Wild Magic

by Jude Fisher

  ‘Well, and asleep,’ she answered shortly. ‘And I intend that he should stay that way. Wait for me here.’ And with that, she caught up the skirt of her shift and ran back towards the wagon, her calves and feet white against the dark grass.

  A few moments later, she returned bearing a large and heavy object which she set down on the ground between them. Virelai shivered, recognising the great stone. It was a far more powerful crystal that his own: he knew its history.

  ‘Place your hands upon it,’ Alisha ordered. ‘Here, between mine.’ He did as he was told but minutes later the crystal still remained inert, devoid of reaction. The woman frowned. ‘Concentrate,’ she chided, but still there came no spark of life. Again she clicked her tongue, and with all his effort Virelai bent his will once more upon the crystal. As if the great stone had been sleeping, suddenly lights shot across its surface and its core became lit with inner fire. Weird lights played across their faces, illuminated the ground around them with purple and red, cyan and gold. When at last the nomad woman took her hands from the stone and sat back upon her heels, her face was stark with repressed emotion.

  Virelai scanned her expression anxiously. He had seen nothing but coloured mists, as if the crystal deliberately held back its secrets from him. ‘What did you see?’ he demanded at last.

  ‘No demons,’ she said softly, and her face was full of fear and wonder. And maybe the slightest hint of disgust. ‘Poor Virelai. There are no demons. And no sign of any geas, either.’

  This confused him greatly. If there were neither curse nor demons whence came this malady? He opened his mouth to ask just this, but she leaned across the great stone and, after a momentary hesitation, touched her fingers to his mouth.

  ‘You must go north,’ she said. ‘And take the cat with you. Only the Rose of the World can truly heal you.’

  ‘But she—’ he started in dismay. The Rosa Eldi was his nemesis; of that he was sure. If he had never spied her in Rahe’s chambers he would not have been tempted to drug the Master, nor to steal away from Sanctuary; he would have remained safe in that sorcerous haven, sheltered from this terrible, confusing world in which men schemed to do harm to one another, and in which his very fabric seemed unable to endure.

  Then a new thought occurred to him: what if he were to take charge of the Rose of the World once more – steal her away from the northern king when his new masters made their attack upon his capital; and then (somehow) spirit her away her from the obsessive grasp of Lord Tycho Issian? What if he were to take her, and Bëte, and return them to Sanctuary, and there seek Rahe’s forgiveness, abjectly throw himself on the mage’s mercy? It was at this point that his imagination ceased to function: it was impossible to envisage what might happen then. The Master was not by nature a merciful man; but would he not be grateful for the safe return of his woman and his cat, if not his errant apprentice? It seemed the best plan he could conceive. The Rose would heal him, and with his renewed strength he would draw sufficient magic from the cat to enable them to slip unnoticed from the grasp of his tormentors. The order he had known all his life would be restored to the world; the damage he had done would be undone. All would be well.

  He beamed at Alisha Skylark, who was watching him with intense curiosity. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I know now what I must do. I cannot imagine why I could not see it before.’ And then he turned to leave.

  Just like that. Alisha stared at his back in disbelief. How like a man: to come to her full of doubts and fears and in need of reassurance, only to leap away again as soon as she had set matters to rights, with all his thoughts bent on a new course of action and no consideration of her at all. ‘Wait!’ she cried, caught between vexation and concern. ‘You will not get far without my aid.’

  That made him turn. A deep furrow had appeared in the lily-white forehead. The sight of him so made her anger ebb away abruptly. At least his face is unmarred, she thought. Despite his oddness, he had always seemed quite beautiful to her: it was, she realised now, his very strangeness that drew her; he was unknowable, an unfathomable mystery; a man full of contradictions. A man who might do anything, be anything. And no wonder, having come from such strange beginnings . . .

  With difficulty, she drew her eyes away from his piercing gaze. ‘Your skin,’ she reminded him, as if he could forget so fundamental a thing. ‘You will need some unguent for your skin.’

  He smiled, and she remembered suddenly one bright morning when they had lain together as the sun slipped through the wagon’s shutters and turned those pale eyes a blazing gold and she had felt her belly flicker with desire and something akin to awe. A terrible sadness swept through her for what might have been, and she turned away, unable to bear the sight of him with all that brightness back in his face, his voice, burning away with new purpose.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I did not think.’

  He watched Alisha disappear into the shadows of the wagon once more; heard the quiet chink of pots and glasses, the grinding of pestle against mortar, a tender reassurance to the stirring child. Then she came out to him again and with gentle fingers applied the paste she had made to his hands and forearms, where the damage was worst. As it always had, her touch rendered him speechless and languorous, so that his blood seemed to rush to the surface of his skin to meet her. When she stopped, he stood there for a moment, swaying like a man in a trance.

  ‘You are not a bad man, Virelai,’ she said softly. ‘Please remember that, when the world seems dark around you. What you are is not your fault; no matter how we come into this world, we all have choices as to how we make our lives. I saw no demons in the crystal: no demons, other than men themselves. You will have a great choice to make soon, Virelai, and upon it will rest all there is that is worth saving in the world. Go with love; and do your best.’

  And then she pressed a heavy pot of the stuff she had made into his hand and slipped away from him, closing the door of the wagon with a firm click behind her. She stood there for several minutes with her back pressed against the cold wood and her heart hammering away like a wild thing, and listened to his footsteps retreating through the grass.

  All the way back to the Eternal City, ducking automatically beneath low-hanging branches and oblivious to the sounds of the night-creatures his passage stirred, Virelai sat the ambling horse in silent speculation as to what on Elda Alisha Skylark might have meant by her curiously hieratic pronouncement. But even by the time the sun came up and he had stabled the animal and made his way without detection to the safety of his chamber, he was still unable to fathom the true significance of her words. But a plan was forming in his head: a plan which involved not only recapturing the Rose Eldi and returning her and the cat to their master; but also the boy called Saro, and the powerful stone he wore about his neck . . .

  That very evening the Lord of Cantara came to his chambers. He burst in through the door without announcement, out of breath, and in uncharacteristic disarray for such a deeply fastidious man, let alone one who had just come from making his observances to the Goddess. Virelai could see the safflower stains on his hands, the tracks of orange pollen down the front of his robe, and something else, too; something darker and more obdurate in nature, for where the safflower marks were smeared, as by a hasty brushing of the hand, the other had taken a firm and steady hold of the fabric. It looked, to Virelai’s untrained but keen eye to be a significant spattering of blood. Sacrifice. Yet another, which surely made it three days in a row. Virelai knew about the cockerel and the lamb: he had had the onerous task of selecting and purchasing both poor creatures, then washing them with all the necessary preparations before they were taken into one of the contemplation gardens and given (usually loudly and against their will) to Falla by one of her grim-faced priests. Today, however, it looked as if the Lord of Cantara had made the killing himself rather than wait for the ministrations of a holy man. The sorcerer found himself wondering what unfortunate beast had had the pleasure of being sent to the Goddess by Tycho Issian’s h
and, and shuddered. Truly, something must be afoot; and not just as indicated by the number of sacrifices: the Lord of Cantara had a loathing of grime, yet he had clearly not stopped to wash his hands, or to change his clothing. Moreover, his eyes were bulging, and so was the front of his robe.

  All this Virelai observed in the few seconds it took his master to cross the chamber. He had learned to read Tycho Issian’s moods swiftly: it was a matter of self-preservation. The tented robe was a cause for some concern, though. It was not that Virelai objected to the idea of two men taking pleasure of one another – among the nomads such things were commonplace enough and seemed to do no harm – but the Lord of Cantara terrified him and he could not imagine there being any pleasure to be had from him at all. Reflexively, he stepped between the lord and the ornate desk on which the scrying-stone sat, safely sheathed beneath its dark shroud.

  ‘Show her to me!’

  Tycho Issian’s voice was hoarse with urgency.

  ‘My lord—’

  ‘Show her to me, now! I must see her.’ The Lord of Cantara buried his hands in his hair, clutched his head as if in agony and began to pace the room. ‘I have never felt such fire for any woman— It’s true that females have always been a curse to me, with their provocative mouths and their lush bodies . . . but usually I worship the Goddess with them and then my desire is slaked, for a time. I’ve never wished for a woman I could not buy – even at great expense; but she – she is different . . . I can’t stop thinking about her. She is all I see all through the day; and at night she haunts my dreams. I smell her wherever I go, I hear her voice, even though I’ve never heard her speak— It’s beyond comprehension—’ He stopped suddenly and turned to stare at Virelai, his hands falling limply to his sides. ‘I think I’m going mad,’ he said in anguish.

  Virelai did not know what to say. ‘Surely not, my lord,’ was all he could manage, though he knew in his own mind it was a lie. Mad, yes, and much more . . .

  ‘She makes me burn.’ Tycho clenched his fists, ground them both against his groin, forcing down the protuberance there. Then he approached the table at such speed that Virelai flinched away; but all the Lord of Cantara did was to grip him by the shoulders and, lowering his voice, croak out: ‘I do not think . . . I do not think she is entirely human, the Rosa Eldi. I believe she is touched by the divine. And so, you see, I must have her. I must save her soul. It is my sacred duty.’

  Now, he forced Virelai to sit before him and unveil the stone. The sorcerer did this nervously; not only because the lord’s erection was pressed uncomfortably against his back, but also because he was concerned about Tycho making comment about the state of his hands. Where Alisha had applied her ointment, the skin was certainly holding together better than it had; but it was still an odd shade of grey and even candlelight could not conceal that fact to any with eyes to see. He had put on some gloves, but in order to scry it was necessary to make direct contact with the crystal. Reluctantly, he peeled them off, but the Lord of Cantara did not even blink, made no comment at all. The grip on his shoulders remained steady; and almost as if the lord’s obsessive need drove the scrying using Virelai as its conduit, the great stone rendered up the Rosa Eldi with insulting ease.

  There she was, smiling with that strange, bemused smile he had so often seen on her face since she had fled him, in some great hall whose walls were adorned with ancient tapestries and decked with weaponry – barbed spears and crossed axes, sheaves of swords fanning as if for mere decoration; halberds and pikes – all fixed within manageable height as if to provide the occupants with an instant armoury in time of surprise attack. Amid the ugliness that surrounded her, the Rosa Eldi was pale and perfect, as graceful as a lily, as radiant as a safflower. Virelai breathed a sigh of relief: at least they had come upon her in a public place, fully clothed and deporting herself in a seemly manner, rather than cavorting naked with the dark and rampant king, as had always seemed to be the case whenever he searched the crystal for her before now.

  As if the mere sight of the Rose of the World was a balm upon his torment, the Lord of Cantara relaxed his grip upon Virelai’s shoulders. Then: ‘Ah,’ he said, in a great release of breath. ‘There she is. There she is!’

  A crowd of folk were gathered around her, dozens of them, all pressing close to pay their court. They were all arrayed in rich clothing and fine jewellery: a riot of colour and baubles that flashed in the light of the sconces and the flames roaring high in the hearths. So much fire, Virelai thought. To his mind, it was a hellish scene, but the lord behind him whispered in awe: ‘See, see— She is Falla rising from the fires of the Holy Mountain.

  ‘“Her bare feet soft on smoking coals

  Trailing vaporous clouds behind her

  And red they were, and white her soles

  What man, or god, could bind her?”

  ‘She is magnificent. Ah . . .’

  The crowd knotted, wheeled, flowed like a sea; and then there was the barbarian king, Ravn Asharson, moving with easy grace through his courtiers towards his wife, his long hair shining beneath his silver circlet, the mass of his wolfskin cloak emphasising the muscular set of his shoulders. As if beguiled by him, the crystal followed his every step, revolving so that where before it had offered a view of his back, now it aligned itself with the Rose of the World, so that all that could be seen was the Eyran king as he processed through his people, his proud face, the firelight burnishing his eyes and cheekbones; the fierceness of his smile.

  ‘Damn the thing!’ Tycho growled. ‘Bring her back: I don’t want to see him, that vile whelp! Show me the Rosa Eldi.’

  With every atom of his will, Virelai fought the crystal away from its fixation upon the Stallion of the North until at last it veered crazily sideways; unhelpfully refusing him, even then, the Rose of the World, but offering in her stead the view of a quiet chamber, simply furnished, in which a dark-haired girl sat upon a low settle playing a game of knucklebones with a homely-looking woman engaged in picking her teeth with a sharpened stick while waiting for her partner to cast the bones.

  The Lord of Cantara hissed; and at that moment the Altean contingent entered the room, headed by Favio Vingo, pushing his eldest son before him in a bizarre wheeled contraption. The older man’s face was taut with antipathy for the southern lord, but the boy’s eyes burned with fervour.

  ‘My lord,’ Tanto began, ‘they said we might find you here. I have an idea for a great sphere in which several of the Footloose might be burned together . . .’

  Tycho did not even glance away from the crystal to greet his visitors.

  Tanto was not to be put off, however. Shrugging his father away and setting his own hands to the wheels, he brought the chair in tight to the table so that he could see what it was that was so absorbing the Lord of Cantara. ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed delightedly. ‘Crystal-gazing: how entertaining. What is it you seek?’

  He craned over the table towards the stone and seemed for a moment mazed by its sliding lights and odd perspectives. Then his jaw dropped open.

  ‘Selen,’ he breathed.

  It was, in truth. Even as he spoke her name, Tycho Issian’s daughter raised her head from the game, and a small line appeared between her eyebrows as if she was concentrating hard, or was listening for a distant voice. Tanto almost launched himself over the table to take hold of the seeing-stone; then remembered in the nick of time that he was supposed to be an invalid and subsided into the chair.

  ‘My daughter!’ cried the Lord of Cantara. ‘So she was stolen by Eyran brigands indeed!’

  Now, as if with a mind of its own, and unheedful of Virelai’s impotent grasp of hands and will upon it, the crystal veered away again, until with a sickening lurch it offered a set of entirely new perspectives. The first was that of a gloved hand pushing open a stable door in the dark; then they were back in the firelit regions of the Great Hall of Halbo Castle, far up in the vaulted ceiling above the new Queen of Eyra, so that the viewers found themselves staring vertiginously down up
on the crown of her head. It was a deceptive angle; but even so, Virelai could tell something was not right, was out of true: for him, the image blurred and flickered. There was magic at work here: powerful magic.

  ‘Falla’s tits!’ Tanto suddenly exclaimed loudly; but so shocked was he by the view of the Rosa Eldi now offered to him that the pious Lord of Cantara did not even notice the blasphemy. ‘He didn’t waste his time: she’s been well and truly plugged—’

  Tycho was blinking rapidly as if he could not believe his eyes. Then: ‘She is with child!’ he wailed. ‘The cur has got my love with child—’

  All but Virelai could see clearly that the Rose of the World’s belly was distended in a powerful curve away from that spear-straight spine, made all the more prominent by the softly clinging wool of her white gown. Ravn Asharson approached her, kissed her rapturously on both cheeks and then full on the mouth, and his right hand spread itself proprietorially across that lush swell.

  By Virelai’s ear, there was a great howl of noise. Then the table went over, and the howl was joined by the sound of the crystal striking the floor with massive force and shattering into a million fragments.

  The sound of the breaking crystal reverberated through the castle walls; it echoed through the passages and stairways; fled out into the night. Down in the kennels, the dogs milled about in distress, their tails clamped between their legs; feral cats bolted through the courtyards; geese lifted from the surface of Jetra’s Lake, shocked from sleep. In the Star Chamber, Lord Rui Finco – engaged in an absorbing argument about siege tactics with Lord Prionan – lifted his head and winced at the sudden jag of pain that lanced through him; some men cried out sharply, then wondered why they had done so; while others stared wildly around as if disorientated. Hesto Greving dropped the goblet of Golden Spice he had been nursing this past hour as if burned; then stared with dismay at the glistening pool that gathered around his feet, and despite the ache in his bones found himself calculating the waste: thirty-two cantari at least, though he had drunk maybe a half of the cup’s volume.