Hi everyone. I’m feeling much better now. Just a cold, but it hit me at a time that wasn’t great. My sister was visiting with one of her daughters from New Zealand, and the university semester had just finished, which meant there was a lot of general catch-up work to get done. So of course, I ended up coming down sick. Anyway, all better now. And so, on with the story…
-oOo-
The tent of the gifts was a huge, old, much-repaired canvas affair with flying triangular false-buttresses of fabric, porticoes and even a mock-tower–all made of the same heavy gold and grey cloth. Two bored guards stood outside, leaning on halberds and yawning. A few folks were milling in and out, but if there had been an initial rush to see what wondrous treasures were being proffered as gifts, that rush had long since subsided.
After a quick exchange of words with one of the guards–largely amounting to, “Don’t touch anything”–Caewen and Dapplegrim were allowed in. If the two men guarding the tent thought it was odd that a large red-eyed horse with a skullish face wanted to see the treasures, they did not show it.
Darkness and ruddy low light reigned within. The interior was barely lit by a half-dozen smouldering braziers, and the air was stuffy. Presumably from hours of slow-burning charcoals. Three massive tables dominated the space. They sat across from each other in a rough horseshoe, a span of trampled and dying grass making up the gap between them. The tent had been hoisted up over green sod. There was no groundsheet, nor even an attempt to cover the ground with blankets. Caewen took a few steps into the gloom. The dirt felt weird and lumpy. The soft soil had been beaten by a lot of feet. Small divots pocked the whole of it. The tables on the left and right were heaped with treasures that gleamed with small liquid dashes of light. The table at the far end was starkly empty in contrast.
“The third dynasty?” said Caewen, and nodded at it.
“Hurmth,” answered Dapplegrim. “No one gives gifts to them, and they do not give gifts in return. It’s the two great dynasties that warrant bribing.”
Choosing on whim, Caewen turned to her left.
Atop the table was a mass of silver and ivory, polished jet rings, cameos of white, shell-pink and grey, and other more exotic colours. Raw red gold the colour of blood-in-honey. Delicate crowns of icy white silver. Heaps of waterworn sapphires. Vases of remarkable skill and vibrant beauty. Drinking vessels in the shape of wondrous birds, their necks curved and forming handles. Flowing, shimmering bolts of silk in hues of midnight skies and moonlight on water. Presumably, these were the gifts of the night, intended for the sun-wise folks. They all had the look of things that had been crafted away in the north, in the nightlands. Caewen couldn’t see anything immediately suspicious about them. “Anything jumping out at you?” said Caewen.
Dapplegrim shook his head.
They crossed to the other side of the room. Rich satins and velvets in orange, gold and vibrant blue. Urns carved from semi-precious stones. Delicate porphyry statuettes. Yellow diamonds the size of a thumb, strung on threads of copper. Burnished necklets. A whole tunic studded with lapis lazuli and turquoise. Great hunks of amethyst embedded in a torc of gold. The gifts of the day, to be given to the night-folk, it seemed.
Caewen looked them over. “What about this lot?”
Dapplegrim shook his head. “No,” but then he paused and said, “Well, that one smells funny. Not-quite-human funny. Like… hurm. Like dry, dusty snakeskin. Or like dirt from a waterless cave. It doesn’t smell like people.”
Caewen bent over to look at the object. It didn’t look like much. A small gold plate… almost a saucer, really, with a few emeralds stuck into the surface. It had evidently been presented in an old yellowed bone case with a dog carved on the lid. There were some curls and clouds around the dog’s head. “Nothing else seems amiss?”
“No. Hur. Hurmmm.”
“I wonder why someone was lurking around here? And why did the black birds go after Samarkarantha and Pel then? I mean, there are treasures here, but maybe we are missing seeing the thing that was important? Maybe something has already been stolen?”
“Seems unlikely,” mused Dapplegrim. “Hurm. The guards might be half-asleep, but they are only a formality, truthfully. There are spells upon spells laid thick on this place. Stealing anything at all would be a quick way to a painful death.”
“H’m. But someone has been able to cheat the goddess of her justice? Couldn’t they have cheated these spells too?”
He shook his head. “Not unless they have some other trick. The goddess is a goddess, a spirit of the earth, the air, magic, hur… and of place.” His sniffed and his velvet-skinned nostrils flared. “But this is mortal magic. A whole different order of things. A trick to deceive the one won’t work against the other. It’s like.. like… it’s as if you hid your scent to avoid wolves. It doesn’t do you any good if you are being hunted by a cat-o-the-mountains. They hunt by sight.”
“I see. I think. And there’s nothing else odd about anything here?”
“No. I can’t smell anything like a curse or hex. There don’t seem to be any sneaky spells, or weirds for spying. No scryer’s tricks. No death curses. Nothing strange at all. These are all just pretty baubles.”
“Even the one that smelled a bit off?”
“Even that. It just smells off. And it’s only strange because I can’t place it.”
“How do you mean?”
“What with my travels, it’s a bit odd is all. I’ve never scented that particular smell before now. It’s from something, hurm, uncommon, I’d guess. Or from very distant lands?”
“Well, if it is a gift from far away, that wouldn’t be surprising.” Caewen put her hands on her hips, sighed and said, “I guess that is all we can do here for now. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason to keep standing about in this stuffy air. It is strange though. Why would someone be lurking around this tent? Why attack Samarkarantha? Why risk getting in a fight with him over baubles? He’s a powerful magus, by all appearances. You’d have to be sure of yourself–or desperate–to go up against him. There must be a reason. There must be more to this.”
“Could it be that there’s nothing important here? Maybe the assassin was trying to lure in nosey pokers? Might have been a trap for anyone who was getting too curious?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
They left the tent more thoughtful and deflated than they’d entered it. One of the guards asked, “Enjoy your visit?” and Caewen just mumbled a reply.
“What now?” she said to Dapplegrim, after they’d moved a small distance off.
“We could go back to Samarkarantha’s tent?” he suggested hopefully. “I wouldn’t mind a rest and a bite to eat.”
“I’m tired too.” Caewen stretched her back, yawned and said, “And hungry. But would you mind if we dropped in on Fafmuir first?”
“I suppose not. Why did you want to talk to him again?”
“At the moot he said he had it on ‘good authority’ that the Winter King was real, and was gathering armies. I want to know what he meant by that.” She rubbed at her left eye. She was really feeling the tiredness now.
“It would be good to know where he stands in things,” said Dapplegrim. “I don’t trust him half an inch from the ocean deeps.”
“I don’t trust him either. But he has seemed to be helpful. He does seem to want to get to the bottom of the murders. He did save Keru, too.”
“And exacted a price for it. Hurmmm.”
“Yes,” she conceded. “There is that. Well, then? Should we?”
“Might as well. His tent was up the hill, that way? Wasn’t it?”
“I think so, yes.”
They struck off at about the right angle, stepping between tents and cutting through a knot of market stalls and traders. “There are fewer uncanny folks about now,” remarked Dapplegrim. “Many fewer even than yesterday. A lot of them were wearing disguises, so you mortal folk won’t be noticing their absence so much, but they’ve almost all gone now.”
A hairy, hunched creature dressed in hard, dull hemps waddled past them.
“The Nibelung are still about though,” observed Caewen. “Is there any point in asking them about the murders, or the Winter King for that matter?”
He snorted. “Doubt it,” said Dapple, “unless we want to pay a lot of silver for truths, half-truths and lies all mixed up together. Tight-lipped and crooked-tongued are the Nibelung. And they never do anything for nothing. Not easy to deal with.”
Just then a short, sharp hiss snipped out at them. Neither Caewen, nor Dapplegrim, were immediately sure where it had come from.
“Hsst!” it came again.
They looked about. A man in a magenta cloak and otherwise black and grey outfit, all very fine and expertly sewn, was trying to get their attention from the shadows beside a nearby tent.
They walked over, but not too close.
“Yes?” said Caewen.
He motioned them closer.