Shadowmage

by Max Keith

  Who sighed and looked out over the lowlands.

  This part of the Empire really was beautiful, he mused; he’d wandered here briefly, back during old Raxillor IV’s short and unsettled peace, the one the foxy old King had tried to cement by betrothing his daughter Raxillene to one of the Imperial princes. The peace had ended when the Princess, not even ten, had stolen the lad’s horse and carriage, bitten off the tip of his nose, and disappeared.

  What a crisis that had been, Poildrin reflected. He’d been a mere Undermage then, fresh from the College and roaming the wastes in his new white hood, which he’d rubbed with muddy pine needles on his first night on the road so that he wouldn’t appear quite so laughably inexperienced. The diplomatic uproar over Prince Kasmin’s maimed nose had found him entertaining an overly nipply girl in an inn off the Red Castle square. The inn had been a cesspit, but then the entire Red Castle was a cesspit. He and all the other subjects of the Realm had found themselves cuffed, spat upon, and even mildly slashed as they’d left the city, with a mob angry at the insult to their little prince’s proboscis pursuing them up the river until they grew tired.

  Glen, Poildrin remembered. That had been the little prostitute’s name. She truly had possessed memorable nipples. Poildrin sometimes wondered what had happened to her.

  What had happened to the vicious little Princess, of course, was well known: she’d turned up, alone and feral, flogging the Prince’s pony and rising out of the plains toward her father’s fort at the Gethell Pass with a mean look in her eyes. And the King had kept her there in the Borderlands ever since.

  A good idea, all things considered. The years had passed, the War had resumed, and many had died. Raxillene had a restless spirit and a seriously overdeveloped sense of her own importance, and in combination that was not a recipe for stability and good judgement. So the King had sent to the Mage College to see whether they could suggest a companion for his ambitious daughter, someone who could temper and direct her energy so that she could contribute something, perhaps; in those days the War had already not been going well, the King hadn’t yet gone mad, and the Realm was trembling on the brink of final defeat.

  The College had contacted the Mageguild, and the Guild had met, and one sad and rainy day Poildrin’s old mentor Torsel Peewin had come seeking him. He’d been just six years out of the College then, and already preparing for his test to become a Firemage, and he hadn’t been looking for a job. His days had been spent studying and practicing; the fire-spells were difficult. Peewin had found him in Norther Town, crammed into a rented room above a brewery, taking instruction from the witch who owned the building. Old Peewin had wrinkled his nose at the stench of the place, for the witch was doing sulphur work. Poildrin, streaked with various kinds of soot, had looked up in surprise to see the man in the Kingsmage’s golden hood.

  “Master Peewin!” Poildrin had scrambled to his feet. He’d blinked at the light coming through the door; he’d been keeping the room dark. Some of the flames he was looking for were hard to see.

  “Brimstone spells, I see.” The old man gave a theatrical sniff. “Or smell, rather. Hard to tell what’s worse, Franx: the brewing downstairs or your homework up here.” The room was subdivided, mazelike, with hidden corners everywhere and at least three hearths. “Quite a nice place this is, for your studies.”

  “What are you doing here?” Poildrin had been without a robe in the stifling heat of the room, its windows shut against the rain. “I thought you were teaching down at the Lower School.”

  “I am!” He’d shuffled to a chair and sat gratefully down; the climate up here, Poildrin had reflected, was probably tugging at his rheumatism. “I was, anyway, until the Council sent me.” He’d waited quietly, small birdlike eyes gleaming in the low orange light. Poildrin had frowned.

  “Sent you… what, here? To Norther Town?”

  “Here. To you.”

  Well. He’d been astounded. The Council did not, as a rule, send Kingsmages to run messages to Nextmages, however ambitious they might be. He’d blinked. “Is it about the date of my test?”

  Old Torsel had chuckled at that, but his message had been grimmer. The arc of Poildrin’s carefully plotted life had changed that day, and there were times he wished it hadn’t. He’d found himself, a month later, reeling from the rough winter sea passage down the coast, stumbling ashore after a rushed Fire Test and a night of inebriation, being escorted down a set of richly tiled basement stairs into one of the larger cellars at the Palace, where they used to put Princess Raxillene until she calmed down.

  She’d been twenty by then, tall and with her family’s blandly regal good looks. In her case, though, it was tempered by that special, uncontrolled ferocity that Prince Kasmin’s nose knew so well. She was clever and mean and spoilt and altogether a formidable proposition in those days, a terror to her tutors and a struggle for her chaperones. And, occasionally, a shame to her family.

  Poildrin had liked everything about her.

  “She needs a calming influence,” had come the unctuous warble from the Lord Chancellor, in those days a corrupt and dangerous man called Stacefield. He’d later died under circumstances sudden, if not mysterious. Not coincidentally, Raxillene had never liked him. “She has considerable energies, which must be channeled.” The interview had taken place in the Throne Room, a cold and bleak place that smelled faintly of the leathery skin clinging raspily to the faces of the ancient traitors whose heads hung piked around the walls.

  “She needs a beating.” That had been the Princess’ brother, sprawled boorishly in a chair. He had just that month turned eighteen and been named Regent, and had celebrated by at once ordering five men executed. The King, Poildrin remembered, had not been present at the interview, but then that’s what a Regent was for. At least the young man had the grace not to sit in his father’s throne, a fairly plain chair of great ancientry and little comfort.

  “She’s got a great deal of, err, practical knowledge of the less savory arts of policy and government. But I fear she is…” Stacefield had shifted a worried glance sideways to the Prince, who by that time was buffing his nails. He cleared his throat. “She is a passionate young woman. She likes to have her own way.”

  Poildrin had stared back at the Chancellor with studied self-assurance, his new red hood making him confident. “She’s a bitch,” he observed. “That’s what you’re trying to tell me, is it not?” The Prince-Regent had stirred at that, glaring.

  “She’s Royal, mage,” he’d growled flatly. “One does not speak that way of Royals.”

  Poildrin had matched the Regent’s foul look with his usual coolness. He was not really a courageous man, simply impatient with foolishness. He could see the young man agreed with him, too; it was known throughout the upper reaches of the Realm that Prince Raxander would have had his sister strangled as soon as look at her. “I’m trying to save time, Highness,” he’d murmured calmly. “I think I understand what sort of person your royal sister is. Have you any other questions for me?” He swung smoothly back toward the Chancellor.

  Stacefield, for his part, had watched this exchange with some interest. He smiled falsely. “No need, I think. I feel you might be just exactly the sort of man we’re looking for.” He’d cocked his head toward the youth down the table. “Highness?”

  The Prince, his interest in the interview entirely extinguished now, looked aside. “As you wish, Stacefield. I couldn’t possibly care less. She needs to stay away from me, mage, and from the Palace.” He’d gotten to his feet. “You understand?”

  “I do, sire.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, that’s your only real job. Keep her down there in the Borderlands where she can’t bother anyone.” But, of course, the Princess had already had her very well-developed network of spies and correspondents from all over the continent by that time, about which her brother knew nothing. She hardly needed to be near the Palace to cause trouble. “Talk to the Merganser-General about this man’s wages, Stacefield. Just rem
ember the treasury isn’t bottomless,” he hinted.

  Chancellor and firemage had traded a glance full of understanding. “Highness,” the former had bowed, and that was that. Poildrin Franx had an occupation. An interesting one too, even though it frequently brought him to sheep-stenched pastures in obscure valleys like the one where they camped that night, just past the little hamlet of Hovestreit. He sat by the fire, relieved at last of the need to disguise their guest and ecstatic that he’d only need to do so for one more day. “Tomorrow, m’lady, we’ll hand you off to my colleague Shamar Leyn outside Berridge.” He shrugged. “He’ll see you safe to the coast.”

  “Disguised, I take it.”

  Poildrin shrugged. “He’s a shadowmage as well, Madam. You should rely on his judgement.” Leyn was an Imperial, and therefore technically Poildrin’s enemy in this war, but they’d known each other somewhat at the College. Besides, he was from the Southern Rump, practically a neighbor. And finally, the Princess was paying Leyn handsomely for his part in this, and Leyn was a man of many expensive passions. Traxtell shook her head like a dog ridding itself of water.

  “I still don't see why you lot can’t take me there yourselves,” she groused. “I don't see the sense in involving any more people in this than necessary.”

  Poildrin spread his hands wearily; they’d had this conversation before. “What can I say, Excellency? I go where the Princess bids. And now she bids us drop you off with Shamar and then turn right around and head back into these mountains.”

  “Where, no doubt, you’ll cause no end of trouble.”

  Poildrin looked away. “The Princess’ plans are not always obvious,” he replied carefully. This was a poisonous little quadrille they were dancing, the two of them constitutionally unable to keep from digging for information. Both of them lived in a world where power flowed from knowledge, usually of things that were supposed to remain secret. “She’ll send us further word once we leave you,” he lied.

  Traxtell clearly doubted that, but she would get no further and knew it. “Well,” she muttered, “I wish you good fortune, I suppose.” She’d need more, though, for as soon as her treason became known the Emperor would be baying for her blood.

  “And you as well,” Poildrin said after a pause. He’d sent his familiar, the owl he’d bought for sixty gold mergansers, off to deliver his message to the elusive Shamar Leyn, and was expecting an answer anytime. “We’ll know soon enough when we’re to meet him. I’d expect, say, lunchtime.” He had no idea, actually; he just wanted rid of the odious Traxtell as soon as could be. “With luck.”

  “Luck.” The Imperial snorted. “I make my own luck, Franx.” She got heavily to her feet and waddled off into the night, leaving the mage to sigh and look southwest for his returning owl.

  Fucking Imperials.

  He remembered Leyn as lazy and dissolute, a son of the nobility… but clever as well. He’d been an excellent memorizer at the College, his mind sharp in that special way that never had difficulty storing information. Not a very imaginative man, Shamar Leyn, but good for a laugh and a drink, and valuable on test day as a man whose paper you could reliably copy from.

  Leyn had been in Poildrin’s cohort until he’d dropped back a year following his father’s death, shortly before Jerren Greeneyes had gone back to the Empire, but the lad had stuck with it and graduated in his usual flood of excellent marks. Now he waited, according to the owl, at an inn near Berridge Common, next to the local fane. The message had told them to look for a grey horse with a green gold-chased saddle at the inn; if the beast was outside, the mage would be inside. “Big horse, or little?” Firkis frowned.

  Poildrin sighed. He did not figure he really needed to be so cautious as to send the man in ahead as a scout, but caution was the habit of a lifetime for him. So Firkis and Aimee would be wandering into the town, posing as man and wife; a state of affairs that would no doubt come naturally to the smith, who’d lusted after Aimee in a state of painful chastity for years. From down on the ground, the healer’s eyes met the mage’s and she smiled slightly.

  “Does it matter, Firkis?” she asked. “There can’t be but seven hundred people in that town. How many golden saddles can there possibly be?” She straightened; she’d been adjusting a boot-knife. “Don’t worry, Franx. We’ll be fine.” She took her bogus husband’s arm lightly and comfortably underneath her own, causing the big man to flinch slightly. “Shall we take a walk into town, my love?”

  He muttered something that could have been fright or assent, but it hardly mattered; Aimee was already dragging him up the road, their thick boots crunching on the gravel bed, just two villagers in from the hills to do some shopping.

  “You’d better know what you’re doing,” Traxtell spat. At long last tiring of his headaches and with the end of their incognito journey now in sight, Poildrin had stashed the traitor in a deep hollow behind some bushes and, with a sigh of gratitude, let the disguise charm fall away. It was to the lasting credit of Alorin, crouching nearby with her crossbow loaded, that her first sight of Traxtell’s toadlike face hadn’t made her flinch, or even stare. Now she glanced with grave amusement at the mage and rolled her grey eyes.

  “I do.” The simple couple down from the hills would stroll into the inn, would look for a squat Imperial Shadowmage in a corner, and would discreetly drop a short note at his table as they left after their ale. The note would tell the mage to get his horse and move north on the Hovestreit road until he met a tall, vicious-looking valkyrie in a patched green cloak, who would then escort him the rest of the way to the hollow under the bush. “He’ll be here.”

  The traitor had snorted, then let loose a spiteful fart as Alorin rose liquidly and stole out toward the road; the Imperial mage could be expected any time after the sun passed overhead. She brushed self-consciously at herself, twitching hips and shoulders until her leather armor settled more naturally around her; the valkyrie, Poildrin reflected, truly was a gorgeous woman. When in clothes she looked tall and sinewy and capable, but he’d been with her on many jobs and in many places and had seen the lengths she needed to go to while getting ready in the morning. If she looked sinewy, it was only thanks to some really cleverly engineered support garments that did miraculous things to what was, actually, quite a lush figure.

  He never could stop himself from watching her as she strode away, leaving her horse in the hollow. Down in the noisome little dell, Traxtell noticed and laughed coarsely. “She won’t open her legs for the likes of you,” she jeered confidently.

  “That is not her function here,” Poildrin replied primly. He spat out a rusty gob of saliva; the salt pork had wedged itself between his teeth, and he’d been using a knife to pick it out. It hurt. “As long as she gets Shemar Layn to this spot, what she does with her legs is her own business.” He frowned. He hadn’t meant to sound so brusque, but never before had he met a woman who put him so instantly into such a foul mood.

  He’d done jobs like this before, nursemaiding some of the Princess’ sundry correspondents around the woods and hills of the continent, in both Realm and Empire. Very often the people he was shepherding were grateful for his attentions, or at the very least civil; more often than not they could at least make conversation. But not Lady Algar of Traxtell, apparently. The two of them sat in stubborn and vaguely malevolent silence, waiting for the sun to cross the sky and the mage with the fancy saddle to appear.

  Not for the first time, Poildrin wondered how this gassy fool could possibly be of value to the Princess.

  She was going to engineer the surrender of the Starkhorn, though. That was all that mattered, at least as far as Princess Raxillene was concerned. If she could do that, and if the Princess could present the fortress to her brother the Regent on a silver platter, then the Council would have to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, she knew what she was doing. That she could deliver the Realm’s greatest fortress bloodlessly while her brother gambled and fucked his way through the taverns of the Palace. That she was, simp
ly put, a better man for the Regent’s job.

  They’d demur, claiming there was no precedent, that the Prince was in charge, that the King would have never approved if he’d been sane, but Poildrin knew the Princess already had a long-prepared plan for the glorious day that the Council saw sense.

  Like many of her plans, it involved Alorin Kaye and a knife, thrust into some tender and vital part of an enemy’s body.

  Hooves on the road above made both of them go tense. Poildrin saw Traxtell’s eyes go wide, then flicker over toward the mage. He had a dagger, a wickedly sharp one that Firkis had made for him some years back, but he heard just one horse, and that probably meant Shemar Leyn was on his way. “Relax, Excellency,” he muttered, and then he took a deep breath and rose slowly through the bush, straining to see what was coming from the south.

  “You can come out, Franx.” It was Alorin’s flat, deep voice, calm and smooth and full of competence. “I’ve brought Her Excellency’s friend to whisk her away.” The valkyrie was being scornful, even sarcastic, and yet she sounded as if she were discussing the weather. A funny thing, he reflected, the Lammorel accent: it lent itself to mortal insult, but spoken with a calm precision that avoided offense. Poildrin often wished he had that kind of ability. He was always trying for Alorin’s confident, even tones, but he came off sounding sour. “Show yourself.”

  And that was why the first glimpse Leyn had of his old classmate involved Poildrin thrashing his way out of a bush, yanking twigs and dirt from his grey robe, spitting out an errant leaf as he squinted up toward the man on the big grey horse. He laughed, that easy laugh Poildrin recalled from their classes. “You look as though the world is treating you quite well, Franx.”

  “Leyn.” He brushed himself off and grimaced as he plucked a thorn from his finger. “I’ve seldom seen a less feminine saddle.”