by Carol Berg
A QUARTER HOUR SUFFICED. Packing was simple. A spare shirt. Gloves. A wool jersey and my heaviest cloak. My staff and copper bracelet. My knife and a few small items from the laboratorium, useful for creating wards or directional charms or for treating injuries. A brass ring Portier had given me to demonstrate his newfound magical skills—useful if I needed to send him a message by some suspicious means. A heavy blanket, a skin of ale, a flask of clean water, and what portable provision we had in the larder. Once Ilario had scribbled a message for his valet and I’d left a few instructions with Finn, we were ready.
“All will be well here, Master. Never a worry,” said Finn as he fixed a lead rope from my horse to Captain de Santo’s saddle. The youth had been near giddy from the moment I’d said I was leaving without him. “I’ll deliver the chevalier’s message to his servant right away. Ought I post Damoselle Anne a message at the same time, telling her where you’ve gone?”
My fingers twined a small oval of silver on a slender chain. The pendant’s magic, though created by Anne’s dead sister, had been triggered by Anne herself. It pricked my fingers, as sharp and brilliant as the points of a queen’s diamond. Anne claimed it was a nireal, a soul mirror, a simple variant of an enchantment I’d used to instill a dead man’s soul into a living body. She had given it to me on the day she arrived at Pradoverde, some kind of sentimental token. I’d forever intended to study its magic but always found some excuse not to. I’d certainly never do so in front of Anne. No need to feed her foolishness. Or mine. I shoved it deeper in my pocket.
“No. If she inquires, tell her I’ve gone to Coverge to make sure my father’s dead. I should be back before the turn of the year.” Seven days to Jarasco. Another through the mountains to Raghinne. A day to hear the message and the mode of its delivery. Then back. “Seventeen days.”
PORTIER HAD ONCE SAID I sat a horse with all the grace of a fence post. And that was when I could see where I was going. Anne relished riding and had tried to get me comfortable with it by bringing more horses to Pradoverde. “Falco’s smart and steady,” she had told me. “Feel him. Move with him. Partner with him and you needn’t depend so much on seeing. He believes you’re in charge, so just act like it—as you do with everyone else.”
Riding was a useful skill. Thus, I had tried. My attempts resulted in a twisted shoulder and a cracked rib. I had renamed the beast Devil.
As we set out north, I clung to Devil’s mane and saddle like a leech to warm skin. Seventeen days stretched ahead like an eternity. Yet it could not pass fast enough to soothe my urgency. I had to reach Raghinne before my father died.
I would scarce have known Captain de Santo was on the other end of my tether, save for an occasional instruction growled over his shoulder: Give him his head, mage. Or You must hold him steady through the town. Or Friendly your animal, if you know aught of befriending.
Ilario, on the other hand, prattled incessantly. Keeping some sense of the landscape around so I wouldn’t get disoriented and fall off required so much concentration, I couldn’t have said what the idiot talked of.
Northern Louvel comprised naught but rolling fields and vineyards, cows, and the occasional market town. The cows weren’t a problem, but two years tucked away in isolated Pradoverde had left me unpracticed in dealing with human chaos. I needed no eyes to know when city gates appeared on the horizon. In the darkness behind my eyes, the aether surged with sharp-edged emotions and the layered residue of human striving. The noise and pressure trapped in my skull left me near breathless. To rebuild my mental discipline was rugged when I was so preoccupied with remaining upright.
In late afternoon, we rode into the crossroads town of Heville. Situated on the border between northern Louvel and southern Challyat, Heville likely hosted a customs station. The overpowering stink of manure, rotted grapes, and ripe cheese witnessed to a thriving market. Incense smoke and the clamor of bells bespoke a temple.
Ilario’s reminder that it was First Day explained the incense and the crowds. But an unusual fervor gripped the town. Believers chanted prayers, holy verses, and songs. The Readers’ and Sermonists’ bells and clappers called them to the temple with the jangling, rattling clamor of a hailstorm in a bell maker’s shop.
Off to my left, scratchy voices rose in a litany of the Saints Reborn—mendicants, no doubt, traveling brothers of the Cult of the Reborn, those who believed that saints were noble souls who had rejected Heaven, reborn to the land of the living time and again to aid humankind in our travails. Rowdies screamed “idolater” and “heretic” at them, though the Temple more commonly viewed Cultists as merely “excessively devout.”
The crowd must not like mages, either. Whispered curses brushed my skin like spiderwebs: Souleater’s servant…Fallen. A crier called the faithful to witness a tetrarch casting out a daemon.
My stomach lurched. I nudged Devil forward. “Chevalier, Captain, what’s the name they’re shouting—this tetrarch daemonist?”
“Sounds like Ferrow or some such,” said de Santo.
Ferrau! Daemons! He was the tetrarch Masson de Cuvier had consulted about his dream. The Temple daemonist who knew of me. “Get us out of here. Now!”
“Hold on.”
As I tightened my grip on reins and mane, they surged ahead, tightening Devil’s tether. But the crowd kept our pace to a crawl.
A hand gripped my ankle. “What’ve you done, daemon-twister, you and your kind?” The gritty snarl dripped hate. “My dead wife comes in the night. Cold-eyed. Fierce. Verger says she’s come to eat my boy’s soul!”
A tale right out of the nightmare of the great emerald. “Wait! Captain, I need to hear—”
Devil sidestepped, pulling me away, and other bodies closed in. My companions pressed on.
The noise and shouting and the sense of so many bodies and unseen obstacles already had me sweating. Now haunted visions and phantom Temple bailiffs in their yellow robes and green badges pursued me through the dark inside my head. They’d know me. I doubted there were three blind mages in all of Sabria.
Our pace quickened as we headed north through verdant Challyat. Fewer hills. Fewer vineyards. More cows. Twice we had to detour around iron-wheeled coal wains. Passing riders called greetings of divine grace before leaving us choking in their dust.
Every alien hoofbeat made me flinch, which caused Devil to balk and skitter. I mumbled the friendliest words I could think of.
About the time Devil and I settled into some sort of truce, Ilario dropped back beside me. “We’d hoped to make it so far as Nanver, where there’s a hostel with the most exquisite fish to be found this side of Tallemant, but the early sunset just won’t allow it. Vino says the only sheltered spot for fifty kilometres is just ahead. Fortunately, I’ve a great fondness for sleeping out.”
“No one’s following us? None in Temple colors or mage collars? I’ve this nagging sense…” Surely at any moment a heavy hand would clamp onto my shoulder.
“Not as I know. I’ve a spyglass—much finer than the one I carried to Eltevire—and I’ve taken a look from time to time. Perhaps I should loan it to the captain, as he’s expert…”
“Good. Yes.” No assurances were going to calm this fever. Not until I got to Raghinne and heard what the angel wanted of me. Practical sense must rein my impatience.
Not long after, de Santo issued a clipped, “Leftward just ahead.”
Devil slowed and turned in response to his lead, and we soon passed into a narrow pocket of cold dry air and old vegetation. And something else…
“Wait,” I said softly, raising my hand.
We halted, blessedly without argument, and I patted the side of my saddle until I touched my staff. Ruing the power I’d wasted on the seeing spell throughout the day, I slid my forefinger to a grooved pattern of a half circle and infused the waiting enchantment with power and will.
My ears tingled, and the ravine came alive with sound. Burrowing voles. Scuttering shrews. Sparrows or pipits crunching seeds or yanking overlooke
d berries from dry stalks. Moth wings fluttering, spiders weaving, beetles clicking, and something larger…breathing…waiting…
Leathers creaked, and I waggled my hand for continued stillness. Aided by the enchantment, I stretched my hearing farther. A soft thud. Movement…
I shouted a warning, and a body came crashing through the dry weeds.
De Santo grunted. A thrum…and an arrow whined past my ear, resulting in a solid thud just behind me. Devil snorted and sidestepped, and I flattened myself forward and flung my arms round his neck as the world spun and sloshed in the cursed blackness.
“Chevalier?” I yelled. “Captain? Who’s there?” I dared not loose my hold on Devil to pull out my staff.
“Only a roe deer,” called Ilario, entirely where I didn’t expect him to be. “Soothe your mount, mage! Reassure him!”
“Easy, easy, you black-hearted villain,” I mumbled, heart crashing against my ribs. Someone else could judge whether I addressed the beast or myself.
Once I’d got Devil calm enough I could dismount and take out my staff, I poured more power into the hearing enchantment, listening until my head near turned inside out. But I heard nothing untoward. Ilario and the captain were murmuring briskly about wood and fire.
“Are you all right, mage?” Ilario unwound Devil’s reins from my dead fingers. “Angels defend, I was sure my heart would leap from my breast! But we shall reap the benefits of your warning and Vino’s skilled bow. My stomach—always tender, if you recall—was rebelling at the thought of jerky and cheese.”
Again lies, I thought, lifting my head as if I might view the chevalier’s mind. Ilario’s mount had not startled. Perhaps the beast was just extraordinarily calm. But Anne’s teaching and my own limited experience testified that the mount most often reflected the rider’s nerves. Ilario was not, and had not been, at all anxious.
That needed to change. It was not my companions’ leathers I’d heard.
“Someone wearing plated leather and a sword was lurking down the ravine,” I said. “Likely he startled the roebuck apurpose with a rock or a dirt clod.”
“How could you possibly know that?” barked de Santo from just behind me.
I spun so fast I near lost my balance. Defensive fire spurted through my staff, scorching my cheek. “Haven’t you heard?” I snapped, furious at my lack of discipline. “Blind mages develop a god’s skills.”
I recognized men’s fear of magic in de Santo’s gruff question. Indeed, he had reason enough. But I could have killed us both. “Don’t sneak up behind me.”
While the captain butchered the deer, Ilario tethered the horses. He stuffed a rag in my hand. “Your horse will treat you princely if you rub him down.”
Work always helped me think more clearly. I took on all three of the beasts. Later, when Ilario started dithering with flint and steel, I provided fire.
“Chevalier,” I said, as the fragrance of roasting meat warmed the chilly ravine, “if you would guide me around a reasonable perimeter, I’ll set wards to warn us of intruders. We’d best keep watch through the night, as well.” Someone had been waiting here along the Coverge road at the “only sheltered spot within fifty kilometres” and didn’t want to be seen. I didn’t like it.
“A most excellent plan! Here we have a most delightful, prickly stand of hawthorn.…” Ilario’s descriptions of trees, vegetation, soil, and rocks suffered from his usual excess of good cheer and verbiage, but I was able to sort out useful details. Using my knife, samples of earth and vegetation, charred sticks from the fire, and the deer’s bloody bones, I worked a tightly warded enclosure. An hour’s concentration left me feeling a bit less scattered and a bit less naked.
Twice in the night my right hand burst into flame—sensory flame—as something sizable tripped my wards. Another deer? A boar? Human? Each time I leapt to my feet, and my staff blasted fire into the sky, waking my companions and terrifying the horses. Each time, the intruder retreated before I could learn more of its nature. After that, Ilario and de Santo made sure to sleep or watch well away from me.
Daemon. Servant…In the deeps of the night, whispers bathed face and limbs, tickling, rousing me to wakefulness. Cold fingers pressed firmly between my eyes.…
“Get off me!” The touch vanished. “Do you crave death?”
My flailing staff encountered naught but scrubby plants.
De Santo mumbled curses from a goodly distance. I was left feeling foolish, save when I returned to my blanket; it smelled of fresh herbs and cold ash, much like…Soggy with sleep, I couldn’t recall. Someone had been here. Either my wards had failed or I had been dreaming. Indeed, the fingers might have been pressing from inside my head. Gods, I was a madman.
Before we rode out the next morning, the three of us walked my perimeter. Ilario reported disturbed brush but no tracks, save those of roe deer and lesser creatures. De Santo concurred. Yet, just outside the circle deep in the ravine, a scent lured me to my knees. No magical residue lingered nearby save my own, and I detected no remnant of the herbs I’d smelled in the night. But beneath the forever green leaves of a laurel lingered a scent of incense.
Likely no milkmaid had come here to honor her dead or dabble in ineffective conjury. Incense was very expensive. Nobles had access to it. As did sorcerers of the Camarilla. As did Readers, bailiffs, and other servants of the Temple. No one I cared to meet.
DEMESNE OF CHALLYAT
Ilario’s manservant, John Deune, caught up with us late on our second day out. I’d seen him occasionally about Castelle Escalon, a bony, pinch-mouthed man who scuttled about the edges of rooms and passageways like a well-dressed mouse. More than once I’d spied him filching coins from the palace servants’ pettibox, a tawdry little cheat by one in private service. I’d surmised the chevalier retained such an awkward, ill-spoken servant to better exhibit his own flamboyant graces.
“ ’Twasn’t easy finding fit netherstocks or gloves roundabout Laurentine,” said the manservant as the four of us crowded into a cramped well yard in the town of Grousse. “Nor would the scurrilous apothecary stop complaining about the brewing of your stomach medicament. Said it stank up his shop, as if a lord’s will could ever be an inconvenience. Not that I spilt the supreme elevation of your position to the tradesmen, lord, though it would have resulted in much better service, I’m sure, and I’ve never grasped what possible business forces you to lower yourself”—his tinny whine scarce dropped, as if a blind man standing three paces away might not hear—“to associate with the present company. A good thing I can help watch for his unholy perversions—”
“Bridle your tongue, sirrah!” Tremors shivered Ilario’s command. “The mage is a hero of Sabria and my sister’s loyal servant. I am forever in his debt and offer my service freely to accompany him on this journey of tragic family circumstance.”
“Uh…naturally, my lord. Inexcusable rudeness…” The servant swallowed each word as if it were a porcupine.
At one time in my life I would have delighted in conjuring wolf fangs or claws to flash from beneath my cloak. A bit of fire and a view of my burn-scarred hand had often sufficed to fright alley thugs. But somehow as the decreasing number of my days as a sorcerer weighed so heavy, using magic for low personal satisfactions seemed somehow…unrighteous.
“I’ll not gnaw your bones this month, John Deune,” I said, leaving them to check on Devil.
“…silk of wretchedly poor quality…only the crudest tooth cleaners to be had…” The manservant reeked of anise. I detested anise.
Ilario held indignation no longer than he held mathematical formulas. “Ah, my faithful John Deune, you’ve brought me everything required for this journey. You must now fly to my royal sister to inform her of my journeying and expected return at the year’s turning, and then plunge into the bosom of your family for a holiday.”
“But, lord, I should—”
“Nay! I am in good company. Your sons must be quite colossal now.…So astonishing how children’s bones and flesh
just keep growing all of themselves…”
A quarter of an hour and we’d left the sniveling servant behind. Our mutual distaste was well served by separation.
THE WEATHER HELD COLD AND SUNNY. We rode hard. We slept out. De Santo bought or scrounged supplies from freeholders or village markets along the way and supplemented with rabbits and other small game. I patted Devil and mumbled sweetnesses to him. He remained skittish and I felt a proper dunce. When Ilario bought us apples, I kept mine back for the horse, and he liked that better. Neither man nor beast tripped my wards at night.
Yet after that first disturbing night, every kilometre closer to Raghinne tightened some screw in my head. Spikes of flame pierced my eyes, just as in the first months after they were ruined. Sleep was impossible. I couldn’t eat without nausea. As we neared the city of Jarasco and its well-traveled crossroads, the aether boiled and my spirit was chaos.
My companions suffered for my madness. I swore at them to cease coddling my blindness and whispering between themselves or I’d rip their own eyes out. Twice I almost strangled de Santo when he nudged me, ready to give me a hand up into the saddle. He took to poking me with his sword tip instead.
