“Then . . . may I escort you back to your inn?” he asked. He doubted she needed an escort – Talry was hardly awash in footpads. But he also didn’t want to leave her sweet-smelling company.
“That would be lovely,” she agreed. “Would you like to share my cloak? The mist is quite chilly.”
The next morning found the lad short of sleep, but strangely contented. Only Hirth, the senior apprentice he shared a room with, noticed anything amiss.
“So, you were prayin’ at Ishi’s shrine?” he muttered, quietly, as the family began to wake and prepare the day’s chores. “Who was she?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Well, unless Ishi smells of lilacs and seaflowers instead of horseshit, and uses rouge that stays on your face, I’d say that you slipped and fell into something delicious along the way.”
“I did not,” Tyndal protested, madly dabbing at his face. The apprentice sighed and helped him out.
“Sure, Shitfoot, but don’t let Frentine see,” he muttered. “She’s got an eye for you.”
“Wha—?”
Tyndal tried to forget the conversation as he mucked out the stalls at the stable for the day, but his lethargy was apparent. Master Gonus found him listlessly heaving hay into mangers with the pitchfork and stopped him.
“Take a break, lad, it looks like your arms are made of cotton today. Besides, I need you to take the wheelbarrow down to the dock. Barge in this morning, already heard the bell. Upriver. Got a load of iron on it that needs fetching. The farrier’s due on market day, and he charges double if he supplies the iron.”
Tyndal groaned at the prospect of heavy lifting but dutifully hung the pitchfork up and took up the battered old wheelbarrow. The docks were only a quarter mile away, and downhill at that . . . but that easy decline would turn into a hellish ascent, once the pig iron was loaded. Still, Tyndal tried to enjoy the trip down to the docks – it was a beautiful day, once the sun had burned the fog away.
The barge was better than some Tyndal had been on, and it carried not just cargo but paying passengers – high born, too, from the look of the luggage piled on the dock when he arrived. He knew enough about river traffic now to know that the passengers would depart first before the cargo was unloaded . . . and iron would be the last thing unloaded. He parked the wheelbarrow between two crates large enough to shield him from the morning sun, and settled behind it for a nap.
He was thinking fondly of the spot on Ansily’s neck where it was trying to make up its mind whether or not to be shoulder or neck or some mysteriously intriguing combination of the two when he imagined her so vividly, he smelled her. Then a shadow covered his face. When he opened his eyes, an amused Ansily looked down on him, shaking her head.
“If your master knew what you were doing . . .” she began.
“They always unload the iron last, and the passengers first. I’ve got time. And if I linger too near the barge, they’ll make me unload it. I’ve seen it happen. Besides,” he smirked, “I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”
She grinned back. Dimples. Damn her. “Me, either. Spiritual crisis.”
“But what are you doing here? I thought – oh.”
“Right,” she reminded him. “I’m here to meet a barge. This is the barge I’m meeting. So just how long does it take for these passengers to depart, and the cargo unloaded?” she asked, mischievously.
“Let me check,” he said, peering through the crack between the crates.
That’s when he saw it, between the cracks. A black and white checkered mantle. His breath stopped.
Then he saw a second, and his blood froze in his veins.
Witchhunters. The Censorate. Here. In Talry. And there was only one reason why they’d be here.
He knew better than to attempt to cast a spell, this far away from his witchstone and this close to professional magi – professional warmagi, he corrected himself as he saw a mageblade peeking over the shoulder of the larger of the two Censors. But there was magic and there was magic – any spell that affected the Censors might be detected. But the subtle spells he could cast on himself would not be, except under close examination.
At least that’s what he hoped he remembered from his unorthodox training. Six months learning basic spellcraft, then a crash-course in warmagic wasn’t much to go on, but he knew a few common cantrips – such as the one called the Wandering Ear.
Cantrips were the building-blocks of magic, the very first ways a new mage learned to channel and command his Talent. He’d spent hours practicing them, those wonderful first few months as Master Minalan’s apprentice, before the goblin troubles arose. He’d loved the physical demonstrations of his power. There were a few hundred he’d mastered – simple things, like encouraging and energizing the air on your fingertip to emit a flame or a spark, to make a bubble of magical force and then reduce its size until it ‘popped’, to coax a drop of water up a straw or to make a trail of sand follow your finger across a table.
The more cantrips you knew, the more you knew how to put them together to make simple spells. Like the letters of the alphabet combining to form words, as Minalan had taught him both disciplines at once, in Boval, and words form sentences, so did cantrips form spells. The more you knew about them, the more you knew how to fit them together, the more magical energy you had to put into the casting, the more profound and dramatic effect.
This particular spell was extremely useful, and had led to his first lecture on professional ethics from his master. The Wandering Ear allowed you to listen to whispered conversations a bowshot away, if you did it right. He assembled the symbols in his head, put them in the proper order, visualized them in the proper color . . . and gave them just enough power from his own source, not his shard’s, to energize it. Then he softly whispered the command word just as the girl stepped perfectly into place.
“So?” demanded Ansily. “Do we have—hey!” she squeaked, as Tyndal pulled her down on top of him.
He hadn’t done it to be romantic – although he wasn’t averse to the idea, after the previous night’s excitement. He’d done it – once again – to keep her quiet, and give him something to do while he eavesdropped on his enemies.
Ansily struggled a bit at first, but quickly melted on top of him, her soft lips tracing his as the tips of her hair tickled his face. He devoted as much attention as possible to the matter, but part of him was invoking the command words on the Wandering Ears . . . and then the words of them men fifty feet away were as clear as if they were standing over him.
“. . . this shithole domain when there are more junior officers capable of this kind of work. Honestly, Wantran, if it’s just an investigation, surely we have less important folk for that!”
“Are you taking issue with the commander’s orders, Lespin? “ asked the older man with the deeper voice. “I’m certain he’d be happy to entertain your suggestions. You know how forgiving he is.”
“The Commander does what the Commander sees fit – I am merely a tool in his hand,” the younger Censor recited disdainfully. “But with renegades popping up all over the West, we should be riding that way, not searching through every third-rate barony in the Riverlands.”
“It’s because of the renegades that we’re here,” reminded Wantran. Tyndal tried to picture the man’s face, even as Ansily’s kisses became more urgent. “The intelligence says that the renegade leader’s family is here – he’s commonborn, a baker’s son.”
“And he has a witchstone?” scoffed Lespin. “That’s unseemly!”
“Exactly what the Commander thought,” replied Wantran, dryly. “Only it had less to do with his class and more to do with his flagarent violation of the Bans. And he’s handing them out to every hedgemage and footwizard he can find. If we want him to stop, we need leverage . . . and sources say his bride may be staying with his kin, here in Talry.”
“And if she isn’t?”
“Then we spend a few days looking around, do some scrying to be sure, and t
hen we move upriver. I don’t see what you’re complaining about, Lespin, this is as easy a duty as you could ask for.”
“I don’t want easy duty, I want interesting duty. Chasing down a renegade’s whore isn’t my idea of a challenge.”
“Well, maybe I can find a way to make it more interesting,” suggested Wantran, his patience beginning to slip. “The bakery is right there – see the red ovens over the fence? It will take us an afternoon to inquire, a day or two to be certain, and then we’re off.”
“Fine, fine,” grumbled the younger man. “Do a quick scry while I get the baggage, see if you spot anything. If we’re lucky, the renegade himself showed up and is hiding in his mother’s chamberpot.”
“Funny. I haven’t been feeling so lucky lately,” observed Wantran. “Particularly since my last partnering assignment. Before we go interrogate this baker, let’s find an inn for luncheon. Those biscuits they served us this morning would have been sent away from a prison cell.”
The two Censors continued to banter good-naturedly, the type of running argument any two men of a profession might have, while Tyndal’s mind raced and his mouth was preoccupied. He found his hand stealing to her back, and then her hip, and then to points south seemingly of its own accord. His terror at being discovered was – for the briefest of instants – replaced by a primal appreciation of Ansily’s curvy body.
Tyndal continued kissing her until he heard the two men stomp up the stairs from the river dock and begin the climb up the slope to the bakery. He didn’t break the embrace until he was certain that the two were out of sight.
“Whew!” Ansily said, breathlessly, as she broke. “You know, you aren’t a bad kisser?”
“That’s what the horses keep saying,” he teased. He was trying to stay relaxed – he did have an amorous girl laying on him, which wasn’t helping, except that in a way it was. She stared at him a moment, her eyes dancing as they took in his face, and she offered the slightest grimace.
“Those men were who you’re hiding from, aren’t they?” she whispered into his ear. He was shocked – but he nodded. “I thought so. I was kind of hoping that was all about me, but I noticed how tense you got when they passed by. Who are they?” she asked.
Tyndal struggled with what to tell her, and how much. Admitting he was actually a fugitive from one of the highest authorities in the Five Duchies would be problematic. He wasn’t sure that there was an official reward out for his capture, but he had to imagine that the Censorate would look favorably on anyone who informed them of his whereabouts. Ansily was not poor, but the Censorate was rich, and compensating an innkeeper’s daughter with riches beyond her dreams would be simple for the institution.
Could he depend on Ansily? More important, could he trust her? With the truth?
What would Master Minalan do?
Tyndal sighed. “They are the Royal Censors. They enforce the Bans on Magic.”
Ansily’s eyes went wide. “So you’re not a stableboy . . . you’re a hedgemage?”
“Apprentice spellmonger, actually,” he admitted. “And yes, I’m far better at being a stableboy. But then I’ve just begun the trade.”
“So what did you do to get them on your trail?” she asked tossing her head toward the stairs the Censor’s had climbed. “Kill your master? Use magic to steal?” Ansily asked, biting her lip with excitement – then studied him even more carefully through slitted eyes. “Seduce his daughter?”
“No, no, and oh dear gods, no. Master . . . well, my master is only ten years older than I, for one, so he has no daughter yet. He’s very much alive, but he’s working for the Duke right now to stop an invasion of goblins in Alshar.”
“Yes, I can see why that would get the Magic Police on to you,” she agreed, with feigned sagacity. “Really, Tyndal – or whatever your name is – why are they chasing you?”
“Because my master is using forbidden magic against the goblins,” he explained. It was the simplest explanation that didn’t require a history lesson to put into context. “And even though he’s trying to save the Duchies, he didn’t fill out the right paperwork or something. I don’t know. All I know is that the Censors will be happy to use Alya – that’s his intended, and she’s pregnant – or myself as hostages to persuade him to surrender.”
She considered. “Would he?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Tyndal. “My master is as loyal as any sworn knight, but . . . well, there are larger concerns at issue.” He didn’t feel like explaining more about the invasion – or the undead goblin shaman with unfathomable magical power bent on a genocidal war against all of humanity – to a pretty girl on a warm spring morning, so he hoped she’d not pry too much. “If he thought that the Duchies would be better served with me in a cell and him running free, then . . .” he said, swallowing uneasily.
“I see . . . it really is complicated. All right, Tyndal of Somewhere, I’m going to take your word that you aren’t a murderer, an arsonist or rapist,” she said, enunciating the last crime with deliberation. “And you really are just adorable, and you’re a really good kisser. So . . . what can I do to help?”
His mind raced like a thoroughbred. “You said the Eel’s Elbow is the nearest inn to the docks? Then that’s where they’ll sup. That gives me very, very little time. So . . .” he said, shifting Ansily’s weight over to the left – inadvertently pressing her right breast into his left cheek – so that he could dig for the soft leather pouch he kept inside his trousers, instead of the large cloth pouch he jingled a few iron bits in. He withdrew two of the silver coins he had left and pressed them into the girl’s hand. “Take this, and use it against my mistress staying at the Four Stags. Do not use her real name – call her . . . Delanora,” he decided.
Ansily grinned. “So I shall. And Tyndal? You can trust me,” she urged.
“Because we’re . . . we’re . . . lovers?” he whispered. Well, almost.
She grinned again. “No, silly, although that’s not a bad reason. You’ve given me coin for a lodging. That invokes the innkeeper’s sacred oath to protect their guests against all harm. If your mistress hasn’t been convicted of a crime or is under warrant, she gets the protection of the House as long as she stays and she pays.”
“And you won’t reveal it to the Censors? Even if they pay you?”
“The innkeeper’s trust is sacred,” she said, shaking her head. “Once coin has changed hands, it can’t be revoked unless the guest is unruly.”
“Somehow I don’t think you’ll have trouble with Alya. Unless you get between her and her plate. If it comes to it, I’ll saddle up the gray mare, she’ll be nice and gentle, and send her on her way as soon as I can.”
“Well, if you help me bring my order up the hill with that handy wheelbarrow, I’ll collect my horse from the stable and escort her there. She can be my . . . older sister.”
It was Tyndal’s turn to study her. “Are you sure? Are you serious? This is my mistress, and—”
“Oh, relax!” Ansily insisted, rolling her eyes. “Who’s going to see anything amiss with a couple of women on the road between villages? That’s hardly proof of a renegade wizard.”
“Let’s hope so,” he said, giving her one final kiss before he pushed her off of his chest. “I don’t know a lot about the Censors, but I do know that the toughest warmagi in the Duchies fear them. They have spells of detection and discovery that no one else knows. Or knows how to counter. If they catch on that I’m here . . .”
“I could never let a decent kisser like you get captured,” she promised. “Ishi would never forgive me.”
Tyndal raced to the bakery as soon as he was sure the Censors had rounded the corner of the High Street and were headed to the Eel’s Elbow. It took him only moments to whisper the news to Dara, who was on duty at the counter. Wide-eyed she nodded and calmly took the next customer in line. Tyndal wanted to scream at her to hurry, but that would have been counter to the plan – the point was to avoid attention, not attract it. He couldn’
t even wait around to see if Dara would do what she was supposed to, he had to trust that she would activate the contingency they’d prepared.
He knew what he had to do, at least. He dashed into the kitchen, used his magesight, and tried his best to see if there were any tell-tale traces of recent activity in the house. Satisfied that there wasn’t, but painfully aware that he had not the skill or learning to devote to it properly, he went back to work. He grabbed a loaf for lunch and ran back to the docks, just in time to get his iron stock loaded form the barge. Much of the next hour was spent pushing the much-heavier wheelbarrow up the slope to the stable. By the time he arrived, he was pouring with sweat and his lack of sleep was showing visibly on his face.
Two hours after noon, as he was sorting out the rental harnesses for repair, his heart caught again when he saw the flash of black-and-white checkered mantles in the street. The two Censors had finished their lunch and were back to business. They entered with the calm arrogance of those used to getting their way, and for the next two hours he fretted while he waited, ready to go to the rescue of the bakers at the first sign of trouble.
Not that he had the faintest idea of how to do that. But he was willing to die trying. He owed Master Minalan that much.
The Censors were in the bakery for two hours, as paying customers were turned away at the door. Tyndal did his best to keep himself occupied with work, but the pitchfork seemed foreign in his hands for the first time in days. He wanted a wand. He wanted to get his mageblade. He wanted his witchstone. He felt powerless, a mere stableboy, not an apprentice mage, and a survivor of Boval Vale.
Finally, as the sun was beginning its descent, the Censors emerged – alone – looking bored and frustrated. Tyndal felt a huge wave of relief that they hadn’t discovered anything, and his sphincter – finally – unclenched. He busied himself with stacking the iron he’d fetched until they passed.
The River Mists Of Talry - A Spellmonger Story (The Spellmonger Series) Page 3