XVIII: Portents

Sunset turned the red stone walls of the tower room to the hue of old blood. The awkward, bony youth who hunkered out of the way on a crate for a stool, his jaw hanging slack as he gaped at his mentor, gave a guilty start that propelled him almost in one motion to the westward window. He tore his eyes from the robed man like a fluted pillar at the center of the room, and watched Areolin sink beyond the far hills. Hoping hoping hoping that he gauged the half of the disk—the oddly-flattened disk—accurately, he swallowed hard but still croaked, “Now, lord!”

Treskiel na Cathforrow closed his spell. In the utter silence of the small room, something made a small, an embarrassingly small, tik!

The young man’s bunched shoulders plunged, in disappointment and vicarious shame. Treskiel did not notice, but stared into his own palm as if some great mystery of the world lay there. The young baron Doreith squinted, and craned his neck, and Treskiel turned his hand towards his protege.

There he had held his opal pendant, his personal reservoir of magic. Now he held a fine gold chain, swaying slightly beneath his hand; a filigree-gold gem-cap; a palmful of pale, shimmering dust; nothing more. Doreith’s eyes grew round. Treskiel smiled his small, understated smile.

“But nothing’s happened!” the boy blurted.

The floor rolled beneath them like the deck of a ship, and settled, the tower swaying gently still. The two sorcerors, master and protege, stared at one another. Doreith opened his mouth to offer admiration, and the tower shuddered. Books, beakers, globes on the shelves bounced and danced. Treskiel leaped to save a particularly fine sphere of quartz, Doreith grabbed a stuffed cat and watched a crystal decanter shatter at his feet, scrolls rained down around them. A window embrasure cracked, and snapped one of its shutters. Shrieks, cries, and crashes of distant chaos rose from the castle without and the town beyond.

And then the earth rested again, as if it had never danced. The tower stood firm. For a moment everyone in or around Carastloel fell silent, on edge for further shock. Something snapped somewhere, followed by a rush and a rough clatter of stones into a street, and nothing more. As it was apparently safe now to raise a great clamor, they did.

In the tower, Treskiel’s legs buckled as the magical drain caught up with him. Doreith flung the stuffed cat into the prince’s face in his haste to seize him but he did save Treskiel’s knees from cracking into the flagstones, and heaved him over to the cot. Treskiel fought for consciousness.

“Radiance?” Doreith bleated, fanning the gaunt face with a flapping hand.

Treskiel gave up. Huw would see to the city. Happily there were no fires, though he did not know how he knew, nor at this time cared. “Send for the gem merchants,” he managed to mumble to the boy. “Opals.”

“Radiance?” Doreith repeated, and tugged gently at the quartz globe still clutched to the prince’s chest. It came away, and Treskiel’s hands fell slack; carefully he returned the globe to its tri-claw base, and set about cleaning up, with one uneasy eye on his mentor.

Huw woke the prince at noon the next day, Treskiel’s explosive fury at having slept so long blowing past the chamberlain like a gale upon a mountain. Doreith slept on, curled on his pallet—silk-covered and stuffed with down, for he was the baron of Catmentur, but a pallet still, for the student—and Treskiel went down to attend to his shaken country.

It was a week before he had leisure to summon the jewelers, but then, it would be a week and more before he felt up to attempting more than his own magelight. There had been a curious feeling, just after he awoke that noon: that a vast tide had ebbed, but would return on the flood tenfold, if he permitted it. The spending of magic, like any strength, magnified its own store, upon recovery; perhaps it was possible for enough magnification to destroy the storehouse. He did not care to find out in himself.

Doreith watched him intently as he explored the cool, slippery pebbles with long fingers. Pale lights of pink and iridescent blue glimmered and winked in the white depths of some, green fire and gold flashed from the black opals. He scooped up a palmful—one of the jewelers bit his stylus; ah, the man disliked disorder—and listened to their delicate slithering rattle as he poured them back onto their black rabbit-fur bed. Then he closed his eyes and slid and rolled each one slowly through every nook of his hand.

Ah. That one. Egg-shaped, the size of his thumb; an image of an intricate maze winding deep into green and gold depths opened in his thought, an alluring maze. Yes, he could go there.

“Set this,” he said, opening his eyes. “In silver, I think.”

“A pendant, as before?” the older jeweler, the one who had known better than to wince at any act of nobility, asked with a bow.

“But of course.”

When they had gone, Doreith coughed gently. “Er. Opals, lord? Er. Why?”

“I like opals.”

Doreith shot him a sidelong glance. “Only that?”

“Why?”

The young baron looked away, shrugged, and shifted uncomfortably. At last he fished in a pocket and pulled out a walnut-sized stone, held it out for inspection. Dark, dark gray and glittering, polished no more than a river might contrive, it was an object only a child could prize.

Treskiel smiled. Doreith was in most endeavors as incompetent as a child, save two. One was his gift for sorcery. Doreith had been happier, born to a lowlier station where he could have devoted all his energies to this craft. If he liked a piece of mere gneiss for a talisman, let him have it.

“Plainness that pleases will serve you better than richness that does not. Only consider my staff.” He brushed aside the boy’s effulgent gratitude. “Now, I had thought to study comets next.”

“Th-that would be excel-extraordinary, lord. Um. Lord?”

“Yes?”

“You will recall Re—my frien—the Viscount Reisson? Only he, I talked to him just after we, I mean you roused the Bull, and he would, it’s his, he asked if, could would could you find have a place in maybe your um court? He’s a poet.”

Treskiel was well used to Doreith’s stuttering ramble, and coped by mostly not listening until the end. “A poet? Delightful. Send for him, then. Ah—” he cut off another rush of thanks with a raised palm, “—and do you know any astronomers?” Doreith’s other gift was that he placed or withheld trust uncannily well: if his barony was run more by his officers than by himself, at least it was manned by competent and loyal people, by all the accounts of Treskiel’s spies. If Doreith liked someone, that was almost voucher enough.

Doreith started. “Astr-? Er. L-Lord Irne’s son, second son, Varaan na Dare. We fost-, he was my, at Lord Carnane’s, in Catladyan—”

“Excellent. Send for him also. Then join me in the tower.”

“Y-yes, lord. At on—immedi—now, lord—I mean then—”

Colderwild, too, felt the tremor, though mildly: crockery rattled, and ripples ran in and out over the surface of the water in the cisterns and pools, even the ale or wine in people’s cups. And though the rumor from the Silver ran that some great expenditure of magic had accompanied the quake—cause or coincidence, they could not say—other upheavals interested the Runedaur more.

“Of course, you know what’s been happening in Maldan.”

Supper in the Hall of Fire, where Rothesay had first been welcomed, and four members of Colderwild’s community had returned from many months a-wandering, and everyone ate quietly, the better to hear the news.

“Changin’ overlordship,” observed Caltern. “Who is it now—that Midland kinglet?”

“Deorgard,” agreed one of the newcomers, a boyish-looking man called Navan, or sometimes Facechanger.

Caltern frowned. “Don’t think so. Maderoc, maybe?”

“Yes—that’s his clan: Deorgard the Madroch.” The Sferath Navan had curious Geillan pronunciation, to Rothesay’s northern ear; she wondered if it were wrong, or dead on for its region.

“The one out of Aellicia.”

“The same. Know where he is now?”

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There was a chorus of shrugs. “Buggering some new little kingdom,” Rory murmured in Rothesay’s ear. She giggled.

“Brandhad,” said Dav. Rothesay shot a questioning look at Rory, but Ulflaed, who had returned with Navan and the rest, whispered, “Seat of Fenustad. Western Maldan,” he added, when she still looked puzzled, and Rory jumped in, “As far west in Maldan as it’s possible, without you’re in the mountains!”

Navan looked smug. And, “The Myrinine,” he corrected.

A soft, surprised roar ran around the hall. Caltern belched. “Maybe it’ll eat him!”

“Well!” Dav purred, leaning back in his seat till he lay, almost as straight as if he were standing, from seat-edge to chair-back. “Have any of us followed?”

No one, to the best knowledge of the newcomers, had infiltrated either King Toryarl’s host or Deorgard’s. Many of the diners that evening volunteered, including Nessian, to Rothesay’s considerable surprise.

“They’ll probably try to pass as someone’s slave,” Ulflaed informed her later. “You’d be amazed, how close a slave can be to someone. And, you know us, whoever it is will find some way of dumping his work on some other poor sod!” He laughed, but neither Rothesay nor Rory did.

“I don’t know,” she said seriously. “We seem—or at least the knights seem—to do an awful lot of real work!”

“They say you can tell a novice by how much they try to get out of,” put in Juris.

Cobry blushed visibly. “But, what’s the point of getting knighted and all that, if you’re going to have to work like a slave anyway?”

Rory grinned. “It’s work to a slave. To a knight, it’s just life. So they say.”

Ulflaed nodded. “The way I heard it, a knight always knows he’s going to, say, have a decent supper, have a good place to sleep, clothes to wear. He doesn’t have to try, doesn’t have to work at it. They say once you’re knighted, you go off and watch the clouds blow by for a week, or a month, or a year, and then you get bored and then washing dishes is more interesting than not washing dishes, exactly because you don’t have to.”

Cobry stared his open disbelief. Rothesay had a strong suspicion that Juris felt the same way but was trying to hide it, as though he had heard the same and meant to pretend that he believed.

“Well, it’s not going to be me,” Cobry said, as much in admitting he was not up to the task, as refusing to pass as a slave. “But—the Myrinine!” His eyes glowed. “It scares me to my sandals! But I mean to go, someday!”

“Just make sure you’re always polite,” Rothesay put in. “Um—that’s what my old, um, mentor used to say. He’s a wizard.”

“Polite?” Juris echoed. She shrugged.

Rumor drifted around next day that Master Leoff would be the one to go. Rothesay tried to picture the elegant little man passing as a slave. Lacie laughed, and pointed out a little old beggar-man hobbling through the cherry trees towards the main keep.

“That’s not Leoff!” Rothesay exclaimed.

“Bet me—go attack him!” Lacie retorted. Rothesay needed no more.

That evening, Dav stood before his empty hearth as a little old Geillan beggar-man sat gracefully sipping excellent wine beside him, talking as old friends will. The apartment door crashed open between one word and the next. In burst a young Geillan warrior, short and slender for his breed, maybe, but bristling with indignation. His rough-beaten, but steel, sword pointed unmistakable threat at the Master of Runedaur.

“If you use our techniques,” Dav drawled, “you’ll give yourself away to anyone who recognizes them.”

“Like you,” said the young warrior, and dropped back into a popular Geillan stance.

The beggar-man looked around. “Excellent form. You’ve studied them well. Weight too far forward, as one overeager; flashy, intimidating sword-angle—they win half their battle in imposing appearance, as you seem to know.”

The young man swept his sword around into Runedaur waiting-pose. “I,” he announced, “am to be the infiltrator.”

“Do we know you?” asked Dav, and the young man grinned with delight.

“We met formally some years ago, Master, but most recently at the battle before Andrastir. Sorchone am I, out of Kingscroft. And Mistress Gulda has set me this Challenge: to discover the Madroch’s sense of being!”

Dav and Leoff understood: one’s sense of being, as the Runedaur meant it, dictated one’s ultimate aim and purpose. The three conferred then, and at last Leoff deferred to his young usurper. “Do you mean to join them as itinerant warrior?” asked Dav.

“I thought to pose as one out of Dun Gilwin,” said Sorchone, stroking his dark-green/light-green checky tunic, “especially as they have but recently submitted.”

“You might,” agreed Leoff. “Yet you might obtain more, passing for slave. A vassal attends his lord in public, seldom in private until he proves himself in some extraordinary act; a slave passes unseen, and hears what is uttered in what is thought to be secret.”

Sorchone bowed. “Slave I will be, then. I thank you, Masters.”

“And your greatest caution must be—?” Leoff prompted, one pale eyebrow barely lifting.

He hesitated. Discovery he did not fear; instead, proving himself a Runedaur spy, should he ever wish to make the claim, would be a beastly chore in itself. In a Sferan court, more caution was needed, but it seemed unlikely that the Geillari yet thought themselves of any interest to the Order. “Teach me, Master.”

Leoff inclined his head graciously. “Then: to convince your observers without convincing yourself.”

“Thank you, Master,” he replied politely; he understood the advice, and yet it puzzled him, or Leoff’s concern for it puzzled him. Well, he would keep it in mind.

“Well met again,” said Dav, “and well spoken. We look forward to your most interesting return.”

Taking leave of the masters, Sorchone considered calling on Rothesay. Perhaps it might be more amusing to call on her later. Ah, but there was always the risk of not having a later in which to call.

He bowled her over in the middle of the stables, demanded for penalty that she walk the gardens with him, and laughed at her astonishment.

“Where did I come from? But I sat by Facechanger all through supper!”

Rothesay thought back. Navan had sat between a massive brown bear of a man, Vakiloth the smith’s brother, and an austere, pinched sorceress—

“You dressed as a woman?” she yelped.

“And Navan—Loela—as a man. In fairness, Facechanger has always done so; if I surprise you as much, may I guess that I managed well?”

“Why not? You must have learned much from—what was it? Marron’s?” Sorchone bowed. “But now you’re all done up like a Geillath! And before you ask, no, if it weren’t for your voice, I wouldn’t have known you in that, either!”

“You flatter me. Now, come: tell me all about our Moot, and how you liked it, and how passed your summer!”

She saw him off at dawn, and tried to hide any anxiety for him: a pleasant thought, even if it arose of nothing more than friendship. Nothing more than—? he wondered, as he urged his horse across the Daorlas ford. Do I truly value friendship so lightly? No; indeed I should like to be that one’s lover, but better a true friend than a false bedmate. And yet better still, maybe, a true friend who is also bedmate, a conjunction that appeared rare outside the Order. And the conjunction must be ‘more’ than either of its parts. Very well, then: “nothing more than” friendship with the wine-haired Darian—well, not yet!—and no scorn reflected upon Friendship. Sorchone was at peace before he reached the further bank.

Knowing these lands well, he passed swiftly across Ristover, though roads were few. He left his Geillan disguise behind, intending to be taken as a Sferan prize once he reached Fenustad; yet even in quite small hamlets he was taken as a Ristovan prize, being recognized as a Cathforrow. Despite the heat, and his taste for more colorful garb, he resorted to his Runedaur black, just to fend off his countrymen, and still occasionally stooped to outright stealth until he reached the Andreisi west. Yet travelling among his people, he gradually sensed that some change had come over his cousin’s court. A new respect, a new pride, seemed to be budding. Young nobles of the further reaches of Ristover had an eagerness to attend, and rumor said that poets and philosophers from other Houses asked to join them. Sorchone had long known that the Order had been grooming Treskiel towards mastery of the remaining Sferiari; interesting, that the prince’s response should be, first, in the arts. What, if anything, might he envision militarily? Sorchone could not guess, but if it kept Treskiel alive and whole till Sorchone was out of the House’s reach, it was all fine with him.

He paid a call of courtesy on the Marchess Cuildon when he came to Obath; she may have entertained doubts that one slim youth could grant her Harvest request, but none that hers was in fact his errand. As this misapprehension loaded him with gifts and goods for his further road, he did not correct her; besides, what he learned would aid the Order in choosing whether, or how, to serve her.

From Obath, he wandered further up the Sionane. The Marchess may have called him “no very great stream,” but he was rocky and turbulent; suitable fords were few, and he bore no bridges. Yet Sorchone could see the Marchess’s fear this year: Sionane’s water ran low, great stretches of rock lay bare, jutting up among ever smaller pools. Rain had finally broken while he stopped at Obath, with a great storm the night of the equinox, and it went right on raining as though to re-balance the world against the earlier drought. Sionane began to fill again, but it would take more than a few days’ downpour to restore him to his wont. Treacherous fording still, and no place to risk a horse; but determined footmen might venture across—so long as they understood that retreat would be a challenge.

At last he found a crossing he liked. A league back, he had passed opposite a Geillan homestead, a “freehold,” he believed they were called, large and prosperous-looking, huddled behind its wooden palisade on the north bank. Meadowland rolled from the farm up towards the Rusannmar mountains, and the dark fringe of the Myrinine. He turned loose his horse, repacked his gear—a light load, as he did not mean to do more than give a good impression of a desperate traveller; but thanks to the Marchess, a rather rich one, which he expected to win him at least the good humor of his captors when it was stolen from him. He had left all weapons back in Obath, a partial trade for his gifts perhaps, to cause no fear among the Geillari that a raid from Andras was underway or imminent; besides, if he came to need any, his opponents carried plenty. Thus decorated, he picked his way over the rocks in the last light of evening.

The next day he crept back towards the freehold under shelter of the woods to its north, and spent the day spying out the habits of the family. He found a thick stand of fir just over the first hill from their gate, along the path to their current cow-pasture; sleeping there, he should be both reasonably dry for the night, and, if he slept late enough, probably surprised by the two eldest sons next morning. They were big strapping lads and he was small, and of course famished from his travels—that he could be as well-fed as a princeling could well be and still play a starving beggar to conviction gave him no great joy, but there seemed to be no hope for him that way—and he should be well on his way to grovelling servitude by lunchtime tomorrow. From what news he would glean from them, he could arrange his further plans later.