -- that Lord Gorley died by accident! Gods, gods, gods-
"This can't be happening to me," he moaned into his mug. "This simply cannot be happening."
And as if that wasn't enough -- the collusion between Gorley's widow and the other two to lure the gang of bullies away without so much as a single fight!
"I'm ruined," he told the wine. "I am utterly ruined. How could they do this to me? This is not the way heroes are supposed to behave -- what am I going to do? Why couldn't things have happened the way they should have happened?"
Then -- the way they should have happened--
The dawn light creeping in the window of his little cubby on the second floor of the inn was no less brilliant than the inspiration that came to him.
The way they should have happened!
Feverishly he reached for pen and paper, and began to write--
"The warrior and the sorceress rode into Viden-town, for they had heard of evil there and meant to bring it down--"
KEYS
I love locked-room mysteries, and I thought it would be fun to do one with a different setting-one in which magic was used in place of forensic detection, but magic itself was not used to create the mystery in the first place. And who better to take that setting than Tarma and Kethry?
She stood all alone on the high scaffold made of raw, yellow wood, as motionless as any statue. She was cold despite the heat of the summer sunlight that had scorched her without pity all this day; cold with the ice-rime of fear. She had begun her vigil as the sun rose at her back; now the last light of it flushed her white gown and her equally white face, lending her pale cheeks false color. The air was heavy, hot and scented only with the odor of scorched grass and sweating bodies, but she breathed deeply, desperately of it. Soon now, soon-
Soon the last light of the sun would die, and she would die with it. Already she could hear the men beneath her grunting as they heaved piles of oily brush and faggots of wood into place below her platform. Already the motley-clad herald was signaling to the bored and weary trumpeter in her husband's green livery that he should sound the final call. Her last chance for aid.
For the last time the three rising notes of a summoning rang forth over the crowd beneath her. For the last time the herald cried out his speech to a sea of pitying or avid faces. They knew that this was the last time, the last farcical call, and they waited for the climax of this day's fruitless vigil.
"Know ye all that the Lady Myria has been accused of the foul and unjust murder of her husband, Lord Corbie of Felwether. Know that she has called for trial by combat as is her right. Know that she names no champion, trusting in the gods to send forth one to fight in her name as token of her innocence. Therefore, if such there be, I do call, command, and summon him here, to defend her honor!"
No one looked to the gate except Myria. She, perforce, must look there, since she was bound to her platform with hempen rope as thick as her thumb. This morning she had strained her eyes toward that empty arch every time the trumpet sounded, but no savior had come -- and now even she had lost hope.
The swordswoman called Tarma goaded her gray Shin'a'in warsteed into another burst of speed, urging her on with hand and voice (though not spur- never spur) as if she were pursued by the Jackals of Darkness. Her long, ebony braids streamed behind her; close enough to catch one of them rode her amber-haired partner, the sorceress Kethry; Kethry's mare a scant half a length behind her herd-sister.
Kethry's geas-blade, Need by name, had awakened her this morning almost before the sun rose, and had been driving the sorceress (and so her blood-oath sister as well) in this direction all day. At first it had been a simple pull, as she had often felt before. Both
Kethry and Tarma knew from experience that once Need called, Kethry had very little choice in whether or not she would answer that call, so they had packed up their camp and headed for the source. But the call had grown more urgent as the hours passed, not less so-increasing to the point where by mid-afternoon it was actually causing Kethry severe mental pain. They had gotten Tarma's companion-beast Warrl up onto his carry-pad and urged their horses first into a fast walk, then a trot, then as sunset neared, into a full gallop. Kethry was near-blind by the mental anguish it caused. Need would not be denied in this; Kethry was soul-bonded to it-it conferred upon her a preternatural fighting skill, it had healed both of them of wounds it was unlkikely they would have survived otherwise-but there was a price to pay for the gifts it conferred. Kethry (and thus Tarma) was bound to aid any woman in distress within the blade's sensing range-and it seemed there was one such woman in grave peril now. Peril of her life, by the way the blade was driving Kethry.