The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [64]
The healer's words sobered them all. Embra went to Hawkril's sack for the bottles to fuel her casting and said, "It's not spies in Adeln I'm worried about-it's Father's mages, using magic. They must know, or be able to find out in our library, where the underways lead."
She reached up and laid her hands on either side of Hawkril's face, because he was nearest, and then with whispered words and little ceremony, went to each of the others. Each bottle she touched shivered and collapsed into shards and spilled vinegar as the faces seemed to change, and her bowl slumped into shavings of rust last of all.
Looking down at it, she leaned against Hawkril and murmured, "This spell leaves eyes untouched and alters only seeming, not flesh-so don't let any amorous wenches run their hands over you."
"Had you such plans?" he asked after a moment, sounding as much fearful as jesting.
The sorceress gave him a look. When she stepped away from the armaragor, she was shaking with weariness, and the three men exchanged worried glances.
"Lady-?" Craer asked, but Embra waved her hand sharply at him in dismissal.
"I'm all right," she said firmly, "or will be. Just get me food."
Craer smiled. "I know a tavern…"
"You would," she replied, raising an eyebrow. "Would you mind very much if we went to another one-one where I won't be expected to take my clothes off and dance on a table?"
"They have taverns like that in Adeln?" he asked, in mock astonishment. "Hawk, do you ever recall-?"
"No, I never do," the warrior rumbled. "I make a point of it. If someone's dancing on my table, they're putting their feet where I could be assembling a goodly pile of meat tarts!"
"Procurer," Embra said warningly, "don't make any jokes about 'meat tarts'-just don't."
"Lady," Craer said innocently, "the thought never crossed my pure, nay, pious, mind."
"He has a pure and pious mind?" Sarasper asked Hawkril.
The warrior snorted. "Aye. He cut it out of some priest in a brawl. It shriveled up into a little thing like a prune, and he carries it around and takes it out when he wants to impress ladies-say, Little Manyfingers, look! We've a lady with us now!"
"That's no lady, Lord Sword, that's a sorceress."
Embra winced. "That wasn't all that amusing."
"Lady," Sarasper murmured, "I don't think any of their jokes are. Just let the gabble wash over you, and the time passes."
Craer rolled his eyes. "Ready on?"
When they nodded, he led them up a slippery slope, into an incredible smell and a pile of rotting refuse, human waste, and bones.
"Behold-an alley dump," he explained cheerfully, "and unless I've forgotten all five of Adeln's streets, our tavern's right over there."
The procurer had dismissed perhaps forty or so laneways in Adeln in his reckoning, but he was right about the tavern.
***
It was hot, noisy, and crowded in The Ring of Adeln and smelled of unwashed bodies crammed close together, much spilled beer, and-other spilled things. The Four discovered just how ravenously hungry they were when they found themselves devouring three or four platters each of decidedly bad meat tarts and something called egg-and-greens scramble with hot sauces. The ale smelled like a gutter and was thin and sour, but one stopped noticing that after about seven tankards.
Folk were crushed in shoulder-to-shoulder, and the din of talk and drunken laughter was almost deafening. Someone had overturned a table, and there were several fights, but the four who'd come in together kept to the corner table they'd claimed and devoted themselves to listening and looking around rather more alertly than they pretended to.
Much of the talk seemed to be about trouble-trouble between barons, and the war that might soon bring to all the Vale. A Tersept had openly renounced all claim to his hold and taken a barge down to Sirlptar, wizards had been seen exploring back trails and wells, and armed men were riding into the Vale through every mountain pass, it seemed…
There came a time, much later, when the Four were each on their eighth