The Magic of Recluce (19 page)

The woman in the green tunic ignored Antonin, her veiled face turned toward Justen. The gray wizard said nothing, nor did he even stand.

“Actions speak louder than words. There are those here who hunger. Will righteousness feed them? Will the innkeeper feed them from the goodness of his heart and deprive his family and kin?”

Justen seemed to smile faintly. “That is an old argument, Antonin, one scarcely worth answering.”

“Is it wrong to feed the hungry, Justen?”

The wizard in gray shook his head, almost sadly. I wondered how he would answer the white wizard's question.

“Is it wrong to feed the hungry, Justen?”

Even the herders in the corner turned toward Antonin.

“You among the herders—does one of you have an old goat, a tired ewe that will not survive the winter? Come…two silvers for such an animal. Certainly a fair price.”

I found myself nodding. Even in early winter, a fair price for an animal that might easily die in the frigid eight-days ahead.

The wizard in gray shook his head once more, then sipped from his mug, watching as Antonin beamed from where he stood by the table.

“Innkeeper, for the use of your serving table, a silver also?”

The innkeeper, wiping his thin hands on the greasy apron he wore, smiled briefly, not with his eyes, as he looked at the crowd. “Enough, esteemed wizard, but I would hope in your charity that you would make good any damages…”

“There will be no damages.” Antonin gestured toward the herders. “Who will take my two silvers?”

“Here, lord wizard.” A bent man shuffled forward, his curly and dirty gray hair springing wildly from his head. His leathers were filthy, so battered their original color was lost beneath the dirt, and so tattered that the yarn laced through and around them barely seemed to hold either his vest or trousers together. Dirty raw wool poked from the holes in trousers and vest.

“Bring me the animal.”

“Will he slaughter it here in the inn?” I asked.

Arlyn chuckled. “You'll see no knives here, youngster. The one's a great wizard.”

“Too great,” mumbled the traveler on my other side, who had said nothing since I had seated myself. He turned to his companion, an older man dressed in faded green with a heavy green cloak still wrapped around him.

A chill wind bit through my own trousers as the herder left, though the doorway was open only an instant or so. Outside the wind was beginning to moan, and the early dusk was nearly gone. I wondered how much more ice would fall before I could leave the inn. Or would it be snow by morning?

Arlyn's slurp reminded me of the mug I held between both hands. I sipped the cider carefully, but could taste nothing foreign. Still, I waited after my first sip.

Thunk
.

“Ten pence.” The serving girl laid down two heavy slabs of black bread and a thin wedge of yellow cheese. “And the token back.”

I handed her the token and a silver.

Now I had the cheese and bread, and wondered if I could eat it—safely.

As I glanced toward the gentry section, I found the eyes of the gray wizard upon me. He nodded slightly, as if to say that I could.

I looked at the cider mug between Arlyn's hands. The wizard's face was unreadable, which was answer enough. But why would he even answer my unspoken question? And why did I trust the man in gray and not the one in white?

Taking a small bite from the tangy black bread, I tried to figure out the answers. Tamra would have called me a fool for even entering the inn. Sammel would have shared the stable with the animals, and who was to say who was right?

The outside door opened, wider, and the wind dispersed the lingering warmth that had grown from the body heat of the crowd. I swallowed another chunk of the dry bread, washing it down with the lukewarm cider.

Baaaaa…

The herder passed near the end of our table, nearly brushing the man in green, as he carried a scrawny sheep slung over his shoulder toward the wizards.

The inn door had shut, and the sudden odor of filthy sheep and unwashed herder nearly choked me. Had I not escaped from the ice and blizzard so recently, I might have been tempted to forsake the stench of the inn for the clean cold of the outside. Trouble was that the outside was too cold.

“Watch…” hissed the man in green to the traveler beside me.

Thump
.

Arlyn's head dropped onto the table. The cider mug was still half-full. I looked, listened, but he was still breathing.

“Your sheep, ser.” The herder set the animal in the space beside the wizard's table.

Splattttt…

The sheep repaid the warmth by defecating on the rush floor.

The innkeeper looked nervously at the wizard.

Antonin smiled, then gestured. Both soil and odor vanished, although the faintest odor of brimstone remained.

For a moment, everyone stopped talking, even the gentry.

Baaaa…

“You…promised…two…silvers…”

“You shall have them, my man.” Antonin drew the coins from his purse and laid them on the edge of the table.

…snaaaaath…snathh
…Arlyn the carpenter was snoring.

The herder pulled a small iron hammer from his pouch and touched each coin with it. They remained silver.

“Stupid…” muttered the man beside me.

The fellow in green nodded.

Stupid? To check the coins provided by a wizard? I would have, but with Arlyn asleep, snoring on the table, there was no one else I dared to ask why it was stupid.

Antonin stood, swinging his sleeves back to reveal bare arms. Not heavily muscled, as I would have expected, nor thin like a cleric's, but knobby like a merchant's.

“Before you go, friend herder…”

The herder turned back and looked down.

“You, my friend…” The white-robed wizard gestured toward the innkeeper. “The two largest trays you have.”

“Long ones be all right?”

“Those would be best, friend.”

If nothing else, the continued use of the word “friend” was not just annoying, but boring.

With a sour look as he sipped from his mug, the wizard in gray glanced from the sheep to the wall, then let his eyes pass over me and along the common crowd.

In the meantime, the innkeeper brought out two enormous wooden serving trays and set them upon the trestle table just beyond the gentry's area. The veiled woman had turned her chair to watch, but the older fighter at Antonin's table kept his back to me.

The tradespeople, including a woman tinker with a broad face and muscles that would have exceeded those of either Koldar or his stonemason wife-to-be, reluctantly shuffled off the benches and stood at the end of the table away from the innkeeper.

Antonin stepped past two gentry tables, both filled with travelers wearing fur collars on their cloaks—no women—and approached the trestle. He motioned to the herder. “Pick up the animal and put it on the table, right over the trays.”

The herder did so, nearly effortlessly.

The table shivered as the sheep wobbled there.

“Watch,” hissed the man in green. I was watching, as was everyone in the inn.

The wizard advanced; the herder stepped back, his hand on the leather belt where he had placed the silver coins.

Antonin raised his hands.

I closed my eyes and looked down, not knowing why.

SSsssssssssss…

Light like a sunburst flared across the room with the sharp hissing sound.

Even with my eyes closed, the light had hurt. I squinted, blinking. The tears helped, and I could see long before anyone else could. Antonin had a nasty smile on his face, the look of a bully pleased at a beating administered to a small child.

Justen had an even more sour look upon his face, and the rest—from the commons to the gentry—were still blotting their eyes, trying to see. Except for the veiled woman, who was looking at Antonin from deep-set eyes whose expression was unreadable from where I sat.

“…ooooooo…”

“Look at that…”

In my observation of the wizards, I had forgotten the sheep. I tried not to gape with everyone else. But I did. The two trays were heaped with succulent sliced and steaming mutton, with joints at the edges, and with sweetbreads piled at each end. A sheepskin rug lay on the floor beside Antonin, who was toweling off his forehead with the back of his wide right sleeve. Outside of the joints on the tray, there were no bones.

Sweat suddenly poured down my forehead. The common area felt like the kitchen when Aunt Elisabet baked bread for all the neighbors at winterdawn.

I watched as the wizard in white smiled at the innkeeper, then at Justen, the gray wizard.

“Meat. Honest meat for those who would go without.” Antonin turned to Justen. “Actions do speak louder than words, brother wizard. Tell me that it is wrong to feed the hungry.”

“It is not wrong to feed the hungry, but it is wrong to feed their hungers.”

I never liked obscure answers, and I didn't like Justen's. If he thought that Antonin was a showman, he should have said so. Or that he served evil by tempting hungry people. But he didn't. Justen only smiled sadly again. Did the man ever do anything besides disapprove of the white wizard?

Antonin the white wizard faced all of us in the common area. “Come forward, those of you without a penny for food. There is enough for a small portion for all who are hungry.” His voice was hearty and friendly, and the words sounded genuine, but the real invitation was the smell of roast mutton.

First came a boy in a patched jacket, the apprentice of some tradesman. After him came a thin girl in leggings too big and an old herd coat too small. Before the shuffle of their feet had reached the trestle table, half the commons were pressing after them. Only the whiteness of the wizard kept the crowd in a line.

Arlyn snored on the table, but the man next to me and his companion in green had joined the crowd. Tempting as the mutton smelled, the odor repelled me as much as attracted me. So I munched through the rest of the hard black bread and the thin cheese wedge while the others jostled for the mutton.

The innkeeper emerged from the crowd carrying the sheepskin, the one thing of lasting value, and disappeared briefly into the kitchen with the prize, emerging quickly with a large truncheon and another man with an even greasier apron and a larger club.

Antonin sat at his table and sipped from a real crystal glass—wine, not mead or cider, glancing once or twice in my direction. I tried to ignore him as I swallowed the last of the cider.

The gray magician—Justen—stood up and pulled his cloak around him. Then he walked toward me. I stood, wondering whether to meet him or flee. Then I shrugged.

“Let us check the animals, apprentice.”

I nodded, realizing that, for whatever reason, he was offering some sort of protection, and followed him into the blizzard that separated the inn from the stable.

Whheeeeeeeeee
…The howl of the wind was lower, only a half-wail compared to the shrieking that had forced me inside earlier. The needle-ice no longer fell, replaced with fine white powder so thick that it blurred like heavy sea fog.

“You near lost your soul there, young fellow.”

I wanted to leave him right then. Another person knowing better than I did, ready to preach and not explain. But he hadn't asked anything. So I waited to see if he would explain.

He didn't, just walked toward the stable. I followed.

T
HE WOMAN IN
gray watches the roadside from the bench seat of the wagon, holding her staff tightly in one hand. She tries not to think about the similarity between the rolling of the wagon and the motion of the cargo ship that had so recently carried her to Candar.

On either side of the road, the dull gray-brown of damp and rotting grass, interspersed with patches of black weeds, stretches to the hills on the north and to the horizon on the south. Beyond the southern horizon lies the Ohyde River, and the point where her journey will end—Hydolar, where the road and the river meet.

Ahead on the road, she sees three thin figures, their ragged and uneven walk like that of so many others that she and the wagon have passed.

Crack!

“Hyah…hyah…” rumbles the driver without looking at the whip he has cracked or the two draft horses pulling the now-empty wagon that had carried cabbages and potatoes. He wears a heavy belt filled with more than gold, and a cocked crossbow rests on a stand to his right. “See anything, Maga?”

On the road ahead, the two younger men ride a pair of rail-thin horses. The sandy-haired one bears a long rifle, good only against the desperate, but necessary on the road they travel.

Beyond them, beyond the three figures that the wagon lumbers around, she can sense only the emptiness of another set of minds, trudging away from Freetown and the soggy desperation of too much rain and too little sunlight.

“Nothing except some more hungry people…”

“Good for us, at least,” rumbles the driver. “Never got so much for cabbages and potatoes.”

She grips her staff and tries not to think about either ships or the gnawing pains in the minds and bellies of the vacant-eyed men and women and children stumbling along the road toward the sunlight of Hydlen.

“S
ERS
! T
HE DOORWAY
, please!” The pleading voice came from what I first took to be a pile of rags and blankets. The stableboy had heaped a worn saddle blanket over a pile of rags and burrowed his own tattered leathers underneath. He was huddled in a nook where he could watch the big sliding door. Beyond him loomed Antonin's coach, not quite lit by an internal flame.

“Of course,” I found myself saying as I quickly slid the heavy slab back into place and plunged the stable back into gloom.

Whhhhh…thip, thub, thip, thub…
The doorway creaked and rattled in the wind.

The darkness didn't bother me, since I didn't seem to need much light to see by any more. Turning toward Justen, I found he had left and walked toward the stalls in the rear.

Gairloch was still double-stalled with the other mountain pony, dark gray with a creamy mane.

Wheeeee…nun…

“Good girl…”

I should have guessed. “Yours?”

Justen nodded.

“Gairloch's male.”

“That won't matter for now. Rosefoot's pretty tolerant. She likes company. Where did you get him?”

“Freetown.”

Justen nodded again. “I thought so. It would be odd for them to have a mountain pony, though.”

“The liveryman led me to believe that was why I could afford him. Mean-tempered. I rescued him from the gluepots.” I shrugged. “That was what they told me, anyway.” I shivered. The stable was cold. Not so bad as outside, but not a whole lot warmer than an icehouse.

Justen climbed onto the half-wall that separated the stalls. To our right was a tall mare who turned her head in our direction, skittishly. A white blaze covered her forehead.

The gray wizard crouched on the stall half-wall and eased toward the outside wall. Just above him was a squarish opening partly framed with hay wisps. He stood up in the opening, his head out of sight. With a sudden jump, he pulled himself up into the space above the stalls. “Come on, youngster, and bring that staff you hid next to your pony. They'll rest better, and so will you.” He disappeared, and I could hear the rustle of straw or hay.

“How…?”

“Can't you sense it?” His voice was muffled.

He was right, though. When I tried to reach out and feel for the staff, like farseeing, it almost burned into my brain. I grabbed the half-wall for support. After a moment, I reached down and reclaimed the dark staff. To my hand, the wood held only a faintly reassuring warmth.

Wheeeee
…Gairloch tossed his head, more like a nod. It had to be coincidence.

“Are you coming, young man?”

With a second thought, I reached down and grabbed my pack as well, brushing off the straw and slinging it half over my right shoulder. I clambered up on the wall, then scrambled, far less gracefully than the gray wizard, up through the square opening.

“Ac…
chew WWW
!”

“The dust will settle shortly.” Justen had pulled off his boots and his belt and was piling more of the loose hay into a bed.

“We're staying here?”

“You can stay where you want. I prefer not to stay under the same roof as Antonin. I sleep better.”

I sighed. There it was again. More assumptions, more statements, and no explanations. “Could you explain a few things to me?”

Justen stretched out on a cloak that suddenly was more than twice it original size, and looked to be twice as thick. “A few. If it doesn't take too long. I'm tired, and I intend to leave early tomorrow. I'm headed toward a little hamlet called Weevett, and then to Jellico. Jellico's the town where the Viscount of Certis reigns. Once upon a time, Howlett belonged to Certis, but nobody remembers. Back then all it had was sheep, and no one really cared, even before the deadlands. Now Howlett belongs to Montgren, and no one really cares except the countess.”

I frowned, trying to sort out my questions. Finally, I gave up. “You said my soul was in danger from Antonin. Why? I mean, how could he have hurt me that way?”

Wooooooooo…rat, tat, tip, tat
…Momentarily, the wind picked up and ice chunks rattled against the roof overhead.

Justen wrapped the overlarge cloak around himself. “Take off your boots. Your feet need the air.” He shrugged, trying to make himself more comfortable on the straw. “Antonin is the strongest of the white magicians. A chaos-master, if you will. Wielding chaos is extraordinarily hard on both body and soul, and most white magicians die young. Powerful, but young. Antonin, and Gerlis, and by now I would suspect Sephya, have attained the power to somewhat postpone their early demise, by transferring their personality and ability to other and younger bodies, preferably to bodies already equipped with the talent and unaware of their own defenses. You fit the bill admirably. That's why I decided to move you away from Antonin. He was preoccupied with Sephya and her…situation. He didn't really sense you. Your innate defenses are good enough to conceal you from a quick look.”

I shivered again. “Thank you.” I struggled and eased off one boot, realizing that while the ice and rain hadn't gotten through the thick leather, my feet were indeed damp. The second boot came off easier, but my left foot was just a trace smaller than my right anyway.

“Oh, don't thank me. I did it for me, not you. None of us gray magicians could afford to have Antonin controlling a body with your latent powers. His knowledge is already too great.”

“What do you intend, then?”

“Not much. You can devise your own hell once we're clear of Antonin. Tomorrow, assuming you're willing, on the way to Jellico I'll teach you enough to allow you to block anyone from taking over your body without your consent. Plus, if there's time, a few other tricks that are pure black and won't prejudice your decision.”

“My decision?” The words were grunted as I levered off my right boot.

“Whether you intend to be a black, gray, or white magician.” Justen yawned. “I am tired, and so are you. Get some straw together and go to sleep. Rosefoot will certainly let us know if anyone tries to climb up here. So will your pony and your staff. Good night.”

He rolled over and left me sitting in a pile of straw, my pack and boots by my feet, my head twirling with unasked and unanswered questions, and my thighs aching still from too much riding.

For all the aches and questions, I was asleep before long, listening to the
wooooooooo…rat, tat, tip, tat
…of the wind, ice, and snow, even as I wondered who Justen really was and whether I should trust him. But I slept anyway.