Spell of Fate | Page 5

attention to was
about to happen, he aimed a kick at the pole. Without quite knowing
how it had happened, Jurtan found himself for a brief instant hanging
upside down in the air, where he had been dragged when something
that felt like an enraged beehive had latched onto his foot and lashed it
up over his head. Then he was sprawled out on the dirt fifteen feet
away, at the end of a five-foot furrow, with his face covered with mud

and his leg throbbing and tingling as though Max had had him
exercising for three days straight without a rest break. Jurtan got an
elbow under him, wiped dirt out of his eyes with an equally filthy hand,
and spit loam out of his mouth.
Max was standing nearby looking the shrine over with a professional
eye, but from a prudent distance. "What did you think was going to
happen?" Max said. "It's an active offering to an active god, looks like
the Protector of Nature. Whoever set it up obviously had the concept a
little vague, since they mutilated a tree to do it instead of just honoring
something green in its natural state, but I guess the Protector wasn't
being too picky that day either, or maybe she was just hungry. You're
just lucky it didn't call an enforcer."
Jurtan dragged his head free of the dirt and sprawled up to a sitting
position. "You wouldn't have let me get near it if it would have set off
something real bad."
"Oh, you think so," said Max, "do you."
"Not if it would have called attention to you, no I don't."
The kid was probably right but that didn't mean Max had to let him
know he knew it. Give him an inch and, well, who knew where you'd
end up. Max gave Jurtan a hand instead and pulled him to his feet. "Get
yourself put together again while I finish breakfast. We still have some
eggs from that last village."
Even in his newly reinstated morose mood, Jurtan had to admit that one
of Max's other talents was knowing how to make the most of cuisine on
the road. With some decent food inside of him and after his second bath
of the morning, Jurtan was also more willing to take a longer view of
his situation. He was prepared to acknowledge that the pace Max had
been setting since Iskendarian's swamp was by no means a killing one
even if it wasn't downright leisurely. They'd been in and out of several
countries and city-states since then, wasting a fair amount of time
talking and hobnobbing in towns and farms. They'd even made a few
outright side trips to check out local legends or hot spots, and in one

case to visit a ruined castle where Max had climbed a toppled mound of
wall-stones festooned with moss and trailing ivy to declaim several
stanzas of ancient poetry. Far too many stanzas, if you asked Jurtan,
who had never been a big fan of high literature. When you added it up,
though, you had to conclude that they'd been staying on back roads and
avoiding the larger thoroughfares. On the more traveled routes there
would have been more people who might have remembered them,
Jurtan figured, but there would also have been more excursionists to
lose themselves among. On the other hand, the smaller towns they'd
been through wouldn't see ten visitors in a year, so they'd most likely
remember the two of them if anyone asked.
How much did Max really want to shake The Hand off their trail?
Something else Jurtan had learned was how to think and work at the
same time. While he'd been mulling Max's plans and intentions back
and forth he'd succeeded in getting the area cleaned up and the horses
packed; more skills Jurtan couldn't recall wishing he possessed. At least
sitting on a horse all day was no longer a more drawn-out form of one
of Max's tortures. Jurtan was almost at a stage where he could say he
felt comfortable with riding.
"No," said Max.
Jurtan paused, one foot in its stirrup and halfway into the saddle.
"What?"
"We've been pushing the horses enough. Let's give them a break
today." Jurtan let himself down to the ground. They hadn't been
pushing the horses, they'd been virtually coddling them. What was Max
up to? This bit with the horses wasn't the only strange thing this
morning, either. "Why are you wearing that beard and that grubby
disguise?"
"Practice. " If there was anything else Max didn't need, it was practice
in deception or dissimulation, which meant his answer this time had
meant about as much as any of Max's answers ever did. "If you told me
what was going on