Sword and the Spell 01: The Grey Robe (5 page)

Her scream had brought others to the scene as well and
she stepped back from the wall around the pond once she had given the garden
boy long enough to take a few paces through the water. Picking her moment to
perfection she burst into tears just as a burly man in dark breaches and
leather jerkin reached her. From her crying and tear stained face he
immediately concluded what had taken place.

Without hesitation or caring for his fine leather
boots he waded into the pond and fished the bedraggled kittling out with a
large callused hand. When he turned back his face was scarlet with anger and in
three strides his other hand had clasped the startled garden boy around his arm
and dragged him out of the water. The kittling was dead, his young mistress was
crying broken-heartedly and his boots were ruined. In his mind there was no
doubt who the culprit was. In cold fury the man withdrew his thick leather belt
and lay into the garden boy with a ferocity which was savage.

“No, that’s not fair, he didn’t do anything,” cried
the boy as the image faded from the globe, leaving him with the final glimpse
of the beautiful child’s satisfied smile.

“Beauty is never fair,” said Maladran, “and people are
always taken in by it without seeing what is beneath. They prefer it to the
ugly truth of life and reality. Remember that as you do your next master’s
bidding and you may yet live long enough to reach manhood. Now sleep, we both
have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

The boy turned over pulling the magician’s cloak over
his head, not wanting him to see the tears that were forming. The man had made
it clear he had no intention of keeping him but he didn’t understand why he had
gone to the trouble of rescuing him from the Stablemaster’s dog whip and Tarris’s
cruelty if he was just going to hand him on to someone else. It made him feel
like a piece of baggage or an unwanted dog. Did he not know that one master
would be much the same as another?

Maladran took a last look at the boy and returned to
his place by the fire putting the globe back into the saddle bag, stretched out
and rested his head on the hard leather saddle. He had felt the pain of the boy’s
despair before sleep had obscured his feelings and was disturbed by the effect
they were having on him. It was unfortunate that the boy had seen his scrying,
it had clearly upset him and he was even sorry for his sharp and pointed retort
but it couldn’t be helped. He turned irritably away from the fire, unable to
get comfortable.

Hellden have him, he even felt sympathy for the boy,
feelings which had been dormant since the early days of his own apprenticeship.
The magician shrugged the feelings away. He supposed he was tired from his
journey and the night’s activity and was over sensitive. One thing was certain,
he couldn’t continue to allow the boy’s emotions to impose themselves on him so
the sooner he could be bound to a new master the better.

The boy muttered in his sleep and Maladran rolled his
shoulders in discomfort feeling the same prickling unease he had felt before
when he had first seen the boy. It seemed that even in his sleep there was
something in the boy reaching out to him but such contact should have been
impossible. Only Yarrin had possessed the level of power to touch his mind and he
was dead, yet there it was again, something in the boy was disturbing him. The
boy cried out again, louder and more urgently this time and rolled over in his
sleep tangling himself in the cloak.

Maladran sat up, the feeling of unease increasing so
that his skin prickled and his stomach knotted with tension. Random thoughts
battered at his mind as he stared into the fire; they were not his own thoughts
but the boy’s. He stood up shaking his head. This was intolerable and could not
be allowed to continue. To stop this he had to get control of the boy and for
that he had to know his name. Maladran crossed to where the boy lay entangled
in the cloak and whimpering in the throes of a nightmare. His sudden scream
made Maladran wince as the sound cut across his frayed nerves. He put his hand on
the boy’s shoulder to wake him and the boy’s eyes shot open as he tried to
scuttle way from the man’s touch.

“Steady boy, be quiet now,”

He could feel the boy shake beneath his restraining
hand and his heart pounding at an alarming rate. Sweat ran down the boy’s face
and body and his skin was cold and clammy. Maladran helped him to untangle the
cloak and guided him closer to the fire. Not sure what else he could do he sat
down next to the boy and held him for a long time until his breathing slowed.
When he had stopped shaking Maladran left him to put more wood on the fire and
returned with two bowls and some small packets he had taken from his saddlebags.
He filled both of the bowls with hot water that had been heating in the pot and
added some herbs from a grey packet to them and some other herbs and a dollop
of honey to the one he held out for the boy to drink. Maladran sat opposite the
boy and sipped at the hot, bitter liquid.

“Was it the same nightmare as before?”

“It’s always the same.”

“Tell me,” Maladran commanded and then more gently, “These
things are often better when they are shared.”

“I can’t,” replied the boy hesitantly. “I can’t
remember what I dream only the feelings afterwards.”

Maladran sat back on his heels frowning and studied
the boy for a while. He had encountered this problem before; an event so
traumatic that the mind blocked out its existence, only releasing it piece by
piece through dreams until the subject could face what had happened to them.
Sometimes it took years but there was a quicker way.

“Would you like to remember?”

“Will I remember everything?” said the boy looking
surprised and slightly scared.

“Probably but not all at once. Firstly you will
remember what caused your nightmares and in remembering they will stop. After
that things will come back to you piece by piece until you remember everything.”
The boy still looked doubtful. “Don’t you want to remember who you are?”

“Will it hurt?”

Maladran found himself smiling. “No it won’t hurt
although you may feel a little confused when you first remember who you are but
you can do something to stop that happening. When you wake the first thing you
must do is tell me all about yourself, starting with your name.”

The boy nodded in acquiescence and Maladran crossed to
the other side of the fire and sat down beside him. Returning a person’s memory
or letting them relive a dream was as easy as blocking their memory and much
more permanent. Both were processes which he’d practised may times. It was a
simple case of entering their mind and setting or releasing the lock which held
their store of recollections in thrall. To restore a memory only required a
quick mind probe, often with only the tiniest bit of magic. With a willing
subject it was only mildly tiring and the recipient was always inordinately
grateful and very occasionally overwhelmingly emotional. He assumed the boy
would fall into the first category or at least he hoped as much, he was far too
weary to give comfort to a distraught child.

“Close your eyes, boy.”

The boy closed his eyes and almost instantly opened
them again. “I’m scared,” he said in a small voice.

Maladran knew he was, he could feel the boy’s
emotions, timid and anxious. It wasn’t like his previous fear, the terror of
pain and being abused but a fear of being lost and alone. Somehow it touched
something within Maladran from his own childhood.

“There is nothing to be scared about, I will be with
you.” He took the boy’s cold hands and smiled encouragingly. “Now close your
eyes.”

Maladran closed his own eyes and sought the darkness
in his mind which was the vessel of his power. He pushed thoughts and feelings
aside, even awareness of his senses ceased to exist as the dark void grew to
consume all his being. Within the darkness a soft light began to glow; the
focus of his power, formless but intense and ready to do his bidding. With
practised ease he moved the light from his own mind and pushed it outwards, slowly
and gently towards the boy.

For a moment there was an unaccustomed resistance and
the light wavered and retreated back towards the void as if some unknown force
within the boy had warned it away. The void in Maladran’s mind was thick with
power and he thrust the light impatiently forward where it wavered irresolutely
before being snatched into the boy’s mind like something being torn from him.

The thick power he held in the void recoiled and
dissipated, leaving him dizzy and strangely empty. The sensation lasted for
only a moment before a new awareness took its place. Against everything which
was possible his own senses were being penetrated. He could hear the wind in
the trees and the impatient stirring of a horse, he could smell wood smoke and
the metallic, salty taste of fresh blood. Although it was impossible he could
feel the touch of a man’s hand, long strong fingers and rein-callused palms. He
recoiled with the shock as he realised it was the boy’s senses he was feeling
and not his own. Somehow the focus of his power had pulled him into the boy’s
mind so he could see and feel all the boy saw and felt. He knew he had to
withdraw before the link with the boy became too strong but shapes were forming
before his eyes and the moment to retreat was gone.

The shapes became more solid but still the vision did
not clear. He breathed deeply to impose more control on the boy’s mind and then
coughed violently as acrid smoke filled his lungs and stung his eyes and tears
ran down his face. The sound of burning wood and falling timbers overwhelmed
all other sound except the clash of steel and the screams of men as they
battled and fought. Hot salty blood ran down his face and into his mouth and he
went to wipe it away but it was not his own blood but that of a woman who held
him protectively in her arms. Through the smoke and the blood he could just
make out a pristine figure in white, still alive and his body unmarked except
for the bloody stumps of his wrists where his hands had once been.

He tried to reach out to him but in an instant time
had passed and he was no longer there. The fires no longer burnt although wisps
of smoke from charred timbers drifted by and the arms that held him were cold
and stiff. Crackling flames had been replaced by cackling carrion feeders come
to feast on the dead and the taste of blood had dried bitter in his mouth. In
an indignant flurry of wings the black flyers retreated from their meal as a
solitary horse and rider in bronze and leather armour entered the scene of
carnage. He felt fear now like never before and cringed back as far as the
unyielding corpse would allow. Despite his efforts a whimper escaped his lips
and then a strong hand was taking his and lifting him from the corpse’s embrace
to a place high above the ground on the quarters of a large, black war-horse.

From that precarious height there was no escaping the
vision of horror spread in a circle around him. Men and women hacked down and
butchered, children disembowelled and dwellings burnt to the ground. On the
ground at the man’s feet lay the woman whose arms he had been pulled from, the
remains of her torn clothes soaked in the blood from the gash in her throat,
her pale eyes staring sightlessly at the sky. The horseman cursed, mounted his
horse and turned away from the scene of carnage, using his cloak to shield the
child from the horror around them.

Then a new sound filled his hearing. He was still
facing the man’s back but now the man stood with legs braced and a short sword
drawn in each hand. Facing him in clear view were twelve soldiers, dressed in
dark flowing robes, armed with long curved swords and grimly determined. They
studied their quarry for the first sign of attack, their eyes flicking passed
the warrior to where he stood, cowering behind his protector. A new kind of
fear washed over him and took him by surprise. This was not fear for himself
but for the man and intermingled with the fear was trust and love. A shout of
defiance escaped the man’s lips as the soldiers rushed forward and the warrior
stepped up to meet them.

His arms hurt and his head swam dizzily as if it had
been shaken violently and something had come loose. Beneath his tightly closed
eyelids, his eyes were gritty and stung as if he had been crying for a long
time. Someone yanked hard on his hair, pulling his head back and forcing him to
open his eyes. The scene had changed although there had been no sense of time
passing. He looked around at the grey stone courtyard with its raised platform
and sturdy crossed poles driven into the stone.

Maladran shuddered; he recognised the place and knew
what happened between those crossed poles. He felt fear building inside of him,
tensing his muscles and increasing his heart rate and realised that it was now his
own fear he was feeling and not the boy’s. His control had returned with the
boy’s confusion, giving him the chance to withdraw but before he could grasp
the focus of his power a commotion caught the boy’s attention and he was swept
away again on a tide of the boy’s emotions.

The guards harried their prisoner forward, quieting
his struggles with a blow to his gut which made him cough and retch. They
dragged him onto the platform and fastened his hands and ankles to the leather
thongs at each end of the crossed poles. It was the warrior, stripped and
blooded from his capture and with a long bloody wound from thigh to knee. The
boy struggled against those who held him, not caring that the grip on his arm
could break his bones, intent only on getting to the man. Frantic emotions
tumbled from him; love for the man who had tried to protect him, guilt that he
was the cause of the man’s humiliation and a furious anger that he could do
nothing to help.