“Yes, master,” he said, finally. “Where do you think he was going?”
“He passed outside the range of my spells, but I don’t think he went very far,” Master Faye said. He looked over at Joshua, thoughtfully. “How much progress have you made on riding a horse?”
Joshua made a face. He would never have been permitted to ride if he hadn’t been a magician – and yet he’d discovered, when he’d started to learn, that he disliked it intensely. The horses all seemed to hate him and threatened to unseat him whenever he gave them an opportunity. And to think he’d envied horsemen back when he had been a child! He hadn’t realised just how bad-tempered the beasts actually were.
“Take one out when the sun rises and ride around the fields, near the border,” Master Faye ordered. If he saw Joshua’s expression, he said nothing. “I want you to keep an eye out for anything unusual.”
Joshua blinked. “Anything?”
“Signs that someone might be lurking just outside the borderline,” Master Faye explained, patiently. “Speak to the farmers; ask them if they’ve seen anything odd. Don’t use truth spells unless they have a real strange story, one you find unbelievable. And remember the story of Mervin.”
“Right,” Joshua said. Mervin had been one of the few Scions to believe that someone should be policing magicians, rather than allowing them to run rampant. His career had been spent hunting magicians who used black magic, to the point where he’d acted more like a City Guard Investigator than a proper magician. An odd man, but very practical. The stories had included lectures on what to look for if one happened to be hunting a black magician.
Master Faye gave him a sharp look. “If you find anything, contact me at once and try to avoid meeting him,” he added. “You won’t be any match for a Scion, even after the hard work we’ve done over the last two weeks. Just keep your distance and contact me.”
He smiled, rather thinly. “Go back to bed,” he ordered. “I’ll keep a watchful eye out for trouble.”
Joshua didn’t sleep well that night, finally resorting to a sleeping spell he’d been told to use on himself only in the direst of emergencies. He couldn’t help the nightmares crawling through his skull and it was almost a relief when he awoke, just as the sun was slowly rising above the mountains in the distance. Muttering words under his breath that would have earned him a rebuke from his father, he staggered into the washroom and splashed cold water on his face. He didn’t feel refreshed at all.
There was no sign of Master Faye as he walked downstairs and into the kitchen, only the two silent servants, who laid out a full breakfast before he could say a word. Master Faye had clearly briefed them on what Joshua would be doing all day, for they’d also laid out a packed lunch and several bottles of juice. No alcohol, of course. Joshua had been told that alcohol could make a magician silly, and then dangerous. It was unwise to drink any, even a tiny sip.
Shaking his head, he ate his breakfast, filled his knapsack with the packed lunch and a handful of sweets from the kitchen, and then walked down towards the stables at the back of the house. Master Faye wasn’t much of a horseman either; Joshua had never understood why a man with the power to fly even bothered to keep horses. But then, a horseman was less noticeable than a magician flying through the air. It was the only reason Joshua could accept why any magician would want to ride a horse.
“Filly is ready for you, Master Joshua,” the stable boy said, tipping his hat. Joshua had the feeling he would have liked the lad, if there hadn’t been a massive social gulf between them, one that could never be bridged. “He’s in a very good mood.”
Joshua scowled. The boy loved horses and they seemed to love him back, even though he spent most of his time mucking out their stables. His family didn’t have the money to buy a horse for themselves, let alone keep it, which was probably why he’d entered Master Faye’s service. Not that Joshua could complain; it was traditional for apprentices to take care of their master’s horses and he would have hated the job. The beasts would have hated him too.
“I’m sure,” he said, finally. The expensive lessons with a fine horseman had been largely a waste of money. “Let’s see the beast.”
Joshua had never been able to tell if Filly was male or female, although he had been told that the beast was male. The creature had a wicked temper when roused and an unerring sense for when a rider was not capable of keeping him under control. Joshua forced himself to look calm as the stable boy led the horse out of the stall and started to fit him with a saddle and bridle. Filly eyed him with dark eyes that promised a nasty experience in the future. It was impossible to escape the feeling that the beast was mocking him.
Master Faye insisted loudly that humans were the only intelligent creatures on Darius. The legends of mermaids had never been more than sailor stories; darker legends, which were shared between the old wives, were often used as excuses for bad behaviour. Looking at Filly, Joshua couldn’t help thinking that his master was wrong. There was a dark intelligence in the horse’s eyes. Or maybe he was just imagining it.
“You behave yourself, all right?” The stable boy said, to the horse. “Or the master will sell you for cat meat.”
Joshua snorted. He’d also been told that Filly was a famous stud horse. Everyone for miles around wanted their mares to be covered by the big black horse, who probably thought himself in heaven. The stable boy’s threat was impractical; even if Filly was no longer allowed out of the stable, he’d still be allowed to have sex with female horses. There was something almost enviable about that.
Carefully, Joshua climbed up on Filly’s back and into the saddle, casting a charm that should prevent him from falling off, or at least ensuring a relatively soft landing. Filly snickered – an alarmingly humanlike sound – and shivered, very slightly. Joshua had wondered if he was actually a transfigured human, but Master Faye had sworn that he was a real horse. It wasn’t uncommon to check newly-purchased animals just to make sure someone wasn’t trying to slip a spy into a household.
The stable boy passed him his knapsack, which Joshua slung over his shoulder. He could have used the saddlebags, but Filly had once unseated him and run off, forcing Joshua to spend the rest of the day chasing the wretched beast. Master Faye had laughed when he’d come home, tired and sweaty, and refused to teach him a charm for controlling horses directly. Joshua would almost sooner have been beaten.
“All right,” he said, knowing that the whole trip wasn’t going to be fun. “Let’s go.”
Filly marched out of the stable and then, without any warning, jumped into a canter, moving down the middle of the street at terrifying speed. Joshua gritted his teeth and manipulated the reins carefully, knowing that pulling them too hard could result in the horse slamming to a halt and himself flying over Filly’s head and down onto the cobbled ground. People scattered as they saw Filly coming, getting out of the way faster than they did for anyone human, even Master Faye. Filly’s reputation as a bad-tempered beast had spread throughout the entire city.
Joshua forced himself to stay calm as they approached the gates. There were a pair of carts in front of them, being unloaded by the farmers under the watchful eye of the City Guard, but Filly just kept going, speeding up as he charged directly at the carts. A moment before they would have run into them, the horse jumped, cleared the carts effortlessly and raced out of the city. The Guardsmen knew better than to get in the way.
Outside the city, the road rapidly became much less comfortable. Each of the Pillars was supposed to maintain their own road network, but Master Faye had never been able to build up the manpower needed to repair the damaged roads. Warlock’s Bane profited from his careful management, including allowing the merchants to make their own decisions with minimal taxation, yet something would have to be done about the roads sooner or later. When he was Pillar, Joshua told himself, he would organise a muster and get people to work on the roads. Or maybe he’d just offer to pay workers double if they worked outside the city.
Like most cities, Warlock’s Bane was surrounded by farms, which produced much of its food. Joshua had accompanied Master Faye as he’d reviewed them, taking his customary ten per cent of their produce, although he had to admit that he’d found the whole process rather boring. The farmers had locked up their daughters, either out of fear of him or of Master Faye, as some Pillars were known for deflowering as many girls as they could. Joshua couldn’t imagine Master Faye with anyone. If nothing else, he seemed to have no other interests beyond power and ruling.
Joshua waved to a farmer riding on a cart as Filly thundered by, heading right for the borderline. There were a number of farms that straddled the frontier, or existed outside it in hopes of avoiding Master Faye’s taxes, although that wasn’t always a smart decision. The true danger of living outside a bailiwick was being targeted by Scions, either for food, women or simple amusement. Joshua had been training for six months when he’d seen the aftermath of one attack and it hadn’t been pretty. The farmers had been normal humans when the Scions had arrived. Afterwards, they’d been monsters. And no one had been able to do anything about it because they were on the wrong side of the borderline.
The sun was higher in the sky when he finally slowed down, approaching the outermost farm. Joshua had a private suspicion that the farmer had intended to settle outside the borderline, or support others who were outside the borderline, but Master Faye didn’t seem inclined to make an issue of it. Pillars who dictated too much to their population, he’d claimed, tended to have less useful populations over time. If he’d just wanted power without responsibility, he would never have challenged the last Pillar of Warlock’s Bane to a fight.
Filly snickered again as they stopped just outside the gate, but Joshua was wise to the horse’s tricks this time and used a freeze charm before slipping out of the saddle and dropping down to the ground. Once he’d tied Filly firmly to a tree, he released the charm and listened with a certain amount of pleasure to the horse’s angry noises. Humans disliked the freeze charm; horses clearly reacted worse. Grinning, Joshua turned his back and walked away, heading towards the small farmhouse on the other side of the gate. A middle-aged man appeared around the corner and lifted an eyebrow when he saw Joshua. He didn’t look pleased to see the Pillar’s apprentice.
“Welcome, My Lord,” he said. No, he definitely didn’t sound pleased. By rights, Joshua could claim hospitality, but it wouldn’t be a very welcome imposition. “We are at your service.”
Joshua nodded. “My master sent me to enquire if you’d seen anything unusual in the area,” he said, without preamble. There was no point in staying near the farm any longer than was strictly necessary. Nice as it would be to try to seduce the farmer’s daughter, Master Faye would be furious if he wasted time. “Anything, anything at all.”
The farmer relaxed slightly, looking a little relieved. His tax evasion either hadn’t been noticed or had simply been ignored, Joshua decided. It wasn’t at all uncommon for farmers to attempt to evade paying more than the bare minimum; Master Faye ignored it, as long as the city had enough food. Joshua wasn’t sure what view he’d take of it when he was Pillar.
“Nothing, My Lord,” he said, finally. “There was a wagon convoy nine days ago, if that counts; they sold Molly some spices before heading onwards to the city.”
And evaded taxes in the process, Joshua knew. “I think that isn’t really what I’m looking for,” he admitted. “Is there nothing else at all? No strangers? No rumours from across the borderline? No odd magic at all?”
The farmer hesitated, and then shook his head. “No, My Lord,” he said. “It has been a quiet month.”
Joshua thanked him and walked back to Filly, feeling the farmer’s eyes following him until he managed to climb back onto the horse and head out, past the borderline. Not that it was very clear; the boundary was really nothing more than a handful of charmed posts, creating a line that marked the edge of Master Faye’s jurisdiction. No one could enter without realising that they were now subject to a Pillar who determined the law in his bailiwick. Outside, there was a faint sense of freedom – and chaos. Joshua knew that there were people who liked living outside bailiwicks, but they were at the mercy of anyone stronger than themselves. It very rarely ended well.
The road managed to grow even worse as they cantered along, looking for anything unusual, but there was no sign of anything. Eventually, they reached the resting place and Joshua steered the horse inside. There were no wagons in the clearing, no travellers resting before heading down to Warlock’s Bane, yet Joshua couldn’t escape the sense that he was being watched. The dark forest looked utterly impassable. Anything could be hiding there, including a greedy Scion bent on conquest. Slowly, reluctantly, Joshua turned and pushed Filly out of the clearing, back to the road. It was something he would have to report to Master Faye...
... But if there was a Scion there, outside the borderline, who could object? It wasn’t as if he was living in Master Faye’s territory. He could do anything there.
Once they were back on the road, Joshua took the opportunity to use his mental voice to speak to Master Faye, to tell him what they’d learned, before he started to head along the borderline. He could ask the other farmers as he swept around the edge of the bailiwick, a task that would take most of the day. Irritating as it was, it was necessary – and besides, the alternative was more lectures from Master Faye. The trip was almost a break. Or it would have been, if he hadn’t had Filly.
The horse snickered again and Joshua sighed. When he was Pillar, he was going to hand Filly over to a breeder with strict orders never to let him into a field, let alone onto the roads. And he was never going to ride a horse again. Flying, with all its dangers, was much more pleasant than riding. He saw birds flying in the distance and smiled. Flying was a skill he needed to master. It gave him a sense of freedom that he’d never had while down on the ground.
“Behave yourself,” he told Filly. The horse made a rude noise and tried to bolt. Joshua pulled on the reins carefully, readying another charm. There had to be something that could allow a magician to control a horse directly. “We have a few more farms to visit before we can go home.”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
The snoop followed the rider as he headed away from the clearing and back towards the first set of farms. Dacron watched through its sensors as the rider turned westwards, taking a poorly-maintained road that led around where they believed the border to run. His arrival at the landing zone could not be a coincidence. Dacron lacked the sheer processing power he’d had as an AI, but he could still calculate the odds – and knew that they were staggeringly low that his arrival was a coincidence.
“We tracked him backwards,” the AIs said, through the radio link. The QCC links that would have allowed them to practically manifest on Darius were breaking down, suffering a series of inexplicable glitches. They were operating at one remove and hated it. “He set out from Warlock’s Bane as soon as the sun rose, heading out towards us. They must have detected our arrival.”
Elyria scowled. “But how?”
“Magic?” The AIs suggested. “Or maybe they are more aware of what happens in their world than we realised.”
Dacron scowled. The more he looked at the data, the more he was convinced that there was an intelligence behind Darius, even if it was one with very strange priorities. It disrupted – but it didn’t stop – surveillance programs. There had been no attempt to do more than interfere with the snoops, if the interference had been deliberate. And then the shuttle hadn’t suffered any major glitches until it was safely down on the ground, when there had been a glitch that had shocked the team, without actually killing anyone. Dacron’s best guess was that the glitches were warning shots, but why would anyone do that when they could just have hailed Hamilton and asked them to leave the star system?
“That isn’t the issue,” Jorlem said, calmly. “Do we move the shuttle?”
There was a long pause. A simple visual survey of t
he clearing would have revealed nothing; the diggers had been so precise that they’d actually rebuilt the wheel tracks left behind by previous visitors. But if the locals had some form of ESP that would allow them to locate the shuttle... the observation team might be dangerously exposed. There was nothing stopping the locals from simply digging it up with buckets and spades.
“That raises a separate issue,” Fred offered. “Can we move the shuttle?”
Dacron had his doubts. The antigravity units had been tested several times since the glitch and they all seemed to be in perfect condition, which proved nothing. They’d been in perfect condition before the shuttle had entered the atmosphere. Moving the shuttle might be simple, or it might be very dangerous. The next glitch might prove lethal.
“I do not believe that we should risk it unless we have no other choice,” he said, and outlined his reasoning. “If the locals do come here with a party, we stun them and move away.”
“Assuming that stun weapons work,” Adam pointed out. “Who knows what will glitch next?”
Adana glanced over at him. “Don’t you know anything from the Ancient worlds?”
“The glitches were always random,” Adam explained. “Sometimes pieces of technology would refuse to work – and then the next day they’d be working perfectly. The only common thread we found that bound them together was that the more advanced any given piece of technology was, the more likely it was to glitch. Some of those glitches proved fatal.”
Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows) Page 12
