Uprooted(64)

He didn’t keep his voice down. But Prince Marek didn’t look around, though a few of the soldiers glanced at us. The horses stretched their necks, trembling, and we rode on quickly, leaving the dead behind us.

We stopped a little while later to give the horses a rest. They were all tired, from fear as much as effort. The path had widened around some marshy ground, the end of a spring creek that was drying up now as the snowmelt stopped running. A small trickle still came bubbling along and made a wide clear pool over a bed of rocks. “Is it safe to let the horses drink?” Prince Marek asked the Dragon, who shrugged.

“You may as well,” he said. “It’s not much worse than having them beneath the trees. You’d have to put them all down after this in any case.”

Janos had already slid down from his horse; he had a hand on its nose, calming the animal. He jerked his head around. “These are trained warhorses! They’re worth their weight in silver.”

“And purging elixir is worth their weight in gold,” the Dragon said. “If you felt tender towards them, you shouldn’t have brought them into the Wood. But don’t distress yourself overly. Chances are the question won’t arise.”

Prince Marek threw him a hard look, but he didn’t quarrel; instead he caught Janos aside and spoke to him consolingly.

Kasia had gone to stand by the edge of the clearing where a handful of deer tracks continued on; she was looking away from the pool. I wondered if she’d seen this place, too, in her long wandering imprisonment. She stared into the dark trees. The Dragon came past her; he glanced at her and spoke; I saw her head turn towards him.

“I wonder if you know what he owes you,” the Falcon said unexpectedly, behind me; I startled and turned my head around. My horse was drinking thirstily; I gripped the reins and edged a little closer to its warm side. I didn’t say anything.

The Falcon only raised one narrow eyebrow, black and neat. “The kingdom hasn’t a limitless store of wizards. By law, the gift places you beyond vassalage. You have a right to a place at court, now, and the patronage of the king himself. You should never have been kept here in this valley in the first place, much less treated like a drudge.” He waved a hand up and down at my clothes. I had dressed myself as I would have to go gleaning, in tall mud-boots, loose work trousers sewn of sacking, and a brown smock over it all. He still wore his white cloak, although the Wood’s malice was stronger than whatever charm he’d used to keep it neat in the ordinary woods; there were threads snagged along the edge of it.

He misunderstood my doubtful look. “Your father is a farmer, I suppose?”

“A woodcutter,” I said.

He flicked a hand as if to say it made not the least difference. “Then you know nothing of the court, I imagine. When the gift rose in me, the king raised my father to a knighthood, and when I finished my training, to a barony. He will not be less generous to you.” He leaned towards me, and my horse snorted bubbles in the water as I leaned hard against her. “Whatever you may have heard, growing up in this backwater, Sarkan is by no means the only wizard of note in Polnya. I assure you that you needn’t feel bound to him, simply because he’s found an—interesting way to use you. I’m certain there are many other wizards you could align yourself with.” He extended his hand towards me, and raised a thin spiraling flame in the palm of his hand with a murmured word. “Perhaps you’d care to try?”

“With you?” I blurted, undiplomatically; his eyes narrowed a little at the corners. I didn’t feel at all sorry, though. “After what you did to Kasia?”

He put on injured surprise like a second cloak. “I’ve done her and you a favor. Do you imagine anyone would have been willing to take Sarkan’s word for her cure? Your patron might charitably be called eccentric, burying himself out here and coming to court only when he’s summoned, gloomy as a storm and issuing warnings of inevitable disasters that somehow never come. He hasn’t any friends at court, and the few who would stand beside him are the very doom-sayers who insisted on having your friend put to death at once. If Prince Marek hadn’t intervened, the king would have sent an executioner instead, and summoned Sarkan to the capital to answer for the crime of letting her live this long.”

He’d come to be exactly that executioner, but apparently he didn’t mean to let that stand in the way of claiming he’d done me a kindness. I didn’t know how to answer anything so brazen; the only thing I could have managed would have been an inarticulate hiss. But he didn’t force me to that point. He said only, in a gentle voice that suggested I was being unreasonable, “Think a little about what I’ve told you. I don’t blame you for your anger, but don’t let it make you spurn good advice,” and gave me a courtly bow. He withdrew gracefully even as Kasia rejoined me. The soldiers were getting back on their horses.

Her face was sober, and she was rubbing her arms. The Dragon had gone to mount his own horse; I glanced over at him, wondering what he’d said to her. “Are you all right?” I asked Kasia.

“He told me not to fear I was still corrupted,” she said. Her mouth moved a little, the ghost of a smile. “He said if I could fear it, I probably wasn’t.” Then even more unexpectedly she added, “He told me he was sorry I’d been afraid of him—of being chosen, I mean. He said he wouldn’t take anyone again.”