The Malmillard Codex (17 page)

Garet sneered at a boy, only slightly
smaller than he, as the youth struggled to clamber onto a shaky
cart already overloaded with too many other children.

"Child, watch out for that infant there," he
shouted, motioning towards a baby that threatened to tumble out of
the cart.

With a satisfied smirk at the boy's
answering scowl, Garet followed Val towards the horses. "Did you
sleep well, master?" he asked as they skirted a recalcitrant camel
that refused to rise, despite repeated blows from its owner.

Ignoring the boy's question as best he
could, while the hot blood rose in his cheeks, Val asked, "Where is
this caravan going, boy?"

Garet gazed up the long expanse of Val in
bemused wonderment. "Your pardon, sir…but you're traveling in it,
and you don't know where we're going?"

Val slowed his stride to allow the shorter
legs of the boy to keep up. "I'm traveling with Madryn, as you well
know," he said, his voice dropping as he mentioned her name. "She
is on her way to some particular destination, but I'm not sure just
where or why. How many stops does the caravan make?"

Garet gave a sage nod. "I thought,
sir
, that anyone with any sort of knowledge at all could
clearly see that the mistress is going to Malmillard," he said, his
very tone a sneer.

Val already knew that Garet had no
appreciation for anyone who did not belong to the ancient sect of
Llar Zhan, as both Madryn and the boy did. Val, to Garet, was
merely someone who accompanied the two most important members of
the caravan on their journey—Garet and Madryn.

"Malmillard," Val rolled the strange name
over his tongue. "Where is that?"

"It's not a
where
, you great
fo—master, sir," Garet said, "it's a
what
. Or," he stroked
his chin with a grimy hand, "a
who,
perhaps."

Val reached down and grabbed the skinny boy
by the back of his ragged robe and lifted him high above the
ground; scrawny legs dangled over dusty ground. Val was not in the
mood for Garet's obscure answers. Not today.

"Listen, boy," Val said, his face so close
he could smell the dates on the boy's breath. "I need to know
everything you do. Understand?"

Garet snickered, not at all put out by his
present location. "I fear that would take years and years, master,"
he pointed out with an infectious giggle; his logic was, to Garet's
mind at least, inescapable. "But I will be delighted to tell you
all that I know of the ancient order of Malmillard, if you wish
it."

Val gave a grim chuckle at the boy's
generous offer. "And what will it cost me?"

Garet smiled. "Well, as you know well,
master, I don't really enjoy traveling on a cart or, worse yet, on
my feet." He wriggled like a fish hanging from a line. "But if I
were to find someone who would offer me a ride, say you, for
example…oh, sir, I could tell you many things. Things that would
amaze and delight you."

"I'm sure they would," agreed Val. "I'm sure
they would."

***

"The adepts of Malmillard are a most ancient
sect," began Garet, his scrawny arms linked tight about Val's waist
as their mount cantered towards the front of the line; the dust
rose up from beneath trotting hooves and settled on them in a thick
coat. "A sect of powerful mages, if you understand what that is,
sir."

Val snorted, and Garet hastily resumed.

"So powerful are the Malmillard that, it is
said, they can hide their vast cities in plain sight of all, and
yet no one will see them unless the adepts themselves allow
it."

"Then how does anyone ever know that they're
there?" Val asked, and with some logic, he thought. "How can Madryn
be going to this Mallow-place, if no one can see it or even knows
if it exists?"

Garet released his grip about Val's waist
just long enough to box him lightly on one ear. "Pay attention, you
great huge lummox," he commanded in his high-pitched voice, "or
you'll never learn anything."

Val, secretly amused at this demotion from
'master' to 'great lummox', kept silent.

"Now," Garet resumed in a smug tone, clearly
surprised that he wasn't to be punished for laying hands on Val,
"the Malmillard, as I have so carefully pointed out to you, are a
sect of powerful adepts. Adepts are, as we all know, possessors of
magical powers; these powers, by their very nature, are forbidden
to you common folk. Therefore, the Malmillard hide themselves for
just that reason."

"And what reason is that, oh teacher?"

"Why, you great blundering booby, because
they have powers," Garet repeated. "This means
that-they-are-powerful. And if they are powerful, then that power
can be used for a great many things. And likewise if—I say if, mind
you—someone, some ordinary person, could manage to gain ascendancy
over a being with these aforementioned great powers, then the adept
could possibly be forced to serve this ordinary person and do her
or his bidding."

Garet peered around Val's bulk, to make sure
he was paying attention. "Now, you may well ask, how could any such
ordinary person—like as it might be yourself, for instance—gain
ascendancy…" Garet liked this word so much he repeated it,
"ascendancy over a powerful magic worker?"

Val was silent. Garet punched him in the
ribs with a skinny elbow.

"How, oh teacher?" Val asked agreeably.

"Well you may ask," Garet replied with a
satisfied nod. "Well you may ask. It has been said that one can
gain mastery of a Malmillard by only two methods."

"Those methods being?" Val asked hurriedly,
to prevent another assault on his ribs.

"Those methods being, one: trickery. Two:
treachery. And no other way."

Val waited for more, but Garet had
apparently shared all he thought necessary.

"Very interesting," Val said, "but it tells
me nothing at all. I know no more about our destination that I did
at the beginning. Why do you think that Madryn is going to this
Malmillard at all?"

Garet snorted in disgust. "Because, you
hulking imbecile, Zamorna is the destination of the caravan.
Zamorna, the dreaming city, is the only place in all the lands
where one may actually see and speak with a Malmillard adept."

"Very interesting, to be sure," Val agreed.
His sleepy brain was not making any sense of these meanderings, and
he wondered if Garet were simply taking advantage of his condition
with clever stories, so the boy could ride in state and sneer at
the other servants as they stumbled in the dust. "Very interesting.
But this does not, oh teacher, tell me why Madryn might be going
there—if she indeed is. I have neither seen nor heard any
connection between her and these legendary invisible witches of
yours. In fact, I believe you've just made them up, to entertain
me."

Garet gave a patient sigh, and then spread
his hands as though to ask why he was cursed with such an ignorant
fool for a master.

Their mount chose that exact instant to trip
over a partially buried skull, bleached by the sands and sun.

Garet snatched at a handful of Val's robe.
"The Malmillard are the only ones who can remove a curse," he
continued with a bit less of his former bumptiousness. "It's
apparent to any but a fool that the mistress is laboring under a
curse."

"Plain to you, perhaps, oh teacher, but as
you so rightly point out, not quite so plain to the rest of us
fools," Val said. "And even if she has been cursed, what makes you
think these Mallow-folk will remove it for her? What does she have
to do, just ask them, and they do it for a favor?"

"It is said," began Garet in a sonorous
singsong, the cadences of the professional storyteller, "that the
great adepts of Malmillard will remove a curse if one offers them
something in return."

"Mercenary magic workers, aren't they? What
does one offer, money?"

Garet leaned around to catch Val's eye. Val
was surprised at the utter seriousness on the boy's usually
cheerful face. "They must be offered something that will increase
their own power, you see," he said.

"And that might be?"

Garet tightened his arms around Val's waist.
"Usually," he admitted, "usually, but not always, of course—a
life."

After a moment of uneasy reflection, Val
asked hopefully, "Do you mean these adept people are looking for
slaves, to toil for them and cook their meals while they're busy
casting spells and such?"

"No," said Garet. "They have plenty of
slaves for such mundane tasks as that…creatures, I have heard, that
they conjure from some nether world and set to work. No. To remove
a spell takes something more than slavery."

Val was suddenly impatient and more than a
little angry. "Tell me, clear and open, what these witches do with
a life that is given them."

A tiny sigh came gusting out of Garet's
garrulous throat.

"They use blood to destroy the spell," the
boy admitted. "Everyone knows that the only way to remove a spell
is to drown it in innocent blood."

***

For the rest of the day, Val rode along in a
stupor, barely noticing the boy who clung to him and jeered at
others who had to walk. Val's dazed mind raced from image to image,
trying to make sense of the information he had received from Garet.
Was it true, or simply the boy's imagination? And if it were true,
how did it couple with the happenings of the last days and
weeks—and especially, with what had happened last night between
Madryn and himself?

Was Madryn indeed cursed? Were his dreams
somehow a part of that sinister magic? Was Madryn going all this
weary way to have a curse removed by these Malmillard adepts, as
Garet had opined with such assurance? But how could Garet, an
untutored boy from the streets, know such things, especially about
Madryn?

No, Val decided. The entire story was
ridiculous, the silly imaginings of a dreaming boy. What could
Madryn have done to deserve a curse…?

Yes, he decided. Lord Valaren Starseeker had
died at Madryn's hand; there may well have been a curse placed on
her in revenge. Evil though Valaren had been, he still may have had
followers, powerful and ready to avenge his death in any way
possible.

Cursed? Madryn, cursed?

No, impossible. Madryn was not cursed. Yet
when he thought it over again, all the things that had happened to
her from the moment they'd met—attacks, shipwrecks, set upon by
thieves—in fact, she could well have been put to the hunt herself,
for giving him assistance.

His escape. Why had Madryn been passing by
at just the particular time when she would meet him, running for
his life? Was that another part of the curse, ill met and
dangerous?

Images and questions fought in Val's
exhausted mind, running around and around and around…as he
struggled to make some sense of it all. So lost was he in the
roiling depths that Garet had to beat on Val's back with angry
fists for several moments to draw his attention.

"Master!" yelled the boy.

He had been shouting for some time now, Val
realized dimly.

"Master! Bandits!"

An ululating scream rose up behind Val.

Behind?
he wondered

But, without realizing it, Val had managed
to wind up at the back of the caravan, with the detritus and the
camp followers, those who had not the money to travel in state and
who lived—when they did live—off the discards of their more
affluent brethren.

Val pulled hard on the reins and struggled
to wheel his horse about while at the same time trying to see
behind him.

There, high atop a mounded dune that reared
to one side of the trail, and outlined in black against coppery
sky, rode a long line of mounted, hooded figures. The wailing that
he'd heard must come from them, he decided; long, drawn out screams
so high-pitched that it was difficult to believe that they
originated in human throats.

"Bull-roarers," whispered Garet, his hands
tight around Val.

Val had forgotten the boy was there. "What?"
he asked distractedly as he tried to count the bandits.

"That sound," Garet replied, his voice
shaking. "Bull-roarer. It's a sound they make with sk-skulls tied
to leather strips and whirled through the air very fast, in
cir-circles." Even in his fear, Garet was trying to increase his
ignorant master's knowledge.

Val's spirits rose as a concrete enemy rode
towards the caravan. At last, something he could understand—and
fight.

With a shake of his shaggy head, his broad
mouth splitting into a grin of pure delight, Val laughed. Just what
he needed—some heads to bash and bones to break. Something to do
battle with that he understood.

The long dark line of mounted figures began
a steady and rapid descent of the mounded dune, and then raced with
ever increasing speed towards the end of the lumbering, vulnerable
end of the caravan.

Val darted quick glances to right and left.
He was the only guard in sight. The others must be further up the
long train of horses and wagons. He had to warn them, had to send
word to Madryn and the others.

Did he have time? Val watched the mounted
figures race forward, tried desperately to gauge their speed,
deceptive in the shimmering desert air. Val looked around; there, a
horse struggling to pull a too-heavy cart from a deep indentation
in the soft sand. The horse must have wandered from the hard beaten
path; now the inattention of its driver would cost him.

Val cantered over and slid from his saddle,
pulling the reins over his head as he dismounted. Slashing through
the carthorse's harness took seconds with his sharp blade.

Val reached up, pulled Garet from his horse
and, without letting the boy's bare feet touch the sand, boosted
him onto the top of the now-unencumbered animal.

"Ride to the front of the caravan!" Val
shouted to the boy. "Warn the others! Find Madryn!"