Warrior Prime, page 10
part #1 of Ink Mage Legacy Series
“Of course we are.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, that was the plan. Don’t be silly.”
“No!” barked Zayda. “I heard you and Mardis Kain talking. I’m not going. Not now. Not ever.”
“You know, I’m really being very patient. I’m not sure what the problem is here.”
“I’m not a slave!” Zayda said heatedly.
“We don’t want to make you a slave,” Peyne shot back.
She tugged violently at her collar. “This does. And it will never come off if I go with you. The old woman said there were answers in the deep desert, that I might be free again.”
“Well, then the old woman can just take a flying . . . old woman? Who are you talking about?”
“Back in the Mashi village,” Zayda said. “She told me of the ancient magicians before giving me the tattoo.”
“You got another tattoo?”
She averted her eyes, nibbling her lower lip. Peyne guessed the conversation had gone in a direction Zayda hadn’t intended.
“Maybe you should tell me all about it,” Peyne suggested.
She sighed and let the story spill out, the villager Dureen who’d come to take her to the old woman—the sister—and then the old woman telling her about the origins of ink magic in the deep desert, and finally getting the new tattoo.
She finished her story, and Peyne took note she’d neglected to say what the new tattoo actually did. “Let me see it.”
One of Zayda’s slim hands automatically came up to cover the spot between her breasts.
Peyne rolled his eyes. “Never mind. There’ll be time for that later. The important thing is we get to a safe place, and marching back into Fyria doesn’t qualify for either of us. They’re about to go to war with my home country, and as soon as somebody recognizes what that collar means, they’ll pack you off to the prince. So. To reiterate. We angle east. We’ll hit the coast sooner or later, and then we arrange a ship.”
Her face hardened. “No.”
Peyne sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. This shouldn’t be so difficult. “It’s really pointless to keep arguing like this.”
“I agree.” Zayda put a foot into the stirrup and heaved herself into the saddle. She clicked her tongue, and the horse headed south at a trot.
“Are you serious?” Peyne jogged to catch up, grabbed the horse’s reins, and yanked the animal to a halt.
Zayda glared down at him. “Let go of the reins.”
“This nonsense has gone on quite far enough,” Peyne said. “Now, you’re going to listen to me, and the first thing we’re going to do is—”
Zayda’s hand fell to the hilt of her scimitar. “Let. Go.”
Peyne froze. Then he slowly removed his hand and took a step back. They held each other’s gaze for a long, tense moment.
“If I ever lose this stupid thing”—Zayda gestured to the scepter in her sash—“then my head comes off. Imagine living your whole life like that, knowing that if you were careless, or somebody robbed you, then your head might explode. What would you do to get the collar off?”
Anything, thought Peyne. Anything to be free of it.
Zayda didn’t need him to respond. She saw the answer in his face. “Then you know that I’m doing what I must.”
They looked at each other another long moment.
She held out her hand.
He hesitated, just a moment, then took it. She swung him up behind her in the saddle.
“Hold on to my waist,” she said. “It’s okay.”
He did as instructed.
“And I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “So stop thinking it right now. It won’t do you any good.”
“Please. You can’t possibly know what I’m thinking. I happen to be a complex person. Practically a riddle.”
“You’re thinking you’ll humor me for now,” Zayda said. “And then talk me into your way of thinking eventually or trick me onto a ship or some clever thing. Won’t happen. I’m going south.”
Peyne cleared his throat. “That new tattoo doesn’t give you mind-reading powers, does it?”
Zayda didn’t answer but grinned, knowing he couldn’t see. She gave the horse a kick with her heels, and the steed lifted its head, snorting loudly as if to say about time and trotted across the baked land.
CHAPTER TEN
His official title was the Prince’s All Knowing and Infallible Court Magician, an appellation that had been made up just for him.
Meddigar shook his head, chuckling. Fyrians do love their titles. I doubt I’ll ever get used to it.
Infallible. That would be nice.
But, he admitted to himself, he wasn’t doing so badly. He was in high favor among Fyria’s greats. He had a palace of his own. Not so big compared to some, not as big as the prince’s palace certainly nor most of the nobility or even as large as some of the more prominent merchants. A palace nonetheless.
And women. Dumo forgive him for all the things he’d done with so many women. When the prince was happy, he could be extremely generous.
And so far, Meddigar had done nothing less than make the prince one of the most powerful men in Fyria second only, many would say, to the grand sultan himself.
Not bad for a boy from the grasslands. The Fyrians embrace very few foreigners to the royal bosom.
All because Meddigar had had the good fortune not to die in the deep desert.
He crossed the workshop to the cabinet where he kept the strange liquid metal for the collars, opened it, and took out an iron pot with a secure lid. The object was heavy. He carried it to his workbench with a grunt.
Not that the desert hadn’t done its very best to kill him. No food. No water. By sheer dumb luck had he stumbled upon the lost city.
And dumb luck was something akin to lightning. It very seldom struck the same place twice.
The wizard removed the lid and looked into the pot, lined inside with smooth ceramic. The brassy, liquid metal within shimmered in the lantern light. He should have been used to the sight by now but still wasn’t.
Meddigar had come out of the deep desert with a supply of the metal along with other untold magical treasures, two enormous pack dromadan loaded down with ancient artifacts. Chief among his finds were the secrets of ink magic and how to apply the Prime to an appropriately receptive subject. Various inks and needles and stencils and other arcane items.
The collars had been a surprise.
At first, Meddigar hadn’t understood what they were for. Plundering the ancient workshops of long-dead wizards wasn’t an exact science. He’d had to piece together scraps of information from dusty tomes and tattered scrolls. The process had pushed his ancient Fyrian to the limits. The classes at the university in Tul-Agnon had been good—wizards serious about magic were obliged to study the old tongue—but classroom instruction even with the best of mentors seldom prepared one for conditions in the field.
But Meddigar had persevered. He’d learned the function of the collars and how they were made. Enslaving the ink mages had been distasteful to him at first, but the more he thought about the process, the more he understood.
Wizards guarded their secrets closely. Since they couldn’t ink the Prime on their own backs, that meant they either had to trust somebody else to put it on them or that whomever the wizard selected to receive the tattoo had to be trustworthy. A risk either way. Either the wizard had to share the secret of how the tattoo was inked, or he had to chance that he was creating a mage who might eventually grow more powerful than him.
The collars took the trust, and therefore the risk, out of the equation. The collars and the control scepters assured obedience. An ink mage could obey or die.
A knock at the door.
“Come.”
Nila entered the workshop. A pretty young thing but with a permanent expression like she’d just smelled bad cheese. Brown, flawless skin, eyes a light sandy brown, full red lips. She’d be fat in coming years, Meddigar suspected, but was pleasantly curvy now. She wore a flowing turquoise gown and matching head wrap, thin material to accommodate the heat. How such an attractive woman could be so constantly sour was one of the little mysteries Meddigar had given up on in the year she’d been his apprentice.
She nodded slightly, a minimal show of respect for her master, then said, “Prince Kha’narahn wants to know about this morning’s batch.”
“None were suitable,” Meddigar lied.
Nila narrowed her eyes. “Not a single one?”
Meddigar frowned. If he were back among his own people, an apprentice would not be so forward as to question her master. But he was here in Fyria and hadn’t picked Nila to be his apprentice. The prince had provided her ostensibly as a gift. And she was apt enough, intelligent, and properly educated. Technically her abilities were superior.
But to Meddigar, the prince’s motivations were fairly transparent. Nila served two purposes: to act as the prince’s spy and to learn the secrets of ink magic through her normal duties as an apprentice. After all, it was tradition that the master pass on his secrets to the pupil.
Eventually.
He stroked his dark beard, gray just starting to creep in at the corners of his mouth. He’d reached the far end of middle age. But I have many good years left in me. Don’t be too eager for my secrets, little Nila. Not yet. Your prince will have to wait.
Nila stood next to him, looked into the pot. “That’s the last of it?”
“Yes. I thought I’d make good use of my time in case we find a suitable girl in the next batch, but these materials are rare and valuable,” Meddigar said. “Of the nine women I tested this morning, two might do in a pinch. I don’t think the prince would want us wasting resources on mediocrity. Do you?”
Nila opened her mouth for a quick retort but caught herself. She understood the difference between stepping right up to the line and crossing it. “Your wisdom in this is, of course, undisputed.”
And don’t forget it.
He dipped a ceramic ladle into the liquid metal. Ceramic worked best. Other metals reacted badly, and the shimmering liquid seemed to cling to anything wooden. He dipped the ladle into the pot, filling the bowl two-thirds of the way. He pivoted to the mold on the workbench, filled the first slot, a thin line twenty inches long.
“You’ll be heading back to the deep desert soon?” she asked suddenly.
Meddigar stiffened but tried to keep the annoyance off his face. Clever girl. She suspects. “Why do you ask that?”
“The liquid metal.” She nodded at the pot. “I’m eager to see the lost city, and if we’re running out . . .”
Damn her.
And therein lay the predicament. In getting lost both to and from the city, Meddigar, out of his head from hunger and dehydration, had gotten hopelessly turned around.
He had no idea, not one, where the lost city might be located.
Probably how it got lost in the first place.
Oh, he knew the general direction. South into the deep desert. Obviously. Perhaps if he retraced his steps, something would seem familiar.
He kept filling the mold, to buy himself a few seconds to think. He dipped the ladle into the pot three more times, filling as many lines. The metal poured out like a thick, brassy gravy.
“I hadn’t thought to bring you, actually,” Meddigar said lightly as he shuffled scrolls from one side of his worktable to another, not looking at her. “It is an unpleasant journey. I’d thought to spare you.”
“My place is at your side,” Nila said. “Both to learn and assist.”
And if he refused to take her, the prince would hear and grow suspicious.
“Hold that thought,” the wizard told her. “And stand away.”
She took three steps back.
Meddigar’s hand dipped into a pouch on his belt. He pinched a small portion of the powder there, a mix he’d concocted himself to go with the spell, also a thing of his own invention. He sprinkled the powder over the liquid metal in the mold as the word of the incantation began to tumble from his lips. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Nila, her eyes narrowed in concentration as she tried to follow the words of the spell. All useless effort of course. Spells had to be studied, their words elusive, resisting being remembered.
He passed his hand over the mold as the arcane syllables trailed off. There was a blur in the air around the liquid metal, a vibration, and then it was over.
Nila leaned in to examine the lines of metal. “May I?”
“By all means.”
She picked up one of the brassy lines. Instead of spilling through her fingers like liquid, it hung limp in her grip.
“It feels . . . odd,” Nila said. “Not like liquid, but not solid either.”
“Not its final form, obviously,” Meddigar explained. “But like this we can manipulate the alloy, fasten it around the neck of our new ink mage. Then the last command word makes it solid. A bit of a cheat actually. I had to invent a spell that would duplicate the process.”
She shifted the limp length of metal from one hand to the other. “You’ll teach me?”
“In time. But as you’ve pointed out, we’re short of the metal. Perhaps in a few months an expedition can be properly arranged.” That should put her off for a while.
“I began preparations last week,” Nila said. “The prince happened to hear about it and is expediting matters.”
“What?”
“No need to wait with the authority of the prince behind us. I assumed you’d be pleased.”
“Indeed,” Meddigar said. “Pleased.”
Meddigar’s plan had been simple. Return to the deep desert and do everything possible to locate the lost city again. If he found it, then he would replenish the rare supplies needed to ink the Prime and fashion the collars.
And if the city proved impossible to locate again, he would simply disappear. The prince had lavished fabulous wealth upon the wizard, and if Meddigar spirited himself away with only a fraction of such riches, he could set himself up nicely. He knew a number of wards that would foil any magical search for him.
Nila coming along was an unexpected complication.
Never mind. Misfortunes could be arranged. Nila need not alter his plan one whit.
His Royal Majesty Ferris Gant sat on his throne trying not to look bored. It seemed somehow a sin that the palace’s great hall in the capital of Merridan should ring with the tedious whine of various government ministers. The soaring vaulted ceiling echoed with the dullest details of trade agreements, the minutiae of the bureaucracies that kept the city running, the pleas of a menagerie of minor nobility all hoping for some boon.
How long since he’d been hunting? Too long. But of course a king couldn’t simply slip off with a few comrades and go hunting. No, it had to be a production, bodyguards and chefs to prepare a luncheon and minstrels and ladies-in-waiting to ooh and aah over whatever he happened to kill.
Being king is a damned awful headache.
The minister of agriculture droned on about crop rotations. With heroic effort, Gant stifled a yawn.
Nothing of real importance ever happened at court. Urgent and weighty matters always happened in a back room with a pitcher of wine and away from prying eyes. A handful of men conducted the great affairs of Helva. A thousand expendable peons handled the myriad details.
No. Gant chastised himself. He must never think of those people as small or expendable. That was his uncle talking. Gant’s Uncle Pemrod had been an effective king but not a good man. There had to be a way to do both.
And work in some hunting too, for Dumo’s sake.
The minister finished, and Gant nodded and smiled, indicating he appreciated the report, then dismissed the man with a casual gesture.
The chamberlain stepped up to announce the final business of the day. Evet Murnan was a skinny, storklike man with a comical beak of a nose and an unfortunate overbite. But his intelligence was of the sharpest variety, and he had an infallible knowledge of every noble house from the most influential duke in Merridan to every backwater baron in Klaar. His political instincts were beyond reproach.
Murnan raised his voice theatrically. “Your Royal Majesty, it is with distinct honor that I present the Fyrian Imperial Ambassador Hreel’Kishna.”
The ambassador was short and alarmingly fat. Breathtaking obesity had become a new trend among the Fyrian aristocracy, a conspicuous physical show of wealth and leisure. Hreel’Kishna was light skinned for a Fyrian, black moustache curled extravagantly on either side, his beard sharp and abbreviated, jutting out from the uppermost of his triple chin. He wore a turban with an enormous emerald in the center, flowing green robes, and a belt of gold links.
His girth kept him from achieving a proper bow, but everyone knew what he was trying to do, so it was fine. Gant nodded a greeting, hoping the man had something significant to say but knowing he didn’t.
“His most sublime imperial and supreme grand sultan of the Fyrian Empire sends his sincere greetings,” the ambassador said. “It is with utmost respect and the fervent desire for friendship between our two great nations that I have come again to offer you a daily report on the search for the lost ship the Pride of Klaar.”
Dumo damn your eyes, you insipid lard ass. Get on with it.
“Alas, there remains no sign of the vessel.”
The tone of regret in the ambassador’s voice seemed so genuine, Gant was forced to consider the man might actually mean it.
“There is, however, some news,” the ambassador said.
A pause.
Just tell me, you buffoon. Gant had stopped himself from rolling his eyes. He’d learned very early that as king his every gesture and facial expression was monitored. A furrowed brow might send outlying territories into rebellion. A sneeze could start a war.
So. Fine. He was expected to say something.
“Helva is ever grateful for Fyria’s ongoing friendship,” Gant said. “And any news you might be able to share would naturally be appreciated.” It was the bare minimum etiquette required, but it would suffice.
“The Fyrian high council of sultans has been led to believe that insurgent activity has increased beyond even our expectations,” the ambassador said. “Our sources report that these elements have expanded their activities to the areas in and around the Fyrian coastline. We think it possible, even likely, that an insurgent ship may have intercepted the Pride of Klaar.”
