Chapter 23

“Where are your friends?” Rallus asked.

“They didn’t come with me,” Corec said. In truth, he hadn’t been sure how Rallus would react, and had convinced the others not to come. They could always return if the man was still willing to cast the banishing spell—though Corec suspected it wouldn’t work any better than Lodarin’s.

The wizard eyed the cloth-wrapped object on the table between them. “Did you bring back the items I requested?”

Corec picked up the bundle and carefully unwrapped it to show the orb, then placed it back on the table, tucking the cloth around it to keep it from rolling off. “Lodarin sends the scrying orb with his compliments.”

“Excuse me?”

“He was alive, and not particularly happy to receive visitors.”

“Alive?”

“Yes. I have your wand and your compass as well, but he refused to give us back the gem.” Corec decided not to pass along Lodarin’s other, less respectful messages.

Rallus frowned. “My alarm ward went off. How is he alive?”

Corec wasn’t sure if the man was speaking to him, but answered anyway. “He said it was something called drain shock. He fell unconscious.”

“Drain shock? That shouldn’t have ... never mind. He actually gave you the scrying orb?”

“Yes. Perhaps in exchange for the gem? He didn’t really say why, other than that he doesn’t know how to use it.”

“I trust you didn’t mention the other things I sent you to look for?”

“I didn’t have much of a choice.” That was a lie, but Corec wasn’t going to admit he volunteered the information. He had no intention of getting between two powerful, squabbling wizards.

The old man pursed his lips. “What did he say?”

“He says you don’t need to worry about the spell book or the gauntlet—he’s got a plan to keep them out of anyone’s hands.”

A flash of anger crossed the wizard’s face, but he hid it quickly. “Very well. Thank you for delivering the orb. You may go now.”

“What about the banishing spells?”

“You didn’t fulfill your end of the agreement.”

“We made the trip out there. It’s not our fault your information was wrong.”

“I can’t go around casting spells for anyone who wants them. We had a deal and you didn’t meet the terms.”

Corec crossed his arms in front of him and stared down at the smaller man. “You said the scrying orb would pay for the spells.”

The wizard sighed. “Fine. One item, one spell. Which of the bonds do you want me to try to remove?”

Corec figured that was the best bargain he’d get. He rolled up his right sleeve and pointed to the second rune down—Treya’s. “When shall I bring her by?”

“That isn’t necessary. You carry one end of the bond. I can cast the spell with just you.” Rallus stared at Corec’s arm and whispered indistinct words. His spell took longer to cast than Lodarin’s or Deshin’s, and Corec had no way to tell whether it was truly a banishing spell, but when it was done, the rune still glowed.

“There,” Rallus said, “I cast the spell. But whatever that thing is, it can’t be banished.”

Katrin preferred playing music in the city to playing in villages. Not many women visited a village’s inn or tavern, other than the whores and serving girls who worked there, and village men weren’t interested in love songs or slow ballads. She’d had to limit her repertoire. She liked the drinking songs and the silly songs, but she was getting tired of sea shanties and songs about war, most of which were written for a male voice. And without another minstrel to do the singing, she’d stopped playing her flute almost entirely, except for the occasional piece that the listeners could sing along with.

In Tyrsall, though, women often accompanied their men to the inns and taverns, and Katrin could play romantic songs, ballads, and instrumental music. She even played dancing songs when the audience called for it, though her choices were limited with no other musicians, and with no gittern, lute, or fiddle.

She finished a song on the flute, then paused to catch her breath from the vigorous finale while a young man, trying to impress the girl he’d brought with him, dropped a copper piece in Katrin’s upturned hat, which was sitting at her feet. The song had been short but difficult, designed for students to practice rather than for playing in front of others, but it was fun and lively, and she’d found that audiences enjoyed hearing it. After she’d recovered from the flute piece, she switched to her harp and sang an old ballad about a noblewoman who fell in love with a weaver’s son, the two dancing together in secret one last time before the woman was forced to marry someone else.

As the song came to an end, Corec returned to the inn and took a seat with Shavala, so Katrin decided to take a break. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, everyone!” There was some grumbling from the customers as she made her way between tables to join her friends.

“You’re not wearing your hat,” Corec said when she sat down.

“I forgot to bring a mug with me to hold my tips, so rather than stopping in the middle of a song to get one, I took off the hat. I’m getting more tips now that they can see the rune. Half again as much, I think.”

Corec laughed. “I guess we found a use for it after all.”

“How did things go with Rallus?”

“He wasn’t very happy, but he cast a banishing spell. Or at least he said he did. It didn’t work—not that I was expecting it to after Lodarin tried.”

Katrin sighed, but she hadn’t been hopeful either. “Treya won’t be happy. What do we do now?”

“We go to Circle Bay and get your brother out of prison.”

“Are we going to look for another wizard when we get there?”

“If you want to, or if Treya wants to, but I don’t think we’ll have any better luck than with the ones we’ve already tried.”

“So, we just keep the runes, then?”

He grinned. “You don’t want to get rid of it now, do you, after finding out its real purpose is to improve your tips?”

She ignored the joke and thought about what it would be like to always have the rune. “I can live with it, I suppose,” she said with a shrug. “Earlier, when I was up in our room, I was able to hide it for five minutes while I was thinking of something else. Maybe I’ll be able to keep it hidden all the time, like Treya and Shavala do.”

“Can we stop going back and forth looking for wizards, then?” Shavala asked. “I want to see new things, instead.”

“Treya may still want to track down a wizard in Circle Bay,” Corec said, “but I think we need to figure out another solution. Maybe I can learn to control it. Are you going to stay in Circle Bay or come back with us?”

“I don’t know,” Shavala said. “The man Treya took us to see—that priest—said we should stay together, but I’ve been in one place for too long already.”

Katrin had forgotten the elf girl was supposed to be traveling. “Can’t you stay, at least for a while?” she asked. “Like the other elves that live here?”

“I want to see everything I can. North and south, west to Terevas, east across the sea. Why don’t you come with me?”

Corec glanced at Katrin. “I hadn’t thought about that,” he said, “but I’ll run out of money soon if we keep going. We’ll be spending most of what I’ve got in Circle Bay. We were planning to come back here so I could find a job.”

“People give coins to Katrin when she sings.”

“That might be enough if we stayed in the city and she played every night, but it won’t be enough for the three of us to travel a long distance. Winter’s coming, and you’ll need to buy more food than you can find on your own. What will you do when your own coin runs out?”

Shavala cocked her head to the side. “I have more coins now than I do when I left the forest.”

Katrin laughed. That was probably true—the elven woman had hardly spent any money while they traveled. She’d been handling all of the group’s foraging and hunting, so Corec had covered most of her other expenses in return. And once they’d realized they wouldn’t need the gold they’d saved up to pay Rallus, they’d split up shares from the bounty they’d earned from the drake—five gold for each of them who’d been there that day. That excluded Katrin, but since Corec’s share was going to pay for getting her brother out of prison, she could hardly complain.

Corec hesitated. “I don’t know. I guess we can talk about it.” He faced Katrin. “What do you think?”

She wasn’t sure how to respond. She was a city girl, and she’d grown tired of never knowing where she’d be from one day to the next. After months of uncertain traveling, it had been a relief when she and Corec had decided to make their home in Tyrsall. She wasn’t quite prepared to give up on that idea, but she didn’t like the thought of Shavala going off on her own, either. What if something happened to her while they weren’t there to help?

Finally, she said, “Let’s discuss it after we’re done in Circle Bay. I really want to find a bardic teacher, but some bards travel. Maybe we could travel with one of them.”

Shavala grinned.

“I still think money would be an issue,” Corec said. “We’d need to look for jobs along the way.”

“We can find jobs like hunting the drake,” Shavala said. “Maybe Treya and Bobo will come with us, too. I’d like that.”

Corec laughed. “Treya is supposed to be traveling, like you. I suppose it’ll depend how much she likes the two of you, and how much she hates me. As for Bobo, at this point, I’d be more surprised if he didn’t come with us.”

“This will be good. We can see new things together.”

“We haven’t decided yet,” Katrin reminded her.

Corec said, “It would help us plan if we knew where you wanted to go. And we were planning to go to Circle Bay by ship so we could get there faster. That means we’d probably need to stable the horses and mules here in Tyrsall, but then we wouldn’t have them when we leave Circle Bay. We thought we’d be coming back here.”

“I will ask Bobo if he has a map, so I can decide where I want to visit,” Shavala said. “But I do want to try sailing on the sea, at least once. We can go to Circle Bay by ship, then return here to get the horses so we can go north. Perhaps we can reach Lanport before the weather grows too cold. Meritia said I should try to see the Storm Heights while they’re covered with snow.”

Corec nodded. “We can do that, though if there’s that much snow on the Heights, Lanport’s likely to be cold, too. Winter comes early that far north. Still, Lanport’s on the coast, so it doesn’t get much snow itself. Katrin, are you sure? This would be a big change from what we discussed.”

“It’s not forever,” she replied. “I still want us to come back here when we’re done.”

“It will be good,” Shavala repeated, then changed the subject. “What were you doing on that last song?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were singing about a man and woman dancing between trees, and then I saw them dancing.”

Katrin stared at her. “You saw that? While I was singing it?”

“Yes. The song was in Eastern, so I didn’t understand all the words, but the trees were flowering while they danced. It was just some quick flashes in my mind.”

“Was it the song about the cherry blossoms?” Corec asked.

“Yes,” Katrin said, “but how can I do that? I don’t have a teacher yet!”

He shrugged. “I didn’t have a teacher for the spells I’ve learned. Maybe you don’t actually need a teacher.”

She considered that. “No, I do. There’s a lot about music that I don’t know. Besides, I was trying to push the feeling of the song, not the vision of it, so it didn’t do what I wanted it to do. Did anybody else notice?”

“I didn’t see anyone react,” Shavala said.

Corec said, “If it was subtle, they might have just thought they were picturing it in their heads as they listened to the words. These folk aren’t used to bards.”

Katrin nodded. “I guess, even if they realize I’m a bard, it’s not like they’d know I was doing it wrong. I should go try again.”

She returned to the front of the room, thinking about the best songs to use for practicing her new ability. She decided to stick with ones she’d seen real bards perform, since she wasn’t sure how successful she’d be in making up new visions on her own.

“Back again?” the portly harbormaster asked, gazing up and down Treya’s body as he always did when she came in.

“Yes,” she replied. “Do you know of any new ships heading to Circle Bay?”

It was the fourth day in a row she and Bobo had searched the docks for a ship that could take them. Corec was trying to have as little contact with new people as possible, to avoid casting the binding spell again, and Katrin and Shavala knew even less about ocean travel than Treya did.

Luckily, Bobo had been on a ship several times when he was younger, so they were depending on his recommendations. Treya herself was dreading the trip—she’d only been out to sea once, on Renny’s father’s fishing boat, and she’d been sick the whole time.

“Osprey came in this morning from Circle Bay with a shipment of rum and wine for the Renton-Dorse Trading Company. Captain’s name is Tevian. He usually ships back out within a few days. It’s the three-masted carrack at the end of pier thirty-seven. I don’t know if he takes passengers.”

“Thank you,” she said. This would be the third ship they’d looked at. The first refused to take passengers at all, and the second only had a single cabin for passengers, and had already rented it out.

It took them twenty minutes to reach the right pier. As they approached, Bobo said, “This ship is smaller than the others we looked at.”

It still looked big to her—far larger than the fishing boats they’d passed on the way. “Does that mean it won’t take passengers?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. A smaller ship requires a smaller crew, so perhaps there’s some space left over.”

They drew close, finding the captain supervising as his sailors unloaded the cargo. An assessor was calculating the taxes before allowing porters from the trading company to load the casks and barrels onto their waiting wagons.

After they’d introduced themselves to Captain Tevian, Bobo said, “Do you carry passengers? We’re seeking passage to Circle Bay for five people.”

“I’ve got two passenger cabins, each with four bunks, but I’m not going to Circle Bay. I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon for Valara.”