After more than two weeks walking the long road from Souterm to Galdeez, Phin Phoarty felt better than he had in years.
The first week, admittedly, had been rough. Phin had awakened every morning with his feet, knees, and hips aching. It took until the noon stop for a quick meal before all the soreness worked through then in the afternoon his legs started to feel tremulous, like a new-born bird’s. The discomfort was exacerbated by sleeping on the ground out of doors, which was something Phin had never done in his life.
The Imperial Post Road crossed the whole of the Empire from Souterm north through Doon and over the Girding Mountains at the Rhuunish Gap, then through Tull, the western Beoshore, and across the ancient, defunct lands of Gyle and Telina to a port on the Cold Sea called, with typical Codian efficiency but a lack of originality, Norterm. The northern terminus of the Imperial Post Road. All along the Road’s great length tidy “King’s Inns” were erected a good day’s march apart, or half that by coach or horse. The five travelers stopped at one each night but only the woman with the lovely Zantish name of Nesha-tari took a room. Phin, Zebulon, Amatesu and Uriako Shikashe camped for a copper piece in fenced fields across from the inns, which at least all had wells and fire pits. The Far Westerners had two small pup tents but Phin shared a third with Zeb despite the fact that the Minauan man had a tendency to roll over in his sleep and elbow Phin in the throat, or even more alarmingly, to nuzzle the back of Phin’s neck with his nose.
Nocturnal groping aside, Zebulon was a decent traveling companion full of soldier’s stories and old minstrel tales he related on the march while pushing the baggage cart, never asking Phin to take a turn. In the second week Phin was feeling stronger and offered to take some turns at the barrow on his own. After a tenday of exercise in the clean air Phin started to feel good. He now wore wool trousers and a Doonish shirt and cape the Far Western woman Amatesu had bought at an inn after saying flatly that altering any of Zebulon’s clothes to fit Phin’s long frame was beyond her abilities. As Phin walked along in the easy peasant garb he began to remember that he was still a young man, a fact that he had forgotten over his ten years at Abverwar. He started to lose his stoop and recalled that he was a tall man as well, and that he did not need always to lean on a staff, glaring at people.
Phin glared at no one now, but he had taken to staring at Nesha-tari who always walked out ahead of the group with Uriako Shikashe closest to her, Zeb and Phin trailed behind with the barrow, and Amatesu walked either with them or with the samurai, depending on how off-color a tavern tale Zeb happened to be telling at any given time. The Far Western woman was friendly enough, the samurai was an aloof ox, but the woman Nesha-tari was a complete mystery. She kept her distance and her own counsel, and when Phin asked Zebulon anything about her she seemed to be the one topic Zeb was not happy to discourse upon at great length. The few times Phin pressed him a little Zeb became a bit surly, and the wizard suspected the Minauan was carrying a torch for her, which was ridiculous. Phin had yet to see any more of the woman than an alabaster wrist between glove and sleeve or a lock of shining blonde hair blown back from under her hood, but he could tell that she was a woman of standing, and quality. Far above the reach of the bawdy axe-man from Wakminau in the Riven Kingdoms.
As the party drew closer to Red Galdeez and even as Phin felt as physically good as he ever had, the fact that he had still hardly had a look at Nesha-tari began to trouble him. He hoped she was not in some way scarred or misshapen, for that would just be tragic, but he did not think that could be the case. Though she went about covered there was nothing retiring or timid about the way she walked, with a stride that was at once graceful and with great purpose. After Galdeez when they traveled on Shugak roads through the Red Hills on the Vod Wild side of the river, surely then the whole group would have to march closer together. And as there were not going to be any inns in the Wilds they would all be camping in the evenings. Phin started to daydream about it even before Galdeez was in sight.
Phin rose early in the mornings to meditate on his spells, which he could then cast with a word and a gesture at any time during the day. Since leaving Souterm he had taken to preparing only the one bit of magic that seemed likely to have any utility if there was some trouble on the road, the spell of Sleep. Phin’s meditation was deep as he was away in a part of his own mind that was a realm of symbol and signs, but it was generally quite brief as Sleep was not a complicated spell. Each morning it began to take longer however, and Phin was alarmed to find that even in the mental place that allowed him to wield magic the idea of Nesha-tari was somehow still present. Nothing quite like that had ever happened to Phin before, and it made him think something very strange was going on in his head.
If Phin had lived a different life he might have thought he was falling in love for the first time. But Phin had lived his own life, and he knew magic when he smelled it.
The last night before they were to reach Galdeez, Phin waited until Zebulon was asleep and then slowly slipped out of the tent. Amatesu’s cooking fire in the pit had gone to ash, and the night was chilly. Phin stirred the embers until little yellow glimmers winked from the blackened wood, wrapped his bedding blanket around his shoulders and sat cross-legged before the pit staring into the embers until his eyes lost focus and his breathing stilled. In half an hour he blinked, and could see that the last sparks had faded out. He had memorized one Sleep spell, and a stronger than usual version of the divination spell referred to in the verbal shorthand of Abverwar as Know History.
Phin crept away from the camp before putting on his soft boots and walking across the Post Road for the nearby King’s Inn. He wondered absently why the places were called that for there were no Kings in the Codian Empire, and resolved to ask Zebulon tomorrow if he thought of it. That was the trivial sort of information Zeb seemed to have in abundance.
It was late and the inn kitchen was closed, the common room empty. A man appeared behind a desk from a curtained doorway as Phin’s entry jingled a chime above the front door. The clerk was a young Doonish local in a clean tunic of light blue cloth, the breast embroidered with a simplified version of the Codian Book-from-the-Water design as an upright rectangle in a circle. Phin told the fellow he was a member of the Madame Nesha-tari’s party, and needed her room number. The desk clerk did not know the name but recognized Phin’s description of the woman’s hooded ensemble. He was still loathe to give Phin a room number though he did offer to summon her. Phin said it would keep until morning, and turned to go. He turned around again as the man was passing back through the curtained doorway, muttered a few words and raised his hand to his mouth to blow a bit of fine powder from his fingers.
The man stopped in the doorway and swayed. Phin stepped around the desk and caught the fellow under the armpits as he began to crumple to the floor, totally limp. Phin dragged him through the curtain into a small office, and hoisted the fellow onto a cot at the far wall. He blew out the lamp on a table.
Phin returned to the desk, flipped open a ledger by an inkwell to the last marked page and ran his finger down the column of signatures. Madame Nesha-tari’s was there without her title, as was the room number.
Phin turned to a corkboard on the wall behind the desk on which was drawn a diagram of the one-story inn, two wings lined with rooms running off the central kitchen and commons, with the stables in an outbuilding. Each room on the diagram was numbered and a key hung from a peg in each one that was not presently occupied. The peg for Nesha-tari’s key was empty, and the board told Phin that she had taken the corner room at the north end of the inn, round the back. He looked down the hall toward that wing but walked out the front door and around the building.
There was no light in Nesha-tari’s two corner windows, high on the walls so that even with his height Phin would have to get on tiptoes just to raise his eyes level with their bottom edges. All the windows of the inn were on hinged casements of dark wood enclosing a diamond-shaped metal mesh around tiny panes of glass. Nesha-tari’s side window was shut tight, but that in the back wall was open just a crack so that a lace curtain behind it shifted whitely in the moonlight. Phin stood underneath the window and gathered his thoughts, though he could feel his heart hammering in his chest.
He would have to touch her to cast Know History, and actually Phin had little reason to think the spell would work. It was generally used for inanimate objects that could be handled, and by concentrating hard a wizard could come to know something of their origins, their age, and in the case of something like a weapon, just to what use it had been put. Phin had never cast the spell on a person before, and was unsure if it could tell him what he suspected: That the Madame Nesha-tari was some sort of witch, and that she had put an enchantment on him.
But he wanted to touch her. Really, really bad. The thought of setting a hand gently upon her, perhaps on a creamy shoulder, was making Phin’s heart beat so hard he began to fear it would wake her as he boosted himself into her room.
Phin’s palms were moist and he wiped them on his shirt before reaching up and pulling the back casement out just a bit further into the night air, wincing as the hinges whined ever so softly. He put his fingers on the window ledge and stood with his nose almost touching the white-washed timber wall, rising slowly on his toes until he could peek between his fingers.
It was pitch black in the room but as he squinted Phin thought he could just see two dim spots of blue light, almost like eyes looking back at him.
Then the flat end of a Far Western weapon called a tonfa cracked across the back of Phin’s skull, and he saw no more.
*
Uriako Shikashe’s voice awoke Zeb while the canvas sides of his tent were still dark. Zeb was splayed on his back more comfortably than was usual in the tent he shared with Phin Phoarty, and after a moment he realized it was because he was alone. Amatesu was talking to Shikashe now, outside. Zeb rolled over and started to snuggle deeper under his blanket, but had the thought that Nesha-tari might have woken the others up early. She might actually be standing outside right now. Zeb slithered out of his bedding and the tent, stumbled up to his feet and looked around.
Still dark night, and no Nesha-tari. Shikashe stood nearby and frowned at Zeb with his arms crossed and his long black topknot all unbound so that his hair fell around his shoulders. As the samurai slept only in a long shirt of embroidered silk he had at moment a slightly womanly appearance, apart from the mustache. Not that Zeb was going to tell him so.
Amatesu had rekindled the fire and was kneeling on the far side. Zeb stepped over to see what she was about, and blinked in surprise for Phin was lying on the ground before her as though dead. Amatesu had turned his limp head sideways by the chin, and was gently probing his brown hair with her fingers. When she pulled them back they were red and wet in the firelight.
“What the hells happened?” Zeb shouted, snapping fully awake and scampering over to kneel next to Amatesu.
“I struck him in the head,” the woman said with a frown. “Too hard, I think.”
Zeb stared at her. “You did what?”
Amatesu did not answer but worked her fingers into Phin’s hair at the back of his skull. She closed her eyes and lifted her chin, then released a long, soft breath. She looked just like she had when Zeb had first met her, when the shukenja had jammed her fingers into the ruins of his elbow and withdrawn them with the joint repaired.
Phin stirred, then jerked and blinked his eyes. Amatesu stood up and wiped her bloody fingers together, looking around the campsite for the water bucket.
“What…” Phin looked up at Zeb and stammered. “Where am I…what?”
“Amatesu hit you in the head.” Zeb turned to the shukenja as she crossed to the bucket. “Amatesu, why did you hit Phin in the head?” The fellow wasn’t a bad sort really, Zeb had come to think. Phoarty had a nose-in-the-air snootiness about him that Zeb supposed was typical for a mage, but he had been loosening up for the last week or so.
“He was trying to break into the Madame Nesha-tari’s bed chamber,” Amatesu said, dunking a cloth in the bucket.
Zeb’s eyes widened and he stood up. Phin had rolled to all fours and was starting to rise groggily, but Zeb put a foot on his ribs and knocked him back to his side.
“You were doing what?” Zeb hissed down at him.
“Zebulon!” Amatesu snapped, in the exact tone of voice that the matrons had used at him when he was a boy in the Baj Nif Drom. But he didn’t hear her. Zeb’s hands were balled in fists at his sides and they were shaking.
“Get up!” he barked at Phoarty and Phin did so rapidly, lunging at Zeb from his knees until Amatesu snagged the mage’s collar and dragged him back. Zeb took a step forward raising a fist, but Shikashe snaked an arm that felt like a tree limb with muscles around Zeb’s neck and squeezed. Zeb actually felt his eyeballs bugging out as he grabbed Shikashe’s arm.
“Both of you, stop it!” Amatesu ordered, still holding Phin’s collar while the red-faced mage clawed in the air toward Zeb.
“I will blast you to Hades!” he sputtered furiously, and Zeb answered with an equally enraged though less comprehensible gasp and wheeze.
Amatesu met Shikashe’s eyes and nodded, then she jerked Phin back to put her own arm around his neck. Zeb could not really see it as his vision was starting to swim. The Far Westerners throttled the Wizard and the Minauan until both were going limp, their faces almost purple, then each let their patient go. Zeb and Phin collapsed to all fours and almost knocked their heads together, gasping for breath. The fury had drained out of both of them.
“Enough?” Amatesu asked. Phin nodded and Zeb tapped the ground like he was surrendering a wrestling match. When the two men were breathing more normally they looked up at each other from inches away.
“She’s a witch,” Phin croaked.
“Who…who is a witch?” Zeb panted.
“Nesh…Nesha-tari.”
“Nesha-tari is not a witch.” Amatesu said calmly.
She still stood behind Phin, so he flopped to his back while gulping air to look the shukenja in the eye.
“She is. She has put a spell on me.” He raised a trembling hand and pointed at Zeb. “On him, too.”
Zeb groaned and thumped to his side. His throat felt as though it was the diameter of a straw of wheat. Shikashe had ambled back to his tent and was pulling on trousers, paying no particular attention to the others as though this was a typical morning.
“It is not a spell, as such,” Amatesu said. Her brow furrowed and lips pursed as she thought. “It is something we think is…part of what Madame Nesha-tari is. Zebulon, how do you say, when an aspect is just a part of a thing? As flight to a bird or a bite to a snake?”
“Natural?” Zeb wheezed, and Amatesu nodded.
“Yes. The manner in which men are attracted to Nesha-tari Hrilamae may be a form of magic, but it is not a spell she has cast. It is natural to her.”
Zeb managed to push himself up to his elbows. “Look…if you’re saying she is…hot as a just-fired pistol…then I agree.”
Amatesu turned to Phin, who almost had his breathing back to normal though he was rubbing his neck.
“Phinneas?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Please describe the Madame Nesha-tari.”
Phin looked at her, then over to Zeb. He shrugged.
“I haven’t seen much of her, truth be told. She is tiny, I mean small built. Alabaster skin. Long blonde hair, like a princess of Exland. In a story.”
Zeb stared at him, then turned to Amatesu.
“I think you broke his brain.”
“Zebulon?” Amatesu asked.
“Nesha-tari is tall,” Zeb said. “Almost my height. She’s not pale, her complexion is more like a coffee with a lot of milk. She has blue eyes, bluest you ever saw, and a gorgeous, magnificent…” Zeb sat up and raised his hands beside his head. “Mane of rich, red hair, with a curl. Like a native of Phohnassa.”
Phin got to his elbows and looked at Zeb. “Strawberry blonde?”
“No. Wine-dark. Kind of hair you want to bury your nose in. For a week.”
The two men looked at each other, profoundly confused. They turned back to Amatesu who held up a hand with a thumb and finger slightly apart.
“The Madame Nesha-tari is about this much taller than I. Her hair falls just to her shoulders. It is light brown. Her skin is darker, though a bit lighter than is typical for a Zantish person, I think. She does have blue eyes, though.”
Zeb and Phin’s breathing had returned to normal, but now neither had anything to say. They just kept staring at Amatesu.
“Men see Nesha-tari as they would,” the shukenja explained. “Not as she is.”
“Just men?” Phin asked, and Amatesu nodded.
“I think it is so.”
Zeb looked across the fire to where Shikashe had settled on a camp stool, watching the others with his hands on his knees.
“Does she look like a Far Western girl to him?” Zeb asked Amatesu but the samurai answered for himself, speaking a single word that sounded like a name. “ Matsuko.”
Amatesu dropped her gaze to the ground and Zeb thought for a moment she looked pained. She spoke in a very quiet voice.
“For his Lordship Uriako Shikashe-sama, the Madame Nesha-tari appears much like his wife, Uriako Matsuko-sana.”
Zeb looked back across the fire at Shikashe. “You are married?”
Amatesu had not looked up yet, and her voice became even quieter.
“His Lordship’s wife was slain long ago in Korusbo, along with their children. Their loss pains him greatly, and it is why he has come to this place. Far from the memory of them.”
Zeb blinked and looked back at Shikashe, whose face was as always impassive though he now stared into the fire rather than looking at any of the others.
“Condolences,” Zeb said. “I am sorry.”
“Wait a minute,” Phin pushed himself to a seat on the grass and raised a hand. He spoke to Amatesu slowly in a manner Zeb had found condescending, though just at present he was unsure how much anything he thought or felt lately was a byproduct of Nesha-tari’s weird juju.
“What, exactly, do you think that Nesha-tari is?”
The shukenja finally raised her eyes from between her feet.
“I do not know. I am not yet familiar with the many creatures of this land.”
“Creatures?” Zeb asked.
“Yes.” Amatesu looked at him steadily. “Whatever she is, the Madame Nesha-tari is not human. Not altogether.”
“And the reason,” Phin glanced at Zeb. “The reason we were at each other’s throats a minute ago…You think that is part of whatever magic Nesha-tari possesses as well?”
Amatesu nodded. “This is not the first time on our journey that men near to the Madame Nesha-tari have come to fight. Though this time Uriako-sama and myself saw it early enough to intervene.”
Zeb winced. “This time?” Amatesu nodded.
“We needed your services as the translator who had begun with us in Ayzantu City was killed by a sailor aboard our first ship.”
Zeb and Phin exchanged another long look. There had been a moment there, Zeb thought, where if he had been able to get a fist on Phin he might not have stopped hitting him.
Amatesu allowed the two men a long silence before speaking.
“It is our hope now that you two have an awareness, that the effect of Nesha-tari’s presence may not be so strong.” She frowned. “Though it does seem to be growing stronger, of lately.”
Phin looked off toward the inn, but Zeb looked between the two Far Westerners.
“Why are the two of you even with that…woman? And why hasn’t Shikashe tried to kill me yet?”
“Uriako-sama is a man of formidable will. As to your first question…” Amatesu gave a shrug, which Zeb thought may have been a gesture she picked up from him.
“We two have found ourselves in many situations most strange since leaving Korusbo, and the West. This is not, for us, much more different.”
Zeb looked at the shukenja, and shook his head faintly.
“I think you should start telling me stories while we are on the march.”
Amatesu gave no answer, other than to lower her gaze back to the ground.
*
Nesha-tari watched the conversation from across the road. She did not understand the words in Codian but could hear them all plainly as her Hunger had by this time intensified all her senses. She had awakened as a man approached her room from around the side of the inn, and recognized Phinneas Phoarty by his scent when he was beneath the window. She had stood in the darkness, and without making any conscious decision she had fully intended to kill him as soon as he stuck his head into her room.
She was relieved that Amatesu’s arrival had kept her from doing so, not for any reasons of morality nor even because it would likely have complicated her continued travels with the Westerners and Zebulon Baj Nif. As Hungry as she now was, Nesha-tari could feel her power coursing within her. Her heightened senses were the least of it. Nesha-tari felt immensely strong and did not doubt that if she wished too, or would let herself, she could bound across the road and slaughter everything in the camp field, apart perhaps from the Westerners. They might put up a scrap. The energy Nesha-tari could feel from the pads of her feet to the tips of her hair was exhilarating, delightful, and would have been wholly intoxicating were it not accompanied by the agonizing knot of the Hunger in her stomach, like she had swallowed a burning brand.
If she Fed now the pain would be relieved, but with it would go the power. Nesha-tari was little more than two weeks from the Camp Town at Vod’Adia, and from the man she was sent there to kill. He was also an individual of great strength, and Nesha-tari did not doubt that it would take all of hers to best him.
The conversation broke up and the Westerners returned to their tents for there were still two hours left of darkness. Phoarty and Baj Nif remained talking by the fire and Nesha-tari heard them speak her name more than once. She realized she was creeping closer only when her bare foot touched the crushed stone of the road’s shoulder, and she made herself stop. She shuddered in her robe beneath her cloak even though the touch of the soft fabric was grating against her skin. She stalked back toward the inn.
A little more than two weeks, and her Hunger would be assuaged either by Feeding or by the final relief of her own death. Nesha-tari thought she could probably make it that long.
Probably.