Lords of the Sky (22 page)

Chiara’s voice, admonishing, interrupted Rwyan’s thoughts and she nodded defiantly.

“You’ll forget him,” Chiara said, echo of so many other conversations.

And Rwyan answered, “No. Perhaps I shall learn to live without him, but I shall never forget him.”

There was such certainty in her tone, and such pain, that Chiara forgot her disapproval and was only friend, She took Rwyan’s hand gently in her own and said no more. Instead, they stood in silence as the twilight deepened and the surface of the Treppanek was no longer painted with the sun’s red gold but became as blue velvet, a softly whispering cushion to the moon’s silvered reflection.

Then a bell summoned them to their dinner, and they went, still hand-in-hand, along the deck to where their fellow sorcerers clustered eagerly about a brazier on which meat grilled.

It was easier in company. Conversation made demands on her attention that enabled her to concentrate on what was said and how she would respond, and none there, save Chiara, knew of Daviot. So she spoke of the Sentinels and the recent attack, and of the expectations of the College, and for a while felt not at all sad. And Lyakan passed the tiller to a Changed and joined them, broaching a keg of good ale,
which he cheerfully declared must be consumed before they reached the islands, which announcement was met with enthusiastic agreement.

Rwyan drank somewhat more than was her wont, and joined in the singing that ensued, and that night slept quite soundly, for all her last thoughts were of Daviot.

There were no more attacks as the galleass sailed east, nor as she ventured onto the Fend. The weather remained mild, Lyakan setting his three lateen sails as the tower of Rorsbry Keep hove in view, Fynvar a distant thimble shape to the north. He tacked eastward, supplying remedies to those who found the ocean’s chop distressing. Rwyan was pleased she suffered no discomfort; a little guilty that Chiara’s violent illness did not trouble her more.

A day, a night, and the morning of another day they sailed, and then the closest of the seven Sentinels were in sight.

Rwyan found herself a place at the prow, her senses focused on the islands. She held her place as they came closer, until only one was visible, the rest lost to the dip and bob of the galleass. Lyakan ordered the sails furled, and the oarsmen bent once again to their sweeps, propelling the ship onward. The wind blew colder out here, and soon she heard the murmur of surf, the beat of the rollers that swept across all the width of the ocean, perhaps from the distant lands of the Sky Lords even, to break on these isolate stones. She wondered if the anchorage would be dangerous.

Then danger was forgotten as her talent revealed the island in all its rugged splendor.

She had been told of the Sentinels, but to be
told
was not the same as seeing, and the descriptions had been delivered by sorcerers. It would take a Storyman to do this place justice. It was a vast slab of rock, as if a single, inconceivably massive boulder had been dropped into the Fend. Waves broke against the feet of sheer cliffs, smooth and high: un-scalable. White spume crashed against blue-black stone, a foaming line of demarcation broken only where an impossibly narrow gap showed in the rock. It was not, Rwyan “saw,” an inlet but a cave’s mouth, barely high enough the galleass’s masts might enter unharmed. She held her breath as Lyakan put his tiller over and the vessel raced, driven by sweeps and
tide, for the opening. The glittering tower was lost, the cliffs loomed above, surfs roar drowned the apprehensive murmurs of her companions. Then Lyakan bellowed and the oars were brought inboard, and the galleass slid between the sea-gates guarding the dark ingress.

Rwyan felt the magic that drew the craft in, defying the tug of the sea, the Fend’s currents as nothing to that power. At her side, Chiara cried out, clutching her arm as darkness fell like sudden night, only a glimmer of day behind, and even that lost as the sea-gates closed. For Rwyan darkness held little meaning, and so she “saw” the proximity of the cliffs to either side, the roof frighteningly low above. She might have reached out to touch the stone, so close was it. Then daylight returned, blinding natural sight after the Stygian depths of the entrance, and the galleass floated gently to a harbor cut by magic’s might from the heart of the rock.

From seaward, the island had appeared entirely forbidding; now it appeared entirely paradisal.

The inlet was circular, a beach of pale yellow sand interrupted only by the blue granite pile of a quay and the hulls of fishing boats sweeping in a great calm arc around the saltwater lake. There were buildings constructed of wood and stone, pale blue, white, or rose petal pink, along the water line. More scattered randomly amongst stands of cedar and pine and myrtle, where little streamlets spilled down from terraces decked with olive groves, orchards, and meadows. Goats roamed, seemingly at will, more agile than the sheep and cattle grazing the luxuriant greensward. There were formal gardens, opulent as any in Durbrecht, and others of more natural shape, displaying a vivid array of wild flowers. Paths wandered the terraces, and long flights of white stone steps. The entire center of the island had been shaped by sorcery to cup this jewel as if in a careful fist.

And on the topmost tier, so high the observers on the galleass must tilt back their heads, necks craned, to gaze upward to where it stood bright against the sky, was the white tower, like a sword raised in defiance of the Sky Lords. A single straight stairway ran to its foot, a door of blue wood there, no other openings. It seemed a very simple structure to emanate so great a sensation of sorcerous power, and Rwyan studied it in awe. Within lay the greatest secrets of her kind.

She staggered as the galleass drifted to a halt, her attention diverted from the tower to the rush of activity initiated by their docking. Two of Lyakan’s Changed sprang to the wharf, securing the ship as two more ran out the gangplank. All came from their rowing benches to assist the newcome sorcerers to disembark. There were none amongst the crowd gathered on the pier: all there were Truemen.

Chiara was aflutter with undisguised excitement as they traversed the plank to meet the welcome of the residents. Rwyan, for all she was enchanted with the beauty of her new surroundings, was less stimulated. Before long, she knew, Lyakan would take his galleass back across the Fend and the sea-gates would close behind him. It felt to her that they would close, too, on Daviot; that he must be shut off from her by all the weight of ocean and distance and duty. She turned her attention a moment back, to the ship and the Fend beyond, and then she sighed, and took a breath, and shaped her lips in a smile as she walked toward her future.

I
n the weeks that followed Rwyan’s departure, I grew surly. I thought more of my loss than of learning and gave short answers to those who inquired after my abrupt change of mood. My mind was occupied with memories of Rwyan. I indulged in the pointless exercise of self-pity. It was foolishness: what was, was. I knew that; it made my grief no easier. I sank into sullen despair, that exacerbated by my healing leg. I progressed from crutch to staff and then was able to limp without support, chafing at confinement within the College. None but Urt and Cleton knew the reason for my black mood, but it was impossible it should go unnoticed—questions were asked my friends. I am confident neither Cleton nor Urt (who were both interrogated) gave much away, but the College authorities were subtle and very adept in drawing out answers. Such is, after all, a part of the Mnemonikos’s talent, and it may be employed to more ends than the investigation of a story. Whatever was said or not, the conclusions drawn were correct: that I had become engaged in an affair with a member of the Sorcerous College recently departed for the Sentinels. I was brought before a tribunal, that judgment of some kind might be delivered.

Decius presided, and it was to his sunlit chambers I was summoned. He sat as usual behind his desk, but to right and left, on high-backed chairs, sat four of the College dignitaries. Keran was one, beside him, Ardyon; on the master’s
right were Bael and Lewynn, who taught geography. I could read none of their faces; I was not invited to sit.

Without preamble, Decius asked me, “Is it true you dallied with a student of sorcery?”

I saw no profit in equivocation and answered him, “Yes.”

“For how long?” he demanded.

I said, “A year.”

His brows rose at that, his round face become owlish in its surprise. “Yet none suspected,” he murmured. “You must have had help.”

I was not sure if he asked a question or made a statement and so offered him no response: I was prepared to accept whatever punishment this College court deemed fit, but I would not betray my friends.

“He’s great ingenuity,” Bael said. I was uncertain whether that was praise or condemnation.

Decius nodded, so that the sun coming through the window at his back flickered bright on his pate. I was somewhat blinded by the light, so I could not see his eyes clearly. He said, “Hmm,” and was silent awhile.

Ardyon leaned toward the master and murmured something I could not make out, save, I think, for the names Cleton and Urt. Decius nodded again in response and made a small gesture, as if quieting a restive hound. I waited. I felt my healing leg begin to throb dully.

Then Decius asked me, “How did you think it should end, this affair?”

I said, “It has not. I love her.” Ardyon’s explosive nasal inhalation told me I spoke too fiercely, and it came to me I might well face expulsion. In a milder tone I added, “I had not thought beyond that—that I love her.”

“Yet you know such”—Decius appeared for some reason to find the subject delicate—
“friendships
are not encouraged.”

“Nor,” I ventured, “forbidden.”

Close on the heels of my realization that I might soon be thrown out of the College came another. Were I expelled, I could return home to Whitefish village, and that was not overly far from the Sentinels: I could obtain a boat (it was a measure of my mood that I did not consider
how
I should acquire it) and sail to the islands; find Rwyan there. Of course, that would mean throwing away these last few years,
turning my back on all I had learned, and there remained some small rational part of my mind that warned me I should not find entry to the Sentinels easy, and that Rwyan might not be allowed, or might not wish, to leave. Balanced against my desire for her, it was a negligible weight.

“Not forbidden,” Decius said, “but neither encouraged. That for both sides’ sake. Did it not occur to you that she has a duty, as do you, and that your … love … should conflict with that loyalty?”

I wondered why he found that simple word,
love,
so hard to say. It did not occur to me then, in my youth and my loss, that his love was entirely for the College and all it stood for; that he found it difficult, indeed near impossible, to comprehend that a man might find a greater passion.

I said, “I suppose so. Yes; but I hoped …”

Decius gestured that I continue. I squinted into the light, shrugged, and said honestly, “I did not think too far ahead, master. I hoped we might both remain in Durbrecht … or find ourselves assigned residents to the same keep … or …” I shook my head and shrugged again.

He said, “Your Rwyan is gone to the Sentinels, where none but sorcerers are permitted residence. Even did you somehow find your way there, you would not be allowed to remain. Ergo, your affair could not have succeeded.”

It seemed, almost, he read my mind; I was taken aback that he knew so much. I should not have been, of course: there was little enough went unnoticed by the College, and this matter had been investigated. I ducked my head and muttered a reluctant negative.

Then he startled me again by asking, “Would you throw away these years? Do you wish to leave us?”

We had a saying in Whitefish village concerning the fish caught betwixt net and hook. I understood it fully in that instant. I knew that if I said yes, I might walk away, free to go seeking Rwyan. And if I did? I had no way of knowing to which of the Sentinels she had gone. Even did I somehow succeed in landing on the right island, I must still find my love. I did not doubt but that Decius spoke the truth when he warned me I should not be allowed to remain. And would Rwyan forsake her duty, quit her calling to come away with me?

I hesitated, my head spinning. I fidgeted, indecisive, easing
my weight from throbbing leg to good and back again. The sun was warm on my face, hiding the expressions of the men who watched me, awaiting my answer. I thought then of that message Rwyan had left me. My talent, my trained memory, brought it back precise:
Tell Daviot that I love him. Tell him that I shall always love him, but I cannot refuse my duty. I must go where I am bid, as must he in time. Tell him I pray he recovers. Tell him I shall never forget.

Rwyan had accepted her duty. Could I do less and remain the man she loved?

To Decius I said, “No. I’d not leave.”

As I spoke, I was unsure whether I chose the net or the hook. I knew I felt a dreadful pain.