The Silver Mage (48 page)

“Then why not go back to Cerrgonney?” Garin said. “I doubt if anyone would arrest you or suchlike. Cerrgonney lords are always short of folk to tend their lands.”

All the alleged farmer could do was stare wide-eyed at Garin. Laz suppressed a grin.

“It’s their goddess, I suppose,” he said to the Envoy. “Come now, my good man, you worship Alshandra, don’t you?”

The fellow swallowed heavily and glanced away.

“What be it to you?” he said at last.

“Naught,” Laz said. “Shall we go back to camp, Envoy?”

“Just so,” Garin said. “My thanks for the information.”

Voran and Brel decided they had no reason to wait until morning for the attack. They led their forces to a spot midway between the two farms, then split them into two squads of mixed cavalry and axemen. When they marched off, Laz followed the squad targeting the first farm.

The battle, such as it was, ended quickly. The axeman broke down the gate. The prince’s riders poured into the farmyard. When armed men rushed out of the farmhouse and the barn, the front rank of swordsmen cut them down with an efficiency that reminded Laz of slaughtering sheep. The man who’d posed as a farmer in the parley ran out a back door and headed for the wall, but riders chased and caught him. They dragged him back alive, more or less, to face Prince Voran when his highness returned from the second raid.

When the swordsmen dismounted, they began to loot the farm, as methodically as they’d slain its defenders. Laz rode round to the shed. He dismounted, ran to the door, and lifted the bar free of its staples. He was about to open it when it swung wide, pushed from the inside, to reveal the portly pale-haired fellow with the brand on his face. He was clutching a leather saddlebag to his chest. He stared at Laz, tried to speak, but only stared the more.

“I’m not a lovely sight,” Laz said, “but we’re rescuing you all the same. You’re a free man.”

The fellow began to weep in two thin trails of tears. His head trembled, shaking no, no, no, as if in disbelief. Laz caught him by the arm with one hand then took his horse’s reins with the other. He led them both around the looters and out of the compound to safety.

By then Prince Voran had arrived with some of his men—the rest were stripping the other farm—and other prisoners as well, two men and a woman, to join the pair captured at the first farm. Voran had Bren and a raft of servants brought from the army’s camp, the servants to deal with the captured supplies and livestock, Bren to identify the prisoners. Four of the prince’s riders made the prisoners kneel in front of Voran, who dismounted to look them over.

Laz and the freed slave hurried over to watch. At first the prisoners glared at the prince in cold defiance, but when Bren rode up, the men swore and the women began to weep, clinging to one another. Bren dismounted and trotted over to kneel at the prince’s side.

“That fellow there on the end,” Bren said. “He’s Lord Burc himself. The other’s his brother, Lord Marc.”

“And the women?” Voran said.

“Their wives, Your Highness. Truly, they all lived little better than farmers, even in that dun where I found you.” Bren shot Lord Burc a look of sheer contempt. “Some king you are now, eh?”

For a moment Burc seemed to be about to speak, but he shrugged and kept silent, as did his brother.

“Very well,” Voran said. “I promise you that your women will come to no harm, Burc. I’ll find them a place of refuge. But I’m taking you and your brother back to Cerrgonney to answer the charges of reiving and murder laid against you there.”

“And just who be you, then?” Burc said.

“Voran, Prince of the Gold Wyvern, Justiciar of the Northern Border by the command of the High King himself.”

Burc turned his head and spat onto the ground. The Wyvern men hauled the prisoners up and dragged them away in the direction of the army’s camp. Prince Voran mounted again and led the rest of his escort after them, leaving the servants to deal with the booty from the farms.

“So much for that.” Faharn had come up behind Laz during the questioning. “Ah, this must be the fellow with the book.”

The freed slave turned dead-pale and began to tremble.

“Here!” Laz said to him. “You must understand the Gel da’Thae language.”

“Yes, I do.” The scribe stood a little straighter and glared at him. His voice, however, was as high as a young boy’s despite the fierce edge he gave it. “I take it I’m still a slave.”

“No, you’re not. I’m an outcast from the cities, myself, a scribe and loremaster, and this is my apprentice, Faharn. My name is Laz Moj.”

“I’m truly free?” His voice squeaked on the word “free.”

“You’re truly free, and if you go back with the prince, he’ll find a way to return you to your true people out in the Westlands. What’s your name?”

“Pol, just Pol will do. What do you mean, true people? Horsekin raiders destroyed my village when I was a child.”

“Village?” Laz blinked at him. “The Westfolk are wandering nomads.”

“Then, alas, they’re not my people.”

“But—wait!” Laz remembered old legends about those who’d fled the Great Burning. “Do your folk live near the sea?”

“Yes, between the mountains and the Western Ocean, or up in the foothills, where it’s easier to hide from the raiders.”

“Then I’ve got somewhat of great interest to tell you, Pol, and you’ll have a tale and a half for the Westfolk when you finally meet them. Come with us. If naught else, you deserve a decent meal, and I see that Faharn has snagged us a chicken.”

Faharn held the fresh-killed brown hen up by its yellow feet and grinned, all fangs.

The entire army ate well that afternoon, except for the prisoners. Faharn drew the hen, then encased her in wet clay from the streambed, and roasted her whole in their campfire. He also collected grain from the servants and made a porridge of sorts, which they ate while waiting for the chicken to cook. Once the clay covering had baked as hard as pottery, Faharn pulled the ball out of the embers and broke off the clay. The feathers came with it, and they divided up the meat.

Between bites Pol told Laz about his people—refugees from the Great Burning who’d fled west rather than east out to the grasslands. There were, he thought, perhaps two thousand of them at most, scattered in little villages and farms, living always in fear of the Horsekin. Pol’s clan had been fishermen, and their exposed village on the coast far enough south for them to feel safe—until the ships came.

“We didn’t know that the Horsekin had boats,” he finished up. “But these did, just a raiding party, yet there were enough of them. They came when the men were out fishing and slew the village elders before they took the rest of us as slaves.”

“Bastards!” Faharn remarked.

“Just so,” Laz said, “and cowards as well.”

“I thought my ancestors were the only survivors from the old days,” Pol said, “but now you tell me there are others.”

“A great many others, actually,” Laz said. “They live as Westfolk out in the grasslands, and then I was told that there are towns in the Southern Isles, far away across the Southern Sea, and that the People from there are slowly returning to the plains.”

Pol digested this information along with his share of the hen while Laz considered the problem of the dragon book. He’d not rescued this unfortunate man only to steal from him, though admittedly he’d stolen plenty of other property in his day.
Those days are over,
he told himself.
And that was a matter of survival.
He considered any number of plans before the obvious occurred to him. He could simply ask.

“The book with the dragon on the cover,” Laz said. “Is that a great treasure to you?”

“Not any longer,” Pol said. “I knew that the writing had to be in the language of my ancestors, even though I couldn’t read it. It was a connection to my lost home and clan, well, of a sort, and the only one I had. I saved it when one of the servant girls back at the dun was going to use the pages to light fires.”

Laz nearly choked on his mouthful of chicken. “I’m cursed glad you did,” he said when he’d stopped coughing. “I’m a loremaster, as I mentioned, and I’m most curious about the book.”

“Do you want it?” Pol laid his empty bowl down. “I’d be honored to give it you out of sheer gratitude. If nothing else, you rescued me from that wretched hut. I was terrified that the prince’s men were going to set fire to the compound, and I’d be roasted alive in it.”

“I saw the door moving as if someone were banging on it,” Laz said, “so I thought I’d best go see. Are you sure you can part with the book?”

“Of course.” For the first time all day Pol smiled. “I don’t need it now.” His soft boy’s voice quivered with joy. “I’ll be returning to my people.”

“I’ll ensure that you do.” Laz rose to his feet. “Let me just see if I can have a word with the prince.”

Laz found Voran sitting on a folding stool in front of his tent. Brel Avro sat nearby, and the dwarven warleader looked as pleased with himself as a cat with a stolen fish cake. When Laz knelt before the prince, Voran gave him permission to speak.

“Your Highness,” Laz said, “today my apprentice and I rescued a man who’d been enslaved by the Horsekin. He has Westfolk blood in his veins, and he fain would return west to his people.”

“The fat fellow?” Voran said. “I take it that the Horsekin unmanned him.”

“I fear me they did. I was wondering if Your Highness might grant me a boon, that you’d take the poor man under your protection and see that he gets home.”

“Easily done. We have extra horses, thanks to the Boars. But here, won’t you be returning to Cerrgonney with the army?”

“I fear not, Your Highness.” Laz suddenly realized that he needed a good lie to explain why he’d been leaving the prince’s service in the middle of nowhere.

“I offered him a position with us.” Brel Avro saved him. “We need to learn the Horsekin language. He and his apprentice know it.”

“So they do.” Voran swung round and scowled at the warleader. “Which is why I gave the man a position with me.”

“Your Highness, forgive me,” Laz broke in. “But what with my maiming, and the ill-will your people bear the Horsekin, my apprentice and I live in fear when we’re in your territories. My scars make me an object of scorn, and poor Faharn—your folk shun or threaten him.”

“Oh.” Voran considered this for a moment. “Well, truly, I can understand that. Very well, then. I’ll have my captain make provision for the rescued eunuch. We’ll get him back west, one way or the other.”

“You are most generous, Your Highness, and my thanks.”

That night, while Pol and Faharn slept, Laz sat up by the glowing coals of the campfire and gloated over the dragon book. He’d done Dallandra the enormous favor she’d asked of him. Now he needed to see what profit he could gain from it. Yet, when he considered the silver wyrm, who hated him from lives past, and the dragon’s possible rage should Laz try to withhold the book, he decided that it would be best to pass it along in the same way he’d received it—freely.

L
ate that night the white spirit appeared to Dallandra in her tent. In the dim glow from a dweomer light, hanging at the ceiling, her womanish form looked so substantial that both Calonderiel and Dari could see her, even though she’d created herself out of etheric substance. The baby gurgled and held out both chubby arms when the spirit bowed to Dallandra. Cal merely stared, his mouth slack in surprise.

“Greetings,” Dallandra said. “Do you have something to tell me?”

“Yes,” the spirit said. “The dragon book now belongs to the man with the burned hands.”

“Excellent! What about the man with the beast on his face?”

“He is safe. He’ll return to you here on the grass. The prince of the Children of Aethyr has promised him aid.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Laz—the man with the burned hands—is supposed to take the book to Haen Marn.”

“So he intends. I heard him speak to the commander of the Children of Earth. He will travel with them.”

“Well and good, then. You have my heartfelt thanks for coming to tell me all of this.”

The spirit smiled and nodded in an oddly human way, then disappeared. Dallandra handed Calonderiel his daughter to hold.

“I’d best go tell the others,” Dallandra said. “Grallezar and Ebañy will want to know.”

“What I want to know is what happened to the Boars,” Cal said. “I assume that spirit meant Voran when she spoke of a prince.”

“Yes, I’m sure she did. I’ll scry for him on the morrow, when it’s light, to see if there’s been a battle.”

Dallandra got up and went to the door of the tent, then paused. “By the by, not a word about the book to Arzosah.”

“Don’t worry,” Cal said with a snort. “She doesn’t deign to speak to me.”

“Doesn’t she? Then consider yourself blessed.”