The Silver Mage (22 page)

“No going back to sleep!” He grinned at her. “The gods will be angry.”

“Huh! The gods aren’t going to notice someone like me.”

“Wear that new dress anyway, just in case.”

“I will, then, and my thanks to you again.”

Rhodorix had asked for cloth as part of his guardsman’s pay in order to give it to Hwilli. Much to his surprise, he’d been able to get her a dress already sewn up by the prince’s wife’s women, a further mark of the rhix’s favor toward him. “The horses are our living wall,” the prince had told him. “You have my thanks.” Rhodorix treasured the memory, letting it roll around his mind like fine music.

In the cold Gerontos had trouble walking, even with his stick. Rhodorix let his brother lean on him as they made their slow way outside to the courtyard in front of the palace. Women carrying torches stood in a line at the outer walls of the buildings and ringed the inner walls of the fortess itself. The healers stood on the steps of the palace. Hwilli hurried forward with her fellow apprentice.

“We’ll help Gerro,” she said. “You’d best take your place. Remember, don’t say a word until the priests say it’s finished.”

“Well and good, then,” Rhodorix said. “I won’t.”

Andariel had already gotten the rest of the guards in place, horsemen to the right of what at first looked like a pile of firewood, infantry to the left, archers equally divided among the two contingents. As horsemaster, Rhodorix joined the captain up in the front rank. From that position he could see that the firewood had been carefully stacked into a temporary altar, square in shape, some twelve feet on a side though only about five feet high.

When he glanced up, he saw men on the holy tower beside the gleaming brass gongs, but as yet neither the priests nor the white cows had made an appearance in the courtyard. They were, he surmised, waiting for the prince to arrive—soon, Rhodorix hoped. Even in their heavy cloaks the men were shivering in place. Finally silver horns sounded. The healers on the palace steps moved aside to let Ranadar through. He took a torch from one of the women and stalked up to the altar. In the flickering light he looked furious, his preternaturally handsome face drawn tight and grim under the hood of his cloak.

With the prince in place other horns shrieked, the sour bronze cry of the priestly instruments. Marching in lockstep, their gold-and-sapphire decorations glittering, the priests were coming with their usual bodyguards around them, the silver alloy swords gleaming like the teeth of wolves. At the rear, two of them led sacrifices, but not the cows. Rhodorix choked back a curse just in time. The two Meradan prisoners of war shuffled along, draped in drab cloaks, their hands bound, their heads shaved.

Had they been back in the homeland, Rhodorix could have stepped forward and demanded his prisoners back. They might have chosen to live as his slaves or to face the altar and go free of him forever. As it was, he could do nothing but watch as the priests led them to the firewood structure. They stood heads down and hopeless as the priestly contingent gathered around them.

With raised arms, the priests began to pray, a long litany in the language of the People, but some ancient and holy form of it, just different enough that Rhodorix, who’d left the crystals back in Gerontos’ chamber, could understand little of the long involved plea to a great many gods. At intervals, horns blared and gongs rang out, but no one spoke or moved.

At last the head priest let out a shriek that nearly matched the horns.

“The dark, the dark!” he cried out. “We must light the dark!”

Other priests shoved the prisoners forward. They struggled, twisted, but the priests forced them to their knees. In the glittering torchlight silver swords flashed up and swung down. The dead Meradan fell forward, their heads dangling from strips of skin and spine, as blood gushed. The bronze horns screamed over and over as the priests lifted the bodies and placed them on the altar. Ranadar stepped forward and flung his torch into the firewood.

The assembled crowd waited, gasping for breath, as the flames flickered, nearly died, then caught with an uprush of fire. The gongs clanged and clashed as the assembly let out its collective breath in a sigh of relief. The torchbearers hurried forward in long lines and began to cast their torches into the blaze.

Rhodorix looked toward the east. Although the stone walls of the fortress blocked the horizon, he could see the faint first silver of dawn. The stars were beginning to disappear at the sun’s first lighting.
Well, there!
he thought.
It’s back for another year.

The priests and the prince had drawn back from the blazing altar where the prisoners burned. Ranadar turned from the altar and motioned to his men to follow him. Andariel and Rhodorix collected the guards and marched off behind their rhix in an untidy mob.

Ranadar led them all the way back to the new stables, where they clustered around him at his command.

“I want you all to know,” he said, “that I forced the priests to kill those men before they were thrown onto the fire. They wanted to lay them alive on the altar.”

Rhodorix’s stomach twisted in disgust. Andariel shook his head and shuddered. Several of the guardsmen swore.

“They told me,” Ranadar went on, “that the times demanded sacrifices beyond the usual. The cows weren’t enough, they said, since the gods were so obviously furious with us. I told them I wouldn’t take part unless the men died first.” His rage vanished, and his voice suddenly wavered in self-doubt. “They kill the cattle first, don’t they? I haven’t cursed us all, have I?”

“They do, my prince,” Andariel said. “I think you’ve saved us all from a worse bane than any priest could lay upon you.”

“My thanks.” Ranadar paused, gathering his breath. “And the sun is rising. Well, it’s done, no matter what the outcome may be.”

R
hodorix had been hoping along with Gerontos that his brother’s leg would heal up straight and sound. As the winter days wore on, each a little longer than the last, his hope vanished. A month or so after the solstice rites, Gerro started walking without leaning on a stick, but he limped with a sideways roll from a frozen knee. Though neither wanted to voice it, both men knew he’d never fight on foot again at his former level of skill. Eventually, however, when the snows turned soft during somewhat warmer days, though they still froze again at night, Rhodorix brought the subject up.

“About that leg—”

“I know. I’m worried, too,” Gerontos said. “Paraberiel suggested I go talk with his master in the craft,”

“I’ll go with you. You’d best take that walking stick.”

Gerontos turned on him, his face bright with rage, but he caught himself. For a moment he stared at the ground.

“True spoken,” he said at last. “Hand it to me, will you?” Rhodorix gave him the stick, then picked up the basket with the two crystals. While he himself could understand much of what the people said, Gerontos still knew only a few words.

They walked slowly down the long corridors leading to the herbroom, where the door stood partway open. Rhodorix could hear talk inside. When he peered around the open door, he saw Hwilli, her master, and the Mountain woman Vela. They were discussing building something they had in mind—
as if any of us can build anything,
he thought,
as if any of us will live that long!
“Hola?” he called out. “Hwilli, may we come in?”

“Of course.” It was Jantalaber who answered him. “Have you brought us your brother?”

“I have. Come on, Gerro.”

Jantalaber helped Gerontos hoist himself up onto a marble-topped table then knelt in front of him. He ran his hands along the withered leg, shook his head, tapped it here and there with a thoughtful forefinger, and finally prodded the muscles along the calf. He stood up with another shake of his head.

“This doesn’t look good,” the healer said into the white crystal. “I’m sorry, lad, but the bone was smashed, not broken cleanly. The muscles aren’t adhering properly, and the long bone has healed just ever so slightly off center.”

“I see.” Gerontos said emotionlessly. “Well, my thanks, anyway, for everything you’ve done for me.” He glanced Rhodorix’s way. “Will you help me get back to our chamber?”

“Of course.” Rhodorix made his voice as cheerful as he could manage. “Looks like you’re marked for an archer now.”

Gerontos shrugged. From his mask of an expression, it was impossible to tell what he might be thinking.

“Hwilli?” Jantalaber said. “You may go back with them, if you’d like. You should tell your man your good news.”

“What’s this?” Rhodorix turned to her, but her smile told him before she could speak. “You’re with child?”

“Yes, I am.” She was holding her head high, on the edge of defiance even in her happiness. “Are you glad of it?”

“Very glad!” Rhodorix held out his hand to her.

She took it and smiled at him sideways, abruptly shy. He gave her a chaste kiss on the forehead in deference to the presence of her master.
A man needs to know that something of him will live after him,
Rhodorix thought,
but that’s a bit gloomy to be telling her.

Some days later, the last of the Mountain axemen arrived at Garangbeltangim. They’d taken advantage of the slight warming and temporary thaw to leave the northern city and head south to join up with their kinfolk. Wrapped in his scarlet cloak, Prince Ranadar met them out in the snowy courtyard. Rhodorix and Andariel stood nearby, ready to find the men somewhere to sleep and eat in the overcrowded fortress.

“We would have stayed to the end in Tanbalapalim,” their avro, Tarl, told the prince. “But Prince Salamondar told us it would be a waste of our lives. Go guard your women, he said. Live and remember us.”

The hardened warleader leaned on the haft of his ax and wept. As if to drown the sound of his grief, the bronze gongs on the priests’ tower began to clang and clatter out the passing hour.

T
he winter snows melted early that year. When Hwilli looked up to the high peaks, she saw them still white and gleaming, but down near Garangbeltangim only dirty streaks and heaps of snow lay in spots with deep shade. Everywhere else, brown mud lay over the land like filthy blankets.

“The winter wheat will be sprouting soon,” Hwilli told Jantalaber. “And the farm folk won’t be returning to keep the deer and wild goats away from it.”

“Very true,” the master said. “I’ll have a word with our prince tonight.”

Ranadar listened to the word, apparently, because he ordered a contingent of those guardsmen who had no horses to patrol the wheat fields. They grumbled, but they went down to the village. Hwilli went with them that first day to tell them how to repair the huts. They needed rebuilding every spring, as did the fences that marked out the fields. Master Jantalaber was waiting for her at the gates when she returned.

“Do you think they’ll be able to do the work?” he asked her.

“I doubt it, not without someone to tell them how,” Hwilli said. “Will I have to teach them?”

“No. I’ve already spoken to Paraberiel. I don’t want you down there, the only woman in a village full of soldiers. Par comes from a farm family, too, you know. I’m sending him down on the morrow.”

“Thank you! I can’t tell you how grateful—”

“Most welcome, I’m sure. Now, the two terraces just below us are a different matter. If you could lend your knowledge there? The mounted men will be sowing hay for their horses.”

“I’ll be glad to do that, yes. I’m starting to think that Rhodorix is right. The horses are the only safety we’ll have as things go on.”

Jantalaber looked away, suddenly weary. “If things go on,” he said. “Ah well, the gods will send us what they will, and there’s naught we can do about that.”

Once the last of the snow had melted, and the days were noticeably warmer though the nights still froze, Hwilli took to spending her mornings down on the terraces with Rhodorix and his men. They complained, as soldiers have always complained about undignified work, but they learned to clear ground and plow, to plant and to fend off hungry birds instead of Meradan. Those few days seemed so peaceful, so unseasonably warm and soft, that Hwilli could let herself pretend that the summer would stretch out the same, with the Meradan somehow kept far away.