The Telastrian Song (3 page)

B
anneret Intelligencier Vallis Giura
crouched as low as he could on the wall. He was no novice in the practice of concealment and disguise, but this was a situation he would rather not have been in. Sitting atop a two-story wall, his body breaking the line of its top, he was in plain sight for anyone who happened to look in his direction. In his favour it was night-time, and the wall top was beyond the reach of the mage lamps that lit the quiet street below. Since taking his vantage point, only one person had passed along it.

The most likely person to see him was the man Giura was spying on. Cristan Nerli was in a lit apartment room opposite Giura’s vantage point. There was a pane of glass between them and the man had no reason to believe anyone was watching him. Nerli was dangerous, and something of an unknown. He seemed ordinary at first glance, but Giura was not sure of what powers the man might have. Enhanced eyesight? Night vision? The ability to sense when someone was near? Watching?

Nerli wasn’t doing anything of note—boiling eggs from the look of it—but he was an interesting man. Giura had been hunting practitioners of magic for the better part of his adult life, and he had never seen one like this before. Back-alley conjurers, healers and conmen were Giura’s stock in trade. Small-timers, but Giura had seen tiny streams swell, flood, and wipe out all before them. One never knew which of these dabblers would make a breakthrough, find something that had been forgotten for hundreds of years. Something that would make them more of a threat to the order of things. Giura believed he was watching one such man now, a belief that filled him with fascination and fear.

He had been on the wall for some time and it hadn’t been comfortable to begin with. Parts of his body were starting to go numb and he knew he would have to put an end to his surveillance soon.

In the hours that he had been watching since nightfall, the man had done nothing of interest. Giura wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved. His attention was drifting to his discomfort rather than his task, and he was starting to wonder if he was wasting his time. He refocused and committed himself to a few more minutes.

The man was indeed boiling some eggs. Nothing remarkable about that. Giura was about to give up when something caught his attention. The man was not standing over a stove or a hot plate to boil his eggs. He was standing by an ordinary wooden bench, with nothing beneath it that could be responsible for generating heat.

This was nothing especially noteworthy in itself. Giura had seen people boil water before with only the power of their mind, or their magical powers, or whatever it was they used; the boasts varied. Those people charged a silver penny for the chance to watch, but the display had always taken all of their concentration and left them exhausted. Giura usually left those ones alone. It was as much as they were capable of. This man was doing it as casually as he might pull on a pair of boots; reading from a book and only occasionally glancing at the pan of boiling water.

Giura felt giddy at the thought. Since becoming an Intelligencier of the mage hunting variety—a mage taker, as they were popularly called—he had wondered what it would be like to face a proper mage, wishing at times for the excitement it would bring. It would be the pinnacle of his career. It could also be the abrupt end of it. Stories of what the ancient Imperial Mages could do were sparse and mingled with as much fiction as fact, but if only parts of the stories were true their powers were beyond belief.

Faced with the possibility of realising this dream it was difficult not to feel afraid, but the fear was tinged with curiosity and excitement. He had never seen true magic before—of course he had seen the mage lamps that lined the main streets, the product of a level of skill long dead—and to see a true adept was mesmerising.

Giura had already seen more than enough to have the man arrested and brought to the Grey Tower in chains, but there was more he could learn by observing, so he decided to delay that act. All thoughts of numbness and discomfort faded as he continued his vigil. Torture had its uses, but watching a man while he did not know there were eyes on him was a far more effective method.

He continued to lie on the wall-top watching the man eat his eggs, and then move to a desk where he spent the next hour. Giura strained to see what he was doing, unsuccessfully. The opportunity to rummage through the man’s desk wasn’t far off, so Giura’s patience wouldn’t be tested.

A woman and a young boy walking down the street diverted Giura’s attention—they looked like mother and child. The Cathedral’s campanile had long since chimed for twelve bells. Although the city never truly slept, seeing a young lad and his mother out and about at that hour was unusual. They were both hesitant and she had to urge the boy forward. The behaviour was characteristic of those seeking out the illegal services of a practitioner. They might fear magic, hate it even, but it was a different story when they needed it. The boy’s arm was in a sling, and even from his vantage point on the wall Giura could see that the lad was in a great deal of pain.

They stopped by the door to the practitioner’s apartment. She pulled the bell chain at the door, looking over her shoulder with as guilty an expression as Giura had ever seen. Two stories above, the man in the apartment went to the window, opened it and peered out. Giura’s heart raced as he strained to make himself as small as possible on the wall-top. He held his breath and gritted his teeth; had he been unwise in remaining there so long? Nerli glanced down to the doorway and nodded when he saw the woman and child, never looking in Giura’s direction. Giura breathed a sigh of relief as the man withdrew from the window and closed it without seeing him.

Nerli answered the door a moment later and brought the woman and boy up to his apartment. There were plenty of back alley quacks in the city, most not worth notice but a few with a little genuine, albeit limited, talent. Some Giura had arrested, others he allowed to go free—always a finely balanced decision of when they were doing more good than they were capable of doing wrong.

This man was more than them, far more. The arrival of an injured child was a surprise. How had they known about him? Relatives? The power this man had was worth keeping secret. Healing the child was a mistake. With so much magical skill, surely he was smart enough to realise that? A grateful mother might be sworn to secrecy, but a quickly healed injury would need explaining and secrets were always far more fun when shared. People liked to show others that they knew important, secret things. Another one of those qualities that made Giura’s job a little easier. Each healed child or family favour would bring the Intelligenciers one step closer to discovering this man. Perhaps he just liked to show off. Perhaps he was naive. Perhaps he just didn’t care.

Giura couldn’t see what was going on in the apartment, but it wasn’t long before the mother and child appeared back on the street—the boy without his sling. He flexed his arm enthusiastically and was chastised by his mother. Dutifully, but with a glum face, he pulled the sling from his pocket and put it back on. Giura smiled. She was making an effort at least. He wondered how long that would last; how long before every mother in her apartment building knew of the man that could mend their children’s broken bones.

What was in it for the practitioner? Everyone knew about the Intelligenciers and how they prowled the city hunting down and stamping out magery, among other things. Their headquarters, the Grey Tower, was spoken of in hushed tones with genuine fear. Did this man think he was too powerful to need to worry about them? The idea sent a chill through Giura. What if he was right?

As Giura walked back to the Grey Tower, he wondered what more the man could do. Could he break bones as easily as mend them? Magic was a fascinating thing, though illegal. Through the twisting streets of Ostenheim, all Giura could wonder about was how the man had learned what he had and who his friends were. So many interesting questions, so many secrets to uncover. Times like that reminded him how much he loved his job.

C
ristan Nerli woke later
than usual, and later than he would have liked. Healing the boy’s arm had taken far more out of him than he expected. His body was all aches when he got out of bed, and the conveniences afforded by his new skills were beyond him. The Master was due to call on him later that day, so he needed to be back at his best. A good meal and a walk around Crossways should make him feel better. The Master said that being near to large numbers of people would help with recovery after particularly taxing magic.

He breakfasted and forced himself to work on his grimoire for an hour before leaving his apartment and heading for Crossways. Food had helped, but as the Master promised it was when he reached the crowds on Crossways that he started to feel back to normal.

Nerli idled there for an hour, feeling stronger with each passing minute, before returning to his apartment to prepare for his meeting. No matter how much time Nerli spent with the Master, he would never become accustomed to his odd, eastern ways. He hoped the Master would be pleased with the progress he was making with the grimoire. The thought of angering him terrified Nerli. Sometimes he wondered if he had made a mistake in accepting the eastern mage’s offer.

The power was intoxicating though. Now that he had a taste for it, he knew he could never go back to what he was before. Each day he became more addicted to it, but he didn’t care. His mind often drifted to the old stories of the Imperial Mages, the way they had become corrupted, the evil they had done. That wouldn’t happen to him though. He wouldn’t allow it. He would only use his power to help people. After all helping people—having something they wanted—was an equally good route to status and wealth. Take the boy. His mother had sought Nerli out, begged him to help her son and paid him well. More than he would have earned in a month in his former life. He was important now. That would continue to grow. He didn’t need to do anything more or anything different. The other things, the things that made him shiver when he thought of them, were unnecessary.

As he opened the door to his apartment building and started up the stairs, a thought occurred to him. Why had the eastern mage travelled all that way to seek him out? Was he really that special? What was in it for the Master? What could he offer such a powerful man that he could not already attain himself?

C
ristan Nerli was a nobody
. Giura had searched every information resource available to him, and there was little to which he was not privy. Discovering his name was not difficult, but everything else was proving to be a challenge. If Nerli had done anything of significance in his life there would have been a record of it somewhere. Thus far, it seemed that Nerli had not.

With the Intelligenciers’ files exhausted, as well as the less meticulously kept City Watch records, Giura went out into the city to see what else he could learn. A man didn’t reach middle age without someone knowing who he was or where he came from, even in a city as large and anonymous as Ostenheim.

The trick to making enquiries about someone was doing it in such a way that it would not get back to the subject of those questions. It was a delicate thing and involved dissembling, something Giura was well accustomed to.

He started with the traders local to where Nerli lived, grocers, butchers, bakers, and the closest tavern. Listening was the first step. People loved to gossip, so if Nerli had been too ostentatious in his display of power it would be talked about in hushed and nervous whispers. From what Giura had already seen, he suspected there would be some chatter about the boy with the broken arm who was mysteriously healed.

He made his rounds of the local businesses, but all he had to show for it at the end of the day were some sausages, fruit, and a loaf of bread, none of which he needed. He dropped them off at the donations counter by the Cathedral before moving on to the next step of his plan.

Alcohol and idle tongues were always a boon for the Intelligenciers. More men had talked themselves onto the headsman’s block when lubricated by wine, ale, and spirits than Giura would ever be able to count. Today he didn’t need anything incriminating, just enough to build a picture of where Nerli came from, and how he went from invisible to the strongest practitioner of magic Giura had ever seen.