“What?” Kristen asked.
“I know some of those guards. I don’t want them to recognize me.”
He need not have worried. The Blodgett girl was not unattractive. Without stirring any deep fantasies she captured the attention of the caravan men, then was clever enough to leave them al smiling when she walked away.
Kristen whispered, “Check the old woman. She was hoping they would carry her off.”
“Real y, Kristen? You’re not being fair to her now.” Ozora finished ragging Bight. She barked orders meant to get the party moving again.
“Oh, my,” Kristen murmured. “Dahl. Look there.” She indicated a solitary traveler headed east. He was ragged.
He shuffled dispiritedly. He looked like the last of the displaced persons who had trudged every road just a year ago. “Isn’t that Aral?”
“Him or his handsome twin. You get stuff ready here. I’l catch the little sh… bugger.” He bounced up and trotted after the traveler, who appeared not to have noticed the resting Sedlmayrese. Being that far gone in thought was begging Fortune to poke you in the eye.
So. Inger’s Thingmeet was drawing a broader-based crowd than the Queen anticipated.
This could turn interesting.
...
Bragi settled on a weathered block of limestone, exhausted after clambering out of the ruined temple—or whatever it was in its time.
“Damn! I’m stil out of shape! I thought I was getting it back. I was so wrong!”
“It’s not just that,” Michael Trebilcock said, settling nearby.
“The transfer had something to do with it. Look at this guy.
And he does it every day.” He indicated the Tervola Tang Shan, who was just oozing through the gap in tumbled stone masking the stairway down to the hidden portal.
“He’s about twelve and he’s woofing for air.” The Tervola was, likely, older than either of them but had not suffered the wear and tear. He said, “The drain was caused by a filter Lord Yuan instal ed. It keeps the unnamed from tracking who is going where. Lord Yuan wil ameliorate that effect when he has time.” Tang went to assist two bodyguards having trouble getting through the gap because of their size.
Bragi surveyed the world into which they had emerged. It seemed comfortably Kavelin come autumn, after the leaves began to fal , yet he recognized nothing. “Where are we?
This don’t look right.” By which he meant that everything was too clean and tame to have been abandoned long. The surrounding fields had yet to return to nature. The forest, more than two hundred yards downhil in every direction, had not yet begun to encroach on the cleared land. The fields boasted tangles of wild grasses and late wildflowers but none of the scrub and thorny brush that invaded abandoned fields almost instantly elsewhere. Insects buzzed even though the season was late and the nights had to be chil y.
Tang Shan, laboring to make himself understood in a language he did not know wel , explained, “This ruin is eight…miles?…south-southeast of your Vorgreberg.” He extended an arm to point. Ragnarson could just make out smudgy air in that direction. The Tervola continued, “Our instructions are to accompany you partway. We should reach a main road in an hour or two. We wil leave you there, hoping that Destiny has no more cruel tricks in her sack.”
Ragnarson frowned at Trebilcock. Trebilcock shrugged.
“Some idioms don’t translate.”
Tang Shan said, “This was once a temple, important to its cult. It has been abandoned for a century but the consecrating power has not yet faded. It is a good place.” Ragnarson felt that. “I didn’t know it was here.” Something this close to Vorgreberg ought to be common knowledge and part of the local folklore.
Tang said, “You wil have a hard time finding it from outside.
Protective glamours turn you aside gently beginning so far away that you wouldn’t notice except to think you were getting confused the way people can in the forest. Our troops found it while hunting partisans during the occupation. The partisans were unaware of it despite exploiting the surrounding forest for cover.” Ragnarson grunted acknowledgement.
He had encountered similar “outside” islands when he was young and living by his wits and blade. Those, though, had not been sweetly benign. He said, “We should get moving.
These places are never as tame as they try to make you think.”
One eastern soldier smiled thinly. Bragi assumed that meant that arrangements were in place already.
Tang Shan and the lifeguards wore what, at a hundred yards, might pass for local clothing. Any nearer, though, and one would have to be afflicted with terrible eyesight not to see that they were no local peasants. Even Tang was big for Kavelin.
Shan said, “You are correct. We should. Lord Yuan has work waiting for me. I’m looking forward to it.”
“I’m not so sure I stil love you, either.” Ragnarson groaned as he got his legs underneath him.
Trebilcock remarked, “You’d better not need carrying. You do, you’l be having supper with the wolves.”
“I’l manage. It’s al downhil from here.” And up. And sideways. With no road. With no path. Without even a decent game trail trending the proper direction through the autumnpainted tangle of palisade for the ruins.
After two hours Ragnarson gasped, “Shan, how wil you ever find your way back?”
The Tervola grinned. “We’re clever. We have secret skil s.” Trebilcock said, “They’ve been dropping bread crumbs.” Tang agreed. “After a fashion. Worry not. We saw to our needs before we gave any attention to yours.”
“That fil s me with confidence.”
“I am pleased by your praise.”
Ragnarson realized, to his surprise, that he was in better spirits than he had been for an age, though fighting the undergrowth up and down gul y banks was murderously exhausting.
In time, Michael said, “Shan, we’ve been at this for three hours. You said two. Are you leading us around in circles?” Tang Shan, worn out himself, gasped, “I am currently providing the rearguard. If we meander please blame the man out front.”
The man breaking trail was best known as Michael Trebilcock. He did not stop grumbling. But, just minutes later, he flung up a hand for a halt, then used it to cup an ear.
Faint road traffic noise leaked into the woods. The five oozed toward it.
Twenty feet further on the tangle became the usual vaguely groomed Kaveliner woodland where the deadwood stayed harvested and the brush did not get much chance to flourish. It looked exactly the same as far as the eye could see in every direction.
Ragnarson muttered, “There’s some witchcraft stuff going on here.”
“Can’t get anything past you,” Trebilcock countered.
“I’d forgotten what a wiseass you can be.”
“Look there.” Something moved from right to left up ahead.
“Are those camels?”
The shapes were vague through the trees but, yes, those big lumps of ugly were camels. Ragnarson turned to ask the Tervola if he was sure they had come through the right portal.
There were no easterners to be seen.
While Ragnarson gawked at their absence Trebilcock drifted forward, sniffing. “No doubt about it. Those are camels. And I know where we are.”
“They’re gone. Those three. Vanished.”
“They stepped back inside the il usion. Ask Varthlokkur to look for the place next time you see him. We’re just south of the southern road west. Sedlmayr is off that way maybe forty miles. Two or three miles that way is your old house.
Two more miles and we’l be knocking on the castle gate.” Ragnarson snorted. “I can imagine the party my wife wil throw if she finds out I’m back.”
“She might surprise you. So. Let’s strol on over there and take a gander at a world that has camels in it.” Bragi was reluctant. He no longer had the inclination to play politics. He was a blunted sword, possibly bent, maybe even broken.
