Fortress Draconis (33 page)

They broke camp early the next morning. Orla looked around for the stick she’d been using as a walking staff, but didn’t see the gnarled piece of oak anywhere. She glanced suspiciously at the fire, afraid Lombo might have broken the stick apart to feed it, but the pile of wood they’d gathered the night before had not yet been exhausted, so that solution to the whereabouts of the stick seemed implausible.

“Magister, this is for you.” Kerrigan rolled to his feet and stood using a five-foot-long ebon staff to assist him. He extended the stick to her and she accepted it cautiously.

Caution bled into surprise. She knew this staff. The cool smoothness of dark wood, a tiny divot missing from where she’d once parried a gibberer’s longknife, even the length and the delicate balance she could easily recognize. She spun it in her hands, then ran them down the length of it.

There was no mistaking it.This is mystaff, but it’s at the bottom of the Crescent Sea! Even if Kerrigan had somehow bargained with Tagothcha, the sea’sweirun, and the spirit had returned the staff, there was no way he could have gotten from their camp to the sea and back with it.

“Where did you…?”

Kerrigan smiled shyly. “Not really where, Magister. I made it.”

“What?”

He shifted his shoulders uneasily. “When I was younger I would throw tantrums and smash things. I would get punished for it. And then, even if I dropped something accidentally and it broke, more punishment. So I kind of learned to fix things. If I touched it and knew it, I could take a like material and re-create it. Your stick, the one you have been using, I used that because it already had a link to you. I’ve handled your staff before, worked magick through it, so I knew it.”

Orla felt a chill run through her. “You’ve never told anyone you can do this?”

He shook his head. “If they knew, then I would be punished for breaking things, or punished for withholding information. It’s not particularly hard to do, really. A bit of construction mixed with conjuration, some concealment and clairvoyance thrown in. I could show you how it’s done.”

She covered her mouth with her hand.He’s married four schools ofmagick into one spell. She’d never heard of such a thing happening before. A spell to create a rampart for defense might combine construction and combat magicks, or a spell to make an arrow hit a distant or unseen target might take combat and clairvoyant magicks and weave them together. She’d heard of one urZrethi spell—one she didn’t think she could have mastered if she’d studied for another fifty years—that transformed a nag into a mount that could make the rider tougher in combat and invisible. That wove together combat, conveyance, and concealment magicks, and was, by far, the most complex spell she’d ever believed existed.

And yet, as a child desiring to cover up mistakes, he creates this spell?She shivered.They have no idea what we have created in him.

“Are you okay, Magister?”

She nodded and forced herself to smile. “I am, Adept Reese, and am in your debt here. As for learning that spell, I doubt I have enough years left in me to be able to do so.”

Kerrigan’s eyes dulled for a second. “You feel okay?”

“Yes, Kerrigan, thank you.” She hefted the staff. “Your gift makes me feel even better. By the time we get to Yslin, in a couple of days, I think I shall feel very good indeed.”

Will alternated between being so excited he wanted to shout and dance and laugh and sing, and being terribly afraid that if anyone noticed him he’d be chucked out of Fortress Gryps or tossed into gaol or worse. Being where he was at the moment was something he’d always dreamed of, and always bragged about happening.It’s just that it never happened this way in the dreams.

There he stood, just inside the doorway of the Grand Hall of Fortress Gryps. Crow stood there, Dranae, too, and Jarmy, as well as a bunch of other folks from Vilwan. It looked to him as if every other wizard of any stripe who had been living in or around Yslin had joined the Vilwanese contingent. Since Vilwan was extra-governmental, its party was not to be introduced and took up a position of least importance.

Only Resolute held himself apart, standing with a small group of Vorquelves. Most of those Vorquelves wore bright silken finery that matched that of the human nobles in attendance. Resolute, on the other hand, wore a heavy cloak he’d made of mangy gibberer scalps and had trimmed with vylaen fur. Beneath that he wore a good set of forest-green and brown hunting leathers, though he’d taken the sleeves off so his tattoos could be easily seen.

Will envied Resolute his choice of dress, but acknowledged that things weren’t as bad as they would have been had Will been forced to dress up in the rich clothing of the nobility. Their pointy-toed shoes looked like they pinched, the collars clearly choked, and the pants had enough buttons that Will was fairly certain that if you didn’t pee before you drank anything, you were never going to get them off in time to do it after.

What he’d been forced to wear wasn’t much better, and he was pretty certain something else was going on that he didn’t know about. Because Crow, Dranae, and he were going to attend as part of the Vilwanese contingent, they were fitted out for dressy robes that would be appropriate to their station. They gave Dranae a deep red robe that marked him as an Adept, and put two colored bands encircling each wrist. Those circles indicated what magicks he was supposed to be good at, but Will had no idea what white and green meant.

Crow had been given the grey robe of a Magister. Estafa, the Adept who had them fitted out, said he was willing to risk that rank with Crow because of his white hair and powerful demeanor. Will figured the latter comment was to flatter Crow into revealing something about himself, but Crow remained politely silent. Instead of rings around the sleeves of his robe, Crow got a robe with slashed sleeves that revealed two colors—red and yellow silk panels were used. Will didn’t know what they were for, but since Jarmy had a blue robe with a red band circling the sleeves, he assumed red stood for combat.

After Resolute refused to don a wizard’s garb, Estafa turned to Will and studied him for a while. He shrugged, then pulled out a black Apprentice’s robe and had Will pull it on. The sorcerer tugged on it here and there, then knotted a white rope around Will’s waist and nodded.

“That works fine. You’re done, Will.”

The young thief had smiled and tucked his thumbs inside the rope. “What’s this for?”

“To hold the robe tight around your middle.”

“No, no, what magick? What do I do?”

Estafa gave him an overly generous, completely insincere smile full of teeth. “Ah, well, Will, you need no stripes or slashes. You’re an Apprentice. No one would believe anything more of you given your youth.

“But don’t worry”—the man winked—“you’re very special as it is.”

Will frowned. “But there was someone who came through here who got a robe like Jarmy’s, and he had lots of stripes and he looks younger than me.”

“Ah, Adept Reese, yes, well, he’s special in his own way, too. Getting here, he … well, it was a long journey overland.” Estafa’s thin lips curtained his teeth. “Go along now, Will. Be content to hide as an Apprentice. Best you’re not noticed until it’s time.”

Will had rolled his eyes and departed for the room they’d given him in the wizard’s tower. Throughout the voyage to Yslin, which hadn’t taken more than a day, he’d found all of the wizards to be fond of speaking in riddles. He wouldn’t have minded it, save that he would catch them shooting speculative glances at him. A few of them, like Jarmy, turned out to be okay sorts, who listened to his tales of fighting gibberers in the mountains and at the stable.

He’d found the tower a bit annoying. When he got his room assignment he was told it would be the second left. He went down the corridor and turned left, and then left again and found himself in a little alcove. The door opened before him revealing a small room with a bed, a chest of drawers, a round table, two chairs, and a sea chest with a big lock. He started to work on the lock with his picks, just to keep in practice, but at his touch it popped open. Inside he found clothes that would fit him. Over the next couple of days he found the selection of clothes changed depending on the weather, and at least once, green shirts predominated after he’d awakened thinking the day just felt green.

He could have taken that, but his room wasalways the second left. If he took right turns—being mindful that he was in a round tower after all—he could never find his room. If he reversed course, two lefts later, there he was. Moreover, he might take three rights and go down stairs to get to the dining hall, but his room ended up being two lefts away, with no stairs most times—though once he did come downstairs to go to supper, and his return trip to his room took him down yet another level before that second left.

As a result of all that, he never did leave the tower and reacquaint himself with Yslin. It felt good to be home again, smelling the sea, hearing the accents, watching the sun set over the mountains he’d ridden to. From his tower window he could see some of the sky-baskets move from building to building above the twisting streets. He couldn’t really see the Dimandowns, since Fortress Gryps stood between his room and his old home, but just knowing it was there was enough for him.

And now, here I am, in Fortress Gryps.Having grown up in Yslin, Will knew the Alcidese government used the ancient fortress as a place for important receptions and balls. Countless thieves planned capers to get them in during some grand party. They would steal nobles blind and flee, they all claimed, but generally decided the undertaking was impossible. Seven had tried—three singles and a group of four. Of five of them Will never heard another word, but one’s head appeared on a spike over a postern gate visible from the Dimandowns.

The only one who had succeeded had been the Azure Spider, and he’d stolen a coronet that was going to be presented to the king’s eldest daughter, Kallistae, on her fifteenth birthday. It was common knowledge in the Dim that Augustus had vowed to shave his head until the crown was returned. The Azure Spider had left Yslin in the wake of that theft—fled according to some, gone on to better things said others. Will supported the latter view, and was glad he’d not been caught and shared the other thieves’ fates.

Will shivered, but not because of the memory of seeing Mad Dick’s head mounted on the wall. The thieves, when describing what they’d be stealing, had so grossly underestimated things that Will figured the collective lot of them were spinning in whatever graves they’d been dumped. Their imaginations might have been well exercised in planning their thefts, but had not even begun to break a sweat when it came to describing the nature of the swag they were aiming for.

If jewels were raindrops, some folks would be drowning.Will smiled within the shadow cast by his robe’s hood as kings, queens, princes, and princesses wandered past. Heralds announced them, then the various royals slowly strode along a scarlet strip of carpet that led them to a dais where King Augustus and his wife greeted the visitors.

Just seeing the king—shaved head and all—sent a thrill through Will. For as long back as he could remember, people told stories of King Augustus and his Okrannel campaign. Had it not been for him breaking the army Chytrine had sent to further ravage the countryside, the bards would have folks believing Chytrine would be wiggling her ass on the Alcidese throne. That he got a bride in the bargain just made the tale sweeter for the telling.

Plenty of men in the Dimandowns would point out the scars they’d earned in that campaign, but Will wasn’t fooled. If every one of them had been there, the army Augustus led would have been much bigger than the three thousand he had with him. Since few of the braggarts had Okrans accents, he knew they’d not been in the irregular troops that had joined Augustus. But since each of the scars came with a stirring description of battle, Will hadn’t minded that they were false.

King Augustus, though, was anything but false. The bald head, the bright eyes, and the bold moustaches bespoke a man who would have been more comfortable in combat, or maybe as a pirate sailing the Crescent Sea. Augustus seemed a man made for adventure and Will’s heart swelled with pride as the king greeted his guests.

Will’s smile broadened as he decided that if he were thieving, he’d leave Augustus his crown.

That veil of inviability did not extend to King Scrainwood of Oriosa. Bits of grey streaked his long, brown hair, and though the mask he wore made them difficult to see, his hazel eyes shifted restlessly. Will had seen his like before on the streets. The slight hunch to the shoulders, the hyper-alertness to quick movements, those were the mannerisms of a man who had something to hide. Will would have gladly stolen everything the man had on, but he half suspected the crown was studded with paste jewels.

Scrainwood had traveled to the-Council of Kings with a modest entourage. Will dimly remembered hearing the man had been widowed. His wife had gone out for a sail in a little boat and had never come back. Nasty rumors said she was living life as a shepherdess in the hills, and that whenever Scrainwood traveled, her sons came to visit her. Will wasn’t sure he believed much of any of that, but of the Oriosan princes there was no sign—though the younger was said to have come with Scrainwood.

Next in came the delegation from Okrannel. From behind Will the wizard Estafa hissed cattily, “Okrannel, by rights, should have come before Oriosa. Scrainwood maintains his nation should come first because hehas a nation. Truth is, Oriosa is more Aurolani than the Okrans Marches are.

King Stefin of Okrannel shuffled slowly along the carpet, with a crone on one arm and a middle-aged man on the other. A bevy of nobles followed in their wake to make up what had been, so far, the largest contingent attending. Even so, Will noted, they collectively possessed fewer jewels than some single personages.If jewels were raindrops, there would be a drought in Okrannel.

One striking woman, standing tall and with blonde hair so white it came close to matching Crow’s, made up for the lack of mineral wealth amid the Okrans delegation with her lively amethyst eyes. She moved with a fluid grace that put all other women to shame, and not just those in the room.Back in the Dimandowns I’ve seen women like Lumina dance the way that makes men’s blood molten, but she’d be nothing compared to her. … In fact, it occurred to Will he’d only ever seen one other woman as beautiful as this.