The Silver Mage (30 page)

Neb grabbed a clean strip of linen and began to wipe the pus away from the wound. This new bandage also gleamed with the sign of something alive. As the air touched it, however, the glow faded, though it never completely vanished.

“So!” Neb said. “I don’t know what’s inhabiting you, Hound, but we’re going to get rid of it.”

“Fleas.” Hound attempted to smile. “They be that what lives on hounds.”

Neb patted him on the shoulder, then turned back to her. “Branni, the herbwoman in our town had us boil things that the sick had used. She thought we were balancing humors, but by all the gods, I’ll wager we were killing whatever an infection is.”

“Here now!” Hound tried to sit up, but Neb pushed him back down. “You’ll not be boiling my arm, will you?”

“Of course not!” Neb said. “I’ll be putting on herbs that’ll kill whatever these things are.”

If he can find the right herbs,
Branna thought. The idea that some live thing too small to be visible was feeding on wounds seemed incredible to her, too grotesque to be believed. She had to remind herself that when it came to healing, Neb’s lore was far greater than her own. Aloud, she said, “I’ll fetch water, and then start that fire.”

“My thanks. If you could find a skin of mead, too? And maybe fetch a couple of the men.”

“Here!” Once again their reluctant patient tried to sit up. “What have you in mind to do to me?”

Neb shoved him back down. “Do you want to lose that arm, or do you want me to heal it?”

Hound moaned and lay still, a gesture Branna took as capitulation to the healer’s superior knowledge. The two gnomes materialized, one on each side of Hound, not that he saw either, and shook their heads in a mimicry of sad pity.

A small pile of twigs and scraps of firewood stood ready beside the hearthstones in the middle of the tent. Branna grabbed an iron kettle and hurried out with her gray gnome skipping ahead of her in the warm sunshine. She went upstream from the camp to fill it where the water would be clean. Not far from the tents she found Mic, sitting on the bank. He had a handful of pulled grass which he was throwing, one stalk at a time, into the water.

“What are you doing?” Branna said.

Mic yelped and let the remaining grass fall onto the ground. “My apologies,” he said. “I was just thinking how life snatches our friends away from us, just like the water takes that grass.”

“Ah. You’re thinking about Kov.”

“I am, truly, and Dougie as well. Perhaps Dougie even more, because we’d ridden together back in Alban.”

“Well, they both had a harsh wyrd.” Branna knelt and tipped the kettle into the water. “It’s very sad.”

“I’ll carry that back for you when it’s full. It’ll do Kov’s soul no good to have me sitting about like a fool or laggard.”

“More to the point, it’ll do you no good.”

“True enough, true enough.” Mic sighed and stood up. “Let’s see what I can do to keep myself busy and useful. That’s the dwarven way, not all this sitting about.”

Branna handed him the kettle, then found mead and a pair of burly Cerr Cawnen men to hold Hound down when Neb poured the liquor on the wound. Fortunately, the patient fainted early in the procedure, allowing Neb to clean and stitch with only minimal help. The Cerr Cawnen men had left, and Hound had settled into a more normal sleep, when Dallandra entered the tent.

“Richt told me that you’d found infection in the lad’s wound.” Dalla paused to sniff the air. “Ah, mead! That should wash out the corrupted humors.”

“More than corrupted humors were at work.” Neb turned and gave her a brilliant grin. “I think I’ve solved it, Dalla. I think I know what causes these infections, and I’ll just wager it’s true for illnesses as well. Here, let me explain what I saw.”

Master and apprentice left the tent, talking together in low voices. Branna and Mic cleaned up the filthy bandages, then put them in the kettle of water to boil. She slopped in some mead from the leather skin for good measure. As she watched, the last traces of the reddish aura glow disappeared, leaving only the dead matter of the bandages themselves.

“If living things are crawling on those,” she said, “I want them dead.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Mic said with a shudder. “Hard to believe, though I’d wager Neb knows more about it than I.” He sighed, glancing around him. “I’ll just be seeing what my poor niece is up to, then.”

“You’ll be brooding about your cousin, more like!”

Mic left without answering. With a sigh of her own, though this one expressed exasperation, Branna considered cleaning up the mess around Hound’s bed, then stormed out of the tent. Nearby she saw Neb and Dallandra surrounded by her four apprentices, all of them talking fast as they questioned Neb. Branna strode up to them and nearly shouted out her words, “I beg your pardons!”

Everyone turned to look her. Ranadario, in fact, took a step back.

“I’m not a servant,” Branna said with a toss of her head. “Neb my dearest, if there’s some nasty thing living on those dirty bandages, hadn’t
you
better clean them up when you’re done with them?”

Neb flinched and looked down at the ground. “So I had,” he said. “My apologies. You’re quite right.”

Branna strode off again, but she was thinking,
That’s another reason why I married him—he’s not an honor-bound warrior. He can admit it when he’s wrong.

A
fter a hot dusty afternoon in the gold chamber, Kov was more than ready for a swimming lesson. He stripped off his clothes except for his loin wrap, laid them neatly on his bed, then hurried outside to join Jemjek.

They walked a good ways upstream to the bend in the river that marked the shallows. The sun lay close to the western horizon, casting ripples of gold like coins on the river. A light breeze rustled the long grass along the bank and cleared away the last of the dust and gold-greed from Kov’s mind.

“It’s good to get outside,” Kov said.

“It is,” Jemjek said. “Water be good.”

At the sandy beach, caught in the river’s bend, they paused to watch the water flowing and rippling. About half-a-mile downstream the timbers of the bridge cast a tangle of shadows across the river. Yet despite the peaceful afternoon, all the birds abruptly fell silent. Over the murmur and splash of the water, Kov heard a drumming sound.

“What be that noise?” Jemjek said. “The sky’s clear. Can’t be thunder.”

“It’s not,” Kov snapped. “It’s hooves, horses, and here the bastards come!”

Like a black wave of flies heading for dead meat, distant riders were trotting through the tall grass. They were coming from the north and riding in such good order that he knew they had to be Gel da’Thae, not Deverry men.

“Get down!” Jemjek shrieked. “Into the water!”

The Dwrgi slid out of his tunic, grabbed it in one hand, and dove into the river. In swirls of light and bubbles he transformed. The tunic billowed like foam beside the six-foot-long otter he’d become. Kov dashed after him and slipped over the bank into the thick stand of water reeds. He could only hope to hide since his flesh couldn’t transform. In the shallows he stood with his nose just above water and peered through the reeds. What he saw turned him cold.

Horsekin, all right! Regimental cavalry such as he’d seen at Zakh Gral, a troop of them, no, a regiment formed up four abreast, hundreds of them, trotting down the riverbank, heading for the village. Dust plumed as the steel-shod hooves cut down the grass and pounded it into raw dirt. Kov heard something rustling the reeds behind him, nearly screamed, and turned to see Jemjek beckoning to him with one paw.

“Swim!” His mouth’s new shape turned the whispered word into one long hiss.

“Wait!” Kov hissed back.

Jemjek shook his sleek wet head “no” and turned around to dive back into deep water. Kov had a brief thought of taking this chance to escape. With no clothes but a loin wrap, no food, not even a knife, he squelched the thought as soon as it appeared. In the gathering twilight his hiding place worked well enough. No one even looked his way as the regiment trotted onward down the river.

The last of the cavalrymen passed by just as the sun sank below the horizon. Behind them, traveling at a more dignified walk, rode two women on white mules and a small squad of retainers, one of whom carried a banner embroidered with Alshandra’s bow and arrow above a row of letters in the Horsekin alphabet. The women wore leather tunics painted with Alshandra’s blazon as well.
Priestesses!
Kov thought. So, this regiment had some important job at hand. He could assume that they’d come for the bridge. The only thing he could do was watch them take it.

Kov let the priestesses and their squad get past him, then stood. He could see some riders heading across the bridge and others swarming into the village. Moving a bare yard at a time, he began to wade downriver through the shallows. Once he came within sight of an escape tunnel, he would dive and swim into it, but at the moment he wanted his feet on earth, even though it was only slippery wet sand.

Ahead of him in the twilight a sudden red glare bloomed. A huge lick of flame leaped up toward the sky. The Horsekin had fired the village. Kov’s rage flared up to match the black plume of smoke that twisted upward, spreading in the evening wind. How dare they! How dare they just ride in and destroy! And what of the village folk? Had they all gotten underground in time?

By then he was close enough to see horsemen milling around on the downriver side of the burning village. The light from the flames picked out the priestesses’ white mules as they conferred with a pair of officers. Most of the regiment had spread out, doubtless to ensure that no one would offer resistance. In the dancing glare, Kov could see the dark hole in the riverbank that marked an escape tunnel some hundred yards ahead of him. The river reeds, however, were thinning out. He would have to strike out for clear water and swim. He crouched down to wait till the light dimmed. The flimsy huts of the fake village would burn fast and briefly.

Just beyond the group around the priestesses, he could see a pair of dismounted men, dragging something along the ground as they approached her. Kov’s stomach wrenched as he discerned the otter shape of dead Dwrgwn, two of them, one a full-grown adult, one much smaller. Not everyone had reached safety, then. A panicked child, perhaps, and its mother—just who no longer mattered to Kov. He felt a hatred that burned in his blood like poisoned mead.

One of the priestesses leaned over her mule’s neck, saw the corpses, and screamed. The sound reached Kov over the crackle of dying flames.

“Mazrakir! Mazrakir!” She flung up her hands and began to chant. The second priestess joined her. One of the horsemen unseated a spear from under his right leg and used it to skewer the child’s body. With a contemptuous flip, he tossed it into the river. Dismounted soldiers dragged the adult corpse to the bank, then shoved into the water.

You stinking maggots!
Kov thought.

As the remnants of the huts turned to ash and glowing embers, the Horsekin rode on in a rough column. Once the last of them crossed the bridge, they fanned out to make a camp on the far side. Kov left the shelter of the reeds and paddled into deep water. He swam to the tunnel mouth, took a deep breath, and dove. In the dark water, he could see only a deeper darkness straight ahead of him. Choking on panic, he swam straight for it, found the entrance waiting, and plunged in. His knees hit mud. When he risked raising his head, he found air. He gulped it in, realized it smelled of wet Dwrgi fur, and risked a cautious “Hola?”

“It be Kov!” Jemjek’s voice answered him. “Never did I be so glad to see a man!”

Jemjek caught Kov’s reaching hand and pulled him forward to the drier mud of the tunnel floor. Beyond them Dwrgi voices chattered softly.

“They killed two of us,” Kov said. “Who?”

“Marmeg and her little Clakutt. He did grab a spear and try to fight them, and she did run to grab him and get him to the tunnels.” Jemjek’s voice caught in a sob.

“But the bodies, they were in Dwrgi form.”

“When we die, we do change in the great river of Death.” Jemjek sobbed again. “They rode them down, and they did laugh, Kov, they did laugh when they did slay her and the lad.”

“Swine! Filthy, dung-eating swine!” Kov felt his eyes fill with tears. “They and their kind will pay for this. Some way or another, they will pay and pay and pay again. I swear it by the Mountain Gods!”

Jemjek threw his head back and howled in agreement. Behind them in the hot smoky tunnel Dwrgwn wept and moaned.

Kov wiped his eyes on his arm, then made his way through the crowd and went to his chamber to change out of his wet wrap. Someone had put a basket of blue fungus on his bed. By its light he dressed, then took the basket and hurried to the gold chamber. Thanks to the fire directly above, the warren had turned hot, the air stifling, but when he walked through the heaps and jars of treasures, by the blue light of the fungus he could see that none had come to harm.
It’s not hot enough to melt gold!
he told himself sharply. His irrational fear frightened him the more. He was becoming entirely too protective of these glittering piles of stolen goods.