The Hawk And His Boy (17 page)

Owain Gawinn said nothing more after that, except to snap an order to the young officer at the gate. Soldiers dashed out with fresh horses, and in a matter of seconds the trader and the twins found themselves hurried along through the streets of Hearne. The rain and the darkness and the looming walls around them passed by in a blur of clattering hoofs and the muttered talk of the soldiers. Owain rode at their head, but he seemed a shadow flitting through the night, only just in sight and always out of reach.

The street climbed up a steep rise. The houses were larger there, mansions, for the most part, set back behind walls and gardens. The rain rustled overhead in the branches of trees sheltering the street. They came to a gate in a high wall. Owain called out, and the gate swung open. They entered into a courtyard. Light spilled from doorways and windows. Servants came forward.

“Welcome to my house,” said Owain Gawinn.

The regent’s own physician came and tended to the little girl. He was an old man with a stern face, but his hands were gentle and the girl’s labored breathing eased under his touch.

“Her blood’s tainted with a strange poison,” he said. He bled her with a knife into a stone vial, though Loy scowled and grumbled in the corner so much that he had to be ushered from the room. Owain’s four children peeped in through the doorway, all with his blue eyes. Sibb, his wife, swept in and out with hot water and a cool hand that seemed to do just as much good, if not more, than the physician.

Murnan Col left that same night, relieved and heading north to Thule and home. One twin, Gann, went with him, but Loy stayed behind in the house of Owain Gawinn, for, as he said to his brother, he had felt the little girl’s life ebb away in his arms over the course of those past days and he wished to see her whole again before he left.

Her fever broke after three days, and the wounds on her arm and leg began to heal. But even though she opened her eyes, she would only stare at her visitors. Not a sound escaped her lips, despite Owain’s repeated attempts to question her. Finally, his wife banned him from the room.

“She’ll speak when she’s ready,” she said. “Until then, you’ll have to wait. Now go, before I lose my patience.”

“Know your place, Sibb!” said her husband. But then he laughed and kissed her. He was a wise man and knew that his wife was wiser still in most matters.

The days passed, and still the girl remained silent. All of them grew used to her grave eyes—Owain, his wife Sibb, their children, the servants, and Loy—though Owain wondered what it was that she had seen. This was not the first tale he had heard of such killings, but it was the first time he had encountered a survivor.

After some time, the girl plucked up enough courage to venture out of her room, but only if Loy was in view. Besides Owain’s wife, he was the only one she would suffer to pick her up. But even for him she remained silent and solemn, despite the many ridiculous faces he would make for her benefit. Not a night went by without a nightmare coming to her, and it was only then she made noise—screaming as if she were looking into the darkness of Daghoron itself. The household waited patiently for her improvement and speech. She remained mute, however, and so the family grew to expect nothing more of her, though Sibb wept over her sometimes at night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

VANISHING STAIRS

There was food on the table when Jute woke up. After he ate, he investigated the room. There was nothing worth stealing. Wool blankets and old books would not bring much from the barrow sellers who bought from the Juggler’s children. The room adjoined another room with nothing in it except for a window opening out onto a stone casement. He crawled outside and sat in the morning sunlight. The stone was already warming with the sun. He was at a great height, well above the rooftops of the city. Above him, the university spires towered even higher, up into the clear sky. Far below, the hubbub of Mioja Square drifted up to him. People bustled like ants among the brightly colored awnings of the stalls.

The city sprawled around his vantage point. The sea was a brilliant line of blue to the west. To the east, huddled near the university walls, was the ugly mass of the Earmra slum, where the poorest of Hearne’s poor lived and worked. To the north, of course, the rooftops sloped sharply up toward Highneck Rise, at whose highest point rose the gleaming white stone towers of the regent’s castle. He had never been inside, or even close, for the castle was so heavily warded it set his ears buzzing if he got within a hundred yards of the place. According to the Juggler, the castle of Nimman Botrell was filled with the most fabulous treasures imaginable.

The Juggler.

His jaw tightened. A breeze blew by his face, prompting him to look to the sky, but there was nothing there—no hawk riding the winds—only the empty blue.

The view from the window only held him so long. By noon, his boredom outweighed his fear of the university and the terrors Severan had hinted at. He opened the door to the hall and peered out. No one was there. The hall was silent. Even better, he could not hear any ward spells whispering in his mind. What was it Severan had said?

An alarming number of the ward spells here aren’t attuned to noise.

Then what do they listen to if not noise?

He rubbed his nose and thought hard about this for a moment. He hadn’t met a ward yet he couldn’t beat. The trick was to be as silent as the sky. Silent and empty, and the spell would reach right through you and find nothing.

Jute crept down the hall.

He tripped his first ward twenty minutes later.

After some time prowling about the warren of hallways, he came upon a marble door carved with whorls that seemed to creep in and out of each other. He pressed his ear against it and listened. There was only silence. More importantly, there was no ward whispering in his mind. He opened the door and found himself standing on a platform jutting out over a huge, gloomy space of darkness. He edged over to the side to look down. He could see nothing below. But surely something was down there. He had to find out.

Happily enough, a staircase curved down from one side of the platform. The steps were visible some distance down in the darkness, reflecting a hidden light source he could not make out. Jute tiptoed down the stairs in silence. However, after some time, he became aware of a noise. He froze. It was the quietest of noises—similar to a finger tapping on stone. Just a simple, peaceful tapping.

Or so Jute thought.

He took another step down the stairs, listening hard. After a few more steps, he realized the tapping increased in rapidity the further he descended. He retreated back up the stairs a way and paused. Sure enough, the tapping slowed back down.

If Jute had understood the history and nature of the university, he would have promptly ran back up the stairs and hurried to the room where Severan had left him. And there he would have waited until the old man returned. But Jute didn’t. He was a stubborn boy and he was also a curious thief. It was a combination that didn’t always prove healthy.

He tiptoed down the stairs, listening with all his might to the tapping as it increased in tempo with every step he took. He still could not tell where the stairs ended, as no floor was visible below. By this time, the tapping was so fast that surely the next step down he took would result in the tapping becoming a single, unbroken blur of sound. He took one more step and found this to be true.

It was at that moment the stairway began to vanish. The steps below him disappeared, one by one, climbing up toward him. He turned and ran. There was one horrible spot at the end where he felt the step under his foot soften and he looked down to see the thing vanish. He lunged for the platform at the top of the stairs and hauled himself, sobbing for air, up over the edge.

Jute lay on his back, his heart hammering against his ribs. After a while, he noticed with horrified fascination that, far below the platform, the stairway was reappearing. The stairs shimmered into view, one by one, mounting higher and higher. The last stair materialized under his fingertips, and he snatched his hand away as if the cold stone would burn him.

Severan was waiting in his room, perched on the wooden chest.

“Have an apple,” he said, waving at a pile of withered specimens on the table. He took one for himself and bit into it. Jute picked up an apple and promptly dropped it on the floor. His hands were shaking.

“Ah,” said Severan. “You found Bevan’s stairway. I felt it vanish. My colleagues also did. We figured it must have been a large and unlucky rat, though I had my suspicions. No one’s ever reached the bottom of those stairs. Alive, that is.”

“I can’t just stay cooped up in here!” said Jute.

“It’s either stay cooped up or have the wihht find you,” said the old man. “Or have your neck broken in any number of ways. The wards in this place are deadly. Can you get that through your thick skull?”

“The stairs vanished right underneath me!”

“You shouldn’t have been wandering around. I don’t doubt you’re bored, but, trust me, you were lucky. Those stairs killed a lot of people during the Midsummer War. Bevan was an unusually creative wizard. He was the one who figured out how to mask the warning buzz that wards give off. Once he’d discovered that, it wasn’t long before all the best wards in this place were woven for silence. Though—did you hear a tapping noise when you were on the staircase?”

“Of course,” said Jute. He bit into an apple. “What do you expect me to do? Sit in here until I grow old and die?”

“Most people would never have heard any tapping, which is how Bevan designed it. However, if you heard it that means you’d probably be able to recognize many of the wards in these ruins, one way or another. So I suppose it would be safe for you to see a bit of the place. Though,” he warned, as Jute’s face brightened, “you must use your wits, which you obviously didn’t do on the staircase.”

“I’m alive, aren’t I?” said the boy.

“Next time, if you hear noise, no matter how quiet, get away from that place as fast as possible. Furthermore, don’t go below the ground level and do not go outside, whatever you do. Some of the entrance wards are strong enough to reduce a house to rubble. The wards in this place are much more sophisticated than the variety people buy in the marketplace for their homes and whatnot. Any noise, any movement, changes in color or temperature, even a change in odor—treat them as signs of a ward listening to you.”

“What if it’s just a mouse scurrying by?” said Jute.

The old man sighed and reached for another apple.

“A mouse,” he said. “How I wish the world was that simple. You obviously know nothing about the Midsummer War. If you did, even the mice in this place would give you cause for concern.” He settled back on the wooden chest and began to speak.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

SCUADIMNES AND THE MIDSUMMER WAR

“Long ago,” said Severan, “all Tormay was united under a monarchy that ruled from the city of Hearne. The duchies of Dolan, Hull, and Thule in the north and those of Vo and Vomaro in the south all gave their allegiance to the king. Harlech, of course, far to the north, minded its own business, as it has always done and always will. The deserts of Harth, beyond Vomaro, gave their loyalty to no one, though the tribe of Oran was beginning to establish itself in those years by seizing control of the oasis trade routes. The duchy of Mizra did not exist in those days.”

“What?” said Jute, blinking. “Mizra, where all the gold comes from?”

“Mizra, where all the gold comes from. There’re more important things to know about Mizra than that. The Guild is obviously selective in what it teaches its budding criminals. Mizra, at the time, was a wilderness, east of the mountains of Morn. No one ever went to Mizra and no one ever came from Mizra. Anyway, at the time, the university in Hearne was a center for the study of history and certain other topics. It was a place of wonder, a repository of knowledge so vast that men have never known its like. Students came from every walk of life.”

“To learn how to be wizards?” said Jute.

“Not just wizards,” said Severan. “It was a place for scholars as well. Besides, no one learns how to become a wizard. You either are or you aren’t. Wizardry is just a trait like any other trait. Some people are born with the knack of understanding animals or throwing the perfect clay pot or knowing just when to whisk a cake out of the oven. The university taught how to control and refine the trait of wizardry. The trait itself can’t be taught.”

“But what about ward-weavers?” asked the boy. “Fat old Arcus in Mioja Square offered to take on Wrin as his apprentice, and Wrin’s stupid as a rock. I once gave him a piece of tin and he thought it silver.”

Severan waved his hand in the air. “You can teach a dog to do tricks if you’re patient and have plenty of bones to keep the rascal happy. Anyone can learn a few bits of wizardry, but it doesn’t mean you’re a wizard. Most modern ward-weaving is tomfoolery and only fit for keeping out rats and mice. As I was saying, er, what was I saying? Oh, yes. The university! The university was a vibrant place, a marvelous mix of the best minds of Tormay. All dedicated—well, mostly all—to preserving knowledge of Tormay’s past and the study of the Dark. For if one does not know the past, one cannot guard against the future.”