Chapter 6: GreenEyed Lady

Jewel drew in a deep breath of the fresh summer air, savoring all of the myriad unfamiliar woodland odors carried to her on the gentle breeze. She glanced up at the sun, guessing that it must be shortly before noon, local time. They had been working since early morning at bringing their equipment and supplies through the portal to this land named Khamus. They were at last ready to start out on their mission of rescue.

"It is the finest of seasalt!" Jewel watched and listened carefully as Amy haggled with the farmer they had met along the trail. They had made several short visits to this world the past few weeks, getting acquainted as best they could with its strangeness, but this time they were here to stay for a while. "We are offering you more than a fair price for your pack beast, Ser Mattathe."

"Nah. It ain't neither enough, woman. With no pack beast to pull my plow, I'll have no food to season with your salt, come winter." The farmer, who had given his name as Mattathe, was short and sturdy. He had dull reddish hair, a florid complexion and a ragged brown beard that parted to reveal jagged yellow teeth. His clothing consisted of a patched and dirty tunic over roughly stitched leather breeches with most of the hair left on, and crudelymade boots that made no distinction between left and right feet.

Shaking his head, he rocked back on his widespread heels and looked stubborn. He was trying to hide the covetous gleam in his eye by casting a knowing eye at the sky, and Jewel guessed that he was enjoying this unexpected chance to haggle. His pack beast, an unlikely looking creature that seemed to combine the worst features of camel, goat, and turtle, stood braced on its six stumpy hoofed legs, its long neck pulling against its tether to reach for the tender leaves and clumps of grass that grew alongside the trail. "I'd just hafta buy another from my neighbor, Asmahd. He's got two, but he'll tell me his second pack beast is worth more than just a packet of seasalt. I'll show you where his farm is. You can buy his, if you've gotta have another for your string."

The sun was high in the sky, and they were all sweating in their rough garb. It had been early morning, local time, when they had opened the portal into Khamus, but it had taken the three of them longer than she'd expected to bring through and hide the rest of their cache of supplies. She wasn't sure just how long, since she didn't have her watch and her time sense hadn't yet adjusted to this new world. Amy had insisted that none of them bring anything along that might provoke an accusation of their being evil magicians.

With that chore taken care of, they had headed for the trail where they had almost immediately met a man leading a somewhat mangylooking pack beast He was returning to his farm from the village market, his pack beast lightly laden, and they had seized the opportunity to do some trading. Their disguise required that they have at least one of the ungainly creatures to carry some of their belongings. Otherwise, with only the packs on their backs, they would be too conspicuous entering the village that was their next goal.

"All right, then. We shall go and see this neighbor of yours." Amy wrapped up the tiny packet of salt, making as though to return it to her pack.

"Now, wait." Mattathe scowled as he saw his chance for a quick profit from these ignorant strangers fade. "I'll sell her to you for a measure and a half. She's a fine, healthy beast."

"That's far too much." Amy's expression was disdainful, but Jewel could tell that she was hiding a triumphant grin. Now she was finally getting somewhere. "Your pack beast is past her prime, and just look at how thin she is. You must have been feeding her on nothing but weeds this past season, and working her day and night. No, a measure of seasalt is all she's worth, but if you'll throw in her harness we'll give you a full measure and a quarter."

"A measure and a quarter! That ain't enough, not when you want her harness, too. No, you've gotta give me a full measure and a half for her."

They settled for a little under a measure and a half, just over an ounce of the brownish crystals, but the farmer finally agreed to throw in the beast's worn and muchpatched harness. As soon as he had gone on his way, mumbling and chuckling to himself over how he'd cheated these dumb strangers, they retraced their steps to where the portal had set them down. It took all three of them to roll the flat rock away from the mouth of the shallow cave where their goods were hidden.

"Come here, you misbegotten khreldich!" Neal practiced one of his newlylearned Khamusani oaths as he yanked at the pack beast's tether, urging it closer to where their goods were stacked inside the shallow cave. It snorted indignantly back at him as though resenting his implication that its mother had been granted only a passing acquaintance with its sire, planting its cloven hooves in the yielding sod and arching its long neck.

"Not like that," Amy laughed. She prodded it from behind in a particularly tender spot, using a sharp stick she had whittled from a convenient sapling to serve her as a herder's staff. The pack beast burbled and groaned its disgust at this unkind treatment, but did condescend to amble closer. "Now, for your first lesson on how to load a pack beast..."

Jewel watched carefully as Amy showed them how to make up the beast's packs, flexible rolls of heavy canvas and leather that were tied crosswise over its back and lashed to holes drilled in the ridged bony plates that protected its sides. Once the beast was loaded, they rolled the stone back over the mouth of the cave to protect the rest of their belongings and headed for the nearby village that was the reason for starting their expedition in this particular place.

It had taken them a fair amount of searching to find just the right starting out place for their journey. It was only ten miles or so from where Tony and Jewel had first landed, off in the wrong direction at that, but it was just outside of a town on a major trade route that would take them the way they wanted to go. The road, though only a trace of bare dirt that meandered seemingly at random through the forests, would lead them along the northern shore of the inland sea that formed the heart of the land of Khamus.

In all, their journey would take them almost a hundred miles, winding far out of their way at times to bypass stretches of trackless forest, but it was the best they could do under the circumstances. This town was the nearest one of any size. They could buy the rest of the things they needed here, and it would give Neal and Jewel a chance to become more familiar with the land's customs. It would also give them an opportunity to practice speaking Khamusai, and let them find out how well the people would accept their imposture.

The village of Chammar, when they reached it late that afternoon, lay at the foot of a long grassy slope, surrounded on all sides by small farms. Amy had told them that it had once been the home of at least three thousand Khamusani, but that had been centuries ago when the country had known much more prosperous times. What was left of the town sprawled untidily along both sides of a small river. A stout wall of stone topped with heavy timbers, still kept in fairly good repair, enclosed the central portion of the village where most of its twelvehundred or so people lived. Outside of the wall, tumbled ruins overgrown by trees and brush were a reminder that Chammar had once been a much larger town.

As they approached Jewel raised her head, wrinkling her nose in distaste as she sniffed the breeze that blew toward them from the town.

"What's the matter?" Amy teased, laughing at her disgusted expression.

"That's really bad! Does it always smell like this?"

"What's wrong?" Neal took a deep breath. "Oh, I see what you mean. It is pretty potent, isn't it?"

"Potent isn't the word for it." Jewel pretended to hold her nose in disgust. Rotting garbage and lack of sanitation were all too apparent, spiced by a touch of dead fish. Against this stout background was woven an even richer tapestry of lesser stenches; cooking spices, smoke, animals and too many examples of unwashed humanity in too small an area proclaimed themselves to Jewel's sensitive nostrils.

"You'll soon get used to it," Amy teased, hardly seeming to notice the stench. "First, we must find lodging for us and our pack beast. After that, it will be necessary to call on the commander of Chammar's garrison to purchase the trading permits that we must have. Since this is the largest town for many days' travel, it will have a quite large force quartered here. At least fifty soldiers, I would think."

"What if we meet other traders?" Neal asked. They were speaking a mixture of Khamusai and English, and Jewel thought that he was really doing quite well at learning the new language for someone who didn't have the advantage of her perfect memory. "Won't they know I'm a phoney?"

"A... phonee? Oh, like a chargni. Oh, no. The shore of the Great Ocean holds many lands," Amy reassured him. "A trader would not find it strange that another did not speak his language. Also, the journey across the mountains from the sea is long and dangerous. There are never many traders here at any one time, and anyway this is not the time of year when most of them come to trade."

"That looks like an inn, up ahead." It was Jewel who first spotted it. There was no sign, merely a green branch jammed in a crack over the door of a nondescript building. The withered and drooping leaves promised food and shelter to all who entered, as long as they had money to pay.

"What do you want from me?" The innkeeper was short and dark, his heavy muscles long since gone to fat. He squinted up at Neal suspiciously.

"Lodging and food for three." Neal spoke slowly, trying to make himself understood in Khamusai. "And, stable room for one pack beast."

"Who are you, coming here at this season?" The innkeeper relaxed slightly at Neal's words. He didn't really seem particularly interested. It was as though the rest of his questions were merely a ritual that had to be gone through. "Your speech is strange. I have not heard its like before."

"We are traders. I am Nurm." They had picked this name with care, using a play on his initials to come up with one that was common on this world, yet similar enough to his own to make it easy for him to answer to it.

"Ah yes, lodging. And stable space." The fat face creased in an oily smile, then froze as another thought occurred to him. "Only one pack beast?"

"One die in rock fall. One drown. Three run from wild beasts."

"You mean, you lost all of your trade goods?" He backed away a step, as though their bad luck might rub off on him and his inn. "You have nothing to trade?"

"We have goods. Must buy more pack beasts, go back to where goods are hidden."

"Ah, that's all right, then." He winked as a thought came to him. "And, if you do not bring these goods into Chammar, there will be no levy on them. That's a new twist; what the soldiers don't see, they can't tax. Don't worry, old Mulgrub will keep it quiet. I wouldn't stay in business very long if I couldn't keep a few things to myself."

"How about rooms?" Jewel thought that Neal didn't seem too convinced by Mulgrub's protestations, but he didn't press the point. "And meals?"

"My inn has the finest of rooms. Two meals a day, and fresh straw every sixday in the mattresses. I'm not too crowded, right now. There will only be three others in the room with you. Two coppers a day, and dirt cheap it is at that price."

"Two coppers?" Neal turned as though to walk away. "We are only traders, not some of southern nobility. Come, we go find another inn."

"But... But Ser Nurm! Wait a moment. Don't go. One and a half coppers, and fresh straw every other day. You won't do better in all of Chammar."

"One copper, and one room for just us. We keep trade goods there, where no hands but us can touch."

"One copper? You would bankrupt a poor innkeeper! Well, one and a quarter, since business is slow this time of year, and you get the room all to yourselves."

Coached by nods and shakes of the head from Amy, Neal finally settled for this rate when the innkeeper would go no lower. With the price finally settled, Mulgrub proudly led them up a narrow stair to show them the room.

"Finest lodgings in all of Chammar," he boasted. "The ceiling is high enough along this side of the room for even you to stand without knocking your head on a beam. The blankets are thick and warm, and washed afresh every sixday, without fail. If you take your meals in the common room it will cost you only another copper a day for the three of you. One and a half coppers if you take your meals up here. Packbeasts stabled for only a halfcopper a day for each one."

"Ten coppers for a sixday, then, and we'll eat with the others," Neal answered when Amy mouthed the words at him from behind Mulgrub's back. "Now, how do I find the commander of the town's soldiers?"

"Ten coppers? That will be fine. Captain Torvash?" Mulgrub scratched his head, dislodging several specks of multicolored dandruff. Jewel could distinctly see that several of the specks had legs. "He should be down at the barracks, this time of day. Just follow the street this side of the river, upstream, until you're right up against the city wall. If you don't find him there he might come by here to eat. Takes his dinner here most evenings, just after dark."

"We see you at second meal time, then." Neal handed Mulgrub a handful of the coppers they had carefully manufactured to match samples they'd obtained earlier. "Here is for first sixday."

The fat innkeeper hurried out, satisfied, and Neal examined the door to their room.

"Is this the only lock? It doesn't look like it would keep a determined thief out."