Free The Pearls by Deborah Chester Page B

up to her shortly thereafter at a sedate and respectful trot, the litter was now safely out of the mud, but the food wagon proved to be too heavy for the sticks laid out for it. It had sunk down to the axles and looked like it might stay there.
    Lea exchanged a look with Thirbe. “We’d better hope we reach an inn by nightfall if we’re to have supper,” she said.
    He frowned, still looking restless. “Aye, there goes your gear and grub. Did he leave all the servants behind as well?”
    â€œThey’ll catch up,” a cavalryman volunteered cheerfully.
    Around her, everyone was conversing, completely at their ease. Lady Fyngie’s giggling told Lea that her youngest attendant was flirting with the lute player again. Laughter and chatter filled the air, sometimes ringing through the valley, and all the while Lea’s sense of oppression grew.
    She understood now why Thirbe felt as though he was being watched. She felt it, too, and knew it to be the bad jaiethquai hanging over this desolate little valley.
    No birds. No villages. No barking dogs or running children peeping in shy curiosity from the road hedges. No curls of smoke from chimneys. Only the sigh of a cold north wind through the trees and frost-burned leaves fluttering to the ground. Aside from the noise of her party, there was no other sign or sound of life here.
    The jaiethquai seemed so dense and sad that Lea felt as though she’d intruded into someone’s grave site. What a sad place, a terrible place, she thought, if not even the wild birds would come to it. She wished she had not come this way either and regretted not turning back when she had the chance.
    â€œLook,” Thirbe said, pointing across the stream. “Ruins.”
    Lea stared hard in that direction. Although it was but midafternoon, the day was growing progressively gloomier, with long, inky shadows already darkening beneath the trees. She saw a few small mounds choked by grass and vines, but no real evidence that any dwellings had once stood. Disappointed, she fingered her necklace of gli -emeralds for reassurance, taking care to maintain her inner balance against whatever oppressive forces lingered in this place.
    â€œI don’t see them,” she said.
    â€œBound to be more ahead.”
    She was on the point of asking Thirbe how he knew that if he’d never been here before, but she was interrupted.
    â€œEr, Lady Lea,” said a deferential voice. “May I join you for a short while?”
    She saw that the priest had ridden up to her. Mounted on a slope-shouldered, nondescript horse, the Reformant was a heavyset man with multiple chins, thick brows, thicker lips, and a large, unfortunate wart on one cheek. He was an extremely ugly man, and although that hardly mattered to Lea, his personality was too colorless to compensate for his looks. Her attendants despised him, making fun of him at every opportunity despite Lea’s reproaches. As a result, she felt obliged to compensate for their cruelty by giving him more of her attention than she really wanted to. It was most vexing.
    â€œPoulso,” she said now in polite acknowledgment. “Of course you may.”
    As he rode up beside her left stirrup, Lea shot a look of mute dismay at Thirbe on her right. Her protector waggled his brows without sympathy, as if to say she could have avoided this by remaining inside her litter.
    â€œI thought,” Lea said, turning back to the priest, “that you’d elected to stay with the wagons.”
    Poulso bowed, or attempted to, making an awkward sort of slouch in the saddle. “You have been most kind, most gracious, dear Lady Lea, in granting me the use of the enclosed wagon. Of course, it was a trifle crowded in there among all the chests, and the musicians have been rude about my sitting on one of the panpipperies and breaking it, but I assure you it was a most inadvertent accident and I meant no deliberate harm of their