by DAVID B. COE
“I understand that we don’t need to hurry back to Amarid,” Orris commented, pulling Baden from his musings, “but I’d like to put some more distance between us and Watersbend.”
“That seems wise,” Trahn agreed. “The two of you made some enemies there last night. I’d be interested in hearing your side of what happened.”
Baden grinned at his friend. “I’m sure you would.” Briefly, he described for Trahn, Jaryd, and Alayna the previous night’s events, although for now he said nothing about the alien birds, or the peculiar weapons carried by the attackers. That could wait.
“I observed all of this from a distance,” Orris added after Baden finished his tale. “I still wasn’t certain that I could trust Baden. And, with Pordath . . . gone, I would have been of little use to him in his battle.” The Hawk-Mage’s discomfort was evident in both his expression and the sudden constriction of his voice, but he pressed on. “I agree with Baden,” he concluded. “The stranger recognized Sartol, and was about to speak to him when he died.” Orris started to say more, but then he stopped himself, glancing at Baden.
“Didn’t the townspeople see that, too?” Jaryd asked, showing no sign that he had noticed the look that Orris and the Owl-Master had shared.
“They might have,” Baden told him, “but even if they did, it wouldn’t have meant anything to them. Sartol killed the men who were destroying their village. He protected his secret, and made himself a hero. He also managed to make it seem that I was protecting the strangers.”
“You make it sound like he planned it all so well,” Alayna said. “It seems to me that he just made the best of an impossible situation. He may have silenced his allies, but he raised your suspicions, and Orris’s.”
“But you forget,” Baden returned, a rueful smirk on his lips, “Orris and I are traitors; at least that’s what he’ll claim. Our suspicions are of no concern to Sartol. No, the only thing that diminishes the shrewdness of his actions is the fact that you and Jaryd survived the grove. Otherwise, his plan would have been perfect. Frighteningly so.”
The others considered this for some time, but no one responded.
At length, Trahn stirred. “There’s more to this tale, isn’t there?” he asked, looking at Baden and then Orris.
Baden nodded. “Yes, there is. But I think it best that we save it for this evening. You and Orris are right: we should get moving.”
They were riding again within a few minutes, the firm soil and open terrain allowing them to set a swift but sustainable pace. Baden’s companions were in high spirits, obviously pleased to be together again, and for some time all five of them rode together. Soon, however, Alayna and Jaryd moved ahead of the others and Baden found himself riding alone, reflecting on a strange and disturbing dream that had come to him the night before.
Naturally, Baden had the Sight, and he had learned to recognize prophetic dreams when he had them. This, he had been relieved to know, had not been one. But it had begun with an image that Baden knew to be real, because Anla had conveyed it to him. It was her perspective of Watersbend as she flew across the Moriandral to draw the attention of Trahn, Jaryd, and Alayna. Beyond where the mages stood, past the blackened ruins of farmhouses and the smoldering remains of decimated crops, Baden saw, through Anla’s eyes, row after row of the town’s dead. At first, in his dream, the bodies just lay there beneath the starlit sky. But then Baden saw a figure moving among them, and he knew instantly that it was Sartol. The Owl-Master walked slowly from corpse to corpse, healing gashes and burns with a touch, making whole again bodies that had lost arms and legs, and restoring life to all of them, so that each time he moved to the next victim, the previous one rose and followed him.
At that point, Baden had awakened, his pulse racing and his cloak soaked with perspiration. Exhausted as he was from his harrowing night, the lean mage had managed, after some time, to fall asleep again. But this morning, when Jaryd and the others arrived, their saddlebags filled with the supplies given to them by Watersbend’s people, the image of Sartol healing the dead had returned. In spite of the devastation of its homes and shops, in spite of the lives it had lost, Watersbend was the first town whose trust and support the Order had reclaimed from the suspicion sown by the attacks on Tobyn-Ser. And they had Sartol to thank. The Owl-Master had betrayed Tobyn-Ser to the outlanders; in a very real sense, he was as responsible for the deaths and devastation as the two men he had killed. But kill them he had, betraying them in turn, and saving what was left of Watersbend. And then he had healed the survivors, mending injuries that, in a way, he himself had caused, and the people had thanked him for it, their faith in the Order restored just a bit.
Riding on the plain in the bright midday sun, Baden found the bitterness of that irony too much to bear. Willing himself to shift his thoughts elsewhere, the Owl-Master glanced ahead and saw Jaryd and Alayna riding together, her long hair trailing behind her in the wind, and Jaryd’s slender frame, more muscular than Baden remembered, appearing relaxed and comfortable on his mount. They said little, but occasionally they pointed out to each other distant villages, or hawks circling high overhead. Since his reunion with the young mages the night before, Baden had not seen them stray far from each other, and once more, the emotions this stirred within him were conflicted. He would never begrudge Jaryd and Alayna their happiness. Indeed, he reflected, given the future he had foreseen for Jaryd, and the one presaged by Alayna’s first binding, their marriage might one day provide the Order with the most stable, powerful leadership it had known since Phelan.
But seeing them together also forced Baden to confront the painful and, he had to admit, questionable choices he had made in his own life. He had not been completely honest with Jaryd about his love affair with Sonel. Yes, it had ended badly, in part because of the difficulties inherent in a romance between two mages. But Sonel had been ready to commit herself to him. There had even been an opening for a mage in the southern part of Tobyn’s Wood, where she served. Baden, however, had been unwilling to take that step. He was a migrant, he had told her and anyone else who would listen, he was not a nester; settling down would have gone against his nature. He realized a few years later how great a mistake he had made, but by then Sonel had married. After some time, they became friends again, but the shadow of what had happened between them continued to darken their friendship, even after her husband died.
He had been wrong to present his experience with Sonel as an example Jaryd should heed in his dealings with Alayna. For while he saw many of Sonel’s qualities in the beautiful Hawk-Mage, he and Jaryd were quite different. Thinking this, Baden looked again at his nephew, noting the ways in which the young mage had changed since leaving Accalia. He was still quick to smile, and he still carried the warmth and the passion that Baden remembered. But the Owl-Master perceived in him now an awareness of the people around him, a sensitivity that he had lacked before. Regarding him as he rode, Baden recalled the afternoon when Jaryd first met Orris, in the corridor outside Jessamyn’s chambers in the Great Hall. The boy had taken an instant and effortless dislike to the Hawk-Mage, a feeling that had been magnified during the Gathering by Orris’s gruff manner. So Baden had watched with interest last night when Jaryd approached Orris and thanked him for saving his life and Alayna’s, and the Owl-Master had been gratified to hear the warmth and compassion with which Jaryd expressed his sorrow for the loss of Orris’s hawk. Baden had also sensed a change in Orris. Perhaps Jaryd had perceived this as well. As unlikely as it would have seemed just a few weeks ago, Baden saw the potential for a meaningful friendship between the two mages.
Gazing still at Jaryd and Alayna, listening to the easy laughter coming from Orris and Trahn, who were riding a few yards behind him, the Owl-Master wondered if it was possible for all that had happened since they set out for Theron’s Grove—the murders of Jessamyn and Peredur, Sartol’s betrayal, Pordath’s death, the attack on Watersbend—to have strengthened them, to have brought them closer. Could it lift the lethargy th
at had covered the Order like a musty blanket for all these years, or was that too much to ask? He turned the question over in his mind for much of what remained of the day. He was too wise and too sensible to believe that these transformations alone would defeat Sartol and the Order’s enemies, but the riddle itself provided a refuge from the darker thoughts that had haunted him throughout the day’s ride. It was a distraction he welcomed.
They halted at dusk, setting up camp on a small rise in the middle of the prairie. Surrounded by the tall, wind-swept grasses, far from the Moriandral, which curved away to the west just above Watersbend, and just barely within sight of the Emerald Hills, which rose gently from the plain on the northwest skyline, the mages arranged themselves around a small fire and enjoyed the food and wine given to them that morning by the villagers. They ate slowly, at a pace that matched the comfortable speed at which they had ridden this day. Tomorrow, they would push themselves harder, but this had been a day, and now an evening, of relative, much needed rest.
As the last remnants of daylight faded, and stars began to brighten the night sky, their conversation turned finally to Jaryd and Alayna’s encounter with Theron. Together, the young mages recounted all that they had seen and heard, one picking up the narrative where the other left off, and each supplementing what the other said with forgotten details. They described for the other mages the soft, green radiance of the unsettled Owl-Master and his falcon, and the bright, angry glare of his emerald eyes. They told of being forced to spend the night in the grove, although both of them said little about what they encountered during their separate ordeals. Most important, and in the greatest detail, Jaryd and Alayna shared with the others the information that the ancient Owl-Master had finally offered during their second encounter. And Jaryd displayed the remarkable token that Theron had left for them.
Holding Theron’s staff in his hands, examining the aged wood in the glow of the fire and mage-light, Baden marveled that such a thing could come to pass. How could this token exist in both the realm of the Unsettled and the world of the living? “You said he referred to himself as an incarnation of the Mage-Craft?” he asked, absently running a hand along the staff.
“Yes,” Jaryd replied, “in fact, he described all the Unsettled that way. At one point he said, ‘I am power itself,’ or something along those lines.”
“Do you know what he meant?”
Jaryd grinned and shook his head. “Our discussion wasn’t going that well at the time. It didn’t seem prudent to press the issue.” He glanced at Alayna, who gave a small laugh.
“I’m more interested in what he told you about Sartol and the attacks,” Orris broke in, smoothing his beard with a brawny hand. “He warned you about Sartol’s strength?”
This time Alayna answered. “He told us that Sartol was dangerous, that he was more powerful than any mage since Phelan.”
Baden looked up at that. He had gone for weeks without thinking about Phelan, and now, for the second time this day, the legendary Wolf-Master had entered his thoughts. He wondered if this meant something.
“But he also made it clear,” Alayna continued, “that Sartol represented just a part of the threat we face, and that he wasn’t even the most menacing of our enemies.” She paused, as if reaching for a memory. “ ‘Even if you can defeat him,’ ” she quoted after a moment, “ ‘greater perils will remain.’ ”
Orris looked from Alayna to Jaryd. “The outlanders?”
Alayna nodded. “That was how I took it.”
“Me, too,” Jaryd confirmed.
“ ‘Their tactics reveal their weakness,’ ” Baden murmured, repeating what Theron had told the young mages.
Jaryd met his uncle’s gaze, his lean face looking serious in the firelight. “That’s what he told us. We guessed that since they were trying to undermine the authority of the Order rather than fighting us directly, their weakness lay in their inability to defeat the Mage-Craft.”
“Did Theron confirm that?”
“To a degree,” Alayna told him. “But when I asked him if they had power, he implied that they did, although not a power that we would necessarily recognize.”
Baden glanced at Orris, and found that the Hawk-Mage was already staring at him. Jaryd must have seen this as well. “When Alayna and I told Trahn of Theron’s belief that outlanders had committed these attacks,” the young mage said pointedly to Baden and Orris, “he was shocked. But it didn’t seem to surprise either of you. Why? How did you know already?”
“We didn’t know,” Orris told him quietly. “We merely suspected. You verified it for us with your story.”
“I told you about my battle with the men who attacked Watersbend,” Baden explained. “But I neglected to mention what Orris found afterwards, when he examined their weapons and the birds they carried.” And so it fell now to Orris to offer a tale of his own. At Baden’s request, the Hawk-Mage also repeated his conversation with the Abboriji trader. Then, finally, in a voice tinged with regret and fear, Baden revealed that Sartol had carried off nearly every bit of the evidence Orris had found.
“You think he’ll destroy it,” Trahn ventured.
“I would,” Baden said matter-of-factly, “were I in his position.”
Alayna caught Orris’s eye. “You say he took almost all. You still have some proof of what you saw?”
Orris looked at Baden, who nodded once, drawing a smile from the Hawk-Mage. Reaching into his cloak, Orris pulled out a small, glimmering circle of glass and precious metal. “Behold!” he whispered, holding it forth in the palm of his hand.
Not surprisingly, Jaryd was the first to perceive what he held. “The eye!” he said with excitement, turning quickly toward Baden. “That’s the eye of the bird that I saw in my vision!”
The Owl-Master smiled. “And a powerful vision it was, Jaryd. More accurate than I ever would have believed possible. The cloak, the bird, even the ceryll and its color; all were just as you described them, except that there were two of them.”
“Actually,” Alayna commented, “according to Theron there are fifteen of them.”
Orris’s eyes widened.“What!”
Jaryd nodded. “It’s true; I had forgotten. I asked Theron about my vision, and he told us that he had seen these mages as well. Mostly, they travel in pairs or singly. But, on one or two occasions, he saw sixteen of them. He said one of them had died since then, although he didn’t know how.”
Trahn exhaled through his teeth.
“At least now we know what we’re dealing with,” Baden observed. “There are thirteen more of them roaming Tobyn-Ser, all of them capable of doing to a village what was done to Watersbend last night.”
“You believe they’re from Lon-Ser, Orris?” Jaryd asked.
“Yes,” the mage answered. “Given what Crob told me, it seems to make sense. They’re definitely not from Abborij; I don’t see where else they could be from.”
Baden nodded gravely. “I’m inclined to agree.”
Alayna ran her fingers through her dark hair in a nervous gesture. “We know so little about Lon-Ser,” she commented, giving voice to something Baden had been thinking as well.
“We know more now than we did yesterday,” Orris countered, his brown eyes appearing almost black in the firelight. “They have knowledge that allows them to create weapons that can replicate nature. It’s a skill that goes far beyond anything we possess here in Tobyn-Ser.” He looked around the fire, addressing the other mages as well. “We’ve believed for many years that Lon-Ser’s artisans were the most skilled in the world—all the goods that came to us from Lon-Ser, by way of our trade with Abborij, seemed perfectly crafted. The precision of their workmanship almost defied explanation.” He paused, his eyes now focused on the blaze in front of him. “But if they can replicate nature, it stands to reason that they can replicate craftsmanship as well. I would guess that whoever or whatever created the outlanders’ birds and weapons has also been used to create their exported goods. It would explain a great dea
l.”
“There’s a word for such abilities in the ancient language,” Trahn said in a hushed voice. “Melorsiad.It means, literally, ‘false knowledge of life.’ ”
“Crob referred to it asmechanization, ” Orris added. “The use of tools to create other tools, which in turn create other tools. And when I was looking at the outlanders’ birds, that was the first thing that I thought of. They were nothing more than tools. Advanced, yes, and designed to fool us into thinking that they were real. But, if you strip away the artifice, they’re little more than a glorified hammer or plow.”
“Mechanization,” Jaryd repeated, the word coming awkwardly to his tongue. “I think I prefermelorsiad. ”
Orris grinned. “As do I. But, you see,” he went on, turning to Alayna, “we do know something about them.”
“We know that they have abilities that we can just barely comprehend,” Alayna said a little desperately. “That doesn’t make me feel much better.”
“That’s not all,” Orris persisted. “We also know that they don’t have magic as we know it, and that they need something from us urgently enough to resort to this elaborate plot.”
Alayna stared at the fire, her frown like a dark gash across her face. “I suppose that’s something,” she said bleakly, “but it seems very little when compared with what they appear to know about us.”
Once again, she was giving voice to Baden’s thoughts. “Alayna is right,” he said in a voice that was nearly lost within the sound of the wind moving across the prairie. “They know of the Order, of how we dress, of the objects and creatures that we carry. They planned their last three attacks so that a mage attending the Gathering would still have had an opportunity to commit them. They even knew enough to leave feathers.”
“Surely, Sartol could have helped them with those details,” Orris suggested.