The Road To Sevendor - A Spellmonger Anthology (6 page)

“My Lord?” he squawked again, taking a step back.

“Hire us a horse ripe to
throw a shoe?”
he said, disgusted.  “We didn’t get to Harline before we were walking.  I demand our money back!”

All thoughts of escape vanished as Tyndal’s professional pride – as a
stableboy
– was hurt. 

“My lord, I assure you the farrier was here just a week ago, and assured us—”

“I don’t care if Huin himself assured you that it could crap golden muffins, Boy, you
hired us a lame horse!
  Do you have any idea how much time you cost us?  Your information has already caused us to inconvenience one very irate Ducal tax collector.  Had we decent horses, perhaps we could have caught up with our prey, but we had to trade those nags and lost half a day doing it!”

“My lord, I am sorry that you ran into misfortune, but Mast—”

“You have a hundred heartbeats to put coin in my hand, boy,” the warmage said, darkly, “or I shall have you taken into custody.”

Tyndal glared back defiantly, but went to the jar where Master Go
nus kept the coin for the stable and slowly – very slowly – counted out half of the fee before handing it to the Censor.  “That’s
half
.  We’ll send the
other
half when we get the horses back. 
And
the tack,” he added, warningly.  He reasoned a real stableboy would have done the same, even at the risk of alienating a customer.  Customers came and went, but you had to live with your master every day.

“Very well, then,” Wa
ntran said, reluctantly accepting the money.  “When we have concluded our business at the bakery, then I shall speak to your master about them.”

“The bakery, my lord?” he blurted out automatically.  He tried to cover himself quickly.  “I eat lunch there every day.  Everyone does!  Is the baker—”

“It’s nothing to concern you, boy,” Wantran dismissed, pulling his cloak of office back over his shoulder.  “An evil sorcerer broke the law, and he happens to be the son of the baker.  We think he knows where he is, is all, and we need to get that information.”

“But the baker will be okay?” he asked, worriedly.

Wantran studied him carefully.  “Perhaps you should consider someplace
else
to get your lunch tomorrow,” he said with a dark chuckle, and left the stable.

The moment he left, Tyndal sprang into action.  He wasn’t absolutely sure of what he was doing, but he knew he needed to do
something
.  The thought of Master Rinden being lead-away in chains – or worse – terrified him.  The old baker was a strong man, but he could not resist the spells of compulsion the Censors would employ.  Or less-mystical but more painful methods.  In mere hours they would know about him . . . and where Alya was hiding.

Tyndal couldn’t abide that.  He retrieved his witchstone from the shelf he’d hidden it upon, and then went all the way to the back of the tack and harness room, where he had hidden a bundle the second day he’d worked here.  Carefully he unrolled the oiled leather he’d wrapped around his mageblade and the only wand he’d brought with him.  It wasn’t worth much – it didn’t have more than two charges – and any decent mage could defend against it, at need.  But Tyndal wasn’t planning on giving them a chance to do so.

He drew the blade six inches to examine the steel before he snapped it back.  He barely knew how to use it.  Master Minalan had tutored him, and he’d practiced with it faithfully  in the village the Bovali refugees had been sent to, but any first-year guardsman was better with a blade.  That didn’t deter him in the slightest. 

He strapped the mageblade across his back, tucked the witchstone under his shirt, and slid the warwand into his belt, behind his back.  Then he took a deep breath, turned around—and walked smack into Ansily, knocking them both to the floor.

“OhmygoddessTYNDAL!” she said, ashen-faced as she helped him to his feet.  “Those men, those Censors!  They were at the
Four Stags
this morning, and I overheard them, and I came as fast as—”

“It’s all right, Ansily,” he said, as gently as he could manage with his heart pounding in his chest.  “I saw them.  They haven’t discovered me, but they are going after Master Rinden.  I can’t let that happen,” he said, defiantly.

“But they’re soldiers!” she said, her eyes as wide as wagon wheels.  “They’ll
kill
you!”

“Probably,” he conceded, as casually as he could manage, “but I’m not going to make it easy on them, and I’m
not
going to let them take away my master’s father. 
Or
his bride.”  He started to walk past her, but she grabbed on to him instead.  He hadn’t expected that, though he found he enjoyed it.

“Tyndal,
no!”
she pleaded.  “I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in, but—”

“I’m in all sorts of trouble, and I can’t wait any more,” he insisted, shaking off her grip.  “They are over at the bakery
right now!”
he said, pleadingly.

“All right, but . . . can’t we summon the guard?”

“They’re
Royal Censors
, Ansily,” he tried to explain.  “The
Duke
couldn’t even tell them what to do.”

“But if you go to fight them then won’t that be treason or something?”

“It’s probably just really stupid, and honestly I’m not that worried about that right now.”  He stared at her curiously.  Why would anyone worry about that sort of thing when someone’s life was on the line?  Sometimes he wondered if women were all crazy.  “Stay here. Stay hidden.  They won’t bother you, I’ll wager, especially if you just look like a frightened girl hiding— ”

“I’m sure I’ll manage!” she said, sarcastically.

“If I pull this off, I’ll come back for you.  If I don’t, you should be safe over here.  And if you get the chance . . . run.”

She looked at him with tears in her eyes, and before he could say another word she was kissing him, passionately.  “If you pull this off, Tyndal of Somewhere, then you had better come back here.  You and I have some
unfinished business,”
she said, her eyes telling him just what kind of business she had in mind.  Tyndal spent a few seconds locked in utter confusion before he shook it off and pulled himself away. “So what are you going to do?” she asked, a little more confidently.

“I have no idea,” he confessed.  “But I’m down to desperation and imagination, so it’s not going to be subtle.”

The sounds of sobbing and screaming could be heard over the tall wooden fence that surrounded the bakery compound, which was already starting to attract attention.  They weren’t cries of pain—yet, he noted as he sprinted across the road, they were cries of outrage.  They hadn’t begun to hurt them yet.  They were just bullying and threatening and scaring them, not actually harming them.  That was something, at least.  He crept up to the wall and scaled it effortlessly – he’d always been partial to climbing trees, and the wall was hardly a barrier.  The compound was deserted; the shadows spawning in the twilight were darkening as the harsh noise was coming from inside the sprawling house.

Tyndal quietly crossed the courtyard past the giant red ovens and came to one of the windows that led to the residence.  He didn’t need the hearing spell to hear what was happening inside.  The voices were loud, angry, and severe.

“—tell us where your son is hiding!” Wantran’s voice demanded.  “We know he was here, we detected the tracking spell he planted on us!  Which of you knows?”

“We haven’t seen Minalan in over a year!  Leave him alone!” Mistress Sarali insisted, pleading for her husband.  It tore Tyndal’s soul to hear that riven tone in the good woman’s voice.

“She speaks the truth,” Lespin’s voice called out, casually.  He must be using a spell.

“He
sent
someone, then,” Wantran insisted.  “Do not lie to us!”

“The spell on our saddle was fresh,” Censor Lespin pointed out.  “Are any of
you
magi?  No, you stink of flour and sweat and ignorance.  Then the mage your son sent to protect you . . . where is
he?”

Tyndal suppressed the desire to jump through the window and announce himself.  As dramatic as the gesture would have been, he realized it would have been just as final.  He could not take the risk that the warmagi would not only capture or kill him, but kill everyone else in the house as well.  He had to find another way. 

His first task, as he saw it, was to get the Censors out of the bakery.

That part he hoped would be simple.  He stole back over to the fence, and using it and a stick of firewood as a ladder he quickly lifted his stringy body up to the low roof of the building. 

Imagination and desperation.  There had to be
something.

He scanned the street from his vantage point, details already beginning to fade in the gloom of twilight.  He noted the mist forming along the riverfront at this hour, and the number of lights on in the village, and he heard the bell of a barge coming up the river.  It seemed so peaceful and serene that it was hard to imagine the scene that was unfolding under his feet.  He spared just a moment to consider hiding up here until the Censors had left, but he knew that wasn’t really something he could do.  He might be common born but he knew what honor was.

What he
could
do, he decided, was give his master’s family the best chance at fleeing he could.  He needed divine intervention, like the fog that the goddess Delanora had used to hide the lovers in Ansily’s tale.  
Where the hell is
she? he wondered, bitterly.  Then as he stared at the creeping mist, Despite his desperate situation, he thought he had the beginnings of a plan which might do the trick . . . and probably get him killed in the process.

It was the mist.  He could use the mist.  It was just water, in the air, and he knew a thing or two to do with it. 

Tyndal took one last look around the roof, glanced longingly across the road to the stable where Ansily waited for him,  and then around at the darkening village that had been, however temporarily, his home, and he sighed.  Then he got to work.

The explosion that erupted in front of the bakery had been only mildly impressive, and had exhausted Tyndal’s knowledge of magical pyrotechnics, but it had done the job.  It had produced (along with a loud bang and eight-foot tall pillar of fire) an unmistakable wave of magical energy that any mage would have felt.  The Censors certainly did – in moments both men were rushing out to the street, swords and warwands in hand, looking around intently for the source of the spell.

Tyndal had wisely moved the moment after he’d cast the thing, so when the magi began tracing the spell’s origin he was in a different place entirely.  Lespin savagely attacked a shrub that screened the steps of the shop across the street, and then signaled to his partner that the offending mage he suspected had been hiding there was gone.

“That’s not very sporting of you!” Wantran called out into the night.  “Why don’t you come out and we can talk like gentlemen?”

Tyndal’s heart raced as he triggered the next part of his plan.  A weak flare – no more than a cantrip – sputtered up the hill, away from the river.

“You’re going to have to do better than
that
,” Wantran called, shaking his head.  “Master Mage, surely you can offer us something more tempting as a lure?”

Tyndal paused, mid-crouch, as he skimmed the rooftop of the little shop next door to the bakery.  He debated with himself, and then shrugged.  He wasn’t going to be lingering here long, anyway.  He drew his warwand from his belt and carefully aimed.  Lespin was instantly knocked off of his feet, which Tyndal found very gratifying.  Unfortunately, the Censor got to his feet very quickly . . . and very angrily.  He scanned the area, and cursed when his magesight revealed . . . nothing.

The mist had thickened, encouraged by a few small spells here and there, and then just before he had engaged his first distraction he’d energized the entire cloud.  Not to do anything in particular . . . just hold the power.  It wasn’t perfect, but it made magesight useless for tracking him now. 

Tyndal was already moving, scaling the rear wall of the building and scooting around the corner, where he could peer out into the thickening mist and see his foes as they searched for him.  He grinned despite himself as he released another cantrip, another tiny ‘pop’, near the Censors.  Both men whirled and threatened the empty gloom. 

Satisfied that they were preoccupied with the mysterious hidden mage, he slunk across the top of the fence to the rear of the compound and scaled the gate.  

He unexpectedly saw Hirth, the junior apprentice, who was clutching a bloody rag to the side of his head with one hand and holding a bare dagger in the other.  He startled when he heard Tyndal’s footsteps, then sighed as he recognized him in the deepening gloom.  Hirth’s face was as white as if he’d been moving bags of flour.  Except for the dark red parts.

“Thought you’d be over the horizon by now,” he whispered, harshly.  He sounded pleased that Tyndal wasn’t.

“I’m not that smart,” Tyndal pointed out.  “What happened?” he asked, indicating the bandage with a nod of his head.

The dark-haired apprentice shrugged.  “This?  Oh, just being my usual charming self.  I didn’t like how they were treating Mistress Sarali, and said so.  But Master Rinden didn’t say
anything
, Tyn, I promise—“

“I’m not worried about that – I’ve lured them away for a bit.  Can you manage to get everyone out of the house and down to the back gate?  I think I can keep them chasing shadows awhile yet.”

“That shouldn’t be difficult.  They had everyone crammed into the kitchen.  They started getting really nasty, Tyn,” he added, worriedly.

“I know,” he sighed.  “That’s why I’m here.  I’ll take care of this, I promise.  You just get everyone out of the house and . . .”

“Down to the charcoal burners,” Hirth suggested.  “They owe Master Rinden their livelihoods, and most of them are part-time thieves on the best of days.  Good lads.  They sure know their way around a dice cup,” he added, ruefully.

“Perfect,” agreed Tyndal.  “I’m going to keep sniping at them until you get away.  If I don’t see you again, tell Alya to tell my Master I tried my best.  Just get everyone out, for now.”

“I’ll do it,” he agreed.  “You really think a scrawny guy like you can contend with a couple of ugly fellas like that?”

“I know a couple of tricks,” Tyndal said, defensively.  “And I’ve got this,” he said, showing off his nearly-spent warwand.  “And this,” he added, nodding to the mageblade over his shoulder.  “It should work as well on Censors as it does on goblins.”

Hirth looked impressed and scared at the same time – he’d never been in more than a fist fight.  “Good luck,” he said, respectfully.

“Thanks,” Tyndal said as the other apprentice hurried away.  “Back to work,” he added to himself . . . and began climbing back up the fence to the roof.  He found a good place from which to scry, behind the warm kitchen chimney. 

His magesight was just as blinded by his spell as the Censors’ – but he had thought of that.  He cast a slightly more powerful spell, the Earfire Evocation, which revealed to him sound as if it were flame.  Only he could see it, and he’d rarely thought of it as useful in any way, but now it was ideal.  It had seemed only logical, considering the limited spells he knew from memory, and it worked.

It quickly revealed the location of the Censors in the gloom, as well as a host of distracting flame: the creak of the barges on the river were purple spikes high above the light blue flare of the sound of the river itself.   A pair of bats became an entwined ball of bright orange and yellow fire, and the rustle of livestock in the stables and barns flashing green curls of flame from the doorway.  He kept as quiet as possible while he scryed, in case the warmagi had thought of the same trick.

First he noted Wantran by his size of the flame and the bluish color of his voice.  The warmage was enveloped in several spells, Tyndal could feel, though he only had the vaguest idea what they were.  Lespin was nowhere to be seen, but Tyndal suspected from a reddish flame that he was searching the far end of the street, down the slope toward the docks.

He had anticipated that.  He’d left a few blatant spells simmering in that direction as a ruse.  Nothing dangerous –  glyphs and basic enchantments.  One glyph made a embarrassingly loud fart noise in the night, the sudden flare of bright yellow fire telling Tyndal just how far down the slope Lespin had gone.  They weren’t elaborate, but they were freshly hung, something that would take even a professional spellmonger hours to accomplish without a witchstone.  He hoped it was enough to convince the Censors that a real mage was baiting them.

Wantran was looking increasingly frustrated, turning slowly in a circle as he tried to see through the mist.  Tyndal decided to add to his frustration with more distraction.  He searched the clay tile roof as quietly as he could until he found a windblown twig.  It wasn’t ideal, but it was substantial enough to hold the spell.  He’d learned it in Boval Vale, when Master Minalan had taken him out to harass the goblins.  Whenever the raiders wanted to distract a patrol, they’d used a variation of the spell. 

With a witchstone, it was childishly simple.  Summoning a tendril of power from his precious shard of irionite, he shaped it into the symbols in his mind while his hands twirled the twig between them.

When he was satisfied, he tossed it into the air and whispered the mnemonic trigger.  The twig obligingly flew into the air and across the road, until it was over the warehouse next to the stable.  There it flared brightly but briefly, and emitted a loud series of pops.  A Dandyjig charm.  It impressed young girls, he’d discovered – and irritated Censors.

“Damn
you!” he heard Wantran’s baritone curse.  “Stop this childish nonsense!  Come out and fight like a man, you bastard footwizard!”

“Not bloody likely,” Tyndal whispered under his breath as he quickly descended the wall.  The Censor outweighed him by a good three ingots, maybe as much as five, and wouldn’t hesitate to kill him.  Instead he turned his attention to the gloom behind him, where a trail of multicolored flame convinced him that his risk had purpose, at least.  He was gratified in seeing the firey traces of footsteps and whispers fade away as the last of the baker’s large clan disappearing into the night.

Last to go was Master Rinden, who was nursing a black eye he didn’t seem to notice.  He didn’t see the boy in the shadows above as he passed through the charcoal gate.  He looked scared, Tyndal decided at first, scared but determined.  No, he looked
angry.
  And defiant.  He was fleeing, but he was protecting his family, and there was honor in that, Tyndal realized.