The Silver Mage

by Katharine Kerr

  “Well enough, unless there’s a blizzard,” Rhodorix said. “Their winter coats are good and shaggy, and we’ll take blankets for them at night.”

  “Yes, we may have to camp on the road,” Andariel said. “Snow or no snow.”

  “I don’t think the Mountain Folk are all that far away,” Ranadar put in, “but it’s hard for the mages to scry in this weather.”

  “Of course,” Andariel said. “Understood, Your Highness.”

  Rhodorix understood nothing of this talk of scrying, but he was willing to take sorcery on faith, since both his prince and his woman believed in it.

  It took some time for the horse guards to ready themselves and their supplies for the road. Rhodorix used a bit of it to find Hwilli and tell her where and why he’d be gone.

  “I heard about Lin Rej from Master Jantalaber,” Hwilli said. “The mages can speak with each other somehow.” She went pale about the mouth. “He said that the slaughter was dreadful.”

  “No doubt. The prince looked shaken himself.” Rhodorix let out his breath in a sharp sigh. “Well, we’ll do what we can for the survivors. Tell me somewhat. Gerontos wants to ride with us. Should he?”

  “No. The cold will cramp every muscle on that weak leg. He won’t be able to stand up, much less fight if you need him to.”

  “I’ll tell him no, then.” Rhodorix laid his hands on either side of her face. “Give me a kiss, beloved, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  Hwilli kissed him as eagerly, as passionately as she always did, yet as he walked away, he found himself wondering if Gerontos was truly unfit to fight, or if she merely preferred having him stay in the fortress. Don’t be a fool! he told himself. You’ve not seen one thing to make you jealous, not one! Besides, he asked himself, what if I die in battle one fine day? He decided that he’d rather have Gerontos take Hwilli than any other man and put the matter out of his mind.

  hwilli hated seeing Rhodorix ride out on patrol, simply because she was terrified that he’d be killed—not an unreasonable fear, given the times. Since she had learned the basic principles of dweomer fast and easily, Master Jantalaber had begun teaching her how to scry, a skill she found elusive. The master would place a pair of objects on a table in the chamber next to hers. Since she knew what the table looked like, she could first imagine it and then try to see what lay upon it, but the image of the table in her mind stayed stubbornly empty, a memory only.

  When, however, she tried using Rhodorix as the subject of her exercises in the craft, she at last had some success. Now and then she caught a glimpse of him, riding on a snowy road or giving his horse a nosebag of grain. The glimpses were short and generally murky, but at least she knew that he was still alive.

  “This is extremely interesting,” Jantalaber said. “Your people scry more easily when some feeling lies behind the attempt. It’s just the opposite with us.”

  “Well,” Hwilli said, “it’s true for me, at least. I don’t know if it would apply to everyone.”

  Jantalaber laughed and nodded. “Right you are,” he said. “I was rushing toward a conclusion that might not exist. However, let’s abandon the table exercise. From now on, try to see your horsemaster or someone else you know, Nalla, perhaps.”

  “Or my mother?”

  Jantalaber’s cat-slit eyes went wide with surprise. “Is she still—” he caught himself. “Is she still with us?”

  “No, she was sent to Rinbaladelan with the rest of the cattle.”

  Jantalaber winced. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But she’ll be safer there than anywhere else in the princedoms.”

  “That’s true. My apologies, Master.” Hwilli could hear her voice begin to clog with tears. She coughed, sniffled, and managed to clear it. “I just worry so.”

  “Alas, that’s appropriate enough.” He shook his head and sighed. “But, yes, by all means see if you can see your mother.”

  It took Hwilli several days of trying, in short bursts of work, but at length she did catch glimpses of Gertha. Dressed in clean blue linen, she sat in a cushioned chair by a window. She was pale and thin, far too thin. No doubt the long walk south had exhausted her. She held a bowl of what seemed to be dried fruit. As Hwilli watched, she took a piece out and began to eat carefully on the side of her mouth that still had teeth. Hwilli caught a glimpse of a painted wall behind her. Shame made her wince and lose the vision; she’d misjudged the People down in the south badly, apparently, when she’d thought they would treat refugees like cattle.

  Hwilli saw the truth some days later, when she scried again and found Nalla and Gertha in the same chamber she’d seen before. In the vision Nalla suddenly looked up and smiled. She’s seen me! Hwilli thought. Nalla nodded as if she’d heard her, then mouthed the words, “I found her and took her in.” Hwilli returned the smile in a flood of relief. The vision broke up, leaving her mind divided between bitter and sweet thoughts. On the one hand, Nalla had gone out of her way to rescue Gertha. On the other, she had needed rescuing. A glimpse of the rest of the villagers, huddled outside Rinbaladelan’s walls with no shelter, convinced Hwilli of that.

  Hwilli went looking for Jantalaber to tell him of her success only to be distracted. Cloaked servants rushed down the corridor toward the outer doors. Hwilli caught the eye of a young man.

  “The Mountain Folk are here!” he called out and ran on past.

  Hwilli ran to her chamber, got her cloak, and hurried after them. Out in the frosty courtyard the horse guards were dismounting. She picked out Rhodorix immediately, thanks to his gold-colored mount. When she called to him, he saw her and waved.

  “I have to stable my horse,” he called out, “and the captain and I have to report to the prince. We’ve brought messages.”

  “Well and good, then!” Hwilli blew him a kiss, then turned her attention to the refugees, straggling in through the gates, women and children first, and the men behind.

  Some five hundred at a quick count and estimate—Hwilli felt the shock as a blow, that out of Lin Rej’s many thousands only five hundred women had survived. Perhaps half had a child with them: a babe in arms, or a toddler wrapped against the snow in every spare bit of cloth the mother could find, or older children, gaunt and squinting, snow blind and clinging to their mother’s skirts. Behind them came roughly a hundred axemen, weary, bedraggled, their beards and eyebrows white with frost.

  “Ye gods!” Jantalaber whispered from behind her. “Gods help us all!”

  Hwilli glanced around to see him standing to one side of the door, his eyes as wide with horror and shock as hers doubtless were. He started to speak, then merely shook his head in sorrow.

  “This can’t be all,” Hwilli said. “Weren’t there more soldiers at least?”

  “That’s true.” Jantalaber sounded weary rather than relieved. “They’re wintering at Tanbalapalim. That’s where the Meradan will strike first, no doubt.”

  Hwilli shivered, pulled her cloak around her, but shivered the more, trembling on the edge of a faint. Jantalaber laid a steadying hand on her shoulder.

  “Go inside, child,” he said. “Get the herbroom ready. No doubt there are plenty of these people who are going to need our help.”

  The master had spoken the simple truth. All the rest of that day, Hwilli, Par, and Jantalaber worked in the herbroom, doing what they could for cases of frostbite, exhaustion, fluxes of the bowels, catarrh, and a good many other complaints. They heard tales of despair as well. A good many people had died during the long winter walk down from the smoking ruins of Lin Rej to Tanbalapalim. No one, however, wanted to talk about the death of Lin Rej itself.

  “You have to shut that out of your mind,” one woman told Hwilli. “You have to shove it into a chamber, like, and lock the door over it.” Her hands shook as hard as her voice. “Don’t ask. Please, just don’t ask us to remember it.”

  “I won’t, then,” Hwilli said. “Take this vial of herbwater with you. One sip at night will help you sleep.”

  The woman looked up at
her with tear-filled eyes, whispered a thanks, and walked off, clutching the glass vial in both hands as if she feared it would leap out of them.

  Yet, a few words here, a mumbled oath there, a sentence framed in tears—a few precious scraps of information did come out during that long day, some of it to the good. Another group of Mountain Folk might well have escaped the slaughter. There was reason to hope that the Meradan had never found an escape tunnel that led from one quarter of the city to a bolthole some miles east. A few of the axemen had tried to reach that tunnel. Although Meradan had blocked the way, the soldiers had found that area of the city deserted; its inhabitants must have gone somewhere, and there were no corpses in sight.

  “So we think they’d already escaped,” a woman said. “Before the Meradan got there.”

  “Not just Meradan!” An axeman with a broken wrist put in. “The halls were crawling with a different kind of lice! The—” He stopped, glancing at Hwilli, then away. “Ah, what does it matter now? Worms and slimes from Hell, all of them.”

  At the dinner hour, Rhodorix came to the herbroom. He stood in the doorway and watched with bleak eyes as Hwilli cleaned a festering cut on a young child’s cheek. A Meradani sword had grazed her face as she fled behind her mother. By then, only a few patients still waited to be seen, and they, as Jantalaber remarked, were the ones with the least pressing injuries.

  “When you’ve stitched that cut, you may leave, Hwilli,” he said. “Par and I can finish up here. In the morning, though, I’ll need you back.”

  “Of course, Master,” Hwilli said. “My thanks.”

  “I’ve had one of the servants bring food to my chamber,” Rhodorix said. “The chamberlain’s having the Mountain Folk camp in the refectory for now.”

  Gerontos had set the bowls of food, mostly bread and some dried beef simmered in wine, out on the table in the chamber. While they ate, Rhodorix told them about the horse guards’ ride north.

  “We found a squad of Meradan,” he said, “and wiped them out. We got twelve good horses out of the scrap and a couple that will do for pack animals once their wounds heal.”

  “Good,” Gerontos said. “Any losses on our side?”

  “None. Ye gods, the odds were a hundred to fifteen. If we’d lost any men, Andariel and I should have been flogged!”

  The brothers shared a laugh, though Rhodorix cut his short.

  “And I finally managed to take a couple of prisoners,” Rhodorix continued. “I stopped the men from cutting them into shreds just in time. They might be persuaded to part with some information.”

  “Good,” Gerontos said. “I wonder how much pain the white savages can take?”

  “We’ll find out, I wager. But here’s a thing that creeped my flesh,” Rhodorix said. “Some of the men we killed weren’t Meradan. They were farm folk, according to Andariel, men like us.”

  “Were they fighting for the Meradan?”

  “They were.”

  “Then it’s all the same to me.” Gerontos turned to Hwilli. “When can I ride to war again? I’m going half-mad, sitting around here like this.”

  Hwilli was so exhausted from her long day in the herbroom that she blurted the truth without thinking. “You may never be able to,” she said, “not standing on the ground, anyway. Your leg’s mended well enough for you to ride, but I don’t know what fighting from horseback is like.” She glanced at Rhodorix. “Do you use both legs?”

  “Only to stay in the saddle.” Rhodorix was staring at his brother in obvious concern.

  When Hwilli looked at Gerontos, she found his face an utter mask. He could have been enraged or thinking of nothing at all as far as she could judge from his impassive gaze. He sighed once, sharply. “That’s a blow and a half.” His voice was perfectly level. “Are you sure?”

  “No,” Hwilli said. “Neither is Master Jantalaber.”

  “Then I’ve got some hope,” Gerontos said. “I’d rather slit my own throat than live like a servant or suchlike.”

  “I’d expect no less of you,” Rhodorix said. “But the new bow that the archers came up with is a splendid thing. If naught else, you can learn how to use it and ride with them.”

  Gerontos smiled, such a sunny smile of such evident relief, that Hwilli felt faintly uneasy. They both enjoy killing people, she thought—then sharply reminded herself that the Meradan deserved it.

  As he usually did, Rhodorix spent the night in Hwilli’s chamber. She would have gladly spent half the next day abed out of exhaustion as much as for love for him, but the bronze gongs of the priests woke her long before the winter sun had crept above the horizon. Rhodorix mumbled something unintelligible and pulled a pillow over his head to block the sound. Hwilli got up and dressed, then hurried down to the herbroom and her duties.

  When Hwilli arrived, a line of patients had already formed out in the corridor. Jantalaber and two of the Mountain women were already at work, examining some of the worst frostbite cases in a blaze of dweomer light.

  “Have you seen Par?” Jantalaber said.

  “I’ve not,” Hwilli said. “I came straight from bed when I heard the gongs.”

  “There’s some bread on a plate in the drying room. Take some before you start work.”

  Hwilli fetched a chunk of bread and stood out of the way to eat it. She had met one of the Mountain women before, a healer named Vela, who came on occasion to the fortress to trade supplies of herbs and roots with Master Jantalaber. At the moment she was sitting on the high stool, translating for Jantalaber as he worked with patients who didn’t speak the language of the People.

  Like all the Mountain Folk, Vela was short and stocky, but this morning her face looked gaunt, her eyes deep pools of shadow in the silver light glowing from the ceiling. She’d pinned her long gray hair up to the top of her head with bone pins in random clumps, and she wore a ragged dress over a pair of the leather leggings usually worn by the men of her people. When she acknowledged Hwilli with a wave, Hwilli saw that her hand and wrist had suffered burns along the back. She remembered her patient of the day before saying “don’t ask” and refrained from mentioning it.

  Hwilli had just finished her bread when Paraberiel hurried in. All that day they worked with the injured and the terrified, until Hwilli wanted to weep more from the sheer horror of what had happened than exhaustion. More information crept out of frightened mouths, about walking through so much blood that the floors had turned slippery, or of hearing the screams of women being raped before their throats were cut, or the way the Meradan growled and slobbered with rage as they killed and killed and killed.

  “They burnt through the main doors on the hillside,” one axeman told them. “And then they got in somehow through the walled gardens.”

  “The worms who tended the place let them in,” a second axeman said. “How else do you think?”

  “Worms?” Hwilli snapped. “Perhaps you’d rather this worm let someone else tend your wounds.”

  The axeman yelped, as surprised as if a statue had spoken to him. Vela slewed around on her stool and barked an order in Dwarvish. After that, the men talked only to answer the healers’ questions about their injuries.

  Once they’d done everything they could for every injury, Jantalaber invited the healers to come eat in his chambers. The other dwarven woman, Othanna, begged off, because she desperately needed sleep.

  Jantalaber’s outer chamber, high up in the mages’ tower, displayed on its walls the many treasures he’d collected over his long life, elaborately glazed pottery, silver work, tapestries, pictures painted on tawed leather. A tiny fire burned in the freestanding pottery stove, using just enough fuel to take the bitter chill from the air. Only the priests kept truly warm in winter at Garangbeltangim. Bundled in their cloaks the three healers sank gratefully into cushioned chairs while Jantalaber’s manservant brought bread and wine and dried fruit to go with a dish of spiced meats, stewed beyond identifying but tasty all the same.

  At first the two masters tried to talk of ple
asant things, but eventually the conversation turned to the attacks. No one in Garangbeltangim could avoid them, Hwilli realized, not for more than a few moments together. Trying to chat about some other subject struck her as trying to ignore a bleeding wound.

  “My apologies for that fellow with his talk of worms,” Vela said to Hwilli.

  “My apologies for snarling at him,” Hwilli said. “If they let Meradan into your city, they were worms no matter what tribe they belonged to.”

  “I suppose.” Vela stared across the chamber with exhausted eyes. “I’ll never be able to forgive them, never, but I do wonder if mayhap they never realized how the Meradan would treat us. I want to believe that.”

  “I think you may,” Jantalaber put in. “No one could have anticipated what followed. I suspect that no one meant to set those fires, at least. It seems likely that the Meradan were planning on using Lin Rej as a stronghold. They had no reason to destroy it. Sometimes men go mad when a battle starts.”

  Vela nodded and held out her goblet. The manservant stepped forward with a flagon of wine and refilled it. Paraberiel, who’d been growing paler as he listened, held his up for more as well.

  “Everyone was so surprised that our farm folk would join the enemy,” Vela said. “Dolts! I have been warning the council for years and years now that we had no right to treat those people that way!” Her voice sank to a growl. “Lackwits! Blind!” She had a sip of wine to clear her throat. “Still, I was shocked at how—they were so, well, savage—I didn’t realize. None of us did, we just didn’t realize how hot rage can burn.”

  “Don’t think of the horrors,” Jantalaber said in a soft, careful voice. “Try not to dwell upon them.”

  Vela nodded and drank a long swallow of wine. She sighed before she continued, “Maybe now the council will listen to me. What’s left of it.”

  “And maybe the prince will listen to Maral about our farm folk.” Jantalaber paused, and the twist of his mouth expressed something less than hope. “I suppose.”