The Grey Robe

by Clare Smith

  Lord Farrion ignored the comment. “Were you able to follow and find those who did this terrible thing?”

  “I regret not, the landslide obliterated any tracks and the heavy rain in the area has made it difficult to follow any other traces. The area is full of hidden valleys where it is easy to hide a palace let alone a few men who don’t want to be found.”

  “How convenient.” Newn left his chair and walked to the dresser where he poured himself a full goblet of wine, staring back at his uncle in challenge. “I don’t know why my father supported you, Callabris; you’re a waste of space. You failed to protect my father and mother and then you fail to track down the men who killed them. In fact you’re even more useless than that worthless brother of yours who let King Duro of Sandstrone die. Perhaps you should meet the same fate as he did for your continuous failures.”

  Callabris said nothing but behind him his protector took a threatening step forward ready to defend his master if anyone moved towards him.

  “That’s enough,” interposed Farrion. “Callabris, His Highness is upset and is not thinking straight. It might be best if you and protector Allowyn returned to where the landslide happened and tried again to pick up the trail. We’ll send for you when your presence at court will once again be appreciated.”

  Callabris bowed briefly and left the room followed closely by Allowyn. The door had barely closed when Newn threw his goblet of wine at the door. It clattered noisily to the floor and the wine ran down the pale silverbark wood and pooled on the marble floor like fresh blood.

  “I don’t want him here again; get rid of him and get me a black. And if you ever talk to me like that again I’ll make you pay.” Newn kicked the goblet out of the way and left the room, slamming the door behind him and leaving red foot marks along the hallway.

  Lord Farrion sighed deeply and refilled his goblet before returning to stare into the flames in the fire grate. Perhaps the boy did have a point, the magician did fail his father and it could be beneficial to have the magician and his damned shadow removed before the prince changed his mind and wanted them back again. A small smile crossed his features. The boy was a fool as well as a spoilt brat; didn’t he know that a ruler without a magician to support them, even a white one, was vulnerable? But if the magician did leave and then something unfortunate happened to Prince Newn he couldn’t be blamed, after all he had only followed the prince’s orders.

  *

  Callabris stood at the edge of the landslide studying the tumble of rocks, broken trees, uprooted shrubs and loose soil which had been torn from the hillside and had rolled downwards sweeping away the road just as the royal coach had been passing. The force of the landslide had carried the coach along with the horses and the passengers over the precipice into the ravine below. It was only the driver who hadn’t been carried into the ravine, his body having been impaled on the dagger-like remains of a splintered mountain everleaf.

  A gouge had been carved out the side of the ravine with the canopy of tall everleafs shattered by the path of the landslide. The smashed coach had been found two days later when it had failed to arrive at Lord Farrion’s estate. What had remained of the bodies, after sly hunters and mountain growlers had taken what they could reach, had been buried quickly without the usual pomp of lying in state.

  He had been part of the search party, not that his magic had been needed to find the remains of the king and his wife. Whilst the royal guard had done the grisly work of retrieving the remains he had carried out a cursory search of the area for an explanation of what had happened. Perhaps if he hadn’t been so upset at the death of a master he had served faithfully for ten summers he might have seen then that the landslide was manmade.

  Landslides were not uncommon in the area but he had missed the initial signs that the king’s death had been no accident. He and his protector had returned two days later and had found the signs which he had reported to the Crown Prince but now the trail was cold and the after image of the assassins, who had left their footprints and smell behind, were vague and indistinct.

  Callabris felt the presence of his protector behind him and wiped the moisture from his eyes onto the back of a knuckle. “He was a good man and a fair and just king. He will be greatly missed by his people and all who called him friend.”

  “I think that his son isn’t of the same mould.”

  “I regret that you’re right, Allowyn. His mother’s indulgence has turned him into a spoilt and selfish child and his father’s blindness to his faults has led the boy into having no morals.”

  “He had no right to talk to you as he did, master, nor to speak of your brother as he did. Will you stay with the boy or will you take up King Boreman’s offer and accept his patronage?”

  “Federa’s will bound me to his father and as long as his son does nothing to break that bond then I must stay with him. I would stay anyway for his father’s sake although I think life is going to be more fraught than it was. What about you, Allowyn, will you stay? I know you have no liking for the boy and he has none for you either.”

  “My loyalty is to you, master. If you stay then I will stay too but if he attempts to harm you or shows you disrespect then I will take you away from here and the danger he poses even if it’s against your will and the will of the goddess.”

  Callabris smiled and turned away from his review of the ravine to look into the earnest eyes of his protector. “He won’t try to harm me, Allowyn but if he does you have my permission and Federa’s sanction to take me as far from here as you think is needed to keep me safe.”

  Allowyn nodded in acceptance and then studied the darkening sky with concern. “If you have finished here we had better get to the way house before it gets fully dark. This road is known to be treacherous at the best of times and it looks to me as if there is a nasty storm brewing.”

  He turned and led the way back along the road to where the horses waited, tethered to a scrubby bush poking out of the loose soil of the hillside. The wind started to pick up and blew dust and loose twigs around their horse’s hooves as they rode together back towards Dartis until they reached the way house. It was a small wooden cabin rather than a house built in a hollow between two giant boulders. The boulders deflected the prevailing wind from the sod and stone roof and left just enough space for a lath shelter for the horses.

  They led the tired horses into the shelter and scattered some dried grass and some oats for them to eat. By the time they had unsaddled them, fetched water from the rain barrel and rubbed them down the rain was pounding on the roof and the wind was whipping the overflow in horizontal eddies. The two men made a dash for the cabin door and dived in, slamming the door behind them before the rain could soak through their cloaks.

  Inside the one roomed cabin it was dark and smelled of dampness and cold ashes. Callabris produced a small flame in the palm of his hand and lit the single lantern, its light barely illuminating the corners of the windowless chamber. Around the walls were a number of sleeping platforms complete with rough mattresses filled with old, musty straw. There was a table with benches on either side and a hearth at one end full of cold ashes but with a wood pile stacked ready to burn.

  They were used to travelling together and had no need to talk as they set to work quickly, each with their own tasks. Before it was completely dark outside their cloaks were drying by the fire and they had eaten a hot stew of dried meat and wild roots which Allowyn had gathered on their journey. A pot of water simmered over the fire and the aroma of fresh herb was starting to drive away the less pleasant smell of dampness and decay.

  Pushing the empty bowls to one end of the table Allowyn unsheathed his swords and his knives and one by one honed and cleaned them, testing each blade for sharpness before moving onto the next. On the other side of the table Callabris took a leather bound journal from his saddlebag and carefully recorded what he had found. It didn’t take him long; there had been just a few booted footprints, some horse droppings and the thick end of a broken bra
nch where there were no trees growing, which might have been used as a lever or a prop.

  The description of the afterimage he had conjured was little better; a single dark figure with no distinguishing marks except for the impression of a double twisted ring on the hand which had held the broken branch. His report completed, Callabris returned the journal to the saddlebag and took one of the lower bunks, pulling his fire-warmed cloak tightly around him. His protector returned his knives carefully to his baldric and placed the swords in front of him on the table where they could be easily reached and when his master’s breathing took on a slow, even rhythm he blew out the lantern and waited.

  When the door crashed open late into the night the first attacker fell instantly with a knife in his chest. The man following behind dived to the floor but not before another knife had sliced into his face cutting through his eye and leaving him shrieking in pain and shock. Behind him another dark figure leapt over the two fallen men swinging his sword in front of him like a scythe. As his sword swung to one side the upturned table hit him squarely in the chest sending him staggering back into two more assassins who had entered the cabin behind him. Before the table had settled onto the earthen floor Allowyn had leapt across it and had buried his sword almost to the hilt in the man’s guts. He ripped the sword sideways and grey intestines spilled from the gash into the screaming man’s hands.

  The last two attackers through the door pushed the dying man aside and struck back, both swords snaking out together, high and low, towards the protector. Allowyn twisted avoiding the full thrust of the high strike but taking a finger’s depth of steel in his shoulder instead of his neck. Blood blossomed on his shirt and his arm went instantly numb making his sword slip from his fingers. The low strike sliced through his thigh just above his knee sending Allowyn staggering back over the fallen table, hitting the ground hard and his sword clattered from his other hand.

  Seeing his opponent down, wounded and unarmed the attacker gave a mirthless grin and raised his sword for the death blow but Allowyn heaved himself up onto his knees and his attacker’s sword clattered to the floor with his hand still attached to the hilt. The scream he gave as blood spurted from his severed wrist was abruptly cut off by the knife in his throat.

  Leaving his sword partner to deal with the unarmed protector the remaining assassin had darted around the side of the upturned table, sword extended, intent on finishing the target he had been sent to kill. Callabris had woken at the first sound of battle and had only enough time to sit up before his assailant reached him and pressed his sword to the magician’s breast just over his heart. The man leered at Callabris with black broken teeth and started to speak but froze, his eyes locked with those of the magician.

  He didn’t move a muscle as his sword partner screamed and blood splattered across his arm, nor when the room became silent except for the groans of the man holding his entrails in his hands. Only when Allowyn drove his sword into the base of his neck, down through his chest and sliced his heart in two did he finally move. As he slid off Allowyn’s blade the protector removed the sword point from Callabris’s breast letting it drop to the floor along with its dead owner. Callabris blinked rapidly releasing his spell and Allowyn sat heavily on the sleeping platform next to him.

  “I’m sorry, Lord, with the noise of the wind and rain I never heard them coming.”

  Callabris stood up and pushed the body out of his way with the toe of his boot before crossing the room and picking his way over the dead. He quickly closed the cabin door blocking out the sounds of the storm before retrieving some items from his saddle bags in the corner of the room where they had been stacked. When he returned to the sleeping platform with a roll of bandage in one hand and a small tub of balm in the other Allowyn had already used his remaining knife to cut back his breaches around the thigh wound. It was deep but the blade hadn’t cut into anything vital so Callabris smoothed the balm across the gash and wrapped a length of bandage tightly around it.

  “It’s not your fault, if it had occurred to me that we were likely to be attacked on such a foul night in the middle of nowhere I would have put a ward on the door.” He handed the balm and a pad of bandage to Allowyn so that he could attend to his shoulder. “Do you know who they were or who sent them?”

  Allowyn stood and looked carefully at the man who had held a sword to his master’s breast and then inspected the others as he collected up his bloodied weapons. Finally he stopped in front of the groaning man whose blood pooled on the floor around him. He nudged him with his foot and the man opened his eyes.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Go to hellden!”

  Allowyn kicked him hard in the side sending more blood pulsing from the wound. “Who sent you?”

  “Fuck you and your cursed magician!”

  The protector turned to Callabris and shrugged receiving a shrug in return. When he turned back to the dying man he pulled back his head and his knife sliced through his throat silencing his groaning. “I’ve seen that one hanging around the castle yard, he does the odd bit of dirty work for Lord Farrion and these two hang around the river port.” He stepped over to the man with one hand and picked up the one he had severed at the wrist. “I don’t know the others but this looks like the twisted ring you described.”

  Callabris frowned and nodded “Do they work for the prince or his uncle?”

  “Either or both, who knows. One thing I do know though is that it isn’t safe for you to stay in Tarbis any longer. Whoever sent these to kill you may have also sent them to kill the king and as far as I am concerned that severs any ties or obligations you have to the Prince or this kingdom.”

  Callabris nodded in agreement. “You’re right. In the morning we leave for Northshield but for now let’s feed these to the sly hunters and get some sleep, we have a bloody mess to clear up here tomorrow before we can be on our way”.

  Allowyn righted the table and put his weapons on it for cleaning before dragging the bodies outside into the pouring rain.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The White Robe

  Jonderill held the stick in his hand and gave it a brief wave in the air, hesitantly muttering the appropriate words under his breath. He watched the broom intently to see if there was any change in its position but nothing moved, not even a bristle. Sighing dejectedly he put the stick onto the table and stared at it in disappointment. It was not an ordinary stick but the one which he’d spent a summer and a winter carving with the symbols of a magician’s trade.

  Each notch and groove had been accompanied by the appropriate incantation which he had painstakingly learnt by heart but after nearly two summers all he had was a decorative piece of the rare golden weiswald and a head full of meaningless words. As far as magic was concerned, his one and only ability was the occasional creation of elemental fire. Even that was not reliable, making him resort to a firestone every day when he lit the many fires in the magicians’ tower. In fact he seemed to have gone backwards in the time which had passed since he had been apprenticed to Plantagenet and Animus.

  He left the high stool on which he had been sitting and collected the broom. The handle was smooth and familiar but without the slightest tingle of magic, despite all his efforts. Since completing his wand he’d been trying to make the broom sweep the floor without his assistance but inevitably he ended up pushing the broom in his daily task of cleaning each of the five floors of the magicians’ tower. He’d already swept his tiny room at the top of the tower beneath its tall spire, sweeping around the small clothes chest, its one rickety chair and the ancient desk.

  The only other items in the room were a rug, which he’d shaken and his bed which he had covered with his solitary blanket. His room was cold and draughty with no fire grate to warm it but the view from the small casement window over the kingdom of Vinmore and Leersland in the distance made up for all his cold and discomfort. Besides, he’d read somewhere that physical depravation developed ones powers and he was d
esperate enough to try anything.

  Beneath his room was the guest room, which he had also swept although it had never been used since he’d taken up residence in the tower. Today was different though. Today he had made the bed, laid the fire ready to light and opened the windows to air the room with summer breezes. Despite his masters’ assurances that the guest they had invited would come he was certain the magician would never stay in the room or at least that is what he hoped. Only a master of his trade could test an apprentice's progress towards being a junior journeyman so it was a master they had invited. When all the apprentices presented their work at tomorrow's festival Maladran, as the only master magician in the six kingdoms bound to a king, would be there to judge him.

  Given a choice he would have liked it to have been Animus or Plantagenet as they wouldn’t be too hard on him but he had been told that a master couldn’t judge their own apprentice so it had to be Maladran. Jonderill already knew what Maladran would have to say about his efforts. The thought of the festival added to his gloom. At fifteen summers he would be the oldest apprentice there and the most inept. Whilst those who had seen eight or nine summers presented hand crafted tools or soft leather bridles or rabbits from the morning’s snares he would present a poorly carved stick without any power and a broom which wouldn’t move.

  He could already feel the shame of people laughing at him when the black-cloaked magician shook his head and turned his back on the apprentice to announce failure and rejection. An apprentice who failed their first test was no longer an apprentice so that would be the end of it all. There would be no more listening to the two elderly magicians telling tall stories into the early hours of the morning, no more hot toddies and horror stories on cold winter nights and no more laughter at the spells which went awry. He would have let them down and exposed them to more ridicule than they already received from people who saw them as no more than two bumbling and inept old men. That hurt more than the thought of him being publicly shamed and far more than knowing he would return to being a bound servant, perhaps in the kitchens if the Housecharge would have him back there but more than likely in Tarris's stables.