The boy sighed. “In the presence of magic, of power, of will, as the sorcerers would call it, I can, it seems, dispel, absorb, and then redirect the power that is expended.”
“So you swallowed the power of the god of the caves?”
“Yes.”
“And you could do this to other gods? To sorcerers?”
“Well,” Gideon said, “yes. If conditions favored it. It’s unlikely that most sorcerers would be inept or imprudent enough to allow me to do that uncontested. And I imagine that most other gods are rather more reluctant to let go of their power than the god of the caves was. I also believe that proximity matters.”
The clearing was silent but for a few hardy birds greeting the day as Allystaire considered the implications of the boy’s words. Finally he said, “And you could use this power to kill?”
“Yes.” There was something in the slightly cold, nonchalant way that Gideon said that single word that chilled Allystaire, and he took a few steps to close the distance between them, laying his free hand on the boy’s shoulder, bending down to look him in the eye.
“I need you to promise me something, Gideon,” he said, solemnly. “You reminded me just a short while ago that we should always be looking to expand our capacity for mercy. Promise me that you will not kill anyone with this Gift unless it is absolutely necessary.”
Gideon frowned uneasily. “You and Idgen Marte and Torvul already abide by this rule. Or at least, I think that you make the attempt. What exactly are you asking?”
“Then kill only if it means your life, or the life of others, if you do not.”
“How will I know if that is the case?”
“You will,” Allystaire replied. “Please, I ask you again. Promise me that you will think of mercy first. Always.”
The boy thought on this for a moment, and then nodded. “I promise,” he said.
Allystaire nodded and straightened up, felt the cool morning air relieve his suddenly sweat-damp brow. “Thank you, Gideon.” He looked with some consternation at the growing light in the sky, and said, “I think we will not get much more done this morning. Perhaps tonight. If not, tomorrow is another day.”
“How many more days travel?”
Allystaire grunted noncommittally as he started ambling back towards the camp. “Depends on where we go.”
“The Goddess told me we must be in Thornhurst as soon as we can manage. There is something there that is unfinished.”
“The altar,” Allystaire replied. His hand tightened around the length of wood he carried. “The Altar in the Temple of the Mother. It needs you and Torvul there to be complete.”
“Why does this thought anger you?” Gideon gestured with his staff to the fist Allystaire had made.
“It is not that. It is the thought that Bend—another town, a town where, in many ways, all of this began—is laid open to the scourge of Braech’s anger. I had thought to go there and confront the Choiron.”
“Oh.” Gideon went to Allystaire’s side and looked up at him. “I think with Torvul’s help I could show you Bend, if you wished. Bend as it is now.”
“Show it to me? How?”
With a grin that imitated Torvul too closely for Allystaire’s taste, Gideon said, “Magic.”
Chapter 14
The First of
Many Cooperations
Back in the camp, Gideon had knocked on the door of Torvul’s wagon almost immediately. There were no signs of breakfast yet, though most of those sleeping around the fire stirred, if fitfully, and Idgen Marte soon appeared from whatever nearby tree she had perched in. They heard grumbling in a mix of tongues as Torvul answered Gideon’s knock, though when the boy spoke to him in an excited rush, the dwarf ushered him in.
Soon enough, the pair of them emerged from the wagon. The boy carried a basket of long, thin pieces of bread that smelled sweet and proved light and delicate on the tongue.
“Where did you get the sugar for this,” Idgen Marte asked, even as she stuffed half of a sweet stick into her mouth and reached for another.
“From his saddlebags,” the dwarf said, pointing a finger at Allystaire. “Great big cone of the stuff, raw and pure.”
“I do not recall being asked if you could go through my bags,” Allystaire began, sternly, though at least half in jest, for he was already grasping two more of the breakfast confections in one huge hand.
“I took charge of food. That means any and all food or ingredients I found among our baggage,” Torvul replied, testily. “Not that this is likely to be a problem, but make sure they all get eaten. They stiffen up something terrible if they are left over. Give us plenty of energy for the day’s travel, too,” he added, “after our little demonstration, that is.”
“Demonstration?” Idgen Marte this time, taking more care with her second pastry.
“Yes. The boy here, quick study that he is, outlined for me how we might do a bit of scrying. Not like your Braech priestess’s bowl of seawater, mind, or some charlatan’s ball of glass. It might not be exactly what you’re hoping,” he said to Allystaire, “but it should do the job.”
“What will it be then?”
“No divulgin’ of secrets,” Torvul said. “I can only promise when it will be,” he added, snatching two of the last pastry sticks from the basket. “And that will be after breakfast.” The dwarf ate slowly, with relish, and occasional swigs from a jug of ale that he somehow kept cellar-chilled in his wagon.
When that was done, Torvul and Gideon cleared up the breakfast detritus, the dwarf refusing offers of help, for Gideon seemed to be the only person Torvul routinely trusted with entrance to his wheeled home. With that finally done, they appeared again, Torvul holding a leather tube with hard leather caps tied at the top and bottom.
“Come with us,” Torvul said to Allystaire, and the three of them wandered away from the camp. Torvul took the lead, setting a quick pace that belied his usual deliberate gait. Eventually he led them to a slight outcropping at the edge of the pass, not exactly a peak, but it commanded a reasonable view of the north and west. Torvul turned to Allystaire, and held up his tube, uncapping both ends.
“Gideon’s notion is that he can pour some of his own power into mine, and since you’re so keen t’ see Bend, I had an idea how t’make it happen. D’you know what this is?” He held the tube out to Allystaire, who took it gingerly.
“Thought it was a map case, though clearly not.”
“It’s a glass,” Torvul said. “In terms you can understand, it extends the range of your vision.”
“All the way to Bend? It is a hard few days ride from here.”
“No, no, no. It doesn’t go near that far. Don’t be daft.” Torvul cleared his throat. “Though what we were thinkin’ is if we apply a little of one of my concoctions to your eye and a little to the glass, and Gideon feeds a trickle of,” the dwarf paused to search for a word and settled on, “of whatever he has, well, then maybe you’ll get a distant glimpse.”
“If the Goddess told him that we must head for Thornhurst, his word is good enough,” Allystaire replied, nodding towards Gideon.
“Yes, but it’ll be gnawin’ at ya the whole way, and you’ll be chompin’ at the bit to head up t’Bend as soon as we’re settled. This’ll put your mind at ease—and it’s a good test for me and the boy. Now.” Torvul reached into one of his ever-present pouches, drew out a potion bottle and handed it to Allystaire. “Dab some of this into your right eye, then look into the glass, eh?”
Allystaire nodded. He poured a few drops from the thin-necked glass into his hand and let them gather at his fingertip before rubbing it carefully into his right eye. There was a kind of hum of power, a light trill of new sensation that ran through his head and down his spine, and he gazed into the glass, as Torvul indicated.
Allystaire was unprepared for just how far he was able to see. Not so far as Be
nd, but down into the gently rolling hills and fertile valleys of Barony Delondeur. He could see the odd village, the patchwork cloak of fields, all shades of brown, spread out before him.
“Torvul, this is a wonder,” Allystaire said, in a hoarse whisper.
“Not yet it isn’t,” the dwarf murmured. “Close your eyes again. When I tell ya t’open them next, I want you to think very, very hard about the town of Bend. I take it that is where all this paladin business really started. Concentrate.”
Allystaire did as he was told and felt something catch at the front of the glass he held—Torvul’s surprisingly dexterous fingers applying some potion to the end of the glass, he thought. Then he heard the dwarf turn towards Gideon, who’d been silent this whole time, and say, “Go on.”
Instantly Allystaire heard the strum of notes, the warmth that meant the Mother’s power—it was a tangible presence, albeit one less overwhelming than Her own. He felt it flow into and envelop him.
“Now!” came the instruction from Torvul.
Allystaire’s eye flicked open even as he struggled to remember the town of Bend. Muddy streets, the outlying warren of tents and shanties clustered around the flimsy palisade wall. The surprisingly large town within it. Bricktown, the thriving twenty-year old center of the place. The absurd toy keep that squatted within it. The warehouse on the Street of Sashes. The wall against which he had beat to death the slaver captain. The throb in his hand. The Assize, the awful storm, the widow he had bought a new life for on a boat to Londray.
Suddenly his sight flew over the landscape; his stomach flipped as though he were falling, and the expanses of Barony Delondeur rolled past him and suddenly his vision was filled with the squalid town where he’d first met Idgen Marte, rescued the folk of Thornhurst, and been Called by a Goddess.
Or, rather, his vision was filled with what was left of it. Bend had burned, and was, in places, still burning. Lazy, thin plumes of smoke drifted up, not the kind that signaled a blazing fire, but rather the smoldering ruins of one. Here and there, figures moved, but Allystaire’s vision moved too quickly to make them out.
He tried to pull back, but realized that he was no longer controlling his vision. Some huge Presence, some indomitable willpower, knew that he was looking upon it and drew his gaze like a fisherman drew his netted catch.
Allystaire tried to exert some kind of control, tried to focus, and suddenly found his head swimming and his knees going weak. His vision rushed out onto the bend of the Ash from which the town had taken its name, and began following it on its course towards Londray Bay and the great sea beyond, a stream of blue blurring past his vision. His hand trembled on the glass. There were ships sailing upon it—long, sleek Islandmen ships, full of mail and hide-clad oarsmen and a handful of bare-chested men who wore only gauntlets upon their hands. He had no time to study them, for his vision was drawn to a tall, dark-bearded figure in robes the color of the sea. Standing at the bow of one of the ships, the man raised his hands in supplication to the waves, calling the wind that filled their sails.
That bearded figure, the Choiron Symod, suddenly turned sharply, sensing a presence. Then Allystaire thought he heard a voice call his name, a voice as deep and enormous as the ocean itself. That was all it said, Allystaire, yet even the sound of his own name, spoken by that voice, shook him to his core.
He knew, lurking somewhere past the river and the sea that drew it, something huge and immensely powerful knew him, and hated him.
“Cut it off, boy, cut it off!” He heard these words distantly, as though the speakers were miles away. He heard a cracking sound, felt something in his hand give way, and then his legs started to wobble.
Suddenly he jolted back to awareness. Torvul’s hand was clamped onto the back of his shirt, dragging him from the outcropping they’d been standing on.
“Stones, but you’re heavy,” Torvul grunted. The dwarf had a grip like iron.
Torvul let go and Allystaire surged to his feet. He looked down to the tube in his right hand; it was crushed. Only the stiff leather case had kept the glass from cutting into his skin. He held it out to Torvul with a sigh.
“Not your fault,” the dwarf was saying to Gideon, whose shoulders were slumped a bit. The dwarf laid one hand on the boy’s arm and held the other out for his glass, Allystaire placed it in his palm and the alchemist stuck it in his belt. “We should’ve tested it in a smaller way.”
The dwarf turned to Allystaire then. “What did you see? And what started, ah, tugging on you?”
“I saw Bend. Destroyed. In flames. The Choiron’s work, no doubt. As for what tried to grasp hold of my mind? I think it was the Sea Dragon himself. Through his priest.” Allystaire remembered, for a frightful moment, the power that grip had exerted, the fear it had stoked in him.
There was silence for a long moment before Torvul said, “Her Ladyship told us She feared that She and Braech were bound to be at odds.”
Gideon, quiet and slumped, finally spoke. “How are we to contend with a god? Not a senile one like the god of the caves, but one in the fullness of His time?”
“Gideon,” Allystaire said, “you just performed a miracle none of your previous masters would be capable of. Think on that, and worry not about the miracles to come.”
The boy looked at Allystaire when he spoke, and smiled faintly. “I will.”
“And it worked,” he added. “No matter what else came of it, it worked. I saw Bend.” He stopped then, suppressing a rising tide of anger, and went on. “Refine it later. No plan works perfectly the first time, eh? Come. I mean to make as long a ride as we can of today.”
That seemed to brighten the boy’s mood and he hurried off to the camp. Torvul and Allystaire lingered.
“How’d you know how to handle the boy like that? You’ve said you were never a father…”
Allystaire chuckled softly. “No. Yet I did spend a good long time turning boys into knights. There is a time to praise, a time to correct, and a time to punish. This was clearly the first.”
“I s’spose so.”
“Sorry about the glass.”
Torvul shrugged lightly, without meeting Allystaire’s eyes, and was silent a moment. “Allystaire, back in the caves, when he spoke to…whatever it had been. Stones Above!” The dwarf cursed, shook his head, and stared at his boots. “He frightened me—more than I’ve ever been.”
Allystaire turned his head to watch the dwarf, but remained silent.
“I, on the way back out o’the cave, after seeing him just take in all that power, I started thinking about what I might have to do. Him being a sorcerer…”
“He is not,” Allystaire pointed out.
“Didn’t know that then, did I? All I knew at the moment was that a sorcerer’s apprentice had just talked an ancient god into letting go of its hold on the world, and then sucked in all its energy for himself. It was a terrifying thought. And I, I started wonderin’ if we were going to have to…”
Allystaire frowned, the expression deepening the lines on his face. “Torvul—another time, my life before all this, I would have thought the same. I will not fault you for it.”
The dwarf was silent a moment before saying, “Thanks. D’ya think, is there some ritual for…cleansing ourselves? Asking forgiveness?”
Allystaire shrugged. “Not unless you want me to devise one. All in all I would just as soon you spoke of it to the Goddess Herself.”
Torvul grunted. “Nothing like going straight to the top.” A pause. “So that’s it then? No lecture? Nothin’?”
“You did not hurt him. And you would not have done so except at greatest need. Remember, Torvul: faith. Faith in the Mother, yes, but also in ourselves, and in each other.”
“So speakin’ to the Goddess, d’you just…think in Her direction, as it were, or speak aloud? Does She answer back?”
“Betimes,” Allystaire replied. �
��Certainly not as often as I might hope, but I suspect that is the point. If She always answered—”
“Then we would just be pawns,” Torvul finished for him. “Let’s get on the road already. Dwarfs belong under mountains, not atop ‘em.”
“Torvul, if I may ask, if dwarfs, as you say, belong under mountains, why are your folk above ground?”
Torvul sighed. “Not today.”
Chapter 15
Homecoming
The descent from the Thasryach pass was far less eventful than the climb, and by midday they were entering the foothills Allystaire had looked across that morning. Idgen Marte set as fast a pace as she could, and Torvul coaxed speed from his ponies and his sturdy wagon’s wheels.
To Allystaire’s initial surprise, Keegan and the other Brotherhood men were able to keep pace even on foot. Though they were reluctant to respond to his attempts to draw them out, he’d learned that two of the remaining band were from Barony Delondeur, one was from Barony Innadan, and a handful wouldn’t say even that much. All had deserted their respective armies within the past three years. Yet nothing else. Not even their names.
He wasn’t overly troubled by it, but he did catch them peering at him sidelong and murmuring amongst themselves. He knew guarded fear when he saw it.
So when they paused—briefly, at Allystaire’s insistence—to eat a midday meal, he was finally more direct.
Strolling over to where they gathered, several yards away from where he’d tethered Ardent, he announced his presence broadly and amiably. “Gentlemen,” he said, and the only one who looked directly at him was Keegan, “might I ask what you find disagreeable about our travels?”
One of them, a Delondeur man, Allystaire thought, glanced briefly to Keegan and then back. “We’re sorry, m’lord,” he said, avoiding eye contact. “We, ah, we just…”
“They’re frightened of you,” Keegan said bluntly.
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