horses rather than the more usual bullocks or oxen. Horses meant speed. The convoy must be carrying something vital. Zala noticed the escort was bunched together at the head of the caravan. No one was paying attention to the rear of the procession.
When the last wagon passed her, Zala raced from cover and swung herself into its canvas-shrouded box. She was under cover again in the space of a few breaths. The wagon was filled with assorted casks and crates, all firmly nailed shut.
Once the speeding caravan was inside the city wall, Zala’s wagon pulled hard to the left and stopped, throwing her to the floor.
“Close the gate! Close it!” bawled a hoarse masculine voice.
Zala peered out. Clouds of dust, churned up by the wagons, roiled high into the air. Taking advantage of this cover, Zala slipped out of the wagon and quickly vanished into the unfamiliar streets.
Juramona was preparing for a siege. Lanes nearest the walls had been cleared of obstructions, and the roofs of the houses were covered by green cowhides that could resist fiery arrows. Buckets of sand or water were placed at every corner, and everyone-men and women, youths and oldsters-wore helmets, but there seemed to be few real warriors present. Zala kept her own head firmly covered by her hood, to conceal her upswept ears. One never knew how humans would react to the sight of even a half-elf.
The skills she employed to travel invisibly through field and forest worked just as well in town-perhaps even better, because the town-dwellers were not so in tune with their surroundings as country folk. Many humans credited elves with the ability to make themselves invisible. This was legend, but enjoying the advantage such beliefs gave them, no elf would deny this supposed power.
Zala’s techniques were simple, but required great dexterity. To follow someone unseen, she matched their footfalls so no stray noise would betray her. When standing still, she turned edge-wise from people and, whenever possible, moved toward the left. Most folk, being right-handed, tended to look to the right first before setting out. Taking advantage of this habit allowed a stealthy tracker to keep from being noticed. When looking around trees (or here, the corner of a building), she kept low. People expected to see heads or faces at their own eye level, not close to the ground.
In this way Zala passed like a ghost among the anxious Juramonans. Not till she reached the location described by the empress did she relax her woodland stealth.
The house before her was old and looked long abandoned. Shutters were closed, and crossed timbers were nailed over the front door. Concealing her true purpose, Zala hailed a passing laborer and asked if the house was available for rent.
The youth shifted the hod of bricks he carried off his shoulder and regarded her in wide-eyed astonishment. “The barbarians are coming!” he cried. “Who needs a house at a time like this?”
“I do. Does anyone live here?”
“No! No one’s lived there since Lord Tolandruth left it, before I was born!” The fellow hurried on, shaking his head at the stupidity of strangers.
By such oblique queries, Zala gleaned information about her quarry’s rumored whereabouts. In one street she pretended to be a soldier’s wife seeking news of her husband. In another, she was a peddler trying to collect a debt, and further along, a healer searching for a delirious patient.
As Empress Valaran had surmised, Tolandruth was not in Juramona and hadn’t been for years. However, an intriguing bit of gossip kept coming up. Several people mentioned a man who was said to know Tolandruth well. No one spoke his name; he was referred to as “Tolandruth’s captive,” “the special prisoner,” and most frequently as “the unsightly gardener.”
Inquiring into this mysterious person’s whereabouts, Zala was directed to a rather squalid part of town. She arrived at a row of houses buried beneath the frowning shadow of the High House. Although the day was waning, a few shafts of sunlight still pierced the scattered clouds. At the indicated door, she knocked. No one answered.
The narrow street was empty except for herself and a bony cur gnawing at something dead in the gutter six doors away. Zala inserted her knife in the gap between the door and frame, lifted the latch, and slipped inside.
The room beyond was dark and uninhabited. When her eyes had adjusted, she crept through the room toward the rear of the house. An open window framed a swatch of green and brought the scent of flowers to her nostrils. Remembering the fellow had been called a gardener, Zala slipped warily out the back door. What she saw stopped her in her tracks.
In the small area behind the house, where most folk would have a chicken coop, pig pen, or privy, there was indeed a garden, and no mere kitchen plot for herbs or root vegetables. A verdant carpet of jade-colored grass covered what soil was not already filled with flowers. And such flowers! Sunflowers taller than Zala herself with heads so heavy they had to be supported by strips of ribbon tacked to the lath wall behind; roses, with blooms large as soup bowls and the color of ox blood, filled the air with their dense perfume. Creamy white lilies were beginning to close for the day. Cornflowers, yellow daisies, irises in bold purple and pale gold, violets, and marigolds stood in serried ranks like perfect soldiers. Most remarkable of all was a stand of enormous dandelions, with puffy white heads as big as Zala’s own.
In the center of this magnificent display grew an apple tree, its branches still covered in white blossoms. Fat bumblebees buzzed through the branches, and narrowly avoided collisions with a profusion of butterflies in nearly every color of the rainbow.
Zala’s astonished trance was abruptly shattered by a scraping sound. It came from only a few steps away, from behind a screen of trumpet lilies, their white blooms spotted with red, like blood on snow. Although she circled around the screen with customary stealth, the figure kneeling on its other side knew she was present, though his back was to her.
“You needn’t skulk there. Come forward,” he muttered, continuing to dig the point of a small trowel into the black earth around the lilies.
She advanced, but halted when he turned to look up at her. Her shock was mirrored on his face, and both of them recoiled.
The gardener was a Silvanesti. That fact itself was startling enough, here so far from the elf homeland. But what truly took her aback was his appearance.
Never in her life had Zala beheld such a homely member of the ancient and elegant race of Silvanesti elves. His long hair was a dull dusty gray, tied at the nape of his neck by a scrap of ribbon. Eyes the pale blue of Quenesti Pah’s crystal staff might have been arresting, if they hadn’t been set so close together. Add a long, thin nose, and pale skin covered by too many splotchy brown freckles, and she fully understood the sobriquet he’d been given: he was an unsightly gardener indeed!
For his part, the strange elf recovered quickly from his surprise and said, “So, you’ve come to kill me.”
“What? Why should you think that?” Zala stammered.
“You have the tread of a hunter, but you’re a female half-breed. Such a combination speaks of desperation, so I take you for an assassin.”
Zala folded her arms and put her nose in the air. “I am a tracker, not a murderer. Who are you, that you expect assassins in your own garden?”
“You don’t know me?”
Zala shook her head. He stood, brushing dirt from his Ergothian-style trousers, and said, “I am Janissiron Tylocostathan, formerly general of the armies of the city of Tarsis. Among humans, I am called Tylocost.”
“You’re the one called ‘Tolandruth’s captive?’ ”
“I am. I was defeated in battle and taken prisoner by Lord Tolandruth.”
Time weighed heavily on Zala. Abandoning discretion, she asked, “Where might I find Lord Tolandruth?”
Tylocost smiled, revealing an uneven set of teeth.
“So that’s why you’ve come. I’m sorry. I don’t know where he is.”
He stooped to retrieve his trowel. When he straightened, Tylocost found himself staring down Zala’s Made. The length of polished iron drew nothing more than a shrug from the former general.
“I still don’t know.”
“I think you do. Silvanesti never forget an injury, and this Tolandruth did you
He reached out a long arm and plucked a white rose from its trellis. “You have a fair face for a half-breed,” he said, smiling. The smile vanished as Zala pushed the point of her blade through his cloth jerkin.
