even handle them too long, I'll somehow get taken inside that castle.'
'And what do you fear will happen to you there?'
Rod looked at her. 'That someone will hand me all this power you keep saying I have.'
'And?'
'And I'll do the wrong thing, and wreck Falconfar.'
''Wreck?''
'Kill everyone, hurl down kingdoms, make the mountains erupt, the seas drown the land, that sort of thing.'
'But what you write, everything you do, you can reverse by writing more. You can put it all back.'
'No, Tay,' Rod whispered. 'You can't. I can't. One can't. No one can ever put it all back. Once something's done, it's done. You can try to put it back, but the damage is done; you can never repair it all.'
Something sad and terrible rose in Taeauna's eyes, and she whispered, 'You're learning. Lord Rod Everlar, you are learning, and finally handing me hope thereby.'
And she turned and blew out the last lamp.
Her voice had sounded as if she was on the trembling edge of tears; hesitantly Rod reached out a hand for her, in the darkness, meaning only to comfort.
It was captured in her fingers, and firmly turned over. Her lips brushed his palm in the softest of kisses before his hand was firmly returned to him.
'Please, lord, let me sleep,' she whispered, sounding even closer to tears.
'Of course,' Rod mumbled, rolling over.
He lay there as still as he could, listening for her to settle into sleep, but Falconfar's god of slumber-if Falconfar had a god of slumber-got to him first.
'Which one, old viper?'
'Well, we don't look like the most respectable traders, now do we?' Iskarra whispered hoarsely. 'So then, we need one of the better-looking wagons. Not too grand, or we'll seem out of place riding it. But solid, respectable; all the things we aren't.'
'Huh. I'm solid enough,' Garfist growled, thumping the large, descending slope of his belly. 'The other, I'll grant ye. Not that I see-'
'That one,' Iskarra said, pointing across the walled wagon-yard. 'Off by itself, there, hard by the wall.'
Garfist promptly hefted his keg to a more comfortable carrying position under his arm, and set off across the yard.
Iskarra's choice was a larger wagon than most, nondescript and solid. It bore no badge nor painted name on the gray side or end she could see, and the two men busy around it were hitching its team of four draft horses back up, rather than unhitching and hobbling them for the night.
Iskarra turned her back, pulled out her tankards-it wouldn't do to bare all her secrets before she had to-and trotted hastily after Garfist, calling softly, 'Ale? A quaff for the night? Only one copper tarth.'
'No sale,' one of the drovers said curtly.
'Begone,' the other suggested, in no more friendly a manner.
Garfist sighed heavily and set down his keg.
'Blast and bugger-all,' he growled. 'Ye, too? What's a man got to do, to sell any ale in this- whoa!'
The drover beside him had drawn his sword. 'See this? Get gone!'
'Well, now,' Garfist growled, 'that's not friendly!'
'It's not meant to be.' The man showed his teeth, and jabbed the point of his sword in the general direction of the fat man's belly.
Garfist swiftly plucked the keg up and thrust it forward, catching the point of the drover's blade in its staves. When he flung the keg down, the sword was wrenched out of the man's grasp, and Garfist reached out with one ham-sized hand, caught the man by the throat, and snatched him off his feet to dangle in midair, kicking and strangling.
'Must be valuable, whatever's in there,' he growled at Iskarra, as she darted past him to confront the second drover, who was advancing menacingly from his end of the wagon with drawn sword in hand.
'Likely,' she agreed over her shoulder, running straight at the man and hurling her tankards, hard and accurately. His blade deftly struck them aside, and then thrust ruthlessly at her; she slowed not a whit, but twisted herself sharply sideways as she snatched a hairpin out of the tangled mess of her hair.
The sword went right through Iskarra, piercing the crawlskin back and front, plunging through her false breast and back, but thanks to her twisting, missing her emaciated real body within. By then her arms were around the drover, and she was stabbing his back hard and repeatedly with the hairpin. His leathers prevented it from going in that deep, but it didn't have to; Iskarra had dipped it plentifully in the strongest sleep-inducing drug known in Falconfar.
Nose-to-nose, the drover grinned mirthlessly at her, and then kissed her. 'Skaekur, huh? Never forget the feel of it, bubbling through the body. Pity I'm spellguarded against it.'
Iskarra tried to pull free, but there was suddenly something in her head, like a dark purple cloud stealing across her thoughts, dark and heavy… She couldn't seem to think straight, to care about anything anymore, but she could see, as if from a great and numb distance, that she was now energetically embracing the drover, and returning his kisses.
With a furious effort she managed to. swing their locked-together bodies around until she could see along the wagon to where Garfist had been happily throttling the other drover.
Her mountainously stout partner had set the man down and was now gently massaging the drover's bruised throat and dusting him down as carefully as a mothering-maid. Garfist turned and gave Iskarra a smile, and she saw that his eyes had gone purple.
Nodding a respectful farewell to the drover, the fat ex-pirate came lurching along the wagon. The darkness in Iskarra's own head was forcing her to gently disengage herself from her drover, now, and spread her legs to accept his hands on haunch and crotch, boosting her up the back of the wagon to open its rear doors wide.
She did that, swinging them clear just as Garfist rounded the wagon and boosted himself inside, with a great rolling grunt and a heave that shook the wagon and made the hitched horses snort and paw.
Then the force in Iskarra's head was compelling her forward into the darkness of the wagon, between the stacked wooden crates of swords and arrows, to pluck aside a central stack she shouldn't have been able to budge an inch.
The end of the stack proved to be false, a single panel adorned with sawed-off ends of stacked crates. Behind it, smiling rather unpleasantly at her, sat an unkempt man with curly hair of dirty gold, and unruly eyebrows and a jaw-fringe beard to match.
His large, dark purple eyes were in her head already, floating dark and heavy and all-seeing. He was the source of the magic now ruling her and Garfist. Yardryk, his mind identified himself, apprentice of Arlaghaun. He was young and supremely arrogant and overconfident to a fault, she could tell; neither his name nor that of the great wizard he served was information she was supposed to know. He seemed unaware of how much his thoughts were leaking into her head.
Yardryk was hiding among all these swords and arrows so he could get into the velduke's personal keep; the wares had been chosen to make them irresistible to warriors facing a siege. The idea was Arlaghaun's, but the schemings and details had been Yardryk's own, and he was very proud of them.
He was also greatly pleased, now, by the unexpected arrival of Garfist and Iskarra, now that he had made sure no rival mage had sent them to him as lures, or was lurking in their mind. They were just what he needed: outlanders not of Bowrock or of Galath, who had been drovers before and could serve so again now, freeing his warriors to pose as guards of so precious a load.
This would enable Yardryk and one of the warriors to slip off into hiding, once the wagon was inside the velduke's keep; thereafter, they could work much mischief. Leaving one guard for the load, and two owner-drovers up front to flog the goods and suffer the daggers of the Bowrock warriors, if the velduke wanted to escape paying or grew overly suspicious of so convenient an arrival of weapons.
Yardryk saw no reason not to take the wagon to the keep right now, seeing as other carters, despite the coming of night, were still running their wagons of food and casks of wine to the velduke's buyers. Food and wine
