Lynn Flewelling - The Oracle's Queen

The birds woke around them and sang to welcome the new day, their calls mingling with the sigh of a freshening breeze through the leaves overhead.

They didn’t hear the sound of horses until the riders were quite close.

“They’re right behind us!” Barieus moaned, staggering and nearly dropping Cal as he looked back over his shoulder.

Despair overwhelmed Lutha. They couldn’t escape, except by hiding, and if the riders were from the keep, they were probably being guided by the same wizardry that had found Cal so quickly.

“Leave me. Run for it,” Caliel mumbled, struggling weakly in their grasp.

“We won’t leave you.” Lutha looked in vain for some sort of cover.

“Don’t be stupid!” Caliel groaned, sinking to the ground.

They could hear the jingle of harness clearly now, and the staccato beat of hooves. “Bilairy’s balls, there’s at least a score,” Barieus said.

“Help me get him off the road,” Lutha ordered, trying to drag Caliel’s limp body into the brambles.

“Too late!” Barieus moaned.

The sound of the horses was louder, drowning out the early birdsong. They could see the glint of metal through the trees.

Suddenly they were startled by the strangest sound they’d ever heard. It was close by and seemed to come from all sides at once. To Lutha it sounded like the combination of a bullfrog’s croak and a heron’s call, but blended and drawn out in a weird pulsing drone.

He and Barieus closed in to protect Caliel from this new threat. The sound grew louder, rising and falling, and making the hair on the backs of their necks stand up.

The horsemen rounded the bend and came on hard in a pack. There was a wizard in the front rank, his white robe unmistakable. Lutha and Barieus tried to drag Caliel into a bramble brake, but it was so thick they couldn’t get through. Huddled there, thorns piercing painfully through the backs of their cloaks, Lutha crouched over Caliel.

The riders thundered past, some of them so close Lutha could have reached out and touched their boots. Not one of them spared a glance for the ragged fugitives watching incredulously as they all but rode them down.

The weird drone went on until the last rider had disappeared around another bend and the last jingle of harness had faded in the distance, then stopped as abruptly as it had begun. In its wake Lutha could hear the cries of the gulls and the hammering of a lone woodpecker.

Caliel was awake again, and shuddering with exhaustion. His wounds had opened; dark patches of blood and sweat stuck the coarse material to his back.

“What in the name of all the Four just happened?” whispered Barieus.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Lutha muttered.

A moment later they all heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps in the forest beyond the bramble brake. Whoever it was made no attempt at stealth. Along with the loud, careless snapping of twigs underfoot, the traveler was whistling.

A moment later a dark little man appeared out of the brambles in the road behind them. He had a small sack strung over one shoulder and was dressed in the long, belted tunic and ragged leggings of a peasant farmer. He didn’t appear to be armed, apart from a long sheath knife at his belt and the odd-looking staff he carried over his other shoulder. It was about a yard and a half long, and covered with all sorts of designs. It seemed overly ornate for a weapon and too thick for a quarterstaff.

As he came closer, Lutha realized this was no Skalan. The man’s wild, black hair hung in a mass of coarse curls past his shoulders. That, together with his dark, nearly black eyes marked him as a Zengati. Lutha watched him warily, trying to tell if he was facing friend or foe.

The fellow must have guessed what was on Lutha’s mind. He stopped a few yards away, balanced his staff in the crook of one arm, and held both hands out to show that they were empty.

Then he smiled and said, in a thickly accented voice, “Friends, you need help.”

Now Lutha could see that what he’d taken for a staff was a wooden horn of some sort. The man wore a necklace made of decorated animal teeth on a leather thong, and bracelets of the same design.

“What do you want with us?” he demanded.

The man gave him a puzzled look. “Friend.” He pointed in the direction Niryn’s men had gone. “I help, yes? They gone.”

“That noise, you mean? You did that?” asked Barieus.

The man raised his horn for the others to see, then puffed his cheeks out and set his lips to the top of it. There was a sort of broad mouthpiece made of a ring of wax. A throbbing blat issued from the other end. He made a few more of those odd noises, like a piper warming up his instrument, then the sound changed and settled into the deep drone they’d heard before. Lutha found his gaze drawn to the man’s feet as he listened. They were very dirty and callused, as if he’d never worn boots. His hands were grubby, too, but less so, and the nails were carefully trimmed. There were bits of dead leaves and twigs caught in his hair.

The music was as odd as the man, and there was no question that this is what they’d heard before.

“It’s magic, isn’t it?” Barieus exclaimed. “You’re a wizard!”

The man stopped playing and nodded. “They don’t hear, those riders. Don’t see.”

Lutha laughed outright. “That’s some good magic. Thank you!”

He started forward to clasp hands with their savior, but Caliel caught his arm. “No, Lutha! Don’t you see?” he gasped. “He’s a witch!”

Lutha froze. He’d have been less shocked to encounter a centaur mage, come down from the Nimra Mountains. They were more commonly met than hill witches, and a good deal more welcome. “Is that true?”

“Witch, yes. I Mahti.” He touched his chest, as if Lutha might not understand. “Maaaah-teee? Retha’noi. What you call ‘ heeel fok’.”

“Hill folk,” Caliel grated out. “Don’t trust him—Probably scouting for a raid.”

Mahti snorted and sat down cross-legged on the dusty road. “No raid.” He walked two fingers across the ground. “Walk long days.”

“You’re on a journey?” asked Lutha, intrigued in spite of Caliel’s reaction.

“Long walking, this ‘joor-nay’?”

“Yes. Many days.”

Mahti nodded happily. “Joor-nay.”

“Why?” Caliel demanded.

“Watch for you.”

The three Skalans exchanged skeptical glances.

Mahti dug into a greasy pouch at his belt, popped something dark and wizened into his mouth, and began to chew loudly. He offered the pouch to the rest of them and smirked when it was quickly declined. “See you in my dream song—” He paused and held up two dirty fingers. “These nights.”

“Two nights ago?”

He held up three fingers and pointed at each of them. “See you, and you, and you. And I find this.”

He dug into another small pouch and held out a bent gold ring. Caliel stared at it. “That—that’s mine. I lost it when they caught me.”

Mahti leaned over and placed it in the dirt in front of Caliel. “I find. I run hard to get here.” Mahti held up one bare foot, showing them a few dirt-caked cuts in the thickly callused sole. “You run, too, from friend who has—” He paused again, searching for the right word, then looked sadly at Caliel. “Your friend, he who turns his face away.”

Caliel’s eyes went wide.

Mahti shook his head, then touched a hand to his chest above his heart again. “You have pain from that friend.”

“Shut your mouth, witch.”

“Cal, don’t be rude,” Lutha murmured. “He’s only speaking the truth.”

“I don’t need to hear it from the likes of him,” Caliel shot back. “It’s just some trick, anyway. Why don’t you ask him what he wants?”