Wild Magic (16 page)

He heard a click above him and then the sound of feet on the wooden steps, and a moment later a lithe figure in a dark robe emerged, barefoot and in a hurry, from the room above.

‘Aha, my lovely!’

Stepping out of the shadows, Rui caught the girl in his arms and propelled her with him through the doorway into the Galian Room. Even before he unveiled her, he knew by the touch of her alone that it was Raqla. With a practised hand he flipped the sabatka over her head until it fell to the floor in a shimmer of silk.

‘Bast’s teats!’

If he were blind, and working solely on the shape and feel of her, he would still have sworn it was Raqla. But the evidence of his eyes told him otherwise. The woman standing before him with one hand over her breasts and the other modestly concealing her hairless crotch, was pale and blonde – a rare colouring in the southern lands, where men and women tended to dark skin and darker hair. He stared and blinked, suddenly lost for words.

Then something occurred to him.

‘Turn around!’ he ordered the woman suddenly.

She looked alarmed but turned a shapely shoulder to him and presented him with her elegant back and rounded buttocks, on the right of which a large brown mole was displayed in sharp contrast to the milky skin. He traced it with a finger and felt the woman tense. He knew that marking: he had caressed it often enough after the throes of their lovemaking. Rui felt a ripple of superstition tremble down his spine. He made the sign of the Goddess, bent to retrieve the fallen robe and threw it to the woman.

‘Clothe yourself.’

The girl caught the fabric, shook the robe out into its proper form with swift efficiency and shrugged her way in it. She was about to adjust the veil that covered the face when the Lord of Forent took a step towards her.

‘No, wait.’

Inserting his hands into the mouth-slit, he tore the headpiece in two with a single, violent gesture and stood there, assessing her face. Then he caught her chin, angling her head this way and that. The girl’s eyes were as big and as black as coals: and he knew them well. Was the hair a wig? He wound its silky length around his finger and gave a sharp tug. The woman exclaimed in pain. Not a wig, then.

‘Why have you dyed your hair?’

The woman stared at the ground, unable to meet his gaze. She had performed acts with this man that would bear favourable comparison to those of the famous lovers in the forbidden erotic book,
Cestia’s Journey
; she had seen every part of him in the most intimate detail, had watched him at his most vulnerable while he slept or when he lost himself in ecstasy; but still she could not look him in the face. It was truly a shameful thing she had done, shameful and punishable by death . . .

Rui’s tone was softer than she had expected as he asked, ‘Who has done this to you, Raqla?’ but when she answered, her voice barely above a whisper, she saw his jaw clench and his eyes go hard.

‘Stay still. No, don’t stand like that: I need the light on your face—’

This one was difficult. Her jawline was too pronounced, and she had an overbite. He had managed the hair with much less effort this time, but it seemed there was always some aspect of the remaking that would compensate for the easier bits. And the eyes – he could never quite get the eyes to change. He had read in one of the tomes in the Master’s icy library how one of the poets so favoured by the Southern Empire had referred to the eyes as ‘the windows to the soul’ and had then had no idea what nonsense the man had meant by this; but finding they were immutable, immune to the most powerful magic he could extract from the cat, he was beginning to wonder whether there might not be some truth in poetry after all.

He was, on the other hand, quite proud of what he had achieved with the form of the woman. The hips were almost right – lean and slight as a boy’s, with just a swell of flesh at the haunch; and the breasts were perfectly shaped. It had been a pleasure to cup them himself, even though he risked dire punishment if discovered.

He brought the cat up level with the girl’s face and watched as her eyes widened at the struggling beast’s snarl of protest. Tightening his grip on the thick skin at the back of its neck, he closed his eyes, focused his mind carefully on the clean, taut line of the face he recalled so perfectly from memory, and repeated the refining spell.

‘Stop this travesty now or you will shortly be making a sharp downward exit from this window.’ The voice was dangerous and cool. ‘The sharks have had a thin summer this year: a paucity of storms has meant that there have not been the usual number of shipwrecked sailors for them to feast on; and they do so enjoy the taste of human flesh—’

Virelai’s eyes shot open. He had not heard the footsteps, nor the door come open; and so to see Lord Rui Finco standing on the threshold, his keen face taut with controlled anger, and the girl he had worked on so successfully yesterday on her knees before him with the veil of her sabatka ripped away was a surprise indeed. Even so, he could not prevent his gaze from wandering between the faces of the two women and noting with some satisfaction that Balia’s jaw was closer to the template than his earlier attempt on Raqla had been. His skills were improving all the time.

‘Whatever in the fiery pits do you think you are doing?’

Virelai came back to his predicament with a guilty start. He had not seen the Lord of Forent angry before and he suspected of those who had faced his fury, not many had survived.

‘My lord— I—’

Rui shut the door behind him silently. Virelai did not like that. When Tycho was angry he had a tendency to scream his displeasure and lay about him with his fists. He’d received a myriad of bruises as a result of the Lord of Cantara’s temper; and once a whipping, but no worse. The Lord of Forent, on the other hand, looked as if he might well be quietly true to his word about feeding him to the fishes, and probably the two girls as well. And no one would hear – and even if they did, it was the lord’s own castle they were in: who would dare to question him over the loss of one poor nomad?

‘Sorcery. I can smell it.’ Rui Finco’s face twisted in disgust. ‘I knew there was some perversity in the air, some filthy practice between you and your master.’ He looked down at the black cat, currently gone uncharacteristically limp and quiet in Virelai’s hand. ‘And let that poor creature go, for Falla’s sake!’

Virelai released his hold on Bëte. She fell on her feet, gave him an unforgiving look which promised that she would add this latest degradation to her ongoing tally, and with the teeth-setting sound of claws on wood, leapt up the tall chest of drawers on the opposite side of the room and took up position there where she might view proceedings in safety.

‘We burn magic-makers in this realm,’ Rui said softly, his eyes never leaving Virelai’s face.

‘I know, my lord.’ Virelai could feel a quaking begin in his knees, as if the bones there were liquefying.

‘Do you know when the nomads started to be persecuted in earnest in this country?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘In my late father’s time. He had cause to believe a nomad sorcerer had betrayed him by casting a glamour over his enemy. I shall not burden you with the entire sordid tale, but suffice it to say that I have a brother in this world who is not truly my brother, and my father was less than happy that those who trod Istrian soil should dare to bring disgrace on his house in so foul a manner. He took against the Footloose peoples from that day forward. He must have burned—’ Rui cast his eyes ceilingward and began to count ‘—let’s see, there were two, three, four hundred – no, no, what am I saying? – a thousand of them. There were several dozen in that first caravan of travellers – men, women and children: that made a considerable bonfire, I can tell you, Master Virelai. As a child of eight, I was brought out onto the viewing platform and forced to watch. I think my father considered it some form of punishment for me, that I had been at home and not protected his hearth and his wife as a true Istrian warrior should; but truth to tell, I was most morbidly fascinated to hear their wails and to watch the way their skin crisped and blackened, and boiled off their bones like tallow candles. Do you know that when you burn a human creature the smoke that billows up from them can coat the buildings for the distance of half a league or more with a very unpleasant sticky black fat?’

Virelai’s knees began to buckle.

The Lord of Forent caught him by the elbows. ‘How now, my sorcerous friend: is your stomach too weak for such details? Do you perhaps see yourself entering a similar fire? Would you shriek, think you, or go with quiet dignity? It must be said, that’s hard to achieve when the flames begin to make your eyeballs sizzle.’

At this, Virelai crumpled. He sat there on the floor of the tower-room, shaking with terror. It was as he thought: where the Master was harsh and the Lord of Cantara both brutal and cruel, this man was more dangerous by far: he would see them all in the fires and laugh as they burned.

‘I am sorry, my lord,’ he managed to say. The words bubbled up and out of him in a torrent now as the floodgates of caution gave way. ‘It’s my master, my lord: Tycho Issian, Lord of Cantara, for whom I work this glamour. He has become ill with his need for – for a certain lady, and I am trying to help him ease his distress. It’s very difficult work, my lord, and my efforts have not always been met with appreciation. Many times he has beaten me when the spell fades before its time. It is very hard to make a glamour which will hold for any while, my lord, much less so one that depends for its effect on counterfeiting another so perfectly.’

But Rui Finco was barely listening to him now. Rather, he was staring first at Balia, then at Raqla. He pulled the latter from where she had subsided onto the floor and stood her alongside the first girl. He spent some time looking from one to the other; then he came back to Virelai.

‘You will not continue this practice, do you hear me?’

Virelai nodded mutely. Tycho would doubtless beat him black and purple; but he would prefer such treatment than to incur the Lord of Forent’s displeasure any further.

‘He is not to spend himself on these creatures. I cannot afford to have his obsession lessened in any degree.’

This last the lord uttered in a voice so low and so bland that it was clearly not meant to be any part of their conversation, but Virelai nodded anyway.

‘Can you bring them back to themselves?’

Understanding that he was not to burn, at least for the time being, Virelai scrabbled upright. ‘There is no need, my lord. Very shortly Raqla will be herself again, her hair black and her body wider. And if Balia sleeps for an hour or so the glamour will fade of its own accord: it requires some effort of concentration on the part of the subjects themselves to maintain the illusion you see, my lord—’

‘Yes, yes.’ The Lord of Forent waved his hands. Then his eyes narrowed as if something else had occurred to him. ‘The silver that the Lord of Cantara has so fortuitously come by in recent months; was it sorcerously made?’

Virelai’s terrified expression told him the answer to that question.

‘Even the silver he has given me to aid our venture?’

Virelai shook his head vigorously. ‘No, my lord. Lord Tycho thought it best to ensure that we traded the silver I made for true silver for your own coffers, my lord. Although I am finding that my skill in changing other metals to silver is improving all the time: I have some in my possession that has retained its new form for almost two moons now.’

The Lord of Forent became contemplative. ‘I see. How interesting. However, while I may not share my father’s penchant for the aroma of the roasted flesh of the Footloose, do not think I shall hesitate to skewer you personally if I find you carrying on your perverse practices—’

‘My lord, I—’

‘Do not interrupt me. I will personally skewer you if I find you making magic for anyone other than
me
. Do you understand me, nomad? You will remain here as my guest, as will your erstwhile master, the Lord of Cantara, and your damned pet cat, and from now on you will all three of you do my bidding, or face the fires for sorcery.’ He turned to the women. ‘It’s been some time since I took a golden-haired girl to bed. Shall we see if your changed appearance has taught you any new tricks?’

The two women followed their lord to the door with remarkable alacrity, Virelai thought; as if they were not simply being obedient to his command, but were eager to remind themselves of his abilities.

A moment later he was left alone in the chamber. Alone, that was, apart from the cat, whose eyes he could feel boring into him with the utmost contempt and loathing.

Every time he thought his life could get no worse, it seemed Fate had another unlucky card to deal him. He sighed, remembering the Master’s words to him:
You should thank me for bringing you here to Sanctuary and saving you from all that greed and horror
.

Yet again he felt the old doubts assail him.

Eight

Messages

‘Sur’s nuts, how I hate the blasted sea!’

She leaned over the gunwale again, catching her bleached and knotted braids in one hand and retching so horribly that anyone not privy to the situation might be forgiven for believing that a sheep was being slowly and grotesquely strangled.

The tall, gaunt man next to her watched this performance dispassionately, and when she straightened up, her face now almost as haggard as his own, he raised an eyebrow. ‘Picked the wrong profession for such a delicacy of stomach in that case, Mam.’

The weatherbeaten brown of the woman’s skin had taken on the faintest tinge of spring-green. Privately, Knobber thought it suited her: made her look a little more vulnerable, a touch more womanly. He hadn’t seen her look vulnerable since a distant evening in Jetra and that strange matter of the hillman whose disappearance had caused the mercenary leader such excess of emotion that he’d actually caught her shedding a tear. Only the one, mind, and that dashed away angrily with the back of a hand: but that one tear in itself had seemed a very abomination against nature. Generally, Mam looked barely female: it was hard to think of her as a woman at all, even if you scrubbed and combed out her hair and dressed her in one of the sheer gauze shifts the new queen was reported to wear, that were currently causing such a stir in court circles in Halbo. He shuddered. Actually, that image was not a pleasant one on which to dwell, and if Mam caught him entertaining it – and she did have an uncanny way with such matters – she’d not be amused. And Mam not amused was something to be avoided, and that was the truth.