The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [59]
Embra sighed and shook her head. "In all seriousness, remember this, gentlesirs: what I know is dwarfed by what I pretend to know."
Craer winced. "Words too well chosen to forget. A pity they aren't more often uttered by those whom they most closely fit."
"Such as-?" Sarasper asked meaningfully, leaning forward with a scowl.
Craer handed him his hat. "No, no, healer; none of us. I was thinking more of barons and suchlike rabble."
Embra shook her head and smiled. "We can be all day trading tongue-thrusts," she told the nearest branches overhead, "or we can settle on names for each other and be about this, hmm?"
"Well said," Hawkril growled. "Let's walk." He spread his arms and shooed his companions along the road, so forthwith they became Olim, his wife Vordra, their daughter Rendree, and Vordra's friend Lassa-who in her sweetest and most haughty Silvertree tones advised Hawkril to say nothing if all he could manage was his usual deep growl, and Craer to say nothing at all, ever, unless he wanted Lassa's boot well up his backside.
They were still chuckling at that when Olim saw the signboard, and pointed. Craer's eyes were still the best among them all; he squinted and announced, "Tarlarnastar. A small village-and proud of it."
"It does not," Vordra growled, "say that. Lay by your cleverness for a time, Crae-Rendree. I've never heard of Tarlarnastar."
"And I'm sure its folk have never heard of you, either, Mother," Rendree said sweetly, dancing swiftly out of reach.
"I thought you were going to kick him," Olim said to Lassa-who smiled back and then took two running steps and punted the young lass head over heels into the nearest ditch.
Rendree came up spitting frogs and snarling, "That's not so funny." His comment was swiftly belied by shrieks of laughter from his three companions. "I'm not sure Faithful of the Oak walk about hooting like drunken tavern lasses, either," he said sullenly.
Those words were true enough to abate the shouted laughter somewhat, and it faded away completely when Embra stiffened. She put her hand on Craer's wrist, just for a moment, warning him with her eyes. A moment later, that part of her magic that had let them see their new guises, instead of the true shapes beneath, started to fade.
Whatever he liked to pretend to be, the thief was no fool. An unseen alarm could only be magic that Embra had felt… and since no fire or flying sword or dancing bones were racing up to smite them, it must be a spying spell. They were being watched. The lastalan spun around and skipped back to Sarasper. He could see his companions as their true selves again, which meant that Embra had stopped working magic, and was trusting in her finished spell to show the world their disguised shapes.
"Does it still hurt you, Father?" Craer asked, frowning as a young girl might. "I heard you groan."
Sarasper met Craer's gaze for the briefest of moments, and said, "Aye, lass, you've the right of it, as usual. The Forefather delivers me not from the pain." His next step was a pronounced limp.
"Yet it does me good to hear us laugh, all together," he rasped. "Let us press on, for it may be that this Tarlarnastar holds my healing, or some sign from the Father."
Craer rolled his eyes, just once, to let Sarasper know he was playing the part of a pious pilgrim all too well, and turned away in his girl's body to run ahead a little, and peer-and sigh, and come pack kicking at stones. "I see no towers, Father," she said. "Only huts."
"And can you see all there is to see from one run and look?" Vordra said severely. "Walk with us, girl, and we shall enter this place together. It may be that hope, and help, and even salvation lie in other places besides towers."
"Aye, well said, Vordra," her friend Lassa agreed, linking arms with the goodwife, who in turn leaned on her husband. "The Father loves trees and growing things, not the stones of men-and what is a tower but a man's pile of stones trying to be a tree?"
The look young Rendree gave her