by D. P. Prior
Pheklus stood, slowly, stiffly, straightening his spine vertebra by vertebra and ending with a crack of his neck. He looked askance at Vrom and Tey, then pitched his reply at the Archmage. “I almost had one this year. You know how they sometimes slip away. But please don’t fret on my account. It is not my intention to die.”
The Archmage chuckled. “Nor, apparently, is it Calzod Murcifer’s, but we all know the real reason he doesn’t want an apprentice. He has his eyes set on loftier goals.”
Calzod’s face was a mask without emotion. Not even a glance at Theurig this time.
“But death is the will of the Weyd, Pheklus,” the Archmage said. “All things perish. The evidence is irrefutable.”
Theurig was nodding impatiently. “Yes, yes,” he muttered to himself. “Now can we go and eat?”
Pheklus responded to the Archmage with a nod and a crooked smile. “Perhaps next year, Excellency.”
***
It was full dark by the time they left the cavern and returned to the the Wyvern of Necras statue, the stalls, and the dancers. The music had devolved into sonorous drumming, a monotonous sequence of calls and answers. Torches had been planted around the perimeter, and in their flickering light Snaith saw that it wasn’t just the music that had devolved. The masked and naked dancers now writhed and cavorted atop the dais, grappling, seeking dominance, first one partner on top, then the other shrimping out from beneath to mount. They were skilled, dangerous, using arms and legs defensively, then suddenly sweeping to the attack with explosive submissions. The loser would make lewd overtures to the victor, and the rolling would begin again, men on men, women on women, women on men. It was combat of a high level, but it was also sensuous, arousing, orgiastic.
The sight was jarring to Snaith’s sensibilities. In Malogoi, people would have forfeited their lives for such acts of depravity. The Weyd, they were told, demanded it. But the sole source of knowledge of the Weyd back home had been Theurig. Snaith had come to learn, even so early in his apprenticeship, that each clan had its own customs, its own interpretation of what the Weyd wanted, of what it was. Surely here, at the heart of the Archmage’s dominion, the truth was rendered in a much purer form.
Snaith studied the dancers with renewed intensity, seeing in their struggles the interplay of opposing forces, the perpetual drama of the cosmos: life and death, growth and decay, good versus evil, all in flux, no one state better than another.
That last thought stayed with him, unsettling as it was. Is that why Theurig could do the things he did—to Vrom Mowry, Bas and Jennika, to those who failed the test at Coldman’s Copse? Did he consider himself above good and evil, beyond right and wrong?
“Don’t forget to eat,” Theurig said, moving away toward the base of the statue, where tables had been set up, laden with food and crystal bowls of a rose-tinted beverage the sorcerers were ladling into goblets. “There’s a long road ahead of us later.”
“Later?” Snaith said, turning away from the bodies on the dais. “You mean tonight?”
“We’re not staying any longer than we have to,” Theurig said. “You and I need to talk. Alone.”
“Great,” Snaith muttered. His feet hadn’t had time to recover from the outbound journey.
As Theurig grabbed himself a drink, Snaith scanned the crowd mingling around the stalls—a good number of Lakelings, some children, all of them masked, many cloaked in feathers. The apprentices were there too, untethered from their masters, exploring the wares on offer. He strained for sight of Tey, but couldn’t find her or her companions. Had they left already? Was that even permitted?
He pinched the bridge of his nose. He was starting to get a headache, a bad one that had come out of nowhere. A hand clamped down on his shoulder. On instinct, he spun and raised his ruined arm to strike.
“Once a warrior, eh?” the Archmage said. He was flanked by two Lakeling guards, neither of whom reacted to Snaith’s aggression.
“Forgive me, Excellency.” Snaith dipped his head and tugged his cloak over his bad arm.
“Nothing to forgive.” The Archmage’s yellow eye widened, and he nodded toward the statue’s base, where Theurig had been joined by Calzod Murcifer. The two sorcerers edged along one of the tables, sampling food, topping up their goblets, and talking in hushed voices.
“There’s not much I don’t see or hear,” the Archmage said with a sigh. He slung an arm around Snaith’s neck. A faint tingling played across Snaith’s skin—nothing as intense as at the cavern, just a dim echo, a coiled power waiting to be unleashed. “Have you availed yourself of the stalls? There is much the Lakelings prepare that is hard to procure elsewhere.”
“Perhaps later,” Snaith said.
“Ah, you need to eat? Don’t let me detain you. But one thing first: Where do you stand, Snaith of the Malogoi?”
“Excellency?”
“To whom are you loyal? The girl, I see that—the Witch of the Valks. I can understand why. She’s raw, that one. A feral creature. Not at all a conniver like some of these others. She’d sooner spit venom in your face than stab you in the back.”
Then you don’t know her. If the last few days had taught Snaith anything, it was that if you thought you’d worked Tey Moonshine out, you were going to be in for an unpleasant surprise. In that, she was like the Weyd—or at least the Weyd that Theurig had spoken about in the schoolhouse: the ineffable deity that dripped like water through your fingers once you thought you’d grasped it.
The Archmage was still watching the exchange between Theurig and Calzod Murcifer. “Did Theurig tell you he was a thief? No? He’s not the only one, either. Well, don’t let on that I know. He stole something from me some time ago. A pendant. A sorcerous crafting I brought back with me from Hélum. I hear he uses it to make fire, or to put on dazzling displays of sparks.” He chuckled and shook his head. “That is but a fraction of its power, but Theurig lacks certain keys. Maybe one day, when you and I are better acquainted, when our allegiances are plain, I will reveal them to you.” He turned to study Snaith’s face, and again Snaith had the impression the Archmage’s blind eye saw far deeper into him than the other. “I’ll tell you what, Snaith: I have a good feeling about you. I’ll take the initiative. Let me give you one of the keys to using Theurig’s pendant as it was intended.” He enunciated his next words carefully: “Emotion is the ox that pulls the plow.” He winked with his yellow eye and moved away, startling Theurig and Calzod with a bellowed greeting, then embracing them and taking over the conversation.
Snaith was left wondering why the Archmage had told him all this, about Theurig’s theft of the pendant and one of the keys to using it. Was he meant to steal it for himself? Or was this a test? Was he supposed to take it from Theurig and return it to its rightful owner?
No, it was neither. There was a deeper, darker game at play here. The fierce pounding of his heart told Snaith he’d already intuited the answer at some level. He was being asked to choose sides, that was for certain. But was more being asked of him? The Archmage hadn’t disapproved of Tey deposing Slyndon Grun. If anything, he seemed impressed by it. Hélum’s is a dog-eat-dog empire, he’d said back at the cavern. Was he encouraging dissent and infighting, giving Snaith permission to do what he’d been thinking about since Tey had accused Theurig of afflicting Vrom with the rot and what that implied about his mother and father? Since the sorcerer had taken his book?
Thoughts and pictures conspired within Snaith’s mind, twisted it into a nest of serpents. He angered too easily, he could see that. In the circles, emotion was always a weakness. A clear head brought victory, and that’s what he needed right now: a clear head to determine his place in this cabal of sorcerers jostling for position. This brood of liars and deceivers scrabbling their way toward the top of the heap.
He dragged his attention outward, away from the turmoil within his skull and onto the tables at the base of the statue, piled with food. He gave Theurig, Calzod, and the Archmage a wide berth, coming at the tables from the
far side.
And what fare they offered! Like nothing he’d ever seen in Malogoi. There were cheeses of infinite variety: soft, hard, holey, creamed; spiced meats, blood sausage, freshly baked bread that steamed in the night air. Pinkish mudbugs with their claws intact were arrayed on beds of lettuce. Clay pots with lids contained beans and mint and golden grains; others held curd flavored with cinnamon and sweetened with honey.
He sampled the liquid in the bowls that the sorcerers had been ladling. It burned his throat and he nearly choked. To help himself recover, he poured a goblet of one of the many wines standing uncorked in earthenware casks. It was full-bodied and dry, far stronger than he was used to. He sipped it slowly as he picked at the food until Theurig returned, stern-faced and bristling with agitation.
“Fill your satchel. You can eat on the way. Come on, we’re leaving.”
***
“Every year it’s the same,” Theurig complained. “Rich food, strong wine, and that evil brew in the bowls.” He put his hand to his chest and belched. “Never again, I always say to myself, and yet every time, I succumb.”
Snaith looked back across the darkness of the lake, watching the receding orange glow of the torch mounted at the stern of the Lakeling’s boat.
“Now what?” he said, pulling up the hood of his cloak against the night chill and the mosquitoes. “Back to the temple ruins for the night?” It wasn’t a pleasant thought. “We’ll break our necks walking in the dark.”
Theurig leaned on his staff and drew out a pendant on a chain from beneath his robe. He glanced at Snaith then gave the slightest of shrugs. “I was going to show you this at some point. Might as well be now.” He closed his hand around the pendant and shut his eyes. After a moment, he let out a sharp exhalation. Pearly light bled through his fingers, and when he released the pendant, it gave off a lantern’s glow from where it sat against his chest.
“Where did you get that?” Snaith asked carefully.
“A sorcerer comes across such trinkets from time to time.”
“Magic?”
Theurig scoffed and set off into the trees hemming the shore. “I doubt it.”
The sorcerer set a good pace, and Snaith was hard-pressed to keep within the ambit of the pendant’s light. His blistered feet were raw and stinging. He considered asking Theurig to wait awhile and re-bind them, but he’d only be wasting his breath.
“So,” Theurig said, “Imtep Khopeth. Even laying superstition aside, a very frightening man. I saw him, you know, when I was about your age. In Hélum. Must be an old man now, but word is he’s just as active. Just as dangerous.”
“The Archmage mentioned your trip to Hélum.”
“Did he now?” Theurig’s pace slowed, as if he needed to cede more effort to his mind than to his body. As if he needed to think. “Did he tell you the story? Did he gloat?”
Snaith shook his head.
“No mention of my master, Kardish?” Theurig asked.
“Kardish? No.”
It felt to Snaith some invisible presence walked alongside them now, brooding and heavy. Not the lingering memory of Kardish, so tangible in Malogoi. Something neither of them was saying. For Theurig, no doubt it concerned the digging at the tumulus, and what the Archmage did and didn’t know. But for Snaith it was the matter of his parents.
The pendant’s glow seemed to have dimmed. When they had set out from Lake Pleroma’s shore it had been akin to steely daylight, but now it was crepuscular, the half-light of dusk.
“Bit of an imposition, don’t you think,” Theurig said, “that His Excellency expects us to reconvene at Gosynag Bay twelve days hence? A stone’s throw from the Wakeful Isle, but another bloody long hike from Malogoi. Does he think I have nothing better to do? Full welcome, my beard! As if the Hélumites will care one way or the other.”
“Unless they demanded it,” Snaith said. “Perhaps they told the Archmage who should be there when they come ashore.”
“Pah,” Theurig said, but then he frowned and rolled out his bottom lip. “Did he say that? Is that what the Archmage told you?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Don’t remember? How can you not… Ah, I see. It’s like that, is it? And I suppose you’re not going to tell me what else you discussed with His Excellency? Or about what you were digging for in Coldman’s Copse? You might think you have friends in high places now, but don’t fall for it, Snaith. Anathoth Xolor is playing you, as he does all of us at some point or other. Be disloyal to me, and he’ll know what kind of dog you are. You think he won’t grow suspicious of you, too?”
Loyalty? You expect my loyalty, after what you’ve done? After all the lies?
It was oddly invigorating, watching Theurig fret and bubble over with frustration. Let him stew. Snaith decided to add fuel to the flames by answering with a question of his own.
“What did you talk about with Calzod Murcifer?”
Theurig stopped walking. “Did the Archmage ask you to find out?”
“He saw you,” Snaith said. “But you already know that.”
“But did he overhear?” In the fading light from the pendant, Theurig’s eyes were set within calderas of shadow.
Snaith shrugged.
“Fine,” Theurig said. “Let’s play it your way. Calzod is worried about the involvement of Hélum. The Seven ordered a withdrawal from Branikdür all those centuries ago for a reason. Whatever has drawn them back must be very important indeed. It could even prove catastrophic.” Theurig waved a hand dismissively. “That’s how Calzod thinks: always the conspiracist. Everything is an augury, a portent, an omen. For an intelligent man, he demonstrates an alarming degree of superstitious claptrap.”
“And what do you think?” Snaith asked.
Theurig puffed out his cheeks and spread his arms wide. “Politics. That’s what everything boils down to. Something was discovered, something unearthed that gives the whiff of an advantage to some faction or other within the Empire, perhaps even within the Seven themselves. To my mind—and Calzod’s—there are only a handful of possibilities, most of them shrouded in myth. But you, of course, already know what it is.”
Theurig looked at him intently, but Snaith was giving him nothing. Not until he had what he wanted: an admission of guilt concerning his parents and the rot. Where to find them. A cure. And his book back.
“Snaith, I urge you—”
Theurig swooned and fell against a tree, steadying himself with one hand on the trunk. The pendant’s light flickered and winked out.
“Useless…” Theurig gasped. “Piece of junk. I thought… thought it would light the whole journey home, but it’s draining, the concentration needed. Only… used it in short bursts in the past.” He gulped and then bent double, clutching his stomach. His staff dropped from his hand. When Snaith stepped toward him, he waved away the help. “Always get a little nauseous when I use it. It’ll pass.”
Theurig promptly vomited down the front of his robe.
“Why don’t we camp here the night?” Snaith said, as the sorcerer sunk to his knees, muttering and wiping his mouth with a sleeve.
“In the dark?”
An owl hooted somewhere in the distance. Suddenly, the treetops were awash with noise: rustling, cicadas, the patter of tiny feet.
“I’ll build a fire,” Snaith offered.
“And light it with what? Rubbing two sticks together? I never did master that technique,” Theurig said. He was no more than a clump of blackness, rolling to a sitting position and leaning back against the trunk. “Far be it from me to remind you, but you only have one arm.”
“The pendant,” Snaith said. “Surely you can muster enough strength for one quick spark.”
“How do you know? How do you know the pendant can make fire?”
Snaith winced. He’d given away more than he intended. Lightning fast, his mind gave him a way of keeping the Archmage’s revelation secret. “When the bear attacked, you drove it off with sparks and flames from your staff. I jus
t figured—”
“Put two and two together, eh?” Theurig said, with evident relief. “Saw me use the so-called sorcery of the pendant, and realized it was behind what I did with my poor old staff. See what you and Tey cost me? That staff had sentimental value.”
Snaith couldn’t tell if the sorcerer was joking, and in the dark it was impossible to read the expression on his face. He found it hard to think of Theurig as sentimental about anything.
A dim glow spread outward from the pendant, just enough to see by.
“Go on, then,” the sorcerer said. “Gather some wood and I’ll set it alight, before I throw up again.”
Within minutes, Snaith had built a sizable pile of deadfall and kindling, and Theurig crawled forward, taking off the pendant so he could dangle it over the stack. He grunted with effort, and sparks cascaded onto the wood. One or two caught, and the sorcerer flopped onto his side, exhausted. In the flicker of the blaze, he looked gaunt, wasted, close to death.
“Sleep,” he said. “Just need sleep.”
“No.” Snaith said, lunging across the space between them and snatching the pendant from Theurig’s grasp.
The sorcerer’s eyes widened in astonishment, then drooped shut again, as if he lacked the strength to keep them open. “My pendant,” he muttered.
“Not yours,” Snaith said. “But don’t worry, I’ll return it to its rightful owner.” Maybe. Probably not.
Theurig groaned something incomprehensible. His chest expanded with a long, rattling breath. “Talk in the morning. Need rest.”
Snaith went down on one knee and, with his maimed arm, delivered a clubbing blow to Theurig’s cheek. The sorcerer cried out and tried to sit, but Snaith hit him again, this time on the nose. He was rewarded with a pulpy splat.
Theurig squealed and sputtered and tried scooting backward, but Snaith got astride him, pinning his arms with his knees. He let the pendant swing above the sorcerer’s upturned face. Theurig’s eyes tracked its motion left and right. Blood streamed from his broken nose into his beard, and he panted heavily from having to breathe through his mouth.