[Lanen Kaelar 03] - Redeeming the Lost (16 page)

“Goddess knows, that’s true enough,” he said. “Though
a legitimate complaint would have to be investigated. We healers are not ruled
by the Archimage, but led by him. Even he is answerable to the Council of Mages
assembled.”

“Would the word of one man, unknown to any of
you, have any weight in that Council?” I asked wearily.

“It might, if you have proof, or another
witness,” he replied. “Have you?”

‘The proof of my own eyes and those of half a
dozen others, of spiriting a”—I took a deep breath, and pitched my voice low
that it might not crack—“of spiriting my daughter away from me and from her
husband some four days since. But I don’t know where he is. I need help.”

To my surprise Rikard closed his eyes, as if
in pain. “Shia keep you, Master Jamie,” he said, wincing. When he looked up
again, those sharp eyes were more gentle. “I really am a Healer, you know,” he
said quietly. “I’ve been doing this for forty years, I don’t need to summon
power to see your pain. The merest glance—very well. Let us start again. I am
Magister Rikard, of the College of Mages. How may I help save your daughter? Is
she ill?”

“No. She’s in the power of the bastard you
serve, and I fear with every breath I take that he’ll murder her soon if he
hasn’t already.”

Rikard caught his breath, and his eyes
widened. “Why has he taken her?” he asked urgently.

“I have no idea, though I think it might be to
put her in the power of Marik of Gundar.” Her father, as it happens, but you
don’t need to know that. “What I don’t know is where he has taken her. Is Berys
here at the College?”

“I spoke with him not half an hour gone.”

I felt a great weight lift from off my
shoulders. “Blessed be Shia. If he’s here, she’s here.” \

“How can you be certain?” asked Rikard
quietly.

“I can’t, not entirely,” I said quietly. “He
might have murdered her by now; but if she lives he’ll have her close. Likely
in one of those old detention cells, if you don’t know different. I know not
what he needs her for, but certain sure he’s not stolen her away for her
health.”

“May the Goddess bless you forever, Master
Jamie,” said Rikard, his eyes gleaming in the dim light. “I’ve been trying to
get hard evidence against him for years.” Suddenly he drew back. “Though I warn
you, if you are lying, Healer or no I’ll have it out of your hide.”

“He really is a twisty bastard, isn’t he?” I
chuckled. “Goddess. If you’re looking for treachery everywhere—no wonder he’s
grown so strong.”

Rikard sat back. “It’s true. Though I have no
real reason to trust you.” His gaze never left mine, and after a while he added
wearily, “Right now, I don’t even care. I’m sick unto death of it all. If you’re
working for him, so be it. I’d rather have an open fight than creep about
suspicious of everyone for the rest of my life.” His eyes began to gleam again
in the firelight. “And if you speak truth—Goddess, I’ve been looking for proof
against him for years now.”

“You haven’t been looking in the right places,”
I snorted. “Hells, I saw him murder a poor babe near twenty-five years gone,
making a Farseer. He was a demon-master then. Lady Shia only knows what he is
now.”

“Will you denounce him in public?” asked
Rikard. The change in him was amazing—he looked now like a drawn sword ready to
strike. “Will you dare repeat such things to the assembled Council of Mages?”

“I’ll cry it in the town square if you like,
but first”—I grabbed a fistful of his robe and pulled him close to me—“first I
get my daughter out of his hands.”

“Agreed,” he said calmly. “Let go of me,
please, and listen carefully. The passwords you will need are very simple.”

“M’name’s Gerander,” I said, sweeping off my
recently acquired cap. “I’m Magister Rikard’s new man, come to sign in.”

“Left it a bit late, haven’t you, Gerander?”
asked the man at the gate, suspiciously. As well he might be. I had been living
rough for some time, I had put on my grubbiest clothes, and I had to admit that
I looked more than a bit suspect. That was the idea. Let him see the clothing,
not the man, and I could pass easily enough later without being recognised. “And
you’ve chosen the wrong name to call, Magister Rikard is—”

“Is here, Norris, thank you,” said Rikard
briskly. “I know, he’s not very prepossessing, but there’s a good man under all
that grime. I’ll have him wash and get him a set of server’s gear so he won’t
offend you. Or me,” he said, with a wink at Norris. We both passed through the
gates, I under intense inspection, and into the courtyard. It was not brightly
lit, but the lantern I carried shed enough light that I could see the small
gratings off to my right, where Rikard said she was most likely being held. I
contrived to walk to the right of the Magister, stomping my feet a little that
I might get an idea of the echo and the sound.

As I passed the third along I thought the echo
sounded a little dull. That was the ruined one, I’d been told—but I didn’t
believe more than half of what I’d heard. Oh, surely those who spoke thought
they spoke true, but they weren’t nearly suspicious enough of Berys. I’d lay
money Lanen was there, in that “ruined” cell. My heart beat faster—she was so
close—if I had a dragon’s strength I could have torn a hole in the stone wall
and dragged
her out, if I left now
and rode like fury I could get Shikrar or one of the other really big ones—

No. No time. Rikard had said Berys had called
on all the College to gather after they had eaten. That meant about now. I
hurried to catch up with Rikard, who walked quite calmly until he was out of
sight of the guard at the gate. Then he grabbed my sleeve and we both ran. His
chambers were nearby and he locked the door behind us.

As I was throwing off my worst garments and
swiftly darkening my face and hands with soot from the little grate, I begged a
scrap of parchment and the use of pen and ink. I scribbled a brief note as
Rikard went over the directions we had rehearsed.

“Back out into the corridor, turn left, take
the first corridor to your right and then the little stairs down to the left.
It’s not very far along, mind or you’ll miss it in the dark.” I folded the
little scrap of parchment and tucked it in my scrip. Rikard handed me the dark
lantern he had lit from his own lamp, and a small key. “Once you’ve got her
out, bring her back here to my chambers. That’s the spare key to these rooms,
so she can lock herself in here. Then you keep the rest of your bargain—keep
straight along the corridor in front of this room, along to the end, then
right, it’s the fourth door on the right, a big double door of old oak. You
listen carefully outside that to see how the wind’s blowing. If you hear a lot
of shouting, come in and be ready to defend yourself.”

“I’ll do my best. And Magister—” I caught his
eye. “Thank you.”

“Get her out, son, and then you can help me
bring down that devil,” he growled. “With Shia’s blessing, we’ll have done a
fine night’s work between us.”

I nodded to him and slipped out into the
corridor, dark lantern in my hand, keeping to the shadows and moving as fast as
I dared.

I strode towards the meeting chamber. My heart
beat faster, knowing that I finally might have a way to depose Berys. Hard
proof, after all these years! I sent a blessing on Jamie’s errand, wondering
briefly if I should have asked him to bring the girl before the assembly as
further proof. No matter, if she was wanted she could be fetched once he had
her safe in my quarters.

The doors to the chamber stood open, but
unusually there were guards at the door. I didn’t recognise either of them, and
they were roughly twice my size.

And very heavily armed.

If I had not chanced to meet with Jamie that
evening, I truly believe I would not have noticed. Perhaps it was that little
touch of fear, of his being discovered, that had me on the alert. The presence
of two such large and well-appointed strangers at such a time was very peculiar
indeed. I glanced into the chamber without going in. It was already full.

In fact it was brimming over. Every
Magister—well, nearly every one, a few came along behind me and wandered in,
chatting of nothing much—every student was there. Even the paid servers.

It was so very, very wrong.

And in the moment, there flashed before my
eyes the sight of my old friends, Magistra Erthik and Magister Caillin, dead
outside the door of the student Vilkas. I knew Vilkas, I had worked with him,
and Erthik had known him even better. She had been tutoring him along with his
inseparable friend, Aral. Those two young souls could no more have murdered
Magistra Erthik than they could—

—than they could have withstood Berys if he’d
caught them. He had called an assembly to denounce them for trafficking with
demons even before the murders were discovered. I had never believed it for a moment.

I took a step back from the door. The guard on
the right gazed at me. “What’s wrong, Magister? The Archimage is waiting, you
are the last to arrive.” He reached out to grasp my arm.

I flooded his system with sleep and did the
same to the other. They dropped between one breath and another. A second pair
of like men were striding down the central aisle towards the doors, and I drew
in a breath and made myself invisible.

Not true invisibility, you understand, that’s
impossible, but any who sought me would not see me unless they were as powerful
as I. Their eyes would latch on to anything else, anything at all, that was not
me. I moved swiftly and as silently as I could, lest the other guards should
have better abilities than I feared. One, indeed, went to the place I had been,
but the confusion took him and he could see only his sleeping comrades. He bent
over and began shaking them.

I backed down the corridor, going as quickly
as I could without making noise. The few scuffs of my shoes on the stone floor
were covered by the commotion that swiftly surrounded the sleeping guards.

When I was out of their line of sight, I ran,
down the corridors and out into the courtyard, as far as I could go.

And if you must know, yes. No day goes by, no
night have I spent since untroubled by my memory of that terrible, terrifying
cowardice. I knew as certainly as if I had seen it happen that most, or all, of
the people in that room were going to be dead before morning. I also knew—or
felt—or feared—that I could do nothing for them by bravely dying with them. It
was too late for warnings.

Perhaps if I had shouted to them, before the
armed guards killed me, more might have escaped.

Perhaps I’d have just been killed with them,
and even greater evil would have blighted all of Kolmar.

Let you take some comfort, then, in the fact
that the name of “coward” from others does not affect me in the slightest. For
it can never have the force from other mouths that it has from my own soul, red
with spilled blood and black with leaden guilt, every day of my life.

I woke, groggy, with no idea what time it
might be. There was no hint of moonlight, though whether that meant she was yet
to rise or had passed me by, I didn’t know.

I cursed to myself as I sat hunched on the
hard bed, staring into the darkness and wondering with a kind of detached dread
what Berys might have done while I slept. I felt no different, and to be
honest, I suspected there was not a thing I could do about whatever it was at
this stage. I ignored the possibilities as best I could, and quietly blessed my
ignorance of demon matters. If something awful was going to happen that I
couldn’t do anything about, I’d rather not know.

I found, as my eyes adjusted to the low light,
that there was a tray on the floor with food on it—bread, cheese, cold soup,
and water. I was starving and ate every scrap. I knew absolutely that it wasn’t
poisoned. Berys would never be so kind.

For all that, I only just managed to keep it
down. Thank the Lady, it wasn’t the deadly sickness Vilkas had healed me of—sweet
heaven, was it only a week past? a little less?—just the normal sickness most
women have to put up with in pregnancy. It was quite a deal less bothersome
today than it had been the last few days. I didn’t know if that was because
something was happening with my babes, or because after days of enforced
fasting I’d had two meals this day, or if it was just the natural time for that
kind of illness to end. I tried to remember what I knew of childbearing, but
the little I could recall was that there seemed to be us ninny different
reactions as there were women.

“Damn,” I said out loud—at least, my lips and
tongue moved, and my throat shaped the sounds, and air rushed through, but
nothing came out.

Alone in silence. Again. Still.

At least now I knew how Berys had discovered
that I could speak with the True Dragons, the Kantrishakrim, in their Language
of Truth. Bloody Marik must have told him.

O blessed Shia. I turned cold in an instant,
head to toe. Marik,

who knew I was pregnant, and was only waiting
for the advantageous moment to tell Berys. O Mother of us All, I begged,
blessed
Mother, as one to another I
beseech you, protect my babes. Let
there
be no good time for my unnatural father Marik to tell Berys
what he has learned. Let Berys curse Marik six
ways in a se’ennight if it will keep my babes from the evil one.