“Cerryl?” called the overmage.
Cerryl walked quickly toward Jeslek.
The older man’s face was shadowed, and lines radiated from his eyes, lines of age that Cerryl had not seen before. His sun-gold eyes still glittered, and the dullness had left the white hair.
“You saw how the Gallosians received us yesterday?”
“Yes, ser.”
The overmage cleared his throat, then fixed Cerryl with his eyes. “Cerryl, all students must undertake a task-a thing to be accomplished alone-before they are accepted into the Guild. The task is set before each in a manner to ensure that the mage-to-be indicates utterly his devotion to the Guild.”
Cerryl didn’t like what he knew was coming, even if he had no idea of what task Jeslek was about to lay upon him.
The gold-eyed mage smiled. “Many have questioned your devotion, and I have set you a task after which none can gainsay your right to the Brotherhood.”
“Yes, ser.”
“You are to remove the prefect of Gallos.”
Cerryl swallowed, as much because of the growing chaos that swirled around Jeslek as because of the task. Was that because Jeslek expected him to refuse?
“Ser?”
“Why do I task you, is that what you wonder?”
“Not exactly, ser. You have the power to destroy massed armies…” Cerryl wanted to know more, even if he were in no position to refuse the overmage.
“Ah… and I could ravage the lands, you think.”
“You have that power. Of that, after yesterday, there is no doubt.”
“That is indeed true.” Jeslek stroked his chin. “Therein lies a problem. If I did indeed ravage Gallos-then who would farm the land, or cut the timber-or collect the road duties? Likewise, if the removal of the prefect is accomplished by a lesser mage… then who will refute the wisdom of acquiescing to the ‘requests’ of Fairhaven?”
“And how am I to accomplish this, ser? I cannot very well walk up to Fenard-”
“You will be sent with a lancer guard as an assistant to Sverlik. He, of course, as an envoy, could not act overtly against Lyam.” Jeslek shrugged. “How you deal with Lyam, that I leave to your discretion, save that you must vanish from Fenard and return to Fairhaven without knowledge of any in Gallos. A simple enough task for one who would be a mage.” Jeslek smiled.
“How am I to deal with those armsmen who escaped, ser? They will claim we attacked them.”
“You have been most creative so far. I am sure you will find a way.” Jeslek shrugged, and the chaos continued to build around him. “Captain Klybel is forming your escort right now. He will also provide some extra rations for you. It is best you do not have to forage. I would like you to leave as quickly as possible.” Another false and quick smile followed. “We have made our point, and will also be returning to Fairhaven shortly.”
Cerryl preferred the more direct speech Jeslek had used when Cerryl had been a more junior student mage.
“Best you prepare,” Jeslek suggested pointedly.
“Yes, ser.” Cerryl bowed and turned. Even before he was a dozen steps away, Jeslek had summoned Anya.
“Anya… I’d like you and Fydel to ride south-just a kay or so- to the end of that ridge, and study the area. Have Fydel scree it for Gallosians. I’ll need to trace the chaos lines there. I’d like you to leave immediately…”
Cerryl frowned as he walked back toward where he and the other students had camped and where the chestnut was tethered.
“What was that about?” asked Lyasa. “Should I ask?”
Cerryl glanced around. Kochar was nowhere in sight. “Jeslek has insisted that I go to be an assistant to Sverlik in Fenard. I have to do something for him and Sverlik. As a test.”
“After this?” Lyasa also glanced around, then back to Cerryl, her olive-brown eyes filled with concern.
“After this. One does not argue with an overmage.” He glanced along the road to where Jeslek had dismissed Anya. “I would like another favor. Jeslek says you’re headed back to Fairhaven before long. Would you tell Myral? Just Myral?”
“I can do that.” Lyasa paused. “I’d rather tell Leyladin, and let her tell him. I don’t see him often, and people would notice. I can trust her.”
“If you think so.” He smiled as he strapped his pack on the gelding. “All right. Thank you.”
Klybel rode past, leading a line of lancers-doubtless Cerryl’s escort. The captain did not look at Cerryl.
“You be careful,” cautioned Lyasa.
“As careful as I can be.”
“Cerryl!” called Jeslek.
The student mage untethered the chestnut and began to lead his mount toward the group around Jeslek.
“Good luck,” whispered Lyasa.
“Thank you.”
All of the lancers were mounted, save one-an armsman with a single silver bar on his left tunic collar who inclined his head.
“This is Undercaptain Ludren, young Cerryl,” said Klybel. “Your escort will be a half-score. That should be large enough to deter brigands and small enough not to alarm the people of Gallos.” The lancer captain leaned forward and extended a folded parchment square. “This is a map of the main roads of Gallos. We trust it is accurate.”
Cerryl took the map with a nod. “Thank you.”
“If you are attacked, you have leave to defend yourself, but I would encourage you not to use your powers against any except those who do attack you.” Jeslek’s voice was mild, reasonable, and Cerryl could sense that the chaos around the overmage had begun to subside.
“I will use what powers I have,” Cerryl answered as he mounted the chestnut, “only if attacked.”
“Good.”
Ludren remounted, then looked at Cerryl.
“Whenever you are ready, Undercaptain.”
Ludren nodded and turned his mount westward on the Great White Highway.
Cerryl’s lips tightened as he could sense a screen of chaos rising behind them, one that doubtless blurred his departure. Sterol has set you as a check to Jeslek, and Jeslek wants you removed in a manner not to be traced to him.
Still, there was nothing he dared do. Not yet. His lips tightened. Perhaps not ever, but definitely not yet. He flicked the reins and let the chestnut pull alongside the Undercaptain and his mount.
XCVII
Through the day and a half since Cerryl and his escort had left the main body of the Fairhaven forces, the twelve had ridden alone westward on the Great White Highway, not encountering anyone, in and out of intermittent cool rain and chilly breezes. Puddles collected next to the granite road wall, and their mounts occasionally splashed through flat sheets of water running off the nearly level granite paving stones.
“Empty, it is,” Ludren said once more, as he did every few kays.
“Not a soul in sight,” answered Cerryl. The only living thing outside his group was a single black vulcrow that flew ahead of them and waited, then watched as they passed, and flew farther ahead-either looking for scraps or for someone or some animal to keel over and die.
Ahead, Cerryl could see a side road-one that crossed the Great Highway, or that the Highway crossed. As they neared the crossroads, he could make out a single kaystone with two arrows. One pointed south with the name Tellura-one of the names that had led to his mapmaking. The north-pointing arrow bore the name Fenard.
“Toward Fenard.” Cerryl turned the chestnut off the Great White Highway and onto the clay-packed trail that bore hoofprints-not terribly recent prints.
“Here’s where it may get rough, ser,” said Ludren.
“Do you think that the Gallosians would wait on the side road this far from Fenard?” Cerryl doubted it very much. They might run into a company of armsmen closer to the capital. Might? He held back a laugh, since Ludren would have taken it wrong.
Ludren frowned, then nodded slowly. “You might be right, ser.”
“I don’t know. I’m new to this,” Cerryl said as the chestnut carried him along
the narrower packed clay road. “I would think that the arms-men who survived would probably ride to Fenard to tell the prefect.”
“Like as not, he won’t be wishing to see us.”
“No.” That was an understatement. Jeslek had clearly set Cerryl a near-impossible task, doubtless in hopes that someone would kill him. More than a day of riding, and Cerryl still didn’t have a good idea of how he was going to get into Fenard, let alone kill the prefect and get out.
Half-surprisingly, the thought of killing the prefect didn’t bother him. Was that because what everyone had said and what he had seen gave the impression of a very unpleasant character? What if Lyam weren’t as pictured?
Cerryl glanced back over his shoulder at the white lancers. The pair behind him-Jubuul and Zusta, he thought-rode silently and dejectedly. The mage wondered what they had done to displease Klybel and Jeslek.
“Ludren?”
“Yes, ser.”
“What were you told about escorting me to Fenard?”
“Well… ser… I can’t say as I was told much. The captain said I was to get you there, and then we were to try to catch them on the Great Highway, and if not, to rejoin them at the South Barracks.”
“You weren’t supposed to carry any messages or supplies to the mage Sverlik or back from him?”
“No, ser. We were to escort you to the prefect’s palace and then return.”
Cerryl nodded. “How long have you been a lancer?”
“Nigh on ten years, ser. Glad I was that the captain and the over-mage offered this. Otherwise, it might have been another ten afore I made captain. That’s why there be no silver on my tunic-just the rank bar.”
“It must take a while to make rank.”
“Depends, ser. Huylar made undercaptain in six, but he was in the Sligan campaign-the one where they put down the timber camps and the traders so as they’d listen to the Brotherhood. To make rank, you take chances or time.”
The Sligan campaign? “When was that?”
“Three, four years ago. Huylar’s been ‘round longer than me.”
“Were you involved in the Sligan campaign?”
“Me, ser? No. I was part of the mage’s guard in Hydolar, like Viurat is in Fenard.”
“I don’t know Viurat,” Cerryl said pleasantly, his eyes on the road ahead, and where it wound to the left around a long hill that flanked the road on the east.
“Viurat’s my cousin. No reason as you’d know him, ser.”
“How long has he been in Fenard?”
“Must be five years now. Brought Ryentyl-she’s his consort-he brought her with him.” Ludren laughed. “Lancers aren’t supposed to have consorts unless they’re officers, but no one really looks. Not that hard. Guess they like Fenard. He’s still there.”
Cerryl steered the chestnut around a particularly deep-looking pothole filled with dark and muddy water, glancing at the sky to the north. The clouds were dropping and darkening, foreshadowing another storm, if not for another few kays-and more headaches.
“Storm coming,” the undercaptain added. “Might keep those purple lancers from looking for us.”
“I doubt they’re looking for us. Not here.” Of course, any Gallosians who saw them might well want to eliminate anyone from Fairhaven, especially a student mage, but Cerryl doubted anyone was actually out searching. Not yet. That might change after the survivors of Jeslek’s fire attacks reached Fenard.
“Hope you’re right, ser.”
Cerryl nodded, his mind more on what awaited him. Even assuming he could get into Fenard, assuming he didn’t have to evade or flee Gallosian armsmen, Jeslek had said he was to remove the prefect and to leave Fenard unseen. How? The only way he could be unseen was to cloak himself in light, as Anya had done in visiting Faltar, and Jeslek knew Cerryl hadn’t ever done anything like that.
Could he channel light around himself the way he could channel chaos? He ought to be able to-light was a form of chaos. Still, what he ought to be able to do and what he could do might be very different.
He concentrated… and found himself blind-enclosed in darkness. The chestnut half-whuffed, half-whimper-screamed, as the darkness surrounded them. Cerryl quickly released the light-shifting screens, or whatever what he had done was called. The gelding stepped forward and sideways for a moment.
“What was that?” Ludren leaned forward. “For a moment, you were not there.”
Cerryl forced a quizzical expression. “You must be mistaken. I have been here all along. My mount… something spooked him.”
“I would have sworn…”
“Still say he disappeared…” came the mumbled words from Jubuul. “… trouble with mages… never where you think they are.”
Cerryl licked his lips. He needed more practice, but it wouldn’t help much to practice while riding with the lancers. He forced a laugh. “Isn’t that true about most things?”
“What, ser?” asked the earnest Ludren.
“Oh… nothing’s exactly what or where you think it is.”
“If you say so, ser.”
A long ride to Fenard, a long ride to certain trouble, trouble he wasn’t even quite certain he could avoid or master. Cerryl did not shake his head but kept his pleasant smile in place.
XCVIII
Cerryl peered through the cool fall drizzle, wishing he’d brought a true waterproof. The leather jacket was hot, and tended to soak up the misting rain after a time, but the rain was too cool to ride through in just his shirt and white tunic.
Ahead, to the north, a narrow stone bridge arched over the river. Beyond the river, a wagon drawn by a single horse creaked past the browning grass of the roadside meadows toward still-distant Fenard.
The student mage eased out the map and looked at it. “That’s the River Gallos, I think.”
“Is that close to Fenard?” asked Ludren.
“Not that close,” Cerryl said. “We’d see more people on the road. Fenard is a big place.”
Cerryl wasn’t looking forward to reaching Fenard. He couldn’t afford not to succeed because if he survived without carrying out Jeslek’s charge to him, Sterol would say that Cerryl should have confronted Jeslek immediately. But Jeslek would have tried to destroy Cerryl, and Cerryl wasn’t certain he was strong enough yet to hold off Jeslek’s power.
He laughed softly to himself. Who was he deceiving? Jeslek would have turned Cerryl into ashes if he’d refused to undertake the task-and then told everyone that Cerryl had attacked him, or some such. There was a reason Anya and Fydel weren’t anywhere around when Cerryl left. Doubtless, Jeslek would claim that Cerryl had run away- or something. As for the lancers, they were the ones no one would miss-probably listed as lost on a scouting mission. Lost to hostile Gallosians, providing another reason for bringing the force of Fairhaven to bear on the prefect.
“Ser? Begging your pardon… ?”
“What’s so funny? Nothing, really, I guess.” Yet it was all absurd. Once he got close to Fenard, he’d have to rely on the invisibility trick to get into the city. He’d tried it at night, when the lancers weren’t looking, and he thought he had it mastered, although he worried that the shield might cause the air to waver, like the one time when he had seen Anya use it. Yet… he had no other alternatives.
If he could get inside Fenard, he’d need some kind of cloak to cover his whites…
Cerryl shook his head. At the moment, he wasn’t certain how close he could even get to Fenard before the Gallosian lancers or armsmen or whatever showed up. He looked at the bridge, then at the map. From what he could determine, they were still a day and a half from Fenard.
“Another two days, almost.” He rubbed his chin, conscious that he had a beard, but one all too scraggly-and no razor. No razor from a certain gray-black mage… that might have been the last thing he ever received from her. He pushed away the thoughts.
“Like as we’ll never catch Klybel, then, on the return.” Ludren sounded discouraged.
Cerryl wondered how the overpr
omoted undercaptain would feel if he knew he was never supposed to catch the rest of the white lancers. “So long as you get back to Fairhaven, it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“I suppose not, ser. And what about you, ser?”
“I have a task to carry out. Then we’ll see.” See what? How you can manage to get back to Fairhaven and manipulate Jeslek and Sterol into making you a full mage? Why? Because the alternatives were worse, at least over time. Fairhaven controlled or would control all the lands east of the Westhorns, and those to the west hated white mages, as did Recluce.
Cerryl imagined he could live out a life somewhere as a peasant, but it would be a short and miserable life, and he’d seen enough of poverty.
So… you’ll take on the Guild? And probably get killed in the effort?
He laughed softly again.
“Ser?”
“Nothing. I’m not thinking too well, I guess.” Cerryl folded the map and replaced it inside his jacket. “We’ve a ways to go.”
XCIX
The green-blue sky was clear, and the midday sun warm, but not too warm. A light wind, with a hint of chill, blew from the west, from the unseen Westhorns, ruffling the roadside grass, including the few tufts that grew out of the old road wall on the west side of the packed clay, a road wall little more than stacked gray and black stones.
Something did not feel right, and Cerryl reined up abruptly. A small cot stood less than a kay to the west, and rows of cut stalks lined the field beyond the strip of meadow that bordered the road. A man gathered and bound the straw, not looking toward the road or the travelers.
A small river meandered from the northwest, and another stone bridge crossed it perhaps three hundred cubits down the road from where Cerryl had stopped. On the far side, low-lying fields, almost like marshes, stretched nearly another a kay before reaching the reddish granite walls of Fenard. A long and low dust cloud rose from the road on the north side of the river, a dust cloud coming from the city.
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