Margaret Weis - The reign of Istar

We left the savannah three days after we saw the nomad woman and her child. We made camp that night in a blind canyon, a long slot of stone and tall, rising walls. No need to post watch there. The only way into the canyon was in clear sight of our camp.

We'd no more than built a fire when Alyce looked around to find the kender missing. "Dinn," she said. "Where'd he go?"

The minotaur made the kender's fist-hitting-palm gesture.

"Damn! I told him — " She glanced at me, then took another tack. "Dinn, are you sure?"

Dinn shrugged. "I'm never really sure what he's trying to say, but that is my guess."

Ah, she wasn't happy with that answer. Nor was she very happy when I asked her what the gesture meant. Blue eyes glinting, she said, "It means that that kender's going to find himself in some big trouble next time I see him."

She said no more.

As we ate, the red moon cleared the high canyon walls, spilled light over the stone, made the shadows a web of purple. Alyce, who'd displayed a wharfman's appetite at the Hart, picked only absently at her food. When she tired of that, she bunched a rough woolen blanket into a pillow and stretched out before the fire.

She lay silent, staring up at the narrow sky, the gleaming stars. The fire's flickering glow made her pale cheeks flush rosy, her dark hair shine, but I only watched that from the comer of my eye. Dinn, sitting in the night shadows and honing his daggers, had the most of my attention. He worked with sure, even strokes and sometimes sparks leaped from the steel and stone. When that happened, the minotaur would look up at me, his dark eyes gleaming, his large yellow teeth bared in something like a smile.

"Doune," Alyce said after a while. "We're near Kell's hideout. Tomorrow, we'll be playing a whole different game."

I looked away from Dinn, not liking the sound of that. "What do you mean?"

She looked at me, her eyes neither soft and thoughtful, nor brittle and jeering. She wasn't smiling. Her expression was unreadable.

"Doune," she said. "Can I trust you?"

I answered evenly, though I didn't know where the question was leading. (And, no, it didn't remind me of my own doubt. Doubt had haunted me for the past three days.)

"I swore I'd deal honestly with you, Alyce."

She nodded. "On your old friend's memory."

I said nothing, remembering Peverell's fist-hittingpalm gesture, repeated again tonight. Ambush for Kell, or betrayal for me? I didn't know, and I waited to see where Alyce's questions would lead. Dinn put aside his daggers, watched and waited, too. But he wasn't watching Alyce. He was watching me.

Alyce said, "Doune, you also said that bounty hunting is just business. Can we trust you to stand by us, no matter what we find tomorrow?"

I laughed without humor. "Unless this Kell of yours has an army with him. Then you can trust me to do what anyone with sense would do — cut my losses and run. Live to hunt another day, eh? This is a strange time to be talking about that."

She shrugged. "Not really. Tell me, Hunter-Doune, what would you do if — "

A loud whistle — a sudden pattern of sharp notes, shrill enough to make the hair stir on the back of my neck — broke the night silence.

"Goblins," Dinn rumbled, reaching for his daggers.

I scanned the dark heights, saw nothing but shadows and the baleful eye of the red moon gleaming. I listened hard for Peverell's whistle, but heard only the ghostly echo of night wind trapped in the canyon. Then, darkness become solid, goblins lined the heights, black against the moonlit sky. I counted a dozen. Although distance might fool the eye about details, I knew that the least of them was taller than I and more muscular than even the minotaur.

You might think that none of this mattered much, that we could slip through the shadows and the dark, head for the mouth of the canyon and take our chances running and hiding until we lost them in the dark and the mountains. We couldn't.

A huge goblin stepped forward to the edge of the drop. It held something high, like a dark cleric offering sacrifice. Alyce cursed softly. The goblin held the kender above its head, had voiceless Peverell for a hostage and a shield.

Peverell writhed in the goblin's grip as if he wanted nothing more than to overbalance his captor and send him plunging to a bone-shattered death. So furiously did he struggle that I knew he'd not give a thought to his own bones until he was in midair himself. Yet he was lightly built and had not one tenth of the goblin's strength. His struggling was worth nothing but the goblin's annoyance.

Alyce gestured to Dinn, pointed to the canyon entrance. Wordless understanding passed between them in just one look, as though a whole plan had been unfolded and discussed. The minotaur didn't like it, whatever it was, but Alyce reached up, stroked his red-furred shoulder.

"Don't worry, my friend. I'll be fine. Now, go. Go."

He obeyed, as he always did, but in the fire's light I saw his eyes gleaming, all reflected animal glare and as red as Lunitari hanging high in the sky above the canyon's black walls. A dire warning, that look, and directed at me.

"Don't worry," I said, sarcasm not even thinly veiled. "I'll be fine, too, Dinn."

He exercised admirable restraint, did no more than feint a lunge at me as he passed by — and I still have two eyes today because I kept as still as stone when one of his twisted horns came close to my face. Alyce smiled in a cold, absent way.

"You shouldn't bait him like that, Doune. There might come a time when I'm not near to restrain him."

"Might come a time when I'd welcome that."

She said nothing, likely recognizing bravado when she heard it. I looked over my shoulder at the mouth of the canyon, yawning blackness with silvery stars hanging above. I turned back to Alyce, saw her studying me.

"Is this where a bounty hunter decides to cut his losses and run, Hunter-Doune?"

I snorted. "Could I?"

"Go and try," Alyce said flatly. With her sword's gleaming tip she pointed to the goblins. They'd found a narrow path, a winding way down the black canyon walls. They went slowly, being obliged to keep behind the one who was still shielding himself with Peverell. But they came on steadily, and I saw that my first count was wrong. There were more than a dozen of them; at least twice that. "There's no profit in this for you now, Hunter-Doune."

None at all.

In that moment the silver moon, Paladine's son lagging behind Lunitari as he always does, rose above the stony heights. By Solinari's light I saw Alyce's face in profile, as white as marble. All her attention was on the kender caught in the goblin's dutches.

The big goblin flung the kender to the ground, laughed when he saw him hit the rough stone and tumble the rest of the way to the canyon floor. Peverell lay where he fell, a pitiful jumble of arms and legs. When I looked at Alyce, I saw one thin line of silver on her cheek, moonlit tears.

"Are you with me, Hunter-Doune? Or will you leave me?"

She was not weighing me now, or taunting. She really didn't know how I would answer. By the light of wise Paladine's son, I saw in her eyes the knowledge that with me or without, she'd probably not get out of this canyon alive. I saw her wanting to believe that I would not abandon her here.

I'd be a fool to stay, but that would be nothing new. I'd been a fool for the last three days, should have gotten out when I knew I wasn't sure whether I trusted her. What had made me stay?

It was a jeweled moment, one of those spaces in the soul when you understand that something has happened to change you. Those moments have their sudden, unlookedfor absurdities to send you laughing, if only silently. Once I'd asked the silver moon why I cared what Alyce thought of me. A bit late in answering, was Solinari, but he answered me now, softly, like a whisper in my heart.