Valaika shrugged and turned once more to the entrance of her suite. “It’s not as though I’d asked to see her with any urgency. I may be aunt to the next ruler, but since my brother died, there are Noble Houses closer to the throne than I.”
“And related to the Tarkin of Hellik?”
They had reached Valaika’s door, and she paused, hand on the door’s handle.
“That is why I’ll be kept waiting only three days.”
“All to the good, then,” Parno said, following her in. “Any particular reason to invite you only to this audience and not a more private meeting?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, her smile twisted to one side. “There’s reason.”
Eighteen
A CROSS THE PASSAGE AND down three paces from the magicked door to the Blue Mage’s workroom, was another door, this one with a plain wooden latch clearly in view. It opened, Dhulyn found, into what appeared to be a more personal sitting room. Here, in addition to a wide wooden bench covered with bright cushions under the narrow window, there was a small round table with the shelf for a brazier pan between the legs, a short cabinet of the type used to hold plates and cups, several large, well-padded chairs, and niches holding oil lamps decorated with the patterned glass shades for which the city-state of Tenezia was well known. As in the other rooms, winter rugs had been removed, revealing a tiled blue-and-green floor.
It was here, Dhulyn imagined, that Avylos received social guests— if he had any, for she noticed that only one chair showed signs of repeated use—and took his meals away from his workroom, where all his focus and concentration was needed for his magical pursuits. During the year she had spent in the Scholars’ Library before taking her final oaths as a Mercenary Brother, Dhulyn had been taught that, wherever possible, Scholars should keep their workrooms separate from their living quarters. It appeared that the Blue Mage had been given the same advice.
Since there was no magic on the door, Dhulyn did not hesitate to enter the room. She checked the cupboard—plates and eating utensils as she had expected—lit two of the lamps, and, wrinkling her nose at the honeyed smell of the scented oil, pulled one of the unused chairs over to the table. She angled herself so that the light would fall into her lap, and sat down to read, leaving the door to the hall standing open. It was some hours later that she heard footsteps slow as they approached the open doorway. She closed Zania’s book, pushed it into her tunic just above her waist and pulled the laces shut, tying them where they would support the book without outlining it. She crossed her ankles, resting her feet on the brazier shelf under the table and folded her hands on her belly, as if she’d been taking a nap.
As Dhulyn expected, it was Avylos himself who appeared in the doorway, the brilliant blue of his overrobe catching the light from the oil lamps. He was carrying a tray on which rested bread, a large piece of game pie, the meat layered with slices of dried fruit, and a pottery flask of what smelled like spiced crab apple wine, sweeter than she would normally drink.
“Here, let me,” she said, getting to her feet and taking the tray from him. “You should be better served than this. Or is it that you’re hiding me even from your servants and pages?”
He smiled as though something had mightily pleased him. “Indeed, I’ve let it be known that you have the crying fever.”
Dhulyn raised her eyebrows. “That will be sure to keep away all but the desperately curious.”
“Even the desperately curious usually know better than to explore my rooms uninvited.”
“I will be sure to remember that.”
She set the tray on the table and sat down herself. The portions were generous, but even so, there was only enough food for one. As a Mercenary Brother, held captive however comfortably by an enemy, she should not touch it. But that was not the role she was playing here. If Edmir were writing her lines, and Zania directing her movements, what would they be telling her? If she and Avylos were truly what they claimed to be, the last of their tribe, the only Espadryni either of them had ever met since the Tribes were broken—how would Avylos expect her to act? What would be natural under the circumstances? Dhulyn thought of the surge of emotion she had felt on seeing and recognizing Avylos as an Espadryni. I would want to trust him, she thought. Though it went against her Schooling, and the Common Rule of the Brotherhood, she would want her kin to be worthy of her trust. And that gave her a way to turn the Common Rule to her advantage.
“Is the food not to your liking?”
“I was just thinking that if I were anywhere else, or if you were anyoneelse, I would have to find a way to refuse the food, or to trick you somehow into sharing it with me. It is our Common Rule,” she added, “to aid us against eating poisoned or drugged food.”
He reached for the plate.
Before he touched it, she laid two fingers on the back of his hand. “I said, ‘if I were anywhere else.’ ” She pulled the plate toward her, took her knife from her belt and cut herself off a bite-sized piece of pie. Avylos smiled and poured her out a glass of the wine, pleased, as she’d thought, that she trusted him.
Sun and Stars—if it is drugged, I hope it’s one I’ve been Schooled against, she thought.
Avylos got up and went to the cabinet to the right of the door. He selected for his own use a stemmed blue glass and brought it back to the table, filling it with wine before sitting down across from her once again. “Tomorrow I must leave you for the morning,” he said. “I will have food left in the corridor where this part of the House joins the main section. I advise you to be sure no one sees you fetch it. Can you do that?”
“It is another of the things I have been Schooled to, yes,” she said.
He nodded, and took a careful sip of the wine before setting it down once more on the table. “I know enough about the Mercenary Brotherhood to know that your commitment there is for life. I cannot—I must not—ask you to abandon the Brotherhood, but would you take work here?”
“In Beolind?”
“In the Royal House. We are kin, as you said. Perhaps the only Espadryni left in the whole world. Certainly you are the only one I have ever seen.” He lifted his eyes to her face for just a moment before lowering them again to the glass he was turning in his fingers.
Stick to your role, Dhulyn told herself. What would she say if she were just a lone Mercenary Brother, made such an offer? “The Brotherhood is a life tie.” That, at least, was no more than the truth, the Common Rule. “We have no pasts once we are Schooled.”
“Yet you came looking for me here, thinking that I might be one of the Espadryni. When you saw me, you called me cousin.”
She had. Dhulyn tore off a piece of bread and put it into her mouth, buying herself time to think. Despite the Common Rule, despite what she may have thought, when she had seen a Tribesman her heart had lifted and she had called out to him, instinctively, without conscious decision. As though a part of her had, after all, wanted more than the Brotherhood had given her. She’d often been impatient with other Brothers, who found it hard to put aside the years before they came to the Brotherhood. With Parno, especially, she had been short. Now she recognized that it had been very easy for her to follow the Common Rule and put her past behind her. Until she’d met with Avylos the Blue Mage, she’d had no past.
Blooded fool, she said to herself. Whatever he might make her feel, this man was not her past, this was the Blue Mage.
“I will be guided by you,” she said finally. “But perhaps I should make no plans until you have spoken with the queen.”
He leaned back, smiling. Dhulyn wished she was as satisfied with her answer as Avylos appeared to be.
“While we wait for the time to be right, will you do something for me?”
Dhulyn, her mouth once more full, raised her eyebrows as she chewed.
“Will you See for me?”
Dhulyn let herself fall back against her chair, laid her knife down on the table, and allowed herself to blink and appear startled. No matter what he knew, or how he k
new it, that would be the safest reaction to Avylos’ question. Stay in character. She could almost hear Zania’s scolding her. The sharp spike of fear that shot through her she pushed away, and kept well hidden.
She swallowed. “What do you mean?”
He smiled, and in that indulgent smile she saw the smugness, the arrogance which was what he tried to keep hidden.
“As you were so young at the breaking of the Tribes, you may not realize that the Sight was a common thing among our women. But even if I had not known this, I am a Mage. Your Mark is as clear to me as the color of your eyes.”
Dhulyn picked up the cloth napkin that still lay on the tray and began to wipe her trembling hands. She could do nothing that might betray her excitement. She and Parno had been following the rumors that said there was a Seer once more in Delmara, in the hope that Dhulyn could learn from her. But if Avylos knew the women of the Espadryniwere Seers . . . He was older. He remembered his life among the Tribes. Here might be the source of what she needed most to know.
Even so, she was not here to learn from him, but to stop him. Perhaps, if she were very careful, and played her part well, she could do both.
“A Sight of the future would be of great use to me,” he said, as the silence grew.
She leaned forward. “I would do everything within my power to help you,” she said. “But how much help you’ll find me . . .” She lifted her shoulders and let them drop.
“Now it is my turn to ask what you mean.”
How much to tell him? If she were to learn anything useful, she must be as truthful as possible. There was no way to know what detail was important.
“I have long hidden my Mark, and not simply because it would complicate the life of a Mercenary Brother,” she said. “It did not come to me until after the breaking of the Tribes, when I had seen the Hawk Moon perhaps twelve times. It terrified me, for I had no one to train me or explain. Seers are so rare, that even the Guildhalls of the Marked have little or no information to help me. So my Visions remain erratic, they do not always come when I summon them, nor can I control what I will see. They are strongest during my woman’s time, as though the blood calls them, but few other things have any effect. I was hoping to reach the Shrine of Delmara, where they say a Seer sits once more, to ask for training, but I have my living to make, and even for a Mercenary Brother, that’s not so easy.
“You are older than I,” she added, placing her hands on the edge of the table and leaning forward. “Did you have sisters? Do you remember any ritual they performed? Any tool they used?” If he knew about the vera tiles, that would tell her whether there was anything to learn from him.
He was nodding. “My magic also came late to me, after I’d left the Tribes. Like your Mark, it was limited and erratic at first. I could magic only myself, or my immediate surroundings.” Avylos gestured, and suddenly he was a brown-haired man, with Edmir’s dark eyes, then his hair returned to its normal blood red, his eyes their vivid blue. He held out a hand and a tiny blue flame appeared on his palm.
“Then, as I practiced and studied, I could send the magic farther from me.” He drew a small circle of light in the air with his right index finger and a flame appeared in one of the oil lamps Dhulyn had left dark. The surprise she did not trouble to hide was not a reaction to the lighting of the lamp, however. She had recognized the gesture he’d used painting the streaks of light in the air. She had seen it, or something very like it, before. She had seen Avylos himself gesturing in the air, but without any light following his finger. And she had seen an older Espadryni man do exactly what the Mage was doing now. Avylos painted another symbol and the shutters opened; yet another, and a small scroll flew in the window and came to rest on his open hand.
“But surely you can magic things even farther away?” Dhulyn said. “Unless you travel with the armies . . . ?
“I have ways of sending the magic farther afield, yes, but nothing I can show you now.” He laid the scroll to one side. “And you, Cousin, what can you show me?”
Dhulyn nodded smartly, as if she were only making her decision as they spoke. “If you like, I will try, but you may prefer to wait until my woman’s time comes again.”
“You asked what I remembered of the women of the Tribes,” he said. Dhulyn noticed that he did not say whether any of these women were his sisters. “Sometimes they chanted, or hummed the same tune, over and over, until it seemed they fell into a light trance, and it was then the Visions came. The chants I do not remember, but the trance I can give you myself.”
It should work, Dhulyn thought, even as she desperately wanted to say no. The Visions often came as she dropped off to sleep, while her mind was loose and drifting. She knew that certain drugs, those which relaxed and freed the mind, could make the Visions clearer—but a trance would mean being unconscious, and vulnerable, in front of him. Still, there was no way she could refuse without making it plain she did not trust him. And always before her hung the possibility that she might learn something.
“I will try,” she said.
An Avylos much younger than the man she knows sits back on his heels. He is in a small tent, just large enough to allow two people to stand upright,though at the moment he is alone and kneeling on a cushion. As she has seen him do when a child, he is drawing figures in the air, but this time lines of light trail after his moving finger. His face is split in a wide smile, as he draws faster and faster. “Ne foromat srusha,” he is saying over and over again in the tongue of the Espadryni. “I am not barren.”. . .
The room has a floor of polished oak, inlaid with a fine banding of a much darker color near the walls, almost like the edging on a carpet. There are shelves and cubbies for books and scrolls. The large worktable is to her left, placed where it will receive the light from one of two tall, narrow windows, under which a bench has been built. There are cushions on the bench, and a three-legged stool lying on its side. She has seen this room before, but this time the door is closed, the tabletop is empty except for the plain casket. No unrolled scrolls, no open books. The room is empty . . . .
It is night. The moon shines through the narrow windows, illuminating the worktable, casting shadows from the bars across the wood floor. She walks into the room and approaches the desk. Her field of vision takes in the room’s far corner, beyond the windows, to her left as she approaches the worktable. Something is wrong. She has Seen this before, she has Seen herself walk into this room, over to the worktable, her hands outstretched to the casket that sits there. She should be able to See her other self, her Seeing self, but the corner of the room is empty, she’s not there .. . .
Zania is wearing a winter cloak, the throat well closed with elaborate frogging, the hood pulled up close around her face. Her cheeks glow and her eyes dance. She is singing, and looking down at a bar of blue crystal which she holds in her bare hands. As she sings, she turns the bar first one way, then another, first by the middle, then by each end in turn. Finally, she holds the bar between the flat palms of her two hands, and shuts her eyes. . . .
Avylos is made of light. Beams of light pour from his fingers’ ends, from his eyes, from his open mouth, from the ends of his hair. He walks toward her, his hands stretched out and she feels herself stepping forward, even as she wills herself back.
Her eyes snapped open and he was kneeling in front of her, his face white, his eyes focused on her, searching, as if her features would tell him something.
“What did you See?”
“You were full of light, lord Mage. Full of light.”
“More jam?”
“Mmm.” Dhulyn accepted the small ceramic pot of nellberry jam Princess Kera handed her and spooned some onto her biscuit while she swallowed what she already had in her mouth. She’d never eaten nellberries before, and was beginning to be afraid that she’d never get another chance. She’d gone down to the castle end of the corridor that morning as Avylos had instructed her, and hadn’t been altogether surprised to find the princess had brought breakfas
t herself. Like anyone of her age, the princess was curious, and as Dhulyn expected, she had many questions.
Dhulyn returned the spoon to the tabletop, where it had been representing the Limona River. “Your strategy was a good one,” she said, pointing to the battleground she’d created using the saltcellar, spoons, jam pots, and dried fruit that had accompanied the biscuits and bite-sized meat tartlets that made up their breakfast. “You made good use of the terrain, very good use of your cavalry. Your archers, perhaps, could have been in a better position.” She tapped a spot that had been left blank before looking up at the princess. “Your brother had no hand in this plan?”
Kera shook her head without lifting her eyes from the tabletop. “Edmir has no head for strategy. The plan was all mine. Why did it fail?”
Dhulyn held up a finger. Frowned. Licked the jam off it and held it up again. “First, you expected to be outnumbered, but not as greatly as you were.” She held up another finger. “Second, you did not know that Parno and I had changed the usual strategy and formation of the Nisvean forces.” Another finger. “Third, you expected the magic that has protected the Tegrian armies for the last two campaigning seasons to work this time as well.”
“So it really wasn’t my fault?”
Dhulyn raised her eyebrows. “Come. You knew as soon as you’d seen Edmir’s image in the pool what had really happened.”
Kera looked up from the representation of the battle of Limona. “I know. It had to be Avylos. Yet, somehow, I couldn’t feel sure.”
“And you are sure now?”
The girl nodded. “Avylos tried to kill my brother.”
“And he is still trying.”
“Why are you helping us?”
Dhulyn shrugged. “It began as a way to follow our Common Rule. We don’t hold for ransom, and your brother was ours to decide upon, no one else’s. Then, things grew more complicated. With respect to your mother, an ambitious and predatory queen is a worry for her neighbors, if for no one else. Such a queen with a tame Mage can be a larger worry then.” She fell silent as images passed through her mind. “If you had seen what he did to Probic, you would not need to ask me why we are here. We have had some experience, my Partner and I, of Mages and the like who become ambitious for themselves. It is not a problem from which you can walk away. It will follow.”
The Soldier King Page 28
