by Melanie Rawn
Love was something he wouldn’t understand until he was past thirty years old, and the irony of it was that he was the Humble Whomever, and she was the Blooded Lady Thus-and-So. But oh, how they laughed. . . .
Once she stopped wanting to murder him.
3
During his fourth summer as Scraller’s page, the old man came for him.
Col was dawdling on his way up the privy stair, hoping Scraller was in a mood for a few songs tonight. Anything but another Humble Whomever.
“Well? Hurry up, boy!” Flornat ordered from the upper landing. “You can’t mean to keep him waiting!”
Sighing, Col trudged up the steps and down the hall to the bedchambers. There were three, in use as Scraller’s temper of the evening dictated. One was painted as an evocation of the tangled swamps of Rokemarsh, all wild green shapes and fantastical flowers, with nudes of all descriptions cavorting in the mud. Another room mimicked the stark landscape of Caitiri’s Hearth, glittering black mountains topped by silvery snow; Collan always felt rather sorry for the nudes on these walls, coupling on sharp obsidian and hard white ice. He hadn’t been inside the third bedchamber in quite some time, for it had been redecorated. It was to this room that Flornat led him now.
Col’s jaw dropped open. He’d seen woodcuts of Firrense in some of Taguare’s books, and the new decor was obviously intended to recreate the most famous walls of the Painted City. All the Saints were here, all right, just as in the picture that ran all the way down the walls of one of Firrense’s streets. But as casual as Collan was about religion, he saw this room as blasphemy. The sight of hundreds of Saints disporting themselves in giggling ecstasy was designed to shock, and succeeded.
Scraller lounged on a massive pile of silk and velvet cushions, his head moving slowly on his skinny neck like a lizard’s as he regarded his latest triumph. Every so often he brought a tankard of wine to his lips, drank, and let his arm sink languidly back to the pillows. Flornat whispered an announcement of Col’s arrival from the door, then beat a retreat.
There was a wooden lectern over in the corner, where St. Venkelos the Judge was wrapping himself in St. Lirance Cloudchaser’s long, wild black hair. Col turned away before he could discern what else the pair were doing, and fixed his gaze on the open book of erotic poems.
He read in his usual style, detaching himself from the words while giving each one salacious emphasis. So remote was his mind from the text that it took him twenty minutes to realize that each poem was an obscene parody of a hymn to a specific Saint. Quick glances at Scraller showed him that the man turned to the appropriate portrait with each title. Col read on, and stopped looking, stopped thinking, stopped hearing the sound of his own voice.
All at once he heard a drawn-out moan. His tongue tripped over a rhyme as his eyes shifted involuntarily to where Scraller sprawled on the cushions. His robes were parted, his naked body exposed to the lamplight, and his hands were very, very busy.
“Come—here—”
Collan sidled away from the lectern, his foot catching on its legs. It and he and the book toppled to the floor. Scrambling to his feet, he made for the door. Locked.
“Here, boy,” Scraller panted, as if ordering one of his hunting hounds.
Col pounded at the face of St. Gelenis First Daughter painted on the wooden door, fought with the gilded galazhi-horn handle the Saint smirked at: it was St. Chevasto’s cock.
“Not that one—mine,” Scraller said from just behind him.
His shoulder was seized, he was spun around to face his owner. “I’ll kill you first,” he snarled.
The door slammed into his back, knocking him into Scraller. They both went down in a sprawl. Collan rolled off him at once and leaped to his feet.
“Time to go, I think,” the old man said, appearing like a Wraith—or at least what Col had heard about Wraiths, for he’d never seen one and hoped he never would. The old man was old even then, his face as wrinkled as the shell of a black walnut and approximately the same color, his shoulder-length white hair uncovered by a coif and as startling as the intense green of his eyes. These were very large and fine, shaded by a bristle of black lashes and formidable snowy eyebrows. Col stared at him, unable to move, not knowing whether to be more astonished by his sudden appearance, his black face, or his words.
“Well? Come on, then. Or are you deaf?” The old man’s voice was deep and rich with sarcasm. “A deaf musician—what a prodigy. But I’m convinced you heard me. Come along now, we’ll pack your things. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m taking you out of here for good and all.”
“Huh?” Col managed.
“Nothing to pack, I suppose. Well, that’s the way of things, isn’t it? You don’t even own your own skin. Filthy institution, slavery. Come along, then, just as you are. I don’t have much time to waste on you.”
And with that, he turned and left the room.
Scraller moaned once, stirred, and went limp again on the carpet. Col glanced down at him, then delivered a hard kick to his scrawny chest before galloping through the door after the old man.
“Hurry up!” The black-cloaked apparition was striding down the hallway. “Spells of Silence and Invisibility aren’t easy, even for me.”
“Invis—” Col caught up with him. “You’re a Mage!”
“Warrior Mage Guardian and First Sword Gorynel Desse, at your service—at least until we’re out of this sewer. I’ve only an hour’s lease on this spell and it has to get us nearly to Combel.” He didn’t look at Col during this speech, not even when the boy blurted in surprise at the notion of riding to Combel in an hour.
“Are you crazy?”
“It’s been so speculated,” Gorynel Desse admitted. “If you ever get to know me, you can judge for yourself.”
“There aren’t any more Mages. They all died at Ambrai.”
“Just because Avira Anniyas says so?” He snorted. “Walk your shoes a little faster, please. I don’t have all night and escapes are tricky at best.”
Collan balked, planting his shoes firmly on the stone floor. A slave had tried to escape last autumn. His head, carefully preserved in a glass jar, still adorned the entrance to Quarters.
The Mage stopped and swung around, white hair and black cloak swirling. “To address your self-evident objections in order—I spelled Scraller just now. He won’t wake up until Seventh tomorrow. Secondly, we won’t be caught unless you persist in your present imitation of a potted plum tree. Thirdly, my reason for doing this is irrelevant at the moment, but your reason for accompanying me is quite urgent. An ongoing argument between Taguare the Bookmaster and Flornat the Slavemaster was resolved this morning. The latter won. You are officially thirteen years old, and if you want to get any older with all parts intact, hurry up.”
Collan approached, still suspicious but with a cold knot tightening in his stomach. “What d’you mean?”
“I mean,” said Gorynel Desse, “that tomorrow you’re scheduled for the gelder’s knife to preserve that charming voice of yours, and unless you want to spend the rest of your life as a eunuch, move!”
Col moved.
A little over an hour later they were indeed at the outskirts of Combel, taken there by their own feet and Gorynel Desse’s magic.
“It’s a difficult spell,” the old man said as they tramped through the dark, moonless night. “Curiously, it won’t work on horses. Something about them absolutely refuses to believe that a mile isn’t really a mile. They’re very stupid or very clever, I can’t decide which. Folding isn’t something just any Mage can do, either, and it’s doubly difficult on top of Invisibility. But it so happens that I—”
“I thought you said there was a spell of silence, too.”
“Oh, I got rid of that one at the bottom of all those tedious steps. Now, what was I saying before you so rudely interrupted? Ah, yes. I was bragging about my Folding spell. A fortunate thing I’m so good at it, too
, for it’s saved my moderately useful life several times.”
“How?” Collan asked.
“Stories best saved for another occasion. As for the spell . . . there’s a simpler version whereby a Mage compresses objects for easy transport—or concealment. It’s something like folding a napkin. This particular application takes more power and concentration. I’m Folding pieces of land, you see.”
Oddly enough, Collan did. Sort of. “So one step equals two or three?”
“More like ten or twelve. I’ve never worked out the exact ratio. But I understand you’re mathematically inclined. Why don’t you puzzle it out for me?”
He knew how far it was from the castle to Combel. He’d been there with Carlon this spring, buying strings and songbooks at St. Sirrala’s Fair. By the time they arrived at the outlying mansions of the (relatively) wealthy, he reported his calculations.
“One to eight-point-six-five-two?” the Mage repeated. “Only that? Hmm. Well, I’m getting old, I suppose. Wish I’d been able to find the Ladder rumored to be at Scraller’s.” Not pausing to explain this latest incomprehensibility, he strode down a cobbled lane lined with columned and tiled homes. “She’ll be waiting for us, I hope,” he muttered. “I do hate having to talk my way in past the servants. One tends to look so disreputable on these occasions, and now that Warrior Regimentals are dangerous—”
“I thought we were invisible.”
“Do I look like a Mage Captal to you, boy?” Desse responded sharply. “Five spells simultaneously while juggling three daggers and an onion—” He snorted. “How our Leninor loved to show off! But every use of power is paid for. And I’m going to be paying for this night until spring thaw!”
“Who’s waiting for us?” Suddenly Collan grabbed the old man’s sleeve. “Did you buy me from Scraller for somebody else?”
“Great Saints, no!” He pulled Col out from under the jittery luminescence of a street lamp. “You listen to me, boy. You’re free now. The only person who can sell you is yourself, because the only person who can place a value on your worth is you. Now, some sell themselves for money, or wine, or an advantageous marriage. Others count their coin in power of various sorts. But people who are truly worth something can’t be bought. Do you understand?”
He understood one thing perfectly. “If you didn’t buy me, and I’m free, then I’m gone.”
“And how far do you think you’d get?”
“Pretty far by morning,” Col retorted.
“Which is when they’ll miss you—and a whole night is quite sufficient for the trip to Combel on foot.” He eyed the boy narrowly. “There are no horses missing at the castle. This is the only logical destination—not even an idiot ignorant lute player would head out into The Waste, especially unmounted. Therefore this is the first place they’ll look. You have no identification disk, no horse, no refuge, and no friends. How does that all add up in the mathematics of survival?”
Collan was silent.
“All right, then. Come on. It’s just down this lane. You’ll like Lady Lilen. She’s an old friend of mine. She’s not a Mage, but her grandmother was, and—well, I daresay you’ll hear the family history sometime or other.”
The Lady herself met them at the back door of her mansion. She was small, comfortably plump, and only a few years younger than Gorynel Desse as far as Collan could judge. She ushered them through a short hallway to the kitchen, where steaming stew and thick slices of crusty bread smeared with soft cheese waited. Collan pounced. Folded road or not, it had been a long walk.
“The itinerant herbalist again?” Lady Lilen inquired teasingly of the Mage, twitching his robe with dainty, well-kept fingers. “Gorsha, dearest, you’re so much more impressive as the Unnamed Lady’s Questing Father!”
“Which requires baggage suitable to a Blooded’s comforts, and I travel fast and light these days. Is that a Cantrashir red I smell mulling on the hearth?”
They conferred quietly beside the fire, sipping hot spiced wine. Col ignored them for the most part, seated on a tall stool at the butcher block, devouring the stew. He was pleasantly drowsy by the time he finished, but now that his belly wasn’t rumbling he was curious enough to look and listen again.
Copper pots and iron skillets hung from hooks on the hearth’s stone hood and around the massive stove. The smoke-stained yellow bricks of the oven were accented by inset blue and green tiles, which repeated above the two sinks and across the spotless floor. This was a nice kitchen. Collan felt strangely safe here, and attributed it to the lack of a treadmill near the hearth.
“He can’t stay,” he heard Lady Lilen say, and the sensation of security vanished. “I would’ve sent you a message if I’d known where you were—and if you’d given me a little more time. Yes, I know these things are always sudden, but you have a positive gift for last-instant arrangements, Gorsha!”
“What’s the trouble?”
“What it always is these days. Ostinhold isn’t living up to Scraller’s expectations. His agents have been by almost every day for a week, going over my account books. I keep telling them it’s impossible to produce the herds he envisions, but he seems to think galazhi breed—”
“—like Ostins!” the old man teased, and Lady Lilen blushed. “Sorry, my lovely, but you walked right into that one! I understand your difficulty with Scraller, but what better place for the boy than in a house already being investigated? Hide in plain sight is a Mage Guardian’s best—”
“You don’t understand. Scraller himself is coming tomorrow. And I’ve learned that Anniyas is encouraging him.”
Collan slid off the stool.
“Stay where you are,” said the Mage without looking at him.
“You are crazy!” he burst out. “I’m getting out of here! Now! Tonight!”
Desse relaxed back in his chair. “Go right ahead.”
Collan started for the hall. Each step brought him approximately a quarter of an inch nearer the doorway. He kept at it, stubbornly staring at the opening that seemed to mock him. It didn’t retreat into the distance or anything so obvious. He just couldn’t get to it.
“Spells,” said the Mage, sipping wine, “can be reversed.”
Glowering, Col returned to his stool.
“If you’re quite finished, Guardian Desse,” sniffed Lady Lilen, “let me tell you what I’ve worked out.”
At dawn, after a restless night in a real bed with feather pillows and soft scented sheets—the first ever in his life—Collan was put on a horse. This animal was attached to a cart, one of many going to Renig with four of the Ostin daughters. They were to stay with an aunt during the Shir capital’s autumn social season, a journey planned for months. The bored inspector who scrawled his signature on travel documents yawned as he waved them on their way.
The addition of one copper-haired boy to the entourage was not remarked upon. By Half-Seventh the alarm regarding an escaped slave reached Combel from Scraller’s Fief, but no one connected the extra child with the runaway. Lady Lilen, already under scrutiny, certainly would never be so foolish as to assist the escapee and bring Scraller’s wrath down on her head.
As it happened, Collan himself removed all danger from the Ostin Blood. He was not with the young ladies when they arrived at Renig. The second night of the trip, he stole a horse—a feisty little mare, not the druge gelding that pulled the cart—and galloped away.
Desse was furious when he heard of it. But by that time his attention was engaged by other matters and he was too busy hiding himself to worry about finding someone else. And if the boy was too stupid to know when people were trying to help him—well, so much for him.
For the time being.
4
Collan was on his own from Applefall to Snow Sparrow: six long, scary weeks. He worked for food and lodging when he could, stole when he had to, and nearly got caught a hundred times. Taguare had called him not yet thirteen; truly told, early the
next year he would be fourteen, and in the manner of boys that age grew over an inch in those six weeks alone. Scanty, irregular meals melted what flesh he had right off him and by the first of Candleweek Col could have believably claimed close kinship with any scarecrow in the fields around Cantrashir, except that the scarecrows looked better fed.
How he made it as far as Cantrashir was a tale he decided to save for his grandchildren—after some judicious editing. He did compose a ballad about the journey through the Dead White Forest and the Wraithenwood, but the song was only in his head. As identifiable by his musical skills as he was by the mark inked into his shoulder, he hid all his schooling. A pity, too, for there was plenty of money to be made as a roving singer, or assisting semi-literate merchants with their account books, or reading to wealthy ladies. But he would have had to explain how such learning had ever come to an orphaned peasant boy, and instinct told him the best disguise was to appear half-witted. He became rather good at it.
She teased him about it, of course. “Do the Village Idiot, darling,” she’d say in a coaxing sweet voice that made him gnash his teeth. But he taught her—sometimes by main force—the art of dissembling behind one mask or another, and several times it kept her stubborn head firmly attached to her lovely neck. Her lovely stiff neck.
Impossible woman.
By the time Gorynel Desse appeared again, several important events had occurred. None of them impressed Collan when the old man finally found him, wearing his fool’s face and juggling whatever the crowd tossed at him in the middle of the Lesser Cantratown Market. The deal was that if he could keep up to seven items aloft for five whole minutes, they were his. And wasn’t it kind of the Saints, people murmured—while three plums, a small wine bottle, and two leaf-wrapped pasties orbited the imbecile face—to give the child such quickness of hand and eye to make up for an obviously deficient set of wits?
The shabby old Warrior Mage stepped to the front of the crowd and threw a box of matches into the succession. Col reacted as if the things had lit spontaneously. Bottle shattered, fruit went splat, and thick yellow leaves parted to send pasties flying into the ample chest of a matron who strenuously objected to having her gown besmirched. Col proved his feet were as fast as his hands, and ran like hell.