Malraun did not bother to watch it go. He had far. more interesting concerns than a mere Aumrarr and her toy. His recent intrigues had brought no less than three thrones to the verge of collapse, and he was determined that two of those realms would be his before another moonrise.
They were well beyond the guardpost, tramping down a rutted dirt road between walled gardens- creeper- cloaked walls of stone with the roofs of thatched homes rising beyond them-before Taeauna took her hand off Rod's arm in a silent signal that they were now far enough from the guards to speak freely.
She promptly did. Beginning with a snort, a shake of her head, and the murmur, 'Only in Arbridge would they name an inn so.'
'The Two Drowned Knights?' Rod grinned. 'I thought it amusing, yes.'
'Oh? I thank you for the warning,' the Aumrarr said tartly.
She'd done all the talking to win them safely past the wary Arbren warriors, and Rod had been only too glad to stand there looking old and in pain and dull-witted, while the guards discussed him with her as if he were a sack of meat or a placidly deaf ox.
There'd been much discussion, thanks to Taeauna's skillful tongue. They'd learned that a Lord Tharlark ruled in Arbridge now, and that he'd been armsmaster to Sir Sahrlor, the dead knight of Artown, and was a hard- bitten warrior who wanted Falconfar to be rid of all magic and wizards. Tharlark no longer dwelt in town, but had taken Tabbrar Castle at the far end of the vale as his abode, once home to the dead Sir Tabbrar.
It seemed that fear ruled Arbridge now, and kept honest folk abed inside their barred and shuttered homes of nights, but just what caused that fear, the guards had not wanted to speak of, beyond warning the Aumrarr and the old man with her not to camp in a field or hay-heap by night, but to hie themselves inside an inn, pay the coin demanded, and stay there until after sunrise.
'So,' Taeauna said, as they reached a moot where cobbled streets of close-crowded stone-and-thatch homes and shops opened out all around them, and men hurrying to get indoors cast them suspicious looks. 'Behold The Two Drowned Knights. Old sir, do you again bide silent, and let me talk and pay.'
She tapped a purse heavy with takings from Highcrag, and cast a level look at Rod, who nodded silently. Men gazed eagerly upon the Aumrarr, and seemed happy to get her attention and converse with her; whereas he could have been a dusty piece of familiar furniture, too broken-down to use, and too immobile to need noticing.
Taeauna strode across the street as if she lived in Arbridge, and Rod hastened to follow.
The inn was a tall, square, ugly stone fortress of a building, its ground floor lacking any windows that Rod could see. The Aumrarr thrust open its front door and shouldered her way past several muttering local men, into warmth and feeble lantern light. They fell abruptly silent at the sight of the severed stubs of her wings; Rod shouldered through that silence in her wake, meeting the gaze of no one.
The common room was as dimly lit as Rod had expected, and crowded with dark and massive furniture. It wasn't crowded with patrons, though; only a few folk were seated dining and drinking.
Spiced ale, salty broth, or mulled wine: it all came in the same tall, battered metal tankard, and with the same hand-loaves of coarse, dark rallow-bread. Taeauna ordered the wine for herself and the broth for Rod, and they shared them, passing the tankards back and forth like husband and wife.
Not that any of the locals-almost all of them men in leather and homespun, weary after a day's work-cared if the Aumrarr and the old man were a couple or otherwise. They were too busy leaning forward over their own tankards and excitedly impressing a handful of peddlers and traveling wagon merchants with tales of the latest peril to afflict Arbridge.
The Wolfheads, it seemed, had come to Arvale. And the Snakefaces, too.
As the winter past had begun, ran their talk, Dark Helms had suddenly infested Arbridge. Raiding every few days, searching every barn and cottage and swording everyone who didn't flee fast enough, the Helms had scoured the vale from one end to the other, even appearing in Tabbrar Castle. Always they came 'from nowhere,' apparently melting out of empty air, menacing crofter and lord alike.
In spring the Dark Helms had suddenly stopped coming. The fear they'd brought, however, hadn't faded one whit. For no sooner had the dark-armored warriors ceased to be seen in Arvale, then a new menace appeared: snake-and wolf-headed men who wore masks of living flesh to appear human, and posed as traders by day, but let slip their masks to prowl the vale and murder Arfolk by night.
For years Arbridge had known few visitors from afar, but the Snakefaces were hidden among a flood of unfamiliar wagon merchants from distant holds and kingdoms, who were suddenly everywhere in Arbridge and Galath, and Tauren and Sardray beyond, too. These merchants sold mirrors, cast metal ewers and decanters, well-made coffers and kegs, saws and hasps and nails, daggers and buckles and cheeses and all manner of things useful and exotic, and bought hides and smoked joints of meat from Arbren.
There had been mages among the traders, too. Not spell-tyrants like the fabled Dooms, but more ordinary folk, both old and young. Bony and fat, I hey worked little charms and wardings, and sold potions to heal the sick and make the uncaring fall in love.
'None of them lasted long,' one drover said darkly from nearby, wrapping both of his large and hairy hands around his tankard as if it were a wizard's neck. 'The Vengeful saw to that.'
Vengeful? Nothing he'd created, Rod was certain. Taeauna was also listening with that slight frown that meant, he was increasingly sure, that she was encountering something new. And troublesome.
'The who?' a wagon merchant asked, rubbing his chin.
The two men of Ar shook their heads and put up their hands in warding gestures, and just in case the merchant was too dense to take the hint, one of them muttered, 'Shouldn't have said anything at all; we don't speak of them.'
The merchant nodded, but then leaned forward and plucked at the arm of one of the pair, and muttered, 'Well enough, I'll not pry. Yet I'd take it kindly if you'd answer me this: I was seeking a woman who owes one of my business partners quite a debt, and was told in Tauren she was slain by the Vengeful. Now, she could well have been a sorceress, from what some have said. Does this sound right to you? These Vengeful; they'd slay a sorceress?'
The Arbren pair glanced around to see if anyone was listening, making Rod glad he'd just looked away from them and was now peering at their reflection in the shiny, unadorned signet ring he always wore on the middle finger of his left hand. Then one of them nodded curtly and emphatically.
'Good,' the merchant said, 'I can stop wasting time looking for her then.'
'So,' the drover said to him, 'you've come through Tauren? What news? I've a brother lives there…'
'Finish your broth and come,' Taeauna murmured to Rod. 'And try to look sad and old and exhausted.'
'Behold my stellar acting,' Rod said wearily, setting down his empty tankard and rising reluctantly and stiffly to follow her. He hadn't walked this much in a day for years.
'No wings?' asked the innkeeper, as he took her coins and pushed a long-barreled key across his desk to her.
'The first part of my punishment,' Taeauna almost spat at him, and then pointed at Rod with the key as if it were a dagger. 'The second part.'
The innkeeper grimaced sympathetically, shrugged, and said, 'Through yon arch, turn left, end of the passage. Match the key to the image burned into the door.'
The Aumrarr thanked him with a nod, and motioned curtly with her head for Rod to precede her.
As they reached the end of the passage she stopped outside their door, peered hard at the adjacent walls as if expecting them to bristle with hidden doors, and then muttered to Rod, 'Forgive my coldness. I must act the right part to keep you from being suspected of being a wizard. As an Aumrarr working off a blood-debt, I'll be expected to guard you, sleeping across the entrance to wherever you slumber.'
She unlocked the door and stalked into the room beyond, hunting around it as if expecting Dark Helms under the linens and behind every curtain. A dim, dancing light was coming from a candle-end set in a bowl-shaped rock. There was a single bed, with linens and furs and a scattering of cushions, a large window with shutters and no glass, a larger wooden wardrobe affixed solidly to the wall, and two curtained-off corners of the room: behind one curtain was an ewer of wash water standing in a basin on a shelf, and behind the other stood a chipped chamber pot. The window shutters and the door could both be barred from inside the room, and the Aumrarr set bars into place without delay. Then she flung open the wardrobe doors, which were as large as the door they'd come in by, and thumped the back of its dusty emptiness suspiciously. Solid. Then she checked the floors, ceiling, and walls,
