Hawkmaiden

by Terry Mancour

  As many houses and shops as were being built, the village Commons was still covered in tents, lean-tos, and make-shift shelters. Over a thousand Bovali were still living in temporary quarters, she learned as they walked to the market. Dara couldn’t see how they could build that many houses in Sevendor Village, but she also learned what was to become of the new arrivals. Most would be moved farther away, to the entrance of the vale, where a new village was being built on the site of the one the Warbird had burned when she was a baby.

  Dara didn’t know how she felt about that. How could you just create a new village? Villages were something that just were, not something you built.

  Then she decided that was silly – a child’s understanding of such things. Villages were just collections of houses, after all. Houses could be built. People could move into them. That’s all a village was, she reasoned. The idea of another village in Sevendor Vale was strange, but no less strange than magelights or the other changes the Magelord had contrived.

  The sheer number of people packed into the market now was daunting, she felt, as they reached the plaza of hard-packed dirt (now a dirty white). Her fuzzy memories of her previous trips recalled a lively crowd, but not one nearly as large or as densely-packed. Even in the early morning hours, as the other merchants set up their stalls, there were more people in the market than Dara remembered being there at midday.

  As the Westwoodmen busied themselves with preparing their own wares for the day, Dara had to calm Frightful, who was easily spooked by the noise. Dara eventually had to hood the bird and tie her to her block to keep her from threatening passers-by. There were a lot of admirers, too. Before the old bronze bell rang to signal the start of trading, dozens of folk had come by the booth to gaze upon Frightful’s regal bearing and beautiful plumage.

  Dara took a lot of pride in that admiration, particularly when she was asked who had captured and trained her. Dara ended up telling the story a dozen times that day to all sorts of people, many who were skeptical of her truthfulness. Her Uncle Keram came to her defense each time, insisting that Dara alone had been clever and strong and brave enough to make it to the peak, and then back down again with her bird safely in hand.

  It wasn’t just Dara’s pride he was feeding, though, she realized. Frightful’s attractive feathers and the tale of her capture and training lured people to the Westwood booth all day, and business was good as a result.

  Dara didn’t mind helping out the Hall, of course – that was ever Westwoodman’s duty – but she was just as glad to be given leave to wander the grounds midmorning to stretch her legs. Her uncle even gave her a few pennies to spend, his generosity fueled by the boost her bird had given sales. Dara took the tiny coins and eagerly began looking at what wares were available.

  She stopped at a few booths to see what they’d brought and was disappointed. Most of the items were common household goods or foodstuffs. The Bovali were hungrily buying up much of what was available, and there were few luxuries available that she desired. Dara soon found herself more entertained by just listening to the conversations of the people at market than shopping.

  She soon learned far more about the goings-on in the world beyond the Westwood than she had in the last year. To her surprise she discovered the dour Wilderlands castellan of the Magelord, Sir Cei, had triumphed at the Chepstan Fair tournament, winning not only a domain of his own but the hand of a fair young widow. The champion had declared he would not give up his current post, and his bride would come live in Sevendor Castle with him after they were wed.

  More exciting than even that was the news that the Magelord himself had been attacked by some wicked magi, (the Censorate, she overheard) at the Fair, and had to get no less than Baron Arathaniel to intervene. That was terribly scandalous, she knew – no one fought at a fair. That was like lying in front of the Flame. Even Dara knew that and she hadn’t even been to one.

  But the more ominous news concerned the ongoing feud their lord had been suffering with the Warbird – the lord of West Fleria, Sire Gimbal. Bad old Sir Erantal had been a friend of his, she knew, and she secretly worried the corrupt knight would somehow use his powerful friend to strike back at her home. The Warbird had been a name of quiet dread in her ears for her entire life, as tales of the brutal knight’s conquests of his neighbors had become local history. Brestal, the easternmost estate in Sevendor, had been conquered by the Warbird’s men before it had been recovered by the Spellmonger.

  Dara found it interesting how the opinions she overheard diverged, depending upon who held them. The native Sevendori (who were now a minority at market, she noted, amused, even if you added the Westwoodmen into the sum) were fearful and cautious about the idea of the fearsome Warbird setting his eyes on Sevendor. They saw the Magelord’s defiance against him as a reckless taunt against a powerful foe, and they muttered that no good would come of it.

  The immigrant Bovali, on the other hand, seemed to encourage their lord’s feud. The strangely-dressed, odd-accented mountain people were convinced of the Magelord’s righteousness and his ability to defend the domain, should it come to blows. Indeed, they seemed to welcome the chance to go to war against the Warbird, and made no end of jest about it.

  The Riverlands folk who had come to Sevendor recently seemed somewhere in the middle. The carpenters and smiths, merchants and artisans who had been attracted to the Magelord’s coin had little opinion of the Warbird, specifically, nor of the Magelord. They just wanted to keep making profit and avoid war that would disrupt it – perhaps the most commonsense perspective, in Dara’s opinion.

  She was trying to casually listen in on a heated conversation between two Genlymen and a Bovali settler when she felt someone come up behind her.

  “Oh, it is you,” a familiar voice said. “I didn’t think there could be two redheads your size in the valley.”

  Dara whirled at the unexpected interruption and saw it was the mage Gareth. He was wearing a pointed cap, his short but gawky body leaning on a plain wooden staff, his mantle flung back. His grin was wide and his eyes were smiling. She started to relax and then got tense again – why would he want to talk to her? She wasn’t even fainting!

  “Gareth!” she said. “What are you . . . ?”

  Me? Master Banamor is overseeing a lot of the market, now, and he hired me to help. He even has a booth of his own, selling magic supplies. Here, come with me and I’ll show you.”

  “Magic supplies?” she asked, confused and intrigued. She had no idea what that might be.

  “Oh, just some basics, for now: parchment, ink, a few herbs, some stones. He’s even created a few trinkets to help spur sales. Not many buyers and not much inventory, yet, but there’s more of both on the way.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, confused.

  “The Magelord has decreed that Sevendor is to host the first-ever magic fair this autumn,” he explained, as he walked her to his booth. “He decided it would help encourage magic, now that the Bans are lifted, if the various footwizards and enchanters and such had a place to come and exchange important wares and news and the like. And encourage trade in general. He’s already made some promising local discoveries, that could enrich a few folk. There’s really a market for that sort of thing, and he’d like to see Sevendor fill it. Come autumn, this whole market and Commons will be filled with wizards from all over the Duchy. And beyond,” he promised.

  “That’s . . . it’s going to be here?”

  “That’s his plan,” promised Gareth with a grin. “I heard it from Tyndal himself – that’s the Magelord’s senior apprentice, Sir Tyndal,” he boasted. “A knight mage.”

  “The Magelord has apprentices?”

  “Two,” Gareth said. “He was a Spellmonger before he was a Magelord, and they were both apprenticed to him before his ennoblement. And they distinguished themselves at the battles, last year, enough to be knighted by the Duke himself. But between you and me,” he confided, “they’re both a little pigheaded. Especially Tyndal.
Rondal’s all right – he’s supposed to drop by the booth today – but they’re restoring the old gate tower, now, by the dike—

  “The what?”

  “Master Minalan and his apprentices used magic to raise an earthen wall and ditch across the low pass,” explained Gareth. Dara understood what he was talking about now – the strange new construction she could see from Matten’s Helm. Frightful just didn’t have the understanding to know what was going on. “That dike and the new tower will help protect us from men like the Warbird. But Tyndal and Rondal are both working on and they just about hate the sight of each other,” he added, amused. He stopped in front of the booth. It looked rather sparse, compared to its nearby competitors.

  “Not much to look at now,” admitted Gareth, sheepishly, “but Master Banamor thinks that there’s a real possibility Sevendor could become as famed for magic as Gilmora is for cotton. Especially now that the Snow That Never Melted happened. From what I can tell, all this white stone makes it ridiculously easy to do magic here, now. That’s going to attract a lot of wizards.”

  “It is?” Dara asked, curious.

  “It already has,” nodded the skinny youth, solemnly. “There have been all manner of footwizards and magi who have come to the Castle. Enough so that two new inns are being planned.”

  “Inns? Here in Sevendor?” That was unheard of. No one came to Sevendor. It wasn’t on the way to anyplace else, and there was really no reason to come here. Only, now there was a reason to come, Dara figured, so she decided an inn or two wasn’t a bad idea. From what her father and Uncle Keram had told her, inns were dens of wickedness. She hadn’t asked them to elaborate, yet, but she suspected some of the things that went on there, from the hushed tones they took.

  “Not just inns, but all sorts of other things,” promised Gareth. “Magelord Minalan has invested a lot of money in this valley. Probably more than it’s worth – no offense – but he wants to make it better. With magic. He’s already starting to build a mill pond so you don’t have to go outside of the domain to grind your grain.”

  “We use our own grinding stone,” Dara pointed out. “The boys take turns with the crank. But we don’t eat as much bread as the villeins.” A mill wasn’t that impressive, to a Westwoodman. But Dara did have to admit to herself that it would be a boon for the peasants. “And what does magic have anything to do with a mill, anyway?”

  “They’re using magic to build it. I’m sure they’ll use magic to run it somehow – not really my field of study. But the wizards and magi will be coming. Especially once the Magic Fair is held.” He stopped and looked at her searchingly, which startled Dara. “How has the bilocation been going?” he asked, quietly.

  “I . . . I’ve been practicing. I’m getting pretty good at it. I can do it in flight, now.”

  “That’s impressive,” Gareth nodded. “Is the change in perspective hard to contend with?”

  “It takes getting used to,” she said, suddenly grateful at the opportunity to discuss the matter with someone – anyone. Keeping the secret was difficult, but the hardest part was not being able to talk about it to other people. “When you’re that far up in the air and you look down, you see the whole world differently. Not just from up high, which is bad enough – believe me, I know – but you see it differently. You see and notice different things. It’s . . . strange.”

  “That’s magic,” chuckled the mage, picking at his mantle. “Have you been able to manage it with other animals?”

  “Other . . . animals?” Dara asked, confused. “What do you mean?”

  “Few Beastmasters use only one animal. In fact, from what I’ve read, most of their study involves learning how to inhabit many different kinds of animals. Each one is a different kind of challenge. It’s supposed to get easier with practice, but it takes years to learn how to do it well.”

  “I’d never thought about that,” Dara admitted. “Uh, Gareth? Can I beg a boon and ask that you not mention my . . . my bilocation to anyone just yet?” she asked. “Not while I’m still practicing, at least.”

  “Well, sure,” agreed Gareth, reluctantly. “Although I don’t know what’s so bad about it. Beastmastery is a great Talent to have. And it may lead to more.”

  “That’s why. Right now it’s taking everything I can do to train Frightful. The bilocation has helped that, but while I’m learning that and falconry, well, it’s just easier not to complicate things.”

  “And that way no one knows you’re using your Talent to train your bird,” Gareth guessed. “They just think you’re a really, really good falconer.”

  Dara blushed. She hadn’t thought of it that way. “Something like that. I’m just already the redheaded freak of nature, running around in the Westwood with my pet bird and not doing proper things like needlework and looking at boys. Only a few people even know I have Talent. It’s just easier to contend with it without everyone staring at me. Even more.”

  “Your secret is safe with me, Dara of Westwood,” Gareth grinned. “I don’t think—”

  Dara never learned what Gareth didn’t think, because at that moment a ruckus was raised nearby. Angry shouts and snarls, the sound of men arguing. Immediately the crowd parted, as it does when tempers flare and fists might fly, and the heads of all turned toward the noise.

  Three men – a Bovali man and two native Sevendori, Dara noted – were having an argument, and it did, indeed, look as if it would come to blows. It was hard to piece together from the shouts, and was made worse by the Bovali man’s western accent, but it was clear that the Sevendori felt the Bovali man had cheated them, somehow. A goat was involved.

  But the acrimony seemed to spark some resentment among the rest of the crowd. Dara noticed the native Sevendori, particularly those from the hamlets of Genly and Gurisham, seemed eager to find a reason to fight with the Bovali immigrants.

  The Bovali in the market, on the other hand, were just as quick to come to the aid of their countryman. Worse, the Bovali seemed to have an awful lot of long knives and other weaponry about them. Sevendori peasants did not carry arms – such a thing was an affront to the nobility – but the Bovali had fought for their lives escaping their homeland, Dara had heard, and the habit of being armed was a hard one for them to break.

  As tempers rose and the crowd pressed in, segregating into two sides around the arguing men, Dara realized with horror that she might just be in the middle of the first violent riot in recent Sevendori history.

  “Stay behind me,” Gareth warned, although how the skinny, failed warmage expected to protect Dara was uncertain. The shouting was getting louder and louder, and another Bovali man jumped in to defend his fellow. The Sevendori pushed. A fist was drawn back. The crowd held its breath, waiting for the inevitable fight to begin.

  “HOLD!” came a bellow from the rear of the crowd. The shout was so strong and so commanding that everyone did as they were told – they halted, and looked around.

  A large man with a wide face and a new-made mantle strode into the center of the altercation. Railan the Steady, Dara recognized, the former Yeoman of Sevendor Village. Now the Yeoman of Genly Hamlet. He had a fierce look in his eyes as he put a hand on a shoulder of two combatants and pushed them apart.

  “Are you mad?” shouted the village leader. “Will you bring the wrath of the Spellmonger down on us all?” he demanded of the Sevendori from his new village. Railan had been one of the leading voices in the vale for years, she knew, and had used his influence to quietly combat Sir Erantal’s excesses. Dara would have thought the man would have welcomed his replacement, but as it had led to his dispossession and demotion, she supposed she could see why he might not see the Magelord in an entirely positive light.

  “The wrath of the Spellmonger?” one of the Bovali men asked. “We don’t need Master Min to settle our affairs for us! It’s the wrath of the Bovali you should fear!”

  “Enough of that talk!” barked another man, an older Bovali with a dark green mantle and a thick beard. “We’r
e here to trade, not fight. It’s no one’s wrath you should fear, it’s the loss of coin. Is there no proper marketwarden to sort this out?”

  “In our time we did not need such things to trade,” Railan the Steady shot back. “We could trust that it could be done with decency and fairness.”

  “We saw what you had to trade when we got here, mate,” a Bovali accent called from the crowd. “It don’t take much decency to trade a handful of sticks for a handful of rocks!” The jibe sparked a ripple of laughter among the Bovali. The Sevendori peasants took offense to the joke.

  “And now we pay thrice the value of a single egg, thanks to you lot!” growled one of the Sevendori combatants, angrily.

  “And thrice the value of your labor, you lazy sods!” came another Bovali retort.

  “ENOUGH!” shouted Railan, angrily. “Have you no appreciation for the danger we’re in? Our land lies under the rule of a wizard and is cursed by the very gods. This Snow That Never Melted is a sign!”

  “Yeah, a sign we’re all going to be bloody rich,” Gareth whispered to Dara. “Doesn’t that sodfoot realize that yet?” She was a bit shocked at his temerity, openly criticizing an elder – and a man of rank - that way, but she was also a little thrilled to be taken into his confidence, like an adult. It emboldened Dara to offer her own opinion.

  “He’s just plowed under because he’s now the leader of Genly, and he has to watch his old home turn into a proper village. He was once the third most important man in Sevendor domain,” she pointed out, in a whisper. “Now he’s just the most important man in Genly.”