'What are you going to do now?' Velindre asked, curious.
'I haven't used earth in an illusion before.' Naldeth rubbed his hands together. 'But if that mage in the beaded cloak can, I'm sure I can do just as well if not better.'
Kheda saw the muscles tighten along Naldeth's jaw as the wizard gritted his teeth.
The mage spread his hands wide and drew a cloud of dust up from the scuffed and soiled ground. The village spearmen gasped as a figure formed in the empty air. It was the skull-masked mage, about as tall as a man's upheld forearm and complete in every detail, from his blue-feathered cloak to the hanks of hair hanging from the cord around his waist. Naldeth gave them a moment to recognise their erstwhile master before stepping forward to scatter the image with a violent blow, his face stern with anger. Stepping back, he smoothed the rage from his face as the dust formed itself into a miniature dragon. It wasn't the lithe sky dragon that the skull-faced mage had courted, nor yet the solid black earth dragon from across the river. A more sinuous creature, it was akin to the dragon Kheda had seen in the sea, albeit red-scaled rather than green.
The spearmen were kneeling in the dust now, all eyes fixed on the floating illusion. Still impassive, Naldeth wove another skein of dust into a pile of diminutive brown corpses. The dragon walked through the air with slow menace, sunlight glinting off its scarlet scales and golden claws.
Now scowling furiously, Naldeth stepped between the stalking dragon and the meat awaiting its pleasure. He smashed the little beast into sparkling shards with a clenched fist. As the glittering fragments dissolved into dust, the wizard sent illusory flames to wipe the image of the slain into oblivion, his face sorrowful.
'What exactly do you think you are telling them?' Kheda asked quietly.
'Hopefully that I'm no servant to any dragon.' Naldeth watched the dust blow away on the wind. 'That I won't see the dead dishonoured by filling some beast's belly.' He raised his hand and the flames of the woodless, scentless pyre sprang still higher, turning from wizardly scarlet to all-consuming white heat.
'I just hope that what he means is what they're understanding by all this,' Risala murmured as she and Kheda retreated. The wild men were getting slowly to their feet, talking quietly among themselves, eyeing all four of them with speculation and, here and there, suspicion.
'What are you doing?' Kheda saw Velindre holding her hands cupped before her, faint blue magelight wound between her fingers.
She didn't answer as Naldeth snapped his fingers and the incandescent white fire vanished. There was nothing left of the dead now but pale, gritty ash. Velindre spread her hands wide and released the magic she had been cherishing. It swept the feathery ashes up into a dancing spiral. Threaded with sapphire, the vortex rose high into the cloudless sky and dissolved into the radiant blue.
'So now they're utterly lost as well as dead.' Risala stared upwards, tears standing in her eyes.
'Perhaps not,' Velindre said quietly. 'Aldabreshi bury the humble dead to return their virtues to their domain but the bravest and best lie on the towers of silence so their merits may be spread wider.' She brushed lingering remnants of azure light from her hands. 'These ashes will be carried across this whole island.'
'My mother said the dead are burned so nothing is left to hold them here and stop them crossing to the Otherworld,' Naldeth said with a catch in his voice.
Risala favoured him with a quizzical glance. 'And you call us superstitious.'
'I wish I knew what these people thought about such things.' Kheda saw the wild men looking at each other with growing confusion and some unease. He took a deep breath. 'Let's get back to the village and discuss what we're going to do next. There's still a wizard and potentially a dragon between us and the Zaise.''
Just do the task that's laid before you and don't be distracted till it's done. That's what a warlord must always remember.
His uncompromising tone had silenced the other three and they followed him meekly back around to the open face of the bluff. With the spearmen trailing behind, they all struggled back up the steep slope in silence. No one spoke until the village came into sight. The open space within the thorny enclosure was wholly deserted.
'Where's everyone gone?' Naldeth wondered.
The spearmen started calling and whistling, clapping their hands. Slowly women and children began to emerge from thickets of spiny plants and thistles. Mothers had their babes strapped to their backs with lengths of stretched hide and all were carrying bundles. Even the youngest children clutched some burden.
'They were ready to run,' Kheda realised, 'in case we lost the fight.'
'Where were they going to go?' Risala wondered.
As the men spread out, arms wide to offer comforting embraces, the women did their best to smile through their lingering fears. Little children clung to their mothers' hands or hugged their fathers' legs. Kheda caught sight of the scarred spearman, the bloodied hacking blade still in his hand as he approached a woman, his expression sorrowful. She sank to her knees, pressing her hands to her face to stifle heart-rending sobs as she realised someone dear to her wasn't among the returning men. A young girl simply stood, her shocked face as immobile as carved wood. An infant wriggled in his mother's embrace as she tried to offer comfort to the bereaved girl. Other families clustered around a weeping mother and her bevy of distraught children.
These people are not animals to be prey for some beast. Or playthings to be tossed around by some wizard's whim. They could be so much more than savages.
'Is there anything we can do for them?' Risala's voice was tight with distress.
'Let's get out of this sun.' Kheda took her hand and began walking stiffly towards the skull-faced mage's hut.
'We won, didn't we?' Naldeth sounded less than convinced.
'We won that particular skirmish.' Kheda did his best but his words were still harsh and angry. 'That's all.'
They reached the dead mage's hut. The shade beneath the sturdy roof was welcome and the inadequate walls offered at least some diminution of the sounds of sorrow outside.
'So what do we do now?' Risala asked wearily.
'We think through exactly what we're doing here.' Kheda swatted at a couple of persistent flies that had pursued him into the gloom. 'We've barely taken time to
draw breath since we set foot in this place.' He looked at Velindre. 'May I have some water for washing my hands?'
'Of course, my lord.' She mocked him with a low bow before picking up a gourd tucked in one of the bed spaces. She held a hand over its open neck and turquoise light dripped from her fingers. The sound of the drops hitting the empty bottom was loud in the silence.
'You were wondering why tyrants and brutes rule some domains within the Archipelago.' Kheda turned on Naldeth. 'It's because once you start a fight, it's nigh on impossible to stop it going further. We've started a war here today. I know we didn't mean to but we have. We've beaten back the tree dwellers but they'll attack again, doubtless with their mage in his beaded cloak coming looking to test himself against you.'
'Then we'll drive him off, or kill him if he won't take the hint,' Velindre said with distaste.
'We don't know anything about him,' protested Naldeth, sitting down awkwardly to massage his stump. 'We knew this skull wearer was evil, we saw him with that girl...' His words trailed off in confusion.
'We don't know anything about any of these people.' Kheda gestured towards the savages outside the hut. 'We don't know who deserves life or mercy, who's selfish or wicked. But I think we've all seen that they are more than mindless animals, more than savages. They're no different from Aldabreshi or barbarians in their suffering, and in their bravery.'
'Which is another reason why Aldabreshin warlords are always reluctant to wage war. Innocents always die, and every innocent life must be paid for.' Risala leaned against one of the pillars supporting the roof. 'The seeds of the future always lie buried in the past.'
'We didn't come here to fight in their battles.' V
elindre handed Kheda the gourd, now full of water.
'No, we didn't.' Pouring a little water on his hands, he tried to rid himself of the dried blood. 'Which makes absolutely no difference to our current situation. We've started a war and we either have to abandon these people to certain death when that wizard and his dragon come to exact their revenge, or we have to work out how to drive this war to a rapid conclusion that leaves these people victorious, and safe as a consequence.' He looked at Naldeth again. 'Dev told me why you northerners think we're all savages in the Archipelago: because when we wage war, we do so relentlessly. But he came to understand that it saves more lives in the long run.'
Whereas, he told me, you northern barbarians have wars that have dragged on from generation to generation, wasting lives like waves of plague sweeping across your lands.
Velindre folded her arms and cocked her head to one side. 'So do you have a plan, my lord of Chazen?'
'These people live brutalised by magic' Kheda bent to wash splashes of blood from his sandals. 'Their lot might improve if they looked to authority earned through wisdom and ability, rather than through whatever quirk of birth grants wizardry to otherwise undeserving individuals.' He looked at his soiled trousers and gave up on them without even trying.
'I find that an interesting perspective from a man born to his own position of absolute power,' Velindre said tersely.
'This isn't about me.' Kheda stood up straight and looked at her. 'It's about them, and this place, and how we get ourselves out of it. We didn't come to fight in their battles, you're right about that, and I still want to get home to Chazen.'
'How do you think we can do that?' interrupted Risala.
'We need to show these people that they can live without a wizard with his foot on their necks.' Kheda
gazed out through the gaps between the stakes making up the wall of the hut. 'We need to convince them not to kill their enemies outright, but to offer them the choice of alliance instead of death.' He sighed. 'There will be those who will prefer to die, especially at first, but we can hope that the more intelligent ones will see the advantages to living free of magical tyranny.'
'Which all sounds very fine in theory.' Velindre couldn't curb her irritation. 'Just how do you propose to take magic out of the scales hereabouts?'
'By having you two kill as many mages as we come up against,' Kheda said with brutal frankness. 'And by having you two take no responsibility for these people beyond defending them by meeting wizardry with wizardry. Let them find leaders among themselves. And I can teach them things that will weight the balance heavily in their favour whenever it comes to a fight without magic' He paused for a moment. 'If we can make these people a power to be reckoned with, and the rest can see they can do it without magic, without the suffering that's the cost of having a wizard on your side, perhaps we won't need to fight too many battles. Perhaps other people here will want to share in a better life.'
'Perhaps,' scoffed Naldeth. He looked at Velindre. 'What about the dragons?'
'What about the dragons?' The magewoman looked at Kheda, her angular face severe. 'I won't kill them for you.'
'The first thing a warlord does if a jungle cat has turned man-eater is to make sure there are no men, women or children in the forest for it to catch. Every village locks its ducks and geese away and hogs and deer are driven out of the beast's territory.' He looked at Velindre. 'If you say these dragons are only here because they're used to easy meat, we deny it to them. We stop the slaughter of
prisoners and wounded. You burn the dead to ashes every time.'
'It's not only the meat that keeps them here,' said Naldeth doubtfully. 'There's the confluence of elements.'
'You kept that black dragon distracted and out of the fight today.' Kheda looked from the young mage to Velindre. 'If you can keep that beast or any other from backing a wild wizard, I can give these people new tools to fight with, weapons that will give them a fair chance of killing an enemy mage without any magic of their own. Once that happens, everything changes.'
'You condemn them to death simply for being mage-born?' Naldeth protested. 'Besides, I thought you said only wizards kill wizards here. Isn't that the custom?'
'Then it's time to change the custom.' Kheda was unmoved. 'You were the ones decrying such magical tyranny. Don't you want to break this vile circle these people are trapped in?' he challenged Naldeth. 'Does it really favour these wizards and these dragons? Isn't their magic just as crude and makeshift as the wretched lives these lesser people lead? I thought you northern mages were all for advancement and learning.'
'It's a shame these people can't get the benefit of all the eloquence of an Aldabreshin warlord.' Velindre switched her gaze to Naldeth. 'We might be able to persuade these wild mages to surrender, short of killing them, if we stifle their magic. If we can drive the dragons away, there'll be no aura for them to draw on.'
'But how do we drive off dragons?' Naldeth shook his head. 'We should take this to Hadrumal and lay it before the Council. We've done all we can.'
'I still don't fancy my chances of working any spell over that distance,' Velindre told him with some chagrin. 'I'm definitely not about to try any translocation and I don't know what would happen if I tried a bespeaking. The fire
dragon that attacked Chazen insinuated itself into my magic and looked right back through my spell at me when I was scrying for Dev once, before I ever came to the Archipelago. That black dragon could well do something similar.'
'Then what are we going to do?' Naldeth cried, exasperated.
'We try using nexus magic to drive off the dragons,' Velindre said promptly.
Naldeth gaped at her. 'What?'
'You were working with Usara and Shiv, weren't you?' she demanded. 'I know they've been looking into blending sympathetic elements. You've a powerful fire affinity and working with Planir has honed your abilities with the earth. There are few wizards to equal me with the air, even if the Council decided Rafrid was a safer choice for Cloud Master.' She swallowed the bitterness tainting her words. 'And unwelcome as Azazir's attentions were, the mad old bastard taught me more about water magic than I ever expected to know.'
'Every scholar in Hadrumal would still say it takes four wizards to manipulate four elements.' Despite his reservations, Naldeth sounded tempted.
'Ordinarily, with the usual run of affinity and elemental power available.' Velindre nodded. 'But we will have the elemental congruencies here to draw on.'
'Nexus magic is best worked through a focus gem,' Naldeth said unguardedly.
'A ruby, perhaps?' Kheda asked bluntly.
Velindre surprised him with a sudden laugh. 'I imagined you'd go poking about in the holds.'
Kheda wasn't smiling. 'Are you sure you can do this? Overconfidence killed Dev just as surely as that fire dragon's egg.'
'We should be able to repel any dragon if we can draw
the other elements into a nexus antithetical to its own affinity.' She sounded confident.
'Then we have to recover the Zaise,' Kheda said determinedly. 'And I can find good uses for the rest of that cargo. Our best chance of doing that is if we take the fight to the tree dwellers while they're still reeling from this defeat. Can you undertake to keep that dragon away, and curb their mage's power?'
Velindre nodded slowly, frowning. 'I'd like some time to think through a few ways of constraining that wizard's magic without killing him outright.'
'We should discuss this theory of nexus magic' Naldeth didn't sound quite so sanguine as the magewoman.
'As long as we're not attacked, we can wait a day or so.' Kheda looked around. 'These people need time to recover a little.'
'What then?' Risala was gazing at Kheda, unblinking.
What are you expecting me to tell you? I'm sorry, my love, but I won't lie to you.
'Then we will have the Zaise and its cargo and we can decide how to make best use of both.' He swallowed unpalatable truths that he could not bring himself to voice just yet.
'Now, let's teach these people a few things that will give us the advantage in the fight.'
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The old woman was inexpressibly relieved when she finally saw dusk sweeping swiftly across the sky. After keeping the whole encampment busy all day, the strangers had finally gone back to the painted man's hut. The old woman accepted a piece of peeled vine from a shyly smiling child and spared the little girl a brief smile of her own. As the child scampered back to her mother, the old woman chewed on the sweetness coating the fibrous core, mindful of her sparse teeth. It soothed the qualms in her belly.
Was something wrong? The strangers had been harsh and curt as they spoke to each other ever since they had come back from defeating the men from across the river. Then the golden stranger and the red-faced one with the powers of painted ones had spent long periods just talking to each other, sitting in the hut, heads close together, murmuring like brooding birds. The tall stranger had been stirring all the men to action, making himself understood with wordless gestures and a frown that brooked no dissent. His woman had offered her helping hands to the women setting everything to rights again after their abortive flight to the uncertain safety of the thorn scrub.
People were still busy about their huts and enclosures. One or two smiled at her as they passed by. The old woman nodded obsequiously to acknowledge the mother of a healthy brood who'd earlier offered her shelter for the night. She knew why they were being so solicitous.
They wanted answers to their questions. How would they react when she finally had to admit that she had precious few answers? Would they still be as kind?
At least it still looked as if she didn't have to fear being tied up, to be kept barely alive with meagre scraps and water until some painted man demanded food for his beast. Everyone was still talking about the tale that the men had brought back from the battle. Neither the golden stranger nor the ruddy one had waited to woo a beast with the carrion. Instead they had shown the bodies of friend and foe alike the courtesy of fire. Of painted fire, at that.
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