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'Here are candles,' said the landlord, indicating a high shelf upon which rested a cracked dish and a
stack of stubby, brownish cylin-ders. 'If you should want something, go downstairs; someone will be
watching the hearth all night.'
'I thank you.'
'Rest well.'
Alaric lay back on his pallet and watched the sky darken. He was lulled to sleep by muffled noises
from the lower floors and by the soft cooing of doves in a small cot beside the window.
A rustling sound near his left ear roused him. Letting his eyelids lift slightly, he glanced around without
moving his head. Someone - a woman, by her voluminous garb - was rummaging in his
knapsack.
His first impulse was to flee; he quashed it, having learned a bit of self-restraint in recent months.
Had the intruder been a man, he would not have been so tranquil, but a woman, weaponless as far
as he could see, seemed less of a danger. He tried to think of what Dall would have done in such a
situation. He corrected the thought: what Dall had done. He, himself, Alaric had been the thief, eleven
years old, slipping a deft hand beneath Dall's mattress to purloin his silver. Dall had lain still, feigning
sleep, and watched the child use his witch's power to escape with the money.
Alaric allowed the search to continue until he could hear the consternation in her movements, and then
he said, 'You'll find nothing, for I haven't a copper.'
Rather than starting, she looked up slowly. Dim moonlight slant-ing through the half-open window
revealed her face: Mizella.
'So I see, ' she said.
'A good thief makes less noise.'
'You sleep lightly.'
'Yes, when I sleep alone.'
'I apologize for trying to steal what you don't have.'
'You didn't believe I was a poor, starving minstrel?'
'No.'
He touched her arm. 'I will forgive your disbelief if you stay with me now. I can't pay you, but I can
give you a song.'
She laughed mirthlessly. 'You think the others pay me?'
'I would if I could.'
'Customers pay. Trif says you are to be one of us.'
'For a while. I don't know how long.'
'We all came here for a while . . . and here we are still. That is how things happen in the forest. If you
stay long, you will stay forever.'
'It would be pleasant to stay if there were something to keep me.'
'As for that,' she murmured,' I couldn't say,' and slid into his arms.
At breakfast, he was still puzzling over her behaviour. Stealing from patrons he could understand; they
might not notice the theft until the inn was far behind them, and then, if it were only a matter of a few
coppers, they might shrug it off as not worth returning for. But stealing from one's fellow workers,
members of the same household, was a different - and more foolish - matter. It was bound to cause
discord. Yet Trif's actions at dinner the previous night indicated strongly that he allowed little discord in
his 'family'.
It was not mere theft, then. Mizella, shaking out every fold of cloth, probing every corner of his
knapsack, had been searching for something. She, or more probably all of them, did not trust him,
suspected he was more than he admitted. And they were afraid, else they would never bother with such
a blatant investigation. She had even peered at his clothes while undressing him.
Afraid of what? What could one lone man possibly do, trapped in a house full of armed defenders?
The landlord had spoken of robbers and of the desirability of Durman claiming this forest, lending its
protection. Were there, perhaps, gangs whose scouts insinuated themselves into the good graces of a
household and then attacked from the rear as their cohorts attacked from the front? But what could they
have been looking for in his knapsack that would identify him as such a scout? Hidden wealth?
Weapons? He decided to end his uncertainty by asking point-blank.
'What were you searching for last night, Mizella?'
Everyone at the table looked up, and the abrupt cessation of chatter was startling.
Mizella shrugged. 'I don't know. I would have recognized it if I'd found it.'
'And you didn't find it?'
'No, minstrel, I didn't find anything.'
Alaric glanced sharply at the landlord. 'Then are you satisfied that I am what I say I am?'
Trif smiled slowly. 'No man is what he says he is.'
'Well, I'm not a villain, come to murder you in your beds!'
'No? Ah, I feel much better now you've said that.' He laughed and scooped up the last of his porridge.
'Come outside, minstrel, and I'll show you a few things that need to be done for the common comfort.
And we won't even mount a guard on you.'
The laugh seemed genuine enough and Alaric decided that he must have passed whatever test had
been administered. If the forest were as dangerous as Trif insisted, he could hardly blame the man for
entertaining some suspicions about a stranger.
Alaric was assigned some light tasks which passed the time agreeably enough. In the course of
accomplishing them, he pried into every room of the inn, memorizing details of their arrange-ment,
storing the information in his capacious memory almost without conscious effort. After dinner he played a
pair of songs for the whole company.
Mizella came to his pallet again, earlier this night. 'I told Oldo you asked for me. I'll make a bed in the
other corner if you prefer to sleep alone.'
'Whatever you like. I have no hold over you.'
'Then I'll stay here.'
'I thank you for the flattery. Do you find me a better lover than Oldo?'
'I don't know yet, but I like a man who doesn't order me about.'
'How can I order you about when I hardly know you?'
She shrugged. 'I'm a whore.'
'A man who pays nothing has little right to make demands.'
'The others pay nothing, yet I am paid, in the food I eat, the roof over my head, and the clothes I
wear. If you stay long and add your share to the common pot, you'll be paying me, too.'
'How did such a pretty girl as you come to a wilderness place like this? I would think to see you with
a strong husband and fat children.'
'Now you ask for a tale of woe, minstrel. Did you not say you had heard them all?'
'And I also said I was always open to a new complaint.'
'You'll find nothing new here. Once, I lived with my parents and my brothers and sisters on a large
manor. We farmed, as did all our neighbours, and it was neither a pleasant nor an unpleasant life. As the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]