Chapter 7: Tramps and Thieves

"Three days in this hole, and we still aren't ready to leave!"

Jewel stood with her fists on her hips, glaring at the clutter of trade goods and supplies whose stacks took up most of one end of their room. They had agreed to speak Khamusai as often as possible, working to perfect their vocabularies and accents.

"Less than two days, back home." Neal scratched at a welt on the side of his neck. The bugs had gotten in a few licks before their sprays and powders had taken effect. His hair and beard were growing longer, curlier by the day. Jewel thought, irrelevantly, that it only made him look more handsome. "We're almost ready to go. If we don't come up with another pack beast in the next day or so, we'll leave anyway. We can make it with only five if we have to, but we'll be taking a chance. If we lost even one along the way, it could leave us severely overloaded. Lighter loads will let us move faster, too. It's too bad that they don't have horses here."

"Or cows," Amy added from where she sat, her long legs outstretched, on one of the straw mattresses. "Or even pigs. We have few meat animals in Khamus. None of them as good as your cows and pigs. When you return to your world, I would like very much to go along with you if only for that reason."

"We'll see about that when the time comes. You may change your mind by then." He stood up and paced restlessly, ducking his head to miss the low side of the beamed ceiling. "It sounds like our morning meal is about ready. Shall we go and see what they're serving today?"

"Sounds great." Jewel lead the way, and they clattered down the stairs. She still wasn't quite used to the crude sandals they'd purchased in Chammar, and she would be glad when they were out on the trail and she could go back to using the boots she'd bought from L. L. Bean. "At least, the meals are better than the rooms in this place. I'll sure be glad when we can start moving. Once we're out of town where nobody can see us, we can break out our own sleeping bags and air mattresses."

"Ah, Nurm." Mulgrub greeted them at the foot of the stairs, smiling broadly. "Good news. I have found you another pack beast. It belongs to my late wife's cousin, so I can get it for you at a very low price."

"How low?" Neal grinned back at him. "And how much is your share to be?"

"You wrong me, good trader." Mulgrub smiled confidently. "The morning meal is not quite ready to serve, so why don't you come out to the stable and look at the animal. It is a good one, strong and willing."

They followed him into the stable yard. Jewel was getting used to their appearance, but her first reaction each time she looked at a pack beast was an almost uncontrollable urge to break out laughing. The creature had a broad, lowslung body that was covered with irregular plates of bony armor separated by strips of thick hair in any of a multitude of colors. It also had a bucktoothed goatlike head on a sinuous neck, six stumpy legs that ended in splayed cloven hooves, and a tail like a coil of frazzled rope. Though it wasn't large enough to be ridden, it was able to carry heavy loads at a stiff walking pace, capable of keeping going as long as it found sufficient food and water. This pack beast was indeed a prime specimen. The six stumpy legs were stoutly muscled, the hooves sound, it had all of its teeth, and its coat of hair was a rich and glossy brown.

"It will do, I suppose." Neal looked it over, dubiously. "How long was it sick?"

"Sick?" Mulgrub was taken aback. "What do you mean? It hasn't been sick."

"It isn't overly fat," Neal pointed out. "Yet, as you can see the hooves are hardly worn down at all, and it carries no marks of harness."

"It has not been in harness lately, that is true." Mulgrub looked at Neal with growing respect. "My late wife's cousin is not rich, and feed is costly this year. It has been fed only on natural forage. True, it will not have the stamina that a grainfed animal would have, but a little time on the trail and it will keep up with the best."

"I suppose that it will have to do. A price of five silvers should be about right."

"Most times, that would be true, but with the present scarcity a fairer price would be seven and a half."

"So little?" Neal looked at him sharply. Jewel knew that he had expected an asking price of at least fifteen, and would have been pleased to settle for somewhere around ten.

"You have friends about." Mulgrub spoke softly, glancing around to make sure that no strangers were near. He brought his fingers together in the shape of a peaked roof, then slid the fingers of his right hand past the tips of his left ones, mimicking the shape of a breaking wave.

"I... see. Yes, well, seven and a half will be fine."

"It will be placed in the stables with your others. You will be leaving tomorrow?"

"If we can gain the permission of Captain Torvash. I will visit him again as soon as we have eaten."

As they walked along the dusty street, Jewel realized that Amy had been right. She no longer noticed the smells of Chammar unless she stopped and thought about them. Also, the people she met no longer seemed strange, or strangely dressed, and the language came to her tongue almost as though she had spoken it all of her life. Even Neal could get along in it fairly well by now, thanks to her and Amy's coaching each evening in their room and his insistence that they speak nothing else whenever possible.

They didn't have far to walk, and the sun was still low in the morning sky when they reached Captain Torvash's headquarters. The sentry admitted them without a bribe, for once.

"Your permit will cost you one hundred gold coins." Captain Torvash came right to the point, not even answering Neal's greeting. He glared at them across his desk. "Your stock of trade goods may be small, but it is of the best."

Jewel could tell that Neal was having trouble keeping his temper reined in. The going rate in Khamus was one gold coin for thirty silver, and one silver for twenty copper. Each coin weighed one measure, roughly two thirds of an ounce.

"That is much too high, and I do not have that many gold coins with me," he protested. "So high a fee, and I can make no profit. My expenses are not light, and the risks are high with Khamus so unsettled. I hear rumors saying that there are bands of rebels and renegades all about."

"Are you saying that the King's troops cannot keep the peace? You are insulting to His Majesty, if not downright seditious. One hundred gold coins. That is the price to you. Either you pay, or you can take your trade goods back across the mountains. You have made some strange friends in the short time that you have been here. Your name has been mentioned by several who are suspected of worshipping the puling SeaBitch."

"You know that I cannot pay such a price," Neal protested, laying his hand on his belt pouch. "It would beggar me. I am not wise in your ways, but is there no way that I can persuade you to lower your price?"

"You can't bribe me, if that is what you are asking. Now, if you don't want a permit, I have other business to attend to. Come back when you change your mind, but each day you waste the price will go up by another ten gold pieces."

Neal walked out without another word, but Jewel could see that he was still fuming.

"That tears it!" he exclaimed as they followed him down the narrow street. "Oh, I could pay it, all right. But if I did, he'd really be suspicious. Probably confiscate our goods and throw us all into jail, or even have us executed out of hand. No honest trader could meet his price, and if we paid it he'd really be sure we were spies."

"I don't think he's all that worried about our being spies. Did you see his face when he mentioned the MotherGoddess?" Jewel frowned, biting her lower lip. "That was the sore point with him, and he wasn't the least bit interested in taking your bribe."

"We'll just have to head out of here like we were going back toward the mountains," Neal decided, taking a deep breath. "We'll have to circle around the way we want to go, once we're away from Chammar. I hate to do it, and lose the time that it will cost us. I wish that I could just let Tony rot here! Or that my portal was improved enough that we could use it to hunt for him. There's no telling what will happen back on Earth while we're gone."

"I wish that we could, too," Jewel answered, "but you know that you can't. You still feel responsible for the poor b... for his being here."

"What luck, Ser Nurm?" Mulgrub was waiting for them at the door to his inn. "Did you get your permit?"

"We did not!" Neal was too angry to guard his tongue, but he did lower his voice when Jewel shot him a warning glance. "He wanted one hundred gold coins. I refused, but I haven't decided what to do next."

"I thought that you might have run into a problem there, the way you looked." Mulgrub thought for a moment. "Stay calm, now. You do have friends in Chammar, you know. Perhaps something can still be done to solve your problem."

"Friends, indeed!" Neal snorted. "Those friends are the reason Torvash is so angry."

"That may be part of the reason, but it is not all. Stay calm, I say." He patted at the air with both hands, touching his thumbs together in front of his chest, Khamusani style. "I will speak with you again, later this evening."

"I only hope that Torvash doesn't decide that we'd be safer locked up," Neal grumbled, but allowed Amy and Jewel to lead him inside the inn.

"No danger of that, Ser Nurm. Now, I must see to the cooking of the evening meal. You might be wise to make sure that all of your goods are packed and ready to go."

The afternoon seemed to stretch on forever. They packed and repacked their belongings, trying to make their own packs easier to carry, then sat around talking. As the day wore on they made plan after plan, only to discard them in frustrated disgust. At last it was dusk, and they joined the rest of Mulgrub's guests in the big common room of the inn for their evening meal. As usual the lowceilinged room was crowded and dark, the air thick with smoke and spicy odors, and full of the sound of men talking and eating. Neal and Amy only toyed with their food, and more than once Jewel even caught herself reaching for a nonexistent knife and fork or salt shaker.

"Master Mulgrub would have you come to the rear courtyard." Jewel could barely catch the words as a serving wench whispered them in Neal's ear. She nodded as he raised an eyebrow, asking if she had heard. Amy smiled her agreement as Jewel passed the word on to her, and the three of them quickly slipped away from the remains of their meal.

"Go to where the lad takes you." Mulgrub looked about, nervously, as though the gloom hid untold dangers. "Be sure that no one sees you as you go."

The stable boy took them down dark back streets, dodging furtively through cluttered and noisesome alleys, until at last they came to the back of a fairsized building. Heavy clouds had been gathering all evening, and with the coming of night it had grown almost completely dark as the stars were hidden from sight. A door swung silently open and they stepped inside, their guide darting away into the night.

"Welcome once again to the Temple of the MotherGoddess of the Sea." It was the Elder Sister herself who greeted them. Jewel gasped in amazement as lamps were lighted, revealing the inside of the temple. No longer was this the tired, gentle, aging priestess who had received them on their first visit. Now the Elder Sister was a vibrant, commanding figure in ceremonial robes of green and blue. Her hair was still gray, but her face was now the visage of a woman in her middle years, strong and vital. Around them, her retinue of lesser priestesses bustled with an electric energy. All traces of age and decay had vanished, both in temple and priestesses, and a multitude of richly embroidered tapestries covered the rough walls.

"We bid you welcome! Come forward, and join our worship at the altar of the MotherGoddess."

They were led forward to kneel before a low table. It was of highly polished greenishbrown wood, with rich carvings that were almost hidden by a goldembroidered cloth of deepest green. At each end of the table, large spiral seashells served as holders for intricately carved candles. The Elder Sister spoke an invocation in the archaic tongue she had used to give them her blessing, but this time Jewel found that she could make out the sense of the words by listening closely and translating to Khamusani in her head.

"Praise on these, oh MotherGoddess of the Sea. Praise them with great praise, for they are the bringers of salt from Your Sea of Life, without which Your children must sicken, and age, and die. Send down upon them the blessing of Your love and guidance as they drink the Water of Life, and reward them with life and health through all time to come."

At least, that was what Jewel remembered of the chant when she thought back on it later. A perfume redolent of the sea was rising from the pale green flames of the candles, making a music in her head that almost drowned out the sense of what she was hearing. As though in a dream, she watched the rest of the ceremony, not even wondering as delicate porcelain shell cups were set before them.

Obeying the ritual gestures of the Elder Sister, she raised the cup to her lips and sipped. The steaming liquid tasted faintly of honey, and salt, and the faraway sea. It did not seem to be alcoholic, but whatever it contained quickly rose to her head along with the scent of the candles. She still heard music, but it seemed to come from far away. Gentle hands led her to a couch. Amy was there, snuggling warm and close, but Neal was somewhere else. She caught a glimpse of the Elder Sister leaving, taking Neal with her, but it was too much trouble to watch.

Something within her tried to protest jealously at the sight, but the emotion was lost somewhere in the darkness inside of her head and she could not even wish to move to stop them. She surrendered to the music that rose up all around her and even within her head, and to distant voices whose chanting was like the crashing of surf on sundrenched beaches.

"Come, awaken. It is time for you to leave this place."

She was alert in an instant, sitting up abruptly with no idea of the passage of time. The temple was deserted, empty once again but for a few scattered pieces of furniture. Beside her, stretched out on a heap of soft fabrics, Amy stirred languorously and opened her eyes. The Elder Sister smiled down at them fondly, and Neal was standing at her side with a sated, though somewhat embarrassed expression on his face.

"Your pack beasts with all of your belongings are outside in the alley, along with a guide who will lead you to safety. Here are documents which show that you have purchased a trading permit, but you must be gone before Captain Torvash awakens. When he asks, he will be told that you have returned to the shores of the Great Sea from whence you came."

"We thank you..." Neal began.

"No time for thanks, and no need. If ever you need aid, go to any Temple of the MotherGoddess. Word of your doings will be sent all through the land. They will know of you, and of our debt to you."

Once again they were led through back streets and alleys, their pack beasts following silently behind as they walked through the sleeping village. A ramp took them down into a cellar, and an underground passage brought them to another cellar beneath the ruins of a deserted building outside the city's walls. They were shown a littleused path that led off into the forest, and their silent guide left them. The darkness slowed them almost to a crawl, and by the time the sun rose behind them they had only gone a mile or two. The clouds grew ever heavier, turning an even darker gray. All too soon the first drops of rain were falling, coming ever harder and thicker until the three of them and their animals were plodding along in a steady downpour.

"For this, we left Oregon?" Jewel griped under her breath, but Neal caught her words.

"Anyway, there won't be any tracks to show Torvath which way we went," he answered, breaking for the first time the silence he had kept since they had left the temple. "Amy, are you sure that this is the right way?"

"No, I can only hope that it is. We will have to guess at the direction until the clouds clear away. Then, if we keep the rising sun in front of us we will come at last to the place where my father... Where I used to live." She brushed bedraggled strands of wet blond hair back from her face. Jewel thought that tears were mingled with the raindrops that ran down her cheeks, and she had to resist an urge to comfort her. "We cannot get lost too badly, though if we wander it will slow us down. If we stray too far south we will strike the shore of the Inner Sea, and to the north there are no paths. This road we are on should meet the main trade route some time today or tomorrow."