The Silver Mage (26 page)

“A painful but necessary thing that did happen some years ago now.” She looked down, and with one long toe began to make a little groove in the dirt floor. “There were some among us who had to be turned out.”

“Turned out?”

“Sent away. Some among us were folk like Deverry men or the First Ones. For years my own folk had lived with them and next to them in their villages. Some of us had made households with them and even borne children, impure children with both kinds of blood in their veins. Some could become Dwrgwn in the water, but most couldn’t.” She frowned, hesitating. “It was very peculiar. Most times some children in a litter could change in the water like normal folk, but not the rest. So we banished all those who couldn’t change.” She looked up, her dark eyes cold under their fan-shaped gray brows. “I lived among Deverry people. I know what evils they can work when they’ve a mind to. Once I became Lady here, I couldn’t allow my folk to have such as they living in our tunnels.”

“So you made them leave. What if they refused to go?”

“Then we killed them. They didn’t give us any choice.”

For a moment Kov could find no words. She was looking at him calmly, openly, her eyes wide, her mouth unsmiling but far from grimly set.

“I see,” he said at last. “I’m surprised you’ll let me live here.”

“Oh, you’re a man of the Mountain Folk.” She smiled and patted him on the arm. “Earth and water blend well enough.” The smile disappeared. “It was those others we couldn’t allow.”

“I see.” He repeated it for want of anything better to say. “Um, well, my thanks for telling me.”

She smiled again, turned, and trotted off down the tunnel. Kov went back to the chamber of gold, where Clakutt was waiting for him.

“She told you,” the boy said. “I heard her.”

“She did,” Kov said. “What do you think of all that?”

Clakutt shrugged, looked away, his face twisted in sorrow. “My gran, she did tell me it had to happen.” His voice wavered badly. He shrugged again and picked up a pottery jar from the floor. “Be it that I look inside this?”

“Good idea.” Kov had no desire to force him to say his opinion of the Scour aloud. No doubt it would be dangerous to do so, if Lady heard of it. “Lay it down on its side first and bang on the bottom. That’ll scare out any spiders or suchlike.”

As they continued working, Kov found himself thinking over Lady’s remark about Earth and Water blending. Apparently, the Dwrgwn knew about the abstract elements and their relationships. As a boy, Kov had been taught such things under the rubric of natural philosophy, an important study among the Mountain Folk. Fire and Water were the pure forms of the elements. Fire begat Air, and Water, Earth, with Earth and Air being mixed or impure forms. So did that mean that the Westfolk and the Mountain Folk were impure peoples somehow? They both lived far longer than Horsekin or, he suspected, the Dwrgwn, who were in theory at least pure peoples. Could it be that purity was more a drawback than a boon? Deverry folk, the Children of Aethyr, lived lives as short as those of the Horsekin. Was Aethyr a pure or impure element? In all his studies, Kov had rarely heard Aethyr mentioned, much less its properties.

Kov wished he could consult with his old teacher, Loremaster Gwarn, an impossibility at the moment, of course. With a sigh, he turned his mind back to the work at hand. When he began to tally up the coins in the hoard, he remembered that he’d never asked Lady about the promised scribe.
That’s what you get for letting your mind run off after vagaries,
he told himself.
Better to stick to practical matters, just like Father always said.
He did find a bit of wood, and Jemjek had a little knife. They counted up the coins in twelves and notched the wood for each lot.

Because of the scribe, at dinner that night Kov mentioned how much he wanted to talk with Lady again. When, the next day, one of her servants summoned him, he assumed she’d gotten his roundabout message.

“She’s in the council chamber,” the young Dwrgi lass said. “I’ll take you there.”

Kov followed her through winding tunnels that led down, deep into the complex to a big chamber, where the only light came from baskets of bluish-green fungi much like those of Lin Serr. Dressed in plain pale linen, Lady sat on a high-backed chair placed between two large light baskets. Beside her stood a tall Dwrgi with gray hair at his temples and a bristly mustache that covered his entire upper lip. Around his waist a leather belt with a gold buckle clasped his brown tunic. Kov noticed a long knife in a sheath dangling from the belt, which he took to be a mark of some sort of position or rank. He was proved right when Lady introduced him.

“Our spearleader,” Lady said. “His name is Leejak.”

Kov made Leejak a bow, which the spearleader returned.

“We’ve had troubling news from our gatherers in the north,” Lady continued. “The Horsekin are building a fortress.”

“Troubling, indeed!” Kov said. “How close is it?”

Lady shot Leejak a sideways glance. “Far away, I think,” she said.

“Huh, not far enough!” Leejak said. “Maybe ten days by tunnel. We do have tunnels that lead that way, you see. This fortress, it be south of the barrows where we do gather.”

“That’s not much of a distance for men who ride horses above ground.” Kov decided that giving Leejak an honorific would sweeten their relationship. “Does my lord agree with me?”

“So our spearleader told me,” Lady broke in. “Now, they do build it in a place we call the Long Barrow, or on top of it, I should say.”

“It’s a grave site, then?”

“I think so. We’ve not gone gathering there, because it lies on the wrong side of the river. Besides, a mound that large—it could well be haunted or suchlike.”

“They be putting stone walls on top of the barrow,” Leejak said. “We did call you here because your people do ken much about building with stone. How long think you it takes them for the finishing of the fortress?”

“Without seeing it, I can’t possibly tell.” Kov made his voice as casual as he could, but thoughts of escape were filling his mind. “I’d have to go there and take a look at it, but normally it takes a long time to build solid stone walls and the like, if that’s what they’re doing.”

“I’m told,” Lady said, “that they have many slaves working upon it.”

“Then it could rise much faster, of course. If you and the spearleader want to prevent them from settling there, we’d need to act quickly. If I could just be taken there for a look—”

Leejak cleared his throat with an angry growl and crossed his arms over his chest. Lady glanced at the spearleader with a nervous toss of her head. “He did suggest that,” she said, “but I fear you’ll leave us suddenly if we let—”

“There be a need on us to take some action,” Leejak interrupted her. “It does trouble my heart, thinking of Horsekin so close.”

“It troubles mine, too,” Kov said. “You’re sure they’re building in stone?”

“For now the buildings are only made of wood,” Lady said, “or so they told me, the messengers, that is, but they say that the Horsekin are hauling in stones from the west. They come on river barges, and then big cows pull them to the fort.”

Oxen, Kov supposed. “If they finish building stone walls around this fort,” he said aloud, “there’ll be precious little we can do about it, even if it turns out that we should do somewhat.”

She winced, then glanced at her hands, where rings glinted in the bluish light. “As long as our people are safe in their tunnels,” she said, “I’d rather merely post watchers up at Long Barrow.”

“Not enough.” Leejak glared at her. “What say you, Kov?”

“I agree,” Kov said. “Last summer I was part of an army fighting Horsekin. They’re ruthless, and we’d best not take chances.”

Lady moaned under her breath and tipped her head to rest it against the back of her chair. “I’m so afraid.” Her voice trembled on the edge of tears. “There are so few of us. The risk—if we lost more—” She let her voice trail away.

“There be risk in doing naught.” Leejak said.

But what can we do?
Kov thought. Frail Dwrgic spears would never pierce Horsekin armor. Leejak cleared his throat as if he were about to speak again, but Lady sat up straight and with a wave of one hand forestalled him.

“We’ll do naught till I know more.” Her voice turned firm. “There are so few of us. We can’t risk losing anyone in some rash way.”

Leejak shrugged, rolled his eyes, but said nothing. Kov bowed to them both and left the chamber with the spearleader close behind. Out in the corridor the servant lass waited with a pair of light baskets. Leejak took one from her.

“Go sleep,” he said. “I walk him back.”

With a bob of her head and a smile, the Dwrgi lass hurried off down the corridor. Kov and Leejak strolled after, silent until the blue glow from her basket turned a corner and disappeared.

“When Lady be like this,” Leejak said in a soft voice. “There be no use to argue.”

“I got that impression, my lord.”

The spearleader snorted and shrugged. “Later mayhap we do talk more, make her think more.”

“Do you think she’ll change her mind?”

“I do. She does this other times, before.” He paused, struggling for words. “She does think good after while. There be a need on her for time to think good, I do mean. Soon you do see this or so I do hope.”

“So I do hope as well, my lord. I can assure you of that.”

They walked up a long ramp and turned into a corridor that Kov knew well. Through an open doorway, a bluish glow greeted them.

“Here’s the treasure chamber,” Kov said. “I have a light basket in there, my lord. I’ll just fetch it and see myself home.”

Leejak nodded and strode off. Kov went inside, picked up the basket of fungi then lingered for a moment, letting the gold and its invisible mist soothe his troubled mind. Horsekin nearby—
ah ye gods,
he thought.
Will we never escape these savages?
As he turned to leave, the light in his basket flickered on a heap of coins and cast the blocky shadow of some object protruding from the heap. Kov pulled it free and found a crumbling codex, missing its front cover, deeply torn along some of its folds. In the dim light he couldn’t properly read it, but he could decipher the Deverrian writing enough to realize that the codex contained dweomerlore.

“I wish I could show you to Dallandra,” he said to it. “I’ll take you along on the off chance I can escape from this ghastly place.”

With the codex tucked under his arm, he went back to his chamber, where Grallag had taken up his usual station. Kov greeted him and went inside, shutting the door behind him, to catch what sleep he could with worry for unpleasant company.

The more he mulled over what he was learning about this peculiar folk, the more Kov wished he could consult with Dallandra. She had the strange lore to understand these things better—he was certain of that.
She has dweomer, too,
he thought,
which would come in handy about now.
With the thought he realized that despite what he’d always been taught, he now believed in the existence of sorcerers.

O
ut on the grasslands, as Laz’s mood grew blacker and blacker, and his temper worse and worse, more and more of his men deserted him. Even though Drav had started drilling his ragtag collection of deserters with military discipline, the Westfolk camp offered enough comfort and amusement to make Drav seem tolerable, or so Krask informed Laz as he left. Finally, after some days of these slow desertions, Laz ended up with a band comprised of himself and one man.

After the last deserter had walked off in a huff, early one evening, Faharn built a small fire of twigs and dried horse dung. By its smoky light they ate dry flatbread and cheese washed down with spring water. The evening breeze brought them the drift of distant music and the occasional burst of laughter from the elven camp. Now and then, Laz caught a faint scent of roasting meat. At those moments Faharn would stop fanging his leathery dinner and look wistfully across to the painted tents, glowing from the fires scattered among them.

“Why don’t you just go join the others?” Laz said. “Ye gods, just because I can’t bear seeing Sidro doesn’t mean you have to fester out here with me.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Faharn snapped. “I’m not going to desert you.”

“Why not? I must be the worst company in the Northlands at the moment.”

Faharn shifted his weight on the log, shrugged, and scowled at the stale flatbread in his hand. “I was hoping,” he said at last, “that we could take up my lessons again.”

Laz felt so sour that he was tempted to tell him the truth, that Faharn’s small talent for dweomer had blossomed as much as it ever would, that in fact there was no use in his studying any more dweomer than he already knew. But Faharn was watching him so hopefully, so patiently, like a dog who knows that sooner or later his master will share the meat he’s engaged in eating, that Laz threw him a morsel of reassuring lie.