He smiled at Van. “No need to keep hand on hilt, my friend. It will avail you nothing, as I am no child in shaping spells of sealing.” The outlander, confident as always in his own strength, tried to draw. His sword was frozen fast. Gerin would have believed Sosper without test; the man radiated power as a bonfire radiates heat.
Gentle but overwhelmingly self-assured, Sosper cut off the baron when he began to speak. “Why do you question Avelmir’s judgment? I can give you no aid, nor can the Collegium, until the time he specified. What happens among barbarians is of little moment to us in any event, and less now. You may perhaps be able to deduce the reason, having once studied here. No, look not so startled, my young friend: who knows the chick better than the hen?”
Trying to master his surprise, Gerin turned his wits to the problem Sosper had set him. He found no solution, and said so.
“Do you not? A pity. In that case, there appears to be no need for further conversation. Leave me, I pray, so I may return to my calculations.”
“At least tell me why you will not aid me,” Gerin said. “Balamung is no ordinary mage; he has more power than any I’ve seen here.”
For the first time, Sosper spoke with a touch of asperity. “I am under no obligation to you, sir; rather the reverse, for you take me away from important matters. And as for your Trokmê, I care not if he has the Book of Shabeth-Shiri—”
“He has. You don’t seem to have listened to a word I said.”
“How can you know this? Have you seen its terrible glow with your own eyes?” Sosper was skeptical, almost contemptuous.
“No, but I spoke with a woodsrunner who has.”
“You accept the untrained observations of a savage as fact? My good man, a hundred generations of scriers have sought the Book of Shabeth-Shiri—in vain. I doubt a barbarian hedge-wizard could have found it where they failed. No, lost it is and lost it shall remain, until the one no grave shall hold brings it back to the world of men.”
Gerin had not heard that bit of lore before. It chilled him to the marrow. But his protests died unspoken. The old man before him had been right for so long, and grown so arrogant in his rightness, that now he could not hear anything that contradicted his set image of the world. He was talented, brilliant … and deafened by his own rigidity.
“Leave me,” Sosper said. It was order, not request. Followed close by Van, Gerin left the chamber. Ice was in his heart. The door swung closed behind them of its own accord. Like a faithful servant, the foxfire ball reappeared to guide them back to its creator.
On their return, Avelmir looked to be considering some remark at their expense, but Gerin’s stony visage and an ominous twitch of Van’s great forearm muscles persuaded him to hold his tongue.
“What now, captain?” the outlander asked as they left the Collegium.
Gerin shook his head in dejected bewilderment. “Great Dyaus above, how should I know? Every move I make rams my head into a stone wall: the Sibyl, Carus, now this. Maybe Balamung was right. Maybe I can do nothing to fight him. Still, I intend to go on trying—what else can I do? And I can do one thing for myself right now.”
“What’s that?”
“Get drunk.”
Van slapped him on the back, sending him staggering down the steps. “Best notion I’ve heard in days. Where do we find a place?”
“It shouldn’t be hard.” Nor was it. Not five minutes’ ride from the Collegium stood a small tavern, set between an apothecary’s shop and an embalmer—“Where the druggist sends his mistakes, I suppose,” Gerin said. He read the faded sign over the tavern door. “‘The Barons’ Roost.’ Hah! Anything that roosted here would come away with lice in its feathers.”
“Someone doesn’t seem to care.” Van pointed to the matched blooded dapples and fine chariot tied in front of the tavern.
“He must be slumming.” Gerin slid down and hitched the wagon next to the fancy rig.
The Barons’ Roost had no door, only a splotchily dyed curtain, once perhaps forest green. Inside, it was dirty, dark, and close. Its few patrons, from the look of them mostly burglars, pimps, and other small-time grifters, gave Gerin and Van a wary once-over before returning to their low-voiced talk. “Hemp for smoking?” Gerin heard one say to another. “I can get it for you, of course I can. How much do you want?”
“What can I give you boys?” asked the fat man behind the bar. His hard eyes gave the lie to the jovial air he tried to cultivate.
“Wine,” Gerin said. “And quiet.”
“The quiet’s free. For the wine, I’d see your silver first.”
Van laughed at that. “Show too much silver in a dive like this and half the jackals here’ll decide they’re wolves today.”
“They don’t seem to be troubling him, do they?” The taverner jerked a thumb at the noble slumped over the far corner of the bar. Three jars of various vintages stood before him; from his slack-jointed posture they were empty, or nearly so.
“For all I know, he’s one of them, or their boss,” Van said.
At that, the noble slowly swung round. A golden earring caught candlelight and glinted. “Who is it,” he asked loftily, “who dares impute me a part of this place in any way save my location?” A swacked grin spread across his face as he focused on Gerin and Van. “As I live and breathe, the wench-stealers!”
“Rihwin! What are you doing here?” Gerin exclaimed.
“I? I am becoming preternaturally drunk, though if I can still say preter—pre—that word, I have not yet arrived. I shall be honored to stand you gentlemen a round: anyone filching so luscious a lass as Elise from Wolfar of the Axe deserves reward. Yet after she was gone, what point to my staying in the north—especially as my welcome had worn rather thin? So three days later, home I fared, and here I am.”
Considering it, Gerin decided it was quite possible; Rihwin would have taken no side-trips to delay his journey. With his load of cares, the Fox was glad to see any face he knew. He answered, “You can buy for us if we can buy for you.”
“Fair enough.” Rihwin turned to the tapster. “A double measure of Siphnian for my comrades, and quickly! They have considerable overtaking to do.”
The wine the taverner brought had never seen Siphnos, and the amphora in which it came was a crude local imitation of Sithonian ware. At any other time, Gerin would have stalked out of the dive. Now he relished the warmth rising from his belly to his brain. When the vessel was empty he ordered another, then another.
No amateur toper himself, Rihwin watched in disbelief as Van poured down mug after mug of wine. “Heaven above and hells below!” he exlaimed. “I toast your capacity.” The three men drained their cups.
“And I your fine company,” Van said. The cups emptied again. Riwhin and Van looked expectantly at Gerin.
He raised his mug. “A murrain take all magicians.” He drank.
Van drank.
“All but me,” Rihwin said. He drank too.
“What’s that?” Gerin was abruptly half sober.
“What’s—arp!—what? Excuse me, I pray, I am not well.” Riwhin’s head flopped onto his arms. He slept. Gerin shook, prodded, and nudged him, to no avail. The southerner muttered and whimpered, but would not wake.
“We’ve got to get him out of here,” the Fox told Van.
Van stared owlishly. “Who out of where?”
“Not you too!” Gerin snarled. “Before he flickered out, this candle said he was a wizard.”
“A murrain take all wizards!” Van shouted. He drank.
The baron tried to whip his fuzzy wits into action. At last he smote fist into palm in satisfaction. “I’d wager you think you’re quite the strong fellow,” he said to Van.
“I am that,” the outlander allowed between swigs. “And sober, too.”
“I doubt it,” Gerin said. “In fact, I’d bet you’re too puny and too drunk even to carry this chap here”—he indicated the inert Rihwin—“out to the wagon.”
“Go howl, captain.” Van slung Rihwin
over his shoulder like an empty suit of clothes and headed for the door. Gerin paid the taverner and followed.
Van slung Rihwin into the back of the wagon so hard Gerin hoped the noble was unhurt. “Will you own you were wrong?” he said.
“It seems I have to,” Gerin answered, smiling inside.
“Pay up, then.”
“Tell you what: I’ll race you back to Turgis’, double or nothing. You take the wagon and I’ll drive Rihwin’s chariot.”
“Doesn’t seem quite fair,” Van complained.
Privately, Gerin would have agreed. He loaded his voice with scorn. “Not game, eh?”
“You’ll see!” Van untied the wagon from the hitching rail, leaped aboard. He cracked his whip and was gone. Gerin was right behind him. Pedestrians fled every which way, tumbling back into shops and displays for their lives.
Rihwin’s team was as fine as it looked, but the Fox still had trouble gaining on Van. The outlander, with more weight behind him, bulled through holes Gerin had to avoid. He also drove with utter disregard for life and limb, his own or anyone else’s.
They were neck and neck when they reached the Alley. They stormed down it. And then, right outside the wheat emporium, they descended on a great flock of geese being driven to slaughter. Gerin doubted it was the flock which had delayed them on their way to the capital. That one still had to be on the road.
Van never slowed down. He had time for one bellowed “Gangway!” before he was into the middle of the geese, Gerin still a length or two behind. The Fox glimpsed blank despair on the face of one goose-tender. Then the air was full of terrified honking, squealing, cackling, defecating big white birds.
Some flew into the grain market. They promptly began to devour the wheat there. Swearing merchants tried to drive them back into the street, only to retreat in dismay as the birds fought back with buffeting wings and savage pecks and bites.
Half a dozen geese flapped their way through the second-story window of a bath-house. An instant later, four nude men leaped out the same window.
A dun-colored hound contested the right of two geese to a cartload of peaches. When five more birds joined the fray, the dog ran off, tail between its legs. Squawking contentedly, the victors settled down to enjoy their spoils.
Yet another goose seized a trollop’s filmy skirt in its beak. The goose tore it from her legs and left her half naked in the roadway. Her curses only added to the turmoil.
Somehow or other, the racers got through. Any pursuit was lost in the gallinaceous stampede. Gerin took the lead for a moment, then lost it when Van, quite by accident, found a shortcut. The baron was gaining at the end, but Van pulled into Turgis’ forecourt a few seconds in front.
Plucking a feather from his beard, he walked over to the Fox, broad palm out. “Pay up, if you please.”
“You know, we forgot to set a stake. I owe you twice nothing, which, the subtle Sithonians assure us, remains nothing.”
Van pondered this, nodded reluctantly. “Then we’ll just have to race back,” he declared. He took two steps toward the wagon and fell on his face.
The pound of galloping hooves brought Turgis out his front door on the run. “What in the name of the gods is going on?” he shouted. “Oh, it’s you, Gerin. I might have known.”
The baron lacked the patience to trade gibes with him. He boiled with urgency. “Do you have a potion to sober up these two right away?” He nodded toward Van and Rihwin, whom he had lain beside his friend. The noble had stayed unconscious all through the wild ride.
“Aye, but they’ll not be happier for it.” Turgis vanished into the hostel. He returned a moment later with a small, tightly stoppered vial. He poured half its contents into Van, gave the rest to Rihwin.
As the drug took effect, the two of them thrashed like broken-backed things, then spewed their guts on the ground. Sudden reason showed in Rihwin’s eyes. Wiping his mouth, he asked, “What am I doing here? Where, for that matter, is here? Who do you think you are, my good man?” he added when Van, still in pain, rolled up against him. His voice showed much of his usual cheerful hauteur.
The outlander groaned. “With any luck, I’ll die before I remember. There’s an earthquake in my brains.”
Rihwin rose gingerly. He looked from Van, who stayed on the ground with head in hands, to Gerin, none too steady on his feet himself. “I congratulate you, my friends: practice has made you a superior pair of kidnappers. Tell me, which of you has wed Elise, and which intends to marry me? I confess, I have given little thought to my dowry.”
“Go howl!” Gerin said. “Tell me at once: is it true you’re a wizard?”
“Where did you learn that, in that horrid dive? How drunk was I? It were better to say I am all but a mage. I completed the course at the Collegium but never graduated, nor was I linked to a familiar.”
“Why not?”
“Of what interest is this to you, may I ask?”
“Rihwin, you will have my story, I promise you,” Gerin said. “Now tell me yours, before I throttle you.”
“Very well. The fault, I fear, was my own. I learned all the required lores, mastered the spells they set me, met every examination, completed each conjuration with adequate results—which is to say, no fiend swallowed me up. And all this I accomplished on my own, for he who nominally supervised my work was so concerned with his own goetic researches that he had scant moments to lavish on his pupils.”
“Not the wizard who styles himself Sosper?” Gerin asked.
“Indeed yes. How could you know that?”
“I’ve met the man. Go on, please.”
“Came the night before I was to be consecrated mage, and in my folly I resolved to repay my mentor for all his indifference. He is a man who likes the good life, is Sosper, for all his sorcerous craft, and he dwells near the Palace Imperial. At midnight I essayed a small summoning. When the demon I evoked appeared, I charged it to go to my master’s bedchamber, give his couch a hearty shake, and vanish instanter once he awoke. What I ordained, the demon did.”
A reminiscent grin lit Rihwin’s face. “Oh, it was a lovely jape! Even warlocks are muzzy when bounced from slumber, and Sosper, suspecting nothing other than a common earthquake, rushed in his nightshirt to the palace to inquire after the Emperor’s safety. I would have given half my lands to see his face when he found the temblor his private property.
“But it takes a mighty wizard to befool such a man for long, and I, alas, had nowhere near the skill to maintain my appearance of innocence ’gainst his inquiry. Which leaves me here … almost a mage, and glad, I suppose, my punishment was no worse than expulsion.”
Rihwin’s tale was in keeping with the judgment Gerin had formed of him at Ricolf’s holding: a man who would dare anything on the impulse of a moment, never stopping to consider the consequences—but one who would then jauntily bear those consequences, whatever they were.
Banking on that mercurial nature, Gerin plunged into his own tale. “And so,” he finished, “I found I could get no proper mage, and was in despair, not knowing what to do. Meeting you in the tavern seems nothing less than the intervention of the gods—and on my behalf, for once. Fare north with me, to be my aid against the Trokmoi.”
Rihwin studied him, wearing his usual expression of amused cynicism like a gambler’s stiff face. “You know, I suppose, that I have every right to bear you ill-will for winning the love of a girl for whose hand I struggled over the course of a year?”
“So you do,” Gerin said stonily.
“And you know I find your northern province uncouth, unmannered, and violent, nothing at all like this soft, smiling land?”
“Rihwin, if you mean no, say no and stop twisting the knife!”
“But my dear fellow Fox, I am trying to say yes!”
“What?” Gerin stared at him.
“Why do you think I traveled north a year ago, if not for the adventure of it, and the change? I was stifled by the insipid life I led here; were it not that I am in a bad o
dor up there, I doubt I should have returned at all.”
Van struggled to his feet. “Good for you! Keep the same ground under your feet too long and you grow roots like a radish.”
“But—what you said of Elise …” Gerin was floundering now.
“What of it? That I lost her was my own foolish fault, and none other’s. I was not in love with her, nor she with me. Aye, she’s a comely maid, but I’ve found there are a good many of those, and most of them like me well. I entered Ricolf’s contest much more to measure myself against the other suitors than for her sake.”
The last of his foppish mask slipped away, and he spoke with a seriousness the baron had never heard from him: “Lord Gerin, if you truly want my aid, I will meet you here in three days’ time, ready to travel. I pray your pardon for not being quicker, but as I’m here, I should set my affairs in order before faring north again. Does it please you?”
Dumbfounded, Gerin could only nod. Rihwin sketched a salute, climbed into his chariot, and departed. His horses whickered happily at the familiar feel of his hands on the reins.
“What do you know?” Van said. “More to that fellow than he lets on.”
Gerin was thinking much the same thing. It occurred to him that he had seen Rihwin only on a couple of the worst days of his life; now he began to understand why Ricolf, with longer acquaintance, had thought the southerner a fit match for Elise.
More than once over those three days, the Fox wondered if Rihwin would have second thoughts, but he was too busy readying his own return to waste much time on worry. Van acquired a stout ash spear (“A little light, but what can you do?”) and four examples of another weapon Gerin had not seen before: flat rings of bronze with sharp outer edges. Their central holes were sized so they fit snugly onto the out-lander’s forearms.
“They’re called chakrams,” Van explained. “I learned the use of them in Mabalal. They’re easier to throw straight than knives, and if I just leave them where they are, they make a forearm smash unpleasant for whoever’s in the way.”
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