The Swordsman's Oath (Einarinn 2) (68 page)

Jumping down from my perch, I headed for the Archmage as soon as he emerged from his tent, waving aside an offer of food from Halice as I passed her.

“How soon can you scry for these mines, Planir?” I asked without preamble.

“Just as soon as the necessary wizards have woken and broken their fast,” replied the Archmage with the faintest hint of surprise at my early appearance.

“Who do you need?” I was determined to get this masquerade on the stage as soon as all the fiddlers were together.

“Wake Viltred, somebody, please,” Planir commanded over his shoulder, his own eyes fixed on mine.

“I’m already awake, Archmage,” the old wizard said crossly, a steaming tisane in one hand as he rubbed the knotted fingers of the other against his arm as if they pained him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Scrying,” replied Planir tersely. “ ’Sar, where are you?”

“Here,” Usara yawned fit to crack his jaw and grimaced as he scrubbed at his eyes with a shaking hand. “Sorry, I rather overdid it yesterday, clearing that channel in the river bed.” He nodded a casual greeting to me but started visibly when I looked up to return it.

“What are you staring at?” I snapped.

“I think most of us find it rather disconcerting to watch the color of your eyes flickering like that,” Planir answered for Usara in level tones that nevertheless effectively silenced me.

“It is certainly an effect I’ve never come across in the written record, but then there was never any hint about this whole business with the dreams either.” Mentor Tonin arrived at my shoulder, busily lacing his ink-smeared jerkin before accepting an armful of parchments from an attentive pupil whom I identified as his protege, Parrail, a wiry-haired Ensaimin lad I’d have thought was scarcely old enough to be halfway through an apprenticeship, let alone wearing the silver seal ring that Vanam bestowed on its scholars. “Thank you for agreeing to undertake this scrying so early, Archmage. I very much appreciate the courtesy.”

“Where’s Naldeth?” Viltred looked around crossly and the brisk young mage pushed his way through the warriors with scant apology.

“Where do you want me?”

“I’ll need you to join the nexus.” Planir rolled up his sleeves as Shiv set a broad silver bowl nearly an arm’s length wide on a rough wooden table lashed from green timber. He poured plain river water from a skin and, with a snap of his fingers, the silver bowl was full of emerald light, the radiance illuminating a gathering circle of awed faces as the mercenaries looked on silently. I stifled an ill-tempered desire to tell them to lose themselves and take their ignorant curiosity elsewhere.

Viltred laid a hand on the rim of the bowl and now it shimmered with mingled blue and green light. Usara nodded to Planir, laying his own hands on the sides of the bowl and the circle of colors developed a yellowish undertone. Naldeth stretched out his hands, palm down over the water, and a reddish tint warmed the swirling pattern. The waters circled faster and faster, a vortex plaiting the liquid light in a dizzying spiral until Planir dipped both his hands into the center of the well and the bowl rang with a chime like a great temple bell. I could hear the watching mercenaries stir and murmur behind me but Planir’s steel gray eyes held my gaze in a viselike grip.

“Watch and tell me what you recognize.” The Archmage spread his hands and an image rose from them, a circle in the empty air, edged with an ever changing pattern of the colors of wizardry, the clarity of the vision startling in the midst of the early morning mists. The picture moved and swooped, circling until I saw the placid expanse of the estuary, the wizard’s ship at anchor. I blinked as my eyes swore every oath they knew to tell me I was moving, while my ears denied them absolutely, leaving my stomach churning violently somewhere in the middle. I’ve never suffered from seasickness but now I made a mental note to be more understanding to those, like Livak, who do.

The river sped away beneath the magical mirror, the banks on either side narrowing, growing more steep, white water now breaking the swirling greens of the current, the flatter grasslands of the coastal plain shrinking as the forest marched down to the water’s edge. I found myself swaying and tilting as my vision convinced me I was somehow traveling over this landscape, high as a bird but effortless in this enchanted flight. Peering in a futile attempt to see around the corner of the image and completely caught up in the spectacular improbability of the experience, I nearly missed it.

“There, back a little, on the near side, that’s the entrance to the gorge!” I struggled with the words as Temar’s memories came clamoring out of confinement and an urgency I could not explain filled me with dread.

Planir closed his eyes for a moment and the image wheeled round, whispers on all sides telling me I wasn’t the only one finding this more than a little hard on the gut. The sunlight in the spell shone down on a narrow defile, ferns and wiry stems of opportunist bushes very nearly concealing it completely as a small torrent bubbled its way over a rocky bed to lose itself in the main flow.

“Where exactly is this?” Planir demanded, looking intently at the vision from his own side.

“It’s a little way upriver from the mining settlement.” I had the answer before I realized I knew it. “Temar and Den Fellaemion managed to get the survivors away on the boats and then marched them to the mines to get them away from the moorings.” A flood of recollection threatened to overwhelm me, the shouts, the weeping, the outburst of anger as frustrated people with nothing more to lose save their lives rounded on those driving them so hard for the sake of their salvation.

“Do we know where that is, ’Sar?” The Archmage rounded on the younger wizard, whose face was grim with effort as he poured his power into the spell.

“Yes,” he said shortly.

Planir clapped his hands and the unearthly vision was gone, leaving only a bright pattern lingering inside my eyes, shooting across the pale morning light as I rubbed them. The mercenaries began to drift away, curiosity and misgivings in their low-voiced conversations, a few stumbling over unseen obstacles with attention momentarily elsewhere.

“Archmage!” Kalion pushed his way toward us, an expression of intense annoyance creasing his fat jowls.

“Hearth-Master,” Planir greeted him with smooth courtesy.

“Why was I not wakened for this scrying? I would have thought I was the obvious choice for anchoring the nexus and—”

“Archmage!” The urgency in Shiv’s voice turned every head toward him. He was still leaning over the broad silver bowl, scrying alone now. “It occurred to me to trace down the river on the other side of the watershed, to see if it offered a better route from the coast. Just look what I’ve found!”

We crowded around to look down into the shining water. The bowl showed three ships riding easily on the calmer waters of the coastal reaches, anchored just off an inlet that I recognized from Temar’s encounter with the stolen
Salmon
. I looked up to see every face grim.

“That’s where the Elietimm attacked the colony’s ships,” I told Tonin, who nodded thoughtfully, checking a much folded piece of parchment.

At this size, each boat looked more like a child’s toy than a real vessel. Still, no child’s toy would have tiny figures moving around the decks and rigging; well, not outside Hadrumal certainly.

“Could this be a deception?” I asked suddenly, remembering the illusions the Ice Islanders had wielded to such deadly effect before.

“I don’t see why it should be,” said Planir thoughtfully. “They have no reason to know we’re here, after all.”

“Are you sure of that?” Otrick elbowed his way to the Archmage’s side. “Haven’t they followed us here?”

“I don’t think so,” mused Planir. “Could you expand the radius a little, Shiv, show me some of the coast? No, there, that camp looks well established. That’s a base for exploring the interior, I’d say. Back to the ships, if you’d be so kind, thank you. Look, that sail’s been jury-rigged, and you can see a season’s fouling on the bottom of that ship riding high in the water.”

The Archmage looked up at the circle around the bowl. “I’d say that’s an expedition that’s spent the summer here, charting and surveying. However, I would certainly say it suggests Elietimm interest here is at least as urgent as ours.” He looked over at me. “If Messire D’Olbriot is looking to re-establish a colony here, I think he might have to evict some sitting tenants.”

“That’s a service I think we could very well look to render the Sieur,” Kalion mused, expression intent.

“That’s the enemy, is it?” Arest pushed Kalion aside to loom over the bowl, scowling darkly as the fat mage attempted to recover his position before thinking better of it.

“Thank you for joining us,” Planir greeted the warrior with a trace of irony.

“So what are you going to do about them?” demanded the big mercenary. “They’ve got four or five times our number, given the size of those ships. If they find us we’re dead and booking passage with Poldrion. You either have to kill or capture them.”

“How far away are they?” Planir inquired of Shiv thoughtfully.

“No more than a handful of days’ sail.”

“Too close,” the Archmage grimaced and shook his head. “I think you’re right, corps-master. We cannot afford to risk having them at our back, or them getting wind of what we’re doing.”

“You’re simply going to kill them?” Tonin’s expression was aghast.

“Give me one good reason why not?” challenged Arest. “They’ll kill us without a second glance at the runes if they find us!” The scholar subsided in unhappy confusion.

“Taking such decisions is part of the price for taking a place at the highest tables,” Kalion did not look in the least distressed at the prospect. “It’s a matter of statecraft, mentor.”

“I’ll soon knock the bastards out of this game,” Otrick’s eyes sparked blue fire as he spread his hands over the bowl.

“I don’t want to alert them unnecessarily,” Planir laid a warning hand on Otrick’s arm. “Use wind and wave, work with Shiv and simply drive the ships on to those rocks. That will suffice for the present.”

“No dragons?” scowled Otrick, glaring up at the taller wizard like a terrier about to take on a mastiff.

“No dragons,” the Archmage confirmed in a tone that brooked no argument.

Livak slid in beside me as we all watched, unashamedly avid as the two mages bent their heads over the water, Otrick’s grizzled and tousled, Shiv’s black and neatly braided for a change, in the manner I’d seen on several of the mercenaries.

The sky above the tiny ships began to darken; clouds swept in from the ocean in swirls of white, then gray, then forbidding black. Piling high on top of one another, lightning began to flash within the dark towers of vapor, an odd thing to see without the sound of thunder following. Where the waters had been placid and blue, green swirls of current now began tugging at the anchor ropes, the ships shifting and bucking, white teeth of breaking foam nipping at them, harrying them. The tiny figures on the decks were moving busily now, reefing sail and wrestling with flailing ropes. We saw them flinch from something, a hard rain of hail punishing them with icy blows, dimpling the waters all around but not quelling the gathering waves now ripping the vessels from their grip on the sea floor, driving them inexorably into the savage embrace of the rocky shoreline.

I felt Livak shift her footing beside me.

“Move aside, trollop.” Viltred’s harsh words startled me and as I looked up, three things happened inside the space of half a breath.

Livak drew a dagger from her belt and lunged at the old mage, only to be sent headlong backward with a stunning flash of red fire from Kalion. Viltred ignored them both to fasten his skinny hands around Otrick’s equally scrawny neck, his rushing charge sending table, bowl and water flying. The Relshazri wizard was not big, but he was big enough, Otrick’s robust personality residing as it did in a small if wiry frame. Viltred had him down in an instant, leaning all his weight into crushing the Cloud-Master’s throat.

I looked for Livak, to see her wringing her scorched hands, expression dazed.

“Are you all right?”

“His eyes, Rysh, his eyes!”

At her scarcely coherent words, I moved to grab a handful of Viltred’s hair, wrenching his head back to show me sockets filled with featureless black.

“Elietimm magic!” I yelled, barely getting it out before a shattering pain numbed my hands, next smashing upwards into my head and dropping me to my knees. A flash of amber light snapped audibly through the air and I looked up through tears of agony to see Viltred wrestling in toils of enchantment woven by Planir, the backlash flinging me aside.

“Tonin, do something!” the Archmage shouted angrily, cursing under his breath as Viltred struggled in his bonds, blue flames crackling down the golden beams to set Planir’s sleeves alight. The Archmage grimaced in pain but his concentration did not waver.

The mentor spilled his parchments on the dewy grass, tossing them aside until Parrail snatched one from the litter and the pair of them began a faltering incantation. Livak reached for me and I helped her to her feet, scarcely more steady myself. I noticed distantly that Shiv and Naldeth were tending to the fallen Otrick while Kalion was weaving a circle of unearthly, crimson flame around the Archmage and Viltred, still frantically struggling against the confines of the wizardry. A cry that sent birds fleeing their roosts all around ripped through the morning mists and Viltred suddenly collapsed, all the magic vanishing to leave a smell of burning and a riot of startled questions shouted on all sides.

Planir ran to gather the fallen Viltred in his arms. The killing anger in his face contrasted with his gentle hands as he searched for pulse or breath. Mentor Tonin rummaged frantically in a pocket, but when he found his little vial saw there was no longer a need for his medicaments.

“Did we do it? Did we restore him before his heart gave out?” the scholar wondered fruitlessly, more to himself than to anyone else.

Planir just shook his head, eyes steely with an awesome wrath.

“
Ware the invaders
!” Temar’s voice sounded inside my head so loudly I could not believe the rest of the encampment hadn’t heard it too. Startled, I sprang to my feet, abandoning questions over Viltred’s fate.