Taking Flight

At least everyone along the Great Highway seemed to speak Trader’s Tongue. Kelder had heard other languages spoken, but only in the background; travelers and strangers always seemed to be addressed first in Trader’s Tongue.

Which, of course, was why it was called Trader’s Tongue, and why it was such an easy language to learn-this was what it was for.

It was after dinner that night-a good but unremarkable dinner-that Kelder discovered one great advantage of staying in so small an inn. With only three rooms, he and Irith had to share.

And with just the two of them, they were given the smallest room, with only one bed.

Kelder thought about making some noble gesture like sleeping out in the stable, or at least on the floor, but then he looked at Irith’s smile and realized that she must have known, when she led him to this out-of-the-way inn, exactly what the situation was and what she was getting into.

It would seem that he had, indeed, been courting, and more successfully than he thought. He had not seriously anticipated so quick a conquest-if conquest it was. The question arose in Kelder’s mind, and was immediately suppressed, as to just who had conquered whom.

It didn’t really matter; they were, he knew, fated for each other.

They talked for a long time about nothing in particular-Kelder learned a great many new words in Trader’s Tongue, and felt himself becoming more comfortable with the language-and in the end they did more than just talk.

It was wonderful.

It was very late indeed when Kelder finally fell asleep.

By the time they were up and dressed in the morning the other guests had eaten their breakfasts and departed. Kelder was in no hurry, but for once Irith seemed a little impatient, so they ate quickly and set out without dawdling.

At first he found himself wondering about little things he had noticed about Irith. She never removed the bloodstone choker, for example, not even when sleeping-but maybe the clasp was hard to work. He hadn’t really gotten a good look at it, in the dimness of their shared room.

She also always wore six or seven narrow bands of some sort tight around her right ankle, none of them particularly attractive, and from what little he had seen Kelder was unsure if they were bangles, or bracelets, or possibly even tattoos. Three had designs involving feathers, and one gleamed like mother-of-pearl. He was determined to get a better look at them sometime.

There was no hurry, though.

After they had been walking for awhile, Kelder’s attention turned to the journey itself. They were meeting far fewer travelers now; traffic east of Yondra Keep was apparently less than traffic farther west. Also, the distance from the Keep to the Angarossan border was roughly three times as far as to the Keep from the Amramionic border, which seemed odd to him. Shouldn’t the Keep be in the center of the kingdom?

Well, it obviously wasn’t, so he trudged on and on, expecting every minute to cross the border into Angarossa.

“Tell me,” he asked Irith around mid-morning, as she danced on ahead of him, bare feet skipping lightly across the highway’s stones, golden hair flashing in the sun. “What’s the route, exactly?”

She turned and looked back, her hair settling to her shoulders like a flock of doves landing. “You mean where the Great Highway goes?”

He nodded, somewhat out of breath.

Irith pointed eastward. “Through Yondra, and then Angarossa, and Sinodita, and Dhwerra, and then out across the desert to Shan,” she told him.

“And how far is that? To Shan on the Desert, I mean.”

She looked ahead and considered.

“About fifteen leagues, I guess,” she said at last.

“Oh,” he said. He glanced back at empty roadway, and then asked, “How far have we come? I’m not very good with distances.”

“Oh, four or five leagues,” she answered, with a vague wave indicating that her reply was little more than a guess.

He stopped and looked back, and then at the road stretching endlessly on ahead. They had covered no more than a fourth of the journey?

That was a depressing thought.

Of course, he’d come a good distance before even reaching the highway, and Irith wasn’t counting that.

And in stories people journeyed for sixnights on end, or months, or even years.

And he wasn’t really in any hurry to get to Shan, was he? He had no business there; it was just a convenient goal, an excuse for traveling. The real reason he was going to Shan, after all, was to fulfill the prophecy, and that spoke only of the journey itself. A longer journey also meant a chance to spend more time with Irith before proposing marriage, and that was a good thing, too.

So why hurry?

“Hai, slow down!” he called to Irith, who had not stopped when he did. “What’s your rush?”

“I don’t like bandits,” she called back. “Come on!”

He sighed, and hurried to catch up.

They passed an empty, crumbling watchtower just before midday.