Metal and Magic: A Fantasy Journey

by Steve Windsor

They walked back together. The girl skipped along beside her, humming an old Thulian song and darting away now and then to collect flowers that caught her fancy. Levoreth knew the song and she sang the words as she walked along.

  “On the heathered downs of Davos bay

  where the river meets the sea

  the fishers mend their broken nets

  upon the sandy lea.”

  “You know it,” said Giverny, surprised, twirling around. She smiled in delight. “My grandmother taught me that one when I was little. She said ‘The Girl of Davos Bay’ was one of the forgotten treasures of Thule.”

  “Not yet forgotten,” said Levoreth. “Some things are never forgotten. Delo of Thule was the finest bard Tormay has ever known. They say his songs wove themselves into the coast of Thule. If you walk the cliffs there, you can hear his music in the sounds of the wind and the sea, and in the call of the gulls.” She continued singing.

  “Blues and greens and shadows beneath—

  the colors of the sea.

  Breathe wind—blow the storm clouds hence

  and bring my love home to me.”

  A brindled old hound loped out to meet them as they approached the camp. It licked at Levoreth’s hand before pressing up against the girl’s knees.

  “Gala, my love,” said Giverny, rubbing the dog’s head. “That’s Lady Levoreth Callas you just kissed. It isn’t every day you’re hobnobbing with the royalty of Tormay.”

  “Nay, girl,” said Levoreth, laughing. “I darn my own socks.”

  Mistress of Mistresses.

  Gala Gavrinsdaughter. The blood of the wolves flows in your veins. I knew your grandmother well.

  Aye. There are days when I hear my mountain-kin calling. The hound turned sad, brown eyes on Levoreth. Do you come for my little one?

  Levoreth caught her breath sharply. The hound nosed at her palm and whined. Giverny whirled away to pounce on a clump of blue bonnets.

  What do you speak of?

  Your mark is on her. All the nyten, even the sly jackal and the poisoned serpent, all things living cannot help but love her of instinct within them. The earth protects her, though she has ever been headstrong and foolhardy, even as a tiny whelp. Fate has not touched her for the life of her people. Do you have some design for her days?

  Levoreth quickened her pace angrily.

  I am not Anue that I would stand in the house of dreams and shape the futures of men. Would you assign to me more might than is my due? Listen well, Gavrinsdaughter! I did not seek my lot in life, for though I am the Mistress of Mistresses, there are powers beyond me that, unseen and unsought, move me to my fate, just as they do you. We are all borne upon the wind blowing from the house of dreams.

  The hound padded alongside her, head hanging low. Behind them, Giverny trailed, deaf to their speech.

  You speak of legends beyond legends, but you are the only legend we know to be true, for we see you with our own eyes and feel your touch upon the earth. You are our bulwark against the Dark. Do not judge me too harshly, Lady. You are the stillpoint of my people. Can we not help but think the skeins of our fate hang from your hands?

  The encampment bustled with people: women washing clothes, children carrying buckets of water to a trough set up just beyond the wagons, where a string of horses was picketed. A fire crackled under an iron pot suspended from two crossed pikes. Levoreth could smell sage and onions and the sweet meat of the roebuck. She inhaled—dried rosemary, wild carrots that must have been plucked from the Scarpe itself, and a sprinkling of pepper all the way from Harth and worth its weight in gold. On the far side of the camp, the Dolani men-at-arms had their own cook fire burning. Night was coming. The hound lingered nearby for a moment and then slunk off among the wagons. Giverny brushed past her and Levoreth found a single blue bonnet in her hand.

  The flames from the fire in the center of the encampment flickered sparks up into the darkness. In the east, the moon gleamed a yellow so feeble it seemed the night was about to swallow it up forever. But the stars overhead shone brilliantly within the black expanse. They were like the gleams of countless jewels—some tinged with the ruby’s dark wine, others hinted at blue sapphire fire, yet even more gleamed with the incandescence of diamonds. As the darkness deepened, they burned all the brighter.

  Someone handed Levoreth a bowl of stew and a hunk of bread. She sat down and leaned back against a wagon wheel. The bowl was warm in her hands. Across the way, she could see the duke talking with Cullan Farrow and several old men. Horses, no doubt. Smoke curled up from the pipes in their hands. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift, listening to the sounds of the night.

  Children played at hide-and-seek among the tethered horses of the herd. Someone plucked a guitar, murmuring the words of an old Vornish love song. A mother crooned to her baby. The knitting needles of the duchess clacked quietly together. A young man-at-arms grumbled to the sergeant about having to eat their own food, as the old Farrow woman in charge of the cook pot had beckoned them over. The sergeant explained that their rations were good enough and that he’d break both his arms if he saw him laying a finger on the Farrow women.

  Levoreth smiled. The Farrow women were famed through all the lands of Tormay for their beauty. But they were also renowned for their tempers and willingness to stick a knife in any who might offend. They wouldn’t be needing any sergeants to defend their honor.

  Lady.

  Levoreth sighed. The hound lowered herself down beside her.

  Gala Gavrinsdaughter.

  The night is replete with sorrow. From three hearts it wells.

  You would tell me, I think.

  Aye. The mother of my little one. I have tasted her dreams ever since her firstborn went away. She is of the blood of Harlech, as you must know, Mistress of Mistresses. She dreams of shadows. Harlech dreams true, do they not?

  And the second?

  She is you, Lady. I can smell it in the change of season and the scent of the earth. I can—

  You presume, hound.

  The old dog flattened her head against the ground and was still.

  And the third?

  But the dog did not answer her and soon crept away into the darkness. Levoreth tasted the stew but it had gone cold. She got up, stiffly, and walked to the fire. Light flickered on the ring of wagons that encompassed it, gleaming on faces. A woman stooped over the cook pot. She straightened and turned. The promise of beauty and grace in the girl Giverny was fulfilled in her. A sheaf of silvering black hair was bound back from her head. Firelight pooled in her eyes.

  “Lady Callas,” she said.

  “I’m only her niece,” said Levoreth.

  “Still a lady,” said the woman. “There’s old noble blood in your family line.” Her head tilted to one side, her face impassive.

  “My stew’s gone cold.”

  The woman took the bowl from her and refilled it.

  “I am Rumer Farrow,” she said. “Giverny’s mother.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Giverny is all we have left these days, Cullan and I. Ever since our son went away. As you know. As everyone, all of Tormay, knows.” There was no bitterness in her voice, only resignation.

  “She’ll be a great lady someday.”

  Rumer touched her arm, as if to apologize. “But this I do not want for her. I would only wish her a quiet life, a man to love her just as mine loves me, children to grow up around her like young colts. This is all she needs. This is all anyone would ever need. Is not anything more than this only a burden and chasing of the wind?”

  “You speak truly,” returned Levoreth. She could not keep the harshness from her voice. “What more could anyone want? May all have such lives and find quiet deaths at their end, surrounded by loved ones and peace. Yet the Dark rises and men ride off to war. Lightning strikes where it will. Do we choose any of this? It chooses us and sweeps us along toward ends we can never see.”

  The woman bowed her head and, when she raised it, there were tears in h
er eyes. “I am from Harlech, Lady. We dream true there, for the veil of the sky wears thin in Harlech. I can’t help but dream. I see my son’s face, my young Declan, returning to me, but of my daughter I see nothing but darkness and the silent earth.”

  Giverny then appeared from the shadows and twined her arms around Rumer’s waist. They stood and looked at Levoreth—the daughter smiling and the mother staring mutely. Levoreth did not dream her own dreams that night. The ground whispered to her of Rumer’s sorrow, and she stirred uneasily on her pallet.

  The duke of Dolan and his party stayed one more day with the Farrows and then left, with many plans voiced concerning colts and broodmares between Hennen and Cullan, until the duchess rolled her eyes and even Rumer laughed. The Farrows stood and waved goodbye until the vastness of the Scarpe swallowed them up in its horizon of grass, and they were gone.

  “Fine people, fine people,” said the duke happily.

  “To be honest, my dear,” remarked his wife, “they are pleasant. Rumer Farrow is a remarkable lady, and her father was the lord of Lannet in Harlech. I’d rather spend the next two weeks with them than having to survive Hearne and that insufferable sop Botrell.”

  The duke was pleased and startled at this. He suggested that perhaps they should return, as he was beginning to regret not buying a certain broodmare Cullan had shown him.

  “Certainly not,” said the duchess. “We’re going to Hearne and the fair and Levoreth will fall in love, and I shall be polite to Botrell. We’ll soon see the Farrows again, I’m sure. Perhaps they’ll come through Andolan later in the fall.”

  “Oh, all right,” said her husband.

  “Duty, my dear.”

  “Hmmph.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: FALLING FROM GREAT HEIGHTS

  That day, Jute fell from the tower that stood in the center of the university grounds.

  The tower stood by itself in the middle of a courtyard. He trudged up the stairs, hoping for a good view of the city from the top. The steps creaked under his feet, old oak worn to a dark, satiny sheen. Up and up they went, until his face was wet with sweat. The stairs ended beneath a trap door, which he pushed up, and he found himself standing on a platform. Hearne stretched around him in a patchwork of minarets, spires with their weathervanes pointing for the west wind, and flat-topped roofs, colorful and flapping with drying laundry. Sunlight shone on brick and stone, thatch and slate, and the green copper roofs of the regent’s castle, perched on Highneck Rise. The castle rose up amidst the white stone villas of the nobility clustered on the heights. Its towers were the highest in Hearne, but the tower Jute stood upon was almost as high. Beyond the rooftops, the sea was a streak of blue under an even bluer sky.

  A cloud drifted across the sun, and something creaked on the stairs far below him. At first, he thought he was imagining things. But then he heard it again. Wood creaking accompanied by an almost inaudible, wet sort of squish. The sounds came one after the other, climbing up the stairs. It was all he could do to clamp his chattering teeth together and remain silent. Hands trembling, he eased the trap door down and sat on it, thinking. Nothing at all came to mind except the desperate desire to jump up and down and scream.

  “Hawk!” he said. “Please. Where are you?”

  The cloud hiding the sun thickened and grew into a gray mass that obscured the entire sky. Rain began to fall. Jute scrambled over to the edge of the platform and looked down, hoping for ledges, handholds, anything. However, a master craftsman had his hand in the building. The stones of the tower had been fitted together with perfection. Jute leaned over and ran his fingers over the stone joints, and a groan of despair escaped his lips. They were impossibly smooth.

  The trap door slammed open behind him. A stench of corruption filled the air, a stink of damp and rotting things. He had smelled the same odor before—in the cellar of Nio’s house. He did not even turn to look but threw himself out into space.

  This is going to hurt. Much worse than any beating the Juggler gave. For only a second. Maybe less. I hope.

  The cobblestone court rushed up toward him.

  A last thought floated by.

  One more day would have been nice.

  And then the wind caught him.

  Softer than silk.

  Silent.

  Something—a door—eased open inside his mind for a moment, and then, just as gently, closed again. The wind left him standing, bewildered and mouth hanging open, in the middle of the cobblestone court. Around him rose the walls of the university and before him loomed the tower. A damp snarl floated down from high above. He turned and ran.

  Jute had no clear thought except that he needed to hide. Somewhere quiet and still. A small space. Small spaces are always safer, but he shivered in doubt and thought about the open expanses of the sky. Hurtling around a corner, he started down a flight of steps. A man hurried into view at the bottom and looked up. Severan. They both stopped, staring at each other.

  “What happened, boy?” said the old man. “Was it only a ward that set the air in this place quivering? I’m running out of explanations for my fellow scholars!”

  “I don’t know,” said Jute, his voice cracking. “You tell me—you’re a wizard, aren’t you?”

  “A scholar,” said the old man. “Only a scholar. The true wizards all died many years ago. Come. We must talk.”

  The boy followed him to what was obviously the old man’s rooms: a simple cell furnished with a writing desk, several cane chairs grouped around a banked brazier, and an iron-bound chest. Off to one side was a sleeping alcove. Severan stirred the brazier to glowing life.

  “It’s here,” said the boy dully. “That thing. The wihht. It came for me. I was on top of the tower in the courtyard.”

  The old man’s face turned pale. “And you escaped it for the second time? There’s more than luck at play here. Who are you, boy? You must trust me.”

  “Why should I?” Jute’s hands curled into fists.

  “I was Nio’s friend a very long time ago. He was a different man then. I don’t know him now. Listen, Jute. I understand why you don’t trust me completely. Hopefully in time you will. Perhaps if you understand more of what might happen. Scholars like myself are not just interested in the past. We’re interested in the future, in what might happen. In what might become. I think there are other things that might become interested in you. Not just Nio and his wihht.”

  “What do you mean—other things?” asked the boy.

  “When you broke into Nio’s house, you stepped beyond the everyday world of Hearne. An entire life can be lived in this city without awareness of the larger world behind and beyond it. Anyone who can live this way should thank fortune for such happiness. They’ll never face such a thing as you faced in Nio’s cellar. But even a wihht pales in comparison to the ancient powers that serve the Dark.”

  “The Dark? Is there really such a thing as the Dark? I thought it was something made up, a bedtime story.”

  “Rest assured, it isn’t a bedtime story.” Severan smiled somewhat. “Unless, of course, you want to give children nightmares. You might laugh, but there’s a great deal of truth to be found in bedtime stories and the like. You see, such tales don’t just spring up out of nothing. They weave themselves into being out of truth. A whisper in the countryside became gossip in a nearby village. Details were added in the local inn, influenced by candlelight and winter boredom and too many tankards of ale. Traders passing through took the local tales and carried them away to the cities. And as years followed upon years, the stories worked their way into history, or into the delicious bedtime terrors mothers tell their children in hopes of securing their obedience. The very oldest of such stories, however, are as rare as pearls and, I think, even more valuable still.”

  “What are those stories about?” asked Jute. He drew his knees up to his chin and the old man noticed, for the first time, that the boy’s eyes had a peculiar silvery sheen that gleamed in the light of the brazier.

  “The ver
y oldest ones are about four words and four mysterious creatures of immense power. Such power that the earth would shatter and reform itself at their bidding, that the wind and sea was theirs to command. The beasts and birds were their servants. They were the four anbeorun—the four stillpoints. It was said, though this has only been mentioned once in the single surviving copy of the Lurian Codex, that even the dragons would still their flame for them. The book that the wizard Staer Gemyndes wrote, the Gerecednes, surely contains even more knowledge of the anbeorun.” He sighed and shook his head. “I’d happily spend the rest of my life looking for that book.”

  “There are no such things as dragons,” said Jute.

  “Don’t be so quick to presume,” said Severan. “There are more terrible things than dragons that walk this earth.”

  “I suppose so,” said the boy doubtfully. “But what does all of that have to do with the four words?”

  “Patience. We’re coming to that. Most legends are rooted in fact, no matter how thin that fact might be when compared to the legend. Sometimes, the opposite is true. When the armies of Oruso Oran II sacked the city of Lascol, the plunder carried back to Harth included many books from the ducal library. Later, cataloguing the books, a court scribe discovered the memoirs of the wizard Sarcorlan.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “That scribe went on to become one of the greatest historians that Harth has ever known. And if Harth is known for anything, it’s known for a rigid attention to details, which has resulted in a highly efficient army, orderly cities, and marvelous historians. When I read the scribe’s account of the discovery, I journeyed to Harth to see the memoir for myself.”

  Severan fumbled a ring of keys from his robe and unlocked the chest in the corner. He returned to his chair with a black book in his hands. He muttered a word over the thing and then opened it.

  “Is that the memoir?” said Jute.

  “Er, yes,” said the old man.

  “You’re a thief?”

  “Do you think thievery is the sole right of thieves?”

  “No,” said the boy, smiling. “It just seems a bit odd. Especially at your age.”