Land of the Burning Sands (31 page)

“You needn’t look quite so worried,” Beguchren murmured. He’d tilted his head back against the headboard of his chair and closed his eyes, so how he could know whether Gereint looked worried or impatient or irritated or anything was a question. His face was tight-drawn, the bones sharply prominent under the skin. He looked much older than he had in Breidechboden: Gereint would now have believed him to be in his sixties or even his seventies, and he wondered again how old the mage actually was.

“Is it what happened last night?” Gereint asked him. “I thought you seemed well enough after—after. But I was, um, I don’t know if I would have noticed anything, ah, subtle.”

Beguchren did not answer. Gereint found himself frowning once more and tried again to make his expression bland. The women brought tea, glazed rolls still warm from the ovens, and assurances that beef and eggs and bread were on the way. Beguchren opened his eyes and lifted his head when the women came up to the table, but he made no move to serve himself. It might have been a lord’s arrogance, but Gereint, suspecting that the mage’s hands might shake if he tried anything as demanding as pouring out tea, poured it himself without comment. He added two spoonfuls of honey and a little milk and handed the cup across the table. Beguchren, looking mildly amused, took the cup—in both hands, Gereint noted—and drank half of it at once, like medicine. The cup rattled in its saucer as he put it down.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Gereint asked him. “Too stubborn?”

Beguchren shrugged, a minimal gesture. “By the time I realized the difficulty, we’d come so close to Pamnarichtan it seemed foolish to stop short.” He’d folded his hands in his lap, waiting perhaps to regain enough strength to drink the rest of the tea.

“Was it the magecraft last night?” Gereint asked again. “Or is it just”—he did not want to say
a weakness
—“something that happens?” he finished.

A slight pause. Then Beguchren shook his head. “Not the magecraft. The proximity of the griffins this morning.”

Gereint thought about this. Then he stood up to help the women from the inn lay out platters of beef and bread, eggs, sausages, and fried apples. Beguchren ignored this activity with a lordly disdain for noticing servants, which was, Gereint suspected, actually a way of disguising that he could not lift a platter himself. Once the women had gone, he filled a plate for Beguchren first and set it across the table in easy reach, then one for himself.

Beguchren took a sweet roll and ate it slowly. Then a bit of beef and an egg. He lifted his eyebrows at Gereint. “Did you order everything in the kitchens? There’s far too much.”

“For you, maybe.” Gereint filled his own plate a second time. “The griffins did this to you. Just flying past, a quarter-mile away? And you want to go up to their desert, do you, and find them in it?”

“Gereint…” Beguchren began, then shook his head, smiling with rueful humor. His hands had steadied at last. He said, “It’s a consequence of the events in Feierabiand, I believe. The griffins expended a great deal of power there. I was… overpowered, I suppose.”

And the rest of Casmantium’s cold mages had been killed. Gereint had heard that. Because they had been less powerful than Beguchren Teshrichten? Because Beguchren had been with the king? Or because Beguchren had simply been lucky? Or for some other reason entirely?

Gereint wondered just what the battle between the griffins and the cold mages had entailed, and exactly how thoroughly the griffins had won it. Then he wondered whether he really wanted to know.

“The effects seem both more wide ranging and more lingering than I might have wished,” Beguchren added, a touch of apology in his tone.

And might get worse if they encountered more griffins? Or encountered them more closely? Gereint remembered how profoundly inimical he had found the desert. And Beguchren was a cold mage: far more opposed to the desert than any man with a mere gift for making. The two philosophers Gereint respected most, Andrieikan Warichteier and Beremnan Anweierchen, both agreed that opposition to the griffin’s fire was the entire purpose and character of cold magecraft.

Beguchren had said they would go north
all the way
. But if a handful of griffins passing a quarter-mile away had strained him to the end of his strength, what would stepping into their desert do to him? Gereint said, “You should have a carriage. Why did you leave yours behind in the south?”

Beguchren shook his head, a small, surprisingly gentle gesture. “I did not wish to risk a servant of mine. Irechen has been my driver for many years.”

Gereint thought of and dismissed several obvious rejoinders. In the end, he said merely, “You might have asked me to drive. I wouldn’t want to try six-in-hand, but I could certainly have managed a little rig like that.”

Beguchren’s eyebrows rose. He said after a moment, “I suppose I could have done. I didn’t think of it.”

Gereint leaned back in his chair, trying not to laugh. He kept his expression sober with an effort.

“Well,” Beguchren said, a little nettled, “the roads north of Metichteran, as you have said, are not so good. And you know we will not be able to take horses into the desert. We will leave them, at the end, and go up on foot.”

“Well, I suppose I can carry you, if necessary.”

A flicker of offense in the pale eyes was followed almost at once by a glint of wry humor. “I suppose you could. If it became necessary. I don’t believe that’s likely.”

Gereint didn’t comment on this optimism. Beguchren
had
said he’d wanted a maker who was physically strong. Gereint had not asked why. He did not press the mage now, only split a sausage and laid it across a slice of bread. Then he asked instead, “You still wish to try to ride on to Metichteran today? It’s, what, twenty miles, a little more?” By himself, and given Beguchren’s tall black mare, Gereint was confident he could ride that far in five or six hours. He could
walk
it almost that fast, if he needed to. But Beguchren? He did not want to force the mage to admit to an incapacity he likely found shameful. But neither did he want to see him collapse halfway to Metichteran.

“I’ll be well enough in an hour,” Beguchren answered, mildly enough.

Gereint tried not to look doubtful.

Beguchren peeled and sliced an egg, layering the slices fastidiously across a piece of bread. He murmured, not looking up from this task, “I might ask the inn to wrap up some of this excellent breakfast.”

“Including plenty of sweet rolls,” Gereint surmised. “And cakes of sugar. Yes. I’ll arrange it, lord mage.”

The mage looked up at that, frowning. Not about the sugar. “Gereint—”

Gereint held up a hand. “Nobody here would understand it if I called you by name, lord mage.” Nor would he regardless, but he did not say so.

“Nor will you,” Beguchren said, echoing this unspoken thought. But he made a small, dismissive gesture with two fingers. “Never mind. Yes, Gereint, please acquire some more sugar. As I am sure you recall, I would like to reach not merely Metichteran by this afternoon, but Tashen by this evening.”

This seemed wildly optimistic to Gereint. He didn’t say this, either, but merely stood up and went to see about wrapping up a packet of food. With plenty of sugar.

The horses, happy with their rest and the sweetened grain the stable boys had given them, were inclined to stride out briskly. Gereint kept a wary eye on Beguchren, but the little mage showed no sign, now, of exhaustion or collapse. He was quiet, but then he was constitutionally quiet, so Gereint had long since concluded. Even if he had been surrounded by his own retainers or friends… did he
have
friends? Other than the Arobern, who could not be precisely a
friend
… It occurred to Gereint for the first time that he knew nothing at all about the mage: earth and iron, the man might even be married, though it was hard to imagine so reserved and inscrutable a man with a wife, or children or even parents or brothers of his own blood. Nor could he imagine invading that impenetrable reserve with questions.

But even if surrounded by friends, Gereint could not believe that Beguchren Teshrichten was ever precisely demonstrative. And Gereint himself, if not precisely an enemy—nor precisely a servant, nor precisely a prisoner—was certainly not a friend.

The country between Pamnarichtan and Metichteran was rougher than Gereint had remembered. Nor had he made sufficient allowance for the way the road climbed far more often than it ran level. Coming the other way, they had gone mostly downhill. Now, riding constantly uphill, they could not press the horses faster than an easy walk. There were more stones and snags, too. A fine carriage would have had a slow and difficult passage; even a farmer’s wagon would be prone to broken wheels and axles. Gereint guessed that most carters and such who regularly used this road were probably makers, the sort sufficiently gifted that they could coax a breaking wagon to last from one town to the next. Perhaps Beguchren’s leaving his carriage behind had been more reasonable than he’d first thought.

Gereint’s own mare began to cast a shoe; he felt two of the nails start to shear and the rest to bend, and caught the metal with his wish that it hold, hold, hold. The nails held. Gereint didn’t mention the problem. If he could coax the shoe to last to Metichteran, any smith could replace it; if it didn’t, there wouldn’t be anything to do but lead the mare and walk himself. He wondered what Tehre Amnachudran would think of shearing nails. Probably she would rather let them shear and watch how they broke. But probably she could brush a thumb over them and set them back into place without benefit of a smith, if it occurred to her to bother. He smiled, imagining the casual, distracted manner in which she would do such a small, difficult task.

The woods crowded close to the road here, and on their other side the river was narrower and swifter than below the confluence, and beyond the river the woods stretched out again, impenetrably dense and green. The woods might have hidden any number of brigands or wolves or mountain cats or dragons, but Gereint did not glimpse anything more dangerous than a squirrel. Occasionally a large animal thudded away into the woods, unseen. Each time, Gereint glanced at Beguchren. Each time, the mage, his expression unvaryingly bland, shook his head.

“How do you know?” Gereint asked him, the third time this happened.

Beguchren shrugged, a minimal gesture that barely lifted his shoulders. “I know.”

Gereint shook his head, not in disbelief, but in surprise. “We look so harmless. I’d accost us, if I were a brigand. They can’t all have been cleared out.”

“The cleverer ones may have headed west, as Meridanium has begun clearing these roads near its border. Or even south, to see if they can get honest work now that robbing travelers has become more dangerous. Or—” But Beguchren paused and then finished, “Or simple luck may be keeping them out of our way.”

Gereint wondered how he’d meant to finish that sentence. But he said only, “Luck for them.”

Beguchren only shrugged a second time, dismissing any possible concern about brigands. Or wolves or mountain cats, probably. Even he might have paused if a dragon had come out of the woods, though. Not that one would this close to the towns of men.

There were no boats at all on the river now. Even in the spring floods, the channel here was dangerous: changeable and filled with snags. Now, in late summer, the river had narrowed to a swift slender ribbon, barely more than a creek, that raced down only the deep center of its exposed, rocky bed. Gereint guessed, as the morning passed and the road grew rougher, that it would take a good deal longer than five or six hours to reach Metichteran.

They saw no more griffins. Though the way the woods closed off any decent view of the sky, fifty griffins might have flown past half a mile away and been completely invisible to travelers on the road. But then, probably, Beguchren would know they were there. Probably he
would
collapse if griffins came near. Gereint watched him warily. But the mage showed no sign of difficulty. During the occasional break for sweet wine or a bite of bread or a cup of hot tea, he dismounted and moved with only a little more than ordinary stiffness. So far as Gereint could tell.

They passed the occasional party heading south. No one was traveling in a really large company, but no one was traveling in a group of less than half a dozen, either, and everyone was armed at least with crossbows. None of them were men of rank, and no one ventured more than a respectful nod to Beguchren. Gereint might have stopped one or another to ask for news, but he kept an eye toward Beguchren, and when the mage did not pause, neither did he.

They rode into Metichteran in late afternoon, seven hours after leaving Pamnarichtan. It had been a market day, clearly: The streets were busy with farmers packing up their surplus to cart back to their farms, or bargaining with the most frugal of the townsfolk for the last bushels of bruised apples or spotty turnips. The famous bridge across the Teschanken was busy, too, though the water level was low enough that children were picking their way right across the river’s bed. Gereint gazed down at the fitted stones of the bridge’s arch as they crossed. It seemed to him that the hooves of the horses rang against history as much as against stone. Blood and battle and years mortared the stones. He wondered suddenly whether they might be riding into a tale themselves; perhaps some traveler in some distant year would look down at this bridge and think,
Beguchren Teshrichten crossed the river here to do battle against the country of fire
… He hoped not. He hoped, fervently, that nothing that happened would be exciting enough to remember in tale or poem.