Land of the Burning Sands (33 page)

But he still had no idea how to handle any kind of healing himself. But then, if his guess was good, Beguchren might need nothing but rest and food. Until the next time a griffin flew overhead, to be sure.

Gereint pulled off Beguchren’s boots and, as it seemed far too great a liberty to do more, settled for tucking a blanket around his slight form. The blanket was a light, soft wool, better than anyone had a right to expect in a common inn. Perhaps the innkeeper hadn’t exaggerated so terribly when he claimed his rooms were good. A boy brought the saddlebags, and then the girl arrived in a flurry, too shy to look at Gereint. She blushed and stammered as she told Gereint, in a whisper, that supper would be served beginning in an hour, but she would bring him the first meat that was ready. She was obviously trying not to even glance at Beguchren as she laid out an earthenware pot of broth, a plate of bread, a crock of honey, and the tea things.

Gereint thanked her gravely and let her escape. The room was close and hot in the summer evening, but it was a comfortable, natural warmth, nothing like the inimical heat carried on the wind from the griffins’ wings. Was Beguchren already looking a little less pale? Might there be a little tension in the small hands that lay so quietly on the blanket? Gereint fancied there might be—unless he was simply imagining what he wanted to see. He studied the man’s breathing and was sure his breaths were deeper and more relaxed, no longer the rapid shallow breaths of shock and weakness.

Beguchren opened his eyes. Blinked. A faint, puzzled crease appeared between his eyebrows.

“Easy,” Gereint murmured. “We’re at the inn at Metichteran. We’re staying here overnight after all. We’ll hire a carriage or something in the morning.”

A faint smile curved Beguchren’s mouth. “Is that the plan?”

“It is now. Have some tea.” He let Beguchren hold the cup himself, but kept his own hand ready to steady it if necessary. The mage managed to raise the cup successfully, but his hand shook badly as he tried to lower it again; Gereint closed his fingers around the cup and Beguchren’s smaller hand and guided the cup down to the tray on the bed table. Beguchren seemed not to notice this assistance. Gereint certainly made no comment about it.

“I’ll be well enough in the morning,” the mage murmured.

“Unless the griffins fly over again.”

“Yes,” Beguchren said, in an absent tone. “I shall have to do something about that.”

Gereint waited, but the mage did not seem inclined to unfold any specifics about this “something” he might do. Gereint said after a moment, “There’s broth and bread. With honey.”

Again, a slight smile. Not inscrutable at all, Gereint found: that smile contained a rueful, self-deprecating humor; a strict, bitter pride as well as an awareness of the foolishness of pride; a faint, barely visible echo of the effort necessary to put it down. When had he become able to read the little lord’s smile?

“I’m not actually ill,” Beguchren said mildly. “I believe I will be able to handle something more fortifying than broth.”

Gereint didn’t argue. He only handed Beguchren a mug of broth, watching to see that he could hold it steady. He wanted to ask what the mage meant to do about the griffins, or about his own weakness. Instead, he drew the room’s only chair around so he could both see out the window and keep an eye on the resting mage. There was a good deal of movement through the inn yard, and voices, raised in worried argument, came clearly through the window—too clearly, but though Gereint did not want Beguchren disturbed, he did not want to shut out the light and air, either.

The low sunlight slanted through the window and lay across the floor and the foot of the bed. It was perfectly ordinary sunlight. Gereint found it hard to recall, now, exactly how the light that had blazed around the griffins had differed from this homey light. He frowned out the window, watching the sinking sun layer the sky with carmine and gold… There was no sign of any griffin in the air. A hawk turned far above, but the sky above it was an ordinary sky, and the light that surrounded it ordinary light.

If Beguchren was awake, he was doing a very good imitation of a man asleep. Gereint left him alone. The voices rising from the inn’s yard faded as—if Gereint’s nose did not deceive him—supper began to be served and folk retired to the common room and to the tables at the edge of the yard to eat. The girl, true to her word, brought meat up to Beguchren’s room—beef, of course, in this hilly country, and more bread, and sweet roasted turnips and onions. With a small stack of the wide, rimmed plates used to serve someone in bed. Gereint nodded in appreciation of her thoughtfulness and, to encourage more of the same, found a coin for her in Beguchren’s belt pouch.

Beguchren did not move through any of the coming and going. Gereint did not disturb him. He ate most of the food himself, setting a little aside under an upended plate to keep warm in case the mage might actually want it later. The broth had cooled. Despite the close warmth of the room, he asked the girl to bring a brazier and to put the pot of broth and the covered plate over the coals to keep warm.

Outside, the sun sank slowly behind the hills. Its last light came scattering through the branches of nearby trees and across the rooftops of the town. The moon, fatly gibbous, stood above the highest rooftop. Above Metichteran, the wide sky was empty of everything but high, delicate clouds; the hawk had gone to its roost. The first stars came glimmering into the violet-streaked sky, and dusk closed across the world as the sun set at last. Gereint got up to close the shutters and light the oil lamp that hung in a corner of the room.

Across the room, Beguchren stirred, opened his eyes, and sat up.

Gereint was so startled he nearly knocked the lamp off its chain. The mage looked far better now than he had earlier; Gereint didn’t think it was merely the ruddy light of the lamp that lent him color. He glanced around with something that, if not energy, seemed at least alertness. “Is there food?”

“Broth? Beef?”

“Both, if you please. Is there more honey?”

“Nearly a full crock.” Gereint poured broth into one of the clean cups and carried it to the bedside. This time, the mage seemed to have no difficulty lifting or steadying the cup. Gereint said, not quite a question, “You seem much improved.”

Beguchren glanced up at him. “There won’t be griffins over Metichteran at night.”

“Ah. Yes, I recall some minor philosopher… Who was it? Lachkeir Anteirch? Anyway, one philosopher or another said something about ‘the absence of fire between dusk and dawn.’ Does that mean you are less pressed by the griffins’ presence now? Or that you are less, ah…” He hesitated, trying to frame his question.

“Less pressed by the effort to keep them away from the country of men? Both.” Beguchren finished the cup of broth and looked inquiringly at the covered plate on the brazier.

“A moment…” Gereint tried, not altogether successfully, not to burn his fingers transferring the beef and turnips onto a plate cool enough to touch. He brought this plate to the mage, watched for a moment to be sure Beguchren could handle it, then went to spread honey on slices of bread and arrange these on a second plate. He asked, “
Were
you keeping them away from Metichteran?”

There was a short pause as Beguchren visibly searched for words. “I was reinforcing the… earthiness of this country. You recall how a mage focuses power. Hmm. Or bends and balances the forces that exist in the world; that might be more a more accurate way to put it.”

Gereint nodded, not mentioning that this did not seem an overwhelmingly clear description of magecraft to him.

“The nature of earth is antithetical to the nature of fire. I, hmm. Brought out that quality a little more strongly in all the countryside around Metichteran. This should have made any griffins currently in the vicinity very uncomfortable indeed. You didn’t see any after those this afternoon.” The mage sounded very certain.

“No,” Gereint agreed.

“No. They retreated to their own country.”

“Huh.” Gereint thought about this. “All of them?”

“They aren’t mages. I believe—I hope—there is only one true mage left among the griffins, and he is not here.”

Or Beguchren would know, presumably. Gereint lifted his eyebrows. “If he should come here?”

“I do not believe the griffin mage will challenge me here. In the country of earth, I am generally stronger than any mage of fire, whatever his provenance.”

There were too many qualifiers in this statement to give Gereint much confidence. He asked, “Is it not difficult, doing, ah, this? You were already weary, surely?”

A wry smile. “The brief answer is that it is much easier to make earth more itself than to press against an intrusion of fire into earth. I will rest tonight, in this comfortable bed you insisted on procuring for me, and in the morning, I promise you, I will be strong enough to travel.”

“Then you are still determined to go north.” Gereint tried to keep his deep skepticism about this course out of his voice.

“Gereint… someone must.”

Gereint thought about the griffins spending all the previous day flying in a vast circle, passing over Metichteran over and over. And over other nearby towns and villages? That northeast course of theirs might well take them over Tashen. He thought about the way the sky and sunlight had changed as the griffins crossed the sky, how the wind from their wings had smelled of hot stone and metal. He thought of the twisted, sharp-edged towers of red stone that had cut through the earth in Melentser, shattering streets and buildings; of the sand that had drifted through the streets and into the empty houses.

The mages of Casmantium… especially the cold mages… had dedicated their strength for hundreds of years to keeping the griffins and their desert out of Casmantium proper. And Beguchren was the last of the cold mages. The picture that came to mind, now, given those two statements, was… decidedly troubling. Gereint said abruptly, “What does the Arobern expect you to do here? Alone?”

Beguchren met his eyes. The small mage was no longer smiling. “I’m not alone, Gereint. You’re here with me.”

Gereint wanted to snarl in frustration and stomp in circles. He suppressed this immediate reaction, paused. Asked at last, “What
is
it you expect from me?”

For a beat and a second beat, Beguchren regarded him in silence. But he did not look away. And rather than putting Gereint off with the customary promise or threat—
I’ll tell you when we reach the edge of the desert
—he said at last, “One creates… or I believe it is possible that one might create… a new mage, full-formed, from a sufficiently gifted maker. If the maker is willing to, hmm, reshape himself according to a new pattern.”

Gereint didn’t move.

“The process would inevitably involve a remaking of, as it were, the self,” Beguchren added, his tone becoming… not precisely apologetic. Nor precisely defensive. But perhaps… almost diffident.

“That’s the part you can’t compel,” Gereint observed, after a moment to consider the idea. “Not to say, the part that made you think of, what was the term? Self-abnegation?” He paused again, then added, “I thought gifts such as making were thoroughly distinct from the true power of magecraft?”

“They are. That’s why the self of the maker requires to be remade. I did say Warichteier was, shall we say, not entirely correct in his conclusions regarding magecraft. Or correct in not entirely the right ways.” It was the mage’s turn to pause. This time the pause lengthened uncomfortably. He asked at last, “Gereint, should I have told you at once? Or, indeed, now? I hoped you might come to trust me a little on the road. But I know it’s a kind of little death I ask of you.”

Gereint moved his shoulders uncomfortably, a small motion that was not quite a shrug. “Are you asking for an analysis of the quality of your… building materials? Or your tactics?”

Despite the deliberate lightness of his tone, Beguchren didn’t smile. “Both, I suppose.”

“If you’d put me off again, I would have been angry. I’m glad you told me at last. And I’m glad to know. The other… how should I possibly estimate? I’m not a mage; I have only the faintest notion of what magecraft entails; I’ve never studied any of—whatever mages study.”

“I have,” Beguchren said mildly. “You’re a strongly gifted maker, but there are other makers with strong gifts. But it’s not your ability that concerns me. It’s your willingness, which I can and must estimate. So. Will you come with me now to the edge of the desert?”

Gereint could see that the mage expected him to say “yes.” He asked instead, deliberately, “Will you permit me a choice?”

Beguchren did not look away. His ice-pale eyes were steady on Gereint’s. “Certainly. As long as you make the correct choice.”

Gereint didn’t quite laugh, but wry humor crooked his mouth. “Oh, indeed. And what is it you intend to do, there at the boundary between fire and earth, once I make your correct choice? No, don’t tell me: It depends on what I do.”

“Of course.”

“I’m only one man. I don’t understand why you didn’t require half the makers in Casmantium to accompany you. I don’t believe one man can make so great a difference as you imply. Certainly not, well, me. What possible difference can I make, even if I do everything exactly as you ask?”

Beguchren hesitated, then answered, “I did say that your power, as such, is not my concern. I must ask you to trust me that it will suffice. If I had brought half the makers in Casmantium with me, they would only have tangled their intentions and strength with one another and with mine.”