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Topiara - Chapter 22
The racetrack was crowded, as usual, with the regular denizens of youths, drunks, and gamblers. Iliria and Lyara had long ago found that the best place for viewing the races was atop a small knoll a short distance from the track. It was close enough to the crowd that any bets could be placed quickly, and yet far enough away that a conversation could be held among a group. Several small groups of people lounged about the knoll as the four from the Guide's Hall picked their spot for the afternoon.
Below, the hawkers peddled lists of the afternoon races and the ponies to run in them. The colors of the ponies' riders would be their identifier during the race, so that the leaders and losers could be seen from a distance. "Look, Lyara," Jilan pointed to the list in excitement. "My father is running Agility today under yellow. I saw him run when he was a colt. There aren't many faster."
"Dusty is fast too," Dorin chimed in, pointing to the name of the pony to be wearing green in the first race. "He's run in the first four in his last four races."
"I think you're all crazy. Windsong is one pony that has won nearly every race she's been in," Lyara chuckled at her friends. "Two specie says that blue takes the first."
"You're on!" Jilan and Dorin chimed together, putting their specie into a pile with Lyara's in front of Iliria. Jilan turned laughing eyes to the Talandri girl. "Aren't you betting?"
Iliria put her two pieces in the pile. "I know better than to bet against Lyara," she shook her head gaily. "When she and Karlo would make bets against me those last few races before they left, I always came out the loser."
"Oh." Dorin nudged Jilan with an elbow. "These two think they can out-wager two boys from families that breed racing stock?"
"Let them throw away their specie," Jilan shrugged in Iliria's and Lyara's direction. "Maybe they'll listen to us in the next."
The caller's flag waved in the air briefly, and then the black flag fell. The ponies sprang from behind the dropped line and thundered down the track. The four were soon on their feet, cheering on as first the blue pony and then the yellow surged ahead of the rest. When the black flag at the opposite end of the track fell, however, it was the pony in red that led the group. The friends fell back to their seats, laughing.
"What do we do about this?" Dorin chuckled as he point ed at the small pile of coins.
"Let it stand," Lyara urged, holding her side as the laughter and jumping had made her wound begin to ache. "Wisher is blue in the second, and I'll stand on my first wager." She reached in her pouch. "In fact, another piece on blue."
"Lyara! Wisher hasn't won anything in her last two races," Iliria giggled. "She's a known loser now." "I take Winterwind in red," Iliria shook her head. "Lyara, you're going to lose this time."
"No I'm not!"
"Well, I'm taking green again," Dorin chimed in. "I saw Dancer run last week in the third. He lost only by a nose."
"Don't be fooled. Thunder has beat him more than once by more than just a nose. Another piece says purple comes in first." Jilan tossed another coin on the pile. Iliria and Dorin tossed their coins in, and again the four rose to cheer on their choices. This time the pony with the purple rider won an easy victory, running well ahead of the fastest competitor. With a delighted and feigned superiority, Jilan seated himself sedately and picked up the pile of coins and counted them.
"Pure luck," Iliria tried to scowl through her smile. "That was pure luck."
"Superior knowledge is what we scholars are known for," Jilan pontificated, bringing snorts of derision from both Lyara and Dorin.
"It is superior something, that's for sure," Lyara giggled at Iliria. "I just won't say what that something is."
Jilan broke from his role-playing long enough to look offended before bursting out in gales of laughter himself. As soon as the four had managed to stop laughing, they once more leaned over the paper list to begin the process again.
None of them took serious note of the two men watching them intently from a neighboring hillock.
Lyara hefted her specie-pouch ruefully, aware that there were seven golden coins that no longer belonged to her. "Remind me to beware of wagering against you in the future, Jilan."
The young man laughed. "I warned you. My family has bred racing ponies for generations. Even a scholar spends some of his earlier life out of doors. I know the blood lines of all my father's stock."
"All I know is that you have seven specie of mine!" Lyara said, trying to sound pained. "Financial ruin..."
Jilan snorted at her and put an arm about her shoulders in mock comfort. "Don't worry, I won't let you starve."
Lyara didn't quite flinch at the touch, finding the gesture more an extension of the comaraderie that she felt for the young Talandri. For the many days that she and Jilan had spent in the Guides Hall, effectively separated for the first time in weeks, Lyara had thought back on the adventures and conflicts that had happened to them. Topiara had been pointed in offering visions of alternatives lost and still-possible options, leaving Lyara in a real quandary as to what she wanted her relationship with him to be.
"That's so kind of you."
Jilan took note of the stifled flinch and smiled in wardly. Lyara had been pointedly distant for the first few days of their stay in Tandri, making him wonder if they would ever indeed travel together again. Except for a few meals, he had rarely seen her outside the study time they shared with Lyndon until she had sought him out this morn ing. "You're slipping, Lyara."
"What?" Lyara looked up at him in surprise.
He tightened his hold on her shoulder slightly. "You didn't push me away or turn into a statue this time. Tell me," he asked in curiosity, "are you becoming human?"
"I don't think I want to talk about this," Lyara said in clipped tones. She shrugged to loosen his hold on her.
Jilan maintained his hold on her shoulders and, after a quick glance at his surroundings, accompanied a more and more unwilling Lyara into a more private alleyway. "But I do want to talk about it! We're supposedly leaving for the god's know where in two weeks. I think I deserve to know where I stand..."
"Let me go!" Lyara hissed through clenched teeth, beginning to struggle now. She managed to escape the arm about her shoulders, only to find Jilan then holding her wrists.
"Lyara, stop this!" Jilan barked at her, hoping no one would take note of their struggle. "Stop it...no!" He shook her arms roughly. "Stop it and listen to me!"
Lyara began to struggle in earnest, and Jilan was hard put to keep hold of her wrists to prevent her clawed hands from raking at his face. Lyara's voice changed from simple anger to panic and finally something like terror. When the tone began to approach hysteria, Jilan raised his hand instinctively to try to slap Lyara out of it; the reaction was immediate and completely unexpected.
Suddenly Lyara was cowering, no longer struggling but throwing her hands up as if to ward off blows. "Don't hurt me again!" she whimpered. Jilan dropped her wrists as if they had burned him, and Lyara sank to her knees with a terrified expression that watched his every move. It took a few moments for him to realize that the plea had been made in Kauwlut, and that he had heard the same cry before. It had been late at night, in the throes of her fevered night mare, that Lyara had plead and thrashed and screamed as if she were being tortured.
Instantly he was on his knee beside, reaching slowly for her and whispering in gentle Kauwlut, "No, Lyara. It's all right. No one's going to hurt you." She cringed but did not resist as he pulled her close to him and held her quietly, and slowly her breathing returned to normal and lost its ragged edge.
"Is everything all right here?" a sharp and concerned voice demanded from behind him, and Jilan turned his head to look at the street sentry who had come to investigate the noise in the alley. There was little doubt as to the pic ture that he and Lyara were presenting.
"She's had a bad fright, that's all," Jilan said reas suringly, turning back to Lyara. How long ago, his mind asked silently over and over. He brushed back black hair from Lyara's face. "Everything's better now, isn't it?"
Lyara's nod was slow and hesitant, as if she was only gradually recognizing where she was. The sentry, however, was satisfied that she had not answered under duress and moved on without more than a nod. "Jilan?"
Jilan released his hold on her instantly and moved away, sitting down on the ground and drawing his knees to his chest. "Gods, Lyara. I'm so sorry!" Her expression remained vague and confused, and he vainly sought to reas sure both Lyara and himself. "You know I would never harm you, don't you?" His sigh was a ragged as hers had been earlier. "Oh, gods forgive me!"
Lyara shuddered away the last vestiges of her nightmare terror. "Jilan?" she asked again, as if only now becoming aware of his sitting on the ground a few feet away. "What happened?"
He looked up at her in amazement; she didn't remember. "I think I stepped out of line," he said lamely, getting to his feet slowly. He held out his hand to help her up as if he didn't expect her to take it, but she took the hand easily and pulled herself up.
Topiara warmed on her breast, filling her mind with a brief glimpse. Lyara blanched; and Jilan, seeing the reac tion, dropped her hand, set his mouth in a grim line and turned away. "Perhaps the university is where I belong after all," he mumbled to himself. "At least I know where I can and cannot go there."
Lyara stared after him, still off-balance. "Jilan! Wait!"
"No." Jilan turned and put a hand up to keep her away from him. "I can't fight what I don't understand. And I can't be with you day after day with touching... Don't you understand?" He turned away again. "Best that I leave now, while I still can."
Topiara spoke to Lyara's mind in a deep and unrelenting voice it had never used before. "This is it. You must choose to keep him with us or lose him forever and doom our quest at its birth. You cannot hide from this anymore." A vision flashed, brief and painful. "Choose now!"
"Jilan," Lyara called softly. "Don't go. Not yet. Please." Even without Topiara's urging, the idea of Jilan leaving had ripped at her heart. What could she say that would bring him back? What would ease the hurt she had caused?
Jilan halted at the mouth of the alley and bunched his shoulders. He did not turn back. "Don't do this, Lyara. I can't..."
"Give me time?" she asked simply, and Jilan turned finally. The Lyara that waited for his answer was neither the self-assured and distant Guide nor the terrified girl, and Jilan had a feeling he was seeing the real Lyara for the first time. This Lyara was vulnerable in ways Jilan was sure he didn't know yet; and it was this Lyara that he had been searching for through all the arguments.
He walked back and looked down into her eyes. Some thing stirred in their depths that was tentative and unsure, yet reached to his very soul. "I don't want to leave," he admitted, wishing he dared reach out to her.
"I want you to stay," she responded in the same tone. "Give me time, please?"
In answer, Jilan held out his hand to her. Lyara looked down at the hand and then back up at him, and then she extended her own and placed it in his. There was no flinch.
The knock on Lyara's door late that evening roused her from a deep, dreamless sleep, and she threw on a tunic over her shift before cracking the door open. Lyndon stood waiting, a young chatori with a torch behind him. "When did you last see Iliria and Dorin?" he asked briskly with no preamble.
"This afternoon, at the races," Lyara answered in sleepy confusion. "Why?"
"You haven't seen them since?" Lyndon's question ignored Lyara's.
"No. They were going to an inn to get some sweetmeats after the races. Jilan and I came straight back to the Hall." Lyara's expression faltered and then grew more worried. "Aren't they back yet?"
Lyndon shook his head. "I wanted to talk to Iliria about another assignment -- an urgent one." He rubbed his forehead in exasperation. "Any idea where else they might go?"
"Do you want me to go out looking for them, Master?" Lyara asked, rubbing her eyes to brush aside the remaining exhaustion. "If the matter is urgent, maybe I'd better..."
Lyndon nodded. "You take the area near the racetrack. I'll get some of the others to check the rest of the city. Tandri isn't so large that a person can completely disap pear."
The Guides Master had turned and started down the hallway, and Lyara had closed her door to begin dressing quickly when a disturbance outside at the gate made her rush to her window. The watcher had thrown the gates open and was helping two obviously injured individuals into the courtyard. Lyara threw off her shift and drew on a tunic and trousers as fast as she could and rushed out her door.
The noise had roused many of the other Guides residing in the Hall, and many of them were gathering on the landings and staircases as Master Lyndon pushed open the Hall doors and helped the watcher bring Dorin and Iliria into the torchlight of the Hall. Lyara pushed her way through the milling and muttering Guides until she found herself next to Dorin.
"Giddon, fetch the healer!" Lyndon's voice sliced through the tumult. "The rest of you go back to your beds. The truth of the matter will be out by morning, I'm sure. You can all wait for your news until then. Mikael, help me get these two into my office!"
With the rest, Lyara turned to go back upstairs and so didn't see a bloodied Iliria grab at the Guides Master's sleeve and say something quickly to him. "Lyara, with me in my office now!" The order came in a tone that Lyara had never heard from her Master before.
Moving against the tide of Guides returning up the stairs made her progress slower than she would have wanted, but finally Lyara stood in the doorway of Lyndon's office. "You wished me to be here?" she asked the Master as he laid Dorin next to Iliria on the floor in front of his hearth.
"Not I," he shook his head and pointed. "Iliria."
Lyara moved to her friend's side and winced at the sight of the cuts that crisscrossed her once-beautiful face. Lyndon handed Lyara a damp rag from behind and above, and Lyara gently tried to sponge away the blood. Iliria opened her eyes at the touch. "We were spared to send back a message, Lyara," she breathed softly. Dorin moaned as if in agreement. "Someone named Vinzen said for us to tell you that he wants what is his."
Lyara's hand froze. "Did he tell you anything else?" she asked in a soft voice.
"That the next time it would be Jilan, and that he would be dead." Dorin coughed and moaned, spitting out a little blood from where a tooth had once been.
"What is this Vinzen to you?" Lyndon asked coldly from behind her, and Lyara rose to face him squarely.
"He is the man behind Karlo's murder, and the attack on me that gave me this." Lyara's hand briefly touched her still-sore side. "I killed two of his men, and Jilan killed the one that wounded me."
"What does he want with you, in the name of the gods?"
Lyara's gaze didn't waver. "Karlo took something that Vinzen was going to use -- something he had no right to in the first place. Vinzen hunted him down and tried to get it back. But Karlo had hidden it too well, and he passed it on to me before he died." She could see the question her Master was going to ask next, and added, "I can't tell you any more. It has to do with the scroll from Nilyaron."
Lyndon's mouth closed in a narrow, tight slit, but he nodded. "Vinzen is one of the most ruthless thieves and slavers in Talandria today. He's wealthy enough to hire the best of assassins."
"He won't have to send anyone else after me," Lyara said softly in a steely voice. "I will be coming for him. I don't intend for any more of my friends here at the Hall to get hurt while I hide here."
Lyndon nodded again, and then pulled Lyara aside with a hand at her elbow as the healer pusher her way into the room toward her patients. "You can take whatever you need from the stores here. Whatever you want to help send that man into the everlasting pit."
Lyara nodded absentmindedly. Topiara was pulling hard at her mind and dragging her to kneel once more at the side of her injured friends. The healer looked up from her examination of Iliria as Lyara laid a hand on her shoulder, and then she nodded. Lyara closed her eyes as the healer's fingers dipped time and again into the dish of healing gel and traced the crosshatched cuts on Iliria's face. The warmth from Topiara flowed smoothly down her arm and into the healer's fingers, and the hypnotic drumming of her Kauwlut village so many years ago once more carried Lyara away.
The process was repeated with Dorin, although his injuries were more severe and internal. Lyndon watched the healing with intense interest. He had seen many healings before, but none where there seemed to be a muted light just out of sight within the healer's hands. Before his eyes, Iliria's cuts had closed in on themselves and begun to mend themselves in such a way that any scars would be too tiny to see without study.
When the healer was done, Lyara's eyes opened again. She staggered once as if exhausted and then turned to leave. Lyndon stepped in front of her for a moment and then out of her way. Lyara's fatigue was genuine, and the healer was shaking her head as she gave the injuries a final inspection. Lyndon determined that he would save his questions until morning, but that Lyara would at least give a little better explanation of herself and this entire business before leaving the Hall.
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