A Young Man Without Magic (2 page)

A moment later the coachman called to his team, and the vehicle rolled to a stop on the wet cobbles of the town's only square. “Alzur!” the driver called as he set the brake. “This is Alzur!”

Anrel sat up and fumbled with the latch, and the door banged open. He thrust out his head and looked around. “Indeed it
is
Alzur,” he said aloud, addressing the air. “It hasn't changed a bit, has it?” The town was exactly as he remembered it. Just now everything was damp from the recent rain, water dripping from the eaves and trickling down the streets, but otherwise it could have been any day since he had first seen the place eighteen years before.

But then, why would a sleepy village in Aulix look any different? The rabble-rousers of Lume might claim great changes were afoot in the world, but Anrel thought they would hardly reach a place like this.

He looked around and saw no sign of his uncle. He did, however, see a young man in a green frock coat trotting across the cobbles and waving to him. “Anrel!” this person called. “You've made it!”

The traveler looked down at his dearest friend and smiled broadly. “Hello, Valin,” he said, clambering quickly down from the coach. “It's good to see you!”

“Very good indeed!” Valin replied, stepping forward, his own grin as broad as the traveler's.

The two men embraced, and when they separated Anrel said, “You haven't changed any more than Alzur has, I see.”

“Ah, so it might appear to the casual glance,” Lord Valin said, clapping his friend on the back, “but I believe that when we have a chance to talk a little you'll see just how different I have become. When you left I was little more than a child, and I like to think I am rather more than that now.”

Anrel's smile broadened. Valin was his senior by more than a year, but in truth, had never in Anrel's memory seemed the more mature of the pair. Perhaps, though, he really
had
changed during Anrel's absence this time; his sparse letters provided no compelling evidence either way. “I'm eager to hear all about it,” he said.

“And
I
am eager to hear all the news from Lume,” Valin answered. “What's happening there? Is there much excitement about the calling of the Grand Council?”

Anrel's smile dimmed. Not two minutes out of the coach, and Valin was asking him about political affairs. Pleased as he was to see him apparently unchanged, Anrel had hoped that Valin's obsession with wild schemes to change the world had faded. He was as bad as the firebrands of Lume, and with far less justification.

Indeed, it was largely his familiarity with Valin that had led him to dismiss the beliefs of the agitators, idealists, and theorists of the court schools as unfounded.

“I am not sure I would call it excitement so much as uncertainty,” Anrel said. He glanced over to see that the coachman had already exchanged the day's incoming and outgoing mail with Alzur's postmistress, the same plump little woman who had held the position when Anrel departed four years before—Oria Neynar, was it? Yes, that was her name. She was trotting off with the dispatch case in hand while the driver proceeded around toward the back of the coach. “But let us retrieve my baggage and be on our way, so that this good man can get on with his business.”

“Yes, to be sure,” Valin agreed.

A few fresh raindrops spattered the pavement just then, and Anrel glanced at the sky. He hoped it was just a final sprinkle, and not the start
of a fresh downpour. “I think we should make haste,” he said. He turned to the driver, who had untied the protective canvas and was heaving a leather-bound traveling case to the cobbles.

“Of course!” Valin said, hurrying to snatch up the first bag.

The coachman handed the next bag, a battered valise, directly to Anrel, who nodded, and passed the man a coin in exchange—a sixpence, one-tenth of a guilder, which was generous, but the man had made good time and kept the ride reasonably smooth, and there were no other passengers to contribute to his pay.

The coachman smiled and tipped his hat, then turned to secure the coach for the next leg of his run. Fat drops began to darken the canvas as the driver tied it back in place, and Anrel looked up again. The sky did not look promising.

“Is this everything?” Valin asked, hefting the traveling case.

“Indeed it is,” Anrel said, turning his attention to his friend. “I am, after all, only a poor student, not a mighty sorcerer like yourself.” The statement was made in jest, but it was also the simple truth—Valin
was
a sorcerer, where Anrel was not.

Valin punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Sorcerer, pfah! I am a man like yourself, Anrel. Are we not all the children of the Father and the Mother, and heirs of the Old Empire?” He began marching south across the square.

“Some of us are the more favored heirs, Valin, while others are but despised cousins,” Anrel said, following his companion. “Your magic gives you a status most of us can never aspire to.”

Lord Valin glanced back over his shoulder. “
Never
aspire to? I think you may misjudge the situation, my friend. What our fathers dared not dream of, our sons may take for granted. Changes are coming, Anrel! Surely, if I have heard as much in the taverns of Naith, you have heard it in the capital!”

Anrel did not need to ask what he meant, since he had indeed heard these utopian schemes bruited about in Lume. He did not put much stock in them, but kept his opinion to himself. Instead, hoping to divert the discussion away from the capital and toward Valin's own situation, he said, “You have certainly achieved what
your
father did not.”

“Pfah!” Valin waved his free hand in dismissal. “I can take little pleasure in a fortunate accident of birth. I was merely . . .”

At that point, with no further warning, the skies opened anew, and rain deluged upon the pair, turning the world gray and wet. Water poured from the eaves on every side, and the spaces between cobbles all seemed to fill instantly.

“Over there!” Anrel shouted over the drumming of the torrent, as he pointed toward a pair of small tables set beneath a broad sky-blue awning. The awning was already soaked, but it was still the closest shelter; the two men ran for it.

A moment later the two of them had ducked beneath the sagging awning, and turned to stare out at the downpour.

“It would seem that the spirits of air and water do not want me to rush to my uncle's hearth,” Anrel said.

“Indeed,” Valin agreed.

“This is not the homecoming I had hoped for,” Anrel said. He meant not merely the weather, but the fact that Valin had come alone to meet him. His uncle's presence would have been very welcome, or that of Anrel's cousin, Lady Saria. Lord Dorias's only child had been a baby when Anrel first came to Alzur, and was only just blossoming into woman hood when he left for Lume. He wondered what she looked like now; she had shown signs of becoming a beauty. How much had she changed in his absence?

He would see her soon enough, he supposed, but he wished she had come to meet him and welcome him home. He would have found it reassuring.

But at least someone from the Adirane household was here, even if Valin was not actually a member of the family. It was very good to see Valin again, and to know at least
someone
welcomed his return.

The two young men beneath the awning gazed silently out at the rain for a few seconds; then Anrel turned and reached for a chair. Valin followed his example, and the pair settled at one of the tables, setting Anrel's drenched luggage to one side.

“I expect it will let up in due time,” Valin said.

“Eventually, it must,” Anrel agreed. “I doubt the Father has decided to drown us all.”

Valin smiled, and shook the water from his hat.

Anrel glanced at his companion. There were a thousand things he wanted to ask Valin, so many he scarcely knew where to begin, about Valin's situation, and Lord Dorias, and Lady Saria, and everything that had happened in Alzur in his absence, but he was puzzled. He would have expected Valin to talk about all that without prompting. Why was the fellow so quiet? His only questions so far had been about luggage and matters in Lume; he had not so much as asked after Anrel's health. It would seem he really
had
changed, and not for the better.

Lord Valin li-Tarbek was no kin to Anrel or the Adiranes; he had been born to a family of commoners, but had demonstrated a talent for magic as a child. He had undergone the trials and had been determined to be a sorcerer, and therefore had been made a noble of the empire. But he had needed training if he was to do anything with his sorcery, training his own family could not provide. Uncle Dorias had generously accepted
him as a fosterling and an apprentice, and had raised him alongside Anrel and Saria.

Valin and Anrel had been almost inseparable as boys, despite the difference in their rank and background—in fact, Anrel had sometimes wondered whether Uncle Dorias had taken Valin in just to give Anrel a playmate.

Their personalities were utterly different, though. Anrel had been happy as a student, spending hours poring over dusty books, while he suspected Valin would not have lasted a single season in the court schools before going mad with boredom—either that, or he would have spent all his time arguing in the capital's innumerable taverns, forcing his tutors to expel him.

They had been fast friends all the same, but Anrel's long absence seemed to have let them grow apart.

Anrel frowned. Perhaps a little further conversation would allow him to judge just how Lord Valin had changed. “You were saying, just before this deluge began, that you cannot take any great pleasure in an accident of birth,” he said. “But surely you realize that a great many sorcerers do just that, particularly those who are heir to some specialty, some ancient binding or unique talent.”

“They mark themselves as fools thereby,” Valin replied. “The Father and Mother give each of us gifts at birth, and those say nothing of who we are, or what our worth might be. It is what we
do
with those gifts that makes us deserving of respect. That I was given the gift of sorcery, when none of my ancestors had it, when none of my siblings are so blessed, does not make me a better man than they.”

“It makes you a noble of the empire,” Anrel pointed out, “and entitles you to call yourself Lord Valin. It opens many doors, gives you access to rights and privileges denied to the rest of us. There are many who take pride in that distinction.”

Valin shook his head. “Fools. And their folly may soon be demonstrated, should the Grand Council so choose.”

Anrel grimaced. He had heard this sort of nonsense in Lume, and had hoped he would not hear it again once he left the student community behind. The emperor's announcement that he would summon a
second Grand Council was just a ruse, Anrel was sure; it meant nothing. “I think you wildly misjudge the situation if you consider so radical a change to be likely.”

Valin leaned closer. “You do not? What is the news, then, in Lume? Has the emperor said how the delegates are to be chosen?”

Anrel suppressed a sigh. He was quite sure that it did not matter what process was used; the Grand Council would be impotent. That was not what his friend wanted to hear, though, and Anrel did not want to antagonize Valin.

“On the contrary,” Anrel said, “the emperor has continued to change his mind with every shift of the wind, but his latest proclamation says that each province, each city or town, is to decide upon its own method of selection, just as was done when first the Grand Council met, some six centuries ago.”

“Well, then,” Valin said, straightening again. “Do you not think—”

“Valin,” Anrel interrupted wearily, “do you not see what will happen? The people of the provinces are scattered, and unaccustomed to any meddling in civic affairs. They will do as they have always done, and leave it to the landgraves to choose their representatives, and the landgraves, protecting their own interests, will appoint delegates who will see to it that nothing changes. Likewise, the people of the marches must always defer to their margraves, who they depend upon to guard the borders. Only in the towns is there any possibility that the selection will be left to commoners, and even there, who's to say they won't name whomsoever the burgraves suggest?”

Lord Valin shook his head. “Anrel, you have been locked up in the courts and schools for four years; I think you underestimate the discontent of the populace. Food is in short supply, and most of my fellow sorcerers do nothing to alleviate the shortages. There are beggars in the streets of Naith where there were none when I was a child. When crops fail, the lords shrug and say it's the will of the Mother. The magic that might help feed the hungry is devoted instead to extravagant displays intended to assert status within the government—and that doesn't even mention what is sometimes done to ordinary people to
power
that magic. These things
must
change!”

Anrel turned up empty hands. “While I concede that times are hard and many unhappy, this is how our society has conducted its affairs since the Old Empire fell,” he said. “The realm needs magic to function, so those who have magic have power, and those who do not have none—save for the emperor, of course. A few misfortunes, a few bad years, won't alter that. It's how the world works.”

“But it doesn't need to be like this!” Valin insisted. “Look at Quand, where there is no link between magic and nobility, and where the people choose their leaders. Look at Ermetia, with its two sets of nobles, terrestrial and arcane.”

“What do you know of Quand or Ermetia?” Anrel asked, startled. Valin had never shown the slightest interest in reading about foreign lands—or much of anything else, for that matter. “Have you been traveling while I was in Lume?”