Winterlands 2 - Dragonshadow (8 page)

The Commander shook her head. Her eyes were troubled, resting on John’s face. He must, he thought, look worse than he supposed.

“I got one message two weeks ago: Balgodorus seemed to be heading for the mountains. He has a stronghold there. I’ve sent search parties in that direction but they’ve found nothing, and frankly, in the Wyrwoods, unless you know what you’re looking for you’re not going to find it. You know those woods. Thickets that have been growing in on themselves since before the founding of the Realm; ranges of hills we’ve never heard of, swallowed in trees. They may be untrained scum, but they know the land, and they’re rebellious, tricky, stopping at nothing …” Her face suddenly set, grim anger in her eyes. “And some of the southern lords are as bad, or nearly so. Barons, they call themselves, or nobles—wolves tearing at the fabric of the Realm for their own purposes. Well”—she shook her head—“at least the likes of Balgodorus don’t pretend allegiance and then make deals behind the Regent’s back.”

“Two weeks.” John gazed into the dab of amber fluid at the bottom of his goblet. Two days’ ride from Alyn, with Muffle scolding all the way. Ian had been gone for five days. Old Caerdinn returned to his mind, as he had on and off since the strange mage’s appearance. A vile old man, John remembered, dirty and obsessed. He had been John’s tutor as well, and a quarter of the books at Alyn Hold had been dug from ruins by that muttering, bearded old bundle of rags, or bargained from any who had even the blackest scraps of paper to sell. He—and John’s mother—were the only other wizards John had ever heard of north of the Wildspae, and they had hated one another cordially.

Had Caerdinn had other pupils? Pupils whose wizardry was stronger than Jenny’s, maybe even stronger than Jenny’s human magic alloyed with the alien powers of dragons? This woman of Balgodorus’, or the person who had taught her. The man with the moonstone in his staff? Somehow he couldn’t see the gentleman in the purple coat taking instruction from a toothless dribbling old beggar, much less meekly letting Caerdinn beat him, as Jenny had done. But there were other Lines of magic. Other provenances of teaching handed down in the south, in Belmarie or the Seven Isles. And as Rocklys had said, though their magic was very different from human magic, there were wizards also among the gnomes.

He sighed again and raised his head, to meet Rocklys’ worried gaze. “I have to believe that I saw at least some of what I think I saw,” he said simply. “I was flat on my back for three days after the fight, and it rained during that time. Gniffy had a look round but he said the tracks were so torn up, he couldn’t be sure of anything. But Centhwevir’s gone. And Ian’s gone.” “Of this Centhwevir I’ve heard nothing.” Rocklys walked to the niche in the wall, where in former centuries commandants had put the closed shrines of the gods. She had a shrine there to the Lord of War, and another to the Lord of Law, but where in the south he’d seen little charred basins of incense, and the stains of proffered wine and blood, was only clean-scrubbed marble.

The rest of the niche held books, and his eye ran over the titles: Tenantius’ Theory of Laws, Gurgustus’ Essays, The Liever Regulae, and Caecilius’ The Righteous Monarch. On the table before these books was a strongbox of silver pieces, and beside it a small casket containing half a handful of gems. He remembered the complaints that had come to him from the mayors of Far West Riding and Great Toby, how the King’s commissioners demanded more to pay for the garrison than even the greediest thane ever had.

“Of this new wizard …” She shook her head. “Can Jenny have been mistaken? Or might the man you saw have been some kind of … of illusion, as the dragon was?”

“And be really this woman?” John shook his head. “But why? Why go to the trouble to fool me?”

“In any case,” said the Commander, “all of this convinces me—well, I was convinced before—that we must establish this school I’ve spoken of, this academy of wizards, here in Corflyn. I hope now that when she returns, Jenny will agree to come here and teach others. We can’t go on like this.”

“No.”

Save a dragon, slave a dragon… The old granny-rhyme drifted back through his mind, and the bodies he’d found the last time Balgodorus had raided a village.

And as he heard the words again he saw the wizard in his violet coat and embroidered cap mounting Centhwevir’s back, holding out his hand to Ian.

His ribs ached where the boy’s boot toe had driven in.

The Commander turned from the neglected shrines, the books of the Legalist scholars, very real distress on her face. “It isn’t just bandit mages who are the danger. You know that! Look at the gnomes, operating what amount to independent kingdoms at the very heart of the King’s Realm! Buying slaves, too, clean against the King’s Law, no matter what they swear and claim! They have wizards among them, and who knows what or who they teach. Look at lords like the Master of Halnath, and the Prince of Greenhythe, and the merchant princes of the Seven Isles! Look at Tinán of Imperteng, claiming that his ancient title to the lands at the base of the mountains is equal in rank to that of the King himself!”

John propped his spectacles on his nose. “Well, accordin’ to Dotys’ Histories, it is.”

“What kind of argument is that?!” Rocklys demanded angrily. “The revolt of the Prince of Wyr, four hundred years ago, broke the Realm in two! That should never have been permitted. And Prince Gareth—though I have nothing but respect for him as a scholar and an administrator—is letting it happen all over again!”

“Our boy Gar’s not done so very ill,” John pointed out quietly. “For one coming new to the game and untaught, he’s doing gie well.”

He smiled a little, remembering the gangly boy with the fashionable green streaks in his fair hair, broken glasses perched on the end of his long nose, delivering himself of an oratorical message from the King before collapsing in a faint in the Alyn Hold pigyard. Comic, maybe, thought John. But it had taken genuine courage to sail north to an unknown land; genuine courage to ride overland from the harbor at Eldsbouch to Alyn Hold. The boy was lucky he hadn’t had his throat slit for his boots on the way.

Maybe luckier still that he’d set out on his journey when he had. In those days the witch Zyerne had been tightening her grip on the old King’s mind and soul, draining his energy and looking about her for a new victim.

“That’s exactly my point!” Rocklys drove her fist into her palm, her face hard. “His Highness the Prince is untaught. And inexperienced. And he’s making mistakes that will cost the Realm dear. It will take years—decades—to repair them, if they can be repaired at all. His …” She stopped herself with an effort.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s your friend, as he is my cousin. I suppose I can’t get over my memories of him prancing along with his friends, wearing those silly shoulder-banners that were all the rage, and toe-points so long they had to be chained to his garters. You’re not going to go seeking Jenny?” She came over to him and rested a big hand on his shoulder. John realized he was so tired it would cost him great effort to stand, and his hands were growing colder and colder around the painted rim of the cup.

“I’ll ride on back to the Hold,” he said. “Jenny’ll know Ian’s gone, and something’s gie wrong. She’ll be on her way back to the Hold as fast as she can.”

“I thought mages couldn’t scry other mages.”

“Nor can they. So she’ll know I haven’t been next or nigh Ian in five days, and that I’ve got meself out of bed and down here before my cuts have fair scabbed. She’ll put two and two together—she’s good at that kind of addition, is Jenny. And it’s as well,” he added, setting the cup aside and rising cautiously from his chair. “For in truth, she can’t return too soon for comfort.”

“And if she doesn’t return?” asked Rocklys. “If this bandit chief and his tame mage have found a way to imprison or destroy her?”

“Ah, well.” John scratched the side of his long nose. “Then just us standin’ off a couple of wizards, and a dragon, and all … I’d say we’re in real trouble.” He took three steps toward the door and fainted, as if struck over the head with a house beam.

Wait for me, you idiot! thought Jenny furiously, and let the images in the fire fade. WAIT FOR ME! She wondered why the Goddess of Women had seen fit to cause her to fall in love with a blockhead.

Moonlight streamed through the window, just tinged now with the smoke of far-off fires.

Somewhere beyond the walls a whippoorwill cried. Jenny drew her plaid around her shoulders and wished with all that was in her that she could slip over the palisade, summon Moon Horse from her patient foraging in the woods, and ride for Alyn Hold as fast as she could go. Or if all that were not possible—and it was not, not without leaving close to three hundred people to die—she wished that at least she knew what was going on. Silence cupped Palmorgin manor in its invisible hand. Even the guards had nothing to say, focused through their exhaustion on the open ground beyond the moat. This was the dead hour of night that Balgodorus favored for his attacks. Mosquitoes whined in the darkness, but worn down as she was even the spells of “Go bite someone else” scraped at her, like a rough spot on the inside of a shoe after the tenth or twelfth mile.

No sign of Centhwevir. Under the best of circumstances it wasn’t always possible to scry dragons, for their flesh, their very essence, was woven of magic. But over the past seven days, she had scried the outposts along the fell country, scried the towns of Great Toby and Far West Riding, scried Alyn itself.

No burned ground. No tangles of stripped and acid-charred bones.

And at the Hold, no mourning. But she saw Aunt Jane and Aunt Rowan and Cousin Dilly weeping; saw Adric sitting alone on the battlements, looking out to the south. And John, after his brief interview with Rocklys, had refused to remain in bed, had instead dragged himself next morning back onto his horse and taken the road for home, Muffle behind him scolding all the way.

Ian.

Something had happened to Ian.

Wait till I get there, John. This can’t last. She slipped from the room.

Women and children slept rolled in blankets along the corridor outside her door. She picked her way among them, drawing her skirts aside. Pale blue light glowed around the door handles of other storerooms, warding away touch with spells of dread. Warding away, too, every spell of rats and mold and insects, leaks and fire, anything and everything Jenny could think of. In the archway that led onto the palisade she nodded to the guard, and the night breeze lifted the dark hair from her face. Balgodorus’ tame mage hadn’t stopped with illusion. As she passed the roofs of the buildings around the court, Jenny checked the faint-glowing threads of ward-signs, of wyrds and counter-spells. In some places the fire-spells still lingered, the wood or plaster hot beneath her fingers. She scribbled additional marks, and in one place opened one of the several pouches at her belt and dipped her finger into the spelled mix of powdered silver and dried fox-blood, to strengthen the ward. She didn’t like the untaught craziness of those wild spells, without Limitations to keep them from devouring and spreading where their sender had no intention of letting them go.

There had been other spells besides fire. Spells to summon bees from their hives and hornets from their nests in furious un-seasonal swarms. Spells of sickness, of fleas, of unreasoning panic and rage. Anything to break the concentration of the defenders. The palisade and the blockhouses were a tangle of counterspells and amulets; the smelly air a lour of magic. How could anyone, she wondered, born with the raw gold of magic in them, use it in the service of a beast like Balgodorus: slave trader, killer, rapist, and thief?

“Mistress Waynest?” Lord Pellanor appeared at the top of the ladder from the court below. He carried his helm under his arm, and the gold inlay that was its sole decoration caught the fire’s reflection in a frivolous curlicue of light. Without it his balding, close-cropped head above gorget and collar looked silly and small. “Is all well?”

“As of sunset. I’m just starting another round.”

“Can she see in?” asked the Baron. “I mean, look with a mirror or a crystal or with fire the way you do, to see where to plant those spells of hers?”

“I don’t think so.” Jenny folded her arms under her plaid. “She might be able to see in a room where I’m not, despite scry-wards I’ve put on everything I can think of. She’s strong enough to keep me from looking into their camp. She’s laying down spells at random, the way I’ve done: sickness on a horse or a man, fire in hay or wood, foulness in water. And she wouldn’t know any more than I do how much effect those spells are having.”

The Baron puffed his breath, making his long mustaches jump. “Where would she have learned, eh?” He started to bite his thumb against evil, then glanced at her and changed the gesture to simply scratching his chin. “I … er … don’t suppose the man who taught you might still be about?”

Jenny shook her head. “You’re sure?”

She looked aside. “I buried him. Twenty-five years ago.” “Ah.”

“I was the last of his students.” Jenny scanned the formless yards of open ground below. They had fought, daily, over that ground, and daily, nightly, those ragged filthy foul-mouthed men had come back, with ladders, with axes, with brush to try to burn the gates or rams to try to break them. There were, she guessed, nearly twice as many bandits as there were defenders of fighting strength. They attacked in shifts.

Even now she could see the twinkle of lights from their camp and smell its stink on the breeze. Eating, drinking, resting up for another attack. Her bones ached with fatigue. “He was very old,” she went on, “and very bitter, I suppose through no fault of his own.” She remembered the way his stick would whine as it slashed through the air, and the bite of the leather strap on her flesh. The better, he said, for her to remember her lessons. But she’d felt his satisfaction in the act of punishment alone, the relief of a frustration that ate him alive. She had wept for days, at the old man’s lonely death. She still did not know why. “He remembered the last of the King’s troops, marching away to the south. That must have been the final garrison from Great Toby, because the others had gone centuries before that. He said his own teacher left with them, and after that he could only work at the books his teacher left. There was no one else in the north who could teach properly—not healing, not magic, not music. Nothing. Caerdinn was too young to follow the legions south, he said. Then the Iceriders came, and everything changed.”