The Black Robe (The Sword and the Spell) (62 page)

“Goodbye Razarin.” Sadrin raised his hands, released his power and Razarin was gone.

Tressing screamed and covered his face to protect it from the heat of the fire and the two guards stepped rapidly back leaving the magician to enjoy his moment of triumph. He breathed deeply as a wave of pleasure passed through him making every nerve tingle and his whole body feel alive. When the pleasure had passed he opened his eyes, looked down at his robe and smiled in satisfaction. The robe had turned from black to crimson as he knew it would. Tressing, kneeling on the floor by the door with a look of amazement on his face bowed low and even the guards had gone onto one knee. Razarin was wrong. People would kneel to him.

“Your Eminence,” stuttered Tressing from his position of abasement, “what is it you would wish me to do?”

It was a good question. He had intended to dispose of Tressing in the same fashion as Razarin, although he hadn’t been amongst those who had abused him. However, the man could be useful, after all he did know everyone and how the place ran, and Razarin had been right about one thing, he didn’t know how to rule.

“You will take your orders from me and do nothing without my permission, unless you want to follow your last master into oblivion. Now gather all the masters, grey brothers and acolytes together. They need to know who the new High Master is and what is expected of them. I also have some scores to settle.”

Tressing rose instantly to his feet still shaking like a leaf in an autumn breeze. “That might take some time, High Master. Razarin ordered that they were all to search for the missing woman.” Sadrin frowned, not quite certain what the man was talking about. Desperate to be helpful Tressing continued. “The Lady Tarraquin has tried to leave the Enclave and Razarin gave orders that she should be recaptured and brought back here, but that her companions and the two old magicians should be disposed of.”

Now he remembered. She was the reason he had argued with Vorgret so in a way he owed her a favour; without her he wouldn’t have been here. There was a child too if he remembered rightly. Well it wasn’t Vorgret’s, that was for certain, so it had to be Borman’s in which case it could be of more value than the woman. The thought of having a woman and child under the same roof and distracting him from his duties was not a pleasant one, but perhaps she could be kept close by and visited occasionally.

After all, Jonderill had liked her, so she couldn’t be as bad as most women were. As for the magicians they had lied to him and tricked him, not once but twice. For that they deserved to die except they had, at one time, been the Goddess’s chosen so perhaps confinement in a cell somewhere so they couldn’t deceive him again would be best. The others were nothing to him.

He gave the orders and waited for Tressing and the two guards to leave before walking to the large ebon wood desk and sitting in the high backed-chair. This was the moment he’d been dreaming of for half of his life, the moment when he was no longer a worthless boy who hated farming, but was recognised for his special gifts. He glanced down at his hands and slowly released his power. The silver flagon on the dresser by the door shivered, glowed and collapsed into a puddle of molten metal. He shuddered with the feeling of pleasure that using his gift gave him. It was different this time, not as deep as when he released his power all at once, but more like the pleasure he had when he held himself until his seed flowed over his hands.

Sadrin looked around the room deciding on the changes he would make and caught his reflection in the long mirror. The crimson robe was darker than he thought it would be, almost the colour of drying blood, but he supposed it would become lighter once the Goddess had blessed him. It didn’t matter anyway. There could be no doubt about who the High Master was now. The thought of the Goddess’s blessing made him look around for the entrance to her sanctuary.

Everyone knew that the entrance to the sanctuary was through the High Master’s room, although he had his doubts now he was in the room. He’d expected there to be a grand archway with gold-bound doors of priceless weiswald, but there was nothing obvious. Deciding that it must be hidden from view he stood and spent the next candle length running his hands over every part of the wall he could reach. He had even tried standing on a chair to reach over the dresser, but he found nothing.

Disappointedly he sat back down in the hard chair. He had been so certain that the Goddess would have wanted to talk to him straight away, to bless him and impart her wisdom, but perhaps she was busy elsewhere. It didn’t worry him too much. When she was ready she would call him, and until then he had work to do. First he would have to do something with the High Master’s room. The dark wood and the plain walls were not to his liking. Then he would restore the influence of the Enclave over the six kingdoms and when his time came to leave this life, he would be remembered not as a slightly odd peasant boy, but as the most powerful High Master there had ever been. He smiled at the thought.

*

The armsman trudged back to his barracks feeling tired and irritable. The day had started well enough with him being assigned to street patrol with half a squad of armsmen, which was far better than walking the city walls or standing guard at the city gates. There had even been some excitement breaking up the mob in one of the city’s market squares, not that he’d been able to stick anyone with his pike, but the girl had made up for that. She had been small and pretty with lots of curves in the right places, and when he’d kissed her she’d tasted of wine berries.

He’d thought his luck was in then, but one of his mates had reported his brief absence from the patrol and the next thing he knew, the squad leader had reassigned him to gate duty. If there was one thing he hated it was gate duty, standing there all day long in the hot sun with aching feet watching peasants go by and checking their smelly carts. To make it worse he’d been assigned to gate duty for the next seven day. He was going to die of boredom.

It might have been bearable if the girl had stayed in the city. He had planned to call on her that night after he’d come off duty and perhaps take her to one of the better inns where you could hire a room for a gellstart or two. Instead she had left the city and hadn’t even had the decency to smile at him or say when she was coming back, and after he’d rescued her as well. It was that which really irritated him. He’d got himself into trouble for her and she didn’t even acknowledge he was alive, as if she thought she was too good for him. Well he’d show her how good he was, if she ever came back.

The noise from the inn on the other side of the roadway broke through his thoughts and his feet stopped walking without him really thinking about it. It was his duty to return to the barracks and report before his time was his own, but what in hellden did it matter? He was in enough trouble as it was and knowing his luck, the squad leader would be waiting for him with something else to do. Cursing under his breath he wiped his running, broken nose on the back of his hand and crossed the street where the inn’s warmth beckoned him in.

Usually he drank ale, rarely more than two or three, but his sour mood demanded something more uplifting. He swallowed back two small pots of rough grain spirit and, ignoring the burning in his throat and empty stomach and the lightness of his head, he ordered a third. As he waited, he realised there was something different about the inn. The place was still as dirty and smelly as ever and the furniture was just as rickety and broken, but there were no off duty guards drinking and enjoying their first free time of the day. He swallowed down the third pot of grain spirit and beckoned to the innkeeper for a refill knowing that would be the price of any information as to the whereabouts of his mates.

“Business is a bit slow tonight.” He slurred.

The innkeeper nodded and filled the guard’s pot. “They’re all out searching for that woman but things will pick up later when they have found her.”

“Which woman would that be?”

“Where in hellden have you been all day? The High Master has got half the city searching for some woman with a baby, last seen with a serving girl and a small fat man. I expect there will be a reward for the one who finds her.”

The armsman swallowed back his drink, slapped a silver gellstart into the surprised innkeeper’s hand and left faster than the innkeeper had seen any guardsman move since the last pay day. Half way back to his barracks the armsman slowed from his run to a walk and then stopped altogether. If he reported back to the squad leader, then a whole squad would be sent out after the women in their cart and that would be the last he would see of any reward, and probably the girl too. However, if he could sell the information about their whereabouts to a grey robe, or even better a master, then he might end up with the reward and the serving girl as well. He changed direction and headed towards the temple; there was bound to be a grey robe hanging around there.

He was right and it wasn’t just any grey robe but the Master of Penance. Normally he wouldn’t dare approach such a person, but the grain spirit had given him extra courage. He stopped at the bottom of the steps, gave a nervous wave and when he didn’t get a response from the scowling man he shouted up at him. “Master, the woman you are looking for, I know where she is.”

The Master of Penance hurried down the steps, his scowl deepening with every step. He needed to find the woman and get this over and done with. There was something happening inside the temple and he wanted to know what it was. He was supposed to be Tressing’s equal but it was always Tressing who had the High Master’s ear and not him. This time it would be different; if he could be the one to bring the woman back, the High Master would want to confer with him and not Tressing. He came to a stop in front of the scruffy, foul smelling armsman.

“Where is she?”

The grain spirit made him feel reckless. “I hear there is a reward for her capture?”

The grey robe bit back a cutting response and pulled a gold gellstart from the leather pouch at his waist making the armsman open his eyes wide in surprise and so it should, it was more than his kind earned from one summers’ end to another. “That is yours when we have her safely in our hands.”

The armsman licked his lips greedily but he wasn’t a fool. He wasn’t going to just hand the information over to the grey robe, no way. He’d dealt with the high and mighty before and knew they were not to be trusted. “I can’t explain, but if you have horses I will take you to her.”

He was amazed at how quickly the horses could be procured, and how easily they could get through the city gates with just one sharp word from the Master of Penance; he was certain if he had been on guard duty he wouldn’t have let them through so easily. On the other hand, if his head had been pounding as badly as it was now, he would probably have let hellden’s lord through the gates without blinking an eye.

The first warning Jarrul had that they were being pursued was the distant rumble of horses’ hooves on the hard ground and a spiralling cloud of dust behind them. If it had been possible they would have whipped the horses on and made a run for it, but the horses were old and worn and the cart was equally as ancient. The other option was to hide, but the valley floor was flat and open and in any case their tracks could be easily followed. All they could do was carry on with their pretence of being a farming family returning home and hope that the riders would pass straight by. That didn’t stop Jarrul easing his sword in its scabbard to make sure it would not stick or Birrit moving her knife from the sheath strapped to her thigh into a fold of her skirt.

When the horsemen caught up with them they knew they were in trouble. Three of the temple guards in their black uniforms and armed with swords and bolt bows rode down either side of the cart with three more boxing them in from the rear. Their leader, a grey robe Tarraquin had not met during their brief stay at the Enclave and two armed men, one of which gave Birrit a leering smile, rode to the front of the small procession and ordered them to halt. Any hope they had of talking their way out of the situation ended there and then.

The Master of Penance looked across the weary group of captives with some relief. He wasn’t sure what he was meant to do with them as his orders had been muddled. At first he’d been told to wait at the temple steps, co-ordinate activities and make sure that just the woman was captured and returned unharmed. Then his orders had changed and it was the woman, her child and the two old men who had to be taken and there had been no indication if he should remain at the temple or go and do it himself.

Now that he had them, it wouldn’t matter if he had misunderstood his orders. He did have a problem though; what to do about the rider, the girl and the drunken armsman who was swaying unsteadily on his horse. Hellden be damned if he was going to give him a gold gellstart or anything else for his part in this. He went to give a command and felt the first wave of coldness flow over him making him shudder and almost lose consciousness. Before he had risen to his current position he had been Master of Magic, so he knew exactly what this little spell was and how to counter it.

He built an invisible wall around himself and pushed it outwards clearing the spell and propelling it back at its caster. On the driver’s seat of the cart Plantagenet dropped the reins, cried out in pain and clutched his chest as the concentrated force of the spell rebounded back at him. He fell from his seat into the space below, his face grey and his lips turning blue. Animus struggled to his knees to get to his friend but Tarraquin pulled him back down. This was no time for heroics.

Contrary to what most of the inhabitants of the Enclave thought, the Master of Penance was not a violent man who enjoyed inflicting pain, unlike his predecessor. However he liked things to work smoothly and efficiently and the precipitous actions of the old man had upset his sense of rightness. That had decided his course of action. He leaned across to the armsman beside him with a surprisingly pleasant smile.

“I see the serving girl holds some attraction for you. I have no objections if you help her from the cart and have some fun. What you do with her thereafter is up to you, but there will be no repercussions.”