The Wandering Mage (Convergence Book 2)

by Melissa McShane

  “I wonder where they went,” Jeddan said, stopping inside the front door, which had been smashed. He scanned the ground. “A lot of people came through here, not that that’s news. But I can’t see any indication of people being dragged away. And only two or three people other than us went out the back.”

  “They had to go somewhere,” I said.

  “I’m just saying I can’t tell where that is,” Jeddan said. He went through the door and stood for a moment, looking toward the rest of the town. “Do you want to look further?”

  “I think we have to,” I said.

  I wish we hadn’t. We found the first bodies, all men, about a hundred yards from the farmhouse. They’d been dead for a while—Jeddan said probably a week. I don’t want to know what he’s seen that he knows that so precisely. There weren’t many bodies, but we didn’t look very hard for them.

  It didn’t take long for us to establish what had happened: the town had been raided, the villagers and their livestock rounded up and taken somewhere, those who fought back were killed. We both agreed it was likely soldiers had done this, Jeddan based on the nature of the dead people’s wounds, me because I’ve seen mobs and I’ve seen raids and I can tell what kind of damage is caused by which. I wish that weren’t true.

  It sickens me that the Balaenics just left the bodies there to rot. They saw the Castavirans as enemies, true, but that was like they didn’t think they were human. I have to stop thinking about it if I want to keep my meal down.

  After about an hour we’d had our fill of the destruction and decided to move on, since there was nothing we could do. We were both depressed, I think, and I was nauseated by all the death, so we decided we’d hurry through Debressken so we could finish our business in Hasskian and get back on the road.

  It only took a few minutes for that plan to go to hell. It was full light when we left the ransacked village, and we were no longer the only travelers on the Hasskian road. No one we passed seemed inclined to speak; most of them kept their heads down and ignored us. Or maybe they were just huddled up against the cold. Either way, it’s not that unusual for travelers to keep to themselves, because you never know if the person who wants to be friendly is actually looking for a victim. And we were just as happy not to talk to anyone.

  So it was surprising when we were hailed in an unfriendly voice and told to stop where we were. I hadn’t been paying attention—was hunched into my coat like everyone else, blinking away the tiny cold motes of snow blowing into my face—so when I looked up I was surprised to see an armed guard pointing at us. Another guard had accosted one of our fellow travelers and had a rifle, not military issue, held in a way that suggested violence was definitely an option.

  Jeddan and I looked at each other, and he shrugged, which I took to mean “let’s try to avoid trouble, but we can overcome him if we have to.” We walked over to the guard, trying to look innocent, though if the man was as suspicious as he sounded, he probably thought Jeddan was a threat because of his size. Jeddan no doubt felt the same way, because he trailed behind me so I could do the talking.

  “What’s your business in Debressken?” he said. He wore a fur-lined cap and a heavy coat, and his nose was red and drippy. I saw smears on his gloves where he’d swiped the back of his hand across it. Lots of smears. It made me feel like my own nose needed wiping, though it didn’t.

  “None,” I said, going for politeness. “We’re on our way to Hasskian. Just passing through.”

  “Fine,” he said. “We’ll give you an escort.”

  “Why do we need an escort?” I said.

  “We aren’t taking any chances, not after we been attacked,” he said. “You could be foreigners in disguise.”

  “Do you think foreigners could possibly speak Balaenic this well?” I said.

  He shrugged, and said, “Not taking any chances.”

  “Looks like you took care of the foreigners well enough,” Jeddan said. “If that was their village we saw a ways back.”

  The guard looked as if he wanted to find something suspicious in this statement, but couldn’t. “Brought it on themselves, trying to attack us,” he said. “Lord Governor sent out the troops and took them all away.”

  “It’s not a small town,” I said. “Where did they take them? Far enough away to keep them from attacking honest Balaenic folk like you, I’m sure.”

  He grinned. It wasn’t a nice grin. “Put them in a camp northeast of Hasskian,” he said. “Nobody’s sure what to do with them. Can’t let them attack us, but we won’t kill women and children no matter if they’re foreigners. Lord Governor’s still thinking about it. He’s a good ruler, even if he is touched.”

  “Touched?” I said, because I’d never heard anything to suggest Endolessar wasn’t mentally stable.

  “Touched by the magic,” the guard said. “One of those who rose up after the calamity to work magic. Lord Governor Endolessar can move things without touching them.”

  “I’m surprised he wasn’t lynched,” Jeddan said.

  “We’re not small-minded people,” the guard said, and I had to pretend I was coughing to cover my laughter. “Nothing wrong with magic if you use it for good. We had a bunch of people changed like that, all of them swearing to use their magic to benefit their city. I almost wish it was me.” He looked more closely at my face. “You’ve got the eyes,” he said. “Are you…” Despite his words, he looked afraid. A reasonable fear, since he’d been harassing us.

  “We are,” I said, and on a whim did the water-summoning pouvra almost in his face. I’m most comfortable with fire, but I didn’t want to scare him further—that’s not true, I did want to scare him, but it was an ignoble desire that would have done nothing but satisfy me. Jeddan, for his part, passed his immaterial hand through the man’s arm, making him look as if he were going to be sick. I know Jeddan did that because it’s the only overt pouvra he has, but I’m sure he got as much satisfaction out of doing it to the man as I would have from fire.

  “I’m sorry,” the guard said, “I didn’t—I wouldn’t—but you’re not going to Venetry, then?”

  “After Hasskian,” I said, puzzled. If we’d (I was going to write “if we’d asked him more questions, we might not have gone to Hasskian at all” but that’s not true, we still would have needed to warn Endolessar even if we’d known about the king’s summons.)

  “Well, safe journey, then,” the guard said. “If you stop at the sentry post inside the Hasskian city gate, and tell them you’re magickers, they’ll take care of you. Sorry about the misunderstanding.”

  “That’s…all right,” I said, and we went on down the road. Off to the left, another guard was turning away a traveler who presumably didn’t have a good reason to be there, and there was a line forming at the city gate.

  Debressken grew up around us, made of stone hauled from the quarries to the west, cheaper than timber in this place, and the people were surprisingly friendly. Or maybe it wasn’t surprising, if they knew their guards were turning away “undesirables” before they could get this far. The snow was falling more heavily, still tiny specks, but they drove into my eyes and nose, and I turned up my collar and pulled my hat down over my eyes.

  “They took them northeast,” Jeddan said. “What’s northeast?”

  “Nothing that I know of,” I said. “Nothing special, anyway, unless the convergence changed the terrain. More plains, more towns. A forest, not a big one. Maybe that’s why it’s special—they can round up hundreds of people and there’s no one to make a fuss about it.”

  “What can we do?” he said.

  “Us? Nothing. What do you think? We can’t walk into Venetry trailing a village’s worth of Castavirans and their cattle,” I said. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, then thought better of doing it again.

  “It just doesn’t seem right,” he said, but he fell silent and we walked the rest of the way to Hasskian without saying anything. Not much point, when we were both thinking the same thing and neither of u
s had a solution.

  For the last mile or so we shared the road with a dozen other travelers, all mounted, who came up from behind and then passed us. Apparently they met the stringent Debresskian code of acceptability. We watched as, one by one, they were stopped at the gate, a big iron-barred door a good ten feet tall that had a rusty portcullis drawn up above it.

  Hasskian is a good distance from the Fensadderian border, and it’s been almost seventy years since Balaen came under attack from the west, but the last time, the enemy got this far, and Hasskian held the defense for fifteen days before the army could arrive to repulse the invaders. So its gate, and the black stone walls circling it, are there for a reason.

  I’m sure they don’t realize the irregularity of the stones make the walls easy for a determined person to scale, and the spacing of the three gates means there are places where said determined person can get inside the city without anyone noticing. I’ve been to Hasskian half a dozen times over the years, even though it’s been a while, but this was the first time I’ve gone in via the gate.

  When it was our turn, the guard, who was better armed and armored than the Debresskian and had the hard look of a man accustomed to hurting people, said, “Name and business?”

  “Rokyar Axe,” Jeddan said—I didn’t know the name of his village until that minute, and it was nice to see my surmise about his occupation proved correct.

  “Thalessi Scales,” I said, “and we have been touched by magic and would like to see the Lord Governor on a private matter.”

  “All magickers are to see the Lord Governor upon entry,” he said. (I still think “magickers” sounds stupid. I wonder who came up with it.) “Follow me.”

  That was easier than I’d expected. We went through the gate and into a tiny round room at the base of one of the towers flanking the portcullis. Most of it was taken up by a table on which lay a stack of official-looking papers, a shallow dish of ink, and a wooden stamp stained dark with use. The guard scribbled our names on two of the papers, stamped them, and handed them to Jeddan and me. “You know where the Citadel is?” he said. I nodded. He didn’t need to know how well I knew the Citadel, at least certain very well guarded rooms of it. “Show these to the majordomo. He’ll make sure you see the Lord Governor.”

  We thanked him and set out. Hasskian is an old city, older than Venetry, and its age shows in the narrowness of its streets, which are worn slick from the passage of hundreds of thousands of feet over the last five hundred years, and the narrowness of its houses, built right up against one another, some of them sharing common walls. It was cleaner than I remembered; I think they finally put in modern plumbing sometime in the last seven years, because no one was dumping chamber pots out the windows. Another one of Endolessar’s plans to improve the lives of his citizens and make himself look good at the same time. I wonder how much it cost. Well, we weren’t in the slums, so maybe those were as smelly and dangerous as I remembered.

  The people of Hasskian didn’t look as if they were afraid of whatever danger the foreign “invaders” might pose. They were as friendly as city-dwellers ever get, which is to say they’re happy to nod in greeting, but they have an air about them that says they won’t intrude on your business and they expect the same courtesy from you. I like that about cities. The streets were full of people going about their business, but not so full that we had trouble getting from the gate to the Citadel.

  The grand-sounding building is actually just a manor in a part of Hasskian that was razed about a hundred years ago so the rich could build larger, nicer, more solitary houses than were available in Hasskian at the time. It looks like a tiny castle, with turrets that couldn’t possibly have full-sized rooms in them, whitewashed stone, a little front door that’s a replica of Hasskian’s gate and, unbelievably, a moat. Endolessar’s great-grandparents built it, and people actually travel great distances to see it. I guess some people are so bored they’ll do anything for entertainment.

  There was a guard standing at attention outside the gate (standing open, tiny portcullis raised) but we showed him our papers and he waved us through without even examining them. Inside, the Citadel looked even more like a castle. Our footsteps echoed off the twenty-foot-high stone ceiling, ribbed with more stone, and tapestries hung on every wall.

  Opposite the door was an arched opening through which I could see a long, long table and an equally long fireplace holding what appeared to be most of an oak tree, ashy with the residue of past fires. A stone staircase with no handrail ran up one wall to a gallery high above. It was hard to imagine anyone being brave enough to use it. Well, I would, but even I would think it was pointless.

  A man emerged from the dining hall, straightening his over-robe. “Papers,” he said, extending a hand. He had dark gray hair swept back from his forehead and the pinched look of someone who’d smelled something unpleasant. We handed our papers over and he scrutinized them as the guard had not. “What magic have you?” he said.

  “I can—” I began.

  “Show me, woman, don’t talk me to death,” he said, which made me want to set his over-robe on fire. It was elaborate brocade shot with gold, and his fussiness about it made me want even more to set it on fire, but I controlled my impatience and again summoned water. I admit I could have chosen any pouvra to demonstrate, but I opted for the one that would be the most annoying, and it worked. He took some quick steps backward to avoid the splash and said, “How dare you!”

  “You did tell me to do it,” I pointed out, and he subsided, growling. Jeddan was more circumspect and put his hand through the nearest wall, which impressed the man more than my display had.

  “Very well,” he said, and removed a little book from inside his robe, which reminded me I really needed to find a new book soon. He flipped through the pages, took a tiny pencil from a loop of fabric near the spine, and said, as he wrote, “Come back in two weeks and the Lord Governor will see you.”

  “What?” I exclaimed. “We can’t wait that long! We have urgent news for the Lord Governor.”

  “Don’t they all,” the man said, snapping his book shut and returning it to his hidden pocket. “Two weeks.”

  “I—all right,” I said, sizing the man up and liking the conclusion I came to. I’ve had to talk my way in and out of situations since I was twelve, and the first thing you learn, when you have to live that way, is to judge what kind of person you’re bluffing. Some people, it’s just a waste of time. Others will believe anything you say. This man was in the middle somewhere. I felt reasonably confident I could get him to bend my way so long as I kept a straight face and didn’t let up on the pressure. And, at worst, he’d kick us out.

  “That’s a good policy,” I said, “since I’ve heard he’s a very efficient man who hates wasting time.”

  “True,” the man said, though he looked wary at how reasonable I’d suddenly become.

  “What’s your surname, please?” I said.

  He analyzed this for traps. “Messkala,” he said.

  “Good name. Easy to remember. Don’t you think it’s easy to remember?” I said to Jeddan.

  “I know I won’t forget it,” Jeddan said.

  “Me neither. All right, Messkala, we’ll come back in two weeks and give our news to the Lord Governor then. Which news, I promise you, is not only important but timely. I’m pretty sure he’s going to be furious when he finds out we waited so long to pass that news along to him.” I leaned right up into Messkala’s face. He was starting to look uncertain. “And at that point, he’s going to want to know why it took so long. And it’s going to be no trouble at all for me to tell him your name. I wonder what he’ll think of that?”

  “You’re bluffing,” Messkala said. He didn’t look certain.

  “I could be,” I said, “that’s true. But you should consider whether it will be worse for you if I’m telling the truth and you don’t get me in to see the Lord Governor, or if I’m lying and you do.”

  “You’ll have no proof,” he sa
id.

  “He knows who arranges his appointments,” I said. “He’ll know you had something to do with it. And he’ll be angry enough I doubt he’ll care about investigating very much.” I took a step back, easing up on the pressure just enough. “Look, Messkala, he must see, um, magickers every day. I imagine he counts on you to keep track of all that. So he won’t have any idea we were supposed to come in two weeks. Letting us in now won’t hurt anyone, least of all you. I guarantee you’ll be glad you did.”

  His look of pained superiority was gone, replaced by uncertainty. I gave him my most appealing smile. (I hope. Like I’ve said, I haven’t ever been in a position to look much at my own face.) Finally, he said, “Come with me.”

  We trailed along after him, giving him plenty of space so he wouldn’t feel intimidated by Jeddan’s muscular frame. “That was impressive,” Jeddan whispered.

  “It was luck,” I said. “I much prefer—never mind.” I’d been about to say “sneaking in at night” but realized Messkala might be listening.

  We went along some wide passages made of stone and freezing cold, then up a spiral staircase and into a narrower hall floored with planed wood that felt much warmer. Messkala opened a door on the right and entered without waiting for us. “My Lord Governor, two magickers to see you,” we heard him say as we followed him into the room, which was as brutally hot as the downstairs passages had been cold.

  “Thank you, Messkala,” the Lord Governor said, “you may leave,” and Messkala retreated at a pace that wasn’t quite a run.

  The heat came from a fireplace about half the size of the one downstairs, which meant it was still far too big for the room. Everything in the room was too big for it, the chairs built as if for giants, a cupboard against the wall opposite the fireplace so tall it looked as if it had been wedged into the space between floor and ceiling. The windows, on the other hand, were tiny and square and let in very little light, though that could have been the snow, which was falling heavily. I tried not to feel intimidated, since I was sure that was the intention. It took some effort.