Wandering Lark (31 page)

Wendon cleared his throat. “Uh, of course. I didn’t mean...”

“Just listen to what I must say, please,” Etienne said. “What you did today...” Both Wendon and Thera stiffened, and Etienne wondered if she could get through this without laughing at their obvious sense of guilt. “...Is nothing to be ashamed of. But I could not help but notice that while the two of you were engaged, the very air in this place was stifled with your essence. So much so, that I cast a small fire spell, and those who guard us did not even detect it.”

“Really?” Wendon sat upright as though pondering this matter in a new light. It was an expression she would have expected from Fenelon.
Perhaps there is more to our Wendon that we have ever assumed,
she thought.

“It was as though your passion created a void...” she said.

Wendon shook his head. “Not a void,” he said. “More like a cloaking spell. When I was first apprenticed to Magister Keir, he commented on what he called my tendency to cloud spell matters with my emotions. He said it was one of the reasons I had so much trouble with certain spells...” Wendon paused, looking as though the memory of those words pained him. “But he pointed out that it could be used much like a cloaking spell. The problem, he said, was that emotions did not always follow a controlled path.”

“Controlled or not, it worked,” Etienne said. “Which is why I feel obligated to at least make a suggestion, and you can agree with it or not. I will not hold it against either of you.”

“Suggestion?” Wendon frowned with suspicion. “What sort of suggestion.”

“It is becoming quite clear that Magister Turlough is...not himself at the moment,” she said carefully. “I fear that he is not to be trusted to keep his word not to harm any of us...”

“Well, if you would just tell him where Alaric is, I’m sure he would...”

“You do not know him as well as I do, Wendon,” Etienne said. “He is a determined and sometimes misguided man who cares only for his own appearance and his revenge.”

“Revenge?”

“A demon killed the woman he loved, and because of this, he has declared that all demons are terrible creatures. But having spent time in Vagner’s company, I am coming to see that we might all be mistaken as to the true nature of demons. Not all of them are mindless, ravenous monsters. They have feelings.”

“I once heard a theory that demons were the creations of the gods, and that it was not until the corruption of the Dark Mother of ancient times that they became despised,” Thera said.

“Precisely. As there are likeable and dislikeable people, there are likeable and dislikeable demons. The creature that killed Turlough’s love was merely the pawn of a bloodmage. But Turlough would blame all demons.”

“And your suggestion?” Wendon asked again, still looking suspicious.

“We must not stay here and let Turlough decide our fates,” she said.

“But, what choice do we have?” Wendon asked. “We have broken the rules.”

“We have broken
Turlough’s
rules,” Etienne was quick to amend. “I myself am a member of the Council, remember. I know the laws under which mageborn must live better than any. They were made only to keep us from using our powers to enslave mortal kind, to keep us from misusing the power we possess. Mageborn uncontrolled and untrained are a danger to themselves and all around them. This is why we encourage teaching the spell work as we do. And I can assure you that Turlough would have us become the masters of the world if he had his way. It has long been his desire to have mageborn kings on the thrones of Ard-Taebh. He believes mageborn should rule instead of serve.”       

“And why not?” Wendon asked. “We live longer and are smarter and more powerful and...” He stopped when he saw the look in Etienne’s eye.

“And we are in the minority,” she said. “For every one of us, there are thousands of mortalborn in the world. It is said that before the great cataclysm, mortal men were in the minority. There were Old Ones, Dark Ones, Stone Folk, Hidden Folk, and numerous other races of magical beings. But the Great Cataclysm changed all that. The balance shifted, and now we are the few...and because we are the few, we must guard against anything that would put us in ill favor with the mortalborn of the world. As it is, there are small factions who believe we should all be eliminated. They do not distinguish between us and the blood mages as we do. Magic is magic to them, and we have it and they do not, and that makes them distrust us all the more. The Council keeps Turlough from taking the reins of power over the whole world.”

“And what has that to do with this
suggestion
you still have not told us about,” Wendon said.

“Turlough would use this matter of demons as a catalyst to take total power. He would unseat from the Council all those who oppose him, and if he can make an example of Alaric, then he can make examples of all those mageborn he thinks would oppose him. Many mageborn do have familiars of one sort or another, and we know that when you take away the trappings, those creatures we bind to our will are little more than minor demons. Turlough would use his quest to kill Alaric as a means of pushing to get rid of all opposition, and then he would move to rule the world his way...as a master mage and emperor of all.”

“What are you planning to do?” Thera asked in a calm voice.

“We must leave this place,” Etienne said. “We must find Fenelon and help him find Alaric, and we must protect Alaric before Turlough can kill the young man. But to do so, we must escape here without them knowing we have done. And to do that, I will have to ask you, Wendon—and you, Thera—to create another shield of passion while I work a gate spell to take us to Ross-Mhor. Once there, we will be safe to try and find Fenelon and Gareth and eventually, we hope, rescue Alaric.”

Wendon frowned. “I have lost my place here, I am certain. I have disgraced myself by helping Fenelon to escape...and yet...”

“What?” Etienne tried not to look too hopeful.

“If what you say about Magister Turlough is true, then we are all doomed unless we escape.” He took a deep breath and looked at Thera. “I am willing to try, but only if we all leave.”

“We will all leave,” Etienne said. “You, Thera, myself and Shona.”

“But Shona is unconscious, is she not?”

“She is not,” a voice said from the doorway.

They all looked up. Shona was standing there, wrapped in a plaid blanket, clutching the frame of the door.

“And you know very well that there is no way I will let you leave me behind,” she added.

“We will not,” Etienne said. She rose from her chair and crossed the room to assist the young woman over to the fire. “So, we are all in agreement,” she said.

Heads nodded all around.

“Good. We will wait until well after the dark hour...that way, it will be dawn when we go to Ross-Mhor.”

Again, they all nodded. Etienne closed her eyes, feeling relieved.

Fenelon’s bed felt like someone
had placed a large number of fist-sized stones under the mattress. How Hobbler and his father could sleep under these circumstances was beyond him. Then again, he remembered that Gareth was used to adverse conditions. Any man who had spent much of his life wandering remote parts of the landscape instead of sharing his late wife’s warm bed probably thought these pallets were a luxury.

I have let magic spoil me,
Fenelon thought. It would have been so easy to summon a feather mattress, but Gareth kept insisting it would not be wise for Fenelon to use magic until they were well into the Ranges. He seemed to think Turlough would find them otherwise.

It took Fenelon a while to fall asleep that night, and he tossed and turned most of it away. Didn’t help that the noise in the tavern below was ceaseless. When did Dvergar sleep? It wasn’t like they were underground here. Stanehold was admittedly etched into the sides of the mountains around them, but this particular inn was under an overhang of rock and had windows looking out onto the streets where daylight could be seen. But the Stone Folk did not seem to understand that night was for sleeping...well, maybe not for everyone. He recalled there was a time when he preferred the night. When he liked to gate himself to mountain tops just to stare at the stars, or spend all night discoursing magic with other mageborn of a like mind.

He missed those days.

In fact, he had thought that he and Alaric would start doing that...

But first, I have to find Alaric and protect him from Turlough. And my father.

He still harbored a tiny bit of doubt that Gareth would not turn Alaric over to Turlough, though he did not know why. Was it because he figured his father, being a man of his word, would let his promise to Turlough outweigh his own judgment?

Or that he wondered at times if his own father was as mad as Turlough. There was no doubt in Fenelon’s mind that Turlough was mad. He had been that way since the death of the woman he loved. But to convince the rest of the council that Turlough was a dangerous man was not easy. The High Mage had a good number of friends left to him—those he had not driven away in his desire to destroy all who used demons.

There was the sticky point, Fenelon reminded himself. Mageborn did use demons. Every familiar a mageborn ever summoned was a small but intelligent demon that had been coaxed into service. As he remembered one of his own ancestors saying, demons came in many shapes sizes and intellects. The small, intelligent ones made great familiars.

If Turlough was going to declare possession of a demon as a crime worthy of death, he was going to have to execute a lot of his own friends...

Just as long as he does not execute mine,
Fenelon thought darkly. And wondered just what Etienne and the others were doing right now. He really had hated leaving her behind.

Those were the thoughts plaguing him as he finally fell asleep. Come morning, he rolled over on his side with a groan.

The other pallets were empty.

Horns, they had let him sleep in. Had they left him?

He sat up. No, the packs were still in the corner. Gareth had gone and bought them from one of the merchants who came to this inn. Two large and one smaller one. Fenelon had thought it a waste. Why carry what you could conjure from your own pantry or home?

Then he remembered Gareth’s time-worn argument. Learn to live without magic. There are times is it useless anyway.

And Turlough would be watching.

Fenelon snorted and crawled off his pallet, pulling on clothes. He then stumbled down to the tavern, seeking something for his stomach.

Hobbler and Gareth were there, leaning over a large sheaf of vellum on a table in the corner.

“And you’re sure about this,” Gareth was saying.

“As sure as I’m sitting here with you,” Hobbler said. He pushed his finger across the surface of the vellum. “We take the chasm trail until we reach Stone Valley. After we cross the valley, we’ll reach the river that snakes through the Gorge of Golduram. If we stick to the shore of the river, it will then take about three days to reach the ford on foot. On the other side is Warrenvale, which has an entrance to the Blackbone Caverns and Baldoran’s Pass. Once we get there, another day on foot should put us in the Stone Forest. Over all, I think we are talking over a sen’night of travel just to get to the pass.”

Fenelon crossed to the table and dropped onto the bench beside Hobbler.

“We’re going all that way on foot?”

“Grown soft, have you?” Gareth asked and gestured to the tavern keeper who was a rather wide Dvergar with his hair and beard braided and one eye missing. “Told you living in a fancy keep was not good for your stamina.”

“I happen to like living at Eldon Keep,” Fenelon retorted. “There’s a great deal of power stored in that tor, and it’s useful.”

“And I like living in the wild where I can be close to the ancient magic of our ancestors. This is why we don’t see one another too often, you know.”

“Are you going to harp on that again,” Fenelon said with a frown. “I have my own life and my own researches to pursue, and following you around the Ranges is dull. You rarely do more than sit on a mountain and record the length and breadth of the land.”

Gareth grinned. “Someone has to do it. How else will we find out why the Great Cataclysm occurred? The land itself gives us many clues. And the wild magic that I find sometimes rivals that power you are so proud of. Where we go now will open your eyes...”