Wild Magic (45 page)

Could it be the same stone which Saro bore around his neck, Virelai wondered? Power emanated from the thing in a way that had afforded him the most horrifying and deathly visions. Such a thing in the wrong hands . . . That thought led to another: what if Tycho Issian were to lay hands on such a stone? He shuddered. With the Lord of Cantara in his current unstable state, no living creature on Elda would be safe. It was imperative that the twain be separated, and by as great a distance as possible.

In a fit of morbid dread, he had read on, expecting more and more horrors. Instead, some pages later, he came upon another entry, cryptically worded and strange beyond belief. This he read and then overread, in case he had misapprehended it entirely. But no: its implications were undeniable. A plan began to take shape, the details flowing like the most perfect of weavings. With the stone, if not in his hands, then at least in his company, he could save his own skin. He could return to Sanctuary without fear of reprisal or the Master’s wrath. All would be well. A great wave of relief had washed over him. He remembered the momentary bliss of that rare sensation, before anxiety clamped his chest once more.

His plan rested on the slim shoulders of Saro Vingo: lose the boy and he would lose the stone, and thereafter any chance of survival. Redoubling his efforts, he skidded to a halt at the postern gate with his heart thumping and the breath rough in his chest, and looked outside. It was pitch-dark out there and nothing was stirring. Virelai swore quietly. Surely the boy could not have fled so far and so fast? It was true that the seeing-stones could offer deceptions, so the lad might already be far away, the time he had been shown another hour of the night entirely; or safe in his bed, dreaming of his escape on another such occasion. He sniffed the air. The faint scent of horse-dung came back to him, and warm animals. Was the stable door still open?

Virelai stepped out into the night.

Night’s Harbinger was in a lively mood. There were mares two paddocks away and he could scent them. When the boy had come to his stall he had thought he was being taken to visit them and had followed the lad eagerly, not even complaining when a bridle was slung over his head. So he was more than a little surprised when he found a saddle on his back and a strap around his belly; but it was only when the boy had grasped his neck and stepped up into the stirrup that he knew something was amiss.

Spinning around, Night’s Harbinger tried to bite his rider on the knee as a mark of protest, all the while snorting fit to wake the dead.

Saro clenched his knees against the stallion’s flanks and tried unsuccessfully to quiet him. A moment later, there came the sound of raised voices from the walls above them and his breath caught in his throat. He prepared to press the animal into a desperate gallop; but then the sounds diminished and became more distant as the men passed on without stopping, and no lit torches nor any alarm followed their passage into the castle. Steadying his breathing, Saro urged the horse into a stately walk, heading for the western gate and the grassy plain beyond.

But before they could reach the outer wall, the stallion’s ears began to twitch. Then his head came up sharply and he began to dance backwards. Saro fought him to a stiff halt, then stared into the murk to see what had caused him such concern. About twenty feet away, dimly outlined by the moonlight, was a huge dark shape. A pair of fiery golden eyes flared in the darkness, and Saro felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck and gooseflesh prickle down his arms. It was a primal reaction: prey to predator. Cold sweat trickled the length of his spine. He wished, suddenly and fervently and for the first time in his life, that he had a sword.

For the space of several heartbeats horse and rider stood frozen; then the beast opened its maw. It was vast: that much Saro could divine by the glint of moonlight on the wide-apart fangs. Night’s Harbinger shifted his weight delicately from hoof to hoof and whisked his tail nervously, but otherwise showed no sign that he had any survival instinct at all. Saro waited for a roar to issue out of the cavernous mouth and for the killing leap that would inevitably follow, but nothing of the sort happened. Instead, the creature closed its mouth again with a faint click of teeth. Saro was filled with the sudden incongruous suspicion that the beast had
yawned
. Was it really so confident it could dispatch him and the stallion? Just as he was thinking this, darkness filled the gap between them, as if something had become between the great beast and its prey. A flicker of something tall and pale . . .

The moodstone began to glow.

‘Bëte, desist!’

The voice was deep and commanding. The stallion stilled as if by magic and Saro felt his own will slip into abeyance and his hands, which had been rising to shield the stone, fell limp and useless to his sides. Then the pale thing moved out of his line of sight, and suddenly the beast was there no more. When a cloud passed away from the face of the half-moon overhead, the man called Virelai was standing in front of him. In his arms was a small black cat.

Saro stared past him, but the huge predator was gone, melting into the night as silently as it had appeared.

‘Come with me,’ the pale man said in the same timbre he had employed before, and although something inside Saro’s mind quailed away from the suggestion, his hands tightened on the reins and he heard his own voice replying, ‘Yes, I will come.’

It had all been far simpler than Virelai could have imagined. Using the Master’s voice of command could be very hit or miss; but here he was with the cat all pliant in his grasp and the boy and his horse following him into the shelter of the orange grove below the city walls. Here they could remain unseen while he hared back into the castle and retrieved his necessaries – the grimoire, at the very least, and as much of the carefully faked silver as he could carry. Up in his chamber, wheezing with the exertion of running twenty-three flights of stairs, he stuffed the cat into its wicker basket, still amazed it had not come out of its trance and tried to bite him with its usual spite, and packed into a sturdy sack the grimoire, some clothes, the ointment, a cloak, a knife, two big bricks of the tin-turned-silver, his herbals, pen and inks, carefully stoppered to avoid spillage, and a set of parchments he had been working on, which could prove most incriminating were they to be found by, for instance, the Lords of Forent and Cantara.

Then he started down again. About halfway to the postern, he realised he should take something for Alisha: it would be bad enough turning up on the step of her wagon without warning, and with the boy, too: two new mouths to feed in the hardest of times, and that without taking into account the danger which would surely follow when the hue and cry was raised, and while a gift was no more than the merest emollient in such circumstances, it at least showed some degree of comprehension of the magnitude of the favour he was about to ask. At the third floor, he took a side door and ran down the twisting corridor as quietly as he could manage with the cat-basket bumping on his back and his bundle of belongings clutched to his chest. He knew exactly what she would most appreciate.

The kitchens were silent except for the snoring of the boys by the bread-oven: even though it was still some hours before the dawn, they would soon have to be up and baking again: the fresh bread and exquisite pastries to be had in Jetra’s castle were talked of throughout Istria with nostalgia by those who had experienced them and with longing by those who had not, but they appeared each morning on the nobles’ breakfast tables by dint of sheer hard graft rather than as the result of any simple magic. Virelai crept around them and into the cold-pantry where the rarer spices were stored. Hanging from the ceiling in swathes of aromatic green and gold and pink were garlands of safflowers, bunches of hemp and vervain and loosestrife; behind them, in great wide dishes of blue Jetran pottery was this year’s harvest of lion crocuses, each triform amber stamen removed with care and gathered to dry for colour and flavouring in a dozen exotic dishes. But Virelai knew another use for the powdered pistils. He picked up one of the heavy pots and poured the contents into a square of fabric, tied it tightly and discarded the vessel. Alisha would love the dish, he knew, but it couldn’t be helped. He stowed the parcel inside his bundle and turned to leave. His exit was blocked. In his path was one of the castle dogs – not one of the lords’ elegant deerhounds this, but a black-and-tan, brutish-looking mutt with a square jaw and an ugly head. Saliva dripped from its ruckled mouth onto the stone flags.

Virelai smiled.

‘Lie down,’ he suggested to it. ‘Sleep.’

But it was not the Master’s powerful command that issued out, but a weak and reedy facsimile. Instead of doing as it had been bidden, the dog growled and took a pace forward into the entrance of the pantry. Virelai took a step back. Inside its basket, the cat stirred.

Dogs were a species of Elda’s creatures Virelai had always found problematic. They didn’t like him, quite instinctively. In fact, most animals had an antipathy to him, for no reason which was immediately apparent, since he tried to treat them well and was not given to cruelty; but dogs had large teeth and could inflict considerable damage with one jaw-crunching lunge, much like the Lord of Cantara, and the anxiety they caused him seemed to communicate itself. When he could, he avoided them, or tried to make himself as unobtrusive as possible. This beast, however, had made it its business to seek him out and confront him: it would hardly be put off by simple trickery.

Fear made his mind spin. The voice was not working: what else was left in his armoury? The grimoire was well wrapped and in the bottom of the sack: it would take too long to extricate it and find a relevant charm. Even then he would need the cat’s cooperation; and the idea of removing the cat in front of such a monster was the sheerest folly. His brain worked feverishly. A tincture of the pistils he had just stolen would cause drowsiness and worse: but he had neither the time nor the means to effect such a treatment. Since all gentler solutions were closed to him, the only course left seemed that of mindless violence. He looked desperately around for anything that might serve as a weapon. Glassware; pottery; dried flowers. It was hopeless. The wished-for rolling pin, ladle or long meat-knife was nowhere to be seen. The dishes were heavy, it was true; but shattered pottery and the chaos that was likely to ensue if he did not kill the dog outright meant certain discovery, capture and the failure of his plan. And with the expensive herb stashed in his pack, a charge of theft to answer.

The dog began to make a bubbling, deep-throated growl. Its ears flattened against its skull. Virelai watched its rump bear down and begin to waggle in a manner that might have been comical, had it not so obviously heralded attack. Without another thought about possible consequences, he picked up the biggest dish he could lay hands on and hurled it with all his might at the beast.

Jetran pottery was famed throughout the civilised world for its elegance and the startling blue of its glaze, which was unique to the potters of the Eternal City. The word for ‘blue’ in the ancient tongue of the Tilsen Plain was the same as that for ‘sky’, specifically the deep, unflawed blue of a seven-month sky. What it was not famed for was its sturdiness: the bowl struck the dog square on its massive skull and broke into hundreds of brittle shards. Saffron scattered everywhere, coating the exposed shelves of the pantry, the mutt’s vast paws; the floor. But if Virelai had hoped the thing would be distracted by the aromatic pollen, if not by the missile itself, he was to be sadly disappointed.

Enraged by the thump on its head, which had damaged it only in serving to make it bite its tongue, and confused by the yellow dust that invaded its nostrils and caused it to sneeze, the mutt came grimly on, spraying drool and blood as it advanced. Virelai swung the cat-basket around in front of him. It was a cowardly act, and probably a futile one, but it was all he could think of.

Dog and wicker collided with such force that the sorcerer was thrown backwards off his feet, grazing his elbows on the shelving on the way down and bashing his head with a painful thud on the cold stone floor. There, he found himself trapped by the long basket which had wedged itself crosswise between the narrow walls, and by the immense weight of the dog bearing down on top of the basket. Obscure hissings and growlings filled the air, and then the basket burst apart so that he could feel the beast’s feet churning into his exposed belly. All the breath rushed out of his lungs; his vision began to speckle and he thought he might vomit. Just as he had decided this was how he would die – ignominiously, on the floor of a pantry, in the act of stealing some herbs in the middle of the night, his throat ripped out by some rabid mongrel – there was a sudden release of pressure. Breath returned, followed by a distant whimpering which might have been his own: he was so disorientated it was hard to tell.

After a few moments’ blessed silence, voices sounded out in the kitchens; though whether it was merely the sleepy conversations of the baker-boys, or others wakened by the dog’s din, it was impossible to tell.

Virelai sat up gingerly. Of the dog there was no sign, except for the slick pools of blood and slobber it had left on the flagstones. Bits of broken wicker lay strewn around the floor. Bëte was gone.

In her place was the Beast: lion-sized and as black as night. Its fangs were red, its eyes knowing.

Get up
, it said into his mind, and his bowels quivered.
Behind you there is a door into the outside world. Open it
.

Virelai moved his head minutely, not daring to take his eyes off the great avatar for fear it would try to rip his throat out, too. Elda knew, he deserved such a fate for thrusting the defenceless cat it had been but moments before into the path of a savage cur. Did the Beast it had become think in such a manner? Did it harbour a grudge? If so, his life was surely forfeit.

Hurry.

By levering himself up on the shelves, Virelai managed to stand. Feeling more confident now that he was on his feet (though there was little logic to this, since the Beast could move a thousand times faster than he could in the event of an attempted escape) he turned and surveyed the back of the pantry. There was indeed – he could just spy out of the corner of his eye – a tiny door there, closed with a simple iron latch. Stupid not to have noticed it before.