"A signet ring, small and silver, engraved with the coelbren for 'Apple.'"

"And for 'Aggiús.'" Adarc put a hand on her shoulder. "We'll look for her, and carry your message."

"Bless you. The lass's family'll be heartbroken if something foul is afoot."

Another hour found us on the trail once more. My wagon held ten barrels of pickled beef, and Adarc plodded along at the wagon wheel. The cart was much lighter now without the lumber, but the oxen didn't meander any faster up the trail. According to Adarc, we still had to pass through the gorge of Drægan, a narrow place between the peak of the ridge-crest and another steep hill to the north. Good country for another ambush, he said, but beyond that was open, rolling grasslands, rising up to the mount at Trigrian Hill.

I could see the narrow gap coming into view, now. Was this the last gauntlet I must run to prove myself a man to my father?

Adarc was silent for a change. The news of the maiden's abduction had dampened everyone's mood, reminding us that these were troubled and uncertain lands. "The mining camp—the one that was raided this morning—how far from here is that?" I scanned the chaotic tangle of scrubby hills as best I could from the wagon seat, rubbing the hilt of the broadsword on my belt.

Adarc looked up at me as if he'd just returned from far away. He furrowed his brow and pointed to the north and a bit behind us. "About seven miles from Tirimbaile, sure and the crow flies."

Seven miles. I looked over my left shoulder. The trail forked ahead, one leg of it running in that general direction. A large hill loomed up, surmounted with a timber-frame watchtower. "There?"

"No. That's Cnóceap. 'Copper Hill,' in your tongue. Darachrith is about four miles farther north from that watchtower."

We lapsed once more into silence. Seven miles is nothing, I thought. Certainly close enough to Tirimbaile for bandits to have abducted the maiden Aggiús. Close enough that there might be robbers on that very trail. This barbarous land is where my father chooses to test me?

I turned my attention back to the path ahead. Grasses waved in the early spring breeze. Scattered copses of black alder trees were coming into leaf. Grasses tall enough to conceal a man and copses thick enough to hide a robber band.

When I was a young boy, I'd kept myself awake with feverish dreams of following my father's footsteps into adventures such as these. I'd never known him as a child, he and my uncle had left for the Aukrian colonies in the west before I was born. But my mother had filled my head with tales of wonder. He was an adventurer, plundering ancient tombs. He was a spy, infiltrating the glittering courts of foreign kings. He was a soldier, fighting for the glory of Aukriath on distant battlefields. I remembered the days of my youth in Mendêvos, running through the streets with a switch for a sword, fighting imagined monsters and savages in his name.

They were all lies of course, those stories. When my mother was taken with fever and her sister took me in, I learned the truth. Or rumors of the truth, at least. That he was nothing more than a merchant, and that the Aukrian colony had been massacred by the Tameryâni king. Refugees from the slaughter had died when they fled by sea or overland.

Which was true enough, so far as it went. There had been a massacre, and my father and uncle had become refugees. It was my fifteenth year before he found his way home to us at last. By then, my mother had died, and her sister's husband had long since beaten idle dreams of adventure out of me. But there he was upon our doorstep. My father. And he wanted me to follow in his footsteps, to take up my place at his side.

Four years working on a coastal merchant cog, plying the archipelagos of the Summer Sea. Then we settled in Difelin that winter, and my father got the notion that we might open a route to Temenos through the mountains. "We will make zeh killing," he'd told his investors.

So there I was. Halfway to Temenos, waiting for the mountain passes to open, straggling through the barbarous countryside with a wagon of pickled beef and a cursed chest containing who knew what, waiting for bandits to slit my throat.

Is this what a life of adventure was all about? Uncertainty? Threat? Fear?

Behind us, the lilting air of that damnable child's song floated on the breeze. "Oh hush thee my dove, oh hush thee my rowan, Oh hush thee my lapwing, my little brown bird. Oh fold thy wings and seek thy nest now, Oh shine the berry on the bright tree, The bird is home from the mountain and valley. Oh horo hi ri ri. Cadul gu lo..."

"Is she still back there?" I craned my neck around. The little girl, her dog, and their wagon were trotting up alongside us, making better time than my oxen.

"Talwyn, I thought you found your aunt in Tirimbaile?" Adarc put his hands on his knees and crouched to speak with her.

Her liripipe bobbed as she nodded. "Sure an' I did!" She stopped to speak with him as my wagon lurched on. "Modrep Gwaeddan tells me to meet me broder and 'is caravaan at Raf Treegrian!"

Wonderful, I thought. Now she'll be following us all day.

We continued on to the northeast. Straight into the Gorge of Drægan.

—33—

Will they discover any sign of the maid Aggiús? How real is the threat of robbers and banditry? What dangers await in the Gorge of Drægan?

Tune in next time for more of this Continuing Tale in the Matter of Manred: A Merchant's Tale.