by DAVID B. COE
“What’s her name?” Baden asked, admiring the bird.
“Ishalla.”
“Ishalla,” Baden repeated, unable to mask the pride in his voice. “I trust your binding went well; you both seem to have come through it all right.”
Jaryd nodded. “We’re fine. My shoulder’s a bit sore,” he said, drawing grins from the older mages, “but everything went well. Everything, that is, except for the bandits I ran into last night.”
Baden’s eyes widened. “Bandits!”
“They tried to take Royden’s ring,” Jaryd explained, “and when it wouldn’t come off, they tried to take my finger as well. But I managed to escape by lighting one of them on fire. Later, I lit my campfire the same way.”
Baden’s expression turned serious. “So you bound to Ishalla last night.”
“No, this morning.”
“But you began to manifest signs of power last night?”
Jaryd nodded.
Again, Baden and Trahn exchanged a look, although this time their faces wore expressions of wonder.
“What does it mean?” Jaryd asked, a bit frightened by the looks he saw on their faces.
Baden looked at him appraisingly. “I don’t know,” he said candidly. “I’ve not heard of anything like this before.” He glanced at Trahn, who shook his head as if to say that this was new to him as well. “But,” Baden continued, turning back to Jaryd, “I don’t think it’s cause for alarm. If anything, it merely confirms my vision of the bright future that awaits you.”
Jaryd smiled at that.
Baden placed a hand on his nephew’s shoulder. “Welcome to the Order, Hawk-Mage Jaryd.”
Trahn glanced at the far end of the chamber, where Jessamyn now stood. “Looks like we’re about to start again,” he observed. “I should get back to my seat.” He looked at Jaryd once more, a broad smile on his dark features. “Congratulations, Jaryd. I look forward to hearing more about your binding.”
Jaryd grinned in return and began to move toward Baden’s spot at the council table. Baden stopped him, however, holding him back with the hand that still gripped his shoulder.
“Just stand here and follow my lead,” the Owl-Master commanded under his breath, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Suddenly feeling extremely self-conscious, Jaryd mimicked Baden’s attentive stance, and silently faced the rest of the mages.
For a minute or two, no one took note of them. Trahn walked casually to his seat, and quiet conversations continued around the table. But soon Jessamyn noticed them standing there, and a moment later Jaryd saw her register Ishalla’s presence on his shoulder. Instantly, a bright smile softened the lines of her face. Others, also seeing the Owl-Sage’s grin, followed the direction of her gaze to see Baden and the newest member of the Order standing near the great doorway. Gradually, amid murmurs of surprise and, Jaryd thought, admiration, awareness of his binding spread through the chamber. Alayna, sitting nearest to where Jaryd and Baden stood, was one of the last to notice the excitement. When she turned in her seat to face him, and saw that, like her, he carried one of Amarid’s Hawks, she turned pale and quickly looked away.
“Owl-Sage,” Jaryd heard Baden begin in a voice so clear and ringing that it actually startled him, “I present to you and to this Order a new mage.”
“Tell us of this new mage, Owl-Master Baden,” Jessamyn replied ritually, the smile lingering on her lips.
“He is Jaryd, of Accalia,” Baden returned in the same resonant tone. “Son of Bernel and Drina, grandson of Lynwen, great-grandson of Lyris, both of whom graced this hall with their power. He has been deemed worthy by Ishalla, and is doubly honored, for she is one of Amarid’s Hawks.”
Jessamyn nodded and raised both her arms as she looked around the table. “Mages and Masters of the Order, Baden has brought to us a new mage, Hawk-Mage Jaryd. Shall we make him welcome?”
In answer, the rest of the mages stood and raised their staffs in salute. Jaryd watched Alayna as she did this, but she would not meet his gaze. In another moment, the tribute was over and Jaryd was surrounded by the other mages, who congratulated him and complimented him on his beautiful familiar. Even Orris patted him on the back awkwardly and offered his praise, although the Hawk-Mage’s expression remained dour. Jessamyn approached him last and embraced him. “No one has ever had their first binding coincide with a Gathering, Jaryd,” she said quietly. “You are indeed destined to do extraordinary things.” She released him, smiled kindly, and made her way back to the far end of the table.
As the mages were offering their congratulations, servants of the Great Hall placed a new chair, complete with a perch for Ishalla, at the near end of the table, just next to Alayna. Overcome with excitement and just a touch of anxiety, Jaryd walked to his seat and communicated to Ishalla that she should jump to the perch. She did so immediately and, smiling, he sat down.
Alayna sat motionless beside him, staring straight ahead, as if oblivious to his presence. He looked at her sidelong for a moment and then leaned slightly toward her. “Did I miss anything this morning?” he asked.
“No,” she said curtly, without so much as a glance in his direction. “We just sat here in silence, waiting for you to return.”
“How nice of you,” Jaryd shot back, “but I wouldn’t have minded if you had spoken amongst yourselves.”
She looked at him, her expression unreadable, and, a moment later, Jessamyn began to address the Gathering and Jaryd faced forward again.
After a few moments, Alayna leaned closer. “This morning’s discussion went much like yesterday’s,” she whispered. “Lots of noise, but very little progress.”
“Thanks,” he returned. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
She looked at him sharply and then she, too, turned back toward the Owl-Sage.
For some time, as Jessamyn spoke and the mages resumed their debate over how to respond to the unexplained attacks that had occurred throughout Tobyn-Ser, Jaryd sat, hearing nothing, lost in his own thoughts. At first, he brooded over his exchange with Alayna, wondering why she seemed so hostile and sifting through his memory of their interactions in search of anything he might have done or said to her to give offense. But soon, his chagrin gave way to the wondrous realization of where he was and what he had become. He looked around the table at which he sat, not quite believing that he actually belonged there. At one point, Jaryd found that Sartol was watching him, and, as if reading the thoughts running through Jaryd’s mind, the handsome Owl-Master offered a wink and then a kind smile, which Jaryd returned.
The silent exchange pulled Jaryd out of his musings and he turned his attention back to the debate taking place around the table. Initially, it seemed that the mages were merely rehashing their discussion from yesterday, just as Alayna said they had done all morning. Orris and his allies continued to argue with the older members of the Order, who, Jaryd thought, sounded lazy and weak-willed in their resistance to nearly all suggestions of how to combat the attacks on Tobyn-Ser. Jaryd soon noticed, however, that Baden and Trahn appeared every bit as frustrated as Orris with the course of the debate. Given the better part of a day to ponder the dangers of Baden’s plan to confront Theron, several of the older mages had backed away from the tentative support for the idea that they had expressed the day before. Instead, led by Odinan, the aged Owl-Master who had argued with Orris during the previous day’s debate, they now proposed an alternative to both Baden’s plan and Orris’s call for organized patrols.
“What we recommend,” Odinan explained in his thin, nasal voice, “is that a group of mages remain here in Amarid. As soon as there is a report of another attack, those mages, along with the sage and her first, will use the Summoning Stone to send a small group to the site of the incident to investigate. That way we can respond as quickly as Orris would like without uprooting the entire Order. If these mages find evidence to support Baden’s theory,” he continued, “then we can send a delegation to Theron’s Grove.”
“That’s not
a plan,” Orris said contemptuously. “That’s a veil for inaction and cowardice.” The stocky mage rose, glaring at Odinan. “That’s worse than doing nothing, because it pretends to be something more. It’s mere complacency. It offers no way of determining if there’s a traitor in this Order, and, by the time news of an attack reaches Amarid, any possible trail will be cold.”
“I must say, Odinan,” Baden broke in, standing to face the Owl-Master, “I’m forced to agree with Orris. This proposal would do very little to help us identify our enemies and even less to protect the people of Tobyn-Ser. It’s also a waste of our resources; the Summoning Stone requires a tremendous amount of power to transport people. You would need a very large group of mages, or you would have to limit the number of investigators to one or two. Either way, this doesn’t strike me as a credible alternative to Orris’s plan or to my own.”
“It is a measured response to a situation we don’t yet fully understand,” argued another Owl-Master—Jaryd thought that he remembered the man’s name as Niall. “Until we know more, it would be folly to risk Theron’s Grove or to disrupt the lives of every person in this room.”
“What about the lives of the people living in Taima or any of the other towns that have been attacked?” asked one of the younger mages. “How do we explain to those people that we’ve done nothing because we choose not to inconvenience ourselves?”
“I am not saying that we should do nothing!” Odinan replied angrily. “My plan—”
But before he could finish, a sudden shattering of glass reverberated through the chamber, shocking everyone into silence. On the southern side of the building, halfway between Jaryd’s seat at one end of the table and the Owl-Sage’s chair at the far end, a large rock crashed through one of the Great Hall’s translucent windows, scattering shards of white glass across the marble floor. From outside the window, on the street now plainly visible through the gaping hole in the glass, came shouts of ‘‘Murderers!” and “Traitors!” and then the sound of rapidly retreating footsteps. For a moment, all of the mages remained utterly still. And then pandemonium broke loose. Several mages leapt toward the hole in the window, attempting to catch a glimpse of whoever had thrown the rock. Orris and Trahn dashed outside and, seconds later, ran past the gap in the window. Others rushed to Ursel, the young Hawk-Mage by whom the rock landed, as she assured them that she was fine. Hawks and owls circled overhead, crying out in alarm.
“Is everyone all right? Is anyone hurt?” Jessamyn called out several times, trying to restore calm to the chamber.
Jaryd had jumped to his feet with the burst of activity that had followed the initial silence. But he remained by his chair, with Ishalla on his shoulder, surveying the scene before him and trying to slow his racing pulse. Alayna was standing as well, her lithe frame taut and her face pale. They looked at each other briefly and then, without a word passing between them, walked together to where Ursel and a few others had begun to clean up the broken glass.
Several minutes later, as the commotion in the Great Hall began to die down, Orris and Trahn returned, breathless and flushed. “There were only two of them. We tracked them to an inn a few blocks from here,” Trahn announced to no one in particular. “The city constable saw us running and followed. The vandals will be dealt with.”
“What of it?” came a severe but familiar voice from the middle of the hall.
Jaryd spun around to see Baden still standing by his seat, his lean face stony and white, except for a bright spot of red high on each cheek. The Owl-Master’s bright eyes smoldered like the embers of a fire as he swept the room with an arresting glare.
“What of it?” he repeated, filling the sudden stillness. “Imprisoning them will do nothing. You might as well let them go.”
“Let them go?” Peredur asked indignantly. “They have desecrated the Great Hall of Amarid.” Several Owl-Masters shouted their agreement.
“This is not one of Arick’s Temples,” Baden countered hotly, glancing briefly at Trahn, “and Amarid was not a god. This hall has not been desecrated, it has been vandalized. We would do well to remember the difference.”
Peredur, his face reddening, began to respond. But Jessamyn placed a calming hand on his arm and looked toward Baden. “What is your point, Baden?” she asked, and Jaryd heard controlled anger in her voice; Baden was treading on dangerous ground here.
But the Owl-Master did not back down. “That rock was a message. We’ve grown arrogant and complacent, and the people of this land no longer trust us to take care of them. Jailing those two would be a meaningless, spiteful act. Meaningless, because there are thousands more where they came from who are just as resentful of this Order as they are. Spiteful, because we are but servants of the land and this is their building as much as ours. They broke some glass and wounded our pride, so let them recompense the city for the former. And let us see to the restoration of the latter.”
“How?” Orris demanded. There was a challenge in his tone and in the way he stood, with his hands on his hips and his legs planted on the marble floor. “How are we to do this?”
“By taking action,” Baden stated matter-of-factly. “By facing our enemies. The two who broke the window called us murderers and traitors. That’s how many in Tobyn-Ser see us right now. I’m not a murderer and I’m not a traitor; and I would prefer to believe that the rest of you aren’t either. But to prove that to the people of this land, we must find and stop those responsible for the attacks.” Murmurs of agreement spread throughout the room, but Baden quieted them with a sweeping glance. “Odinan,” he said, turning to face the wizened Owl-Master, “I sympathize with your concerns. But you, who have been a part of this Order for so many years, must see how desperate the situation has become. The Great Hall of Amarid has been marred by citizens of Tobyn-Ser. We must do something to show the people that we care.” Baden held the gaze of the older mage for what seemed a very long time, until finally, with some resignation, Odinan nodded. Baden acknowledged the Owl-Master’s acquiescence with a grateful smile, but it lingered only a moment before the hard glare returned. “Let me add this,” he said, and his voice suddenly was a drawn blade. “If there is a murderer and a traitor in this hall right now, hear me: I will find you, and I will use all my power to destroy you.”
A strange silence descended on the chamber as the other mages glanced at one another awkwardly, as if wondering whether the men and women around them had betrayed the Order. And in that instant, Jaryd knew that someone in the room had heard Baden’s warning and accepted his challenge. There was indeed a traitor in the Great Hall.
And then, as quickly as it had come, the feeling disappeared, leaving Jaryd to wonder if it had been a true insight or merely a flash of paranoia.
“Sage Jessamyn,” Trahn called out, shattering the tense quiet. “I propose a compromise.”
“Let us hear it, Trahn,” the Owl-Sage replied.
“I suggest that we form a delegation to journey to Theron’s Grove. All those mages who are not included in the delegation may choose between joining one of Orris’s patrols and remaining in Amarid as part of Odinan’s group. That way, all mages would be accounted for, we could explore Baden’s theory, and we would be able to keep at least a limited watch on the rest of Tobyn-Ser.”
Again the Order grew silent as the mages considered Trahn’s proposal. At length, Orris spoke. “It’s less than I’d like,” he said, his voice tinged once again with the familiar mix of impatience and anger, “but I’ll accept it.”
“Odinan?” Jessamyn asked.
“It is acceptable,” the Owl-Master agreed.
“Baden?”
Baden looked at the Owl-Sage and smiled. The color had returned to his features. “At the risk of overwhelming my colleagues with enthusiasm,” he said dryly, “I actually like this plan.”
The other mages laughed.
“Then we should vote on it,” Jessamyn suggested. “Those in favor of the proposal?” she asked. Most of the mages in the hall raised the
ir hands, although some showed decidedly less enthusiasm than others. “This, then, is the course we shall follow,” the sage announced. “Our next task is to select the delegation for . . . whatever happens in Theron’s Grove. I believe that Peredur and I should make this journey, and, since Baden and Trahn first presented the idea, I’ll assume that they still wish to go.” She paused, and both Baden and Trahn nodded in agreement. “Sartol, you said yesterday that you would be willing to be a part of this delegation as well. Is that still the case?”
“It is, Sage Jessamyn,” Sartol replied.
“Very well. And you, Alayna; Sartol expressed his belief that you would be a valuable addition to the group. Will you join us?”
“Yes, Sage Jessamyn,” Alayna answered in a clear voice.
“Are there others who wish to accompany us?”
“Sage Jessamyn, if I may,” Baden began. “I said yesterday that I thought Jaryd should be included in this mission, and my colleagues reminded me that he was, at the time, unfledged, and therefore an inappropriate choice for such a task. Today we welcomed Jaryd into the Order, and now I repeat what I said yesterday: Jaryd has a role to play in this, and I would like to include him in the delegation.”
“Jaryd,” Jessamyn said, turning her gaze in his direction, “do you wish to journey to Theron’s Grove?”
“I do, Sage Jessamyn,” Jaryd answered, hoping that his voice sounded as steady as Alayna’s.
“Good,” Jessamyn stated with a nod. “We seem to have our delegation, and we shall leave—”
“Sage Jessamyn,” came a voice with which Jaryd was becoming all too familiar. “I wish to make this journey as well.” All eyes in the room turned toward Orris.
“You, Orris?” Jessamyn said with astonishment. “I didn’t think you approved of this mission.”
“I don’t,” the stocky mage asserted, “and that’s precisely why I wish to go. I believe that there should be at least one in your company representing those who oppose this plan. I volunteer to be that one.”
