“He wants to meet you, congratulate you, hear all you have to say,” replied Shiv. “There’s much your experiences can tell us, information we can use against the Elietimm. Planir needs that straightaway.”
I nodded. All right; I had no problem with letting Planir know just where I stood right at the outset. If he wanted to argue about it, he’d have a fight on his hands and that didn’t worry me in the slightest. The sooner everything was clear, the sooner I could leave this cursed place and get back to my own life. I wondered fleetingly where Livak might be. Turning to Shiv, I was about to ask him, but something in his expression deterred me.
The doubts and diffidence that had been so marked in Shiv last time I had seen him were strikingly absent. He was looking far more confident and assured and, as a result, far more distant than I remembered him, his dark hair cut level at jaw length, a formal gown belted in with a tooled leather strap. Not at all sure I’d find him my ally now his feet were firmly on Hadrumal’s soil, I decided I could wait to find out where Livak was. Shrugging my bag on to my shoulder, I followed Shiv up the dock to a boggy pool of the river where a bridge marched across on stout foundations toward a road Misaen himself would have been proud of. Close-laid stones were laid on a solid foundation, ditches at either side to carry the run-off from the curved surface. I tried not to be too impressed as I saw the city of the wizards for the first time. After all, compared to somewhere like Toremal, or even Zyoutessela, it was no bigger than a middling market town.
The road curled away across a broad, shallow plain, great halls of the soft gray stone standing four-square at intervals along it, long and lofty roofs rising above quadrangles of lesser buildings, in each case the whole surrounded by purposeful walls, towers at their corners looking out and around like careful sentries. The overriding impression that Hadrumal gave was of watching and waiting; the tall buildings seemed to loom above me as I came closer. The sun emerged from behind a cloud and, in a sudden alchemy, the stone glowed gold and inviting for a moment, glazed windows shining like jewels. The moment passed and I could see where smaller houses, workshops, stores and the like had filled in the gaps between the forbidding, implacable fortresses of arcane learning. There was no wall around the city as a whole to protect these lesser folk, I noted; what was there to defend them in time of danger? The arts of the wizards, presumably and I wondered how sure a protection that might be.
I slowed my pace unconsciously, finding myself falling further behind Shiv, who had to stand and wait, his expression startled when he turned to find himself so far outstripping me. I took my time catching him up, wiping sweat from my forehead and swapping my kit-bag to my other shoulder. The street was busy; men and women of all ages and styles of dress walking this way and that, their only common feature an air of self-absorption and an unconscious arrogance in their carriage.
“This way.” Shiv led me through an archway of ancient stonework and across a flagstoned court where my sandals scuffed uneasily on the hollowed stones. Pushing open a door, Shiv ran lightly up the flights of dark oak stairs, eagerness in his every move. I followed slowly, deliberately placing each step on the polished boards, trying to decide what I was going to say to this Archmage of Shiv’s.
“Ryshad Tathel, how pleased I am to see you again.” Planir had been seated, poring over a leather-bound book when Shiv pushed open the heavy door without any particular request for admittance and he sprang to his feet, hand outstretched in welcome.
I nodded an acknowledgment. Planir looked much the same as when we’d met before; tall, dark, fine-featured and at first sight younger than you eventually realized he must be. His eyes were as opaque as ever, his schemes and motives as hidden as the far side of the lesser moon. He was plainly dressed in an indeterminate style, neither Tormalin or Soluran, neither overtly rich or incongruously commonplace. I was not impressed, having seen various noblemen try the tactic of putting the soldiery at ease by dressing down to them. Most fail with it.
“I was most concerned when I learned what had befallen you, but everyone assured me that if anyone could rise above such challenging circumstances, you were the man to do it.” Planir smiled broadly at me and gestured toward an elegant array of crystal and decanters. “Can I offer you any refreshment.”
I was tempted to ask for ale, just to see his reaction. “No, thank you.” He could keep his flattery as well.
“Please, be seated.” Planir took his own chair again and leaned forward on one arm, a friendly smile on his face. “You’ve done sound work, there, Ryshad. We weren’t even sure if there was an Elietimm threat in Aldabreshi, though we had our suspicions, given the information you helped recover last year. We have good reason to be grateful to you again, have we not? As soon as we realize the Elietimm are worming their way in, before we’ve even begun to form a plan to counter them, you discredit the bastards in a storm of scandal that will carry from one end of the Archipelago to the other before Solstice. Saedrin will lose his keys before they secure any base or alliance among the Aldabreshi now!”
“It was all entirely accidental.” I took a seat, but only because my bag was weighing heavy on my shoulder. “Incidental to keeping myself alive, since I had no illusions that anyone would be helping me out of there.”
Planir leaned back in his chair, his smile vanishing. “I can understand that you might feel abandoned,” he said seriously, “but that was by no means the case. Dev is far from my only agent in the islands.”
I didn’t respond, unconcerned whether he took the contempt in my face for Dev personally or not.
“Right then, let’s hear your tale,” Planir said briskly, rising to his feet and striding to a table set under the tall windows looking out across the towers of Hadrumal.
“I was sold in Relshaz, made slave to a Warlord’s lady and found I had to denounce another in order to save my own skin.” I folded my arms and waited for the Archmage’s reaction, ignoring Shiv who was frowning at me as he leaned on the mantel above the fire less hearth.
“There’s much more to it than that and you know it, man!” Planir folded his arms and abandoned his attempts at flattery, which was one relief. “We suspect the Elietimm were responsible both for your enslavement and for your purchase by Shek Kul’s women. It’s the sword, Ryshad. We thought it would be important and the degree of sympathy you’ve established with it is beyond anything else we’ve seen. Even without that, the Elietimm have betrayed its importance. They wanted that sword so desperately that they broke cover and exposed themselves completely.”
I was not at all convinced of that, rather suspecting that young D’Alsennin had been somehow roused in Relshaz, the Elietimm only taking advantage of the situation. These wizards were looking to do much the same, weren’t they? “So I was the goat tethered to draw the wolves out of the wildwood?”
“Not intentionally, but I’ll grant you the effect was the same.” Planir nodded, unperturbed. “Now we need to know just why they were prepared to run such risks to get their hands on that blade.”
“You want the sword, it’s yours.” I shrugged again. Messire wouldn’t take offense, not when he heard my side of this sorry tale. “You can find someone else to dream D’Alsennin’s dreams for you.”
Planir shook his head with a half-smile. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, Ryshad. Once a sympathy has been established there is no going back, no handing it on. No one else will be able to hear the echoes of D’Alsennin’s life but you, not if we pass the sword around every man in the cohorts.”
I looked at him, stony-faced.
“Nor will disposing of the sword relieve you of his presence in your sleeping mind,” continued Planir. “As I say, this can be no more undone than an egg can be unbroken.”
I shot Shiv a grim glance that promised a reckoning between us and he colored, looking down at his notes.
“So, we can all move on and learn what we may from this.” Planir broke the tense silence. “What have you learned about the man who owned the blad
e, what can you tell us about the colony and its fate?”
“Very little.” I shrugged, keeping my face expressionless.
Planir leafed through a handful of documents to find a sealed letter, which he handed to me without further word. I set my jaw as I recognized the imprint and scribe of Messire D’Olbriot on the outer surface. Cracking the wax, I was surprised to find only a handful of lines in Messire’s own, unpracticed hand:
Dastennin send that you receive this, Ryshad, that you have come safely out of the perils of the Archipelago. I do not pretend to understand all that I have been told about lost magics and mysteries hidden in dreams but know this; the Men of the Ice are enemies, to my House and to our Empire. This is a peril we cannot counter with swords or the strength of our arms and resolve. The Archmage is our best hope of defense at present and I charge you, on the oath that binds us, to tell him all you can and to spend all your efforts in his service, even to the hazard of your life. You are sworn to my service and so I command you.
So Dev had been wrong when he taunted me about being sold to the wizards. This was far worse; my honor was being held before me as a challenge. I stifled a disloyal anger toward Messire, that he would lay such a burden on me with no certainty of its weight or the length of the journey he was sending me on. Then I remembered the vision of the Elietimm flaunting the Emperor’s head on a pike and sighed heavily.
“I hope you are not going to prove Messire D’Olbriot’s word false, when he gave me his personal assurance of your co-operation and good faith, Ryshad,” said Planir crisply as he spread a yellowing chart over his highly polished table, anchoring its corners with books, an empty goblet and a random lump of rust-colored stone. “Tell me about your dreams before you were separated from Shiv, all of them, especially the night you were attacked.”
I crushed Messire’s letter in my hand, fixing my eyes on a distant weathervane and began my report, as detailed and dispassionate as any I had ever given Messire. Shiv motioned to me to slow down a little; as he took rapid notes, I remembered the time I had been sent to find the truth of a massacre of camp followers on the Lescari border where it abuts D’Olbriot lands. That hadn’t been a pleasant task, but it had to be done, and I had drawn the reversed rune. A sworn man had his orders to follow and his oath to protect him—that was the way of things, wasn’t it?
I talked and talked; Planir asked many questions, some so obvious as to be irritating, others obscure in the extreme. I didn’t notice him or Shiv ring for wine and bread, but drank and ate gratefully when sustenance arrived, snatching mouthfuls between answering yet more questions as we went over what had happened a second time.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” Planir was leaning over his chart, measuring something. He threw his rule down and turned on me, eyes bright.
“How do you mean?” I wasn’t about to give him a touch-by-touch account of my night with Laio, if that was what he was after.
“The dreams, Ryshad, the dreams,” said Planir softly. “Tell me about the waking dreams.”
I took a deep breath but could not bring myself to answer, not wanting to discuss the echoing sensations that kept trying to pick their way out of the back of my mind of late, if I ever let my guard slip.
“You see, I can help you with that.” Planir lifted a book from a neat pile on the window ledge. “We’ve recovered an ancient archive from a shrine sacred to Arimelin and learned a great deal about the dream lore of the ancients. We have a way to close your waking mind, to let us reach those dreams and learn all we want directly. Once we wake you from the trance the dreams will be gone, and we won’t need to make anymore demands on you. You will be free to go and you won’t be troubled any longer by dreams or visions.”
That was an offer so tempting there just had to be a hook in it somewhere, especially with the Archmage on the other end of the line.
“Just what exactly would you hope to learn?” I asked, puzzled. “I’ve told you everything I can remember and to be frank, none of that has seemed especially important. Anyway, the venture failed, didn’t it?”
“It was certainly lost, that’s true, but we still want to locate this colony, not just hear about it. We’re not simply trying to fill in the gaps in the archives to satisfy the scholars.” Planir poured himself some wine and offered a glass to Shiv, who closed his inkwell and folded up his notes. “If we are to counter the Elietimm threat, we need to know more about this aetheric magic, these powers the Ancients called Artifice. From what you have already told us, it’s clear people were being trained in these skills at this colony. There might be records, archives, even training regimes and instructions possibly.”
“Keep your coin to buy a pie!” I scoffed. “When was this? Twenty-six generations past? Anything they left will be rotted to dust and dirt by now!”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Planir was unbothered by my unrestrained scorn. “We can do much with air and fire, the sympathies of earth and water, to restore even the most damaged and stained parchments. Don’t forget the resources I have to call on, Ryshad: the finest minds of wizardry are to be found in Hadrumal. Anyway, finding nothing is a risk I’m prepared to take. You, on the other hand, would find yourself central to finding a lost land of considerable resources. I know full well your patron has already spent a great deal of coin and effort tracing every reference and record concerning Den Fellaemion’s expedition and would dearly love to reclaim that colony for the D’Olbriot name. Performing a service like that would go far to raising you to chosen man, wouldn’t it?”
There were a whole string of hooks nicely baited on this lure, weren’t there? No, for a man reputed to be someone you wouldn’t play at Raven for a bet, the Archmage was being about as subtle as a farmer tethering a mare in season to fetch a wild stallion into stud. Did he think I was stupid?
“You’ve done this? With other people you’ve foisted these artifacts on?”
“It’s not without its risks,” Shiv spoke up from his corner, his face somber. “We’ve been unable to rouse one girl from her sleeping state.”
“There’s no denying it can be perilous,” agreed Planir gravely. “I blame myself. We undertook the experiment with her before we had recovered the archive and had all the information we needed. Obviously you’ll need to think very carefully before any such undertaking, though, of course, since you say young D’Alsennin had some initial training in aetheric magic, it might be that we find some clue to restoring the poor girl to her wits.”
So if temptation didn’t bring me into his hands, the Archmage wasn’t going to leave me with a way out that didn’t make me feel lower than a louse’s stones, was he? I shook my head as I drained my glass and the eighth chime of the day rang out across the city, startling a bevy of mottled fowl from the leaded roof opposite Planir’s tower. After my time in the Archipelago, it was an incongruously familiar sound, especially in these unnerving surroundings.
“You need time to think about it.” Planir took a gown from a hook on the back of his door and pulled it over his simple shirt and breeches. I have to admit the transformation set me back on my heels a little. It was not a gaudy robe, neatly cut of matte black silk, but the close collar lifted Planir’s chin to give him an imperious gaze. The breadth of his shoulders was more apparent beneath square tailored cloth than soft linen, and as he strode from the room the fabric swept around him like half-bated wings, his questing face hawklike in its intensity.
I looked at Shiv. “Planir wouldn’t get very far in a Convocation of princes, if that’s his idea of sweet-talking someone.”
“You can stick all the roses you want in a pile of horseshit, it’ll still stink,” shrugged Shiv. “Planir knows you’ve been around the provinces, Rysh. Trust me, you should take plain speaking from the Archmage as a compliment. Come on.”
Shiv picked up my bag and his tone carried something more like the friendship I had first looked for, which weakened my defenses more effectively than any of the Archmage’s sallies. I followed him down the
stairs and out into the court where the stone buildings overhung me on every side, oppressive and confining, the shadows dark and chill. A woman crossed the court, her eyes turning toward me, and two youths coming out of a doorway halted their conversation to stare for a moment before hurrying away. For a city built so close to the water, there was precious little scent of the sea in Hadrumal and I felt the dust of dry and ancient stone catch in my throat.
“I don’t suppose you want to stay in the hall, so I told Pered you’d be staying with us.” Shiv was talking blithely as he led the way out along the main street, heading inland where I was relieved to see the lofty halls give way to more normal row houses of pitted gray stone and tile-hung roofs. I began to notice all the other businesses that kept these wizards free to pursue their arcane studies; scribes, booksellers, apothecaries and not a few tisane houses where younger mages laid aside their parchments and robes to gossip with their fellows over a cup of steeping herbs. Wizards had to eat as well, it seemed; shopfronts had their shutters laid down to form counters laden with summer fruit and plump vegetables where canny eyed women were doing their marketing and catching up on gossip with their cronies. Children hung at their skirts and a more venturesome group scampered in the roadway with a rag ball. There was a light drift of debris around a barrel fallen into a gutter and two men were arguing over who exactly had let it fall from their handcart. Hadrumal began to seem less outlandish, but I warned myself not to let apparent familiarity breed carelessness.
“We prefer to live down here; most of the other mages don’t give a cut-piece whether someone’s sleeping with a man, a woman or a donkey but there are always a few who are Rationalist enough to make themselves offensive. You remember Casuel, don’t you? Anyway, we find it’s better this way; nails that stick up get hammered down, after all.”
Shiv’s back was to me as he stepped ahead through the gap between two carts. I allowed myself a grimace. Still, unsure as I might be about meeting Shiv’s partner, anything had to be better than lodging in one of those grim halls with a covey of wizards staring at me from every side like crows waiting out a dying beast. I got on well enough with Shiv, didn’t 1? A more urgent consideration that had been tugging at my cloak since I landed now seized my attention and held it.
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