Just then, a familiar-looking sea gull skidded across the dirt road with a harsh, deep "kyeow."
"Oh, hello, Zagarus," Guerrand said lifelessly.
And a cheery hello to you, too, said the bird, springing on webbed, yellow-green feet to Guerrand's side. Is Justarius working you too hard?
"If only that were the problem. I could just stay up later, work a little harder. No," he said with a rueful shake of his shaggy head, "it's not that simple."
Tell me about it. Maybe I can think of a solution. He ruffled up his chest feathers. I am, after all, a hooded, black-backed Ergothian sea gull, the largest, most strikingly beautiful and intelligent of all seabirds.
In no mood for the gull's ego or humor, Guerrand nevertheless noted drolly the addition of the word "intelligent" to Zagarus's favorite description of himself. Still, he knew the bird would want to know if Kirah were in danger, and so he told Zagarus of the visions in the crystal ball and the choice he had to make.
You're right. It's not simple. What do you think you'll do?
Guerrand sighed. "I wish I knew."
Say, Zagarus said suddenly. I could fly back and tell-
"Who? Cormac?" scoffed Guerrand.
No, the sea gull said, annoyed at the interruption. I could tell Kirah. She'd believe me.
"And who would believe her? Besides, you know the rules regarding separation of familiar and master. You can't possibly fly fast enough to get there and return within a week, which is the longest we could survive a separation."
The gull reluctantly nodded his black-and-white head.
Angry, frustrated, Guerrand kicked a shell he'd worked loose, and it flew into the hull of an upturned fishing boat.
"Guerrand!" The apprentice mage's head snapped up at the familiar voice. He nodded a silent, edgy greeting to Lyim. Zagarus squawked a hasty retreat.
"What a surprise to find you at the waterfront," said the other apprentice. "I thought you preferred the solitude of your tiny room in the hills."
"You'd be surprised to learn that I come to the quay frequently for the familiar sound and scent of the sea. Not-" Guerrand smirked as he continued "-for the clamor of bawdy barmaids and the smell of stale ale."
Lyim shrugged good-naturedly. "To each his own familiarity." He nodded toward where the shell had struck the boat. "And why is Palanthas's most composed apprentice so agitated today? Could this anger be residual from the Knight's Jest?"
Guerrand waved the question away. "Truth to tell, that fiasco had nearly slipped my mind."
Lyim touched a hand gingerly to his posterior. "Would that I could forget it." He jerked his head toward the Lonely Mermaid Tavern. "I was just about to speed the process with the aid of the aforementioned ale. Care to join me?"
Guerrand shook his head. "No, thanks. I've too much to ponder to confuse things with ale."
Lyim squinted closely at his friend. "You aren't still angry with me, are you, Guerrand? Look, I have no idea what came over me on that field, truly I don't." Lyim pulled off his feathered cap. "I've been asleep these hours since Belize took me back to Villa Nova. You'll be happy to know I received quite a tongue-lashing from him upon waking, too."
"That doesn't make me happy, Lyim."
The other apprentice, staring out to sea, appeared not to hear him. "I've tried since to sort through it, Guerrand, but still it makes little sense to me. Frankly, it seems more dreamlike than real." He shook his head as if to send the confused images away on the salty sea breeze.
Guerrand considered his friend with mixed feelings. He could answer a part of Lyim's confusion with one simple sentence: someone cast a spell on you. But he remembered Justarius's warnings to tell no one. Though Guerrand trusted Lyim, answering his question would only raise more complicated ones. He didn't know what to say, so Guerrand said nothing.
The two friends stood in an awkward, guilty silence. Lyim took a shuffling step toward the tavern. Both men looked over suddenly at the sound of three boisterous sailors, dressed in baggy trousers and sleeveless tunics, striding down the quay. One sailor, older than his companions, held a roll of parchment. The others, both young and fresh-faced, hustled along at his side, trying to get a look at the document in his hand. The sailors came to a stop at a nearby lantern post by the busiest pier on the waterfront. Pushing back his eager cronies, the first sailor held the parchment up and secured it with square nails, top and bottom, to the rough beam.
One of the young sailors whistled shrilly. "Four steel pieces a day for mercenary work in Northern Ergoth! How hard can it be to squash some local lord there? Nothing but kender and dark-skinned peasants, I hear tell. A fortnight's easy work, and you're fifty steel richer!"
His head was slapped by the other youth. "That's fifty-six steel, you moron!"
The older sailor who'd posted the notice added, "I hear the Berwicks are prompt payers, too." He thumped his chest. "I'm going to sign on. Can't make that kind of money at sea." With that, the three men scurried off toward the Lonely Mermaid, still talking about the notice.
With a sharp ache in his chest, Guerrand watched them go. He wondered darkly, distantly, if they would be the ones to slay his family.
"Northern Ergoth," muttered Lyim, scratching his head. "Isn't that where you're from?" Guerrand squeezed his eyes shut and nodded numbly. "Do you know anything about the notice?"
"Too much," Guerrand acknowledged wearily without thinking.
"The local lord… wouldn't that be your brother?" asked the other apprentice.
"Look, Lyim," Guerrand said, backing away, "I really can't talk about this."
Lyim's hand flew up to clasp his friend's arm, holding him tight. "All right, I'll do the talking. Your family is in trouble, and you're angry. That's understandable. What's not is why you're still in Palanthas. When are you returning to help them?"
"Help who?" Guerrand asked, avoiding Lyim's eyes.
"Come on, Guerrand, I'm not stupid. I understand why you feel you can't trust me, but…" He regarded his friend through one eye.
Lyim's tactics crumbled Guerrand's resolve. "I can't go back!" he confessed.
"What do you mean? Your family won't let you?"
Guerrand shook his head miserably. "They don't know where I am, or that Berwick means to attack them."
Lyim caught on quickly. "It's Justarius, isn't it? He won't let you leave to help them." Incredulous, Lyim shook his head. "Does he mean to tear you in two, choosing between him and your family?"
Guerrand found himself in the odd position of defending his master. "He requires me to be true to my vow. Besides, he hasn't forbidden me to go, only told me what the consequences would be for me here."
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know." Guerrand looked to the notice on the post. "And I haven't much time to decide."
Lyim's eyes shifted from side to side as he considered something. He snapped his fingers. "Let me go to Northern Ergoth and at least warn your family. I could help them, if it came to that."
"What?" exclaimed Guerrand, scarcely believing his ears. "What would you tell Belize?"
Lyim's expression turned eager with enthusiasm as he warmed to the idea. "I'll tell him nothing. Then I won't be violating any rule like Justarius's, will I? Besides, Belize won't even notice I'm gone. He told me after my tongue-lashing that he's retreating for weeks of meditation and work on his newest book of spells." Lyim waved it away. "He does that all the time."
"But what'll you do at Castle DiThon? Who'll you talk to? You're a stranger! Why would they listen to you?"
"Give me some credit, will you?" said Lyim. "I'll come up with some convincing story about, I don't know, being in the Berwick's hire, then defecting out of a sense of justice, or some such rot. They'll have no choice but to believe me." He shrugged. "If they don't, I'll be there to help your family magically. You know my magic is better than yours."
Guerrand snorted. "Cormac would no sooner let you employ magic than kiss him."
Lyim grabbed Guerra
nd by the shoulders. "That's the beauty of this whole plot! They don't know me from the great wizard Fistandantilus. No one has to know I'm using magic!" He frowned at his friend. "Now stop trying to think of reasons it won't work and tell me what I need to know to make it work."
Guerrand shook his head vigorously. "It's more than I can ask of you, Lyim."
"You didn't ask. I offered." Lyim looked at him slyly from the corners of his eyes. "You got a better plan, or are you just going to let them die?"
Guerrand stopped shaking his head, slowly softening to the idea. Lyim was right about them believing a stranger over him, and also about his spellcasting abilities. Under the circumstances, it seemed like the perfect solution, when moments ago there had been none. Guerrand would be able to keep his apprenticeship, and his family stood a better chance with Lyim. Guerrand peered closely at the other apprentice. "Why would you do this for me?"
"I'd be doing it for me," he corrected Guerrand, his tone unusually earnest. "Maybe it'll help me feel like I've atoned for my behavior at the Jest." He shrugged, trying to lighten the mood. "Besides, I could use the field practice-it's tiresome learning spells I have no occasion to use."
Awash with relief and affection, Guerrand gave his friend a grateful smile. "Then I accept your offer."
Whooping his victory, Lyim slapped an arm around Guerrand's shoulders and hustled him toward the tavern. "You can buy me a drink while we come up with a plan of action. It would help to devise a quicker means of travel than the mercenaries who are signing up, but that seems unlikely. Is there anyone I could trust with the truth? A servant, a sibling…?"
Chapter Fourteen
Lyim waited with growing impatience in the chilly seaside cove, listening to the gentle crash of waves from the Strait of Ergoth. The fresh white tunic he'd donned two days ago to meet Guerrand's sister had turned yellow under the arms and was stained with damp red clay. Yet he couldn't leave. Kirah might show up at any time. And after having spent more than two weeks aboard ship with sweaty, lice-ridden mercenaries headed for the Berwick shipping line's port of Hillfort, he'd be damned if a chit of a girl would keep him from his promise to his friend.
"This is all Guerrand's fault," Lyim growled aloud in his growing frustration. "He was the one who told me to wait in Kirah's usual refuge, instead of seeking her at the keep." If he hadn't listened to Guerrand, Lyim would have thought of some pretext upon which to call for Kirah at the castle. I'd be talking with her now," he said, "instead of sitting in this damp, dark cave."
You could still do that, the young mage reminded himself. And yet Lyim hesitated, feeling like he'd invested too much time here to leave just as Kirah might finally show.
Pushing himself up with a sigh, Lyim stepped through the mouth of the cove to find distraction in the sea. Even its too-steady rhythm would break the monotony. The apprentice felt the tide lapping at his boots as he watched the seabirds wheeling overhead. Among their screeches he thought he heard a faint gasp.
Lyim held himself still, listening. Something was nearby. He heard a second gasp, the rustling of stiff cloth, and then someone scuttling away overhead. Lyim spun around and looked on the rock shelf above the cave, shading his eyes from the sun.
Curled in upon herself against a rocky crevice, like some enormous cornered spider, was a slip of a girl with stringy, shoulder-length blond hair. She wore the tattered remains of a once-fine dress, and was barefoot.
"Kirah?" Lyim called, incredulous.
The girl's eyes went dark with fear, and she would have scrabbled back farther if her spine weren't already pressed against the rocks. "Wh-Who are you? Leave me alone, or I'll scream!"
Lyim was surprised. This was not the spunky tiger Guerrand had described, but more a scared rabbit. He put on his most disarming smile, the one that showed his dimples and the sparkle in his eyes. "I was told you were a girl, not a lovely young lady"
Kirah wrapped her arms around her bent knees and seemed to pull into herself even further, until all that was visible among the shadows of the rocks were her wide, white eyes.
"I am Lyim. Your brother sent me to find you."
"Cormac?"
"No, your other sibling. Guerrand."
The young girl shook her head vigorously, limp hair swinging in pale yellow ropes. "I no longer have a brother by that name."
Lyim's eyebrows rose in mild amusement. "Guerrand said you might be angry."
"Angry!" scoffed Kirah. "That's an understatement." She abruptly pinched her lips into a tight, pale line, unwilling to be drawn further into the subject.
"I can see you're more than angry," Lyim continued in his most soothing tone. "And I know that seeing me is nothing like having your brother back again. But he did send me; I was with him less than three weeks ago."
This line of approach didn't seem to be getting Lyim very far, although Kirah hadn't turned and run, which he counted as a victory of sorts. "You don't look anything like your brother," he said at last.
"I'm told I favor our mother." Kirah eyed his attire suspiciously from the ledge. "And you don't look like a friend of Rand's-a pirate, maybe."
Remembering the prejudice he'd encountered when last on board ship, Lyim had left his trademark red robe in Palanthas. He'd been on the wretched, rocking boat for over two weeks and had grown a thick beard and mustache, well trimmed, the same glistening blue-black as his shoulder-length hair. His clothing was unusually subtle for Lyim: undyed chamois, a jerkin with short, flared sleeves over a white linen shirt. Lyim's breeches were of the same soft leather, tucked into high boots. Kirah was right-no one would mistake him for a mage.
Lyim laughed. "Your brother tells me that all the time." An awkward silence fell.
"So… is Guerrand a mage now?" Kirah asked at last.
"We're apprentices, actually."
Kirah shrugged, signifying the distinction was unimportant to her. "Where is he?"
Lyim coughed at the inevitable question. "Guerrand asked me not to tell you that, for your own sake."
Kirah pursed her lips in disgust but didn't press him on the point. "So, did he send you merely to tell me he's still alive?"
"No," said Lyim, "he sent me to warn you." He was squinting into the sunlight above her. "Say, can you come down off there? I'm nearly going blind." Kirah hesitated to get any closer.
"You realize, of course, that if I were here to hurt you," said Lyim, his handsome face smirking, "a little thing like a ledge wouldn't stop me."
Kirah seemed to consider that, then extended her hand for him to help her down. Lyim took the pale little thing, like fragile bird bones, and steadied her as she jumped to the tide-washed sand at the mouth of the cove. "Much better," he sighed, settling himself onto a knee-high shelf of rock.
"Warn me about what?" Kirah asked, skipping back in the conversation. "The furor over Guerrand's leaving has finally passed. Cormac simply seized the land he wanted from Berwick, and the mood in Castle DiThon is, for once, almost ridiculously happy-particularly since Cormac left to defend Stonecliff against retaliation from Berwick. He also wanted to use the time to draw up plans for the fort he intends to build there."
Lyim snapped his fingers. "That's just it. Berwick intends to strike back, and soon, but not at Stonecliff. He's gathering an army of mercenaries and Knights of Solamnia to besiege Castle DiThon."
Kirah's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "How would you know that? Perhaps you're really a spy in the employ of Berwick, sent here to cause trouble and learn whatever you can by lying to young girls." She stepped away from him, waves lapping up to fill her sandy footprints.
Lyim shook his head sadly. "Your suspicions are misplaced, Kirah," he said. "How can I prove to you that I am truly your brother's friend sent to help you, and not some spy for a man on whom I've never laid eyes?"
She jutted her chin defiantly. "Tell me where Guerrand is, so I can ask him myself."
"You couldn't reach him in time to prevent the Berwick attack, even with the fastest ship."
&nb
sp; Kirah arched a pale brow. "So he's not on Northern Ergoth?"
Lyim chuckled. "Guerrand told me you were clever, but I'm not foolish. You'll have to think of another way to be reassured I am who I say. Quickly now, before I lose my considerable patience," he finished, his sarcasm evident to Kirah even through her own frustration.
"So tell me how you learned of this plot."
Lyim looked relieved. "I can tell you that much safely. Guerrand and I saw the recruitment notices, and I traveled here with many of the responding mercenaries." Lyim plucked at his shirt. "That's why I'm not wearing my usual wizardly garb. Anyway, unless I miss my guess, we have just a matter of days before they attack-the time it takes to march an army from Hillfort to here."
Kirah pondered that for a while. At length she said, "Let's say I believe you. What would you have me do about it? Cormac's at least a day away, even if he would listen to me, which he wouldn't."
"You could never explain where you'd learned it," agreed Lyim. "From what Guerrand has said, your elder brother isn't as tolerant of magic as you are."
Kirah chuckled without humor. "Tolerant isn't a word I would use to describe Cormac under any circumstance."
"We'll have to tread carefully, then," said Lyim. "I have an idea that just might work, but you'll have to give me some information on the Berwick family," he said mysteriously, piquing Kirah's interest.
Lyim looked about the cove with disdain. "We've got to work fast. I need to prepare some spells. Can you sneak me into the keep where I can work in relative comfort-" he brushed at the moist clay on his tunic "-or at least under drier conditions?"
Kirah smiled broadly. Here, at last, was something she understood. Lyim was very charming. If she was making a mistake in trusting him, at least life would be interesting for the first time since Guerrand left.
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