Read Online Sartor by Sherwood Smith - Free Book Online

aimed away from her,
as the man stumbled away in an attempt to escape the light.
    “Go away,” she yelled. Her fist prickled
unbearably. She dropped her hand, shaking it to restore sensation to her
fingers, and the light vanished. Darkness closed in. “Go away ,”
she called into the night.
    The horse’s hooves thumped, then established a rhythm,
and diminished. The man was in retreat!
    Atan felt her way back to camp and sat on her bedroll for
the rest of the night, too frightened for sleep.

FIVE
    On the far side of Sartor’s northwest border
mountains, Rel the Traveler entered an old trade-route inn built beside a
waterfall.
    The swirl of cold outside air caused the curious and the
idle to look up, gazes lingering on the tall, broad-shouldered young fellow
entering. Youth? Grown man? He was certainly the size of a grown man, in fact,
taller and broader than most. The deep-set dark eyes could be those of a man,
but the smooth cheeks, contours of chin, the quantity of glossy black hair cut
short at his collar, were those of a youth.
    In fact, Rel had not yet reached what would be his full
height.
    A troublemaker? thought those who distrusted anyone
taller than they were.
    His clothing was not warlike. He wore plain riding gear,
somewhat worn, but not ragged, dusty and not filthy. His expression was
thoughtful, for he had been thinking of geography, and how the mage-raised
mountains stretching east and west had adapted, over the millennia since the
losing battle against Norsunder, to be indistinguishable from those made by
natural forces.
    But habit also made him wary. Aware of the silence caused by
his entry, he cast a quick glance around and, seeing no overt threat, proceeded
to the counter, his step quiet. No strutting cock he, looking for a fight.
    He also had ready coin, causing the innkeeper’s
attitude to change to welcome. He gave his name as “Rel, caravan guard by
trade,” paid for a bed in the dorm and meals for night and morning. Then
he sat with his back to the wall, where he ate and drank, ignoring speculative
or challenging glances, and occasionally glancing out the dark windows, beyond
which the gathering rain-clouds were slowly blotting the stars.
    It had been a long ride for Rel, and for the customers, a
long workday. After a time he slipped from the others’ interest—all
except the innkeeper’s teenage daughter, who had an eye for a handsome
face. But after two of three unnecessary trips to Rel’s table, and only
politeness in his manner and absence in those dark eyes, she too gave up with
an internal shrug and returned to the pair of snub-nosed, wiry young weavers by
the fire who made up for their lack of handsome looks with enthusiastic
flirtation.
    When Rel observed that people’s boundaries of interest
had contracted once again to the perimeters of their own tables, he sat back
and sipped the hot mulled wine the waitress had offered in place of pie, which
was all gone.
    He listened to the quiet hum of chatter. The inn’s
common room was small, so it was easy enough to catch a sense of what occupied
people’s attention. Local concerns, it seemed, as far as he could hear:
business, weather, who was stepping out with whom, and weather again.
    Shortly after he’d finished, the rain came, an
earnest, slanting downpour that roared on the roof. He trod up the worn stone
stairs to the next half-level, set into the mountain cliff, and opened the door
first on the left.
    The room was round, with one window set facing the
waterfall. Four beds framed the room, with a battered old table in the center,
bare except for a burning lamp. This being autumn, the bed nearest the window
was free; the other three had been claimed. Rel was just as glad. He hated
stuffy rooms, and didn’t mind cold, as long as he wasn’t wet.
    So he dumped his gear on the empty bed, and was about to get
out his map for another study when the door opened and three fellows walked in.
One was older. The other two were around the