Mind of the Magic (Arhel Book 3) (16 page)

He sighed. “I was one of the ambassadors expected to work with the librarians and scribes on documents that affected Klaue and Annin. I knew the library, and I knew there was a secret passage into it. If the Klogs knew I had found that passage, they would have killed me, I know; every once in a while, an ‘ambassador’ would stray into the wrong part of Skeeree and have a little accident, and the Klogs would fly his body home, all teary-eyed and sympathetic.”

Faia leaned into her walking stick as the road wound over a steep rise. “Doesn’t sound like the sort of work people would be lining up to get.” She panted and braced her free arm against her ribs to splint them. That helped.

Delmuirie’s laugh was a short, harsh bark. He said, “It was not. We drew lots among those who were qualified to serve, actually. Losers had to go, so that the rest of Arhel’s humans could live in relative peace. My number came up after a friend of mine was brought back dead from service.”

“That’s terrible.” Faia thought about having to go work for someone who had killed a friend, and thought she’d probably try to find a way to revenge him.

He nodded. “It was terrible, and I lived in fear of meeting my friend’s fate. Still, once the Klogs were gone on their secret trip, I went into the library and back to the hidden passageway. I let myself in, thinking I would find something in there that would give me an edge on the Klogs. I was just sure when they came back, I would know a way for the Annin to beat them—to send them off so that we humans would have a place of our own.”

“But there’s nothing at the end of that passage but a graveyard,” Faia blurted. “And once you get in, there’s no way out.”

“Aye.” He gave her a rueful smile. “We know that now, do we not? But I did not know it then. I went down there, and I was trapped. None of the other ambassadors knew where I was, the Klogs would not be back for nearly two months. I would be good and dead before they got back, and if I were not, they would be sure to kill me when they got back. Oh, I was in terrible trouble.”

“What did you do?” Faia asked, drawn in and sympathetic to his plight in spite of herself.

“He prayed,” Gyels muttered. Faia had not realized that they had almost caught up with him, or that he had been listening.

“How did you know that?” Delmuirie stopped dead and stared at the tracker.

Gyels was unflustered. “It’s what every man does when he gets in trouble. No need to look so surprised. When people get themselves in a fix, the first words across their lips are ‘Oh, god help.’”

“That’s true,” Faia agreed “That’s usually the first thing I say—though I call to the Lady.”

Edrouss Delmuirie nodded thoughtfully and started along the road again. “He’s right. That’s what I did. I lifted the empty cup I found, begging for water, and swore on my blade that I would do anything for my god if he would just get me out of the mess I was in.” He fell silent, and walked along the road, swinging his staff into the snow with almost angry emphasis.

Faia gave him a moment to continue, but when he didn’t, curiosity overrode patience. “So what happened?”

He looked at her, and shrugged “I don’t know. One instant, I am trapped in the Klog catacombs; the next, I have fallen into a place of light and music, happy as can be and not a thought in my head.” He looked into Faia’s eyes, and she shivered at the hollow, haunted expression she saw in them. “And an instant or an infinity later, the light and the music die and I find myself trapped in the catacombs in the dark with a lunatic who keeps praying to me to save him.”

Faia felt lost. “But what did you do to create the Barrier—or had you already done that?”

“The Barrier… that madman Thirk kept insisting I had to lower the Barrier.” He frowned. “What is it?”

“It’s…” Faia struggled for the words. “It’s magic—a sort of wall of magic that goes all around Arhel, and nothing can go in or out of it.”

“Good lord above. And people blamed that on
me?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever for?”

Faia sighed. “This is from my reading, mind you, and from classes I took at the University, and discussions I had with Medwind and Nokar. I am not a scholar, merely an interested layman, so I may not have this exactly right.” She cleared her throat and considered how to explain what she had learned as logically as possible. It had never seemed like a particularly logical story to her. “There are records in some of the old tomes attributing the thing to you. They are copies of copies, of course, and the original sources are obscure, to say the least. But the name Delmuirie has been linked to the Barrier since the oldest records anyone has. The records are of two opinions—they say either that you were a hero protecting Arhel from some unnamed evil of unimaginable proportions who sacrificed your life to build a magical barrier; or else they say you were a complete idiot playing with forces you didn’t understand, and that those forces overwhelmed you and trapped all of us here.”

“No middle ground in there, is there? I am to be either hero or buffoon. And is there a theory that some other person was responsible for this Barrier?”

“Some blame it on natural causes, but most attribute the Barrier to you.”

Edrouss Delmuirie laughed. “No doubt because I could not make a case for my innocence.”

Faia grinned wickedly. “Men have been attributed with great things for lesser reasons.”

But Delmuirie had stopped laughing. “Wait,” he said. “Tell me again where the Barrier goes.”

“All around Arhel,” Faia told him.

“All around Arhel,” he repeated thoughtfully. “So then, Vit and Kaz—what of them?”

“What are Vit and Kaz?” Faia asked.

Delmuirie nodded, and sucked on his lower lip. “Indeed, that tells me what has happened to them… and you have no Klogs, and an impassable barrier.” He frowned. “Well.” He fell silent, and began to walk faster, head down and shoulders hunched.

Faia scrambled to catch back up with him. “So what were Vit and Kaz?” She had little patience for mysterious behavior.

“Ah.” Delmuirie sighed “Places. Huge, wondrous, lovely places—not that it matters if we cannot get there. They were continents across the sea—where the real civilization was. No one bothered much with this outpost.”

“Outpost?”

“Arhel. This was scrap land—marginal from everyone’s point of view. Nobody wanted it—story is, when the Klaue granted this land to the Annin, the Annin named it ‘Our Hell.’ Truth is, it was not ours free and clear even then; the Klogs had their overseers back in Skeeree and in High Bekkust to make sure we Annin did not try to get above ourselves.”

“You’ve mentioned Skeeree before.”

“That’s the Klog name for yon old city we just left. What you call the First Folk ruins.” He started to laugh. “Skeeree was a sort of punishment post for the Klogs—none of the comforts of home, or damned few.”

“Kaz and Vit.” Bytoris shook his head, bemused. “It’s hard to imagine a world bigger than just Arhel. And these places are out there? You’ve seen them?”

“I toured Vit once.” He smiled sadly. “It was… seemingly endless. Fascinating. Ancient, even in my time—full of Kloggish history and Kloggish art. Wide-streeted cities with metal-banded towers soaring like needles toward the sky, thoroughfares lined with statues of the Heroes, libraries that would swallow the tiny one at Skeeree and a hundred like it. The great Klaue debaters arguing philosophy in the streets, roaring at each other from their pillars and spreading their wings in threat-display, while their admirers flocked at the bases of their favorites’ pillars and cheered them on. Vast, stinking meat farms; tone-deaf Klog orchestras playing caterwauls and skirling pipes loud enough to wake the dead and kill the living; Klog pirates swaggering down the avenues with their rilles ringed in gold and their claws tipped in obsidian, shouting at the young flirts and hussies to come join their bands. The parts of Vit I saw were unforgettable.” He shook his head, and turned so that Faia could not see his face. “And everything I remember is gone. I thought I was going to take all of this fine,” he said. His voice was barely louder than a whisper, and Faia heard it crack. She could see his shoulders shake. “I thought that it would not matter that my world was gone, because there was another whole world here and now, and I would find a place in it for me.” He glanced back at her, and the look in his eyes could have broken harder hearts than hers. Faia knew what he was feeling. She’d felt that same awful emptiness when everyone she’d ever loved had died of the plague in Bright.

Delmuirie added, “It does matter, though. It matters more than I ever could have believed.”

He let his pace slack off, making it clear that he wanted to walk alone. As he dropped back, Gyels also slowed, until Faia was even with him.

“I was listening to the man,” the hunter said. His voice was flat, and edged with a burr of irritation. “He tells a sad tale, doesn’t he?”

Faia agreed, keeping her own tone neutral.

“His is the sort of woeful tale women love, isn’t it?” Gyels’s face hardened into a frown. “You pity him, and then you’ll want to make him feel better, and the next thing anyone knows, you will have fallen in love with him.” He growled, “I wish I knew such a tale to tell.”

He hurried ahead, his shoulders stiff and angry. Faia watched him, disconcerted. He wanted her not to like Edrouss, she realized. Gyels was jealous.

AT last the travelers made camp. With no cycles of day and night to break their journey, they pushed themselves to the point of exhaustion—the Tide Mother with its brilliant corona had much earlier dropped behind the far forests and rolling hills. Faia had no idea how far they’d trekked along the High Road, but no matter how hard they pushed, they never caught sight of Thirk.

Perhaps he has found a way to use the magic of the chalice to fend off weariness, she thought. She would never have attempted such a thing with magic—the rebound was too horrible and too dangerous once the magic stopped. However, Thirk was obsessed; perhaps he didn’t care about the price he would have to pay when he reached his destination.

Faia hurt. She thought with longing of the bonnechard leaves at the top of her pack.

I’ll have some after we set up camp, she promised herself. When I am safely in my bedroll and have nothing to do but sleep.

All five travelers tied their tarps together, bound the struts to form two strong arches that crossed in the middle to hold them up, and left enough of a hole in the center for the smoke from their small campfire to escape. The bitter cold was going to make sharing heat essential until the sun finally came back out from behind the Tide Mother—Faia thought sharing sleeping space with four men would be easier than sharing with one. She was glad she’d pushed for the companionship of Delmuirie and the Bontonards.

As it was, Gyels tried to spread his blankets next to hers—and only with difficulty did she manage to reposition herself between one of the Bontonards and the fire without making her retreat obvious. Once she’d done it, she wondered why she had. Every time she looked at Gyels, her pulse raced erratically and she felt the unmistakable stirrings of lust deep in her belly. She wondered if her real fear was that, starved for attention for so long, she’d find herself ravishing the man in the night—only to be caught by her other tent mates. The more she considered the idea, the less she could discount it.

So I want him, she realized. I suppose my problem with him is that I still don’t quite trust him.

His jealousy bothered her, too. It seemed presumptuous of him to exhibit possessiveness toward her where other men were concerned when she had promised him nothing; when, in fact, he hardly knew her. It was probably a difference in culture, she reflected, but if it was, it wasn’t one she liked.

All five of them passed around food—hard cheeses, traveler’s bread, jerky, and honey-sweetened grain balls—and talked in a desultory fashion of their aches and their weary desire for sleep. Faia chewed her leaf, which tasted even worse than Medwind had promised. But the bonnechard worked quickly, and once the pain eased, Faia discovered she really didn’t care how it tasted or how sore she was. She also discovered that instead of making her sleepy, the drug in the leaf seemed to wake her up.

Feeling suddenly sociable, she decided she hadn’t properly met her Bontonard companions.

She lay back with her head nestled on her pack and grinned at Bytoris, the man sprawled beside her.

“Did you know I don’t know a thing about you?” she said.

Bytoris’s dark eyes were mysterious, and Faia liked the faint hint of dimples in his cheeks; he wasn’t smiling right then, but he looked like he did often. He was handsome—though not, she thought, as handsome as Gyels. He grinned, and sure enough, his dimples deepened. “That’s only fair. I don’t know anything about you, either.”

Faia laughed. The drug gave her the most wonderful floating feeling. “You first,” she insisted.

He nodded. “My name is Bytoris Caligro.”

“Well, I did know that,” Faia said. “But I’m honored.”

Bytoris Caligro inclined his head and said, “Of course you are.” He smiled when he said it, and she laughed again. His voice was deep, and he rolled the syllables to those few words until they sounded like music. Faia caught indications of an odd accent, but nothing that she could put her finger on.

“And you,” she said, pointing at the other Bontonard Geos Rull had been sprawled flat on his blanket, looking, Faia thought, either comatose or near death. But he lifted his head from the pillow he’d made of a spare shirt and said, “My full name is Geostravin Thermadichtus Rull.” Geos had light hair that curled wildly, sticking out in all directions, and as many freckles across his nose and cheeks as Faia had. “I prefer to be called Geos.”

“I can see why,” she told him, then realized what she’d said wasn’t very nice. She clapped her hand over her mouth and murmured, “Ooops!” She tried a solemn nod and told him, “My greetings,” but her solemnity dissolved into a sputtering little giggle. She flopped back onto her makeshift pillow and sighed. “Why in the Lady’s name were you tromping around in that stone wreck of a city?”