The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (55 page)

“Not necessarily,” Sorgrad shook his head. “They could head out into the Gap just as easily as swing south toward us.”

“All the more reason to try and put a stop to this good and fast.” Darni looked at Usara with ill-disguised impatience. “Look beyond the reach of your own hands, man!”

This was soldiers’ talk. But I’m not a soldier, never have been, never want to be. On the other hand, on a very few, desperate occasions in my early years on the road, hunger had forced me into lurking in alleys, cudgel in one hand and heart in my mouth. I’d always looked for some man careless in his drink with a well-filled pouch that I could follow and relieve of both senses and purse. At a head shorter than any potential mark and half the heft, I wasn’t about to take on anyone in an equal fight. A footpad goes for the head, not the arms.

“What if you kill off their leaders?” I asked. “The Ice Islanders fighting in Kellarin last summer gave up at once when their commanders died.”

“Then Elietimm have less in common with the Men of the Mountains than they claim,” responded Sorgrad with contempt. “Anyatimm are trained to take over any task if another man’s injured, be it in the diggings, on the trap line or fighting lowlanders in the Gap.”

“They’re paying a lot of heed to Pretty Boy though,” mused ’Gren. “I bet him catching an arrow in the throat would give them pause for thought. A mob’s only as strong as whoever’s holding it together, ’Grad, you know that.”

“What about the Sheltya?” I suggested. “Especially if they’re using aetheric magic to keep everyone together.”

Sorgrad grimaced. “You’d be swapping silver for copper, my girl. Killing Sheltya gets you staked out on a mountainside alive for as long as it takes the ravens to find you and peck out your eyes and liver. Kill Sheltya and that army will be out to avenge a blood feud.”

“What about this Ice Islander?” Nervousness gnawed at the pit of my belly.

Darni looked at Sorgrad. “Would blood loyalty extend to him? I’ll bet half the wealth of Hadrumal he’s at the bottom of this mischief.”

“Even if he’s claiming to be Sheltya, he’s not born to any soke this side of the ocean, let alone the Gap,” replied Sorgrad slowly. “Everyone can see that from his face and hair. They’d probably look to avenge his death, but I can’t see it ranking as blood insult.”

“Family’s everything in the mountains,” ’Gren nodded. “The knife cuts both ways; if you’re not family, you’re nothing.”

“So what if we take the Elietimm enchanter out of the balance?” I persisted. “The Sheltya stay neutral normally, we know that.” I felt my way cautiously through this. “For them to get involved, something must have stirred them up. Given what we saw at the Hachalfess, the Sheltya reckon to be cock of the dunghill, so it would have to be someone out of the ordinary run of the runes. It has to be the enchanter, doesn’t it?”

“He could well be a key link holding a lot of this together,” Sorgrad looked more cheerful. “It’s got to be worth seeing what happens if we snap it.”

“So the three of us go up into the heights and deal with him,” suggested ’Gren. “You lick these Folk into shape, Darni, and stop Pretty Boy’s little army getting any deeper into trouble in the meantime.”

“I’d certainly take any road that offered a short cut through this,” muttered Darni. “I’ve no troops for a pitched battle.”

“I’m sorry but I really cannot agree to this.” We all looked at Usara and the wizard’s fair coloring betrayed him. “I need Sorgrad here,” he said, getting defiantly to his feet and letting his spell fade unheeded. “Planir told me I was to use my powers together with Gilmarten and any other mage I could find locally.”

“I’m no mage and neither you nor your Archmage has any claim on me,” replied Sorgrad in a level tone.

“I understand you could never explore the potential of your wizardry, given your birth and upbringing,” Usara continued as if Sorgrad had not spoken, “but even untrained as you are we can drill you in some simple spells.”

“No,” said Sorgrad.

Usara stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t make myself clear?” Sorgrad’s eyes were cold and hard. “No.”

“This is no time to be stubborn, man. You are mage-born!” Usara’s puzzlement soured toward anger. “You have a duty to use that wizardry and I cannot imagine a more crucial time for you to accept your responsibilities!”

“I have no duty to an accident of birth,” replied Sorgrad with contempt. “I bear no more responsibility for it than you do for losing your hair. My loyalty is to my blood and my friends.”

“Even if your attitude leaves these people dead on the Forest floor?” demanded Usara hotly. “When your cooperation could have saved them?”

’Gren stirred and I gave him a warning glare; I had another rune to turn this hand. “What exactly did Planir say?” The wizard was momentarily disconcerted as I claimed his attention by standing between him and Sorgrad. It wasn’t the most sensible place to be but someone had to stop this from turning into a fistfight.

“I asked what I was supposed to do, given there wasn’t another mage hereabouts beyond Gilmarten—and me,” Usara replied crossly. “Planir said not to be so sure of that and then he broke the link. He must have meant Sorgrad, that’s all there is to it.”

“Says who?” demanded ’Gren belligerently. “How’s he ever even heard of my brother?”

“I told my Archmage that I had discovered magebirth was not unknown among the Mountain Men, as we have always supposed.” Usara lifted his chin defiantly. “That you seem unaccountably able to suppress your elemental affinity—” he shot Sorgrad a look of annoyance and suspicion—“is something better left until we return to Hadrumal. We can explore that peculiarity there.”

“You can forget that, mage,” said Sorgrad disdainfully. “I’m not going to Hadrumal as long as I’ve got a hole in my arse.”

Usara squared up to Sorgrad like a bantam taking on a fighting cock. “Planir said—”

“Why do you say magebirth is unknown among the people of the mountains?” Gilmarten’s courteous question in his soft Soluran lilt cut through Usara’s ire like a knife through cheese. The mage was still looking relatively dapper after our rough couple of days, though the loss of his hat meant he was a little sun-scorched around the face.

“Because it is, I mean, they don’t.” Usara looked bemused.

“They do in Solura.” Gilmarten looked a little self-conscious. “At least, I have met mages of both half- and quarter-Mountain blood and heard tell of at least one pure-blooded.”

“Something else you lot in Hadrumal got wrong?” ’Gren taunted.

“What about Forest blood?” Usara’s question was half a heartbeat behind my own.

“Something else you don’t know, Sandy?” asked ’Gren silkily.

The Soluran wizard nodded. “It’s the same as far as I know; uncommon, but not unheard of.”

“There’s your answer then.” I spoke hurriedly to stop ’Gren stirring the fire any higher. “If you want to get yourself a new apprentice, we see if there’s someone here with the…” I couldn’t think how to phrase it. “Somebody mage-born.”

“We have methods of teaching by rote in my tradition that could certainly offer these people some means of protection,” offered Gilmarten with a nervous smile. Usara looked obstinate but also unsure, aware that the ground had somehow shifted under him.

“Let’s get a grip on the reins here. Squabbling among ourselves is just handing advantage to the enemy,” said Darni firmly. “We need to know who we are fighting, so ’Sar, scry out the closest valleys. See which are mustering for a fight. You two, you know the mountains and you know fighting; the hunters here know the woods. We need to draw up a map tying everything together. We’ll want at least one trained mage in any fight but if we can find mage-born folk hereabouts who can defend their own, that’ll free up more fighting men and women. Gilmarten and Livak, go and see what you can find out.”

Darni’s bull-headed assumption of command at least broke the deadlock. The big fighter headed for Bera and ’Gren followed, Sorgrad walking more slowly, expression unreadable. Usara sniffed crossly as he bent over his scrying bowl but the irritation in his face gradually waned as he wrought his magic.

I turned to Gilmarten, who smiled uncertainly at me. “Let’s start with Harile,” I suggested. “He’ll probably have some ideas about who might be mage-born.”

We went into the gray gloom of the cave mouth. “Harile?”

“Over here.” He picked his way through the pallets and blankets wrapping tightly packed bodies. “What can I do for you?”

“Usara’s scrying out your enemies,” I pointed out the mage hunched over his bowl. “If you’ve something to dull pain without addling his wits, it would help.”

“I can make a tisane to give him a lift,” Harile suggested.

“Many thanks.” I felt Gilmarten stir beside me. “I was wondering, do you ever have mage-born among the Folk?” I asked casually. “It shows itself about the age Drianon bloods a girl, among the outdwellers at least.”

We followed Harile to a fire where he swung a battered kettle over the hottest flames. “We tend to notice it hereabouts when Trimon breaks a boy’s voice. With girls it’s any time after Larasion brings them into bloom.”

“What do you notice? What exactly signifies magebirth to you?” Gilmarten tugged absently on his tuft of beard.

“Some are an utter nuisance anywhere near a hearth until it passes. Fire either burns through half a night’s fuel inside a few moments or just dies away and refuses to be relit.” Harile paused in mixing pinches of herbs in a beaker. “You get some who don’t leave a footprint for half a year, and there’s always the story of one lass who got rained on from Solstice to Solstice, just her, you understand, no one else.” He laughed. “But I’ve heard that tale from a handful of folk between here and the southern sea, all saying it happened to a friend of a friend, so I think that’s just wind in the long grass.”

“Let me take that to Usara.” I reached for the cup and Gilmarten walked with me. He scratched his head, perplexed. “I’ve never heard of sympathy with an element just going away.”

“Can you tell if someone is mage-bom? Is there some test?” I set the cup down next to Usara and we went back to Harile, who was mulching some leaves into a poultice.

“There are methods of determining where the principal sympathy lies,” Gilmarten answered, “when the effects are first manifesting themselves.” He looked concerned. “Is it possible that if a sympathy is not trained it is lost?”

“Not if Sorgrad’s any guide,” I said with determination. “Harile, do you know of anyone here who once showed signs of magebirth? They might be able to help our wizards defend your sick and elderly.”

Harile set his bowl of pulpy mess down at once. “Come with me.” He led us to a fire no more than a few embers smoldering in a nest of feathery ash. Those sitting around it were somewhere between youth and adulthood, with little more than a blanket and a few salvaged possessions to cling to. None had anything like blithe confidence I had come to expect from Forest Folk.

“This is Sarachi.” Harile indicated a youth with Forest red hair over a face that should have been following a plow in Caladhria. “He showed magebirth, as far as we could judge.”

“What of it?” The lad had a hint of spirit left.

“This wizard thinks you could help him.” Harile indicated Gilmarten.

Sarachi started to get to his feet but Gilmarten waved him to sit again. I perched on a stump and watched quietly. Gilmarten lit a twig from the last glow of the fire.

“Concentrate on the flame.” He handed it to Sarachi. “See if you can make it smaller.” To my eyes, the feeble yellow flicker didn’t vary in the slightest until the flame threatened his fingers and Sarachi dropped the spill.

“I need a cup of water.” Gilmarten looked around as if he expected to see a potman. One of the girls wordlessly handed him a carved wooden beaker. “Cup your hands.” Gilmarten poured a little water into Sarachi’s hollowed palms. “Keep it there as long as you can.” Disappointment was audible all around as the water trickled out from between Sarachi’s fingers, despite the effort whitening his knuckles.

“No matter.” Gilmarten sounded as if he meant it. If he didn’t I’d finally met a wizard to challenge to a game of Raven. The Soluran scraped up a handful of earth, picking out fragments of long rotted leaf and then dusting it lightly with ash from the fire. He pressed this into Sarachi’s open palm. “See if you can lift the ash out of the earth. Concentrate, visualize the gray moving out of the brown and being carried away on the wind.”

Sarachi frowned with effort and in the next instant the whole handful spiraled upward into the air. We all looked up and then cursed as specks of dirt fell in our open mourns and wide eyes.

“An air sympathy,” said Gilmarten happily, “or affinity as they would call it in Hadrumal.”

“But you told me to concentrate on the earth,” objected Sarachi.

“Bluffing, wizard?” I teased.

“Something like that. An untrained sympathy can hamper itself; combined trials get around the problem.” Gilmarten looked around. “Does anyone know someone else who showed signs of magebirth?”

A thin girl with lank brown hair raised a bruised and dirty hand. “Castan did.”

We found this Castan at a hearth on the far side of the hollow, a no-nonsense woman with red-rimmed eyes. The notion that her previously disregarded magebirth might help protect her three young offspring set the fire raging beneath her cook pot. Gilmarten explained, we doused the conflagration and moved rapidly on to the next potential wizard.

By the time we returned to Usara, we had seven in tow. Sarachi was joined by a lad whose fuzz of a beard only showed where it caught the light and a tired-faced man in his middle years. Castan was leading three younger women, all smiling nervously and variously encouraged or teased by their friends. We left behind five others, some disgruntled, some relieved, when Gilmarten had pronounced them either never mage-born or with a sympathy so faint it could not be trained.

“Darni is one of those, an affinity too weak to work with,” I told the Soluran quietly as we left one disappointed man crossly poking his recalcitrant fire with a vindictive stick.

“I didn’t know that.” Gilmarten looked thoughtful. “Still, that means we can bespeak him with fire and metal if he’s elsewhere.”