Wild Magic (6 page)

No matter how hard Tanto railed against the barbarian Eyran raiders who had, he swore, burst into Selen Issian’s pavilion, intent on rape and destruction and wounded him in his brave defence of the girl, Saro knew his brother too well. Tanto had elaborated on the tale so much now, embroidering ever more unlikely details into it, that Saro suspected a far simpler explanation for the events and their consequences, and one that was far more in keeping with what he knew of his elder sibling. Tanto was not used to being denied anything: so when the marriage settlement with Selen had fallen through for lack of funds, there was surely only one reason why Tanto would have gone to the girl’s tent: to take (by force if necessary) what he thought should rightfully be his. And succumbing to a stab wound to the genitals spoke of a woman’s desperate defence rather than a brawl with a band of northerners, especially since the only other marks Tanto bore looked suspiciously like the tiny crescent-shaped cuts which might be made by a woman’s fingernails. They said the Goddess looked after her own . . .

No one else had remarked on those small wounds, distracted, no doubt, by the horrifying nature of his other wounds, but Saro had been forced to spend a lot of time tending to his brother after the attack. It had been Favio Vingo’s way of punishing him for giving half his winnings from the horse race at the Allfair to the nomad child whose grandfather Tanto had butchered, rather than donating it to the marriage settlement, as a more dutiful (and hard-hearted) son should have done.

He collected the plate and spoon, and felt for a moment as he did so a disconcerting buzz of energy tingle through his fingertips, as if some ghost of Tanto’s temper haunted the objects and was finding a way to discharge itself through him. As he left the room, he could feel his brother’s eyes boring into his back all the way. In the corridor outside, he shook his head: being alone with Tanto was an unpleasant experience: it could do strange things to his head.

It was a blessed relief just to breathe clean air as he crossed the courtyard to run the plate, spoon and cloth under the tap from the water-butt there. Tanto would doubtless lie to Mother that Saro had not fed him, that he had taken the food away without waking him for his meal, or most likely had eaten it himself. And Saro would probably end up reviled and punished in like manner: by being refused any supper. But as he felt the sun beat down on his face and was assailed by the hot, spicy scents of the honeysuckle and marigolds which had been planted against the whitewashed wall there, Saro did not care. He was used to his brother’s spitefulness, and to his parents taking Tanto’s word against his own.
So much for the loving bonds of family
, he thought. There were times when he felt he had made a deeper connection with the nomad folk he had met at the Allfair than with those with whom he had spent his entire life.

He crossed the courtyard and leaned against the wall, looking out across the landscape. Their villa stood on a hill below which tiers of cultivated land stretched away in myriad steps, bearing their hard-won crops of limes and lemons, pomegranates and figs down into the orange groves, planted in serried ranks along the valley floor so that the land below appeared like a cloth boldly striped in alternating bands of dusty red and glossy green, shot through with a single sweep of glinting blue where the river ran through. Beyond, maybe sixty miles away or more, the land rose white and rocky to form the foothills of the Farem Heights; beyond that again rose the sawtoothed mountain range known as the Dragon’s Backbone, standing as clear and affirmative against the blue horizon as a voice calling his name.

All I want
, he thought, wringing the cloth out over the wall,
is to be away from here. To call my life my own
.

But only the nomads could exist in the wild places beyond the bounds of the Empire. Travelling with their placid pack-beasts, the shaggy-looking yeka, they traversed Elda, never putting down roots, never founding settlements, nor claiming ground, never doing damage to the world. And because they trod so lightly on the land, the land appeared to allow them sustenance and passage through even its most inhospitable areas. The only nomads he had encountered had been at the Allfair, where both northerners and Empire folk travelled to do business, to trade their goods and services, to make alliances, marriages and gain political favour. Had this been the extent of the Fair’s attractions, Saro would have found it dull indeed: but the nomad people – known by the southerners as ‘the Footloose’, though they preferred to call themselves ‘the Wandering Folk’ – had also come to the annual fair, and their presence had provided wonders aplenty. He remembered watching them arrive in their garishly painted wagons and their outlandish costumes, bearing the fantastic array of goods they brought with them to trade and to sell: lanterns and candles, jewellery made from dragonclaws and bear teeth; ornaments, pottery and weavings; potions and charms. His fingers strayed unconsciously to the small leather pouch he wore around his neck. Inside, there lay the most dangerous object in the world, though when he had first come upon it at a nomad peddler’s stall he had thought it merely a pretty trinket, a moodstone which changed colour according to the emotional state of the person who handled it. Since that innocent time, however, he had seen it absorb an old man’s death and pass to him the wearer’s gift – a deep, and entirely unwanted, empathy with anyone with whom he made physical contact. He had seen it flush red in anger and poisonous green with jealousy; he had seen it flare to a white that hurt the eyes; he had seen it steal men’s souls out of their bodies and leave them stone dead upon the ground. Until three months ago, he had thought he had seen the utmost the moodstone could show him. Then, accessing some nexus of power he could not comprehend, it had brought his brother back to the world; and for that alone he felt like pounding it to dust and scattering its magic to the winds.

Magic
, he thought sourly. Surely it was only magic that was likely to spirit him out of this place. If he could just take his courage in his hands and ride out of here in the dead of night he might chance upon a band of Wanderers who would take him in. And then perhaps he might find Guaya again, the little nomad girl whose grandfather Tanto had so needlessly killed and who, up to that horrible moment, had been his friend. Or he might travel north and try to discover what had happened to Katla Aransen. The red of the soil here was a daily reminder of her, for it was the exact dark, sandstone red of her hair; just as the pale blue of the sky on the northern horizon was the colour of her eyes. He found reminders of her all around him: in the curve of a piece of fruit, in a well-turned blade or a shout of laughter; in any mention of Eyra or talk of the imminent war with the North. She was everywhere, and nowhere. He did not even know if she was still alive. She had escaped the burning, Fabel told him, by sorcerous means; but Saro had touched her soul when she had laid hands on him at her knife-stall, and he knew there was no witchery in her; just a pure, natural energy. But night after night she continued to visit him in his dreams, her presence there as vibrant and physical as it had been in life, and his heart still yearned for her. That energy could not be gone from the world: he would surely know in his heart if she were dead . . .

‘Saro!’

His reverie shattered, he turned to find Favio Vingo striding across the courtyard toward him, his face dark with anger.
By the Lady
, Saro thought unhappily,
now what?

His unspoken question was answered in no uncertain manner by a roundhouse slap from the man he had until recently believed to be his father, up to the moment some months back when he had been visited by that unwelcome, disturbing vision of his uncle lying with his mother . . .

Fury rushed through him; but whether it was his own reaction to the painful assault upon his now-pounding ear, or a less tangible legacy of Favio’s temper, he could not ascertain.

‘How dare you treat your brother so!’

Ah
, thought Saro heart sinking.
So that’s the way of it
.

‘To strike a bed-ridden invalid is the worst and most cowardly act – and to strike him so hard as to leave such a mark—’

Saro could hardly believe his ears. While his calumnies against Saro had so far been many and varied, Tanto had never yet accused him of physical violence, so this new allegation represented an escalation in Tanto’s lies. Although Saro knew it to be an exercise in futility, he felt that he should make some attempt to defend himself. ‘I did not hit Tanto,’ he said steadily. ‘If he has a mark on him it must be one of his own making.’

This just antagonised Favio further. ‘Come with me!’ he roared. His fingers closed around Saro’s biceps with brutal force and he began to drag him bodily back towards the house.

Saro was overcome by a flood of righteous anger which approached hatred, followed by a wave of scalding sorrow: for the wrong son was lying like a great white maggot in the sickbed while this mendacious, useless boy strode about glowing with health. Saro went bonelessly with Favio Vingo, his limbs and his mind no longer his own while the physical contact remained in place. On the threshold of Tanto’s chamber, however, Favio shoved Saro away from him so hard that the boy sprawled upon the tiles, and the maelstrom of emotions ebbed slowly away.

When Saro gathered himself and looked up, he found his mother, swathed in her customary blue sabatka, weeping silently on a chair beside the bed and his brother propped up by a multitude of white pillows (
no doubt
, Saro found himself thinking incongruously,
stuffed with the feathers of the most expensive Jetran geese and costing a good cantari apiece, while I sleep on a pallet stuffed with straw and a bag filled with chicken feathers from our own coops
) staring at him with outraged eyes. Tanto’s bedshirt was torn open to reveal a dark bruise over the collarbone, or where the collarbone must be, hidden somewhere under all that soft white flesh. The wound was a livid red, already purpling. It must have required considerable force and determination to have done such damage to himself, Saro thought, once more taken aback at the extent of Tanto’s loathing for him.

‘I was not eating fast enough,’ Tanto complained in a miserable whine, his black eyes glinting with self-induced tears, all the while clasping Illustria’s thin hand in his own flabby great paw. ‘He kept hitting me again and again with the spoon—’

Saro turned to their father. ‘This has nothing to do with me,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘How can you believe I would do such a thing?’

But Favio’s expression was one of purest disgust; and not for the puling creature in the bed, either.

Tanto savoured his triumph. ‘And when I cried out for him to stop, he took out his belt-dagger and thumped me so hard with the pommel that I thought he had stabbed me!’

In victorious evidence of this he reached beneath the bedclothes and flourished what was in truth Saro’s own dagger.

Saro stared at it, dumbfounded. His hand went to his waist, but he knew before he felt there that he was not wearing the belt on which he habitually carried the dagger. He could picture it now, slung over the back of the little cane chair in his own chamber on the next floor of the house. And the dagger had been in its tooled leather scabbard beside it when he left the room that morning. So how had Tanto managed to lay hands upon it?

Tanto saw the doubt on his brother’s face and smiled evilly. ‘But of course I forgive you, Saro,’ he said softly, his eyes like gimlets. ‘I know I am a trial to nurse and that such care is not your natural calling. Which is why I have suggested to Father that since the Council is bound to be calling soon on all good men and true to take up arms for the Empire, we should be training you up as a soldier.’

Saro stared at him in disbelief. Tanto knew well that he had no warrior skills. His swordsmanship was clumsy, his lancework worse: he had neither the taste nor the ability for combat. Nor could he rely on archery – he was a poor shot with a bow, too, not least because he could never stand to harm a living thing. He was fleet of foot and had an affinity with horses which enabled him to ride better than most; but as far as he could see all this qualified him to do was to leave the field of battle rather more swiftly than most, which would certainly be his inclination, since he had neither the aggression nor the blind patriotism required to split another man’s skull for no good reason other than to save his own skin.

He opened his mouth to protest in horror, then closed it again as a new thought occurred to him. If he were to train as a soldier well enough to bring no dishonour to the Vingo name, then he might be allowed to leave Altea and make his much-wished-for escape. He turned his face to the man he called his father, who stood blocking the doorway, hands on his hips in a most uncompromising manner.

‘It is most magnanimous of my brother,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘to make this suggestion. If it would please you, sir, to allow me to redeem myself thus, then I will do my best to take on this task and acquire the skills necessary to a good soldier.’

Favio Vingo looked taken aback. He had been surprised when Tanto had advocated the idea, but had put it down to the fact that since Tanto would never be able to don the Vingo armour and go into battle at the head of the Altean troop as the hero he would surely be, then the next best thing was that his brother should carry the family’s honour. But he was even more surprised at Saro’s response. He had been expecting a storm of protest from the boy who had, he knew well, little liking for such activities. That, or downright, surly refusal. This gracious acceptance spoke of filial responsibility, of humility and, at long last, a bit of manly pride. But while the boy’s attitude might have taken some of the sting out of his fury, there was still the matter of attacking Tanto to be attended to.

‘Since it is not in your nature to take good care of your brother, then you shall learn that care the hard way. I do not know why Tanto should feel warmly towards you when you have shown him such violence and malice, but he has made a special request of me, arguing that the bond between the two of you needs to be strengthened. So, for the weeks to come, before, between and after you begin your training with Captain Bastido, you shall take over the duties of washing your brother’s person, clearing away his waste and applying the ointments prescribed by the chirurgeon. You will start these duties at dawn tomorrow. Tonight, though, you shall retire to your own chamber without food or light, and reflect upon the qualities that make for proper fraternal relations. Now, go to your room.’