“You are a traveler,” said the man, and his deep voice easily pierced the clamor of the room—a leader’s voice.
Alaric inclined his head and pitched his own voice high for clarity. “Say minstrel and mean traveler. We minstrels spend our lives seeking the stuff of new songs.”
“You sing well,” said the dark-eyed man. “You could find a place in some rich house. A king’s house, even, I think.”
Alaric looked at the silver coin. He kept a few like it inside his shirt, but not many, not enough to tempt a thief. He had been a thief himself often enough, in the long ago, and he could always be one again, using the power he had been born with—the power to move from one place to another in the blink of an eye. Still, he preferred earning silver with his songs. He stretched his right hand out toward the coin without touching it, two fingers brushing the table lightly beside it. “I’ve had my share of rich houses. Even kings’ houses. But the horizon draws me.” He raised his eyes. “I would see what lies beyond it.”
The dark-eyed man smiled with one side of his mouth. “I was young once, like you, and I wondered what lay beyond the horizon. Now I am older and I have been there, and still I make the journey from time to time. But you knew that, didn’t you? You know who I am.”
Alaric pulled his hand back and strummed his lute. “The landlord told me something of the man who takes a caravan across the great desert every year. Your name, he said, is Piros.”
The man narrowed his dark eyes. “And did he tell you that Piros is seeking adventurers for the trek?”
Alaric shook his head. “He said that you’re seeking men to work your camels. And that it is a hard crossing, where fate sometimes decrees death. Though I guessed that much without the telling.” He lifted a shoulder in a small shrug. “Sadly, I know nothing at all about camels.”
Piros pushed the coin closer to Alaric’s side of the table. “I have listened to you this evening, and watched you. The nights are long and dull on the great desert, even to men weary with a full day of riding. And there is much silent time for them to fill with squabbles over nothing. Songs could make that time pass more easily.” He straightened in his chair then. “Take my coin as one of many acquired in this place, and likely we will never meet again. Or take it as first payment for your songs on our journey, if that pleases you better. And the camel lore will come along the way, I promise.”
Alaric picked up the coin then and turned it over between his fingers. “You have spoken to the landlord, too, I imagine.”
The dark-eyed man nodded. “You have been here eight days, and he would have you stay. Not that such a place needs a minstrel to draw custom, but he sees you at least half as an entertainment for himself. And you make friends easily, Alaric minstrel. Of course that would be necessary, in your trade, as it is in mine. But my brother thinks you would do well on the journey, and I have always trusted his judgment.”
“Your brother?”
Piros tapped his goblet with one finger. “Has the resemblance faded so much with the years?”
Alaric glanced over his shoulder at the landlord. He saw it now, though the caravan leader was older and more weathered.
“Well, minstrel,” said the dark-eyed man, “by tomorrow, every man in this room will have spent his last copper and asked for a place in the caravan. Will you join the ones I choose?”
Alaric flipped the coin into the air. “They say there’s a lost city in the great desert. They say there’s a hidden treasure trove, too.”
Piros smiled that half smile again. “You’ve been listening to drunken fancies.”
“And they say that on the other side of the great desert is a land of wonders.”
“Ah, that depends on what one has seen before.”
Alaric tucked the coin into his pouch. “I have seen wonders before now, Piros, and I would see more.” He offered his hand to seal the bargain. “I will come with you.”
The dark-eyed man ignored the hand. “There is one more thing, minstrel.”
Alaric pulled his hand back and spread it over the strings of his lute. “Yes?”
“I have a son. He is somewhat of your age, a bit younger perhaps, and he has made this journey with me before. But do not think that he speaks for me. You are in my employ, not his. Do I make myself clear?”
Alaric looked down at his lute and plucked a single string. “Will the other men understand the same?”
“Every one of them.”
Alaric nodded. “Then it shall be as you wish, Master Piros.”
“Piros,” the man said. “Only Piros. Be in the courtyard and ready to leave at daybreak.”
Alaric sang for the rest of the evening, while he wondered what kind of son required such a warning.
In the gray of dawn twilight, the tavern’s courtyard already bustled with men binding casks and rope-wound bundles to the backs of more camels than Alaric could easily count. The camels were kneeling, enduring their growing burdens with an occasional hoarse bellow, like a poorly greased axle laboring beneath a heavy cart. Alaric recognized most of the men from the previous night and wondered how they could work so vigorously with the headaches they must have from their drinking. Several of them grinned at him as he walked past in search of their master.
Piros was at the western extremity of the courtyard, closest to the start of the journey, and beside him stood a youth in robes brighter and newer than his own, with a headwrap of dark-dyed green and a face that marked him likely to be Piros’s son. He had his father’s stance, too, his straight back and squared shoulders. But where Piros gestured now and then with peremptory economy or called a word or a name, the youth stood silent, arms crossed over his chest, seeming to pay little attention to the activity around him.
Alaric caught the caravan master’s eye. “Good morrow.”
“Indeed,” said the man. “It’s a good day to go west.” He looked Alaric up and down, his eyes lingering at the plaited straw hat that Alaric had made with his own hands and then sweeping down the dark tunic and trews to the sturdy boots, no longer new but still serviceable. “Is this how you think to cross the great desert?”
The minstrel carried the rest of his meager belongings in a knapsack, with the lute slung over it. He had traveled a long time so lightly, both by foot and in his own special way. “It is what I have,” he said.
Piros turned his attention back to the camels. “This is my son Rudd,” he said, though he made no gesture toward the youth. “He will find you desert robes for the journey.”
Alaric glanced at the young man, who showed no reaction, as if he had not heard his father’s words.
“Rudd,” said his father, and then more sharply, “Rudd!”
The youth blinked several times and frowned. “Father?”
Again, Piros did not look at him. “Go ask your uncle for traveling robes for the minstrel.”
Rudd peered at Alaric, seeming to notice him for the first time. His mouth turned down sullenly. “Can’t he ask for himself?”
“Go,” said Piros. “Make yourself useful.”
The young man’s lips tightened for a moment, and then the sullen expression faded away, and his eyes seemed to lose their focus. “I could be useful,” he said in a listless tone, “if you’d allow it.”
“Do as I say.”
Shoulders less square and back less straight than before, Rudd turned toward the tavern. But with almost his first step, he swayed like a drunken man, and Alaric caught his arm to keep him from falling. The youth looked Alaric straight in the face then, and he shook off the assistance and kept going.