The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [55]
“Everything is here?”
“Everything you’ll need.”
Not everything he will need, but Zern will not understand that. Creslin is silent as they stop by yet another gate for Gerhard to pay still another fee, this one to permit them to enter the trading grounds.
“Pull the gate!” calls the gatekeeper, and the single beam swings wide.
Creslin follows Zern, trying not to sneeze at the fine dust that sifts upward with each step of the horses. After traveling for several hundred cubits down a snaking path between tents, Zern points to a red-and-gold flag waving on a slight incline at the north side of the grounds. Waving the flag is Pitlick, and the wagons roll up to him.
Within instants, Gerhard is on the ground, bellowing. “Get the tent, the big one, unrolled . . .”
Zern joins him, leaving his reins and mount to Creslin. In turn, Creslin ties his mount and Zern’s to the post where Pitlick’s mount is already tethered, then unstraps his pack.
He checks his gear, debates unsaddling the mare, then decides against it, since he does not know where the saddle and blanket should go.
The site Pitlick has chosen is to the north and perhaps three cubits higher than most of the rest of the trading grounds. A stream winds lazily across a field on the other side of a rail fence that marks the boundary of the traders’ activities.
Creslin surveys the vast spread of tents and listens to the sea of voices; he hears nothing except the sounds of greed and trade.
“. . . the best sea emeralds this side of the Westhorns.”
“. . . spices! Spices! Every spice you can imagine.”
“. . . firewine, get your firewine here.”
The former consort wipes his damp forehead and looks toward Gerhard’s wagons. The trader still gives orders, but Zern is headed toward Creslin with a bag in his hand. “This is . . . where we . . . Creslin.” Zern’s voice stumbles, as though he has tried to rehearse what he says but has forgotten the script.
“The job’s over?”
Zern nods. “There’s a half-silver bonus there.”
“Very generous. I should go thank Gerhard, or was that your doing?” Creslin tries to keep his face blank, although his stomach twists at his words implying that he does not know.
“His doing.” Zern clears his throat. “Anyway . . . good luck.”
“Thank you.” Creslin affixes the sword harness to the pack, then shoulders both pack and sword. Zern watches as he adjusts the pack.
Before he steps away from Gerhard’s wagons, where Pitlick is beginning to unroll a shapeless heap of canvas that will soon become a tent, Creslin slips his pay into the inner pouch of his belt, glad enough for a few more small coins. At least he will not have to show the golds from Frosee or convert the gold links of the cabin into coin. Not yet.
“. . . famous pots from Spidlar. The best purple glazes of Suthya.”
“See the copper as hard as steel.”
Creslin snorts at the boast of the armorer. No bronze could match good Westwind steel. He raises his eyes and surveys the tents and the men and women coming and going. Not ten cubits from him, a black-haired woman, shapely and garbed in almost transparent silksheen, trails a thin man with a huge curled mustache. She wears sadness and a set of chains, light iron shackles, almost decorative in nature. Her eyes catch his, fall on his silver hair. She shakes her head minutely and mouths words he cannot catch before a jerk on the chain sends her reeling toward the mustached man, who has not even looked back.
Creslin sees the whiteness trapped behind the cold iron, and swallows. Seeing beyond the merely visible gives him more than chills at times.
“. . . raw woods. Cedars from Hydlen. Hard pine from Sligo.”
“. . . ointments for any ill! Any ill at all!”
He has taken no more than several dozen steps, crossing behind a wagon filled with lengths of lumber, when a white-blond