THE WIZARD HUNTERS

by Martha Wells

  He walked away, calling to the villagers poking through the smoking ruins of the burned huts. Giliead stared after him incredulously, muttering, “Thanks, Halian, we’ll get right on that.”

  Ilias rolled his eyes in annoyance and gave Giliead another thump. “Talk.”

  “All right, all right.” Giliead turned to Gerard again and asked carefully, “There’s just the four of you? And you came here to fight them?”

  “Yes, and we need your help,” Gerard told him.

  “Those maps you have—” Ander added, “they show details of the Gardier’s operations, the locations of their other bases.”

  Ilias’s brows lifted. “You need our help?”

  “Badly,” Tremaine said. Florian nodded in earnest agreement.

  Gerard began, “We came here to help our people get information—”

  “Gerard!” Ander interrupted sharply.

  Florian finished, “But the Gardier wrecked our boat and now we can’t get back to tell them how to attack the island.” She saw Ander staring incredulously at her and demanded, “What? It’s not a secret. Is it?”

  Giliead hesitated, turning all this over thoughtfully. “Why can we understand you now?”

  Another good basic starting point, Tremaine thought. Feeling on safer ground and wanting back into the conversation, she answered, “We don’t know.”

  Gerard ignored her, saying, “I don’t know. The Gardier—that’s what we call those sorcerers—don’t speak our language either. They had a magical translator device, but I wasn’t aware . . .”

  Tremaine fished in her pocket for the medallion, drawing it out. Surely it had something to do with this. “Here it is. Maybe it’s decided to work.”

  “It didn’t work this well for the Gardier.” Florian took it and examined it with a worried frown. “The crystal’s cracked and the color’s gone funny, all yellow and dull.” She glanced at Tremaine, frowning. “Did the sphere do that?”

  Glad someone was still speaking to her, Tremaine leaned over to look at it. “Maybe when it was in the bucket with it. Those other things I took off the Gardier were in pieces— I thought they self-destructed or something, but maybe the sphere—”

  Gerard stared at them. “You put that in the bucket of water with the sphere?” he demanded.

  Tremaine shifted uncomfortably. “Yes.”

  Gerard swore. “Water conducts electricity and etheric potency!”

  She glared at him. “I know that!”

  “But it’s a barrier to magic,” Florian protested. “We thought the Gardier would follow it if we didn’t block it off from them somehow.”

  “What she said!”

  Gerard looked upward as if trying to gather the strength not to shout, then managed, “The water is a barrier between the sphere and the air, but if a second magical object is in contact with the water—”

  “Oh.” Tremaine looked at Florian for help. “Um.”

  Florian took a breath to speak, bit her lip as she reconsidered, and finished, “Oh.”

  “What does that mean?” Giliead asked, cutting in before Gerard could add any further recriminations. He nodded to the sphere. “What is that thing?”

  Tremaine turned to him. “Our magical thing killed the Gardier’s magical things, and now ours knows everything theirs used to know. But we didn’t know that was going to happen. Well, Gerard would have, but he was unconscious.”

  “God.” Gerard rubbed his brow and winced. “It must have, but I don’t see how. The original spheres were defensive, reactive only. They couldn’t initiate spells without some human guidance, let alone create an entirely new one.”

  “That thing”—Giliead pointed at the sphere, his expression dubious—“killed something that belonged to the wizards— The other wizards, like it killed the flying whale?”

  “What? Oh, the airship. Yes.” Tremaine nodded rapidly.

  “But without the fire,” Florian added.

  “But that translator wouldn’t work with their language,” Ander pointed out, exasperated. “You tried it before. How is it doing this?”

  Tremaine shook her head, wishing he hadn’t brought that up. “When I was holding the sphere earlier I just wished we knew how to talk to each other, it would make this so much easier....” She trailed off as she realized they were all looking at her again. “I’m still not a wizard.”

  “Tremaine!” Gerard stared at her.

  Someone shouted and she turned to see a party of horsemen emerging from the trees above the village. They rode down the main path between the houses, the horses’ hooves sending up a cloud of dust. Some of the men were dressed in dyed leather jerkins, all of them armed with swords or long spears with a curved blade on the end. The horses were unusual too, with rough, dun-colored coats with patterns of small spots along their backs and down their hindquarters.

  “This is like something out of a book,” Florian murmured.

  Tremaine nodded. The villagers waved and called and pointed, greeting the new arrivals with relief. She noticed Ilias didn’t seem so glad and that Giliead appeared positively grim.

  “Who is that?” Gerard asked, turning worriedly to the other men.

  Giliead pressed his lips together, then said, “It’s Nicanor, Halian’s son.” He exchanged a troubled look with Ilias, then his eyes met Tremaine’s. He said, “It’ll be all right.”

  Tremaine found herself nodding. She looked away, suddenly self-conscious, but she believed him.

  Halian strode back down the beach to stand with them as the man in the lead reined in nearby. As the other men pointed and exclaimed at the burning remains of the airship, he swung down off his horse and came toward them, staring off toward it in consternation. Tremaine saw he did look like Halian, though he wasn’t quite as tall. He had long dark hair and the family resemblance showed in his eyes and the shape of his face. He looked around at everyone, frowning as he noticed the strangers and their odd attire. “What happened?” he demanded.

  Ilias shifted uncomfortably and rubbed the back of his neck, looking like someone who badly wanted to answer “nothing” but didn’t think he could get away with it. Giliead started to speak, then just stopped, taking a sharp breath.

  “We’re not sure quite yet.” Halian stepped in smoothly. “Our new friends here were helping us defend against a wizard attack and uh . . .” He scratched his chin and shrugged, smiling. “Something happened, and we haven’t quite sorted it out yet.” He spoke easily, reassuringly, and Tremaine thought he was doing a damn good job of pretending he knew that everything was all right and would soon be settled by being reasonable. He added, “We need to talk in private.”

  Nicanor shook his head, obviously unconvinced. “What do you mean, ‘defend against an attack’? I saw fire shoot up from the ground all the way up on the road.” He stared at the four of them, his dark brows drawing together, a variety of expressions crossing his face, alarm, suspicion, bewilderment. Tremaine sympathized. Then he said, “Are those .. . wizards?”

  “No,” Ilias said immediately. “Not like that.”

  “Not like what?” Nicanor said, looking at him in growing incredulity. “Are they wizards?”

  Tremaine felt Florian stir anxiously beside her.

  Giliead said, “They were on the island. They’re fighting the wizards there. They can tell us about them—”

  “They are wizards.” His eyes went to Tremaine and Florian and flicked away again. “You should have killed them already.”

  Tremaine stopped sympathizing. Ander tensed and Gerard caught his arm, silently cautioning him not to interrupt.

  “They saved my life,” Ilias said. “It’s my fault they’re here—”

  “They saved this village,” Giliead interrupted. “We owe them guest-right.”

  “We?” Nicanor stared at him, his face darkening with anger. “You were taking them home? Once wasn’t enough, you had to do this to your family again?”

  Ilias looked away, his jaw tightening. Watching Nicanor gri
mly, Giliead said, “It’s none of your concern.”

  “Stop that,” Halian interrupted sharply. “Nicanor, they saved everyone in the village. You don’t think that thing”—he pointed at the airship—“wouldn’t have slaughtered all of us? You owe them more than guest-right, you owe them family-right.”

  Nicanor stared at him, his jaw locked against an angry reply.

  Halian stepped up to put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Let’s sit down and talk about it,” he said again.

  They were going to use Gyan’s home to talk, Dyani hurrying in first to warn the old woman who kept the house. As Halian and Nicanor went inside, Giliead stopped Ilias on the porch. Gyan’s house was up under the trees, near the center of the village. The breeze carried the acrid scent of the flying whale’s pyre and people scattered out along the paths, helping the wounded away from the beach, rounding up livestock and children. “Are you sure?” Giliead demanded, keeping his voice low.

  “Yes. I know it sounds insane, but yes.” Ilias pushed his hair back, frustrated, and looked back at their guests. They were gathered in an uneasy group near the corner of the house, with an equally uneasy Gyan standing by. The decision was simple in Tremaine and Florian’s case; even if Ilias hadn’t grown to trust them through shared danger, they had saved his life and he was obligated to defend them. Ander he trusted less, but then the young man wasn’t a wizard. And Gerard . . . They had never met a wizard who behaved in such a civilized fashion; even if he hadn’t obligated them by saving the village, it would have been an impossible decision. Ilias looked up at Giliead in appeal. “Are you?”

  Giliead nodded with a grimace, his expression saying that he wished he wasn’t. “Yes, I’m sure. We don’t just owe them hospitality, we owe them our lives; it doesn’t matter what the rest of their people are like in— How did they say it? Rien?”

  “Rien,” Ilias repeated thoughtfully. “One of the Gardier”—that name was an awkward mouthful—“said it to me.” He nodded to himself. “They must have thought we were Rien’s allies because we burned that flying whale.”

  Giliead rubbed his forehead as if trying to chase away an incipient headache. “We’ll worry about that later. Let’s just concentrate on trying to keep Nicanor from killing them.”

  They went on into the small main room of Gyan’s home, Ilias stepping aside to lean against the wall and fold his arms. Nicanor was ignoring him, something that most people might have attributed to Ilias bearing a curse mark. But Nicanor had avoided speaking directly to Ilias for years, mostly in retaliation for slights delivered by Giliead, whom he couldn’t afford to ignore. Ilias took a deep breath, reminding himself just keep your mouth shut and let Halian handle it.

  “Where did these people come from?” Nicanor demanded, taking a seat at the carefully scrubbed table. He was obviously still fuming. He had grown up in Cineth with his mother’s family while Halian was at sea or at war and was as different from his father as he could be. His younger sister Delphi had fled to Halian as soon as she had been able to manage it.

  Halian sat on the bench across from him. “They were shipwrecked on the island, by the other wizards. That’s the simple part of the story. The rest is . . .” He glanced at Giliead. “Complicated.”

  Giliead stopped at the far end of the table, as if he was going to stand instead of taking the other seat. Ilias knew Giliead didn’t want to make it look as if he was putting himself forward as Nicanor’s equal, a guilty reflex after the way he had spoken to him in front of everybody. But he also knew after that little altercation Nicanor would take it as Giliead refusing to sit down with his brother by marriage. Ilias caught Giliead’s eye and glared, jerking his head slightly toward the table. After a moment of stubborn refusal, Giliead sighed faintly, hooked a stool out from under the table, and sat.

  The stiff set of Nicanor’s shoulders eased a little and he said dryly, “Complicated? That’s an interesting word to use. I take it that flying thing was what’s been attacking our villages and the trade ships?”

  “Yes, but it’s not the only one,” Halian told him.

  “There’s an army of wizards on the island,” Giliead said bluntly, and started to explain.

  While Nicanor, Halian, Giliead and Ilias went into a house to talk in private, Tremaine and the others waited outside with the owner Gyan, one of the men who had helped them aboard the ship.

  Tremaine rubbed the sweat off her forehead and looked around. The air was fresher here, up off the beach and away from the smoking ruins. The little tile-roofed houses were all close together, separated only by small gardens or goat pens and muddy pathways. The place was shaded by large trees that had been left to stand between the buildings. There was painting and carving everywhere, around the windows and doors, under the eaves. They liked variety, as evidenced by the different geometric patterns, leaves and flowers, animals, sun and moon designs. Florian nudged her with an elbow and pointed between the houses. Tremaine leaned to look and saw a fountain under a wooden pavilion not far away, the water falling from spouts carved into the shape of spritelike faces. She wondered if they had fay here too.

  The armed men who had come with Nicanor were gathered loosely around this part of the village, leaning on their long spears, staring at the newcomers and talking in low voices. The rest of the place’s inhabitants were too occupied with tending the wounded or rounding up goats and chickens and hauling bundles out of their homes in preparation for the evacuation to pay much attention. Though Tremaine caught sight of eyes peering at them through the cracks in the carved shutters of the nearby houses.

  Like the crew of the ship, many people were tall, with brown or reddish hair and olive skin, though there were enough shorter blondes and dark brunettes mixed in to show the population was fairly cosmopolitan. She saw quite a few young men wearing their hair in long braids too, so that must be the current fashion, though many of the older men seemed to cut it off at the shoulders or crop it short. The women seemed to wear whatever they wanted, loose comfortable skirts or dresses dyed in colorful swirls or block-printed with designs, or cotton pants and shirts like the men. Some people, maybe those who had been interrupted while at work on the boats or the fishing nets, weren’t wearing much more than a twist of cloth wrapped around their waists. And a lot of them are injured, or were injured, she realized suddenly. She saw old scars, limps, a patch covering an eye, an occasional missing limb. Granted she wasn’t seeing everybody in the village parade by, but a disproportionate number seemed to have old injuries, especially considering most of them seemed in good health otherwise. And they had that catapult all ready to go. They’ve had practice with sudden attacks. Not from airships maybe, but something.

  “Those devices you found,” Gerard was saying thoughtfully, “must work something like the sphere, but perhaps in a more limited fashion. We know the Gardier can detect the presence of magic with them, but if they can also cast certain predetermined spells like the one that was used on me—”

  “Never mind that now.” Ander swore. Speaking Rienish, he told Gerard in a low voice, “We should make a break for it—”

  “No,” Gerard said, his voice sharp but quiet. “Let them try to handle it first.”

  “Gerard—”

  “Ander, we need their help to get back to the target area. At the moment they don’t seem hostile toward us. Just... give them some time to work it out.”

  Ander pressed his lips together, looking mutinous. Florian glanced worriedly at Tremaine, who rolled her eyes. The sphere’s activity and all the arguing had left her tired and cranky. She looked at Gyan, who stood politely just out of earshot, pretending he was interested in a crack in the corner of the house’s stone foundation. She remembered he had been the one to help them into the boat and that he had seemed fairly friendly. She cleared her throat, remembering to speak Syrnaic. “Excuse me?”

  He looked up, startled. He was an older man with a heavy build and a good-humored face, balding with a long fringe of gray hair.

 
“Is there someplace we could sit down?” Tremaine nudged Florian, who immediately assumed a wan and pitiful expression.

  “Oh.” Gyan blinked. Tremaine hadn’t planned this, at least not consciously, but she could practically see his attitude change. Suddenly they were people again and he was their host. “Oh, yes, right back here in the garden.” He motioned around the side of the house.

  It was a little area of cropped grass surrounded by ferns and flowering bushes and clay pots of herbs. Tremaine took a seat on one of the rough wooden benches and put the sphere at her feet. Florian sank down gratefully beside her and began to work her boot off. Ander, tense as an overwound watch, stayed on his feet.

  Gyan sat on the little stone wall opposite them. “Ah .. . You folks been here long?” he asked, with a game effort at polite conversation. Dyani slipped in through the gate and sat next to him, apparently to offer moral support.

  “Not really,” Gerard replied with a smile, taking the other bench. He asked carefully, “Nicanor is a figure of authority here?”

  “He’s lawgiver of Cineth,” Gyan explained, looking relieved to have an easy topic. “He’s Halian’s son from his first household, before he married into Andrien. Halian was lawgiver for a while, then warleader, last time we had a war.”

  “I see.” Gerard nodded encouragingly.

  Gyan warmed to the topic. “When the war was over— under Cineth’s law once you’ve been warleader, you can’t go back to being lawgiver—Halian retired and married Karima, Giliead’s mother, of the house of Andrien. This was all a few years ago.”

  Tremaine tried to look like she was following this. She had enough trouble trying to keep track of her own relatives.

  “Giliead’s the god’s Chosen Vessel,” Dyani volunteered, looking as if she was trying to be helpful.

  Someone else Tremaine recognized from the boat, a young man with wild brown hair, hurried up and stepped over the garden wall, plopping down on the ground. He pulled out a pen that was little more than a sharpened stick with a groove in it, a little clay pot of ink and a handful of scraps of rough brown paper. Pulling over an overturned wooden bucket to use as a desk, he set up his materials and demanded without preamble, “What color was the fire that destroyed the flying whale?”