Shadowmage

by Max Keith

  He sighed.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Alorin had dropped back, and was now looking across at the mage in frank curiosity. “You’re not yourself.”

  “Headache.” Poildrin squinted. “It’s there all the time now.”

  “No, I mean the general… what, malaise? Moodiness? You’ve been miserable for days now.”

  “I’m always miserable.”

  “Worse than usual.” She probably wasn’t trying to be friendly, Poildrin assumed. She was concerned for her own survival if Poildrin couldn’t make sound decisions. “Is it that book of yours? The cookbook?”

  “Spell book,” Poildrin corrected her automatically. He’d been waiting to hear back from the Mageguild about a small but, he thought, valuable work he’d submitted for copying and sale, and usually they were quicker. He’d been wondering whether they no longer liked him. “Not really. I’m just cranky.”

  The valkyrie nodded gravely. “Lack of sex,” she pronounced. “You need a woman.”

  “Volunteering?” He wasn’t interested, not really; Alorin was the sort of woman he enjoyed looking at, but he knew she’d be disappointed in him if they ever fucked. Poildrin had long suspected he was not very good in bed. Besides, he’d always been a little afraid of Alorin. She shrugged.

  “I’m fine at the moment, but thank you for asking.” She glanced back at Traxtell, brooding on her horse, and gnawed speculatively at her lip. “What does she look like?”

  “In real life?” Poildrin shrugged. “There’s a reason my charm makes her attractive.”

  “Ah.” The valkyrie looked tactfully away. “So she isn’t. It must be odd for you, being the only person who can see her as she really is.”

  “I’m a shadowmage.” Poildrin gnawed harder on Aimee’s sachet, wincing. “Everything is ‘odd for me.’”

  “Huh.” Alorin moved her heels back, just enough to surge ahead. “Whatever.”

  Soon enough the air grew heavier with the cool moisture of falling water, the roar of it constant now, coming from around a rocky corner just ahead on the right. None of them knew it, but they were nearing one of the wonders of the Empire, a fabled fall of spectacular beauty which, in peacetime, was a place of pilgrimage and reflection for everyone living in the Southern Rump. Legends told of how Lurik, on one of his endless journeys around the continent, had stopped to rest there and stayed for ten years, gorging on enchanted trout and gaining wisdom from a hermit who lived beneath the thunder of the falls.

  To Poildrin and his companions, it was merely a handy place to stop and water the horses.

  Alorin’s horse Pixie shied in slight annoyance as she rounded the rocky corner, the noise and moisture surprising her, but then she mastered herself and pushed on around the bend, pulled by a smell of rich green grass so intense that even the riders could sniff it. Poildrin had never seen this fall before, but of course he had read enough to know of the Lurik connection and had a sort of dry academic interest in what the place looked like.

  Too, he had a professional interest in the enchanted trout.

  The column of white froth towered up, not particularly wide but awfully tall; more than a furlong into the skies it reached, the water skeining down into a bubbling pool before chattering out across the rich green meadow and down into yet another valley bounded by yet more grey. Mist rolled smoky from the base of the fall, half obscuring a crumbling old fane with a ruined chapel tucked into a little rocky depression on the right.

  Lurik’s Rest it was called, but that meant nothing: Poildrin had been to many places with the same name. He’d often thought that if the great wanderer had truly gone and stayed at all the places called Lurik’s Rest, he’d have spent more time resting than wandering. Whatever; the little group was filing into the meadow now, and Alorin had already swung down from her horse and spun, as always in easy readiness, to see who was following them.

  Shaggy mountain horse, rider short, with a cloak that had once been green but was now just dirty. The rider sat awkward in the saddle as the horse made straight for the water, and as the hooded head swung nervously aside to see who else was on this trail Poildrin saw that the rider was a woman.

  His initial impression was, incongruously, a culinary one. Poildrin had grown up in a household ruled by a mother from the South, way down past the Isthmus. She had been a good cook, but Poildrin had never liked her food because the ingredients were odd and foreign, typically brought by ship from the weird jungles she was always talking about. Her favorite food was avocado; being a naturally contrary fellow, Poildrin had decided that avocados were terrible.

  Which came to mind because the woman on the horse had eyes that looked exactly like halved avocados.

  Dark green at the edges of her iris and then trending toward yellow within, those eyes were altogether striking as they stared back at him unblinking. He saw them flit down and around, taking in the swords and the daggers and the leather clothing and the quality of the horseflesh, saw them decide humility would be best. “By your leave, good people,” she said meekly, her voice deep and quiet.

  Poildrin started violently enough to make his horse look quizzically around at him. For this was not the first time he’d seen those eyes. His head shrank instinctively back into his hood, its shadow spreading down past his nose.

  Alorin, arching an eyebrow as she pissed in a corner by the ruined hut, shrugged from the turf. “We don't own the waterfall, friend. You don’t need our leave.”

  The woman with the green eyes bowed as she slid awkwardly from the saddle. She nodded, her hands in plain view. “As you say.” She shouldered her horse tentatively toward the swirling water, where the beast soon made himself comfortable by shoving aside the other horses. The rider shifted her weight within the cloak. “I mean no harm,” she added.

  Alorin finished up and glanced over at Poildrin. They nodded. “Nor do we,” the valkyrie replied softly; in situations like this, she usually did the talking. Just as well; Poildrin found himself quite unable to speak against the soft power of those eyes. “What’s your name, stranger?”

  “I am called Jerren of Thead.” The cloaked woman was plainly curious about Alorin’s accent, but was too polite to ask about it. She hesitated. “You’re from nearby, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps not.” Alorin swished her hands in the water, then came forward with her hand propped casually on the pommel of her shortsword. “We are traders in wool and leather. I am called Lyria of – of Wynnse.” It was an uncharacteristic error, but over the years Lyria had come from a great many places. It could be difficult to keep them straight, but fortunately the girl seemed far too anxious to notice.

  “Oh.” Jerren’s eyes had not stopped moving skittishly across the dell.

  “We seek Berridge, near the village of Hovestreit.” Poildrin was watching Jerren closely during this exchange, watching eyes and mouth and face, trying to catch reactions. That was how they’d trained him at the College: magic did not read minds. Eyes did. His eyes made a habit of observing everyone closely. Not that Jerren needed much observation; she’d always been an easy read. She still had her expressive face, now set in lines of deeply subservient worry. Underbite, weak chin, but with strong and vibrant lines from her cheeks to her forehead, where a few wisps of straight dark hair rustled lank from beneath the hood. “This trail leads there, is that correct?”

  The green eyes blinked. “I feel sure it does, Madam.” Alorin considered the answer: a cautious girl. “They say this road runs all the way to the Sea. Berridge lies in the foothills, yonder.” She bowed her head. “So my uncle says.”

  “Does he.” Beside the stream, Firkis had pulled Aimee’s horse out of the line so that he could squat down and check the thing’s hoof. Firkis was a useful man to have nearby. Poildrin watched as he rubbed deftly at the dull pale hoof, fingering the shoenails and surreptitiously watching the hooded girl with his hooded eyes. Moving the horse had given Alorin a clear crossbow shot, just in case.

  There was never any te
lling; random companions, chance-met on the Imperial frontier in wartime could be far more than they seemed. Poildrin had doubts about this one; he’d seldom seen a meeker traveler, especially a lone woman. Most of those, at least in the Realm, tended to be aggressive and even brutal, or they tended to be raped; there was seldom a middle course, the roads being what they were. But the Jerren he remembered was not meek at all.

  She certainly was not local, he knew.

  “You live nearby?” Alorin was obviously just as suspicious. “If so, and if your people need quality woolens, why…”

  The green eyes stopped their roving at last, and settled beside their pointy nose on Alorin. “I am from Thead,” said the mouth, thin and careful. “As I said.” Then the eyes shifted toward Traxtell, and Poildrin could tell what she was thinking: why do wool traders need a dancer?

  “So you did.” The valkyrie had noted Jerren’s glance, and now she turned very slowly so that her right shoulder was pointing toward the girl’s left arm. Just in case. “And is Thead nearby?”

  “Somewhat.” She was starting to recover, just slightly, convinced by now that this strangely large band of traders did not mean to kill her outright and fling her into the falls. “I feel certain I would reach it before lunchtime tomorrow.”

  Alorin’s eyes narrowed. “Would.”

  Jerren nodded slowly. “Would.”

  Another flickering, grey-eyed Alorin glance toward Poildrin. He shook his head, very slightly. Alorin caught the signal. “A good journey to you, then,” she nodded. “May you find safety on the roads.”

  “I thank you, Madam.” Definite relief now, the woman’s voice a grateful rush. Her horse was getting into an argument with Firkis’ over a patch of particularly fetching grass. “And you, as well.” She made her way over to her disheveled-looking horse and took the bridle, reaching far up to try to mount. Firkis wordlessly crouched to give her a leg up, and she blushed as she accepted. “Thank you, sir,” she stuttered.

  The five of them watched in tense silence as Jerren of Thead urged her horse inexpertly toward the far side of the little valley, relaxing slowly as she disappeared. Poildrin waited for the expected comment, something crude about the woman’s sexual possibilities, but then he remembered that neither Cashel nor Drinn was along on this little job. And Firkis? He was not the sort of man to make ribald comments, especially when Aimee was around. No, when she was around, he kept his mouth shut about almost everything.

  “That,” Traxtell announced with even more spite than usual, “was an odious-looking wench, if ever I’ve seen one.”

  You’ve seen one, Poildrin thought unhappily, in a mirror. She was right, though. Jerren had been slippery long ago; there was no reason she’d have changed. “We should move on,” he called, nodding toward Alorin. She understood: she’d ride further ahead now, scouting. She mounted with her usual lean, silent motion and disappeared, moving as noiselessly as a mounted woman on a rocky path can. Poildrin followed, his mind now full of thoughts and memories, plagued by a past shadowed by eyes that looked like avocadoes.

  She’d been his curse during his third year at the College, that was sure enough. The tutors and senior mages all said that: a woman at the College was a curse for ambitious young men. They’d been dead right in her case. Jerren of Red Castle, she’d called herself then, for she said she came from that squalid Imperial metropolis at the mouth of the Lyddon. So folk at the Mage College called her Jerren of the Bloody Palace, or Empire Jerren, or simply Jerren the Fucking Imperial Bitch. Or, since Red Castle was the capital of that Imperial region oddly called The Rump, some called her Lady Jerren-of-the-Rump. They laughed when they said it, and often swatted her there in a not-so-playful manner.

  A few called her Jerren Greeneyes. Usually quietly, among themselves.

  Quite why she’d come there was a mystery. The Empire had its own school for mages, every bit as good as the College, and it had the great advantage of not lying in a country at war with one’s own. But, to be fair, she wasn’t the only Imperial attending, though they always kept to themselves and weren’t ever really trusted by the students from the Realm.

  In more introspective moments, in fact, it occurred to some of them that there must surely be little magelings from the Realm going to the Emperor’s mage school. It wasn’t something most of them wanted to think about, though. Folk at the Mage College tended to be patriotic, especially about the War.

  Jerren had swung breezily into the stuffy tutoring room where Poildrin’s cohort met for their lectures in magical legal theory, she a last-minute transfer from a junior class. The cohort, all young men who spent too much time studying, had eyed her body as she eased among the seats, staring quite unsubtly.

  She paid them no mind whatsoever, her pointy little nose slicing the air in front of her from a slight elevation; she was a woman who believed in cocking her head back. The knee-length robe of a second-year novice did little to hide any of her bits and pieces, showing pleasing female roundnesses of excellent proportion in all the necessary areas, all jiggling and bouncing most enjoyably as she moved. Even the tutor had stared.

  Poildrin, then a stringy youth of twenty, had long shown himself to be the most ambitious of his class. Pale and freckled, with a lopsided and uncertain smile, he spent a great deal of time in closed rooms. He had a restless disposition and the sort of brain that was always in motion. That led to a nervous habit of constant leg movement, his knee vibrating steadily as he listened to his tutors. And so nobody ever wanted to share a bench with him. Which was why, on that auspicious day, the tutoring room’s only empty seat had been beside him.

  She’d sailed blithely toward him, and his eyes had gone directly and guiltily to where the strap of her shoulder bag passed through her cleavage; really quite magnificent cleavage, he’d have said, had he been the sort of man who’d start a conversation with a woman. She’d stopped beside him and looked down her ridiculous little nose with an air of amusement.

  “I’d ask if I could sit beside you,” she said, her voice low and rich with a hint of repressed laughter, “but I know you’ll say yes.” Already he’d been captured by those soft green eyes, clearing his throat for a noncommittal greeting as he shrank against the wall. She smiled, and when she did the skin beside her eyes wrinkled.

  They’d shared the bench all semester. His shaking leg did not trouble her unduly, and if Jerren Greeneyes wasn’t very good at magic law, she was at least something to look at. Though quite what brought her, twelve years later, to Lurik’s Rest with a new hometown and a far less forward manner, was a question that gave Poildrin an uncomfortable night, wrapped in his blanket beside the flinty mountain trail.

  Two

  They tangled themselves deeper into the mountains for another two tortuous days. They saw no other people but a pair of minstrels, going from one stinking mountain village to the next, but what custom they found up here Poildrin couldn’t begin to guess. At length, in the late afternoon of the second day, a gap in the grim grey walls ahead showed sky and green valleys rather than simply more mountains. “Look there,” Firkis muttered, nodding from his place right behind Poildrin. “Lowlands.”

  “Lowlands and foothills,” the mage agreed, and within another ten minutes the air began to take on the distinct smell of woodsmoke, tinged with the bitterness of dung, the smell that every settlement on the continent advertised itself with. Poildrin forced a smile through his headache. “I do believe that’s Hovestreit we smell, ma’am,” he told Traxtell with dull courtesy. “We should be able to camp near there tonight, then on to Berridge by tomorrow noon.”

  “Not soon enough,” the woman replied sourly, and Poildrin could not agree more. Apart from her shitty company, the charm had begun slipping over the past day or so as the mage found difficulty focusing. That was always the danger in holding a charm too long, he knew: after awhile, even the most committed mage simply ran out of steam. There was only so much attention he could pay to turning a fat diplomatic spy into a normal-lookin
g dancer, especially when so many of his thoughts were now on Jerren. He rode along in a silence that might have seemed politely attentive, but was in fact just designed to limit the damage to his ravaged brain. “You shitheads have no idea, the risk I’m running here.”

  “I’ve got some idea.” Indeed, more than “some;” the Princess had given him no doubt as to what would happen to Traxtell if she were captured by the Imperials; Poildrin had himself seen what happened when the Emperor threw his enemies into the snakepits. Not for the first time, he wondered where the Princess found her mysterious correspondents. How had a viciously political, gorgeous princess of the Realm ever established any link with someone as repulsive as Traxtell, once a backwater mayor of a northern village famous for the production of peas?

  Odd. He was the Princess’ Shadowmage; he was supposed to be able to answer questions like that. Drinn, Alorin, Firkis… all of them assumed he knew those answers. But the Princess knew how to keep secrets, even from him.

  “Well and good. Because if I’m not past Berridge and on my way to the coast by the time your faggoty Royal Army attacks the Starkhorn, my life is worth snail shit.”

  Poildrin chose not to give an opinion on the worth of Traxtell’s life. “Princess Raxillene,” he began patiently, “assured you our escort to Berridge. Your contact there will be responsible for what happens after that.” He finally glanced over to look at Traxtell. “You understand, m’lady, that the Princess cannot be linked to you in any way. We’ll need to be long gone before the Emperor’s men come looking.”

  “I’m not a fucking moron,” Traxtell snapped back, in the face of much evidence. Some of her tension, though, made sense; she was betraying the defense of the Starkhorn to the Royals, and once the fortress fell the Emperor would be… well, somewhat displeased. Displeased enough to pursue Lady Algar of Traxtell to the ends of the continent, and perhaps even beyond. “You and your merry band of halfwits had better know what you’re doing.” She farted loudly and without embarrassment, and her horse gazed mournfully at Poildrin.