THE WIZARD HUNTERS

by Martha Wells

  Ilias crossed the tiled floor and sat down on the step at Giliead’s feet. Ferias, a husky red-faced man with a perpetually angry expression, was one of the speakers already standing, waiting impatiently for Nicanor to sit down. Ferias’s family had been enemies of Andrien so long no one could remember why and it was no surprise that he was leading the opposition.

  As Nicanor stepped down the tiers and leisurely took his seat, the hushed conversations began to die down. Impatient to begin, Ferias faced Giliead, saying, “You brought those people into the city. Why?” His loud voice startled everyone into silence. Ilias could hear birdsong from the trees outside.

  Giliead gave Ferias a hard stare. “They are travelers, with guest-right. They earned that guest-right defending Agis’s village from the wizards that later destroyed it. We’re taking them back to ... a place they can reach their home from.”

  There was a low murmur of comment throughout the room. Ilias hoped nobody asked how exactly that was going to happen. Gerard had tried earnestly to explain it, but the only point Ilias was clear on was that it required curses. Hopefully most here would just assume the Swift was taking them somewhere they could meet another ship.

  Ferias looked around at his audience. “They are wizards themselves,” he announced, as if everyone hadn’t been talking about it all morning.

  “They are at war with the Gardier wizards on the island. The lawgiver has already explained this and I’m not going to repeat his words.” Giliead let his gaze travel around the room too. “They want to be our allies.”

  Ferias slammed his fist into his palm. “Bringing those people here is why the wizards attacked in force—”

  “The wizards had already attacked,” Nicanor interrupted suddenly. He fixed Ferias with a cold eye. “Unless you think the gleaners’ villages and the missing ships were a coincidence?”

  Gibelin, who spoke for the gleaners and was always a hothead, surged to his feet and angrily demanded, “Or perhaps the dead gleaners weren’t worth your notice, Ferias?”

  Ferias just stood there, breathing hard. Ilias looked at the ground to conceal his expression. Ferias had started out with the wrong argument; few here would believe the Gardier wizards would have just let the Syrnai alone. Everyone would know they would have attacked the coast eventually, provoked or not. Then Ferias fixed his eye on Giliead again. He said deliberately, “How can we trust your judgment? After Ixion. You let him into your house, led your own sister to her death.” He turned away to appeal to the whole room. “How can we trust him after that?”

  Everyone burst into talk. Some were agreeing, some disagreeing, some objecting on religious principles, and some agreeing but protesting the outright rudeness of Ferias’s declaration. Mouth twisted, Ilias exchanged an annoyed look with Giliead. Ferias couldn’t say anything they hadn’t already said to themselves or each other.

  Nicanor contemplated the ceiling mosaic, letting the clamor continue, then said loudly, “Ferias. Do you trust the god?”

  An uneasy silence fell. Ilias sensed Giliead tense. Lawgivers couldn’t give orders to Chosen Vessels, but if Nicanor wanted to pursue this argument, he had far more stones to throw than Ferias. Even if Nicanor was on their side, Ilias wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this.

  Ferias looked as tense as Giliead. He was speaker enough to know that Nicanor was a canny opponent and that the question was a trap, but how to avoid it eluded him. “Of course I trust the god,” he snapped, adding irrelevantly, “Didn’t it cure my cows of the hoofblight last year?”

  Up on the top tier, Ilias saw Ferias’s wife cover her eyes with her shawl.

  “Whatever its view of the events of last year, the god has not repudiated Giliead.” Nicanor’s impenetrable gaze went to Giliead. “His judgment is its judgment.”

  It was unfair but effective. The other heads of household started to argue among themselves and Ilias saw Ferias’s wife motioning for him to sit down.

  They tramped down the road that led to the harbor, Tremaine occupied with her thoughts. She hoped this council turned out to be nothing, but Halian looked worried. Along the way people stared at them from windows, from under the shade trees in the little yards or from groups gathered around the fountains, but nobody seemed to want to stop them.

  The road turned at the top of a rise and they suddenly had a view of the harbor. It was sheltered by a high promontory, which boasted a pyramidal stone tower for a lighthouse on one side and a long breakwater of tumbled blocks on the other. Along the waterfront there were stalls with stone walls and wooden roofs, where a number of merchants presided over lots of raw materials like bars of copper and tin and sacks of grain. Short stone piers extended out into the water for the ships to dock at, though many were stored in long wooden sheds along the far bank.

  The Swift was tied up decorously near the top of one of the stone piers, which was something of a relief; Tremaine had been afraid they would have to push it out into the water again and that seemed a far more difficult process than beaching it. Various crew members were climbing the mast and pulling on the ropes, getting the ship ready.

  Gyan, who had gone ahead, waved at them as he came back along the dock, stopping to talk with Halian. Gerard, Ander and Arites gathered around to listen. Tremaine was already starting to feel sore from the ride and went to take a seat on a stone bench near one of the big wooden posts where the ship was tied off. Despite the bright sunlight the breeze coming off the water was pleasantly cool.

  Florian and Dyani followed her, Florian plopping down with a sigh suggesting the ride had tired her too.

  It was a busy place, with men hauling barrels, casks and big rust-colored pottery jars, traders hawking their wares. Tremaine caught snatches of conversation, most of which concerned the “wizards on the island.” Fortunately no one on the crowded dock seemed to realize there were wizards right here, too.

  As she watched, she saw a short, burly man with light graying hair come out of a grain stall and stop and stare at the group around Halian. Tremaine sat up a little. There was something in that stare; it wasn’t just curiosity to know who the strangers were. His eyes moved over the men as if he was looking for someone in particular. He reminded her of an unfriendly dog, looking for someone to bite. Then he turned and moved away down the dock.

  Dyani nudged Tremaine with an elbow. “That was Ilias’s brother,” she said softly.

  “His brother?” Tremaine repeated stupidly, but Dyani nodded, knowing what she meant.

  “They don’t look much alike, do they?” Dyani eyed the retreating back of the other man without favor. “That’s how Ilias came to Andrien.”

  “What do you mean?” Florian asked, sliding forward on the bench.

  Dyani threw a look around to make sure there was no one in earshot, then leaned confidentially toward them. “When he was a boy, barely seven years old, his father decided that he didn’t want him anymore, and he took him out to the hill where people leave babies.”

  Florian’s eyes widened in shock. “That’s sick,” she murmured. “That doesn’t happen a lot here, does it?”

  Dyani nodded. “Not as much. Ranior, who was Karima’s first husband, made a law against it when he was lawgiver, but that doesn’t stop people like the Finan.”

  “That’s Ilias’s family?” Florian asked, who seemed to be having better luck at keeping it all straight than Tremaine.

  “It was then. Now he’s Andrien.”

  “How did he get to be Andrien?” Tremaine prompted.

  “He tried to find his way home. He was going along the road in the dark and Ranior and his men came riding by— this was after Gil was born and Ranior wasn’t lawgiver anymore—and he found Ilias and he took him home to Andrien. They found out who he was and what must have happened, but Ranior hadn’t caught Ilias’s father in the act, so he couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “Ranior was Gil’s father?” Tremaine asked, frowning a little as she tried to get everyone sorted out.

  “No, the god is Gil
’s father,” Dyani explained patiently. “Ranior was Karima’s husband. He died a long time ago, before I was born,” she added.

  “So Ilias’s family won’t have anything to do with him because of all this?” Florian asked, disturbed. “That’s really unfair, considering it was all his father’s fault.”

  “Well, it’s that and the curse mark.” Dyani grimaced and added, “Of course, that’s not fair either.”

  “The curse mark?” Tremaine felt she sounded like a parrot, but there were too many unfamiliar words, too many concepts that didn’t seem to have any equivalent in Rienish.

  Dyani touched her own face, just at the cheekbone. “The brand, here. It’s given to anyone who’s had a curse put on them and survived. My father would have one, if he’d lived.”

  Tremaine and Florian exchanged a startled look. Damn, Tremaine thought. She had taken it for an ornament. Dyani was right, it was unfair. Considering how often Ilias and Giliead had risked their lives fighting wizards, it was a mortal insult.

  Dyani shrugged and looked down at the rough boards under their feet. “Gyan says we’re lucky we all don’t have matching sets, considering how Ixion hated everybody.”

  “Having a Chosen Vessel in the family isn’t really considered a good thing, is it?” Tremaine said, suddenly putting two and two together. Karima had said people were almost as afraid of the men who had to kill wizards as they were of the wizards themselves. And if she understood what Dyani was telling them, Ranior had left an important and prestigious position as lawgiver after Gil was born. And years later Halian had left a similar position before he married Karima. Tremaine wondered if that was the source of the tension between Nicanor and the others, if he resented his father for risking the family fortunes and prestige merely for love.

  The people in the Andrien village hadn’t seemed to care much about it, but then they would have been used to seeing Giliead and Ilias every day, would have watched them grow up or played with them as children. It was probably hard to develop a good full-blown superstitious fear about someone you had known as a grubby two-year-old.

  Dyani nodded, looking somber. “I don’t know why. I guess so few people in the city know them and don’t realize they’re just like ordinary people.” She glanced up, smiling a little tentatively. “Like you. You’re around curses all the time, but you’re not strange.”

  “I’m strange, she’s not,” Tremaine said, straight-faced.

  Dyani’s smile turned into a grin and she nudged Florian with an elbow, as the other girl chuckled. Tremaine was aware of another pang. She had been having them all morning and finally she realized why. She didn’t want to leave.

  People accustomed to Giliead’s deadpan sense of humor didn’t find hers obscure at all. People used to being thought odd themselves took her oddness for granted. After they got on the boat she might never see this place again. And she found, after all, that she did want to see it again.

  “You know, this is one time we could have used some cloud cover and mist.” Ilias studied the faultless blue sky overhead.

  Giliead nodded, giving the sky an annoyed look, as if the day had dawned clear solely to harass them. “I hope the waterpeople know something.”

  The council had finally disintegrated into a disorganized jumble, with no one sure all the questions had been answered but with everyone certain there had been more than enough arguing. On the way to the Swift, Giliead had decided to see if the waterpeople knew anything about the Gardier’s activities around the island and they were walking out along the tumbled stone of the jetty to consult them.

  The wind was wet with spray as the waves crashed against the rocks almost under their feet. “That was interesting, what Gerard said about curses,” Giliead said finally.

  Knowing something else was coming, Ilias agreed, “It was.”

  Paying far more attention to his footing on the damp rock than could possibly be necessary, Giliead said, “Whatever Ixion did to you with that curse, you were still you.”

  “I know.” Ilias stepped over a gap where foamy water rushed against the rock, trying to think what he wanted to say. “I just wasn’t sure you did.”

  Giliead paused, one foot on the next block. He looked back at Ilias. They regarded each other for a moment in silence. Then Giliead said, “Well, I did.”

  There didn’t seem anything else to say after that. They continued on to the end of the jetty, where the rocks were tumbled and scattered and the water foamed up between. Ilias could see sleek brown forms playing and diving in the waves not far off the end and he and Giliead whistled and shouted to get their attention.

  A small group of waterpeople gathered just off the rocks, their blunt brown heads bobbing in the waves. “You see anybody we know?” Giliead wryly studied the nearly identical heads.

  Ilias snorted. It was nearly impossible to tell waterpeople apart at any distance. Their thick fur made their features hard to distinguish and there wasn’t that much difference between the men and the women. Waterpeople thought landpeople were indistinguishable too, so they had to wait until somebody recognized them.

  Finally, a big male swam closer and heaved himself up onto the rocks. Waterpeople didn’t have legs, just long tails with heavy fins on the end, making them awkward on the land but blindingly fast in the water. Their hands had blunt awkward fingers tipped with large claws, useful for breaking open clams and crabs. Ilias and Giliead climbed down closer to him, sitting on the rocks so their heads would be mostly level. As the waterman shifted closer, peering at them, Giliead asked, “Is that Tuvas?”

  Waterpeople had their own names, but their speech was all whistles and clicks and squeals and impossible to duplicate. They called this one after a cousin of Ilias’s who had had the same blunt features and flat ears. Ilias said, “I think so. Hello, Tuvas.”

  Tuvas whistled back whatever name he used for Ilias and made a gesture of greeting, the whiskers around his heavy muzzle pulling up in an attempt to mimic a human smile.

  “We need to know about a place in the sea,” Giliead told him, “if there are any strange ships sailing there.”

  It took both of them to make Tuvas understand the area they meant, mainly because all his landmarks were underwater. More blunt heads surfaced to watch and the young ones climbed up on the rocks, curious about the humans. The babies especially were all over Ilias, poking and tugging, but Giliead remained unmolested.

  The waterpeople liked Gil, they spoke to him and smiled at him, but they didn’t touch him. Even now one of the younger females crouched beside Tuvas, staring longingly at Giliead’s gold earrings, obviously wanting to touch them. It had to be something about him being the Chosen Vessel, something that they could see or smell. Giliead had never mentioned it, but Ilias wondered if it didn’t bother him.

  Finally, Tuvas realized the area they meant and began to nod rapidly, using his entire upper body. “Things stir,” he said, his rough voice slurring the words.

  “What things?” Giliead asked patiently. Tuvas always tried to answer their questions to the best of his ability, he just didn’t always know how.

  Tuvas weaved back and forth for a moment before he answered, “Evil things of rock-that-isn’t.”

  “You mean wood? Like that?” Ilias pointed back toward the ships tied up along the piers, ducking his head away from the baby that kept tugging on his queue.

  “No.” Tuvas leaned forward. “Like ...” A long clawed finger hovered for a moment, then tapped Ilias’s knife hilt. “That.”

  “Metal things?” Giliead exchanged a glance with Ilias. “Halian said the boats the Gardier landed at the village before they attacked looked metal.”

  “Boat.” Tuvas nodded and put his hands together, miming something that cut through the water and made swishing noises. “Big boat.”

  Chapter 16

  While the crew was bringing aboard and storing the last casks of water, Tremaine and Florian explored the ship a little, finding there wasn’t much more to it than what they h
ad already seen. Below the deck was just one big open area, with the banks of rowing benches, ten to a side, through the middle. There was a space at each end filled with rope, red-glazed pottery jars and other supplies. Woven rope hammocks festooned the ribs that supported the decking and it smelled strongly of tar and wet wood. Even in the calm waters of the harbor, the sea seemed awfully close to the ports for the oars.

  Florian stood by the ladder, leaning down to look out a port. “Can you imagine taking a long voyage in this?”

  “It wouldn’t be so bad, as long as nobody was shooting at you,” Tremaine replied, picking her way back down the central aisle, trying not to trip on the shipped oars. “And you weren’t seasick. And there wasn’t a storm—”

  “Hey,” Ander called, leaning down to look through the opening in the deck. “They’re back!”

  Tremaine hurried to the ladder, scrambling up after Florian to see Giliead and Ilias standing with Gerard, Halian, Ander and Gyan. As the two girls reached them, Giliead was telling the sorcerer, “They’re expecting you, all right. The waterpeople said a metal ship is patrolling the seaward side of the island.”

  “Couldn’t we use the sphere to attack them, like it did the airship?” Florian asked hopefully.

  Tremaine nodded. “Yes, let’s do that.”

  Gerard shook his head slightly, worried. “That’s not entirely practical in this situation.”

  “Why?” Giliead asked, watching him.

  Planting his hands on his hips and looking thoughtfully down the length of the Swift, Ander said, “That ship will have big guns—projectile weapons,” he clarified as there wasn’t a Syrnaic word for gun, “and one or two good hits will blow this hull to pieces. And the guns fire much faster than the sphere works. Also the Gardier know we’ve got a secret weapon now, they’ll be prepared for an attack. They may not even mess about with trying to take us alive.”