Human Mage: Book Three of the Highmage's Plight

by D. H. Aire

  Looking a bit aggrieved, she placed her hands protectively over her rounded stomach, “No, two of us for you seems quite enough at present to meet the needs of one small elfblood’s House by Bond.”

  Balfour glanced at her, “Do you really want to shop?”

  “Your Uncle was quite specific, my lord. We need some time together and you, most definitely, need a break from the routine at the Hall.”

  Nodding guardedly, he replied, “If another old elf questions my diagnosis and treatment, I’ll…!”

  “See, you need to get away— especially now that I’ve been forbidden to accompany you on your rounds.”

  “What? Don’t tell me that your work at the Pharmacopia has become tedious?”

  “Oh, it hasn’t,” Me’oh hastened to reply. “It’s just that they question my judgment as often as they test yours. Your uncle has stopped by frequently and the human medics and I get along quite well.”

  He glanced at her sidelong; knowing that her Cathartan training was very different from the magery enhanced and enchanted medicines of Aqwaine Empire. Her gifts were of human origin and understanding— as strangely were his own, after a certain friend had helped him bring it to the fore.

  The carriage stopped in the Fifth Tier before the Guild District. Balfour stepped down first and aided his beloved to the cobbles, then quickly paid the driver who asked if they wished him to wait.

  “If you would be so kind,” Balfour replied.

  “As it please you, Master.”

  Me’oh looked one way, then another, “Ah, over there. The Jewelers should have just what I’m looking for.”

  “I hope this doesn’t mean you intend to pauper me,” Balfour muttered, closing his eyes briefly to passively open himself to the thoughts of those around him, probing for possible danger. Thoughts and feelings washed over him, a touch of avarice, a sprinkle of greed, hunger for a chop of mutton–– of all things, and many innocuous forethoughts. Me’oh glanced around them, seeking possible danger in her more mundane way, her Carthartan wariness for a lord’s safety never forgotten. The daggers concealed upon her person were many and always close to hand, though, unobtrusive.

  Offering her his arm, Balfour opened his eyes as if he had just been momentarily tired. Me’oh warmly accepted, comforted by the fact that nothing seemed amiss, then off they went toward the Jewelers Hall.

  A Weaver’s Guild apprentice entered the Jeweler’s Guild Hall which lay at the center of Jewelers Lane. Business was brisk, out-Province merchants, wearing their most courtly garb, were eyeing the items closely. A young lord, his new lady come to the Imperial Court but recently, was describing a necklace he would like made, while an elfblood in healer’s robes stood beside a pregnant woman bent on purchasing some anklets. Others were bargaining the purchase of one bauble or another.

  Looking about him, the apprentice finally caught sight of a particular Master, half hidden behind the drapes to the workrooms in back. “Master Posh!” he called, hurrying across the room.

  The elfblooded healer frowned, when the Weaver’s apprentice called his name. Instantly, Balfour stood straighter and turned to find Posh hastily moving out of sight as the apprentice entered the workshops in the rear.

  Me’oh glanced at him worriedly, “Anything wrong?”

  Smiling reassurance, he murmured, “Nothing to be truly concerned about, just a name from the past.” A faeryn master’s name to be exact, but there was no need to concern Me’oh with that.

  Master Posh had noticed the Balfour minute entered the shop. He had stared disconcertedly a moment, then slowly meandered to the rear curtains and from there watched Balfour.

  So, it was true. Balfour, the once failed healer had returned. But was it faeryn skill he had somehow mastered? “What one has learned, another may relearn,” Faeryn had often said. Was it true of Balfour, as well?

  At the apprentice’s arrival and shout, Posh quickly moved back, knowing Balfour had seen him. There was nothing for it, though. The Weaver’s apprentice had revealed him and the lad was but new to his training. “Lorin, what brings you here?” he asked, ushering the Faeryn apprentice quickly out of sight. Life was difficult enough without announcing Faeryn business to the world.

  The lad took a deep breath, “Master Hyram said to tell you that, I quote, ‘He’s here.’“

  Posh blinked, musing, “My, my... Now, that is truly of interest. Well, you’ve completed your task— go out the back way this time and remember that we are merely tolerated for what we do for the Guilds. Try not to shout for all to hear— it is often best to simply whisper your need of me to the masters or apprentices of the Hall. They will lead you to me quickly enough.”

  Chagrinned, Lorin nodded, “Master, forgive me, I’ll do better from now on.”

  “Of course you will!” Posh averred with a chuckle.

  “You’re training is not meant to be ‘by rote obedience,’ as at the Academy, after all.” He took a coin from an inner pocket and gave it to the boy. “Now off with you and be sure to stop at one of the Sweet Shops!”

  “Why, thank you, Master!”

  Posh grinned as the lad rushed off heading for the back entry. Once out of sight, the Faeryn mage frowned wearily. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the elfblood Balfour, standing at the shop curtain, simply looking at him.

  “It’s been a long time, Bal.”

  “That it has, Posh... You were right about me, you know.”

  The portly mage raised his hand to his elvin tipped right ear, “I take it then you’ve learned a different kind of magic to work your hearings?”

  Balfour nodded as Posh approached him. “It turns out that my gifts lay very far afield, indeed.”

  “Who’s the lady?”

  “My wife.”

  Eyes wide, “Carwina know that?”

  Grimly, “I haven’t seen her yet— I understand she has taken personal charge of her father, the Highmage.”

  Me’oh had selected four identical gold entwined anklets and was considering a bracelet for Cle’or when she noticed Balfour sidle over to the curtain. She instantly tensed, but his easy smile to her reassured her that everything was as it should be.

  When he went behind the curtain, she asked the jeweler to set her purchases aside a moment, then casually followed after him. Her eyes widened as she listened, while pretending to examine some of the nearest displays.

  “Posh, I’d like to meet with a faeryn healer.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “How about the fact that I am allowed to practice at the Healer’s Hall, but not train others? They are just as afraid and as awed by what I’ve been able to accomplish. A faeryn healer might have a different perspective— might know someone interested in apprenticing to me.”

  Intrigued, Posh replied, “I’ll see what I can arrange, but don’t expect anything soon. Our healers are scattered throughout the Empire.”

  “Good enough for me.”

  Posh grasped him about the shoulders, “I’m glad you’ve returned. I thought never to see you again.”

  “I thought I’d never return once— funny how fast things change.”

  Chuckling good-naturedly, “I believe Faeryn himself once mentioned something to that effect.”

  “He would.”

  Posh grinned and led Balfour back out into the shop.

  Me’oh was nearby, but not obviously so as they approached the jeweler, who had been speaking with them earlier.

  After Balfour and his wife, of all things, left, Posh pondered the message Lorin had brought and his old friend’s surprising return as a recognized master healer.

  In either case, he had a message to send. He smiled at the Guild masters and apprentices he passed on his way to initiate his particular brand of communication. The Academy trained favored scryings and particular wards that could radiate and receive verbal commands— the Healers Hall and the Imperial Legion maintained such wards.

  Faeryn chose other means.

  Posh smiled at the
Guild guards in the lowest and most secure level of the Jewelers Guild. He entered the Strong Room, where the jewels to be enchanted for charms and other purposes lay. He called out an elvin word. Light filled the chamber as the guards barred the door behind him.

  “Hello.”

  The cut jewels sparkled as if they could sense his presence, which in some ways was true. They were reacting to the use of magic, even such a paltry spell as “Light.”

  “It is time to advance your sense of magery. Listen carefully.” He began to speak to the jewels, explaining the need to the powers of the ether to commune. The jewels began to glow as he acted the Faeryn Heresy, no chanting of spells. No need to focus magery through speaking elvish. Concentrating on touching his elvin soul, he bespoke an elvin word.

  Communing with the ether, his centered elvin self expanded outward in a pattern he practically breathed. The jewels began to glow with a strong searing inner fire, which cast a shadow Posh could see in his mind. The shadow became an image. A wizened elvin face turned toward him and considered him, “Ah, Posh, can the old never rest?”

  “I’m sorry, Master. But we’ve learned that he has come at last... The time Faeryn foretold begins.”

  Weariness crosses the elder sage’s features. “So many have died in defense of mankind, the Demonlord will do everything he can to stop Him.”

  “I understand, Master.”

  “Do you?” The lights dancing before the ancient elf’s eyes faded with the communion.

  The short dwarven bard snored loudly; his head slumped to the table beside him. The elf straightened cautiously and noted the gazes of the startled dwarven bard apprentices cleaning up around him.

  “Don’t tell me I am that frightful a sight,” he rasped tiredly.

  “No, Master,” the nearest young bard student protested, eyes wide.

  The elf grinned, “Then, would you be so kind as to have my bath readied. It would seem that there are to be new tales to sing in the days to come?”

  Apprentices or not, bards were bards. The students on cleaning detail grinned. Songs to them were glorious, but the living of them— that was more so. “Three centuries and I almost feel young again,” he muttered to himself rising as the dwarves scurried to assist him.

  Complications

  8

  It had been a long night. The tracker had been quick enough to lead them directly to the person who had handled the jewel. They had found the urchin and his accomplice well before nightfall. However, once the capture was complete and they had taken their quarry into seclusion, the tracker blithely acknowledged that the scent had gone cold.

  That raised a number of questions. The first was that the jewel was still somehow secreted upon the thief, yet its trail was somehow masked by an enchantment. Terhun spent almost an hour watching the tracker and his watcher prodding the naked thieves’ bodies, even claiming glamours may be upon them. The tracker spent an inordinate amount of time “sniffing” them and each and every rag they had worn. “You have been many places since taking the jewel.” the tracker rasped to the wide-eyed lads, then as an aside to Terhun.

  His watcher added, “They must have passed it on to someone with an enchantment to mask it. We can learn no more this way.”

  Terhun frowned at the oddly piercing look in the tracker’s eyes as he turned back to the thieving youths. The slap across the lad’s face was both frightening and violent. The urchin slumped as his companion shouted.

  The tracker turned to the other lad. “You have been all places he has been. You know where the jewel is... Tell, now.”

  The lad spat at the tracker, which did not appear to anger the madman, as Terhun privately acknowledged him to be. “Master, leave them with me for a time. Keep your guards outside.”

  Terhun to his credit hesitated, then made his decision. He sent his men outside, while he remained. He felt he must witness what these urchins uncooperativeness wrought, and should they give answer he could so testify to the foolish Merchant, Bryan.

  The tracker said nothing about his vigil as he touched the accomplice’s cheek ever so gently, “Tell me, child... You have no reason to hold back, ‘for there can be no true loyalty without family.’“ Terhun heard him strangely say with a flicker of true sanity, which as quickly drained away from the mad tracker’s pale face.

  “You can go to the privy!”

  The screaming stopped only after Terhun bespoke a word that sounded like a curse, then clubbed the tracker unconscious with the hilt of a now glowing dagger, which had not been in his hand a moment before. The man’s watcher yelled, drawing his dagger. Terhun called back his guards, who quickly returned and tied up the madman and his companion, who realized the futility of his gesture.

  Gaping, the terrified little thieves glanced from Terhun, the tracker, to his companion, then back again.

  Sighing, Terhun gestured his men to see to the injured lad. “Will you, at least, tell me your name?”

  The thief swallowed hard, rasping, “I’m called Ruke... What are you going to do to me?”

  Terhun shook his head and sighed, “Ruke, where is the jewel?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Terhun nodded, standing up, “Make sure all of them are tied up good and tight.”

  “The Tracker is wearing a charmed collar, Sir.”

  “That explains it, then,” Terhun muttered.

  “Explains it, Sir?”

  Terhun glanced back at the frightened Ruke and the purpling bruises standing out upon the lad whose injuries were being wrapped in coarse gauze. “His ‘tracking’ sense comes from his madness... His mageling master keeps him focused and ‘sane’ by the binding of that charm.”

  Ruke whispered, “What’s to happen to us now?”

  The guard wrapping up the other child’s ribs, glanced at him, “You stay here until you tell us where the jewel is.”

  Ruke awoke shivering at dawn the next morning, his hands still uncomfortably tied behind his back. He noticed that the tracker was awake and staring at him as if he was not bound, hand and foot himself.

  “Morning, lad,” the madman greeted, cheerfully. “Now, are you ready to tell us where it is?”

  Ruke closed his eyes tight, By the Seventh, Gallen, get us free of this!

  The tracker licked his lips, looking hungrily at the lad who held the key to his trail.

  Juels never noticed the falc soaring overhead as the urchin came to a row of abandoned buildings, which he was a bit chagrinned to be familiar with. He had the privacy of bathing here, Pack Rule or no rule.

  Ever since Gallen had warned him to stop such foolishness and “play the washing game” on less hazardous turf, it was Ruke, surprisingly, who would wake him just before dawn. It was Ruke who had tried hard to mentor him and had been forced by Juels’ apparent sheer clumsiness to accept training from Gallen and make Juels his special project.

  Juels paused at the edge of the arched gate to the rickety house that he knew best. Ruke must know his secret, knowing why he would never bathe where the other boys might see him. Ruke had to know why Juels would stumble from time to time, hastily reorganizing his ragged clothing.

  Juels wished he could show Ruke his gratitude for keeping his secret. Privately, Juels hoped he would be the one to find them. That would show everybody he was as good as them!

  Pausing before that gate, he noted movement inside the house. It could be anybody. The place had a solid enough roof and good outside walls; even if, the interior was warped and gaping with cracks. It could be anybody, which is why such places were so dangerous.

  Juels pulled back into the shadow of the gate, noting the cloaked swordsman, coming out the side door with a bucket, heading toward the old cistern. The cistern that had provided Juels many a good bath.

  Running back down the road, Juels insanely felt that there could be no doubt. This was the place Ruke and Colvin were being held, for whatever reason. The presence of anyone unkempt would have been unremarkable, but there could be no other reas
on to Juels thinking for a markedly better dressed swordsman to be in that house!

  The falc settled upon the branch as Juels reached the next street. Terhun’s guard carried the bucket into the house and the fate moved across the limb uncomfortably. Something was very wrong here. The bird took wing again and began to wing back toward the Sixth, when the black robed figure caught her gaze. The falc squawked and the woman looked up at her, then urgently waved.

  The falc circled gently down and fluttered into a nearby alley.

  The black robed woman casually entered, then faced the perched bird. “So, it is not my imagination that our urchin friends are in some kind of trouble?”

  The bird shimmered. A naked girl now perched, feet overhanging the lip of the low roof, “Trouble... Terhun.”

  “Hmm, I knew nothing good would come from that misbegotten agent of the Lyai.”

  “Well, come on then, child. Seems there may be some important work for us.”

  The girl nodded, then spread her arms and leapt from the roof. She seemed to shimmer, then arms turned to sleek feathered wings and the falc returned to the sky.

  A dozen urchins listened to the out of breath Juels report; however, his was not the only report. Three other lads were just as certain that they had found where Ruke and Colvin must be.

  Gallen listened to the Rats and found himself staring at Juels, while seemingly everyone tried to be heard over everyone else.

  “Quiet!” Gallen shouted at last. “You,” pointing at one boy, “go fetch the others. Tell them that I believe they are in this part of the Seventh.”

  The urchins raced off.

  “You three, follow Mole’s lead... You four, Tevvy’s... Off with you now, come straight here, if you’ve really found them!”

  Juels held his breath as the others were assigned and ran off, until only he and two others remained. “You two stay here as Reserve and Messengers. You come with me. I want to see that house for myself!”