Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga)

by Gail Z. Martin

  Prokief and the guards strode away toward where their frightened horses were straining at their tethers and rode off in the direction of Velant.

  “At least it got rid of Prokief,” Piran grumbled.

  Ifrem stood next to Blaine, and Blaine heard the tavern master murmur a prayer to the gods of sea and air for protection. Around him, others invoked the names of household deities or the blessing of the High God. Some of them clutched at amulets or rolled a polished stone prayer bead between their fingers, lips moving in desperate supplication.

  “You’ve been here longer than I have,” Blaine replied, staring in awe at the island peak enveloped in black, roiling clouds. “When’s the last time it erupted?”

  Ifrem shook his head. “Not since I’ve been here.” He paused. “Planning to stay the night?”

  Blaine shrugged. “With the curfew, don’t see as we have a choice.”

  Ifrem smiled. “Stick around after I close the bar and see to the other guests. I might be able to find an answer to your questions.”

  That night, a storm came in from the west. From the tavern’s doorway, Blaine could see the waves crashing against the storm wall, carrying with them a few of the smaller fishing boats. The crews of the larger boats defied the curfew to take their ships far enough out from the docks to avoid being run aground. Rain lashed the coastline, and high winds snapped the tavern’s sign back and forth on its hinges.

  Two soaking-wet travelers arrived just as the bells in the tower struck nine times. Shivering and dripping, the two men hung their sodden cloaks on pegs near the door and stomped the water off their boots.

  “Bad enough that it’s raining so hard a man can’t see, but it’s got that damned ash in it,” one of the newcomers complained as he pushed his way toward the bar. The crowd parted, having no desire to be as wet as he was.

  “It’s black rain, it is,” his companion added. “And the sea’s gone wild. Saw a man get swept into the waves when the water crashed up over the seawall and fell back again. Good thing you’re down at this end of the street. The shops near the corner will have water up to the ankles, that’s for sure.”

  A palpable sense of fear hung over the crowd that huddled in the Crooked House. Ifrem did a brisk business, with patrons opting for hard liquor over ale to calm their nerves. Blaine and his friends sat in a corner, watching the crowd.

  “Mick! What brings you to town on a godsdamned night like this?”

  Blaine looked up to see Wills Jothra, the village cooper, headed their way. “Picked a bad night to go out for some drink, I guess,” Blaine replied.

  Wills pulled up a stool and nodded a greeting to Piran. “Well, your misfortune is my good luck. Been meaning to talk with you…”

  Piran watched the crowd as Wills went into detail on a business deal gone bad. “So that’s the long and short of it,” Wills said, punctuating the end of his tale of woe by finishing off his tankard of ale. “What do you make of it?”

  “Do you think Keffer meant to cheat you?”

  Wills shook his head. “Nah. I think he’s an idiot, and I think he lost the money he owed me gambling.”

  “Idiot or not, he buys a lot of barrels for the pickled vegetables he sells, doesn’t he?”

  Wills nodded. “Aye, when he isn’t pickled himself.”

  “Then give him a choice: Either he pays you cash, with interest, or he pays you in pickles twice the value of the debt.”

  “What am I going to do with all the ruddy pickles?” Wills exclaimed.

  Blaine grinned. “Give one away to everyone who places a new barrel order. Sell them at a discount to the tavern masters. You stay friendly with Keffer, you get value for the debt, and Keffer just might be more careful the next time he owes you money.”

  Wills grinned and slapped the table. “I knew you’d have a good idea, Mick. Let me buy you and your friends a round.”

  Blaine and the others toasted Wills, who thanked him again before moving on. Before long, two more men wandered over to ask Mick’s advice on business affairs, resulting in two more rounds of liquor.

  Blaine shook his head as the last man walked away. “How does a night at the tavern always end up like this?”

  Verran had finished playing, and as the musicians packed up their instruments, he walked over to the table, sliding his pennywhistle into a leather pouch on his belt. “Holding court again, Mick?”

  “Our friend here wants to know why the confused and beleaguered seek him out,” Piran said dryly, his voice slightly slurred from the generosity of Blaine’s “clients.”

  Verran hooked a toe under a stool and brought it close to the table, and poured himself a tankard of ale. “Let’s see… because you can read and do figures, unlike the majority of Edgeland folks. Or maybe it’s because wherever you came from, much as you won’t talk about it with your closest mates,” he said, feigning hurt, “you had schooling.”

  Verran grew serious. “Honestly, Mick, you’ve done a good turn for more of the settlers than I can count. You’ve either stood up for them in a fight, kept them out of trouble, or gotten them out of a jam.” He shrugged. “That’s rare up here. People remember.”

  “I always figured it was why Prokief had it in for you,” Piran added. “Do you think that’s why he took Dawe? Because he knows you and Dawe are mates?”

  Blaine shrugged. “I wouldn’t pretend to know why Prokief does anything,” he replied. But that wasn’t exactly true. If there had been anyone who hated Ian McFadden more than his own son, it was Vedran Pollard. Time after time, Pollard and the elder McFadden had gone out of their way to quash each other’s business dealings, embarrass each other at court, even hire henchmen to poison herds in the fields. It had always amazed Blaine that Pollard hadn’t beaten him to murdering old man McFadden. And before his assignment to Velant, Prokief had been Pollard’s right-hand man.

  There was a crash and the sound of breaking wood, and one of the front storm shutters tore lose, sending a gust of rain into the tavern. Blaine and Piran jumped up and headed for where their cloaks were hung. “We’ll get it,” Blaine assured Ifrem, who was busy behind the bar.

  Blaine reached for his cloak and paused. “How in Raka did my cloak get wet? I’ve been here all evening.”

  Ifrem gave a jerk of his head toward the last peg on the wall. “Your cloak’s down there. That’s my cloak. I’ll grant they look a lot alike. I had to run out to the shed for more whiskey, curfew or no curfew.”

  Blaine and Piran grabbed tools and a handful of nails and ventured out into the storm. “Not worried about the curfew?” Piran shouted above the storm.

  Blaine found the broken shutter snared in the bushes, and together, he and Piran wrestled it into place against the wind. “You expect guards to patrol in this weather?” he shouted back. A glance up and down the deserted, rain-soaked road proved his point. Soaked to the skin, Blaine and Piran headed back into the tavern, where Ifrem was already mopping up the water that had soaked the first row of tables.

  “Hang your cloaks by the fire in the kitchen,” Ifrem barked. “You’ll find some dry clothes in the storage room. I’ll pour you a whiskey once I’m done. Your drinks are on me tonight. Much obliged for the help.”

  By the time Blaine and Piran had dried off and changed clothes, most of the tavern’s patrons had drifted to the upstairs rooms or took their places on the benches near the banked fire, ready for the night. When the inn was quiet, Ifrem motioned for Blaine and the others to join him in the kitchen.

  “You wanted to know when the last time was that the volcano erupted,” Ifrem said. “I don’t know, but I’ve got something that might tell us.” He went to a wooden cabinet and reached into the back corner, withdrawing a leather cylinder. Carefully, his rough fingers teased out a yellowed piece of parchment. He motioned for Blaine to clear a spot on the large cook’s table, and spread a cloth over the table for a dry surface before he set down the parchment. As he spread it out, Blaine gave a low whistle.

  “Where in th
e Valley of the Gods did you get that?”

  Ifrem grinned. “When I first got my Ticket, I apprenticed to the man who owned the Crooked House. That was about five years ago. When he came down with the fever, he called in a witness and gave me this inn.” He looked at the others conspiratorially.

  “I sat with him in his last hours. And when we were alone, he told me that when he’d first come to Edgeland in the early days of the colony, he’d had a man come to the inn who stayed in one of his upper rooms. The guest was one of the very first to be sent to Velant and then earn his Ticket. Time in the mines broke him, and he wasn’t fit to set up his own homestead; that’s why he stayed at the inn. Well, long and short of it is, the man took sick and died. Since he owed the old owner for his room and board, the tavern keeper claimed what little was in the man’s room in payment. And he found this.”

  Ifrem tapped the parchment. “From what Evath, the old tavern master could figure, the boarder had been an astrologer and scholar who’d managed to run afoul of someone with the power to banish him. Not sure how he did it, but he managed to smuggle a few of his papers with him. Now, I’ve always wondered, what would be so important that someone would bother to bring a map all the way to the end of the world?”

  “And?” Blaine asked.

  “See for yourself.” Ifrem spread the parchment carefully with his hands. Piran and Verran helped to hold down the curled edges.

  A carefully inked map showed the coast of Edgeland, but neither Velant prison nor Skalgerston Bay were marked. The surveyor had done a thorough job of noting every one of the land’s inlets and jagged fjords, as well as the places early explorers had found hot springs or dug for copper or gems. And on the corner of the map, well off the coast of Edgeland, lay a small island marked with a jagged peak and tipped in red. Estendall.

  “It’s a nice map,” Blaine said, straightening, “but what’s the big secret? I can understand why Prokief might not want colonists to have a full map of Edgeland, but—”

  “Look in the margins,” Ifrem replied.

  Blaine bent over the map, straining to make out the fine, spidery handwriting by candlelight. “The eruptions of Estendall,” he murmured, carefully running his finger down a list of dates. He looked up at Ifrem. “Donderath claimed Edgeland years ago, but didn’t really pay any attention until King Merrill created Velant. So who was around to notice the volcano?”

  Ifrem shrugged. “Donderath isn’t the only land to have ever found Edgeland. Before Merrill’s navy drove off everyone else, there were explorers from across the sea who came to Edgeland for the furs. Later, when word spread about the rubies, more came. Ships have fished these waters for a long time. I suspect that the man who made this talked to anyone he met who knew anything at all about Edgeland.”

  “There’s no pattern to the dates,” Blaine said.

  “Our mapmaker noticed something interesting,” Ifrem said. “Every time over the last fifty years that Estendall erupted, there was a major war going on back on the Continent. Nineteen years ago—look, it’s during the Hoagshed War between Tarrant and Meroven. Forty-one years back, it’s the War of Decision, between the two rivals for the Donderath throne. I suspect that the dates farther back come from the bard’s tales, but our mapmaker found a connection of each one to a major war.”

  “And you think that Estendall’s eruption now has something to do with the war in Donderath?”

  Ifrem nodded. “More than that. I think it has something to do with magic.”

  Blaine pulled up a chair. “I’m not sure that I follow you.”

  “Look at this.” Ifrem pointed to the notation on the map. The map was marked in places with a “u” topped with a ring, a symbol of magic. Some of the locations, Blaine recognized as shrines to the major gods. Others appeared to be natural features, such as caverns or mountain peaks. There was one spot, far to the north of Skalgerston Bay, out in the frozen wilderness.

  “That’s near where the trappers disappeared,” Piran murmured.

  Blaine murmured, looking at the other place of magic marked in the far north. One of the “u”-ring symbols for magic sat off the shore of Edgeland, exactly where Estendall spewed its smoke and fire. “What does it mean if a spot is a place of magic?”

  Ifrem was silent for a moment, as if debating something with himself. Finally, he sighed and began to roll up the map. “How much do you know about magic?”

  Blaine shrugged. “Not much.”

  “Mages have a hundred different names for magic, but all that really matters are two: visithara and hasithara. Visithara is the name of natural, untamed magic. It’s wild, like the sea. Hasithara is the name for tame magic, magic that can be harnessed and controlled. Like water in an aqueduct. It’s still the same stuff that’s in the ocean, but it has been shaped by a person’s control.”

  “So?” Piran asked.

  Ifrem rolled his eyes. “The magic that people can control is hasithara. The untamed magic is called visithara.” He replaced the map in the leather container and returned it to its hiding place. “They say places like the ones marked on the map are where the wild power—visithara—flows the strongest. People without magic think the gods seem closer there. A shrine or a temple is built, or the people who live nearby bring offerings to the spirits. For someone with the ability to use magic—hasithara—their power is stronger in those places. For true mages, supposedly, those places are a source of power.” He shut the cabinet door behind him and leaned against it. “And according to legend and the bards, when powerful magic is done, it can backlash through those same places of power.”

  “Are you saying that magic made Estendall erupt?” Piran asked skeptically.

  “Something happened yesterday that put anyone with a hedge witch’s crumb of power flat on their backs,” Ifrem replied. “Today, Estendall explodes. We hear hints that the warden-mages’ magic isn’t working right. I think someone’s tapping into the places of power, creating a backlash.” He paused.

  “Evath told me that the old man he got the map from almost never came out of his room. Seemed to be scared of his shadow. Evath wondered if someone might have been looking for him—or for the maps.”

  “That’s not as crazy as it sounds,” Piran said. “I’ve heard rumors that Prokief has taken bribes from Donderath on more than one occasion to make sure someone in Velant disappeared. It might have taken the old man’s enemies a while to catch up with him.”

  “Do you really think Prokief’s mages had something to do with the volcano?” Blaine scoffed. “They’re strong enough to bully the convicts, but…”

  “Nothing like King Merrill’s battle mages,” Ifrem finished for him. “Or, we can guess, the battle mages of Meroven and the other kingdoms.”

  “Gods save us,” Blaine murmured. “You think it’s the war causing this?”

  Ifrem shrugged. “Do you have a better explanation?”

  Verran eyed their host. “For an innkeeper, you know a lot about magic.”

  Ifrem turned away. “We all were something else before we came to Velant,” he said quietly.

  “I know one doesn’t ask about the past up here,” Blaine said. “But I have the feeling that whatever is happening stands to cause us all a lot of grief. If there’s a way to keep Prokief off our backs—keep him from taking it out on the colonists—I’d like to figure out what it is.”

  Ifrem was quiet for a moment as if struggling with himself, and then shrugged. “I should have figured you’d ask when I showed you the map. I was assistant to Lord Arrington’s senior mage.”

  Verran raised an eyebrow. “You’re a mage?”

  Ifrem chuckled. “No. I was assistant to a mage. Chosen because I could read and write and because I couldn’t do any magic and therefore couldn’t steal any secrets.”

  “So what did you steal?”

  “Nothing of value. My master, the mage, helped to… advance… Lord Arrington’s fortunes. After a while, the lord grew worried that my master knew too many secrets. He betr
ayed my master and had him killed.”

  “Why didn’t they kill you, too?”

  Ifrem gave a bitter grin. “I ran away the night my master was taken. I left the city, figuring that Lord Arrington would want rid of me, too. Loose ends, you know. He sent his men after me, and I was pretty sure none of the king’s guards would take my side if it came to a fight, so I did the only thing I could.”

  “You got yourself arrested,” Blaine supplied.

  Ifrem nodded. “Stole some fruit in plain view of the guards. Once I was in custody, Lord Arrington couldn’t easily get to me without a reason. I figured transport to Velant was better than losing my head.”

  “And do you still think that?” Blaine asked.

  “On good days,” Ifrem replied.

  “So the long and short of it is, you know enough about how magic works to be dangerous, but you can’t do any yourself,” Verran said.

  “Guilty as charged.”

  Blaine met his eyes. “We understand why you wouldn’t want Prokief and his mages to know about you—or the map. Your secret is safe.”

  Ifrem laid a hand on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t have told you if I didn’t already know that, Mick,” he said. “Trouble is coming. If I can help, I’m happy to do it.”

  “If trouble comes, we’ll need all the help we can get,” Blaine replied.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WITH ALSIBETH’S WARNING WEIGHING ON HIS mind, Connor declined Engraham’s offer of a room for the night. He took the two lidded buckets of bitterbeer and made his way back up the hill toward Quillarth Castle.

  Night had fallen and yet the streets were packed with people. He heard snippets of conversation about the strange bells in the city, comments that fell to whispers when he grew closer. He moved as quickly as he could, given the press of the crowd, guessing that Garnoc would be anxious enough for word that he would forgive a bit of spilled ale.

  “Got a taste for the bitters, I see,” the guard at the gate said with a nod toward his buckets as he waved him through the entrance.

  “My master said there was only one thing that would quench his thirst,” Connor replied with a joviality he did not feel.