Wild Magic (67 page)

The captain patted the pouch of coins he carried at his belt. ‘Why should a peasant prosper, when it’s us who has to do all the hard work?’

The sergeant smiled broadly.

Outside, the night sky was lit by the fire in the sheltered vale below the cot, which illuminated the grove around it, crisping the late olives and lemons, so that these fragrant aromas melded with those of burning herbs. But even these appetising scents could not mask the powerful stench that lay at the heart of the blaze. Together, the captain and his sergeant tossed the unconscious body of Lodu Balo on top of the blackened corpse of his wife, dusted off their hands and went back into the house to find whatever provisions they might stock up with for their long journey south. South and east.

By a bend in the Tilsen River, where the osiers grew high, they found the remains of a fire and the marks of churned-up ground. Evidence of an encampment of some sort: but the ruts left by cartwheels surely had nothing to do with two men, a cat and a horse.

‘Now what?’ asked the sergeant.

The captain kicked the blackened stones apart. ‘Fuck knows,’ he said viciously. ‘Where would you go if you was deserting?’

The sergeant laughed. ‘I’m hardly going to tell you, am I, chief ?’ He took in the cheerless vista around them. ‘Certainly not out into this bloody wilderness, that’s for sure.’

There was a cry from the riverbank. One of the soldiers had found pawprints and the rest had gathered around to stare at them.

‘Ain’t natural,’ said one. ‘Mountain lion’s got no business down here.’

‘No mountains for a hundred miles!’

One man placed his hand in the hardened mud. The impression of the cat’s paw engulfed it.

The captain whistled through his teeth. ‘Wouldn’t want that one with its head in your lap, would you?’

The man shuddered and withdrew his hand quickly as if the beast might magically spring up out of its own spoor.

The sergeant regarded the print thoughtfully. ‘“Big cat”, the peasant said. “Big cat.” I was wondering how on Elda he’d managed to spot a domestic cat at such a distance. Something weird is going on here: there was a fair bit of talk back at the barracks about the albino, stuff he got up to for the Lord of Cantara—’

‘Bastard, that Tycho Issian,’ someone said, and there was general agreement.

‘Magic and the like . . .’

‘Whores, too.’

‘So what we got if we add all that together?’ the captain asked, scanning their faces. They looked blankly back at him. He clicked his teeth impatiently. ‘We got shapechanging and sorcerers and Footloose and treachery.’ He dropped his voice and took the sergeant aside. He had known Tilo Gaston since they were lads: they’d trained together, got drunk and beaten the hell out of each other outside a dozen taverns in the Eternal City. Did he trust him? Perhaps not entirely, but money usually sealed a man’s mouth. ‘We got conspiracy in the highest places here. No wonder there’s a high price on their heads: and I reckon we can get it a fair bit higher if we catch ’em, too. Lord of Cantara had some shady ancestors, I’d heard. Someone said something about a nomad father—’

‘You’d better not go round saying that in public,’ the sergeant muttered, looking back uncomfortably in case any of the others had overheard. ‘People disappear around Tycho Issian, and not by magic, neither.’

‘Ah, no, I wasn’t thinking of saying it in
public
.’ The captain winked and rattled the coin-bag. Then he raised his voice. ‘I’ll bet my arse this was their meeting point,’ he said to the troop at large. ‘Those dainty little hoofprints back there belong to no yeka I ever saw, so I’d say our quarry have taken up with a band of nomads. Even if they haven’t, and they just happened to have crossed paths, the worst we can do if we follow these tracks is to find and roast some Footloose. And the best? Well, the Lady knows: but if you keep imagining what you might do with that reward money, it might take your mind off the heat and the flies.’

Travelling with the nomads was the most enjoyable experience of Saro Vingo’s young life. Almost, he forgot the context for their journey: for the tales the old women wove and the knowledge they possessed about everything they passed made him feel the world was a significantly different place to the one he had grown up in: that it was wider and purer and more mysterious and far, far more ancient than he had ever imagined. It made him a little less despairing than he had been since the empathic gift from Hiron had opened his eyes to the horrible true nature of much of humanity; at times he even felt optimistic.

They had been skirting the low foothills of the Golden Mountains for the last two days and were now taking a much-needed rest beside a small stream shaded by overhanging rowans.

‘This is lady’s smock,’ said Alisha, holding up a bunch of tender green stalks topped by delicate pink flowers. ‘It’s a moon-plant: good for the stomach. Good to eat, too.’ She peeled some out of the bunch and handed them to him.

It tasted pleasantly like watercress, if a little more bitter. Already he had learned the names and uses of a dozen fungi, and three dozen plants and herbs – lad’s love (for cramps in the muscles); thorn apple (for breathing problems); henbane (for swelling of the testicles); mullein (for bruising and for piles); rampion (for fevers and discoloration of the skin). He had learned that powdered willowherb would stop excessive bleeding, that a decoction of dove’s foot in wine could ease aching joints and that one of soapwort might fight those diseases contracted in unhealthy brothels. Such applications made the world seem more benevolent, as if the Three had provided all their folk might ever require, free for the picking.

It was from Virelai that he learned a parcel of rather more disturbing information: that potions made from the root of the salep orchid could harden the male genital organ for a day or more; that the pounded woody stems of the spurge could cause miscarriage and that fresh dog’s mercury could kill a mouse, a dog or a man in a most unpleasant manner, depending on how much was administered. He asked Alisha now whether any of this were true, blushing when he got to the bit about the orchid.

‘I do not know where he gets all this terrible stuff from,’ she said, laughing indulgently. ‘Books, he says, the old man’s books.’

‘Who is the old man?’ Saro asked softly. He remembered the vision he had had when he touched the sorcerer. For an elderly man he had not appeared kindly.

Alisha shrugged. ‘I believe he raised Virelai from a baby, but given all that, he will not talk much about him. I do not even know his name.’

‘I do,’ Saro said, surprised. ‘Rahe.’

The nomad woman’s eyes went wide. ‘Ra-hay?’ she asked, separating the sounds.

Saro nodded slowly. The way she said it reminded him of something.

‘King Rahay?’

‘I don’t think he was a king. He never mentioned a king,’ Saro frowned. ‘I touched him once, Virelai, I mean; to see if there was any malice in him and there was a torrent of images – I saw an old, old man, surrounded by parchments and scrolls, and bottles of all sorts, in a fortress made all out of ice. And there was a woman too, with long, long golden hair . . .’ He laughed nervously. ‘Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Like something out of a fairy story.’

Alisha nodded absent-mindedly. She looked towards where the sorcerer sat with the old women, helping them wring out the washing in the stream. Then she turned back to Saro, gazing deep into his eyes. ‘I do not know exactly who or what Virelai is,’ she said very quietly, ‘but I have more than suspicions about the old man. Long ago – hundreds of years maybe – in the time of my distant ancestors in the Far South of Elda, beyond the Dragon’s Backbone—’

‘But there isn’t anything beyond the Dragon’s Backbone,’ Saro laughed. ‘Everyone knows that.’

Alisha looked indignant. ‘But there certainly is: it is where my people came from. Yours too.’

‘My people come from Altea,’ Saro said stubbornly. ‘They’ve been the ruling family of the area for generations.’

‘Does having power over people mean so much?’ she asked gently.

Now it was Saro’s turn to be indignant. ‘I didn’t mean that. I just meant that because the family is considered important in the region, records of every birth and marriage and death have been noted down: we’re proud of our heritage – we know who we are, where we’ve come from.’

‘Apparently not! All the people of Elda came from the Far South, so long ago that stories of that time have passed into legend—’

‘Then why do the legends speak of the Far West, then?’ Saro asked mulishly, as if he might catch her out.

Alisha laughed. ‘That has always amused us. Have you never wondered why both your people and the Eyrans hold dear tales of the Far West?’

Saro looked thoughtful. ‘The Eyrans came from here – from Istria – originally. We drove them north, and then out of the southern continent altogether. So I suppose that’s why some of the stories are shared. And why Sirio and Sur are similar in sound. But Far West and Far South – well, you couldn’t get that wrong – all those Eyran navigators and adventurers planning to find the Ravenway to the Far West – they could hardly sail across the mountains, could they?’

‘You wouldn’t think so, would you?’ Alisha said. ‘Since my mother died – you’d have loved her, I think: she was quite a character, wore her hair in a little white topknot, and about a hundred silver chains around her neck, and she was just the kindest of women – I’ve been trying to remember all she told me; what her mother told her, and her mother before her. And I’ve talked with Elida and Jana: they know much, too. One thing I do know is that Far West is a corruption of “farvasti”, which means “the elder folk” in the Old Tongue. And the elder folk come from beyond the mountains to the south of here.’

Saro closed his eyes. Things were going on in his head, things over which he had no control. Little bits of information were marshalling themselves like the pieces of a puzzle, realigning themselves, coming to the fore of his memory. His eyelids flew open. ‘Rahay – he was King of the West – just like in Guaya’s puppet-play – but he wasn’t, he was King of the South, and his name is Rahe, and he is Virelai’s mentor, the Master: he was the one who found the Goddess hundreds of years ago and stole her away!’ He stopped and stared at her, aware of what he had just said. ‘But no one lives for hundreds of years—’ He regarded her, waiting for her to interject or agree, but she just watched him magnanimously and said nothing, so he went on with his thought process, letting it spill from him like a waterfall. ‘And your people – the nomads, the Wandering Folk – are the People, just like in the old books: the ones with the earth-magic, the ones who channel the powers of Elda. Except—’

‘Except we have little of the Craft left to us – indeed, until the Rosa Eldi came back to the world, we had very nearly lost our magic altogether. Yes,’ replied Alisha. ‘And you are of the People, too – all of you, both Istrians and Eyrans: but you are of those members of the People who marched away into the world determined to make a different kind of life, who turned their backs on magic and the old ways and went to war with one another instead, and made power and money and land more important than love and truth and the heart of Elda.’

‘But if the Goddess is returned to the world, and we have the Beast with us, then if we can find Sirio, all will be restored?’

Alisha smiled at him. ‘It seems so simple, doesn’t it?’

There came a cry from somewhere on the hillside above them, where the path wove down through the rocks. Saro came upright as if he were on a spring, but he could see nothing. The cry was followed by a deep-throated roar, then by screaming.

‘We do indeed have the Beast with us; and it sounds as if she has company,’ Alisha said grimly. She ran downstream towards the rest of the caravan. ‘Visitors!’ she called, waving her arms. ‘Let us pack up and away.’

At once the nomads were on their feet, moving quickly. Saro was impressed by how calmly and purposefully they reacted and wondered if this was because they were by nature a phlegmatic folk, or whether such attacks had become common experience to them. Virelai and the men began to herd the yeka together; the women slung the still-wet washing into the backs of the wagons, gathering up their utensils and belongings as they ran. Saro untethered the stallion and stared behind him, up into the hills where the sound of Bëte’s roar had thundered. For a moment he could see nothing; then there was a movement amidst the bracken and birches: horsemen, with cloaks of deepest blue. His mind raced. Not a roving band of marauders or brigands, then . . .

‘Leave the wagons!’ he yelled. ‘Leave everything and run!’

Alisha, pushing Falo up into their cart, stared at him.

‘Soldiers!’ Saro cried, grabbing the boy down again, and watched her face go white. ‘It’s us they’re after,’ he added, knowing this suddenly to be the truth. ‘Virelai and me.’ He could imagine how his brother might have inflamed the Lord of Cantara into taking this swift action. It was as well Tanto could not ride, he thought, or he’d be leading the troop, and then no one would be safe. He looked past the nomad woman to where the sorcerer stood, swaying slightly like a pale aspen in a breeze. ‘Virelai!’ he called. ‘They’ve come for us – soldiers from Jetra. You and I must face them, hold them at bay for as long as we can, let these folk make their escape.’

‘We need our wagons,’ one of the old men said quietly, leading his pair of yeka forward and harnessing them with slow, sure hands. ‘Our lives are in our wagons.’

Saro felt hot frustration scour through him. ‘You will have no lives if you do not leave your wagons!’ But still the old man persisted with his task until he had the animals yoked.

A moment later, the first of the soldiers came crashing down through the trees, his sword waving wildly. The tip of it was reddened. Then another appeared behind him. His sword was sheathed: he needed both hands on the reins to control his careering horse.

The nomads, seeing the nature of the threat in sudden, vivid colour, were galvanised; but still they would not abandon their carts. Saro, who wore no sword, looked desperately around him for a weapon.

‘Here!’ It was Falo, wielding a long, stout stick of age-pitted holly-wood. ‘It was Amma’s,’ he said, holding it out for Saro, ‘though I don’t think she ever hit anyone with it.’