Bronze Magic (Book 1) (24 page)

A splash slightly downriver signalled the return of the heron. A minute
later, it stalked into view carrying the hapless fish firmly in its beak and
settled down on the rock next to the sorcerer to eat it. Just a small fish,
not the old man of the river, Tarkyn was relieved to see. Tarkyn sent
a message of thanks to the bird who ruffled his feathers nonchalantly
and concentrated on devouring his catch. When the heron had finished
his meal, he flapped his wings slowly and rose into the air without any
further communication.
After a while, Tarkyn’s mind turned to Watertstone. He still hadn’t
seen him or Autumn Leaves. He didn’t want to intrude on him so he
decided to send a message to Autumn Leaves instead. He couldn’t use
words but he could use gestures, he realised. Targeting the right person
was another issue. He shrugged.
I can only try.
He thought hard about
Autumn Leaves; how he looked and sounded, what he knew of his
personality then sent an image of himself signalling for Autumn Leaves
to come to him.
When Autumn Leaves arrived, his face was tight and closed and he
spoke formally with no trace of his former familiarity.
“Yes, Your Royal Highness. I believe you required my presence.”
“Please sit down. I need to talk to you.” The prince eyed the woodman
who showed no sign of thawing. “Autumn Leaves, unless I am mistaken,
you appear to be annoyed with me. I can think of a few reasons why that
might be, but to save me guessing, why don’t you just tell me?”
Autumn Leaves glanced at him coldly then looked away. “I am not
used to obeying commands, Your Highness. Hopefully, it will become
easier over time but at the moment, I resent it.”
“Autumn Leaves, when you are up in the trees and on lookout duty
or whatever, are there not times when one of the other woodfolk instruct
you to do something?”
“Of course, but that is on equal terms. I can just as easily instruct
them, if the need arises.”
“I see. And yet you seemed to be instructing me quite forthrightly
the other night,” observed the prince dryly. He thought for a moment.
“I think we may be at cross purposes here. I did not really intend to
command you to come down here. Admittedly, there might be times
when I would, but this wasn’t one of them. I wanted you to come but if
it had not suited you, I would have accepted that. Perhaps the problem
lies in my mind message. Was it too peremptory? Without the words, you
can’t build in phrases like ‘could you’ and ‘please’ that turn a command
into a request.”
Autumn Leaves finally met the prince’s eyes properly for the first time
since he’d arrived. “Your gesturing was pretty emphatic,” he said shortly.
Tarkyn gave a self-conscious smile. “I have only just started using mind
messages. Maybe I need to add a feeling of uncertainty to make it a request.”
“Go on then. Try it and I’ll tell you what I think.” After a moment,
the woodman shook his head. “No. That comes across as a question; ‘Are
you coming here?’”
“Maybe just less emphatic gesturing?”
“All right. Try that.” Autumn Leaves frowned. “That’s better, but I
think you’re going to have to talk to people about it, so they understand.
Especially with the oath, they’re going to assume, as I did, that they have
no choice.”
The prince eyed him speculatively, “I would like my requests to be
acceded to unless there is a good reason not to be, but I don’t want to
create unnecessary antagonism and I don’t want a request to be confused
with a command. Will I show you what I’d send if I really were sending
out a command? I warn you it would probably only be in a situation
where I was angry or in some kind of danger so there would be a strong
emotion attached.”
“Go on then. To make sure we can tell the difference.”
Tarkyn thought for moment, imagining such a situation. Then he sent
Autumn Leaves the gesture to come to him accompanied by an intense
wave of anger, hauteur and compulsion.
Autumn Leaves went white. “Stars above! Well, that’s certainly clears
one thing up. You didn’t send me a command.”
Tarkyn smiled disarmingly. “No. Something to be used fairly sparingly,
I would have thought.”
The woodman studied the smiling prince for a few moments. “I’m
beginning to see why Waterstone likes you so much.”
The young man coloured slightly, more nonplussed by this one
grudging remark than by any of the beautifully phrased compliments he
had had thrown at him throughout his life at court. Noting the prince’s
discomfort with some amusement, Autumn Leaves kindly moved the
conversation on. “So why do you want to see me? About Waterstone, I
presume.”
“Yes. I haven’t heard from any of you and I want to know how he is
and what, if anything, I can do to help.”
“Well, do you know,” said the woodman thoughtfully, “I think he’s
all right now. He’s just feeling embarrassed about seeing you for some
reason.He won’t tell me why, but no doubt it has to do with whatever his
private thoughts or feelings he exposed to you, so I’m not going to press
him.” He looked at Tarkyn. “Maybe we just need some way to break the
ice again before it becomes too thick.”
They sat and pondered in silence for a few minutes.
“If I were in any sort of danger, he would come,” said Tarkyn,
considering possibilities.
“True. So would everybody else. But you’re not in danger and hopefully
unlikely to be for a while.”
They fell silent again.
“What if I have something of interest to show him?”
Autumn Leaves looked at him speculatively. “Depends what it is. He
mightn’t find it interesting at all.”
Tarkyn subsided. “You’re right. It may be commonplace to woodfolk.”
He thought it through, before continuing with more conviction. “But it
is not at all commonplace to me and I would like the chance to discuss it.
That in itself should be enough, surely?”
“I suppose so, if it’s important to you.”
The sorcerer hesitated. “The only thing is, I’m not sure that I can show
him.”
“Why not? Don’t you trust him?”
“Very funny. Of course I bloody trust him. That’s what this was all
about in the first place.” Tarkyn scratched his head. “I’m just not sure
how to do it.”
“Well, you can either figure that out with Waterstone or you can work
it out with me as a dress rehearsal, so to speak.” Autumn Leaves shrugged.
“Personally, I think a practice run will just make you self-conscious.”
“It is quite unnecessary to make elaborate preparations. All I need is a
pretext for visiting Waterstone the first time, which I now have, however
flimsy. Let’s just find him and get on with it. At the very least, I can tell
him about it even if I can’t show him.” Tarkyn pulled himself to his feet,
accepting the offer of Autumn Leaves hand. “Where is he?”
The solid woodman guided Tarkyn through a stand of small silver
birches then deep into a thicket of hazel trees where they came upon
Waterstone sitting outside his shelter, whittling a new arrow into shape.
There was a certain tension in his movements and he sent a singeing
glance at Autumn Leaves as the two of them approached.
Obviously he knew we were coming,
thought the sorcerer.
He’s a
woodman. Well, at least he hasn’t avoided us.
“Please don’t blame Autumn Leaves,” said the prince, his voice sounding
formal because of his tension. “I have something I wanted to show you.”
Tarkyn heard the cold tone of his own voice and took a moment to
thaw. Then he swung from one extreme to the other and began to blither.
“Well actually, I wasn’t going to show you yet, because it’s a bit of a work
in progress but I decided I would, anyway. Autumn Leaves thought it
mightn’t be as interesting to you as it is to me even though he doesn’t
actually know what it is….” He rolled his eyes beseechingly at Autumn
Leaves. “I’m not doing too well here, am I?”
He broke off as he realised that both woodmen were grinning broadly
at him.
“No wonder you’re so blindingly honest. You couldn’t lie to save
yourself,” chortled Waterstone. “Come on. Come and sit down. I’ll get
us something to drink and you can tell me what’s so interesting, if you
can think it up before I’ve brought you some juice.”
Once the three of them were seated with cups of apple juice, Tarkyn said,
“Actually, I do have something interesting to tell you and hopefully show
you. But first I need to clarify something. If someone has sent you an image
at some time in the past, can you send that image on to someone else?”
The woodfolk nodded. “It’s just like sending a memory,” said Autumn
Leaves, “An image is an image, wherever it comes from. It can be a real
view of something, it can be imaginary or it can be from your memory.”
Tarkyn smiled in satisfaction. “Good. In that case, I think I should be
able to do it. I’ll send you the image first and tell you how I got it second.
Are you ready?” He closed his eyes and brought back the views he has
seen from the heron’s eyes - lifting up over the river, soaring high above
the woodlands, then swooping back down into the river. When he had
finished, he opened his eyes and looked at them expectantly. “So, what
do you think? Can you all do that?
Waterstone and Autumn Leaves both looked stunned.
Waterstone was the first to speak. “That was…unexpected. I have
never seen the forest from above, except from the mountain peaks. But
can we all do what? Are you imagining how the forest would look? Where
did you get the images from?”
Tarkyn beamed at them. “From a heron. That’s what I’ve been learning
to do, mind link with animals.”
The woodmen exchanged glances before Waterstone spoke, “None of
us can share images with animals.” He shrugged, “Maybe it’s because we
use words so much. Your mind linking does work differently from ours.
Have you tried it with any other animals?”
Tarkyn grimaced. “I haven’t yet instigated an exchange. The animals
seem to come to me, really. Like the otter, the other night. It just happened
to be there, working its way up the river so I sent out waves of reassurance
and it came over to me. I could show you the whole exchange but I’d have
to explain the feelings afterwards.
“Go on,” said Autumn Leaves quietly.
Once he had sent the image, he said, “The otter sent me the river from
her point of view to make sure I knew she was mind linking with me.”
Tarkyn smiled, “She was irritated with me because I was a bit slow on
the uptake.” He shrugged, “Hardly surprising I was slow, since it was the
first time.” The sorcerer frowned suddenly, “Actually, now I think about
it, it wasn’t the first time. On the night of the feast, I was upset,” here
he glanced self-consciously at Autumn Leaves, “after seeing Tree Wind’s
memory of my father and the way he enforced the oath taking. Anyway,
there was a tawny owl up in the pine tree above me... the same one
that came swooping over the firesite later that night... and now I think
about it, he sent down some sort of comforting waves so that I could pull
myself together and come out to face you all.” Before the woodfolk had
time to absorb the prince’s admission of vulnerability, an idea suddenly
struck him, “... The owl that warned me about the wolf the other night
was female.” He grinned suddenly, remembering the woodfolk’s disbelief
on the first night. “Maybe it was the other one’s mate?”
Waterstone directed a frown at him. “An owl warned you? You didn’t
tell me that at the time. You gave me all sorts of other explanations….”
Tarkyn shrugged and smiled ruefully at him, “I was just trying to come
up with explanations I could believe myself. I hadn’t had time to put all
the information together then and I couldn’t really credit that I’d just
looked down on the woods through the owl’s eyes.”
“Understandable,” put in Autumn Leaves, the peacemaker. “Not the
first thing you’d naturally think of really, is it? Mind-reading an owl.” The
other two looked at him without saying a word. “I’ll get some more juice
then, shall I?” he said, getting to his feet.
As soon as Tarkyn and Waterstone were left alone, an air of constraint
descended. After too long a pause, Tarkyn said, “You have a good friend
in Autumn Leaves. He risked being burnt to a crisp for you.”
“Oh really?” responded Waterstone, not at all impressed, “He didn’t
think you’d do anything of the sort. Not for a second.”
The sorcerer pulled the corners of his mouth down in mock dismay.
“That’s quite lowering, isn’t it? To realise I’m already losing my fearsome
edge.”
Waterstone watched him with his head on one side, a sardonic glint of
amusement in his eyes. “And yet, if you think it needful, I’m sure you will
easily create a twinge of apprehension to keep us all in line.”
Tarkyn’s stomach tightened. There could be no mistaking the bitter
edge to Waterstone’s words...and he had said ‘us all’, not ‘me’. Until now,
their conversations had been person to person, not prince to woodfolk.
Tarkyn stood up and walked to the edge of the small clearing. He looked
out, hands on hips, into the tangle of branches as he tried to work out
what he could say. Before he spoke, the prince sent Autumn Leaves an
image of himself gesturing for the woodman to wait. He vaguely hoped
that it wasn’t too emphatic. He turned on his heel and stood looking
down at the Waterstone.
“Waterstone,” he began, but faltered as he saw the woodman’s set face.
He sat down again on the log next to Waterstone and leant forward, resting
his elbows on his long legs. He drew a breath and tried again. “Waterstone,
I couldn’t help not hearing all those things you told me when I was
unconscious. I couldn’t help not knowing what a true friend you had been
to me. How it was when I awoke is not how it is now. I had hoped the
message I sent through Autumn Leaves would have reassured you of that.”
He glanced at Waterstone but still the woodman did not reply. Tarkyn
leant down and picked up a long twig and methodically began to break bits
of the end of it, as he talked. “Now it is I who feels a yawning gap opening
between us. I don’t really know what else to say... Yes, I do. Autumn Leaves
explained – quite forcefully in fact – what it meant to expose your memories
without choice, as you did. Although I knew that beforehand at one level,
I didn’t fully appreciate the courage it required of you to keep going. I can
only say that I am sorry I pushed you so far. I can’t undo it. Autumn Leaves
was horrified at what I had done and so am I. My only defence is that, as
you so rightly judged, I am an inexperienced young man and on top of
that, I have had no training in mind linking of any sort.”