Magebane (23 page)

But she wanted to know more about that amazing world, and she wanted to hear it from Anton, not predigested and preselected by Falk. She glanced at him. Surely he would now rush off to talk to Mother Northwind . . . ?

He didn't disappoint. “I will leave you in the care of Brenna,” Falk said as they reemerged into the Great Hall. “We'll talk again later.”

“Of course, Lord Falk,” Anton said.

Falk nodded to Brenna, then strode toward the doors into the kitchen.

Brenna smiled at Anton. “Shall we find somewhere to sit down? I'd like to talk to you some more about—”

Her voice trailed off. Anton's face was quite pale. “My head,” he said. “I'm sorry, I think . . . I think I'd better just go back to my room and lie down.”

“Of course,” Brenna said. “I'll walk with you.” She took him back up the stairs, with him showing no sign of a limp, said good-bye to him at the door to his room, then stood in the hallway, feeling almost as pale and shaky as Anton had looked.

The more she thought about what she thought Mother Northwind had done, the more it frightened and infuriated her.
But maybe I'm wrong
, she thought.
I don't know everything about Healing. Maybe what she did was entirely harmless. Maybe she was trying to help him in some way.

Maybe. Or maybe not.

She had to know. And so she headed off to do something she had never in her life dared to do before: confront her powerful guardian.

She knew he was in the kitchen with Mother Northwind. The shortest route was down the servants' stairs. As she reached the bottom, though, she froze, because some quirk of the corridors allowed her to hear, as clearly as though she was sitting with them, the conversation between her guardian and the witch.

“. . . boy told you the truth,” Mother Northwind was saying. “But not the whole truth. He held back information about the weapons of their military, for instance: things called repeater guns, powered by steam . . . I confess I don't understand how such a thing works, but they seem to hurl pieces of metal with great force and rapidity, hundreds per minute. Very nasty.”

“Magic can deal with anything this Commoner technology can create, if it comes to that, though it
will
be good to be prepared,” Falk said dismissively. “Never mind their weapons. What about their
intentions
? Is Anton telling the truth about him and this dead Professor of his being lone adventurers? Is there truly nothing on the other side of the Barrier but a few tiny communities?”

Mother Northwind snorted. “He was telling the truth. From the images in his mind, his Professor was considered by most at best a crank, at worse a lunatic. And he believes that if he does not return to tell the outside world what happened to them, no one will make the attempt again for years, convinced the Barrier destroyed them. For all their talk of ‘technology' and ‘natural laws,' many of the Outsiders seem to regard the Barrier—the Anomaly, they call it—with superstitious awe. Anton does not seem to be religious, but there are those who see the Anomaly as the work of . . . they call it God, but I suppose you would call it the SkyMage . . . and believe that any attempt to circumvent it is sacrilegious.”

“Excellent,” Falk said. “We will emerge to find scattered and terrified Commoners who will quickly submit to our rule. Better yet, we'll be able to seize whatever technology they have so that we can study it and learn how to counter it with magic.” A pause, then Falk spoke again in a lower voice, but one freighted with more than a hint of threat. “And did you learn anything
else
you should be sharing with me?”

“I can tell you all about the day he lost his virginity to an inn maid twice his age, if that sort of thing interests you,” Mother Northwind said. “It certainly interested
me
.” She gave a lusty cackle, and Brenna felt a little sick . . . and, disturbingly, a little jealous. “Seems she ‘accidentally' walked in on him while he was—”

“No, thank you,” Falk said, coldly. “Very well. There is no threat from these Outsiders. And we have this airship to put to our own uses, once it is repaired.
If
the boy can be convinced to provide details of its operation.” A pause. “And that, I think, tells me what is to be done with him. He is only useful for as long as he cooperates. I think we will call him down for a second ‘consultation' with you. You will see to it that afterward he will be unquestioningly loyal . . .
personally
loyal . . . to me.”

What?
Brenna sagged against the wall, her knees suddenly weak. Forcing someone to loyalty, twisting their mind against their will? That was worse, far worse, than rummaging through his memories and thoughts. The latter was punishable by imprisonment, but twisting someone in the way Falk was suggesting was punishable by death. Falk was Minister of Public Safety. How could he . . . ?

She hoped Mother Northwind would respond with equal disgust, equal outrage; but instead, all the old hag said was, “Very well. But I cannot do it today, not so soon after rummaging through his mind. I'm not as young as I was, and that is a major undertaking. And too much manipulation in short order could cause . . . damage. He will be of little use to you if he's reduced to nothing more than a flesh-and-blood mageservant, unable to even wipe himself without orders.”

“Hmmm.” Another silence. “Well, there's no hurry, I suppose. I have to return to the Palace at once; Verdsmitt's play is tomorrow night, and I have preparations to make. I had intended to take Brenna with me, but that was before I knew about Verdsmitt. I'll take care of that matter, then return for her and the boy . . . no more than three or four days, I expect. Can you have the boy ready by then?”

“Of course, Lord Falk,” Mother Northwind said. “I am, as always, your most obedient servant.” The words dripped with oily sincerity, fatally undercut by the fruity cackle that followed.

“No doubt.” Brenna heard the doors from the kitchen into the Great Hall swing open and closed. Suddenly afraid that Mother Northwind might have some magical way of detecting her presence . . . though if she did, it was surely already too late . . . she scurried back up the servants' stairs to the second floor, and her own room.

She sat by the tall, frosted window, staring blankly out at the gray sky. She didn't know what the “Plan” Falk had referred to was, but it sounded . . . unthinkably . . . as though Falk expected the Great Barrier to fall, and the Mageborn to emerge into the Outside world—Anton's world—and launch a war of conquest to take back what they lost eight centuries before.

She seemed to have some part in that Plan, though she couldn't imagine what it was. And now Anton . . .

They were going to twist his mind, remake him, force him to be loyal to Lord Falk. He wouldn't be the same person after that. He wouldn't be a real person at all, but a puppet for Falk to use as he saw fit, probably to fly the airship for him and help him attack his own people.

Brenna shivered. The Barrier was meant to stand for a thousand years. Two centuries more, at least. The only people she knew of who spoke of destroying the Barrier were the Unbound, the cult that Falk himself had persecuted unmercifully for years, notching up numerous executions.

Brenna's hands were showing an alarming tendency to shake. She gripped the arms of her chair, not wanting to believe what logic told her must be true, but unable to explain it away.

Lord Falk wasn't battling the Unbound,
he was one of the Unbound
. . . and Mother Northwind with him; and Falk, to serve the purposes of the Unbound, had just casually ordered the destruction of Anton's mind.

She had to
do
something, had to warn Anton, save him somehow . . . tell someone who
mattered
what she had heard . . .

And then the germ of an idea sprouted.

Her hands quit shaking.

She couldn't tell “someone who mattered” because there was no one who mattered more than Falk in the entire Kingdom, barring the King and the Heir, whom she could no more contact without going through Falk than she could fly.

But that was the thing. Maybe she
could
fly.

Neither she nor Anton could escape the manor on foot, not in the winter, with men-at-arms at the gate who would be after them on horseback the moment they were found missing. But with the airship, even now being repaired by Falk's own mageservants . . .

Falk was providing them with the perfect opportunity, returning to New Cabora that very day to “take care” of the matter of Verdsmitt—though what possible concern Falk could have with the famous playwright she couldn't imagine. If she could convince Anton of the danger he faced, and if he could fix the airship, launch it and fly it by himself without his Professor before Falk returned, and before Mother Northwind was ready to render him incapable of doing anything at all without Falk's approval . . .

All big ifs. But Brenna saw no other hope.

Her guardian had revealed himself as a monster, and whatever his Plan, she would not be a part of it.

Once he left, she had her own plan to put into action.

Mother Northwind sat in the kitchen of Lord Falk's manor and sipped the last of her meadowsweet tea, reflecting on the jumble of images and memories she had gleaned from the boy's mind. As she had told Falk, and as was to be expected in a young man, his fumbling and extremely limited sexual experiences had been close to the top of his thoughts; unlike what she had told Falk, and the image she liked to portray, they didn't really interest her. She had little interest in men or boys of any sort for any reason at this time in her life. But she did have an interest in cultivating a certain image with the Minister of Public Safety.

She had told Falk the truth about what he would face Outside when the Barrier fell. Why not? He was confident magic could overcome anything the Commoners might throw at him. He didn't have a clue that, if her plans came to fulfillment, it would be those Commoners with their technology who would certainly hold the upper hand in any engagement. She pictured the repeater gun she had seen in Anton's mind spraying its hail of lead through the mounted ranks of defenseless Mageborn, or the devastating shells hurled by “cannons” raining down on the Palace, and smiled at the thought.

What had interested her more had been what she had seen in Anton's mind of the social order Outside. No Mageborn, no Commoners, all equal, all given a say in the governing of their land . . . though there were other lands, including something called the “Concatenation” that Anton thought of with a sense of worry and foreboding, where that extraordinary freedom did not exist.

Still, his own “Union Republic” sounded very much like the fulfilled dream of the Common Cause.

Verdsmitt would be fascinated and heartened to hear it. So was Mother Northwind; not so much for the specific details of how it was done, but simply because it was done at all, without MageLords, and without hard magic. Let the Outsiders sort themselves as they would, so long as they finished the task of the first Magebane and threw the MageLords and their hard magic onto the ash heap of ancient history where both belonged.

Soft magic, she hoped, would survive, offering healing and succor . . .

. . . and a little manipulation of minds as required?
her inner voice commented, a little disapprovingly.

As required
, Mother Northwind thought firmly.
For the good of all. Not to rule, but to shape; not to dominate, but to help.

Of course, she felt badly about what she had done and would have to do next to the boy, just as she had felt badly about Jenna, just as she had felt badly about Karl's mother (though not his Mageborn father), eased into death at the very moment of birthing new life, and felt badly about the Queen, who had suffered a similar fate on the night Brenna was born, and felt badly about the midwife present at that birth, who had also met a sudden and untimely end.

She knew full well she had done things most would call evil. If Falk's SkyMage or the God of the Outsiders actually watched over all that went on in the world, perhaps someday she would be called to account for them. But she would argue before any god or man, if it came to that, that out of her “evil” actions would come nothing but good: an end to the tyranny of the MageLords, an end to the Great Barrier, a return to the mainstream of history for the tens of thousands of prisoners locked up in Evrenfels more than eight centuries ago.

She shook her head. She regretted nothing she had done, or planned to do.

She sipped the last of her tea, put the cup down on the table, tugged her cloak closer, and went out. The next step of her plan was in Falk's hands, though he didn't know it. When he “dealt with” Verdsmitt, arresting him at the Palace, he would be doing exactly what he was supposed to.