Taking Flight

“Oh,” he said, “I’ll be fine.” He glanced around, and added, “But if you see anything to eat anywhere, tell me.” He eyed the corn growing in the fields, but as yet there were only green stalks, not even unripe ears to eat.

“All right,” she said.

They marched on, and the forest stretched on alongside. They met no other travelers on this stretch.

About twenty minutes later Irith pointed to a low plant growing by the roadside, almost in the shade of the forest. “Those are strawberries,” she said, “but I don’t know if any of them are ripe.”

Kelder wasn’t sure he cared if they were ripe, and picked a handful. After his first taste, however, he decided that ripening was important after all; he tossed the rest away. He and his stomach grumbled on.

An hour or so later, after silent encounters with two more horsemen and twice that number westbound afoot, they came to the border between Hlimora and Amramion, a border marked by a small tower of reddish stone. It looked deserted, but as they approached a man in a steel helmet leaned over a merlon atop the tower and shouted at them.

Neither could make out the words, but Irith waved cheerfully.

The two of them strolled on, Kelder growing nervous, Irith quite calm as they approached the watchtower.

The man shouted again, and this time Kelder understood him; he was speaking Trader’s Tongue.

“Who goes there?” he called.

Kelder looked at Irith, unsure what to say. She just waved gaily and called, “Hello!”

The guard squinted down at her.

“Irith?” he called.

She nodded.

“Walking this time, are you?” the guard called. “What happened to your wings?”

She grinned and stepped back away from Kelder for a moment.

When she stepped away she was just a girl-a very beautiful one, but a girl. Then, suddenly, she had wings that unfolded behind her, those great glistening white wings he had seen before. Kelder revised his earlier estimate; her wingspan was more than fifteen feet, and might be a full twenty.

She folded her wings, and then they were gone again. Kelder started to ask something, then didn’t bother.

“Magic,” he muttered to himself. “Wonders and magic.”

“What about him?” the guard called, pointing at Kelder.

“I met him up the road,” Irith called. “His name’s Kelder.”

“That right, boy?” the guard called.

“Yes, sir,” Kelder replied, “Kelder of Shulara.”

“You a trader?”

“No, sir.”

“You of noble birth?”

“No.”

“You armed?”

“No, just a belt knife.”

“Doesn’t count. You a magician?”

“No.”

“You swear that you’ve told me the truth?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Irith?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I just met him,” Irith replied, a bit flustered. “But I think it’s all true. It’s the same thing he told me!”

“All right, go on, then,” the guard said. “And you, Kelder, you be careful of Irith.”

Kelder blinked, and nodded. The soldier waved them on, and they walked on.

Kelder puzzled over the guard’s last sentence. His knowledge of Trader’s Tongue was still far from perfect, and he wasn’t sure whether the guard had meant that he should defend Irith, or beware of Irith.

The latter didn’t seem to make much sense. She might be a shapeshifter, but she was still just a girl. And the guard himself certainly didn’t seem very worried about her; he’d greeted her as an old friend.

So he must have been asking him to look after her.

Well, that sounded fine to Kelder. He was very interested indeed in looking after Irith indefinitely.

And the guard knew who and what Irith was, and had greeted her by name. He had seemed willing to take her word for Kelder’s identity. That implied, at the very least, that she really had traveled the Great Highway before, probably more than once. Kelder looked at his companion again, wondering how she had managed it. She must have started traveling awfully young!

Impressing her was going to be very difficult, he realized, if she had traveled so far and seen so much. He wished he knew more about her, and more about women in general. All the other girls he had associated with much were people he had known since childhood; he had had no practice in getting to know females, in attracting their interest-and he needed Irith to be interested in him. She was so beautiful, so endearing, that just walking beside her was a constant blend of agony and delight-delight at her presence, and agony at the frustration of doing nothing but walking beside her. He wanted to touch her, hold her-but he didn’t have the nerve, yet.

The mere fact that she was there meant she liked him, since after all, she could fly away at any second-but he had no way to judge how much she liked him, or what she wanted from him.

Boiling with indecision, he walked on, watching her.

They reached the town of Amramion a little over two hours after crossing the border.