A Dragon From the Desert, page 6
“And there were no strange stories about any of them? None of them were wizards? None of them met strange ends?”
“No, mistress. Why do you ask?”
“Because usually mage blood runs in a family. It is extremely unusual for a wizard to be born to people who don’t have a history of being able to use magic.”
“Like the kids of white goats are mostly white,” I said.
She looked at me sidelong. I was not sure why. Perhaps she thought what I said was stupid. It was the first thing that came into my head. “That might actually be a good way of looking at it. I normally hear it expressed as the fact that most noble born are taller than most peasants.”
I could see how that would appeal to her aristocratic sensibilities. I could also see how she would prefer that analogy to one involving goats.
“There is no history of magic in my family,” I said.
“How can you be so sure of that? Do you know the history of all of your ancestors on your mother’s side and your father’s side going all the way back to the first man and the first woman?”
“I’m sure that if there was a wizard in our blood line in recent memory I would know.”
She laughed again. Her voice sounded normal. It was a not unpleasant sound. “I wish I was as sure of anything as you are of everything.”
“What do you mean, mistress?”
“I mean that having a wizard in the family is not something that everyone is proud of or that everyone talks about.” There was a hint of bitterness in her voice.
I understood what she meant. Many people, particularly those of the Solar faith might be ashamed of being related to a mage. Most people associated magic with the power of the Shadow. Still, it was the sort of thing that would come up during family discussions. Or at least be hinted at. A thought struck me so hard it must have been written on my face.
“What?” Mistress Iliana asked.
“My mother sometimes claimed that a very distant ancestor of my great-grandmother was a Priestess of the Moon.”
She looked thoughtful. “The Old Ones chose humans with the gift of magic to be their factors and intercessors. Your family has been in this land for a very long time.”
“For as long as anyone can remember. Since before the Sunlanders came.”
“Which coming of the Sunlanders are you talking about?”
“What do you mean, mistress?”
“The history of these lands is not simple. The Sunlanders have invaded several times and seized the land from the followers of the Old Ones. They have been driven out almost as many times but they have always come back to claim what is theirs.”
“How can they be so certain that the land is theirs then?”
She was quiet a long time and I wondered if I had offended her. After all she did come from a noble family and they were always touchy about these things. The Sunlanders were invaders in Umbrea. Everybody knew that. The Sunlanders even boasted about it. It was a source of their pride, that they were conquerors.
“That is a good question,” Mistress Iliana said. She looked pleased. As if I had somehow proved cleverer than she expected or the task of teaching me less dull. “Sometimes there are written records. Sometimes the claims are settled with the sword.”
“That is the Sunlander way,” I said.
“Yes, it is. And you would do well not to use such a sardonic tone when you say it.”
At the time I did not know what a sardonic tone was, but I could tell it was not a good thing and in the future I was to keep my disapproval hidden when I said such things.
“I’m only a servant, mistress,” I said.
“You’re being sardonic again,” she said. “And believe me it would be best for you if you were not.”
I was fifteen summers old. My nod was sullen if it could not be sardonic.
“You do not like being a servant, do you?”
“I’ve not been one for very long, mistress.”
“It is better for you that people believe that you are my servant rather than my apprentice.”
My disbelief must have shown in the look that I shot her because she said, “it is the truth. There are those who do you harm if they thought you were a wizard.”
“Harm, mistress?”
“They might kill you if they thought they could get away with it, and the opportunity to get away with it always arises when you’re part of a company like ours.”
“It seems to me that there are those who will do me harm simply because I am your servant, mistress. Or perhaps because I am not noble.”
“You’re talking about Vorster. He is one of those that I am thinking of. He fears me too much to try anything against me, but he can work out his spite on my servant.”
“What do you mean, mistress?”
“I mean that there are those who hate mages just as there are those who hate women or who hate men who sleep with other men. They do not need any excuse to vent their prejudices. And they hate and resent and fear those who can work magic because they cannot. Or perhaps because they wish they could, and they imagine that we do with our power what they would if they had it.”
Her expression was intense. She was talking about something she had brooded on for a very long time. I knew then that she was lonely even surrounded by all the soldiers. She regarded every one of them as a potential enemy and perhaps she was right to do so. She was a wizard and she had known that for a very long time as I measured such things in the days of my youth.
She must have heard all the stories about evil wizards. Given her status and her education she had probably heard a lot more than I had. She had grown up with the idea that everyone around her would see her as a villain. It was just starting to dawn on me that I too would now occupy that role.
After that we were both silent for a long time. “May I ask you a question, mistress?”
“If it is an intelligent one.”
“Why are we riding with the knights of the Tower and Sun and who are those women in the coach?”
“That’s two questions,” she said. “But I will answer them because they are connected. One of those women is the Lady Alysia, the only surviving daughter of the Duke of Solsburg. Another is her lady in waiting, Rebeka. The rest of the women are servants or poor kin or both. Those knights and their accompanying soldiers are her escort, and we too are part of that escort.”
“Where are we escorting her to, mistress?”
“Back to Solsburg,” she said. My face fell. I had heard of Solsburg. It was a port city on the coast a hundred or more leagues away. If she had told me were going to fly to the moon, it could not have seemed more distant. If Mistress Iliana noticed my expression, she did not seem to care. “Lady Alysia was on a pilgrimage to see the Angel of Tarnheim.”
“That is a long way, mistress,” I said. “Even to ask the blessing of an Angel.”
As far as I knew then Tarnheim was almost as far west as Solsburg was east of our present location, a famous holy place on the edge of the Graveyard of Angels. I had often spoken to pilgrims trudging along the road towards it.
“She has her reasons. As has her father.”
“What would those be, mistress?”
“No concern of ours, boy,” she said.
“As you say, mistress.” A thought struck me. “Is it normal for young ladies to ride with so many bodyguards. I have never heard of such a thing happen with our local lord. I only ever see his tax collectors.”
“The Duke of Solsburg is a much greater man than your landlord. His is one of the oldest families in the land. He has few rivals in Umbrea.”
That statement while true, did not answer my question. I waited to see if she would say any more. She did not disappoint me. “The Duke wanted a wizard to accompany his daughter. I was deemed the most competent for the purpose, so I was dispatched.”
I was curious, and Mistress Iliana seemed disposed to answer my questions so I blurted out, “why would his daughter need a wizard in her escort?”
“The Duke has several wizards sworn to his service but none as good as I with battle magic. And that is the reason I am here, to protect his daughter should there be any attempts on her life. And it is fortunate I was there, for there was.”
That bit of information stunned me to silence. But only for a moment. “Someone attempted to kill the Lady Alysia?”
She nodded.
“But why? Who?”
“Your questions are getting shorter, but you still ask too many of them at once.”
“I am sorry, mistress.”
“There is no need to be. You are my apprentice. You are entitled to ask me questions. Just make sure you do it when there is no one else around.”
“Thank you, mistress.” She made a curt gesture of dismissal.
“As to who would want to kill her, I do not know for sure. The Duke has many enemies– all powerful men do– but I do know they were wealthy and well-connected.”
“How do you know that, mistress?”
“Because they hired assassins from the Crimson Brotherhood.”
I gulped. The brotherhood was a whispered legend. They were mentioned sometimes by my father and by the storyteller in Khorba when he wanted to give us a particularly spine-chilling tale.
“How can you know that, mistress?”
“Because I killed one when he put a blade in Lady Alysia.” There was something terrifyingly casual about the way she mentioned killing. She might have been describing cooking a goat.
“Is the Lady Alysia alright?” I asked.
“As alright as anyone can be who has been stabbed with a poisoned dagger,” Mistress Iliana said.
“A poisoned dagger,” I said, trying to get my head around the idea that someone would use such a weapon. “That is dishonourable.”
“You don’t say. In my experience honour is not something most assassins care much about.”
My cheeks went red.
“There is no need to blush,” Mistress Iliana said. “It is dishonourable, and it is also despicable but that is the world we live in. Not even a young girl is safe from a poisoned blade if her father happens to be a powerful man with many enemies.”
“Will she be all right?”
“It was little more than a scratch, but the wound was infected,” my mistress said. “I have done my best but all I have managed to do is stabilise her condition. Our only real hope is to get her home as fast as possible and let Master Lucas, the Duke’s healer look after her.”
“Poor girl,” I said.
“She must be, for she is currently relying on my skill as a healer.” My mistress looked gloomy and I feared that perhaps Lady Alysia had not much longer to live.
“Is that why she never leaves the coach? And is always inside that huge tent?”
“You see — you can think things through for yourself when you have to,” Mistress Iliana said.
Another terrifying thought struck me. “Is it possible the assassins will strike again?”
“It is more than possible. It is very likely.”
“How did they get to her in the first place? I would have thought she would have been well protected.”
“And you would have thought correctly. But a disguised assassin can get anywhere. The Lady Alysia was praying at the shrine of the Angel when she was attacked by an assassin disguised as a pilgrim. None of her bodyguards were carrying their weapons for they are forbidden inside the shrine.”
“How did the assassin get his dagger in then?”
“No one is searched when they go into the shrine. It is blasphemy to carry a weapon into such a place. No one expects to be attacked there either.”
“But it happened.”
“Yes, it did, and no doubt the perpetrator is being punished by the Holy Sun.” She could not keep the irony out of her voice.
“But you used a deadly spell inside a sacred spot.”
“The assassin burned. The Holy Sun smote down the blasphemer in the act of committing his atrocity.”
“But you said you killed him with a spell.”
“A theologian might argue that I was merely acting as a proxy for the Holy Sun. Particularly as I was doing it in defence of one of the most powerful men in Umbrea’s daughter, a great patron of the shrine.”
I could see it give her a great deal of pleasure to say these words. I wondered why she hated our religion. It did not seem like the right time to ask.
“Why would anyone attack the Duke’s daughter?”
“Why would you think?”
“I have no idea, mistress. I cannot imagine trying to use a poisoned dagger on a young girl.”
“That is to your credit. The most likely reason is that someone wished to prevent her from getting married.”
The idea horrified me. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Because one reason Lady Alysia was at the shrine was so that Prince Tarik could look upon her.”
Even I had heard of Prince Tarik. “He is Duke Leon’s brother isn’t he?”
“You’re not quite the ignoramus I thought you were.”
“Thank you, mistress. I think.”
“Yes, he is the Duke of Nordburg’s brother. Duke Leon wishes to become the king of Umbrea and an alliance by marriage with the daughter of his greatest rival would go a long way towards making him so.”
My head swam. It seemed I had stepped right off the farm and into the sort of intrigue that only a storyteller would dream of. “So, you think someone is attempting to prevent an alliance.”
“It would seem like the most likely theory, wouldn’t it?”
“But you have another?”
“It would not matter whether I had or not. It is not my job to come up with such theories. It is my job to keep Lady Alysia alive until she is delivered to her father.”
“Will it be dangerous?”
“Of course. An assassin with a poisoned blade has failed. Who knows what the person who wants Lady Alysia dead will try next.”
Just for a moment I saw the mask she wore drop. Worry was etched into her face.
“Sorcery, do you think?” I asked.
“Anything is possible.” After that she fell silent and something about her expression told me it would be unwise to question her further.
Chapter Seven
We made camp long before it got dark. Spider rode back to our wagon and nodded to my mistress. She hit the drum and once again it produced that thunderous roar. This time the sound was greeted with cheers and jokes from the soldiers. The knights of the vanguard glared back at us, but they too came to a halt.
The wagons left the road and the soldiers looked around for places to pitch their tents. It was immediately obvious why Spider had chosen this spot.
The road angled north past some ruins. The riders had already scouted them and found them abandoned. Mistress Iliana got down from her wagon and walked towards them, gesturing for me to accompany her. I did so reluctantly. In the part of Umbrea I grew up in ruined buildings were something you avoided unless they had been on your land and generations of your ancestors had proved they were harmless.
There were always stories about haunted places, and places where the Old Ones still dwelt and where monsters existed. Somewhere to the west lay the greatest collection of such things in the world, the Graveyard of Angels.
These buildings did not look like they had been built by the Old Ones or the Solari or any of the Elder Races who had preceded mankind in our world’s dim and dusty past. They looked as if they had been built by farmers like my family and then abandoned.
Spider looked at Iliana. “What do you think?” he asked.
She shrugged. “A hovel. Most likely just some place where the land proved too hard or the well ran dry.”
“Most likely,” Spider said, but he kept walking along beside her and his hand was never too far from the hilt of his sword. A group of knights including Vorster fell into position around us and they too kept their hands near their scabbards. They had the look of men who suspected they might be ambushed.
Behind us, the rest of the force stood ready. The archers had strung their crossbows and held them ready. The pikemen lofted their weapons into the guard position. Ghoran stood with his big axe in his hands. There was a palpable tension in the air.
By the time we reached the walls, I was ready for grey spectres or mirklings to attack us. What we found was a tumbled-down building. The roof had collapsed. Cobwebs and their occupants hung within, not the big kind, that sometimes emerge from the blight and not the bright jewelled sort whose venom can kill a grown man, just the normal web walkers I knew from my home.
Mistress Iliana closed her eyes and muttered. I felt something in the air that had not been there a moment ago. She raised her hand, fingers held in pairs and splayed apart and surveyed the room through the gap as if she was sighting between them. She aimed at every part of the room, then stepped outside and walked around the building, studying the exterior and the approaches from the surrounding land.
As we walked, I noticed the elder signs worked into the walls and over the lintels. Ward posts made a circle around the building fifty strides out. The barn and the byres were similarly protected. The cuts looked clean and if anything, better than the ones back home.
“The place is clear,” Iliana said. “We can camp here. Tell the men to stay within the wardstones just in case.”
The word rippled back through the company and I saw the coach move close to the ruins along with the wagons of the servants. Soon that great striped awning had risen beside the building and the sick noblewoman had been taken inside. Guards were in place all around.
I set up the tent for my mistress near the walls of the house. The knights camped inside the ruins. The other riders and the infantry set themselves up near the wagons. The cook had already got the pot out. The well proved dry so he broke out the water barrels and cooked a mix of beans and vegetables and dried meat. Every man got stew, waybread and black coffee with grounds in it and every man complained about the quality as they presented their wooden bowls and enamel mugs.
