And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him.
The New Testament: Mark, 3:13
Eleal awoke with a start. For a moment she just lay and stared at the roof overhead, heart pounding, soaked with perspiration. She had been dreaming about D'ward again. Rather, she had been dreaming about that mouthwateringly romantic admirer whom she knew to be D'ward although he did not look in the slightest bit like him. He might have grown broader in the last five years, might have grown a mustache and hairs on his chest, but he could hardly have grown shorter. Nor could he have changed the color of his eyes. And why, when they were locked in a passionate embrace, had she been singing? Oh, dreams were stupid!
It was very nice to wake up in a bed again, and even nicer to know that the stench of sewerberries had gone . . . almost gone. Never mind. She was awake now. Close above her hung a gable ceiling, with sunbeams angling through the dirty little skylight. From the street below came a faint racket of voices, wheels, and hooves as the world roused itself for business. This was not a luxurious inn, but it was not a slum, either. And she was in Niol! Today she would be able to explore a city as big and grand as Joal, one she had never visited before. She raised her head to peer over the edge of the blanket and make sure Piol Poet was still asleep, so that it would be safe for her to get up and dress.
Piol's bed was empty. That was exceedingly annoying. He must have risen and departed without waking her, and who knows what he might have learned by now? She threw off the blanket and sat up. Why, he might even have solved the Liberator puzzle already! She reached for her dress.
There had been no shortage of news of the Liberator in Niol last night. The rumors were thicker than flies in a butcher's, but no two of the stories agreed. She had dragged herself off to bed without reaching any conclusion.
With the inevitability of a glacier going downhill, the sloth's snail-slow progress had brought them to Niol itself, the only place in the world where sewerberries were used or bought, so that a cartful of them going in any other direction would have provoked questions. Here, they had sold the stinking mess, cart and sloth and all, making quite a good profit. They had spent about a third of it replacing their ruined clothes and getting cleaned up, as no bathhouse had wanted to admit them, and the rest she had shared with Piol, since it had been all his idea.
Clip! Clop! She lurched down the steep little staircase to the barroom, which was gloomy and deserted. It stank strongly of wine, with lesser odors of urine and vomit. Deciding that she was not quite ready for breakfast yet, she clumped over to the big door and heaved it open, blinking as the sunlight caught her in the face. Niol was famous for the width of its streets. Porters trudged past in twos and threes, carrying bales on their heads and moaning away in their lazy Niolian singsong. A few smelly, humpy bullocks crawled by, hauling wagons. She could hear peddlers hawking their wares in the distance, and the shutters were coming off the little shops opposite. Half a dozen juvenile beggars flocked around her at once, shouting for alms. She cursed at them and slapped them away before their prying little fingers could discover her money belt.
"The gods be with you, my lady," said a Joalian voice.
She spun around. Piol Poet sat on a bench outside the inn door, legs outstretched, back against the wall. He was munching on a roll.
"And with you, my lord." She smiled at him and joined him. The journey had done wonders for Piol, but whether it was rest, food, or just a sense of purpose that deserved the credit, she did not know. His eyes were brighter, his skin less jaundiced. A clean new robe certainly helped, and his turban was neatly bound.
He tore the doughy bread in two and gave her half. "Lots more where this came from. Be off with you!" he snapped at the beggars.
She bit, eying him thoughtfully. "You've got news."
He pouted. "Am I so horribly transparent?"
"No, I am excessively perceptive. Tell me."
He finished a mouthful with the patience of the toothless. "I have ascertained that the Tion Champions are in town, and there is to be a festival next fortnight in commemoration of—"
"Never mind all that! What have you learned about the Liberator?"
He raised a silvery eyebrow. "I thought you wanted me to be your manager in the furtherance of your artistic career?"
"Later. First, what news of D'ward?"
He sighed. "Eleal, why are you so concerned about him?"
"He's an old friend! I mean, those days in Suss were the most exciting time of my life. There's nothing wrong in wanting to meet up with an old friend, is there? Now, what's the news?"
He frowned at her doubtfully. "It makes sense now. The winds of truth have winnowed the chaff of rumor."
"Spare me the poetry." She caught his hand as he moved to take another bite. "Talk first."
He chuckled at her impatience. "He's been here, in Niol! He was seen in the temple. He's also been reported in the queen's palace, but that story seems altogether too farfetched. It does sound as if he came into the city three nights ago, went to the temple, and pulled the priests' noses. Then he ran away before they could catch him. The next night he was at Shuujooby."
"Doing what?"
"Preaching heresy."
"Oh!"
Piol shook his head sadly. "Can't say I'm surprised, not really. He was never a strong supporter of the gods, you know. Remember, he wouldn't go to the temple with you when you went to give thanks to Tion for your safe deliverance?"
That's right, she thought, he didn't. And when the high priest summoned him to the temple, he ran away altogether, so her leg didn't get cured. But to support those awful heretics! T'lin Dragontrader had joined them, too, she remembered. The last time she had met him, they had quarreled over that.
"Well, I certainly will have nothing to do with heresy!" she said firmly. "I believe in the gods!" After all, her father was one.
"So we can forget about D'ward?" Piol beamed with relief.
"No!" Again she waylaid the bread on its way to the old pest's mouth. "If he's a heretic, why isn't he being thrown in jail?"
"Well, that is an interesting question! The queen sent her household cavalry to arrest him at Shuujooby. Apparently there was some fighting, just as the Testament predicts, but the accounts vary from hangnail to hangman, as they say here. In the end the guard failed to obey orders and most of them threw in their lot with the man they were supposed to apprehend."
"That doesn't sound likely."
Piol shrugged his thin shoulders. "It sounds like a miracle. There are rumors of other miracles, too." He hesitated, then added softly, "They say he is healing sick people, Eleal—and cripples."
With professional skill, she suppressed an impending shiver and laughed scornfully. "But you don't believe such tales, do you?"
"I don't know." Piol frowned and bit on his roll. Mouth full, he mumbled, "We have seen miracles of healing in Tion's temple. . . . All these stories are incredible, yet they seem to hang together too well to be completely wrong."
She nibbled at her own hunk of bread. "So where is he now?"
"Yesterday he left Shuujooby on the road to Mamaby. . . . If he keeps up his progress, then today he'll be going on to Joobiskby, and tomorrow he'll head over Lospass to Jurgvale."
If Piol Poet wasn't adding that he'd advised her just to wait in Jurgvale until the Liberator arrived, that didn't mean he wasn't thinking it. Bother! It had taken them days to come from Joobiskby. If D'ward ever got ahead of her, she would have to chase after him, and he was obviously covering the ground much faster than a sloth did. Almost anything would, of course, and she did not own a sloth anymore anyway.
Eleal sighed. "Speak up, old man. You're my strategist. Advise me."
Piol chewed for a long time. She curbed her impatience until he was ready.
"My advice to you, Eleal Singer, would be to go on to Joal, as you said you would, or else let me arrange some auditions here. In some of the temples, perhaps. Niol also has many fine pleasure gardens where an artist may earn a good living with her art, not with—"
"Forget that. How do I catch the Liberator now?"
He sighed deeply. "You always were a wayward child, you know. Follow the crowds, I suppose. And they are heading for Lospass."
"Crowds?"
"Hundreds of people are going to hear the Liberator. They're leaving their jobs, their friends, their families. . . ."
"You have been busy, old man! How long have you been up and about? Never mind that. We can't go on foot, either of us. How?"
With his mouth full, Piol mumbled, "There are people organizing wagon trains. One silver star there. Two for a return ticket."
"That's daylight robbery!"
He chuckled wheezily. "I'd pay the two, I think. The return price may be a lot more when they've got you there."
"We'll pay for one-way trips," Eleal said firmly, "and worry about the future when it comes."