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  “You seem troubled, Jicks,” Vance said into the silence.

  “Oh, just superstitious,” Jicks replied, with a wry chuckle. “This trip has gone too smooth.”

  But Stev laughed. “That’s because we’re in Valdemar, milady,” he replied, bowing a bit. “I promise you, things will start to fall apart as soon as we’re across the Border.”

  Jicks contemplated that for a moment. “If that’s supposed to be comforting, it’s not,” she retorted, but with an upward twist of her lips. “Still. I don’t think the three of us are comfortable unless we’re up to our asses in snapping turtles and shit.”

  “It ain’t natural otherwise,” put in Bret, asking for more cress with a gesture.

  “Oh, one more thing,” Jicks said, helping herself to cress. “Once we’re across the Border, when we’re camped out like this, we’ll need to stand guard watches.”

  “With four of us, that won’t be too onerous,” Stev noted.

  Jicks smiled. “I was hoping you’d volunteer.”

  Stev shrugged. “What else am I doing? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve taken a watch shift. But just what are we watching for? I thought this consortium that sent a delegation were all friends and allies now.”

  “Bandits probably won’t trouble us; we’re too much trouble. Too little gain for too much potential danger with four trained fighters they can see. But there’s wild creatures. Bears.”

  “I knew I was going to get eaten by a bear!” Abi exclaimed, unable to help herself. “I just knew it!”

  Bret and Bart snickered.

  Jicks rolled her eyes but continued. “There’s also lone thieves who’ll try and filch something from the camp while we’re sleeping. If there’s a storm and we’re along a watercourse, we’ll need to pack up and move to higher ground, no matter how far away the storm is.”

  “Won’t that make us a better target for lightning?” Abi asked.

  “Better that than get everything washed away in a flash flood. Then there’s . . . things.” Jicks’ voice took on an ominous tone.

  “Things?” asked Stev. “What things?”

  “Unnatural things.” Jick’s seemed perfectly serious, but Master Vance frowned.

  “My lady, I do hope you aren’t attempting to pull some sort of hoax, so that you and your lads can have a hearty laugh at our expense,” he chided. “We have neither the time nor the patience for third-year Trainee jokes.”

  But Jicks seemed perfectly serious. “There’s magicians on the other side of the Border, real ones. Hell, we have three in the Harriers. They can conjure things up, and sometimes those things get away from them.”

  “And how are we to protect ourselves from these things?” asked Vance, still skeptical.

  “Mostly by staying out of their way. The locals will know if there’s anything about to worry ourselves over. That’s why I asked you, Stev, if you knew any other magic. It’d help to have a Mage along.” She gave Stev a look, as if she suspected he was somehow holding back information from her.

  But Stev shook his head, as Abi had known he would. “The only magic in Valdemar is Mind-magic,” he said. “But since I do have Mindspeech, I can run a periodic sweep to see if anything like a human is thinking hostile thoughts about us.”

  “That’ll have to do.”

  Any more conversation, about things or otherwise, was cut short by the stew finally being ready.

  * * *

  • • •

  The Border crossing was guarded by a single Guard post, but a very complete one; there was a full barracks, a stable, and a resupply warehouse, since it was from here that Guard patrols would range along the Border and northward, looking for trouble. The crossing itself was literally nothing; just a small bad-weather shack and a single man watching the road.

  “I thought there would be a wall,” said Beyrn, sounding disappointed, as the Guard waved them past.

  “What bloody use would a wall be?” Jicks asked, laughing. “There’s not enough Guards in Valdemar to keep a watch on it. Anybody that wanted to get over it could. An army could just bring up a siege engine and knock part of it down. And there’s nothing on the Valdemar side that’s any better than what’s on the other side, so why bother making the crossing at all?”

  Beyrn looked very offended at this statement, but he kept whatever retort he would have liked to make behind his teeth.

  Jicks was quite right about things being the same as in Valdemar, though. There was a very nice village—town, really—full of beautifully made stone houses with slate roofs on the other side of the Border, actually a much nicer village than anything they’d seen on Valdemar’s side for leagues. Jicks told them it was called Ellistown. It was situated along the road in a winding valley, and it was very probably there because of traders going northward. Everyone brightened up when they saw it, and Master Vance seemed particularly pleased. “There should be plenty of projects here we can offer advice on,” he said, gleefully.

  A little too gleefully, actually. Oh no—Abi thought with alarm Don’t say it!

  “This should be very easy.”

  Oh, gods. Now he’s done it. We’re going to be cursed for sure.

  * * *

  • • •

  The village mayor—which was what they called the fellow in charge here—came out to greet them and welcome them officially to the village before a large and appreciative crowd. There was just one problem.

  They couldn’t understand a bloody word he said.

  It sounded like Valdemaran, sort of, but with a thick accent and absolutely unfamiliar words sprinkled liberally throughout. And he didn’t seem to be using words that they did recognize in the same way that they were used in Valdemar. So they just nodded and smiled where it seemed appropriate, everyone appeared to be happy, they all shook hands and the mayor and the audience departed back to their own business, leaving them all alone in the village square, with their wagons and gear and no idea what to do or where to go next. Or at least, that was true of the Valdemarans. Jicks, Bret, and Bart appeared to be completely at ease with the situation.

  “Jicks,” Master Vance said, as they all stood there on the hard-packed dirt of the village square, “I . . . believe we have a problem.”

  Jicks smirked. “No, you have a problem. The lads and I don’t. Aye unnerstanet owt. Tha unnerstanet nowt.” She laughed. “Nay, tha’ll be reight.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean!” Vance said, despairingly. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you just said! How are we to help these people if we can’t understand each other?”

  “Because, Master, I allowed for that. Just get back in your saddles and follow me.” She hauled herself onto her hinny and sent her moving down a side street. Perforce, they followed. The houses were set extremely close together, and right down on the street, just as if they were all in the older parts of Haven. The only thing missing was paved streets; these were just dirt.

  She led them to a house that might have been a touch more prosperous looking than the ones on either side of it. It had a plaque mounted above the door showing four mountains. She dismounted and knocked on the door, which was answered by a middle-aged woman in a brown linen blouse and skirt and a spotless apron. By concentrating very hard, Abi thought Jicks said, “We have five people to buy a spell from the” . . . something. Sorcerer? But she wasn’t entirely sure.

  The woman bobbed her head and gestured to them to come in.

  Abi, the Masters, and Stev all crowded into the tiny stone-walled room she would have called a solar if the house had been manor-sized, while Bart and Bret stayed behind to manage the hinnies and give people room to squeeze past the wagons. It was clean to a fault and sparsely furnished, which was a good thing, because if it had had so much as a chair more than it did they wouldn’t all have fit in.

  They waited for a few moments, and then a man
appeared in the doorway.

  He wasn’t all that impressive to look at. Weedy, middle-aged, going bald on top, dressed in comfortable-looking robes of some soft brown fabric she couldn’t identify. He and Jicks consulted quietly for a few moments, then Jicks spoke up.

  “All right, if you’ve never had a spell worked on you, there’s nothing to worry about. This one’s very tame. The only thing is, for a few breaths you are going to feel as if your head is too big for your body, and your thoughts will seem a bit scrambled and not your own. Then everything will settle, and you’ll know every language and dialect and accent that I do.”

  Wait, what? was all Abi had time to think, and before she could ask any questions, or make any objections, the man made a few flamboyant gestures in the air, spoke several strange words aloud, and light exploded in front of her eyes.

  In the next breath. . .

  Her head felt too big and too tight. There were things swirling around in her thoughts she couldn’t identify. It was as if there were a dozen people trying to Mindspeak to her, and she couldn’t understand any of them—

  And just as suddenly as the effect had occurred—it was gone again.

  “That’ll be five Valdemaran silver pieces apiece,” the sorcerer said politely. “That would be a total of twenty-five. Thank you for providing the template, Jicks, that made things much easier.”

  “What, you can’t give me a discount for providing the template?” Jicks asked.

  “That was with a discount. I have to eat, you know.” The sorcerer crossed his arms over his chest and grinned.

  Jicks looked at Master Vance and coughed. He came out of his daze and fumbled for his belt pouch. “Uh, yes, of course, quite.” The sorcerer held out his hand, and Vance counted out twenty-five silver pieces into it.

  “Nothing I like better than a customer who pays promptly.” The man stowed his fee in his own belt pouch and nodded with satisfaction. “I really don’t know how you people manage to learn languages over on your side of the Border.”

  “The hard way,” Abi said dryly, though she was having a hard time getting her head wrapped around the fact that she had just “learned” several of them instantly, not to mention a number of attendant dialects. What the people here spoke, she understood now, was just a dialect, a kind of polyglot of Valdemaran and whatever they spoke farther south.

  “Did—did we just—” Poor Beyrn was still trying to come to grips with what had just happened. “How can—that’s not—”

  “It happened, so it’s obviously possible.” Padrick had recovered from his shock completely. “Thank you, magician. Whatever your name is.”

  “It’s Steen,” said Jicks. “He used to be with us, the Harriers, until he decided to strike out on his own here.”

  “That’s because I was about as useful as teats on a bull with the Harriers, Jicks,” Steen chided. “Lots of practical, simple spells, but damn-all combat magic. Hellfires, a hedge-wizard would have been more use than me; he might have had some healing spells.”

  “Well, your heart wasn’t in it,” Jicks told him in a kindly tone of voice.

  “If that was a ‘practical, simple spell,’ I wouldn’t like to see combat magic,” Beyrn blurted, voice shaking.

  Vance reached across Abi and patted the younger Master on the shoulder, as if trying to comfort him. “And we won’t. It’s all right, Beyrn, this is not all that different from Mind-magic.”

  “You’re not likely to find a powerful Mage able to do heavy combat magic out here among the likes of us, anyway” Steen told the younger Master. “First of all, they’re rare, and second of all, they go to where they can command gold for their services, and lots of it.” He laughed. “I don’t think there’s ten gold pieces in this entire village. Mostly I do mind tricks like the one I just did on you, help find lost things, and work with water. My single most powerful spell is a parlor trick that makes me popular in the summertime.” He leaned back and called toward the back of the house. “Aubryana! Mint tea for my guests.”

  The serving woman appeared with a tray full of glasses of pale green liquid. Steen muttered a few words and made a couple of gestures, and the glasses suddenly frosted over. “Here you are, my friends,” he said, handing the glasses out. “Just what you need on a hot summer day.”

  Abi’s glass, when she took it, was so cold that it misted when she breathed on it.

  “I can make lots of ice for gatherings,” he said, and shrugged. “But unless an army happens to be standing knee deep in still water, it’s not exactly a useful trick for combat.”

  “Remarkable!” marveled Vance, as he sipped the ice-cold drink.

  “It brought me lots of friends, which isn’t a bad thing for a magician, given that the first person people look sideways at when a cow dies is the local magician,” Steen chuckled. “But I’m taking up your time, and you’re taking up my sitting room. Time for you to go back and talk to Rufous about the old bridge, among other things, and me to get back to my garden.”

  The woman collected the glasses as they filed out obediently, though poor Beyrn was still clearly disturbed at the fact that magic existed at all. Abi wasn’t—but then she’d heard her brother’s and father’s stories. It wasn’t that magic didn’t exist in Valdemar; it was that there was a protective power in Valdemar that drove Mages out or drove them insane, and at the same time made it hard even to think about “real” magic for very long.

  There were dozens of questions she would have loved to have had the time to ask Steen, but as he had pointed out, they were here to do things, not stand around and talk. She followed the others out, and Steen closed his door behind them.

  Rufous, as it turned out, was the name of the village mayor who had greeted them with a speech they hadn’t understood, and he was delighted to have them come back and tell them about the bridge. In fact, he was delighted to show them.

  On the outskirts of the village to the west was a road that led to a swiftly flowing river and continued on the other side. But where a bridge should have been was nothing but a few pilings driven into the bank.

  “It washed out this spring, you know,” Rufous the mayor said sadly. “It washes out every spring, but there’s usually enough left to rebuild it. Not this time.”

  Abi studied the situation from every angle. “How deep is it?” she asked.

  “Deeper than it looks. Well over my head in the middle,” said Rufous, unconsciously standing up as tall as he could. “It’s a good source of tolls for the village. When it’s there, that is.”

  The river ran along the bottom of a flat valley, without the sort of bank that would make it possible to build a stone bridge like the one Abi was so proud of back in Valdemar. But they probably don’t have the skilled labor, or the lifting machines that would allow them to do that either. What they need is a bridge they don’t have to keep replacing, or something that you could haul out of the way in flood-time . . . or both. Hmm. We could give them the plans for a different sort of stone bridge that they can build out of smaller stones, and while they’re building that. . .

  “I have two ideas,” she said. “First, we’ll help you build either a bridge out of a series of floating platforms you can haul out of the water when floods threaten or a simple ferry you can power with a single horse, ox or mule that will be large enough for a single wagon or several passengers and beasts. That will do for now, and when that is complete, we’ll leave you instructions on building a stone bridge.”

  “But . . .” the mayor began to object.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll give you instructions of a sort that the same people who build your houses can follow,” Padrick assured him. “You’re lucky the river is narrow at that point; we can give you a high-arched bridge that the flood-waters won’t touch.”

  “But . . .” the mayor repeated, weakly.

  “Of course, this means the bridge will be quite high comp
ared to the roadbed,” Vance continued cheerfully. “But I’m sure someone in the village will have extra animals that can be hitched to any wagons temporarily to get them over the hump, as it were. You could even include that in the toll.”

  “Ah,” the mayor said, brightening. “I see!”

  “I’ll get the instruments from the wagon and start surveying the site first thing in the morning,” Abi volunteered. “I’m sure I can find good sites for both the floating bridge and the eventual stone bridge.”

  “I’ll begin drafting plans for each floating platform,” said Padrick. “And for the ferry.”

  “And you and I will work out how much material and manpower we’ll need for the floating bridge and the ferry, you can determine which you want, and once you’ve decided, you can begin,” Master Vance said cheerfully. “We’ll begin in the morning. Meanwhile, is there a good place for us to set up our camp?”

  * * *

  • • •

  “I think you ran right over the top of poor mayor Rufous, Master Vance,” Jicks observed, as they sat down to an absolutely delicious supper provided by some of the local women. Abi had considered herself indifferent to food, but that had been before all these days of dried-meat stew, porridge, and not much else; by now the mere thought of a roast set her mouth watering.

  And a roast was what had been delivered; a fine roasted leg of mutton, and fresh bread with butter, a spicy vegetable stew, and berry tarts.

  “I’ve dealt with bureaucrats all of my life, my dear,” Vance replied. “They’re like a nervous horse. If you give them a chance to think, nine times out of ten they freeze, and the tenth time they balk. The only way to handle them is to rush them at and over the problem before they get a chance to get a good look at it.”