“I would have thought so too,” she agreed readily. “But this isn’t just any invading force. It’s an army that has conquered all the nations in the East in something less than a decade. The leader of the armies is a man who calls himself the Voice of Altis. He claims to be a prophet of the god Altis, and the religious revival is spreading faster than his armies. The Spymaster thinks that the only way to resist the invasion will be to unite all the Western countries against him; and he has a nasty habit of being right.”
“So he supports the alliance of Reth and Darran,” said Tris.
Rialla nodded and continued, “None of this would have much bearing on what I’m going to be doing at Winterseine’s hold, except for one thing. The people of the East apparently do not believe in magic; it’s been so long since they’ve had wizards that they’ve long since dismissed the existence of magic as a child’s fable.
“The ‘miracles’ the Voice of Altis performs as a prophet of the old god bear a striking resemblance to the accomplishments of a trained magician. The Spymaster believes that the Voice is a trained mage from this side of the Swamp.” Rialla met Tris’s gaze. “And I think I might have found him.”
“Winterseine,” said Tris.
She nodded her head. “If it’s true, then maybe something can be done to prevent the invasion altogether. Laeth and I discovered enough of a link between Winterseine and this self-proclaimed prophet that even if he’s not the Voice of Altis, he almost certainly knows who is.”
“I’m going with you,” Tris announced calmly, as he moved his snake a space beyond her frog.
Gods, she thought, wishing she could accept: to have someone she trusted with her, to have the healer’s steady presence, to not be alone.
“No,” she replied, her voice steady, maneuvering her bird to take his snake if it tried to eat her frog.
“I’m afraid you don’t have any voice in this,” his tone was matter-of-fact as he moved the snake out of danger, taking her stag as he did so.
“What about your bargain with the old woman?”
“I’ve been at Tallonwood a little over two years,” he replied. “The bargain was for one.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but saw the resolution in his eyes. “Plague it, Tris. What are you doing this for?”
He gave her an odd smile, and she was abruptly reminded that he was not human. “I told you the woman who rescued me had a gift for seeing things others cannot. She told me I should help you accomplish your task.”
“She just told you to help me, so you are?” asked Rialla incredulously.
“Nothing so neat. The future is not unchangeable, Rialla. Trenna gave me a goal, a hint of the possible results of a course of action. Enough to persuade me the goal is worth pursuit.”
“You’re not going to tell me why you are doing this, are you?” Rialla accused, but there was no heat in her voice.
“Of course,” Tris said blandly, “as I explained to Laeth, I am loath to give up the first person I’ve found in a long time who is capable of defeating me at Dragon. Your move.”
She gave the board a surprised look. “I thought I just moved; you must not have been watching.”
He didn’t take his gaze from her face. “I was watching; it’s your move.”
She shrugged and said, “I choose not to move.”
He shook his head. “You chose that five moves ago; you can only do that every six moves. Your move.”
She smiled, moved her sparrow two spaces to the right and said, “Fine. Theft.”
He looked at the board. Her sparrow sat on the space with his dragon.
She raised an eyebrow at his exaggeratedly forlorn expression. “I told you that it wasn’t my move, but when you insisted, you made it my move anyway.”
“What did you move after I took your stag?”
She smiled sweetly. “Your dragon.”
He laughed and raised his hands in mock surrender. “Thief. Your game.”
“It was about time,” she said darkly, helping him replace the pieces in the drawer.
“Now you only owe me two kingdoms, five horses and twelve pigs.”
“Four horses,” she contested hotly.
“Five,” he corrected. “You wagered five horses against the twelve pigs you lost before. It was supposed to be six horses, but you whined and I let it stand at five.”
“Well,” she said, “at least I got my fifty chickens back.”
He started to answer, but the sound of the outer door opening and the frantic crying of an infant called him back to duty.
Alone, Rialla picked absently at the stitching on the bed covering. The week had passed far too quickly. Her leg was almost healed; Tris had taken the stitches out that morning. It still pained her when she used it too much, but every day it improved. Tomorrow morning she would leave with Lord Winterseine.
Perhaps, she thought, it was a good thing that she would soon be going. If she spent much longer with the healer, it would be too hard to go back to being a slave—and to survive, she had to be a slave again—not a Sianim horse trainer pretending to be a slave.
She raised her hand to her cheek, feeling the scar beneath the illusion. She couldn’t feel the tattoo, but she knew it was there: nose to ear, jaw to cheekbone. Sometimes she had felt as if it were tattooed on her soul, that she could never be anything but a slave.
She allowed herself to be drawn out of her bout of self-pity by the sound of a loud, angry voice and the healer’s quiet reply. The front door shut with a slam, and Tris stalked into the bedroom with a black scowl on his face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
His glower deepened. “I just finished setting a broken bone for one of the hedgefarmer’s sons.”
“Hedgefarmer?”
“The hedgefarmers work the land in the hills and lower mountain slopes. It’s poor land, and gives a marginal living at best—but that’s no reason to break a child’s arm. At least once a month I treat one of his children or his wife for miscellaneous bruises and broken bones. I’ve talked to him twice about it, and told him this was it. Next time he hits someone weaker than he is, I’ll see to it that he won’t be in any condition to do it again.”
“Will he listen?” she asked as he paced back and forth.
“No, he’ll probably just not allow them to come to a healer for treatment, plague it! It was stupid to lose my temper. I’m sorry that I did it in front of the child too. That boy has to live with enough violence in his life; he doesn’t need mine as well.”
“You are needed here.” Rialla spoke softly. “Who will set their bones and heal their animals if you aren’t here?”
He stretched and shed his anger as if it were a coat. When he looked at her, there was nothing of it left in his eyes. “These people survived without me for most of their lives. The headman’s mother is a decent healer, as is her new daughter-in-law. I’ve already informed them that I will be leaving shortly.”
Rialla opened her mouth, and he held up his hand to forestall what she would have said. “Rialla, if I stay here too long, someone will eventually notice I work magic, and that could be worse for the village than the lack of a healer. I was preparing to leave soon anyway.”
Tris sat down on the end of the bed. “Tomorrow, when Lord Winterseine takes you, I’ll follow. It shouldn’t be difficult to track a large group of humans through the woods.”
Rialla snickered and Tris stopped talking.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’ve just never heard anybody say ‘human’ when they meant ‘mindless stinking mass of waste left undigested by a pig.’ You do it well.”
He made a half-bow and gave her the sweet smile that he used when he’d made a particularly devious maneuver in Dragon.
“There is one more thing I need to take care of before you go.” He reached over and pulled off her earring. “This comes off too easily. If Winterseine takes it off and your tattoo comes off as well, he’s going to start wondering about you.”