A Dragon From the Desert, page 16
The last one was from Vorster. There was something like rage on his handsome face.
“So how many of you would it take for those Shadowlanders then?” Spider asked. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.
Vorster shot him a belligerent look. Spider smiled as if that was exactly what he wanted to see. The look faded fast as the nobleman realised his mistake.
Spider said, “Would you take five knights? Or maybe ten? Or perhaps the whole company might be better?”
Vorster’s face turned red, but he forced himself to look respectfully at Spider. The tattooed man continued to speak gently, but I sensed anger in his voice. “Possibly twenty-five might have been better given the number of Shadowlanders down there. Didn’t your expensive tutors teach you to count, Sir Vorster?”
I made the mistake of smirking. Vorster caught it and he shot me a look of murderous hatred. It was my turn to look away in a circumspect manner.
Spider kept talking, his tone conversational. “Of course, you might have lost a few of our lads going down that rough slope. Not exactly perfect ground for a cavalry charge. And a few more of you might have died if that sorcerer leading the Shadowlanders decided to do to you what Mistress Iliana did to his pets. So tell me, Sir Vorster exactly how many Sunlander knights would you need?”
Vorster said, “We have our elder signs, sir. And the Shadowlander had exhausted himself attacking the village.”
“You are sure of that, are you, Sir Vorster? Your expensive tutors gave you a working knowledge of sorcery as well as an erratic understanding of arithmetic, did they?”
“I know nothing of sorcery,” said Vorster. His tone implied that Spider had suggested he favoured sexual congress with donkeys.
“Then perhaps you will so good as to leave the battlefield assessment of it to those who do? You’re a handy man in a fight Sir Vorster and brave as a lion but the next time you bring me such an erroneous report, I will flay your hide with a rusty dagger. Do you understand me?”
The menace contained in Spider’s quiet voice might have given Ghoran pause.
“Yes, sir.” Vorster was torn between swelling at the praise and defying the threat. Vorster looked around at the other knights. One or two of the younger ones looked like they might back him up if it came to a confrontation. The other responses lay somewhere between backing away from him and mocking grins. Common sense prevailed.
Spider rode off leaving Vorster to stew in his humiliation. He began to ride towards me then he noticed that Mistress Iliana had reached the wagon. She turned, gave him a mild look and said, “You have something you want to say to my servant, Sir Vorster? Perhaps some message for me?”
He shook his head and rode away, followed by his cronies. Mistress Iliana gave me a cold smile and then sat down on the buckboard of the wagon. She looked tired but elated and I guessed that the use of her power had thrilled her as much as it had thrilled me.
“Well?” she said, noticing the near-worshipful look I was giving her.
“What you did today, mistress. It was the greatest thing I have ever seen.”
Her smile became a fraction sourer. “Not the greatest. Just the most destructive.”
“Both,” I said.
“It was powerful third order magic,” she said. “But someday you may see much more impressive things. And I would not have been able to work such a spell if that sorcerer down there had not exhausted his strength attacking the village. His apprentices did not have the skill or the power to counter me.”
“The sorcerer had exhausted his strength?”
“Casting magic is draining,” Iliana said quietly. “The more powerful the magic, the more draining it is.”
“That’s why you held the fireball, mistress. To show him and his people that you had the strength to do it again.”
“You are quick, boy. There’s no denying that.”
“What do you mean by strength, mistress.”
“This is neither the time or the place for such discussions. We will talk about it later. When there are fewer ears to overhear.”
A few of our men went down into the village to look for survivors or people left behind. They found none.
“I am not surprised,” said Mistress Iliana as we sat in the shelter of the wagon. “Shadowlander mages can sniff out the living, and their pets have the same talent.”
Once the village had been checked and the way scouted, we returned to the road and put as much distance between ourselves and the ruins of Ghazan as possible. We were headed in the opposite direction from the slavers and it felt to me very much like flight. The huge birds followed us until darkness then turned south still screeching their mocking cries.
That night we pulled far off the road and set up camp within a great clump of rocks that formed a natural fortification. Mistress Iliana placed wardstones at each point of the compass on the edges of the camp. The soldiers watched her with a mixture of awe and resentment as she did so. The nightly sentries were doubled, and nobody felt much urge to go roaming. Everybody had the Shadowlanders on their mind.
I set up the tent and built a fire then brought food from the cook wagon. Mistress Iliana watched me do all this with cool curious eyes. In her hand she held the wraithstone amulet. Even in the firelight I could see the dark tendrils swirling within it were much thicker. She had drawn on a lot of power today and it had been tainted.
Once again, we were settled away from the bulk of the troopers although I noticed Ghoran and some of the other soldiers were not too far away. Within easy calling distance certainly.
I settled down with the slop that the cook had provided and waited for the mistress to start talking. She took a sip from her flask. It seemed a smaller mouthful than usual, as if she did not need it so much to keep the chill and whatever else that ate at her at bay.
“You did well today,” she said.
“I did nothing, mistress.”
“You did not panic. You remained calm. You guided the wagon without faltering. At very least you are not a coward.”
“I did not have much choice, mistress.”
“I have seen others simply freeze and become unable to act in such circumstances.”
“Really?”
“Really. You can never tell when it will happen or who it will happen to.”
“You were very brave.”
“Ah, the approbation of a child. How flattering.” She noticed my sour expression and laughed her mocking laugh. “I did what needed to be done.”
“You could have defeated the enemy all on your own.”
“Hardly. I could have managed another two or three balefires and that would have been it. If the Shadowlanders had rushed me, they could have chopped me to pieces. And that’s if I did not simply exhaust my power.”
“What do you mean, mistress?”
“Every wizard has limited strength. Just as there is a limit to how far a man can run before he falls exhausted, so there is a limit to how many spells a mage can cast before the same thing happens. It is easily reached.”
“That is what you meant when you said the sorcerer in black and red had exhausted himself earlier.”
“Quite.”
“If he knew this why did he simply not order his men to attack.”
“Why should he? He had nothing to gain. He would have lost a large part of his force if he had attacked us while I had my power to use and our company held the higher ground. He had already taken his prize, new untainted slaves and whatever wealth was in the village. All fighting with us would do was weaken his force and make him vulnerable to other raiders when he crossed back into the Shadow Kingdoms. What you saw was a piece of theatre, nothing more. I was letting him know the cost of attacking us. He understood the message.”
“I heard Vorster and some of the others claim we should have pursued them and freed their prisoners.”
“Vorster and his ilk are young, and they think only of glory. It’s a bad quality in a soldier and one he will grow out of.”
“I wonder, mistress.”
“You do not like him, do you?”
“My nose resents him, mistress, and the rest of me just goes along.” She laughed at that. It was not the harsh false laughter I had heard before, but a more natural sound, rich and throaty. The laughter stopped abruptly and she said, “Do not let your resentment get you into trouble. Young Vorster is a man who likes to kill.”
“I have looked into his eyes, mistress. I have seen that.”
“Then you need to understand something else. In our line of work, in the world in which we live, that is not necessarily a disadvantage. It often works in a man’s favour. Vorster is a natural killer. One of life’s predators.”
That made me prey. It was not a comfortable thought. I changed the subject. “If I understood you correctly, you don’t think we could have succeeded.”
“I know we could not have succeeded. As it was, we were lucky to come upon the Shadowlanders when we did. If we had run into them a day earlier, with that sorcerer full of power and no prizes to be protected they would have torn us apart, unless we fled.”
“Was he stronger than you?”
“About the same strength, I would guess. We would have neutralised each other and it would have come down to blade-work. Our troops were vastly outnumbered.”
“Neutralised?”
“When two mages fight there are a number of ways they can do that. They can simply unravel each other’s spells, or they can conjure up opposing forces. If I summon fire, he summons ice or vice versa. There are spells to disrupt the working of spells.”
“You know all of these?”
“I know some of them, and I seek knowledge of more. To be a mage is always to be learning.”
“How do I get to be as strong as you?”
“You practise, for many, many years. Magic is like exercise but more so. The more you do it, the more you can. But right now, you are like a child who is learning to walk. You have a long way to go before you need worry about such practise.”
“I wish to learn.”
“I can see that. And so you shall. In time.”
“I wish to learn now, mistress.”
“What do you think you are doing?”
“Learning, mistress.”
“But not learning the things you want to.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“There are things you need to know before you try to cast any more spells. You must walk before you can run and crawl before you can walk.”
“Children do not need to be taught that, mistress. I have a brother and three sisters. I have seen them all learn.”
“It was an analogy, boy, and a poor one.”
She paused for a moment, then stared into the fire. “Or perhaps not so poor. Mages do learn by themselves.”
I glanced quickly over at her. She had my full attention now. “Some of them even survive the experience.”
“What do you mean, mistress?”
“Do you know how to swim?”
“No, mistress.”
“What would happen if I threw you in deep water?”
“I would drown mistress.”
“You might thrash around and struggle your way to land.”
“I might.”
“It happens. And if I did this to you every day, you might eventually work out how to avoid panicking and keep yourself afloat and then you might learn how to swim all by yourself. That is what it is like being a self-taught mage. Only it is worse, for there are things in the water that will be attracted by your thrashing and will come and devour you.”
“That’s not the first time you have mentioned this, mistress.”
“Nor will it be the last. You have power or rather you have the capacity to draw on power.”
“What is the difference?”
“The power is external. You have the ability to sense it, shape it and wield it.”
“Magic is not within us then?”
“It is but it’s a spark that in some people can become a bonfire. It can be drawn on if you know how but that way lies death, for you are drawing on your own life force and that will eventually kill you.”
“I see,” I said, although I did nothing of the sort. I only heard one more vague warning.
“It’s best to draw on the aether, the magical energy that surrounds us, if you can. That will cause you no long-term harm save for the taint you will draw with it.”
I thought I saw a weakness in her reasoning. “Does that mean you can draw on your own life force without risking taint?”
She gave me that sour smile again. I was too quick on the uptake for her liking. “It does but you would be well advised not to do it too often lest you drain yourself of all life.”
“What is this aether, mistress? I mean really, where does it come from? What is it made of?”
“There you ask a question over which philosophers and wizards have argued for millennia.”
“Somehow that answer does not surprise me, mistress.”
“You have wit, boy, and it amuses me. But there is a time and a place for levity, and this is not it. We are talking of matters that put your life and your oh-so-precious soul in peril. You are concerned about your soul, aren’t you?”
My face flushed at her mockery, but she was right. I looked at the ground abashed. “Yes, mistress, I am. As are all decent people.”
That made her laugh and it was not at my wit. “Some say aether is the energy from which souls are made. Some say it is the residue of all the living things that have existed on this world.”
“That is blasphemy, mistress. Souls go either to the Light or to the Shadow.”
“Indeed,” she said. “So the Testaments say and who are we to dispute them.” Her words were pious, but her tone was ironic. “You will be pleased to learn that that is but one theory. Another is that aether is just a form of energy, like fire, like light.”
“Can those be shaped, mistress?”
“A blacksmith’s forge does that. A simple hearth does it. A torch does it.”
“I withdraw my question, mistress.”
“You should not, for it is a good one. And it begs other questions such as where does that energy come from? A fire must burn something. It must be kindled. It will eventually be exhausted.”
“And magic cannot be?”
“Indeed it can. There are whole vast areas of this world where no spell can be woven except by drawing on your own life force. The aether in those places was exhausted or destroyed long ago.”
“How do you know that, mistress?” I was not being insolent. I was curious.
“Because there were once kingdoms in those places, and they left both ruins and records. We know that magic was once worked there but can be no longer. Indeed, some of those places survived only because of magic and when that went away, they died out.”
“I did not know that, mistress.”
“Keep listening. You may discover there are a few other things you do not yet know, my young goatherd.”
“Now you are mocking me, mistress.”
“And you are quite intelligent enough to spot that. I am impressed. Now listen for I will answer your question as best as I am able to your limited understanding, and I do not wish to be here all night.”
“Thank you, mistress.”
“You asked about aether. Some think it flows into our world from elsewhere, from other dimensions–”
“Dimensions, mistress?”
“Planes of existence. Worlds that exist beside ours. The homes of demons and immortals and other races.”
I had a sudden vision of possibilities. Of worlds beyond worlds. Of other places tucked away behind folds in reality. It was like being told all the daydreams I had ever had when I was watching my father’s goats might be real somewhere.
“There is much evidence to support this theory. There are places where the aether is much thicker and flows more freely and these places are almost always near the gates to other worlds.”
“Such things exist?”
“Yes. Though they are little used now save by the Old Ones and very powerful sorcerers and even then there is great peril involved. Something happened long ago that disrupted the spells that created them and since then most of the portals have been damaged.”
“What could have done that?”
“The war of the Angels and the Old Ones. It caused enormous destruction. You can see the remnants still. Ruined cities of elder world demons are strewn across the desert. The Graveyard of Angels is littered with the corpses of fallen Auratheans.”
It was a dark and terrible thing she was talking about and yet it gave me a secret thrill. I was imagining the bodies of dead angels lying in state. They could not have been more than a hundred leagues from where we sat. Once that would have been an inconceivably great distance to me, but we must have covered a significant fraction of it over the past few days.
“Anyway, the power comes from somewhere else and those of us with the gift to wield it can tap into it. In the end, as with so many things to do with magic, it does not really matter which explanation you choose to believe. All you must know is that it works. And now, I bid you goodnight.”
With that she set the drum beside her head. Within it the serpent of fire coiled and squirmed and I wondered whether it was just my imagination or whether it seemed a trifle dimmer and weaker than it had the previous night.
Chapter Nineteen
I could not sleep. I was too worked up by the events of the day. I lay wrapped in my blanket and stared at the stars. Occasionally in the distance I heard a horse stir, or the jingling and clanking of a sentry doing the rounds. Red snored away next to me, asleep quickly as if all the excitement of the day had drained him.
Over and over I replayed what I had seen in my head. I recalled the black birds and the burned village and the enemy force waiting below us. I recalled the fear of death and the elation of survival. Most of all I remembered the way Mistress Iliana had confronted the advancing monsters and destroyed them. The image burned itself into my brain.
I wanted to be able to wield power like that, more than I wanted food or drink. I wanted to be able to rain down fiery destruction on my enemies even though part of me knew that lust for the power of death was sinful.
