Salamander (24 page)

Ellen looked unconvinced. “Can he afford to take that long?”

“After what happened tonight, I think he will take as long as he thinks necessary. While he is looking for us he can have another team recreating the first Cascade, the way Iolen did, by trying to work out what went wrong. They don’t have to know exactly what the problem was. I didn’t. My best guess was that Maridon had tapped the sun, but I think the solution I came up with would have worked. Whoever is doing it only has to realize that there is some enormous source of fire out there to be tapped, then figure out how not to take too much of it.”

“What should we be doing, then?” Ellen spoke softly, but he could hear the note of worry in her voice.

“Your woven protection, the one that makes you invisible to perception. That’s part of the answer.”

“And if His Highness’s mage spots two horses galloping side by side along the highway with nobody riding them?”

“Is there any reason you can’t weave it around the horses too?”

There was a long silence before she spoke. “Have I ever mentioned that sometimes I am very stupid?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. One more thing we have in common.”

After another hour of riding Ellen led them off the Royal Road on a track that ran east, through a patchwork of field and forest. Before dawn she found a haystack in a field with no farmhouse in sight and a convenient stream where they could water the horses. The horses tethered to a nearby oak, the two mages burrowed into the haystack. Coelus forced his eyes open to put a final question.
“If someone happens to come by and sees two unguarded horses do we get to walk the rest of the way?”

“Nobody is likely to see the horses unless he stumbles over them. I can’t put a shadow cloak on them, or on you for that matter, but I wove protections into their manes that should make them hard to notice. Go to sleep.”

He half woke at noon, reached out, felt the reassuring solidity of Ellen beside him, fell back into a pleasant dream. It was mid afternoon when he reached out again, felt nothing, and came abruptly awake. He struggled clear of the hay, looked around. The horses were gone. A moment’s panic before he heard splashing from the direction of the creek.

When Ellen came back, leading both horses, her hair was dripping, her tunic damp; she stood in the sun steaming while she combed out her hair. Coelus watched for a moment before turning to the horses’ gear, mostly hung up over branches the night before. The first saddle bag he checked turned out to contain courier’s rations, dried fruit, meat and twice baked bread.

“I suppose the horses were waiting in case His Highness needed to send a message somewhere in a hurry.”

Ellen nodded. “That was my guess when I spotted them and the groom. If nobody noticed where he was lying and woke him they may not have found out until morning. I’ve looked over horses and gear and I can’t find any spells on them other than mine."

At nightfall the two stopped again, this time in a forest with neither farm nor haystack in sight. The horses were unsaddled and tethered a little way off the road, rubbed down with cloths from the saddlebags. When they were done, Ellen reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a heavy roll of fabric. “Last time I came this way I put up in farm houses, but I don’t want to risk word getting back to His Highness. So while you were sleeping like a log this afternoon, I was working.”

She shook it out, a yellow cloth thick as a quilt; he examined it curiously. “Straw?”

She nodded. “It won’t be missed, but I’ll do something for the farmer in payment next time I come by.”

They made their bed under a tall pine from a pile of needles it had dropped that spring, with half the width of the cloth under them, the other half over. It was deep night when Coelus woke with Ellen sleeping quietly in his arms, her head against his chest. He lay watching the stars, listening to the soft sound of her breathing, before he fell back to sleep himself.

The next morning, several miles farther along, Ellen was roused from her thoughts by Coelus' voice: "You're going the wrong way."

She brought the horse to a stop at the left hand side of the fork. He had taken the right, and was now sitting atop his horse impatiently waiting for her to join him.

"How do you know which is the right way? You've never been here before," she said.

His expression shifted from impatient to puzzled. "I don't know; this just feels right."

She nodded, thought a moment. "Close your eyes and think through your favorite song, words and music; just let your horse follow mine."

"I don't have a favorite song; I can't sing. Will reciting the beginning of the First Treatise do?"

"Admirably."

In a few minutes she told him to open his eyes; he looked around curiously. "What was that about?"

"Why you need me to find Mother; she has the house warded against mages. It doesn't affect anyone else, but there are two or three forks where a mage will go the wrong way. I'm so used to ignoring them that I forgot you weren't."

It was late morning when Ellen finally turned her horse off the track; the path she followed led past an ancient oak and into a farmyard. The farmer waved. Ellen slid off her horse, walked it over to him; Coelus, after a moment’s hesitation, did the same.

“Back for the summer art thou, Miss Ellen?”

“Indeed, and a friend come with me to visit. Dan, this be my friend Coelus; Coelus, old Dan, who taught me to ride back when I needed a long ladder to reach the horse’s back.”

The farmer looked Coelus over carefully, finally nodded to him, turned back to Ellen.

“Expect thy ma'll be pleased then.”

Ellen nodded.

“Expect she will. Canst board our horses? 'Twill be for longer than t'winter past.”

“In the back pasture, with thy old pa’s pack mule. I’ll rub them down for thee; thy ma will be hot to see thee I make no doubt.”

“Father is
home
?” Ellen was unsaddling her horse as she spoke.

“Four days back, thou'lt not call me a liar if 'twas five. Doubt not he’ll be glad t' see thee as well.”

When both mounts had been stripped of saddle, saddle cloth, bridle and saddle bags she let the farmer lead them off, hoisted her saddle bags onto her shoulders, set off back to the road, Coelus following with his saddle bags.

Another half hour brought them into the main and only street of a small village. Ellen led Coelus to one of the larger houses, surrounded by a less than orderly planting. Much of it was blue flax mostly blown, but some of the other colors were still bright. She stopped at the door, hesitating a moment. From inside came a cheerful voice.

“Come in love, and your friend too.”

They went in. The speaker was a small woman sitting by a loom, a length of cloth half woven on it. Her hair was grey, face wrinkled. She rose, stepping around her loom, dodged a chair and a small table, and caught up her daughter in a hug. Kissing both cheeks, she let go of her to turn to her companion.

“And this is the young man you have told me about? You are most welcome, learned sir, and more welcome if I can persuade you to explain a few things I could not get clear from my daughter’s account.”

Coelus eyed her uncertainly. “I will be happy to do what I can. What sorts of things?”

“Basis stars, mostly. Why we think there are only a fixed number and what you base your guess on about what that number is. Also concerning the elementals, or more precisely the pure forms, whether the elementals and the naturals and the rest can all exist at once, or if making one set declare themselves reduces the others to mere potentials. If
the Salamander and the sylph are real, does that mean that the web and the warmth are not? Also …”

Ellen interrupted.

“If you don’t mind, Mother, we have more urgent matters
to talk with you and Father about first. I will be happy to turn Coelus over to your tender mercies thereafter.”

Melia turned back to her daughter.

“You mean the Prince? As your father will be delighted to report, His Highness is energetically searching the College and the village for you. So you should be safe enough here. His opinion of your abilities has been growing rapidly the past two days, although I expect he gives some of the credit to the learned magister here.”

“But we left the village two days ago.”

“I know that and you know that, but fortunately the Prince does not.” The voice from the other side of the door was Ellen’s father; a moment later he came through it. His hair was grey, his voice vigorous.

Ellen gave him a look of mingled affection and irritation.

“I am sure you have been very clever, father. Do you mind telling us just how?”

“Not at all, love. But I would rather do it sitting if you don’t mind.”

He sat down on a chest at one side of the doorway; Melia returned to her chair. Ellen pulled a second chair out of a corner for Coelus, sat down on a stool, and gave her father an inquiring look.

“Two days ago, the morning after you left His Highness’s hospitality, a messenger arrived for me from an old friend of ours in the capital. He hardly gets out nowadays but he is still well connected. He had heard that Lord Iolen had taken off north for the Forsting border with His Majesty’s men in hot pursuit. His Highness, oddly enough, had gone east instead, with a substantial contingent. He thought I would be interested, so sent someone he trusts a three day ride with the news.

“There was only one thing I could think of worth his Highness’s attention in the east.” Durilil nodded towards Coelus. “It took me a couple of hours of peering through various fires to see what had happened. Kieron has enough mages with him to run the Cascade and enough information about your first attempt to try to copy it. If he doesn't yet have a competent theorist to work on improving the schema, I expect he can find one.” He looked up at Coelus; Coelus said nothing, only nodded. Durilil continued:

“The four of us should be able to work our way through your present puzzle; Olver’s messenger brought some suggestions that might help. But we aren’t going to do it overnight, so I thought it prudent to slow things down a little.”

“How?” That was Ellen. Her father smiled.

“At noon on the day after Kieron’s little feast, every scrap of paper he and his people had with them caught fire and burned to ash. When they went to the College to arrange to run the Cascade inside the protective sphere, they couldn’t get in; Magister gatekeeper couldn’t or wouldn’t open the sphere for them. That night they all had a cold dinner, because nobody in the inn could get a fire to light.”

“Wasn’t that risky, father? Once they found out it was being done by someone from miles away?”

Ellen stopped speaking, her face lost its puzzled expression. “Oh. I think I see.”

“More important, His Highness saw. He saw a fire mage of unknown abilities vanish from a guarded room after he had taken care to neutralize her power and chain her to the bed. And a second mage, one original enough to have contrived a spell that had been absorbing most of the Prince’s attention, vanished at the same time, under circumstances strongly suggesting the use of powerful fire magic. At some point I want an account of how both of you did it. But not just now.

“If two mages with unknown powers had vanished an hour’s ride out of the village and things suddenly started to go awry in the village itself in a mysterious, incendiary fashion, it was obvious who must be responsible. If they could do magic in the village they had to be in the village, or at least close. So there was no point in searching for them elsewhere.

“That’s why the Prince’s people have been tearing the village and the adjacent countryside apart looking for you. They’d be tearing the College apart, too, if they could get in. The Prince, I suspect, has been racking his brains trying to figure out in what ingenious place and by the use of what exotic magic you could be hiding. The busier he is at that, the less time he has to spend on other things we don’t want done.”

Durilil sat back, looking distinctly self-satisfied.

"I have at least a little good news, Highness."

Kieron, looking rather the worse for wear after two nights of little sleep, glanced up from his breakfast table at Alayn, a chunk of bread in one hand. "That being?"

"The College is no longer sealed. One of their servants came out this morning; Johan went in and asked after Magister Coelus. He hasn’t been in the College for days. Should we search it?"

The Prince shook his head. "The only reason to think Coelus was there was that we couldn't enter; if it's now open, he isn't there. And my last attempt to get his cooperation was not so successful that I'm eager to try again. We're doing more harm here than good. The more we search for Coelus and his lady fire mage, the more likely others are to notice and draw conclusions."

"Does it matter, Highness? Your secret is on its way to Forstmark with Lord Iolen. The odds are a hundred to one against stopping him."

"The situation is bad, but perhaps not as bad as it seems. Running away to Forstmark is better than being beheaded for treason, which is the direction my unfortunate nephew seemed headed. But allying with the Forstings carries its own problems.