Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01]

by The Mask of Tamrel (epub)

  Jacobson cracked the eggs with a faint, knowing smile. “I thought you might be a little desultory this morning,” he said as he prodded at the quickly-congealing whites with his dagger. “But hunger wins out over grief in most men. Unless a woman is involved, of course.”

  Kelrob said nothing, yearning for the moment when he could press a small fortune into Jacobson’s hand and dispatch him cordially from his existence. At the same time he dreaded that moment, dreaded it in some strange indefinable way that left his stomach unsettled beyond hunger. He watched the eggs cook, kept his silence, and accepted the food with a nod.

  Kelrob ate as Jacobson readied the horses, finishing his eggs in silence and stepping outside the loft for a much-needed bladder draining. The air was cold, but not biting; rancid hay squelched beneath his feet. He unlaced his breeches and stared out over the abandoned field, noticing a debilitated scarecrow swaying gently on its stave. There were no crows in sight, no bird or beast of any kind; to the right he saw the hunched remains of a farmhouse and a rambling skeleton of vacant pens. To the left was the Umberwood, a distant scarlet line of trees flanked by the flat, stubble-crusted stretch of the Plains of Yield. The sight of the trees chilled Kelrob, as did a sudden gust of frosty wind. He struggled to purge himself, laced up his breeches with numbing fingers, and returned to the loft to find Jacobson already in the saddle, hot breath puffing from between his discolored lips.

  The road took eight hours, since Kelrob insisted on traveling cross-country rather than skirting the Umberwood north. They rode through pastures of rattling stubble that bore the very clear imprint of last night’s festivities, still-smoldering bonfires clouding the sky with smoke. At every crossroads there was an effigy hung to the praise of what Jacobson explained as Kora, a local grain god, and to the ancestors, whom the people of this region fiercely revered and sought, at the thinning of the veils, to placate with offerings. Kelrob listened to all of this with the utmost interest, and for a little while he forgot the horror of the previous night. He asked questions about the god, whom Jacobson said was synonymous to the archetype of the Green Man, worshiped in various guises amongst the nithings and generally derided by city-dwellers, the rich, and the learned. Jacobson himself revered the old gods, though he had been raised in the far-north city-state of Aguar (“a surprise to you, I’m sure,” he said to Kelrob), and had been involved in rituals venerating various gods of war and the harvest since he had left civilization to ply his hand as a mercenary. He said this all quite nakedly, without hesitation or disclaimer, and then asked Kelrob what he placed his faith in, to which the mage simply replied, “Magic.” What that meant, if it truly meant anything at all, was unclear, but it left Kelrob with a pain in his stomach. He yearned to hear Jacobson tell more of the rituals practiced in various rural areas, but didn’t want his interest to come across as prurient, and remained silent.

  During this lull in the conversation, Kelrob thought about Tamrel. Though the minstrel had been of human shape, the mage was convinced that he had not only been a wondrous worker of magic, but an alien being from outside the race of men. A heretical suggestion, one that could bring him before the Isdori Council, perhaps even into the judging presence of the Gyre Itself: there were only men, there had always been only men. Once the race entire had been vicious and stupid like the Aks, living in holes and tormented by wild magic, but then the first Gyre came forth bearing order in Its hand in the form of chromox, and the land of Thevin was tamed and made habitable for a new race of civilized humanity. So went the common myth-history, a dogma spoken from the Gyre’s lips and propagated by the Isdori Order.

  Kelrob had long suspected the story of being a falsehood. In his early years of study he had taken to combing through the vast, moldering archive beneath the Rookery, wormlike tunnels where a thousand years of uncatalogued knowledge lay slowly withering into dust. It was in this neglected tomb that Kelrob unearthed some very strange and highly heretical texts detailing variants on the history so assuredly provided by the Gyre Itself. The most unsettling of these had been a thin book he’d found at the bottom of an ancient heap of parchment, the crumbling pages bound in archaic leather that flaked to dust beneath his touch. The title page proclaimed it to be a transcription of the words of Absalom the Mad, a self-described seer who had wandered out of The Lost Lands a millennium past and told tales of powers much older than the race of men, of a world before the chromox had been forged by the Gyre Itself, bringing order to all things. The book provided details of long-dead fantastical species, winged beasts that spoke in tongues of flame and great serpents that dwelt in the seas and demanded flesh-tribute from the crawling kings of the earth. One of the accounts had mentioned a sword of living metal, into which a great inhuman tyrant had instilled his spirit that he may continue to taste blood after his mortal death. The blade had been passed to his eldest son, who was subsequently devoured by the will of his father, and thus the tyrant reigned for many centuries, moving into the flesh of his progeny as each body failed him. His reign was ultimately thwarted by a falling star that plunged into the heart of his kingdom, obliterating all life; this story in particular had intrigued Kelrob, and thinking of it anew he recalled the visions he had seen in the grip of Tamrel’s song, the towers of beryl and adamant, the great fires and glistening shrines, the strange inhuman inhabitants with their piping speech and undulant movements. An insane understanding overwhelmed him, and a sense of horrible wonder, but he said nothing, merely watched the bob of Jacobson’s back as the big man rode ahead, sunlight glinting dully in his matted blond hair.

  At length they began to see more traffic on the road. At first it was farmers and laborers from the surrounding villages, setting out from their homesteads for Tannigal or other neighboring communities with huge dray wagons loaded with the season’s yield. They passed a village, dogs and children running out into the rutted road in their wake; Kelrob had to carefully steer his mount around a line of wagons hauling produce, his eyes appraising their contents as he and Jacobson passed. For over a thousand years the Biomancers of the Isdori had nursed the soils of this region with magic, resulting in overwhelming bounty. Over the last five years there had been some tacit reports of difficult times, of soil going inexplicably sour and fruits shriveling on the vine, but Kelrob was pleased to see that these rumours were unsubstantiated by the healthy produce at hand. At one point he and Jacobson rode past a gray-haired farmer hauling a pumpkin as large as a boulder, the orange rind glistening in the peaking light of the sun. At another point they stopped and bought a pair of apples from a vendor making his laborious way to Tannigal on foot. They tasted crisp and deep, and were so large that Kelrob could barely hold his with a single hand.

  As the sun began to wester they entered more densely populated areas, stone houses replacing daub-and-wattle or stucco. These were dedicated pasture lands, where herds of cows and sheep roamed freely in their massive pens, though they often lingered by the roadside to bleat at Kelrob as he rode past. The houses were not only wrought of sturdier material, but they huddled closer, forsaking the haphazard agrarian spray of the deep countryside and solidifying into actual communities, some with squares and most with markets. They passed through five such towns as the day drew down, Kelrob pausing at several fountains that, alas, contained only water. Still he drank from them, and told Jacobson something of his visions, which the warrior accepted with a knowing nod. “I saw things too,” he said, picking up a battered copper cup and dipping it into the pool. Kelrob waited for him to elucidate, but the big man said no more, merely drank, remounted, and rode on.

  At last Tannigal rose on the twilit horizon. Kelrob looked at its tall gray towers, wreathed in smoke and the perpetual flicker of automating spells, and breathed a sigh of half-relief. It was a small city-state by any standard, an old trading post that had flourished to the point of becoming a bone of contention for several militant merchant-lords. Tannigal had responded to their menacing overtures by fortifying itsel
f and bringing in a representative of the Isdori Council, sealing a pact to abide by the Law of the Gyre in all things. Thus was the city-state officially forged, and though it had been sacked numerous times in the preceding century it remained a prosperous intersection of goods, especially those of a more illicit nature that flowed from the Umberwood. Kelrob’s family had extensive dealings with Tannigal stretching back three generations, and the mage had often accompanied his father here on business trips when he was younger; therefore the towers were familiar, blessedly familiar, though they seemed for the first time to stand out against the sky like a fuming, faceless blight. Kelrob blinked, and the perception was gone, though he still felt ill-at-ease about riding between those gray columns of concretized stone, so stunted in comparison to the gemstone towers he had seen in his vision.

  As they drew nearer to the city walls they passed several caravanserai, rude buildings of wood and plaster that offered a myriad of pleasures for the traveler with coin and time to spare. Jacobson gazed at several of these longingly, but urged his horse on, knowing that Kelrob would brook no delays. Kelrob noted this with approval, suppressing a sneeze as they rode past what was very clearly an opium den. Before long they blended into the main vein of late evening traffic, which consisted mostly of stragglers coming in from the countryside, travelers on foot, and a few small caravans that were being directed to the eastern gate for processing. Directly in front of Kelrob and Jacobson marched a company of ragged minstrels, their instruments piping forlornly amid the amalgamated din of horse and wagon; directly behind them, a minor noble’s carriage trundled along the packed-earth roadway, wheels settling into immemorial ruts. Lights flared along the high marble walls of Tannigal, and the silhouettes of heavily-armed guards could be seen pacing along the battlements behind coils of razor-steel wire. Kelrob was surprised at the strength of the fortifications, which had been increased since his last visit two years ago, and said so, sitting up in the saddle to gain a better look.

  Jacobson nodded, the reins expertly held in his left hand, a bottle of spirits in the other. “Last year a few Aks made it over the Barrier, coming down through the Ilaki Wastes and losing themselves in the Tangle. They rallied there, and drove out quite a few indecent folk before gathering their strength and swarming Tannigal. Not an uncommon occurrence, but these Ak were craftier than most. A few made it over the walls and did some real damage, only time it’s happened in the last century.” Jacobson took a drink and cast an uncomfortable look over his shoulder at the minor noble and his train of sterling white horses that pawed behind them in line to the gates. “So, new security measures. A bigger garrison, spell-infused weaponry and ramparts, and razor-wire, which I think is a nice touch. Adds to the general hovering malaise of doom and fear.”

  Kelrob shifted in his saddle, sore but not yet in agony. He blinked up at the towering city walls, hoping against hope that they would make it to the head of the line before the gates closed. Without his ring he felt compelled to sit and wait, rather than demand his right to the fore; it was much easier to sweep to the front of a long, angry, exhausted line of people with fire burning on your hand than without. He looked up at the razor-wire, frowned, and said, “They’re only doing what they need to do to stay safe.”

  “I’d sooner die than stay cooped up in a city,” Jacobson countered. He craned his neck to stare up at the towers of reconstituted stone, their rectangular bodies coated with gleaming windows and crowned with perpetual plumes of smoke and steam. “It’s a cage of iron, where the fearful go to cower and the rich go to luxuriate. Not for me.”

  “Tannigal is a very poor example of the breed,” Kelrob said. “Have you ever been to one of the Great Cities? Ixthis, or the Seven Cities, or Pelegrin on the Sea? Things are different in those places, purer.”

  Jacobson laughed, gently kicking Henny forward as the line advanced. “Already you forget that I was born in a Great City. Aguar is magnificent in its own way, and yes, the agates and opals wash up on the shore just like they say. A fair city to be sure, with plenty of towers and silvern ships, but a cage is still a cage regardless of the gilding. I left when I was sixteen, and never bothered to venture back.” He took a long swig of spirits, his eyes locked on the high, heavily-patrolled walls. “Truth of the matter is that I’ve been to most of the Great Cities, at one time or another. It always feels like being nailed into a coffin.”

  Kelrob nodded, digesting this somewhat startling perspective on the jewels of civilization he had been taught to revere. “I really do prefer the Rolling Lands to any other place in the world,” he said, looking to the north over low hills shrouded in darkness towards his home, tantalizingly near. The air was hot with the close press of bodies, loud with shouts and whip-cracks and the trundle of wheels over hard-packed earth: he cursed Salinas, cursed him with all his might, knowing that his journey north would be further hampered with inquiries and reports. He might even be forced to winter in Tannigal, if his information on Tamrel was accepted rather than mocked; Kelrob suppressed an agonized sigh. A whole frigid winter burdened with guilt and poisoned with memory, spent in the uncouth presence of a genius drunkard who thought of cities as cages for the non-existent soul. Marvelous.

  Guards stood at the perimeter of the gate, shuffling people through after inspecting their documentation. Many of the men and women from the country had none, and were forced to pay a modest yearly fee for their admittance; so it had always been done in the city of Tannigal. Access to the markets within would recompense the common farmer or craftsman looking to hawk his wares, for there was always a feverish demand for country goods. The fees thus collected were placed in the coffers of the city garrison, ensuring that even the lowliest of soldiers in the employ of Tannigal lived in relative comfort, with all the pleasures of modernity. These included running hot and cold water, ice-chests for storing perishables, toilets, and the ability to moderate the climate of one’s dwelling, all the glorious products of urban magic. Such wonders were unheard of outside a dedicated city-state, and for good reason; enchanted luxuries lost their power after they were taken away from their locus, or city of production. This prevented the use of these miraculous objects for trade, which was a conscious act by the Isdori Order. It ensured that every city-state — unless it wished to wallow in obsolescence — played host to a local sect of Isdori representatives and craftsmen. There were rumored to be several unaided settlements in the extreme northwest, near the vast ruin-speckled Lost Lands, but Kelrob had never seen them, in fact found the idea of a large group of people living in close proximity sans magical sanitation to be disgusting. He rifled in his pack for his papers as they drew close to the gate and came under the watchful eyes of the guards.

  Ahead of them, the minstrels were having a difficult time with the captain of the gate. He was a large, heavy-bodied man, his limbs coated in armor, torso clothed in the green-and-gold tabard of Tannigal. He was shouting at the players, who in turn bowed and apologized and extended their empty hands. Kelrob realized that they had no papers, either of identification or notes of fees paid, and so would be turned away if they could not produce something of value. The captain, it seemed, was not in a bartering mood; drawing his sword, he motioned them away. The minstrels obeyed with a collective sigh, instruments dangling silently from their hands. They would have to take refuge in the surrounding countryside, probably ply their trade at one of the caravanerai in exchange for food and bedding.

  The captain re-sheathed his blade as they departed, then nodded to his overling, a short colonel who compensated for his lack of height with an enormous golden plume that bobbed majestically atop his steel helm. The colonel nodded, and the captain raised a hollow metal cone to his lips, shouting “Next!” through its lesser end.

  Jacobson was the first to move his horse forward, which irritated Kelrob immensely. Staring back over the long line of torches vanishing into the dusk, he prodded his horse on, overtaking the big man just as they reached the cobbled perim
eter of the gates. The guards glowered at them from their posts, through the murder-holes punctuating the walls; Kelrob gulped as he felt two-dozen arrows leveled at his heart, shocked by the callousness of the reception. His naked finger ached, longing for power.

  The captain looked them over, tilted back his helm, and said in a humorless voice, “You’d better have some real business here, other than holding up the line.”

  Kelrob glanced down at his once-regal robes, realizing for the first time what a strange disreputable creature he must appear. With a sharp glance at Jacobson that chastised him to silence, the mage said, “My name is Kelrob Kael-Pellin, son of Amon Kael-Pellin, magister and adept of the 16th Circle.”

  The captain’s eyes widened, jumped to Kelrob’s naked fingers. “My lord,” he said with confused hesitancy, “do you have any proof to these claims? Papers, perhaps?”

  “I have them right here,” Kelrob said, reaching down and undoing his saddlebag. He thrust his hand inside, and groped about, the blood slowly draining from his face as he realized that his identification papers, indeed all his personal documents, had somehow gone missing. His hand clenched into a fist inside the bag; slowly, with great control, he eased his fingers open and graced the captain with a bemused smile. “I seem to have misplaced them,” he said, “but I swear it’s the truth. I’m running three days behind schedule, and am expected by one of the most prestigious nobles of your fair city, Lord Azumana. I’m certain if you told the lord I was here he would be more than happy to confirm my identity.”