The Silver Mage

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‘It’s a hard life they have,’ Andariel continued. ‘The priests say that they did somewhat in their last lives to deserve it, just like we earned our place as warriors.’

‘Our priests always told me the same thing.’ Rhodorix touched the hilt of his sword to ward off any evil that might appear at the mention of such arcane matters. ‘Which way shall we go now?’

‘South,’ Andariel said. ‘The prince told me that some bands of Meradan are raiding to the south. They must have stayed down on the flat and just bypassed us.’

‘Have messengers come in? I haven’t seen any.’

‘The prince doesn’t need messengers. He has farseers.’

‘Has what?’

‘Mages who can see things from afar.’

Andariel was watching him with a slight smile, as if he expected the stranger to argue. While Rhodorix had never known men with true magic, he’d heard about them back in the homeland. What about Galerinos and that blue fire? he told himself. That must have been magic. ‘Well and good, then,’ Rhodorix said. ‘South it is!’

Although they saw no raiders that first day, after a few more days of riding patrols the mounted guardsmen had their first battle test. They had ridden a little farther than usual, once again to the south some ten miles from the fortress. When they crested a grassy hill, they saw below them some fifteen Meradan, riding along as easily and openly as if they owned the road.

‘Here’s a chance to try those new bows,’ Rhodorix said, ‘but tell the lads to try to spare the horses. We need every mount we can get.’

Andariel turned in the saddle and called back the orders. The archers looped their reins around the saddle peaks and brought their bows from their backs. Down below the Meradan had seen them. They paused their horses, then called out and waved to the guardsmen, who must have appeared from their vantage point as small figures silhouetted against the sky.

‘Ye gods!’ Andariel said. ‘They think we’re some of them!’

‘Of course.’ Rhodorix grinned at him. ‘We’re on horseback.’

Andariel shouted more orders. The archers lowered their bows but held them ready, hiding them as best they could behind their horses’ heads. Rather than charge, Rhodorix led the squad downhill at a steady walk, just as if they were planning on joining up with allies. They had reached the flat before the Meradan realized their mistake.

The five archers whipped up their bows and loosed the first volley. Arrows whistled, then sank into targets as the Meradan yelled war cries – then screamed. Three of their men pitched over their horses’ necks into the road. More arrows, more screams, but over the shrill rage and fear Andariel yelled for the charge. Rhodorix followed the captain as the mounted swordsmen left the archers and charged straight for the remaining Meradan.

The Meradani horses that had lost their riders bolted, galloping back south down the road. The others were milling and rearing, bucking and trying to grab their bits. Their riders could barely control them, much less fight. Rhodorix saw one savage whose black hair bristled like a boar’s, tied as it was with a plethora of charms and beads. He urged Aur straight for him. Foolishly the Meradan tried to turn his horse to run. Rhodorix swung straight for his spine at the neck. His sword slashed through the man’s pitiful leather hauberk with a spurt of blood.

With a last scream the rider fell just as Aur slammed into the rear of his horse. The Meradani pair went down, and Rhodorix nearly followed. Only a lifetime spent on horseback saved his balance and his life. He managed to stay on Aur’s back and balance his weight at the same time so that the golden gelding kept his feet. Aur tossed his head, foaming in panic. Rhodorix threw his weight forward and kept him from rearing while he stroked the horse’s neck.

‘Whist, whist, lad! It’s all over.’

The swordsmen had cut to pieces the few Meradan that the archers had missed. When Rhodorix turned his horse back to the battle, he had a moment of nausea at the sight – severed limbs, hacked torsos, heads rolling under hooves, and still the swordsmen cut and slashed until every single enemy had been reduced to so much butchered meat. Battle fury he knew, but he had never seen so much hatred on the field of war.

‘The horses!’ Andariel was calling out in what amounted to bad Gaulish, words he’d learned from Rhodorix. ‘Round up the horses!’

Blood spattered and grim, the swordsmen followed orders. Andariel urged his foaming, dancing horse up to Rhodorix’s mount.

‘Well, that’s a few less Meradan in the world,’ the captain said through the crystal. ‘Once we catch these horses, let’s head back to the fortress.’

‘What about the bodies?’ Rhodorix said.

‘Leave them for the ravens and foxes. They don’t deserve anything better.’

With the captured horses came an equally valuable prize, a leather saddlebag with painted insignia upon it, the ship crest of the Prince of Rinbaladelan. One of the guardsmen handed it to the captain, who opened it and peered inside.

‘Messages,’ Andariel hissed. ‘What happened to the messengers, then?’

‘What do you think?’ Rhodorix said. ‘They must be dead.’

‘I don’t understand. Why didn’t the farseers tell us about the messengers? We might have saved their lives.’

‘Good question,’ Rhodorix said. ‘Maybe the savages can hide from magic. Maybe they have magic of their own.’

The colour drained from Andariel’s face. Rhodorix abruptly realized that the captain – and doubtless the entire fortress – had been considering magic an important weapon on their side.

‘I could be wrong,’ Rhodorix said. ‘Be that as it may, we’d better get these back to the prince.’

‘Just so. Let’s ride.’

Leading their captured horses, the guardsmen rode back to Garangbeltangim. As they entered the gates, half the servants in the fort rushed out to cheer the riders, blood-spattered and exhausted, but victors in their tiny battle. Everyone had been desperate for some kind of victory, Rhodorix realized, so desperate that the insight gave him a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. Maybe they could find and kill a few bands of raiders, but what would happen if his pitiful handful of mounted guardsmen had to face an army?

Andariel insisted that Rhodorix accompany him when he took the captured messages to the prince. They found Ranadar in his great hall, sitting on the dais with his advisors, all of them lounging in chairs around a small inlaid wooden table and drinking from golden cups. Rhodorix wondered which ones were the mages. All three of the men with the prince looked too young, too smooth and handsome to be learned counsellors to a cadvridoc. He realized that he’d not seen one old person in the entire fortress, though Hwilli had certainly implied that her master in herbcraft had reached some great age.

Rhodorix and Andariel knelt before the prince, who leaned down to take the saddlebag from them. When he showed his advisors the crest, they all leaned forward, faces suddenly grim. Ranadar handed the messages to the nearest one, then spoke to Andariel. Rhodorix could pick out a few words and phrases of what the prince said, and he understood even more of the captain’s report of the skirmish, since he of course knew what had happened. The prince listened, nodding now and then. Behind him the advisor was reading through the messages; as he finished a sheet, he handed it over to the next man at the table. All of them had turned grim as death itself.

When he finished, Andariel handed Ranadar the white crystal, apparently at the prince’s request. Ranadar turned to Rhodorix.

‘I’m well pleased with how you’ve served me,’ the prince said. ‘From now on, you shall have the title of horsemaster and be an honoured man among us.’

‘My thanks, honoured rhix,’ Rhodorix said, ‘but at least half the honour goes to Andariel. He’s the one who thought of the new saddles, and without them, we couldn’t fight half as well.’

‘Indeed!’ Ranadar turned to Andariel. ‘Then you’re too modest by half, my friend.’

Andariel smiled, but his eyes looked suspiciously moist. Rhodorix could guess that the prince rarely referred to any man in the fortress as a friend.

‘Your armourer deserves honour as well, my prince,’ Andariel said.

‘He shall have it, then. You must be tired and hungry. My honour goes with you.’

It was the best dismissal he’d ever heard, Rhodorix thought with a grin. They both rose, bowed, and took themselves away. At the door Rhodorix looked back to see the advisors standing up to huddle around the prince, each of them waving one of the pieces of parchment that held the messages.

Rhodorix followed his usual routine, bath house first, then back to his chamber. As he came up to the door, he heard Gerro’s voice and a woman giggling in answer. Suspicion flared in his blood like fever. He flung open the door to find Gerro lying half-naked on the bed and Hwilli’s friend Nalla sitting beside him. She held a pot of some sort of salve in one hand, but judging from the disarray of her hair, and from the fact that her tunic was hiked up around her waist, she’d been doing more for Gerro than treating his withered leg.

‘You might have knocked,’ Nalla said. She handed the salve to Gerontos and grabbed her tunic to pull it down.

‘My apologies.’ Rhodorix knew his face must have turned scarlet. ‘I’ll uh just uh go find Hwilli.’

He turned and beat a hasty retreat, slamming the door behind him. Yet despite the blush, he felt gratified that his younger brother had found a woman of his own, partly because he liked seeing Gerontos happy. And he won’t be sniffing around mine this way, he thought.

All too soon, however, things changed.

‘Hwilli, Nalla, all of you.’ Master Jantalaber appeared in the door of the refectory. ‘I have something important to tell you.’

At their long table the apprentices, male and female both, fell silent as he walked into the room. Jantalaber looked weary, that night, his hair uncombed, his eyes heavy-lidded and sad as he looked over his students.

‘The prince has made a decision,’ the master said. ‘I don’t agree with it, but he’s the prince. Today the guardsmen brought back messages from Rinbaladelan, begging his aid. Ranadar’s sending all but two of you to Rinbaladelan. Refugees are pouring into the city. Many are wounded. They need healers badly and supplies as well.’

Everyone went tense, glancing at each other.

‘Hwilli, you’ll stay with me,’ Jantalaber said. ‘I’ll keep Paraberiel here, too, because he’s been helping me with – well, our project. The rest of you, once you’ve finished your meal, go to your chambers and begin to collect your belongings. In the morning, we’ll load up a wagon with supplies, and you’ll set out with an escort of archers and some of the new horse soldiers.’

Hwilli caught her breath. Would the prince sent Rhodorix away? Jantalaber looked at her and smiled, just briefly. When he spoke, he used her own language, that of the Old Ones. Since he was the only person among the People who had ever bothered to learn it, they both knew that no one else would understand.

‘Your friend will stay here with you,’ Jantalaber said.

Hwilli let out a sigh of sheer relief.

‘I decided to keep you here for two reasons beyond our project,’ he continued. ‘You’re the best of my students, and the healers at Rinbaladelan might not treat you as you deserve.’

‘My thanks, Master,’ Hwilli said, and in this instance nothing poisoned her gratitude.

Jantalaber returned to speaking the language of the People.

‘Par, you’ve advanced far enough to teach others. It will be your duty to instruct the archers in binding wounds. Hwilli will show them which herbs are vulneraries and how to prepare them. They need to be capable of healing themselves if something happens to the three of us.’

‘As you wish, Master,’ Paraberiel said.

‘I won’t lie to you all,’ Jantalaber continued. ‘Things are looking very grim. Apparently the Meradan have wits, after all. They’ve simply bypassed Ranadar’s realm and are striking at the heart of the Seven Princedoms.’

Nalla’s face turned white, and she caught the edge of the table so hard that the blood drained from her knuckles as well. Hwilli laid a gentle hand on her friend’s arm.

‘The prince is beginning to think that the best we can hope for is to fall back to Rinbaladelen eventually,’ Jantalaber continued speaking, ‘and help defend the city, but no one’s ready for that move yet. Still, who knows? With luck and the favour of the gods, I may see you all again in Rinbaladelan one fine day.’

No one spoke. Only a few of the apprentices so much as moved in their chairs or glanced around. Hwilli felt as if a north wind had swept into the refectory and laid a coating of dirty grey frost over everything in it.

When they finished eating, Hwilli helped Nalla fold her clothing and place it into two leather sacks for the travel ahead. Her few other possessions – combs, a silver brooch, a pair of blue ribands – Nalla tucked into a small pouch that she’d carry on her belt. Neither of them spoke until they’d finished.

‘Hwilli, this is horrible,’ Nalla said. ‘The prince believes he’ll lose the war, doesn’t he?’

Hwilli tried to speak, but tears clogged her voice.

‘You see it, too,’ Nalla continued. ‘And your family – ai! they live outside the walls.’

The tears spilled and ran. Nalla threw her arms around Hwilli and held her, just for a moment, before drawing back. Hwilli tried to speak, then hurried to the door before she wept again.

‘I’ll pray I see you in the spring,’ Nalla called after her. Hwilli ran down the corridor and took refuge in her chamber. The last of the sunlight gleamed through the window, a distant gold. She flung herself onto her bed and fought down her tears. This is no time for weeping, she told herself. We all have to be strong. Perhaps if she pleaded with Master Jantalaber, he could convince the prince to allow her mother to come into the relative safety of the fortress. Perhaps.

‘Beloved?’ Rhodorix opened the door and stepped into the chamber. ‘Have you heard the news?’

‘That the healers are leaving?’ Hwilli sat up and turned on the bed to sit facing him.

‘Not just the healers.’ He paused to shut the door. ‘The prince is sending all the farm folk with them. The Vale of Roses isn’t a safe haven anymore, the captain told me. Tomorrow our warband’s going to strip every bit of food they don’t need for the journey south.’

‘I hadn’t heard that.’ How like a man of the People, even Master Jantalaber, to forget to tell me! What does he care about the slaves outside?

Rhodorix sat down next to her and caught her hand between both of his. ‘Do your bloodkin still live out there?’ he said.

‘Only my mother. She’ll be safe, then, for a little while. Well, if she doesn’t starve at the gates of Rinbaladelan, anyway.’

‘The prince won’t let his people starve.’

‘Our prince wouldn’t, true. I know naught about the prince of Rinbaladelan.’

Rhodorix started to speak, sighed instead, and drew her into his arms. His love-making gave her more comfort than any words could have done.

In a grey dawn turned cold by a drizzle of rain, the healers led out their expedition from the fortress. Hwilli walked with them down to the valley, where the farm folk waited for them in a mob of weeping humans, bleating goats, and lowing cattle. The farmers pushed wheelbarrows and handcarts laden with pitifully small bundles of household goods. Hwilli worked her way through until she found her mother, Gertha, a big-boned woman who wore her long grey hair bound back into a single braid. In one hand she held the halter ropes of two milk goats, who were complaining softly and rubbing up against their human’s hips.

‘Mama!’ Hwilli threw an arm around her shoulders. ‘I’ve brought you a cloak and some extra food.’

‘Well, thank you.’ Gertha’s smile displayed the few brown cracked teeth left to her. ‘I was thinking I was going to have a cold walk of it.’

Hwilli laid the cloth-wrapped bundle of bread at her mother’s feet, shoved a curious goat away with one foot, then took off her cloak and placed it around her mother’s shoulders. She pinned it at the neck with a bronze pin. She’d considered giving her the golden bird brooch, but she knew that someone would only steal it along the way if she did. Gertha stroked the cloak with her free hand.

‘Very nice wool,’ she said, ‘but don’t you need it?’

‘No. Master Jantalaber will give me another one.’ She picked up the bundle again and handed it over. ‘Bread and cheese. Eat it first, before the overseers take it.’

‘I will. It’s kind of you to remember me. I wondered if you did, up there in the palace and all.’

‘Mama, how could I ever forget you?’

Sudden tears ran down Gertha’s face. Hwilli hugged her again and wept with her. The horse soldiers were riding up and down the line, yelling at everyone to get ready to move. Whips cracked, the horses tossed their heads and snorted. Hwilli gave her mother one last embrace, then turned away, half-blind with tears. She worked her way free of the mob just as the villagers began to walk away. Some turned for a last look at Reaching Mountain, the huge slabs of rock that had loomed over them every summer of their lives. Most concentrated on pushing their belongings ahead of them down the rocky path.

Hwilli stood on the first terrace and watched until the last figure, the last wisp of dust, had faded from sight. By the time she returned to the fortress, she’d managed to stop weeping.

A few nights after the refugees had started their trek to Rinbaladelan, the first snow fell, but it stayed up high on the mountains. The fortress itself received an icy rain that froze only in the deepest shadows. As soon as the sun climbed half-way to zenith, the frost melted again, but winter had arrived in a swirl of north wind as cruel as thrown knives. Hwilli worried about her mother and Nalla incessantly. Not even Rhodorix could lift her spirits.

‘I feel an evil wyrd coming,’ Hwilli told him one night. ‘I don’t know what, but I can feel it deep in my heart.’

He said nothing, merely stroked her hair, twining it lightly around his fingers, then releasing it.

‘Do you feel it, too?’ Hwilli said.

‘I don’t.’ He smiled at her. ‘In the spring, now, when the Meradan are on the move again, then mayhap I will. But we’ll have a winter here first.’

For his sake she voiced nothing and let his kisses distract her. The spring will come too soon, she thought. Far far too soon.

With Nalla gone, Master Jantalaber took over the task of teaching Hwilli her first lessons in dweomercraft, which amounted to her learning proper words and definitions. The universe, it turned out, encompassed far more than the world Hwilli had always seen, and each of these worlds contained their own proper order of beings and creatures. At times, the lesson over, Jantalaber would talk of his dream of building a place of healing as well, particularly when Paraberiel joined them.

‘I’d thought of building it of stone in the usual way,’ Jantalaber said one evening. ‘Down by the Lake of the Leaping Trout, I thought.’

‘That’s a lovely place,’ Paraberiel put in. ‘Very restful, if someone was ill.’