The Gambler's Fortune

The wind is a constant feature of life in Dalasor and this song sums up all its various moods—the chill wind of winter, the warm breath of summer, the violent storms that rage above the open grasslands and those oh so rare moments of stillness when it takes one a moment to realize what is missing.

Othilfess, 4th of Aft Summer

The long slate table was bare, a body laid out on the cold stone, wrapped to the neck in white linen. A cowl of the same cloth hid the hair but a few wisps escaped, dull with smears of rusty blood. An insidious hint of decay hovered in the air like an unwelcome truth. The lonely flames of candles set at head and foot held back the darkness as evening fell outside, leaving the rest of the room in disregarded gloom as the fire sank to a sullen red heap of cinders.

Aritane watched the three women weeping as they began stitching the corpse into a shaped shroud of stiff leather. “I see no reason for salting the body,” she remarked coldly. “I could perform the charnel rites at once, if you would only let me.”

Ismenia bent to kiss the marble white brow before closing the folds over Teiriol’s face, hands deft and gentle; Eirys and Theilyn were barely able to hold their needles, let alone sew, their fingers shook so much. The old woman looked up. “I’ll have Sheltya who remain true to their oaths lay my son under the sky for Misaen to judge and the ravens to reclaim,” she said calmly. “Get out.”

The girls both froze, trickling tears their only movement. Aritane’s chin came up on an indignant intake of breath. “You owe me the courtesy of my calling and I’ll thank you for it. You would not have his bones at all, were it not for Sheltya bringing him home.”

Ismenia’s eyes flickered to her daughters. “Please leave us to mourn our dead,” she said in more temperate tones.

“Mourning is all well and good.” Aritane looked around at the disordered furniture and unswept floor with disdain. “Taken to excess, it becomes self-indulgence.” She moved briskly to the hearth and piled fresh wood on the remains of the fire.

Eirys was fumbling as she attempted to thread a needle in the uncertain light. “If my child is a son, I’ll name him for Teiro, Mama.”

“You are truly with child this time?” Aritane’s slaty eyes bored into the girl. “So it would seem. Have you told Jeirran yet?”

“I’ve had no chance.” Eirys’ face crumpled with distress. “I’ve seen so little of him—”

“Do not tell him,” commanded Aritane coldly. “You may well yet slip and he needs neither to be distracted by the prospect of a child nor by the blow of its loss.”

Ismenia’s lips narrowed to a bloodless line as Eirys ducked her head to hide fresh weeping. “Leave my daughter’s care to me, if you please.”

“Pander to her endless hysterics like this and she will surely lose the brat,” snapped Aritane. She did not sound displeased by the notion.

Theilyn’s mouth fell open, puzzlement coloring the pain in her eyes. A dead silence fell, the circle of light around the women of the soke excluding the Sheltya in her severe gray robe.

“There are more besides Teiriol have spent their blood in defense of their beliefs,” Aritane said pointedly after some moments’ silence. “I will ensure their bones are in Maewelin’s embrace as soon as may be.” She strode out of the rekin, back stiff with indignation.

“Why not let her do it, Mother?” whispered Eirys. Her fair skin was blotched from weeping, her eyes red and swollen. “We owe her much, you know that.” She rested a hand briefly on her full skirts.

“Don’t credit her with your blessing,” said Ismenia icily. “She won’t welcome anything that might distract Jeirran from the mark she’s setting up for him. All I owe her is the death of my child. Don’t doubt that I will repay her somehow.”

Theilyn looked from mother to sister, her eyes deeply shadowed in her pale face. “You should not say such things. Don’t even think them.”

Ismenia looked at her sharply. “You’ll be running with tales again, will you?”

Theilyn’s mouth trembled, her lips chapped and bitten. “They can hear such things unspoken,” she said hoarsely. “Sheltya and the man from the east.”

“Do not grace them with the name of Sheltya,” hissed Ismenia. “They do not deserve it.”

“But how will we get the rites said for Teiro?” wailed Eirys, fresh tears running through the smudges dried on her face.

Theilyn wasn’t proof against this renewed assault of grief and wept bitterly in her turn. “It’s all my fault,” she choked. “If I hadn’t told him what Eresken wanted, if I hadn’t listened to Aritane. I don’t know why I did, I don’t know what I was thinking of.”

“You were flattered by their attentions, you saw their favor promising you a good match, a rich husband and whatever else it is you want but you’re not prepared to work for,” Ismenia told her curtly. “I need no Sheltya powers to know just what you’ve been thinking, my girl. Don’t ask my forgiveness.”

Theilyn burst into noisy sobs and fled up the stairs, stumbling as she went. Ismenia sighed and rested her head in her wrinkled hands. Eirys sat in mute misery, absently winding a thread in and around her fingers, finally pulling it so tight she drew blood. She looked at the welling red with bemusement.

Heavy boots sounded reluctant on the steps outside and the door to the rekin opened slowly on the summer twilight. Fithian looked around the heavy oak and sidled in, twisting a rag between his hands. “I brought him,” he said simply, his lined face deeply graven with weariness and grief.

He pushed the door wider and ushered Keisyl in. The younger man was thick with dust from the trail, unshaven and filthy from the diggings. Horror haunted his eyes as he looked at the shrouded body on the bare table and he hesitated on the threshold.

Ismenia looked up and managed a watery smile. “Oh my boy, come here.”

Keisyl stumbled toward her, scowling as he fought tears of his own. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I should have stopped him, I should have stayed—”

Ismenia held him tight. “It’s no one’s fault,” she said hoarsely.

Keisyl hid his face in her embrace for a moment before forcing himself upright. He wheeled around and stared at the central hearth where flames suddenly burned bright and heedlessly cheerful as the wood laid on it caught fire. Face contorted with rage, Keisyl grabbed a massive poker and swept aside the logs, sending sparks showering in all directions. Raking embers all over the broad stone plinth, he smashed the iron down on the glowing heart of the fire, strewing the coals to scorch the floor, burn holes in the rugs and cushions and to die, first to red and then to ashy gray, all warmth spent on the cold stone. He stamped furiously on the scattered clinker, reducing the fragments to powder. Ismenia and Fithian watched in silence, faces solemn yet sympathetic. Eirys clutched a scrap of linen, bleeding finger forgotten in her mouth as she looked on aghast.

When the fire was a ruin of cooling ash, Keisyl stood, shaking, head bowed. He dropped the poker with a clang that rang around the room like a death knell. He drew a deep, shuddering breath and raised his head but before he could speak, the door was flung open to reveal Jeirran silhouetted against the colorless sky.

“Keisyl! I saw you arrive,” he said with restrained enthusiasm. “I wish you were returning under better circumstances.” His voice trailed off as he saw the smoldering destruction within. “What do you think you are doing?”

“No fire will burn here,” Keisyl snarled, face haggard. “Not while my brother’s body lies waiting for due ceremony.”

“The fess is full and the men have to be fed,” objected Jeirran with rising irritation. “We’re all upset but life has to go on. What of dinner?”

“Cook yourselves eggs over skillets in the forge,” spat Keisyl. “This is a house of mourning.”

“This is a time of war,” Jeirran retorted. “We are up in arms to avenge Teiriol and those who died with him. We will claim double payment in blood from those lowlanders responsible.” He marched into the room and looked around for agreement.

“It’s you who are responsible,” said Keisyl softly. “It’s you who tempted Teiro with your false promises, your fool’s ambitions, your faithless Sheltya. You owe this soke a life, Jeirran!”

“You cannot see beyond the walls of your fess, can you?” sneered Jeirran. “Teiriol believed in what I am doing. He knew the time had come to set the record right. He wanted—”

“Teiriol wanted to please.” Keisyl shook his head in abrupt denial. “That’s the only reason he ever paid heed to you. He just wanted to please, to live a quiet life, someday with a contented wife and children, trusting to a modest patrimony under the hearth. You robbed him of that, Jeirran, just as surely as you robbed your children of their birthright to buy yourself out of prison down in Selerima!”

Jeirran paled and could not stop himself glancing at Eirys, whose shock was absolute. “What is he saying, Jeir?” she asked in a wretched voice.

Jeirran lashed out to punch Keisyl, taking him completely by surprise. He stumbled backward, split lip bleeding. Jeirran looked defiantly around at Eirys but before he could speak Keisyl surged forward, an upper cut shutting Jeirran’s mouth for him with a teeth-rattling snap. Keisyl’s other fist drove into Jeirran’s gut, doubling him over, but Jeirran recovered fast enough to bring his head up into Keisyl’s face, butting him but just missing his nose. Keisyl’s sweeping blow landed on Jeirran’s ear, forcing an exclamation of pain from him. As Keisyl hesitated, shocked at his own actions, Jeirran backhanded him across the face, a ring scoring an angry line across Keisyl’s cheek.

Cursing, Keisyl grabbed both of Jeirran’s shoulders and forced him backward, running him into the stone wall of the rekin, lifting him forward to smash him back again and again. Jeirran brought his forearms up hard to break Keisyl’s grip and tried to butt him again, but Keisyl’s fury was too strong. He stamped down hard on Jeirran’s feet, raking his own metal-capped boots down the man’s shins. Jeirran struggled, spitting in Keisyl’s face, trying to bring up his knee but only managing to reach Keisyl’s thigh. He managed to wrestle himself away from the wall and tried to snatch up a stool, but Keisyl pulled him away with an oath.

“Stop it, stop it, the pair of you!” Ismenia sprang to her feet and seized the poker, hammering on the hearth with it, halting them both with the shock of the noise. She tried to no avail to shift the corner of the grimy plinth. Fithian came to her aid, working a fire iron to lever aside the stone. “Eirys! This is for you to do.”

“Just leave it, Eirys. Don’t believe what they are saying.” Jeirran tried to get free but Keisyl would not release him. “It’s about time she saw you for what you are, you slime,” he growled through the muck and spittle disfiguring his face.

Eirys reached into the hollow beneath the stone to take out an iron-bound casket. Her hands were trembling so much she couldn’t get the key in the lock but her face was a frozen mask of disbelief. Ismenia stood beside her but did not offer to help, expressionless as Eirys finally opened the box.

“There was gold in here at Solstice,” She looked at Jeirran, incredulous. “I saw it, we all did. Where has it gone? What have you done?”

“Was there gold at Solstice?” demanded Ismenia. “Was it gold or deception woven by that sister of yours? Where’s your good faith now, Jeirran?”

“You’re worthless!” Keisyl threw Jeirran back against the wall, hands flung wide in a gesture of utter contempt.

Jeirran rubbed a hand over his beard. “There are more important things—”

“Not to me.” Keisyl stepped forward. “Not to me and not to my blood. One of our own is dead and we will honor him.” He stopped on the threshold, nose to nose with Jeirran. “You are not of his blood. There is no child to link you to this soke. You have forfeited your oath to my sister. Neither you nor any of your band of misbegots will set foot inside this rekin while my brother’s body lies here, do you understand me?” His voice was menacing.

Jeirran’s chin jutted forward. “You have no right to bar me from this place, nor keep me from my wife,” he said haughtily.

Keisyl raised a fist but lowered it again. Just as smug satisfaction rose in Jeirran’s face, Keisyl seized him by the collar. The shorter man’s struggles were no match for Keisyl’s fury and contempt. Pulling open the door, he flung Jeirran down the steps. Jeirran stumbled and fell, scrambling upright, indignant and red faced. A few onlookers exchanged curious glances and remarks. Jeirran brushed the dust from his trews and straightened his shirt collar but could do nothing about his furious color as he turned his back on the rekin and marched toward the gate-house of the fess.

Keisyl watched him go then closed the great door softly. He leaned back against it and closed his eyes, groaning. “Eirys, my dearest, I’m so sorry. I never meant to say it.”

Eirys was still staring dumbly into the empty coffer that had once held her fondest hopes. “How could he?”

“Because his ambition and his greed have finally outstripped his principles,” said Ismenia with resignation. “Set it aside, my dear.”

Eirys closed the casket with a soft click and laid it carefully on the stone. “I think I’ll go to my room,” she said with brittle calm. “Please don’t disturb me before morning.” She made her way slowly up the stairs, moving like a woman in a walking dream.

Keisyl thumped his fist into the wood of the door. “I couldn’t imagine how this situation could get any worse. Now I know better and that’s all my fault as well.”

“The sooner everyone stops blaming themselves for the lad’s death, the sooner this soke will start healing,” said Fithian unexpectedly. He shoved the hearthstone back with a grunt, raising a cloud of fine ash that hung in the air in a mockery of smoke. “Teiro was the best part grown and knew his own mind. He made his choices and he lived and died by them. We all do that, boy, it’s the way of things. You take this route or that and only Maewelin knows if you’re choosing to step into the path of an avalanche. Two men walk on a frozen lake and Misaen rolls the runes. One man freezes to death when he falls through the ice while another catches the fish that’s the meal to save his life. Teiro could have died in a rock fall and he’d be just as dead, just as young.”

Ismenia nodded in mute agreement, eyes dark with remembered sorrows.

“This is nothing like the same!” Keisyl shook his head obstinately. “This is all Jeirran’s doing. He’s the one stirring up the trouble with all his fine words and promises. He’s the one making war on the lowlanders!”

“Not on his own, he isn’t.” Ismenia looked up from her thoughts. “Look out of the door and see just how many he has following him.”

Keisyl moved instead to one of the narrow windows on one side and peered out at the compound. Knots of men, threes and fives, were staring up at the closed door, heads close in discreet speculation. “He wouldn’t set them on us, would he?” he asked despairingly.

Ismenia came to stand with him, raising herself on her toes to see out. “I’d believe that fool capable of anything,” she said grimly.

Both of them turned at a sudden sound but it was only Fithian unlocking his private chest. He took out a flask and glasses and wordlessly brought each a drink of fine, straw-colored spirit.

Keisyl laid a hand on the heavy latch of the door. “Where are the keys, Mother?”

“Here.” She lifted a bunch hanging from a chain at her waist. “For all the good it would do us.”

Keisyl caught his breath as sudden movement down by the gate turned heads all around the courtyard. Jeirran strode forward, head held high, arms swinging confidently. He marched to the steps of the rekin and looked up at the closed door for a long moment. Even though he knew the darkness within hid him, Keisyl felt as if the man’s eyes were locked on his own. Jeirran turned on his heel, boot nails scraping the stone.

“You all know what has happened,” began Jeirran. He did not shout but spoke with a calm authority that rapidly silenced the speculation all around. “This rekin mourns,” he lifted a hand to the blank stone face, “the soke mourns and so do thrice three more, as Sheltya return their dead sons. We are not unused to grief; Misaen made us a hard land and Maewelin is unforgiving in her trials. But this is more than a fate we must bear as our due. This is not life claimed and paid in return for the gifts of wood and mountain. These lives were stolen. Our parley was dishonored. The bodies of those that offered up their good faith were left discarded like so much rubbish.”

Angry murmurs swelled for a moment and Jeirran fell silent until the noise subsided. The air was ripe with expectation.

“Are we to suffer this insult? Is this to be yet one more abuse of our land and our people that goes unchallenged? Are the lowlanders and their Forest allies going to bar us from roads and trade now that we’ve been bold enough to mark our boundaries?” His voice was unexpectedly calm. “Isn’t it time to tell them enough is enough? Mustn’t they learn we will not stand to be so disparaged and denied?” He shook his head. “I’ve been breaking my heart and testing your patience with questions long enough. You must decide what to do. All I know is I have a murder to avenge. I will not cross my wife’s threshold until I have claimed a life to repay the soke for its loss. I will not take food from her hearth until I have lit a pyre to break the bones of that murderer to splinters. I will not return until I can swear to my sons and daughters yet unborn that I have defended their birthright. Misaen and Maewelin both may judge me if I do not spend every last drop of blood in my veins before I abandon this pledge.”

Jeirran did not look back as he walked away from the rekin. He strode forward but eager men shouting their support, reaching forward to shake his hand or slap his shoulder, soon blocked his path. Those who could not get close raised clenched fists in noisy approval, more soon raising weapons in their hands. The crowd moved awkwardly toward the gate, shifting and seething until it emptied through the narrow stone tunnel. Men in twos and threes ran hastily between the workshops and storehouses of the compound, emerging with sacks, bundles, swords and quivers. They halted for a moment as a great cheer boiled up outside the walls, the sound echoing from the cliffs all around, startling birds from their roosts.

“Do you suppose Eirys heard all that?” asked Keisyl despairingly. “She’ll be opening her arms to him soon enough if she did.”

“I don’t care if she was listening,” said Ismenia grimly. “That’s an oath that won’t go unheard where it matters.”

“You don’t believe he means what he’s saying?” Keisyl demanded. “That’s just his way of excusing himself to his rabble, avoiding explanations when they see this door is barred to him.”

“Whether or not he means it doesn’t matter,” said Ismenia with cold satisfaction.

“Misaen and Maewelin will answer when their names are invoked, even in vain,” nodded Fithian.

“He just realized that there were no fancy words he could use to get men to force their way into the rekin.” Keisyl sighed. “When he has them eating out of his hand by boasting he’s their champion for ancient rights, he’s hardly going to risk all by asking them to break down the door and defile custom along with the threshold.”

“None of them would go that far,” nodded Fithian slowly.

“Jeirran’s not got the wit for that,” said Ismenia scornfully. “It’ll be that harlot he’s reclaimed as sister.”

“Aritane may be many things and some of them foolish, but harlot she is not.”

The unexpected voice was rough with emotion and male.

Ismenia whirled around, hugging her arms to her, face ashen. Fithian reversed his grip on his flask and raised it menacingly. Keisyl stepped in front of his mother, fists clenched and scowling. “Theilyn! What do you think you are doing?”

The girl stepped down from the stairwell door and the gray-cloaked figure behind her put down his hood. “I went to find Bryn,” Theilyn said in a shaking voice. “Even if you’ll never forgive me, I wanted to make some amends to Teiro.” She glanced at the corpse and bit her lip but she had shed all her tears for now.

Bryn twisted his large hands around each other. “She has good cause to be concerned,” he began apologetically. “In this season, even salting the body—there is very real danger of corruption.”

“I’ll have no Sheltya dancing to Aritane’s tune saying the rites for my son,” Ismenia told him with simple truth. “I’ll risk the stain on his bones and answer for it if need be.”

“We could argue the rights and wrongs of what Aritane is doing from Solstice to Equinox but that will be of no use to Teiriol. I cannot leave matters like this.” Bryn colored and shifted uncomfortably. “It looks as if we will be leaving within the day. Once we are gone, I can ensure some Sheltya unconnected with all this will come to you, if you wish it. But I would need to have your word that you will not speak of Jeirran’s army or of any Sheltya presence here.”

Keisyl couldn’t ever recall hearing fear in a Sheltya voice before.

“I would not lie to Sheltya, even if I could.” Ismenia shook her head, more puzzled than defiant.

“Do not say how Teiriol died,” pleaded Bryn. “Or rather, just say that he was attacked in the lowlands, not that he was part of a parley or anything to do with Jeirran’s ambitions. Sheltya will respect your grief, you know that.”

“That would surely suffice, Mama. The important thing is to get the rites for Teiro,” said Theilyn. “If we say anything more, then Sheltya will put us all to the test and Eirys will never be able to stand it.”

Ismenia scrubbed her hands over her face, looking up with hollow cheeks and disordered hair. “I will not lie but I will not volunteer what I know,” she said finally.

“We don’t know that much as it is.” Keisyl looked unsmiling at Bryn. “We’ve done our best to keep ourselves out of this folly.” He moved to open the door. “It’s up to you how you answer for your part in all this.”

“No, I’ll leave by the side steps,” said Bryn hastily. “It’s better that I am not seen.”

He patted Theilyn clumsily on the shoulder as he turned and hurried up the stairs. She nodded absently and moved to the long table, picking up her needle and resuming her task with even stitches. After a moment, Ismenia moved to look over her daughter’s shoulder. With a grunt of approval, she pulled up a stool to the great slate slab and began working an awl through the stubborn leather, marking a line of holes for Theilyn’s sewing to follow. Keisyl collapsed on a stool between them, laid his head in his arms and wept, ceaseless tears falling on the indifferent stone. Fithian sat in a corner and drank from his flask with single-minded intent.

The Great West Road, 6th of Aft-Summer

I wasn’t really paying attention when the arrows came raining in; since murderous Mountain Men hadn’t caught up with us so far, my main worry was our empty bellies and the thirst that was closing my throat. The road was deserted and I was some way ahead of the others, having no wish to take a turn supporting Usara any sooner than need be. The mage was doing his best with a rough crutch, though his leg must have been ablaze with agony.

The arrows sprang from dense thickets low beneath mighty trees, cleaving the air with their spiteful swish. I had barely time to register their flight before all burst into flames. Bright gouts of fire flared in the shadows striping the road and a stink of charred feather hovered on the slow-moving air as scorched arrowheads clattered down. A rustle of consternation in the bushes betrayed at least one assailant. I backed rapidly to join the others, where Gilmarten was looking justifiably pleased with himself.

Darni stepped forward, one hand on his sword-hilt. “We have no wish to fight anyone. Can we parley?”

“You have been fighting, we see your wounded.” The shouting voice sounded young, nervous and angry, a bad combination. A second voice told us we had enemies in the branches of the trees. That’s all it told us, since this one spoke the Forest tongue. We exchanged looks of incomprehension.

“You, there, you of the blood,” it yelled in exasperated Tormalin. “Are you prisoner or traitor?”

“My father was of the blood, but I was born and raised an outdweller,” I called out cautiously. “These men are friends and companions of many years. They have attacked no one.”

There was a puzzled silence. “What of your wounded one?” The question came from another direction and I wondered how many we were facing. From the timbre of the halting Tormalin this was an older man and one whose life had been rudely shaken. With luck he’d be keen to avoid any more fighting.

“We were attacked three days ago,” I shouted. “We lost our horses and our gear and only wish to pass through the Forest as fast as we may.”

“Who attacked you?” demanded the first voice, more uncertain but less angry. It was a young man’s voice, easier to persuade but more inclined to impulsive decisions.

“Men of the Mountains,” replied Sorgrad clearly. “Westerlings. My brother and I were born to the Middle Ranges but we’ve lived in the lowlands for many years. We were looking to trade but were driven out.”

“Why do you block the road like this?” Darni’s face darkened. “Have you been attacked?”

“Attacked, burned out, harried and hunted,” raged the first voice. “By men as fair as your friends there and with magic at their backs.”

Usara jerked upright on his prop. “Magic? Of what nature?”

“Has this been magic of fire and water, of strange winds and broken earth?” I stepped forward and scanned the bushes again. “Or has it been terror in the mind, delusion baffling the senses?”

“What do you know of such things?” This was a new voice, a stronger, more measured tone.

“It was trying to understand this magic of the mind that took me to the uplands.” I could feel furious glares from Darni and Usara scorching the back of my neck.

A fluting whistle was passed down the highway from quite some distance ahead. A man of the Forest Folk stepped out of a low thicket, belly spreading in his middle years, dark auburn hair sprinkled with white, square-jawed face quite grim enough to be a match for Darni. “Riders are approaching. Get off the road and we can discuss this further.” This was the last speaker, who looked at us with a measuring copper eye. “We can offer you food and water.”

Darni and the wizards immediately stepped forward, or limped, in Usara’s case. ’Gren looked at me and I looked to Sorgrad; the three of us followed more slowly. More Folk than I expected emerged from the trees above us and out of the undergrowth. Leggings and tunics of dun and leather were newly splashed with mud and irregular splotches of fresh dye while rags of green and brown cloth were tied around arms and legs, covering hair and faces. These people were actively seeking to avoid being seen. All were armed with bows and sufficient quivers that Gilmarten would have spent his magic long before they ran out of arrows.

A rattle of hooves behind us turned my head back to the road. I caught a glimpse of heads and backs, yeomen by their clothing, solid chestnut horses trotting stolidly along. I could get back fast enough to hail them, to shout for help and say whatever might induce unimaginative farmers to take me to safety. My hesitation brought Sorgrad’s head around, piercing blue eyes unblinking.

“Go if you want to,” he said softly, “but I’m going on. I want payback as well as a pay-off now. Exiling us is one thing, trying to kill us raises the stakes.”

I still felt a shadow of the qualm that Elietimm bastard had planted in my mind but anger burned it away, hot and urgent beneath my breastbone. Sorgrad held out a hand and squeezed my fingers for a moment; I nodded wordlessly and followed. North of the road, the land was more broken, rising in odd abrupt slopes. Trees clustered densely for a stretch and then left stony ground bare but for hummocks of moss and dips filled with drifts of leaves. Evergreens stood sullen and dusty in the summer heat and dense tangles of bramble and gorse were claiming ever more ground with each season. The Folk walking grim-faced to either side of us looked much the same as those farther south, ancient blood seasoned with a cast of the eyes or a tilt of the nose brought in from both east and west of the wildwood.

We rounded a hillock of gravelly ground and found ourselves on the edge of a wide hollow backed by a rocky crag. The scars of a score or more fires were black on the swept earth and each was surrounded by a close-gathered ring of Folk, a couple of hundreds all told, huddled together with scant bundles of possessions and food. Many were flat-faced with shock; others were hunched in distress or sharpening weapons already gleaming in the sunlight with futile rage. Grim depression twisted an old woman’s face in contrast to the blank disbelief of the child folded in her arms. I wondered where its mother was.

“Men of the Mountains,” said the man who had brought us here. “They have been coming down from the heights, driving us back, killing and burning where they may.”

“We must speak with your leader.” Worry was plain on Gilmarten’s face.

“They have no leader, not in the sense you mean,” I told him. “Where are the men who manage the hunts for you? What about healers?”

Darni was scowling. “ ’Sar needs a healer, if we do nothing else here.”

“Yes, I know.” I stifled my irritation. “Healers or trackers might be able to tell us where the Mountain Men are attacking. Does anyone have a map?”

Both wizards shook their heads but Sorgrad looked up from making a rough head count. “I know the lay of the land around here pretty well.”

“Where would we find a healer?” I asked the man.

“Yonder.” He pointed to the outcrop overhanging a wide, shallow cave. We picked our way through the dense gathering, unease rippling outward as ’Gren and Sorgrad were noticed, blond heads in stark contrast to the varied shades of red and brown all around. The tenor of the murmurs was distinctly unfriendly. The Folk who had arrived with us dropped away to their own people, the sharp tone of questions rising here and there. I smiled reassuringly at Sorgrad but he remained grim-faced. The air grew thick with tension rather than heavy with the apathy of defeat; these Folk might lack any formal leadership but they could still find common cause in lynching Sorgrad and ’Gren quick enough.

A daunting number of people were wrapped in soiled blankets on the broad shelf of rock beneath the crag. Green poultices and oddly stained dressings covered wounds to arms, hands and heads. A double handful of men and women were busy among the prostrate figures, lifting heads to give sips from wooden cups or pellets of closely wrapped leaves for chewing. One of the healers was kneeling beside a gray-haired woman whose eyes were hidden beneath a swathe of linen.

“More work for us, Bera?” he asked with a shadow of a smile. Old blood was black on the front of his tunic and caked around his fingernails.

“This is Harile,” our guide nodded. “A leg wound for you and a puzzle for the rest of us,” he told the healer.

Usara limped forward and Harile’s attention immediately focused on the mage’s stained dressing. “Let me see.”

Usara leaned on his crutch, unlacing his breeches awkwardly. He gritted his teeth as Harile gently eased the foul linen away. The bruising was now a nauseous greenish purple covering most of the wizard’s skinny thigh and the wound looked ominously swollen and angry, seeping with yellow pus. I’d thought Usara had been lucky to catch a glancing blow; after all, if the bone had been broken, we would have been in a great deal more trouble. Now I wasn’t so sure. He might well lose the leg anyway and that infection could kill him regardless.

Harile spoke rapidly to a woman of easily twice my heft, round-faced with a solid bulk to her. She poured water from a kettle hung over a small and smokeless fire and added a judicious selection of herbs from a bag at her belt to the bowl. As she approached, I realized she was singing Orial’s healing song under her breath. Harile picked up the refrain in an absent whistle, using the warm and fragrant liquid to wash away the crusted mess. “The bruising makes it look worse than it is.”

Usara’s shoulders sagged and he scrubbed a trembling hand over his face, a pathetic figure with his breeches around his knees, shirt grubby beneath the soiled front of his gown. Testing one’s magic against the wider world is all very well, I thought, but that’s a wizard who’s going to be mighty glad to be safe on his hidden island again. I wondered if he’d make it with one leg or two.

“There are herbs we can poultice to promote healing,” continued Harile. “We can dull the discomfort and you must rest for your body to mend itself.”

“You’ll be fine, ’Sar,” said Darni briskly as the mage eased his breeches up painfully. “Now, where were you attacked and by what numbers?”

An older man with wiry white hair fringing a bald pate above a lean, keen face pushed past Bera. “What do you know of the storm that has burst over us?”

“This is Apak,” said Bera hastily. “The eldest of trackers.” He was backed by a double handful of people looking just as hard for answers.

Darni looked down with unconscious arrogance. “I am an agent of the Archmage of Hadrumal, Planir the Black. Usara is a mage deep in his confidence and Gilmarten is a wizard of Solura, traveling with us.” His tone forbade further inquiry but Gilmarten bowed hastily.

“Are mages to blame for this calamity?” Apak returned

Darni’s haughtiness in full measure, thumbs tucked in his belt. “We know the Men of the Mountains are backed by magic, make no mistake.”

“I can assure you their enchantments are none of our doing.”

I was relieved to hear a more moderate tone in the big man’s words but Apak snorted, unimpressed. “And what of you three?” His eyes and those at his back were hard and distrustful. I felt ’Gren stir beside me, reacting badly to the palpable hostility coming from all sides.

“We were looking to trade in the Western Ranges,” said Sorgrad soberly, accents of Col resonant in his words. “We were summarily expelled from the heights and we have been pursued with murderous intent.” He indicated Usara and the rest of us still spotted with blood in our stale clothing, his expression neutral in the face of accusing stares.

“What do the Men of the Mountains want with us?” demanded Apak, pent-up frustration finding a target in us. “Why are we fugitives in the wildwood that should shelter us?” He was spitting and stumbling over his words, Forest accents distorting his fluent Tormalin. “Me and mine were grazing our donkeys in the upper margins while the grass was good, the women harvesting herbs, the rest hunting hare or fox. We set our sura in the customary places; the Mountain people have turned their flocks to the upper pastures by now and are busy at their diggings, but some always travel down to trade metal goods and pottery for herbs and woodwork.” The anger in Apak’s face faded to perplexity. “When we saw some men coming, we thought nothing of it, but they carried swords and spears and outnumbered us two for every one. They called us thieves and parasites, cursing us for hunting their lands, saying we stole their pelts. They burned our sura, broke whatever they could lay hands on or cast it into the flames. The women were taken against their will, those who resisted whipped raw.” Burning rage surged in his voice. “We hunt those slopes both sides of Solstice but leave them willingly when the season turns. Mountain Men come down from the heights and we move south before the snows.” His voice trailed off as he gazed into some evil memory. “We fled, what else could we do?”

We were the center of attention, Folk moving closer, abandoning their low-voiced conversations.

“And then?” prompted Darni with more gentleness than I expected.

“Not enough for them to drive us from the margins,” spat Apak. “They followed us deep into the greenwood. Every time we halted, we were attacked, no matter how we sought to hide or evade them. Those standing firm were cut down and those who fled were trapped with magic.” The word was a curse on his lips, echoed in murmurs from those ringing us. I was looking for the fastest way to get clear. Sorgrad and ’Gren could take care of themselves and Darni and his mages would just have to take their chances.

“What was the nature of the sorcery?” demanded Usara.

“What do I know of magic?” Apak glowered at Usara before turning his wrathful gaze on Sorgrad, who was doing his best to look wholly inoffensive, and ’Gren, who was fidgeting with growing defiance.

“Just tell us what happened,” I requested politely.

“People ran mad.” Apak’s voice shook. “Men who know every bend of branch between here and the southern seas were utterly lost. Some ran in terror from sister or brother, straight onto the blades of the uplanders. Others turned on their own, striking them down with hand, knife, fire irons, cook pots.” His perplexity and trepidation was mirrored on faces all around. “The Men of the Mountains laughed to see it and then they killed them.”

“Our beasts turned crazed as well.” Bera picked up the tale somberly. “We were by the streams above the marsh where the Forest narrows, cutting rush and reed, waiting for the moons to bring the mickelfish to spawning. They came down from the heights, called us foul names and killed all they could catch. But Mountain Men never come to the marshes, never once, not in all the years I have traveled that way!” He remembered what he had started to say. “We might have fled through the mosses, but our animals turned against us. They went wild, kicking and biting anyone who dared approach. It was worse than the cursed thirst.” Bera shook his head, bemused. “Some died where they stood, hearts burst with the terror.”

“That’s what happened to our horses,” I told him, “when we were attacked.”

“That is no magic I could work,” Usara spoke earnestly. “My powers are over the elements that make up the world that you see, the air, the earth, fire and water. Had I wished to attack your Folk as they worked in a marsh,” he turned to Bera, all fervent honesty, “I would have raised the water against them, turned the mud to liquid beneath their feet to trap them, woven a fog to baffle—”

“That’s not exactly reassuring them, Usara,” I interrupted. Apak was fingering a dagger at his belt and an unease encircled us like the cold wind presaging a storm.

“Wizardly magic has no power to reach into the mind,” Gilmarten spoke up suddenly, his Soluran lilt turning heads. “This is a new and evil enchantment.”

“Or an ancient one in the hands of evil men,” I corrected him. Guinalle and her scholars might be using their Artifice this side of the ocean someday.

“If you are wizards, can your magic help us?” demanded a voice from somewhere. Ominous expectation hovered like a threat of thunder.

“My vows to Lord Astrad, that is, we are forbidden—and I don’t think I would be able to argue that the Forest is without the King’s laws—” Gilmarten looked stricken.

Usara’s pallor wasn’t only due to his wound. “I could not act without sanction from Planir.”

“Not to attack these Mountain Men,” continued Darni smoothly. “Clearly, any mage may act in defense of himself or the helpless.” He nodded politely to Usara but the smile that curled his lip looked more like the warning snarl of a mastiff to me.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible for Usara to go any paler but he managed it. Harile leaned forward to bruise a pungent leaf under the mage’s nose. The wizard coughed with irritation but it struck a spark of color from his angular cheekbones.

“Scrying can tell us where the Mountain Men are camped,” Darni spoke on with barely a pause. “Their movements will hint at their plans and we can certainly make sure we keep out of their path. But isn’t it time we started taking this fight to them?”

Bera and Apak exchanged uncertain looks but a fair few of the rest looked at Darni with new hope rising above their despondency. He could play this hand if he wanted, I decided. At least it should keep people from measuring Sorgrad and ’Gren for a shallow grave.

“We?” queried Bera.

“These same Mountain Men attacked me and mine.” Darni folded shirtless arms over his broad chest, emphasizing the muscles in limbs thicker than my thigh. He looked nigh on a giant among these Folk, coarse black hair curling in the neck of his jerkin. “I’d say we have a common foe, don’t you?”

“You’re going nowhere until you’ve all had some rest.” Harile blocked Darni’s path, pinching his forearm. The skin held the imprint of the Forest man’s fingers, slow to sink. “You’re too big to go so long without drinking. Get yourselves fed and watered and then your wits will be all the sharper.”

The ring of Folk around us immediately broke up, but now the dead silence of the sheltered basin was lively with low-voiced conversations, even laughter, albeit hurriedly suppressed.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” I murmured to Darni as I sat on the hard dry lip of the rock ledge.

“Once ’Sar scries them out, we can plan our attack.” He nodded with satisfaction.

“These folk’ll be slaughtered going up against chainmail and broadswords with no more than leather and skinning knives,” I objected with some heat.

Sorgrad leaned forward past me. “Skirmishers?”

“The usual.” Darni’s expression had all the savage glee of a feral cat. “Harry them, draw them out, bleed them dry.”

Sorgrad smiled broadly. “He knows what he’s doing.”

“Care to share the secret?” I asked with a touch of sarcasm.

“We can harry the enemy, cut down stragglers, and maybe make a few night attacks on their camps.” Darni’s voice was matter of fact. “We can’t deny them the ground, so we make it as costly to take as possible and then raise the price of holding it too high for them to bear.” He looked at the assembled Folk in the broad dell, expression thoughtful.

“That’s a long game to play.” I accepted a wooden bowl of thick and savory soup from the fat woman and ate hungrily. Even the flatbread was welcome, soaking up the last of the hot liquid as I scooped up shreds of meat and greenery with a battered spoon that Sorgrad produced from one of his pockets. A lad went past with what looked suspiciously like squirrels strung on a stick but I put the notion firmly from my mind. It was probably deer meat in the soup.

“That’s better.” Darni drained the last drops from his own bowl, wiping his matted beard with the back of one hand. I felt as filthy as he looked, my shirt sticky with sweat.

“We need to find the closest threat,” said Usara, talking more to himself than anyone else. “The ones that attacked Apak.”

“There must be at least three elements working their way in from the north,” ’Gren pointed out, face intense as he turned his thoughts to strategy and tactics.

“I’ll wager any money the assaults are being coordinated using Elietimm enchantment,” scowled Darni.

“That’s what I’d do,” nodded Sorgrad.

“So we need to come up with a plan to stop that,” I noted innocently.

“What kind of force do you reckon we can stitch together out of these people?” ’Gren looked around the basin, a predatory eagerness in his tone.

“Think how close Apak’s people were to Grynth when they were attacked. Bera’s were on the edge of the Lakeland.” Darni’s jaw jutted forward. “We have to do something or the whole of the Ferring Gap will be dragged into this. Come to that, they’ll have set the entire Forest alight before the end of the season. How’s Brakeswell going to react if the Great West Road is closed? What about Pastamar?”

“We mustn’t be hasty,” said Usara desperately. “First things first. I must bespeak the Archmage. Planir will know what to do.”

I sat silently and drank from a flagon of water. I wasn’t particularly concerned whether or not Planir knew what to do. I had plenty of ideas.

The Chamber of Planir the Black, Archmage of Hadrumal, 6th of Aft-Summer

“So, you see, you must send help and quickly. If we do nothing, there will quite simply be chaos.” The urgency in Usara’s words rang through the shining mirror to strike faint echo from the goblet in Planir’s hand.

The Archmage took a reflective sip of his emerald green cordial. “I think you need to widen your focus here, ’Sar.”

“Is there a problem with the spell?” Usara frowned.

“Think through the consequences of what you are suggesting,” said Planir patiently. “For you and the Soluran to help these Forest Folk is one thing. For the wizards and Archmage of Hadrumal to engage in the fight would be quite another.”

“But these Mountain Men are backed by at least one enchanter from the Ice Islands,” protested Usara hotly. “They seem to have suborned these Sheltya. There’s no telling how powerful they might be!”

“You can counter their enchantments with your own sorcery,” Planir reassured him. “This is a dire threat and you must do everything in your power to halt this enchanter’s ambitions. But I am not prepared to raise the stakes in the greater game by having the mages of Hadrumal take on Elietimm enchanters who have set this landslide in motion.”

“They have stirred up the mountains with Misaen only knows what lies!” cried Usara. “Surely we must show them that we simply will not tolerate such deliberate malice?”

“What would the King of Solura feel, seeing mages waging war on behalf of the Forest Folk?” Planir demanded, face stern. “What would he think of the wildwood becoming the province of wizards with no ties or loyalty to his laws, rather than his realm’s age-old safeguard against Tormalin ambition?”

“We would leave once the situation was resolved,” objected Usara.

“And when would that be?” Planir queried with polite interest. “How long before we could be confident the Mountain Men would not simply storm down from their heights the instant the last mage returned to Hadrumal? How would you reassure the Forest Folk that they would be safe from further attack? Don’t you think they would want at least a few mages, if only to summon help if they are invaded again? Are we going to commit ourselves to supporting the Forest Folk, when they have proved to have no learning of any real worth? Do we want to make enemies of the Mountain peoples, when they have aetheric learning that we so desperately need?”

“I’m sure we could come to some compromise.” Usara sounded less certain.

“What would the great guilds of Selerima and Vanam have to say, the good burghers of Wrede or even of Grynth?” Planir set his glass aside and laced his fingers together, elbows resting on the arms of his chair. “Remember how fiercely these cities and lordlings prize their independence. It may be twenty generations or more since they threw off Tormalin domination, but the memory of the struggle lingers. How would they react to wizards in the Forest dominating the road to all the lucrative markets of Solura? We could have them expelling every mage within their boundaries, forbidding the cities to any wizard, reinstating the penalties for wielding magic that forced Trydek to bring his motley band of apprentices to Hadrumal in the first place.”

Usara made no reply, merely looking increasingly dejected.

“That’s on the one hand. On the other,” Planir suited gesture to his words, “we would find ourselves besieged with requests for help. What of the Ferring Gap? We’d have guild masters hot-footing it to the nearest philtre seller, demanding immediate aid on all manner of spurious grounds.”

“They’d be disappointed then,” said Usara tartly. “All parties in the Gap have given just as much offense as they have received injury.”

“How do you propose refusing help when you have just overturned generations of tradition by fighting in support of the Forest Folk?” inquired Planir.

“This isn’t mere competition for profit,” Usara objected. “These people are being slaughtered!”

“So it’s a matter of principle?” Planir raised a finger. “It’s principles that have kept the Lescari at each other’s throats for ten generations, isn’t it? The rights of a ruler to bequeath his sovereignty to his own blood as opposed to the rights of whoever feels strong enough to make a grab for the crown. If we use our powers to halt one slaughter of the blameless, how can we let that chaos go unchallenged?”

“That’s completely different!”

“How, exactly?” Planir’s calm words were in increasing contrast to Usara’s heated tone.

“We are facing a decisive encounter with a rival magic!” snapped the younger mage.

“Only if we so choose,” Planir waved that away. “All right, I’ll grant you it’s a dangerous situation. Suppose we draw our line in the sand and challenge these enchanters to a pissing contest. How do you propose to explain it to the good people of Ensaimin and anywhere else dragged in? Just what principle is so important that we have the right to bring their world crashing down around their ears?”

“Mages are not answerable to the mundane populace!” retorted Usara.

“No,” agreed the Archmage. “We are not answerable to anyone. We can fight these sorcerers with all the power over air, earth, fire and water that we can summon, and no one can gainsay us.” He paused. “How will that affect our current negotiations with the princes of Tormalin? Don’t you think they might decide that facing the Elietimm on their own, with whatever aid Guinalle and her Adepts can offer, is preferable to allying with mages who take heed of no authority?”

“But that would be simple foolishness,” Usara replied angrily.

The gleaming surface of the mirror pulsed faintly with ripples of magic sliding across its surface. The candle burned fiercely, unnatural flame devouring the wax, hot drips sliding down the silver stick to threaten the polish of the table.

“If I say we should just ignore the princes of Tormalin and everyone else, you’re going to tell me I’m sounding like Kalion, aren’t you?” said Usara at length, with the shadow of a rueful smile.

“I would never be so impolite.” Planir’s grin gave the lie to his words as he leaned forward. “But I could spend all day finding arguments why the Council of Hadrumal cannot be seen to involve itself in what is, to all appearances, a fight for land and its attendant wealth. Here’s another one for you. We support the Forest Folk in this one conflict, but we deny our aid to anyone else who comes seeking it as a matter of principle—”

“You’re mocking me now,” Usara protested.

“Oh yes, ’Sar,” said Planir earnestly. “Where was I? These men of Wrede or the Duke of Draximal’s representatives, they go away empty-handed. There are a great many wizards out in the wider world, ’Sar. Who’s to say one might not be tempted, could not be bought, to use his powers in what could be argued was a good cause?”

“Every mage knows they are answerable to Hadrumal.” Usara wasn’t smiling.

“True enough, but how well could I impose the authority of this office if it came to it?” Planir lifted the heavy gold ring of the Archmage, its massive central diamond set between sapphire, amber, ruby and emerald. “When I have my Council split between defending the Forest in the west, fighting Elietimm in the east and beyond the ocean, while I spend what little remains of my time trying to convince everyone else we do not aim to recreate the Old Empire with me at its head?”

“There’s no reason to suppose anything like this will come to pass,” said Usara crossly.

“No reason to say it won’t,” countered Planir. “Sorry, I’m wrong. I can say with fair certainty that none of this will happen if I don’t allow the Council of Hadrumal and the Office of Archmage to be dragged into your fight in the first place. I grew up in the mining country of Gidesta and one of the first things every child is taught is never disturb a scree. Taking one stone from the wrong place can bring down half a hillside on your head.”

“And that’s your final word?” Defeat faded Usara’s voice.

“That is my final word,” Planir replied with deliberate emphasis. “You on the other hand are a free agent. You are at liberty to use any and every means at your disposal. You will have to answer to Council, but I can assure you of my absolute trust in your judgment and complete support.”

“Thank you for your confidence,” said Usara dryly. “But I don’t see quite what I can hope to achieve on my own. Other than Gilmarten, there isn’t another mage within leagues of here.”

“Why are you so sure of that?” Planir snuffed out the candle between two fingers, the image dissolving around Usara’s puzzled expression.

Candle smoke rose in a fragile blue spiral twisting and braiding itself in the shafts of the evening sun slanting in through the windows. Planir rose from his seat and moved to look out over the long roofs of Hadrumal. The gray stone of the halls was warming to gold in the last light, the courts and alleyways thronged with people as wizards and scholars turned their minds to food, drink, conversation and relaxation. The Archmage gazed down, following individuals here and there until the little figures disappeared through gate or doorway.

He wheeled around, eyes keen and dangerous. Hanging wisps of smoke shook and dissipated as Planir swept past to stand in front of the empty fireplace. “So what was it you wished to discuss with me, Shiv?”

Shiv had been sitting on the far side of the room, deep in the shadows of a winged chair. “I have had news of Kalion, Archmage,” he said diffidently.

“Should I be concerned?” Planir sounded surprised.

“Given what you’ve just been saying about Toremal worrying over mages with unbridled ambition, I should say so!” Shiv’s initial hesitation was rapidly evaporating.

“Tell me what you’ve heard,” invited Planir.

“That Kalion spent his time in Relshaz meeting all the most powerful men in that most influential of cities. Supposedly he was promising all manner of profit and advantage when ‘wizardry takes its proper place in the upper levels of decisionmaking.’ ” Shiv’s mockery was bitter. “At the turn of Aft-Winter he moved on to Toremal. He was invited to all the best parties, from what I hear, met all the well-connected nobles. Now I believe he is traveling between the Dukes of Marlier and Parnilesse in Lescar, offering his services as an honest broker in their negotiations.”

“What makes you think I’m unaware of the way Kalion has been amusing himself?” the Archmage inquired politely.

“You’ve been very busy lately, Archmage.” Shiv struggled for words. “But if you say—I am satisfied…” He got hastily to his feet.

“I don’t think you are,” Planir crossed the room to light a branch of candles with a snap of his fingers, incidentally blocking Shiv’s path to the door. “And I don’t think I am. Do sit down.”

Shiv’s knees buckled beneath him, color rising under his sallow skin.

Planir took a chair on the far side of the fireplace. He studied Shiv for a moment. “You say I have been busy? Yes, granted, my duties keep my days full, but of late no more than usual.”

Shiv coughed awkwardly. “You’ve been a little preoccupied.”

“Indeed?” Planir leaned back and crossed one elegantly booted foot over his knee. “By what?”

Shiv stood up again. “Obviously I was mistaken. I’m sorry to have taken up your time.”

“Or did you think that I had myself tangled in a pretty girl’s garters?” asked Planir genially.

Shiv’s jaw dropped. “I wouldn’t say—” His mouth snapped shut as the Archmage began to chuckle. “Since you put it like that, most revered Archmage, yes. Chimney-corner gossips all over Hadrumal say you’ve been head down and tail up after a wet scent since Larissa first flirted her petticoats at you!”

Planir’s laugh at this was a full-throated guffaw that startled a roosting pigeon from the window ledge. “Oh, sit down, Shiv, and let’s have a drink.” He went to the sideboard, collecting a wine bottle and clinking two glasses negligently together. “I seem to be doing this earlier and earlier each day at present,” he remarked, glancing at the timepiece on the mantel. “Now that would be something you really would have to concern yourself with. You weren’t here when Gelake was Flood-Master, were you? That man drunk was an absolute menace.”

Defiance and apprehension warring in Shiv’s face fled, replaced by simple confusion. He drained his glass in one swallow.

Planir sat back in his chair. “I’m touched by your concern, but it really is unnecessary.”

“Is it?” retorted Shiv. “That’s not how it looks to me or to anyone else. We see Kalion, whom we all know to be blindly ambitious, waving the potential assistance of Hadrumal in the faces of anyone with the least power or influence. He’s a joke here, where there are plenty of people to keep him in check, but out there, with all his fine clothes and his lordly manners, people are taking him very seriously! Why aren’t you doing something about it? Because all your time is taken up squiring your pretty new apprentice around parties and dances and giving her late-night tuition that lasts until breakfast at least three times a week! Troanna doesn’t approve and as Flood-Mistress, as long as you keep refusing to appoint a Cloud-Master to replace Otrick—if Kalion were to mount a serious challenge to you in Council—” Shiv stopped speaking abruptly and peered into the depths of his goblet.

“You’ve made your point.” Planir refilled Shiv’s glass with the crimson wine. “Let me offer you a different perspective. I am fully aware Kalion is letting his mouth write notes his purse cannot hope to honor. He can make all the promises he wants, but he cannot make good on any of them. However long he pulls out his leash, I still have hold of the end and can yank him back whenever I choose. For the moment, I’m content to let him take all the slack he wants and get himself thoroughly tangled up. Then I will naturally come to his aid and with all his fine words proved worthless he will look extremely foolish. Believe me, that will do more to discredit him than any rebuke or penalty I could impose. Kalion will doubtless continue to do all he can to rouse the Council in his support, but I do not propose to give him solid grounds for enmity by express action against him. I won’t make an enemy of Kalion, Shiv, because ultimately he truly wants the best for wizardry and, beyond that, to put the wider world to rights. I have no quarrel with that ambition; we just differ rather radically in our approach.”

“You’re sure you have the Council?” Shiv asked.

Planir smiled. “Kalion’s supporters have become both bold and careless, assuming I am far too busy with the delights of the flesh to pay attention. I’ve been noting just who is feeding Ely and Galen gossip. With Larissa’s help, I’ve laid out some very tempting morsels for those scavenging around the inner circles of the halls. They’ve taken the bait, but it’s Kalion who’ll find it so horribly indigestible. He doesn’t have nearly the support he imagines, not least because whenever I see Ely and Galen charming someone I later make my own discreet appeal to that individual’s common sense.”

“Yes, Archmage,” Shiv looked sheepish.

The Archmage’s genial expression hardened. “Troanna does not approve of my dealings with Larissa, that is very true, but being both old and wise she knows that sensual pleasures are entirely separate from the business of magecraft. Do not make the mistake of confusing the two, Shiv, on my account or on your own. Troanna will judge me as Archmage on my discharge of my duties, not on how I choose to spend my time inside my bed-curtains. You of all people should appreciate that.”

Shiv colored and shifted uneasily in his chair. “Yes, Archmage.”

“I have my own contacts in Relshaz and Toremal. You remember Mellitha? When Kalion is promising both moons and the stars in between to one of the Magistracy, the first thing he does is talk with her. Kalion cuts a fine figure in his tailored gowns, talking loud and long about the infinite resources of wizardry. What he doesn’t see is that the non-mage-born find the idea of magic rather worrying, especially in the hands of a brash and forceful man. Kalion says he can do all manner of things, but he never stops to ask if anyone actually wants him to; arrogance raises hackles, Shiv.

“So they go and talk to Mellitha, whom they know to be a mage, granted, but far more importantly, has lived in their city for nigh on a generation and everyone agrees is a fair and honest tax contractor. She tells them not to worry, that Kalion is all gong and no dinner and the person they need to look to is the Archmage.” Planir grinned. “A mage even more daunting than this unstoppable enthusiast? No, not at all, Mellitha tells them. He’s a man just like you, enjoys pretty girls, a dance and a drink and a dubious joke. Everyone knows that to be true, in Hadrumal or anywhere else.” The Archmage’s eyes glinted steely gray in the candlelight. “Reassurance the princes of Tormalin may cling to, if I am ultimately forced to drive these Elietimm into the ocean with fire and lightning, flood and earthquake. I will loose all the might of Hadrumal against these enchanters if need be, Shiv. What I won’t do is waste time and energy in dealing with petty pinpricks when the real danger is us all having our throats cut if I misstep.”

“Yes, Archmage,” the younger man mumbled.

Planir sighed heavily. “As for Otrick, well, I’m not prepared to give up on the old pirate just yet.”

“It’s been seven seasons out of the eight,” Shiv pointed out, face sorrowful.

“While he is still breathing, as long as we can tend his bodily needs,” Planir’s voice tailed off. “If nothing comes of ’Sar’s trip, then yes, I will take the matter to Council, but even then I will be advising against any hasty decision. Otrick is not suffering, after all.”

Glum silence hung heavily in the air.

“I know you couldn’t sanction Council involvement, but can I go?” Shiv looked up eagerly. “If this Gilmarten’s element is air, with my water talents and Usara holding the earth we’d only need a fire mage to have a nexus.”

“Where would you find this fire mage?” Planir smiled at Shiv’s expression. “I’ll make a deal with you; if you square the circle before ’Sar does, I’ll send you to give him the answer.”

He opened the door and ushered the younger man out, Shiv’s brow now knotted in thought. Planir swung the heavy black oak shut and leaned his forehead against it for an instant. Forcing a smile, he crossed the room and opened a second door, skillfully made to remain unnoticed in the lines and folds of the carved paneling. The Archmage entered a small room dominated by an elegant bedstead whose curtains of yellow silk were embroidered with bright vines and flowers. Larissa sat in a chair upholstered in the same style, hands folded neatly in her lap and ankles crossed. She stared out of the window at the sunset, face set like the snowy stone of the marble washstand beside her. A gown of azure satin overlaid with gauze expertly flattered her figure while her chestnut hair was caught up in combs and curls, discreet cosmetics enhancing eyes, cheeks and lips.

“And now you are, what, angry or upset?” Planir sat on the edge of the bed and took off his boots. “Or both?”

Larissa glared at him. “You tell Shiv I’m simply here to serve as a means of spreading your own particular rumors? After all, everyone’s going to believe what I tell them, aren’t they? If you can’t trust a woman to spread pillow talk, who can you trust!” Rising color clashed with the softer blush of her rouge.

“You’ve always been fully in my confidence when it comes to seasoning the gossip with a few judicious tidbits, my dearest.” Planir dropped his shirt on the floor. “As I recall, you’ve played the game willingly and with considerable skill.” He grinned at her.

“What if I did?” she said crossly. “Doesn’t it bother you, what everyone is saying? And now I hear I can expect sniggers and innuendo anywhere from Col to the Cape of Winds! My role is just to reassure all and sundry that you are a man with manly appetites?”

“I don’t deny people thinking that is something I can turn to my advantage, but I can’t do anything about gossip. I’m very sorry if you find it humiliating; frankly, I could do without it myself,” Planir shrugged. “The office of Archmage has many and varied powers, but stopping people thinking what they want is beyond me.”

“But you use the prattle, turn it against the tattlers.” Larissa’s voice was losing the certainty of affront in the face of Planir’s calm.

“True enough,” he agreed. “I use all and every means to discharge my duties; I told you that from the outset. But I haven’t done anything to create gossip. I have neither flaunted you nor hidden you away as if we had anything to be ashamed of. That’s the other side of the coin after all, if I were to let myself be influenced by the whispers and snide remarks.” Planir unlaced his plain broadcloth breeches, stepping out of them and crossing to a wardrobe where he found a clean shirt of soft silk. “I told you from the start that there would be talk and that it would be for you to judge if it ever weighed too heavily in the scales against me.”

Larissa looked down at her hands and the room was silent but for the rustle of silk as the Archmage dressed.

“All I ask, my dearest, is that you weigh my words before anyone else’s,” Planir said gently. “Have I ever lied to you? Have I ever deceived you? Do you believe me when I tell you that your wit and your company, your charm and your passion, are the greatest gifts ever bestowed on me? With you at my side, I would count myself the most fortunate man in the world, were I the meanest miner in Gidesta, never mind the Archmage of Hadrumal.”

“But you are the Archmage of Hadrumal,” said Larissa with a catch in her voice.

“I am,” Planir nodded. “And I have to bear all that comes with it. You do not, unless you choose to, my darling. You know that.”

Another silence threatened to lengthen interminably until bells all over the many-towered city began to strike their chimes. Planir looked at a small timepiece on the night-stand beside the bed. “For the moment, we have to decide if we are going to the dance at the Seaward Hall. There will be grist for the rumor mill in every set we dance together, but then again if we do not go that will spark a whole new round of speculation and rumor. Has his eye lighted on some other maiden? Has she got the advancement she sought, whatever that might be? Is he moving on now he’s got another notch on his bedpost, or has she tired of being an old man’s folly?” His voice was gently teasing. “But that won’t alter the fact that if you prefer not to go, that is good enough for me. If we go, that’s of no significance beyond the fact that I like to dance, that I particularly love to dance with you, and that I feel like shedding the cares of my office for an evening and reveling with the most beautiful girl in Hadrumal.” He moved to the door, an elegant figure in understated black silk, tailoring impeccable.

Larissa stood up, twitching aside the skirts of her gown. “Find your dancing slippers, O revered Archmage.” She was smiling with a combative light in her eye. “Let them talk. Though, as for reveling,” she linked her arm through his as they departed, “that will depend on whether or not you tire yourself out on the dance floor, won’t it?”

The Great Forest, 6th of Aft-Summer

While Usara was fussing around with his mirror and a spill from the fire, I followed one of the healers out of the hollow and down a farther slope in the forest floor to a long narrow lakelet. Trickles of water ran down the fern-draped face of rock laid in layers of gray and ocher pierced with damp blackness here and there. Cool struck up from the slowly rippling water; groups of men and women were bathing, washing clothing and picking their way carefully along a slippery green ledge to fill pans from the clean water of the spring. I washed thoroughly, gasping at the chill on my hot body but relishing being clean again. Draping my jerkin around me, I went in search of what passed for clean linen.

The man Harile was busy with bowls of steeping herbs in the mouth of the cave and nodded at me as I rummaged in my bag. “You are of the Folk?” He sounded doubtful.

“No,” I shook my head. “My father was, but I am an out-dweller.” I had that much clear by now. My parents’ past was theirs and my future was my own. I lifted the precious book out of the bottom of my satchel and checked that the wrappings were intact. I looked at Harile. “That song you were singing earlier, it was ‘Mazir’s Healing Hands,’ wasn’t it?”

He glanced up from his work. “What of it?”

“Did you know there is power in the song, in the jalquezan?” I smiled at him.

Polite mystification creased Harile’s forehead. “What kind of power?”

“A form of enchantment.” I laid every pennyweight of sincerity within me on my words. “I came east at the behest of Tormalin scholars, to learn the hidden lore of the ancient races. I found the jalquezan.”

Interest was beginning to replace the doubt in Harile’s expression. “But how can it be enchantment? It’s just nonsense.”

“It’s far more than that,” I assured him with utter conviction. “No question of it.”

“If jalquezan is a means of enchantment, what can it do against the Mountain Men?” He seized on this notion as I’d hoped he would.

“You find a song to suit your needs. If you wish to hide, you sing of Viyenne and the Does; if you are lost, sing of Mazir and the Storm and you’ll find your path again.” I made it sound as easy as shelling peas. “The jalquezan ties enchantment to the song. It’s all in this book.” I hugged it tight and hoped he wouldn’t ask to see it.

“You can work enchantment just by singing?” I kept a curse behind my teeth as I heard doubt faltering in Harile’s voice.

“I’ve been traveling with these wizards for the best part of the year. They’ve been trying to solve this puzzle for a generation and jalquezan proved the best piece to fit!” I felt I was bluffing with an empty hand to win a king’s ransom.

“We just have to sing?” Harile looked toward a group of little children. All were tear-stained and one kept looking over her shoulder, her puzzled demand for “Mamamam” understandable in any tongue.

“You sing and you trust in the power of the jalquezan.” If I could match this depth of earnestness, I could persuade the Emperor of Tormalin to pay me for the right to his own throne.

“Do we all have to sing?”

Saedrin save me, what had the scholars’ theories been about Artifice? Belief was the key and the more minds focused on something, the more power that belief could draw on? Just trying to make sense of it made my head hurt and I closed my eyes. Why try to make sense of it? Why not just do it and trust to luck? I opened my eyes to see Harile looking at me expectantly.

“Try to get as many people singing as possible,” I said, all calm confidence. ”Just tell them to concentrate on the words and their wish to have your people safe and well. The jalquezan will do the rest.”

Harile’s brow cleared and he shrugged. “If it does no good, it can do no harm,” he smiled wearily. “And singing will certainly put some spirit in people.”

I’d have preferred a more whole-hearted endorsement but I’d take what was offered. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and see how my friends are getting on.” That was one rune laid, time for some more.

I saw the others clustered around Usara, who was settled on the ground, legs outstretched either side of a broad shallow bowl. I stood next to Gilmarten. ’Gren sat cross-legged opposite and Darni looked down over Usara’s head. Sorgrad sat a few paces away eating something, face neutral.

Dim green light began to gather and swirl in the bottom of the bowl, coalescing into a reflection that sparkled with the sharp uncluttered sunlight of the mountains, odd contrast to the muted light filtering through the woods where we sat. The image swooped and took flight, plunging down a stony track that coiled down the parched turf. Dry earth and broken rock filled the image, sliding past with a speed that baffled vision. I closed my eyes as my stomach protested.

“Where’s someone to fight?” demanded ’Gren.

Usara flexed his hands, tongue between his teeth as he concentrated. “I can’t find anyone close at hand, that’s something at least.”

“Just find the main bulk of their forces,” ordered Darni.

Usara looked up over his shoulder. “This would be a great deal easier without you breathing down my neck. I’ll manage my scrying as I see fit, thank you all the same.” He scowled. “I can’t be sure if their cursed aetheric magic is baffling my scrying.”

“Try it with this.” I dangled the Sheltya bitch’s paring knife over the bowl and smiled sweetly at Usara. “Isn’t your scrying much more certain with someone’s possessions?”

Usara narrowed his eyes at me but took the knife and dropped it into the water with an expressive flick of his fingers. I grinned at Sorgrad and ’Gren.

“Here we are,” said Usara suddenly. We all moved to look over his shoulder, jostling each other but careful not to jog the mage.

Green light rose from the water, soft and fragile in the sun. The silver of the knife blade glittered for a moment before disappearing as a little image floated on the surface of the water. It was the woman, in a rekin somewhere.

“I wouldn’t say all you Mountain Men look the same but your homes sure as curses do!” I murmured to Sorgrad. The woman was standing by a long slate table that could have been cut from the same slab as the one in the Hachalfess. As I spoke, the Sheltya woman crossed the cluttered living hall of the rekia. She went outside; Gilmartin caught his breath while the rest of us swore.

The compound was thronged with men and activity. Sheaves of arrows were being handed out from a workshop, swords strapped over mail-shirts and helms buckled beneath determined chins. The woman went from group to group, leaving each man grim-faced with hatred or bright-eyed with a hot rage that only vengeance would quench.

“You should have used the bluesalt, my girl,” said ’Gren without pleasure. He pointed out a head darker than the rest, gray Sheltya robes over workday leathers. It was the Elietimm enchanter and I cursed vilely.

“We’ll get him next time,” Sorgrad murmured. “See how he copes with a sword through his guts.”

I managed a thin smile. Usara’s spell drifted above the compound and we watched as the crowd ebbed and flowed, people spilling out onto the hillside below the great gates.

Mules laden with nameless bundles were tracking up the long haul, unidentifiable people trailing up after them. The broad valley was cut by myriad workings, old and new scored into the land around like the gouges of giant claws. Stone mills and limekilns sat huge and squat, the fess and the rekin almost insignificant, huddled among sprawling heaps of spoil. The mountains dwarfed everything, reaching upward into the blue sky, the color mirrored in Sorgrad’s eyes as he studied their summits and scarps.

“Someone’s planning a war,” Darni said with grim satisfaction.

“Show me the peaks,” asked Sorgrad abruptly.

Usara’s breath was laboring now, thin shoulders hunched, but he wheeled the image around and lifted it to the mountains high above the fess. A sharp-edged ridge of bare rock ran up to a snowy field of white, ice defying the summer sun in the hollow breast of the mountain. The ridge split into two, one spine running up to a ragged summit of tumbled rock, the other to a higher crest, notched and dished like a well-worn knife. Two mighty peaks dominated the head of the valley, one a thrusting spearhead clad in ice, riven down one face with deep clefts, the other dark and brooding, tolerating no snow on sides that the summer sun struck with the sheen of a raven’s wing.

“Teyvasoke,” said Sorgrad with utter certainty.

“You’re sure?” demanded Darni.

Sorgrad looked at him, face impassive. “I’m sure. You were taught the streets and houses of your hometown as a child? We are taught the peaks of all the ranges, east, west and middle.”

“Teyvasoke.” Darni tried the unfamiliar name on his tongue. “Where are we in relation to it?”

“About twelve days or so from here, traveling fast and light. I’ll draw you a map,” murmured Sorgrad. “If they don’t get here first.”

We looked down on a sizeable number, all intent on their various tasks. Tents were being set up, some in circles, others in neat rows, a few on their own. People were bringing in arms of brushwood and stubborn thorn, stacking the fuel by fire pits while others ferried water and slops. Chainmail gleamed in the sunlight and a few people hurrying to and fro without the burden of armor were dressed in the anonymous gray of the Sheltya. I stifled a faint shudder.

We watched for a while and nothing much happened but then the gates of the fess swung open and a small group emerged, catching up the curious as they headed for an open space in the valley. Everyone sat in a half-circle on the dry ground while the man who’d come out of the fess stood up to address them. He was stocky in build but with a face Niello would have paid good coin to model for an actor’s mask. Wiry golden hair was swept back from a broad forehead above a proud nose. The man’s jaw was square beneath a close-trimmed beard and, given his gestures, his mouth was as eloquent as it was handsome. He turned from side to side, hands expressive as they were spread in appeal, clenched in determined oration and finally raised to the skies in impassioned exhortation. The crowd stirred, soon nodding and echoing his movements as his words spurred them on. When he finished whatever it was he was saying with a flourish of his sword, his audience sprang to their feet, waving and visibly cheering, eagerness bright on every face. My frustration at not being able to hear this charismatic leader’s words was mirrored on everyone else’s expression as they gazed down at the face framed in the bowl while Usara bent all the spell’s attention on the man.

“We’d need ten times the men we’ve got here to stop them,” growled ’Gren.

“Who’s to defend these, if we take everyone who can stand and hold a weapon?” Darni glowered at the children, the elderly and the infirm.

“That would be a legitimate use of wizardry,” offered Gilmarten.

“Wouldn’t you be more use fighting?” Sorgrad countered. “A lightning bolt in the right place could do more damage than half a Tormalin cohort.”

“We’re going to have to be very careful where and how we fight.” Darni was ignoring this byplay. “Picking the right ground is going to be crucial.”

’Gren was watching the tiny figures drifting away from the speaker. “I don’t think he’s managed to rouse any complete soke. If this was a true host, like the old sagas, every fess would have its own fire, its own standard.”

“So who’s behind him?” I looked closer, trying to discern any difference worth the name in the multitude.

“Exiles, those driven out for some crime, real or imagined,” suggested Sorgrad with a thin smile.

“Younger sons from hungry lands,” offered ’Gren. “Sons of those that married out and lost their blood claim?”

“ ’Sar, I need you to scry all the closest valleys,” decided Darni. “See if they are all taking up arms or whether this is a limited rising, stirred up by Blondie there.”

“I don’t know what difference that makes,” muttered Usara rather testily. “There are scores of them, all with swords, and they’re heading this way.”

“Not necessarily,” Sorgrad shook his head. “They could head out into the Gap just as easily as swing south toward us.”

“All the more reason to try and put a stop to this good and fast.” Darni looked at Usara with ill-disguised impatience. “Look beyond the reach of your own hands, man!”

This was soldiers’ talk. But I’m not a soldier, never have been, never want to be. On the other hand, on a very few, desperate occasions in my early years on the road, hunger had forced me into lurking in alleys, cudgel in one hand and heart in my mouth. I’d always looked for some man careless in his drink with a well-filled pouch that I could follow and relieve of both senses and purse. At a head shorter than any potential mark and half the heft, I wasn’t about to take on anyone in an equal fight. A footpad goes for the head, not the arms.

“What if you kill off their leaders?” I asked. “The Ice Islanders fighting in Kellarin last summer gave up at once when their commanders died.”

“Then Elietimm have less in common with the Men of the Mountains than they claim,” responded Sorgrad with contempt. “Anyatimm are trained to take over any task if another man’s injured, be it in the diggings, on the trap line or fighting lowlanders in the Gap.”

“They’re paying a lot of heed to Pretty Boy though,” mused ’Gren. “I bet him catching an arrow in the throat would give them pause for thought. A mob’s only as strong as whoever’s holding it together, ’Grad, you know that.”

“What about the Sheltya?” I suggested. “Especially if they’re using aetheric magic to keep everyone together.”

Sorgrad grimaced. “You’d be swapping silver for copper, my girl. Killing Sheltya gets you staked out on a mountainside alive for as long as it takes the ravens to find you and peck out your eyes and liver. Kill Sheltya and that army will be out to avenge a blood feud.”

“What about this Ice Islander?” Nervousness gnawed at the pit of my belly.

Darni looked at Sorgrad. “Would blood loyalty extend to him? I’ll bet half the wealth of Hadrumal he’s at the bottom of this mischief.”

“Even if he’s claiming to be Sheltya, he’s not born to any soke this side of the ocean, let alone the Gap,” replied Sorgrad slowly. “Everyone can see that from his face and hair. They’d probably look to avenge his death, but I can’t see it ranking as blood insult.”

“Family’s everything in the mountains,” ’Gren nodded. “The knife cuts both ways; if you’re not family, you’re nothing.”

“So what if we take the Elietimm enchanter out of the balance?” I persisted. “The Sheltya stay neutral normally, we know that.” I felt my way cautiously through this. “For them to get involved, something must have stirred them up. Given what we saw at the Hachalfess, the Sheltya reckon to be cock of the dunghill, so it would have to be someone out of the ordinary run of the runes. It has to be the enchanter, doesn’t it?”

“He could well be a key link holding a lot of this together,” Sorgrad looked more cheerful. “It’s got to be worth seeing what happens if we snap it.”

“So the three of us go up into the heights and deal with him,” suggested ’Gren. “You lick these Folk into shape, Darni, and stop Pretty Boy’s little army getting any deeper into trouble in the meantime.”

“I’d certainly take any road that offered a short cut through this,” muttered Darni. “I’ve no troops for a pitched battle.”

“I’m sorry but I really cannot agree to this.” We all looked at Usara and the wizard’s fair coloring betrayed him. “I need Sorgrad here,” he said, getting defiantly to his feet and letting his spell fade unheeded. “Planir told me I was to use my powers together with Gilmarten and any other mage I could find locally.”

“I’m no mage and neither you nor your Archmage has any claim on me,” replied Sorgrad in a level tone.

“I understand you could never explore the potential of your wizardry, given your birth and upbringing,” Usara continued as if Sorgrad had not spoken, “but even untrained as you are we can drill you in some simple spells.”

“No,” said Sorgrad.

Usara stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t make myself clear?” Sorgrad’s eyes were cold and hard. “No.”

“This is no time to be stubborn, man. You are mage-born!” Usara’s puzzlement soured toward anger. “You have a duty to use that wizardry and I cannot imagine a more crucial time for you to accept your responsibilities!”

“I have no duty to an accident of birth,” replied Sorgrad with contempt. “I bear no more responsibility for it than you do for losing your hair. My loyalty is to my blood and my friends.”

“Even if your attitude leaves these people dead on the Forest floor?” demanded Usara hotly. “When your cooperation could have saved them?”

’Gren stirred and I gave him a warning glare; I had another rune to turn this hand. “What exactly did Planir say?” The wizard was momentarily disconcerted as I claimed his attention by standing between him and Sorgrad. It wasn’t the most sensible place to be but someone had to stop this from turning into a fistfight.

“I asked what I was supposed to do, given there wasn’t another mage hereabouts beyond Gilmarten—and me,” Usara replied crossly. “Planir said not to be so sure of that and then he broke the link. He must have meant Sorgrad, that’s all there is to it.”

“Says who?” demanded ’Gren belligerently. “How’s he ever even heard of my brother?”

“I told my Archmage that I had discovered magebirth was not unknown among the Mountain Men, as we have always supposed.” Usara lifted his chin defiantly. “That you seem unaccountably able to suppress your elemental affinity—” he shot Sorgrad a look of annoyance and suspicion—“is something better left until we return to Hadrumal. We can explore that peculiarity there.”

“You can forget that, mage,” said Sorgrad disdainfully. “I’m not going to Hadrumal as long as I’ve got a hole in my arse.”

Usara squared up to Sorgrad like a bantam taking on a fighting cock. “Planir said—”

“Why do you say magebirth is unknown among the people of the mountains?” Gilmarten’s courteous question in his soft Soluran lilt cut through Usara’s ire like a knife through cheese. The mage was still looking relatively dapper after our rough couple of days, though the loss of his hat meant he was a little sun-scorched around the face.

“Because it is, I mean, they don’t.” Usara looked bemused.

“They do in Solura.” Gilmarten looked a little self-conscious. “At least, I have met mages of both half- and quarter-Mountain blood and heard tell of at least one pure-blooded.”

“Something else you lot in Hadrumal got wrong?” ’Gren taunted.

“What about Forest blood?” Usara’s question was half a heartbeat behind my own.

“Something else you don’t know, Sandy?” asked ’Gren silkily.

The Soluran wizard nodded. “It’s the same as far as I know; uncommon, but not unheard of.”

“There’s your answer then.” I spoke hurriedly to stop ’Gren stirring the fire any higher. “If you want to get yourself a new apprentice, we see if there’s someone here with the…” I couldn’t think how to phrase it. “Somebody mage-born.”

“We have methods of teaching by rote in my tradition that could certainly offer these people some means of protection,” offered Gilmarten with a nervous smile. Usara looked obstinate but also unsure, aware that the ground had somehow shifted under him.

“Let’s get a grip on the reins here. Squabbling among ourselves is just handing advantage to the enemy,” said Darni firmly. “We need to know who we are fighting, so ’Sar, scry out the closest valleys. See which are mustering for a fight. You two, you know the mountains and you know fighting; the hunters here know the woods. We need to draw up a map tying everything together. We’ll want at least one trained mage in any fight but if we can find mage-born folk hereabouts who can defend their own, that’ll free up more fighting men and women. Gilmarten and Livak, go and see what you can find out.”

Darni’s bull-headed assumption of command at least broke the deadlock. The big fighter headed for Bera and ’Gren followed, Sorgrad walking more slowly, expression unreadable. Usara sniffed crossly as he bent over his scrying bowl but the irritation in his face gradually waned as he wrought his magic.

I turned to Gilmarten, who smiled uncertainly at me. “Let’s start with Harile,” I suggested. “He’ll probably have some ideas about who might be mage-born.”

We went into the gray gloom of the cave mouth. “Harile?”

“Over here.” He picked his way through the pallets and blankets wrapping tightly packed bodies. “What can I do for you?”

“Usara’s scrying out your enemies,” I pointed out the mage hunched over his bowl. “If you’ve something to dull pain without addling his wits, it would help.”

“I can make a tisane to give him a lift,” Harile suggested.

“Many thanks.” I felt Gilmarten stir beside me. “I was wondering, do you ever have mage-born among the Folk?” I asked casually. “It shows itself about the age Drianon bloods a girl, among the outdwellers at least.”

We followed Harile to a fire where he swung a battered kettle over the hottest flames. “We tend to notice it hereabouts when Trimon breaks a boy’s voice. With girls it’s any time after Larasion brings them into bloom.”

“What do you notice? What exactly signifies magebirth to you?” Gilmarten tugged absently on his tuft of beard.

“Some are an utter nuisance anywhere near a hearth until it passes. Fire either burns through half a night’s fuel inside a few moments or just dies away and refuses to be relit.” Harile paused in mixing pinches of herbs in a beaker. “You get some who don’t leave a footprint for half a year, and there’s always the story of one lass who got rained on from Solstice to Solstice, just her, you understand, no one else.” He laughed. “But I’ve heard that tale from a handful of folk between here and the southern sea, all saying it happened to a friend of a friend, so I think that’s just wind in the long grass.”

“Let me take that to Usara.” I reached for the cup and Gilmarten walked with me. He scratched his head, perplexed. “I’ve never heard of sympathy with an element just going away.”

“Can you tell if someone is mage-bom? Is there some test?” I set the cup down next to Usara and we went back to Harile, who was mulching some leaves into a poultice.

“There are methods of determining where the principal sympathy lies,” Gilmarten answered, “when the effects are first manifesting themselves.” He looked concerned. “Is it possible that if a sympathy is not trained it is lost?”

“Not if Sorgrad’s any guide,” I said with determination. “Harile, do you know of anyone here who once showed signs of magebirth? They might be able to help our wizards defend your sick and elderly.”

Harile set his bowl of pulpy mess down at once. “Come with me.” He led us to a fire no more than a few embers smoldering in a nest of feathery ash. Those sitting around it were somewhere between youth and adulthood, with little more than a blanket and a few salvaged possessions to cling to. None had anything like blithe confidence I had come to expect from Forest Folk.

“This is Sarachi.” Harile indicated a youth with Forest red hair over a face that should have been following a plow in Caladhria. “He showed magebirth, as far as we could judge.”

“What of it?” The lad had a hint of spirit left.

“This wizard thinks you could help him.” Harile indicated Gilmarten.

Sarachi started to get to his feet but Gilmarten waved him to sit again. I perched on a stump and watched quietly. Gilmarten lit a twig from the last glow of the fire.

“Concentrate on the flame.” He handed it to Sarachi. “See if you can make it smaller.” To my eyes, the feeble yellow flicker didn’t vary in the slightest until the flame threatened his fingers and Sarachi dropped the spill.

“I need a cup of water.” Gilmarten looked around as if he expected to see a potman. One of the girls wordlessly handed him a carved wooden beaker. “Cup your hands.” Gilmarten poured a little water into Sarachi’s hollowed palms. “Keep it there as long as you can.” Disappointment was audible all around as the water trickled out from between Sarachi’s fingers, despite the effort whitening his knuckles.

“No matter.” Gilmarten sounded as if he meant it. If he didn’t I’d finally met a wizard to challenge to a game of Raven. The Soluran scraped up a handful of earth, picking out fragments of long rotted leaf and then dusting it lightly with ash from the fire. He pressed this into Sarachi’s open palm. “See if you can lift the ash out of the earth. Concentrate, visualize the gray moving out of the brown and being carried away on the wind.”

Sarachi frowned with effort and in the next instant the whole handful spiraled upward into the air. We all looked up and then cursed as specks of dirt fell in our open mourns and wide eyes.

“An air sympathy,” said Gilmarten happily, “or affinity as they would call it in Hadrumal.”

“But you told me to concentrate on the earth,” objected Sarachi.

“Bluffing, wizard?” I teased.

“Something like that. An untrained sympathy can hamper itself; combined trials get around the problem.” Gilmarten looked around. “Does anyone know someone else who showed signs of magebirth?”

A thin girl with lank brown hair raised a bruised and dirty hand. “Castan did.”

We found this Castan at a hearth on the far side of the hollow, a no-nonsense woman with red-rimmed eyes. The notion that her previously disregarded magebirth might help protect her three young offspring set the fire raging beneath her cook pot. Gilmarten explained, we doused the conflagration and moved rapidly on to the next potential wizard.

By the time we returned to Usara, we had seven in tow. Sarachi was joined by a lad whose fuzz of a beard only showed where it caught the light and a tired-faced man in his middle years. Castan was leading three younger women, all smiling nervously and variously encouraged or teased by their friends. We left behind five others, some disgruntled, some relieved, when Gilmarten had pronounced them either never mage-born or with a sympathy so faint it could not be trained.

“Darni is one of those, an affinity too weak to work with,” I told the Soluran quietly as we left one disappointed man crossly poking his recalcitrant fire with a vindictive stick.

“I didn’t know that.” Gilmarten looked thoughtful. “Still, that means we can bespeak him with fire and metal if he’s elsewhere.”

“He doesn’t have to be an actual wizard for that? Just mage-born?” The next step was an obvious one.

Gilmarten made it. “No, and that means we could contact your friend Sorgrad, if he is willing to acknowledge his sympathy to that extent.”

“I’ll see if I can talk him into it.” Sorgrad might not want to be a mage on Hadrumal’s terms, but if he didn’t see advantages in having wizards keeping us informed about what they could scry out, he wasn’t the man I knew. Of course, there would be disadvantages as well, but we’d find ways around those.

Usara looked up from his bowl as we reached him. He eased his stiff shoulders, each giving a crack that made me wince. “Well?”

“Seven,” Gilmarten’s excitement was understandable. “One each with earth and air, three with fire, which is most unusual, and two with water.”

Usara’s tense face lightened considerably. “That’s two full nexus groups!”

Gilmarten tugged at his beard. “That’s not a way we are accustomed to work in Solura, but perhaps we can manage.”

“We could do without all this noise.”

Darni came over, parchments in hand, ’Gren and Sorgrad behind, heads close in conversation. The gentle song of a lute was blending with a pipe somewhere the far side of the dell, underscored with voices here and there. The melody swelled as everyone united in the same measure for a few moments and ebbed with descant and counterpoint floating in from different directions.

“I like it,” said ’Gren with simple honesty. A single clear voice lifted a new tune, others repeating it a few measures later, doubling and redoubling into a round song.

“If your countrymen have an ear for a tune, it’ll lead them straight to us,” pointed out Darni. I held my breath and my tongue.

“I can use air to cap it?” Gilmarten offered. “I’d be loath to forbid it since they do seem to find some healing in the music.”

Usara shot me a suspicious glance that I returned with a bland look of innocence. I wasn’t about to admit to a hand in this outbreak of singing, not until I had some way of judging whether my speculation was paying off.

Darni grunted. “So what have you found for us?” He smiled at the nervous would-be wizards with all the charm of a man-trap.

I moved to talk to Sorgrad and ’Gren as Gilmarten told his tale. “How’ve you been faring?”

“We’ve got some sound maps drawn up,” Sorgrad said neutrally.

“You agree we should make a play for this Ice Islander? Knock him off the board?” If Sorgrad reckoned this was folly, I’d have to abandon the idea.

“If we can find the bastard.” Sorgrad nodded. “It’s got to be the quickest way to put the mockers on this fighting. These Forest Folk might be getting hit with the shitty end of the privy stick for the present, but if the lowlanders get involved penny to a pack weight the Anyatimm will lose in the end.”

“That’s good enough for me,” said ’Gren, looking dangerous.

“Since when did you need an excuse?” Sorgrad gave his brother a genial shove.

I looked up, but Darni and Usara were still deep in conversation with Gilmarten. “This Ice Islander, he’s going to know plenty about this aetheric magic. That’s what we’ve been looking for, to turn into coin since we started this game. I’ve been thinking he might be worth more to us alive.”

“You’re still aiming to kidnap him?” Sorgrad looked at me sharply. “That’s a high-stakes game, my girl.”

“Long odds pay best,” I told him. “We don’t have a lot to show for half a year on the road so far, do we?”

“But Sandy said you mustn’t!” gasped ’Gren, wide-eyed in mockery.

“Since when did I answer to him?” I retorted with a grin.

“It’ll be cursed dangerous,” commented Sorgrad thoughtfully. “We’d have to make sure he can’t use any enchantments on us.”

“If we can’t work out a way to do it safely, then we just kill him,” I promised.

“Knock him hard enough on the head and he won’t be any trouble,” suggested ’Gren.

“Knock him too hard and he won’t be any use,” I countered.

“Sandy and the Bear won’t like it,” pointed out ’Gren with ill-concealed glee.

“By the time they work out what we’re up to, it’ll be too late.” I smiled. “They agreed we could take him out of the balance. I never said exactly how.”

“According to Darni, those mages will be able to bespeak me,” Sorgrad said dourly. “Whether I like it or not.”

“Couldn’t you suffer having Usara scry out our escape route and telling us if the way is clear? What are they going to do even if they see things they don’t like? They’re not going to be able to stop us.” I waved a dismissive hand.

“Over here!” We all turned our heads at Darni’s peremptory summons.

“He really does think he’s biggest toad in the pond,” murmured ’Gren.

“Let him play king of the log if he wants,” I advised. “We’re in this for ourselves. Yes, Darni, what now?”

Darni looking determined was an awesome sight. “Now I start drilling anyone and everyone capable of fighting. ’Sar and Gilmarten teach their new apprentices enough to keep the tail end here safe from harm. You three try to take this Ice Islander out of the game. The good news is this uprising looks limited to just three valleys. We need to nip it in the bud before it spreads, and the loss of their enchanter might just be enough to do it.”

“Fair enough.” Anticipation warred with misgivings inside me. But this time I’d have Sorgrad and ’Gren with me to tilt the odds my way, I reminded myself.

“If we’re going to tackle him, we need to know where he is,” Sorgrad said to Usara.

“He’s been sticking closer to her ladyship than her shift,” the mage replied. “In the Teyvafess.”

“Can you get these Folk to hold the line long enough for us to get there?” I demanded.

“Can’t Sandy do some magic to send us?” protested ’Gren. “It’s a cursed long walk.”

“A mage can only do that kind of thing to somewhere he’s already been,” I explained.

“One of you mages will have to bespeak me if she goes anywhere else.” Sorgrad looked at Darni. “You’ll have to spare us some bowmen, preferably ones who can handle a sword. It’ll just be the three of us going in, but we have to expect pursuit. They can wait half a day back, closer if the ground favors concealment.”

“I’m coming with you,” said Usara abruptly; his face was pale and set. “I cannot let you risk Elietimm enchantments without some real magic backing you up. We’ve all seen what these people are capable of and I am not going to be the one telling Planir I let you go without all the support I could offer.” He managed a strained smile. “Worrying as I find these Ice Islanders and their enchantments, I’m rather more afraid of our revered Archmage.”

“But you can barely walk, man! And you wizards are horribly vulnerable when you set your minds on your own spells,” I pointed out. “That’s how they got at Otrick.”

“This enchanter would have to know I was there in order to go hunting me,” Usara said stiffly. “With Guinalle’s help over the last few seasons, we have been finding ways of working magic to evade aetheric notice.”

That was all very well as long as it was only his own sanity he was risking, but if the Elietimm got him they’d be halfway to getting me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see how I was going to stop him coming short of stabbing him in the other leg, which I couldn’t see going down well with Darni or Gilmarten.

“There’s no chance of you coming into the fess itself; Sheltya clearly have some way of telling mages. You stay with the bowmen and you sit on your hands until after we’ve made our move.” Sorgrad’s decision startled me but his tone made it clear it was final. “I want your word on that, Usara, by everything you hold holy.”

“If he can’t come in and he can’t use his magic, why do we want him along?” objected ’Gren. “And he’ll have to hop all the way there and back.”

“He can learn to use crutches or he’ll just have to follow on behind.” Sorgrad smiled at Usara. “We’re likely to come out of there with every hound in the soke on our trail. Then you can use all the magic you want, Sandy, raise fire to scour our scent clean off the rocks.”

’Gren and I exchanged a look of understanding. Getting in to steal something is only ever half the task. It’s getting out again with the spoils that marks the successful thief.