In Treachery Forged (The Law of Swords) (7 page)

“Perhaps not, but we shall see,” Maelgyn said. “I’ve been too concerned with getting to Sopan to think about it much.”

“Aye, that’s another thing I wanted to talk with you about,” Ruznak growled, once more focusing his stare on Maelgyn. “I want you to take care of my little girl on your trip through the mountains, boy. Sword Prince or not, me with one leg or not, if you let something happen to her I
will
hunt you down and kill you.”

Maelgyn swallowed nervously. Even in his nineties and with one leg, the old Admiral cut an imposing figure. “I... well, I’ll do what I can. To be honest, I never agreed to ‘guide’ her through the mountains. I’ve got a lot of questions for her, to be sure, but... well, she never talked about coming with me. In fact, all I expected her to do when she said to follow her was for her to lead me to the ferry.”

A dark grin spread out on Ruznak’s face. “Well, that sounds like her, all right. You don’t mind helping, though, do you?”

“Of course not,” Maelgyn said. “I don’t know what I’m helping her
do,
exactly, but I’ll assist her in any way I can, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the war effort. I’m not sure why she needs my help, though – she seems an impressive enough mage to handle any brigands she runs across. I stopped a pack of them who were surrounding her when I got into town across the river, but from the way she reacted to the whole affair I’m pretty sure she knows she could have handled them, herself.”

“She could have,” Ruznak agreed. “She’s not afraid of being attacked. All she needs is what she asked for – a guide, someone to help her find the right trail.”

“I’ve got a spare map of the area, if she needs it,” Maelgyn suggested. “I’m making this trip the first time, myself, though, so I’m not sure how good of a guide I would be.”

“No,” the old man hesitated. “I don’t think a map would work.”

“Can’t she read maps?” Maelgyn asked. “I mean, I don’t know what she needs to go into Sopan for, but I’m going to have to leave in the morning... surely she’s going to want more time to get ready to go.”

“She’s been ready to go,” Ruznak explained. “She’s been looking for a guide for a while, now, and had recently been trying to raise the money to hire one. She, uh, really isn’t able to read a map, but she needs to get to Sopan as soon as possible. A private organization which manufactures mage-produced tools and metalwork agreed to hire her, but only if she can get there before they can otherwise fill the position. Her bags have been packed so that she could leave right away, if necessary.”

Maelgyn grinned. “Well, I can guarantee her employment in Sopan. If she’s too late to get that job I’ll hire her into the Sword’s Service as a court mage. No one that talented should be unemployed long.”

“If she’s willing,” Ruznak agreed, although his tone suggested he doubted Euleilla would be. “At any rate, you will take care of her, right?”

“Of course,” Maelgyn nodded.

“Good,” Ruznak enthusiastically bellowed. “In that case...” He clapped his hands, and immediately three more waitresses showed up carrying platters full of food. “Let’s eat. You’ve got a big journey ahead of you, and you should start it fresh and well fed.”

Chapter 5

Despite the rain, slow whirlwinds of magic dust continued to surround Euleilla. As they made their way through the mountains, however, a tendril of that dust had moved forward and wrapped itself around Maelgyn’s ankle as well. He still had no idea what purpose it served, or why she had decided to encircle him with it, but he’d given up getting a straight answer from her before she’d even taken him to the Left Foot Inn. He’d tried asking Ruznak some of the questions surrounding the girl before they parted, but the old sailor only shook his head, saying, “She’ll tell you if she wants you to know.”

It seemed she didn’t want him to know anything. He hoped, in the event of a crisis, she would answer questions that needed answering, but he was willing to allow her privacy until then. Still, the fact that she ‘leashed’ him with her superfine magic dust disturbed him a bit.

She wasn’t walking with the same self-assurance she had shown in Rocky Run. Her steps were more cautious and the rain had slowed her more than he was expecting. It had been raining for four days straight and both he and Euleilla were soaked to the bone. She didn’t complain, exactly, but she did stop smiling for all of one minute when they set up their camp one night. That had been when her tent tore under the weight of the rain water. Maelgyn had given her his tent, and now
he
was the one sleeping in the rain at nights.

Those wet nights left him tired, cranky, a little sick, and frustrated – especially when they had to head right back to the start of the trail after a mudslide closed the pass he initially planned to take. That had set him back a full day, and he was fairly certain that wouldn’t be the only setback they would have... particularly if it continued to rain like it was.

He turned his head around to watch how his charge was doing, and saw, to his astonishment, her walk head-first into an overhanging tree-limb weighed down with rain.

“Euleilla!” he called, quickly stepping over to her. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” she said, apparently unconcerned about her injury. He could see a tiny bit of blood trickling down her cheek from somewhere above her abnormal hairline.

“No, you’re not. You’re bleeding... didn’t you see the tree limb?”

“Nope,” she answered, reaching a finger up to touch her cheek, and seemingly noticing the blood for the first time.

“Why not? It was right in front of you!”

She froze, not answering for a moment. For the first time that he’d known her, Euleilla actually looked... afraid. There had been times on their journey when she’d looked uncomfortable or hesitant, but he had never seen her afraid. Her smile completely left its face, and Maelgyn knew that there was something seriously wrong. Finally, she sighed, and lifted her hand to raise the hair that covered her eyes. There, he could see, were two eyes which had been scarred over – one scar jagged, the other a perfectly straight line. Both scars, however, covered eyes which would never open again.

“I... I can’t see anything,” was all she said.

“What happened to you?” Maelgyn couldn’t help but ask. He was still astonished that the person who had been his guide all across Rocky Run couldn’t see. She had never shown any sign that she was blind... well, no obvious signs. Suddenly, the whirlwind of magic powder around her made sense: That was how she “saw.” And the “leash” around him wasn’t a leash at all. It was a lifeline.

“My father – my
real
father – was a failed mage and alchemist,” she began. Maelgyn nodded. Failed mages frequently went on to become alchemists. With few exceptions, mage training had to begin at birth or you could never quite grasp the technique needed to access magical abilities. Sometimes a person would be trained as a mage but discovered as they aged that they weren’t powerful enough to use magic effectively. The rate of failure was partly why parents were so reluctant to have their children learn magic.

In Svieda, only about one out of every ten students failed. Those numbers rose and fell depending on family background, where one lived, how they were instructed, and several similar factors, and Svieda had an atypically high success rate. There were only two fields of magic use open to a failed mage: Teachers (failed mages frequently gave the best magical instruction as they would have tried everything to learn magic, themselves) and alchemists (who, unlike the chemists who studied medicines and poisons, typically studied elemental change and magically reactive substances). Alchemy really was the ideal career for a failed mage, who might still have enough magical strength for alchemy, even if they couldn’t use magic for other practical applications.

“Go on,” He said softly, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Euleilla spoke again, haltingly at first, and then the words came faster and faster. After the long, silent journey this far, the sudden avalanche of words was all the more striking. “He was able to teach me the basics of magic. I proved to be quite talented at it, so he arranged for me to apprentice under a mage named Cawnpore. Cawnpore was a harsh but effective teacher, who also happened to be a rather violent drunkard. Still, while my father was alive, he made sure he was sober around me – my father had earned his respect, somehow, and so he did nothing which might anger him.

“My father was working on developing a potion for a mining company in Sycanth – something which would dissolve quartz but leave gold unharmed. Unfortunately, a rival company wanted to stop him. At first they tried hiring away my father, but he refused. Then they tried intimidating him. We left town, moving from place to place all the way across Svieda, until we finally settled in Rocky Run. I was eight years old, I think, and it wasn’t until much later I understood what was going on.

“My father kept working on his research while in hiding. He hoped that we would be able to live our normal lives again if he could just finish that potion. Any gain for the mining companies at his death would then be moot. And finish it he did. He knew it was risky, but he sent for his old friend, and my old teacher, Cawnpore – he wanted someone to guard him when we returned to our old home and sold the new formula. This may have been how they found out where we were, since before Cawnpore arrived we were attacked by an assassin. My father tried to fight him off, but while my father killed the assassin the damage had been done. He had been poisoned, and died less than a week later. What happened to me, though, was much worse in his eyes.”

She pointed to her own eye – the one with the jagged scar. “That was where I got this. One of my father’s chemicals exploded, sending a wooden splinter right into my eye. A surgeon managed to remove the splinter with very little damage, but I will never see out of that eye again.”

Maelgyn swallowed hard – not just because the story disturbed him, but also because he felt a rage building inside of him the more he heard of her story. How dare one of Svieda’s own mining factions harm another citizen of Svieda? It was an outrage... and one which should have been dealt with long ago. “Was any investigation made? Did anyone look for the assassin’s employer? Did anyone look for an antidote to the poison your father was given? Did anyone do
anything?
”

“No,” Euleilla repeated softly, bitterly. “The assassin was so badly burned he could not be identified, so there was no investigation. And my father didn’t bother looking for an antidote. Before he married my late mother, he apprenticed under the man who developed it, and knew there was no way one could be made before he died.”

“Who developed the poison, then?” Maelgyn asked, clenching his fists tighter. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to find the killers, if they could figure out who developed the poison.

“Delbruck.”

Delbruck. Maelgyn bit his lip to hide his disappointment. The most well-respected master of his craft in a century, Delbruck had developed several important medicines... and many more of the most dangerous poisons in existence. He combined magic, alchemy, and chemistry to revolutionize medicine in Svieda... but then he’d been arrested and imprisoned as a traitor for selling poisons to the Borden Isle rebels. He was found guilty of treason and summarily executed, but it made little difference to his reputation as an alchemist. He had many apprentices, and many of them had built on what he had theorized following his death. Apparently, Euleilla’s father had been one of them. If it was a Delbruck poison, there would have been no way to trace it to a particular source.

“Damn,” Maelgyn softly cursed. “So what happened?”

“My father spent his last days reconstructing his mining formula. He wrote it down and gave it to me, telling me to use the money he was supposed to be paid to continue my studies as a mage, and to live a good life. Then, as his last act, he wrote a letter to Cawnpore, asking him to raise me and complete my study of magic.

“I don’t know what my father meant to old Cawnpore, but when I showed him my father’s letter, he broke down and wept. He took the money my father had willed to me from his formula and bought us a house in Rocky Run.

“He continued to teach me for about a year following my father’s death, but as time wore on something about him changed. He had taken to drinking himself into a stupor on a daily basis, and I had to study on my own more and more. I eventually learned the final lesson on my own – the secret of why lodestones work against magic, and how magic relates to lodestones. I assume you’re aware of it?”

Maelgyn nodded. “My own magic tutor had to leave when I was sixteen, but he wanted me to keep up the study and so explained the secret to me.”

“Sixteen?” Euleilla mused. “I was twelve when I learned it. Ah, but I realize that was rather unusual... and it was my downfall. Cawnpore got drunk one night, and he tried to use my position as his apprentice to order me to do some things that weren’t quite legal. I knew he was drunk and would never have ordered that were he sober, and so I refused, but he warned me that he would throw me on the streets if I refused.

“I responded quite... vociferously. I told him I didn’t need him anymore – that I’d figured out the secret, and that all he was doing was holding me back. I told him that I only stayed with him because my father had wanted me to, but if he continued to treat me like a slave I would leave.

“He flew into a rage when I said that, and attacked me. He said some horrible things to me; how he hated me, how he blamed me for father ‘letting’ himself die instead of researching a cure, how he found my scarred face too ugly for words, and that I’d be lucky to ever receive a ‘good offer’ from anyone but him without my eye.