Magebane (16 page)

Lord Falk surprised her. “Perhaps it is as well,” he said. “The youth, after all, is wounded and alone. He will need a friend and companion when he awakes. He will find me cold, and possibly even sinister . . . and he will thus be less likely to tell me what I need to know, whereas to you, he may speak freely.”

Brenna felt shock, then anger. “You want me to be your spy?”

Lord Falk made an impatient gesture with his right hand, as though flicking water from his fingertips. “I mean him no harm, Brenna. But we cannot be certain he does not mean harm to
us
. . . or, if not him personally, those who sent him.” He leaned forward. “He comes from beyond the Barrier. If two men can cross the Barrier, then an army can. And if those who have found their way to the Barrier from the outside world share the traits of their ancestors . . .”

Brenna's tutor had taught her well. She knew exactly what Falk was referring to. “But the Mage Wars were eight centuries ago,” she said. “Ancient history, inside or outside. The MageLords are probably little more than legends out there . . . if they remember them at all. Why would they attack?”

“
We
remember the Mage Wars,” Falk said. “Why shouldn't they? And even if they do not, think of what they will find here: a lush, civilized kingdom, carved out of the northern wilderness, rich in natural resources, developed cropland, fresh water . . . if whatever powers are out there are like every other power in history, they will see us as fruit ripe for the picking, especially if they know nothing of magic and believe themselves to have the edge in military might.”

Peska had told Brenna of the atrocities committed against the MageLords and their followers during the Mage Wars. The rebel Commoners had slaughtered men, women, and children. They would have eradicated the Mageborn entirely if the Twelve hadn't found the Evrenfels magic lode and used all the magic and energy of the Old Kingdom to transport themselves and their followers halfway around the world. Rebounding from their near-eradication, they had carved civilization out of wilderness here—and Brenna, Commoner though she was, did not want to see all that destroyed any more than Falk did.

She took a deep breath. “I'll learn what I can,” she said. “But I would have anyway. I'm not your spy.”

Lord Falk nodded solemnly. “I understand. And of course I will question the boy myself. But if you learn anything you think I should know . . . please tell me.” He held out his palm, and the magelight descended to rest in his open hand. He blew gently on it; it drifted away from the puff of air. “One secret above all I hope he will share with either you or me: how that flying conveyance works.”

Brenna blinked. “Magic, surely. It carried a mageflame. I heard it roaring—”

Lord Falk shook his head. “There is no magic about it at all. I tested it myself. It is a plain, unenchanted object, like a broom or a table. It works by artifice, not magic.” He flicked a finger, and the magelight dropped like a rock to the floor. He raised his hand, the light rose slowly again. “So what held it up?”

Dinner that night was a quiet affair. Lord Falk and Brenna ate alone in one of the more intimate dining rooms off of the Great Hall. Falk had never been one to encourage idle chatter, and he considered any queries about his official business impertinent. Nevertheless, emboldened by their earlier conversation, Brenna ventured to break the silence as they waited for dessert. “Why did you come home at this time, Lord Falk?” she asked cautiously, then decided to venture a small joke. “Is it true what the villagers say, that you know everything that happens here before it happens?”

To Brenna's surprise, a corner of Falk's mouth actually quirked upward. “Well, I certainly wish that were true, but . . . no. No, I came because of an alarming incident at the Palace. You've met the Heir . . .”

“Prince Karl,” Brenna said. “Has something happened to him?”

“Almost. Someone tried to kill him yesterday morning . . .
inside
the Lesser Barrier.”

Brenna blinked. She had been taught the Lesser Barrier protected the King and his Heir as effectively as the Great Barrier protected the entire Kingdom.

As securely as that?
she thought uneasily, remembering Anton, guarded and asleep upstairs.
Are both Barriers failing?

The thought felt like heresy.

“But I don't understand,” she said. “Why should that bring you here?”

“There is someone here I think might be able to help me figure out who was behind the attack,” Falk said.

Brenna frowned, thinking. “Mother Northwind?”

Falk raised both eyebrows this time. “Well done. Yes, she is the one I came to see. May I ask why you named her?”

Perversely pleased to have surprised her notoriously unflappable guardian, Brenna shrugged. “Who else could it be? Aside from me, I doubt anyone else here besides Mother Northwind has ever been more than twenty miles from Overbridge.”

“Well-reasoned,” Lord Falk said. “Yes, it is she I came to talk to.”

“But what information could
she
have?” Brenna asked, curious.

Falk shook his head with a small smile. “That, I'm afraid, I cannot tell you.”

Dessert arrived, a trifle of whipped cream and fresh blueberries that had been magically preserved through the winter. While she ate, Brenna thought about Mother Northwind.

The old woman—Brenna had no idea
how
old—had lived in her cottage, nestled against the valley wall not far from the manor, for as long as Brenna could remember, but certainly she had not
always
lived there. No one knew, or at least no one had ever told Brenna, precisely where she came from, or everything she had done in her long life.

One thing Brenna knew; though she lived among the Commoners, she was Mageborn. More than that, a Healer, who assisted Eddigar, focusing her efforts mainly on the women of Lord Falk's demesne, easing the pains of childbirth and occasionally exerting extra effort to attempt to save the life of a mother or child—attempts which were, more often than not, successful.

Falk had been eating in silence. Now he put down his spoon and picked up his wineglass. As he drank from it, he gazed at her with cool thoughtfulness. “You are now eighteen years old,” he said as he put down the glass. “A grown woman. And that, too, has brought me here.”

Brenna froze, spoon halfway to her mouth, wondering what was about to come.
If he tells me he's arranged a marriage . . .

“When I return to the Palace, I want you to come with me . . . to stay.”

Brenna's heart skipped a beat. “To stay? Not just for a visit?”

“To stay,” Falk confirmed. “It's time.” He smiled. “Spring is scant weeks away. Wouldn't you enjoy celebrating Springfest in New Cabora?”

Brenna felt her face spreading into an enormous smile. “There is nothing I would love better, Lord Falk!” she said fervently.

“Excellent.” Falk took another swallow of his wine. “Then it is settled.” He pushed away from the table. “And now, if you will excuse me . . .”

In her bed that night, Brenna found it hard to sleep, her brain whirling, wondering what it would be like to move to the city permanently. New people, new friends . . . she smiled in the darkness . . . a lover, a husband . . . ?

But then, for some reason, her thoughts leaped back to the youth, Anton, not just her brief exchange with him in the bedroom, but what had come just before that, when she had lifted the covers . . .

She blushed in the darkness, and set herself to determinedly counting nice, fat, woolly (definitely
not
shorn and naked) sheep.

She was up to two hundred and forty-seven before she finally drifted off to sleep.

LORD FALK, ALONE AND ON FOOT, walked out through the manor's front gate.

He strode past the stockade of the men-at-arms without slowing. He needed no escort. He had no fear of the darkness or anyone who dwelt in the valley. Not all of the Commoners loved him, but that hardly mattered. Certainly they all feared him, and none would dare test his magical defenses by attempting to harm him in any way . . . a wise choice.

Mother Northwind lived alone, in a hut not too near the village but not too far from it either, up one of the wooded draws that wound into the high, steep slopes of the Grand Valley. He was not the first to walk that way since the snowfall, nor had he expected to be, but he did take a moment to study the footprints to assure himself that those who had gone ahead of him with their heavy load had returned the same way.

He smelled the smoke of Mother Northwind's fire before he saw her cabin, almost invisible in a copse of poplar and ash at the very back of a long, narrow draw. In warmer weather a stream ran down into the draw from the hillside above, but now it existed only as a series of icicles hanging from the rounded rocks that defined its bed above the cottage.

The cottage itself was nondescript, a simple structure of logs caulked with clay, roofed with slate. It might have been there forever, but Lord Falk knew it had been built new, magically, literally overnight just eighteen years before: knew, because he had had it built, when Mother Northwind had entered his service (if that was quite the right phrase for it) and set him on the path that would shortly lead to the destruction of the Barrier . . .

. . . if the attempt to assassinate Prince Karl did not upset everything.

Well. That was why he was here. He strode forward, boots crunching through the crusted snow.

As he came nearer to the cottage, he heard singing. The tune was a well-worn old folk tune, but the words described the improbable adventures of one Axnay the Well-Hung.
She's home, then
, Falk thought wryly, as he stepped up onto the low porch and knocked three times.

The tune cut off in mid-verse, “leaving poor Axnay embarrassingly unsatisfied. “Enter, then,” said a woman's voice, and Lord Falk pulled the door open and stepped into the warm yellow glow of the cabin's interior.

Mother Northwind sat in a rocking chair by the cheerily crackling fire, a sky-blue shawl drawn around her shoulders and a bright red scarf covering most of her gray curls. She looked pretty much exactly how someone raised on children's stories and the skits of traveling players would expect someone named Mother Northwind to look. Lord Falk, however, knew that her image as a harmless old hedge-mage living in a storybook cottage in the wood was very carefully crafted. It endeared her to the Commoners of his demesne, who saw her as “their” Healer far more than they did Eddigar (especially the women), while keeping her accessible to Falk when he had need of her more . . . exotic services.

Mother Northwind was, in fact, the most powerful practitioner of soft magic in the Kingdom, a Healer without equal. But that was not why Falk valued her. For Healing, he had Eddigar. Much of Healing was actually a form of hard magic, anyway: the knitting of a broken bone was no different in principle from the welding together of rock to make a wall. What set Healers apart was the ability to soothe troubled minds, relieve pain, erase nightmares. The other difference between the two branches of magic was that while hard magic required an outside source of energy (heat from the air, from the Palace's MageFurnace, from the Magefire in the manor's basement), the energy for soft magic came from the body of the mage him- or herself. Falk recalled how exhausted Eddigar had been after dealing with a series of serious injuries following the collapse of a granary under construction in Overbridge. Only one man had died, thanks to the Healer, but Falk had feared Eddigar would be the second.

But Eddigar was to Mother Northwind in his abilities as a Mageborn child who had just learned to illuminate a magelight was to Lord Falk. And it was from Mother Northwind that Falk had learned the other way in which a powerful soft mage could obtain the energy for her work—not from herself, but from the person she touched.

Mother Northwind could heal with a touch, and so she did. But Mother Northwind could also kill with a touch, willing a man's heart to stop. She could alleviate pain, but she could also, without leaving a visible mark, cause pain so great that a man's throat might be ripped to bloody shreds by his screaming.

More, Mother Northwind could get inside a man's mind without his knowing she had violated it, and recover nuggets of information he would much rather have kept hidden: nuggets suitable for blackmail, nuggets providing evidence of treason or graft, nuggets that might betray his dearest friends to their blackest enemies.

Supposedly such magic required touch, and for that reason Falk never allowed Mother Northwind close enough to touch him. Of course, “supposedly” was not the same as assuredly. But Mother Northwind also knew that if Falk ever suspected she had been inside his mind, he would blow her into shreds of bloody meat with a flick of his hand.