“Although,” Niel continued, “now I can’t remember whether you’re supposed to eat them or just mash them up and rub them ... where they’re needed, let’s say. Guess I could do both. I just hope they don’t make me smell as awful as everyone says they will.”
The woman gestured back to where she’d been standing. “Perhaps—”
“So, yes, you’re right,” Niel said, taking a step toward her. “I’d love to spend some time with you. I was just embarrassed, is all, even though it’s only fair you know my condition.”
The woman gave Niel a quick reassessment from head to toe, then leaned forward and patted his arm. “Best of luck to you, dear,” she said, and disappeared back through her door.
Niel turned and continued on his way, on his face a large, self-congratulatory grin.
***
Lunch consisted of half a round of flat, hard bread, a pear, and a few small but tasty portions of roasted mutton—or what he chose to trust was mutton.
In all the years Niel had spent with Biddleby, meat rarely made it to the dinner table. His teacher often sputtered on about how people no longer put forth the effort to grow their food because they’d rather just kill it instead. In large part, Niel agreed. Yet on the days when it had been Niel’s turn to go to town for supplies, the spicy smoke wafting over from the market’s spits often proved too tempting to resist.
Sitting in a spot of shade from a tree that evidently had been too large to remove—the wooden sidewalk jutted gracelessly around it—Niel noticed the sole on his left boot had begun to peel away. Since Glensdyl didn’t constitute enough of a going concern to warrant the College posting a magician to whom he could pay a courtesy call, and with little else to do, he decided to see if he could find a cobbler. He tossed his last scrap of mutton to a lumpy little dog who had waddled over to watch him eat, then started down a nearby side street to the other end of the village.
First, Niel noticed the relative quiet of the alley. Next, he noticed the reason for that relative quiet—the smell. With no sewer system, the businesses and other occupants of the town’s center used the areas behind their shops to dump all sorts of refuse. A few stray animals dined amongst the flies clouding over piles of rotting food and puddles of who-knew-what. Some shopkeepers had dug shallow pits by their back doors in which embers smoldered, slowly roasting rubbish to ash over the course of the day. Niel covered his nose and mouth with his collar and trotted ahead toward where the alley again met the street.
For an instant he thought he’d stumbled. When his shoulder and head slammed hard into the wall, however, Niel realized someone had shoved him.
Dazed, he fell to his hands and knees. He opened his mouth to cry out, but all that came was the sour spew of his lunch thanks to a brutal kick to his stomach.
“I think we have a winner,” someone said.
“Told you it’d just take one,” another giggled.
Someone used the toe of his boot to roll Niel onto his side. “Get it over with, will ya? You take too long.”
Niel managed a feeble struggle, but he couldn’t stop his pack from being yanked off his shoulder. His head throbbed, his vision spun, and the putrid stench of the alleyway and his own vomit made him heave once more.
“Wait,” he groaned. “You don’t—”
A final blow to his head brought a dazzle of light, and didn’t let him finish.
***
Niel, Biddleby said. Niel, it’s time to get up.
Overslept again. Late for chores.
But he wasn’t in bed.
Where, then?
Dirt gritted in his teeth. Something smelled awful.
Alleyway. Lunch.
He hoped he hadn’t made that little dog even lumpier by feeding it.
“Niel,” the voice said again, but it wasn’t Biddleby’s. “Come on, I need you to wake up.”
Niel slowly, painfully opened his eyes. A watery form quivered in front of him.
“Arwin?”
“There you go,” Arwin sighed. “Had me worried. But then, I imagine a head as hard as yours can take quite a lot.”
“That’s not very funny,” Niel whispered despite the vice clamped around his skull.
“I know,” Arwin replied. “Let’s get you to your feet. We have to get moving.”
Moving? he thought. But I haven’t packed...
Niel gasped, snapping back to lucidity. “Wait! My pack! Where’s my pack?”
Arwin’s grip tightened on Niel’s arm as he wobbled. “Afraid that’s gone, friend. They took it.”
Gone? Took it? Just the thought brought stinging tears of fear and anger.
Panicked, Niel gathered himself to search the alleyway, then froze in place as his eyes fell on the form of a man lying face down in the muck barely three steps away. A dark oval of crimson soaked the man on one side, flowering out to a rosy hue as it spread through his dirty shirt. The oval reached up toward his shoulders and down below his belt line. The man gazed in glassy amazement at his own pale hand resting just a few thumbwidths from his face.
Niel had seen dead bodies, though not many—the elderly, the sick—but he’d never seen anyone who’d actually been murdered.
“Niel, I need you to listen,” Arwin said.
Niel wiped his face on his sleeve. “Did you do that?”
“He was going to kill you. So yes, I stopped him. The other one ran off before our friend here even hit the ground.”
Niel stared. He’d never seen anyone who’d actually committed murder, either.
Arwin sighed. “Look, I know you’re banged up, but we need to get you out of town.”
Niel shook his head. He should have gone straight to the College. He’d been so stupid.
“No,” he said. “I need to find the Lord Sheriff, or whatever passes for one in this piss bucket of—”
Arwin jutted his thumb toward the end of the alley. “Those two probably worked for the Lord Sheriff. Odsen’s his name. It’s an old frontier-town arrangement. But whether they’re acquainted with Odsen or not, this isn’t going to go over well. So we need to leave.”
“You don’t understand.” He tried to keep his voice steady, but heard himself growing more shrill with each word. “My whole life was in my pack. I’ve got no money. I’ve got no letters of introduction. I don’t have a thing. Without it I can’t get home, which means I can’t get into the College. Ever!”
Arwin took Niel’s arm and led him to the near end of the alley. “I do understand, but first things first. Objects can be replaced.”
Niel jerked his arm back. “No, they can’t!”
Arwin grabbed him again, hard.
“Dammit,” he said, voice low, jaw tight, “I’m trying to tell you that if you stay here much longer, you are going to die.” He pointed at the man on the ground. “When the partner of our friend there starts talking, people will come looking for you. And when they find you, they’ll kill you. And when they kill you not a soul in this backwater will care enough to scratch his ass about it. Your things are gone. You can’t get them back. The sooner you come to terms with that, the sooner you can get on with saving your own hide.”
The swordsman pushed Niel’s arm away with another loud sigh. “Now, I know you’re not supposed to, but can you sit a horse?”
Niel shrugged. “I’ve never tried.”
“Fine.” He pulled a silver coin from his vest pocket. “Take this. Get food to carry with you. Make them give you a sack as well. There’s a trail inside the woods running more or less parallel to the road that leads south from here. Don’t use the road; just keep it in sight as best you can when the trail gets hard to follow—and it will. Try to make as little noise as possible. Trelheim is less than two days on foot. I’ll take a separate route and catch up with you at the Ragged Rascal. We can figure out what to do there.”
Arwin turned away. “You decide.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if we went together?”
Arwin didn’t answer. He rounded the corner at the end of t
he alley and disappeared.
Niel stood by himself, unable to remember ever feeling so lost. He looked down at the coin in his palm. There was no way he’d get to the College in time to begin the winter semester.
The thought stabbed deeply.
His next thought, though, struck him even deeper than that, and even more viciously than had his attackers: He’d just become a rogue magician.
Confirmed Members went forth from their schooling with the collective influence of the College behind them. Without benefit of the vast resources available to the Membership, accumulating magical knowledge as a rogue would be more arduous than the labors of a peasant farmer—grueling work yielding pitiable results. With luck, he might find a traveling carnival in need of a prestidigitator, or some similar arrangement. But in the end, most magicians working outside the providence of the College amounted to nothing more than wandering indigents, begging for food in exchange for a card trick or a fortune telling.
Niel started walking, and in his mind tested the notion again:
He’d just become a rogue magician.
The absurdity of it made him laugh out loud. At first.
***
Along the deserted street fewer than ten torches flickered in the late evening breeze, casting broad, jumpy shadows that made the narrow avenue darker in places than had there been no torchlight at all. Before Niel stood The Ragged Rascal Inn—three stories high and like all the other buildings in Trelheim, grey and rundown. Shutters dangled from the scant number of windows that still boasted them, though beneath the nearest window an abundant, lone rose bush appeared freshly pruned.
Niel stepped wearily onto the porch—poorly patched, rickety, and stained with spilled liquor, paint and what looked like blood.
He paused at the entrance and noticed nail holes and indentations where hinges had once held a door; now heavy, black drapes hung to seclude the Inn’s guests from the rest of the town. He parted the curtains with his fingers, peered through, and as though someone had pulled a lever the empty Trelheim night transformed into a glowing carnival.
Inside, in what looked to have once been a grand parlor, fat candles in sooty chandeliers poured a rich, buttery light over the goings-on. Sconces of all shapes lined walls that clearly once had been white—large, less-filthy rectangles indicated where portraits once hung. Musicians plucked, puffed and slapped their instruments, and filled the air with a rowdy melody. To the right a makeshift bar comprised of crates and boards occupied most of the room, where nearly all the stools were taken by those talking, drinking, or doing both. The center of the room accommodated numerous round, battered tables around which all manner of characters sat conversing, arguing and laughing. On the worn, wooden floor lay a huge, equally worn rug whose intricate patterns had faded far from their original grandeur and bore innumerable stains and patches of mismatched material. On the far wall hung a long row of pocked and chipped dagger boards.
Niel stood in the doorway watching until a mountain disguised as a preposterously ugly man shambled up and poked him hard in his sore shoulder, almost knocking him down.
“You stayin’ or goin’?” the mountain grumbled.
“I’m meeting someone,” Niel replied.
Out came a large, frightening hand. “Stayin’. One copper.”
Niel tugged from his pouch one of the few coppers that remained from the silver Arwin had given him, and all but pitched it onto the huge palm. The mountain murmured something, then returned to the stool from which he’d come.
After another quick survey of the room, Niel headed for an empty spot at the bar and sat. Countless bottles in more varieties than he would have thought possible crowded the cabinet on the other side of the counter. Within the bottles lurked an assortment of sinister-looking liquids—earthy browns, spicy reds, and even a few shades of green.
A bald, rumpled little man whose eyes never left the rag in his hand scuffed over and waited. Niel had been in a tavern once before, back home. What he really wanted was water, or even a fruit juice, but he didn’t want to embarrass himself or draw attention.
“Wine?” he asked.
A group of men sitting behind him at a table near the end of the bar scoffed and chuckled.
The bartender shuffled away then returned moments later with a dented pewter goblet half-filled with dark liquid. Niel plunked down a copper, hoping it was enough. The odd little man’s hands scrabbled across and scooped the coin into his apron before moving off to tend another patron.
Cup in hand, Niel faced the open room and let his eyes drift as nonchalantly as he could over to the men from whom the laughter had come. He supposed the three of them could have looked meaner if they’d wanted, but he doubted they would have achieved it by much. He also doubted they thought the same of him, so he sipped his drink and tried to remain unnoticed.
The wine was too sweet, without much texture; nothing like the wonderful wines Biddleby always brought home after a far-away symposium. But it was cold, which was good enough for the time being.
He saw no sign of Arwin. For all he knew, the swordsman had already come and gone.
Niel sighed, unable to help thinking there must be some way to get back to the College, or at least get in touch with Biddleby. But how? The Membership had none of their own posted nearby, which meant no going through official channels…
But what about someone not with the College? What if he could find another rogue magician? If so, he might be able to get a message through and explain what had happened.
Hope fluttered in his chest. All might not be lost.
He turned to set his wine back on the bar, unaware that the burly man next to him had inched closer. The resulting collision splashed Niel’s drink all across the man’s back.
Laughter roared from the three mean-looking men.
Niel felt the blood plummet to his feet as the man straightened and turned, causing the wine to trickle in rivulets from his leather vest, run down the seat of his pants to his legs, and finally pool on the floor between his boots. He had dark brown skin, a bushy beard, and sharp brown eyes that bore into Niel’s with what could only be the bloodlust described in his teacher’s war stories.
Niel managed a hard swallow. “I beg your pardon. I—”
The man seized Niel by the front of his shirt, pressing their faces together. The coarse hairs of the man’s beard bristled against his chin. Niel’s goblet toppled to the floor, bounced with a loud metal ting! and brought the rest of the room to an immediate, dreadful halt.
“Oh,” the man growled through clenched yellow teeth, “I think begging’s the perfect place to start.”
He yanked Niel from his stool and dragged him toward the front door. The room gave a collective cheer and clamored with excitement as everyone pushed forward to follow them outside. Niel thought surely Mister Mountain would step in to keep the peace, but as the front door became visible so too did his prospective savior—arms folded, sound asleep on his stool.
A familiar voice sounded close by. “Just a moment, Jharal.”
The man dragging Niel stopped as Arwin stepped into view.
“I think this one might be worth holding onto a little while.”
The bearded man glared down at Arwin, rolled his eyes, then dropped Niel back onto his own feet. Catching his breath, Niel smoothed the fist-shaped bunch in his shirt as best he could, then brushed the dirt from the rest of his clothes.
“You’ve quite the talent for first impressions,” Arwin said with a grin.
The patrons returned to what they’d been doing with what seemed a disappointed though well-practiced fluidity. Even the musicians picked up their tune where they’d left off.
“So,” Arwin said. “You’re here.”
“Do your demonstrations of competence never cease?”
Arwin chuckled and turned to the big man who’d snatched Niel from the bar. “Jharal,” he said, “I’d like to introduce you to Niel. Niel, this is Jharal.”
Niel looked up. The
man’s expression of disgust had not relented. He reached to shake hands with Jharal, who snorted and lumbered off.
Arwin smiled. “I don’t think he likes you.”
“Terrific.”
Arwin gestured to a small table. “Let’s talk.”
The two took seats opposite one another. Arwin dismissed an approaching waitress with a shake of his head. “Rough couple of days?”
“They were fine,” Niel replied, realizing for the first time they truly had been fine, if not better than. Thanks to Arwin he’d had plenty of food for the trek, and he’d found no fewer than three streams from which to drink along the way, not to mention some of the most alluring flora he’d ever seen. More than once he’d had the eerie sensation of being watched, but that aside, after his arduous journey to the Nilfranian a couple more days hiking through tranquil, picturesque forest had been nothing close to a hardship.
“Glad to hear,” Arwin said. “Because there may be more of that sort of thing for you in the near future.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, I think you should come along with us.”
“I see. Have I failed to mention that I’m trying to get to the College?”
“No, you’ve mentioned it.”
“Then how in the world do you expect me to join your expedition?”
Arwin leaned forward. “Lower your voice, if you please.”
“All right. Now, how?”
“You are in dire need of funds. As I’ve said, I’m in need of a magician. We’re in a position to help one another.”
Niel tapped the end of his finger on the table to punctuate his few words. “There is no. Possible. Way I can go with you and make it back in time to salvage my first semester. Which means my place there will be rescinded.”
“I understand that, and I’m sorry for your predicament. I truly am. But this is the only alternative I see that you have. It also happens to be the only one I can offer.”
“I’d hoped to find a magician in town or nearby who might help me get word to my teacher.”
“There aren’t any. If there were, I wouldn’t have bothered looking for one in Lyrria. Besides, you couldn’t afford it.”
A Mage Of None Magic (Book 1) Page 5
