The Silver Mage

by Katharine Kerr

  “No horses come through here,” Leejak remarked. “Too thick.”

  “You’re right.” Kov felt greatly relieved. “As long as we’re quiet, no one on the river can spot us, either.”

  “True. Tomorrow we dig.”

  “Or maybe we can find another tunnel system. Surely some gatherers must have investigated the long barrow.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. We see soon.”

  Yet despite these rational reassurances, it took Kov a long time to fall asleep, even though he felt exhausted from the long day’s march and the night’s danger. Just as the sun broke above the horizon, he got up from his improvised bed and made his way to the forest verge. Overhead a stipple of gray clouds was sailing in from the south. Rain! he thought. Ye gods, just what we don’t need!

  He looked back at the bridge, some two hundred yards away across ground mostly open, though littered with tree stumps. On one of the ancient pillars he could see what appeared to be a carved design, though it stood too far for him to distinguish what it might be—dwarven runes, perhaps, cut on a bridge made by refugees from Lin Rej as they made their way east to found Lin Serr.

  His curiosity would have to wait, he realized. In the light of day, going back to examine the carving struck him as infinitely foolish. What if a barge came downriver? As he made his way back through the forest to warn the others about the coming rain, he told himself that he’d try to see the carving on the return journey—if he lived so long.

  Down to the south and east, the warm summer storm had already broken over the grasslands. Life in the Westfolk camp moved indoors to wait out the rain. Branna had been assiduously following her teacher’s advice and centering her meditations on the problem of returning Rori to human form. Late one drizzly afternoon, when Neb was working in the healers’ tent, she stumbled across a memory knot from Jill’s life, the moment when that dweomermaster had seen dark wings of wyrd enfolding the man she’d once loved.

  Although Jill knew she’d be unable to turn the wyrd aside, she’d sworn a vow to undo whatever it brought upon him, no matter what the risk to herself. It was enough reason, Branna supposed, for her desire to set things right for the man inside the dragon—and yet something more lay hidden at the center of the knot. She could feel it but not identify it.

  The problem reinforced another that troubled her these days. Neb had found his true wyrd when he’d resolved to use dweomer to further the healing arts. She envied the clear focus it gave him, the power it had released for his studies. She had no idea why she was studying dweomer, except that she loved it and had the gifts to master it.

  “There must be some reason I’m doing this,” Branna told Grallezar. “Something specific, I mean. I swore a vow that I’d use it to help others, but that’s all kind of vague, isn’t it?”

  “It is—now,” Grallezar said. “You be young yet. Wait till you reach your third nine of years, and then will you be working a ritual that tells of your true wyrd.”

  “But Neb—”

  “Neb be not you, and you be not Neb.” Grallezar fixed her with a narrow-eyed glare. “And this be not some race or mock combat with lords to set a prize.”

  “True spoken. My apologies. It’s just so hard to wait.”

  “That be because of what I did say: you be young yet.”

  Branna felt a profound temptation to sulk, but she shoved it aside. I’ve almost reached two nines, she told herself. It’s not all that long till I can work the ritual. It only seems like it’ll be forever.

  Dallandra had been using her tent-bound rainy days for meditation, as well, and on the same subject of dragon dweomer. She’d discovered little in these astral forays. When she discussed them with Valandario, she learned that Val had been doing the same, with the same disappointing results.

  “You’d think we’d come up with something,” Val said, “with the four of us all worrying about that wretched spell.”

  “The four? Right, you’re including Branna, as well we should. I suppose we can start by assuming that Evandar’s dragon spell is merely a particular instance of transformation dweomer.”

  “Then the problem is, how do we reverse it from the outside, as it were.” Val paused for a frown. “It’s going to take a tremendous amount of power.”

  “Just that, and let’s hope we don’t kill the man inside the dragon if we can’t earth the forces properly. Now, I’ve been studying Rori’s etheric double ever since he reappeared last year. He seems to have two doubles, actually, one of them dragonish, the other the same shape he had before. They’re somehow tied to the cycle of the moon.”

  “Which one is dominant? Can you tell?”

  “Fortunately, yes.” Dallandra considered for a moment. “The mannish shape is generally stronger, but during the second quarter, the dragon double appears. It’s at its peak when the moon is full.”

  “So we’d best do the working when the moon’s dark.”

  “I’d think so, yes.”

  “I really do wish that Evandar had left the wretched book in your tent or some such place instead of in Alban, wherever that may lie! Why couldn’t he ever do anything simply?” Val held up one hand to prevent a reply. “Oh, I know, I know, it’s because of what he saw in his omens. You explained all that. It just really irks me.”

  “It irks me, too, to be honest.”

  Valandario smiled at the admission, so brightly that Dallandra wished she’d never made it.

  “You did the right thing when you convinced him to incarnate,” Val went on.

  “I didn’t convince him, exactly. He made the decision the only way he ever made decisions, by backing into it.”

  “Like getting a balky horse into a paddock, eh? Arse first.”

  Dallandra was about to make a nasty reply when Calonderiel, for probably the first time in his life, averted an argument rather than caused one. He ducked under the tent flap and came in, shaking water drops from his hair.

  “Am I interrupting some working?” he said. “I can take myself out again if so.”

  “No, no.” Valandario stood up. “I was just thinking of leaving, actually. I need to cast the omens for the day.”

  You and your omens! Dallandra thought. You’re a fine one to talk about Evandar! She managed to hold her tongue until Valandario had left. Cal flopped down on the heap of leather cushions that her fellow dweomermaster had just vacated.

  “I wanted to ask you to scry out something for me, beloved,” he said. “Assuming you don’t mind and all that. I keep wondering what Voran’s up to, because of the Boars, mostly. I’d like to see them brought to justice. Those priests of Bel were a loathsome lot, as arrogant as a ram in spring, but they didn’t deserve what happened to them.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. Let’s see if I can find him. This rain is a nuisance.”

  Despite the water veil falling around the tent, the image of the prince built up fast. Voran was sitting at a long table inside some sort of room with wood paneled walls. At his right hand sat Envoy Garin of the Mountain Folk, and between them on the table lay heaps of parchments, some splitting and yellowed with age, others fresh and smooth. Sunlight fell across them from a window. The rain had yet to arrive at their location, if indeed the storm was even heading their way.

  “Still discussing the border, then,” Cal said when she told him what she’d seen. “Well, eventually, he’ll send messages to our prince. No doubt they’ll have some hard information in them.”

  “And don’t forget that the silver dragon’s off scouting,” Dallandra said. “He should be back soon, and he’ll know more.”

  “True. And, come to think of it, there’s Laz, too. Can you talk with him the way you do with other Wise Ones?”

  “I can’t, or to be precise, he doesn’t know how. That teacher of his—he wasn’t only corrupt, he simply didn’t know much. Or else he knew but didn’t choose to teach what he knew, which is worse. But I can scry for Laz easily enough. I intend to keep track of him, too.”

  “I don’t tr
ust the man.”

  “No more do I, which is why I intend to keep track of him.” Dallandra had been looking for Laz at regular intervals, but she found his image difficult to clarify. Apparently, he’d cast a dweomer spell over himself that hid him from scrying eyes. She could, however, find Faharn and Rhidderc easily enough, then identity Laz as the misty presence near them. He’s a cautious soul, she thought. Or does he even realize that he’s cast up this dweomer shield? He was hiding from himself as much as from some enemy, real or imagined, she supposed. When she considered what she knew of his earlier lives, she couldn’t blame him.

  “Almost there,” Rhidderc said.

  “I hope our prince has reached the dun,” Laz said. “He should have by now.”

  They topped a rise and saw, ahead across a valley, the gray broch tower on its squat hill, wound with earthworks. Even at that distance, Laz recognized it. Home. The word burst into his consciousness and brought with it a flood of memories that washed away the present moment. Once again he felt the weight of mail upon his shoulders, the tug of a sword at his side, the stiff-backed ache of an old wound. He turned in the saddle to give orders to his warband and saw only Faharn riding behind him, leading their packhorse. The memory flood receded, but it left behind images and emotions like the detritus washed up on the beach by a storm tide.

  “There they are,” Rhidderc was saying. “Look.”

  Laz looked where he pointed and saw at the foot of the dun mound the tents of a large encampment, spread out like dirty gray seafoam around a rock. At least five hundred fighting men, Laz estimated, and more horses and servants. Rhidderc and his men continued talking, but Laz had no attention to pay them. He could remember another army surrounding that dun, even larger, this one mostly made up of Horsekin and Gel da’Thae. Although they had hailed him as a friend, Lord Tren had been shocked to meet them. Alshandra’s priestesses and envoys had always been human.

  As the messengers guided their horses down the hill, Laz let his mount follow its temporary herd and watched the dun grow closer and closer. The memories clustered around him, of all the times Lord Tren had ridden back to this isolated lump of ugly hillock, elaborately defended against enemies that never bothered to come. He’d spent much time with his brother, Tren had—Laz couldn’t remember his name, but he felt a strong sense of gratitude for gifts given and hospitality offered, boons far beyond what a younger brother could usually expect from an elder. Someone had murdered him. Who or how, Laz couldn’t remember, only his rage at hearing the news, that his brother lay dead and unavenged.

  And that’s the trouble with this sort of memory of a past life, Laz thought. Vague, misty, soaked in feelings—no hard information, nothing you can ask the old people about, nothing a priest or sage can verify or deny. But hadn’t Dallandra been at the siege of Cengarn? She’d mentioned it, certainly. When he saw her again, he could ask her if she knew how Tren’s brother had died.

  His small party of riders had by then reached the valley floor. They followed a path beside a river and crossed a bridge, stout on its tree-trunk pilings, though the timber looked fresh cut.

  “The Mountain Folk must have built this,” Rhidderc said.

  “They can work fast when they want to,” Laz said. “There was only a ford here before.”

  A slip on Laz’s part—Rhidderc turned in the saddle and seemed to be about to question him, most likely to ask how he knew. Fortunately, in the encampment horns sounded, a shout went up, and a pair of riders wearing the wyvern blazon on their tabards came trotting out. With a whoop, Rhidderc and his men kicked their horses to a trot to meet them. Laz and Faharn followed more slowly.

  “I never thought I’d say such a thing,” Faharn said, “but I’m glad to see the size of this Lijik army.”

  “Me, too,” Laz said. “The Northlands have become a suddenly dangerous place.”

  As they rode through the camp, Laz noticed how well organized it was. On two sides lay ditches for latrines and garbage, with the dirt from their digging piled up neatly for covering the refuse when the army moved on. Tents stood in tidy semicircles inside the ditch works. The horses were tethered out in pastures marked by rope fences, the supply wagons stowed in rows nearby. Here and there gold wyvern banners, planted among the tents, marked the fighting men clustered around them as squadrons from the King’s Own.

  At the base of the hill, the Mountain Folk had set up a camp just as well-organized. Sentries armed with long battle-axes stood at the entrance to the winding earthworks that lined the road up to the walled dun. More sentries called out a greeting at every turn and stood at the open gates. When Laz and his party dismounted in the ward, four men of the Mountain Folk hurried over to take their horses.

  “If you’d just hold our mounts for us?” Rhidderc pointed out the other three messengers to include them in the “us.” “We’ll doubtless be going back to our camp after we give the prince his messages.”

  The men nodded but said nothing. They were all looking at Faharn with suspicion in narrowed eyes.

  “He’s all right,” Rhidderc said, a touch jovially. “Both of these men have good reason to hate the Horsekin. Laz, show them. They tortured him, you see.”

  Laz held up his maimed hands. Two of the Mountain men winced and looked away; the others nodded their understanding.

  “Don’t know where you’ll be quartered,” Rhidderc said to Laz. “Up here, I’d think.”

  Rhidderc’s thought proved accurate. As the important translator and scholar, Laz found himself billeted in the dun itself. The prince’s quartermaster gave him a chamber near the top floor, a tiny space, but it did possess an actual bed. Laz asked him to give Faharn a straw mattress to put on the floor rather than letting his apprentice sleep outside on the cobbled ward as most servants and apprentices did.

  “He’s Gel da’Thae, not Horsekin,” Laz told the quartermaster. “But will the other apprentices appreciate the difference?”

  “They’d make his life miserable, no doubt,” the fellow said. “Well and good, then. He can share your chamber.”

  They dumped their gear next to one of the wickerwork walls. While Faharn went off to tend their horses, Laz sat on the wide stone windowsill and looked down into the ward below. The view was shockingly, achingly familiar. Had Lord Tren come to this isolated chamber to brood or to spy on his household? Or had some servant lass caught his lordship’s fancy and earned a few trinkets on that bed? Laz suspected the latter, but the memory-feeling refused to clarify itself.

  That evening, Laz ate in the great hall at a table headed by Prince Voran’s scribe, who ignored him in an icy way that indicated the scribe saw him as a rival. This disdain allowed Laz plenty of time to look around the great hall, packed with fighting men, human and Mountain Folk both. He was searching for Faharn, but he never saw him. He could guess that, as an apprentice, Faharn was being fed somewhere else with the servants. He did see a man who had to be Prince Voran, because he was sitting at the head of the honor table, a tall fellow, neither ugly nor good-looking, with a touch of gray in his brown hair and a wide mouth that gave him a froggy air when he grinned. On either side of him sat men of the Mountain Folk; the three of them stayed deep in conversation throughout the meal.

  Serving lads and pages dashed back and forth, handing out food and drink while the men yelled requests and oaths. The hall stank of moldy straw, sweat, and smoke from the rush torches burning in the wall sconces. Any kind of meditation on past lives was out of the question in the noise and heat. Laz ate quickly, then got up and slipped away while the others at his table were talking among themselves.

  Back in his chamber, still overwarm from the day, Laz returned to his watch in the window. He could see over the dun walls to the gray sea of tents, illuminated here and there by tiny campfires, and beyond them to the countryside, dark under the stars. Feelings that he knew came from his life as Tren rose in his mind: a bitterness, a deep abiding resentment at someone or something, coupled with a sense that life was bleak, e
mpty, as cold as winter frost on stone.

  In his own current life, Laz had at times tasted a similar resentment, though always with some immediate cause: his sisters’ privileged positions in the mach-fala, his mother’s political ambitions that would have deformed him into a kind of man he hated. Still, his own feelings had been close enough to Tren’s that he could use them as an entry to that other life. He set himself to meditate upon it, here in this dun where once Lord Tren had lived. At last, after the wheel of stars had made a quarter turn in the sky, Laz discovered the source, an abscess gone septic deep in Tren’s soul.

  Tren felt he had lost something. Some treasure was being denied him, something that mattered as much as life itself, something that should have been his, had someone not stolen it. Tren lived wrapped in a bitter certainty that he’d been cheated, denied, robbed, yet he could never find out what that something had been or who had taken it from him. Alshandra and her glorious visitations, a goddess one could see, a vast power who made herself manifest in the common world—she had seemed to supply that lack, to restore what had once been his. But in the end, she, too, had revealed herself to be another cheat, another lie, another robbery, when she’d died in the sky above Cengarn, torn to pieces like a fox among hounds.

  But what had Tren lost?

  “Sorcery,” Laz whispered. “It had to be sorcery. I must have studied it in one of the earlier lives, then lost it or had it taken away—” He fell silent, choking on the sure knowledge that some great abuse had cost him the one thing in life he’d ever truly loved. Dallandra said she had information about two lives, he thought. She never had time to tell me about the other one.