westward travels. At last, the yellowish sky began to grow brown and dim, and Tanalasta was about to suggest that they make camp for the night when the wind suddenly filled with the overpowering scent of old death.
The princess pulled up short, and the odor vanished as quickly as it had come.
“Did you smell that, Vangerdahast?” She felt certain that her face had gone pale.
“Something like rancid blood?” He pointed into the wind. “From somewhere up there?”
Tanalasta nodded.
“No, I didn’t smell anything.”
The wizard turned Cadimus into the wind and urged him forward, leaving Tanalasta to puzzle over his rash behavior. She followed a few paces behind, wishing she had some way other than magic to defend herself. The odor returned again, this time stronger, then began to vanish and return at increasingly frequent intervals. Vangerdahast kept altering his course until the stench grew more or less constant. The princess began to notice mats of green moss and rich grass growing between the stones. Finally, a curtain of white steam appeared ahead, silhouetting a column of scraggly smoke trees arrayed along a chain of low, rocky hummocks.
Vangerdahast stopped beneath a wispy bough and peered down at the base of the hummocks. Tanalasta joined him, nearly gagging on the smell of brimstone and iron as she approached, then found herself looking down into a steep-sided ravine of raw red ground. Through the bottom of the gulch ran a steaming brook of blood-colored water, gurgling northward over a bed of jagged, rust-stained boulders.
“Crimson Creek?” she asked.
Vangerdahast nodded. “Right where you said it would be.” He turned upstream and started to ride along the rim of the gulch. “Come along. We’ll make camp at Orc’s Pool.”
“You know where we are?”
Vangerdahast shook his head. “Never seen this place before.”
“I think we’d better make camp here.” Tanalasta glanced at the dimming heavens, then added, “It’ll soon be too dark to ride.”
“We have time.” Vangerdahast continued to ride. When Tanalasta made no move to follow, be stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “Perhaps you’d like to bet? Double or nothing?”
“Double what?” Tanalasta studied the steaming creek and shook her head. For the water to be that hot, the source had to be nearby. “No deal, Old Snoop. I see your game.”
“Do you now?” Vangerdahast smiled, then urged his horse forward. “I guess you’re just too smart for me, Tanalasta, too smart by far.”
The pool turned out to be even nearer than the princess expected. She followed Vangerdahast along the ravine for a quarter mile, then the steam began to thin, and the creek suddenly grew as colorless as air. They spent several minutes staring into the ravine in puzzlement, then finally dismounted and started to lead their horses down the embankment. As they descended, a scarlet ribbon appeared in the steam opposite them, curling down between the nebulous bulges of two rocky hummocks on the far shore.
Tanalasta pointed toward the ribbon. “I assume Orc’s Pool is rather bloody looking?”
“That would be correct. Are you certain those spell-beggars in Huthduth didn’t make a diviner out of you?”
Tanalasta frowned, trying to decide whether the wizard was mocking her or trying to compliment her. “It’s just common sense.”
“I’ve heard that’s all priestly divination is,” the wizard replied. “Now, real magic-“
‘Would do us no good, under the circumstances,” said Tanalasta. “And I would like you to stop referring to my friends as ‘spell-beggars.’”
Vangerdahast tipped his head. “As you command, Princess.”
They reached the ravine bottom and crossed a mat of mossy grass to the water’s edge, then tested its temperature with their fingers before mounting and riding across. On the far side, they followed the scarlet brook up a small, gently-sloping vale. Though no vegetation grew within two paces of the creek, a luxuriant growth of grass covered the walls of the valley, and the stench changed from brimstone-and-iron to just iron. Once Tanalasta grew accustomed to the odor and no longer associated it with blood, she actually found the smell tolerable.
At length, they reached the end of the valley, where the brook spilled over a rocky headwall from a steaming basin above. When no sentries emerged to greet or challenge them, they tethered their horses to a wild mulberry tree and crept the rest of the way on foot, mindful of the possibility that an orc tribe-or something worse-had forced Alusair to abandon the rendezvous. They found nothing but a small pool of blood-colored water, ringed on all sides by a boulder-strewn collar of green grass and low cliffs of rusty red basalt.
“This is Orc’s Pool?” Tanalasta asked.
“Of course. How many red pools do you think there are in the Stonelands?”
Tanalasta frowned. “Now that you mention it, Gaspaeril Gofar’s treatise mentioned over sixty bodies of iron- tinted water.”
“This is the one,” Vangerdahast said. “I recognize it.”
The wizard clambered over the headwall and led the way toward a ring of boulders on the southern shore of the pool. As they crossed the meadow, Tanalasta noticed a single square yard of freshly-turned ground. Leaving Vangerdahast to continue on his own, she stopped to examine it. The stones had been carefully removed from the dirt and piled along the edges, and there was a small dimple in the center where the soil had been wetted by a cupful of water.
From up ahead, Vangerdahast called, “They’re here-at least someone is.”
Tanalasta went to join the wizard at the circle of stones. As she approached, she smelled a familiar haylike odor and saw the broom of a horse’s tail swing out from behind a boulder.
“Alusair?” she called.
“I don’t think so,” answered Vangerdahast.
Tanalasta stepped around the boulder to find a hidden, well-used camp large enough to accommodate a company of twenty people. At the present time, there was only a tethered horse and Vangerdahast, seated on the saddle that had been taken from the beast’s back. A pair of dusty boots sat on the ground next to him, and he was going through the pockets of a tunic and breeches that had been left beside a neatly folded traveling cape.
“Vangerdahast, what do you think you’re doing?” Tanalasta demanded.
“Trying to find out who this belongs to,” the wizard replied, “and whether or not he’s one of Alusair’s boys.”
“He is.”
The voice came from behind Tanalasta, so close that it made her scream and leap into the air. She came down facing the speaker, clutching a sharp stone she had been carrying in lieu of her magic dagger. The man was naked and wet, with shoulder-length hair and skin still flushed from the heat of the pool, and he didn’t look half-bad. In fact, he looked more than half-good, with dark hair and darker eyes, chiseled features, and a proud chin with just a hint of a cleft. He had shoulders as broad as a door, arms the size of Tanalasta’s thighs, not even a hint of a belly, and… she blushed, for it was not every day that a princess saw such sights.
“Your Highness, forgive me!” The man sounded mortified. Still holding his sword and scabbard, he lowered his hands and covered himself. “I wasn’t expecting you with the stonemurk today, and I was availing myself of the water when I heard someone approaching.”
When Tanalasta did not reply, the man tried to slip past. “I do beg your forgiveness, Princess, but we’ve lost a few men on this journey, and I had to be cautious.”
It finally dawned on Tanalasta that she was staring. “On my honor!” The princess let the stone drop from her hand and turned away, her face burning as though she were the one who had just climbed from the pool’s steaming waters. “P-please, think no more of it.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Tanalasta saw Vangerdahast smile.
“Well then, maybe this trip was worth it after all,” said the wizard. He passed the man his clothes. “And who might you be, son?”
“My name is Rowen,” the man said. Tanalasta heard the snap of pant legs being flapped open. “Rowen Cormaeril.”
Tanalasta felt the blood rush from her cheeks even more quickly than it had rushed into them. She turned, slowly, to find the man now standing in tunic and breeches.
“Of… of relation to Gaspar Cormaeril?” she asked.
