In Treachery Forged (The Law of Swords) (15 page)

“If I wasn’t looking for it?” he said, surprised. “I... well, no. Not unless it’s a very large one.”

Euleilla nodded. “Think of someone untrained in magic as a very tiny lodestone, one which you’d have difficulty finding unless you already knew it was there. You wouldn’t ‘see’ the lodestone if you weren’t looking for it. Likewise, you must ‘look’ for magic in people. If you ‘look’ at a person with this method, and find they are just so unfocused and dispersed that you can’t even see the pattern of magic inside them, they are not a mage. If you can see the pattern... well, then you’ve found a mage. They become a beacon of intense magic, and from that intensity you start to get a sense of how strong a person is.”

“Okay,” Maelgyn said slowly, mulling that over.

“And then you need to learn to keep looking for magic of that sort all of the time. Something which may be hard to do, if you aren’t a person who has to rely on magic to see,” she considered. “But you don’t need to do that to sense latent magic. Once you get to the point you can sense people not trained in magic, you can apply the same trick to any trained mage and you’ll be able to figure out how much latent magic they have yet to access. Like I said, I believe you’ve got the potential to be much more powerful than you are now. You have so much more magic you have yet to access.”

Maelgyn nodded. “Maybe you could help me practice ‘seeing’ magic?”

“I don’t think I could help you with that,” Euleilla answered. “You need to work with someone not trained in magic, first, for this to work. I can help you learn how to use your magic better, though.”

“And I could help you, as well, I suspect,” Maelgyn noted. “Somehow, I think you haven’t had much practice with counter-magic, since you need a partner mage for that.”

“No, I don’t think I’ve had much practice with counter-magic,” Euleilla admitted uncertainly. “Or rather, I haven’t studied
any
counter-magic. I’ve never even been aware of such a thing, unless you’re referring to lodestones and dragonhide.”

“No,” Maelgyn answered. He pulled up the memory of a lecture given by Thoniel, his old magic tutor, and recited it as closely as he could. “Counter-magic can only be done with another mage. It works under the same principle as all Human magic – by borrowing on the behaviors of lodestone. Hold two lodestones together one way, and they attract each other. Hold them another way, and they try to push each other away. It’s one of the major defensive concepts in magical combat.”

“Hmm,” she said. Suddenly, he felt a magical force pushing on him in what was recognizably counter-magic. It wasn’t nearly as strong as her usual magical touch, but he matched it back instead of trying to break through.

The “battle” continued for hours as they hiked on. It started becoming an interesting game of magic. In Euleilla’s case, she was trying to write her name on his skin using a magical combat training technique – forcing a person’s blood to come up and mark their skin in a sort of bruise. Maelgyn was trying something else. He was trying to take control of the muscles in her arm and force her to touch her own nose.

They could have easily burst through each other’s defenses if they had applied their full power: Euleilla was still an amateur at counter-magic, and Maelgyn’s defensive capabilities were not as strong as Euleilla’s regular magic. That wasn’t the purpose behind the exercise, however. They were simply practicing their defenses, which would improve all of their magical abilities in the end.

When Euleilla finished writing her name on the back of his hand before Maelgyn could make her touch her nose, the game changed. She started magically tickling him, and he tickled her back – sometimes in places he wouldn’t dare touch with his real fingers. By the time they set up camp for the evening, both were laughing so hard they were losing their breath.

Euleilla was gasping in air, the battle over, while Maelgyn built the fire pit for their dinner. Sighing contentedly, she said, “Oh, my, that was fun. We’re going to have to do that again.”

Maelgyn smiled at her. Her face was flushed with excitement and humor, her chest heaving with the lack of air, and her hair a tangled mess. She was beautiful, but he had known that for a while. Now, however, she was more than beautiful to him. She was vibrant. No, that wasn’t the right word – radiant, that was better.

He gave up trying to find the right word and just nodded. “I agree. Anytime you want.”

Maybe, just maybe, marrying her was the best mistake he’d ever made.

Chapter 10

It took just one more day before they crossed into the mountain pass. Other than the continuation of their practice duel from the previous day, it passed fairly uneventfully. The pace of that action, however, was fast and furious, and this time didn’t dissolve into a tickle battle. Maelgyn, to his own surprise, won the day, making her touch her nose just like he’d intended. Then, just to make up for it, he allowed her to sign her name on the opposite hand. He could have removed the first mark, but he hadn’t, and now was rather proud of his matching “tattoos.” At the conclusion of their day’s frivolity, they made camp at the mouth of the mountain pass, and in the morning crossed over into Mar’Tok Dwarf territory.

It was easy traveling, but extensive. The Dwarven roads were superior in durability and maintenance to the roads in most Human countries (and even, theoretically, most Elven countries, though the last purely Elven country dissolved before the time of Svieda’s founding), but that didn’t make the trip any shorter. They had to walk down many miles of winding roads, and it was going to be a three day journey to cross the entire mountain range. There weren’t very many good places to camp along the pass, however, so they had no choice but to make it to a Dwarven village that night.

They weren’t playing their magic games as they walked. A fall in this area could be fatal, so they couldn’t afford the distraction. The road was wide, and fairly safe if you could see the cliff-side edge, but there was nothing magically reactive for Euleilla to ‘see’ on that side, so Maelgyn was being especially careful to make sure she was well away from that ledge. In fact, he was not willing to trust the magical lifeline Euleilla had wrapped around him as a proper guide, so instead was leading her by the hand. Whether she noticed that a tiny part of his own magic was concentrated in making sure that grip wouldn’t break, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to take any chances with her life.

For such a well-built and heavily maintained road, there hadn’t been much traffic. According to the papers he’d read, even in its busiest time this road only had the occasional merchant train. There were many other, much busier roads in the mountains that the Dwarves maintained, but this one seemed unusually well maintained for so little traffic. There was only one reason Maelgyn could think of to have these roads
this
well kept, and that reason didn’t please him at all. There were only two places this road exited – into Largo Province, and into Sopan Province. And there was only one excuse for their level of upkeep – the expectation of an army using them. Of a
large
army using them. Of a large army using them against
Svieda
.

It didn’t make any sense for the Dwarves to launch a war against Svieda. Mar’Tok and Svieda had one of the most cordial relationships in Dwarven-Human history. Svieda had never launched a single war against any Dwarven holding and had always traded with them in good faith. And yet, there was this road which was built for no apparent reason other than to make war on Svieda.

Not exactly the most comforting of thoughts for a Sword Prince to have as he was crossing through Mar’Tok territory. He did have the gratitude of one of the Mar’Tok Merchant Princes, but how far that gratitude would stretch he wasn’t sure. Especially after that little warning El’Athras had given him about not letting anyone else know who he was – if that wasn’t a sign that members of the Svieda Royalty might not be welcome in Mar’Tok, he didn’t know what was. However, as long as his cover story held it would remain a fairly safe route. And a cover story which was true was always a good one – even if that story was only half-true.

About an hour away from the village, Euleilla frowned. “Maelgyn, are we near the village?”

“We’ve still a ways to go,” Maelgyn said. “We should reach it before night falls, though.”

Euleilla shook her head as if to clear it. “How odd. I’m sensing a great number of Dwarves... only they aren’t on the path ahead. They’re... next to me.”

Maelgyn frowned and looked around before he realizing what it was that she was feeling. “Caves. ‘Mar,’ in Dwarvish, is ‘Cave Kingdom.’ The people of Mar’Tok originated in the caves, and in fact this is possibly the oldest Dwarven settlement in the world. The caves go on for miles underground – we must be near a pocket of them.”

“I’ve never felt so many people – Dwarf or human – in one place, before. It’s a bit... overwhelming.” The distress in her voice was worrisome.

“What’s the largest settlement you’ve been to since you developed your ability to sense a person’s presence?” Maelgyn asked.

“I haven’t been anywhere much larger than Rocky Run. Even before I moved there, I never lived anywhere larger than the small mining town my father decided to raise me in.”

“Ah. Well, when we reach Sopan, you’ll find that there are a lot of human settlements much larger than Rocky Run and Elm Knoll. Dwarven cities are tightly packed, however, so maybe it’s just that you’re sensing,” he suggested.

“I hope so,” Euleilla answered. “I think that a lot of these people are preparing for a battle, however. I can feel swords and armor near most of them.”

Maelgyn grimaced at this apparent confirmation of his worst fears, but didn’t let his concern carry over into his voice. “Well, we don’t need to worry about that just yet. If they’re getting ready for war, it could be against anybody. I know they have poor relations with the Bandi Republic in their north. Even if they’re hostile to Svieda, they aren’t likely to attack two road weary travelers before war has officially started. Bandits might, but disciplined Dwarven armies won’t even look our way until we are truly at war. Since they shouldn’t even know we’re coming, I doubt we’ll be a target.”

They continued on until reaching a Dwarf village, which had an unusual design founded on terraced mountainside landscaping. There were a number of disquieting looks sent their way as they walked through its streets, but their innkeeper was pleasant enough to them and the rest of the staff at the inn didn’t seem hostile toward the human couple.

Maelgyn had intended to scout around the village for information on the Dwarf they were supposed to meet. El’Athras’ name did appear in the papers Wybert had given him, but there was precious little information on him. It did say that the Dwarf was, indeed, a Merchant Prince, and that while he normally lived in the underground capital city of the Dwarves he maintained a household on the above-ground part of the city of Nir’Thik. Maelgyn could not even confirm these bare facts, however, as the uncomfortable feeling Maelgyn had been getting while they approached the inn was prompted him to moved on. The signs they might not be welcome were numerous – for example, the menu handed him by their Dwarven waitress at the inn was in Dwarvish, with no translation provided.

He and Euleilla pushed on down the mountain road after restocking their supplies, but traffic wasn’t nearly as quiet as it had been. Apparently, there was a lot of transit going back and forth between the Dwarven villages along this road despite the lack of traffic leading into the mountains. That wasn’t all that remarkable, except for the fact that most of the traffic wasn’t what you would expect for internal traffic between two Dwarven villages: Humans dressed in the robes of several countries, the cat-like Nekoji from the Orful River, and various lesser races dressed in foreign attire made up the bulk of it. Quite a cosmopolitan atmosphere for a race that, supposedly, preferred a self-reliant isolation from the rest of the world when not engaged in trade.

None of those other travelers were giving them strange looks, at least. Euleilla seemed increasingly uneasy and Maelgyn couldn’t tell why, but at least
he
felt more comfortable on this stretch of road than at any other time in his journey... and he had to admit, it was interesting seeing Nekoji in person. He had heard tales of this ancient race of “cat people” who walked and dressed like Humans but grew flame-proof fur, rich manes, and feline faces. Before this day, he had never seen one – or even a picture of one – but they were easy to identify, nonetheless. The reason they made themselves so hard to find was quite understandable: There was a trade (an
illegal
trade in most civilized nations) in Nekoji skin. Nekoji were intelligent creatures, far more so than some humans, and very civilized. The flame-retarding properties of their fur, however, led hunters to seek them out, and there had been a number of massacres discovered where whole towns had been wiped out and the populations skinned. Oregal maintained some protection over them, but as an independent people they held fewer lands than even the Dwarves.

Mar’Tok was an unusual place for a Nekoji to travel, but there were plenty of them on these Dwarven roads. Perhaps Mar’Tok gave them sanctuary, which was a rare thing, but Maelgyn wasn’t sure. However, they weren’t built for cave or mountain life, so the large number of them still seemed unusual. Yet another mystery in Maelgyn’s mind – one he doubted he would ever have the time to solve.

Euleilla was shrinking away from some of the Nekoji, much to Maelgyn’s confusion. Later, she explained that they had such vast untapped potential for magic that their mere presence was enough to overwhelm her senses. Maelgyn found that, using the ones she pointed out for practice, he could sense them too. By the time they reached the town of Nir’Thik, he was able to even detect people without strong inherent magic, just like Euleilla, though he still had trouble sensing Dwarves unless he got very close. She was still much better at it than he was, but he now knew the technique, and with practice he might even match her.