A Forthcoming Wizard

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “Easy, now,” Loisan said. His mug was still mostly full, but Magpie had seen him dilute the strong ale in it with juice. His head was clearer than the young man’s. “Pride is a slippery slope, boy.”

  “Yes, Lar Loisan,” Pedros said.

  “That was a fine song,” Loisan said, turning his gaze to Magpie. “You’ll have to favor us with another tune when we stop for the night.”

  In other words, go away and leave us be, Magpie thought. He rose and bowed to the circle around the fire.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I thank you for your company.”

  The knights murmured courtesies. Magpie felt Inbecca’s eyes on him, but he didn’t want to single her out, not when her aunt was watching. As dearly as he longed to sit by her, it was best to remove himself. He went to sit beside Serafina.

  She glanced up only for a moment when his shadow fell across her knees.

  “They only believe in their own will,” she said. “Olen warned us not to let the book fall into their hands. We failed. I failed. We cannot stop the Scholardom now.”

  “No,” Magpie said. He took her hand in his. It was long and narrow, but it felt strong, much like his own. Their skills at magic-and music-making must not be that different. “We can’t. No, that’s wrong,” he said, shaking his head. He still disliked his aunt-in-law elect, but he felt strangely reluctant to defy her. He glanced toward the fire, where Inbecca sat, pointedly not looking at him. It displeased her that he didn’t get along with a relative whom she prized, though often enough in the past both of them had joked about Sharhava’s imperious nature and her devotion, which at that time seemed like a quaint superstition. He felt as if Sharhava had come into her own here, on this wild trail. The control of the book must be hers. He sensed that impulsion. Olen’s claim was too new. He had not studied it as they had.

  “I miss my mother,” Serafina said, turning her gaze away. “I was not ready to be on my own. You may think that odd, a grown woman unused to finding her own way.”

  “Not at all,” Magpie said, giving her hand a light squeeze. “I am not as close to my mother as you, but she continues to guide me though I have been a man for years, with many an adventure to sing of.”

  “Now we must follow in the path of others,” Serafina said. A fine line formed between her thin, dark brows. “Mother would say it was wrong, but it is not. I feel it is not.”

  “I feel the same,” Magpie said. “At least we all have one another’s company.”

  Serafina turned her head to look into his yellow-amber eyes with her dark ones. “That is the one comfort I can take.” She smiled at him.

  He felt his heart warm to her. It was good to speak to a woman who did not shower him with an endless rain of disapproval for a change. He held up the pipe.

  “May I play for you? Would that give you comfort?”

  “Comfort, perhaps not,” Serafina said. “That must come in its own time.” He bowed his head, crestfallen. “But pleasure, certainly.”

  “Ah,” Magpie said. “Music’s other gift.”

  He took the half-carved pipe and began to play.

  “Thraiks!”

  Tildi jumped up, scanning the sky, her heart pounding with dread. Yes, there they were. High in the purpling sky were three sigils that she would never mistake.

  “What thraiks?” Brouse asked, on his feet at her side. He drew his sword.

  “I saw them in the book,” Tildi said. “They just appeared. Look!”

  She pointed up. The black-winged monsters were so high up that they were indistinguishable from the bats who circled in the thermals of the campfire searching for twilight-flying insects except for their runes.

  Brouse looked. By then, half the encampment had come running.

  “Are you certain, Tildi?” Rin asked. She was on alert, whip in hand.

  “There are three of them,” Tildi said. “They are trying to find me. And the book.”

  The centaur set her mouth grimly. “I will protect you. No monster will get past me.”

  “Or me,” Lakanta said. Silently, Teryn and Morag made their way to Tildi’s side. The knights had taken away their weapons, but Tildi felt better having them nearby.

  “I see nothing,” Brouse said, squinting into the gloom.

  “What do you fear?” Sharhava demanded, advancing upon Tildi with a scowl that made her as formidable as the circling demons. “The wards will protect you! If there is any foe in the skies, it will be destroyed. You have never been as safe as now!”

  “Perhaps we had better move away from here,” Loisan said. “If we take the road we will be under the trees. If there are thraiks abroad they will lose sight of us.”

  “There are none,” Sharhava said. “Look up. Those are bats. You come from a farm, girl,” she chided Tildi scornfully. “You must have seen them before. Nothing else. Now, to horse. I want to gain some distance before we sleep this night. Your stations, Scholardom. Douse that fire!”

  “Nothing in the sky but birds,” the almoner, Brouse, said with a scornful chuckle. “Don’t seek to make us fear the invisible.”

  “No!” Tildi said. She looked up again, but the thraiks’ sigils were gone. “They were there!”

  “Come with me, Tildi,” Rin said, beckoning to the girl. She aimed her chin at the retreating knights. “I believe you, even if they don’t.”

  Obediently, Tildi solidified the air under her feet and gained her seat on the centaur’s back.

  “We also believe you, honored one,” Captain Teryn said. With a nod, she sent Morag running. In a few minutes, he returned with their horses saddled and bridled, including Lakanta’s Melune. He held the stirrup as his superior officer swung herself up.

  “Well, that I call courtesy, Master Morag,” Lakanta said. “Almost makes me forgive you. . . .”

  A high, thin scream that Tildi knew she would hear in her nightmares for the rest of her life echoed through the glade, and ended on a descending moan. Rin reared and danced nervously.

  “What was that?” she demanded.

  Over the acrid smell of doused embers, Tildi scented the aroma of roasting meat. Sharhava, a shadow distinguished only by her rune, halted.

  “Guards, arm! Go see what that was. Take care not to penetrate the wards.”

  Two of the knight-runes jogged away from her, growing smaller by the moment until they were the size of the bats who still played overhead. Tildi squinted. What kind of terror was that?

  In a moment, the men came running back.

  “It was a stag, Abbess,” Romini said, his normally ruddy face pale. “It must have touched the wards. There is . . . not much left of it.”

  “Proceed with caution, then,” Loisan instructed them all. “Send scouts ahead to make certain no humans are in our way. That’s a double reason to make sure we meet no one.”

  Tildi could not stop shivering as the group made its cautious way out of the glen. Her scanty dinner had left her hungry, but she felt as though she would never eat again.

  “That poor stag!” she said to Serafina, who was walking her mare beside Rin. “Sharhava made a killing spell out of our protection!”

  “On the good side, it will kill thraiks, too,” Serafina said encouragingly.

  “How can you not care?” Tildi asked, shocked.

  Serafina frowned, as though her thoughts had been called back from far away.

  “I do care,” she said. “It should not have died, but it was an accident.”

  “Are you saying that because we made the wards in the first place?”

  “No, of course not! Tildi, I won’t have that disrespectful tone from you.”

  Tildi leaned close to her, heedless of the tug her guard gave her on her waist tether.

  “I want to go away from here,” she said. “That will break their spell, and there will be no deaths. We can remake it as soon as we’re free.”

  “We can’t go,” Serafina said. Again, she looked puzzled, but the expression passed as swiftly as it had come. “Not
yet, but soon. It will all be fine, Tildi. You should listen to me.”

  “I do, master,” Tildi said patiently. “But you are listening to the abbess. You never do that.”

  Serafina frowned again and moved away from her. Tildi looked after her in dismay.

  “Patience, Tildi,” Rin said. “She is having a very hard time.”

  Tildi sat back, outraged to her very center. They were all to blame for that harmless animal meeting such a horrible doom. It had a speedy death, but it died in such pain that eddies of its suffering were written upon the air. She had never seen anything like that before, not even when the beast-men were killed fighting the earth-roots. It must be the addition of strong magic that caused the agony to echo on after the stag was dead.

  She sat on the centaur’s back, feeling as though she was to blame. She hardly cared what happened to her any longer. How could Serafina take her magic being perverted without even a trace of the fury she showed earlier?

  A cry of annoyance rang back from the file ahead.

  “One of you wizards, pay heed! The road is all mush up here.”

  Dutifully, Tildi began rewriting the road.

  Chapter Nine

  hree runes writ themselves upon the dark sky. More thraiks. Tildi sat bolt upright.

  “What is it, smallfolk?” asked Vreia, who was on guard at the north edge of her sleeping cloth.

  “Thraiks,” she said. “They could be the same ones who were looking for us earlier.”

  Vreia looked up. “I see nothing. You must stop worrying about such things. The abbess has set a magical guard upon us that they cannot penetrate, even if they were there.”

  “But they are there,” Tildi insisted.

  “Please go back to sleep. Morning comes all too soon.” The woman rearranged the skirts of her habit and shifted on the hard ground. “My fellows and I will protect you if anything does come. Now, please, no more alarms.”

  Tildi shivered as she lay down. Thraiks flew often, circling and circling overhead, even in daylight. She supposed that she ought to be grateful to Sharhava for once: if they tried to penetrate the wards this time, they would be destroyed.

  She watched them circle for a while. In spite of the double wards, they must have sensed something. When they grew frustrated they disappeared through a black gash in the sky, a featureless stroke in the midst of the stars, its own rune darkness upon darkness.

  They always returned, day after day, even though she was the only one who noticed them most of the time. The unknown enemy was tireless in his pursuit. The spell of protection must never falter even for a moment, or the winged beasts would be upon her.

  The knights kept telling her that there was nothing to worry about, but she knew they were wrong about that, too. Just because they couldn’t see it didn’t mean it wasn’t there, just like the thraiks. She was getting a bit annoyed with people doubting her word. Such a thing would never have happened in the Quarters, where she was known to be truthful.

  Under Sharhava’s new order, the contingent of six guards who watched her awake also hovered around her at night. Two of them were awake during each watch of the night, no matter what the hour. It was unnerving for her to wake up to the sight of firelight glittering off eyeballs fixed upon her. The book, when it was not in her arms, lay upon a cloth on the ground. The knights had a wealth of them. This, like the others, was no ordinary ground sheet, but pure silk as thick as her little finger and embroidered with runes in gold, red, and blue. She suspected that it might have been made to suit the purpose, but how could the Scholardom ever know that they would need it? From what Tildi understood, the knights had left the castle of Magpie’s parents in a rush to pursue him. Did they carry around with them at all times the paraphernalia necessary to care for the Great Book, should they just happen upon it? To every event they attended? She could just imagine seeing them in the marketplace, basket on one arm and bag of impedimenta on the other. In spite of her annoyance, the thought still amused her. Of course, no one would dare make fun of them. As a group they had no sense of humor. Tildi had begun to see a warming in a few of the knights who guarded her the most frequently, Auric especially. Sharhava remained obdurate. She treated Tildi with care but no friendliness.

  Her reasons for disliking Tildi she made clear. No matter how much magic they had gained through proximity to the book they still could not take the book away from her, because it seemed that no matter how far away from it she was, all she had to do was call for it, and it was by her side. She had an affinity for it that not even Serafina could explain. Even though she had told them the story of the fragment of parchment and her early life, Sharhava just could not bring herself to believe that Tildi’s immunity had come to her “so easily!”

  How well named her kind was. She had never felt as small as she did at that moment. The entire world was too big for her to handle. A chattelmarriage to that oaf Bardol that the elders had proposed for her would almost have been welcome. Almost. Tildi smiled ruefully at the night sky and turned over on her side. She was weary, that was her trouble. With rest, perhaps optimism would return, and she could think her way out of her troubles. The Great Book, like a faithful dog looking for a pat, rolled over and insinuated itself under her hand as if to reassure her. With the smooth, cool surface under her fingers, Tildi sought sleep.

  Tildi fought for air in her dreams. The world had turned into water, drowning her, pulling her down into a maelstrom of spinning runes in darkness. She struggled to climb to the top of the water, but it bound her arms in wrappings of gray silk. She was pulled downward, too deep to save herself. Her lungs were bursting, exploding for lack of air.

  Her eyes flew open. To her relief, the water had not been real. A single, floating golden rune in otherwise total darkness hovered before her eyes. She sought to gasp in a breath, but something warm was covering her mouth though not her nose.

  “Easy, now,” a whisper beseeched her. “Fear not. Breathe. Be silent.”

  She clawed at the hand. The other, much larger than her small ones, captured her wrists and pinioned them together.

  One of the knights was trying to kill her! Wards! She must make wards! How did they go again? Without hands she must draw with her mind. A shaky line began to take shape. It was erased almost as soon as she had made it. Terrified, she started again, much larger. The silver-gilt line faded like smoke. She tried to make a noise, to call for help. Her captor was not burning at her touch. Why was she not burning?

  “Stop!” the voice whispered in her ear. “I am not harming you. Do you know me? No, it would seem not.”

  Tildi gawked at the rune. It was the backward one that she had seen a few days before.

  “Please do not cry out. They are all sleeping. I am a friend. I do not harm you. You will see. I will move my hand. Only, be silent. Will you?”

  Tildi nodded. Her nightmare receded, and she relaxed. The warm weight moved away from her face. She sat up.

  The bonfire had reduced to a glow of red embers. In the cloudy night sky she could see the runes of the stars better than the twinkling lights themelves, so the people around her were no more than their sigils, rising and falling gently as they breathed. Even the guards around her slept.

  “Come,” the voice whispered. A hand took hers. Tildi stood up. She felt the book rise from the cloth beside her. “Yes, bring that, too, if you wish. Step off the ground so you won’t make noise.”

  Tildi obeyed. Thinking the floating spell as hard as she could, she left the unyielding surface of pebble-strewn clay soil for the air. The hand guided her away. Tildi felt the tether that was always around her waist tug loose from the grasp of an unseen knight. He or she did not wake up. Tildi gathered the cord and looped it up over her shoulder. She stepped over the cordon and followed the backward rune.

  She and her mysterious escort glided into the woods. Tildi read the many beeches, oaks, and walnuts, both saplings and mature trees. Until a twig or two brushed her hair, they had no reality to her. The pr
esence guided her around the bulky rune of a large stone and down a shallow slope to a flat place carpeted with the tiny symbols for grass and clover. Beyond, the muffled roar of water told her they were close to the river.

  “Tal,” the voice said. Tildi saw the rune just before a warm golden flame flickered into existence. An oval face with golden skin and large, dark eyes looked at her. The woman to whom they belonged could have been Serafina’s sister, but she was not human. Tildi recognized her at once.

  “Irithe!” she burst out joyously. She threw her arms around the elf’s neck and embraced her.

  “Hush!” Irithe said. She patted Tildi’s shoulder. The smallfolk girl let go, embarrassed. The elf had never been effusive in any emotions. “Well, my old companion, I am glad to see you as well. It has been many a long mile since we walked together out of The Groaning Board at Rushet, has it not?”

  “Oh, yes! What are you doing here?” Tildi asked, remembering to drop her voice to a mere whisper.

  “Ah, well, each of us has our secrets. Have you revealed all of your secrets?”

  Tildi shook her head. “I don’t know if any of them are worth anything to anyone.”

  “They are. A friend of yours sought me out since I saw you last. He says that since you learn from everyone, you should know that you may continue to learn even when you are not with your teachers.”

  “Olen!” Tildi exclaimed. “He sent you?”

  “He did,” Irithe said. “He was concerned for your well-being.”

  “Olen!” Tildi felt a rush of affection and longing for the old wizard, followed by the deepest relief. “Thank Mother Nature! Is he all right? Does he know we are alive?”

  Irithe’s austere face allowed a slight smile to curl the corners of her mouth. “He is well. Of your life, he said his spells were uncertain, but his heart said yes. He needed someone who was adept at tracking and who knew you. Therefore, he sent me.”

  “How did he find you? I told him about you, but he said he didn’t know you.”

  “He did not know me before. Now he does. He sent messages to many of the elvenholts asking for me by name. I knew of the council meeting. Like my brothers and sisters of the forest, I knew of the changes in the wake of the book’s passage. I have been more than three weeks seeking you once he set me on your trail. This is what he sent you in pursuit of?” She looked at the Great Book, hovering like an ivory pillar in the gold of the witchlight.