The Warrior's Bond

by Juliet McKenna

  New arrivals prompted Allin to move hastily to one of the vacated seats, to claim their place in the queue. Temar grabbed the wine and moved after her. Hemmed in on either side, they exchanged silent glances over their glasses. The second chime of night was sounding by the time the portly man who’d been before them came back out, face dark with stubborn resentment.

  Allin stood up, brushing decisively at her skirts. “Let’s see what’s to see.”

  Clutching the wine bottle for lack of anywhere to put it, Temar followed the mage girl into a bare room. All they saw was an iron-bound chest set on an unwieldy table in the middle of a rug woven from strips of threadbare cloth, two females sitting on stools beyond it. Tallow candles in sconces lit damp stained walls, smoky flames briefly fluttering to add more soot to the dirty lath ceiling.

  Allin said something courteous and the older woman stood up. Her white hair was all but invisible beneath a pale blue kerchief, and she wore a full, shapeless skirt and sleeveless bodice of the same material laced over a loose linen blouse. No one in Tormalin dressed like this though Temar had seen some of the mercenary women in Kel Ar’Ayen wearing such garb. Poldrion’s touch had whitened this woman’s hair unduly early, he decided. Her firm face suggested she was still in her middle years but the lines that furrowed her brow hinted those years had been hard.

  “Mistress Maedura.” Allin gestured to Temar. “My companion, Natyr.”

  “All who seek answers are welcome,” said the woman in passable Tormalin. Her shrewd eyes rather unexpectedly lacked the hard calculation Temar expected from a trickster. They were also the colour of a rain-washed sky and he realised how seldom he’d seen anyone with light eyes since arriving here.

  “Your questions?” Mistress Maedura prompted.

  “Of course,” said Allin nervously.

  Temar looked at the younger woman sitting silent beside Mistress Maedura. She had the same pale eyes but hers were as empty as a summer noon, staring fixedly at the wall behind Temar. She was dressed in a soft green weave, skirt spotted with spilled food, and her sparse dull hair was cut short in a ragged crop. The laces of her bodice pulled unevenly over a mature figure yet her face had the unlined vacancy of a child.

  “My daughter was caught between the realms of life as a babe,” said Maedura without emotion. “Lennarda’s mind wanders the shades, but from time to time she encounters those crossing the river with Poldrion. When Saedrin opens the door to admit them to the Otherworld, she glimpses what lies beyond and hears some small snatches of lost voices.” Despite her rehearsed words Temar nevertheless felt she genuinely believed what she said.

  Maedura gave Allin a handful of three-sided bones and gestured her to the single stool facing the chest. “Set out your birth signs on the lid.” Allin fumbled through the bones, finally picking out three separate runes.

  Temar took a step closer, recognising the Deer, the Broom and the Mountain. “You draw three separate bones?”

  Allin shot him a piercing look of rebuke. “But your father would have insisted on the Tormalin way, wouldn’t he, just the one bone?” She turned to Maedura, speaking in rapid, offhand Lescari. Temar would have preferred to know what was being said about him but whatever yarn Allin was spinning, the suspicion flaring in Maedura’s eyes faded to an ever present watchfulness.

  Allin turned to Temar again. “Your grandmother favoured the runes, didn’t she? She swore there was art to casting them.”

  Temar nodded hastily. Holding his wine glass up to shield his mouth, he began whispering under his breath, reciting one of the few charms Guinalle had managed to drill into him. If Artifice was being worked here, it would echo in his hearing with unmistakable resonance. He forced himself to concentrate despite the faint dizziness aggravating his lurking headache, reluctantly realising he wasn’t as recovered as he’d boasted.

  “Ask your question,” Maedura commanded.

  “Where’s my cousin Chel?” Allin demanded abruptly. Temar could see the tips of her ears going scarlet.

  Maedura took her daughter’s hands and laid them on the runes. Aversion flitted momentarily over Lennarda’s blank face then her shoulders sagged, head drooping to show a scabbed and sore scalp. Temar nearly lost the rhythm of the enchantment he was attempting as he realised someone had been pulling the girl’s hair out in handfuls.

  “I see a river.” Lennarda sat bolt upright, startling Allin into a muted squeak. Temar’s fingers tightened on the neck of the bottle.

  “I see a river curving over a plain.” The girl’s voice was deep, firm and assured. “A big river, wide-mouthed as it enters the sea. The water is brown, bringing goodness down from the high land. Then this will be fertile ground. There are marshes, saltings full of white birds. No birds I ever saw before, but we should try bringing down a few, to see if they make good eating. See, there is a fair landing yonder, open grass above the tide line. We can build a wharf along the bank. There is plenty of timber for shelter too, goodly stands of trees.”

  Lennarda stopped dead, pulling away from the coffer and folding her arms awkwardly against her chest. She hunched over, rocking back and forth with incoherent whimpers.

  Allin turned to Temar, her face an eloquent mix of embarrassment and disappointment. “Shall we go?”

  “Your payment?” Mistress Maedura held her daughter’s hands down as they hooked into impotent claws.

  “Your fee?” asked Allin icily. She stood and pulled her cape around her.

  “Whatever you think the information is worth.” Maedura got to her feet as Lennarda subsided into her earlier vacant stillness.

  “Not very much, to be truthful.” Allin drew a resolute breath.

  “No, wait,” Temar broke in, blood pulsing behind his eyes. “Allin, ask again, about anyone.”

  Allin looked doubtfully at him and Maedura laid a protective hand on her daughter’s uncaring shoulder. Temar held up one of the Tormalin Empire Crowns. “My payment in advance.”

  “If this is your question, you must set out your runes,” said Maedura in some confusion.

  “Here.” Temar pushed at the single bone bearing the Salmon, the Reed and the Sea. “I was born under the greater moon, does that make any difference?”

  Maedura shook her head as she lifted her daughter’s hands with their chewed, split fingernails towards the rune and Temar hastily withdrew, flesh crawling at the thought of touching the unfortunate.

  “I seek a little girl.” He coughed and forced his voice to stay level. “A little girl wearing a yellow dress with red flowers sewn around the hem. I do not know her name but she has an older brother and a sister. They all sleep together wrapped in a brown cloak.” His throat closed with emotion and he couldn’t say any more.

  Lennarda’s low, unintelligible noises of distress were abruptly cut off as she slumped forward. Even forewarned, Temar still jumped as Lennarda suddenly reared up again. Allin clutched at his arm and he reached for her, grateful for her hand warming his fingers, which felt suddenly chilled to the bone.

  “Where am I?” This time Lennarda’s voice was light and wondering. She looked around, hands held to her cheeks in a parody of childishness. “Where am I? It’s all dark. Where am I? Mama?”

  As she lifted her eager, searching face to him, Temar felt his heart miss a beat. For an instant Lennarda’s empty eyes shone a vibrant grassy green in the candlelight. “Can you hear me? Mama? Is it all right now?”

  After a moment of utter silence, Lennarda began an ugly keening, empty face crumpling, rocking backwards and forwards again but faster this time, with a growing violence. Her hands clawed and she began tearing at her own head.

  “Hush, hush.” Maedura tried to gather her child in her arms, fending off the raking nails with difficulty.

  “Let’s just go.” Allin tugged at Temar’s arm.

  He resisted. “How many questions does that gold buy me?” he demanded roughly.

  Maedura’s expression was a turmoil of desperation and self-loathing. “As many as yo
u need to ask, what do you think? But only for tonight.”

  “I will be outside,” said Temar with sudden decision. “When you are done with everyone else, we will speak further.” He pulled Allin out of the room so fast she nearly stumbled on top of him.

  Ignoring the covert curiosity of the people waiting, Temar strode rapidly into the front room. “Do you have spirits? Strong liquor?” he asked the serving woman curtly.

  “White brandy, if you have it,” Allin shoved Temar towards the inglenook by the fire. His knees gave out as he reached the low bench so he waited while Allin brought over a black bottle and two small glasses fetched from the cupboard behind the crone’s chair. She watched the pair of them with considerable interest in her watery old eyes.

  “What was that all about?” demanded Allin, handing Temar as large a measure as she could safely pour. “Aetheric magic?”

  Temar swallowed the colourless liquor in one breath, gasping as it jolted him out of the shock numbing his wits. “Not being worked in the room,” he said hoarsely. “Neither of them have any notion of enchantments.”

  “That girl doesn’t look as if she’s a notion in her head,” commented Allin with pity, sipping cautiously.

  “Not unless she catches some echo from some other mind;’ said Temar slowly.

  Allin looked confused. “But she didn’t know anything about Chel. I know for a fact he’s alive and well and trading leather from Dalasor to Duryea. I had a letter from his mother at Equinox and you can’t get much further away from the sea than that.”

  “What she saw was Kel Ar’Ayen.” Temar leaned forward intently.

  “A big river, a wide empty plain? Couldn’t that be, oh, I don’t know, anywhere from Inglis to Bremilayne?” said Allin doubtfully. “And I suppose Chel might have gone travelling.”

  “What she saw, what she thought, we all thought the same when we made landfall in Kel Ar’Ayen.” Temar laid his hand on Allin’s in unconscious emphasis. “I remember looking at that river, wondering if the land would be fertile, picking out the best place to build and noting timber we might build with. Believe me, Allin, for Saedrin’s sake!”

  “Then how does that unfortunate know?” She extricated her hand, flexing her fingers with a slight grimace. “Could it be something to do with the runes? Isn’t Ryshad’s friend Livak looking for an aetheric tradition hidden in old rune lore in the Great Forest?”

  Temar shook his head crossly, regretting it instantly as pain lanced through his temples. “No Artifice is being worked here. I can detect that much with the charms I know.” He looked up at Allin. “I would give all the gold Camarl can spare me to look inside that chest.”

  “They’ve got an artefact?” Allin nodded slowly. “And that unfortunate child has somehow become linked with it, like Ryshad and your sword?”

  “More than one,” said Temar with rising certainty. “That second voice, that was a girl I saw Guinalle lay beneath the enchantments. I saw the child’s green eyes, eyes from the northern hill country, I saw them reflected in the imbecile’s face.”

  Allin frowned. “Where did that woman get a chest full of Kellarin artefacts?”

  “Cannot such questions wait?” Temar demanded impatiently. “We must secure that chest!”

  “How?” countered Allin. “Fraud or folly, that masquerade’s their only means of earning bread. The woman at least must know the coffer’s vital to the girl’s supposed powers. They’re hardly going to give it up to you.”

  Temar chewed at his lower lip. “What if we offered her the weight of the chest in gold?”

  A startled laugh escaped Allin. “Are you serious?”

  “Entirely.” Temar kept his voice low, face grim. “I would pay that to bring only one back from enchantment. I would pay the same time and again to bring every single sleeper back to themselves.”

  Allin sipped her brandy with a faint shudder. “So the rumours of Kellarin gold are true, are they?”

  “For now, Camarl can advance me the coin,” Temar said with a confidence he didn’t entirely feel. “There are riches to be had over the ocean in time and we can repay him then. Perhaps I should pursue those claims the Relict Tor Bezaemar mentioned as well,” he added thoughtfully. “That would at least give me means to buy any other artefact we find.”

  “First we have to look in that chest and make sure there are artefacts in it.” Allin shifted to look through to the back room and the outbuilding beyond. “Then we have to make some deal with the woman tonight. Otherwise she’ll take to her heels, coffer and all. I would like to know just how this business of linking to an artefact works.”

  It was Temar’s turn to laugh. “Do you always have to have the answers?”

  “First, I’m Lescari, and secondly, I’m a mage.” Allin smiled a little guiltily. “Both mean you never take a thing on trust. You ask all the questions you can think of and only go on when you’ve all the answers.”

  Temar glanced into the far room still full with hopeful suppliants. “What’s it like, being mage-born? No wizard I have met will ever spare time to talk about it.”

  “We’re not encouraged to, not once we’ve been to Hadrumal.” Allin coloured slightly. “I told you, there’s a lot of mistrust.”

  Temar shook his head. “Granted, it is sorcery of some different nature, but I grew up with aetheric enchantments. All right,” he amended hastily, “perhaps not used every day, but everyone knew Artifice was there, for healing and truth-saying, for sending urgent word across the provinces. So what is it, Allin, to be mage-born?”

  “Oh, I don’t know how to explain it.” She blushed pink. “Imagine oil spilled on water but you’re the only one who can see the rainbow when the light strikes it. Imagine hearing some counterpoint to music that everyone else is deaf to. You touch something and you can sense the element within it, like feeling the vibration in a table when a timepiece strikes the chimes. You can sense it, you can feel how it affects things around it. Then you realise you can change it, you can shade that rainbow to light or dark, you can mute that note or make it sound twice as loud.” Allin’s face was animated in a way Temar had never seen before.

  The slam of the outer door shattered the calm of the room.

  “Where’s this charlatan hiding out?” A thickset man in everyday Tormalin garb marched into the centre of the room. “Seer she calls herself? I’ll teach the bitch to take honest coin off a stupid girl!” He glared at everyone, sharp-featured and furious.

  “Well? What’s the fakery?” A younger man, unmistakably slurring his words through drink came in to the tavern. He was dragging a struggling girl, fingers biting into her arm as he forced her along. A frown gave his angled black brows a predatory air.

  “Let me go! It’s no business of yours!”

  The second man gave the girl a vicious shake. “Shut your mouth, you stupid slut.” She tried to hang on to the doorjamb and he slapped her hand away with a brutal oath. More men crowded round the doorway, some intent and indignant, others brought along by casual malice or idle curiosity. Many still had wine flagons in their hands.

  Temar realised the girl was the one they had seen earlier carrying a baby.

  “Masters, this is a quiet house.” The woman minding the ale casks stood a prudent distance from the thickset man. “We want no trouble.”

  “You get trouble when you let some trickster use your place,” spat the man, taking a step forward to shove the woman back with one broad, calloused hand. “Where’s this seer?”

  “It’s an insult to all rational thinking,” piped up someone from the back of the crowd at the door. An ominous murmur of assent backed his spite.

  “Superstition. Falsehoods. Preying on an idiot girl’s folly.” The man emphasised each assertion with another shove, backing the woman hard up against her ale casks. “Taking her coin and telling her to go off Saedrin knows where after some feckless Lescari tinker we thought we were rid of?”

  “Well rid,” the younger man panted, still struggling with the gi
rl, who was trying to kick him, her face contorted with tears. “Until her belly swelled. Got his irons hot in your hearth, didn’t he, you whore?”

  “I loved him,” screamed the girl in hopeless rage.

  As the man gave her another vicious shake, she stumbled over a chair. Stretching her free hand out to save herself, she encountered a jug of ale. In one swift move, she smashed it on her tormenter’s head.

  The crash of breaking crockery acted like a war horn on the mob outside. Men surged through the door, shoving tables and chairs aside.

  “You Lescari are all the same, cheats!”

  “Never set to and earn honest coin if you can steal it!”

  “Go swallow yourself, you dripping pizzle!” A man who’d been sitting quietly over his ale stood up. Others braced themselves, ready resentments rearing their heads.

  “Rational men have a duty to combat pernicious superstition,” one voice from the back of the mob rose in a sanctimonious bleat.

  “Rationalists are soft in the head,” an incensed Lescari voice called out to considerable agreement.

  “Soft as shit and twice as nasty,” shouted someone from the back room.

  The rapid accents of latterday Toremal and sharp Lescari lilts left Temar struggling to understand but the mood of mutual hostility needed no explanation. He realised Allin was clutching his arm, trembling with fear. With a spreading mêlée at the outer door and indignant Lescari pushing through from the inner room, getting through the throng was going to be no easy task. Temar tucked Allin close behind him, keeping firm hold of her hand.

  “Is there a way out through the yard, do you think?” she asked nervously.

  Temar used elbows and boots to force a way into the back room, ignoring the protests of those few still seated. “There will be no more answers from the lady tonight,” he told them as he pushed Allin through into the outbuilding.

  He looked at the door doubtfully. It wouldn’t take much to break down that single thickness of warped plank. The first sound of splintering furniture came from the front of the tavern, a startled yell and someone crying out in pain. Temar pulled the latchstring through, tying it as tight as he could.