Lawrence Watt-Evans - Taking Flight

Larsi glared, then gestured.

The sword was withdrawn from Asha’s throat.

“Fine friends you bring in here, Irith,” Larsi said, in a voice that dripped scorn.

Irith shrugged and grinned. “Just a little harmless excitement,” she said. “Traveling can be so boring!”

“I like it boring,” Larsi said. She waved an arm at the other customers, and for the first time Kelder realized they were all staring at the little group at the end of the table. “My customers like it boring. They don’t like kids screaming and people yelling and blades being drawn, any more than I do. Now, if you three can keep it boring, you can stay, but if there’s any more excitement, out!”

“Yes, Larsi,” Irith said, ducking her head in a sort of nod.

“Agreed, mistress,” Kelder said.

Asha glared.

Larsi glared back, and at last the little girl broke and said, “All right, I promise.”

“Good,” Larsi said.

The young man sheathed his sword and left, while Larsi lowered the tray, displaying three plates of stew, three mugs, and a few other implements.

When Larsi had served out the contents of the tray and departed Kelder took a good look around the room, which showed him that, except for an occasional nervous glance, the other customers had returned to their own affairs.

Thus reassured, he turned to Asha and said, “All right, now, tell us the whole story. What were you doing out there following your brother? Why was he a bandit in Angarossa, if you’re from Amramion?”

Asha was shoveling stew into her mouth with a wooden spoon, and Kelder realized that she probably hadn’t eaten all day. He waited until she paused before repeating his questions.

“Amramion isn’t exactly the other side of the World from here,” Asha retorted. “Two days ago I was still living at home.”

Kelder frowned. “All right, then,” he said, “why aren’t you living at home now?”

“Because I came after Abden.”

“But why? Aren’t you a bit young to be out on your own?”

Asha hesitated. She studied Kelder’s face, and then Irith’s. “I ran away,” she said.

“Go on,” Kelder said.

“I ran away,” she repeated, “and I didn’t have anywhere else to go, I didn’t have any family or friends to stay with, except Abden.”

“And he was one of those bandits?”

She nodded. “He ran away last year,” she said, “and he didn’t know where else to go, so he went east, and he got stopped by bandits, and he didn’t have any money, and he wasn’t worth any ransom, but he was big and strong and knew how to fight, so they let him join. He sent me a message and told me about it.”

“And then they all got killed today,” Kelder said.

Asha nodded again and sniffled.

“But what were you doing?”

“I ran away the day before yesterday,” she said. “I couldn’t … I mean, I wanted to see Abden and stay with him. I found him this morning, and he said that I couldn’t stay there, that they didn’t have any way to take care of me, but I hung around and tried to think of something, because I couldn’t go back home. And then the scout came back and said a caravan was coming, so they all rode out to meet it, and I ran after them, but when I got there they were all dead, and you two were there and nobody else was, and I didn’t know what to do, so I followed you.”

She looked up at him. “And here we are,” she said.

He looked down at her. “How old are you, Asha?” he asked.

She frowned. “Not sure,” she said. “Nine, I think.”

Not sure? Kelder started at that. How could she not know how old she was?

He pushed that aside and said, “Nine’s too young to be out on your own.”

“I know that,” she said. “That’s why I came to stay with Abden!” She sniffled. “And he’s gone now.”

“So shouldn’t you go home, then?” Irith asked.

“No,” Asha said flatly.

Kelder looked at Irith, who shrugged, tossing her hair delightfully.

“What are you going to do, then?” Kelder asked.

Asha looked down at the table. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

“What would you like to do?” Irith asked.

The child looked up again. “I’d like to find that caravan and kill everybody in it! They killed my brother, and he wasn’t going to hurt anybody!”

“You don’t know that,” Kelder said. “Or at least they didn’t know that. And he was going to rob them, wasn’t he? That might well hurt them; they make their livings trading, they could starve.”

Asha glared at him and said nothing.

“Being a bandit is a dangerous business,” Kelder pointed out. “Your brother must have known that.”

She turned away.

“Killing them wouldn’t help your brother any, you know.”

“Nothing can help him now,” Asha said bitterly. “He won’t even get a decent funeral.”

“Well,” Kelder said, considering that, “maybe we could do something about that, the three of us. We could go back and build a pyre for him.” The prophecy was running through his head-a champion of the lost and forlorn, honored by the dead. “We don’t have a theurgist or a necromancer to guide his soul, but at least we could set it free.”

“No, we couldn’t,” Asha said.

“Why not?” Kelder asked, puzzled.

“Because,” she reminded him, “they took his head.”

Kelder had completely forgotten that unsavory detail. Asha was quite correct; as he had noticed, the caravan had taken all the bandits’ heads, impaled on pikes as a warning to other would-be attackers. That was standard procedure for thieves, Kelder knew, but he had never before considered the religious consequences.

If someone died and nobody burned the body, the soul would be trapped for weeks, or months, or even years, unable to fly free and search for a way to the gods of the afterlife. It would be prey to ghost-catchers and night-stalkers and demonologists, who respectively enslaved souls, ate them, or used them to pay demons for their services. That wasn’t just theory; there were enough ways for magicians to communicate with the dead that the exact nature of ghosts was well-established.

And one established fact was that you couldn’t burn a body properly unless you had at least the heart and the head. It was better to have the whole thing, but the heart and head were the absolute minimum.

Cutting off a thief’s head and posting it suddenly seemed like a rather nasty custom.

It also, it seemed, offered an opportunity to do something that was a very clear and definite step toward achieving his promised destiny. If he were to champion Asha, who was undoubtedly lost and forlorn, by freeing her brother’s soul, he would doubtlessly be honored by that dead soul; that was a good part of his fate right there.

It would also impress Irith, which he wouldn’t mind at all. He could be a hero to this little girl and her dead brother, at any rate, and without slaying any dragons or doing anything else all that dangerous.

“Maybe,” he said hesitantly, “maybe we could get his head back somehow.”

“Are you crazy?” Irith said, even as Asha looked up at Kelder with dawning hope in her eyes.

That was not the reaction Kelder had hoped for. “I don’t think so,” he replied, a bit defensively. “I mean, why couldn’t we? They don’t need them all, just for display!”

Irith frowned, opened her mouth, then closed it again.

“You are crazy,” she said.

Kelder glowered at her-this was not at all the reaction he had expected, but he was not about to back down now in front of Asha, after getting her hopes up-and especially not with part of the prophecy at stake. “It wouldn’t hurt to ask,” he said. “What harm could it do? You know that the caravan is here in town, we both saw it…”