The Sorcerer's Plague bots-1

by DAVID B. COE

  Besh turned the page to read more, but a knock at the door stopped him. Looking up, he realized that the sun had risen. The knock came again and he called for whoever it was to enter.

  Ojan stepped inside.

  "Sorry to disturb you, Besh."

  "Nonsense, my friend. This isn't my home. You don't need to knock on my account."

  The big man merely shrugged. "I just wanted you to know that I'm headed home now. I've work to get done. I don't know who's coming on next, if anyone, now that it's day. But I can come back tonight, if you and Pyav need me to."

  "Thank you, Ojan. I intend to speak with Pyav this morning. If we need you again, we'll let you know."

  He raised a hand and nodded. "All right. I'm off then."

  Besh watched him from the window. He thought about reading more, but then set the daybook down on the arm of the chair, stood, and stretched. Now that it was light, he was tired. Of course. He'd been a fool not to sleep, and no doubt he'd pay for his folly before the day was out. For now, though, he needed to get home, before Elica made herself sick with worry.

  He returned the journal to the box in the back room and, after taking care to close Lici's door, hurried back to Elica's house. Everyone was awake when he got there and the children came running out of the house to greet him, shouting, "Grandfather! Grandfather!"

  The young ones each took hold of one of his hands and practically dragged him toward the front stairs, while Mihas walked beside him. "Where were you, Grandfather?" the boy asked.

  "Lici's house."

  The boy stared at him briefly, but then looked away again. "Mother wanted Father to go out and look for you, but he said you'd be back when you were ready to come back."

  Just as they reached the stairs, Elica emerged from the house, eyes blazing.

  "Where have you been?" she demanded, leveling a wooden spoon at his heart as if it were a blade. "I've been worried sick about you! First Lici disappears and then you go off in the dark of night like a thief or a… a… a who-knows-what! What were you thinking? Were you even thinking at all?"

  While she was shouting at Besh, Sirj stepped out of the house. He remained behind her, but after only a few moments of listening to her harangue, he rolled his eyes and walked past her.

  "He's back now, Elica. Have done."

  "Have done?" she repeated, her voice rising, which Besh hadn't believed possible. "He's too old to be wandering about in the middle of the night!"

  Sirj had placed a log on his stump and lifted his ax, but he stopped now, fixing her with a hard look. "He's not that old, and I can tell you now that when I'm his age, you won't be speaking to me in that tone."

  For the second time in as many days, Besh found himself thinking that he'd misjudged the man all these years. He could almost hear Ema laughing at him.

  Elica eyed her husband a moment longer. Then she faced Besh again, and in a somewhat gentler tone asked, "Where were you, Father?" "I went to Lici's house."

  Sirj split the log with a single blow, and turned to look at him. "Why?"

  Besh regarded him briefly. "We found a daybook there yesterday. It belonged to Sylpa, and during the night it occurred to me that it might have something in it that could tell us where Lici's gone."

  "Sylpa's been dead for nearly a dozen fours," Elica said. "What could her daybook tell you about where Lici is now?"

  "I don't know yet." He scratched the back of his head and glanced over at Sirj, who just stared back at him. "I suppose what I should have said was that it might tell us something more about Lici herself, something that might give us some idea of why she left." He nearly mentioned then his suspicion that she had departed on the anniversary of her arrival in Kirayde, but he didn't know this for certain, and even if it were true, he didn't know yet what it might mean. "Now, if I may," he said instead, climbing the stairs, "I'd like a small something to eat before I go and speak with the eldest."

  He brushed past Elica as he entered the house. A half-eaten loaf of bread sat on a counter, and he cut off a slab and covered it with butter. Taking a bite, he turned. His daughter stood in the doorway, watching him.

  "Are you all right?" she asked.

  "Of course. Don't I look all right?"

  "That's not what I mean, and you know it. You may be able to convince Sirj that there's nothing unusual about you going off in the middle of the night to read Sy1pa's daybook, but I know you too well. Now, what's this about?"

  He opened his mouth to put her off, but then remembered the promise he'd made to himself the night before. He hadn't lied to Ojan; it didn't seem right to tell his own daughter anything less than the truth.

  "It's about Lici," he said.

  She huffed impatiently and looked away. "I know that."

  "No, you don't. All my life I've felt that Lici and I are… are linked in some way. She came to Kirayde the same year I was born. As a child I was fascinated by her, and even now, years later, I find myself being pulled into her life. Everyone in the village is so anxious to get at her riches, and for some reason, I'm the only person arguing on her behalf. The others on the council assumed that I should be the one to search her house. And while I was reluctant, I also know that I would have felt wronged if another had been chosen for the task." He broke off, shaking his head, knowing that he wasn't explaining this well.

  Elica was looking at him with an expression that was equal parts puzzlement and disgust. "Do you love her?" she finally asked.

  Besh actually laughed aloud. "Hardly."

  "Then I don't understand."

  The old man nodded wearily. He would need a nap before this day was through. What a fool he'd been. "Truth be told, neither do I. It's enough to say that her disappearance… troubles me. And until I know why, I won't be able to rest."

  "Do you fear for her?"

  "I fear everything having to do with her."

  Elica nodded at that, appearing to shudder as she did. "Well, the next time you feel the need to leave the house in the dark of night, I hope you'll at least have the decency to wake me, so I know where you're going."

  "Agreed. I'm sorry to have frightened you."

  She gave another nod and then started to leave the house.

  "Elica," he said, stopping her. When she turned to look at him, he grinned. "What would you have done if I'd said I did love her?"

  She frowned so deeply that he had to laugh again. "I don't even care to think about it," she said.

  Besh finished eating his buttered bread, took a small drink of water, and made his way to Pyav's home.

  The eldest was at his forge, his face even ruddier than usual, his brow dripping with sweat. He saw Besh enter and acknowledged him with a raised chin, but he didn't pause in his work. After a few moments he pulled something out of the fire with a long pair of tongs, swung it around to the anvil, and began to hammer at it, the smithy ringing with the clear sound of metal pounding on metal. Besh could see now that he was making a horseshoe, the curved iron still glowing red. At last Pyav took hold of the shoe with his tongs once more and thrust it into a barrel of water, sending a burst of swirling steam up into the rafters.

  Only then did he step away from the anvil and cross to where Besh stood waiting.

  "Morning, Besh," he said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. "What can I do for you?"

  "Have you spoken to Ojan today?"

  Pyav frowned. "Ojan? Did something happen at Lici's last night?" "In a manner of speaking, yes. I showed up, and I thought he might have mentioned it to you."

  "I don't follow. What were you doing there?"

  "I wanted to have a look at Sylpa's journal. I thought it would shed some light on how Lici first came here."

  "It might at that." He looked at Besh a moment longer, as if expecting the old man to say more. "Is that all?" he finally asked.

  "I thought you should know that I was reading the daybook. It's not mine, and I probably have no business looking at it at all."

  Pyav chuckled. "Is that why you've come
? To have my permission to look at the journal of a woman who's been dead almost half a century?" "Well, yes. I-"

  "It's all right, my friend." He placed a hand on Besh's shoulder. "You're a good man. To be perfectly honest with you, you've been far more scrupulous about all of this than I would have been. And I admire you for it," he added quickly. "Thanks to you, I believe the council is giving Lici the consideration that is her due. But given all that, I can't imagine you doing anything that would need my approval. In this matter, I trust you more than I do myself."

  "Thank you, Eldest."

  "Let me say this as your friend, and not as your eldest," he went on, his broad hand still resting on Besh's shoulder. "Learn what you can of the woman, but take care that you don't place too much faith in Lici's willingness to return your consideration. Whatever you do, do for yourself and not for her. I know that we have no right to take her gold or allow others to ransack her home, but the woman is a demon. She has been all her life."

  Besh offered no response except to thank the eldest for his concern. But as he walked back home, intending to sleep for a short while, he couldn't help thinking that the eldest had to be wrong. No child was born a demon. And that begged the question: What had happened to turn Lici into one?

  Chapter 6

  SEA OF STARS NEAR REDCLIFF, THE AELEANCOAST,

  DREAMING MOON WANING

  Rois Dungar had been captaining merchant ships for thirty years ow, almost since the day of his Fating, when the white-hairs in the tent at Bohdan's Revel, with their strange pale eyes and their magical stone, had shown him at the wheel of a vessel. He'd been barely more than a boy then, just a few days past sixteen, and still enchanted by the festival, by the Qirsi fire conjurers and the tumblers and musicians. It hadn't occurred to him then to care that his fate was shown to him by a Qirsi, that somehow through their gleanings at the Revel, the white- hairs had made themselves the arbiters of everyone's future. And by the time it did, he no longer cared.

  Thirty years. Long ago he'd made enough gold to quit, had that been his desire. He could have bought a piece of pastureland near Rennach up in the Forelands and raised sheep as his father had done, and his father's father before that. But even before white-hair magic touched his life, Rois had heard the call of the sea. He started his life as a captain by running the short trade routes along the northern coast of the Forelands, learning his craft by navigating the waters around the Wethy Crown and along the Sanbiri coastline. Later, he'd begun to sail the Sea of Stars farther south, past the cities of Sanbira and the lofty peaks of the Border Range to the crimson cliffs of the Aelean shoreline and the prosperous port cities in Tordjanne and Qosantia. There weren't many of his kind-captains who carried trade between the Forelands and the Southlands-but those who were willing to brave the long voyages and the stormy waters of the south were rewarded with riches beyond the imaginings of most common merchants.

  Some of those who traded between the two lands stuck strictly to the western waters, just as Rois stuck to the east. They traded with the Braedony empire in the north and with the Qirsi clans of the Southlands. None of that for Rois. No white-hair trade if he could help it. The eastern realms of the Southlands were held by the Eandi, and they would remain in Eandi hands. That suited him fine.

  There'd been a good deal of trouble with the Qirsi in the Forelands in recent turns. There'd been talk of rebellion and war, of a Weaver, one of those white-hairs with all different sorts of Qirsi magic, who was intent on destroying the Eandi courts. Word now was that the war had been fought and won, that this renegade Weaver was dead. But that didn't change much as far as Rois was concerned. There'd be more where this one came from, and there'd be more trouble. They went together, white-hairs and trouble did, just like east winds and rain.

  All of which made somewhat curious the fact that he had agreed to give transport to three Qirsi on this run to Aelea. The short answer he gave to any among his crew with nerve enough to ask was that gold was gold, and these white-hairs were paying plenty for the privilege of sailing on the Fortune Seeker. The truth might have been harder to explain.

  Had it been just any three Qirsi, he would have refused their gold and left them at the dock in Rennach, where they first sought passage on his ship. Three grown Qirsi were more trouble than any gold could cover. But these three weren't grown, leastaways not all of them. This was a family. A man, broader and taller than any Qirsi he'd met before, a woman as pretty as her man was formidable, and a babe who couldn't have been more than six or seven turns old.

  Even so, he still might have refused. But there was talk trailing these three, rumor that gave Rois pause and that eventually convinced him to take their gold and allow them aboard his ship. Usually he didn't credit whispers of this sort. The rumors of ignorant men were worth about as much as weather predictions from a land-bound fool. But these rumors came from guards at the Rennach port, and they echoed things he'd heard in Eardley and Thorald as well. A tall Qirsi, his shoulder slightly malformed, traveling with a beautiful woman who bore his child; that's how they described him.

  As to what this man had done, well, that was a bit more difficult to figure. Some said he'd killed the renegade Weaver with his bare hands. Others said he'd bested him with magic, proving that he was a Weaver as well. Still others claimed that he'd been in league with the renegades himself, but had turned on them at the last, just like Carthach, the Qirsi traitor whose betrayal thwarted the first Qirsi invaders, who had come to the Forelands from the Southlands nine hundred years before. Rois wasn't sure what he believed, but he felt reasonably certain that the man was no traitor. He'd seen his share of liars, cheats, and scoundrels in his time, and all of them had a shifty look to them, something in their face or bearing or manner that made him uneasy. However imposing this Qirsi man might have been, he had an open face, and pale yellow eyes that didn't shy from a direct gaze.

  For a time, when he first saw this couple and their child, Rois did think the man a brute, and the worst kind. The woman's face, pretty as it was, bore subtle scars, pale thin traces of a razor's blade or a finely honed dagger. In his day, the merchant had seen men brutalize in the most evil ways the women they professed to love, and he assumed that this white- hair was no different. It didn't take long, however, before he realized his mistake. These two never strayed far from one another, and the man doted on her constantly, attending to her as if intent on never letting a moment of pain or fear intrude upon her happiness. And it was no act. Some loves could be feigned; Rois had seen it done. This was the genuine article.

  A story followed the woman as well, one that reached the captain's ears after he had first started forming an opinion of this odd pair. She had once been a servant of the evil Weaver and in betraying him had incurred his wrath. It was he, and not the man she so clearly loved, who had given her those scars, despite the fact that she was sheltered at the time by the king of Eibithar himself. That much Rois could believe, and it began to make some sense, not only of what he saw between these two, but also of why they would seek to leave the Forelands for the South- lands. For while he conducted a good deal of trade in both lands, he rarely carried passengers between them.

  In every way then, it was unusual for there to be Qirsi of any kind on the Fortune Seeker. It seemed that Rois carried the gods as familiars on his shoulder, the way some captains carried birds or other creatures they found in their travels. Because had it not been for the Qirsi man standing now in the middle of his ship, Rois, his vessel, and his crew would have been lost hours ago.

  Clouds had hung low and menacing over the jagged white peaks of the Border Range for the better part of a day, but such was the weather in the highlands, and Rois thought nothing of it as he steered his ship parallel to the coast. But with this day's dawn had come the urgent ringing of the watchman's bell, and shouted warnings from the night crew. The captain could feel that the waters had grown rough, and even before emerging onto the deck from his cabin, he knew that a storm was almost upon them.
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br />   Stepping out into a stiff wind and steady rainfall, he saw that it was even closer than he had feared, and that it looked to be a beast of a storm, summoned, it seemed, by Morna herself. The sky was a deep angry purple; the water around them looked as cold and hard as steel. Within moments, a gale began to howl in the sails, nearly tipping the Fortune Seeker onto her leeward side. Swells pitched the vessel to and fro as if she were but a toy, and broke over the sides of the ship, dousing the deck and making the crew's work that much more treacherous. Rois shouted for his men to lower the sails and go to sweeps, but he could hear the hull and deck groaning like wraiths, and he knew that they couldn't possibly carry out his orders quickly enough to save the ship.

  It was then that he heard the voice at his back, as even and calm as the sea was rough.

  "Can I be of assistance, Captain?"

  Turning, Rois saw that the white-hair stood just behind him, with his feet spread wide to keep his balance. He hadn't said more than good morning to the man since he first boarded the ship. At that moment he couldn't have recalled his name for all the gold in Tordjanne. More than once he'd regretted taking him and his family on board in the first place. Whatever the Qirsi might have done for the courts in battling that other Weaver, he was still a sorcerer.

  Now, though…

  "Can you tame a wind?"

  "I can raise a wind against it. The effect will be much the same." "Quickly then, man! Before she's torn to pieces!"

  The Qirsi stepped past him and closed his eyes, rain running down his face like tears. Almost instantly, Rois felt a wind rise out of the west, an answer to that fierce gale raging across the churning waters. The force of the storm blunted for the moment, the ship righted itself, and several of the crew scrambled up the masts and started lowering the sails.

  "I'm grateful t' ye," the captain said, stepping forward to stand beside the man.