The captain raised a gauntleted hand to rub at his face. “Listen,” he said, “it’s been a very long day. I can see by the cut of your robes that you’re some kind of noble...unless of course you slew a noble and took his garb. As for your friend,” he said, with a sour glance at Jacobson, “he stinks like an alehouse. Even if you had the proper papers, we’re under strict orders not to allow any drunkards into the city.”
Kelrob blinked at the man. “I am Kelrob Kael-Pellin,” he said. “By denying me access, you are obstructing a magister, a crime punishable by death.” Threats. I’ve been around Salinas too long. He leaned back in his saddle and stared at the captain, doing his best to look mysterious and threatening. “As I said, I’m expected. Send word to Lord Azumana. He will speak for me.”
The captain glanced over at his superior, the stout colonel with the absurd plume protruding from his helm. The old soldier sat in a magnificent velvet-trimmed chair that looked strange and quite out-of-place in such martial surroundings; he had watched the entire exchange without speaking, his hand resting easily on the exquisitely wrought pommel of his sword. Now, at the sign of question from the captain, he stirred himself enough to lean forward and observe the companions with rheumy eyes that nevertheless pierced Kelrob to his heart. “You claim you’re a magister?” he said in a harsh, rasping voice.
Kelrob nodded, though he did not bow, as would have been proper with any other traveler before such a high captain of a sanctioned garrison. “Yes. I suffered various misfortunes on the road from the Rookery, the result of a rash straying into the Umberwood. I traveled with a companion by the name of Salinas, a Taskmaster of the Ninth Circle; he should have arrived here several days ago.” Making a predictable spectacle of himself, the mage finished privately.
The colonel’s eyes narrowed. “You speak like a magister,” he said. “But I can tell you, there’ve only been two magisters through this gate in the last week, both departing. What was that name you said? Salinas?”
Kelrob nodded, his teeth grinding together. He could feel the line growing restless. Before him loomed the vast iron-banded gates, framed by guards and belching braziers, the great portal opened only wide enough to admit two riders abreast. Salinas hadn’t come — Kelrob had a flashing image in his mind of the mad idiot riding off recklessly through the trees, his ring gleaming with the pyrotechnics of will. Perhaps the Taskmaster had ridden on, skipping Tannigal entirely to make for Torlandia or one of the other less rough-and-tumble city-states edging the Rolling Lands. That didn’t make sense, though; Kelrob knew Salinas would’ve gone directly to the local Isdori consulate and made formal complaints against his underling before moving on. Instead Salinas was missing, gone, dead — the word reverberated in Kelrob’s mind. He had another flashing image, this one of Salinas lying face-down in the loam, a bandit’s arrow protruding from his left eye-socket. His naked corpse was bloated after several days of exposure, and animals had been at it.
The colonel tapped at his scar-creased chin. “You speak like a noble, but you stink like a nithing. And who is this man? You haven’t spoken for him.”
“I can speak for myself,” Jacobson said, easing his horse forward. “The name’s Jacobson, lately of the Umberwood, and as sure as I’m a drunkard the lad is a mage.”
Kelrob groaned. Thank you for that compelling testimony. “He’s my guide,” he said. “I hired him to bring me here after I...parted ways with my previous companion.”
The colonel’s eyes narrowed. Kelrob had the distinct impression that he was a slow man, but by no means stupid. “I need to get this line moving,” he said. “Give me one shred of evidence that you are what you say, and I’ll let you through. Otherwise I’ll house you both in the garret until I have a chance to to send a man down to rouse Lord Azumana, who’ll be none too pleased at the bother. Understood?”
Kelrob glared at the colonel, his normally benign subconscious reveling in the torment he could, but wouldn’t, visit upon this man once his station was confirmed. I’m under arrest. He thought about showing the colonel some of the stranger contents of his pockets, but felt the arrows trained on him, and decided against it. Perhaps it would be better to go with the guards, and stew in a cell for a while...his cheeks flushed at the imagined humiliation.
Jacobson cleared his throat. “Perhaps you should show him some of the contents of your magic purse, m’lord.”
Kelrob blushed. Bribing a guard was almost, but not quite, as humiliating as being taken to a cell. The mage dropped his hand down to his forever-emptying purse. If he’d learned anything from his nightmare journey, it was that money did absolutely nothing to erase sin. As a greaser of stubborn wheels, however, he remained convinced of its efficacy. “I can pay you,” he said, unlacing the purse from his belt and holding it up in his hand. “A gold piece for me and my companion.”
Jacobson groaned beside him. “You should have let them name the price,” he whispered.
The colonel’s eyes were now bright with interest. “Show me,” he said.
Kelrob opened the satchel and drew out one shining coin. He tossed it to the captain, who bit it, then offered it to his superior.
The colonel smiled, holding it up in the torchlight. “Men lie, money doesn’t. You got another of these?”
Kelrob’s heart hammered in anger, driving a hot flush into his cheeks. “I think that should be more than adequate,” he said.
The captain drew his sword. “Answer the question,” he said, with an amused glance at his superior.
They really think we’re robbers who caught a noble in the woods. Kelrob felt faint with humiliation, Salinas’s dead face grinning in his mind. Reaching into the purse, he withdrew another gold coin and held it up in the torchlight, mirroring the colonel’s gesture. “This is all I have,” he lied, though it was close enough to the truth. There were only four polgari left in his purse, alongside a smattering of coppers. His father would absolutely butcher him.
The colonel nodded, snapped his fingers at the captain. The captain in turn motioned for the guards clustered around the gate to stand down, the arrows to still their eager trembling. Kelrob glanced down, noticing for the first time that the cobbles beneath his mount were stained with old blood. He tossed the captain the coin and urged his horse forward, riding so swiftly that he checked his arm against the lip of the great door as he barreled through. Behind him he could hear the guards laughing, and the less hurried clatter of Jacobson’s mount.
“Infuriating!” Kelrob snapped when Jacobson rode up beside him. They proceeded along the main street for a good stretch, riding between the bulky shadows of warehouses, then veered into a lower-class residential area, close-built wooden houses looming over the street and blocking the fuming towers at Tannigal’s heart from view. Kelrob fretted the entire way, though all he could think to say when they drew up their horses in a small fountain-graced square was a repetition of “Infuriating!” He then slumped, shame-ridden, in his saddle.
Jacobson shrugged. The small fountain bubbled merrily, its waters reflecting the silver-and-crimson light of the rising moons. Pulling a coin from his vest, he tossed it in the water. “Just a copper,” he said to the mage. “My little contribution to our extortion. Which would have been much less grave, had you just let me do the talking.”
“How was I to know those men would act like barbarians? I’ve ridden through that gate a dozen times, and never once felt a hint of such disrespect, such...callousness.” Kelrob stilled his heavy breathing and absently patted the neck of his horse, who seemed much less discomfited by the incident than he.
Jacobson cast a glance back towards the gate. “Fairly typical extortion, from my experience. They’re more blatant about it than in the Great Cities, but then that’s the joy of the frontier. I suppose every other time you’ve ridden through a city gate you’ve either flashed your ring or been borne in on one of daddy’s palanquins?”
“My fat
her isn’t that rich,” Kelrob snapped. “He’s just a wine merchant, but he’s always afforded the proper respect, and why am I even discussing any of this with you?” He rounded on Jacobson, suddenly and dimly perceiving him as a target for his wrath. “Those men don’t know me, so their disrespect is forgivable. You have no such excuse.”
Jacobson frowned, his blue eyes darkening. “Remember you’re not wearing any performance-enhancing jewelry,” he said. “You’re powerless, lad. A god come down to earth.”
“I still have my blood,” Kelrob snapped back, “which is more than you’ll ever have.” He was shaking now, ashamed at his words, his anger, at anything and everything pertaining to himself. Once again the image of Salinas lying slain passed through his mind, and he knew it to be a true vision. Turning his horse he set off down a narrow street fronted with low-end shops of dubious guild affiliation, not caring if Jacobson followed.
He did. Jacobson rode Henny up alongside Kelrob’s mount, cut him off at an intersection. “We need to talk,” the big man said.
“I have nothing to talk about with you.”
“What about my payment? You promised that. And I was stupid enough to believe you, more fool me.”
Kelrob dug into his purse, withdrew the remaining four polgari and threw them on the cobbles. “There,” he spat, tugging his horse around. “Now you can drink yourself to death fifty times over. Enjoy.”
Jacobson stared down at the coins in bemusement, the rage-mottle fading from his cheeks. “I think -” he began, then cursed as Henny began to buck and whinny in sudden frantic fear, threatening to toss him from the saddle. Kelrob watched in shock as the withered old horse put up a tremendous fight, finally dumping Jacobson and his pack on the ground and galloping back down the narrow thoroughfare, her hooves sending sparks up from the cobblestones. Within moments she had vanished from sight.
Kelrob was off his horse in an instant. “Are you all right?” he asked Jacobson, who lay panting against the stone-fronted lip of the fountain, his forehead gashed and bleeding. Anger forgotten, Kelrob helped him into a sitting position and examined the wound, prodding at it worriedly until Jacobson slapped his fingers away.
“I’m fine, lad,” he said, pressing his palm over the wound. “Just stop fluttering and give me a moment.”
Kelrob eased back, his hands tangling into a worried knot. “What was that all about?”
“Don’t know. Mayhap something got caught in her shoe, but it felt more like fear than pain.” Jacobson tore a strip of cloth from his tunic and pressed it to the head-wound, which was shallow but bleeding profusely. “I think I need a drink,” he said.
Kelrob grit his teeth. “Really, is that all you can think about? I haven’t seen you without a drink since we’ve met.” Turning, he caught the reins of his horse and pulled the reluctant stallion closer, tying the straps to a darkened lamppost. “If anything you should put some alcohol on that wound. Tannigal isn’t the cleanest of cities.”
Jacobson rose to his feet and stared after Henny. “The garrison will round her up and gut her, I’ve no doubt. Poor thing.” He turned to Kelrob and frowned, a trickle of blood sliding down his cheek. “Shouldn’t you be on your way, then?”
Kelrob blushed as he rose, dusting his hands on the front of his robes. “Don’t talk nonsense. That was quite a fall. You don’t feel pain anywhere else? Any pulled muscles or broken bones?”
Jacobson cracked his back, flexed his arms, and announced that he seemed to be in working order. His pack lay crumpled on the ground, its meager contents strewn over the cobbles; Kelrob bent to collecting these as Jacobson sat on the curb. They consisted of a sodden pair of breeches, a blunt dagger, two tallow candles burnt almost to the quick, several leather-bound books that the mage uncomfortably assumed Jacobson had acquired via banditry, hardtack, a small collection of maps drawn on treated lamb’s skin, a hitherto unrevealed flask that sloshed when Kelrob picked it up, a flint and tinderbox, three vests (all in more degenerate condition than the one Jacobson currently wore), a soiled tunic, a sewing kit, and Salinas’s long-lost cerulean cloak, replete with glittering gemstones and priceless ermine trim. Kelrob shot Jacobson a particularly pointed look as he bundled up the garment and thrust it into the pack. The spoils of war, he thought. Just like Henny. He wondered at the horse’s fate as he tied off the pack and hoisted it, then gasped and nearly fainted dead away at what lay beneath.
Staring up from the cobbles, a small eternal smirk fixed on its porcelain lips, lay the mask of Tamrel.
8: Counsels in the Night
“I didn’t steal it!” Jacobson thundered. His voice reverberated in the small, comfortably appointed room; Kelrob raised his hand in a shushing gesture. He watched as Jacobson poured himself a glass of wine from the sideboard, his hand quaking so violently that he spilled a cupsworth on the room’s pristine woolen carpeting. A fresh bandage swathed the big man’s wound, already brown with drying blood.
“Then how did it get into your pack? Answer me that. Quietly.”
Jacobson bit back the glass at a single swallow and stared at the mask, which Kelrob had propped over the hearth of smokeless perpetually-burning flames. They had taken a room on the eighth floor of a towering concrete wayhouse for travelers called The Modest Means; the window looked west towards the heart of Tannigal, the guild-towers and hulking manses of the rich twinkling with multicolored lights in the darkness. Operated under the auspices of the local Lodgers’ guild, the room boasted an array of magical conveniences: an icebox, a stove, ever-burning lamps and hearth, hot-and-cold air at demand, a bathroom with running water, and a little button one need only press to summon a servant. Three silver had paid for bed and board, though the innkeep (or rather the innkeep’s representative, as it was a proper business) had particularly stipulated silence, as the walls were thin and the hour late.
“I already told you how it got in there,” Jacobson said in an angry undertone. “As you seem to not be paying attention, let me reiterate: it materialized. It appeared out of the ether. It spooked my horse and nearly split open my brains. That,” he said, simultaneously gesturing at the mask and making a sign to avert evil, “wasn’t in my pack this morning. I admit to stealing your companion’s frippery, but not that.” He poured himself another glass of wine, drank half, and fell into a chair whose upholstery sported a nauseous floral theme.
Kelrob glanced at the mask, smiling from its perch, its eyes dead holes in the bone-white face. Rising, he approached it and stared into the almond slits, his nose nearly close enough to brush the porcelain. There was no hint of magic about the thing, no whisper of foreign energy; it was a priceless antique, to be certain, but beyond historical value it seemed to be inert.
Jacobson sniffed and swirled his drink. “I think we should smash it,” he said.
Kelrob blinked, and the mask seemed to wink at him. “Out of the question,” he said firmly.
“Lad, the thing’s clearly following us. At the very least we should lay it at rest in a stream, or bury it in a mirror-lined box.”
Kelrob rolled his eyes. “Hopeless superstition,” he muttered.
Jacobon’s hand tightened on his glass. “You’re just like all the rest,” he said. “A bit sweeter, a bit stupider, perhaps, but you’re a proper magister at heart.”
Kelrob clenched his jaw. “We can’t break it or bury it or toss it in the water. This is an unparalleled opportunity. This mask was worn by Tamrel — was a part of Tamrel, if my hypothesis is correct. It needs to be given over to the Isdori Council for examination.” His voice trembled as he spoke, more with ravenous curiosity than any desire for glory. Still, Kelrob was not unaware that the mask was the prize of any magister’s career. If the discovery was well-received he would doubtless be ushered through several critical initiations, and would have no difficulty securing a journeyman’s position with a prestigious archmagister, a previous impossibility given his blemished r
ecord. Above all else he was relieved that the mask’s recovery lent some sense of meaning to the gross misadventure of the last few days, riddled as they were with so much death. All too clearly he saw the severance of Tamrel’s neck, the void revealed by the yawning wound, heard the chaotic blast of music followed by bleak silence; bowing his head, Kelrob said, “This mask is a key to a past we have forgotten. It needs to be analyzed by the Gyre Itself.”
Jacobson downed the remainder his glass, his steel-blue eyes bright with anger. “It was a mistake to invite you to stay and watch,” he said. “I see that now. Should have got you up on your horse and ridden away, not said a word about Tamrel. Of course, I was drunk, and I wanted to stay, for I’d only heard him sing once before. Now his voice is stilled, perhaps for the first time since the world began, and it’s my idiot doing.” Jacobson closed his eyes, shuttering their feverish light. When he spoke again his voice was calm, almost emotionless. “There are some things that can’t be analyzed, lad. That mask isn’t going to allow itself to be put under the knife. It’s here for its own purposes, and we can either put it to rest or endure its will.”
Kelrob felt a queer shiver race along his spine. Looking to the mask, he felt his entire self-denied spirit wrench towards the object, seeking communication, a flicker of life. The mask merely smiled in response to his plea, its lips shining with false blush.
“We only have to keep an eye on it until tomorrow,” Kelrob said. “I’ll go to the consulate at first light and make my report. After that we’ll pay a visit to Lord Azumana, who has probably been worried sick at my lateness. Tamrel will be off our hands, and we can relax in comfort while I work out a slightly more comprehensive payment plan for your services.”
Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01] Page 11
