Luck in the Shadows

tomorrow about that hurt of your friend's. Old Sedrish is as good a leech as he is a cook. Well, g'night to you!"
    "Good night. And give my thanks to the captain."
    The bandage lint had stuck to Seregil's wound and Alec carefully soaked it loose, lifting aside the stained pad to find the raw spot looking worse than ever. There was no evidence that the old woman's salve was doing any good, but Alec applied it anyway, not knowing what else to do.
    Seregil's slender body had quickly failed to gauntness. He felt fragile in Alec's hands as he lifted him to wrap the fresh bandage. His breathing was less even, too, and now and then caught painfully in his chest.
    Laying him back against the bales, Alec brushed a few lank strands of hair back from Seregil's face, taking in the deepening hollows in his cheeks and at his temples, the pallid whiteness of his skin. A few short days would bring them to Rhнminee and Nysander, if only Seregil could survive that long.
    Warming the last of the milk over the lantern, Alec cradled Seregil's head on his knee and tried to spoon some into him. But Seregil choked weakly, spilling a mouthful down his cheek.
    With a heavy heart Alec set the cup aside and stretched out beside him, wiping Seregil's cheek with a corner of his cloak before pulling it over both of them.
    "At least we made it to a ship," he whispered sadly, listening to the labored breathing beside him.
    Exhaustion rolled over him like a grey mist and he slept.
    — a stony plain beneath a lowering leaden sky stretched around Seregil on all sides. Dead, grey grass under his feet. Sound of the sea in the distance? No breeze stirred to make the faint rushingsound. Lightning flashed in the distance but no rumble of thunder followed it. Clouds scudded quickly by overhead.
    He had no sense of his body at all, only of his surroundings, as if his entire being had been reduced to the pure essence of sight. Yet he could move, look about at the grey plain, the moving mass of clouds overhead that roiled and churned but showed no break of blue. He could still hear the sea, though he could not tell its direction. He wanted to go there, to see beyond the monotonythat surrounded him, but how? He might well take the wrong direction, moving away from it, deeper into the plain. The thought froze him in place. Somehow he knew that the plain went on forever if you went away from the sea.
    He knew now that he was dead and that only through Bilairy's gate could he escape into the trueafterlife or perhaps out of any existence at all. To be trapped for eternity on this lifeless plain wasunthinkable.
    "O Illior Lightbringer," he silently prayed, "shed your light in this desolate place. What am I todo?" But nothing changed. He wept and even his weeping made no sound in the emptiness.

13 Inquiries Are Made
    "Oh, yes, they was here all right. I'm not soon likely to forget them!" the innkeeper declared, sizing up the two gentlemen. The sallow one would try and stare it out of him, but the comely, dark— complected gentleman with the scar under his eye looked to be a man who understood the value of information.
    Sure enough, the dark one reached into his fine purse and laid a thick double tree coin on the rough counter between them.
    "If you would be so good as to answer a few questions, I would be very grateful." Another of the heavy rectangular coins joined the first. "These young men were servants of mine. I'm most anxious to find them."
    "Stole something, did they?"
    "It's a rather delicate matter," the gentleman replied.
    "Well, you've missed 'em by nigh onto a week, I'm sorry to say. They was a bad sort, I thought, when first I laid eyes on 'em. Ain't that so, Mother?"
    "Oh, aye," his wife assured them, eyeing the strangers over her husband's shoulder. "Never should have taken them in, I said after, empty rooms or no."
    "And she was right. The yellow-haired one tried to murder the other in the night. I locked me'self and the family in the storeroom after I caught 'em at it. In the morning they was both gone. Don't know whether the sickly fellow was living or dead in the end."
    The innkeeper reached for the coins but the dark man placed a gloved fingertip on each of them.
    "Did you, by chance, observe the direction they took?"
    "No, sir. Like I said, we stayed in the storeroom 'til we was certain they was gone."
    "That's a pity," the man murmured, relinquishing the coins. "Perhaps you would be so good as to show us the rooms in which they