unexpectedly lashed out with the butt of his pike, catching him with a painful blow to the stomach. It knocked the wind out of him and caused him to land on his rump in the mud of the road. The door in the gate slammed shut.
Lyran lowered Martis down onto the pallet, and knelt beside her. He covered her with every scrap of ragged blanket or quilt that he could find. She was half out of her mind with fever now, and coughing almost constantly. The cheap lamp of rock-oil gave off almost as much smoke as light, which probably didn’t help the coughing any.
“Martis?” he whispered, hoping against hope for a sane response.
This time he finally got one. Her eyes opened, and there was sense in them. “Lyr—” she went into a coughing fit. He helped her to sit up, and held a mug of water to her mouth. She drank, her hand pressed against his, and the hand was so hot it frightened him.
“Take me—to the Citymaster—” He shook his head. “I tried; they will not let me near. I cannot prove that I am what I say—”
“Gods. And I can’t—magic to prove it.”
“You haven’t even been answering me.” He put the cup on the floor and wedged himself in behind her, supporting her. She closed her eyes as if even the dim light of the lamp hurt them. Her skin was hot and dry, and tight-feeling, as he stroked her forehead. “The storm—witched.”
“You said as much in raving, so I guessed it better to avoid looking for the city wizard. Tell me what I must do!”
“Is there—money—?”
“A little. A very little.”
“Get—trevaine-root. Make tea.”
He started. “And poison you? Gods and demons—!”
“Not poison.” She coughed again.“It’ll put me—where I can trance. Heal myself. Only way.”
“But—”
“Only way I know,” she repeated, and closed her eyes. Within moments the slackness of her muscles told him she’d drifted off into delirium again.
He lowered her back down to the pallet, and levered himself to his feet. The bed and the lamp were all the furnishings this hole of a room had; Martis had bigger closets back at High Ridings. And he’d been lucky to find the room in the first place. The old woman who rented it to him had been the first person he’d accosted that had “felt” honest.
He blew out the lamp and made his way down to the street. Getting directions from his hostess, he headed for the marketplace. The ragged and threadbare folk who jostled him roused his anxiety to a fever-pitch. He sensed that many of them would willingly knife him from behind for little or no reason. He withdrew into himself, shivering mentally, and put on an icy shell of outward calm.
The streets were crowded; Lyran moved carefully within the flow of traffic, being cautious to draw no attention to himself. He was wearing a threadbare tunic and breeches nearly identical to a dozen others around him; his own mage-hireling silk was currently adorning Martis’ limbs beneath her mage-robes. The silk was one more layer of covering against the chill—and he didn’t like the notion of appearing in even stained mage-hireling red in public; not around here. He closed his mind to the babble and his nose to the stench of unwashed bodies, uncleaned privies, and garbage that thickened the air about him. But these people worried him; he had only his knife for defense. What if some of this street-scum should learn about Martis, and decide she was worth killing and robbing? If he had his swords, or even just a single sword of the right reach and weight, he could hold off an army —but he didn’t, nor could he afford one. The only blades he’d seen yet within his scanty resources were not much better than cheap metal clubs.
Finally he reached the marketplace. Trevaine-root was easy enough to find, being a common rat-poison. He chose a stall whose owner “felt” reasonably honest and whose wares looked properly preserved, and began haggling.
A few moments later he slid his hand inside his tunic to extract the single coin he required from the heart- breakingly light money-belt, separating it from the others by feel. The herbalist handed over the scrap of root bound up in a bit of old paper without a second glance; Lyran hadn’t bought enough to seem suspicious. But then, it didn’t take much to make a single cup of strong tea.
Lyran turned, and narrowly avoided colliding with a scarred man, a man who walked with the air of a tiger, and whose eyes were more than a little mad. Lyran ducked his head, and willed himself invisible with all his strength. If only he had a
Lyran was heading out of the market and back to the boarding-house when he felt an unmistakable mental “pull,” not unlike the calling he had felt when he first was moved to take up the Way of the sword, the pull he had felt when he had chosen his Teacher. It did not “feel” wrong, or unbalanced. Rather, it was as if Something was sensing the need in him for a means to protect Martis, and was answering that need.
Hardly thinking, he followed that pull, trusting to it as he had trusted to the pull that led him to the doorstep of the woman destined to be his Teacher, and as he had followed the pull that had led him ultimately to the Mage Guild at High Ridings and to Martis. This time it led him down the twisting, crooked path of a strangely silent street, a street hemmed by tall buildings so that it scarcely saw the sun; a narrow street that was wide enough only for two people to pass abreast. And at the end of it—for it proved to be a dead-end street, which accounted in part for the silence—was an odd little junk shop.
There were the expected bins of rags, cracked pottery pieces, the scavenged flotsam of a thousand lives. Nothing ever went to waste in this quarter. Rags could be patched together into clothing or quilts like those now covering Martis; bits of crockery were destined to be fitted and cemented into a crazy-paving that would pass as a tiled floor. Old papers went to wrap parcels, or to eke out a thinning shoe-sole. No, nothing was ever thrown away here; but there was more to this shop than junk, Lyran could sense it. People could find what they
“You require something, lad,” said a soft voice at his elbow.
