Jerzy licked suddenly dry lips and forced himself to relax. He had healed before, although never under these circumstances. The memory of the slaves caught under the broken cart almost a year ago was still a visitor in his nightmares. He had saved most of them, but not all. One had been caught in living death, and he had been forced to end the slave’s life rather than allow him to linger endlessly. Like the plague ship, there had been no other choice—but he could not forget.
He did not let himself think of the plague ship.
These children were not in immediate fear of death, although he doubted the smallest child, his entire side withered, would survive to become an adult. In the slavers caravan, these children would already have been tossed to the side of the road and left to starve. But these children had family, people who cared for them. Who would rejoice to see them well, and whole.
He was not Vineart Malech, no true healer, but he could make a difference here. Not enough to replace the memory of the plague ship, no, but it would be a start.
The world will need healing.
He poured a scant mouthful into the silver tasting spoon and motioned the first child, a girl with terrible burn scarring on her face, forward.
“WHAT?”
The vine-mage jerked awake, all of his senses straining into the still air. He had returned to his chambers, as was his habit in the late afternoon, when the sun disappeared early, to rest before evening meal; and he had … not fallen asleep, but found himself in a half-dozing stage, thinking of the work he planned to do once the moon rose.
“Master?” The slave who waited attendance on him stepped forward, anxious, thinking that he had missed some signal, forgotten something that was needful. The vine-mage waved the boy away, all of his concentration focused on whatever it was that had woken him.
There had been, as he dozed, the sense of something shadowing him, walking directly in his footsteps, breathing on the back of his neck. It had seemed like a dream—except that he did not dream.
“Someone following me,” he murmured. Ignoring the still-attentive slave, he lay back on his pillows and opened his senses as much as he could, the way he would before testing a new vintage. “What’s out there?”
It was possible, possible, that what he was sensing was the awakening of one of the slaves, that a suitable candidate to become his student had finally appeared. Despite what others thought of him—that he would tolerate no competition, that he slaughtered any slave with true potential—he rather hoped it were so, that another woke among the roots.
He was not ready to give over control of the vines, no. He did not expect to be ready for many long years yet. But the vines lived longer than even the strongest vine-mage, and there would have to be another after him, eventually, even after his plan came to fruition. He would rather choose one of his own, even from this benighted land, than leave it to chance, or be forced to give his knowledge to an outsider, one born of the old world.
His Sense stretched outward, but there was no whisper of that shadow within the sleep house, nor did it echo within the yards themselves. Letting his awareness stretch farther, secure that the slave would protect his body while he was otherwise distracted, the vine-mage looked further. Not to the south, where there was only wilderness and death. Not to the north, where the mountains held a different sort of death. Not to the west, the greater uncharted wilderness where no civilized man went. East, toward the sea …
He sat upright again, as his search was rewarded with an echo of magic. Distant, so distant, but clear.
Not a decantation. Not of the normal sort, anyway. Someone had done more than pour a spellwine and utter a few words. The magic had been manipulated.
This was not an awakening slave, no matter how talented.
There was another vine-mage on lands he, himself, had claimed.
Chapter 13
I think Tag-ear is going lame.”
Ao, sitting next to Mahault, who was handling the reins, let out a short laugh, then winced as the wheels hit a particularly deep rut and jounced him into the wooden frame. “On this road? I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“When we stop next, you take a look at his leg.”
“I’d rather let the damned thing go lame.”
“Ao!”
Jerzy, taking his turn in the back of the rickety, uncomfortable cart, shook his head. He did not blame Ao. The beasts were sturdy, strong creatures who smelled of clean sweat and flesh, nothing rank, who pulled the cart over the narrow, rut-ridden dirt road without hesitation, and who required only a limited amount of sleep and were able to graze off the grass under their hooves, but they were foul-tempered animals when released from the traces, and while they enjoyed being petted, any attempt to groom them, or check their hooves, landed the offending person with a purple-and-red bite mark on their flesh to show for it. Tag-ear was the worst, but Blacktail and Barrel were almost as bad.
Not that he could blame the beasts for biting Ao. The trader had been acting odd ever since they set out—not the same annoyed exasperation he had shown on the ship, or even the unusual distance, but a series of sidelong looks and awkward fidgeting whenever he thought Jerzy wasn’t paying attention.
If the others had noticed anything wrong, however, they were ignoring it, so he dismissed it as his own imagining. They were all stressed, in an unfamiliar land, with unknown enemies in front of them and the Washers hunting behind them. It would be more odd if Ao was not acting oddly, would it not?
That thought made his head ache as badly as his backside.
“We’re almost there, according to the map.” Kaïnam had chosen to walk alongside the cart while they went over a particularly rough patch, claiming it was to allow Jerzy more room to stretch out. His longer legs almost managed to keep pace with the cart, although on a flatter, more easy-traveled path, he would need to trot to stay abreast of them. “We should be there by nightfall.”
The sigh of relief Jerzy let escape was echoed by a heartfelt “Thank the silent gods” from Ao, and Mahault flicked the reins again, urging the beasts—lame or no—to a faster walk. After three days, they were all tired of the road, with its utter lack of villages or wayhouses, no other sign of civilization to be seen, only the rising hills, covered with dry brown scrub and thicket. More, the strange feel of the air, cool and dry when it should have been soft with warming weather, and the strange sounds at night when they camped to rest—the yipping howls and low coughs—and the strange glowing eyes that would appear and disappear from the low growth, watching them, but never daring to come within reach of the firelight—were all wearing on them. This was not a civilized land, for all its beauty, and Jerzy had his doubts about what he would find at their supposed destination. Surely no vines could thrive here, so far beyond Sin Washer’s touch.
He said none of this, however; the others needed him to be confident, to keep moving forward, and what purpose would voicing his fears serve? They had no choice but to keep going.
* * *
TAG-EAR DID in fact pull up lame, and they were forced to camp overnight one more time, hoping that the beast would recover with a few hours’ rest. Two could pull the cart, but short of abandoning the lame beast there, it would still have to keep up with them.
“We could eat it,” Ao suggested, making a face at the dried meat he had been chewing on, trying to soften it enough to taste. “It probably tastes like horse as much as it looks like one. Or maybe goat.”
“It would be a nice change from dried meats and fruit,” Mahault agreed, holding her piece over her mug of tai, trying to let the steam do the work for her. “But who is going to slaughter and skin it? You?” She looked at the others. “Jerzy? I don’t think our prince has the skills required, either.”
“If it were a fish, we would be set,” Kaïnam agreed, not taking offense. “But I am not a butcher, no.”
“If it’s not able to continue in the morning,” Jerzy said, “we let it go loose. Either someone will find it and give it a home, or—”
As though on cue, there was another deep coughing noise just out of reach of the firelight; the humans jumped, while the beasts shuddered, crowding in closer to the fire and the relative safety there.
“Or something else will make use of it,” Jerzy finished.
This close to their goal, he felt his stomach twisting inside him, the doubts he could not speak making their presence known in other ways. What would they do, on the morrow? What would they find? And what in Sin Washer’s grace had made him think that he—that they had a chance against anyone who could work such magic, that could reach out and kill a Master Vineart in his own House?
That thought brought him square back to the question he had been avoiding since they left the Vine’s Heart. All four were so focused on finding the source, revealing it as the cause of everything gone wrong, that they were not going beyond the idea of discovery. If the source was here, if the taint he sensed grew in this soil … what sort of vines had created that magic? A wild vine, a legacy that had gone feral … Jerzy identified the twisting in his gut was as much anticipation as fear; the idea that there was a spellvine that had not been identified, that was unknown to the Magewine, to the scholars in Altenne, to the rest of all Vinearts piquing his interest the way a woman or a man never could. If he could bring a cutting home with him, see if it would grow in The Berengia … try to erase the taint from its magic … or try to erase the taint already here … there was no Command against that.
Save that the Vineart here might easily kill them as share a cutting. Save that Jerzy might have no yard to plant it in, even if he were allowed to return. Save the Command that an apostate Vineart’s yard be burned and salted, and Vineart Malech no longer stood in the doorway to stop them.
Guardian, protect them, he thought, touching the tasting spoon hanging from his belt, biting his lip hard enough to draw salty blood. He was helpless, trapped by his obligation, bound by the charge given him: find the source, bring it to light, save the House of Malech from destruction. Guardian, he thought again, reaching for the stone dragon’s presence. There was a suggestion of cool weight pressing against his chest, and then it was gone.
“Everyone get some sleep,” Kaïnam said. “I’ll take the first watch, and we’ll do shipboard rotation, and be on the road at sunrise, with or without all the beasts.”
Holding on to the ghost-touch, Jerzy unrolled his blanket and found a comfortable place near the fire, to get as much rest as he could before his turn on watch.
THE NEXT MORNING, Tag-ear seemed to have recovered enough to escape becoming anyone’s meal. After a deeply unsatisfying breakfast and the last of their vin ordinaire cut with water from the tiny stream, they packed up their campsite and kicked dirt over the remains of the fire. If anyone was following them, they wanted to leave as little trace as possible.
Mahl and Jerzy hitched Blacktail and Barrel to the harness, while Ao, who had drawn the short twig, checked Tag-ear’s hooves again, then tied the still-limping zecora to the back of the cart while Kaïnam repacked their belongings. By the time the sun had risen fully above the horizon, they were on their way, and by midmorning, they crested over a hill and found themselves at their destination.
The flat-topped mountain that had been their constant, if distant companion to the east rose more sharply ahead of them, forming jagged peaks, but the sloping hills directly below them were coated with plantings, twisted brown arms wreathed with leaves the shimmering brown and red colors of Harvest.
Vines.
Something caught in Jerzy’s chest, and his fingers flexed inward, curling into his palms. Mahault touched his shoulder, and when he looked at her, she smiled, as though telling him that she understood he was feeling something, even if she didn’t know what. He nodded back, not sure what to say, either, and then looked back down the road, trying to see the vineyard with less yearning and more the way he thought Mahault or Kaïnam might: distanced, evaluating what might wait for them.
Unlike the bunched rows Jerzy was familiar with, or the more extended lines Vineart Giordan had cultivated, these were a thickly gathered mass, so much that the eye tried to tell the mind that it was all one massive plant, covering the entire slope.
There were only a few bodies moving in the yard, weaving in and around the vines. That, plus the glorious leaf colors, told him that the Harvest had been completed. The air had not lied; the seasons were all turned around in this land, the way Ao had claimed.
“What now, Jer?” Kaïnam asked.
As quickly as that, the moment they saw vineyards, they were looking to him again.
Jerzy stared at the vines spread out below them, feeling the familiar hunger rise up again to be down among them, listening to them whisper. Not his vines; not his soil. He did not know these vines, and he feared what they were able to do. And yet at the same time, he wanted them, with a hunger that surprised and dismayed him more than a little. It could not be normal. Vineart Giordan’s weatherwines had not effected this pull on him, not even when he had a taste in his blood.
Maybe it was not the Vineart who was to be feared, but the vines.
The thought was so startling, Jerzy almost tripped and fell.
“Jer?”
“I am thinking,” he said.
“You’re drooling,” Ao retorted.
Reflexively, Jerzy swiped at his chin, then turned to glare at Ao when he realized what he had done—and that his chin was utterly dry. But it was good to see Ao grinning at him again, and, despite the uncertainty of the moment, he smiled back.
Mahault brought them back to the moment. “Do we sneak around? Go down and introduce ourselves? Go back to the Heart and pretend that we never found this place?”
All of those choices sounded equally appealing to Jerzy. But only one would accomplish what they had set out to do.
“We go down and introduce ourselves,” he said finally. “That is protocol, when you enter another Vineart’s lands. If we follow protocol, we will know what to expect.”
Ao and Kaïnam both nodded, but Mahault shook her head, even as she was following them down the road toward the front gate.
“Only if they know and follow protocol, too,” she said, casting a worried look up at the vast expanse of open sky, as though already expecting some sort of attack. “If they don’t …”
If whoever tended the vines below did not, they were likely walking into a trap.
THE GATES THAT marked the start of the vineyard were made of a dark wood that arched over the road the same way the vine-twined arch did the entrance to the House of Malech. Jerzy braced himself for the same sense of gentle interrogation, if not the welcome he always felt when he passed under that arch, but there was nothing.
Whoever this Vineart was, either he hid his protections—or he did not have any. Jerzy wasn’t sure which possibility made him more uneasy.
“Ah-ah!” They were greeted by a slave dressed in a waist wrap made of the same brightly colored pattern as they had seen on the villagers four days back. His skin was not quite as dark as theirs, but his hair had the same night-black tone and tight-curled appearance, although it was trimmed close to his scalp. He also wore a white metal necklet, the square amulet hanging against his bare chest. Jerzy felt the urge to touch the token still tied around his own neck for reassurance, although he doubted Master Malech’s name would mean anything here, in this place.
Or if it did, it would be nothing good.
“Welcome to the domain of the Vineart Esoba of the House of Runcidore.” The slave spoke near-perfect Ettonian, the trade-lingua remnant of the ancient Empire, with only a trace of an accent, and made a formal bow that would have been perfectly in place in the Aleppanese court. “You have come far, and will wish refreshment before meeting with my master.”
It was not a question, and they were not given the chance to answer, as two more slaves, less brightly dressed and wearing no jewelry, came forward to take the reins from Ao and to help Mahault down from the cart, leaving Jerzy to scramble do
wn on his own.
“Civilized men,” Kaïnam said quietly, in halting but clear Berengian, and Jerzy nodded. They were almost too well mannered, considering protocol had already been broken; slaves had no business greeting visitors. Jerzy would have thought this man some sort of servant or aide, except that he was dead certain the man was a slave. There was something, a tingling of the hairs on his forearms, or an itch behind his ears—it was how a Vineart could choose whom to buy, out of a crowd of scared, filthy, untrained children. That knowledge came to him as though he had always known it.
Perhaps he had. Or it might have been the Guardian, even at a distance, giving him what he needed. Jerzy grasped at the second explanation and clung to it. Anything to not feel so ignorant and isolated here.
The senior slave clearly expected them to follow. Lacking any other options, they did so, entering the vintnery proper without fanfare or obstacle. House Runcidore was a simple structure; there was only one story, and the windows were open to the air, rather than being glassed in, but it was strongly built, with pleasing lines. The door was open, too, but when they entered, they saw that there was a heavy wooden door set inside, and at each window as well, to be fastened from within.
“Storm shutters,” Ao said quietly, looking around. “They must have bad storms here, in season.”
The main hall was exactly that—a giant open space, with two open, arched doorways at the far end. There were no tapestries on the walls, nothing but whitewashed walls and sconces where candles flickered with the clean, smokeless light of a well-crafted firespell. Despite the simplicity, there was an elegance to the building that had been lacking in the rough clay-brick structures of the village.
“I have never heard of Vineart Esoba,” Ao said, still keeping his voice pitched low, to avoid the slave’s overhearing.
“Nor have I.” And that was more worrying. Mahl and Kaïnam would only have encountered the few Vinearts who did business with their homes, and Ao’s people had no traffic with spellwines. There was little reason for them to have known the name of a Vineart so far away. But Jerzy had learned the names of many of the Vinearts of note, even the ones far away, and he had never heard of Esoba, or the House of Runcidore.
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