“We can catch our breath and start looking for a boat from here,” Tyndal whispered, as they crammed themselves between the boxes. He began peering from between the cracks to see which fisherman or bargeman had left a boat tied, rather than carried to the docks. He suddenly felt very soft hands on his face.
“Tyndal,” Ansily said, in the quietest of whispers, “you saved my life!”
“You tried to save min—” he began, when his lips became involved in other pursuits. Why did women think about things like this when they could be dead at any second? he asked himself, vainly, as he felt his mouth respond to her ardent, desperate kiss. Her hands seemed to roam all over him, which made keeping a good lookout difficult . . . much less anything else requiring the slightest concentration.
“Ansily . . .”
“I want to, Tyndal!” she mewed insistently in his ear.
“Ansily, we’ve got to get out of here, Lispen—”
“Is right here,” boomed the Censor’s voice. Tyndal froze. Ansily yelped. Tyndal sprang from the makeshift alcove, his mageblade in both hands, throwing the girl protectively behind him. Yet he didn’t see anyone. Even with magesight, there was no one in sight.
Until there was. The sinister checkered cloak seemed to slide out of the fog where it clearly hadn’t been, and the smaller of the two Censors appeared, one hand clutching a pendant around his neck, the other holding a warwand.
“Shadowmagic,” he explained, and Tydal’s heart fell. “I trained for six months with the Censor’s shadowmagic Master before I was chosen for this post. Using the river mist to encloud my scrying was clever, lad, but that just suggested where your thoughts were lying. You couldn’t escape overland quickly enough, even with a horse – one who wasn’t going to throw a shoe, that is. That left the river. I knew that if Wantran did not capture you, then you would make your way here . . . just as you did.”
Tyndal aimed his mageblade squarely at the Censor’s heart. “I’ve dealt with your partner, Lespin. Don’t make me kill you, too.”
Lespin laughed mockingly through his teeth. “Old Wantran has seen more wiley witches than you, lad, and lived to tell about it. And I can see that toy you hold is barely more than simple steel – I won’t even dignify it by answering it with my own. Lay it down, step away from it, and submit. For if I have to take you by force, I won’t be gentle about it. Our orders are to take you alive. They do not specify that you should be . . . intact.”
The threat was chilling, no less for the matter-of-fact nature of its delivery. Tyndal didn’t waver. “If you are so certain that you can take me, then I suppose we’ll just have to see. You’re a warmage . . . I have irionite,” he said, causing a flare of sparks to sputter from his blade to emphasize the point. “It took more than one warmage to defeat the Mad Mage of Farise,” he reminded the Censor.
“And he was an adept, not an untrained mageling,” Lespin said, just as matter-of-factly – but the mention of irionite had made him wary. Tyndal cursed himself mentally for mentioning it. Rarely was telling your foe about your biggest advantage a factor in heroic epics. That was the sort of thing the villain did. “Lay down the blade. This is your last warning,” he said, moving toward the end of the dock, his wand soon joined by a second.
Tyndal swallowed, stepped sideways two steps to move away from Ansily, and nervously began to draw power from his stone. He didn’t rightly know what he planned to do with it, but having the power there at his call was really the only leverage he had in this duel.
“Just leave the girl alone,” he said, hoarsely. “She blundered into this by accident, and she doesn’t know anything.”
“She’s neither of our concern – unless you make her so,” Lespin said. “Tell me, why do it this way, when you could have avoided all of the pain and agony you’ll face now? For I won’t kill you, lad. You’ll go back to Wenshar in chains, tied like cargo. And there you will have the misfortune to face the ire of Censor General Hartarian . . . and you will learn the meaning of suffering.”
“Because I didn’t stand on a wall and look down at thousands of goblins and piss myself, I’m not going to do it for one lousy little Censor,” he said, boldly.
Unexpectedly, the man chuckled. “So the tale of invasion is true?”
“I was there. It was my home,” he said, defiantly. “Now it’s overrun, as is everything in the Wilderlands. All the way to Tudry,” he said, miserably. “Even now my master fights them while you fight him!”
“Then you will be fortunate enough to avoid that fight,” Lespin said. “Goblins are not the Censorate’s concern. Renegade magi are. Ready, b—ahhhhh!” Lespin’s sentence died in his throat as his eyes opened wide in surprise . . . moments before he was blown unexpectedly off the dock, dozens of feet into the air, and splashed far downstream into the river.
“Tyndal?” squeaked Ansily.
“I didn’t do that!” he insisted, looking around wide-eyed for the source of the attack. It didn’t take long. Just as the Censor had emerged from the shadows, a magelight suddenly appeared over the river, twenty paces from the dock.
Under the pale glow of the arcane illumination Tyndal could barely make out two figures in the thick river mist; but where he expected to hear the slap of water against the boat they would have had to be standing on, there was nothing . . . and as the glow came closer and the figures more distinct, the apprentice could tell that there was, indeed, no boat.
“I hope you weren’t looking forward to handling him yourself, Tyndal,” the warm, yet stern voice of Lady Pentandra said. “We don’t have time for a glorious duel.”
“L-lady Pentandra?” he asked, mystified, as the famous thaumaturge – and beloved colleague of his Master – stepped lightly and gracefully onto the dock, her slippers not even wet. A thick woolen cloak of pale blue surrounded her, making her seem semi-divine in the glow of her light . . . and a slender wand was in her own hand.
Next to her was the shorter, clumsier form of his fellow-apprentice, Rondal – a left-over Master Minalan had inherited from an errant competitor, back in Boval. Rondal had been tasked to stay with the rest of the refugees, just as Tyndal had been tasked with protecting Alya, so his presence meant something important was afoot.
“I told you I was on the way,” she said, a little irritated. “My barge is still a mile downriver, but when I felt someone clearly using a lot of magic all at once, I felt compelled to hurry. I built a . . . bubble chariot,” she explained, clearly simplifying a complicated spell into an inadequate description. “We were able to glide along much faster that way. And it looks as if I made it in the nick of time . . . although I’m sure you could have handled it,” she added, when she saw Ansily’s frightened form behind Tyndal. “And who is this?” she asked, curiously.
“Ansily of Roxly,” Tyndal explained, pausing only to sheath his mageblade. “She’s an innkeeper who . . . she’s been helping me protect Alya. She’s safe,” he added, hurriedly.
“Ah. Yes. I see,” Pentandra said, a twinkle in her eye. “Well, she will have to stay with Minalan’s family awhile longer without you, I’m afraid. Things in the Wilderlands are moving, and your Master has called all his allies to him, you included. Your Duchy needs you, Tyndal of Boval,” she said, formally.
Tyndal blushed, and was thankful it was dark and misty, and he could hear Ansily gasp behind him. He took her hand and squeezed it.
“I’m sorry, I have to go,” he said, reluctantly. “Please tell Alya, and Master Rinden and Mistress Sarali and the bakers, will you? And then get back to Roxly where it’s safe for you.”
“You have to . . . to go? But you saved my life!” she said, staring at him intently.
“He has other lives to save,” Pentandra insisted. A bell rang downriver as her barge finally rounded the bend. “And we cannot tarry. That Censor will wash ashore eventually, and we need to be leagues away when he does.” Rondal looked disgusted as Ansily nearly crushed him with the force of her embrace.
“I’ll come b
ack,” he promised, lamely, after she kissed him. “I’m sure it won’t be long . . .”
There were a few tears and a lot more kisses before the barge thudded against the wadded rag ball that protected the hull from the stone quay. “Now, Tyndal!” Pentandra insisted, as Rondal stepped into the barge. One last kiss, one last tear, and one last squeeze of Ansily’s hand, and before he knew it the dock and the tiny village of Talry disappeared into the fog behind them.
“You did well there,” Pentandra soothed him when he let out one last ragged sigh. “Truthfully, you held off two trained Censors. And protected that . . . protected your master’s bride,” she said, softly. “That was nobly done.”
“It was desperation,” Rondal said, sourly. “Did you see how much he was shaking when we showed up?”
“That was valor,” corrected Lady Pentandra with a tight smile. “And the chill of the mist.” Tyndal looked at the master mage gratefully. “In fact, let’s get you below to my cabin and find something a little warmer for you to wrap up in. I daresay you left your mantle and cloak back at the bakery?”
He nodded, then dutifully followed her down the steps to the tiny cabin, after listening to her instruct Rondal in keeping the water elemental that was speeding the barge upriver operating properly. Finally, she cast a magelight and lit up the curtained alcove that concealed the lady’s quarters.
“Go ahead and get out of those clothes, they’re filthy,” she said as she began looking through her baggage. “I had a few things made for Rondal, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind sharing . . .” Tyndal blushed, but peeled his sweat-soaked tunic off his body. He was reluctant to part with his breaches at the moment, and it took Pentandra only a moment to realize why.
“Oh, blessed Trygg’s bounty, you were . . . she was . . . oh, dear,” she said, shaking her head. “You saved her life, and she was going to give you a hero’s reward . . . until I came along.”
“I’m not complaining, milady,” Tyndal said, hurriedly. “I was just—”
“Shhhh!” the beautiful mage said, shaking her head and smiling. “Sometimes the gods are cruel to us, Tyndal, putting what we desire so close to us as to appear in reach . . . only to have it torn away again. That’s especially true for we magi, when so much has fallen so suddenly on our shoulders. Sometimes the gods are cruel to us . . .” she said, waving her hand to cast a spell, “and then sometimes they can be just as kind.”
She removed the light blue mantle from her shoulders, allowing it to fall to her tidily-made bed. Her gown, a traveling garment made of finer cloth than he’d ever seen, was held in place by three buttons, which she quickly unfastened. “You’re going to war, whether you know it or not, lad. You may not return to fulfill your promise to that girl, no matter what gods you swore to do so by. Sometimes,” she continued, stepping naked out of her dress, “the gods can give consolation . . . and if they can’t or won’t, then a mage has to step in to fill the need.”
Tyndal’s head spun as the warm, soft flesh of the older woman pressed against his bare chest. She smelled so different than Ansily, more floral, less . . . innocent. “I cast a spell of silence,” she whispered into his ear unnecessarily. “Until it’s dispelled, you can make as much noise as you want, and no one will be the wiser.”
Tyndal relented, despite himself. Pentandra was not the prize he had fought for . . . but she was a kingly consolation for his efforts. She was mature and skillful, wise and beautiful, enchantingly adept and winsomely compelling. His youth, his desire, his fervent need swept away the guilt he felt for letting his body take him to where his heart had not led him . . . but his body didn’t seem to care.
And when he finally arose to the dawn and stumbled out on the deck bare-chested to witness a sunset over a strange and new shore, no one was the wiser . . . save Tyndal.
The River Mists Of Talry - A Spellmonger Story (The Spellmonger Series) Page 7
