A Flight of Marewings

by Kristen S. Walker

  He shrugged. “You might have just been an easy target to get the attention away from her. You know how girls are.”

  She straightened her back and held her head up. “You’re right, I’m just going to ignore it. I won’t get dragged into petty arguments.” She took a deep breath to calm herself, and smiled at Orivan. “It’s almost time for morning drills. Shall we go to the training field?”

  18

  The Council IV

  Eutychon wrapped the edge of his kattar around his hands so that the other Council members could not see them shaking. He’d come to the meeting sober, without so much as a drop of wine, and he was already beginning to regret his decision. When they had a break for lunch, he would be sure to have a small glass brought in with their food, just enough to calm his nerves. Perhaps he could call them to make a toast to their new god, Varula; no doubt they would all be a little more cheerful after imbibing.

  On his left, at the center of the half-circle Council table, Merchant Pelagia caught his movement and gave him a slight disapproving frown. Curse the old hag. Somehow she could always tell when he’d been drinking or felt hungover from the night before, and she nagged about it worse than his wife. As if her own health was something to brag about. Eutychon didn’t know exactly what ailed her, but his spies told him that a physician came to her house privately almost every day.

  Pelagia turned away from him and looked at Shipwright Zeno. “I hear that your spies have successfully infiltrated the Warlord’s main fort. Do you have anything new to report about his actions?”

  Zeno glanced at Eutychon, waiting for permission to speak.

  Eutychon smiled and nodded at the other Councilor. He knew that Zeno was excited about his news, and he was willing to let him take the credit for the accomplishment. He had his own plot to take credit for later.

  Zeno smiled back and took a deep breath. “Yes, Councilor. My spies tell me that Commander Varranor has taken one of the new recruits as his mistress and could be preparing to give her special favors. Everyone’s looking down on him with disapproval. Quite the scandal.”

  Pelagia sat up in surprise. “I did not know that the brother had a mistress. Our spies have always told us that both of the Mrokins were oddly celibate.” She nodded her approval. “But no man can deny his lusts forever. How does this help us turn him?”

  Zeno rubbed his hands together. “According to my reports, Varranor is getting jealous of his older brother. Galenos promised to make him the leader of the Storm Petrels when he became duke. We thwarted that. Then Galenos offered to make Varranor the head of a new mercenary company, but we also refused his proposal. So he has no hope of getting out from his brother’s command.”

  Pelagia gave him the thinnest of smiles. “I see. So if we offer the brother a command of his own in return for helping us, he may betray the brother who has gone back on his promises.” She ran a hand through her hair. “We will have to proceed carefully, though. Find out more information first before you make any offers. I want to be sure of his loyalties.”

  Zeno leaned back in his seat and smirked to himself.

  Eutychon cleared his throat. “I also have news about the Warlord’s movements.”

  Pelagia turned her head and looked at him down her nose, which always made him feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t right that a woman should be so tall.

  “What is your news?” she said in a pinched voice.

  Eutychon gripped the arms of his chair, because his hands were shaking harder under her stare. “We, ah, have been watching the few remaining people he has left in the city, including the mage that he is now employing. And just this morning, my people intercepted a letter in the post that was addressed to the mage.” He paused for dramatic effect. “From Lord Seivon of Petropouli.”

  Gasps of shock went around the table. Thais of the Musicians Guild leaned forward. “Is he courting an alliance with our enemies, the traitorous dog?”

  Eutychon shook his head. “A request for academic research from his mages. It seems that Galenos is still looking into the illness that took Basileos’s life, but the mage cannot figure it out.”

  Pelagia’s stare hardened. “And did the mages in Petropouli tell him what the illness was?”

  Eutychon leaned away from her, and the shift made his chair creak loudly, echoing through the high-ceilinged Council room. He always got the feeling that Pelagia knew more than she said, but there was no way that she could know the truth about the duke’s fatal illness. “I, uh, had one of my own mages do some creative editing to the letter before we passed it on for delivery. Galenos’s mage only has a piece of the truth now—enough to cure the few servants who are still afflicted, but not enough to know the cause.”

  “I see.” Pelagia pressed her mouth into a line so thin that her lips disappeared, giving her the grim appearance of a corpse. “And you do not believe that the mage will be able to detect your magical tampering for himself?”

  Eutychon cringed, but he shook his head. “My—my mages reassure me that they have the latest cryptography spells. Unless the warlord’s mage was an expert on the newest research, he wouldn’t suspect a thing.”

  Pelagia turned and looked at Zeno. “Do an independent background check on the warlord’s mage to reassure us that he is not an expert in cryptography or the detection of magic.”

  Zeno snapped to attention in his chair. “Yes, my lady.”

  Pelagia nodded. “Good. Now, Varula Soma, how goes your conversion of the populace to our faith?”

  Eutychon was grateful when her attention turned elsewhere, but his heart still pounded with the stress of the interrogation. Why did the old hag insist on questioning every choice that he made? He knew the risks just as well as her.

  He would have to move up the timing on a few of his plans. He could not afford to let her become too powerful. Pelagia was a good schemer, with a head for details, but if she stretched her hand too far, then she might have to succumb to the same “illness” as the late duke.

  19

  Ameyron II

  Ameyron read the letter for the sixth time, hoping that there was more information he had missed. The mages from Petropouli had written him about the cure they used for Kalysta Peren, and like a miracle, it had worked—after submerging all of his patients in a bath of mineral salts, sent with the letter, their urge to dance had disappeared. Now they had only to eat and rest to recover the strength they had lost from being malnourished.

  But why had the cure worked? Surely the mages had known something about the nature of the disease to recommend such an unusual treatment. Why didn’t they tell him more about the cause or how to prevent the illness from returning?

  There was only one cryptic line near the end of the letter. “At the source, cast a spell to conjure foxfire. Only by this light will you see the traces to be sure that the infestation does not survive.”

  That clue told him so little. Foxfire was a basic spell, taught early in every mage’s training, and used when a mage did not have access to the right materials to summon true fire or the power to make magefire. It cast an eerie light that distorted most things around it and wasn’t very useful for illumination, unless one had no other choice. What kind of traces could foxfire reveal? And what did they mean by an infestation? Had some strange creature caused the illness by poison or some other means?

  Try as he might, he could not puzzle out the meaning, and his books offered no extra clues. Foxfire was referenced in hardly any books since it was used so rarely. He had a collection of bestiaries and encyclopedias about monsters and magical creatures, but the problem with these references was they were written at different times, by different authors, and they were often incomplete, inaccurate, or disagreed with each other. Someone needed to do a systematic study of all Seirenia’s magic-warped beasts that compiled all the known research into a standardized format.

  At any rate, none of the books he had mentioned a creature that caused dancing mania or one that could be seen by foxfire alone. />
  He could go to Petropouli and ask for more information, but he wanted to check one thing first. What would happen when he went to the duke’s old house and summoned foxfire?

  He got the key from Galenos, who had left the house boarded up. Galenos offered to send a small contingent of his soldiers to escort him, but Ameyron refused.

  “I doubt that my life will be in danger, and at any rate, my assistants know how to cure me now if I am suddenly struck by the affliction from exposure. Having anyone else with me would just be a distraction.”

  Galenos shrugged. “Well, let me know if you find anything. I’m relieved that you managed to cure everyone, but I want to know why they got sick in the first place.”

  Ameyron nodded. “So do I.”

  So he went to the Votsis mansion alone after dark, to give the weak foxfire the best chance of showing something. The front door opened with the key. Months of stale air greeted him when the door swung open: no one had touched the old house since the duke’s death.

  Ameyron closed the door behind him, shutting himself in with the darkness. He didn’t want the rich neighborhood to wonder why the abandoned house was glowing with magic light. He cast the foxfire spell. A ball of pale green fire sprang to life in his hand, creating a small pool of light around him.

  He held it up and looked around him. He stood in a grand foyer decorated to display the wealth of the Votsis family. The furniture was still in the house, covered in heavy cloths to protect it from dust. There were paintings on the walls and statuary in the corners—nothing had been taken out. He nodded to himself, pleased by his luck. Whatever traces he was looking for, they should still be preserved.

  The first obvious place to look was the duke’s own quarters. When Ameyron went upstairs and left the public part of the house, he discovered that most of the showy decorations disappeared. The duke’s rooms were large and well-appointed, but they had a utilitarian motif that reminded him of what he had seen in Galenos’s own house. It appeared as if neither man appreciated the show of wealth for its own sake.

  If he were a greedy man, he could have taken a few choice baubles from the house and used the money from their sale to set up a research laboratory of his own, and likely no one living would ever miss them. But Ameyron had a mystery to solve. He left the duke’s belongings where he found them and continued his search.

  When he had searched the upstairs and found nothing, Ameyron went back down the stairs through the public rooms, and then to the back of the house where the servants lived.

  The servants’ quarters were small with simple furniture, but not cramped or cheap. Most of the furniture had been removed when the servants moved out, leaving off-colored gaps along the walls. What was left was well-worn but still sturdy and serviceable. Ameyron had lived in places worse than this: Basileos had treated his servants well enough. He wondered what had happened to their belongings after the end of their employment, though, because he had not seen anything in the cramped shacks of the sick when he went to visit them. The comfortable life they enjoyed in this mansion had disappeared.

  For all that he learned about the mansion’s contents, though, he found nothing about the source of the disease. Whatever infestation the Petropoulian mages suspected was nowhere to be seen. So he could trust that with the last of his patients cured, the epidemic was over and he had nothing left to worry about—or he could go over the mountains to the cave city and demand answers.

  He sighed and began to make a list of the supplies he would need to pack. He had a long journey ahead of him.

  Traveling alone was dangerous, so Ameyron found a trading caravan going from Kyratia to Petropouli that would escort him for a small fee. He had to carry his own belongings, including a thin sleeping roll that he bought for the trip—nights in the mountains could be a little chilly, even in the warm Dry Season—but otherwise the caravan provided everything from food to trained fighters for protection against monsters on the road. They also knew which roads were safest to travel and where to stop for a little extra trading along the way.

  Ameyron was grateful for the fighters when the caravan was attacked by a pack of spiderwolves. He recognized the monsters from drawings he had seen in books, but nothing prepared him for the terrifying sight of the enormous, furred bodies, with eight legs and fangs dripping with venom, dropping out of the trees on delicate strands of silk thread.

  Ameyron was no battle mage, with spells at his finger tips that could lay an enemy flat. He fell back into the mass of traders and ducked his head low.

  At the back of the train, the cattle mooed and threatened to run off, carrying the caravan’s supplies and trade goods with them. The experienced handlers worked quickly to cover the beasts’ eyes and keep them relatively calm.

  Meanwhile, the fighters strung their bows and launched a volley of arrows at the spiderwolves. They struck a few of the monsters, drawing out howls of pain.

  Ameyron thought that the swift resistance would cause the spiderwolves to flee. He’d read that they were wary of humans and, when injured, were quick to run off again.

  But a cry from behind killed that thought. While they’d been distracted by the monsters dropping from above, another group of spiderwolves had circled around behind them to attack the cows.

  One large gray spiderwolf leapt up and caught a cow around the throat. The poor animal was paralyzed by the venom and fell to the ground. The monster’s pack mates darted in quickly and spun silk webbing around the beast and its burden, then dragged it up into the nearest tree.

  Only one of the fighters struggled through the chaos of the panicking cows, clutching a spear in his right hand. He lunged forward and drove the spear deep into the back of the gray spiderwolf while it scrambled to follow its brethren up the tree.

  The monster gave a piercing cry and lost purchase on the tree trunk. It crashed to the ground and whirled around, sinking its fangs into the fighter’s leg.

  Ameyron cried out, thinking that the man would be slaughtered before his eyes. He scrambled to think of something he could do, anything. He shoved his hand into a pocket and found that he still had some of the powder left for casting the foxfire spell. Gasping out the words to activate it, he threw the powder in the spiderwolf’s face.

  A flash of green light startled the creature enough for it to loosen its grip on the man’s leg.

  The fighter, sluggish from the venom’s effects, drew the knife from his belt and buried it deep into the beast’s throat. The spiderwolf convulsed once and died, even as the man collapsed, paralyzed.

  The rest of the pack ran off into the trees, taking the cow with them and leaving the fallen behind.

  Slowly the traders managed to gain control of the situation again. The handlers managed to calm down the remaining cows and urge them down the road, away from the smell of the dead spiderwolf, which the cows were only too happy to do. The fighters went on ahead, ranging off the road into the nearby forest to look out for any other threats. The rest of the travelers regrouped and stumbled on.

  Ameyron wanted to stay behind and examine the remains of the dead spiderwolf, but his skills as a mage were called upon to heal the wounded. Some of the travelers had constructed a travois for the injured fighter by lashing together a few tree branches and hitched it behind a cow, but they could not afford to lose one of their defenders.

  Ameyron had few spell-casting materials available to him, but a wise woman of the trading caravan showed him where to find healing herbs in the forest. She assisted him in cleansing the wound and setting the broken bone. They left the injured fighter resting comfortably in the travois.

  She did not speak much or ask questions, but she watched his actions closely, and he realized that she must be a hedge witch. Hedge witches did not have formal training like mages, usually being unable to afford the expensive education of the Academies, but they traded in whatever scraps of magic and folklore they could glean. No doubt she had picked up a few new things by seeing Ameyron at work.

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nbsp; At last, they reached the final pass. Ameyron leaned against a rock and sighed. Below him sat a sweeping vista of rolling forests dotted with the occasional farm, lit by the golden light of the setting sun on his right. But where a month ago he would have admired the view, now he only saw more tree roots to trip over and stones to pick out of his shoes. He hoped there were no more monsters to attack them in the valley.

  The journey had wearied him, but now it was almost over. On the far side of the valley lay Petros Mountain, and inside the heart of the mountain, in a system of natural caves, was the city of Petropouli. There he hoped to find the answers to the mysterious illness he had studied for the last few months.

  The caravan of traders that he traveled with assured him that crossing the valley would only take a few more days’ time. They smiled and clapped each other on the back at the view, happy to see their destination in sight at last.

  The hedge witch nodded at Ameyron. “It will be easier once we’re down in the flatlands,” she said. “You’ll see. Take heart in a journey well-traveled.”

  He tried to follow her advice, but he was weary to the bone. He re-shouldered his heavy pack and trudged after the others down the mountainside. Night would fall soon, and they still had to reach a suitable campsite before they could stop for the evening.

  When they reached a clearing large enough to fit the whole band, Ameyron contributed to the camp with a spell that filtered the river water so it was safe for them to drink. He also performed the menial task of setting up his own tent to sleep in, a chore that he now performed with practiced ease. In the city, he had rarely hired servants, so caring for himself on the road was no big change. The traders had seen he was not the kind of mage who turned up his nose at hard work, and they had become grateful to share their campfire and cooking pot with them.

  Tonight the last of the salted pork went into the pot with roots foraged from the forest, plus thyme, barley, onions, garlic, and a little beer. The smell of the food soon made his stomach complain in hunger.