The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [4]
The three reached the edge of the circle of wagons. Now that they were close, Lirith could see the vehicles were more than a little roadworn: wood cracked, gilt peeled, and dust flecked sun-faded paint. Yet somehow this only added to their patina of mystery.
Although they had wandered for time out of mind, it was said the Mournish came from the south. And indeed the appearance of their wagons had been a more frequent—if far from regular—sight in Lirith’s childhood home in southern Toloria. Still, she had not seen the Mournish up close since her girlhood. The scent of spices, candles, and roasted meat reached her nose, and memories flooded her.
“Listen!” Aryn said, coming to a halt. Lilting music drifted on the air, blowing back and forth with the breeze. The young woman shut her eyes and swayed like a slender tree. “It’s so beautiful.”
Lirith drew in a breath, letting fresh air clear the memories from her mind. “Well, are you feeling wild yet, Sir Durge?”
He seemed to consider her words, then gave a solemn nod. “Perhaps just a bit, now that you mention it.”
Lirith gaped at the stone-faced knight. Had the Embarran made a joke, or was it merely a happy accident? Either way, she laughed. Perhaps Aryn’s impulses had proved beneficial once again—perhaps visiting the Mournish was not such a bad idea after all.
“All right,” she said, engaging Aryn’s good left arm and Durge’s iron-hard right, “I believe there are some spice pies with our names on them.”
It did not take them long to find the pies. They paid a copper coin apiece to a toothless woman clad in orange and yellow, then sat in leafy shade. There they bit into bubbled crusts to release warm juices that dribbled down their chins. When the spice pies were gone, Aryn and Lirith laughed as Durge diligently licked each of his fingers.
After that, the three wandered from wagon to wagon, and at each one a new and enticing aroma drew them on. There were plates of sugared nuts, sizzling bits of meat on sticks, and small cups fashioned ingeniously of leaves, filled with honeyed wine as gold as the sun, but cool against the tongue as evening dew.
And not all of the wagons contained food. Many were open to reveal black cloths piled with silver rings, bright scarves that fluttered on the air like butterflies, knives of blue steel, polished stones, rugs woven with swirling colors, tin whistles, and boxes of wood carved like the Mournish wagons themselves into the forms of animals and birds.
At one wagon—this one shaped like a crouching rat—an old man beckoned them closer with a bony finger. They peered into the gloom within the wagon, and only as their eyes adjusted did they make out the glass jars that lined wooden shelves. The jars were filled with yellowish fluid, and things floated inside them. At first Lirith couldn’t tell what they were, then a jolt of horror surged through her. One jar was filled with eyeballs, another with snakes, and one with the half-formed fetus of a pig, its clearly visible spine ending not in one head but two.
Displaying a rotten grin, the old man reached out and brushed Aryn’s left arm with something dark, dry, and shriveled: a monkey’s paw. The baroness screamed and darted from the wagon, bumping into a rickety wooden stage where a monkey—this one quite alive—danced in time to a drum. The stage tilted, and the spindly creature leaped for Aryn, eliciting another shriek. She heaved the monkey back at its owner, who caught it as he shouted at her in a hot and musical tongue.
Lirith and Durge grasped the baroness’s shoulders and quickly steered her away. As they walked, Aryn collapsed against them in breathless, trembling laughter, tears streaming from her eyes. Lirith couldn’t help joining in, and even Durge’s craggy cheek seemed to twitch. At last the three of them came to