Swords & Dark Magic (18 page)

He stood there with the smoke going up to the sky, and the heat baking his front and calling up more sweat, and then a hand landed on his shoulder, and squeezed.

“Good job,” Tewk panted. “
Good
job, boy.”

“Master Willem,” he said, not prideful, not arrogant, just numb. Down below the wall he could see mercs running for it, some with loot, some not, and doors pouring out men who headed for the open courtyard gate. They weren’t slowing down.

“
Master
Willem,” Tewk said, and squeezed a second time. “There’s still work to do, for you and me. Your Talent can hound those bastards all the way to the gates. I’ll mop up any that get behind us. All right? Got the strength for it?”

“People won’t get killed,” he said, remembering Master’s injunction. He hadn’t killed anybody. He hadn’t tried to kill anybody. If their own inclinations were to kill people—he hadn’t stopped it, but he hadn’t made them do anything they wouldn’t like to do. He turned, a little wobbly, and a little dizzied by the downward view of the steep and narrow stairs, and Tewk kept a firm grip on him. “I’ll do it.”

“Until you can magic yourself wings,” Tewk said, “I’m keeping hold of you. Not losing you, no.”

“Thanks,” he said, and started down the steps, with Tewk’s hand firmly clenching his collar, all the way down.

King Osric was holding court uptown. Master was packing, down here in the Alley. Master was going back to his house higher on the hill, and Master was going to work for Tewk’s cousin, twice removed, who was going to be the new duke in Wiscezan.

“He’s a little lazy,” Tewk said about his cousin. “You’ll notice he sat safe in Korianth. But he’s a scholar, not a fighter. You’ll like him,” he said to Master, and Master nodded.

Almore and Jezzy were already packed, since Master said they would have real beds, and each their own room, and six changes of clothes, and servants.

Willem supposed he would have a room, too. He had new clothes—his old ones he didn’t even want to remember. He’d had a bath at the Ox, he’d changed into clothes all the same color—gray—with new boots from the boot-seller, and a gray cloak he liked just to stroke, because it felt as smooth and soft as one of Jezzy’s cats.

But he didn’t know, now that Master and everybody called him Master Willem, exactly where he would be. He didn’t have anything to pack, either, except an old knife he liked, and a few pages Master had given him, which he was going to bind into the start of a book. So he had those lying on the table, and Master and Tewk talked for a while.

King Osric had gotten into the town and into the fortress without even a fight: and it wasn’t as bad as a sack, but Wiggy’s place had lost furniture and tankards—and was getting new ones: King Osric had ordered damages paid, so Wiggy and his daughter were happy, and feeling rich.

Most every damage had gotten fixed. Master had fixed a few. Master was feeling a lot better now that the demon was out of town, and was getting visibly a little younger, which was not an illusion; Willem was fairly sure of it.

So everybody had a prospect, and he was fairly sure his was bright. He just didn’t know what it was.

Until Tewk walked up as he was standing, looking out the open door of their little house, and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re pretty good,” Tewk said. “The world’s wider than Wiscezan, you know. I’ve got a cousin up in Peghary who wants a little advice. Ever ridden?”

He hadn’t. If he were Jezzy, with Jezzy’s talent, he wouldn’t worry about it; but horses scared him. They were tall. They had intentions of their own.

Tewk was asking him to go on the road with him. And see places. Peghary. He’d only heard of that place.

“Master might need me,” he said. He still had that duty. Master had leaned on him for a long time.

“I’m doing very well,” Master said. “I can spare you a few months. I’ll be busy with these two. They’re getting old enough. They’ll take care of things.”

Master never had said anything about
his
room in the house. And with Tewk—

He’d gotten used to Tewk. Tewk was smart in different ways than Master. There were things still to learn.

Places to go.

He nodded, looking out on the dust of the Alley.

Fact was, Tewk needed him. He wasn’t the only one who put illusions on things. Cousin in Peghary, hell.

Maybe there even was a cousin.

“Sure,” he said. “All right. I can ride.”

Raised in rural Vermont, K. J. PARKER is part of the new generation of fantasy writers who, over the past ten years, has been publishing work that has been redefining sword and sorcery. Parker’s first novel,
Colors in the Steel,
appeared in 1998 and was followed by two further volumes in the Fencer trilogy, the Scavenger trilogy, and the critically acclaimed Engineer trilogy. Parker’s most recent books are novels
The Company
and
The Folding Knife,
and novella “Purple and Black.” Having worked in law, journalism, and numismatics, Parker is married to a solicitor, lives in southern England, and, when not writing, likes to make things out of wood and metal.

A RICH FULL WEEK

K. J. Parker

H
e looked at me the way they all do. “You’re him, then.”

“Yes,” I said.

“This way.”

Across the square. A cart, tied up to a hitching post. One thin horse. Not so very long ago, he’d used the cart for shifting dung. I sat next to him, my bag on my knees, tucking my feet in close, and laid a bet with myself as to what he’d say next.

“You don’t look like a wizard,” he said.

I owed myself two nomismata. “I’m not a wizard,” I said.

I always say that.

“But we sent to the Fathers for a—”

“I’m not a wizard,” I repeated, “I’m a philosopher. There’s no such thing as wizards.”

He frowned. “We sent to the Fathers for a wizard,” he said.

I have this little speech. I can say it with my eyes shut, or thinking about something else. It comes out better if I’m not thinking about what I’m saying. I tell them, we’re not wizards, we don’t do magic, there’s no such thing as magic. Rather, we’re students of natural philosophy, specializing in mental energies, telepathy, telekinesis, indirect vision. Not magic; just science where we haven’t quite figured out how it works yet. I looked at him. His hood and coat were homespun—that open, rather scratchy weave you get with moorland wool. The patches were a slightly different color; I guessed they’d been salvaged from an even older coat that had finally reached the point where there was nothing left to sew onto. The boots had a military look. There had been battles in these parts, thirty years ago, in the civil war. The boots looked to be about that sort of vintage. Waste not, want not.

“I’m kidding,” I said. “I’m a wizard.”

He looked at me, then back at the road. I hadn’t risen in his estimation, but I hadn’t sunk any lower, probably because that wasn’t possible. I waited for him to broach the subject.

By my reckoning, three miles out of town, I said, “So tell me what’s been happening.”

He had big hands; too big for his wrists, which looked like bones painted flesh-color. “The Brother wrote you a letter,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied brightly. “But I want you to tell me.”

The silence that followed was thought rather than rudeness or sulking. Then he said, “No good asking me. I don’t know about that stuff.”

They never want to talk to me. I have to conclude that it’s my fault. I’ve tried all sorts of different approaches. I’ve tried being friendly, which gets you nowhere. I’ve tried keeping my face shut until someone volunteers information, which gets you peace and quiet. I’ve read books about agriculture, so I can talk intelligently about the state of the crops, milk yields, prices at market, and the weather. When I do that, of course, I end up talking to myself. Actually, I have no problem with talking to myself. In the country, it’s the only way I ever get an intelligent conversation.

“The dead man,” I prompted him. I never say
the deceased
.

He shrugged. “Died about three months ago. Never had any bother till just after lambing.”

“I see. And then?”

“It was sheep to begin with,” he said. “The old ram, with its neck broke, and then four ewes. They all reckoned it was wolves, but I said to them, wolves don’t break necks, it was something with hands did that.”

I nodded. I knew all this. “And then?”

“More sheep,” he said, “and the dog, and then an old man, used to go round all the farms selling stuff, buttons and needles and things he made out of old bones; and when we found him, we reckoned we’d best tell the boss up at the grange, and he sent down two of his men to look out at night, and then the same thing happened to them. I said, that’s no wolf. Knew all along, see. Seen it before.”

That hadn’t been in the letter. “Is that right?” I said.

“When I was a kid,” the man said (and now I knew the problem would be getting him to shut up). “Same thing exactly: sheep, then travelers, then three of the duke’s men. My grandad, he knew what it was, but they wouldn’t listen. He knew a lot of stuff, Grandad.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Him and me and my cousin from out over, we got a couple of shovels and a pick and an ax, and we went and dug up this old boy who’d died. And he was all swelled up, like he’d got the gout all over, and he was
purple,
like a grape. So we cut off his head and shoveled all the dirt back, and we dropped the head down an old well, and that was the end of that. No more bother. Didn’t say what we’d done, mind. The Brother wouldn’t have liked it. Funny bugger, he was.”

Well, I thought. “You did the right thing,” I said. “Your grandfather was a clever man, obviously.”

“That’s right,” he said. “He knew a lot of stuff.”

I was doing my mental arithmetic.
When I was a kid
—so, anything from fifty-five to sixty years ago. Rather a long interval, but not unheard of. I was about to ask if anything like it had happened before then, but I figured it out just in time. If wise old Grandfather had known exactly what to do, it stood to reason he’d learned it the old-fashioned way: watching or helping, quite possibly more than once.

“The man who died,” I said.

“Him.” A cartload of significance crammed into that word. “Offcomer,” he explained.

“Ah,” I said.

“Schoolteacher, he called himself,” he went on. “Dunno about that. Him and the Brother, they tried to get a school going, to teach the boys their letters and figuring and all, but I told them, waste of time in these parts, you can’t spare a boy in summer, and winter, it’s too dark and cold to be walking five miles there and five miles back, just to learn stuff out of a book. And they wanted paying, two pence twice a year. People around here can’t afford that for a parcel of old nonsense.”

I thought of my own childhood, and said nothing. “Where did he come from?”

“Down south.” Well, of course he did. “I said to him, you’re a long way from home. He didn’t deny it. Said it was his calling, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

It was dark by the time we reached the farm. It was exactly what I’d been expecting: long and low, with turf eaves a foot off the ground, turf walls over a light timber frame. No trees this high up, so lumber had to come up the coast on a big shallow-draught freighter as far as Holy Trinity, then road haulage the rest of the way. I spent the first fifteen years of my life sleeping under turf, and I still get nightmares.

Mercifully, the Brother was there waiting for me. He was younger than I’d anticipated—you always think of village Brothers as craggy old fat men, or thin and brittle, like dried twigs with papery bark. Brother Stauracius couldn’t have been much over thirty; a tall, broad-shouldered man with an almost perfectly square head, hair cropped short like winter pasture, and pale blue eyes. Even without the habit, nobody could have taken him for a farmer.

“I’m so glad you could come,” he said, town voice, educated, rather high for such a big man. He sounded like he meant it. “Such a very long way. I hope the journey wasn’t too dreadful.”

I wondered what he’d done wrong, to have ended up here. “Thank you for your letter,” I said.

He nodded, genuinely pleased. “I was worried, I didn’t know what to put in and leave out. I’m afraid I’ve had no experience with this sort of thing, none at all. I’m sure there must be a great deal more you need to know.”

I shook my head. “It sounds like a textbook case,” I said.

“Really.” He nodded several times, quickly. “I looked it up in
Statutes and Procedures,
naturally, but the information was very sparse, very sparse indeed. Well, of course. Obviously, this sort of thing has to be left to the experts. Further detail would only encourage the ignorant to meddle.”

I thought about Grandfather: two shovels and an ax, job done. But not quite, or else I wouldn’t be here. “Fine,” I said. “Now, you’re sure there were no other deaths within six months of the first attack.”

“Quite sure,” he said, as though his life depended on it. “Nobody but poor Anthemius.”

Nobody had asked me to sit down, let alone take my wet boots off. The hell with it. I sat down on the end of a bench. “You didn’t say what he died of.”

“Exposure.” Brother Stauracius looked very sad. “He was caught out in a snowstorm and froze to death, poor man.”

“Near here?”

“Actually, no.” A slight frown, like a crack in a wall. “We found him about two miles from here, as it happens, on the big pasture between the mountains and the river. A long way from anywhere, so presumably he lost his way in the snow and wandered about aimlessly until the cold got to him.”

I thought about that. “On his way back home, then.”

“I suppose so, yes.”

I needed a map. You almost always need a map, and there never is one. If ever I’m emperor, I’ll have the entire country surveyed and mapped, and copies of each parish hung up in the temple vestries. “I don’t suppose it matters,” I lied. “You’ll take me to see the grave.”