Taking Flight

“This is getting expensive,” she complained as the four of them trudged away from the inn.

Kelder glanced at Ezdral, who was now neatly clad in a light green tunic trimmed with yellow, and a dark green kilt with black embroidery at the hem. The old man was barely recognizable as the drunk who had accosted them in Shan.

“Isn’t it worth it, though?” Kelder said. “And I think you owed him something.”

Irith didn’t reply.

Due to their late start they didn’t reach the village of Sinodita until mid-afternoon, and by then both Asha and Ezdral were too tired to continue. They settled in at the Flying Carpet and rested.

Kelder apologized to Bardec the Innkeeper, but even so, that gentleman insisted that Irith pay for the room and meals in advance.

Irith grumbled, but paid, and Kelder spent the remainder of the afternoon looking around the town for odd jobs whereby he could earn a few coins. By sunset he had accumulated seven bits in copper and a pouch of dried figs by chopping wood, stacking it, and helping capture an escaped goat. He had also heard scandalous gossip about the company Queen Kirame kept in her bedchamber, gripes about the idiocy and malevolence of King Caren of Angarossa, theories that Irith the Flyer was actually a minor goddess in disguise and her presence an omen of good fortune, and considerable discussion of the prospects for the coming harvest in the richer farmlands to the south, and what the effects would be on markets and the local livestock-based economy.

It was rather pleasant, really, to hear the everyday chatter of ordinary people, to listen to voices other than Irith’s velvet soprano, Asha’s high-pitched whine, and Ezdral’s oushka-scarred muttering. When he joined the others for supper he was tired, but in high spirits.

Kelder was too tired to even mind particularly when he discovered the sleeping arrangements-the largest bed was too narrow to hold two adults, so Irith and Asha shared that, while he took the other bed and Ezdral got a pallet on the floor.

They made better time the following day, passing Castle Angarossa at midday and coming upon the battlefield early in the afternoon. Abden’s cairn was undisturbed, but the other corpses were gone-none of the travelers could do any more than guess at what had become of them. Kelder’s own guess was that some of the local inhabitants had been sufficiently public-spirited to remove such an obvious health hazard.

The hard part of their self-imposed task proved to be finding enough combustibles to build a proper pyre; with the highway tidied up there was very little to be found, and in the end Kelder resorted to knocking at the door of a nearby farmhouse and paying far too much of Irith’s money, as well as all his own seven bits, for a wagonload of stovewood and some flammable trash. Pleas that it was needed for the humanitarian gesture of a proper funeral were countered with remarks about the expense and effort involved in obtaining the wood in the first place, and the discomforts of eating undercooked food or sleeping in a cold house.

Several wagons and a full-blown caravan passed during the period between their initial arrival at the cairn and the eventual lighting of the pyre, and none of them stopped or provided any assistance at all. In the end, though, Kelder struck a spark, fanned it into a flame, and stepped back as it gradually spread through the pile on which Abden’s mutilated remains lay.

“I wonder if we’ll see the ghost,” Asha said, staring.

“You probably won’t,” Irith said. “People usually don’t, especially after so long.” She paused, then added, “Sometimes I do, though, because of the magic.”

“Tell us if you see him,” Asha said. “Tell me if he’s smiling.”

Irith nodded agreement, then leaned over and whispered to Kelder, “He’s probably gone mad by now, being trapped in two places for so long.”

Kelder frowned and whispered back, “If he has, will he recover?”

Irith shrugged. “Who knows? I’m no necromancer.”

It took the better part of an hour before the corpse was consumed, and Irith did not have the stamina to watch constantly; finally, though, she glanced up and started.

“There!” she said.

The others looked, but saw nothing more than rising smoke and crackling flame.

“Was he smiling?” Asha asked eagerly.

“I didn’t see,” Irith said. “He was facing the wrong way, and I just caught a glimpse.” She hesitated. “I’m not really sure I saw anything.” She noticed the expression on Kelder’s face and added, “Really!”

“He’s gone, then?” Ezdral asked.

“I guess so,” Irith said.

Kelder noticed that Asha was crying silently, tears running down her cheeks, her chest heaving.

“I guess we can go, then,” Ezdral said, with a look at the descending sun. “Which way? Back to Castle Angarossa?”

Asha looked up at him. “Why would we go back there?” she asked through her tears.

“For someplace to sleep,” Ezdral said. “It’s the closest place.”

“But it’s the wrong direction,” Kelder pointed out.