A Dragon From the Desert, page 19
“The Solari Emperors no longer rule,” she said. “Their empire is gone.”
“The Sunlanders claim to be their descendants.”
“They are and they are not.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Empire collapsed in civil war. Its rulers were wizards. They fought each other. They killed each other. They did terrible things.”
This I knew from the Sunsday sermons. “They were corrupted by the Shadow,” I said.
“So the Church tells us,” Iliana replied.
“I expect you are going to tell me differently.”
She shook her head. “I would not dare do anything so blasphemous. The Church is essentially correct. Many of the Solari were corrupt and they did do terrible things. Those things brought all wizards into disrepute and they cost the First Families their power.”
I scoured my mind for bits of remembered sermons. “You mean the Patricians.”
“Yes. They were the real rulers of the Empire. The Emperor was chosen from their ranks. Always. He had to be. They were all mageblood. That is why they were the priestly class. That is why they could touch the Light. The commoners did not have the Power. They were mundani.”
“Except some were not,” I said remembering the story of Manutharis, the saint who had emerged from the slums.
“Of course,” she said. “The power sometimes arises among those who cannot trace a bloodline. It does not mean there is not one. People are people. They sleep with those they are not supposed to. But when mageblood were found they were always adopted into one of the First Families. Does that remind you of anything?”
“The way the Church recruits mages it finds. If what you have told me is correct.”
“Clever boy,” she said. There was a goading tone to her voice. “If you study history you will notice such patterns repeat themselves often and often. The Solari came to the Old Kingdoms because their home islands sank beneath the waves. A cataclysm caused by the use of magic apparently. They built an Empire which then collapsed in a – you guessed it– cataclysm caused by magic. The Solari had tales that they had originally come to their home islands fleeing a cataclysm caused by magic. And on and on.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“Because I can read and before we are done you will be able to as well. You will be able to study the ancient texts yourself, judge them for yourself and decide whether I have been misleading you.”
“I thought I was to learn magic.”
“You will find it all goes together.” I thought she was merely putting another obstacle in my way, placing another burden on my shoulders. She saw my expression.
“It is not enough to have power,” she said. “You must know why you are using it. And you must understand why other people do the things they do.”
“It seems being a wizard is more complicated than I imagined.”
“It is more complicated than anyone imagines when they put their feet upon the path, and it only gets more so.”
“Why am I not surprised that you would tell me that?”
“Because you are an intelligent boy,” she said. “But right now, that is all you are. Never forget that. You have brains and talent and they may take you far. But everyone has to start somewhere.”
I waited for the threat I knew was coming. It was her pattern. I already knew her well enough to know that.
“You must learn, boy, or you will die.”
“You will kill me,” I said.
“You will kill yourself and you might take a lot of other people with you. You have seen that in your dreams. Do not let it become a reality.”
“How could that happen?”
“You have many questions, boy, and that is good. But we’ve talked enough of this for the nonce. There will be time enough before we reach Solsburg to answer your question. Think on what I said.”
She returned to reading her book. It was clear that for the moment our conversation was over.
Chapter Twenty-Two
That evening, after my reading lesson, I walked Ruth back, under the moonlight. We took the long way, around, walking by the edge of the Bleak Lands.
The stars glittered above us. Just for a moment I sensed something else there. A winged shadow blocked the pinpoints of starlight as it skimmed by overhead. Perhaps it was an owl or a buzzard, but I did not think so. There was a presence to it that made me shudder. Red woke. He looked up in the same direction I had, gave a small mewling cry and then subsided into silence.
“What is it?” Ruth asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not cold,” she said. “Why did you shiver?”
“I thought I saw something in the sky. I’ve felt something like it before.”
“A wind demon, an Old One?”
“I wish I knew.”
“You think it’s following us?”
“More likely it’s following Lady Alysia or looking for her.”
It was her turn to shudder. She reached out and took my hand. She was shaking.
“Will this never stop,” she said.
“Perhaps when we get to Solsburg, to the Duke’s castle. No one would dare attack her there. It’s too well protected.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“My mistress is.” It was a lie, of course, but she seemed to need reassurance.
“Assassins can come in many disguises.” Ruth said. “The way the one who attacked Lady Alysia in the shrine was garbed, he could easily have been taken for a priest. Except at the last second. There was something about his eyes then, an emptiness.”
“You sound like you were there.”
“I was. I thought for a moment he was going to kill me, but then…” Her hand shook even more, and she tugged it from my grip. She looked up into my eyes as if measuring me, as if weighing things in her mind. Just for a moment she looked as if she was going to speak but then out in the darkness something shrieked. A crashing noise sounded in the bushes.
“What was that?” Ruth asked.
“A hare. Something’s chasing it. An owl maybe or a spike-eared fox.”
“How can you know that?” Whatever had been on her mind, it was there no longer. If she had been thinking of telling me something, the moment had passed.
“I spent enough time watching my father’s goats to recognise those sounds.”
“It seems like everything out here is being hunted.”
“Or hunting,” I said. “But not everything. Some things are just watching– like I watched the goats.”
“But mostly it’s kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.”
“I’ve heard most of the world is like that. Even the big cities. Especially the big cities.”
“I wish it wasn’t.”
“Might as well wish the Holy Sun did not circle the earth. The wishes of people like you or me don’t count for much. But you were talking about what happened in the shrine. Did you really see what happened?”
She stared at me and she swallowed. She thought for another moment and she muttered, “I did. From far too close. He was coming right for me and then she got in the way...”
“Lady Alysia?”
She seemed startled when I said the name, then looked away. “Of course, Lady Alysia. Who else?”
She fell silent after that, as if afraid to say more.
“It must have been horrible,” I felt like I was missing something here, and I could not think of anything else to say. It encouraged her to speak.
“It is horrible to think about it. Being hunted that way. Being in fear of your life constantly. Not knowing who to talk to or who to trust.”
“The way you are talking you’d think you were the one being hunted.”
Her laughter was odd. She looked right at me. Her pupils seemed very large. “It scares me and it frightens me to see her lying there, not knowing if there will be another attack. Not knowing whether she will die or not. Not knowing what is going to happen.”
She looked small and scared and vulnerable. I reached out and drew her too me. She was shaking again. She hugged me back. Her face was wet. I took my sleeve and wiped the area around her eyes.
She sniffed and rubbed her nose and then withdrew from my clasp. I was disappointed. I had liked the warmth of her in my arms and the scent of her in my nostrils.
“Nothing’s going to happen to her,” I said. “She’s surrounded by soldiers and my mistress is watching over her.”
“Why would anybody want to kill her anyway? She’s just a young woman who wants to get on with her life.”
“My mistress thinks someone may want to prevent her being married. There is supposed to be a marriage alliance in the works.”
“Your mistress tells you things like that?” She sounded shocked. It was my turn to look evasive. I was supposed to keep secret my role as apprentice.
“I sometimes overhear things I shouldn’t,” I said. My voice was very quiet. I had to force the words out. I did not like lying but I could not see what else I could do.
She looked disappointed by my answer. Having started talking I could not bring myself to stop. “She also thinks that if the marriage takes place Lady Alysia will be safe. The whole purpose of trying to have her killed will have failed.”
She let out a long sigh then was silent for much too long. Red stirred on my shoulder, shifting his weight. His tail tickled my neck as it looped part way around it.
“Let’s talk about something more cheerful,” she said.
“As you wish– what would you like to talk about?”
“Do you think you’ll stay Mistress Iliana’s servant for long?”
“I am indentured for seven years.”
“And after that?”
“I have not thought that far ahead,” I said. There was truth in that too. It was almost half my then lifetime in the future, so far away I had difficulty imagining it. “But I don’t think I will remain a servant.”
I thought in seven years I will have learned a great deal of magic. Who knew what might be possible then or what I might be able to do? I said nothing. I could hardly tell her I was going to be a wizard.
By unspoken consent we walked further apart as we reached the area near Lady Alysia’s coach. I wished her goodnight and she looked at me for a long time before she replied.
“Good night,” she said at last, but once again I felt as if she was going to say something else.
“You took your time,” Mistress Iliana said, when I returned. She was waiting by the fire when I returned, looked at the waning moon.
“I was talking with Ruth, mistress,” I said.
“You two always seem to find a lot to talk about.” There was a strange stress on her words as if she had wanted to say something else.
“We are friends, mistress,” I said. She looked away into the darkness, and I had the feeling she was disturbed by that. She took a sip from her flask and she saw me watching her.
“Be careful of too much wine. It is a bad thing for a wizard.”Her voice was a little slurred. My eye strayed to the flask that was never far away from her hand. She gave me a sour smile. “In this, it is a case of do as I say, not as I do.”
“Why is too much wine a bad thing for a wizard, mistress,” I said.
“Magic is a thing of intellect and emotion as well as power. You must concentrate on your runes and fire them with your passion. Wine leads to too much emotion and too clouded an intellect. You can still draw on your power, but the results can be disproportionate and not what you desire. Taken to an extreme you can do things under the influence of wine that you would never consider doing sober. Think of the way men beat their wives and children when drunk. Think of someone with the power of a mage in a similar rage.”
Something in her voice told me she was not speaking hypothetically.
“I can’t do anything, mistress, so I doubt that would be a problem.”
“You can’t do anything yet,” she said. “That one little word makes all the difference.”
She took a sip from her flask and seemed to come to a decision. She took out the runestone she had once given me. She closed her eyes and I felt power surge around her, flowing through the wardstones she had set around us. The air shimmered and I knew without having to be told that we were somehow cut off from the rest of the company.
She handed the runestone to me and said, “Tell me what you see.”
Sudden excitement filled me. It seemed as if she was really going to teach me some magic.
“I see a lot of lines in a very complex pattern, so complex it is hard to follow and when I try it hurts my eyes.”
“You are looking at a word,” she said.
“A word?”
“Every rune is a word written in Eldrak, the Old High Tongue. Some say it is the language in which the Source wrote the universe.”
“At first dawn, the Word,” I said.
“In the beginning, the first of many words. These are them. Every word describes a concept perfectly, at least as far as the mind of a mage is capable of apprehending it.”
“This is just a word?” My disappointment showed in my voice.
“It is a word that describes its subject so perfectly it is its subject. It allows you to call on that subject and manipulate it if you know the correct sequence of other words. This is one way magic works.”
“You mean there are others?”
She nodded. “Many, many others. Some say as many ways as there are wizards. There are people who can work with the fundamental forces of magic who have never seen a rune. There are people who use rituals and prayers and invocations to gods and demons. You do not need to worry about those because you will not be learning them.”
“Why?”
“Because this is the quickest and easiest way I know. It is also the most potent.”
There was no arguing with that. “So what does this word mean?”
“You tell me.”
I thought about that for a moment. “It means light.”
“Close. It means a specific form of light. It means the light of the Holy Sun. That is important.”
“Why?”
“Because the light of the Holy Sun will burn Old Ones and drive back the Shadow. It is a true light. There are other forms which are not. Again, you do not need to worry about those because you will not be dealing with them for a very long time.”
I thought about the spell she had just cast. The way the air shimmered. The way it tasted. “You are working with false light right now.”
Her smile was shocked and proud. “You sensed that?”
“I guessed it.”
“A very accurate guess and one that shows the extent of your talent. I have woven an illusion around us. Anyone watching us will see only two sleeping bodies.”
Another thought struck me. “You chose this rune deliberately when you tested me.”
Another nod. “It is one of the easiest to learn, one of the basics, a building block for many other spells.”
“But that is not the only reason, is it? It would burn me if I contained the Shadow. Would I have even been able to use it?”
“You were not supposed to be able to use it,” she said. She was being evasive but much as I wanted to pursue the question, I wanted to pursue learning magic more. I studied the rune closely, trying to remember what it had felt like that first night. I traced the lines, but nothing came. My head started to hurt but I felt no surge of power. I kept squinting and concentrating but nothing happened.
“Nothing,” I said at last. “Nothing’s happening.”
“I can see that,” she said.
“Why?”
“Magic is not a simple thing. You cannot just call upon it and expect it to respond. Your mind must be receptive. Your mood must be appropriate. Your breathing must be just so.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Believe me, it is true. You are manipulating a great force with nothing but your mind and spirit. We are not creatures born to use magic, like the Old Ones. We can only do it under certain circumstances. That is why so many mages use rituals and drugs and chants and physical adjuncts. To prepare their minds to contact the aether.”
“You don’t.”
“I have been using the spells you have seen me use for many years. Tell, me when you first drove a wagon were you as relaxed about it as you are now. Could you guide the beasts without thought, while your mind dwelt on other things?”
“No, of course not.”
“Think of learning Eldrak as being like that. To begin with you need to concentrate very hard on what you are doing, particularly at the earliest stages of learning. Eventually things will become second nature and you will be able to do other things. You will be able to move from simply speaking one word, like a baby learning to talk, to stringing together sentences which are grammatically correct and can be understood by everyone. Or in the case of magic, to overstretch an analogy, by the powers on which you are calling.”
“Sentences,” I said. My head was whirling. Just comprehending the rune on the stone was fantastically difficult. She was suggesting that to learn to do what she did I would need to be able to hold and manipulate multiple runes in my head.
“Sentences,” she said. “Sometimes you will need to call upon many forces and mingle them and modify them. You need to hold the runes for light and illusion and mastery in your head to ward us as I am doing now. You will need to be able to hold them in a fixed pattern if you wish to maintain that spell and cast another, or even speak in coherent sentences, again, as I am doing now.”
“You are still casting the spell as you are talking to me?” I had a sudden image of how fantastically complex that must be and yet she did not appear to be under any strain. She was talking normally.
