They took the tired watchman at the gate’s recommendation for a decent inn, over the suggestions of the peddlers who were set up around the gate, after they tipped the gruff-looking townsman. His recommendation, The small but tidy Inn of Sunset, proved much nicer and for a fairer fee, they discovered, than those offered by the fruit vendors and fishmongers selling their wares outside the gate illegally in an off-market day.
After they’d registered with the innkeeper and paid for three days in advance, the lads enjoyed a good supper of flat bread and fish stew, washed down with plenty of beer included in the price of their room, in the common room of the inn. The place seemed more popular with travelers and merchants than mariners, they saw, though the small inn was half-vacant. The innkeeper’s son played a viol at dinner, quite well for a lad his size.
Rondal spent the time while Tyndal was in the privy to contact Master Minalan, mind-to-mind, and give him the barest update on their progress. They didn’t want to disturb him overmuch – he’d made it clear that he did not want to be associated with the mission, should things go poorly – but he did have some good advice to spare.
Don’t reveal you are magi, if you can help it, he advised. Especially High Magi. From what I understand, the Three Censors of Enultramar already have at least one witchstone, and they’d love to acquire two more. With them in charge of the arcane regulation in the province, that might get you attention you don’t want. They would make quite a show of a double execution at Yule, especially of my apprentices.
We aren’t worried, Master, Rondal assured.
That’s what I’m afraid of. You need to be worried. You boys never saw the full horror of what the Censorate can do, fortunately. And that was back when their power was checked, however inefficiently, by the Dukes. Now that they don’t have that constraint, they’re likely to be far, far more aggressive in their enforcement efforts, he warned.
We’ll be on our guard, Master. We’re going to start looking for a contact with the Brotherhood tomorrow. Once we find one, quietly persuading someone to reveal their headquarters here should be easy enough. It seems like anyone in Enultramar is willing to sell out anyone else, for the right price.
You are not far wrong, Minalan agreed. Which is why you need to be careful. With the Censors ready to pounce, and the Brotherhood ready to punch, and the rebels ready to punish, you have walked right into the middle of trouble. Do your best to stay out of it.
We are completely focused on the mission, Master. But we do need to discover what the Rats are up to.
Then do it quietly. We have enough real enemies as it is; no need to recruit some more, however poor they are at it. The last thing you need is to have a bunch of bloodthirsty gangsters follow you back to Sevendor.
You’re worried they’ll take over? Rondal asked, confused.
No, I’m worried Banamor will take lessons, he replied, sarcastically.
Chapter Three
An Enchanting Piss
“When the mariners of the Sea Lords first conquered the coastal people of Alshar and took control of their waterways, the Cormeeran emigrants were unaware of the exotic dangers implicit in the Bay. Not only did the estuaries and swamplands hold a dizzying amount of amazing and spectacular herbs and plants, but the animal denizens of the Bay frequently challenged the Sea Lord’s dominion more than the native Alshari resistance.
“Among the fiercest of these unexpected dangers was the creature known to the natives as caiman, and to their Cormeeran conquerors as “river drakes”. These ferocious predators cling to the rivers and estuaries above the bay, lurking in swamps and brackish lagoons, lying in wait for sea birds, seals, and land mammals that happened too close to them.
“Often resembling floating logs, when the Sea Lords first encountered these toothy predators on raiding or retributory expeditions inland, they frequently mistook them for innocent littoral flotsam until it was too late. Many of the hooks and peg legs of the early Sea Lords came not from battle on the high seas or even shipboard accidents, but were due to unfortunate encounters with these incredibly aggressive predators.”
The Bestiary Of Enultramar
“So how do you want to do this, Ron?” Tyndal asked, as they surveyed the ancient warehouse from the roof of the nearly deserted porter’s hall across the street. The three story structure had narrow windows, just enough to allow air and a little sunlight into the interior but too narrow to allow thieves.
Ordinary thieves.
“It might be helpful if we knew where he and his mother were,” Rondal pointed out, leaning over the rickety rail that encircled the top of the hall. “That would certainly narrow our approach. You up for a little scrying?”
Tyndal nodded. “Should be easy, assuming they aren’t warded,” he said, settling onto the roof with his legs crossed. “Try to keep the seagulls from pooping on me while I do this, will you?”
Rondal shrugged. “I make no promises.”
“Asshole,” Tyndal snorted, and closed his eyes.
It was always boring watching someone else do magic, unless you were part of the spell. It usually resembled taking a brief nap more than anything else - the energies that most magi worked with did not register to the naked eye. Only when a mage made a special effort (and expended a lot of power) or used spells that produced a visible effect, mostly it looked like napping.
But Rondal knew very well what his partner was doing, behind his eyelids. Scrying spells were basic warmagic, a way of telling who was whom and where they were standing, so that one did not go into battle without being properly informed. There were several means and methods of doing this, depending on the strengths of your talent and the depths of your education, but generally scrying spells involved extending the awareness of the mage far beyond his immediate senses. Depending on the method, scrying relied on detecting specific types of energies against a background that could distinguish them.
In this case, Tyndal would be looking for the types of energies manifested by a child and a young woman, which were distinct and different from those of a grown man. If their intelligence was correct and the Brotherhood’s local crew was holding Ruderal and his mother against their will in that warehouse, Tyndal would be able to locate them in short order. Rondal didn’t even have to use magesight to tell that the warehouse was devoid of spellcraft.
Even if the Brotherhood had invested in warding spells, neither lad believed they’d have the foresight needed to stop trained warmagi. While it was technically easy to ward against such intrusive detections, Rondal and his straw-headed fellow had been learning a lot of obscure warmagic spells over the last year, and they’d discovered that there were far more ways to go about scrying than the traditional ones.
“Got them,” Tyndal said, opening his eyes and bouncing to his feet a few minutes later. “Bottom floor, southwestern corner. Behind iron,” he reported. “And above water.”
“Above water?” Rondal asked, surprised. “That place is at least fifty feet from the waterfront!”
“There’s water under there,” Tyndal insisted. “I felt it. Under them. Wood over them, stone on two sides, iron on two sides. Don’t believe me?” he challenged. “You can check for yourself.”
“No, no, I trust your scrying,” he said, hastily. Tyndal had a habit of being competitive about magic, and Rondal didn’t want to invoke that right now - it was tiring. “So, how many Rats in that building?”
“Seven,” shrugged the other knight. “Four on the first floor, three on the second.”
“Four guards, thugs, or porters watching the place,” Rondal figured, “management upstairs, maybe with a couple more guards.”
“Notice how we’ve been here two hours, and not a single cart has gone in?” Tyndal asked.
“Well, the town is hardly bustling,” he said, nodding toward the half-deserted streets. The sun was just starting to set over the mountains in the west, turning Enultramar Bay into a glorious portrait in orange, gray, and blue, the sunset for which Solashaven wa
s justly famed.
Yet there were few merchant ships hurrying into port, and not nearly enough wains departing the docks toward home at this time of day as there should be for a town this size. The few craft moored at the wharfs were shallow-bodied barges or nimble Farisian caravels seeking cheap harborage for the winter here. But there was little coming in or going out of the port. Individuals walked from shop to stall, slowly and without purpose, for lack of better work to do. “But I take your point. What’s inside the warehouse?”
“Wares?” shrugged Tyndal. “I don’t know, I was looking for Rats and their captives, not a good bargain on a slightly-mildewy tapestry.”
“It’s a warehouse,” Rondal reasoned. “It should have something inside. If there are people in there, it should have some merchandise, at least for show.”
“I’m more interested in that water I felt,” Tyndal said, rubbing his chin as he studied the place. “That has to be some underground sewer system or inlet that runs under the place.”
“It would be easier to load a boat if all you had to do was open a hatch and lower it down,” agreed Rondal. “Make it more convenient for smuggling and such, too.”
“But where does it come out?” Tyndal asked. “There isn’t an outlet nearby, not that I could see.”
Rondal studied the matter. “I think I know how we can find out,” he said, after a moment.
“I’m curious to hear your thoughts,” admitted Tyndal.
“What’s one of the basic rules of hydromancy?”
“Water is wet?” Tyndal asked, stupidly.
“And flows downhill,” Rondal explained, with exaggerated patience.
“You’ve noticed that?”
Rondal thought quietly for a few more minutes. “Are you still thirsty?” he asked, suddenly.
Tyndal blinked. “It’s hot enough in this place to fry an egg on my arse. I could drink all night.”
Rondal slipped a silver shell into his friend’s fingers. “Go buy a two pints of ale. Ale,” he emphasized. “Not that shitty Maiden’s Blood.”
Tyndal looked concerned. “You can’t mix brandy and ale!”
“I’ve seen you do it before,” Rondal said, confused.
“Which is why I don’t mix brandy and ale,” Tyndal said, indignantly. “It’s . . . bad.”
“Don’t be such a girl,” Rondal said, rolling his eyes. “It’s drink. You’re a Wilderlord! Sgowt yn ddewr!” Using the Kasari admonition towards bravery was a particularly foul blow, Rondal knew.
Tyndal rolled his eyes and left down the rickety back stairs. He was gone about ten minutes, long enough for the sun to disappear completely, plunging the bay behind him into a steel-gray monochrome for a few moments. The sea was beautiful, as magnificent as the peaks of the Mindens that had surrounded him as a child. He could never imagine that there was that much water in the world, until he saw it for himself . . . and the great Bay of Enultramar was just a small part of the greater ocean.
Tyndal returned before darkness fell over the town completely. Some of the more affluent homes burned lamps to augment the fading light, while most of the shabby homes burned a single taper. Tyndal placed two earthenware pitchers of dark brown ale on the edge of the facade.
“Your ale, Sir,” he said with an obsequious bow. Rondal nodded, then closed his eyes and summoned power from his witchstone. It only took a trickle to do what he wanted - and in magesight the two pitchers were imbued with an arcane glow.
“All right,” Rondal said, nodding to them. “Drink up.”
“I still think this is a mistake,” Tyndal said, taking the vessel gingerly in his hands. But he put it to his wide lips and began swallowing the ale in deep draughts. He finished half of it before pausing for a breath.
“Go on,” Rondal said. Tyndal exhaled and drained it before setting it down. “Half way there,” Rondal encouraged, glancing at the other pitcher.
“That’s for me, too?” he asked, surprised.
“That’s the plan,” Rondal affirmed. “All of it.”
Tyndal shot him a look, but took the second tankard. It took him twice as long to finish it, and when he did he erupted in an impressive belch.
“Well done, Sir Foghorn,” Rondal nodded, taking both urns away from him. “I had every confidence in your ability.”
“What the bloody hells are we supposed to do now?” Tyndal asked, making a face at the belch. “That first one wasn’t bad, but the second one tasted awful!”
“We take a walk,” Rondal said, slapping the taller lad on the shoulder. “Come on.”
A few moments later they were walking through the street in front of the warehouse, patently ignoring the place as the street fell into darkness. Ironically, as the light faded the place seemed to come alive, as the folk of the night began their routines. Whores and pimps began their promenade, as the few employed workmen and porters headed home for the night. Drunkards stirred out of their holes as the heat of the day receded in favor of the cool sea breeze from the Bay.
“They call it the Maiden’s Hour,” Rondal lectured Tyndal, as he led his suddenly-drunken friend from one end of the long street to the other. “In Sea Lord myth, it’s when the Maiden of the Havens convinces the Salt Crone to take a nap, allowing her to let the weary mariners into her hall for wine and food.”
“She’s the goddess of comfort and hospitality, right?” Tyndal slurred.
“Among other things. But she gets an hour before the Shipwrecker takes control of the Wheel of the Day. Or something like that. Sea Lords are weird.”
“Sea Lords are weird?” Tyndal asked.
“Well don’t you think so?,” Rondal said, smiling at two pretty whores - or perhaps honest women, blessed with the glow of twilight - as they giggled and passed by. “Consider. They have no mother goddess, just a dad and five daughters. And some really horrific iconography,” he added.
“Is there a point to this ethnography?” Tyndal asked, belching again . . . and then again.
“Actually, yes,” Rondal conceded. “In that the original Alshari, the people who lived here before the Sea Lords came and conquered them, originally seemed to have all of the usual agricultural gods . . . but after the Sea Lords came, they started worshipping what was essentially the counterpart and counter to the Storm Lord and his daughter. They called her Vingata.”
Another belch, another face. “Your point?”
“Vingata is basically everything the Storm Lord is not. She’s a mother goddess, like Trygg, a fertility goddess like Ishi, and an avenging goddess like Briga.”
“Sounds like a hell of a lady,” Tyndal agreed, drunkenly.
“Actually, when the Alshari slaves revolted, the myth said that Vingata rose up from the fields and called forth a bunch of magical . . . imps? Land spirits? I don’t know, some kind of little demon folk, and they helped the slaves overthrow their masters.”
“So what happened?” demanded Tyndal.
“The Sea Lords returned two years later with a dozen ships and enslaved the entire bay, again.” Rondal said, helping his friend over an early drunkard sprawling from a doorway. “They rounded up six of her priesthood and slaughtered them in honor of their gods on a rock out in the bay,” Rondal explained. “That’s where the Great Bell is, now.”
“So what happened to Vingata?” Tyndal asked.
“She continued to be worshipped in secret in the hills, back in the swamps, the usual out-of-the-way places where Sea Lords don’t often go. She became associated with the river drakes over in the swamps. Her priesthood turned bloodthirsty, kidnapping young Sea Lords every now and then and throwing them to her pets in secret.”
“That doesn’t seem very ladylike,” Tyndal said, blearily.
“She was pissed off,” Rondal explained. “But every time a Sea Lord would disappear, they would send out parties to brutalize the Alshari slaves on general principal. In any case, her priesthood organized the next round of slave revolts. While the fleet was away raiding Farise or something, they made a p
act to all act at once, at the same time. So they waited until the sun went down over that ridge, there,” he pointed into the darkness. “But apparently all of the Sea Lords spend the Hour of the Maiden drinking that revolting wine and seawater stuff and eating delicacies off the arses of slave girls - the usual,” he shrugged.
“The usual,” Tyndal nodded, drunkenly.
“So the Alshari slaves all waited until the remaining Sea Lords were drunk, then they wrapped them up in sailcloth and took them into the swamps and strung them up over the river drakes. They armed themselves, looted the havens, burned a good number of them, burned some ships, and retreated into the interior.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Tyndal agreed.
“They thought so,” nodded Rondal. “When the fleet returned, they found some of their kin slain, their homes burned, their slaves fled, and their fields destroyed.”
Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series Page 5