Elaine Cunningham: Honor Bound

To hunt.

Winter snows might have covered thehumans' tracks, but Nimbolk found a trail in the name Honor spokethat night:

Volgo.

At first, he'd hardly needed thename. A man who traveled in such company could not stay hidden. Alarge party of men traveling the forest would hunt, and lightfires, and build rough shelters. When they left the forest theywould pillage farmsteads and crofters' cottages. They would stop invillages to buy where things were sold, they would drink and boastin the smoky halls where humans gathered. And when their trail ledto the edge of the northern sea, the dwarves who dwelt in the seacaves and knew every ship by its sails had added a destination: Sevrin.

Sevrin, with its endless scatteringof islands and its hundreds of tall, blond-bearded men. Even thename-trail cooled, for Volgo was not an uncommon name among theislands' humans.

Nimbolk rose from the boat,stretching muscles stiff from long disuse. He paced along theshore, so intent upon the pleasure of movement that a heartbeat ortwo passed before he sensed what he'd sought for solong.

The Thorn's magic rode the air likemusic, like perfume. It had been here, on this island among manyislands, and not long ago.

In the distance, a stone keep roseabove the cliffs. The wind carried the rumble of angry shouts andgrief-edged keening. Something dire had happened there, somethingthat involved the Thorn.

Nimbolk pulled the hood of his cloakover his ears and headed for the keep. Someone there would give hima new name, a new trail.

A new hunt.

Rhendish Manor formed a city withina city, a fortress town covering most of Crystal Mountain. At thetop stood the adept's home, a white stone mansion surrounded by awalled garden.

Vine-covered trellises encircled theadept's garden, and the flowers on them grew so abundantly thatsome spilled over the top of the wall. Honor suspected that morethan a few people saw the foliage as a less conspicuous way toenter Rhendish's estate. She wondered, briefly, what had become ofthose who'd survived the green guardians.

She slipped through the garden andcrept along the deep shadows that clung to the wall, past vinesthat raised painful welts or left poisonous oils on the skin. Suchplants were well known in the deep woodlands. The forest folk usedthem to protect secret places from outsiders, or to warn each otherof hidden dangers.

An arbor crowned with three-fingeredyellow blossoms caught Honor's eye. Memory overtook her, and for amoment she stood beneath ancient trees, reading the message writtenwith flowering vines upon the corpse of a fallen pine. Any elf whosaw this vine would know something dangerous had made its den inthe hollow-in this case, a wolverine and her litter ofkits.

Honor's hand moved to her belt, tothe place where her seed bag should hang. Most forest elves carriedseeds and learned a ritual that would speed their growth, so thatthey might leave wards and warnings of their own.

How had Rhendish come by theseseeds, this knowledge?

She hoped they hadn't come from her,but who knows what secrets the adept might have wrested from her inten forgotten years?

A troubling thought, but she turnedher mind to more immediate concerns. She took a deep breath andheld it as she passed under the arbor. If a night breeze shookenough pollen from the little flowers, the adept's guards wouldfind her asleep under the arbor come morning.

Just ahead, a trellis carried aprofusion of vines and roses to the top of the wall. Fox hadclimbed the over-spilling branches just days before. Most humanswould have avoided the thorny plants in favor of a lesspainful-looking option, but Fox had been raised at the forest'sedge by a mother who knew nearly as much green lore as the forestelves.

Climbing the trellis with only onegood hand proved more challenging than Honor had expected. Shemoved slowly, easing from rung to rung, from one thorny branch tothe next. When she reached the top of the wall, she rolled overquickly and hung by one hand as her booted feet soughtfootholds.

There were none to find. Someone hadtrimmed the vines and roses away.

Honor dropped, hoping her metal kneewas equal to the impact. She rolled as soon as her feet touched theground, but not before a cold, sharp pain flashed from knee tohip.

No. Surely Rhendish hadn't replacedher thigh bone with metal. That couldn't be possible.

But then, how was any of it possible? Howcould she be flesh and clockwork, elf and machine?

Such thoughts were dangerousdistractions. She thrust them aside and crouched in the deepshadows near the base of the wall to study hersurroundings.

Dim lamplight pushed at thedarkness. More lamps gleamed in several of the windows in the long,low stone building where future alchemists learned their trade. Afew of Rhendish's apprentices hurried between storehouses andworkrooms.

There was no way to get through thecourtyard unseen. Her best hope lay in convincing the apprenticesshe was someone to avoid.

Gatherers, the far-traveling rogueswho stole and slaughtered to keep the adepts' storerooms supplied,were frequent visitors to Rhendish Manor. Just last night she'dwatched from her window as a couple of sun-browned men supervisedthe unloading of crates from a handcart. One of the apprentices haddropped a crate, releasing several snakes patterned in red andyellow and black. When the pandemonium subsided, all of the snakeswere safely crated and two young alchemists lay dead. No one hadquestioned the gatherer's priorities.

Honor pulled up the hood of hercloak, rose to her feet, and strode boldly through the yard, givingher walk the rolling gait of someone whose boots spent more time ona ship's deck than city cobblestone.

Some of the apprentices glanced inher direction, but the deep cowl shielded her face and no oneseemed inclined to take a closer look. Alchemists might considergatherers a necessary evil, but all evils seemed more daunting atmidnight.

She walked through the courtyardwithout incident and entered the twisting maze of streets leadingdown the hill.

The daytime bustle had calmed withnightfall, but Honor was by no means alone on the streets.Rhendish's creations required metal, fuel, leather, wire, stronghempen twine, minerals, oils, and a hundred other things. Many ofthe artisans who supplied the alchemist made their homes on CrystalMountain. Merchants kept shop here, innkeepers supplied ale andentertainment.

A trio of youths staggered out of atavern, arms draped over each other's shoulders for support. Two ofthem sang with drunken enthusiasm and no discernible talent. All ofthem wore the long, pale blue tunics of apprentices in the art ofalchemy.

Honor slipped into the narrow alleyseparating the tavern from a bakery and hurried down a series ofstreets leading to a cooper's shop. Behind it she found a courtyardpaved with large, flat stones and cluttered withbarrels.

A pile of newly cut barrels stavesblocked the stone she wanted. She moved them aside and then pickeda broken copper hoop out of the wreckage of an oldbarrel.

The thin metal strip slid easilyinto the crevice surrounding the stone, but Honor could not findthe clasp that unlocked the door. She probed the entire perimeterof the stone with the copper strip, twice, before admittingdefeat.

Delgar had blocked the tunneldoor.

No doubt there were others nearby,but this was the only one Honor knew. And without it, she had noway to warn Fox-if indeed he was still on Sevrin.

Honor tossed aside the copper stripand retraced her steps to the tavern. The windows had been thrownopen to catch the night breeze. She leaned against the wall nearone of these windows and listened for news of the City Fox,anything that might help her find him.

For good or ill, the tavern'spatrons seemed to talk of little but the thief who'd breachedMuldonny's Stormwall fortress and left the adept dead in the ruinsof his workroom.