Luck in the Shadows

a light.
    What was he to do with the cursed disk? Throwing it into the fire seemed to be the wisest course of action, yet doubt stayed his hand; Seregil had thought it valuable enough to steal, and later had said he was determined to get it to Rhнminee.
    Handling it only by the leather lacing, he found a patched tunic in Seregil's pack and rolled the disk up in it. Shoving it to the bottom of the pack, he carried their gear downstairs and hurried back for Seregil. The innkeeper and his family had barricaded themselves in the kitchen storeroom and, despite his various pleas and assurances, refused to come out.
    In the end he had to get Seregil down by himself, carrying the unconscious man across his shoulders like a slaughtered deer. Once downstairs, he laid him on a table and went through the kitchen again to the storeroom.
    "You in there!" he called through the door. "I need a few supplies. I'll leave money on the mantelpiece."
    There was no reply.
    A candle stood in a dish on the sideboard.
    Lighting it with an ember from the banked fire, he cast about for food. Most of it was locked in the storeroom with its owner but he still managed to come away with a basket of boiled eggs, a jug of
    brandy, half a wheel of good Mycenian cheese, some new bread, and a sack of pippins. Going out to the well, he discovered a jar of milk let to cool and added that to his haul.
    Stowing everything beneath the seat of the cart, he used their blankets and a few from the inn to make a pallet in the back.
    When everything was ready, he carried Seregil out to the makeshift bed and carefully wrapped him up.
    Except for his labored breathing, Seregil looked like a dead man on a bier.
    "Well, he won't get any better sitting here," Alec muttered grimly, slapping the reins over the pony's rump. "I said we were going to Rhнminee, and that's where I mean to go!"

12 Alone
    — did the dead sleep within death? Some vestige of his living consciousness sensed the passage oftime. There was a change of some sort, but what? Slowly he became aware of pain but it was muted, experienced at a distance.
    Very odd.
    Smells came with the pain, the smell of illness, infection, the unwashed odors of his own body from which his fastidious nature recoiled even as he rejoiced in the ability to discern them. Perhaps he wasn't dead, after all? He had neither explanation for his predicament nor memory of his past and now even the pain was slipping away again. Silently, helplessly, he willed it back, but it was gone.
    He was alone. And lonely—
    Alec drove as hard as he dared, determined to reach the seaport by the following day. He stopped only to rest the pony and tend Seregil's wound.
    The burn on his own hand made his arm ache to the elbow, but it was scabbing over already. Inspecting Seregil's breast in daylight, however, he found that the wound there was still raw, with angry lines of infection fanning out from it.
    He stopped at the next farmstead they came to, hoping to beg a few herbs and some linen. The old wife there took one look at Seregil and disappeared back into her kitchen, returning a few moments later with a basket containing yarrow salve and aloes, clean linen rags, a flask of willow bark tea and one of milk, fresh cheese, bread, and half a dozen apples.
    "I–I can't pay you," he stammered, overwhelmed by such generosity.
    The old woman smiled, patting his arm. "You don't need to," she said in her thick Mycenian accent. "The Maker sees every kind deed."
    The countryside fell away into gentle slopes as Alec drove westward toward Keston. By the following afternoon they came down into more settled country.
    There was a different scent on the breeze here. It was a water smell, but with an unfamiliar tang.
    Gulls wheeled overhead, much larger than the little black-headed ones on Blackwater Lake. These birds had long yellow beaks and grey wings tipped with black. Great flocks of them flew overhead or picked their way over empty fields and rubbish heaps.
    Topping a rise, Alec saw in the distance what could only be the sea. Awestruck, he reined in and stared out over it. The sun was low. The first golden stain of sunset spread a glittering band across the silver-green water. A scattering of islands lay like knucklebones cast along the coastline, some dark with trees, others bare chunks of stone thrusting above the waves.
    The road wound on down to the coast, ending in a sprawling town that hugged the shore of a broad bay.
    "You must be an