Yet he also remembered time for play. A smile curved Matteo’s lips as he rounded a bend in the dirt path and the river came into view. Year after year, melting snow from the highest mountains brought a rush of white water. Each spring’s flood widened the ravine just a bit Here an aged tree leaned over the water. A few young boys, naked as newborn mice, had hung a rope from a tree limb, and they took turns swinging out over the ravine and dropping into the water. Their hoots of laughter filled the air, interspersed with good-natured boasts and insults. This was a familiar scene, one often played out downriver among the jordaini lads.
But these boys could expect to learn a trade, wed a neighbor’s daughter, build a cottage they might call their own, and raise children who would know who their parents were. For the jordaini, there would be no family. This was ensured by a final secret rite, a so-called “purification ritual” inflicted before they left for the wide world. Thanks to Kiva’s machinations, another man had taken Matteo’s place. The elf woman’s experience with human males had left her believing that Matteo would disgrace himself and his order, given half a chance.
As Matteo rode through the jordaini lands, he searched the faces of every young man he passed. He didn’t really expect to find the man who’d taken his place, of course, and after a while his thoughts shifted to calculating the odds against this occurrence. He was therefore surprised when his gaze fell upon a man whose hair was the same color as his, a dark and distinctive chestnut rarely seen in the southlands.
He reined his horse in for a closer look. The man was standing at the side of the road, gazing morosely at something in the high grasses. A low, wooden cart listed to one side on a broken wheel. Two piebald carthorses took advantage of the small disaster to nibble at the roadside meadow flowers.
The young man was tall and strongly built, much like Matteo in general size and appearance. On close examination his features were not all that similar, but the unusual richness of red in his hair drew the eye and cast a powerful illusion.
Matteo called out a greeting. “May I help you, brother?”
“Don’t see how. The wheel splintered in that rut and the thrice-bedamned millstone tipped off the cart,” the peasant grumbled. He glanced up, and immediately sank into the deep bow that showed proper respect for wizards and their jordaini counselors.
Matteo brushed aside the stammered apologies and asked the man’s name.
A look of apprehension crept over the young man’s face at being singled out in this fashion, but he didn’t hesitate. “Benn,” he supplied. “Of village Falaria.”
“All problems have solutions, Benn, and yours is easier than most. I see you carry an extra wheel,” Matteo noted as he swung down from his horse.
“What fool wouldn’t? The wheel’s the least of it. Getting that millstone back in the cart—that’s what I call a problem.”
He looked surprised when Matteo peeled off his white tunic and began to drag the heavy wooden wheel off the cart, but he fell to work beside the jordain. In short order they had the new wheel in place, and then they stood side by side eyeing the millstone.
“Too heavy for two men,” concluded the peasant.
Matteo’s gaze fell upon a pair of long, stout oak oars lashed to the side of the cart. “Not necessarily. A Halruaan sage once claimed that he could lift the entire world, provided he had a lever long enough.”
“Easy to say, hard to prove,” Benn observed. “For starters, where would he stand?”
Matteo laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “An excellent point. Let’s see what we can manage, short of standing on the moon and using Yggdrasil, the Northmen’s world tree, as a lever.”
Together they rolled a likely boulder to use as a fulcrum. Ben guided the horses and cart into position, backing up little by little as Matteo used the oar to raise the millstone. At last he lowered one edge of the stone onto the low cart, then moved the fulcrum into position to lever up the far side.
When the task was done, Benn handed Matteo a goatskin of wine. Matteo tipped it back for a polite sip. As he lowered it, he noticed the peasant eyeing him appraisingly.
“No offense intended, my lord, but we might be mistaken for brothers.”
Matteo was silent for several moments, not sure what good might come of taking the path this observation opened. “Perhaps, in certain lights and under certain extraordinary circumstances, we might even be mistaken for the same man.”
The peasant nodded, accepting this. “I often wondered whose place I took.”
His tone was matter-of-fact and without rancor. Matteo swiftly cut him off. “Don’t say more.”
“What harm? You know the story as well as I.” He met Matteo’s gaze with a level stare. “No, I see that’s not true. You’re packed with more questions than my sister’s five-year-old son.”
“You may have been enspelled not to speak of this.”
“Doesn’t seem likely. I told my Phoebe when I asked her to wed, and here I stand. If it sets your mind at ease, I don’t have much memory of the before and during. Afterwards, the gatekeeper came to see me. Made me promise to ‘foreswear vengeance,’ which I guess is a fancy way of saying I should let sleeping dragons lie. He also said the man whose place I took had no part in it and would half-kill anyone who did.”
Matteo gave a grim nod of agreement. After a moment, he ventured, “Are you treated well here?”
The peasant pointed toward a snug cottage, just over a stone bridge that crossed the river. Well-tended fields surrounded his domain. A small flock of goats grazed on a hill, and a pair of rothe calves gamboled in the paddock.
“If I hadn’t been brought to the Jordaini College, my years would have been spent in another man’s field. See what I have here. The jordaini hold title to the land, but it’s mine to work as I see fit.”
Benn shrugged. “My Phoebe pines for babes from time to time, but we two have a fine life together. She is mistress of her own home. She makes her cheeses and sells them to the jordaini for a fair price, and she’s a good hand with weaving. I bought her a fine loom for her bride’s gift,” he said with pride. “How many men can claim that?”
The jordain’s answering smile was genuine. “Few men achieve such contentment. Your happiness lifts a burden from my heart. It surprises me, though, that the guard could produce so much ready coin. A good loom is a costly thing.”
“Oh, wasn’t the guard. ’Twas a master paid me off.”
Matteo’s heart thudded painfully. “Would you know him if you saw him again?”
The young man snorted. “Not such a chore. An old man, but tall—about the height of you and me. Had a beak like a buzzard. This sound like anyone you know?”
The jordain nodded, for he could not force speech through his suddenly constricted throat. There was only one master who fit that description—his favorite master, an elderly battle wizard, and the last man in the Jordaini College whom Matteo would have suspected of involvement in this grim chapter. The last man he would have suspected of conspiring with Kiva.
With a heavy heart, Matteo mounted his horse and kicked it into a run. As he galloped toward the college gates, Andris’s words rang in his mind:
Some truths are like dark mirrors.
Seeking his reflection in this particular man’s face, if it came to that, would be a difficult task indeed.
Tzigone sank down onto a large stone, too exhausted to walk farther. She stared out into the mist—a constant, chilling presence that never seemed to recede a single pace no matter how far she walked. There was no edge to that mist, at least, none that she could find.
She was reaching the edges of her endurance. This morning she’d had to cut a new notch in her belt just to keep her trousers up. Time passed strangely here, but she suspected that several days had passed since her last meal. Though she’d rationed herself sips of water like a dwarven miser doling out gold, the waterskin she’d brought from Halruaa was empty.
She idly tossed pebbles into a small pool, watching
the ripples spread. Fierce thirst urged her to throw herself at the water, but her days as a street performer had left her with a wealth of cautionary tales. Many a story warned of mortals passing through strange magical realms, only to be trapped forever if they ate or drank.
Tzigone gathered her remaining strength and sank into the deep, trancelike concentration that preceded her borrowed memories. Each day, it was easier to slip into her mother’s past, perhaps because she herself was close to sharing her mother’s fate.
That uncharacteristically grim thought dissipated in a flash of sunset color and sweeping winds. In this memory, Keturah was riding a flying wyvern! A small grin of anticipation lit Tzigone’s face as she fell completely into her mother’s memory, once again becoming Keturah in a vision more vivid than any dream.
Keturah dug her fingers between the blue-black scales of the wyvern’s back and leaned low over the creature’s sinuous neck. The thunderous beat of batlike wings buffeted her, and the dense forest below sped by in a verdant blur.
The young wizard clung desperately to her perch and to the magic that had summoned the wyvern. She could sense the malevolent will of the dragonlike creature, alternately puzzled and angered by Keturah’s gentle compulsion.
Submitting was difficult for the creature, and cooperation impossible. Each downbeat of the wyvern’s wings lifted them lurching into the sky, and each short glide was a stomach-turning drop, for the wyvern simply did not think to adjust its flight for the extra weight of a passenger.
A furious shriek burst from the wyvern. Keturah looked up, startled, as a shadow passed over her. Above soared an enormous griffin, wings outstretched. It glided in majestic circles as it took measure of the wyvern and its rider.
Keturah’s reluctant mount banked sharply and began to climb, its rider and her magic completely forgotten. The wizard began to sing another spell, but the creature’s vengeful shrieks and the keening of the wind blocked her efforts as effectively as an archmage’s counterspell.
The wyvern’s long, barbed tail whipped toward the griffin like dark lightning. The griffin shied back, rearing in midair. Its massive, white-feathered wings backbeat furiously, and its taloned forefeet and leonine paws thrashed at the air as it struggled to avoid the attack.
A bolt of energy flashed from the griffin’s direction, sizzling into the wyvern’s side. With a shriek of pain, the wyvern veered away. Keturah noticed for the first time that the griffin carried a rider—a slight young man, deeply browned by a life spent between sea and sun. As their gazes locked, the startled expression on his face told Keturah that he had been equally unaware of her.
It was a moment’s contact, quickly broken by the erratic flight of the wounded wyvern. Now utterly beyond Keturah’s control, it circled back for another attack. The wyvern dropped into a hurtling dive, coming just below the enormous winged lion. As it passed under the griffin, the wyvern threw itself into a rolling spin, swinging its poison-tipped tail like an enormous flail.
Suddenly Keturah was falling though the air. Another burst of magic darted from the griffin, catching her and slowing her flight to a slow, gentle drift.
Gratitude surged through her, and amazement. The young griffin rider had saved her, and at considerable risk to himself. Wyverns viewed griffins as natural enemies, and Keturah’s erstwhile mount seemed intent upon tearing this one from the skies. The rider, if he wished to survive, would do well to save his spells for his own benefit!
As she floated down, Keturah craned her head back to watch the battle. Again and again the wyvern struck, snapping and stinging at the great lion-bird. As she had feared, many of the attacks got through. Maintaining the feather-float spell was obviously limiting the young wizard’s defensive power.
The forest canopy rose to meet Keturah. She drifted through the small upper branches, then seized a handhold and began to climb down.
Meanwhile, the storm of feathers and scales raged overhead, growing ever closer and more frantic. The shriek of the griffin mingled with wyvern roars. Trees rustled and branches cracked as the gigantic creatures plummeted toward the ground, locked together in final combat.
Keturah flattened herself against the tree trunk as the enjoined creatures tumbled past her. Their descent was a long, sickening series of lurching drops and crashes, followed by a more horrible silence.
She half climbed, half slid down the tree. The great creatures lay at the base of the tree, locked together in an embrace so fierce that Keturah envisioned them taking the battle to whatever afterlife awaited them.
Keturah quickly forgot such thoughts when she saw the griffin rider. He was still strapped into the saddle. Blood poured from a cut on his scalp. One leg was bent at an improbable angle.
She quickly loosed the straps and ran her hands lightly over his neck and down his spine, then gently probed his skull. Nothing other than his leg seemed broken, praise Mystra, so she carefully dragged him away from the giant beasts.
All that night, she alternated between tending the wounded man and gathering enough wood to keep a circle of fires burning. The fire was a risk—Dhamari’s latest hound was not far off her trail—but a small thing compared to the risks this young man had taken on her behalf.
Keturah did not have to summon strange and dangerous creatures that night to ward off her trackers. Creatures came of their own volition, answering the lure of fresh meat in great supply. In a summoning as complex as any that gathered humankind together, the scavengers roared and howled the invitation to dine. Then—again, far too like the Halruaans for Keturah’s comfort—they fell to snapping over the scraps.
In all, the night was long and grim, and not a moment passed that Keturah expected might be her rescuer’s last. The voices of the scavengers seemed to call his name, as well.
To her astonishment, the young man’s eyes opened shortly before dawn. For several moments they followed her movements as she dipped a cloth in her tiny kettle and placed it on his forehead.
“I’m alive,” he observed grimly. It seemed to Keturah that he was neither surprised nor pleased by this realization.
“You’re lucky. I’ve seen fewer wounds on a defeated army.”
He hauled himself painfully into a sitting position and regarded her thoughtfully. “Do you have experience with the military, or is that a figure of speech?”
Her lips twitched. “If you’re asking if I’m a camp follower, the answer is no. I must say, though, that I find it admirably optimistic for a man in your condition to ask.”
She expected the youth to be mortified. Instead, he responded with a surprisingly deep chuckle.
“It’s been many years since anyone accused me of optimism!”
It was on the tip of Keturah’s tongue to mock his choice of words—after all, her rescuer-turned-patient looked to be even younger than she—but something about him stayed her teasing comment. She studied him for a long moment. “You are wearing a magical disguise,” she decided.
Astonishment flooded his face. “It should be undetectable,” he said ruefully. “Gods above, the spells involved are complicated enough!”
“That explains a few things,” Keturah mused. “Some of the spells you tossed at the wyvern were far beyond most wizards of your apparent years. Maintaining such a disguise can be distracting even without the feather-fall spell, for which I thank you. I suppose that’s how you were overcome during battle.”
“You’re too kind,” he said dryly. “Actually, to the best of my recollection, I think I was knocked senseless by a passing seabird. The stupid thing couldn’t maneuver around the battle.”
Keturah burst out laughing. “A man whose magic defies wizardly scrutiny, who rides griffins and casts spells like the king himself, downed by a clumsy pelican!”
After a moment the man’s lips twitched. “I suppose the situation has a certain ironic appeal.” His smile faded quickly, and he regarded her for a long moment. “Well?”
“That’s a deep subject” She shrugged at his blank stare. �
�Sorry. That was one of my father’s favorite jests. No wonder he never made much of a living as a bard.”
“You’re not going to ask me my true identity?”
Keturah shrugged again. “If you wanted it known, you wouldn’t have conjured a disguise. If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon dispense with introductions all around.”
“Your secrets are your own,” he agreed. “As far as I’m concerned, we were both born this morning. We have no life but that which lies before us.” This prospect seemed to please him. His smile, boyish and frank, loosened some of the bonds around Keturah’s heart
“I like the sound of that.”
“As do I.” He glanced down at his splinted leg and sighed. “It appears that we’ll be in this forest for quite some time. What shall I call you?”
“Something exotic, I think. Hmmm. Vashti?”
He snorted. “Only if you want me to envision you wearing purple veils and dancing with finger cymbals.”
“No then. Simanatra? Chelis? Lissa?” With each suggestion his expression of mock horror grew. Keturah threw up her hands in feigned disgust. “Since you’re so picky, why don’t you name me?”
He considered her for a long moment with eyes that seemed to scan her soul. Finally he took her hand and lifted it to his lips.
“You’re Beatrix,” he said softly.
The mists of memory swirled, and Tzigone’s vision picked up many days later. Keturah and the young wizard stood at the mouth of a cave carved into the heart of a living bilboa tree. Their eyes were fixed upon each other’s faces as if they sought to memorize what they saw, and their hands were clasped in the manner of lovers loathe to part.
“Before you go, there are things you must know,” Keturah said.
Her lover shook his head. “I know your heart. Your laughter is the music dearest and most familiar to me. What else is there to learn?”
The Wizardwar Page 18