The Assassin's Edge (Einarinn 5) (8 page)

“There are more candidates for Stone Master than Usara.” Kalion barely let the Flood Mistress finish speaking. “Galen has been examining the fundamental assumptions underpinning our understanding of the element of earth.”

“I had no idea.” The Archmage shook his head thoughtfully. “But he hasn’t initiated any discussion that I’m aware of and I do keep current with such things, the earth being my own affinity. Kalion, you should drop Galen a hint to share his conclusions, otherwise people will only think him good for the latest gossip.” There was a barb in Planir’s casual geniality.

“Usara is far too young to have any credibility with the older mages,” Troanna said with finality. “He hasn’t the experience to claim pre-eminence in his element, no matter what his recent reputation as an adventurer might be.”

“While Galen has spent so long in Kalion’s shadow, he has no reputation of his own at all.” Planir met Troanna’s stern gaze calmly. “Who could be confident he’d be sympathetic to some apprentice’s adolescent confusions or could summon the necessary diplomacy when two mages dispute a pupillage? There’s more to mastery than pure study, as you know better than anyone.”

He sprang to his feet, crossing the room to stand by the window. “There’s no obvious candidate for Cloud Master — or Mistress — any more than there is for Stone Master. True, I could offer a handful of each to the Council but do you think any would command a consensus? I don’t—and I certainly don’t want Hadrumal splitting into factions and backbiting when, as you so rightly say, Troanna, we must be wary of threats from outside. The Elietimm have been quiescent since their attempt to stir revolt in the Mountains was foiled but we cannot relax our vigilance just yet. Kalion, your hopes of greater influence on the mainland may finally be realised with this new understanding we’ve come to with Tadriol over Kellarin. Even the appearance of dissension among ourselves could undermine all the work you’ve done to convince people of Hadrumal’s potential to help them. It never takes much to revive the suspicions and misinformation that plague wizardry’s reputation in the mainland.”

“Ifs and buts are no excuse for inaction, Planir.” Troanna was unimpressed. “This situation is intolerable and, as Archmage, your duty is to resolve it.”

Kalion’s jowled face creased with dissatisfaction. “And quickly.”

“Hasty with the whip and the horse may stumble,” warned Planir. “I’m sure the best candidate will become apparent in time.”

Troanna snorted. “Or you’ll spend so long looking, you’ll pass over an adequate one. Better ride a donkey that carries you than a horse that’s always bucking.”

“I’ll find a proverb to trade you for that one tomorrow,” Planir smiled.

Troanna stood. “This is no matter for levity.”

She looked at Kalion and the stout mage reluctantly rose to his feet. She ushered him out of the room, neither mage saying anything further before she closed the door with an emphatic clunk.

Planir looked at the plain oak panels for a long moment before slinging his robe haphazard over the back of his chair. Weariness at odds with the early hour carved deep lines in his face now as the animation left it. He moved to the window, looking down as Kalion and Troanna disappeared beneath the arched gateway. Holding out his hand, he studied the great diamond ring of his office, sunlight catching the faceted gem set around with emerald, amber, ruby and sapphire, all the ancient tokens of the elements of wizardry. On the finger beside it, he wore a battered circle of silver. Whatever device had decorated it was long since worn to obscurity.

The Archmage clenched his fist and closed his grey eyes on a grimace of regret and frustration. The glasses Kalion and Troanna had used began to tremble slightly, a faint rattle from the table beneath. The dregs of plum cordial suddenly ignited in a startled flame while the untouched water in the larger goblet began to seethe before breaking into a rolling boil. The fluted bowl of the cordial glass folded in on itself, the long stem wilting. The water glass sank beside it, empty of all but a fugitive trace of steam, the broad foot spreading into a formless puddle. The gloss of the polished wood beneath was unmarred.

“Childish.” Planir said reprovingly to himself before opening his eyes with a wicked grin. “But satisfying.” Tossing the now cold and solid glass into an ash bucket by the hearth, he pulled a well-worn jerkin from the back of the door, shrugging it on as his light tread echoed rapidly down the stairwell.

Vithrancel, Kellarin,

15th of Aft-Spring

Why are people always so eager to give you gifts?” I followed Halice out of the trading hall.

“It won’t be my beauty, so it must be my charm.” Halice offered me the little mint-lined basket of withy strips.

I took a sticky sweetmeat and nodded at Temar’s residence. “His lordship’s back.” The bold flag fluttered jauntily.

“Let’s see what he’s got to say for himself.” Halice curled her lip.

“Mind your manners,” I warned, mock serious.

“Me? Who served the Duchess of Marlier?” Halice pretended outrage.

“Who got dismissed for giving her mouthy daughter a slap,” I pointed out.

“She deserved it.” Halice laughed.

We turned down what looked to be a lane at first glance, running between the trading hall and Temar’s residence. Inside the latter, hammers still echoed and saws rasped over the much interrupted and delayed business of making it fit for a Sieur’s dignity. Two lads barely older that Tedin sat in a doorway dutifully straightening scavenged nails. One scooped a few from rain-dulled tiles at his feet. Their broken patterns beneath the gravel and the stumps of pillars buried in the new stone of the walls on either side were the last remnants of a great hall that had once stood here. But the roof was long since fallen and the mighty walls only offered a few broken courses so the colonists had merely taken them as a guide for new buildings raised around the shell of the old hall. We passed carved embellishments worn featureless by generations of rain.

The one elegant doorway that had survived above head height was now the entrance to Temar’s private quarters at the back of the tall building. Halice pushed open the door without ceremony. Once the carpenters had fitted out the reception rooms, archive and private salons necessary for the rank the Emperor had confirmed him in, Temar might be able to turn this into suitable accommodation for the Sieur D’Alsennin’s servants but for the present, the lower floor was undecorated with crude screens at one end inadequately masking a kitchen and a private chamber for Temar above reached by a plain wooden stair.

Temar and Ryshad stood behind a long table up at the far end, poring over a slew of charts with a couple of other people bending their heads close.

“Master Grethist got an ocean boat up to this cataract.” Temar tapped the map with a long finger. “With sail barges, we can explore further.”

So they were planning another expedition. If Ryshad was going, perhaps I should tag along. Summer in Vithrancel didn’t promise to be overly interesting without him.

“Portage over that ground will be a trial and a half.” A black-haired woman, sedate in a homespun tunic over undyed skirts traced a line with a chipped nail. “It’s far more broken than the slope on this side.” She looked up at our approach.

“Rosarn.” Halice greeted her with a familiar nod. The woman’s homely appearance was deceptive; Rosarn had been a mercenary longer than any bar Halice and as soon as Temar gave the word, she’d be in boots and leathers, daggers sheathed at hip and wrist, ready to cut her way through thickets a squirrel would rather go round. Half the corps commanders in Lescar went looking for her if they needed an enemy position scouted out or a potential advance reconnoitred. She specialised in tasks demanding light feet and the wit to think fast on them.

“How far did you get, Vas?” Ryshad, the love if not of my life then certainly of these past three years, brushed at his black curls in absent thought.

“Here at autumn Equinox.” Vaspret set a stubby finger on the parchment. Stocky, weather-beaten and with manners as ill made as his much-broken nose, he had come to Kel Ar’Ayen as one the original venturers and sailed on the first explorations of the continent’s coasts with the long-dead Master Grethist.

“To retrace Vahil Den Rannion’s route, we should really be using the caves.” Whatever they were planning, Rosarn was clearly looking forward to it. I’d heard her say more than once a whole continent to explore without risk of a Lescari arrow in the guts was a gift from Talagrin.

Temar was fair-skinned by nature and the spring sun had yet to tint his winter pallor but I saw him blench from where I stood. Ryshad looked sharply at Rosarn and a shadow darkened his amber-flecked brown eyes. Then he saw me and smiled, affection softening the stern lines of his long jaw and broad brow. I smiled back and the minor discontents of the day vanished like morning mist on the river.

“We want an overland route to join the two rivers,” D’Alsennin said with a touch too much firmness. He searched for some other map. “We can hardly take wagons or mules through caves, even if the route Vahil used is still passable, by some miracle of Misaen’s grace.”

And you’d rather face invading Elietimm single-handed than spend any time out of reach of daylight, my lad. I’d no idea if it was Temar who’d originally been afraid of the dark or Ryshad in some childhood fastness of his mind. Perhaps it was some echo of the imprisonment in Edisgesset’s sunless caverns that they’d both tasted, caught in the toils of Artifice. Whatever the case, both men now shared an abiding fear of enclosed spaces and I kept waking to an open bedroom door because Ryshad couldn’t sleep with it shut.

But Ryshad was older than Temar by a double handful of years and more. He set his jaw, visibly ignoring his own qualms. “Is there any chance the missing artefacts could have been lost in the caves, before Vahil got to the ships?”

Vahil Den Rannion, Temar’s boyhood friend and now twenty-some generations ashes in his urn, had borne the task of taking the sleeping minds of Kellarin’s people beyond the greedy Elietimm grasp. He’d found a way through the caves that riddled the high ground between Vithrancel’s river and another that ran down to a second settlement in the south barely founded before the Elietimm scourge arrived. I wouldn’t have wagered a lead penny on his chances but, against all the odds, Vahil had won back across the ocean, only to find the Empire collapsing around Nemith the Worthless’s ears. Every noble House had been too busy saving its own skin to spare any thought for a colony all but written off a year or more since.

So the treasures had been scattered, their true value unrecognised down the long years. Then mages consulting with alchemists at Vanam’s university had piqued Planir’s curiosity with tales of bizarre dreams tantalising scholars of the days before the Chaos. Since waking to find himself required to lead the colony, Temar had striven to recover all that he could, even challenging the Emperor of Tormalin to help him but there were still a few poignant sleepers insensate in the vast emptiness of the cavern that had protected the colonists for so long. Guinalle visited them every Equinox and Solstice, searching her learning for any clue as to how she might rouse them without the artefacts that bound them to the enchantment.

“I suppose that’s possible,” Temar acknowledged reluctantly, ice-pale eyes hooded like a hawk’s under narrow brows. His hair was as black as Ryshad’s but fine and straight, cropped like a trooper’s.

“We should send someone to search,” Ryshad said firmly. His commitment to finding the lost artefacts was equal to Temar’s. That had been one factor in the Sieur D’Olbriot’s decision to release him from sworn service, the prince seeing how Ryshad’s sense of obligation had him increasingly torn between D’Alsennin’s interests and D’Olbriot’s.

Temar’s angular face lifted with relieved inspiration. “Guinalle could devise an incantation to find anything holding enchantment in the caves.”

“Why not improve your own skills with Artifice rather than always relying on her?” asked Halice sharply.

Temar looked at her with surprise. “I’ve scarcely time to study Artifice.”

“A Sieur decides where to spend his time.” Halice flicked the corner of a map hanging over the edge of the table. “What is it now? Charting coasts? Prospecting for metals?”

“Scouting a route to Hafreinsaur,” said Temar defensively. Fired with enthusiasm when the Emperor had decreed independence for Kellarin, as present day speech rendered the ancient name, one of Temar’s first and thus far few acts as Sieur had been naming the settlements to honour the original founders: Vithrancel for Ancel Den Rannion, Hafreinsaur for Hafrein Den Fellaemion. He’d wanted some such name for the mining settlement but that had failed in the face of mercenary tongues mangling colonists’ colloquial references to their cave sanctuary in Old High Tormalin. The compromise that was Edisgesset was now firmly established.

Halice gave him a look that would have shrivelled any mercenary. “I can name ten men who’ll do as good a job as you.”

Temar rubbed a cautious hand over his mouth. “You think I should be doing something else?”

“Spend more time in and around Vithrancel,” Halice told him frankly. “Do some of the pettifogging work that weighs down Guinalle from sunrise to dusk. Someone’s asking her advice every second moment because you’re never around. She’d have more than enough to do if she were only working Artifice, what with fools falling sick or injuring themselves and her insisting on warding all the crops and animals every chance she gets. She’s exhausting herself and it’s the willing horse that gets worked to death, my lad.”

“We’ll discuss this later.” Rosarn rolled up her maps with a rattling sound. “I’ll see what progress the boat-builders have made.”

“I think—”

Rosarn deflected Temar’s indignation with an apologetic smile, gathering up Vaspret as she headed for the door. Never mind Tadriol the Prudent, 5th of that House to rule as Emperor of Toremal decreeing Temar was now Sieur D’Alsennin, prince of that House and overlord of Kellarin. Rosarn answered first and foremost to her corps commander.