Renegade Wizards aot-3

by Lucien Soulban

  That left Tythonnia to quietly help Raff with the cleaning of the hare meat from the bone and burying the viscera in the pouch of the animal’s fur.

  “You do that well,” Raff remarked.

  “Practice,” Tythonnia admitted. “My father taught me everything I know about hunting and surviving.”

  “Did he teach you magic as well?” Raff asked.

  “No. That was Desmora, a wise woman in our village. She had Vagros blood.”

  “Really!” Raff said, his curiosity piqued. “Wyldling magic?”

  Tythonnia blushed then realized there was nothing to be ashamed of, not in front of Raff. “Some Wyldling craft,” she admitted. “But it was a hard discipline.”

  “Yes!” Raff said. “Discipline. People miss that fact. They think the Wyldling ways are carefree-easy. Which clan of Vagros did she come from?”

  “The Gratos,” Tythonnia said. She washed her hands with a bit of water from her waterskin.

  “I know them,” Raff said, nodding. “I believe they’ve settled, most of them. A few Vagros are with us.”

  “That’s surprising,” Tythonnia said.

  “Hunters captured one of their seers. For practicing Wyldling magics. They’re nearly the last practitioners of it, you know.”

  “Ah,” Tythonnia remarked. She couldn’t help herself. She felt her skin flush at the comment. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry?” Raff asked, scrutinizing her. “You’re not part of the Wizards of High Sorcery anymore.”

  “But I was,” Tythonnia said, drying her hands. “I can’t help feeling responsible, like I failed somehow-” She hesitated.

  Raff cocked an eyebrow at her and waited for her to complete her sentence.

  Tythonnia glanced at the others. “The Wizards of High Sorcery don’t understand why certain magics exist.”

  Raff nodded and motioned for Tythonnia to sit next to him on the grass, away from the others. When they were both seated, their legs crossed, Raff planted his chin in the palm of his hand and waited for her to continue.

  “They can’t tell the difference between why they practice magic and why fortune-tellers with their so-called cupboard tricks practice theirs.”

  “And why do the others practice their magic?” he asked with a half-cocked smile.

  Tythonnia felt like she was back with Highmage Astathan, answering his riddling questions and trying to glean the reasons behind the queries. “To offer comfort,” Tythonnia said.

  Raff smiled and nodded; he seemed pleased, like a tutor’s pride for the ingenuity of his principal student.

  “The orders don’t understand that,” Raff said. “They think all sorcerers study magic for the same reason: for power. That’s not what this movement is about.”

  Tythonnia listened and nodded in places she thought appropriate. Only she found herself nodding more often than she realized. Raff explained how Berthal’s movement was about freeing magic again, so its use wasn’t restricted in practice or parsed out to only those who could afford it. He wanted to eliminate the barbaric practice of the test, a process that crippled or killed bright and promising students who be forced into the test too early.

  The more Raff spoke, the more passionate he grew in his statements. He was truly bothered by what he saw happening with the wizards. And the more he spoke, the more Tythonnia realized that he was once a wizard himself.

  Finally, after an hour of talking, Raff excused himself. It was getting late, and they all needed their sleep. Raff retreated into the darkness to relieve his bladder, and Tythonnia made her way to the bedrolls. She found Ladonna lying there, awake and watching her. Tythonnia hunkered down next to her and pretended to drift asleep.

  “Good conversation?” Ladonna whispered.

  “I–I think he’s Berthal,” Tythonnia responded.

  “I know,” Ladonna said. “His staff holds powerful magics … too powerful for a mere guide.”

  “He doesn’t trust us yet,” Tythonnia said. “For the last couple of days, he’s been leading us in circles. He’s taking his time and-shh. He’s coming back.”

  Raff returned and settled down away from the three of them. Shortly after, his rumbling snores filled the air.

  Over the next two days, they continued walking, though both Ladonna and Par-Salian finally realized their path was not straight and true. Raff took the time to speak with each of them, finding out why they’d decided to become renegades and how they ended up meeting.

  Their stories were well rehearsed, what with all the time spent practicing on the journey to Palanthas and during their nights in the Wanderer’s Welcome. Ladonna spoke of a desire for power without the restrictions of High Sorcery impeding her ambitions. She was convincing in her story, and Tythonnia had to wonder what shred of truth made it so compelling. Par-Salian spoke of falling in love with a woman who died during her Test of High Sorcery. The grief drove him away from the principles of the wizards.

  Finally, the question came to Tythonnia, and after considering her predigested answer, she decided on a different tack. Her talk with Raff had been intimacy of a sort. She found herself wanting to share her story with him and was suddenly worried that anything she lied about would sound false because it lacked any real conviction. Neither, however, could she tell him the real truth about why they were there.

  The fact was, she knew why she was there, but …

  “I don’t know,” Tythonnia admitted. “I’m not sure what I’m doing here.”

  Everyone stared at her in surprise-her companions for her off-script remark and Raff with an enigmatic but bemused expression that said she’d caught him off guard. Beyond that, however, she couldn’t explain herself. She hadn’t realized it until listening to Raff the other night, but the fact was, she’d been feeling that way since the journey began. The nostalgia of sleeping under the stars, of hunting and surviving, of speaking with the Vagros and remembering the Wyldling spells she once learned through Desmora-all that had affected her deeply.

  Ever since the test, she had been forced to reexamine her very identity, down to her sexuality. The only words that brought her comfort belonged to the voices of Desmora and Grandmother Yassa and Kandri; the only lessons that gave her strength were learned outside the books and stuffy lecture halls of the orders. The tenets of High Sorcery no longer reassured her. They were just words, applicable to everyone in general and never meant to console anyone in particular.

  Everyone was still staring at Tythonnia, however, and she realized Raff would not let a remark like that slip away. So she shifted to another truth.

  “There’s a member of the order,” Tythonnia said. “Justarius. He’s a good friend. Not scared of much and a bit reckless maybe. He could shoot an arrow straighter than me, and there was nobody better at handling a horse. He was better than me at spell-riding. And fast on his feet.”

  “You loved him?” Raff asked.

  “No,” Tythonnia said quickly. “It’s just that he reminds me of my cousins … men of the woods. Only Justarius is smarter than them. Honestly, he’s better than me at about everything I think I’m good at. Or-he used to be.”

  “What happened to him?” Raff said.

  “The test,” Tythonnia responded. “He survived it, but it crippled his leg. He’ll never ride well again or run or hunt. He’s now just another book-learned wizard. The test hurt the strongest parts of him while it left me untouched.”

  “The test leaves no one unscathed,” Raff said.

  “Maybe not. But I survived it better than he did. And he was better than me at everything. Doesn’t that mean I should’ve been hurt, not him?” Tythonnia asked.

  “The test is arbitrary,” Raff said, his gaze growing distant with a sad twist of his mouth. “It kills the best of us, makes us beggars desperate for the scraps of talent left.”

  The remainder of the walk was spent quietly, though it didn’t escape Tythonnia’s notice that Par-Salian and Ladonna had exchanged troubled glances when they thought she w
asn’t looking.

  For whatever reason, Raff seemed to trust them more after that. He led the trio to a camp nestled at the foot of the Vingaard range. There were more than three dozen tents of various sizes and almost as many wagons with countless horses either hitched or standing idly by. They rested near a mountain stream that cascaded down over polished rocks, surrounding a great fire pit that had been dug into the ground. The smell of roasted meat tickled Tythonnia’s nostrils. Nearby, children sat around a woman who read to them.

  As soon as Raff appeared, several men and women greeted him with eager hails and smiles. They eyed his three companions, but there was nothing belligerent in their stares, merely curiosity.

  When they called him Berthal, he merely turned to the three wizards and asked, “So when did you know?”

  Ladonna smiled, Par-Salian appeared embarrassed, and Tythonnia answered, “The night we first talked, just you and me.”

  Berthal smiled and made his way to one of the tents. Before entering, he motioned to the three of them and told the others to find space for them. He vanished through the tent flap.

  Berthal found Kinsley and a woman waiting for him. Both were standing, as though expecting his imminent arrival, and chatting, though the woman appeared embarrassed and awkward. She was very slight, more like a young boy in frame than a woman, and she wore weathered traveling clothes made of worn leather. Yet for all her mousy qualities and a lower lip that drooped, she was attractive still. It was her brown eyes, Berthal decided, soulful and yet nothing escaped their notice. Whoever was caught in her gaze was caught completely. Around her arm, she wore a ragged, black armband.

  “About time you got back,” Kinsley said. “Everything go well with the three new arrivals?”

  “Well enough,” Berthal said. “We’ll talk about it later. This must be Mariyah?”

  Kinsley introduced Mariyah, who smiled shyly in acknowledgement. From the pack slung forward on her shoulders, she produced a small wood box inlaid with mother-of-pearl panels. She presented it to him with both hands, her smile eager.

  Berthal accepted the box and sat down on his bedroll. When he noticed he was the only one seated, he motioned for the others to join him.

  Inside the velvet-lined box were scrolls, bits of jewelry, and flasks of liquid-all magical, no doubt, but Berthal was eager to dig deeper. He’d heard about such pocketsafe boxes, containers that were larger on the inside than they appeared on the outside. While the box itself was impressive, it was said to hold a valuable artifact, at least, that’s what Mariyah’s overly amorous mentor had told her in one of his bids to win her to his bed.

  What she must have endured, Berthal thought and stopped rummaging. “Thank you for this,” he said, putting the box on his lap.

  “Don’t you wish to examine it?” Mariyah asked in surprise.

  “In a moment,” Berthal said. “What’s more important is that you made it here safely.”

  Mariyah smiled broadly, her expression one of shyness and a strange pride that would not be concealed. Berthal liked the strength he saw in her, which had not been immediately apparent. He glanced back into the box and saw the key made of bone lace.

  “Ah,” he said, the comment escaping his lips in surprise. “It can’t be.”

  “What?” Mariyah asked eagerly. “Is the key important?”

  Berthal picked it up and examined it. He almost laughed.

  “What is it?” Kinsley asked, trying to examine it without touching it.

  “The Key of Gadrella,” he said in awe.

  “Highmage Gadrella of Tarsis?” Mariyah asked. She shifted closer to examine the key under new light.

  “And yet my question remains the same,” Kinsley asked. “What is it?”

  “An answer to a dilemma,” Berthal said. “Well done, Mari-yah. You’ve more than earned your place among us.”

  The Journeyman watched as Par-Salian, Ladonna, and Tythonnia were given a spot to lay camp. The renegade movement was growing in strength, and they were welcoming more and more people each day. They were definitely becoming a threat to the Wizards of High Sorcery, even though their number included children playing and the husbands and wives of the sorcerers making the camp livable.

  Still, it was easy enough to gain Kinsley’s attention. Once the Journeyman realized who he was at the tavern in Smiths’ Alley, a little display of magic was all he needed. After that, a touch of persuasion and acting to prove his sincerity earned him an invitation here, where it was easier to continue watching the three wizards on their mission.

  And if the scant records of the event were remotely accurate, here was also where matters unraveled.

  Talking would be far more difficult, since a hundred people or more surrounded them. Looking around, Tythonnia realized that the accompanying families far outnumbered the sorcerers. Magic was a devotion to the Wizards of High Sorcery, and while not a celibate organization, the quest for knowledge was often thought to come at the expense of living a normal life. Unfortunately, that was also the standard that they measured others by. If one was not willing to sacrifice everything important to him to study magic, then one did not deserve the knowledge.

  While Tythonnia understood the reasoning behind that notion, she also thought the wizards had somehow blown matters out of proportion. Most of them didn’t even understand why they did what they did, only that it was a tradition handed down to them that they thought should be maintained.

  The more Tythonnia thought about it, the more upset she became. These people, at the camp, weren’t renegades and dangerous outlaws. There were families and men and women who tempered life and magic. And they were unjustly condemned for trying to find balance in their daily routine.

  Certainly, there were sorcerers who hungered for power and who despoiled the art by using it to spread misery, but more often than not, sorcerers wanted to be left alone. They used magic to help their neighbors or themselves. They brought comfort or they protected. They raised families, they nurtured, they loved, and for that they were hunted for using a natural affinity to the Wyldling.

  “You’re talking to yourself,” Ladonna whispered as they dug a small fire pit and surrounded it with rocks.

  “Am I?” Tythonnia asked, embarrassed. Her mouth had been moving, she realized, and she forced herself to calm down. Whether or not she agreed with what they were doing there, she still had orders to follow and an oath to fulfill. Distasteful or not, she’d made a promise.

  And still …

  Par-Salian returned with fresh water from the stream, and after they were done making camp, they decided it was time to explore. The camp leaders, however, had a different idea. Two men and two women approached the trio. Their leader had ebony skin and a mixture of braided and beaded hair that ran to the nape of his neck. He looked to be of Vagros stock in his manner and style.

  “My name is Shasee. Welcome to the camp,” he said, shaking hands and exchanging introductions with Par-Salian, Tythonnia, and Ladonna.

  “We are a community,” he explained, “and everyone here is expected to participate and to pull their weight. I am told you three cast magic?”

  The three companions nodded, listening patiently.

  “Good. Welcome, then. We ask that you not cast magic around the camp, especially when it comes to your chores.”

  “Why?” Ladonna asked. She was irked; she wasn’t used to someone dictating her use of the arts.

  “For the children,” Shasee explained patiently. It was obvious he’d encountered that particular resistance before. “It gets the little ones excited and sets a bad example for them, implying that magic is a trick to avoid hard work, a plaything. They’re too young to understand how dangerous it can be. Unless you want a dozen children following you around constantly, begging you to show them a trick like urchins looking for steel.”

  Tythonnia struggled hard to suppress her smile. Ladonna and Par-Salian were shocked; they had clearly never entertained the notion that renegades would act responsibly when
it came to magic. That was something they always believed was the province of wizards alone.

  “We’ll be careful,” Tythonnia said. “How can we help?”

  Shasee smiled. “You tell me,” he said. “We need someone to read to the children. To help teach them.”

  “I’m not a teacher,” Tythonnia said. “But I do hunt.”

  “Excellent,” Shasee said. “We need more food for this coming week. Anything you can find.” He pointed to the grizzled man standing next to him. “Lorall will tell you where the hunting is good.”

  Lorall nodded in greeting.

  “What do you teach the children?” Par-Salian asked nervously.

  “Reading and history mostly. We have no tablets for them to write on, so …” he said, trailing off with a shrug.

  “I can do that,” Par-Salian said. “History is a favorite subject of mine.”

  Everyone turned to Ladonna expectantly.

  “Fine,” Ladonna said with a roll of her eyes. “I can mend.”

  “You can?” Tythonnia asked. Even Par-Salian was surprised by the admission.

  “Yes,” Ladonna said. “Rosie taught me. Now hush about it, or I’ll show you what else I can do with a needle and thread.”

  Tythonnia and Lorall returned after a few hours with four hares, tied together at the legs, and a small boar, all being dragged behind them on a hunting litter. She was grateful for the hunt the past few days, the simplicity of living off the land and working her muscles to earn a meal. Her injuries burned, but it felt rewarding. Several times she found herself contemplating this spell or that to lure more game to them or to ambush their prey more easily. But the thought of hunting with magic felt abhorrent to her. Magic wasn’t a crutch. It was a dangerous tool that shouldn’t be used without heavy consideration. And yet she’d grown so comfortable with it she knew she was tempted to use it as a substitute for real work.

  Thankfully, the other hunting teams did well enough. A couple bagged deer and more hares, while those less fortunate took to gathering wild apples and edible berries. Nobody returned empty-handed, and with the provisions purchased from the nearby village of Dart, the camp had four more days of food. Yet it felt like they were falling behind, that there were too many mouths to feed.