BOOK II

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
AT THE INN

Standing outside the inn at Reard, Doo experienced something close to relief when she realised that she no longer had Taigram's pendant. She was certain that it had fallen, rather than been stolen, and she was sure no-one would have yet picked up the small cloth parcel in which it was wrapped. She had no qualms about going back to get it, and with her anger at Chaldez and Dan on the point of exploding she was glad for an excuse to get away from them.
Chaldez had been stupid, the way he had encouraged Dan to drink, and Dan had been no better. Her annoyance at them both had turned to alarm and then to terror when the arguing began. Not speaking Eujinni, she had no idea what it was about, and then things had moved with bewildering speed and she had found herself standing outside the inn, her fear rapidly turning back to anger.
Her hood over her head, she slipped back into the inn and unobtrusively made her way to the table where she and the others had been sitting. On the floor near her stool lay the package. She sat down, gathered it up, and lifting her head saw the fat merchant come through the door. At first she did not realise that he and the other men who followed him in were together. He looked at her table, and moving towards it called the name of Chaldez. He shouted it again, and now for the fist time she grew alarmed: The other men, whom she now saw had clubs and sticks, crowded around him. Her eyes went beyond them to the door; if Chaldez appeared at it she would shriek a warning to him. And such was her concentration that she did not immediately realise that attention in the room was beginning to focus upon her. The fat man pointed at her, words crashing out of his mouth. She stared at him, not knowing what was being demanded of her. Tears sprang to her eyes, and it was as though they were a signal because at once she was seized roughly by two men who pulled her to her feet and brought her face to face with the merchant. He shouted at her again, and her continued silence was rewarded with a stinging slap across the face.
"TOAD!" she shouted back at him in her own language, her fear replaced by fury. "The gods suck you dry!"
His expression changed. He was perplexed by her words, the like of which he had never heard before, but could think of nothing better to do than to repeat his question. This time, the man whom Dan had argued with intervened. He pointed to the door; Doo was released, and the fat man and his followers barged their way back out into the roadway. She heard voices and running feet, and then there was silence.
Gradually the hub-bub of voices within the inn built up to its previous level, and Doo was forgotten. Her bed for that night had already been paid for, along with the meal, and when she felt certain that she would not be noticed, she went upstairs to it.
For a long time she lay in the dark, her mind in turmoil. Not knowing what had happened to Chaldez was a kind of agony. It tormented her, but eventually she escaped from it into fitful sleep. And almost immediately, so it seemed, she was being shaken awake. The room was lit by the flame of a torch, and by its light she could see several figures, among them the fat merchant. Without further ado she was led downstairs and out into the roadway.

She was taken through the dark, narrow streets to a large house standing alone on one side of a square. Here she was questioned by an imperious man whose mouth was deformed by a hair lip. Unable to answer any of the questions flung at her, she could only stare at her captors and every question she failed to answer earned her a slap. She tried not to cry, but the tears came to her eyes anyway. The merchant and her interrogator consulted together, and she was taken down to dank room below street level. It was tiny, cold, and bare of furniture; if she were to lie down it would have to be on the cold stone floor, and she had left her travelling cloak at the inn. She stood, shivering, all night.
The next day she was taken back to the inn and allowed to go to her bed. She slept until noon, and when she awoke she saw that she was being watched over by a stout, matronly woman.
Doo washed herself, and was taken downstairs to the main room for a meal. As she picked at her food she realised that she was being used as bait to trap Chaldez. She closed her eyes and thought: "Don't come back. Don't come back, my darling."
She was kept at the inn, a virtual prisoner, for another four days. On the morning of the fifth she awoke to find herself alone. The matronly woman and two other, younger women, had been taking turns to guard her day and night but now there was no sign of any of them. When she went downstairs the inn-keeper made it clear that she was to leave. She collected her travelling cloak and made her way to the quay on the riverside. She had no clear plan in mind, except to get away from Reard.
Several boats were tied up and she went from one to another repeating, when she saw anyone, the single word: "Kroya." Eventually a large, bearded man nodded, and she showed him a gem which she managed to remove from Taigram's pendant.
"Kroya?" she said again. "Kroya," he returned. "You take me to Kroya," she said. "I give you this," and she held it out to him. He made as though to take it, but she pulled away her hand. "When you take me," she said. "I give it to you when we land," and she did a little mime for him. He appeared to understand, and allowed her to climb down into his vessel which was being loaded with wine casks.
As the craft made its way through the steep-sided gorge to the open sea she was reminded of the last time those craggy cliffs had towered above her; then Chaldez had been standing beside her, and the thought of him was painfully disturbing.
Was she mad to be going back to Kroya? He would not dare to come looking for her there, but what else could she do? In Eujinni she was alone and, unable to speak the language, helpless. In Kroya were her own countrymen; she could survive among them, she was sure of it.
She thought of Chaldez again, and gave thanks to the gods that he had not gone back to Reard for her and fallen into the trap which the merchant and his accomplice had set for him. Then it occurred to her that perhaps he had been unable to return . . . Might he have been injured, or killed? She threw the idea away. No: he was sure to have realised it was too dangerous. Unless . . . he had not wanted to go back for her? She began to cry, not because she believed it was true but because she was so terribly alone, and because she wanted Chaldez at her side now.
That evening, standing on the quayside in the Kroyan port of Raggan, she shivered with fear and apprehension, but the need to find shelter drove her to action: she would try to sell another of Taigram's jewels.
Her attempts to do so ended in disaster.
Following Dan's example, she had gone to an inn; it was full of Theigan soldiers and she imagined she would have no difficulty finding a buyer. Her presence, however, provoked an immediate out-burst; she was surrounded by bawling, groping men and but for the intervention of an officer she would certainly have been raped there and then. He drove off her assailants and took her to a near-by house where he began to question her.
She told him she was the wife of a soldier called Keds who had been killed soon after his arrival in Kroya.
"Keds?" repeated the officer, "Whose company was he in?"
Doo could only shake her head.
"How did you get here?" he asked. "Whose ship did you travel in?"
Her reply that she had come separately, and paid for her passage, was not well received.
"Where are you staying?" he asked next, and at that she burst into tears.
"You'd better stay here the night," he told her. "I'll speak to you again in the morning. And I advise you to think carefully about the answers you give me."
The next day Doo's fabrications were totally demolished. The officer, a thin, grey-haired man called Gaddatag, extracted first of all her true name, and then the fact that she had been accompanying Prince Chaldez. She was then detained in his house until an escort could be brought together to take her back to the capital of Budenrath.
"The Lord Havil," said Gaddatag, "will be very interested in what you have to tell him. I'm sure of it!"