by Carol Berg
“Saints Awaiting!” mumbled Ilario. “Rogue mages are the Souleater’s servants. At the least, I’ve some protection.” He pulled a lump of black string, seashells, scarlet beads, and silver bangles from his pocket and dangled it from silk-gloved fingers. “Adept Fedrigo made this for me before I traveled to the sea last summer, as I had expressed my mortal fear of crocodiles. I think it must be a most efficacious charm. For certain, I suffered neither scratch, bite, nor sighting of the wicked creatures. Indeed, I could not even complain about a poor bed upon my travels. Do you think it will suffice in this dismal wood?”
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. “Certainly, Chevalier. I’d wager we’ll encounter not a single crocodile today.”
Hilarity bubbled out of him until he near choked on it. At least he took no offense when my annoyance burst its bounds so injudiciously—damnable idiot.
Our mounts’ hooves thudded solidly on the well-beat track through a tunnel of oaks and chestnuts. Stray gleams of sunlight glinted on bits of polished tin hung here and there on the lower branches. No matter the Camarilla’s strictures against illicit practice, the ignorant would ever pay hedge witches and marketplace conjurers for such useless trinkets, thinking to ward their travels on perilous paths.
As we rounded a curve, the path opened into a trampled clearing. The unhandsome stone house with sagging thatch might have been a particularly large acorn dropped from one of the thick-boled oaks. I signaled a halt.
“At last!” Ilario flung a long leg over his beast and dropped lightly to the turf. With a flourish, the lanky young lord removed his traveling cloak and tossed it across his saddle, exposing a sky blue satin waistcoat and uselessly thin and tight leather breeches of the fashionable sort deemed suitable for “rustic” excursions. He swept his arm in my direction. “Lead me, good Portier.”
I disembarked from my lead-footed mare and smoothed my sober gray tunic. No one would ever call me a “fashionable young twit” or “a preening peacock with a mind less weighty than his feathers.” Sighing, I scuffed a clot of dung from my boots. Quite a duet we made—Ilario the Fop, the laughingstock of Merona, and Portier de Duplais, librarian, bound together like a peacock and a tortoise, ready to face the assaults of the unholy.
“Divine grace shine upon thee and thy ancestors, master mage!” I called.
No one answered. Ilario kissed his luck charm, and though his expression maintained a proper sobriety, he winked at me in the intimate manner that I had not yet deciphered, but which felt most unseemly.
I called again, a little louder this time. “Master mage, a word with you, if we might.”
No leaf stirred in the thicket of saplings, buckthorn, and laurel that obscured much of the ugly house. No smoke rose from the peak of the roof.
“Bother, if the fellow is away.” Ilario pursed his lips, blew a disappointed note, and propped his arms on his saddle, gazing mournfully at me across his beast. Even his plume seemed to droop.
Dried mud, gouged with footprints, bore witness to a great number of visitors—both men and women, many in thick, nailed boots and others on horseback. Some had come in sodden winter; others within the past tennight, as approaching summer tempered the rains. Horses had been tethered here for hours at a time.
“Ill-tempered,” the locals had told us. “Wouldn’t cross him . . . not for a purse full of kivrae.” Yet yeomen, merchants, tradesmen, and even the poorest of husbandmen and laborers sought him out, and he served them willing. “’E fixes them as is cursed in the mind,” was the clearest report we’d scavenged. That could mean anything from providing sleeping draughts to excising bits of brain tissue like the storied Mad Healer of Dock Street.
So why the shabby surroundings? Even in these times, when magical practitioners’ prestige had ebbed to the level of jongleurs or card cheats, a master mage could live as well as a duc. Privacy could be bought in fairer packages than an ugly hut in a chestnut grove.
I rapped on the door but jerked my hand away. The awareness of living enchantment slithered up my arm like a fiery snake. I’d never felt the like. I grasped a small, smooth stone inside my coin pocket. The courret, a rare wardstone borrowed from Seravain, chilled my fingers, declaring that the lingering enchantment posed no danger. I’d no other way to tell. Disentangulation, discerning the particular nature of the enchantments or magical residues my trained senses perceived, required spellwork, and thus lay beyond my abilities.
Footsteps crunched in the brush.
“Who’s there?” The resonant voice was a presence in itself, deep, substantial, brittle, cold as the north wind off the barrens of Delourre.
I whipped my head around.
A lean, wiry man halted at the edge of the trees. His gaunt face was unshaven. The dark hair that dangled wild and loose at front and sides had escaped from a shaggy tail. Despite the imperious greeting, the pick and three iron lever bars dangling from his belt, and the heavy boots, russet tunic, and work-stained canvas slops named him a common countryman. And though he measured scant centimetres taller than my own modest height, I was uncomfortably certain he could snap my scrawny limbs like twigs. He balanced a sizable stone on his shoulder with only one hand. He appeared entirely unlike any mage I had ever met, and yet . . .
“We’ve come to see the mage on important business, goodman. Is he nearby?” Ilario dabbed his long nose with a kerchief and craned his neck, peering deeper into the trees.
If I could but glimpse the man’s neck . . . Mages were forbidden to hide or remove their silver collars, the Camarilla’s concession to the fears of the powerless.
“Identify yourselves.” The fellow emerged from the gloom and halted in the center of the clearing. Indeed, a seamless band of silver encircled his sinewed neck, wholly incongruous with his rough attire. And the collar’s fine lay of gold designated the wearer a master mage. Yet it was the voice that marked him as worthy of note . . . and the eyes set deep under heavy brows. The fiery green of new oak leaves, those eyes could slice paper edge-on. For certain, no common laborer had such.
The fop snapped his hands to his sides and inclined his head. “Ilario de Sylvae, Chevalier ys Sabria, sir mage. And my good companion, Portier de Duplais.”
“Divine grace, Master,” I said, bowing with my left hand laid on my right shoulder, the mark of my blood family clearly exposed. “We would appreciate a word with you on a matter of interest.”
“I share no interests with aristos.”
“I am the archivist at Collegia Seravain,” I said. “When examining our records—”
“Go away. I dislike company.” The sorcerer hefted his burden a little higher and vanished into the oak and blackthorn scrub crowding the left side of the house.
Ilario bolted after him like a startled doe. “Hold on, sir mage!”
“Please, Master! Chevalier!” My call might have been floating dust for all it slowed them.
I had no choice but to follow. I needed a talented outsider to pursue this investigation. If this mage had skills to match his arrogance, the level of knowledge his collar bespoke, and some quantity of honor that could be claimed or bought, we might have found our man.
Thorny branches snagged my clothes, and my boots sank into the soft earth.
However, the gangly fop darted through the tangle unhindered. “Hear me out, sir mage,” he called brightly. “We’ve brought you an invitation . . . an opportunity, one might say. If we could but sit for a moment, share a glass of wine, perhaps. My mistress will be most distressed if her offer is unheard. Most distressed . . .”
Mistress? Enthroned god! I’d told the fool to let me handle this.
Wrenching my sleeve from the barbed grip of the brush, I stumbled into a small, sunny garden: a few orderly hills and rows of vegetables, and a raised bed of close-planted herbs, swarming with bees. Garlic shoots and thick, low masses of dusty greenery bordered the plot.
Astonishing. From the mage’s wild appearance, and the smoldering fury that tainted his words, one might better
have expected devilish machinery or smoking pits.
“I’ve tasks enough to occupy my time. Take your opportunity elsewhere.” The earth quivered when he dropped his loaf-shaped stone to the barren ground on the far side of the garden. At least fifty similarly shaped stones lay about the area, some stacked, some scattered randomly, some carefully trimmed and fitted into three walls set square to one another. Chips and flakes of stone littered the dirt.
Ilario blotted his cheeks with his lace kerchief. “Please, good sir mage—”
The mage whirled, his fiery gaze raking Ilario’s turnout from purple plume to sleek boots. He flared his nostrils. “If my oven was built, I could bake bread and serve a noble guest and his companion properly. Even a coarse meal would better suit your taste than converse with the likes of me. But my bakefire cannot be lit as yet, so you must leave my home unsatisfied.” He removed the pick and the iron bar from his belt and tossed them to the dirt. “Leave. Do fine gentlemen like you understand a plain-spoke word?”
Shivers cooled my overheated skin. No welcome here; the villagers had not erred in that.
Squatting with his back to us, the mage shoved the new stone close to the others. His wide, long-fingered left hand palmed the height and width of the block as if to measure it against its fellows. The back of that hand, thick with black hair, was clean of any family mark, as the tale of Exsanguin bespoke. Odd how the right hand stayed so firmly inside his tunic. Was he armed?
Despairing, I ventured into the dismissive silence. “If you would but allow me to explain, Master. My position as archivist led me to your name—”
“We are sent, sir mage!” Ilario bellowed at the man’s back, while bulging his eyes and waggling his brows at me incomprehensibly. “My mistress believes that current mania for scientific advancement has unfairly turned popular opinion against the mystic arts. She has assembled a consilium of mages, graciously lending her particular prestige to their works.” He began to march up and down, bobbing his feathered cap like a cock in a hen roost. “Certainly your next question will be what works might these be? Unfortunately, I am incapable of telling you. Though I represent a woman whose intellect scales great heights, my own wit plods along the solid earth. My comrade Portier, here, himself a learned practitioner of your fantastical arts, could explain our aims better, but, of course, he is a modest man of modest rank and shy of intruding in conversation between his betters. Besides, my lady has particularly charged me to offer you her patronage. . . .”
Blessed saints, the mage would believe we were both flea-wits. The fool Ilario had gotten it wholly muddled. We had agreed that I would assess the mage by luring him into a test of his capability and honor. Only when I was satisfied would we broach the matter of the queen’s mages and what we needed him to do. The queen knew—and could know—nothing about this mission.
Yet, indeed, the mage twisted around and stared at Ilario with an intensely curious expression.
“My lady relishes nurturing new talent. I can assure you . . .” Ilario’s prattle skidded to a stop under the weight of the mage’s scrutiny.
The disconcerting gaze shifted to me. My skin itched. Unease swelled in my belly, reaching full growth, then relaxed again like a flower that buds, blooms, and fades all in the space of ten heartbeats. My soul felt abraded—exposed. Likely it was my conscience. Surely this man recognized the lies.
“What game is this you play?” said the mage softly, returning his attention to Ilario. His dark brows knit a line. “Speak as yourself this time, lord.”
Ilario’s lips parted, but no sound issued from between them. I, too, felt rendered mute.
“Does truth pain a Sabrian chevalier so much?” The mage extracted a stylus from a jumble of tools in a wooden chest and scored the new block across several of its faces, rolling and marking it entirely with his left hand. “So, one or the other of you can tell me truthfully why you’re here. Or I can draw it out of your asses with a billhook. Or you can go away and leave me to my common labor.”
A sighing breeze shifted the overhanging branches. The sultry gloom deepened. I rubbed my arms through the worn velvet of my doublet.
I was no gullible stable hand who believed charmed cats could cure his pox or pond scum make his wife fertile. Though all agreed that Sabria’s greater magic had faded, I had studied the testimony of those who had seen mages soothe whirlwinds and stem the advance of poisoned tides. I myself had felt the balance of the five divine elements and the flow of power through my veins and deepest self—no matter that the result was naught but a sputter in the scheme of the world. But the vibrant and richly textured power swirling about this sunny garden was no more kin to the magic I had experienced than a sunset is cousin to a candle flame. Pressing the back of my hand to my mouth, I fought a compulsion to spew King Philippe’s secrets, though the mage had not even raised his uncommon voice.
Ilario’s golden skin took on the hue of sour milk. He swallowed, blinked, and dabbed at his quivering lower lip, then straightened his long neck as if for the headsman. “My apologies, sir mage. Allow me to clarify. That my kinswoman defies popular beliefs with support of sorcery is true. What I failed to mention is that she is interested in certain areas of magical pursuit that many people might consider . . . unsavory. And I must confess that my mistress has not yet heard of you. I took this inquiry upon myself after hearing Portier’s report—”
“My lord!” Father Creator, he was ready to tell all. “Discretion, sir!”
“We must tell him the truth, Portier! For my lady’s sake. Sir mage, some days ago, my friend Portier told me of your unusual collaring at Collegia Seravain. I bade him locate you in hopes you might take an interest in my mistress’s needs. In fact, I’ve been thinking of hiring my own mage. I’ve no staff at all save my valet, which is highly improper for a person of rank, depending on others to see to my requirements. . . .” Ilario, lost in his prattling deception, flashed me a desperate look. My head threatened to split.
The mage tossed his stylus aside and settled onto the dirt, resting his folded arms on his drawn-up knees, as if prepared to lecture us. “What part of my history leads you or you”—he glared ferociously at me—“to believe that I might be willing to be kept in some aristo’s menagerie alongside the horses, hounds, and birds? I work as I please and study what I please, and no one demands my time be spent making love philtres or skin glamours or servicing whatever ‘unsavory’ desires your mistress wishes to indulge. I’ve countless better things to do.”
As I tried not to stare at the mage’s now-exposed right hand—a red-scarred, twisted claw living ugly and useless at the end of a well-muscled arm—my mind raced to knit Ilario’s unraveled stupidity into a useful story. The fop had skewed the truth just enough to leave me an opening for the very test of skill and character I wished this visit to encompass. If only I knew how to entice the mage into revelations. Obviously, he cared naught for comforts or renown. What induced him to accommodate those who came here seeking his help?
“Because the opportunities we offer are unique,” I blurted, insight like a blade between my ears. “Your history and this place”—I waved my hand to encompass his odd home—“and gossip of a forbidding mage who untangles the mysteries of broken minds led me—us—to believe we might find in you a certain . . . nontraditional . . . approach to your work. A talented man interested in puzzles.”
“Go on.”
Scarce daring to believe I’d guessed right, I laid down another thread. “We could offer virtually unlimited resources to advance whatever studies you wish—books, funds, connections to information and materials from every corner of the known world, the most prominent mages in Sabria as your colleagues. You would have the opportunity to collaborate in magic of a grander scale than you could—”
Mirthless laughter halted me midargument. “So you are more fools than villains,” said the mage. “Unfortunately for you, it has been many years since I concluded that large-scale magical works are entirely sham and chicanery, and
that the ‘most prominent mages’ in Sabria have not the least concept of true sorcery. In short, your benevolent mistress is misguided at best, some duc’s whore perpetuating a fraud at worst, and she could not offer me gold enough to participate in such a mockery.”
“Speak no slander, sir!” Ilario’s words dropped in the mage’s lap like a challenge glove. “We serve the Queen of Sabria.”
“Lord Ilario!” I snapped, horrified. The fop had almost got me believing he had a wit.
“The queen?” The mage guffawed. “So the ‘prominent’ colleagues you offer are the shadow queen’s trained Camarilla pups? I’d sooner bed a leper than ally myself with clowns and fools.”
No reasoning man could wholly discount the charges laid against sorcerers—that some of us paraded grand illusion in the guise of true sorcery. But this brutish arrogance was insupportable.
“Civilized men do not belittle those they do not know,” I snapped, summoning what dignity I could muster ankle deep in a vegetable patch. “You may be gifted, sir, but the mages of the Camarilla have proved their talents over centuries.”
He only grew quieter and more contemptuous. “Show me the great work of a Camarilla mage, student, and I will show you with what tools a minimally talented hod carrier can duplicate it. Show me one of your own great works. Or perhaps . . . even a small one?”
And so was Ilario’s challenge glove returned to my own lap, along with the mage’s choice of weapons. I had not thought my failed status so obvious.
Annoyed at my slip of control, I gathered my temper. I had not come here to demonstrate my own magical worth. If we were to fail at this, all the better this man believe me Ilario’s intellectual peer.
“No,” I said, crushing doubt and pride alike with the hammer of necessity. “You show us. Elsewise, we shall assume you’re naught but a trickster with a crude mouth, afraid to speak your own name, and with no better concept of magical truth than those you disdain. I can provide interesting, magically challenging employment for a skilled mage who values truth, scorns danger, and bears no loyalty to the Camarilla or any other magical practitioner.”
