The Silver Mage

by Katharine Kerr

  “I packed your things for you,” he said.

  Hwilli felt too cold, too sick from running this way and that, to do more than let a few tears fall.

  “Draw back!” an officer was shouting. “Clear the gates! Clear the gates!”

  Jantalaber caught her arm and drew her gently with him as the crowd of refugees followed orders. One massive gate swung open to allow the line of mounted men to trot in. On his golden gelding, Rhodorix brought up the rear, chivvying the others along toward the stables. Hwilli longed to run after him, but Maraladario herself, wrapped in a dark blue cloak shot through with silver threads, stood in her way. Her emerald-green eyes narrowed.

  “You’ll come with us,” she said. “Don’t make me ensorcell you, Hwilli. It would go against every principle I hold, but by the gods, I’ll do it if I have to.”

  Hwilli could do nothing but weep. She despised herself, she felt humiliated to the core of her very soul, but still the tears ran. The People had broken her, she felt, torn out her soul and replaced it with another. Had she any true strength, she would run away and hide where no one would find her, until at last the refugees had left, and she’d be left behind, free to die with her beloved, but the tears drained her strength, or so she felt, and made it impossible to move, much less run.

  Bronze gongs rang out from the priests’ tower, signaling, perhaps, the end of everything. Silver horns blared the signal that the prince himself was approaching. At the same moment Rhodorix and his men came running into the ward from the direction of the stables. They flung themselves down to kneel just as the doors of the palace opened and Ranadar, followed by his retinue, stepped out. Hwilli had no interest in the prince. Seeing Rhodorix had given her part of her soul back, or so she felt.

  “Rhoddo,” she called out. “Rhodorix!”

  Before Maraladario or Jantalaber could stop her, she broke away and ran to Rhodorix. He scrambled up to face her.

  “Don’t let them send me away,” she said. “I want to stay with you.”

  “You can’t stay here,” Rhodorix said. “Now, listen. I’ve asked the prince to let my brother go with you. His twisted leg will keep him from fighting, so the prince agreed. Gerro will take care of you and the child. Do you understand?”

  His words were making little sense. Hwilli grabbed his arm with both hands. “I want to stay with you,” she repeated.

  “You can’t.” He pulled his arm away. “It would mean your death.”

  “I don’t care.” She raised her head to let him see the tears. “I’ll die with you when it comes to that.”

  She took one step toward him, but hands grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back. Master Jantalaber had reached her. She twisted in his hands, struggled to get free—until she heard a voice she recognized even in her grief.

  “What’s all this?” Ranadar, the prince himself, came striding up to them.

  Rhodorix knelt, head bowed. When Jantalaber let her go, Hwilli flung herself down beside him.

  “She won’t leave, Your Highness,” Jantalaber said. “My apprentice, that is, because of the love she bears your horsemaster.”

  Hwilli looked up at the prince, who was standing with his hands on his hips, his head tilted to one side as he considered her. The afternoon sun glittered on the sapphire in his dweomer pendant and turned the chased roses as fiery-gold as the harsh light itself.

  “You have to go,” Ranadar said. “You can’t fight, and so you’re just another mouth to feed.”

  “I can bind wounds, Your Highness.” Hwilli felt her voice shaking in her throat, but she forced herself to speak. “I can tend all manner of ills—”

  “We have other healers, ones who can draw a bow as well as bind wounds. You swore a vow to your master, didn’t you? I pity you, but I’ll order you all the same. Go! Your prince commands you. Go with your master, child!”

  Hwilli stretched out her arms to Rhodorix, who refused to look at her.

  “You heard him,” he said. “Follow his orders.”

  He wants me to go, she thought. He doesn’t want me here. The thought was a spear of ice, stabbing her to the heart. Her defeat tasted like a death, a cold emptiness that chilled her mind and her soul. She got to her feet, gave Rhodorix’s sullen back one last glance, and let Jantalaber lead her away.

  By the gates the other refugees had drawn up in reasonable order with a squad of archers. At the rear, behind the servants and handcarts, Gerontos sat on his chestnut warhorse.

  “Hwilli!” he called out to her. “Come here! You can ride behind me.”

  Understanding broke through Hwilli’s grief. Rhodorix had handed her over to his brother, just as if she were a horse he no longer wanted to ride. For a moment the courtyard seemed to move under her feet. Master Jantalaber caught her by the shoulder and steadied her.

  “Go ride with him,” he said. “The child you’re carrying could suffer, if you’re forced to walk the entire way.”

  For the sake of Rhodorix’s child, Hwilli went to Gerontos. He dismounted, helped her climb up behind the saddle then mounted again. As they rode off, she glanced back to see Rhodorix still kneeling before the prince. Very well, she thought. I’ll do as you say, but I’ll always be faithful to you in my heart and soul.

  With a sigh that was more a gasp of surrender, she slipped her arms around Gerontos’ waist to steady herself as the column began to move. He turned his head to glance her way. Despite the awkward angle, she caught a glimpse of a well-pleased smile.

  Rhodorix kept silent by iron self-control as Hwilli and Gerontos rode off to catch up with the refugees, most of whom had already filed through the gates. He listened to the sound of the chains grinding through the winches as the gates closed with a rumble like thunder. Under the cover of that sound he allowed himself one long keen. Tears ran down his face; he wiped them roughly away on the back of his hand. The prince, with his hands on his hips, watched him.

  “So!” Ranadar said. “You did love that woman. Did you want her to stay?”

  “I wanted her to go, Your Highness, but only for her sake. For mine I wish she could have stayed, but I’ll hope and pray that she lives a long life and finds a little joy in it as well.”

  “The thought becomes you. I doubt me if you and I will do either.”

  “The only joy I can see myself finding, Your Highness, is dying before you do.”

  “That’s a boon the gods will probably grant you.” Ranadar paused, looking up at the cloud-strewn sky. “One way or the other.”

  PART II

  THE NORTHLANDS SUMMER, 1160

  The reflection in the mirror is not your actual face. No more is the world you see the world.

  —The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid

  I GOT MY WISH. I died long before the prince did.

  The silver dragon spread his wings, contemplated flight, then closed them again. A wind came up, whining through the broken towers, murmuring in the trees. A dust demon whirled across the shattered paving stones of the courtyard by the long-gone gates.

  “I thought I’d die here in Garangvah,” Rori said aloud, “but I didn’t. We lived through the siege, and then I followed Ranadar when he began raiding. It was all that was left to us, raiding. We stole their horses, we killed as many of their men as we could.” He laughed with a long rumble of satisfaction, remembering the kills. “It was my wyrd, when I died on one of those raids. Was it an arrow?” He considered one of Garangvah’s broken towers, as if perhaps it had heard and might answer. “I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s a new war now.”

  With a rustle of wings the silver dragon leaped into the air and flew, heading east. He laired that night on one of the foothills, then set out again in the morning. Late in the afternoon he reached the fortress he’d seen a-building. Although he’d flown over the area a number of times, he’d never examined it carefully. In the slanted light of the aging day, he saw marks upon the ground he’d not noticed before, places where the scrubby grass grew thicker or thi
nner. As if they were shadows thrown by Time itself, the marks displayed a pattern of long lines enclosing areas that might have been fields and little circles the size and shape of farmers’ huts. Yet nothing remained on the ground to explain them.

  The fortress itself presented a further surprise. In the midst of flat scrubland, it stood on a hill of sorts—very much of sorts, he realized. He flew up high and glided in a lazy loop, studying the hill and the half-finished buildings, all of wood, that stood behind a wooden palisade. Despite the clutter, he could see enough to discern a crucial truth.

  Like a long sausage, the ridge rose in an oddly symmetrical shape. A circular depression marked each end, as if the earth had settled over some kind of construction underneath. In the center, where the new buildings stood, he could only guess at the ground underneath, but it seemed oddly uneven, as if boulders or some sort of loose rock underlay the soil. At least part of the ridge, then, was no natural feature, but an ancient structure, perhaps even an enormous barrow joined to shrines at either end.

  Did the Horsekin realize that they were building upon a supremely unstable foundation? Apparently not. Long barges, anchored side to shore, fringed the nearby river. Each of them held cubical blocks of gray stone. Somewhere upstream the Horsekin were quarrying. Rori could guess that they had learned a hard lesson about dwarven fire the summer before and intended to defend against it as best they could, but he doubted if any master masons were working on this citadel. The city-builders of the Gel da’Thae would have understood another lesson—that stone walls required a firm footing if they were to stand. A peculiar mound like this one would destabilize anything heavy built upon it.

  They could perhaps build a stone fortress here if they drove pilings for a foundation, but after they drove the pilings, then what should they do? The more Rori considered the question, the more uncertain of the answer he became. While he could recall his days as Gwerbret Aberwyn, and the long discussions of fort craft he’d held with master craftsmen, the memories were curiously dim and hard to recall, compared with his dweomer memories of old lives and old hatreds.

  The hatreds, in particular, burned in his mind. As he floated on the currents of the wind, he counted them: the Horsekin, certainly. Tren. Raena. Alastyr—but, he reminded himself, Alastyr and Tren were one and the same soul. The Bear clan of Eldidd that had tried to undermine his rule as Gwerbret Aberwyn—all of them, too. Most deeply of all, he hated the dark dweomermen of Bardek, who had broken his mind and will back when he’d still been a young man and an exile. Nearly a hundred years old, some of those memories, but the hatreds still smoldered in his soul. At times they flared up, so hot and bitter that they made him uneasy, threatening every shred of mercy and justice he possessed. The years that he’d passed in dragon form were divesting him of everything that had made him a good ruler, a decent lord, a human being. Dalla was right, he thought. I can’t—can’t what? keep living like this?

  He shuddered with a vast shiver of extended wings and tried to put the rage out of his mind. His one reliable refuge from his thoughts beckoned: flight. His wings beat the air as he gained height, until the fortress looked like a smear on the earth and naught more. The cool wind soothed his hatreds and blew them among the thin streaks of clouds.

  Rori made a wide turn to the north and spotted on the distant horizon the pluming dust that meant the approach of a large number of—something. He dropped down and flew in that direction until he soared over a long column of marching spearmen, followed by a ragtag collection of Horsekin on foot. Behind them trundled loaded wagons, drawn by horses, and oxcarts as well, piled high with lumpy, uneven cargo held down by hides and ropes. A bevy of mounted riders drove herds of horses and cattle, while behind them marched another tidy column of spearmen. Riders brought up the rear. These, some hundreds of them, rode in a straggly column, bunching up, thinning out as they traveled slowly along. Horsekin, then, not Gel da’Thae cavalry—Rori risked swooping down lower, circling the line of march for a better look.

  Although he saw chained slaves among those who walked behind the leading contingent of uniformed spearmen, the others in the line of march seemed to be traveling freely enough. Mostly women drove the wagons. Children perched on top of bulky, ill-stowed loads or sat beside the women on the wagon boxes. The rearguard horsemen wore heavy tunics of leather, painted with designs that from his height Rori couldn’t read. Painted shields hung from their saddle peaks. A migration, all right, a full migration of Horsekin tribes. Probably they were planning on settling around the new fortress to raise food and mounts for whatever plans Alshandra’s rakzanir had underway.

  As Rori headed south again, he realized that he wasn’t far—not far as dragons reckon distance, at any rate—from the strange village and the wooden bridge that Berwynna had described to him. Any army planning on extending itself through the Northlands would want that bridge. He decided to take a look at it and headed east again. Soon he was soaring high above the Dwrvawr. He turned downriver, spotted the village and the rickety bridge that Berwynna had described, then circled lower for a better look.

  Near the village a strip of sandy beach sloped down toward water reeds and what appeared to be shallow water, shaded by a cluster of willows. In deeper water a pair of enormous otters swam back and forth. Rori dropped down a hundred yards or so and circled to confirm that indeed, two otters, roughly six feet long from whiskered snout to graceful tail, were exactly what they were. As he watched, one of them swam to the beach and clambered out. It started chasing its tail like a dog. In a swirl of bluish light the otter disappeared, and a human being, dripping wet and naked, stood in its stead. The other creature paddled toward the bank, flipped onto its back, and, still in otter form, bobbed in the current.

  The naked man pointed at the sky and called out—from his height Rori could just hear his voice without understanding the words. Another man stepped out of the trees, a short, stocky fellow clad in a loin wrap. He tipped his head back to look up. They’d spotted the dragon, perhaps, though Rori could assume that he looked like some sort of large bird at his distance. He banked one wing and headed back southwest. Those otters—or shapechangers—or whatever they were! The sooner Dallandra heard about them the better.

  The strange white bird circled overhead, then flew off, heading southwest. Kov watched it, a silver glint against blue sky, until it passed out of sight. He ached with envy of its wings. Behind him, his swimming teacher clambered out of the water. The were-otter turned, spun fast around, and in a swirl of blue light, changed back into man form.

  “Was that a crane, do you think?” Kov asked him.

  “It were not,” Jemjek said. “I know not what it may be, but the seeing of it did trouble my heart somehow.”

  “Just so,” Grallag said. “We best be going back inside.”

  Since there was no arguing with his strong-armed Dwrgi guards, Kov agreed.

  Kov was never allowed to go outside alone. During the day, he could walk wherever he wanted inside, though at night, Grallag slept in front of the entrance to his chamber. For days now, he’d been exploring the complex around the treasure chamber and studying the walls and the ceilings in the hopes of finding a ventilation shaft, or even a chink or crack, that an enterprising dwarf could use for an escape route.

  Unfortunately, the Dwrgwn were almost as clever as the Mountain Folk when it came to burrowing. They had laid a pale mud-plaster over the smooth walls, which they’d reinforced with a course or two of stone where the walls joined the hard-packed earthen floors. Stout beams supported the ceilings and kept the doorways of the various rooms trim and true. All the ventilation shafts had bronze grids embedded into the ceilings over their openings. Kov admired their skill even as he cursed it.

  Although he’d never found an open shaft that might function as a way out, he had seen a surprising number of empty rooms and dusty hallways. A few pieces of derelict furniture, a dropped tunic, covered in years’ worth of dust, a blackened stone beneath a vent that spoke of a
cooking fire—here and there he saw signs that these rooms had once been lived in. Had there been a plague or some sort of war? He wondered, but when he asked the various individuals he knew, they all shook their heads and professed to know nothing about those signs of life.

  Kov had also been asking those Dwrgwn he’d gotten to know, whether his guards or the other diners at the communal meals up in the village, about the heaps of treasure lying so carelessly in the big chamber.

  “What I wonder,” Kov would say, “is why gathering is so important to you all. It’s not like you do anything with the treasure. You don’t trade it or wear it or keep it in your private chambers.”

  “We do much love to visit it,” ran the usual reply. “When we be ill, we do go there and then feel well. When we be sad, it does make us happy.”

  On the day that Kov saw the unusual white bird, he went up to the communal meal early. After he’d fetched his usual plate of boiled fish and spelt porridge, he sat down next to a young woman, Annark, whom he found attractive despite her thick half-moons of eyebrows, mostly because she seemed more intelligent than most Dwrgwn. When he asked her why she loved the treasures, she gave him the answer he needed.

  “It be the mist lights,” she said. “See you not them? The beautiful blue haze from the gold, and the lights dancing from the jewels.”

  Kov was too surprised to respond.

  “The blue does rise from the gold,” Annark continued, “like mist on the river. We do waft it to ourselves, we do roll in it, and our own blue shadow, it does draw strength. See you it not, Kov Gemmaster?”

  “I can’t, alas, but I can feel it.” Suddenly he saw an important truth. “All of my people can, and that’s why we love gold so much. We breathe in the mist and soak it up through our hands.”