Taking Flight

“Kelder,” Irith gasped, “Kelder, let go of me!”

Kelder stumbled on dew-moistened grass, and Irith pulled free. She turned, and saw Ezdral, with incredible speed for a man in his battered condition, charging down at her.

She squealed in terror, and froze for a few seconds. Then, as Ezdral neared, she vanished, and a frightened bird fluttered upward into the night.

An instant later the enraged Ezdral, unable to stop on the steep, slippery slope, lunged through the spot where Irith had stood and went tumbling over the verge and into the river.

He struck with a tremendous splash; a few drops spattered Kelder’s breeches. And then, to Kelder’s horror, the waters closed over the old man and began to calm.

Ezdral did not reappear.

“Irith!” Kelder screamed. “Save him!”

Irith transformed herself in mid-air, from bird to winged girl, and called back, “Are you joking? He tried to kill me! Besides, I’d get soaked.”

“But he’ll drown!”

“He’s an icky old drunkard,” Irith replied. “Let him drown!”

Words failed him, and Kelder, desperate, dove over the bank and into the river.

He struck the water unevenly, arms and legs flailing, and was astonished at how much the impact hurt — he hadn’t thought water was that solid. Then he was in the water — and under it, as he quickly discovered that Irith was right, swimming is something one needs to learn, it does not happen by instinct.

He thrashed wildly, trying to get his head above water, but to no avail; the air rushed from his lungs, and the water closed over his head. He floundered, reaching for the bottom with his feet and not finding it. He tried to call for help, and the water flooded his mouth and nose, choking him. His chest felt as though it were about to burst.

Everything went black, and he waited to die — but death did not come.

Instead, strong arms took hold of him, twisted him around until his face was out of the water. He couldn’t see his rescuer as he felt himself dragged through the current, as firm hands clasped his arms and hauled him up onto the bank.

The pressure on Kelder’s chest became unbearable; his mouth opened, and he vomited what felt like the entire river out onto the grass.

And with that out of the way, he fainted.

Chapter Thirty-Five

When he awoke Kelder needed a long moment to figure out where he was. The ceiling was whitewashed and featureless, with morning sun streaked across it, and at first that was all he could see. He was in a bed, he knew that by the feel of the mattress and bedclothes, but which bed he could not tell.

It gradually sank in that he was in his bed at Valder’s inn.

He turned his head and found Valder’s serving maid, Thetta, sitting beside him, reading something from a small stack of papers. He tried to speak, to ask her what was happening, but all that came out was a croak.

That was enough; she looked up from the papers and said, surprised, “You’re awake!”

Kelder was unsure just how to respond to so obvious a statement, but since his voice didn’t seem to be working yet, that didn’t matter much. He croaked again in confirmation of her observation.

“Just a minute,” Thetta said, giving him a comforting pat on the shoulder. “I’ll go get Valder.” She rose, and hurried out the door.

Kelder used the time until her return to see if he could get his voice working, and when Valder and Thetta entered he was able to ask, still in a croak but intelligibly, “What happened?”

“The soldiers pulled you out,” Valder said. “Ezdral, too. They heard the splashing, and Irith yelling, and they came and got you.”

That made sense, Kelder saw. “Is Ezdral all right?” he asked.

Valder grimaced. “More or less,” he said. “He didn’t drown, if that’s what you mean, and he didn’t swallow as much water as you did, or breathe any in — Kelder, don’t you know anything about being in the water?”

Kelder shook his head.

“Well,” Valder told him, “you did just about everything wrong it’s possible to do.”

Kelder shrugged and smiled wryly. That much he could do; it was only things involving breathing or his throat that were painful.

“Anyway,” Valder went on, “Ezdral didn’t drown, but he came out of the river still screaming at Irith, and mad at you, and me, and Asha, and just about everybody else. Not that I blame him.” He sighed. “I had the soldiers keep him, and they took him back to Ethshar when their relief arrived — they’re well on the way by now; that was hours ago.”

Kelder blinked. “What...” he began, and found he didn’t have the breath to continue. He tried again. “What will happen to...” Again, his wind gave out.

“What will happen to him there?” Valder guessed, and Kelder nodded. “I don’t know,” Valder admitted. “I asked them to try to find him a job, maybe clerking for one of the guard captains, but I don’t know if that’ll work. If not, I suppose he’ll wind up in the Hundred-Foot Field — but that’s better than the back market in Shan, I’m sure.”

Kelder swallowed carefully, readying his throat, and asked, “What is the Hundred-Foot Field?” He had wondered that ever since Azraya had first mentioned it.

“Oh, don’t you know?” Valder smiled. “Well, Ethshar is a walled city,” he explained, “and it was built during the Great War, when the walls and defenses were serious business, so it has what is probably the biggest, fanciest city wall ever built. It goes around three sides of the city, and the fourth side is the waterfront. There’s an entire army camp built into it on the east side — they call the area near there Camptown, as a result. Even so, though, if there was a real war, and the city was under assault, or siege, the wall isn’t big enough to move all the troops and equipment you might need from one spot to another, and it’s too big to man and equip the whole thing constantly. So there’s a strip of land just inside the wall that Azrad the Great declared had to always be kept clear to allow troop movements, a strip extending one hundred feet in from the inner side of the wall. The inner edge is a street, naturally — Wall Street — but nobody needs a hundred-foot-wide street, especially when you can only build on one side of it, so the rest is an open field. That’s the Hundred-Foot Field. The penalty for building anything permanent there, even just a few bricks stacked up, is death.”

Kelder still looked puzzled, and Valder added, “And since it’s the only place inside the wall where nothing can be built, including fences, and since it goes all the way around the city, it’s where all the beggars and thieves live. It’s a sort of labor pool, too — anyone who hasn’t got a place will wind up there, and some of them aren’t thieves, just down on their luck, so when someone needs workers and isn’t too particular, he can just go to the Field and give a shout, and usually get half a dozen. I used men from the Hundred-Foot Field when I built this inn, two hundred years ago.” He smiled reassuringly. “Ezdral could do worse than winding up in the Field, believe me.”

Azraya had not been so sanguine about it, and she had actually lived there, while Valder presumably had not. “It doesn’t sound any better than Shan,” Kelder said bitterly.

Valder shrugged. “Well, you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved,” he said, “and at least you got the spell off him, so he has a chance now, once he calms down. Besides, Shan on the Desert is dying, it’s been declining for a century — nobody wants to go all the way out to the end of the World, and now there are other places to get most of what Shan sells. The Great Highway isn’t all that great any more; it used to carry three times the traffic it does now. Most of my customers here are bound to Sardiron or one of the Ethshars; those are all healthy and growing.”

Kelder was mollified, but not entirely convinced. He had wanted to do better in his role as champion of the downtrodden. He had found Asha a place, here at the inn; he had wanted to do the same for everyone he had