'Wait!' the head exclaimed. 'I can reveal secrets to you such as you cannot rrmmmpphl'
What she could not do with the secrets was lost in a muffle as Zaranda dropped a wadded blanket over the head's mouth. She slammed the lid shut and triple locked it. Then she went to bed.
'But I don't want to be served,' Zaranda said for what seemed the ten dozenth time.
The orc-orog, in truth-trotted along beside Goldie on his bandy legs, apparently tireless despite the heat and the weight of his armor. Horses raised by men or elves had to be specially trained to abide an orcish rider, even a very clean one. Not surprisingly none such had been available. Fortunately the plodding of the heavy-laden pack mules kept the pace down.
'I must serve someone,' said Shield, also for about the ten dozenth time. 'You were sent to me. It is the will of Torm.'
Zaranda sighed. No less than Father Pelletyr, she had trouble believing he was really a paladin. Yet she was at least convinced that if there were deceit to his claims, it was a deceit he practiced on himself
Zaranda Star had little knowledge of paladins or paladinry. Though she had always fought for what she thought was right, the paladin life-path had never appealed to her. Shield did display certain characteristics of the breed. He was uncommon strong, being able to tie tenpenny nails in effortless knots with those black-taloned fingers, and he radiated a quiet force of personality that his ceaseless deferring to her did little to mask. He must have been a formidable war leader indeed among the orcs. Unless of course that gift was the result of whatever revelation had changed his life.
He wasn't very bright-, as Farlorn had demonstrated the night before, which meant that debates such as this one were exemplars of futility, inasmuch as they always ended with his retreating behind a stout palisade of 'It is the will of Torm' and refusing to budge.
So who's the simple one, Zaranda? a voice asked inside her mind. She sighed.
They crested a rise and there before them, still blue with distance, the spires of Zazesspur floated in a pool of haze.
'It's beautiful!' exclaimed Father Pelletyr, who had never been to Tethyr before.
Even Zaranda felt her breath catch in her throat.
Shield stopped and stood with legs wide, seeming braced, gazing at the city. Then he nodded. 'My destiny awaits there,' he announced. 'I shall die in that city. Torm has told me this.' He seemed to derive satisfaction from his certainty.
'And dare we hope,' Farlorn whispered, his breath tickling Zaranda's ear, 'that it will befall sooner rather than later?'
Golden Dawn whipped her head around and snapped at the bard's thigh. His mount caught the motion and shied away. 'Back that little trollop away from me,' Goldie snarled, 'or I'll bite a chunk from her rump, you pimp.'
Farlorn laughed as if in delight.
'Goldie!' Zaranda said reprovingly, but she was too angry with the half-elf to put much weight behind it.
What's happening to us? she wondered. Is there really something dreadful in the city, drawing us in? She shuddered but kept on riding toward the far-off towers.
A couple miles from the walls, Zaranda ordered the caravan off the main road one final time. That provoked the usual whining from Father Pelletyr, as well as an unusually vehement outburst from Eogast, who tore at his beard, stamped his feet upon the ground, and swore fearsome throat-tearing dwarven oaths that he had never in all his centuries known of so much pointless lollygagging.
'The less used the entry,' she explained patiently during a breath break in his tantrum, 'the less we'll have to pay in bribes to gate guards and bureaucrats- and the larger the shares when we pay off.'
As expected, an appeal to avarice soothed Eogast's dwarven heart and stilled his outcries. Nonetheless, his outburst had held more than the usual edge. Leading the caravan down a brushy defile toward a breach she knew of by the old Dung Gate, she wondered if he shared her growing misgivings about their imminent arrival in the city.
Stillhawk rode knee-to-knee with her. They were under the loom of tall buildings and the wall, which was here twenty feet high. The ranger kept casting apprehensive glances up at the masonry pinnacles.
I don't like this, he signed to her.
'I understand,' she said. 'We're a long way from your native woods.' Stillhawk was never comfortable in or even near a city. Surrounded by walls of wood, brick, or dressed stone, he always felt as if he were caged, even if he were walking in a broad open plaza. He tolerated exposure to cities from his long comradeship with Zaranda. She in her turn tried not to drag him into them any more than necessary.
She might indeed have left him outside the walls while she took the caravan within and tended to business. That was their usual operating practice; he could certainly shift for himself, even in strange countryside, and he trusted her for his share of the payout. Not that he cared overmuch for such things.
Zaranda was not entirely sure why he stayed with her as her comrade-in-arms and, technically, her employee. He had a restless craving for action, and knew that where Zaranda went, action tended to follow. Her escapades provided ample opportunity to loose arrows and swing his sword against those beings that worked evil in the world. IB a way, she sensed, his association with her tempered those cravings; had he not accompanied her, he probably would have devoted his life to a grim and bloody-handed quest for vengeance, exacting installments on a blood debt that could never be repaid. Stillhawk had enough wisdom to foresee the loss of his humanity caused by such obsession, to see that he would, in time, become one of the monsters he lived to slay.
Or so it seemed to her. Stillhawk was a man not much given to talking about himself.
It's not that, he signed. My heart is bad about this city, now. There is great evil here.
Which is why I want you beside me, she signed. I'm sorry to drag you between walls of stone, old friend.
She caught herself then, just on the verge of suggesting he stay outside anyway-which would be a slap in the face to his ranger pride. I'm beginning to feel the loss of sleep, she thought. It's starting to affect my judgment.
She wondered if Stillhawk's sleep was troubled, too. If he had had a dream he regarded as a vision, he would likely have told her. But if his dreams were like the ones that afflicted her, they were vague and formless, whispering darkness and dread-nothing clear-cut.
Zaranda thought of asking whether he was having nightmares or was simply edgy at the prospect of entering a city. She refrained. Vague as the dreams were, there was something personal about them, something obscene, so that in a way she could not define, she was ashamed to talk about hers, and reluctant to pry into his.
For a time she had wondered if the brazen head were somehow responsible, and whether she ought to cast the thing in a millpond. But no, if the head had the power to invade her mind with suggestive visions, she suspected they would be explicit rather than vague.
She looked around. Was Father Pelletyr yawning more than usual beneath his parasol? And the men: Eogast muttering darkly into his beard-nothing unusual about that-Balmeric with bags under his eyes so heavy he looked as if he'd already received his payout and drunk it all away. The guardsmen and drovers looked cagey… Had they been dreaming too?
Shield of Innocence strode tirelessly at Zaranda's other hand, head high within its concealing cowl. He had expressed his own expectations clearly enough when he first caught sight of Zazesspur. His carriage suggested nothing of apprehension, as though he already accepted his fate, whatever it was.
Alone in their cavalcade, Farlorn rode with head and eyes clear. Seeing Zaranda swivel her head, he kneed his mare and interposed her between Stillhawk's bay and Golden Dawn, ignoring the warning way Goldie flattened her ears.
'Why so somber, Zaranda Star?' he asked with a laugh. 'Let me lift your spirits on wings of song.'
She gave her head an almost convulsive shake. Normally she would welcome such an offer; clearly, hers was not a happy caravan right now, and the bard's songs did wonders for morale.
'Let it go,' she said. She looked at him sidelong. 'How have you been sleeping?'
'Never better. Desolate though this land is, it has a charm that soothes me. It's a far cry from my native woods, but after all, 'twas I who chose to forsake them.'
' 'Desolate,' ' Zaranda echoed. Despite herself, she uttered a brief laugh. She had been thinking how green
