by Guy Antibes
Valanna nodded. “I just touch it.” She did so, leaving them in the dark. Kulara led the way back to the camp while Valanna continued to think about the consequences of spells. When they had some time in Bitrium, she would write down the intended effects and the possible unintended effects of spells. With her new way of thinking and the perspective Kulara had just given her, she realized that there was so much more to magic than she thought. She regretted that her father had a stroke before she really came into her magic. Communications were so difficult and Valanna only picked up the very basics of magic. Her uncle never knew much and mostly used her as a servant.
She laid out her bedroll on the other side of the embers that had once been their cook fire. She could hear murmurings from Asem and his wife, but soon all she noticed were the sounds of night birds and insects.
The morning light woke Valanna up, but she found she couldn’t move. She tried to cry out to Asem, but she couldn’t even lift her head.
“Ah, the last one wakes up,” she heard a woman say out of her range of vision. “Time to go.” Valanna saw a Colcanan face come into view. “We know you practice magic, dearie. Magic without a permit is a violation of our law. Since you are close to Bitrium and you three are a very interesting trio, we will take you there and decide what to do.”
Valanna was lifted up on her horse. She couldn’t move her eyes, only open and shut her eyelids. A man tied her to the horse with her head on the side of the horse’s neck and the ground moving past her was all she could see until the rhythm of the horse’s gait lulled her to sleep.
She woke again, back in possession of her body. Valanna smelled cooking and looked around. Her hands were now tied together at the wrists. Their captors consisted of two women and three men.
“Hey,” she said.
“Say nothing.” Asem was tied up, hands and feet, next to her.
She struggled to a sitting position. Kulara glared at her. “They found us through that light you made.”
“You asked me to make it, as I recall,” Valanna said.
“Say nothing,” Asem said again. “Both of you.”
“And what have you to hide?” The woman, who obviously led the group, said. She wore her dark hair long with a blue streak on each side of her face.
“Nothing. We have nothing to hide.”
The woman lowered on her haunches. “Two Warish, if I guess correctly, and a Pestlan traveling to Bitrium practicing magic in the middle of the night?”
“It wasn’t the middle of the night,” Valanna said. “You know that.”
Asem glared at her.
The woman grinned. “I do.”
“Can’t two women go out into the fields and relieve themselves?” Kulara said. “You saw a small torch and found the ground wet, did you not?”
“We saw a magic light.”
Valanna could hear the uncertainty in the woman’s voice.
“Then why are you headed to Bitrium?”
Asem groaned, and then sat up. He glared at his wife. “I am seeking information about one of your witches.”
“Do you have her name?”
“I do. Honor Fidelia.”
Valanna saw the woman’s eyes widen a bit. She smoothed her face. “I’ve never heard of her.”
“Well, I guess that’s why we haven’t asked you,” Asem said evenly. “I know someone who will have heard of her in Bitrium. Since we are heading where you are taking us, why don’t you take off our bonds?”
“I suspect that you all know your poses. If I am wrong, you will be a bit uncomfortable on our trip. If I am right, then I don’t want my friends and me to be littered along the way.”
Asem nodded. “Perhaps we can have something to eat. It would make our trip less uncomfortable.”
~
What would Dalistro think with Trak gone from his house? The man would certainly check the guild next. Three magicians would have vanished. Well, not exactly vanished, Trak thought. At least now they were days away from Espozia.
They traveled as a mother and her two children. Malena didn’t look anything like Trak, but then she was pretty enough that no one probably cared about Trak. Now that they traveled together, he could see that she was a bit older than Val, perhaps only two or three years or so older than Trak. Since they traveled as family, they shared rooms in inns and the odd farm that would take them in. Trak saw more of Malena than he expected, but it didn’t seem to bother the girl. She had likewise seen more of Trak, but she didn’t seem embarrassed about that either.
So Trak just appreciated the view and tried his best to make their trip as smooth as possible. Honor, on the other hand, treated them both like unruly children. The one redeeming development was that Trak now wore his old sword and he had his portfolio safely tucked into a saddlebag. Honor wouldn’t let him take it out and he had to agree not to touch it until they reached Colcan.
The sword would distract anyone from thinking they were magicians, but the book would confirm it. Escaped magicians were treated ‘unevenly’ in Santasia as Honor had said. Some would just as soon see them on their way and others would try to hold them for the guild. The southern guilds were less possessive than those closer to Espozia. Keeping a low profile seemed the best approach and Trak agreed with that.
Night had fallen and Trak stirred the glowing embers with a stick. Malena had retired and Honor sat with Trak. Both of them looked into the fire.
“How did you escape from the guild?” Trak said.
Honor looked up and smiled faintly. “Nullia. I tested well as most Colcanans do, but Nullia had freed me before any classification. I started as a Green with my memories intact. Then I maintained a slow rise to Red and then asked to be assigned as a spy in Pestle.”
“What about Malena?”
“She made the mistake of following a boy she loved into southern Santasia. It wasn’t a good match. She used her magic to get even when she finally caught up with him being intimate with a Santasian girl. The girlfriend called the guild and Malena was the Yellow who you met. Only after she witnessed your performances did Nullia and I finally free her. She had a rough time coming out of the spell, but we left soon after she finally came to terms with her real identity. It’s harder for some than for others.”
Trak rubbed his head. “I won’t forget how disoriented I was. Emerging memories were painful.”
“For a few, it drives them mad. They must be re-captured and their minds erased to survive.”
“Why didn’t the guild re-capture you?”
“They never knew I was free, until a few days ago. They sent me to Pestledown, looking for strong magicians to waylay.”
“So Dalistro isn’t one of your scouts?”
Honor chuckled, a low-throated sound. “No. I don’t know what his game is and neither does the guild. That’s why they waited until he’d be gone for a few months before they captured you.”
That fact didn’t sit too well with Trak. “So you were in on it the entire time?”
“Dalistro plays his own game, I play my own within the confines of the Magicians Guild, until lately, and within the strictures of the Magicians College in Bitrium.”
“Where does that leave me?”
Honor played with the fire for a moment and then looked at him. “Where do you want to be?”
“With my fathers.”
“You have two?”
“Neel Cardswallow and Able Bluntwithe.”
“Ah, Able.” Honor said. “The Pestlan rebels. I’ve never met Able, but Neel has always been a very likable rogue.”
Trak suddenly realized that he was fully at sea without a steering rudder. “Is Esmera a rebel?”
“She is and most of your friends, but the situation is complicated in Pestledown. There are rebels and then there are the factions supporting the rebels.”
“There is more than one?”
She nodded. “Coffun Cricket is in the pocket of the Santasians. The Santasians thought I was in the pocket of the Magician’s Guil
d. Snively is in his own pocket or for a faction yet to be determined, though he is generally thought to be most closely allied with Neel’s goals.”
“Neel and Able?”
“Freelancers wanting magic restored to the land. They all sort of work together. The Warishian spies are working with the government and the suborned institutions to effect a bloodless coup.”
“Valanna?” Trak said.
“Valanna, Podor Feely and your Pestlan king’s chamberlain, among many others, are in Warishian pockets. They have the most agents, including highly placed academicians and even influential clergy.”
Trak just shook his head in wonder. “I was lucky.”
“We were lucky. Dalistro spirited us away at a highly critical time. You are a very important piece that everyone wants in their pocket or—“
“They want me dead.”
“Yes, dead. Dalistro recognized this and provided you with a continuance of your education and weapons training. I think you astounded him, quite frankly.”
“Neel’s doing. He taught me the forms.”
“Your doing. Your forms are perfect. It’s a gift that is rarely given. You did incredibly well in the guild, did you know that?”
“I don’t know what I know, but I worked hard to keep from being caught. I had no idea what was happening and wouldn’t with the spell or without it.”
“And that was your greatest defense. How could you slip up, being as ignorant as you were?”
“Not too ignorant. I remembered the ‘worry’ word.”
She smiled into the fire. It made her look younger, nearly pretty, for an older woman. “With a little help. You are most interesting. Your ‘threads’ as you described them and remembering the spells made it easy for you to move among them. While you tried to piece together your past life, your prodigious memory hid any errors that you might have made. Nullia was fooled.”
It was Trak’s turn to chuckle. “It was a close thing.”
She shook her head. “Not really, I would have stolen into your room and lifted the cursed spell myself, if I had to.”
Her comment shook Trak a little. His great accomplishment had an unknown back-up plan. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“What happens next? I’ve just been following you.”
“We go to Bitrium for a bit more instruction and then we can develop a new set of plans. Right now we don’t know what has developed in Pestle since we’ve been gone.”
“But they won’t know anything more than we do.”
Honor scrunched up her shoulders. “Would you like to know a secret?”
Trak had to roll his eyes. Everything seemed like a secret to him, but he urged Honor on.
“There is a pose that two people can make that links them. Once linked they can talk to each other from any distance.”
“You’ve told your countrymen that I’m with you?”
She shook her head. “No. The link is rather uncomfortable since the two linked are in each other’s thoughts constantly. We generally only use married couples… happily married couples.”
“So there is a spouse in Bitrium and a spouse in Pestledown?”
Honor nodded. “There is.”
“Do I know either one?”
“You do, Leaf Gougepenny. That’s not her real last name, of course, but we spies help each other. I paid some extra coins to Cricket to get him to assign you to her. She confirmed to us that your story was accurate. You really were illiterate.”
“I was. I’m not now.”
“No. You’ve learned a lot, but there is more to teach you.”
Trak yawned. “I know. There’s a lot everyone needs to teach me, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.”
Honor yawned in response to his. “Then, we learn more tomorrow.
~~~
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE BONDS BEGAN TO REALLY HURT VALANNA’S WRISTS when they finally reached Bitrium. Asem just whistled a tune as they approached Bitrium. She didn’t understand and couldn’t share in his positive attitude. Her quandary dropped to the back of her mind as they approached the city and she began to notice its unique character. Dark stone towers reached into the sky, all but the tallest of them capped with steep black cones. The only embellishments that she could see were vertical lines running up the towers. The severity of Colcan expressed itself more plainly here than any other place they had passed through.
She noticed the eyes of one of her captors observing her. He narrowed his eyes as he spoke, “I advise you to be on your best behavior. We don’t tolerate foreign magicians in our guildhouse, unlike the Espozians.”
Valanna didn’t need to be reminded as they rode under an unguarded gate. Windows on the tall buildings on either side of the road looked down from the second floor. She wondered about the blank walls on the first floor, looking from side to side for at least a door.
“Defense,” Asem said from her side, a smile lifting the sides of his mouth. “This is what we would call a killing zone if this were a fort in Warish. It’s not uncommon in our country and I’m surprised to see one here in this school.”
“You are correct, Warishian,” a Colcanan said from behind them. “We have fought for our school against the Santasians many times in our history.”
“I don’t remember any recent wars between your two states,” Asem said.
“Not recently, no, but the school is over a thousand years old. The first tower was built by the first Colcanan.”
“Who was from Santasia, if my history tells me correctly?”
The man in the back didn’t respond.
Valanna wondered what Misson Dalistro’s version of Colcanan history would be like? She never knew since she had never spent a lot of time working with him.
They entered into a large courtyard. It looked like a larger version of the road they had just been riding on; no windows or doors at the bottom level except for a large iron gate immediately in front of them.
The Colcanan leader rode quickly across the courtyard and conferred through a peephole in the gate. She sauntered back and raised her arm. The gate began to open and they proceeded to enter the actual city of Bitrium. Valanna wondered what had made these people so paranoid?
The road on the other side looked more like the kinds of cities that she knew. People thronged the streets buying and selling from shops and open stalls. She did notice the extra attention her group received as they moved slowly toward the concentration of towers. All of the buildings were made out of various colors of gray stone. With all of the added activity, the city still remained dour.
Another wall, similar to the one that circled the city, appeared as they turned a corner in the road. Valanna looked over at Asem, who seemed intent on studying the fortifications. They went through another of those killing grounds and entered a courtyard. Men and women dressed in dark gray stood around them as they stopped.
“Off,” their escort said. She turned to those assembled. “We caught two Warishians and a Pestlan woman on the road, heading for Bitrium. The two women practiced magic in a field and that attracted our attention.”
Asem looked very relaxed for being called a criminal. Kulara’s eyes darted from face to face and the way she twisted her hands in her bonds, Valanna could tell she was ready to fight her way out.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” one of the men in gray said, as he walked over to Asem.
“I say get these ropes off of me, old friend.”
The man grinned. “I’m sure the experience did you some good, somewhere in that old Ferezanan body.” He assumed a pose and said a word that Valanna couldn’t understand and Asem’s bonds parted.
Asem dismounted. His senseless hands still dangled from his wrists, but that didn’t seem to matter when the two men threw their arms around each other and laughed.
~
Valanna had expected to be roughly handled and hustled off to a dungeon deep underneath one of the tallest towers. She looked at
Kulara, who didn’t look very pleased.
“It would be nice if my husband confided in me just a little more,” she said. “He has friends and contacts everywhere and, it seems, Bitrium has been affected by Asem’s charm, as well.”
Charm wasn’t the first word that came to Valanna’s mind when thinking of Asem. Sinister, dangerous, risk-taker was more consistent with her image of the man. She watched Asem move a bit away from his friend as he argued with the leader of the group that took them captive.
The animated discussion continued as Asem sauntered over to his wife and Valanna. “Berin is a former contact that I had, before Marom led the country. I’ve always kept in touch with him. I had hoped to arrive in Bitrium under less…” he paused and looked around the courtyard, “antagonistic circumstances. He has news of Pestle.”
“Are we going to stand here forever?” Kulara said. “And what exactly is my role here?”
Asem grinned and put his arm around his wife, but Kulara didn’t respond. “We are man and wife in Bitrium. Valanna is a refugee from the Warish court. It is best to use the truth whenever you can.”
She glared at him and then relaxed. “You do have your own ways, Asem.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek while Valanna was lost, her newly won confidence frayed a bit.
Their captors finally mounted and rode out of the courtyard, leaving their horses and belongings.
Asem’s friend, Berin, walked up to them. “I am sorry. These are tense times and I apologize for our scouts. Normally, you would have been asked to register in the city, but...” he shrugged.
“Nothing that bandages and a few days might cure,” Asem said. His words reminded Valanna of her painful wrists, which the surprising events had done a good job of pushing to the back of her mind.
“Come and let’s get quarters in my tower.”
“You have a tower?” Valanna blurted out.
“I don’t own one, my dear.” He smiled at Valanna and she wondered what she saw in his face. Friendliness? Trust? Berin certainly didn’t seem to be hiding anything. “Leave the horses. I’ll have your things delivered to your rooms.” He left them for a moment and conferred with a man holding horse reins.