Fortress Draconis (24 page)

“They gave that task to you? Did the Grand Magister assume our long association would make me dull my tongue on the matter?”

He shook his bald head. “Had that been their presumption, I would have disabused them of it, and quickly. We have an invasion, and I need to know if he will be useful to me or not.”

Orla snorted. “Things have not changed much since I last reported to the Council. Adept Reese is, without a doubt, the greatest human sorcerer known. His parents’ talents bred true. He studies hard, but he has been raised like a horse with blinders. He knows magick, all manner of magicks. He has mastered spells of incalculable power, and is easily able to deconstruct, examine, refine, recombine, and create spells that no man has yet dreamed might exist.”

The Magister nodded. “This is as intended.”

“Yes, what you intended. What you all intended.”

“You?”the Magister’s eyes narrowed. “I recall rather well your being with me at his nativity. We all volunteered for that duty; we believed in that duty. Has your heart changed? Do you think we were wrong?”

“No.” She shook her head resolutely. “You’re correct in saying we all volunteered for that duty. All of us did, save one: Kerrigan. He was drafted against his will, before he had a will, and he has been shaped and crafted. He’s been trained as a dog might, for one purpose. At least, he began his life training for one purpose, but his goal was changed as things went along.”

Orla sighed and gestured south, toward the island’s heart. “Have you seen him outside the times of testing?”

“No.”

“You should. The entire Council should. You have no idea what his training has done to him. It was agreed—by me, too, yes—that neither Kerrigan nor any of them would be told their intended destiny. The pressure would have been overwhelming. Just their training has crushed the others, but he keeps on. Why? Because he has stopped questioning his purpose in life. He learned early on that such questions would not be answered, so he just abandoned the quest forthat knowledge.”

“Yet, by doing so, he has accomplished so much.”

“True, but how useful is it?”

The Magister of Combats chuckled. “Immensely useful, if he can wield a fraction of the power you suggest. I’ve seen it, during testing, of that there is no doubt.”

“Oh, he can, but you’ve seen him do it in a testing chamber.” She shook her head. “In combat, arrows flying, men screaming, fire burning, and greasy smoke choking, he’d be useless. This morning, Magister, he skinned his knee. It was a wound you and I would dismiss without a second thought, but it became the center of his being. He would not cast the spell to heal it until I told him to do so, andthen he wanted to get into a clean robe, to set himself to do it. When I made him cast it while down on one knee, when Ishamed him into doing it, then he did. He did it well, but even then he had no distractions. In anarcanorium he is unequaled. In the field, I’d choose the most raw Apprentice over him.”

“And yet he is the best we have.” The Magister of Combats sighed heavily. “He’ll be no help in the fight at all.”

“He could cure some who are wounded, but I think that is it.” She pursed her lips. “Put him in a ward, give him a bodyguard, and order that person to slay him if the Aurolani forces are able to overrun the island. And, no, you won’t have me do it. I would refuse, and quite frankly, you need me elsewhere.”

“You’re right and you’re wrong, Orla.” A hint of a smile traced over the Magister’s lips. “Were it within my power, you and I would fight side by side again, driving the pirates off.”

“Itis within your power. The defense of Vilwan is your responsibility. I may be older and slowing down, but I’m still one of the better combat mages available.”

“I would never deny that fact, Orla,never!‘ He brought his hands together over the knot made of the arms of his brown robe. ”The fact remains, however, that you have a more important mission than defending Vilwan. No, wait, hear me out. There actually is such a mission. You will accompany Adept Reese as he is evacuated from the island. It is your job to get him away safely.“

Orla felt a great wave of fatigue crash through her. “You cannot be serious. I will be wasted in that job.”

“Nonetheless, it is yours.” The Magister of Combats bowed to her. “He is your charge, and for his fate, I have no fear. And since you think he should learn more outside thearcanorium, this is your chance to teach him.”

Her head came up. “Oh, I see. The Council is willing to accede to my requests to do that, using the invasion as a pretext. So much better to have that than to have to admit being wrong.”

“Orla, my dear friend, you know better than to question the origin of good fortune.” The Magister smiled, then advanced and laid his right hand on her right shoulder. “Go strongly, teach him well. If we are not defeated, he can return. If we are, it is a good thing for the world that he will not die with us.”

Will felt fair certain his ribs had cracked, he was laughing so hard. He’d dropped the flour sack he’d been carrying and clutched his sides. The look of surprise on the fat kid’s face a half second before the flour sack hit him smack in the chest had been priceless. The way his expression had gone from serene confidence to sheer panic was a memory Will would run through his mind time and again.

And then, to make things better, the flour sack had flown way up, then come down hard and burst, drenching the boy in flour. He’d run off, sobbing, leaving a misty ribbon in the air behind him.

And it was his own fault.Resolute had called to him, indicating he should get in line with the rest of them. Instead the kid had just stood there and gestured imperiously. He’d even closed his eyes, daring Resolute to throw the sack.If I had done that, Resolute wouldn’t have been helping me breathe, he’d have been skinning me alive.

“Finished laughing, boy?”

The rime-tinged edge in Resolute’s voice stopped Will’s laughter dead. “Ah, yes, I am.”

“Good.” Resolute caught him in a vise-grip around his right arm. “Pick up the sack you dropped. Carry it to the cart. Then, find a broom. Sweep up the spilled flour and put it in that sack again.”

“What?”

Resolute’s eyes became silver slits. “That flour could make up the last bread you’ll ever eat. We’re getting no more supplies here. This is it. We can’t waste anything.”

“Got it.” Will tried to pull his arm free of Resolute’s grasp, but failed.

The Vorquelf held on for a heartbeat more, then released him. “Hurry, boy.”

Will stooped and picked up his flour sack, then carried it to the cart. Dranae took it from him there and easily tossed it into place. The cart creaked as it landed.

“Tell me something, Will.” The large man plucked another sack from an Apprentice’s back and lofted it onto the cart. “Why did you think that was funny?”

Will blinked. “You didn’t?”

“Should I have? The young man was getting ready to use magick to move that sack. He probably could have moved the whole cart.”

The young thief frowned. “How do you know that?”

Dranae hesitated for a moment, then ran a hand over his jaw. “I just do. Seemed obvious to me. We’re on Vilwan. He’s in a robe, makes a gesture.”

Will nodded. “I can see that, yeah.”What I can’t see is how you could have thought he was powerful.

“Why was it funny?”

“Well, because he was knocked down. Because he was surprised, and then because he was covered in flour and ran off crying like a baby.”

“Even though it was all a mistake?”

Will felt like squirming. “Well, I didn’t know it was a mistake, right?”

“Even though he had obviously been hurt?”

“I didn’t know….”

The flesh around Dranae’s blue eyes tightened. “You know how heavy the sacks are. You know that had to have hurt.”

“Well…” Will felt his guts starting to shrivel. “Others were laughing.”

“So they were.” Dranae clapped Will on both shoulders, hard, sending a shock wave through him. “But they were mostly mages, too. Remember, Will, it’s not a good idea to have a sorcerer thinking you’ve been laughing at him. You’ll have a lot of trouble here on Vilwan if you forget that.”

Will’s expression soured. He’d not liked the boat ride to Vilwan. He’d gotten used to the motion of the ship easily enough, but had the misfortune of standing next to someone who didn’t. Before Will could clean the vomit off himself, Resolute volunteered him to clean the deck. Plenty of other little jobs had kept him hopping, and then when he got a chance to sleep, it was in a musty hammock belowdecks.

His bones ached from fatigue and his belly growled. There’d not been much food on the ship, and most of it was older than he was. The hard biscuits didn’t taste bad, they just didn’t taste, save for the weevils in them. Will deemed it just as well that the King of Saporicia was sending so many folks to Vilwan to die, because after they’d enjoyed bad food, worse water, and a long sea journey, they’d have been ready to storm his castle and topple him from the throne.

Will talked to one of the Apprentices—easily spotted by a robe with a scarlet body—and asked where he might find a broom. The Apprentice smiled and told him they were kept at the gaming fields. She pointed toward the center of • the island.

Will shrugged and set off, but an Adept in a robe of forest-green stopped him. When Will reported what he had been told, the Adept snorted and told him there were no gaming fields. “We use brooms for the same thing everyone else does, as that Apprentice will soon be reminded. Try one of the port shops here, they will have one you can borrow.”

A tavern lent him a broom. The journey along the docks to it and back gave him a chance to take a look around. He found Vilwan slightly disappointing because the area around the docks, or what the locals referred to as Seatown, looked pretty much like every other seaside section of town he’d ever visited. Dirty, dingy, with a few broad, straight roads, then a tangle of muddy alleys leading back into a thicket of warehouses and ramshackle houses. While he didn’t mind that, he expected something more exotic.

The Adepts and Apprentices bored him, too. Some, like the one who had been hit with flour, seemed bug-eyed, staring at the troops being shipped in to defend their home. Others sniffed like nobles, as if their blood were somehow better than his. And, from his standpoint, the most annoying thing was that none of them had money pouches. He didn’t mind folks being snooty as long as he had a chance to collect a snob-tax from them.

Will sighed and returned with the broom to begin to sweep the flour up. The Adept he’d spoken to earlier came over, dragging the Apprentice who had deceived him over by the ear. “This is what you want the broom for, to collect this flour?”

Will nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Very good.” The Adept glanced at the Apprentice. “You’ll help him.”

The Apprentice, a redheaded girl with enough soft-swelling on her chest to be only a couple years younger than Will, nodded. “Yes, Adept.”

Will brandished the broom, then nodded toward the sack. “Just hold that and I can sweep the flour into it.”

As she slowly bent to the task, Will dragged the broom through the flour. It seemed to him that the broom, bristle-bare as it was, did a better job raking than it was sweeping. Will made several passes, but brought more dirt than flour to the waiting sack.

The Apprentice gave him a witheringly depreciative glance. “You dulls. This will take forever.” She gestured once and a blue spark flew from her right hand. It hit the broom dead in the middle of the-stick and wrenched it from his grasp. Whirling and twirling, the broom danced through the flour and drove it in a wave to the waiting sack. In no time at all, every speck of the flour at the point of impact had been swept up, and the broom would have started in on the tracks left by the running boy, but the Apprentice called it back and killed the spell.

Will blinked and his jaw dropped open. “How? I thought he said you used brooms for what we all do.”

“We do.” She smiled sweetly. “We just don’t use it the sameway you do. Sack’s full, I’ll take the broom back for you.”

He shivered. “It’s from …”

“I know where it is from.” She forestalled his next question. “It’s in the magick.”

Will took the sack and gathered the top of it closed. He hefted it onto his back but barely felt the strain.If a kid can do that… Images of self-propelled constabulary nightsticks cavorted through his head.Dranae’s right. Laughing at wizards is not a good idea, and stealing from them would be even worse.

Alyx refused to look in the mirror, and reluctantly met the eyes of the women who had helped dress her. Given her embarrassment, she would not have greeted their gazes at all, but they had slaved over her—bathing her, brushing, braiding, and fixing her hair, then dressing her. Without help Alyx could have shrugged on a full mail suit faster than they were able to get her into her golden gown.And the armor would move easier and leave me feeling so much less vulnerable.

She did not resent these two women and their help. While she had been dressing herself for decades, the garments she’d worn while with the Gyrkyme had been simple—barely more than sacks. The Gyrkyme, with their wonderful plumage, hardly had need of fashions to make themselves more attractive. A scrap of cloth here or there would suit the most modest, and modesty had not been one of Alyx’s concerns until well into puberty. Even then she followed society’s conventions more to save others embarrassment than herself.

But she could never have donned the gown that had been chosen for her without help. Long, flowing skirts dragged on the floor, forcing her to wear shoes with toes that reared back and up, like a snake preparing to strike. With each step the serpentine toe kicked the hem of the gown out from beneath her foot. The skirts themselves gathered at her slender waist, at the edge of a stiff bodice into which she had been tightly laced. She could hardly breathe, and bowing at the waist was a flat impossibility as the leading edge of the bodice extended down to fully protect her femininity. Above the top of the bodice, which scarcely hid her nipples and barely contained her bosom, a slender, wispy silken scarf swirled from one wrist across her shoulders to the other. Alyx, feeling trapped in the gown, likened the scarf to a golden chain linking silk manacles.