The Magehound

by Elaine Cunningham

  “You might say that,” he said shortly.

  Tzigone frowned and handed him a small burlap sack. “You can carry this for me. That will help restore your image as a polite and proper jordain.”

  Matteo absently took the sack and slung it over his shoulder. “You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?”

  “Of course. I got Cassia’s attention for you. Again, there’s no need to thank me.”

  Matteo cast his eyes toward the sky. “Again, I concur wholeheartedly.”

  She gave him a suspicious look. “You don’t sound pleased. I must say, you’re a hard man to repay. But I know just the thing—something not even you could fault or refuse.”

  She took off through the crowd, weaving through the throng of shoppers and buskers as she moved confidently toward her destination. Matteo followed, fearful of the trouble her next well-meaning act might cause.

  They wound through the market to a small side street lined with stalls, each of which was shaded by silk awnings dyed in brilliant rainbow hues. The afternoon sun filtered down through the trees that shaded the street, providing pleasant shade for those who lingered for a midday meal. Murmured conversations and savory fragrances filled the air.

  Tzigone came to a stop under a crimson canopy. She inhaled deeply as she eyed a row of braided pastries drying on a T-shaped wooden rack. Several more pastries swam in a cauldron of bubbling fat, rapidly turning plump and brown and filling the air with the scent of frying sweet bread. The baker was dredging a fresh batch in finely ground sugar mixed with rare spices: allspice and cardamom and mace. Tzigone patted her pockets and produced a few of the wedge-shaped electrum bits that passed as small currency.

  “Two of the hangman’s nooses,” she instructed the baker, pointing to a long braided pastry with a loop at one end. “And can you swirl them around in the spice again? Make them good and sticky?”

  Matteo shook his head when she offered him one of the powdery treats. He pointed to the cauldron’s underside, which was red and glowing without the benefit of fire.

  “The pastries are cooked by magical means,” he explained. “Such things are forbidden to a jordain.”

  For a moment she gaped at him, then she shrugged and took a big bite of the sugary bread. “Tastes the same, either way. But there’ll be no waste. I’m hungry enough to finish them both,” she assured him. “What about you? Let’s stroll about and find something that pleases you.”

  He shifted the bag from his shoulder. “There’s no need and little time. I’m due back at my patron’s villa by sunset, and before then I must see that Procopio’s message is properly delivered.”

  Tzigone grinned and gave him a playful shove. “Aha! Then you’re not so out of favor with him as you implied.”

  Matteo sighed and slumped against the broad, silvery trunk of one of the massive trees that shaded the lane. “I will be, once Lord Procopio hears of Frando’s challenge.”

  “Why should he care? That Frando is an idiot, even by the standards of the jordaini. I’ve met donkeys who could best him in debate.”

  “That may be so, but he is counselor to the mage Xavierlyn. A challenge between counselors reflects upon their patrons. At this point, Procopio has no desire to best Xavierlyn, but neither would he care to lose to her.”

  Tzigone nodded sagely. “Ah. He has a standing bet, with large sums placed on either gamecock. He’ll suffer no great loss that way, but such things can be inconvenient if he hasn’t the ready coin to float.”

  The notion scandalized him, as did the comparison between a jordaini debate and the vulgar practice of gambling upon cock fights. “This has nothing to do with money! It is a matter of politics. Xavierlyn is the Chief Elder of Halarahh. For Procopio to challenge her would be tantamount to announcing his aspirations to her position. He cannot afford to appear too ambitious at this time.”

  She shrugged again, not seeing the sense in it. “What did Cassia have to say?”

  “I think she intends to recommend me to Queen Beatrix,” Matteo grumbled.

  Tzigone brightened. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Becoming the queen’s counselor?”

  “Not if it means going to the palace in disgrace, as a means of saving my current patron trouble.”

  “After you’ve arrived at a destination, does it truly matter if you traveled by horse or mule?” she pointed out “Once you’re there, the journey is quickly forgotten.”

  Matteo had to admit that there was a certain practicality to this. “I am beginning to follow the paths your arguments take,” he told her, and then sighed. “This worries me.”

  She laughed merrily and linked her arm through his, pulling him back into a slow walk. “Didn’t I tell you that you’d get used to me in time?”

  “That is something we must discuss,” he said slowly. “I cannot deny that I enjoy your company, and I have thought of you often since last we met. Believe me when I tell you I have no wish to give offense, but I must insist that you stop interfering in my affairs.”

  Tzigone stopped dead and stared up at him. “Interfering!”

  She looked so dumbfounded that Matteo felt compelled to provide illumination. “Meddling. Or influencing, if you prefer that term. The most recent example was your performance in the Arbor Square.”

  “A man was getting ready to pull two very nasty-looking knives on you. My story served as a distraction,” she pointed out.

  “A distraction that offended a fellow jordain and prompted him to issue a challenge.”

  Tzigone folded her arms. “Which in turn brought you to the attention of the king’s high counselor.”

  “Not all attention is desirable. Cassia thinks me an inept fool, and for that reason, she intends to recommend me to her rival.”

  “Who happens to be the Queen of Halruaa,” Tzigone concluded, exasperation edging her tones. “I thought jordaini were supposed to be ambitious! Who cares how you arrive at such a high place? Once you get there, you set about to make your mark.” She struck a haughty pose. “If you cannot do so, then you’re the fool that the king’s counselor named you,” she concluded in Cassia’s voice.

  The imitation was uncannily accurate, more precise than an echo. Matteo shook his head in amazement. “How do you do that?”

  “The voices?” She shrugged. “I’m told that I’m a natural mimic. I used to travel with a troupe of entertainers who hawked me as The Human Mockingbird.’ It was fun for a while,” she confided, “but the feathers on the costume made me sneeze. You’ve heard of Old Bess?”

  It took Matteo a moment to follow the abrupt shift in her conversation, but he nodded. Few people in the coastal lowlands did not know of the notorious pirate. A plump, middle-aged woman with the cheery manner of an aging milkmaid, Old Bess was nonetheless among the bloodiest and most ruthless captains to sail the Great Sea.

  “I have had occasion to speak with her,” Matteo admitted. “Two years past, she spent part of the summer rains at the jordaini house, insensible with fever.”

  “That old shark?” Tzigone said incredulously. “I’m surprised the jordaini would have anything to do with her.”

  “Sometimes criminals and foreigners are brought to the house for treatment so that the students might observe the course of serious disease and injury and learn of their treatments,” he explained. “In all truth, no one expected her to live. When she recovered, she insisted upon paying for her keep and her care by instructing some of the students in tides and currents. It was her tales of battle, however, that provided the liveliest lessons,” he confessed with a little grin.

  “Then you know the voice.” Tzigone cleared her throat and pursed her lips as she smiled, in a manner that made her cheeks puff up and her eyes appear to twinkle. To complete the illusion, she stepped under the crimson awning, light filtered through it, adding reddish lights to her hair and painting her face a wind-burned pink. Without changing her form or features, she managed to portray the essence of the jovial, apple-cheeked pirate.

 
“Wot’ll ye be havin’ now, dearie?” she said with bright charm and a thick north-isle Moonshae accent. “Will it be a fish knife through yer gizzard, or will ye be having a sit-down on the business end of a pike?”

  She went on, cheerfully listing increasingly gory methods of death in a tone more suited to a tavern wench’s blithe recitation of the night’s fare.

  As he listened, Matteo felt his lips twitch and his ire begin to fade. It was difficult to remain angry with Tzigone for long. The wench was amusing, and in her own way, she truly did seem to mean well.

  He also found her interesting in a manner that went far beyond her tall stories, for there was about her something of a puzzle. It did not escape him that Tzigone’s speech dropped easily into Common, the widely used trade tongue that few Halruaans, who were in general both insular and proud, saw need to master.

  “And now a recitation from the decadent northlands,” she suggested, her voice smoothed from a Moonshae burr into an affected drawl.

  “They’re far from staid after a raid,

  These men of Zhentil Keep.

  They kill off all the women,

  For they much prefer the sheep.

  “The men don’t eat their ill-got treat.

  Not one of them’s a glutton.

  So isn’t it a marvel

  That they always smell of mutton?”

  She declaimed the verse in ringing metered speech, much as a classically trained bard might deliver news of battle or recite an epic of long-dead heroes. The combination of her cultured tone with the bawdy verse had Matteo shaking his head in amazement.

  “Wherever did you hear such a thing?”

  “Great songs endure, but bad ones travel,” she informed him with a grin.

  He chuckled. “I’m not familiar with that proverb, but it seems to hold true.”

  “Proverb?” A flicker of annoyance crossed her face, but she quickly shrugged it aside. “So what shall we do now?”

  Matteo knew the answer but found that he didn’t relish speaking it. “I’m afraid we part ways,” he said with genuine regret as he prepared to drop her burlap bag at her feet.

  Her eyes widened in alarm, and she flung out a hand to stop him. “Don’t put that down!”

  Suspicion bloomed anew, and with it came a sharp, painful stab of self-reproach. Jordaini had a strong resistance to magic, including all means of magical inquiry. Since they could seldom be seen through scrying devices or seeking spells, they were natural couriers. Elaborate protocols ensured that they could not be used as such, even by their patrons. They carried only what they could place in the leather bags at their belt, and they memorized messages rather than carry scrolls. By accepting the bag from Tzigone, Matteo had gone against tradition and broken several core rules. And in not questioning her intent in handing him the sack, he had proven himself to be as naive as she had named him.

  “What’s in here?” he demanded.

  Not waiting for an answer, he jerked open the sack and thrust one hand into it. His fingers closed around a smooth, hard cylinder. He drew it out, his heart pounding as he regarded the wood and leather scroll case.

  “It’s a spell book,” he said incredulously. “You told me that you were no wizard.”

  “You don’t need to be a wizard to know the price of such things,” Tzigone retorted. “It’ll bring a good profit in the markets, provided I sell it after dark and well away from this part of the city.”

  Relief swept through Matteo. The reaction surprised him, as did the realization that it was easier for him to deal with Tzigone as a thief than as a wizard. Surely he did not approve of thievery, but in his world, wizards could play only two roles: patrons to be served, or enemies to be outwitted and defeated.

  The thought of battle prompted him to glance at the arcane markings on the case, looking for some indication of the school and the power of the wizard who owned the scroll. This was important. Battle was to be avoided if possible, but he doubted that the cheated wizard would allow him time for explanation.

  After a moment’s study, he found what he sought. Lightly etched into the dark wood was the outline of a raven perched upon the point of a triangle. These were the symbols of death and the renewal that death offered, so it seemed likely that this had been the property of a necromancer.

  Matteo grimaced and dropped the scroll case back into the sack. Necromancers were not considered the most honored or powerful of Halruaa’s wizards, but he disliked dealing with them.

  “What’s wrong?” Tzigone asked quickly.

  “Apart from the fact that once again you’ve had me carry stolen property?” he retorted.

  She looked at him keenly. “No offense, but you don’t seem all that bothered by theft. When I told you that I acquired this spell scroll with resale in mind, you looked positively relieved. So I take it I’ve stepped on one of your precious jordaini rules.”

  For a troubling moment, Matteo considered that perhaps he was more concerned with the rules of his order than with simple matters of right and wrong. Theft, in his opinion, was wrong, while, strictly speaking, magic was not. But although consorting with thieves was hardly the accepted thing, friendship with a wizard could get him censured or even slain. This seemed oddly out of balance.

  He made a note to consider this at a later time, and he explained the matter to Tzigone as best he could.

  “A jordain may not use magic or pay for it to be used on his behalf. He cannot own or use magical items. He cannot have personal dealings with wizards. Even handling magical items is suspect. The purity of the order is rigorously ensured by the magehounds and the Jordaini Council, and the penalties for violating any of these rules are stern.”

  Tzigone made a wry face. “As bad as all that, is it? Well, don’t concern yourself. I’ll be rid of this by dawn,” she said as she reached for the sack.

  At that moment a passerby jolted them, and the bag fell from Matteo’s fingers. Tzigone lunged for it, but she couldn’t get past him in time to get at it. The bag thudded onto the cobbled street.

  Immediately a flash of arcane light darted from the bag. Deeper than crimson in hue, it sizzled out like the strike of a preternaturally quick snake.

  The sudden burst of magic unnerved the midday diners. Chairs overturned as they moved away. Pasties and cheeses dropped unheeded to the cobblestone. Coins and merchandise lay forgotten on the counter as both merchants and customers thought of things that required their urgent attention. Spell battles were uncommon in the streets of Halruaa, but they were not so infrequent that people considered them a novelty worthy of the risk.

  “Red lightning. That’s never good,” muttered Tzigone. She began to edge toward the yellow awning of the fishmonger’s stall nearby.

  Suddenly the lightning sizzled back, retracing the path of the spell of seeking. The light and power of the bolt seemed greatly increased in power; it was brighter and somehow weightier.

  Matteo frowned. He hadn’t expected this conclusion to the spell of seeking. Few wizards could travel along the path forged by the seeking magic. The wizard he was soon to face was more powerful than he had anticipated.

  He placed his hands on the hilts of his daggers as the wizard manifested before him, not drawing them but prepared to defend himself if need be.

  The victim of Tzigone’s latest theft was a tall man, exceedingly long of limb and narrow through the shoulders. His lanky frame was swathed in the black-red robes of a necromancer, which swirled about him like storm clouds at sunset. A faint odor of a charnel house clung to him, whispering softly but unmistakably of death. By some coincidence of fate, the man was paler than a corpse, a true albino, with eyes the color of water and skin whiter than the underbelly of a fish. The black robes cast grayish shadows on his skin.

  With almost theatrical menace, the wizard began to advance, one thin hand leveled at Matteo. His skin grew paler still, so that the flesh became as clear as crystal and the skeletal form beneath was revealed.

  “Behold the fate of
the hands that touched my spellbook,” intoned the wizard.

  “Sure, give or take sixty years,” Tzigone muttered from somewhere behind Matteo.

  He shared her confidence—as a jordain, he was immune to most spells. But he wondered briefly how Tzigone might explain her own resistance to magic. After all, the spell of seeking had not worked when she carried the bag, either.

  The necromancer made a sharp, quick gesture with his skeletal hand and then waited expectantly. His grim hauteur quickly changed to anger when no one obliged him by withering away to bone.

  He followed with a series of quick, impatient gestures. At his command, dozens of smooth, polished sticks rose from a basket in a nearby stall, all of them edged in tassels—juggler’s tools sold in groups of three as toys for children. The sticks flew into the midst of the now-empty square and clattered into formation. An odd, angular skeleton, the bones of a creature that had never known life, began to advance on Matteo.

  Matteo quickly adjusted his stance and his strategy. He had never faced such a foe before, but he reasoned that every creature, alive or dead or fabricated, was held together in much the same way.

  He dropped and spun as the wooden skeleton advanced. As he turned, Matteo slashed out at the joints where one of the knees might have been. The silver blade cut deep into something he could not see—not flesh, but an energy that was almost as palpable. The magical bounds were strong and did not sever entirely, but the necromancer’s creation seemed to be effectively hamstrung. It stopped suddenly, listing hard to one side as its “arms” flailed about in a quest for balance.

  Matteo ducked under the wildly swinging limbs and wedged one dagger between two joints of the construct’s wooden spine. He held the blade firmly in place as he kicked the other leg out from under the magical creature. The skeleton went down with a clatter and lay twitching, but it was no longer able to move its parts. The magical flow that held the thing together followed much the same path as the energy that coursed along a living man’s spine. Sever that, and the rest was all but over.