The Magic Engineer (13 page)

Kadara and Brede again exchange glances. Liedral grins at Dorrin. Dorrin looks at the fire.

“There was a strange party in Fairhaven, two blades and a young healer…” ventures the apprentice.

“That sounds like Sarronynn,” snaps the sun-eyed man.

“But the healer also could feel the winds, according to Zerlat.”

“Where are they?”

The apprentice shrugs. “According to the standing orders—”

“Damn the standing orders! Does anyone know where they headed?”

The apprentice lets out a slow breath as she watches Jeslek’s eyes fade into the vague look that means his senses are somewhere else.

“Where?” demands the hard voice. Not all Jeslek’s senses are elsewhere.

“They headed toward the Easthorns.”

“What did they look like?”

The young woman purses her lips, ignoring the distant look
on her master’s face. “The healer was thin, with curly red hair. One blade was a red-headed woman. She carried double swords, including a Westwind shortsword. The other blade was a man, pretty young, but big.”

“And no one thought such a group was strange?” Jeslek’s eyes are fully alive again. “Two blades, just to protect a poor young healer? Who knows just what that healer is? And just as we’re starting to tighten the noose on Recluce. Doesn’t anyone think?”

He is out the door from the tower room, and his feet echo on the stairs before the apprentice can answer his question.

The apprentice frowns, mumbling, “You’re not the High Wizard yet.” But she takes a deep breath and continues polishing the mirror on the table.

Dorrin flicks the reins to keep Meriwhen abreast of the cart. Kadara and Brede ride ahead. The pack horse trails, harness tied to a ring on the cart.

“Why are all the Blacks so opposed to Fairhaven?” asks Liedral.

“Wouldn’t you be, after all the trouble it took to escape the Whites?” counters Dorrin. “Besides, living with chaos is rather…painful…if you deal with order.”

“Recluce seems rather…arbitrary…about defining chaos.”

Dorrin laughs, a short harsh sound. “They’re all so concerned about maintaining the pure Black way. Any change is considered chaos.” He brushes away a mosquito. “Even order changes, but they don’t see it.”

“What determines what is Black and what is White?” asks the trader.

“They hammer that out in lessons when you first start your schooling.”

“Who gives the lessons?”

“One of the Black mages.”

“Do they all teach the same lessons? What happens if one of
these learned Black mages dies?”

“That doesn’t happen much in Recluce. His apprentices and the others know what he knows, for the most part.”

Liedral frowns. “People remember what they want to. You learn that as a trader. You know how to write, don’t you?”

“Of course.” Dorrin sighs. “I’ve been through my father’s library. Recluce has books and more books. At least, my father does.”

“So…all of the White and Black magic is written down?”

“Not the White. Not even very much of…Actually, there’s not much at all on
why
things work, or how to do things—just the conditions.” Dorrin shakes his head. “Why are you interested in all of this?”

“I’m just interested, healer. I’m a trader. The more I know, the longer I’ll live.”

Dorrin glances at the smooth brow under the floppy hat, then toward his compatriots as they ride toward the rolling hills ahead.

“Why do you hide—”

“Because. I’d prefer you leave it that way. Do your friends know?”

“I haven’t said so, and neither have they. Kadara wouldn’t bring it up, and Brede is rather sharp, but he can keep his tongue. I don’t know.”

“Just think of me as a trader, all right?”

“Fine. If that’s the way you want it.” Dorrin wonders if being a woman is so restrictive in Candar. Of course, magistra Lortren has shown how the Whites had eventually brought down Westwind because of its feminine domination. But why did either sex have to dominate? It was all too clear that people fought over beliefs, but why? The fighting never changed anyone’s mind—unless you killed them. He looks toward the hills that separate them from Weevett, the small farm town that they had passed through only days before. Overhead, the sky is clear, although he feels as though a cloud masks the white-yellow sun. Looking back, he sees a black bird circling.

Then he looks forward toward Brede and Kadara, but they have also turned, as if aware of the nearing black wings. Kadara points to the bird.

“Vulcrow. The wizards watch through their eyes.” Liedral raises her voice.

Dorrin extends his senses on the breeze to hear what the two blades are saying.

“The vulcrow’s probably a spy for the wizards.” Brede fingers the hilt of the heavy blade.

“Wonderful,” snaps Kadara.

“You don’t know that they’re looking for us.” Brede doesn’t even turn from the road ahead. “Who would care about a young healer and two blades?”

“I don’t know. But things happen around Dorrin. They always have.”

Dorrin watches as the vulcrow’s circles widen toward them. Meriwhen whinnies, takes a sidestep, before Dorrin pats her neck. “Easy…easy…”

After unstrapping the bow, Liedral sets the quiver by the seat.

“What are you doing?” asks Dorrin.

“Getting ready to shoot a vulcrow.”

“But—”

“The damned wizards tell their traders. Besides, they don’t like to admit they use the birds.”

The dark bird flaps nearer, but the trader flicks the reins, and the cart squeals as one wheel lifts over a muddy hummock that has encroached onto the stone pavement. Liedral reins up the cart horse, extracts an arrow from the quiver, and draws the bow.

Dorrin’s senses reach skyward, stretching toward the whiteness around the ungainly flapping bird. The trader nocks the arrow, and as the shaft flies, Dorrin screams. “No!!!!”

Kadara and Brede turn, their movements trapped in the syrup of white-clouded and slowed time. Liedral’s mouth hangs open. The vulcrow’s wings freeze on the upstroke, pinions spread.

Sun-eyes appear in the sky, except they are not there, and the unseen eyes glare down upon the travelers. “SO…”

The white fog that Dorrin can feel but not see descends with the speed of lightning and the force of a gale. As the chill rips at him, tears at his thoughts, he thinks, “I am me…Me!”

The white storm tosses his thoughts aside like a leaf in a cyclone, and another kind of blackness descends.

Whhnnnnn…nnnun…

The sound of the mare rouses Dorrin.

“Wha…” His tongue thick, his head splitting, Dorrin finds his face buried in Meriwhen’s neck, the fingers of his left hand locked in her mane. Feeling like an insect narrowly escaped from a giant flyswatter, he loosens his fingers from Meriwhen’s mane. After straightening slowly in the saddle, he squints against the afternoon sun, barely above the clouds that cover the lower quarter of the western sky. Afternoon? Where are the others?

The cart and pack horse are less than a hundred cubits up the road, motionless. A dark figure is half-sprawled across the seat. Dorrin swallows, trying to moisten his mouth, then looks past the cart.

Several hundred cubits farther along the dusty road, Brede stands by the low stone wall, holding both horses. Kadara sprawls over the fence, retching.

Dorrin waves to Brede, points to the cart. There is nothing he can do for Kadara, and Brede is there. The trader remains motionless as Dorrin rides up to the cart and dismounts. His fingers brush her forehead, and his senses confirm that Liedral is beginning to wake. He transfers what little energy he can to her and opens his water bottle, moistening her lips.

“…never had that happen before.” She struggles upright.

“You never traveled with questors from Recluce before, either.” Dorrin offers her the water bottle.

Liedral takes a deep pull, then returns the bottle. “We need to get going. I don’t like being on the road at dark, wizards’ peace or not.”

“If this is peace, I’d rather not see war.” Dorrin replaces the bottle on the saddle, then remounts.

Liedral straps the bow and quiver back into place, checks the harness and the horse, then slips onto the cart seat. “Let’s go.”

“Was that your doing?” Brede reins up beside Dorrin, Kadara, still pale, following.

“No.”

“Then…why—”

“I don’t know. It was a White Wizard, and we were beneath his notice. I’d guess that he was showing how powerful he was.” Dorrin twists, smacking his neck in an attempt to squash
the mosquito that has drawn blood. He rubs his neck, then wipes blood and mosquito off his hand.

“Sending a message?” Brede muses. “It could be, but why us?”

Four sets of eyes exchange glances.

“Let’s go,” Liedral finally snaps.

“What were they?” asks the High Wizard. “You retreated…sought your study in haste.”

Jeslek shrugs. “Youngsters from Recluce. Like the guards said. But you never know, and I wanted to make sure. Some of the prophecies in the Book have come true.”

“I thought the superstitions of the Legend were beneath you.”

“One must know them to disregard them.”

“That’s a fitting proverb for you.”

“You wish to relinquish the amulet, as you promised?” asks Jeslek idly. “After all, I have demonstrated that…”

“I recall something about completing the job.”

“As you wish. It’s not something that can be done overnight, and the Book certainly doesn’t state that it will happen overnight.”

“It’s good to see that you are cultivating patience.” Sterol smiles. “What about the youngsters? Do you incinerate them or bury them under molten stone?”

“No. I’d rather have them spread the word. Two were blades. The other was barely worth calling a healer.” The thin man with the yellow-sun eyes takes a sip of water from the goblet. “Since they were no danger, I’d rather save my strength for other things.”

“Like the last half of the hills between Kyphros and Gallos?”

“That’s one thing. There were at least some hills on the route to the Easthorns. But the Gallosian side is too exposed.”

“I am sure the guards will appreciate your concerns.”

“Besides…we still have to think about the blockade of Recluce.”

“Ah, yes. The next step on your agenda.”

“You said that we needed to do something, I do recall.” Jeslek smiles politely.

“So I did. I suggested something less direct, however. Still, directness has a certain…flair.”

“Now—those are walls,” observes Brede, inclining his head toward the massive granite blocks that rise nearly seventy cubits above the river plain on which the city of Jellico rests. The walls are a lighter and pinker gray than the clouds that shroud the sky. The wind moans and keeps blowing Dorrin’s hair across this forehead. As he pushes the too curly and far too long strands out of his eyes, he wishes he had cut it.

“Why do they need them?”

“They were originally built by one of the early viscounts to hold off Fairhaven,” Liedral responds dryly.

“Oh?”

“You will notice that there are no marks upon the walls, either.”

Dorrin shifts in his saddle as the stone road widens into a causeway that leads to the river bridge. Even from the bridge, the eastern gates are visible, swung open, and bound in heavy iron. The grooves for anchoring the gates and the stones in which they have been chiseled are swept clean. A half squad in gray-brown leathers, three men and three women, plus a single White guard, wait to inspect the travelers.

“Your occupation and reason for entering Jellico?” asks the White guard, his voice polite, emotionless.

“Liedral—I’m a trader here in Jellico. My warehouse is on the traders’ street off the great square. I’m returning from a trading journey.”

Looking over the parapet crenellations on the wall above, a crossbowman watches, his weapon resting on the granite.

“These your people?” asks the guard.

“Yes. The guards are mine. The healer is traveling with us for protection.”

The White guard pokes at several bags, taps a jug, frowns, and finally nods. Liedral flicks the reins, and guides the cart through the stone archway and into Jellico. The houses are tile-roofed, two-storied structures of fired brick with narrow fronts, pitched roofs, and heavy, iron-bound oak doors, closed against the cold spring wind.

The four pass less than a score of pedestrians as Liedral wheels the cart left, and then down a narrow street that leads toward the center of Jellico.

“There,” the trader states at last. The stone-walled building toward which Liedral points is three stories high, the width of three houses, with a high-pitched roof. The warehouse is a floor higher than the adjoining structures, a cooper’s shop toward the square and a silversmith’s toward the city gate. Toward the square are the grayed facades of even taller structures that appear to predate the warehouse, perhaps by centuries. The square is another hundred cubits down the narrow street.

Three doors open from the warehouse—a sliding door level with the rough stones of the street and wide enough to admit Liedral’s cart. The second door is iron-bound and barred, and the last, closest to the square, is a door of plain oak under a green-painted portico.

Brede swings off the gelding without an invitation and points to the sliding door. “You want me to open this one?”

“If you would. Leave it open. Freidr never airs anything out.” Liedral drives the cart through the door and onto the smooth and hard-packed clay. A faint aroma of spices permeates the space. Liedral climbs off the cart.

“If you want to clean the stables and do the loading, you can sleep in the stableboy’s room,” Liedral offers. “Freidr doesn’t keep one any longer. He claims it’s my responsibility, since I’ve got all the horses.”

“What about a place to wash up?” Dorrin is all too conscious of the grime that enfolds him.

“You can use the washroom as much as you like—so long as you pump the water and clean up any mess you make.” Liedral loosens the last strap from the cart harness and leads the horse into the second stall. “You three can have the last three stalls at
the end. I daresay they’ll need some cleaning. But that comes after you help me unload and shift things around. The bins are probably a mess, again.”

“Is Freidr…” asks Kadara.

“My brother. He and Midala live on the third floor. My rooms are on the second—when I’m here. He factors here in Jellico what I gather.”

Brede tethers his gelding by the last stall. “What goes where?”

“The four purple jugs? That’s glaze powder, and they go up on the first level, just up the staircase. There should be a picture of a pot in purple outside the right bin and a jug like these inside.”

“What’s cerann?” asks Dorrin.

“Take it easy with that. It’s a rare oil, goes on the second level, the bin with the green leaf.”

“How rare is rare?” muses Kadara, lifting a heavy sack.

“Each bottle in the case is worth a gold and a half. The sack is sweet beets. Put it in that big bin over there.”

“That’s rare.”

Brede has returned to the cart. “What next?”

Dorrin climbs the stairs slowly, ensuring that each foot is placed firmly on each riser. He doesn’t have eighteen golds to spare. That he knows, and he doubts that Liedral can easily absorb such a loss. By the time he has stored cerann oil, tublane, pottery glaze, and dozens of other small items, Dorrin understands why the trader is broad-shouldered.

Liedral leads them through a doorway at the end of the warehouse. “Here’s the washroom. I need to talk to Freidr. We’ll have a late supper, sometime after the twilight bell. You’re invited. You might look around the great square.”

“After I do some wash,” Dorrin says, looking down at his travel-stained browns. “Actually, I need to find a good curry brush.”

Kadara grins. “The same fastidious Dorrin. In a new city, and you think about laundry and currying.”

“I’m also thinking about me, and the way I smell.”

Liedral pauses. “There are several curry brushes in the tack room. If you want to keep one of the older ones, that would be fine.”

“Thank you. Meriwhen will like it.”

“Now you’ve named the horse?”

Dorrin flushes.

Liedral backs away and steps through the doorway to the living quarters.

“Fine. Let me wash up first,” suggests Kadara. “I’m not doing laundry. You can go curry your Meriwhen.”

“Fine.”

While Kadara washes, Dorrin unloads Meriwhen, curries her, and gathers his soiled clothes. Then he pumps two tubs full of water before Brede appears. Brede is stripped to the waist and carries a small towel and a razor for his blond stubble.

“Still doing wash?” Kadara has changed into a gray tunic and trousers, with a bright green scarf that sets off her hair and eyes.

“I just started.” Then Dorrin sighs. Once again, he has answered a rhetorical question. He never learns.

“I’ll do mine later.” With the travel grime off her face and the light tan almost covering the faint freckles, she looks almost like an etching of an ancient Westwind Guard—beautiful and deadly. “I’m going to the square to see if I can find some things.”

“What things?” asks Brede from the other side of the washroom.

“Just…women’s things.”

His elbows deep in the tub, Brede splashes water across his face and looks up at Dorrin, water dripping down in a stream from his chin. Dorrin looks at Brede, and Kadara is gone.

Dorrin rinses out his travel trousers and wrings them over the waste bucket, then hangs them over a laundry table as he picks out a soapy tunic.

Brede hurriedly finishes washing and dries off, leaving Dorrin alone in the washroom. The healer finishes all his once-filthy clothes, and carries them out into the warehouse, hanging his wash in the empty fourth stall, spreading it on a rope he has found coiled in the corner of what was once a tack room.

“You don’t have to be that careful, healer.”

The short and squat man who accompanies Liedral nods. Despite the dark beard and cold blue eyes, he appears little older than Dorrin.

“This is my brother Freidr.”

“I’m pleased to meet you. My name is Dorrin.”

“Are the others around?”

“They went off to the great square. I thought I would follow their example after I wash up.”

“We will see you at supper, then.” Liedral points, and the two traders climb the steps. “The cerann was a good buy…overextended a bit…”

Dorrin returns to the washroom with his one dry and clean set of browns, where he washes himself thoroughly, then cleans the washroom, then dries and dresses. As an afterthought, he reclaims his staff from the stableboy’s room.

As he walks toward the great square, he notes again the relatively small number of people on the streets, few indeed, even for a blustery spring afternoon under gray skies. The stones underfoot are dry.

Dorrin passes several booths selling weapons, but all have the white-bronze blades of the Whites. Nowhere does he see iron. Is Jellico totally controlled by the White Wizards?

“Dorrin!” Brede waves from fifty paces away.

The healer returns the wave and steps toward the tall blond.

“Have you seen Kadara?”

“I just got here,” admits Dorrin. He pauses to look at the display to his left, at the edge of the square.

“Seeds! The best spice seeds this side of Suthya!” The man’s white hair bears an unhealthy yellow tinge, and his gray garments almost flicker with white. Pouches of seeds are set on the small single-axled cart, a cart that could be drawn by a man or a dog. Neither a dog nor a pony is visible.

Dorrin edges closer to the small leather pouches, frowning at the water stains on the leather, wondering about the use of leather with seeds. If the leather has been tanned with acorn extracts or other acids, and then gotten damp, neither brinn nor astra will grow.

He extends a hand toward the nearest pouch, not touching the leather, letting his healing senses reach the seeds. Most are dead. He shakes his head. His left hand tightens on his staff.

“What’s the matter?” asks Brede.

“Most of the seeds are dead,” Dorrin explains.

“You’re a fraud, friend,” claims the peddler. “My seeds are
the best, the very best.”

Dorrin nods politely, and steps back, heading toward the cart with a grill from which drifts the warm dripped-fat scent of roasting fowl.

“The youngster in black said his seeds were dead…” mumbles an older woman in brown.

Dorrin frowns. His clothes are brown, a deep and dark brown, but brown.

“More ’n likely,” sniffs another gray-haired woman in a patchwork of wools. “He’s a white-back.”

The three women leave the white-haired man without customers.

“I said you’re a fraud!” The peddler shouts. “Thief! Thief!”

Two white-coated guards appear before Dorrin, white blades pointed toward him. “What’s the problem?”

“Him and his Black quackery! He says my seeds aren’t any good. That’s theft!” The peddler is almost hoarse, his voice is so loud and ragged.

Bystanders step away, almost melting into the streets off the square.

“You a Black healer?” snaps the square-faced guard.

“No. I’m a questor.”

“Same thing. What about what the peddler says?”

Dorrin faces the guards, his staff resting still in his left hand. “I said nothing, except to my friend. I certainly am no trader.” A warning flash slides through his brain, although his words are literally true.

“Those women—they would have bought except for him!”

“What women?” asks the other guard, looking around the nearly deserted section of the great square.

The peddler looks around, then waves his arms. “He scared them away.”

“Likely story.” The guards lower the white blades.

The square-faced one turns to Dorrin. “You, youngster—keep your Black thoughts to yourself. You understand?”

“Yes, ser.” Dorrin nods politely.

“I don’t want to see you making more trouble, young fellow.” The square-faced guard turns to Brede. “Nor you either, with that iron toothpick!”

Brede nods. “I will be careful, ser.”

The two guards march across the square.

“Well, are you going to pay me?” snaps the peddler.

Brede looks at the peddler. “For what? False accusations? The healer couldn’t tell an untruth if his life depended on it. That’s more than one could say of you.”

The white-haired man shrinks away from Brede’s glare. “Black bastards…trouble-makers…all of them…”

Brede grins. Dorrin shrugs as they walk toward the stalls on the far side of the square. Brede’s grin vanishes as he watches two men fold their tables at the approach of the two questors. Another throws a cloth over his silverwork to signify that he is closed.

“Sorry,” Dorrin apologizes.

“There’s not much we can do.” Brede nods toward the avenue. “Might as well head back.”

Dorrin feels the eyes of the White guards on their backs as they cross the square and head back up the avenue toward Liedral’s building.

Kadara is hanging up her laundry when they slide open the stable area door. “You weren’t gone long.”

“We had a few problems.”

“I had a few problems,” Dorrin corrects. “A local peddler was selling dead seeds. I remarked on it, and the authorities overheard. By the time there were through, everyone decided it was time to close.”

“Oh, Dorrin.” Kadara pats his shoulder.

The doorway from the quarters opens. “If you’re all back, we could eat,” Liedral announces. The trader wears clean dark blue trousers and a high-necked tunic, with damp and clean brown hair longer than Dorrin’s but shorter than Kadara’s ear-length cut.

The dining room is on the lowest level. The long red-oak table is polished, oiled, and only slightly battered along its eight-cubit length. There are wooden armchairs, not benches, for the six who gather. Four other chairs are placed in the corners and against the wall. Freidr stands by the head of the table. To his right sits a thin blond woman.

“Dorrin, Brede, and Kadara, I would like to introduce you to Midala. Midala,” Liedral says smoothly, “Kadara and Brede
are blades; and Dorrin is a healer.”

Freidr smiles and gestures to the table. “Please be seated.”

Dorrin finds himself between Midala and Liedral, who sits at the foot of the table. Brede and Kadara sit side by side with their backs to the high windows that front upon the street.

A young woman in dark blue sets a platter heaped with thin strips of meat covered in a dark brown sauce before Freidr. As he serves himself and Midala, the serving woman returns with two other deep platters, one filled with potatoes coated in cheese and another with limp and dark greenery.