Chapter 4.

The moon was creeping above the trees when the coach rattled and bucked across the rutted tavern yard. The coach made a “J” at the end of the yard and drew up outside the stable. Before it had quite stopped, Grohd and Lyrec came out of the tavern.  Grohd’s lips parted in a wide grin as he saw Reeterkuv, the driver, atop the coach, handing down luggage.

“We’ll have good times tonight,” he had earlier promised Lyrec. “The stories you’ll hear … Reeterkuv can keep you laughing all night with his tales about the people who’ve ridden on his coach. Ask him to tell you about the fat woman and the cheeses!”

The fat woman and the cheeses—the innkeeper chuckled to himself just remembering it. Oh, there would be high times this night, indeed.

The coach was little more than a box on four wheels, drawn by four horses. No ornamentation or scrollwork added to its frame. The windows were drapeless holes. It creaked and rocked as the passengers disembarked. They seemed gray in the twilight, like statues. Then the first of them to get out—a young man wearing a physician’s medallion—set down his baggage and began to slap at himself. Chalky dust erupted at each slap, revealing dark clothes beneath. Even so, the physician’s face and curly hair remained ashen. He appeared all the more unworldly, grim and spectral for the contrast. This was true of the other passengers as well. Things were not as they should have been.

A tense silence hung over the scene. People getting off coaches usually make a great deal of noise: they curse their aching backs, grumble about the horrible roads, or even praise the driver for getting them to their destination alive. There’s a collective sense of humors about such a group because they’ve grown relaxed in each other’s company during the long journey.

These people might have had no tongues. They said nothing.

None of them acknowledged their companions, either. They took their luggage that Reeterkuv handed down and they walked off alone, in an agony of silence, toward the huts.

Something had happened.

It had to have been very bad, Grohd knew, to cause this much tension. Thank goodness, he thought, that Reeterkuv was driving. He would learn the truth, the whole story, in no time. He waved to his old friend.

And Reeterkuv ignored him.

The tavern keeper gave Lyrec a troubled look, but Lyrec had sensed the tension immediately and begun probing. He’d found walled-up minds. Smothered anger.

Grohd began unharnessing the lead team of horses. He shot glances at Reeterkuv, but never caught the driver’s attention. They might never have met before. He huffed. His breath plumed into the night.

Lyrec worked on the second team. The driver was right above him. The man’s chiseled features were drawn tight, making a skull of his face. He had a large goiter at his neck. Lyrec said, “Certainly is cold,” then waited, looking up, forcing an answer.

Reeterkuv glared back. He unconsciously flexed his long, stiff fingers. “Aye,” he answered. His voice creaked like dry leather. “A chill on tonight.” He glanced quickly at Grohd, then climbed down the opposite side of the coach and was lost from view behind it.

“He seems to have run out of stories,” Lyrec commented.

Grohd muttered under his breath as he led away his two horses. Lyrec took the other two by the rings in their bits and followed behind.

Together, the two men put the horses in their stalls. Lyrec went down the row and closed the doors on the stalls, then waited near the stable door. Grohd poured feed grain from a dark coarse sack into each trough beside each door. His disgruntlement was apparent in the way he slung the sack and strewed the grain in and over the troughs. He mumbled about the passengers, that they were “lively as corpses,” and he called Reeterkuv an ingrate for keeping the account of it—whatever it was—to himself. By the time he had roped off the neck of the sack, Grohd had decided bitterly that Reeterkuv was no longer his friend and would no longer be welcome in his tavern.

He turned to go, gesturing to Lyrec—now there, he thought, was a fellow you could always depend on—to go on ahead of him. They both moved one step, and both stopped at the same time.

There stood Reeterkuv, his elbows against the jamb, leaning toward them like a man nailed into the doorway. His head was bowed, though he looked at Grohd through his brows. He spoke suddenly, his creaky voice an ancient whisper in the confinement of the stable. He said, “I didn’t think you’d heard.”

“Heard what?” Grohd forgot instantly he was angry with his friend.

“About the king.” Reeterkuv created suspense accidentally; he didn’t know where to begin, and didn’t really want to speak at all. This provoked Grohd, who needed no provocation as it was. 

“What are you talking about?”

“Grohd …” Reeterkuv tried to smile. “Ah, Grohd, let’s go have a drink together. For the sake of the act, what d’ya say?”

“Reeterkuv! What’s the matter with you? What about Dekür?”

“Dekür—the king’s been murdered, Grohd. His daughter’s been taken, too—disappeared into the forest.” He pushed back from the doorjamb and began unconsciously to rub his palms together to warm them against the cold, then became aware of what he was doing, stopped and looked down as if he held some answer there.  “They’re goin’ to crown the boy if they don’t find her.”  He turned away then, and was gone. 

The sound of his footsteps scraped across the yard like shovels catching the last toss of dirt on a grave. A few moments later the tavern door slammed shut.

Lyrec stayed where he was. He did not know what to expect, or exactly how the people of this place reacted to such news. He breathed deeply, listening, smelling manure and hay and the vinegar sweat of horses.

Grohd was all in darkness; he could have been any shape, any body. Only his eyes revealed him—small milky pools that gleamed when they moved. His words came out of the darkness suddenly, like rain.

“We never met. I never saw the king, always meant to. Always thought one day his coach would roll in here and he’d stay the night and we’d get on famously. Always thought that might happen. Fifteen years he ruled over us—a very long reign around here. A very long peace.”

Lyrec remained silent, motionless. He was confused by this anguish. Why such pain over the death of someone never known? What special place did a respected ruler have in people’s hearts? He did not yet know, but he was learning.

“Dekür was going to live forever,” Grohd went on. “You could tell—it just felt that way. Fifteen years. He would be king a hundred years and we’d have peace that long, too. Always thought I’d meet him.” The pools shifted; he looked at Lyrec. “How can he be dead? How?”

“I don’t know.”

“You never met him, either.”

“No.”

They stood then, encased in a long silence.

Lyrec suggested, “The passengers must be hungry after their journey. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes. Yes, it’s a very long ride. Reeterkuv drives to favor his team. He takes care of his horses. He’ll brush them down soon—as soon as he eats. A good man, Reeterkuv. A good friend.”

“And in a hurry to brush his horses I hear.”

Grohd nodded, then walked up to Lyrec and grabbed his arm. “Will you help me serve?” Lyrec nodded, ready to go, but Grohd stopped him.  “You know, Reeterkuv’s a very trustworthy friend.”

“I never doubted it.”

“Me, neither.”

*****

Dinner did not go well.

Before the food was even finished the argument began.

The young physician and the older passenger—a bellicose, red-faced, pop-eyed man—began bickering at one another. It soon became obvious that their vicious comments were a continuation of an argument begun much earlier, during the journey.

The older man announced quite suddenly to the room at large that the king’s death was so unnatural that no one but the Kobachs could be responsible. Then he leaned hack in his chair and waited with folded arms, smugly.

Tension rippled through the room like waves of heat. Lyrec looked at the foul-tempered, florid man uncomprehendingly. He was only dimly aware that the name referred to a population.

He looked at Grohd across the bar, expressing his question without words. Grohd frowned and shook his head. Some people were like that, what more could he say?

“Idiot!” The word cracked the silence. The red-faced man had been waiting for it; he had already leaned around in the chair to face his adversary. The young physician drew himself halfway across his table. “Again, how blind can you possibly be? The king came out of Ukobachia that very morning—where he had visited his father. His father, damn it. How many times must I shove the facts under your nose? Do you mean to tell me that Ronnæm was in on a plot to murder his own son and kidnap his granddaughter?”

The other, though he had stirred the conflict, spluttered and grew redder still in anger. “Just because he lives there doesn’t mean he has to know what goes on. I told you—they plotted behind his back.”

In the far corner of the room, Reeterkuv put his head down on his table and crossed his arms over it; the old woman sitting by herself in the opposite corner looked down at the floor in disgust; and the red-complexioned man’s own wife took her drink and very quietly crept from the table to sit farther back by herself. She tossed her husband a black look that he ignored.

The physician tapped the side of his head. “Your brain’s gone feeble. You should move to Trufege, old man, where they’re all as dim-witted as you. A child drowns in a creek—the Kobachs caused it. The crops wither from a summer drought—the Kobachs pulled down the sun to scorch their fields.”

“What about last winter’s plague, eh? Rats from the forest? No, that was Kobach work. Everyone knows it.”

The young man fingered his medallion. “Tell me, you dung-minded imbecile, do you have some idea what this represents? What it means? It means I’m a physician—I had to tell you, I couldn’t wait all day for you to remember. And as a physician I study and treat illnesses and—and—plagues. So let me tell you something, let me push some knowledge through those ears of yours—”

The old man began to make loud snoring sounds.

“—let me give you some fact instead of myth to chew on!” His angry voice rose into a yell. “A hundred years ago the very same plague slew the Bracknils, wiped out an entire tribe!”

The other sat up straight in his chair and pointed an accusatory finger. “That wasn’t rodents!”

“So what?”

“And it wasn’t in Boreshum—it was in the south, around Lake Raen.”

“Exactly.” The physician smiled in triumph. “Disease is natural. The five human essences are thrown out of balance. Happens in different times, in different places, for different reasons—and all of them natural!” He slammed his fist on the table. “No magic.”

The red-faced man’s lips crimped tightly. He sneered. “So what? That’s disease, that’s Trufege—”

“—where you ought to live—”

“—but that’s no answer for the king. Dekür didn’t die of plague. He died with his sword hammered through him. He was burned. All his men were dead save the one rider who escaped to tell the tale, and they say that one’s gone mad. His daughter vanished without a trace, and not one clue as to the identity of the murderers. Tell me that’s natural, oh wise man of medicine.”

“Well, obviously it’s the work of Kobachs,” the physician agreed sarcastically. “How could anyone doubt it?”

The other man missed the irony of the physician’s voice. “Well,” he said, “finally. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along.”

“You stupid old hoar-head.”

“You’re both fools!” It was a new voice. The old woman, sitting alone, had heard all she could tolerate. Her red puffy eyes glittered with malice. “You know nothing. Neither of you. Why don’t you both just admit that and have done with it? Leave the rest of us to our misery an’ our prayers in peace—” Her voice quavered. She looked away, covered her face with one hand.

The old man snorted. The physician hissed with exasperation.

Reeterkuv stood up to leave. He paused by the door and looked back upon the room. “I have an idea,” he said softly. “Why don’t you get a cymrallin and you can set it all to music.” He nodded to Grohd and Lyrec. “Begging your pardon, forgive me for delivering a pestilence into your house. I’m going out to be with my horses, where there’s some sense to be found.” He closed the door quietly, leaving behind him once again the crushing silence in which they’d arrived.

The people looked at nothing, at no one. The wife of the pop-eyed man withdrew. The others watched her leave, then, one by one, followed after her. The old woman left behind her full bowl of stew. A cold skin covered its surface. She hadn’t taken a single mouthful.

Grohd sighed heavily when the last of them had departed. He went around the bar and began clearing off the tables. In the back room, the cooking fire played shadow-ghosts on the walls. Lyrec stared through the doorway with unfocused eyes, and the shadow-ghosts seemed to him to be agitated, dancing figures—embodying the mad emotions of these beings.

Grohd kept silent as he returned to his stool behind the bar. He stroked Borregad. The cat had somehow managed to remain asleep in the charged atmosphere. His lips smacked, then his mouth opened and his tongue unfurled in a long, curled pink yawn. He never opened his eyes.

“Grohd,” Lyrec said. “Tell me something. There was a word that came up—”

“Kobach?”

“Yes. I’m not familiar with it.”

“Yes, well, they’re sort of a special case. A village disliked and distrusted by half of Secamelan, though the king’s father lives there and the king’s wife grew up there.”

“But the way they said it. There’s a stigma on the word itself.”

“It means ‘witch’ or ‘sorcerer’. Ukobachia’s a village of witches.”

“Witch.” He let the word sink in. “But why do they live together?”

“I don’t know. Some say they have blue designs etched into their skins, or they’re deformed, got extra limbs or eyes in their chests, so they can’t hide what they are.”

“Why are they so hated?”

“’cause they have powers. And there’s a legend the Kobachs were a tribe that wanted too much power. They wanted the secrets of the world, of the gods. So Voed decided that since they wanted to know those secrets so much, they could have them, but they’d pay for ’em by being forever suspect by all other tribes.”

“And are they?”

“By some, maybe most. Dekür, though, didn’t believe it. There was a lot of noise about the kingdom when people found out what he’d married.”

“You mean ‘whom’?”

“No. What. She was a witch. People thought there’d be a schism between the King and the Hespet, the oracle-priest of Voed’s temple. But there wasn’t. Seems the Hespet didn’t believe much in witches, either. Some people still think the Kobachs are trying to take over, though. They stay to themselves.”

“And people make up things when they don’t know.”

Grohd shrugged. “You hear all kinds of stories in here.”

“And the other place? Trufege?”

“Trufege’s the nearest town to Ukobachia. They’re always saying the witches did this, the witches did that. They blamed this plague they had on the Kobachs, too. But the Hespet looked into it and found that they’d desecrated Voed’s temple somehow. They’d broken with the church. Their priest did also die in the plague. So the Hespet sent them a new priest, and that one—ho—that one’s a fanatic, a raving madman if half the stories are true. He has them kissing the ground first thing in the morning and shouting praises to the sky at night, burning down trees inhabited by demons and throwing away good grain if he says it’s impure. Impure—now, what can he possibly mean? He should give it to me. I could ferment it. He says the plague was the gods’ punishment to the village of heathens. And they’re all agreeing with him. They’re all out of their minds.”

“You know a great deal of what goes on in this kingdom, don’t you, Grohd?”

He gestured modestly. “Well, if you want to find out news, try a tavern. The fellow who pours the drinks has heard everything worth hearing.”

“So I see. How much more do you know of your country?”

“Well, let me think.” And he pondered, opening the pathways, allowing thoughts and recollections to pour out. He looked up at Lyrec, drawn by the feeling that he was being watched intently, looked up into eyes of silver fire. He continued to stare for some time, while a thousand bits of digested information were read and replicated. Then the eyes were black once more.

Lyrec took his hat from the bar and placed it on his head. “Good night, Grohd, and thank you.”

“Lyrec,” murmured the taverner. Like someone sleep-walking, he turned a laggard half-circle and shuffled into the back room. A large blanket swung down behind him to cover the doorway.

Lyrec shook the fat black cat. “Wake up, Borregad.”

The cat’s blue eyes opened, but rolled around independent of one another, and quickly closed. “Uhh, my head is cracking.”

“Shh! It’s time to go back to the loft. Everyone’s gone to sleep except us.”

“But we don’t sleep.”

“That’s a remarkable observation coming from someone who’s done practically nothing else.”

The cat raised his head with great delicacy into an imperious pose. His eyes remained shut. “A stupor is not the same as sleep. It’s the fault of this ghastly beast that I’ve become. Ooh.” His head lowered.

“Ghastly beast is right. And how would you know all this? You’ve never remained in mortal form for half so long before. How do you know if you and I sleep or not?”

“Why do you have to ask me so much? Why do you taunt me so? Can’t you let me be? Go pine for Elystroya or … I’m sorry. That wasn’t supposed to be spoken. I didn’t mean it.”

Lyrec’s lips pinched tight, but his anger passed. “Of course not. I know.”

“Anyhow, you shouldn’t grieve for her. She’s still alive.” When Lyrec made no answer, he opened one eye. Lyrec was staring down at the bar. “She is alive,” Borregad insisted, mustering all the belief he could into his voice, “you’ve told me so yourself. Now, admit it.”

“I’d like to.” He was silent for a moment, then said, “Odd, isn’t it, Borregad—that both of us think of her as she.”

“Here she would be a feminine principle.”

“Is that so, do you think? An opposite, a mirror image. A natural division, do you think?”

“Questions. I don’t know,” the cat complained.

“Well, come on.” He started away.

The cat sank back. “Nooh. Leave me here. If I move, I’ll be sick, I swear.”

“Borregad, my dependable ally. All right. Sleep here, but I tell you now you’ve had the last grynne you’ll taste in this lifetime.”

“Ennh,” the cat replied. His muzzle fluttered, whiskers twitching.

He was unconscious by the time the tavern door latched.