No one spoke for a time as they rode south into Pamr and turned westward into the center of the town. As the five passed down the main street, the handful of men standing outside the chandlery, where a grimy white bow had been placed in the front window, turned toward the horses.
"That's her!" someone shouted.
Three of the men stiffened and glanced toward Anna, as if to step into the packed dirt of the street, then paused as they saw the arrnsmen.
"Hail the sorceress!" cried an unseen feminine voice.
The face of the tall, bearded man in the center of the three clouded, and he raised a clenched fist, looking around quickly for the woman who had shouted.
Anna turned Farinelli toward him, then reined up. Farinelli snorted loudly, as if to warn the townsman.
"Don't curse me," Anna said. "And don't raise your hand against me, or any woman. Your lord is now Lady Gatrune, and her captains will support her to your death. She was ill pleased with Forse. So was I: Why would you seek your own death to avenge someone so cruel?" The sorceress waited.
"No woman should raise her hand to a man," sputtered the bearded man.
"Then... no man should raise his hand against a woman. After all, a woman bore him, and another will bear his children." Anna waited, then added, "Times are changing, and you should change with them." She flicked the reins, and Farmnelli carried her westward past the chandlery.
"...arrogant bitch!"
Anna ignored the words, much as she would have liked to do more, but some men would never change, and she couldn't do more for the local women-not yet. Still, it continued to irk her that what would have been sternness in a man was considered bitchiness in her.
"You believe that stuff about her flaying the dark ones with fire whips now?" whispered Fridric to Stepan.
"...don't understand sorceresses.. . burned that chandler to a crisp, and she was crying. Here she's telling them to shape up, or mayhap die."
Put in Stepan's terms, Anna thought, some of her actions were strange, but how could she explain what she felt without appearing a total emotion-driven idiot? When she didn't have time to think things out, she had to go by what she felt. When she didn't, she got into even more trouble.
"Lady!"
Anna looked up to see a small girl scurrying from a small house toward her. The barefoot brunette carried a basket and lifted it up to Anna, even as the girl's eyes flicked back toward the center of town.
Almost inst inctively, Anna bent to take the basket.
"Thank you.... My mother thanks you, too," whispered the child before she raced back away from the riders.
Anna's mouth opened, but the girl was gone behind a dusty hedge, and Anna found herself looking at a dirty gray cat that also immediately vanished into the roots of the hedge.
"I don't think the chandler was well liked by the women of Pamr," said Daffyd.
"It would not seem so," agreed Markan.
As she rode, Anna lifted the cloth covering the rush basket. Within were two round cakes, a coarse weave bag that appeared filled with nuts, and a waxed wedge of cheese.
What could she do with the basket?
"There's room in the Provisions bag," suggested Daffyd. "What's in it?"
"Cakes, cheese, nuts."
Markan helped bring the piebald mare up beside Farinelli, and held open the provisions sack while Anna eased the basket in place. She slipped the flowers under the leather strap of her own saddlebags, wishing that she had a better place to put them.
Between the flowers and the dust, her nose itched again, and they hadn't even left Pamr.
A quick glance back reassured her that no one was following, but Stepan shook his head. "No one be following you, lady, not from here."
Was she that fearsome?
Her eyes went to the road ahead as they neared the bridge over the Chean. Despite the length of the stone span- more than two hundred yards, the river itself was a narrow strip of brownish water between dry mud flats, weeds, and sun-dried water plants. A nondescript brown duck paddled toward the reeds of a small marshy span north of the bridge.
Farinelli's hoofs clacked loudly on the stones of the bridge, and Anna felt as though she were leaving more than a town where she had spent but a single night, as though the unknown she had already faced were the familiar compared to what lay ahead.
58.
The sun was still above the western horizon when the five riders passed the roadstone that declared Zechis a mere two deks ahead.
Daffyd's lips were clamped tightly together, and he swayed in the saddle of the gray mare.
Fridric's and Stepan's conversation had died away. Anna's legs were sore, and the thigh muscles above her knees threatened to cramp. Her hair felt like it had crawled through a swamp, then been powdered with dust, and her eyes burned from the road grit.
"A good day's ride, indeed," Markan declared. "We'll like as to be at the inn before sunset, well before sunset."
Anna pulled her sweat-dampened hat farther down on her forehead to shield her eyes against the sun as they neared the town. Unlike Pamr, the only large trees visible in Zechis were those to the north of the town proper that outlined the banks of the Chean.
Anna glanced at the house nearest the road, shutters askew, walls brown-splotched and dusty.
Nothing moved, except a chicken pecking at the ground on the west side.
The five rode quietly, the only sounds those of hoofs, harnesses, and horses occasionally snorting.
Another hundred yards farther into the town, Farinelli danced sideways as a gray dog growled, straining at a rusted chain that held him close to the door of a small hut with cracked and dust-smeared plastered walls that once might' have been white.
"Easy, Farinelli. . . easy." Anna patted the gelding's shoulder.
The dog growled once more, then sank back onto his haunches as the travelers passed, their dust subsiding in the hot stillness of late afternoon.
The inn dominated the central square of Zechis. Perched above a roofed front porch, the sign alone was distinctive, with a painted border of intertwined black and gold triangles, and an enormous black pony. The outside walls had been recently whitewashed, and a youth in rags swept the front steps.
Markan reined up at the railing beside the front steps, and Anna followed his example, conscious that a quiet had fallen across the handful of men standing in the shade of the east facing porch. A heavy man in a gray leather vest and a shirt that once could have been white openly leered, while a younger, trimmer man in a sleeveless tunic merely looked.
Anna bowed to the inevitable, and snapped firmly, but not sharply, "Markan.. . you and Daffyd come with me."
The player appeared puzzled, but Markan answered crisply, "Yes, Lady Anna."
The heavy man in gray looked away. Markan's eyes twinkled, but his face remained stern as the three dismounted and tied their mounts.
Anna let Markan and Daffyd flank her on the way into the inn. Inside, the main floor was warmer than the porch, and Anna removed the soggy hat. Behind a narrow counter at the end of the entryway stood a narrow-faced woman in a brown shirt.
"Looking for lodging?"
"What have you for a party of five?" Anna asked.
The woman glanced from Anna, then to the armsman and the player. "And who else?"
"Two more armsmen," Markan said. "My lady travels light."
"You can have the corner place, lady. That's a gold, for the private bed and the common room.
You get a basin and a towel, and common fare for all."
The no-nonsense manner indicated that was to be expected, but Anna paused.
"Our mounts?" asked Markan. "The usual copper each?"
"For five? That's for hay. If you want grain, say an extra two coppers. Visula might ask four, but it's late." The innkeeper paused. "That's a gold and seven coppers. . . if you want the grain."
Anna managed not to fumble with the wallet, and laid a gold and a silver on the counter, waiting.
The three coppers came back slowly, as if the innkeeper were expecting some largess.
The sorceress smiled. "Extra service is paid for after it is rendered . . . if it's merited."
Markan's lips stiffened momentarily.
"You won't find better on the whole highway to Falcor, lady. No you won't!"
"Then I'm sure we'll both be satisfied," Anna answered with a smile.
"You want I should show you the room?"
"Daffyd... . you come with me. Will you take care of the mounts and baggage, Markan?" Anna asked.
"We'll stable them and bring things up." Markan turned to the woman keeper. "The front corner or the back?"
"Back, a'course. Quieter for a lady."
Anna followed the older woman up stairs barely wide enough for the innkeeper's broad hips, and down a narrow hail where every plank creaked.
"Here you be."
The room directly off the hall held six pallets of a dubious nature, an oil lamp on a wall sconce, and a single narrow window.
Through the door from the outer room, Anna stepped into the corner room. Small, not much more than three yards square, it had a window with the two-shutter arrangement- louvers on the inside and heavy open shutters on the outside. A single worn towel lay folded across the base on the lumpy narrow double bed that had no pillows. A nightstand containing a basin and pitcher on one side and a single squat lamp with a sooty mantle stood between the bed and the window.
Two wooden chairs and a cracked and battered chamber pot completed the furnishings.
"Be bringing up the water soon as I leave."
"I'd appreciate that," Anna said.
The woman sniffed and headed back down the dim hall, the floorboards creaking under her weight.
"It's not much better than the tents in Pamr," Daffyd observed sourly, massaging his thighs.
Anna refrained from shaking her head. Compared to the Black Pony, the El Reno Motel she'd stayed in for Irenia's senior recital had been a palace-if only she'd known! If the Black Pony happened to be better than most, Anna wasn't sure she wouldn't prefer a bedroll in the open air to the rest of the inns. Of course, inns probably had greater appeal before the dark ones had cut off all the rain and snow.
Markan clumped down the hall and into the room, handing Anna her saddlebags and lutar case. "Lady... the way you handled Quisa. . . even Lady Anientta couldn't have done that." The armsman shook his head and surveyed the room with a laugh. "Hasn't changed much. It's still better than most."
Anna carried the saddlebags back into her room and set them in the wooden chair closest to the window.
"Here's a good solid bucket of water!" announced Quisa.
Markan intercepted it. "Thank you, Quisa."
"You're with that lord down south, aren't you, fellow?"
"Lord Hryding," Markan agreed. "We're headed to Falcor."
"Takes all kinds, it does." Quisa shook her head and waddled back out the door.
Fridric, provisions bags in hand, had to flatten himself against the wall to allow Quisa to pass.
Stepan was laughing as he brought in the last of the saddlebags. "I waited until she came down, but, no, you just had to get up the stairs."
"You were right," Fridric conceded.
"What's in these?" Stepan lifted the two irregular bags. "They clank, like blades and stuff."
"Blades and stuff," Anna admitted. "I thought they might be worth something."
"More than in your purse," Markan said. "Could I ask..."
"You can ask." Anna forced a smile.
"Never mind, lady. Better I not know."
"I'm hungry," Fridric said, almost plaintively.
"Best we eat early. Food just gets tougher," Markan suggested.
"I'd like to wash up a little," Anna said.
"Not enough water for all of us," Markan observed, glancing toward Anna's room.