Chương 9: The Travelling Folk

9. The Traveling Folk They woke the next morning to a day that was very fair, for autumn; likely the last warm sun that the season would have to offer them. Martim said that he would go out of the city, taking his crossbow with him for the hunt, little Flit riding perched upon his shoulder to spot for him. Elyse told him that this was a very good idea, and that Cecil should go out with him to prowl the fields as well.

The wizard was a bit concerned about leaving her alone and still wounded, but she pointed out to him that should he fail in his hunting, having Cecil along would be a fine insurance to see that they should have at least some meat to eat. And besides, she could hide very well with the weaving of shadows. The wizard saw reason, as she thought he probably would. And, she thought, he did not guess at her true reasoning for why she wanted her familiar to go with him.

Cecil would hunt, yes, true (she could not stop him from hunting even if she wanted to) but he would also keep an eye on the wizard, as well. It was not that Elyse did not trust the man. Indeed, she had been told all her life how dangerous and untrustworthy men were, and yet here she was, journeying with one, alone no less, and he had been nothing but kind to her.

"Bleeding serpents," she muttered to herself as she stood in the doorway, watching Martimeos walk down the empty streets of the ruined city on his way to hunt, "He only nearly killed himself saving my life." And just a day after meeting her, too. More than kind. She had always suspected that she had been taught nonsense about men, and now here was the proof. She trusted him out of spite and contempt for that as much as for his own actions. Perhaps that was foolish, but she didn't think so.

She did not think she would have been led to him if he was not trustworthy. No, she wanted Cecil to watch the wizard because he was acting strange. She had not spoken to him about the odd little jaunt she had seen him take the night before. What had he been up to? The wizard certainly left enough mystery about himself.

He had a way of turning away questions about himself with a wink and a smile, or else distracting her with a discussion about the Art that kept her occupied for hours before she realized that her questions about him had gone unanswered. Why had he gone to see that tree in the plaza? She grabbed her walking stick. Her fae-stick, she already thought of it fondly, and she had already resolved to keep it even after she had healed, as a souvenir of besting a fae at riddles. The fae!

Already her wanderings were bearing fruit. It was fortunate that Martim had been her guide, although at first she thought the man had gotten them both killed. She had read that wandering deep into a fae-wood was something that only a few came back from, and often cursed or changed in some manner. It did seem that the stories made the fae seem more dire than they actually were…

though, had she been alone, even little Lob might have frightened and unbalanced her, and she might very well have ended up as a plaything of his 'friends'. She had a sudden vision of the goblin preening with a new catskin cloak and a bag made from her face, and she shuddered. She tested walking back and forth on the stone floor of the tower, and was satisfied.

Her healing had not fully taken away the pain of the sprain, but it was much improved, and something that might have had her limping for weeks was likely to be gone entirely within a few days thanks to the Art. She could hardly be accounted as skilled with the healing craft, and yet even the little she could accomplish seemed a great boon to her. Healing could be so much more, if she learned the workings of it, though.

She knew of healers who could fully mend small cuts in an instant, and greatly speed the healing of wounds which might have maimed or crippled. And she had read of legends that with a skilled healer and time, someone might be brought back from the very edge of death. Though, perhaps this last truly was mere fancy. She had always been taught that past a certain point, death had its own pull that no amount of healing could resist. She thought of Martim, and then shook her head. One mystery about the wizard at a time.

She limped her way out of the tower and into the square, fae-stick clacking against the stone. She shook her head at the grim skeletons of buildings surrounding her. What a very sorry thing, that folk had gone through the effort of building so tall, only that it might be burnt down. She had never imagined that a town would be so big. When she had read about them in the stories, she had imagined that they'd have been, oh, perhaps three dozen buildings all put together?

She had a hard enough time imagining that many, but this was so much more. Even burnt and ruined as it was, it awed her. What must it have been like when people actually lived here? She wasn't sure that she would have liked it. She came to stand beneath the oak, in its shadow, and frowned up at it. Choking thorn vines crawled all over it, drooping from its branches. That might explain why it was so sickly and already bare of leaves.

There were plants she knew of that would grow up trees like this and choke them - creepthorn, for one, and the crowberry plant. But though she knew something of herbcraft, these thorn vines, with their vivid red flowers, were unknown to her. She stepped closer to the tree, and very nearly tripped over a small ledge of brick that would have sent her flying face-first into the thorn bushes had she not caught herself.

Swearing under her breath, and glaring at the oak as if it was to blame, she procured a small knife out from within the pockets of her dress and took a small cutting of the thorns. The vines bled a thick black liquid into her hands when she cut it, and the petals of its flowers felt strangely greasy. It stank of something rotten when she cut it, as well. What an odd plant. She wondered if it might have any uses.

Next she found a spot on the tree where the thorns did not grow so thick around it, and she laid her hand upon the rough bark, deeply fissured and covered in lichen. She knew the tree-speech, and she wondered what this tree had to say. Probably not much. Even in the best of times, most trees did not want to speak of much other than the health of the land, and the feel of the dirt, or perhaps to complain of parasites in their roots. And that was when they were talkative.

Trees spoke with the creak of limb and the wind whispering through their leaves, and when autumn came often they did not want to speak very much. Once they lost their leaves entirely most did not want to talk at all, and all that would be heard in the forest was the sound of the smug evergreens. She thought it very likely that this oak was beyond talking right now, but it could not hurt to try.

She stared upward into the knots of its twisting branches, stark against a clear sky, and stilled her own breath, listening for the creaks, the whisper of the wood, imagining that she flowed into the ruts and grooves of the bark, feeling for anything, the barest sign, the most quiet whisper. And it came to her.

This tree, the life in it, the heart of this oak, it grieved, deep within its core, for it had been made vile and twisted by what had been done with it, what had hung from its branches, twisted and twisted and twisted was its heart in a worm's spiral, and into those twists something dark crept, up through its roots it sipped at the shadows - Tearing her hand away with a gasp, Elyse clutched it as if it had been burnt, dropping her fae-stick with a clatter. She had never felt a tree so tormented before.

There was no real speech to it, even - she had never been spoken to in this manner either. There was only the pain, and the grief, and the sad knowledge that it would never grow as it should have. It barely seemed like an oak at all. Oaks were proud trees, and solemn. She hurriedly retrieved her stick and stepped back from the tree, staring suspiciously at it. She did not trust it at all, or the way it seemed to exercise some strange power over Martim. It could be dangerous.

She could not remember any stories where trees had preyed upon people, but she had heard of stranger things. She wished she had the wizard's skill with flame, so she might burn it right here and now. But there was really nothing that she could do about it now, and it was only a tree. It wasn't going to tear itself up by the roots and come charging at her. Still glancing at it over her shoulder, frowning, she made her way back to the Aurelic tower.

Just as she had turned, and was about to make her way through the doorway, she could have sworn she heard the sound of footsteps, and the clatter of a rock being loosed. She whirled, her heart beating fast in her chest, but there was no one there. Just the empty plaza, the tree, and the wind. Still, she could not shake the feeling that she was being watched. Eventually she made her way in, standing by the campfire.

She did not like that she could still see the tree through the doorway, and so she shifted until she could not. While the tree was unusual, she could not puzzle out why it might have pulled at Martim so. His secretive nature could be irksome. She would just have to ask him about it outright. The wizard had left behind his great black-furred cloak, since the day was so warm. Idly, she picked it up, admiring the craft of it.

She could feel the lingering of the Art within it - she knew the wizard enchanted it to keep himself warm, and he had told her that it had something to do with flame, though she didn't see how it worked. The way that he described flame to her sounded so odd, sometimes. She didn't feel a great devouring hunger at all. She felt as if the flames danced, as the shadows danced, but it was a dance she could do nothing to steer. She sniffed the cloak.

It smelled of pipesmoke and dried leaves, which was what Martim smelled like. Also of sweat and travel, but not in an overwhelming or unpleasant way. On a whim, she drew it around her shoulders. It weighed her down, dragging along the floor, and when she put the hood up it very nearly swallowed her head. That was one thing she had not been able to appreciate from a distance - just how much larger the wizard was than her. She knew men were large, but it was a bit unsettling up close.

Though she supposed it had worked out when the wizard had grabbed her up and sprinted with her, when the demons had chased them. That too had been startling. She had not known that she could just so easily be tossed about like that. She threw the cloak aside and sat, rummaging within her layered dress until she found what was perhaps her most prized possession - a book, bound in rich dark leather and written in small, tight script.

It had no title, but a page at the beginning said that it had been copied by the scribe Mikhail of Halsend (she did not know who that was), at the Scriptoria on Persh (she did not know what that was) sponsored generously by Lady Domon, and that it contained a collection of the Lady's favorite tales, some transcribed from other sources, others passed down by verbal telling.

Elyse had no idea who Lady Domon was either, or who she might have been - she was very likely dead, by now, the book was yellowed and old - but she thought that the woman had a fine eye for tales. It contained stories of Véreline Valoir, tales of grand workings of the Art, and power, and of the many lovers the sorceress had taken. Stories too of the two noble brothers Rance and Ronan and their tragic end; she still felt her heart twist when she read that one, no matter how many times she had read it before.

Or the tales of the many heroes who faced the strange necromancer Hooloon from across the gray seas, who was not even human and seemed to have the blessing of the Dark Stranger himself. Sometimes Hooloon would kill mercilessly, and other times he would play strange games with those who opposed him, and never was he defeated - he simply sailed back across the gray waters in his dread black sloop one day, after losing a bet to the famous gambler Dani Kyne, never to be seen again.

Of course, some of these stories seemed less likely to be real than others. She had read every tale countless times, and yet she never tired of reading them again, she loved them so. She thought that she would probably sooner lose a hand than to lose this book.

While she waited for Martim to return, she settled in to read a story - one of Véreline and her palace intrigue, when she had to unveil the murderous plot of the unparalleled illusionist who called himself The Night Fox, rumored to be half-fae, and who sought to glamor himself into the very lordship of Mannus Aurum. The sun crossed the sky, past its zenith. Elyse had read her way through the story about The Night Fox, and a couple of others besides.

She had just closed her eyes for a nap when the clatter of hooves striking stone reached her ears. How irritating, she thought to herself, already half-asleep. Of course, someone has to ride by just as I try to sleep. Someone riding by. Riding by where she was, all alone, and not knowing who it was. Her eyes flew open, and she leapt to her feet, only to hiss and curse as a jolt of pain shot through her ankle.

She glanced out the door, but could not see the rider - or riders, she thought it sounded like more than one horse - then cast a frantic eye around their campsite. Too obvious that a fresh fire had recently burned here, and with too many other signs of habitation; all someone had to do was look through the doorway to see that someone had bedded here. She cursed herself a toad-brained fool for not thinking ahead of time how to hide.

She was simply so unused to it; she had traveled always through the forests and the fields and off the roads, where you could always lie flat in the tall grass, or among the leaves, and wrap the shadows about yourself and count on that you were well-hidden from plain sight. Where could you hide in a bare stone room? The clop of those hooves was very clear by now, and whoever rode them must be very close by.

She pressed herself against the wall, where she would be out of sight of the doorway, and hoped that perhaps whoever this was - they must surely be in the plaza by now, and not even that far from the tower - she hoped that they were simply passing by. But she had no such luck. The hooves stopped such that the rider must have been no more than ten paces away, and then came a short, sharp whistle. Moments later, a dog trotted into the tower, and Elyse drew in a hissing breath.

It was a dog, true, but of no sort she had ever seen. Large, it would have been much taller than she was if it stood on its hind legs, and so skinny that she wondered if it were starving, though it seemed otherwise healthy and of good temper. It had a very long snout, and when it saw her it made no sound. Rather, it simply pranced towards her with strange grace on long, thin legs, silken white hair streaming, sniffed the hem of her dress, and regarded her with wet, black eyes that seemed somehow sorrowful.

Then it sat on its haunches and gave a low, rumbling bark.

"Hoi!" a gruff, strangely accented voice called out, so loud that it nearly made her jump.

"We are catching you now, nickthief, so come out and make yourself accountable. If you try to be running again I will be having Polda holding you, and she is having very sharp teeth, yes? She has been biting off thieve's hands before, so I am recommending you surrender." Polda could only be the dog, Elyse assumed, and she did not want to have that creature bite her. It seemed to have an oddly gentle nature, but with the size of it and the length of its snout she thought it could probably bite her in half.

She could feel her temper flaring at being called a thief - she had no idea who this rider was, with their strange manner of speech, but she hadn't stolen anything. There was nothing for it, anyway. She limped to the door to greet the riders, while Polda merely looked at her. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. The pair on horseback were an odd sight. They rode on well-kept roans of chestnut hue, weighed down with camprolls and saddlebags.

One of the riders was a lean, wiry man with a large mustache that extended all the way to his tawny, braided hair and looked strange without a beard to accompany it, and the other was a somewhat plump woman with hair braided so that it very nearly matched his. They both wore shawls of startling blue that covered them down to their riding breeches, and odd, tall red hats that flopped over so that their tips nearly reached their faces.

Another dog, the twin of Polda except even larger, sat obediently by the woman's horse. The moment the man saw Elyse, his face fell.

"You are not being our thief," he muttered, and then hunched his shoulders and glanced towards his partner, as if he knew what was coming.

"Not being our thief," the woman nearly spat. She gave the man a stare so hard it seemed as if it ought to knock him over, and he winced.

"Not being our thief! I was knowing this foolish chase would be trouble, and now look at what you have been doing, Chesmed son of Harl. You are sending your dog to attack an innocent woman, traveling alone!" Elyse was not sure that what the dog had done could be called 'attacking' - Polda was standing by her side, and had done nothing more than sniff her gingerly, but she was not full of sympathy for this Chesmed fellow at the moment.

"I should say that I am not," she snapped, leaning on her walking stick, jabbing an accusatory finger at him.

"And you really ought to be more careful when accosting strangers, you know. I am a witch, and I might just have ensorceled your dog to turn around and tear out your throat." Chesmed grimaced, doffing his red hat, and he gave a curious bow in his saddle.

"Please be forgiving a hasty fool," he said, his head still down.

"If you will be staying here, we will be returning to be making the gifts for forgiveness. But we are pursuing a thief, and have been since last night. Have you been seeing a young man this day? He is of very light hair, and I am supposing he might be called handsome-" That was as far as he got before he got cut off by an outraged squawk.

"Has all sense of honor been fleeing you? You are besetting upon a young woman, injured, alone, you should be offering her assistance for that in itself - but also she is one we would be calling shaman." The woman was already halfway out of her saddle, and Elyse noticed that strapped to her back was a basket carrying a fresh-faced young toddler with ruddy cheeks. She was also not really plump - she was pregnant.

"Halle…" the man began warily, but at another hard stare he sighed and began dismounting as well. Elyse wondered if the two were related. They looked rather similar. Suddenly, she felt rather awkward. She had really been hoping that these two would simply ride on once they had realized their mistake, and she could go back to reading her book.

"I…I am not really in such dire need of assistance. I am not truly alone, my companion is simply out hunting." She saw Chesmed perk up at that.

"He is not your thief either," she told him somewhat testily.

"I suppose he is handsome enough, but he is dark-haired. And I can tell you for certain he was not out and about stealing from you last night." Halle laughed at that as she rummaged through her saddlebags.

"It is good to be hearing that you are not alone," the woman said, "and that you are having someone to be hunting and tending you while wounded. But you must be letting us doing the apologizing." She turned, and her hands were full of a bundle of rolled cloth, every color of the rainbow.

"Oh, but I am forgetting to introduce ourselves. I am being named Halle, and this is being my husband, Chesmed." She paused, and then said, delicately, "You are not needing to be fearing him. He is being the stubborn fool, but he will not be hurting you." Suddenly, Elyse became aware that she had been staring intently at Chesmed, and that the man had been maintaining a respectful distance with his hands raised in caution. She chided herself as a gutless coward.

Hadn't she just been telling herself earlier that she knew from Martim that all she had been told about how dangerous and wicked men were was false? It certainly held true for other men besides the wizard. If he was the monster that she had been taught men were, he certainly wouldn't be listening so meekly to his wife.

"I am quite certain of that," she said airily, raising her fae-stick - Chesmed flinched at that, as if he thought she was about to work the Art upon him - "Only, might you call off your dog?" Polda was still doing nothing but standing by Elyse's side - if anything, the creature was nuzzling her slightly, as if expecting to be petted - but the man apologized once more, and with a sharp whistle Polda trotted over to him to get a good rub behind the ears.

Halle had spread her cloth over the ground, bright wool in colored stripes, and set the child on her back aside, still in the basket, where it sat and stoically burbled to itself. The woman was setting up some strange copper pot, engraved with crescent moons and stars, on a stand above a burnished silver box that contained a live coal, which she blew upon until it was glowing red-hot. She and Chesmed sat cross-legged, with their dogs lying down next to them, and motioned for her to join them.

Elyse thought about just telling the two to leave. Or forcing them to. She thought she might be able to scare them off, with the right glamor. But they had a child, and she did not want to be scaring the poor thing. And besides, they had mentioned some kind of gift, which she was interested in. She joined them, kneeling - her dress was cut well for movement, but was not so flexible that she could sit cross-legged in it - and wondered what she might say to them.

"This thief, what did he steal from you?" she asked Chesmed. The man made a low growl in his throat.

"Coin," he said, staring at his hands, "Which I would not be caring for, but he was stealing something else, a…a heirloom. A little horse statue, of gold." He held his thumb and forefinger apart to indicate the size.

"It was his wedding-gift to me," Halle murmured, as she stirred the liquid inside the copper pot with a long, thin spoon. Whatever was warming in there, it was nearly pitch black.

"It was very pretty. But I knew the moment I saw it, it would be attracting thieves."

"It was suiting you. I would give the thief ten times its worth in gold and be letting him go, only to have it back." He sighed, and withdrew into himself. He had very light brown eyes, the color of long-dead leaves. Both he and Halle did, and they seemed nearly on the verge of tears now.

"I am fearing we will never find him now."

"You have already been giving me many more gifts of much greater worth, my heart," Halle said soothingly, patting him on the arm. She gave Elyse a knowing look.

"You are knowing how men can be. Very sensitive about these things." Elyse wasn't sure she was knowing, actually. She knew very little about coin, or the worth of gold, or why men should particularly care that much about it. But she nodded along sagely, as if it were obvious.

"Did this thief attack either of you? I have some skill in healing, if you are injured." Chesmed and Halle's eyes both widened in surprise, and the woman stammered, "You are too kind, shaman. I am thanking you most graciously. But it is being most unnecessary."

"The thief was not doing his work with blades and bloodletting," Chesmed hurried on quickly.

"He was approaching us as we made camp, and was putting on a false face of camaraderie. He was calling himself Ren, though I am doubting he gave his true name. He was looking over our wares, and was even buying some, which I am seeing now was only a way for him to be knowing where we were keeping our coin." Chesmed's face darkened.

"He was availing himself of our fires, and then lifted our purses in the night." Polda lay her head on his leg, looking up at him, as if sensing his dark mood, and Chesmed stroked her mane of hair absent-mindedly.

"Polda was able to be tracking him here, but…" He gestured around helplessly.

"So many places to be hiding, here…"

"Cross-on-Green was not always so," Halle murmured quietly.

"Do you know what happened to it?" Elyse asked, unable to contain her excitement. She wanted to know more about how this town had been ransacked, wanted to know more about this White Queen, but Martim had been so obviously pained by the thought of it when he had spoken about it yesterday that she hadn't had the heart to press him with more questions.

"I am…something of a stranger to these lands myself. I have been told that the White Queen was responsible, but I don't know much more beyond that." Chesmed exchanged a look with his wife. Halle was pouring the now-steaming black liquid out of the copper pot and into three very small, dainty ceramic cups.

"I am apologizing again, shaman. We are, ah, what you would be calling, initiates? This is our first coin-journey, away from our people, on our own. We know little more than you do. Only what our elders have told us."

"We have been hearing of this…White Queen." Halle's hands shook ever so slightly as she poured.

"The shamans did not like to be speaking of her. She was shaman, being very strong too. It was wrong, so the shamans were saying, for one to be shaman and chieftain both. That was what made her so mad. This White Queen, she was being…unkind, to those on their coin-journeys." She set the copper pot back down, and regarded the burnt-out buildings that surrounded them sadly.

"I had been hearing Cross-on-Green was a small town, but welcoming to outsiders, and lovely for trade. It was one of the places I was wanting to see, when I was a little girl, just hearing about the world from our elders. But then it was razed. The elders, they were not knowing exactly what happened, but they were thinking this White Queen did it, yes." She shook her head, and then pressed a tiny, steaming cup of the black liquid into Elyse's hands.

"Here. Be drinking the vulz with us, and then we may be making a proper gift to you." Unsure why gift-giving depended so much on her drinking this liquid, Elyse lifted the small cup - less than a mouthful - to her nose, and sniffed. It had a strange, almost burnt smell to it, and an oddly burnt taste, as well, though surprisingly sweet. Something about it made her feel very clear-headed after drinking it.

Both Chesmed and Halle took their vulz in one gulp, fast enough that she thought they must have scalded their throats. They both shook themselves and slapped their bellies, and then Halle unrolled a many-pocketed length of cloth.

"I am apologizing for the meanness of the gifts," she said as she did so, "But we are initiates, and we have not yet been collecting much to be giving away. But still, you may be choosing what you wish." The woman retrieved a variety of odd trinkets from the pockets and stood them up on the cloth, as if for display. A stone carving of a king holding a sword, though smoothed and darkened as if many hands had held it over the years.

A flat disc with a strange spiraling pattern etched into its surface and traced with colorful paints, such that it looked like a rainbow knotting in upon itself. A skull that certainly looked as if it were human, and real bone, but much tinier than any human's skull would be, even a babe's.

"Where did you get these - what creature does the skull come from?" Elyse asked. Chesmed answered for his wife.

"Some, we are knowing the stories of. The stone carving is in the style of some northern kingdoms, but we are unsure of where exactly it is coming from or who it was. The disc is from trade far in the west, from a place being called the City of Bells, and it is said that such things are simple decoration there. The skull, we are not knowing, but we are hearing it told that there are far-off lands where tiny, hairy men are living in the forests, and that this belonged to one of them."

Halle brought out yet more baubles for her choosing, and going by the number of bulging pockets in that roll, she may have had dozens of them. But the one that caught Elyse's eye, and the one she chose, was a gray clay carving of a fat frog, hollow and holed, so that when you put your lips to its lips and blew, a sort of rough, low whistle was produced. That was not the reason she chose it, though. She could feel the Art in the thing, much older than it seemed the carving would suggest.

Chesmed and Halle knew little about it - which they seemed to almost find unbearably embarrassing, blushing deeply when she pressed them on it. They could only tell her that they had purchased it from a farmer, who had gotten it from from some hawker when he had bought his harvest into town to be sold, telling him it was a good luck charm for rain. It may well be, for all she knew. Whatever the Art was in it, it was so old that it was faded, and difficult for her to tell what it was meant to do.

Perhaps it was meant to do nothing other than preserve the little bauble. Chesmed and Halle stayed on for some time after that. They let their son out of the basket that Halle had carried him in - he had no name, as yet, they would not name him until his third birthday - and Elyse made the shadows dance for the pudgy little toddler, which he reacted to with shrieking laughter. She asked Chesmed and Halle where they were from, for she had never heard of these sorts of folk before.

They were simply traders, they told her, from a land called Yold out to the east.

"A vast, empty place," Chesmed said, "A sea of tall grass, where you can travel from sundown to sunup and never see a hill, and the only buildings you will see are ruins from days gone by. Old Aurelic forts, and more ancient besides." They were of a people who lived as nomads in the land of Yold, who were horse-breeders, though they simply called themselves the People.

Elyse knew nothing of horses, but she did suppose their mounts looked well muscled and very clearly cared for, and were obedient as well, standing aside impassively as Chesmed and Halle made their stop, not even tethered. The People would make their living as traders - "Because you get tired of seeing nothing but grass all the time," Halle joked - and among them, a good life was one spent always traveling, making many "coin-journeys", seeing many lands, and eventually growing wealthy.

Elyse could certainly see the appeal of such a life, though it certainly had to be dangerous.

"It is true," Halle admitted, "In the days of old Aurelia, the People would travel further, and safer. These days many choose to give up the travel after a dozen or so coin-journeys, and retire with wealth and plenty. But we still have our fortune to make." As they were talking, Elyse saw Flit flying by, a scarlet spot in the sky, and it was not much longer before Martim appeared walking down the road.

The wizard did not seem worried about the two traders; in fact, as he approached, he made an almost courtly bow, with one leg bent.

"A fine day to you, merchants. How does the road treat you?" Chesmed grumbled and seemed crestfallen - Elyse wondered if perhaps the man had been waiting to see if Martim actually did turn out to be the thief he had looked for- but Halle was all smiles as she introduced them, and Martim in turn. Though when Elyse explained the situation to him - how she had been mistaken for a thief - Martim raised his eyebrow, and both Chesmed and Halle blushed crimson.

"I don't suppose you have come through a place called Pike's Green in your travels," he asked them, while they were still recovering, which Elyse made note of with interest, but the two traders could only shake their heads. When she questioned if the hunt had gone poorly, the wizard shook his head.

"I have Cecil guarding our kills. I have found a good spot for a camp, I think, much better than this tower." He turned to the two traders, and gave them a nod.

"I took more kills than we can eat, and we should be glad to share camp with you. It is some distance south." The two traders took the offer with grace enough, but they both seemed more nervous now that they were dealing with not one, but two 'shamans', as they called them, and were plainly unused to being treated as equals by those who practiced the Art.

"I am thanking you, but we are heading west, to the town of Twin Lamps," Chesmed said, removing his hat again and giving a strange little bow while sitting down. Then he glanced up at the sun.

"Though I am thinking, perhaps we are making camp here, to see if we cannot be spotting the thief."

"Don't," Elyse said quickly, while at the same time Martim said, "I would reconsider that." The wizard turned to her, surprise and questions in his dark green eyes. Elyse's mind had gone immediately to that twisted oak in the plaza. Camping within sight of that? Without the protection or knowledge of the Art to guide them, and with a child in tow? But she spoke nothing of this, simply motioning for Martim to go on.

"A great wicked thing was done here, and this can seep into the land itself, at times," the wizard continued, giving her a sidelong look.

"I myself did not find very restful sleep last night. It may be a place ill-considered to make camp." Chesmed and Halle looked back and forth between the two of them.

"Well," the man said, looking around uneasily at the ruined shells of buildings looming over them as if seeing them anew, "If two of the shamans are telling me it is no good to make camp here, then I am listening." That dire warning seemed to have killed the cheerfulness of their gathering. Even the child began to whine and cry. Elyse rose, leaning on her stick, while Martim gathered their things from the campsite, and the two merchants rolled up their things and tucked them neatly into saddlebags.

Chesmed took the child up on his back, this time, with one last regretful murmur about not being able to catch the thief. There was not much time to linger, if they were going to make it to their new campsite by dark - her ankle felt better, but Elyse hoped that Martim had not chosen something too far away. Though he would certainly offer to carry her if it began to hurt too badly, and she might not refuse him this time.

Chesmed and Halle mounted their horses, and set out to the west, with their graceful dogs prancing at their sides. And as the two turned to wave to them, Elyse was struck with a strong, strange feeling, a near-certainty that she would see them again.