Magic's Poison, page 2
part #1 of Magic's Poison.epub Series
The elusive familiarity of its scent suddenly evoked a memory of the Magian college at Miriford, where she’d trained. The stern professor who instructed the students in history had taken their small class to the college treasury and taken a crystal jar out of a locked iron box. She’d opened the jar and held it out to them. Inside was a dark brown paste, and from it wafted the ghost of this same scent of musk and angelica. ‘This is a preserved sample of aribissa,’ the professor had told them. ‘The venom of an ophidian, a man-serpent. This is the drug the Sildonian Mages used to rule the world.’
‘No,’ Marin whispered now, aloud. The professor had gone on to tell them a great deal more, but the most important point was one which everyone had known already: that the sample in the crystal jar was all the aribissa the world contained. The ophidians were extinct. They had all died in the fall of Anasildon, two hundred years before, and the Mages’ empire had died with them.
‘No,’ Marin said again. She was desperately afraid, with a fear quite different from the physical terror she’d felt when Jako attacked her. Then she’d been afraid for herself, but now she was afraid for the whole world. The empire of the Mages had been the greatest and most terrible the world had ever known, and aribissa had been its foundation. Her chief feeling toward that fragrant brown paste had been relief that there was no more of it. The liquid in the syringe, however, was not preserved aribissa. It was fresh.
Maybe it wasn’t aribissa. It couldn’t be, after two hundred years! It was just something that smelled a bit similar...
It was magical, though, powerfully so. Aribissa, it was said, had enhanced the power of any magician who used it: that was the first of its effects. The second was more sinister. A magician could use it to poison another’s will and render the victim his helpless slave.
With a stab of apprehension, she thought of Lord Marbrook. In the autumn the royal deputy had been willing to investigate Andar—unhappy about his duty, perhaps, but resigned to it. In the spring, though, after one meeting with Andar, the royal deputy was his partisan.
Marin had met with Lord Marbrook the morning after that meeting. The royal deputy had not been his usual smug and supercilious self: he had been pale and shaky, his speech full of odd halts. He had kept looking at Marin pleadingly, as though he wanted something from her. She had thought that he was hungover. Now, appalled, she considered the possibility that he had been poisoned with aribissa, and that Andar had stolen his will.
Another consideration struck her with a thump. If Andar was using aribissa, there was no limit to what he could require his victims to do. He could command Lord Marbrook to despatch the whole Stonyvale garrison to look for her, and to kill her if they caught her. Lord Marbrook would have no choice but to obey.
So far Andar had moved circumspectly. Maybe he didn’t want anyone to know the source of his power. That would make sense: the news of a fresh source of aribissa would overturn every established order. The three Dorian kingdoms—no, the whole world!—would rush to seize or destroy it. If Andar wanted to keep control of it—and hold on to what he’d gained by using it—he had to keep it a secret
To keep his secret now, though, he would have to kill Marin.
Marin jumped to her feet and began to strike camp. Andar was presumably keeping track of Jako—any magician could use divination to discover the circumstances of his own people—and he would know that the attempt to poison her had failed. He would react accordingly. She had to get away.
She left Jako’s body where it lay and his horse loosely tethered in the meadow. Her gelding Willow was astonished to find himself saddled up again after dark, but he bore it patiently. He was always a brave and willing mount. By no means a beautiful horse—he was small and shaggy and gray, with a large head and thin neck—he remained exceptional for his sure-footedness, his powers of endurance, and his sweet, uncomplaining temperament. Socks, the pack-horse, was less good-natured, and she complained loudly at setting off again after dark, making a loud rumbling grunt with every step. She was accustomed, however, to following Willow, and they headed off along the road in the dark.
About a mile from the campsite the main road forked, one path going south along the river into the duchy of Coltrim, and the other continuing due west into the county of Tenefen. Marin followed the Tenefen road until the moon rose, the horses trotting and walking along a dimly seen path between the towering trees. When the moon came up, however, she turned into the first game trail she found. Willow snorted and tossed his head, but he picked his way carefully over the rough country in the bad light. Marin leaned forward against his neck, trusting his sure feet.
When they were well clear of the road she halted. Too tired to make camp, she saw to the horses, then wrapped herself in her blanket and snuggled into a pile of dry pine needles under a bush.
As soon as she closed her eyes, she saw Jako rushing at her again, and heard his scream as the knife went in. She opened her eyes and stared out at the dark. Miserably, she wished she’d been more careful—that she’d hidden her camp, so that Jako rode past and never met her.
If he had, though, she wouldn’t have found the aribissa, wouldn’t know about this... this... she checked herself as she thought ‘ancient evil, returned to haunt the living world.’ That was a line from a broadsheet ballad, nothing to do with the real world.
Except the stuff in the flask was real. Part of her wished she hadn’t found it—but she told herself firmly that that part was stupid. She had no wish to live in a world governed by Sildonian Mages, particularly if they were like Andar. She was a Guardian, too. Preventing the abuse of magic was her job.
She felt under her shirt and found the hard smooth shape of her Guardian’s signet, the official seal of her office, the symbol of her responsibilities. Her fingers brushed the little leather bag which now hung beside the signet—the flask of aribissa.
How had Andar ever come by such a thing? Aribissa wasn’t something someone could make. Its only source was the poison glands of the men-serpents, the ophidians, and they were extinct!
Except they obviously weren’t. She tried to imagine an ophidian—a serpent in the shape of a man, cold and venomous and scaly. She shuddered. Ancient evil, returned to haunt the living world. The nightmare was real. It had given this flask to Andar. It was in league with him.
She began to shiver, and pulled the blanket around herself more tightly.
She wondered if there was an ophidian out there in the dark, looking for her. She told herself that if it was, it wouldn’t be able to find her, and in the morning she could ...
She realised that she could not continue the journey she’d planned. Her intention had been to ride first to the royal capital of Levalsa Aldor, a hundred and sixty miles from Stonyvale. There she’d intended to leave a report for the royal chancellor before continuing another hundred and fifty miles west to Miriford to enlist the help of her superiors in the Magian Council. It was the proper course to take in a case of sorcery where the local authorities were unhelpful—and, for that reason, she couldn’t take it. It was what Andar would expect her to do. She must take some other path, one he didn’t expect and couldn’t easily trace—and she must take it quickly. Once Andar realised that he couldn’t stop her from reporting him, he might well take other steps to protect himself.
The horrible thought occurred that Andar could sidestep all trouble by visiting the king. Lord Marbrook would be able to get him a private audience. If Andar poisoned the king the way he must have poisoned Lord Marbrook... she had to stop him!
She floundered, dismayed, wondering where she could turn. Then, with relief, she remembered that the duke of Sithia was supposed to be making a tour of the northern portion of his province. Sithia was a huge, sprawling duchy, but the northern portion adjoined the southeast of the White River district, and lay only sixty miles or so from Stonyvale. What was more, the duke was reputed to be a bold, resolute man, intelligent and exceptionally able—a good man to deal with a crisis. She would cut across country, following no road and leaving as little trace of her passage as she could, and she would go to Sithia.
With this decided, she fell into an exhausted sleep.
She woke at dawn, weary, queasy and afraid. She fed the horses some grain, then loaded the pack on Socks and saddled Willow. Gnawing a breadroll, she set out toward the southeast. To get to Sithia she had to cross the White River. There was a bridge at Stonyvale, but no other before Highbridge in the duchy of Coltrim. There was, however, one place where the river could be forded, though only in the summer, when the water was low. The current was always too strong to the north, and to the south the river was too deep, but the ford should be passable at this time of year. It lay a few miles downstream of her first camp, and she aimed for it, relying on her knowledge of the district and her magician’s senses to keep from getting lost.
It was slow going: Willow picked his way carefully through dense brush, around tangles of bramble and over fallen trees, Marin sometimes riding bent over to avoid the branches, sometimes dismounting altogether. Socks followed, grumbling about the bad footing, blowing out her belly in disgust and making frequent attempts to stop and graze.
Marin worried constantly about pursuit. While she was confident that nobody was tracking her, she was afraid that Andar could divine her whereabouts. Divination, it was true, was always erratic. It worked best when the diviner knew the person or place he was trying to learn about, and it helped to have a concrete object as a focus—a plant or a stone from a place, a person’s possession or lock of hair. She feared that Andar had taken from her house in Stonyvale to use as a focus: he’d have no trouble getting into it, if Lord Marbrook was under his thumb. Normally Andar resided at Lake Hacheg, a full day’s ride to the northeast of Stonyvale, but she was willing to bet he’d started for Stonyvale as soon as he realized she was about to leave the district.
Ordinarily she’d be confident that even with a focus Andar wouldn’t be able to tell more than that she was alive in forested country to the southeast—but he had aribissa, and who knew how much that enhanced his power? She thought of the scent of the stuff, and found herself itching to smell it again. She reached up to touch the flask in its little leather bag.
She put her hand down again. She did not trust her desire, and certainly didn’t trust the drug. The poison in that flask had been intended to enslave her. She was not sure how aribissa worked—she had a vague recollection that the Sildonian Mages had cast a spell while they and their victims both were drugged, but she couldn’t really remember the details. The historical lectures at the Magian College hadn’t seemed very important at the time. Still, Andar had obviously intended this aribissa to subdue her, and it was potent stuff: she should have as little to do with it as possible.
Late in the morning she reached the White River again, some miles downstream of where she had left it. The road to Coltrim ran along its bank, and she hesitated on its verge. She gave a nervous glance in each direction: the road stretched empty and peaceful in the sunlight. She turned north toward the ford.
They reached the ford without encountering anyone on the road. Marin was relieved to see that the water was particularly shallow—she’d heard of horses being swept off their feet by it when the stream barely topped their legs. She turned Willow down the slope and allowed him to stop for a drink at the water’s edge. While the horses drank she sat uneasily in the saddle, glancing around at the trees, the water rushing along the gravelly shallows, and the road. There was not a soul to be seen, and no trace of a human presence struck her magician’s senses. At last she touched Willow’s sides, and he moved obediently out into the ford.
In the middle of the stream she felt a spell release. She had no idea what it was, but she cried out in alarm at the strength of it, and urged Willow toward the far bank. The next instant she heard a roar upriver, and saw a wall of white water rushing down at her. She leaned low over Willow’s neck as he wallowed through the river toward the shore.
The water hit, nearly knocking her from the saddle. Willow was swept off his feet, but righted himself, struggling in the churning flood. Marin clung to his neck with both arms and wrapped her legs around his belly, feeling the strength of his muscles as he swam and floundered and strained every fibre to reach the shore. The water was bitterly cold, snow-melt from the high Skywalls. Marin inhaled it, choked, coughed, and with an involuntary gasp took in another breath of icy river.
Willow’s hooves struck ground, lost it, found it again. He heaved himself out of the flood and clawed his way up the far bank to safety. Marin slithered off his back and collapsed on the ground, coughing convulsively.
After a little while she lifted her head wearily, blinking away tears. The level of the river had already dropped; almost it was shallow again. Willow was standing over her, his head hanging, his wet coat looking almost black. The lead rein had been torn from the pommel of his saddle, and there was no sign of Socks and the pack of supplies.
Marin found the mare’s body about fifteen minutes later, stuck on a shoal near the edge of the river. Socks had, of course, been behind Willow, a short distance that was enough to kill her. The pack was still strapped to her back.
Marin stared miserably at the dead horse. She had loved her. She had loved every horse she ever owned, and the mare’s grumbling had always made her laugh. She waded out into the river and stroked the dead animal’s sodden neck.
It had been, she decided, a water-binding. The spell was complicated but not obscure; it was commonly used to check a stream enough to allow repairs to a mill or dam. She could construct one herself, if she had enough time and access to some reference books. To use a spell to kill was sorcery by definition, and a capital offence—but then, Andar was already guilty of sorcery, and had nothing to lose by practicing more of it. The binding had been fixed just above the ford, and set to release when Marin reached the center of the stream. Keying a spell to a particular individual was also something any reasonably skilled magician could do. Andar had probably needed one of Marin’s possessions to cast the key, but she’d already guessed that he’d raided her house in Stonyvale.
What was frightening—indeed, terrifying—was that ordinarily a water-binding required the magician to touch the water as it was bespelled, carefully inducing a snarl around a rock or branch that then collected debris until the stream was choked. By every rule, the binding should have been cast just above the ford—but there’d been no one there. What was more, Andar couldn’t have guessed that she meant to cross the river until after she’d turned south that morning. To be sure, the White River flowed through Stonyvale—but for Andar to bind it there, but not allow the binding to set until twenty miles downstream—that should have been impossible. How could she escape an enemy who could do the impossible?
He would cut her off. He would kill her.
She took several deep breaths, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes to try to stop herself from bursting into tears. She had no time to cry: she had to think.
She lowered her hands and looked down at the drowned pack-horse. All her gear was in that pack: her tent, her spare clothes, her white Guardian’s robe. The food supplies were probably spoiled, but she might be able to salvage something...
Another possibility occurred to her. All the things in the pack were hers, and they would resonate to a spell of divination. If she worked a glamour into them so that Andar’s probing divinations encountered a dead horse and what seemed to be a dead rider...
She would have to abandon the pack. It would take everything she had to provide enough resonance to hold a glamour.
She hesitated, torn—then took a deep breath and began splashing around the dead horse in a circle, seven times. Then she knelt in the shallow water and laid one hand on the mare’s neck, the other on the pack. Carefully she extended her senses, then began to construct her spell.
When she’d finished, she lifted her hands and stood up, shaking with weariness. There now appeared to be two bodies on the shoal: the horse, and a woman in a white robe. The woman’s long brown hair floated like weed in the current, and Marin was glad she couldn’t see the face: the sight of herself drowned would certainly give her nightmares. She would have indeed have died in that flood, if it hadn’t been for Willow.
She tested the glamour: it resonated to her magician’s senses as well as deceiving her eyes. She could only hope that it resonated strongly enough to cover the traces of her actual and living presence.
It would fade, of course. In a few hours the abandoned pack would become visible through the illusion, and by nightfall the glamour would have vanished entirely. But maybe—if she was lucky—Andar would check on his success before the glamour faded, and, having satisfied himself, not check again. She could hope so, anyway. She didn’t have much hope otherwise.
She splashed back to the bank. Willow was grazing—awkwardly, drooling green around the bridle-bit. She noticed with concern that he was limping on the near fore. She touched his shoulder, then stood still, once more extending her senses. Beast-speaking—the magic of handling animals—was the first magic she had ever practiced, and it was still the one she liked best. It took her only a moment to ascertain that Willow had torn a muscle in his shoulder during his struggles in the water. She scratched a pentagram around him, constructed a healing charm, eased it onto Willow’s shoulder and bound it fast--then sat down hurriedly, feeling light-headed.
Working magic always made her tired. She needed food, she told herself—then remembered that all her supplies were in the pack. She pressed her face against her knees: she had nothing but a half-lamed horse, the clothes on her back, and a purse containing three silvers, and it was still a long way to Sithia.
She couldn’t delay here, though, whether or not her trick had worked. She was in plain sight of the road on the opposite bank, and somebody might come past.
She got up and started over to Willow—then paused. Her leather riding coat was snagged in a bush just downstream of Socks. It had still been damp that morning, so she’d draped it over the top of the pack, and it had been swept off by the flood. To find it caught was an unexpected piece of good luck.
