“To speak a title to one’s face, that is . . . considered rude. Lynesse Fourth Daughter would not say, but it is as though you consider her a thing. Call me Free Mark when pointing me out to another, yes. Call me Free Mark to my face, you lessen me, as though you cannot spare the time to pick me from my fellows, you see?”
By now Lyn wished her friend had just kept her mouth shut. The sorcerer actually stopped, staring. “Is that the way of it? How was this knowledge kept from me?”
Esha shrugged. “By your separation from the world of men, Nyrgoth Elder. Or so I would guess.”
And again, just as after the attack, the Elder was not offended by any of this. In fact, he seemed positively happy to have learned something, and had a little more spring in his stride all the way to the water. Lyn supposed it was rare enough that a sorcerer of the ancient race was taught something new.
The boat crew were three women of Esha’s people, bowing to Lyn with that calculated respect the Coast-people used with any notional superior outside their own ranks, that stopped just short of insubordination. They watched the Elder warily, and all held their breath when he stepped aboard the ferry, in case the boat turned to live wood and sprouted leaves, or transformed into a fish.
“Surprised he can’t just walk over the water,” one of them said, obviously intended to be out of the Elder’s hearing, but Nyrgoth turned his head and said brightly, “I suppose I could, but that would be wasteful,” and that shut them all up for the voyage.
The thing that Esha had got hold of was nasty looking, more like a claw than anything else. It was a curved spike some six inches long that had obviously been part of some creature, mottled black and green and with the broken end encrusted with what looked like scales. It came wrapped in what had been fine cloth once, and supposedly the seller had been vizier to one of the little forest kingdoms. Easy enough claim to make, Lyn supposed, but it was very fine cloth.
Nyrgoth Elder sat in the belly of the boat with the cloth spread on his lap and studied the thing without touching it, though occasionally he brought his hands close and made what she could only characterise as mystical passes through the air. By the time the far shore approached, he had rewrapped the grisly memento and was frowning a little.
“If I had the assistance of my tower I could probably make more of this,” he told her. “I think your friend may have been lied to, though. I can see no artificial structures within it at all. It’s not a relic of the ancient times, as Ulmoth possessed. Your people may have been scared off by some animal new to their forest.”
Lyn held on to that as they disembarked, and held on to it as Esha paid the boat crew and the vessel put off. She even managed to hold on to it as they wove through the tent-cluttered space that had been the market grounds on the Ordwood river side, turning her face from the plight of the hundreds who had come this far and no farther. The anger was building up inside her all that time, though, and she felt her control over it fraying from moment to moment. She wanted to make a scene right there, where all those displaced people could hear her. She wanted them to share just what she thought of the sorcerer’s words, and join her in her condemnation.
Nyrgoth Elder was patently unaware of her reaction, and so when she finally couldn’t hold it in any longer—after they were clear of the camp and into the trees—she caught him entirely off guard when she rounded on him.
“No, I do not think that all those people were driven out of their homes by an animal!” she snapped at him. “Nor do I believe, Nyrgoth Elder, that the forest folk, who for all their lives, and the lives of their ancestors, have known these lands, would have a single beast within these trees that they did not recognise, be it predator or prey. I believe there is a demon, as they say, and that it controls minds and feeds on people and cannot be fought by normal ways. Otherwise I would not have risked my mother’s wrath and my own life by trekking to your tower and calling on our family’s compact. It is sorcery that needs sorcery to fight it! Not an animal that needs only a bow and a spear!”
She ended up shouting quite loudly, and broke off, horrified at how impolitic she had abruptly become. Inside, she knew with utter misery that what she was really railing against was her mother and her court, because they had said exactly the same thing as the sorcerer. And if, just if, they and Nyrgoth were correct, and there was no demon nor sorcery, then she had done an incalculably foolish thing and confirmed everybody’s bad opinion of her forever.
For a moment there was an expression on his face—such an expression: panic, horror, hurt, offence and fear all crammed into those aquiline features, and none of them looks that a sorcerer’s visage should bear. Then all trace of it was gone, as completely as if she had been entirely mistaken, and his haughty, unruffled stare was back. She waited for him to just go, perhaps walking across the water as he’d said, or disappearing into thin air.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, for a moment just her child-self standing before any number of broken vases and windows, knowing the sentiments were too little and too late. The words bounced off his stiff regard, but then he inclined his head slightly, a superior accepting the contrition of an inferior, which she supposed was her due.
“The apologies are mine, Lyn,” he told her. “These are your rituals. It’s not for me to detract from them. We should continue to hunt this demon of yours.”
Lynesse froze, feeling horribly awkward again. Nothing the sorcerer said or did ever seemed to be quite right, and did he think she didn’t understand that he was humouring her? “Yes,” she got out, forcing a smile to her face. “We shall. And we’ll avoid towns, where we can.”
Nyr