Stopping before the door to their bedroom, Mark’s thoughts moved to Brynne. Could he leave her here alone with an unholy fight looming before her? No, of course not. She could return to Colorado with him – they all could. But now he sounded like the coward, a sensible coward, but a coward just the same. Despite his friend’s confidence, Mark believed Nerak would kill them all.
Steeling himself against the wellspring of emotion he felt whenever he saw Brynne, Mark entered the room quietly, hoping not to disturb her right away. They would remain in Eldarn until this business was finished.
Garec pulled hard until the resistant plug popped from the bottle with a satisfying report. ‘Whoever this trapper is, he has great taste in wine,’ he said as he poured for each of the friends, topping his own glass to the brim before handing the unfinished portion to Lahp, who proceeded to drink directly from the flask. The bottle looked like a toy in the Seron’s hand and Garec laughed as Lahp finished the contents in one enormous swallow.
‘Remind me not to get into a drinking contest with you,’ he said, crossing to the fireplace to removing his trout fillets. ‘Sorry it’s fish again tonight,’ he told the company, ‘but tomorrow I’ll see if I can’t get a deer or something.’
‘This is fine, Garec,’ Brynne replied. She looked much better for having slept most of the day. ‘Without you we’d be reduced to roots and berries.’
‘She’s right,’ Mark agreed, sipping noisily. ‘You missed my archery display at Seer’s Peak: thirty-two shots and not one fish.’
They all laughed at Mark’s admission except for Brynne, who continued to watch the front window anxiously. She was cross that she’d slept the day away and promised herself that dawn would find her scouting the riverbank to find some sign that Sallax was all right.
Mark gripped her hand beneath the table. ‘I’ll come with you tomorrow,’ he whispered.
At that moment she loved him, for knowing what she had been thinking, and for saying what she needed him to say.
Garec finished the last of his dinner, examined the bottom of his wooden trencher and chucked it into the fire. ‘These bowls are too old,’ he observed. ‘We’ll have sores in our mouths if we keep eating from these.’ He watched as the wood burst into flames. Rising from his seat, he crossed the room to retrieve the worn canvas pack. ‘I think Gilmour had a few fresh trenchers in here,’ he said, unfastening twin leather straps.
No one spoke as Garec started absentmindedly pulling out items, placing things on the wooden table like exhibits at a triaclass="underline" a hat, one glove, a pair of wool socks, some tobacco in a leather pouch, a small book written in Pragan. Then Garec’s hand came to rest on a carved wooden pipe and he stopped short, appalled.
‘Sorry,’ he whispered, almost crying, ‘I’m really sorry.’ He began returning the old man’s possessions to the bag. Brynne crossed and took him in her arms.
‘It’s all right, Garec,’ she said. ‘You’re doing the right thing. There’s no sense in you carrying two packs. Combine what you need in your bag and leave the rest here.’
Garec hesitated, as if waiting for something to happen. His forehead began perspiring and he released the pipe, now moist from his grip, to fall into the bottom of the satchel.
‘Garec,’ Steven said, ‘his memory doesn’t live in those things.’
Garec nodded, without looking at anyone, and, unable to reopen the pack, handed it to Steven. The young bowman picked up his quivers and started mending fletching.
Steven looked quickly at Brynne before reopening Gilmour’s bag. Garec was right. The old sorcerer did have three fresh trenchers, and Steven stacked them neatly in the centre of the table. Not knowing whether to continue, Steven reached gingerly back into the pack and withdrew three pipes, two more packs of tobacco, a short knife, some lengths of twine, several articles of clothing and a small bar of clean-smelling soap. Mark grabbed one of the trenchers and began turning it over in his hands, ostensibly inspecting the wood for worms, termites or rot. The vestiges of Gilmour’s life looked like a pile of junk: his socks had holes in them, his knife was bent and its leather sheath was torn and useless. These were not the final possessions of a powerful educator and magician; they were more like secondhand items distributed at the reading of a homeless person’s will. Mark drank deeply from his goblet and hoped the unnerving ritual would end soon.
Steven broke the silence. ‘That’s it.’ He fumbled about inside the pack for another moment before adding, ‘Except for these.’ He tossed a book of matches to his roommate. Mark caught it in one hand, flipped it over and read the advertisement printed on the back: Owen’s Pub, Miner Street, Idaho Springs. ‘And this,’ Steven removed several pages of old parchment, folded over and ragged along the edges. He placed it on the table near the trenchers and dropped Gilmour’s empty pack to the floor.
‘Sonofabitch!’ Mark exclaimed and Brynne looked at him curiously. ‘My paper and my matches, that old dog. He must have picked these up that night we went swimming in the river.’
‘ Machess? ’ Brynne asked, fumbling with the foreign word.
‘Matches.’ Mark tore one from the book and struck it into flame. Both Brynne and Garec gasped when the small torch ignited and Garec reached over to test the flame with a fingertip, as if somehow it might be an illusion. ‘It’s magic,’ he said in awe.
‘Nonsense,’ Mark replied. ‘It’s chemistry, exceedingly simple chemistry.’ He handed the burning match to Brynne who watched as the flame crept closer and closer to her fingertips before burning out on its own. ‘I’m surprised the Larion Senate didn’t bring these back from one of their trips.’ He considered this a moment, then said, ‘Actually, they probably did. I bet they just ran out of them, or didn’t write down the formula to make more… who knows? Maybe some smoker there at Sandcliff used them up.’ No one laughed; so, Mark proceeded to unfold the parchment. ‘Damn, but I could have used this up there.’ He gestured towards the southeast and the Blackstone peaks.
‘Where did you find it?’ Garec asked, examining the burned match stump.
‘At Riverend, in the room where Steven and I were tied up. These pages were hidden behind one of the stones above the fireplace mantel.’
‘What’s written on them?’ Brynne leaned over to look.
‘It’s probably an ad for a Gore-tex parka and some snowshoes,’ Steven teased.
‘No,’ she went on, ‘it looks like a letter, a note to someone.’
‘Who wrote it?’ Garec asked, only half listening as he worked on his arrows.
Mark handed Brynne the pages and she flipped through them quickly in search of a signature. She froze when she reached the final sheet. ‘Garec?’
‘What?’ he mumbled without looking up from his fletching.
‘It’s from Tenner Wynne.’
Garec returned the arrows to his quiver and reached for a wine goblet. ‘Tenner Wynne? The Tenner Wynne?’
‘Mark found these in a third-storey chamber at Riverend. How many Tenner Wynnes lived there before the fire?’ She continued scanning through the parchment for additional evidence that the letter she held was authentic.
‘Who’s Tenner Wynne when he’s at home then?’ Steven asked, nibbling on what he guessed was a dried apricot.
‘ Was,’ Brynne corrected, ‘Tenner was a prince of Falkan, a descendant of King Remond.’
Garec said, ‘But he abdicated the Falkan throne to his sister-’ He groped for her name.
‘Anaria,’ Brynne supplied. ‘Princess Anaria. She was a Barstag by marriage.’
‘Right,’ Garec said, adding sheepishly, ‘Brynne paid attention in school better than I did.’
‘Too bad you missed me on the Stamp Act,’ Mark told him, ‘you’d have been sound asleep before the end of first period.’ Garec grinned and raised his goblet. Mark responded in kind and said, ‘To the Stamp Act.’
‘The Stamp Act, whatever that might be.’ He emptied his glass and reached for another bottle. Lahp, who had been listening in silence, shrugged before crossing the room to stoke the fire again.