The Magehound (32 page)

Matteo folded his arms. “Really.”

“And it’s a good thing I did! Are you aware that a pair of nubile Amnian twins are being smuggled into your bedchamber even as we speak? And that they are clad in the queen’s gowns, and wearing wigs and face paint so that they both resemble Beatrix? Frando plans to accuse you not only of depravity, but of theft of the queen’s property and treachery against the king. I suppose that would be treachery by proxy, since the twins are not actually Beatrix,” she mused. “The niceties of Halruaan law escape me.”

“Indeed,” the jordain said dryly. “That’s an ingenious plot, considering how little time Frando had to conceive it. He must have more talent than either you or I credited him with.”

“Who knew?” she marveled.

Matteo sighed. “Tzigone, why do you insist upon telling such outrageous tales?”

“It keeps me in practice,” she said with a shrug, then patted the wooden bench. “You might as well have a seat. We could be here for a while.”

“Until the magehound is summoned,” he said grimly. “Do you realize how serious this situation is?”

She met his eyes. “All my life I have been pursued by wizards and magehounds,” she said quietly. “Once before I was caught. I escaped, but not before I learned exactly how serious the situation can be. Here’s a tall tale you can believe: If I don’t get out, I’m dead.”

Matteo nodded slowly. “Then you are a wizard after all.”

“Must you keep singing that dreary tune?” she snapped. “I told you, I’m no wizard. I have never been trained, I have never gone to any of the schools, I have not even been tested for gifts.”

Matteo suspected that this was true, as far as it went. He sat down beside her. “I believe that you will be slain if the law gets hold of you. But I suspect that theft is the least of your crimes.”

“Compare my situation to yours,” she suggested. “I’ve been a street entertainer, making my way by doing tricks that supposedly had nothing to do with magic. If fraud is proved, there’s a price to pay. Same as with the jordaini.”

He thought of Andris and of the price that had been exacted from his friend. He couldn’t stand quietly by while that happened again. After a moment he looked up and let Tzigone see the resolve in his eyes.

The girl nodded and then began to plot. Matteo could almost see the gears working behind her eyes, as if she were one of the queen’s clockwork creatures.

“I want you to stand over there in the far corner, where the shadows are deepest. Put your white cloak over your shoulders. Turn your back to the door, so that the first thing someone sees is a faceless jordain. You’re not much taller than Cassia. It might work.”

He quickly followed the line of her reasoning. But impersonating a jordain was a serious offense, even if one jordain pretended to be another. “Is this truly necessary?”

“Depends. How attached are you to the idea of living? Personally, I’m quite fond of the notion.”

Matteo nodded in acceptance. He rose and took the position she had indicated, his daggers at the ready.

Tzigone rose and walked to the door.

“Guards!” she demanded in a peremptory tone. Cassia’s voice rang from her throat, strong and commanding. “Open this door at once.”

The guard came over to the door, glanced at the jordain in the shadows, and made the assumption Tzigone had anticipated. He dug the key from his bag and bent to unlock the door.

Tzigone seized his hair with both hands and yanked his head into the iron bars. He fell senseless. The key remained in the lock, twisted in a half turn.

Nimbly she reached around and finished the task. Motioning for Matteo to follow, she darted toward the narrow winding steps that traced the interior wall of the tower.

Matteo followed her up the steep flight, knowing full well what he was leaving behind. Saving Tzigone’s life had only one possible result. He could never return to the only life he knew.

He acknowledged that this wasn’t a new choice. He had merely taken another step along the path he set upon the day he stepped between Tzigone and the deadly wemic. The day that Andris had died. The day, he realized suddenly, that his unwavering faith in the jordaini order had been shaken beyond repair.

A strange desolation assailed him as he followed Tzigone out of the tower. He was a jordain, sworn to the service of truth and to Halruaa and her wizard lords. This had been his whole life, it was all he knew. He couldn’t conceive of anything that could replace it.

But first, survival. They raced to the top of the tower and then squeezed out the window and climbed down the vines that somehow found purchase on the smooth marble walls. From there they moved to the curtain walls, and from there to the branches of the first of several trees. But they didn’t speak until they reached the leafy sanctuary of Tzigone’s bilboa tree.

Matteo watched as Tzigone took dried rations and a flask of water from a hidden cache. “Do you know every such tree in the land?”

“One or two in every city and main village,” she said. “I move around a lot. I doubt I need to explain why.”

“In truth, an explanation would be in order,” Matteo said. “For what are you searching? What is worth the risks that you’ve taken?”

For once Tzigone gave a straight and simple answer. “I’m looking for my ancestry.”

Matteo’s brow furrowed. “This is so important?”

“I can see why you wouldn’t think so. You’ve never known family.”

“All jordaini are taken to the school shortly after birth,” he agreed. “It is the traditional way.”

“But haven’t you ever wondered who your family were?”

He gave that careful thought. “From time to time, I have wondered who might have given me birth. But the jordaini are my brothers, and I have known no real lack. Your situation is different, I take it?”

“Yes,” she said shortly. “I had a mother, and I won’t rest until I find her. Don’t you ever wonder what happened to yours?”

“She was a woman grown when she gave birth. I understand that jordaini births are usually predicted by the matchmakers, so she knew from the onset that she would bear a child only to give it up. This is done willingly, for the good of the land. The parents are well compensated, as they have no children to care for them in their old age, and they are greatly honored for their sacrifice.”

Tzigone stared at him for a long moment. “Come with me,” she said abruptly and began to slide down the tree.

Less than two hours later, they stood in the doorway of a one-room cottage, one of several such cottages, all identical and clustered around a simple garden surrounded by a tall, thick wall.

“What place is this?” Matteo asked in a whisper. There was something about the place, pleasant though it was, that inhibited the spirit.

“Go inside,” Tzigone said.

Matteo paused at the doorway and spoke the traditional pledge tradition required of all Halruaans, swearing that no magic would be worked within this house.

“Do not mock me,” said a small, anguished whisper.

He came fully into the room and peered into the shadows that lingered by the unlit hearth. A woman huddled there, curled up on a chair like a weeping child.

“That was not my intention, mother,” he said softly, using the polite form for unknown women of her apparent years. “My words were a greeting such as any might speak. They are also truth, for I am jordaini.”

The word hit her like an arrow. She looked up, her eyes wild in her white face. “A jordain!”

Matteo couldn’t comprehend her distress, but he had no wish to add to it. “Your pardon, good mother.” he said, bowing. “We will go.”

The mad light faded from the woman’s eyes, leaving her face listless and dull. “Go or stay. It matters not.”

Tzigone shoved at him from behind, prompting him farther into the room. While Matteo stood, feeling awkward and helpless, she bustled about, opening the shutters to let in the sun, plumping up cushions, building up the hearth fire, and putting water and a handful of herbs in the kettle. She brought the woman a cup of tea and curved her thin hands around it, guiding it to her lips until memory took over and the woman drank on her own. Through it all, Tzigone kept up a soft, steady stream of chatter-gently humorous tales of life in the city beyond these walls, entertaining stories that probably had no basis in reality.

Matteo listened with only partial attention as he watched the girl tend this unknown woman. And he knew, without understanding the reason, that his choice that day had been the right one.

Finally the woman drifted into sleep. Tzigone pulled a thin blanket over her and rose. Her eyes were bleak as she met Matteo’s considering gaze.

“You are kind,” he said softly.

She shrugged this aside impatiently. “There is little that anyone can do for her, other than the odd small kindness.”

That the poor woman was insane was obvious to Matteo. “What happened, to shatter her so?”

“Magic,” Tzigone said grimly, gazing at the pale, wasted face. “Once this woman was a powerful wizard, married to another wizard in a match made by still another. It was predicted that a child of their blood would likely be jordain.

“The woman wanted children of her own to keep and love, but she was assured that only one jordain was ever born to a family. So she did her duty and consented to the match.

“Time passed, but there was no child. She and her husband were greatly concerned. He offered to bring potions for her that would bolster her health and promote conception. For nearly five years, this continued. What the woman never knew,” Tzigone said in a tight, angry voice, “was that she was taking potions that twisted the natural course of her magic and that of the child she would bear. All of the power that might have become magic was refocused, so that her child might have great talents of mind and body.”

The words seemed too fantastic for belief. “Is this one of your stories?” he asked tentatively.

Tzigone focused her eyes on his and let him judge what he saw in them.

“The magic wasn’t just taken from the potential child, but from the mother. Little by little, her gift dwindled away, retreating to a place within herself that she could no longer reach.

“When the child was born, the process was complete. The birth was difficult, as such births invariably are, and the midwife pronounced that the woman would never bear another child. At one blow, the woman lost her babe, her dream of a child to keep, and all of herself that was bound up in her magic. This proves too much for most women to bear. They become as the woman you see before you.”

Matteo absorbed this in silence. He didn’t doubt Tzigone’s words. Grim though this explanation was, it did explain why the jordaini were usually stronger in body and mind than the average man, and why their resistance to magic was so strong. But such a price to pay!

He tried to picture the woman who had paid this price for him and the man who had let her do so unwittingly. But it was too strange, too unreal, for him to grasp.

“Have you nothing to say?” Tzigone demanded. “Do you understand now why I wonder what became of my mother in this land of magic and wizards?”

She fairly spat out the last word with undisguised venom. Matteo had been raised to serve wizards, but he didn’t find her reaction at all extreme.

“All my life,” he said slowly, “I have been charged with developing the strength of mind and body. The passions of man were studied as important strategic considerations, but we were not encouraged to explore or experience any of them.”

Tzigone gave him a strange look. “You had friends, surely.”

“Yes. But even the closest of these had the careless ease of proximity-or so I thought,” he said painfully. “My dearest friend, a jordain named Andris, was condemned by a magehound and slain by the wemic who pursued you the very day we met.”

“Ah.” Tzigone nodded, as if a long-held question had been answered.

“The grief and guilt that followed my friend’s death was my undoing. I acted in a manner that denied all my training. Emotions, it seems, have great power.”

He fell silent for a moment, then added, “This is new to me, and I don’t know where it will lead. I should feel outrage, but I do not. I cannot mourn a woman I never knew. I cannot hate a man I never met. Perhaps that will change. If it does, I’m not sure what I will do.”

“Even in this you’re honest,” she said softly, her eyes searching his face. “Maybe that’s not always such a bad thing.”

They quietly left the cottage, each deep in thought. Tzigone had come to this place intending to tell Matteo the truth: This was the woman who had given him birth. But as Matteo had pointed out, there was no telling what he might do once he got into the habit of allowing emotion into his life. Most likely he would declare vengeance upon the wizard who had sired him. That could lead nowhere good.

Matteo spoke first. “This is why jordaini have no families, is it not?”

“Magic is toxic,” Tzigone said grimly. “Apparently it isn’t easy to breed magic out of a human, and there is no telling what will come of the effort.”

“Precaution is the grandchild of disaster,” Matteo said softly, speaking an old proverb. “For such measures to be taken, things must have gone terribly wrong.”

“Mistakes happen,” Tzigone agreed. She took a long, steadying breath. “I suppose that’s the only possible way to explain me.”

Tzigone braced herself for the jordain’s questions. To her surprise, she realized that she was prepared to tell him everything she knew about herself and her background, secrets that she had spoken to no one. Matteo had never been less than honest with her. That honesty created a debt, and she always paid her debts.

But Matteo didn’t immediately respond to her grim pronouncement. Instead, he took a small tightly rolled scroll from his bag and handed it to her.

She took it and smoothed it flat. The message was brief, and after a moment, she lifted incredulous eyes to his face. “Reads like a death warrant,” she said, only partially in jest.

“That was my assessment,” he agreed.

Much as she would have liked to, Tzigone couldn’t argue. Cassia, the high counselor to King Zalathorm and one of the most powerful jordaini in the land, had enlisted the help of all members of the jordaini order to find information on the whereabouts and background of a thief known as Tzigone.