Wishing for a long draught of cool clean water – a man could grow just as warm and thirsty descending stairs as he did ascending them – Gael crossed the place of arms, his measured strides echoing under the high vault.
The pages made way for him respectfully, two bobbing quick bows as he passed into the storage room.
Gael barely saw the litter of wooden practice weapons, cutting butts and pillars, and leather mats pushed to the walls of the small chamber.
Lord Carbraes captured one’s focus – not through mannerism or mere posturing, but because of the aura of absolute assurance that cloaked him. Gael had never witnessed the regenen at a loss, which was startling given that he was losing the long war with the unafflicted enemies who assailed the trolls. Gael figured the troll-lord must think in numbered matrices. He always had a second plan when the first failed, and a third after that.
Carbraes stood just a touch taller than Gael, but his shoulders were considerably broader and bulkier. Rumor insisted that the regenen did sixty handstand push-ups every other day to keep his strength. Gael suspected rumor – in this instance – was correct. The expression in Carbraes’ ice blue eyes said he would tackle and succeed at any feat, no matter how challenging.
Despite his strenuous regimen, the truldemagar marked Carbraes’ physique. Deep crow’s feet bracketed his eyes and reached back across his temples to his hairline. His skin was roughened and chapped red. His nose possessed the typical upward curve and bluntness. He wore a short and neatly clipped blond beard and mustache – perhaps to hide the lines around his mouth and the blurring of his chin? His curling blond hair was equally short and threaded with silver, revealing his still shapely ears, unusual in a troll.
He went garbed in a white thistlesilk blouse under a knee-length tunic of cream suede ornamented with bronze rivets at the hem and other stress points along the seams. An ecru thistlesilk cape flowed back from his shoulders. Brown leather warrior’s boots were laced up his shins.
The natural colors were easy on the eye, or at least on Gael’s eyes. He disliked the garish costumes sported by Belzetarn’s castellanum and the magus, blessedly not present at this moment.
Carbraes finished instructing the two page boys kneeling before him. “You” – he tapped the brown-haired one on the shoulder – “run to the castellanum’s cabinet chamber and tell him just what I told you.” The boy nodded, sprang to his feet, and dodged around Gael to dash away through the place of arms. Carbraes tapped the black-haired boy on the chest to re-gather his straying attention. “Go to the field quartermaster and bid him compile a tally of the blades broken across the last three moons versus the number broken three years ago in the same season.”
The boy followed his fellow with equal alacrity.
Lord Carbraes looked up and spotted Gael. “Hah! Secretarius! You come in good time. Look on what the scouts of the Third Cohort have brought me.”
A pair of warriors stepped from behind the regenen. Gael’s gaze passed over their tunics of bronze scale armor – light and shining and flawless, made by Arnoll in the armor smithy – to fasten on the massive bronze shield they carried between them.
No, not a shield. Surely not. Wider than the full length of a troll’s arm, etched with curling traceries, and deeply furled around its circumference, the artifact would be far too heavy to serve as a shield in battle. So what was it?
Two punched and beaded holes near the top edge gave Gael the answer: a gong.
“Examine it,” Carbraes instructed him. “First with your eyes.”
Gael frowned, not liking where this was going.
The central boss of the piece – matte black and oddly dimpled – was surely meteoric iron, rarer than tin and deucedly hard to melt or work. It required forges far more powerful than those lurking in Belzetarn’s roots. Who would possess such resources? And why had they been deployed on this gong?
Gael stiffened his knees, resisting the memory of the groan uttered by Belzetarn’s regenen stair recently. It had not been the stair – or the tower – from which hailed the muttering reverberation, surely, but this trophy Carbraes bade him study.
The bronze surrounding the iron boss held a silvery sheen atop its warm coppery tints, no doubt made of an arsenical alloy, rather than a tin one. The abstract traceries adorning its surface were finely drawn, the curves displaying perfect mathematical symmetry.
Gael spoke his assessments aloud, concluding with, “Exceptional work by an exceptional smith in an exceptional forge. I shouldn’t think the Ghriana-folk of the mountains had the capability.”
Carbraes lifted an eyebrow. “What?” He gestured to the warriors to lay the gong down on the stone floor, instructing them, “Carefully,” when they moved too quickly for his liking.
Gael was getting a very uncomfortable feeling about this prize of war, if battle were indeed where it had come from.
Carbraes said, “No, this didn’t come from the Ghriana-folk. It’s old, far older than they.”
“Where did it come from?” asked Gael, moderating his emphasis on did.
“The scouts pulled it out of the ruins of Olluvarde after some chucklehead tossed a pebble down a dry well and the resulting resonance brought them all to their knees.”
Olluvarde. A city of the ancients built a thousand years ago or more, when the fabulous airships of Navellys still sailed across the sea, bringing riches. Or so legend said. What had the ancients wanted with a gong that weakened trolls? No trolls had ever marred their paradise. The dread truldemagar swept the world only after Navellys was drowned.
“Open your inner senses, Gael,” said Carbraes. “Tell me what you see. I must understand the essence of this thing, that I may choose its fate – and ours – wisely.”
Gael felt his heart clench within him. He’d feared Carbraes would make this request from the moment the regenen said, first with your eyes. Why specify, unless a different looking would follow? And . . . while such looking to check his own energea, or Keir’s, or even that of a random notarius or messenger, was innocent enough . . . scrutinizing an artifact forged by the potent energea of the ancients might lead him to magery. Or worse.
Gael remembered the worse all too well.
* * *
Seven years earlier, Gael had stood on a vast plain beneath a hurrying sky, tattered gray clouds racing below a light overcast, and wheeling crows screaming their hunger.
The river to the north – the Havreyn – lay beyond sight, but a fringe of trees along the nearer Givenlangid feathered the southern horizon. The stink of river mud well mixed with blood rose nauseatingly from the trampled oats underfoot.
The battle had moved off to the west.
Gael tested his inner senses. Was his king safe? That was the important thing. So long as Heiroc remained hale and whole – unwounded, uninjured, his energea coursing strongly – all was well. Gael bent his full concentration to that task. It was his task as the magus of Hadorgol to protect the king and thus protect them all.
So long as Heiroc lived, all Hadorgol would live.
And he lived, blessed be!
The hurly burly of the fighting – thick about Gael and the king a moment ago – had bludgeoned Gael’s inner sight to darkness. And the outer sight could not tell so much as the inner.
But there, some ways off, shone the king’s characteristic arcs and nodes, blazing silver like a beacon among the less brilliant energea of his honor guard. Gael spared a thought to wonder if it were Heiroc’s bright energea that generated the compelling charisma of his character or the reverse, his charisma that generated his shining energea.
It didn’t matter. Gael loved his sovereign like a brother and always would.
He swung abruptly to the north, sensing something . . . very wrong.
What in Cayim’s hells?
A shivering on the horizon. A rippling movement. Rushing, rolling, an advancing wall of water that was here.
Gael went down under its weight, water in his nose and eyes, sucking mud slamming
up to knock him senseless.
He came to an instant later, battered by tree branches and struggling to find footing in the flood, struggling not to gulp river water into his lungs. He clutched at an arm that smashed against his palms and then was torn away. A dead body? He kicked at something less resilient at his feet. A chariot wheel?
And then the wave dumped him down and drained away, while he sat in water up to his neck, coughing.
The king! Where was his king?
Frantic and gasping, Gael swiped water from his eyes and scanned his surroundings. There would be no reopening of his inner sight without the ability to take a slow breath in followed by a slow breath out. His outer sight would have to do.
A smashed and tumbled chariot met his gaze, then the dead charioteer, flung against the cutting blades jutting from the spokes of the battle wheels.
Gael jerked his head around to see a cluster of corpses, all clad in the blue and green tabards of Hadorgol, merciful goddess! No!
Had none survived the marauding river?
But there was Heiroc, climbing to his feet, cropped blond hair sodden, gold-threaded aqua tabard over a coat of bronze scale mail equally so, and his bearded face dragged long by grief for the dead around him: his people, his warriors, his defenders.
The receding flood swirled at his knees. Then his gaze met Gael’s, and his expression lightened. He picked his way forward, saying, “Quickly now, Magus! There’s time yet to salvage something, if we hasten. Come!”
Gael was still coughing too hard to do anything but choke and gasp.
The king heaved him to his feet and led him around the tumbled chariot.
On its far side stood another chariot, this one intact and upright, lacking its charioteer, but possessing a trio of horses still harnessed, snorting and stamping.
“My king, I cannot drive,” protested Gael.
Heiroc grimaced. “But I can!” he answered.
Gael felt his face heating. Of course. He’d forgotten the king raced – most dangerously – in the hippodrome for his rare amusement.
The king went to the horses’ heads, gentling them with low murmurs and the calm of his hands. Then he boosted Gael into the chariot itself, robes dripping, and climbed in to take the tangled reins.
A moment later he’d cleared the reins of snarls and they were off, the horses trotting west.
Gael labored to regain some degree of equilibrium, enough to be more than a hindrance to his sovereign. He had to stop hacking and coughing. Had to.
The expanse of the plain glimmered silver in dimpled ripples. The flood was down to a mere hand’s breadth in depth. It splashed up from the chariot wheels, forming great fans of water whipping away from the wheel rims and blades. In the distance, a lone tree, pricked out in spring green, stretched out spiky limbs against the ragged sky. Beyond it, a mass of men seethed, blades flashing, shields thrusting, the echoes of clashing metal punctuated by earthier thuds and strained cries.
Not every warrior had drowned.
Gael took in a long, slow breath, and his inner sight opened on his out breath.
Tiamar in his Mother’s paradise!
The receding waters gleamed with threads of searing gold.
“That’s troll magery!” snapped Gael.
“Say again,” said Heiroc, focused on guiding the horses over the chancy terrain.
“Your enemy” – Gael hesitated – “your brother has a troll-magus in his train!”
Heiroc hissed. “Dastard! He dares!” The king dropped his hands, and the horses surged forward, breaking out of their trot.
He was right to curse. No civilized regime permitted a troll to remain in its midst, much less cossetted and courted and constrained to work magery for his sovereign’s benefit! Gael was a magus. But he was not a troll magus.
What had Erastys – the king’s brother – done?
And what had Nathiar – Erastys’ magus – become?
Gael squinted, urgent to discern any movement in the troll magery through the gouts of spray flying under the chariot’s increased speed. For those filaments of blistering gold were not quiescent. They writhed and gathered, forming, shaping – Gaelan’s tears!
Beneath the mirror of the waters, the broken blades and lost spearheads stirred, like fish working free of the mud after their winter’s hibernation.
Gael abruptly withdrew his attention from the world of the outer senses. It was the inner world that would protect his king. He breathed in. He breathed out. The soft silver of his arcs sparkled into his awareness. The more vivid glow from his nodes – violet at his crown through aqua and green to silver at the root node, a brighter silver than his arcs – bloomed at each connecting link.
His inner lattice of energea glistened with the health of the unafflicted, and he drew on it, like a man pulling water from a well.
Curling arabesques of silver-edged blue spun from the arcs of his fingers, weaving a net around the energea lattice that marked his king, weaving and brightening and growing to create the shield that would protect Heiroc and Gael and the chariot and its horses.
Just in time.
The web of scorching gold that crawled in the litter of sword blades and spearheads shivered and jerked, then lifted into a spinning whirlwind.
Gael’s vision abruptly doubled. The inner sight showed him a cyclone of shredding gold and amber and black-edged copper light. The outer sight revealed a storm of whirling metal, spattering blood, and flying gobbets of hacked flesh.
The leaves and twigs of the lone tree fountained into hurled confetti. Low-soaring crows became explosions of feathers. And the undrowned warriors – fighting so valiantly for their king – went down to death.
Tears streaked Gael’s cheeks as he strained to uphold his juddering energea under the onslaught.
He knew these men.
Young Laron. Old Milas. And musical Iorgo. Ah, Seya’s son!
If only his shield were great enough, strong enough, enough enough to preserve them all. But it was not. His king must suffice.
More blades lifted from the mud. Ghosts of arrows and halberds, maces and morningstars tore at Gael’s energea.
His shield . . . Must. Not. Fail.
Lightning cracked, flashing blue white.
Was it the storm clouds in the heavens? Or the storm of troll magery drawn from the earth? The rebounding shock kicked Gael from the chariot, the mud rising up to smack his face and knock the breath from his body.
Tiamar! He couldn’t breathe.
Shield. Must. Not. Fail.
He upheld it. Somehow. Through darkening vision and lancing pain. He would protect his king, if it killed him. And it might.
His ears were ringing, and his eyes beheld nothing but blackness. But he could feel the drain on his nodes as his will fed the shield of energea amidst the storm. Upheld it. Upheld it. Upheld . . .
And then the storm died.
Gael let his shield fade.
As his inner sight snapped shut, the outer world demanded his attention. Aching ribs. Throbbing head. Stinging across all exposed skin. And a viciously stabbing agony in his left shin. Broken?
He fought the red darkness closing his outer vision. Gael might be down, but his king was not. Was he? And while Heiroc yet stood, this battle was not over.
Gael’s pain won for an interval.
Three cold drops of rain on the back of his neck cut through the fog of injury. He felt river mud oozing through his robes at belly and breast. He rolled up on his side to see Heiroc climbing to his feet beneath the black branches of the denuded tree. The king had suffered his fall from the chariot without harm, thank Tiamar!
The stamp of boots on the wet earth and the clink of scale mail drew Gael’s blurry gaze away from Heiroc.
Cayim’s death!
The battle might not be lost, but it would be all too soon.
Five warriors wearing the scarlet and orange tabards of Pirbrant over their mail approached, with their king at their head, his magus at his side.<
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Dizzily, Gael brought King Erastys into focus. He wore a long red tabard, silver-threaded, over a silvered mail coat, and his sword was in his hand. Save for his black hair, clubbed into a thick braid – dark against Heiroc’s blondness – he looked so like his brother that it hurt.
Erastys and Heiroc had been the best of friends and comrades as boys and as young men. Even when their uncle gave Pirbrant to Erastys, the two brother kings had lived as good neighbors. Gael had always counted Erastys a friend. Until Erastys decided he wanted not merely kingship – an unusual honor for a younger son – but sovereignty over his homeland of Hadorgol.
Gael would never forget the pain in Heiroc’s eyes when Erastys’ herald brought his declaration of war.
Hadorgol and Pirbrant – Heiroc and Erastys – had fought a dozen inconclusive battles over the last year. And now Erastys of Pirbrant would win.
Gael’s own heart ached at the thought of Heiroc’s defeat and surrender.
But – there was that drawn sword and murder in Erastys’ eyes. Was it surrender Heiroc faced? Or something darker?
A crow cawed and alit on the shoulder of the man at Erastys’ side. His magus Nathiar.
Gael’s hot belly chilled.
Nathiar, too, had once been his friend: a thin and laughing man with a sardonic sense of humor. They’d learned to manipulate the energea together under old Korryn’s tutelage, sat together in Hadorgol’s court, and served the brother kings together, side by side.
But when a choice had to be made, Nathiar had chosen Erastys.
As Gael studied his old friend, Nathiar veered toward where Gael lay. Nathiar had been human at their last encounter. Now he was a troll. His olive skin remained smooth and unmarred. His straight jet black hair showed no threads of gray. They would come. Only the slight slant to his eyes and the curving elongation of his nose revealed his troll-disease to the outer sight. But, to the inner, his drifting, unmoored nodes left no doubt.
So the rumor was true. Nathiar had attempted to cast a glamour, the most intricate and demanding of magery. Tried and failed. And brought the truldemagar upon himself in the trying.
The Tally Master Page 2
