Land of the Burning Sands: The Griffin Mage Trilogy: Book Two

by Neumeier, Rachel

  “I can’t. I’m not precisely doing it.” Beguchren paused, stroking his mare’s neck as it fidgeted. He went on after a moment: “You’re feeling the pull of a natural affinity. In a way, it’s similar to the geas. I’m sure you feel the likeness. That’s one reason it disturbs you. But this, unlike the geas, you can overrule, if you wish. You’re overruling it now.”

  Gereint shook his head, trying not only to understand what the mage was saying but also to clear his mind. This wasn’t at all like the geas; Beguchren was wrong about that. It was more like an inexplicable impulse, despite everything, toward trust. “Is this why you wanted this slow journey together, just you and me? To let this ‘affinity’ develop?”

  “What does Andreikan Warichteier say in his Principia about the relationship between mages and their students? About how men become mages?”

  Faced with these academic questions, Gereint found himself steadying—and knew Beguchren had asked them for that purpose—and couldn’t even resent him for it, though he wanted to. Or felt that he ought to want to. He said, “Less than I wish he had, now. I’m not any kind of mage or potential mage—”

  “How do you know?”

  Gereint said, as quietly as the mage but with so much intensity that he might have shouted, “If you’re so powerful, then whatever I am, skilled maker or poor excuse for a mage, what do you need me for?”

  “I’ll tell you once we reach—”

  “The country of fire! Yes, so you say! You’ll tell me, it will be something terrible, I’ll refuse, and you’ll force me to do it anyway—”

  Beguchren held up a hand, shaking his head. “No, Gereint, there you are wrong, I promise you. What I will need you to do for me is nothing I or anyone else can force you to do. Or the geas would have sufficed.”

  Gereint controlled, barely, an impulse to fling himself down from the saddle and stride away into the woods. His hands were shaking, he found, and he closed them hard around the reins to hide the fact. He said tightly, “Why did you free me? To coax me to trust you? Did you think that likely to work?”

  “Under these circumstances? No.”

  Gereint waited. But Beguchren did not explain, only started his horse moving again, gently, upriver. Gereint’s mare followed without any signal from him.

  Gereint shook his head. He said grimly, “Warichteier says that like calls to like, and that there’s a natural affinity between mages and natural creatures of earth. You seem to believe I might be some sort of mage. I hope you haven’t set all your hopes on that. I’m only a maker. But I’ll stop fighting you. All right? I won’t fight you, my lord mage. I’ll go north as far as you wish, as fast as you wish. But I don’t believe for a moment you don’t intend to force me to fit your need. Whatever that may be.”

  Beguchren hesitated, his eyes on his mare’s neck. He began to speak, then stopped, hunting for words. At last he lifted his gaze and began, “Gereint, necessity can bind a man more tightly than any geas. Magecraft,” said Beguchren, “like any magic, is a natural quality. Warichteier was half right, but only half. A mage is… a point of focus in the world. A point where forces balance and pivot. Any mage is like that, though earth and fire mages balance different and opposing forces. When we study, what we learn is to notice what we’re doing to the world and, hmm, how to bend in the right direction the pull we always exert, do you see? For all his learning, Warichteier was not a mage and he did not really understand magecraft. That is why his commentary on the subject is so opaque and not altogether accurate.”

  “A cold mage—”

  “We say ‘cold mage’ when in a sense we mean merely ‘a mage trained to oppose fire.’ But if an earth mage develops his… inclination… to oppose fire, he gives up certain kinds of power in order to emphasize certain other kinds. Do you understand?”

  Gereint didn’t, but didn’t like to say so, lest Beguchren realize he was speaking almost freely and stop.

  “To be sure,” Beguchren added, “an ordinary earth mage must give up certain kinds of, hmm, power as well. Whereas a gifted maker such as yourself is not any sort of mage: A gift is different in kind from magecraft. However—” He lifted a hand—to gesture, to demonstrate something, it was not clear. Because a short little hunting arrow flicked through the air not a hair’s width from the mage’s fingers and disappeared with a wicked little hiss into the dark river, and two more sank, humming, into the earth at their horses’ feet.

  Gereint would not have thought there was enough light left for shooting. Clearly there was. Mouth dry and heart pounding, he checked his horse. Beguchren had drawn up as well, peering into the dusky woods with no great alarm so far as Gereint could see. Another arrow whipped past in front of them. Gereint lifted his hands to show they were empty and muttered under his breath, “I thought this was perfectly safe?”

  “It is,” Beguchren replied seriously. “Or nearly. Shh. Don’t frighten them away.” As Gereint wondered how exactly either of them could possibly frighten away a troop of brigands—frown sternly at them?—the smaller man also held his empty hands out in token of surrender.

  Gereint said grimly, “If that first one was a warning shot, it came remarkably close to hitting you—and if they just want to stay under cover and shoot us both, I don’t know what’s stopping them—”

  “They might intend to take me as a hostage,” suggested Beguchren. He didn’t sound overly concerned about the prospect. “Perhaps someone among them has realized that they might send to my family to demand a rich ransom.”

  Gereint stared at him. “You believe they’ll think that far ahead, with the men-at-arms of all the northern towns beating through the woods for them? I hope you have some way to protect us besides depending on the reluctance of murderous dog-livered cutthroat brigands to shoot us out of hand.”

  Beguchren gave him a look.

  “Well, you haven’t been very quick to show it, if you do!”

  “Gereint, I should think you, of all men, had learned patience?”

  “You might think so,” Gereint muttered, and saw Beguchren’s mouth twitch toward a smile. If the brigands hidden in the woods saw that smile, he thought, then if they had a thimbleful of sense among them, they’d sneak away from this camp as quietly as they’d come and not stop running till they hit the edge of the desert… Maybe they had. There was certainly no sound from the woods, and no more arrows. “Where are they?” he asked again.

  “I think…” murmured Beguchren. “Yes, I rather think they are coming out now.”

  This was true. The brigands had finally decided that their quarry were truly at bay, and were slowly coming out into the moonlight. One, and then another, and then a third—all with bows—another, armed more simply with a club. A fifth man, and a sixth. “Not eager to close in, though,” observed Gereint.

  “You probably frighten them.”

  Gereint almost laughed. “Bows?” he reminded the smaller man.

  “I don’t suppose they’d have turned to brigandage if they were brave men—” But Beguchren fell silent as the men finally began to approach. There were eight altogether. Only three had bows—though three were certainly enough. The rest carried clubs. To Gereint, they looked alarmingly ready to use those clubs. Even eager. They looked warily at Gereint, but their glowers were directed toward Beguchren.

  “It’s my size,” the mage murmured. “A certain sort of man resents wealth in a man smaller than he is. If you were the one wearing the rings, they’d still be planning to kill you, but they wouldn’t feel they had to break all your bones first.”

  Gereint gave the smaller man an incredulous glance. “Of course they would. They resent me just for being bigger than they are, whether or not I’m wearing a lot of sapphires. I hope you have something in mind other than appealing to their generous natures.”

  “Do you think that’s all of them?”

  “All who are going to come out, at least.”

  Beguchren nodded. “I think so, too.”

  The leader of the br
igands, a man nearly as broad across the shoulders as Gereint, hefted his club. He had a mean look to him, like a scared dog that nevertheless meant to bite. If he intended to take Beguchren as a hostage and let Gereint go in order to collect a ransom, it wasn’t apparent at the moment. He looked a lot more like he meant to beat them both to death himself. He looked them over, then said, in a growling, contemptuous tone, “Where’d you hide the rest of it?”

  Beguchren shook his head in gentle puzzlement. “The rest of—?”

  The man gestured again with his club. “Those rings can’t be all you’ve got. You’re stupid, but you can’t be that stupid. Everybody knows to hide their money.” He flicked the club back and forth mockingly. “Get down off that horse, little dog-lord, and tell me where you put it. In the saddle cloth? The saddle? Huh?”

  “I guess they’re not thinking about hostages,” Gereint murmured, glancing down at the mage. “If you’re going to do something, now might be a good—” He stopped.

  Beguchren had reached out across the distance that separated his horse from Gereint’s and taken hold of Gereint’s arm. He gripped hard, not as though he sought support, but more as though he needed to mark Gereint’s position. He was gazing at nothing, his expression abstracted. After a moment, both the packed earth of the road and the black river that had been all but hidden in the dusk began to shimmer with a pale, cold radiance like moonlight through winter fog. The air chilled, as though the seasons had suddenly shifted forward straight to winter, passing through the rest of summer and all of autumn in an eye-blink. The pale light grew steadily brighter, though no warmer.

  Most of the brigands simply gaped. Two of them started to edge back toward the woods, but they stopped before they had retreated more than a few steps.

  Like moonlight, the cold light of the stones was gentle to the eyes. Though it was bright enough to cast shadows, Gereint did not need to squint through the light to glance at Beguchren’s face. The mage looked perfectly calm and quite unmoved. The pearly radiance filled the whole road between river and woods. Like moonlight, the cold magelight stripped color from the world it revealed. The white feet of the horses gleamed like lanterns in the cool light; they sidled and backed, but did not panic. Gereint would have liked to panic himself, but did not dare. He reached out quickly to catch Beguchren’s reins, afraid of what might happen if the two horses moved apart and the mage lost his hold on Gereint’s arm. The tangled branches and leaves of the woods were black and dense; the river, rimed with ice at its near edge, glinted an almost metallic silver.

  The brigands did not fall. They were dead where they stood. Frost sparkled on their faces and hair; their eyes were wide open and unblinking. Their skin was white as ice; their clothing stiff and glittering. The cold shattered their clubs and bows; the wood broke with clean, crisp snaps. The dangling bowstrings cast back the light as though they had been made of silver wire.

  Gereint sat very still. Beguchren still gripped his arm; he did not want to find out what would happen to him or to his horse if the mage let go. The pale light was ebbing at last, washing slowly down out of the air like fog, sinking into the earth and water. It left frost behind, spangling the ground like a fine diamond net. The cold eased as the world remembered summer warmth; the natural moonlight, now alone, seemed pallid and weak.

  Beguchren drew a deep, slow breath and let go of Gereint’s arm.

  Gereint immediately backed his mare half a dozen steps. He was shuddering, not entirely with the lingering cold.

  Beguchren blinked, shook his head, breathed sharply, and straightened his shoulders. Then he gave Gereint a sharp look, seeming for the first time to realize Gereint’s horror. “What I did was swifter and kinder than hanging.”

  Gereint took a breath, but stopped without speaking. Took another breath and let it out again, still without saying a word. He looked around at the eight dead brigands. As he stared, the first one fell at last—stiffly, as a rigid board might fall, not limply like a shot deer. Then the second. Gereint tried not to flinch at the heavy thudding sounds as first one man and then the other hit the ground. The horses pricked their ears forward in nervous curiosity at this strange human behavior. When they shifted and stepped, their hooves left dark prints in the frost.

  Gereint made himself meet the mage’s eyes once more. He said at last, “You’re one of the king’s agents. So you had the right.”

  Beguchren inclined his head. “Anyone has both the right and the duty to clear the road of brigandage if he can. But, yes, the Arobern specifically asked me to assist local efforts as I found the chance.” He paused. Then he said gently, “I think we can get to Raichboden yet this evening. I don’t think we would be comfortable camping along the river in the dark.”

  “No,” Gereint agreed grimly, and put his horse into a trot, slightly too fast a pace for the dim light, but it seemed as glad as he to leave the icy brigands to thaw behind them. He did not even want to think about the dreams he might have this night—if he dreamed; he doubted he would sleep at all and probably that was just as well. He glanced involuntarily over his shoulder as a third brigand fell, with a ringing, crystalline crash, behind them.

  They found the inn at the Raichboden ferry no more than a mile farther north. The ferry was not at the landing but tied up at the dock on the town side of the river. Or not actually at the dock; the water level was so low that the ferry had simply been run up on exposed mud flats near the dock and tied up there. Fortunately, the inn on their side of the river was a good one, and well accustomed to late-arriving travelers. It had a small but decent private room, with two clean beds and, best of all, a bath basin already filled with steaming water. Beguchren provided the soap. The soap was smooth textured and rose scented, exactly the sort of soap Gereint would have expected the mage to carry if he’d thought about it. He almost wanted to laugh. He would have laughed if he’d been trying to use this fine soap to scrub grease off pots, rather than the memory of death off his body. He was glad to use the bath first, while the king’s mage arranged for men to go back down the road in the morning to collect the bodies for a proper, if symbolic, hanging. Beguchren also arranged for broth and bread, neither of which Gereint thought he could stomach.

  “A little broth, at least,” Beguchren said quietly. “You need something.”

  Gereint accepted a mug, though he merely turned it around in his hands rather than sipping. He couldn’t decide whether the rich, meaty smell was appetizing or nauseating.

  Beguchren said softly, “It’s not precisely honorable, I know—”

  “It’s not a sport,” Gereint said grimly. “Or a hunt. Do you think I don’t know that?”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I’m surprised you couldn’t just whistle for them to come crouching trustingly to your feet like dogs, and then freeze them solid with your magelight—”

  “Gereint!” Beguchren set down his own mug so sharply the broth spilled onto the table. “Please don’t mistake brigands like that for men like yourself. There’s not one of them, gifted or not, who hadn’t turned his back on any kind of trust. You know that is true.”

  Gereint made no answer.

  The mage went on more gently, “Nothing could have saved them, even any among them who might somehow have retained some trace of decent human sensibility. If taken by men-at-arms, they would all have been held for hanging. Would that have been kinder?”

  Gereint bowed his head a little.

  “Can you eat something? Will you let me—” Beguchren paused. Then he went on, but with an odd note of constraint in his light, smooth voice: “Will you permit me to ease your rest tonight? If you wish, I can ensure that you do not dream. Will you take my word that I would do nothing but give you dreamless sleep?”

  Gereint looked over at the mage. He could see that Beguchren expected him to refuse and guessed as well that, surprisingly, he might be hurt by the refusal. He said finally, “I’d take your word. But I think even men such as those are worth one or two bad
dreams.”

  Beguchren gazed at him for a moment. Then he nodded. “So long as you can rest a little. It will be a long day tomorrow; almost as long as today. I’d like to get at least to Tashen tomorrow, if we can. Past Tashen, if possible.”

  “Past Tashen” was very likely to mean right into Amnachudran’s lands, if Beguchren insisted on going upriver on the east side of the Teschanken. One more worry to run through Gereint’s dreams. He didn’t let his expression change, but merely nodded and said, “And then the day after, the desert.” He didn’t say, And then you can end all this mystery and tell me at last what you mean to do in the griffin’s country. But he didn’t need to. Beguchren bowed his head in agreement.

  Gereint stood up and glanced inquiringly from one small narrow bed to the other.

  “Whichever you like,” said Beguchren.

  Gereint nodded. He didn’t, under the circumstances, wish the mage a pleasant night.

  CHAPTER 8

  Immediately outside Breidechboden, the road that led west toward the ornate and wealthy city of Abreichan widened enough for four carriages to travel abreast. Indeed, for the entire distance between Breidechboden and Abreichan, the road was that wide. And for that whole distance, it was paved with great flat stones quarried from the local hills and lined with tall plinths topped with grim-faced stone soldiers chiseled roughly out of granite. This road was always guarded, those carved soldiers proclaimed. Travelers journeyed under the protection of the Arobern kings. Brigandage might from time to time be a concern in the wilder north, but here in the broad, rich lands of the south, that protection was constant and powerful. Only after a traveler passed west of Abreichan and pressed on toward the little mountain towns of the far west did that protection become less reliable. After the Arobern completed the planned improvements to the mountain road, that might well change: the king would not want brigandage to soil his new road.

  Tehre wished they were actually traveling west. She had never even been so far as Weierachboden, far less Abreichan, which everyone knew rivaled Breidechboden in splendor and ostentation. But even more than she wished to see the cities of the western plains, she longed to go all the way to Ehre and watch the builders and engineers of Casmantium go about the business of flinging their great road through the mountain passes to Feierabiand. The engineers would be carving their new road out of the sides of the mountains, bracing narrow paths that overhung desperate precipices, building buttresses to make a level road where nothing level had ever existed, bridging steep-sided chasms with arches and architraves and, possibly, hanging bridges with wrought-iron chains… Tehre had not even realized, until she turned her face to the west and put Breidechboden at her back, how much she would have loved to take this road all the way.