Sky Rider

by Terry Mancour

  Neither man replied as she strode away, although both looked balefully at the crackling Flame as she walked stiffly by. It was impertinence of the highest order to sass your parents in front of the Flame.

  But Dara didn’t care. This wasn’t impertinence. She was in the right, she knew. She was a noble trying to enact the wishes of her liege lord to the yeoman of one of his estates, and her father and uncle were being needlessly obstructive . . . just because she was “Little Bird” to them, not Lady Lenodara the Hawkmaid.

  It made her so mad she wanted to cry. They knew how hard she had worked, since she’d discovered her Talent and gotten apprenticed. She’d risked her life more than once to defend Sevendor and its lord. Her ability as a falconer and a beastmaster had actually helped save Sevendor and Master Minalan from attack. For them to look upon her request for a proper mews as akin to building a chicken-coop was just insulting. Just because a mews wouldn’t add to the estate’s coffers every full-moon accounting did not mean the expenditure wasn’t worthwhile.

  Indeed, it didn’t matter one bit whether the estate would profit from the mews. This was an order from a noble, Dara reasoned. One she had every legal right to make on Minalan’s behalf. Perhaps if she had demanded that Westwood Manor pay for the expense her father’s refusal might have made more sense. But objecting to her spending her own money to improve her own professional life was another matter. Worse, declaring that she had to use the reward for her service so that she and some future husband might buy a farm . . . that made her irate.

  A dowry made sense for her sisters, Leska and Linta. Their aspirations ran toward a domestic life and a prosperous holding, and Dara did not look down on them for that. Saving coin to help them start out would allow them and their future husbands to establish themselves in trade or in land without going into debt.

  But Dara was a professional woman, both as falconer and as a mage. After her apprenticeship was done she would be earning her livelihood through that trade, not through agriculture. More, she was now ennobled as a magelord. The title, and the rights it conveyed, put her on a far different path than her big sisters. Dara didn’t need a dowry toward some farm in the future. She needed a mews, and she needed it now.

  Perhaps, she considered as she walked back to Sevendor Castle, if her father and uncle knew about the secret project she and Ithalia were working on, they would be of a different mind. Should it prove successful, giant falcons could become extremely useful in the war effort. Without a proper mews for the regular falcons to start from, it would be very hard to develop the giant variety they were seeking.

  But another part of her resisted the temptation to turn around and explain to him. She shouldn’t have to, she reasoned. There was no good reason for him not to do what she asked, except that it was inconvenient for him and his own plans for the manor. Yes, Dara was a noble, and nobles made life difficult for commoners all the time. But compared to some of the outrageous requests she’d heard about the nobility making of the peasantry, constructing a mews seemed pretty benign.

  It was the fact that she was his daughter, and a girl, that had made his decision, she decided. Had Master Minalan been the one making the request, she knew, the entire Westwood would be working on it already. But since it was plain old Dara, the Little Bird who lived in the castle, her father felt he could safely ignore her.

  That made her angry. Dara felt as if she had earned the right to build the mews, not just as a noble and the financial backer, but as a daughter who had done well and brought honor to her hall and her family. The Westwood had prospered, since she’d become Minalan’s apprentice. While she couldn’t take all the credit for that, she knew she’d had some effect on the recent prosperity the woodland estate enjoyed under the Magelord. For her father to ignore that felt like the worst kind of insult.

  She was tempted to go immediately to Master Minalan and explain her father’s unwillingness to build the mews the way she wanted, where she wanted. The Spellmonger of Sevendor certainly had the power to compel the Master of the Westwood to act.

  But Dara also knew that if she did that, she would be essentially borrowing her master’s power. That might get the job done, but it wouldn’t solve the problem of her father seeing her as a little girl, not a professional in her own right. No, the Spellmonger had given her an order, and she wanted to handle this on her own.

  As Dara passed under the gatehouse she came to a decision: she would handle the matter herself, without involving Master Minalan. Not only would that keep him from asking pointed questions about some of her work, but it would prove that she could solve problems on her own without running to her master every time things got hard.

  Even when that problem was her own father.

  Chapter Eight

  The Path To The Knob

  The next morning, Dara rose before dawn and slipped out of the castle, pausing only long enough to raid the pantry for a few sweet rolls. The morning had cooled her temper only a little, and her resolve was even stronger. All night long she had considered her options in building the mews, trying to overcome her frustration with the problem of her father and focus on what she could actually do. That was hard – every time she recalled her conversation with her Kamen, she got angrier.

  But she’d arrived at some decisions by morning, and when she headed out of the castle it was to purpose. It was a bit of a walk into Sevendor Town, but she didn’t mind. She enjoyed Sevendor at this time of day. The peasants were already awake and preparing to take the road to their scattered fields. Dogs barked at each other from neighboring yards, roosters crowed the coming of the sun, sheep, goats and pigs were seeking their breakfast and woodsmoke filled the air as hundreds of wives kindled the fires to make the day’s meals.

  Dara enjoyed “eavesdropping” on various animals as she walked. Some were difficult to make contact with, but others were remarkably easy – as easy as waving to someone on the side of the road. She had her favorite animal spies among the livestock and wildlife of Sevendor. Chickens were too stupid to be very helpful, of course, but the pigs were almost always willing to exchange a friendly greeting and a polite inquiry as to her health. A few of the oxen who regularly pulled the carts back and forth betwixt town and castle were old friends. And an aging nanny goat who frequented the side of the road near Gurisham was a ruthless gossip, when you caught her in the right mood.

  While their perspectives were often limited, they sometimes were able to tell her useful things human beings wouldn’t consider. Not in words – Dara didn’t really “talk” to animals, as most people thought. But by sharing mental and emotional perspectives through their magical link, they could communicate. Indeed, words would have been awkward, for some of the concepts the animals shared. There just wasn’t a human vocabulary for what and how dogs smelled their world, for instance.

  It was through her animal friends that Dara was able to track down who she was looking for: Gareth.

  The young wizard lived in the center of the new town that had sprung up in Sevendor, taking a bed and table at Banamor’s expanding hall near the center of the High Street.

  Banamor was a former footwizard. They were unregistered and largely untrained magi who made a meager living selling their limited magical services to peasants and artisans, while avoiding the notice of the Censorate of Magic. Banamor had come to Sevendor soon after the Spellmonger’s arrival, and had provided a mercantile element to Master Minalan’s staff. He’d been instrumental in supporting the market in town, and had developed a business buying and selling magical Now he was not only the Fairwarden of the Magic Fair, he had recently been elected mayor by the growing town’s new council.

  Banamor had been richly rewarded with his canny efforts. Banamor’s shop was the largest and grandest on the High Street, with two stories finished and a third under construction. The industrious wizard needed the space; with the growth of the town and the success of the Magic Fair. The entire lower floor was one vast warehouse filled with everything from magica
l herbs to shipments of snowstone to big bags of red dirt that Dara had no idea what use they had.

  As his primary assistant, Gareth did a lot of work for Banamor and was frequently away from the shop on his master’s business; but Dara was early enough to catch the young wizard still at breakfast, before he had left for the day. His thin face looked surprised at Dara’s sudden and unexpected appearance at Banamor’s table that morning.

  “Dara! Is there something amiss?” he asked, concerned, smoothing his unkempt hair with one hand while he straightened out his shoulders.

  “I need a favor, Gareth,” Dara sighed, resigned to doing something she really didn’t want to do. She sat down at the trestle table and explained the entire, tangled situation with her father and uncle to her friend while he ate his morning porridge. While he was still sleepy, he paid careful attention to her until she finished.

  “So, your father and uncle don’t want to build a mews – particularly that mews – even though you’re willing to pay for it, you need it for the birds and falconer Master Minalan paid for, and there’s no good reason why you shouldn’t put it where you want to,” he summarized. “Why don’t you just get Master Minalan to order them to?”

  “Because I shouldn’t have to!” Dara nearly exploded. “I know I’m right . . . but if I go to Minalan, it will look like I can’t handle my own family,” she admitted, her shoulders sagging. “How is that going to look? And I need to get this done – those birds are miserable in that shed, and Master Arcor and his apprentice aren’t much happier. I need to take care of this without resorting to the Spellmonger, if I can.”

  “So you came to me?” Gareth asked, confused.

  “The only way I can get this done without my father’s help is with magic,” she reasoned. “I want to begin the project myself, and see how much of it I can do with spells before I have to hire someone,” she decided. “I figured you would know best how to do that. The path needs to be expanded into a roadway fit to bear a cart, the top of the rise needs to be cleared of brush and trees, and I thought you might know of a magical way to do that sort of thing. If you could help,” she added, pleadingly.

  “I could,” Gareth admitted. “I’ve actually got a pretty light day, today. I’m not going to Chepstan Fair, this year, Banamor is sending one of his other assistants, so I’m spared that nightmare of planning. And the shipment we were expecting this morning from Ruelsby is late. Banamor fears bandits – there’s been a lot of that, lately, particularly in Sashtalia. He’s gone to have a word with Sire Cei about it.

  “As far as building your mews goes . . . well, there are advanced spells and enchantments for that sort of thing, especially clearing and widening – that’s pretty elemental enchantment,” he bragged. “I suppose I could take a look and do as much as I can to rough in the road. You could get a work crew to tidy it up afterwards,” he proposed.

  “Not if my father won’t assign a work crew,” she reminded him.

  “If the Westwoodmen are too busy to assist, then there are other hands in Sevendor willing to take your coin for their labor. But we’ll come to that when we need to. Let me get my cloak and hat, a few spell components, and leave a note for Banamor and we’ll get started.”

  After Gareth packed up some supplies he thought they might need, they walked back to the Westwood as the town and fields of Sevendor came to life around them. The anvils of the forges began to ring, the herders began to move their herds from one pasture to another after the morning milking, and folk began moving down the roadways on their daily errands.

  Work crews gathered around local landmarks before moving to their chores I groups, shovels or hoes over their shoulders. Unlike the old days, before the Spellmonger, there weren’t any men loitering around waiting for someone to hire them – there was plenty for all. By the time they crossed the hanging bridge to Westwood Hall, there weren’t many workers left on the roads.

  The bridge guard let them cross without challenge, and Dara was glad to not be headed to the manor hall, for once, the site of her confrontation with the Master of the Wood. Instead they bore left and headed toward the steep trail that led to the site she wanted to build upon.

  The steep, narrow path up to the knob proved to be a challenge, even for the journeyman wizard. Unlike Banamor, Gareth had attended a formal magical school and graduated with the credentials that allowed him to practice anywhere. He specialized in thaumaturgy, the study of magic as a science, and he was considered to be a gifted intellect by other wizards.

  Unfortunately, Gareth’s physical frame was not as robust as his brain. By the time they made it to the path, he was already starting to sweat and huff his breath. Dara suggested a short break while he studied the trailhead, just a few yards past where the kennels were built up against the base of the cliff.

  “I think I can do something, here,” he decided, after considering the geography a bit. “Cut a stick for me half again as wide as the widest cart in the Westwood,” he directed, as he began to rummage through his satchel. “I’m going to go to work on the worst parts of the trail, first.”

  Dara did as she was asked, hacking down a hazel sapling with her heavy belt knife as he began to cast spells on the trail. When he was done, he looked at her wryly.

  “You know, you could have done that with a spell,” he said, examining the roughly-hacked end of the stick. To prove his point he cast a quick spell that neatly separated the twisted portion of the cut and provided a neat, perfectly flat cut, instead.

  “Sorry,” she sighed. “I’m still not used to using magic all the time like that.”

  “How can you resist, under a mountain of snowstone?” he grinned. “It’s easy as breathing. Never mind. This will do.”

  “Are you going to use that to make a wand?” she asked, curiously.

  “I’m going to use it to measure the width of the trail and ensure it’s relatively flat,” he replied with a chuckle. “Sometimes a stick is just a stick. Follow behind me, and make sure that everything I do provides a path as wide as that stick and flat enough to get a wagon wheel over without tipping it,” he advised.

  Gareth began his spell. The base of the trailhead was wide enough, expanded over the years by untold numbers of feet climbing up to the knob. But it quickly narrowed as tree roots and a fresh growth of spring underbrush encroached on its route. Gareth’s spell neatly sheared away all the low-lying foliage and snapped trees out of the way without effort. Every step he took released a new explosion of pops, snaps or rustles as the plant life along the path was stripped away.

  Of course, there were plenty of rocks that occluded the sides of the path, as well. Gareth’s magic was just as effective for those, either by prying them out of place or – more fascinating to Dara – actually cleaving the white stones apart like they were made of clay.

  It took all morning for the two wizards to make it to the first of two switchbacks on the trail, and, as the sun neared its peak, Gareth begged for a break. Doing magic continuously like that was physically and mentally draining, she knew from her own experience. While he rested and surveyed the next portion of the trail, she ran back down to Westwood Hall and begged a basket of food for them both. Magic was hungry work, as hard as manual labor when effort was sustained that long.

  “You know, this is a really pretty spot,” Gareth remarked as he chewed. “We’re not even at the top, yet, and we can still see out over the forest and into town. I can see why your father accused you of selecting the site for its view.”

  “That wasn’t why I did it – it’s just the best place for it,” she countered. “The ‘pretty view’ means we’re at a higher elevation. And we’re remote. Both good things for a mews.”

  “This switchback is going to be troublesome for a cart,” Gareth pointed out as he chewed a heel of bread. “There’s nary enough room to make the turn, unless we build out this area more. That big boulder is in the way.”

  “That’s going to be expensive to dig out,” Dara sighed, heavily. The bou
lder was the size of a cart, itself, and occupied most of the area where a cart would have to turn.

  “Yeah,” Gareth agreed, drawing a wand from his belt. He said a word in what Dara thought sounded like High Perwynese, pointed the wand, and the boulder crumbled into gravel. “That should make it more manageable.”

  Dara stared incredulously at the mound of small rocks that had replaced the one very big rock. “Gareth! I had no idea you knew how to do that!”

  “It’s actually not that hard,” he demurred, as he put the wand away. “The spell is simple, it just takes a lot of power and some experimentation. It expands the natural fissures that already exist in the rock, is all. If you have a witchstone, it’s nothing.”

  “If you don’t have magic, it’s four or five days of brutal labor with a pickaxe and sledge hammer,” Dara agreed. “And that’s just to get it to move out of the way.”

  “This way, you just have to rake it and compact it,” Gareth agreed. “A few cobbles on top, some topsoil, and it’s plenty wide enough now to get a wain through the turn.”

  After lunch, Gareth continued his relentless spellwork up the path. It became much easier, Dara noted, widening the path between the first and second switchbacks. The ground was far less rocky and the path was already wide. Measuring it with the stick she’d cut, Dara followed behind Gareth and did what she could to move the rocks he dislodged into a more useful position.

  Even with magic it was still grueling, difficult work. Dara’s fingernails spilt and broke as she heaved one rock after another to the side of the trail, where it would better support the wheel of a wagon. Gareth, meanwhile, kept pushing forward all afternoon, despite becoming more and more tired with the effort. He reached the second switchback in late afternoon, and after a brief rest he used his wands to re-shape the dirt and rocks until there was a space wide enough not just for a wagon to turn, but to haul a second wagon off the road if it broke down or needed to let one pass.