Page 22 of Into the West

Slowly, Briada began to clap. Her cousins followed. Then Hakkon and Ivar and all the rest joined in. Amethyst straightened a little more, obviously pleased with their response.

“Now I see why Kordas picked you out. You are very good at quick thinking, Amethyst, and at planning.” Briada smiled. It wasn’t a grin, but it seemed genuine. “Why do you say ‘this one’ instead of ‘I’?” Briada asked.

“‘This one’ refers to the habitation of this body by my self. We were not willingly placed into these forms, so we do not refer to them as ‘ourselves.’ This one is Amethyst, to all of you, which is simpler and accurate enough.”

Suddenly Amethyst froze. “There has been a development,” she said. “It seems we are not alone.”

It took longer than Kordas had hoped to get the first strings organized and lined up properly, make sure the load wasn’t too much for the horse, and get them through the Gate. At least once we get them all on the move we won’t have to do all this all over again, he thought with a touch of exasperation. But really . . . they’ve known for moons this day was coming. Couldn’t they have at least practiced a little?

The scouts should have been an example to them all, but of course, no one was paying attention when barges were colliding, people were shouting and swearing at each other, and the horses waiting to be hitched up watched all this with—he could have sworn—looks of impatient disdain.

By the time the first of the strings was actually through the Gate, the sun was much higher in the sky, and he was fairly certain that the scouts were several leagues away and completely out of sight. Well . . . that really didn’t matter, now, did it? They were supposed to be well ahead of the rest.

“Rose, how far are the scouts from the Gate?” he asked anyway.

“Amethyst tells me they are quite out of sight, and that she is not very good at judging distances.” Well, that confirmed that he was right. At least it meant the scouts were making good time. “But we have a more immediate problem,” she continued. “It seems we are not alone on this river, and the first barges are being detained. Your—”

“Never mind, I’m on my way!” He vaulted into Arial’s saddle and urged her into a canter, very conscious of the hand-crossbow and Spitter at his side and hoping he would not have to use them.

After the timeless point of disorientation that Gate-passage always subjected him to, he found himself about to run full-tilt into the haunches of a Tow-Beast, and pulled Arial up short.

His heart dropped, and he went cold all over, as he saw what Rose had meant.

The couple of guards he had, and the clearly rattled Valdemarans, faced off against what looked like a group of armed farmers and hunters. There were bows in plenty, all of them at the ready, some nasty-looking pitchforks and mattocks, and even a couple of wicked pruning hooks and boar spears.

He drew himself up as tall as he could, knowing that at least he had the advantage of height on them, being as he was on a horse, and walked Arial up to the front line of the mob.

“Might I inquire what the matter seems to be?” he asked, in the local dialect—or at least the one that was local to Crescent Lake.

One big man in a blacksmith apron—those seemed to be universal—stepped up to the front, eyed Kordas while hefting one of his hammers, and replied.

Well, it was similar to what the people at Crescent Lake spoke, but the accent was so thick it was hard to understand. Oh, not the alarm masked with anger, that was easy enough to read. But the words were almost unintelligible.

Quickly, because he didn’t want anyone to have time to react to what he was about to do, he looked straight at the man, gathered his magic, readied his spells, and uttered the trigger words for the first.

“Be still.”

The blacksmith froze. Kordas nudged Arial up to him before the others could realize what he’d done, and touched the man’s forehead, triggering the second spell.

There was a moment of dizziness. His eyes glazed, then cleared, and he backed Arial up. “Awake!” he said, breaking the spell.

The blacksmith swayed a little, came back to himself, and paled. “What didja do to me, warlock?” he roared in anger and alarm.

Anyone with weapons on them reached for them.

“Peace!” he shouted before anyone could move. “I was just making sure we could understand each other!”

“You—” The blacksmith froze. “Wait—!” he shouted to the others, then turned toward Kordas, looking distinctly shaken. “A moment ago ye was speakin’ jibber-jabber!”

“I know, I know,” Kordas said soothingly. “I just needed to touch you to use magic to learn your tongue. The last thing I want is for us to start hacking at each other over nothing!”

That just made the blacksmith angry. “Nothing? Ye set up yon uncanny door, ye start bringin’ people into our lands, and then ye start bringin’ boatses full of gods only know what, and ye say that’s nothing? Nothing to you maybe, but it’s us that’s got the opinion that matters!” The mob behind him growled.

“It’s a misunderstanding,” Kordas replied, keeping his tone quiet, and not matching the blacksmith’s anger with his own. “We’re just passing through, following the river. We’re looking for a land to live in that doesn’t already have people in it. Now that we know you’re here, we aren’t going to leave the river. Truly.”

He had to say this quite a few times, paraphrasing it each time so he wouldn’t sound like he was mocking them. In between he added little things like “Our land wracked with war,” and “Evil men were pursuing us, but we got away,” being very, very careful to phrase these things so that they were, at least, technically true, just in case one of them had a power like the Dolls did to tell what was true or false. Each time he repeated what he wanted them to hear, they did calm down a little more, and the anger slowly turned to suspicion and something he suspected was plain old dislike of the stranger. He couldn’t blame them, especially if they had never seen a Gate before. It was obviously powerful magic, and the people who could do things like that were rightly to be feared.

It took a lot longer than he wanted to, and the entire time he couldn’t help but think of all those Poomers and Spitters back there on the other side of the Gate, and how much easier it would be to just bring them through and clear these people out—