The common room held only a few drunkards wasting away their afternoon in dark corners well away from the wide fireplace. A large, swarthy woman stood behind the bar, using a dirty rag to polish a dirtier glass. Loren remarked upon it with some surprise. It was a surprising show of wealth in such a mean little place.
Annis saw her expression. “The sand of the Dragon’s Tail is the best in the nine lands for glassmaking, they say, so it is common along the river’s shores.”
Loren said, “Common as dirt, you might say.”
Gem snickered.
Xain took Annis to the woman, and she pulled some coins for a room from her purse. A small boy led them upstairs to a room with a large pallet but hardly enough room for a couple to lay.
Xain said, “You girls may have the straw. The boy and I will sleep upon the floor.”
“I want the bed! Do you know how rarely I have been granted such a luxury? I was meant for a gentler life than I have been given,” Gem flung himself down on the pallet and turned to look at them, spreading his arms wide.
“Aye, a soft scholar’s life.” Loren looked skeptically at the pallet—only Gem could have called the thing a luxury. “You may have it, then, Gem, and share it with Annis. I have slept on far worse than a wooden floor.”
Xain frowned and rubbed at the back of his neck with a dirty palm. “I did not . . . I would rather you have the pallet.”
Loren understood his meaning and rolled her eyes. “Sky above, wizard, this is not a house of lovers. Do you think a maiden cannot sleep on the floor with a man and stay a maiden?”
Xain’s face turned beet red. “You are being ridiculous. I meant only a simple courtesy, not a . . . I will fetch us some dinner.”
He quickly retreated through the door. Annis giggled and flung herself on the pallet beside Gem, reaching over to poke his ribs. Gem yelped and rolled away, batting at her grasping hands.
Loren could not bring herself to join in their joking. She remembered Chet, thinking of when they were younger and would sleep beside each other on the forest floor to follow a hunt. Her parents had ended those trips near as they started. Treasured memories, more valuable because of their rarity. A year ago, and now a lifetime away.
She wondered what Chet was doing now and how his parents fared. The bump she had put on his father’s head would be gone, she hoped. A desire to see him nearly overcame her, and Loren felt the need for distraction.
She sat upon on the pallet’s edge and turned to Annis. “We must think of what we wish to do once reaching Wellmont. Wavemouth would have been a shorter journey, I know, but from Wellmont I think we can travel to one of the northern outlander kingdoms. Mayhap to Calentin, where they would never find us, though many months that would take.”
Annis sobered as she spoke. “That may be the only road left. I fear my mother may never stop hunting. She would not seek you at all were it not for me.”
Loren shook her head. “No. I earned my ire from Damaris. Now she seeks us both. We are best served by working together. She stands at fault, not you.”
She nodded, but Annis did not look as if she believed her. Even Gem grew solemn as they spoke.
“But to make such a long journey, we will need more coin than you have in that purse,” said Loren. “And I know a few ways to earn some, but all of them take too long. Do you think we could find one who would trade coin for magestones?”
Annis reached into her cloak for the brown packet. Quickly, she untied the string, and the cloth unfolded to reveal the glistening crystals.
Loren studied them for a moment. She had not had a chance to study the magestones so close. She had been far from the stones when they were scattered at the constables’ feet. Later, when Loren threw them around the floor of Damaris’s room, she had been near delirious from a serpent’s bite. Now she caught each glistening facet, the smooth and glass-like sheen of every carefully carved surface. Each was hardly longer than her smallest finger and carved in such a way that they stacked perfectly in neat little rows. When laid flat in two lines, side by side and stacked four high, they formed a neat little package only slightly larger than a big man’s hand.
Annis thought deeply. “I am unsure. The only person I could ask for advice is my mother, and I do not think she would willingly give it.”
Gem snorted. Annis continued.
“It may be that my family are the only ones who traffic in such stones. It does not seem the sort of business we would willingly share. If I only knew their purpose, we might more easily find a buyer. Can we not ask Xain?”
Loren’s brow furrowed, and she opened her mouth to answer. But then the door crashed open, and she looked up to see the wizard standing with a wooden tray full of food. With his hands occupied, he had opened the door with a kick.
Before Loren could think to cover the magestones, Xain’s eyes fell upon them all. The tray slipped from his hands, food spilling across the wooden boards. He stepped in before slamming the door shut behind him, and then threw the deadbolt at his shoulder.
Loren blanched. Terror seized her—not at the wizard’s speed nor the urgency of his movements but at the raw, animal hunger burning deep in his dark eyes.
eleven
“WHERE DID YOU GET THOSE?” Xain’s voice came harsh and merciless as the look in his eyes.
Loren stepped forwards between the wizard and the magestones upon the bed. “They are hers. Where she got them is not your concern.”
“You must know what they are,” said Xain. “Of course they are my concern. Give them to me, at once.”
“No,” said Loren, putting steel in the word. “They are hers.”
Annis sat quivering upon the bed, her eyes wide on Xain’s face. Gem stood uneasily at the back of the room, his hands twitching as though he longed to move but did not know which way to go.
“You could have no possible use for them,” said Xain. “And you do not know the danger you place yourself in, carrying them upon you. At least in my hands they could be used to good purpose. With those stones, I could return to the High King’s Seat and . . .”
He stopped suddenly, as though afraid to say more. Loren turned back to Annis. “Wrap them back up. Put them in your cloak. Do it!” Annis jerked as though woken from a dream and hastened to comply.
The magestones vanished beneath the brown cloth. Xain took another step forward. Loren stepped to meet him, and her hand went to the dagger under her cloak.
“Foolish girl!” said Xain, his voice rising. Loren hoped it would not carry into the inn’s other rooms. “You know not what you trifle with. In your hands you hold the power to conquer a city.”
“And the wealth, I imagine, to travel anywhere in the nine lands we might wish. With the profits from those stones we mean to make good our escape and keep ourselves hidden from the long and grasping arms of the family Yerrin. I will not lose that chance to you, wizard, not for any price under this sky.”
Xain’s hands rose, and he whispered a word. A white glow grew in his eyes, and soon it eclipsed the meager candlelight flickering upon the room’s only side table. Sparks danced above his fingertips.
Loren drew and brandished her dagger. The movement was instinctive, unthinking, and she balked at once. What would she do to protect Annis and the magestones? Not kill Xain, that was certain. But if not that, then what? What could she do to stay the wizard if he decided to take the magestones by force? Mayhap she could best him in a fight, but not with his gift of magic. Words alone could save them all now.
“Tell us what they are to you,” she said quickly, as Xain’s sparks danced higher. “What do you mean to do with them? What do the magestones do?”
Xain blinked, and the light in his eyes began to dim. “You do not even know their purpose?”
“Only that they are of a mighty value and lie well outside the King’s law.”
To her surprise, Xain laughed. After thinking a moment, he closed his fist to stop the sparks. The light left his eyes, and Loren could feel the tens
ion leaking from his frame. He raised his closed fist to his lips, pursing them as he studied her. She could see thoughts brewing behind his eyes and was not entirely sure that she liked it.
“Tell me everything you do know. Have you seen others deal with them? And where did you procure so many?”
Loren considered her answer. She feared to tell Xain the whole truth, knowing as little as she did about the stones. But neither did she know what lie to spin, for the wrong one could turn the situation from bad to worse. It seemed her best option was to feed the wizard one truth at a time and feel her way forward.
“Annis’s mother, Damaris, gave us the stones,” she said. “Well, ‘gave’ might be the wrong word. We stole them when we escaped her grasp outside Cabrus. Annis thought they might be valuable to the right buyer and give us the coin required to make good our escape.”
Xain grunted. “You are right and wrong at once, and in different ways. Magestones can earn one wealth, but they are more likely to land one in a constable’s cell, followed by a slow death. Take them into a trinket shop, and you will soon find yourself hard pursued by the King’s law.”
“What are they, then?” said Loren. “What makes them so dangerous?”
Xain’s eyes glittered as he studied Annis. The girl’s hand still lurked beneath her cloak. “Though they look like hard black glass, the stones will break without effort. When placed upon the tongue, they melt like ice on a frying pan. If a wizard consumes them so, our power is increased manyfold. Weak wizards grow strong, and powerful wizards—well, a powerful enough wizard may level a mighty fortress. Long ago, wizard kings would use magestones as a weapon of war, and with such power they were unstoppable. That power led to the High King outlawing both Wizard Kings and the stones.”
Loren felt that there was more to the explanation but did not know where to begin. “What do you need them for? You seem mighty enough without their aid.”
Xain studied Annis, as though waiting for her to produce the magestones. When she did not, he sighed and slumped back against the door, slowly sliding down to sit against it. His rear came down in the fallen stew, but he took no notice. “It is true that I am uncommonly strong amongst my kind. Less than one born in a hundred is a wizard, and less than one wizard in a hundred is mighty as me.”
Gem snickered. “The wizard has a high opinion of himself.”
Xain’s dark eyes flashed. “I give no idle boast, boy. I have heard as much my whole life and have seen more than enough to convince me it is true. I bear no responsibility for my power. A gift of my birth and nothing more. But it would do me no good to deny, nor you.”
Loren gave Gem a hard look to keep him silent. The urchin snorted and turned away in dismissal, his eyes out the window. Loren returned her gaze to Xain. Now that he was talking, it seemed prudent to keep him going. “I say again: If you are so strong, what need have you of the magestones?”
Xain’s look grew darker still. “Strong, and yet upon the High King’s Seat one may find many comparable wizards. We cannot rule, and yet we hold our own sort of power. Rulers enjoy collecting us, like trinkets or furniture, there to use as they see fit. Nowhere is this truer than in the High King’s court. One wizard there—a mindmage—was mighty in his gifts yet not so strong as I. And I, in turn, was perhaps more boastful than prudent. In any case, he grew jealous, and when his envy festered into hate, he tried to murder my son.”
Loren heard the word like a slap. “Son? You made no mention that you had a son.”
“And why should I?” snarled Xain. “What concern is he of yours?”
Loren shook her head. “It . . . paints you in a different light. I had not pictured you as a father.”
“A poorer one than I fear I should be,” said Xain, his voice again growing softer. In his gaze there was a deep sadness, all the more sorrowful for his helpless tone. “Now he lives at the court of the High King, guarded and safe, but without his father. I fear fate may keep us apart many years yet. How, then, can I claim any part in his upbringing? He is yet a boy, and unless I right the wrongs done unto me, he will grow to a man far away from the only parent he has.”
His voice twisted, turned to something broken, and Loren averted her eyes in embarrassment. She had received precious little comfort when she cried as a child and was unfamiliar with giving it.
“Why did your rival try to harm him instead of you?” she asked. Mayhap turning the wizard’s mind to anger would keep him from the darker pit of grief.
It worked. Xain’s voice found strength as he continued. “The wizard’s name is Drystan, and as I have said, he could not best me in magic no matter how he tried. I have known him a craven since we met. Striking out at a child suits him far better than a fair fight against another man. Cowardice and deep pockets have long been ill friends, and Drystan is of the family Drayden.”
Annis and Gem both sucked in a sharp breath between their teeth. Loren looked at them in confusion. “What is it? I do not know the name.”
“The Draydens are a family of merchants, like mine,” said Annis. “But where my family has been comfortable a long time, the Draydens have had wealth unimaginable since before history began. Where many fear to anger my family, they would slit their own throats before crossing the Draydens. And where my family has a reputation for walking outside the King’s law, the Draydens are known as the darkest of criminals, whose black deeds in shadow and silence would send the hardest soldier’s heart skipping.”
“Even Auntie feared the Draydens,” put in Gem. “And she was mad enough to taunt constables when the mood caught her. She would accept any mark, target and steal from anyone who took her fancy. Even kill them. But she gave the Draydens a wide berth on the rare occasions they showed their haughty faces within Cabrus’ walls.”
Loren shuddered against her will. Gem’s and Annis’s words frightened her less than the tones of their voices. They sounded like old Bracken telling her a tale of some frightening ogre, a vicious monster that appeared in the night to drag children from their beds to swallow them whole.
Xain nodded at Gem. “Every word you speak is true and yet not the half of it. And Drystan is a festering sore of a man even upon the blight-ridden face of that family.”
“What did you do, then, when he attacked your son?” said Loren. “From all your words, it would not seem wise to trifle with such a man.”
Xain stiffened as he scowled at her. “You think I should have let him get away? Bear a child of your own and then speak to me of prudence. If a man brandishes a knife at your flesh and blood and you do not act to turn the knife back on the wielder, I will call you a shameful kinsman and no one I wish to walk beside.”
Loren’s cheeks burnt. “I meant no offense. But whatever action you took, you ended up fleeing the King’s law far from your family. How did that come to be?”
Some of the fight left Xain. “When I heard what had happened, I sought Drystan out and confronted him. He was no match for me, of course, and I bested him quickly. I do not know if I would have killed him. Certainly I wanted to, but some part of me wants to believe that I would have stopped in the end, extracting only a confession to have him banished by the High King. But before I could, the Grand Magister arrived.”
“Who is the Grand Magister?”
“Be silent, Gem.”
Gem folded his arms in a huff. Loren turned back to Xain.
“I have told you I am powerful, even amongst wizards. Yet I have met others greater still. The Grand Magister is such. He would not have received his placement at the High King’s court if he were a lesser wizard. He found me in Drystan’s chambers and swiftly broke through my defenses, though I managed to make good my escape before Drystan could kill me. After the battle, return seemed hopeless. The Grand Magister has long been in Drystan’s pocket, and those pockets stretch to the bottom of the earth and out the other side into the great night. The little worm would certainly have kept the Magister nearby at all times, ready for any attempt I might make. Without th
e power to defeat them both . . .”
His eyes strayed back to Annis, and to her hand where it rested beneath her cloak.
“I understand at last,” said Loren, her voice growing cool. “You think that with the magestones you could best the Grand Magister and overpower Drystan. And what then? Would you kill him? How would the King’s law view such an act, especially if you used magestone to do it? Would you flee with your son and give him the same life you now live?”
“If not that, then what would you suggest?” said Xain. “Do I let him run free? Would you, if it were your child? I find that hard to believe. Anyone, wizard or no, may do what they like with me. Threats and violence I have faced before and will face again. But my son? Do you know what it is like to have your boy living in the court with the man who tried to kill him and know you can do nothing?”
His voice grew almost pleading, and Loren felt herself waver. She could never see herself wishing the death of another nor imagine the mind of one who would kill a child. Especially not for such a petty motive as envy. Almost she could see Xain’s mind and felt herself growing close to agreement.
Gem blurted a curse from the window. “They have found us.”
“What?” said Loren. “Who?”
“Come see for yourself,” he said.
Loren was by his side in an instant. Xain came quickly to join her. Looking out into the growing night, she saw two dark-skinned men dressed in green, their eyes upon the inn’s front door.
twelve
“THOSE MEN ARE FROM MY family,” Annis said in a trembling voice.
“Are you sure?” said Loren.
“I would wager much on it. They wear our colors. That Mystic woman must have told Fortinbras about us after all.”
Loren saw something she had missed—a small girl standing beside the men. Wasted and thin with a large belly and giant eyes, she raised a finger to their window. Loren dropped to the ground a half second before Xain, Gem, and Annis did the same, but not before they saw the Yerrin men approaching the building.
Mystic: A Book of Underrealm Page 7