Ink Mage

by Victor Gischler

  She didn’t know what to say to that. She’d never known her grandfather.

  “What do you want of me?”

  “I don’t know,” Rina said. “I was brought here.”

  “I see,” the old man said. “You are duchess then.”

  Am I? Yes, she supposed she was. With Father and Mother dead, Rina was now Duchess of Klaar. It was meaningless. Klaar might as well have been the moon. It wasn’t hers. Not anymore.

  “So, Duchess, how may I serve you?”

  “I don’t know,” Rina repeated. “I … need help.”

  “I have already decided to help you,” he said. “I am dying. I am killing myself with every word I utter to you. I have the wasting disease in my belly and in my lungs. You understand this sort of sickness, yes?”

  Rina nodded. An uncle on her mother’s side had died that way.

  “It takes all my energy and focus to keep the sickness at bay,” he said. “So in deciding to help you I am welcoming death. Even this simple conversation is enough to divert my energies. Do you understand this?”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Yes, I see that you do,” he said. “So let’s make it worth it, shall we? Let’s try to focus with clarity on the best way I can help you. For it will be my dying act. Do you wish to live?”

  She blinked at the question. “Do I wish to live?”

  “You’ve brought yourself here in a blizzard. Not easy. In your despair it would have been simpler to throw yourself off a cliff. This would end your grief, yes? But you didn’t do that. I infer you prefer to live.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I want to live.” A strange and simple admission but effective. In spite of everything, she did want to live, to go on even though it all seemed so hopeless.

  “That’s a start, then,” the old man said. “We’ve established you want to live. Now what shall you live for?”

  What?

  He sighed, impatient. “Something must drive you, girl. Find something. Foreign savages have killed your family and taken your land. Do you want revenge? Do you want to take back what is yours? Tell me. I am neither a priest nor a philosopher. I won’t judge you.”

  She hadn’t thought about it. Would she take revenge on those who had robbed her of everything if given the chance? She saw her father’s face, surprised at Giffen’s betrayal. Would she seize any opportunity to slide cold steel into Giffen’s belly? “Yes.”

  “Now we have direction,” he said. “And what do you have to accomplish your task? Do you have an army with which to recapture Klaar? Generals to do your bidding?”

  The old man acted like he wanted to plant an idea in her head one second then disabuse her of it the next. But of course he was right. “I have nothing. Just myself.”

  “That’s more than you think.” He stood slowly, joints popping and creaking as if he’d been sitting there for centuries.

  He gestured, and Rina followed the gesture with her eyes. Strange syllables fell out of the old man’s mouth, tickling her ears and then vanishing. The old man flicked a pinch of some fine powder into the air. Halfway across the chamber, a small fire sprang to life beneath a large brass tub.

  “The water will heat soon,” he said. “You must bathe.”

  “But …” She looked down at her clothes, back at the old man.

  “Don’t be silly. Modesty is a peasant’s virtue, Duchess. Besides, I am old and harmless.” She thought she saw a smile tug at the corners of his mouth.

  “Why a bath?”

  “Because I’m going to give you a gift,” he said. “And we must prepare you to receive it.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Perranese warrior had just enough time to turn his head, his eyes popping wide as Alem slammed into him. They went down hard, and the warrior’s chin caught the edge of the barrel near Tosh’s hiding place.

  With Alem’s weight on his back, the warrior’s head was forced back sharply. There was a sickening snap, and the two of them went down in a heap.

  Tosh sprang from his hiding place, tossing the horse blanket aside, a short dagger in one hand, ready to fight, but the Perranese warrior lay lifeless, eyes wide open, mouth agape. Tosh nudged the body with the toe of his boot. “Damn, kid, you’ve killed him.”

  Alem sat up next to the dead warrior. He rubbed his side, winced. Flying through the air and slamming into a fully armored man had bruised a few ribs. What had he been thinking?

  “Guess I owe you one,” Tosh said. “But his pals could come back any moment, and finding us here with their dead captain won’t go well for us.”

  Alem lurched to his feet, grunted, one hand holding his ribs. It hurt like blazes, but he prodded his side with tentative fingers and didn’t think anything was broken. “Pick one of the mares in back and saddle it,” Alem told Tosh. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Kid, I told you already. There’s no way we can ride out past them.”

  Alem ignored him and limped across the room to the stable master’s tiny room. It wasn’t much. A cot. A stool. A small iron stove for cooking and warmth. Alem crawled under the cot, pried up the floorboard where old Nard the stable master kept the little strongbox. Alem wasn’t sure how many coins might be in it. Probably not many. When visiting nobles lodged their horses in the stable, they would often flip the stable master a coin to pay for extra oats, replace a lost horse blanket.

  Nard’s going to be pissed when he finds his money missing.

  No, Alem realized. He wouldn’t. Nard was dead. He was old but in good health and they would have shoved a sword into his hand and sent him to the wall. He would be dead like so many others.

  Alem bashed the strongbox against the iron stove until he sprang the cheap lock. He spilled the coins out onto the cot and counted them. Fourteen copper coins, but the real score was the two silver pieces. From his belt he took his small leather purse, which contained only a single copper, one he’d been hoarding for months. He added the coins from the strongbox and retied the purse tightly to his belt.

  It struck him that he was making a life decision. This would be a pivotal point in his very small, very predictable existence. First, he’d need to live through the next twenty minutes. The clang of crossing swords no longer reached him from the street, but people were fighting and dying beyond the walls of the stable.

  He remembered the Perranese captain. He’d broken his neck. They’re dying in here too.

  So in the unlikely event he lived to the end of the day, it would be only the beginning. Where would he go? How would he live? He had no answers. If he wanted to live, he’d have to leave behind everything he’d ever known.

  He grabbed Nard’s spare riding cloak from the peg near the door. It was ugly and patched but thick and warm. It smelled like Nard’s pipe tobacco.

  Alem walked out of Nard’s room and froze. Another Perranese warrior, his back to Alem, stood in full armor, holding a sword. Alem’s stomach lurched. He wouldn’t even make it out of the stable. He’d spent his life here. Now he would die here.

  The man in the armor turned. Tosh’s face grinned at him from under the broad helm. “I got an idea.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Rina stepped out of the tub. As soon as she hit the cold air, her skin broke out in gooseflesh. She stood dripping on the cold stone floor of the chamber. The mage had his back to her, pulling a leather-bound book off a low shelf along with a collection of arcane implements Rina didn’t recognize.

  She began to shiver. “I’m wet.”

  He glanced at her with his good eye. “You can’t use a towel. Your skin must be perfectly clean, and I won’t risk lint or stray threads. Stand near the fire, but not too close. You can’t sweat either.”

  She stood just close enough to the brazier to feel the warmth, beads of water tickling as they rolled down her skin. At first she’d felt self-conscious standing naked in front of the old man, but he was obviously uninterested. The mage bent over one of his old books, squinting at the magical writing.

  Her skin warme
d, and she took a step back from the fire. She watched him pull a chair up next to a small table. He laid out various small objects she didn’t recognize, plus a small vase of clear glass, dark liquid within. He lined up other materials like he was preparing to cook some obscure recipe.

  He is a mage, after all. That’s what they do, I guess; potions and so on. And it struck her suddenly that this old man could be up to anything. She didn’t even know his name.

  She turned to dry her other side. She couldn’t see him now, and that somehow unnerved her. The chamber was dark, the brazier having burned low.

  She cleared her throat. “What are you doing?”

  He made a low noise in his throat, dislodging a wad of phlegm. “What do you know of magic?”

  Rina considered a moment. There were stories, of course. Tales of magic splitting oceans in two, dark wizards bringing down the stars to destroy a city, seductive sorceresses twisting kings into knots with charms dripping from honeyed tongues. But they were only stories, and which sprang from some grain of truth and which were utter fancy she couldn’t say.

  “Nothing,” Rina said. “I don’t know anything about magic.”

  The old man snorted. “Then how shall I explain? Where to start?”

  “The fire to warm the bath,” she said quickly. “You lit it from across the room. That was magic, yes?”

  “Yes, okay. We’ll start there. What did you see?”

  “You held out your hand,” Rina said. “And the fire sprang to life.”

  A low chuckle. “I’m a mage, not one of the gods. What did you see? Details, please. The demons are ever in the details.”

  She closed her eyes, replayed the scene in her mind. “You released some kind of powder.”

  “And?”

  “Words,” Rina said. “They sounded clear but then sped by quickly. I can’t remember any of them.”

  “It takes discipline to hold those words in your mind, duchess. It can get crowded between your ears. A journeyman wizard can hold four or five spells. More than that and the brain gets muddled, starts hearing voices that aren’t real. A master might hold eight or ten. They say the Blue Wizard of The Lakes held more than a dozen, all chattering and running around in his brain. More than one mage has lost his mind trying to cram in too many. Those spells want out. It takes a strong mind to keep them in.”

  Rina’s back grew hot, and she stepped away from the fire. “How many can your mind hold?”

  The old man made a noncommittal noise. A pause. “Not enough. Never enough to make a difference.” He coughed and something rattled in his chest. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. I’m an old man in a cave. I’ll give you the last of my magic, Duchess. Come. You’re dry now.”

  She turned and saw him sitting hunched and gray in the chair. He looked bad, skin sallow and slick, dark circles under his eyes. He was deteriorating rapidly. The shock must have shown on Rina’s face.

  “I told you I was keeping the sickness at bay,” he said. “Now that I’m no longer fighting it, it’s come rushing in, making up for lost time. I—” He coughed again, stronger this time, wracking his whole body.

  “Never mind.” He gestured her forward. “Come closer. Within arm’s reach.”

  As she approached, she glanced at the little table next to his chair. He’d laid out the spell book alongside a line of thin, metal instruments. Some looked pointy, and a flutter of nerves twisted Rina’s stomach.

  “Damn you, what is that?”Anger flared in his good eye. He rubbed a finger along the shallow gash in her side, and Rina winced. “This wound is fresh.”

  “During the escape,” she said.

  “Your skin needs to be completely clean and blemish free.” The irritation was plain in his voice.

  “I didn’t get myself slashed just to annoy you, okay?” It wasn’t a deep wound, but it hurt.

  “Shut up, girl. I’m thinking.”

  She opened her mouth to shoot something back at him, closed it again. Maybe she was learning.

  “Yes, yes, that might work to our advantage after all.” He chuckled dryly, which turned into another fit of wracking coughs.

  He composed himself, stood. “Wait here.” He went to the shelf and returned with a fat jar the size of a teacup, seated himself again.

  “Turn around.”

  She turned.

  A second later she felt his hand slather something on the wound, like goose grease. Immediately, a warmth spread out from the wound, the hot sting of the sword-gash fading.

  “A healing balm,” the mage told her.

  She thought about the little vial Kork had tossed her during the rescue. “Is it the same as the healing elixirs, the kind you drink?”

  “Most of the same ingredients, yes. But elixirs work fast. The balm works slowly, more appropriate for what I have in mind. I’m getting a little inventive. This will either work out very well for you or ruin the entire process. We’ll see, I suppose. Now kneel.”

  “Kneel?”

  “I need to work on your back and shoulders, and be damned if I’m going to stand for the whole thing. I’m too old, and this will take some time. Kneel.”

  She knelt. The rough, stone floor dug into her knees, but she kept still, heard him flipping pages in the book behind her. “You still haven’t told me what you’re going to do.”

  “I’m going to give you a tattoo.”

  She frowned. “You mean like sailors have?” She’d seen them before, fanciful illustrations of mermaids and sea dragons.

  “Yes,” the old man said. “And no.”

  Yeah, that’s informative.

  “The principle is the same,” he said. “But crassly decorating yourself is not the goal.”

  “I … I don’t know if I want a tattoo,” Rina said.

  The old mage sighed extravagantly. “You arrived here, orphaned, with nothing but the rags on your back. Foreigners have overrun your land, and where you go from here is anyone’s guess. I have doomed myself merely discussing this with you. What say we throw caution to the wind and get a tattoo today, Duchess, or do you have better offers?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “How is it done?”

  “Needles,” he said. “To insert the ink under the skin. Although we’ll be using quite a bit more than ink, I can assure you.”

  Needles? “Will it—” She swallowed. “Will it hurt?”

  A pause too long for comfort. “Yes. Very much.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  At a distance, the disguise worked. A Perranese warrior on one horse, leading a captive on another.

  Up close was a different story.

  Tosh didn’t have the narrow eyes or the saffron skin of the Perranese, but he tried to sit straight and haughty in the saddle. Perranese foot patrols who spotted them down side streets merely saluted from a distance and kept going. Alem rode with his wrists together in front of him, rope wrapped around loosely to give the appearance they were bound. When Perranese soldiers looked like they might come too close, Tosh would veer off down another path. In this way, they zigzagged toward the city gate, often turning in the opposite direction and having to circle around again.

  Snow fell. It was cold.

  Alem leaned forward in his saddle to speak low to Tosh ahead of him. “This is taking forever.”

  Tosh frowned back at him. “If you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”

  Alem did not have a better idea.

  The plan, as Alem understood it, was to use the disguise to make it to one of the city gates and then do … something. Thinking about it now, in the battle-torn streets of Klaar, Alem realized it was a completely and utterly terrible plan. He supposed they’d figured to sneak through the gate in some way, but Alem couldn’t imagine how. Occasionally, he’d spot a citizen of Klaar darting furtively among the rubble, but most of the city’s population was in hiding. Most members of the army or militia were dead. Three times, they came across a scattering of bodies where the men of Klaar had turned to make a stand only to be
cut down by the swarming invaders.

  They reined in the horses under the tattered awning at the entrance of a burned-out shop, the shadows offering some slight concealment and cover from the snow. Alem almost didn’t recognize that he was at the wide square just inside the city’s front gate. On any normal day, the square would be filled with carts and stands, peddlers hawking wares, the healthy bustle of commerce.

  Now the stands and carts had been cleared away so the Perranese army could use the square as a staging area. A steady line of troops trudged in through the open front gate. Many pulled carts piled with enough goods and supplies to suggest a long stay. Perranese troops also lead occasional groups of captured Klaarians. Alem didn’t recognize any of them. Maybe they’d been gathered from the low-lying villages.

  Alem felt a stab of concern for his grandmother. He hoped the Perranese would leave an obviously harmless old woman alone, but he couldn’t quite convince himself. The invaders didn’t quite seem evil, but they did go about their business with a ruthless efficiency. If they’d been ordered to clear the villages, Alem doubted they would make exceptions.

  “Are we just going to sit here until they notice us?” Alem whispered.

  “We’re waiting,” Tosh said.

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know, okay?” Tosh said. “Just be ready to ride like the blazes if I give the signal. Can you ride?”

  “I can ride. Don’t worry about me.” Alem had spent all his life around horses. When on a hunt, invariably some fat noble’s ass would get saddle sore, and Alem would be picked to ride the horse back to the stable. He always took the long way back, riding the forest and mountain trails of Klaar. Yes, he could ride. He could ride like the bloody wind.

  They waited.

  Ten minutes became twenty and then half an hour. The square appeared to be controlled by a bull of a Perranese sergeant, head bald except for a glossy black topknot that swung like a whip whenever he turned his head to shout at another group of men. If the men marched through the front gate too slowly, he shouted at them. Too fast, and he shouted at them. If he needed them to halt so a troop column could march past, he shouted at them. Nobody in the Perranese army seemed to be doing anything exactly to his satisfaction.