Lawrence Watt-Evans: The Sorcerer's Widow

“You’ve lived in Smallgate all your life?”

“More or less.” He looked down at the footboard, wishing she would change the subject.

“Did you serve your apprenticeship there?”

Kel turned to stare at her. “Apprenticeship? I never served an apprenticeship.”

“You didn’t?”

“No!”

“But I thought Ezak said…”

Kel shook his head vigorously. “I was never an apprentice. If Ezak told you otherwise he was joking. He does that, sometimes-makes jokes. I don’t always understand them. They aren’t usually very funny.”

Dorna smiled. “No? I think he’s funny.”

“You’re smarter than I am.”

Dorna seemed to consider that for a moment before saying, “Tell me about your family.”

“Don’t have one,” Kel answered, looking away. “Ma died when I was eight.”

“What about your father, or your grandparents?”

“I don’t have any, so far as I know.”

“Is that why you never served an apprenticeship?”

“That, and other things. I didn’t especially want one.” That was not entirely true, but he did not care to discuss his background with the sorcerer’s widow.

“No? You didn’t want to be a sorcerer, like your friend Ezak?”

Kel spread empty hands.

“Did you ever have any brothers or sisters?” Dorna asked.

“Don’t know. Did you?”

“I have a younger sister. I haven’t seen her in years.”

“Why not?”

“Because…well, she doesn’t live around here.”

“What about your parents? Are they back in Gaffrir?”

“No. My father’s dead, and my mother went home to her parents, in Aldagmor.”

“So you do have grandparents?”

Dorna shook her head. “No,” she said. “At least, I don’t think so, not anymore. But they were still alive when my father died.”

Kel nodded.

They rode on in silence for a few minutes, then Dorna asked, “How did you meet Ezak?”

“Don’t remember,” Kel said.

“You don’t?”

“We were little.”

“Oh. So you’ve been friends all your lives?”

Kel nodded. “Our mothers were friends. He looked after me after my mother died.”

“So you went with him when he was apprenticed?”

Kel knew that Ezak’s real apprenticeship, to a potter, had lasted all of a sixnight before Ezak’s master threw him out for stealing, but he knew Dorna meant Ezak’s imaginary training in sorcery. He certainly wasn’t going to try to tell a bunch of complicated lies about that that might or might not match Ezak’s; instead he told one simple half-truth. “No,” he said. “I stayed in Smallgate and looked after myself. I was bigger by then.”

“So Ezak came back and found you when he was a journeyman?”

“Yes.”

“So what do you do for a living? Are you his assistant?”

“No. We’re just friends. I do odd jobs. What about you?”

Dorna stared at him for a moment, then laughed. “I’m a housewife,” she said. “Though I did help Nabal look after his things.”

Kel gestured at the wagon. “So you know what all those things back there do?”

Dorna hesitated. “Some of them,” she said.

Kel knew this was his opportunity to learn something really useful , to find out what some of the talismans did, and maybe which ones would be most worth stealing, but he couldn’t think of how to phrase a useful question. Talking to Dorna wasn’t like talking to Irien; it had been easy to get Irien talking about herself, about innkeeping, and about her family, but Dorna didn’t seem to want to say much. Her answers seemed short and uninformative-just as Kel tried to keep his own answers. She kept asking him new questions, instead of saying more about herself.

Ezak was going to be disappointed if Kel wasted a chance to find out more about sorcery, but he just could not come up with a good lead-in. And after all, it wasn’t as if Ezak had done all that well himself.

Finally, Kel just said, “Oh?”

“Some of them,” Dorna repeated. Then she leaned back on the wagon-bench and looked at the road ahead, ignoring Kel.

They rode most of the rest of the afternoon in silence.

Kel was embarrassed to realize, when Ezak’s shaking awoke him, that he had dozed off. He lay propped against a wagon-wheel in the night-shrouded stableyard behind the Golden Rooster, the only inn in the village of Shepherd’s Well, and until he started out of his slumber his head had been slumped on his shoulder.

He and Ezak were outdoors in the chilly dark, instead of inside the nice warm inn, because they had not had the money to do otherwise. They had claimed they were going to take turns guarding the wagons, to explain why they didn’t take a room; Ezak did not want to admit they couldn’t afford a room.

Dorna and Irien, of course, had taken a room. At the time Kel had not seen anything odd about that, but now, as he sat up and looked around in the dark, he wondered about it. Irien had told him that the women didn’t trust them, so why had they been allowed to stay out here with the wagons? Something didn’t feel right about that.

“Come on,” Ezak said. “Get up. I want your help with this.”

“With what?” Kel asked, struggling to see his surroundings. Ezak was holding a shuttered lantern, and the stars were out, but neither moon was visible, leaving most of the yard in deep shadow.

“This mounting block.”

“This what?”

“This mounting block! Come on, sleepyhead!”

It took Kel a moment to remember what a mounting block was-a big block of wood or stone that a young or otherwise undersized rider could stand on to make it easier to climb onto a horse. When he did recall it, he asked, “What do you want a mounting block for? I didn’t see any horses.”

“There aren’t any horses. I intend to swap it for that big boxy thing in the sorcerer’s collection.”

Kel remembered the device, or talisman, or whatever it was, that Ezak was referring to. The second-largest of all the magical objects Dorna had loaded into the wagon, it was mostly made of something that gleamed like silver, but was not quite the right color for silver. It was more or less rectangular, but had several odd ribs protruding along its long sides, and dozens, maybe hundreds, of little square inlays in every color of the rainbow were set into its smooth top. “Why?” Kel asked. “What does that one do?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, but Kel, a hunk of magic that big must be worth a fortune! If we can get it out, and put the mounting block in its place, the sorcerer’s widow will never know it’s gone. We can bury it or hide it somewhere and come back for it later.”

Kel hesitated. “Wouldn’t it be safer to steal a few little ones?”

“It might be safer, but it wouldn’t be as profitable. Come on, Kel, give me a hand.”

With a sigh, Kel got to his feet and followed the dim glow of the lantern to the corner where the mounting block sat. There he and Ezak stooped down, each of them taking one side of the stone block, and lifted.

It came up easily. “It’s not as heavy as it looks,” Kel said.

“Heaving it over the side of the wagon without smashing anything is the hard part,” Ezak said. “Come on.”

Carrying the block between them, they made their way back to Dorna’s wagon, where they paused. “Put it down,” Ezak said. “I’ll get the talisman out, and then we’ll put the block in its place.”

“All right,” Kel said. He and Ezak set the block down, and then Kel stepped back and watched as his friend climbed up into the wagon. He saw Ezak open the lantern shutters a little so that he could see his surroundings more clearly, then set the lantern down on the driver’s bench.