Free Magic in Ithkar by Andre Norton, Robert Adams (ed.) Page A

her.
    What to do? She wished her father was here, or her mother. They always had answers, even if you didn’t like them. Hunt up a fair-ward? Bronze helmets enough about, mostly around the drinkshops.
    Mama said first hint of trouble, yell, she thought, but ... well, yell what? I’m being followed? And the ward asks who by. And I say I don’t know, it’s just I’ve got this feeling in the back of my neck. And he says get out of here, kid, I got no time for foolishness or he takes me by the ear and trots me back to camp. No! Anna rot him, I won’t let him chase me off. Besides, what can he do to me with all these people about? Hunh!
    She moved her shoulders impatiently. Tanu tickled her jaw with his tail-finger. She grinned and pulled it away from her face and let him curl the finger about her thumb. In a funny way her follower gave a touch of spice to her enjoyment of her first fairing night. “He wants to play games,” she told Tanu. “We’ll play, too.”
    She began walking slowly, steadily, halted without warning before a stall, darted around it into another line of shops, tried to catch a glimpse of who was following her, but saw nothing. “He’s done this before,” she told Tanu. She strolled casually along, then suddenly squeezed through first one group of chaffering adults, then another; they smiled after her, granting her the first night indulgence her follower certainly wouldn’t receive from them. She felt frustration billowing from him, a frustration reflected in Tanu’s growing uneasiness. He didn’t like this game. He was treading nervously at the bottom of the pocket, the hairs on his tail erected, rubbing stiffly against her neck.
    She twisted and turned through the rest of the merchants’ sector, riding a high of excitement and mischief until Tanu’s distress began to rub off on her. The game was going on too long; the man’s persistence began to disturb her. “Enough,” she whispered to Tanu and nodded as he sing-muttered his agreement. She tried to break away from the man, but he was always there behind her. Nothing she did shook him off. She started looking about for a fair-ward and knew a spurt of panic when she saw how quickly the crowd was thinning. There were no wards about, not here. He’s been herding me, she thought. Fool, fool, fool. Breathing hard, she scrambled to a stop as the palings loomed before her. She looked both ways along them, then wriggled through the space between two of the peeled poles and raced through the trees to the Pilgrim Way, which led to the great gate of the temple.
    Late as it was, the Way was still crowded. That comforted her and also surprised her. Because she was not a pilgrim, because the folk of Vale were what they were, she had forgotten that the fair was the high point of the pilgrim year. Folk came overland and by sea to pay tribute to the Three Lordly Ones, to atone for sins real or imagined, to beg favor from the gods. To Jezeri all this seemed as much nonsense as the patter of the man with the shells and the peas. Jezeri’s Vale folk paid respect to Aieea the Nurturer and Artna the Hunter; their rites were splendid excuses for feasts and games and general revelry after the hard work of harvest and the gray dullness of winter. There were no priests in the Vale. The folk there—sturdy independent farm folk and stock raisers—thought themselves quite able to manage their relationship with their gods and saw no point in feeding extra mouths. Aunt Jesset would snort with scorn if anyone called her a priestess. She had no authority over the lives of Vale folk and wanted none; all she asked was to tend Aieea’s shrine, grow her herbs, use her healing gifts when needed, and to be left alone to live her life the way she wanted.
    Jezeri plunged into the throng, wove through pilgrims until she thought she’d lost herself; the itch had died away almost completely. She slipped into an opening behind a clot of pilgrims from overseas and began gazing