The Silver Mage

by Katharine Kerr

  “Artha, Holy One,” Niffa said. “The Horsekin, they do plan to turn our town into a fortress for their impious armies. Naught we can do against them will save our folk. The gods—”

  “The gods, think you they be powerless?” Artha said. “They do protect those who give them their due. Have they not quieted the fire that lives beneath us? Have they not steadied the shaking earth?”

  “Somewhat has done so. How do we know it be the gods?”

  “Can you stand there and mutter blasphemies so close to the holy shrine?” Artha spat out the words.

  “Have we not wrangled and snarled over all this before?” Niffa said, and she smiled.

  Dallandra was expecting the spirit talker to take grave offense at that smile, but instead Artha merely heaved a sigh and rolled her eyes.

  “Mayhap we have,” Artha said. “But still, I will leave not.”

  “You may choose what you choose,” Niffa said. “What does trouble my heart is this, that other folk will heed you and stay here to meet an ugly wyrd.”

  “They may choose what they will choose as well. It be no trouble of yours, witch woman.”

  “Ah, but it be my charge, truly, to speak out against false counsel.”

  Artha made a sound much like the hiss of a furious cat and waved her staff in Niffa’s direction. The sunlight caught the silver rings and gleamed in long sparks of light. Dallandra suddenly realized that beside the rings, the staff bore runes. While Artha and Niffa continued what seemed to be a familiar argument, Dallandra studied the staff, which Artha held upright and unmoving in front of her. The runes all seemed to be Elvish. When she sidled a little closer, Artha ignored her. By craning her neck this way and that, Dallandra finally managed to read them, “five elements, all kin, one soul.” That’s the rest of it, she thought, the inscription on Kov’s staff!

  By then, Artha had run out of invective. She and Niffa stood glaring at each other.

  “Er,” Dallandra said, “that staff. Is it permitted for me to ask whence it came?”

  Artha was so startled by this sudden change of subject that she nearly dropped the staff in question.

  “I know not where the first of these came from,” Artha said when she’d recovered. “But my teacher in the spirit lore did have this one, and on her deathbed she did give it to me. They be handed down over the long years, and when one does grow too frail, it be given to the holy fire, and a new one carved.”

  “My thanks,” Dallandra said. “That’s most interesting.”

  Artha pursed her lips and glared at her as if she were a half-wit. Niffa smothered a laugh.

  “I think me we shall disagree on these things forever,” Niffa said to Artha. “What the townsfolk will do, I ken not. I think me that what the prince of the Westfolk does say will have the true deciding of this.”

  With a pleasant wave, Niffa turned and began to climb the steps back up to the plaza. Dallandra said farewell to the furious spirit talker and hurried after her fellow dweomermaster. Neither said anything till they were up on the plaza and well past the shrine.

  “Do you really think she’ll stay here?” Dallandra said. “The Horsekin—what they’ll do to a priestess of other gods—it’s too horrible to even think about it.”

  “I did make a plan already. Some of my brother’s muleteers, they did say they would sweep her up and tie her to a wagon if such should be the only way to, um, persuade her to leave with us.”

  “Good. That sets my heart at rest. I agree with you, though, that whatever Dar says will really decide the issue for the town.”

  “Then we should know soon.” Niffa glanced up at the sky, where a few white wisps of cloud were moving in from the south. “I fear me that the rain, it be coming, though.”

  “I think you’re right. I hope it doesn’t slow Dar and his men down too much. Well, that’s in the laps of whatever gods there may be.”

  As he winged north toward Haen Marn, the Horsekin were very much on Laz’s mind as well. Even though Laz in raven form could fly faster than he could travel on horseback, he felt as if he were crawling through the air, burdened as he was with worry. With Horsekin raiders close by, what if Haen Marn had fled back to Alban? He could return to the Westlands, he supposed, find the royal alar, and deliver the book to Dallandra there, hundreds of miles away. The very thought wearied him.

  At night, when he stopped to rest, Laz found himself missing Faharn. They had met back in Taenbalapan, years before, when their dweomer studies had led them both to Hazdrubal, the Bardekian refugee. Almost from the beginning, however, Faharn had disliked Hazdrubal. He stopped his studies early on, claiming that the teacher was evil, disgusting, and probably a criminal to boot. Laz agreed with his opinion, but he stayed on, learning what he could, discarding what he hated.

  He made such fast progress that he could take Faharn on as a pupil after only a year or two with the Bardekian. When the howling mob of Alshandra worshipers began purging the city of magicians, Laz and Faharn escaped together and gradually built up their band of fellow refugees. Outlaws, perhaps, but unwilling ones—and now most of them were dead or had deserted to the Westfolk, including Pir. I always thought he was my true friend, Laz thought, and Faharn just a hanger-on of sorts. How wrong I was!

  Occasionally, Laz shed a few angry tears over the bitterness of Pir’s betrayal. He could take comfort in thoughts of revenge, of taking Sidro back again and then mocking his former friend for losing her. Now and then he thought of scrying Sidro out, but the fear of seeing her in another man’s arms always stopped him.

  On his third day of flight, which happened to be the day after Dallandra arrived in Cerr Cawnen, Laz found Haen Marn, a good many miles from where he’d left it. The enormous astral vortex lay in a different lake than the one he’d last seen, this one sheltered by a horseshoe of hills that clashed with the landscape around them. Oaks and a scattering of brush grew on the lake side of the rolling hills; outside, among the rough northern mountains, stood pine forest. A river ran from the lake and flowed out of the open mouth of the horseshoe, but no river flowed into the lake from the opposite hill.

  The boulder with the silver horn stood on the lakeshore. Laz landed next to it and folded his aching wings. He’d been planning on flying straight to the manse, but his exhaustion made him pause. Although he felt perfectly confident that he could pick his way through the astral vortex, mistakes happened too easily when a dweomermaster had spent all his energies in the physical world. He transformed back into his human body and dressed, though he left his troublesome boots in his sack, then picked up the silver horn and blew three long notes.

  Shortly thereafter he saw the dragon boat set out from the island. Its strange etheric crew of rowers brought her smartly across the lake, then backed oars and turned her in the shallows. Laz waded out, tossed his sack aboard ahead of him, and with Lon’s help, clambered onto the deck.

  “Well, you be back, bain’t?” Lon said, smiling. “I wager you do have a few tales to tell.”

  “I do, indeed,” Laz said. “I hope Lady Angmar won’t mind me imposing on her hospitality once more.”

  “I doubt me that she will. You did find the island, and that be invitation enough for Haen Marn.”

  Sure enough, when Laz walked into the great hall, Angmar looked up from her sewing, smiled, and waved her hand as if he’d been gone for a day or two. Mara came hurrying down the staircase and greeted him with a bit more enthusiasm but no great surprise.

  “This morning Avain did see you in her basin,” Mara announced. “Welcome back!”

  “My thanks.” Laz slung his sack onto the nearest table. “I’ve brought you back the dragon book, and I now know just what a treasure it is.”

  “That’s so splendid! Please, do tell me more. And my sister? Be she well?”

  “She was the last time I saw her, and your father as well.”

  “Let the poor man sit, Mara.” Angmar laid her sewing into the workbasket on the floor next to her chair. “And fetch him some
ale! Envoy Kov, no doubt he’ll be wanting to hear these tales as well, so do call him in.”

  Mara curtsied to her mother, then hurried out the side door on her way to the kitchen.

  “Mara seems to have learned courtesy,” Laz said, smiling, “since last I saw her.”

  “It be so indeed.” Angmar returned the smile. “The hard work in the kitchen did teach her her sister’s worth, as well. Come sit down, Laz. When Kov and Mara do join us, we shall trade tales.”

  “Wait—do you mean Envoy Kov of Lin Serr?”

  “I do.”

  “Berwynna told me that he was dead.”

  “He were not, but captured by the strange folk of the Northlands.” Her smile turned soft. “My Rori did rescue him and bring him here for refuge, and I think me he be just the man our Mara does need, to be the lord here to her lady.”

  “Excellent! And while I’m here, I can teach her more dweomerlore.”

  “For that my heart would be grateful. There be much need upon her to learn all she can.”

  In honor of his return, Mara roasted a haunch of venison for the dinner that night and made a sauce of wild mushrooms to go with it. Kov baked the bread—as a young man he had, in the custom of the Mountain Folk, lived on a farm and learned that sort of skill. As she presided over the meal, Angmar looked happier than Laz had ever seen her. When he asked, she told him that Rori had agreed to the transformation back to his human form. “That be, if the elven sages do have the knowledge they need to bring him back,” Angmar said.

  “We have the book again,” Laz said. “I’ve met these dweomermasters now, and truly, if anyone can restore him, it will be they.”

  “That gladdens my heart to hear. My thanks, Laz. Truly, it be good that you did return to us.”

  It occurred to Laz that it had been a long time since anyone had welcomed him to a place that felt like home. For a moment, he felt close to tears, but he managed to smile and thank her in a steady voice.

  After a tankard of Haen Marn’s dark ale, Laz felt tired enough to excuse himself and go upstairs to his old chamber. The straw mattress and the blankets still lay where he’d left them, and the basket of extra clothes stood waiting for him as well. Outside, the sun lingered above the horizon, a sign that he had flown far to the north indeed. Its warm golden light filled the tiny chamber with the peace of an approaching night.

  Laz set his sack down and knelt beside it. He took out the precious dragon book and propped it up against the base of the wall. He could just discern the harsh lavender glimmer of a spirit dancing on the cover.

  “Please don’t leave again,” he said aloud. “The Westfolk mages and the dragon himself will come here to fetch you.”

  The spirit brightened as if agreeing, then withdrew. Laz got up and went to the window. He leaned on the sill to look out at the lake, rippling in an evening wind, and used the sunlight upon the ripples as a focus to scry for Dallandra. Although he lacked the knowledge to send her messages, he wondered what she might be doing at that moment.

  What he saw surprised him. Rather than out on the grass or in a tent, she was sitting inside a room and nursing an infant that he took for Dari. He could just dimly discern that she sat in a cushioned chair, and that two other women sat nearby, though neither of them was Sidro or any other women he’d seen among the Westfolk. Although he tried to sharpen the vision, it refused to clarify. In a fit of exhausted frustration, he broke it.

  That he’d seen anything at all through the water veil around Haen Marn intrigued him. Some force must have been guiding him or lending him strength—the astral spirits of the book, perhaps. Yet the scrying left him uneasy. Something dangerous lurked close to Dallandra. That he knew; the what or why of it escaped him.

  Ever since he’d met Dallandra and Ebañy, Laz had come to see just how inadequate his own dweomer training had been. Hazdrubal had left out a good many things, such as the ability to send thoughts to a fellow dweomerworker’s mind. He had given Laz a good understanding of the principles of the dweomer, but he’d slighted the practice in a good many areas, always while promising that someday, soon but never on the morrow, he would teach more. If I hadn’t been so gifted, Laz thought, I’d not have gotten very far with the work. Faharn was right about the old man. He was something of a fraud, truly.

  Be that as it may, Hazdrubal had certainly paid twice over for any sins he might have committed. Laz had a vivid memory of Alshandra’s faithful holding up their bloodstained hands in the sunlight and shrieking with joy after they had clawed and hacked the Bardekian to pieces—gore under their fingernails, blood oozing down their wrists as they held up gobbets of flesh—Laz banished the image and shuddered.

  But the gifts—that evening, watching the sun sinking over the hills around Haen Marn, Laz wondered about his gifts, everything Lord Tren had so longed for but lacked. Someone had given them back to him. That he could surmise, especially when he remembered Hazdrubal’s scornful words about the Great Ones, who “meddled,” or so his teacher had called it, with the destiny of those who chose the dweomer road. But then, Hazdrubal had walked on the dark paths. Once again, Faharn had been right.

  The dark paths. Had he himself known them? Once, in that other life Dallandra had mentioned but never revealed? Laz felt so sick that he could barely stand. He staggered back to the mattress and dropped to his knees upon it. Was that what had cost Lord Tren the only thing he’d ever truly loved?

  “No,” Laz whispered in the Gel da’Thae tongue. “By all the gods, not that!”

  Yet he suddenly felt eyes watching him. He looked around, saw no one, twisted this way and that, still saw not even a spirit in the chamber, yet he knew that somehow someone watched him from a great distance away, perhaps from the astral, perhaps even from the fabled Halls of Light, where the Great Ones gave their judgments. If it were true that he’d taken the path of the dark dweomer, if he’d defiled the lore he loved so much with crimes such as those, he had restitution to make, wyrd to endure. He began trembling so hard that he fell forward onto the mattress. For a long while that night he lay rolled in a blanket like a child, trying to hide from the terrors of the darkness, until at last he escaped into sleep.

  “I just can’t reach Laz’s mind,” Dallandra remarked. “I’ve been trying all evening. I can scry him out easily enough, but I can’t contact his thoughts. He seems to be somewhat ill. He’s shivering and rolling himself in a blanket.”

  “Ken you where he be?” Niffa said.

  “Inside some sort of house. I think it might be Haen Marn, because I can sense a water veil around it. I saw the dragon book propped up against a wall near his bed. I suppose that’s all I really need to know, that he’s safe and the book with him.”

  They were sitting in the great room of Jahdo’s house in front of a small fire, lit to chase away the omnipresent damp of Cerr Cawnen. Dallandra had fed Hildie’s child, and his mother had taken him away to clean him and wrap him in swaddling bands for the night. As the two dweomermasters sat talking, Jahdo came in to join them. He sank into a cushioned chair with a long weary sigh.

  “How does the temper of the town run?” Niffa said.

  “Foul,” Jahdo said, then smiled. “Well, half of it be foul. I understand not our folk at times. Some fear to leave more than they fear to stay, even though we all do know what evils the Horsekin will bring with them.”

  “Do they think your walls will fend them off forever?” Dallandra said.

  “Not forever, only to the winter, when, or so they do hope, the snows will freeze the Horsekin where they sit. It be true that winter around our town be a fierce thing. Were it not for our lake’s warmth, none could live here, I think me.”

  “True,” Niffa put in, “but the Horsekin, they live in the cruel north, too. They do ken how to outlast the snows.”

  “So I did say to the doubters,” Jahdo said. “The true problem, I do believe, be a fear of what might wait for us in the Southlands, so close to the Slavers’ Country. Some do think that we shall be
slaves there again, and it does seem preferable to be enslaved by the evil we know rather than some new one.”

  “Surely they don’t think the Westfolk will enslave them?” Dallandra turned in her chair to look straight at Jahdo.

  “None who remember Prince Dar do have such thoughts, but the young men, well, they know not what to think. They do have a hope that we might offer to join with the Horsekin to take the Summer Country back from the Slavers. I did try to impress upon them that the Horsekin, they want not an alliance this time, but a conquest.” Jahdo shrugged both shoulders. “What will the Horsekin want with our hundreds of ill-armed warriors, when they do command their own polished thousands?”

  The fire was burning low. Niffa got up and took a stick of wood from the basket by the hearth, then placed it carefully among the coals to avoid the salamanders playing among them.

  “Brother?” Niffa said. “Did the council send messengers to Penli?”

  “We did. On the morrow, most like, will we get a reply.”

  The reply arrived on the following afternoon in the form of the entire village of Penli. Some twenty families showed up at the south gates driving their milk cows, sheep, and hogs, with their dogs trailing after and some cats as well, perched on the loaded wagons and handcarts, and ferrets in cages. The town militia led them around the lake to a spot on the grassy commons where they could pitch tents, feed their livestock, and settle their crying children. Jahdo brought Cleddrik to the council chambers by the plaza, where Dallandra met them.

  At the sight of her, Cleddrik took a step back. His eyes grew wide, but he stammered out a pleasant enough greeting after Jahdo’s introduction. Dallandra disliked him on first sight. The very fact that she couldn’t say why she did made her wary; the feeling had something of the omen-cold about it.

  “My thanks for this shelter,” Cleddrik said to Jahdo. “My folk be sore afraid, and I did fear they would up and run off somewhere rather than holding their ground.”