The Soul Weaver by Carol Berg Page A

another was my chestnut mare, Kelty, brought along not to sell, but to be available if Gerick and I should choose to ride.
    Across the yard by the fence, Radele was helping a young woman load several heavy boxes into a wagon. He shared a laugh with her, then tugged his soft-brimmed hat down low over his face and slouched against our cart. The rugged little pony was harnessed and ready. I waved to get Radele’s attention. He saluted and tipped his head toward a far corner next to the stable, where Gerick was engaged in earnest conversation with the despondent storyteller from the night before. My fists and stomach unclenched.
    As I hurried across the courtyard through the people tying baggage onto carts and ponies and bawling mules, a burly drover leaped onto a heavily laden wagon, whistled loudly, and yelled, “Moving out for Montevial! We wait for nobody.”
    Radele gave me a hand into the pony trap, then swung gracefully into his saddle, nudged his mount forward, and accosted the drover. Gesturing toward my cart, he dropped a few coins into the drover’s hand as I had instructed. The drover signaled me to take up the position just behind the lead wagons, and then, with a loud bellow, he headed his own wagon out the gates.
    Gerick’s seat was still empty. But Radele rode directly across the path of the wagon next to me, causing the driver to pull up sharply and curse when he couldn’t squeeze in ahead of me. The young Dar’Nethi gave me a grin and a flourish of his hat. I reciprocated.
    Just as I thought I might have to forfeit Radele’s advantage and relinquish my desirable place near the head of the caravan, Gerick sprinted across the yard and leaped into the seat beside me. “Sorry,” he said, as I snapped the reins, and we rolled through the gates of the innyard.
    Once we were past the town walls, most of the sizable party stretched out behind us on the road. “So,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road, “has he news of his one-eyed jongler?”
    Gerick shifted beside me on the thinly padded seat. “No. I just—I just wanted to tell him I hope he finds his son. I said that I knew someone who’d been stolen away like his boy and had come home again, so that he shouldn’t give up looking.”
    â€œAny price he has to pay is worth it.”
    But when I turned to smile at Gerick, his thoughts were very far away, and when I asked what troubled him so about the man’s story, he averted his eyes and sat up straight. “Nothing.” The set of his face told me not to bother asking more.
    Â 
    Our road wound through the green foothills of the Cerran Brae, sweeping gently upward toward the Leiran border. Some forty people comprised our party. The three principal drovers were Leiran, and six Leiran soldiers, two mounted and four on foot, guarded their three heavy wagons—some Vallorean province’s tax levies of money and grain.
    Just behind us rode a pair of hunters leading five pack mules heavily loaded with skins to sell in Montevial’s market, and a vintner’s party hauling a valuable cargo of Vallorean wine to a Leiran baron. The vintner’s men had most likely been delighted to hear that a tax-levy shipment was in their party. Either the soldiers and the gruesome penalties for interfering with a tax levy would scare off any bandits, or the bandits would be so intent on the chests of gold and silver buried under the grain sacks that the wine might escape their notice.
    Behind the vintner’s men rode a delegation of four Vallorean magistrates hoping to gain tax preferences for their towns, a standoffish Leiran man, his wife and two grown sons, and a belligerent Leiran stonemason and his assistant who had been participating in the continuing effort to remove the names and likenesses of Vallorean royalty from the public buildings in Vanesta. The party was filled out with local people traveling to Leire in search of work or