Circle of Thieves: Legends of Dimmingwood
Read Circle of Thieves: Legends of Dimmingwood Online
Authors: C. Greenwood
Circle of
Thieves
By C. Greenwood
Copyright © 2013 C.
Greenwood
Edited by Ink Slinger
Editorial Services
Formatted by Indie
Mobi Formatting Services
Cover art by Michael
Gauss
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Excepting brief review quotes, this book may not be reproduced in whole or in
part without the express written permission of the copyright holder. The
unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
This is a work of
fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, real events, locations, or
organizations in purely coincidental.
A
Beginning
I’m distantly aware of the ring of my footsteps and those of
my armed escort echoing down the stone corridor. We pass weapons mounted on the
walls and scarlet tapestries embroidered with battle scenes, but I don’t stop
to examine them or to peer through open doorways or down branching halls
leading deeper into the keep. Even if I wasn’t a prisoner, enclosed on all
sides by the Praetor’s guards, I would be unable to focus on my surroundings.
My mind has been in a fog since stepping out of the Praetor’s audience chamber
moments ago.
I am his creature now. I’ve sold my service to my most
despised enemy. That’s all I can think of. Never mind what my intentions were
in the beginning; never mind that my motives started out pure. Or did they? My
mind travels back as I try to untangle the path of misfortune that brought me
here…
Chapter
One
In the wake of Terrac’s betrayal, my initial instinct was to
hurry back to Dimmingwood where life was simple, and I knew who my friends
were. But Hadrian had other ideas. The priest said I needed further training in
my magical talents, and even reluctant as I was to spend another moment in
Selbius with its unpleasant associations, I was eager to learn all he had to
teach me.
This part of my visit didn’t continue in the lazy, slow way
of those first days on the river barges. As I came to be seen less as a guest
and accepted more as a member of the river community, Hadrian and I joined
Seephinia and her people at their labors ferrying the building rocks across the
lake from the inland to the island.
Fleet often came down to the barges to watch us work. He
never stooped to dirtying his hands, for which I couldn’t entirely blame him.
The labor was difficult and often dangerous because of the massive size of the
stones to be moved. But my years of outdoor labor left me equal to the task,
and there was a certain satisfaction in surveying the work I’d accomplished at
day’s end. I also quickly fell under the spell of the mysterious folk among
whom I lived.
By the time the sun set at the end of each day, I was gritty
and sweat soaked and usually ready to fall straight into my bed, but Hadrian
rarely allowed me that luxury. Lanterns were lit inside the cozy little hut,
and we would sit up late into the night with our lessons. Hadrian’s friend
Seephinia would sit quietly in a corner during these long sessions, mending
nets or working on something with her hands, and all the while watching us with
unreadable black eyes. Uncomfortable under her scrutiny, I wondered how much
she knew of the magic Hadrian taught me or if she even understood what it was
we did.
One afternoon we earned an unexpected respite from the grind
of our daily chores. Hadrian allowed me to sleep in later than usual, and when
I awoke, the two of us set out, not to the loading shore as was the usual
routine, but instead gathered the heavy nets and went out on one of the fishing
rafts. We took with us Seephinia’s young nephew Eelus, whom Fleet and I had met
on our first visit to the docks.
Eelus paddled us out into the deepest part of the lake a
long distance off from the noisy work going on along the shore. We could still
see the island and the city built over it, but we were far enough distant that
the old docks and the village of river barges may as well have been a world
away.
We toiled into the afternoon, casting and hauling our nets.
It was warm work beneath the hot sun but we didn’t break to rest until we had
heaped a sizable haul of silvery fish across our decks. Only then did we slip
into the still waters nearer shore to refresh ourselves.
After swimming briefly to wash away the sweat and stink of
the fish, we settled down to give attention to the food and drink we had
brought with us. It was as we were consuming the last of our crisped shellfish
that the outing turned into another of Hadrian’s lessons. Strangely, it was
neither the priest nor I who brought up the subject, but Eelus. We had drifted
toward the far shore of the lake as we rested, and now Hadrian, finishing the
last of his meal, reached for an oar to push us back into deeper waters. Eelus
leapt forward to snatch up the oar before the priest’s fingers closed around
it.
“I will take us back to the deep waters, Gray Robe,” the boy
said cheerfully. “With the weakness of your years, you must rest.”
I opened my senses and sent a thin tendril of magic seeking
toward the priest, just enough for my purpose but not enough to capture his
notice. Eelus was right, I decided. The priest felt his years, even while he
did not show them.
Hadrian grimaced as he caught me studying the lines around
his mouth and eyes. “The boy speaks truly,” he echoed my thoughts. “I’m not as
young as I used to be and often find myself lagging these days.”
I couldn’t be sure if he read my feelings or was merely answering
Eelus’s jibes, but I decided to pretend it was the latter.
“You’re not as ancient as you make out,” I said, meaning it.
The faint streaks of gray lightening his temples might have
fooled me if I hadn’t been there to see him fight the outlaws on the Dimming
Road. And now that I knew him, I could never make the mistake of thinking him a
crusty, middle-aged ruin past his prime. If anything, his time among the river
people seemed to be pushing back the years. On our first meeting in
Dimmingwood, he’d been in danger of gathering a slight paunch beneath his
cleric’s robes, but our daily work on the barges had melted the fat away,
replacing it with muscle. He was still by no means a pretty man to look at, but
there was strength and cleverness in his broad face and a rich timber to his
voice that might make a woman forget the bluntness of his features.
Hadrian laughed lightly. “You’re a little young for me,
Ilan. And don’t forget I’m a man of vows.”
“Listening to my thoughts again, are you?” I asked, feigning
offense.
“Not thoughts, only feelings. And of course I am. You’re
still a novice and so long as you’re my pupil the usual protocol doesn’t apply
to our student
-
master
relationship. I keep an
eye
, so to speak, on how you’re coming along.”
“And? How am I doing? ” I asked.
“Better than expected under the circumstances.”
“What do you mean? What circumstances?” I wanted to know.
He said, “I thought there’d be a period of sulking and
mooning over that boy priest before you were ready to move on and concentrate
on your studies.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Terrac was my friend and nothing more.”
That sounded too vehement, even to my ears, so I hurried on
with, “Anyway, I’m not interested in talking about him. What I was asking about
was the magic.”
I glanced at Eelus at the oar, but the boy didn’t appear to
be listening. “I want you to tell me how I’m progressing,” I continued,
sounding more irritable than I meant to. Perhaps it was just as well. Hadrian
needed to realize he was treading on sensitive ground when he spoke of my
one-time friendship with Terrac.
The priest said now, “Your abilities move forward. In what
direction, it is hard to say.”
I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He considered his begrimed palms before answering. “There is
something not quite right about your magic, I think. I’m not saying it’s
anything you’re doing wrong, only that I sense a darker strain running through
the talent in you. I don’t understand it, but it unnerves me. It feels greedy,
ambitious.”
I thought of my plans concerning the talent, my hopes of
finding the mage who had attacked me. Was Hadrian somehow aware of my plans?
“I think it is the bow,” he continued.
At the very mention of it, my hand went involuntarily to my
shoulder where I usually carried the weapon, but it wasn’t there today. Unable
to justify bringing it on a fishing trip and aware Hadrian looked on it with
suspicion, I’d had to leave it behind in the hut.
Hadrian was watching me. “I know how attached you’ve become
to that thing, Ilan, and I wish you would be rid of it. It affects you greatly,
and when an object like that changes you, it changes your magic with you. Who
knows how much damage has been done already?”
“It’s only a bow,” I snapped. “I carry it for hunting and
protection. It hasn’t affected my talent, and it certainly hasn’t changed me.”
“You are angry,” he observed.
“Of course I am,” I exploded. “I came out here to fish. I
expected you’d probably squeeze in another of your eternal magic lessons at
some point, but I wasn’t prepared to have the incident with Terrac shoved in my
face again. And on top of that, to have to sit still for another lecture on the
stupid bow!”
“Very well,” Hadrian said calmly. “Let us turn the subject
away from Terrac and the bow, since the topics offend you, and we’ll begin another
of my
eternal magic lessons
. We’ll test your knowledge today with a
simple challenge, shall we?”
“Ask anything you want,” I said confidently, relieved to
move into a new area of discussion.
Hadrian gestured toward Eelus at his oar. “Using your talent,
tell me something about Eelus that is not evident to the eye. He won’t mind
your practicing your talent on him, will you Eelus?”
The river boy grinned at us, and taking that as permission,
I summoned up the magic always lurking at my fingertips and directed an
inquisitive thread toward the youngster.
After a moment’s searching, I smiled. “He’s trying to be
very mysterious, but he’s no good at it,” I told Hadrian. “He feels in good
spirits, even amused.”
Eelus laughed, although I wasn’t sure how much he understood
of what we were talking about. He sometimes had a difficult time following our
conversations in the Known tongue.
Hadrian looked unimpressed. “Anyone could read Eelus’s
expression like a parchment. I want you to tell me something unobvious, perhaps
something you’ve come to notice as you’ve spent more time around him and the
other river people.”
He was hinting at something, but I was slow to catch on. My
mind went back to my first day among the river people. Hadn’t I thought then there
was some mystery about the folk, a secret hovering below the surface?
“You’re finally going to tell me what you’re doing here
among these people,” I suggested.
“No, you’re going to tell me,” he responded. “This is your
test, remember? Think about it, and you will piece it together.”
“I don’t want to piece it together. I want you to explain
it,” I complained.
He sighed. “The idleness of you younglings. You never want
to exercise your brains. I expected you to have caught onto it yourself by this
time, which is why I never said anything before. I wanted to see how long it
would take you to catch on, but perhaps you aren’t as quick as I thought.”
When I only frowned at his teasing, he shrugged and said,
“All right. You know that since retiring from my order I’ve spent the years
scouring the provinces in search both of other magickers and of sources of
knowledge concerning the talent.”
I said, “I knew something of the sort, but you speak little
of others like us.”
“With good reason. I’ve no wish to endanger the magickers
I’ve uncovered in hiding. A careless word in the wrong company could cost them
their lives, which is why I know you will keep what I tell you in confidence.”
“I’m accustomed to keeping secrets,” I said wryly.
Still he hesitated before saying, “Sometime back I began to
notice a certain pattern in my studies; one which I felt bore investigating.
Again and again it came up in my talks with other magickers and in my study of
ancient texts. Magical talent, I realized, pops up from time to time amongst
common folk of the provinces like myself, but in the common race, it is a
fairly rare occurrence. Not like your ancestors the ancient Skeltai and their
current descendants across the border. People of that blood are rarely born
without it.”
“What is your point?”
“My point is that magic clearly runs more thickly in the
veins of peoples that have been tied to this land since the ancient days. A
little more study and I realized it was the races who have remained what most
would call
primitive
in their manner of living—those who have cut
themselves off from the outside world, who own a greater portion of magic.”
I thought about that and understanding dawned. “The river
people are magickers,” I realized.
“Most of them,” he agreed. “I cannot explain why they possess
such a strong strain of magic. I do not know if it is a matter of bloodlines or
a question of lifestyle. Perhaps the very isolation of their existence has kept
their magic pure. There are many things I’ve yet to understand.”
“But you mean to,” I guessed.
“That’s why I came to live among the folk,” he admitted. “I
learned on my travels of an isolated clan of savages keeping to the rivers of
the province, disdaining contact with outsiders and living by the old
traditions of their fathers. When I heard the whispered rumors of their strange
powers, I imagined at once what they could teach me. I sought them out at once
and for the past few months have been surrounded by more magickers than I’ve
ever found in any single place at one time.”
I looked at Eelus wonderingly. He suddenly seemed different
to me now that I knew he was one of us. “And I never sensed anything,” I said
to Hadrian, with a touch of disappointment. “I thought I had learned so much.”
He waved off my concern. “You’re young, and you’ve yet to
come into your full power and training. Besides, the river folk mask their
talent well, knowing the dangers exposure would open them to.”
“So in a way, you are their student as I am yours?” I asked.
“Something like that, although their Old Ones did not immediately
warm up to me,” he said. “But they’ve since learned to trust me. It was after
they gave me the name of Gray Robe that I knew I was accepted among them.”
“And what you learn of the magic from them you can pass on
to me,” I mused.
“Such is my plan, if you stay around long enough,” he
answered.
He’d given me plenty to think about, and for the rest of the
day, and indeed for some time to come, I had little more opportunity to dwell
on my broken friendship with Terrac.