The Mongrel Mage

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “These aren’t really the grasslands,” replied Kaerylt.

  “Then why are we here?” asked Sydon.

  “We’ve seen enough of the grasslands for our purposes. All the hamlets will be like Kasiera, or worse, and we’d simply end up killing more raiders.”

  “Is there anything wrong with that?” Sydon’s words were somewhere between matter-of-fact and sardonic.

  “If we kill too many, that won’t help the weavers, and the price of wool will go up, and when prices go up, people get unhappy, and that makes the Prefect unhappy.”

  “Seems like everything makes him unhappy,” observed Sydon.

  “A great deal does,” replied Kaerylt equitably. “That’s why I’d prefer we not do things to increase his unhappiness.”

  Beltur didn’t nod, but his uncle’s words about the Prefect made sense to him. What didn’t make sense was the way his uncle had handled the raiders, given what he had told Beltur their task was. There had been no attempt, from what Beltur could tell, to use magery to persuade women not to go to the Westhorns, and from what Beltur had seen and heard, most women didn’t seem all that inclined to do so.

  Kaerylt looked as though he might say something to Beltur, but Beltur was immediately spared that attention by the return of the young server with three heavy mugs.

  “Two dark and one amber. I’ll collect when I bring your food.” After another almost inviting smile at Sydon, she turned and headed back toward the kitchen.

  “Don’t leer, Sydon. It’s unbecoming, especially for a mage.”

  “I wasn’t leering, ser, just appreciating.”

  “You don’t seem to know the difference.”

  Rather than reply, Sydon lifted his mug and took a small swallow. “Better than Kasiera. Still not great.”

  No one spoke for a moment, and by the time that Kaerylt had sampled his ale, the server returned with their food.

  While Kaerylt paid her, Beltur looked first at the browned crust on the top of the sections of beef pie served to both his uncle and Sydon and then at the reddish gray liquid inundating the meat, potatoes, and other root vegetables comprising his bowl of stew, wondering if he’d made a very bad mistake. He glanced at the small and warm loaf of bread that accompanied the stew. At least that would be edible. Gingerly, he took the large spoon and dipped it into the stew, bringing up a chunk of meat and a fragment of something else, then eased them into his mouth.

  He would have laughed if he hadn’t had a mouthful. The stew was but mildly spiced, at least compared to what he had been eating much of the time, and quite tasty. He took another mouthful, and yet another, interspersed occasionally with bites of bread, until the bowl was almost empty. Then he used what was left of the bread to sop up the remainder of the stew.

  Managing not to grin, he sipped the remainder of his ale—still a form of grass ale, he thought—as he watched Kaerylt and Sydon struggle through the apparently tough and greasy beef pie and a thick crust that was almost inedible.

  For once you made the better choice. He contented himself with that thought as he sipped the last of the amber ale.

  XIII

  Beltur woke up with a start, immediately sensing that Sydon was not in the tiny chamber that they shared. Disoriented as Beltur was, he had no idea exactly what glass it might be, except that it was likely well before midnight, since he was feeling groggy. But where was Sydon, and what was he doing?

  The serving girl! Sydon must have slipped away after Beltur had drifted off to sleep.

  At that moment, the door opened, remained open for a moment, then closed. Even in the darkness, Beltur could sense the other mage. Then Sydon’s shadowy form appeared as he released a concealment and immediately slid the latch bolt.

  “What…” mumbled Beltur.

  “I’ve been here all along,” hissed Sydon. “Just remember that.”

  Beltur didn’t reply, being more concerned with the heavy footsteps outside on the wooden floor of the hall, footsteps that halted outside their door, then, after several moments, retreated.

  “I didn’t think he’d dare,” murmured Sydon.

  “Who?”

  “The innkeeper. How was I to know that the girl was his daughter?”

  “Now what have you done?” hissed Beltur.

  “Not enough to get us in trouble … or much trouble.”

  “Us? I didn’t exactly have anything to do with this.”

  “No, you didn’t. You’re too orderly to enjoy life.”

  “What does making trouble have to do with enjoying life?”

  “I enjoy life. So should you. Let other people make the trouble,” replied Sydon complacently, sitting on the narrow bed and pulling off his boots, then his tunic. In moments, he was stretched out. “Get some sleep.”

  For a time, long after Sydon had dropped into slumber, Beltur just lay there, wondering how Sydon could do what he’d done so casually and then immediately fall asleep. He shook his head, still thinking. Finally, he also felt his eyes growing heavy and closed them.

  The second time Beltur awoke, it was out of an uneasy dream in which he was trying to untie an elaborate knot made out of an iron chain in order to get into a room where he would be safe from some threat he could not identify. What awakened him—and Sydon—was the pounding on the door and Kaerylt’s voice. “Wake up, and open this door!”

  Beltur got to the door first and let his uncle in.

  Kaerylt strode past Beltur and glared down at Sydon, who was struggling to sit up. “I told you to stay away from the women.” Kaerylt’s voice was as cold as Beltur had ever heard it. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “I stayed away from her, but she didn’t want to stay away from me.”

  I didn’t hear her slipping in here last night, thought Beltur.

  “That excuse grew old more than a year ago. We’re trying to find out about why women are leaving their families and consorts to go to Westwind, and you’re giving them yet another reason? How do you think the Prefect would feel if he found out?”

  “Ser … I didn’t do more than kiss and embrace her.”

  “Only because her father arrived. Didn’t you think about why such an attractive young woman was serving at an inn? Did it not even cross your mind that most who work in the inns are related to the owner?” Kaerylt delivered each word in a witheringly scathing tone.

  “I thought that if she was interested—”

  “What she felt should never interfere with what I told you. Ever!”

  Beltur winced as he felt the chaos gathering around his uncle.

  Even Sydon paled. “I’m sorry, ser. I didn’t mean any harm.”

  “What you meant and what you almost did are two entirely different matters. If you disobey my instructions one more time, you will find yourself on your own and walking back to Fenard … or to any other place you deem more satisfactory.”

  Sydon actually gulped, Beltur saw.

  “Now, both of you get dressed. We have a great deal to do, and little time in which to accomplish it.”

  Beltur managed to conceal his puzzlement. His uncle had not even hinted that they were limited by time.

  “After we eat, we’ll be leaving and riding to Buoranyt. That’s a slightly larger town a day’s ride south. It’s the closest town to the great dry wash.” Kaerylt turned. “I’ll wait in the hall.”

  In less than a quarter glass, Beltur and Sydon were again sitting in the public room, being attended to by the older server. The younger blonde was nowhere in sight. Beltur had the amber lager and the egged hamcakes. Kaerylt and Sydon opted for fried egg toast and dark ale.

  Once Kaerylt had finished his breakfast, except for what remained of his ale, he cleared his throat. “A dispatch rider arrived late last night. We only have three days to do what we can before we begin our return to Fenard.”

  “From the Prefect?” asked Beltur.

  “From Arms-Mage Wyath on behalf of the Prefect.”

  “Did he say why?” asked S
ydon.

  “Neither the Prefect nor Wyath are in the habit of explaining,” said Kaerylt dryly. “I suspect that events have preempted our task.”

  “Do you think the Viscount has done something?” asked Beltur.

  “That’s possible. Other things are possible. I’m not inclined to speculate, especially where the Prefect is concerned.”

  What his uncle left unsaid implied that the summons to return to Fenard was the result of something unforeseen, and that the unforeseen was seldom good, especially where the Prefect was concerned.

  XIV

  When everyone was mounted up in the inn yard early on fiveday, Kaerylt addressed the riders. “Buoranyt’s not a full day’s ride from here. Not by the direct road. We’re going the longer way on a back road so that I can report on the great dry wash. The Prefect wants to know if it’s as impassable as the locals claim … and also whether the raiders have a camp within it.”

  “It’s rather long, I thought,” offered Beltur.

  “Something over twenty kays,” replied Kaerylt. “We’ll do the best we can with the time we have.” He gestured to Pacek, and the two began to ride out into the square.

  Beltur and Sydon followed, as did the troopers behind them. Pacek and Kaerylt took the main road southeast for slightly more than a kay before turning onto a much narrower way, a dusty track barely wide enough for a single wagon or two riders abreast that led west-southwest. Beltur could immediately see hoofprints on the road, much more than he would have expected on a side road. Although they were heading in the same direction as the Gallosians, they were blurred, suggesting that the riders had not passed that way in the past day or so.

  After studying the tracks for several hundred yards as he rode, Pacek announced, “Those are raider tracks … some of them came this way when they left Paalsyra.”

  “On their way to the wash?” Kaerylt’s words were barely a question.

  “It seems more likely than going this way to reach Buoranyt.”

  Beltur almost asked why the raiders had split their forces after attacking Paalsyra, but did not when he considered the captive women. Even if the local people were unable to attack whatever outpost the raiders might have in the wash, it wasn’t likely to be a place where they’d want to bring women, for a number of reasons, including the fact that it would be easier for them to escape and make their way back to Paalsyra.

  The surroundings of the back road didn’t seem all that different from those around Paalsyra, with a mixture of fields and woodlots, even small forests, with some sections of grasslands, which became more prevalent by the time they had ridden some two glasses. A short while later they rode over the crest of a low rise and all that lay before them was grass, except that perhaps a kay farther ahead the grass became sparse, and what there was grew in the fissures of an expanse of crumbling and cracked red sandstone that stretched to each side both north and south as far as Beltur could see. Directly ahead, beyond the sandstone, there was … nothing … a wide gap of emptiness that extended more than a kay before it was bounded by the same red sandstone that bordered the west side of the great wash. Some fifty yards short of the edge, the road turned to the south, roughly parallel to the wash, although there looked to be a less traveled path heading north from where the road turned.

  When Kaerylt reached the turn, he and Pacek reined up. Beltur and the others waited while the undercaptain studied the tracks in the road.

  Finally, Pacek straightened in the saddle. “Most of the riders headed back north.”

  “Then we’d better take a look at the wash from here first,” said Kaerylt, easing his mount forward toward the edge, reining up a good five yards back from where the ground dropped away.

  Beltur followed, but stopped short of his uncle. While he could make out the far rim clearly, he couldn’t see the bottom.

  Kaerylt dismounted and handed his mount’s reins to Sydon, then turned to Beltur. “Dismount and come with me.”

  Beltur did so, following his uncle toward the edge of the wash with a certain amount of trepidation, but grateful that Kaerylt angled his steps onto the middle of a solid-looking chunk of the red sandstone and stopped a yard back from the crumbled edge. From there, Beltur could see most of the bottom of the wash, some two hundred yards down, in his estimation. The side of the wash wasn’t a sheer drop, but close to it, with the parts that were not sheer covered with reddish sand. In those places, red sandstone pillars jutted up from the steep slopes, as well as along the bottom of the wash near the sides. A dry streambed wound down the middle of the wash, and the only vegetation seemed to be sparse bushes here and there rising from the reddish sand and red stone boulders that seemed to cover the entire bottom of the canyon-like wash.

  “There’s no sign of a path or a road along the bottom,” observed Kaerylt. “Not here, anyway. Can you sense anyone or any large animals?”

  Beltur hadn’t thought about that, and it was several moments before he replied. “Only some vulcrows, I think.”

  “That’s all I could find, either.” Kaerylt turned. “We’ll keep heading south and see if we can find any traces of raiders along the way.”

  For the next three glasses, covering more than ten kays, Kaerylt and Beltur checked the wash, and found no sign of any large living creatures except vulcrows. Beltur was more than happy when Pacek announced they were less than a kay from the road back east to Buoranyt.

  “It’s clear that they don’t have a camp or a hamlet in the middle of the wash,” Kaerylt said as they turned onto the road away from the wash. “There’s no sign of anything there, and no water.” He shrugged. “There might be springs near the south end, but if there’s a camp there, it wouldn’t seem that hard for troopers to get to it. The north end is dry, according to you.”

  “Yes, ser. There is a problem with the sand, though,” replied Pacek. “It’s so fine that it would be hard on the horses to go far.”

  “Then it would be hard on the raiders’ mounts, too, unless they have a path they take, and there should be traces of that.”

  “There might be.” Pacek’s tone was just short of grudging.

  “We’ll see what the next kay brings,” said Kaerylt.

  Over the next kay the bottom of the wash changed little from what they had seen before, except that the walls became slightly steeper.

  Two glasses later, the riders neared Buoranyt, a town set in a low and wide valley largely surrounded by fields and orchards, a setting Beltur found so much of a change from the grasslands and the wash that it seemed most unlikely … except, from what he could see, it appeared that the same kind of terrain would have continued if he and the others had kept riding eastward. The other thing he noticed was that all the dwellings he saw were of fired brick, not mud brick, and the roofs of the dwellings were of a reddish tile.

  Pacek led the way to the small main square, which was brick-paved. The inn located on its east side actually had a signboard with a green-leaved tree and the name Olive Inn, suggesting what the trees of the orchards might be. From there, the riders rode into the rear inn yard.

  There, Kaerylt turned to the younger mages. “Sydon, you come with me. We’ll settle matters with the innkeeper. Then you will deal with the gear and Beltur with the horses. It’s early enough, not even fourth glass, for me to find the village elder or someone else who can tell me what I need to find out.”

  Beltur wasn’t exactly surprised to find himself dealing with the horses once more. He was pleasantly surprised when Sydon returned to help him. Then they both carried the gear to the inn, putting Kaerylt’s in one small chamber and their own in the adjoining room. They even had more than enough time to wash up and attend to other matters … and still wait for almost half a glass after that before Kaerylt returned and the three made their way to the inn’s public room.

  Both serving women in the public room were neither young nor old, and both were not unpleasant to the eye and dressed in a similar fashion to those in Paalsyra—and without obvious weapons. T
here were also several women sitting at tables with men.

  Kaerylt made for the single corner table remaining and seated himself with his back to the wall. The shorter of the two servers was at their table within moments.

  “Good evening, sers.” Her eyes took in the three white tunics and widened slightly. “We don’t see white mages here often.”

  “We don’t get here often,” replied Kaerylt pleasantly. “What is the fare? Is there anything you’d suggest?”

  “There’s a shepherd’s pie tonight, mutton cutlets with boiled potatoes and milk gravy, or boiled cabbage and ham. I like the shepherd’s pie. The pie and cutlets are two coppers, three with ale, and the cabbage is one, two with ale.”

  All three of them decided on the shepherd’s pie. As they sat with their respective ales, waiting for their food, Kaerylt took a small swallow from his mug, then said, “We’ll be starting back to Fenard in the morning.”

  “Don’t we have another day?” asked Sydon.

  “There’s no point in taking it. You can see that Buoranyt’s not like the other towns.”

  “Neither was Paalsyra,” Sydon pointed out.

  “True. I talked to one of the town councilors, and they’ve not had problems with raiders here. According to him, the towns south of the great wash continue to have difficulties, but it would take us three days more to get there.”

  “Why don’t they have a problem here?” asked Beltur.

  “They have a town militia, and they deploy scouts any time they get word that raiders are anywhere near.”

  “Why would that make a difference?” asked Sydon.

  “They’re ready to fight back at any time. Their houses are also sturdy, with brick walls and tile roofs. It’s hard to set tile on fire. Over time, the raiders have learned that they’ll lose more than they can gain.”