The White Robe (50 page)

Jarrul fought off a fit of coughing as he watched them leave, unable to believe that they would just move out without telling him what was going on. So shocked was he that he didn’t hear Captain Tordray come up behind him until the captain snapped to attention and called his name. Jarrul jumped like a startled long-eared hopper.

“My apologies, Master Jarrul. I have a message and instructions for you which Lord Istan has left.”

“Well, that’s a relief; I thought he’d forgotten I was still here.”

“Not at all, sir. He begs me to tell you that it’s King Borman and his retinue who waits yonder requesting permission to enter Tarmin. He came to offer his respects to the Queen but on hearing that her majesty was absent he would like to pay his respects to the council instead.”

“He came to pay his respects with an army behind him?”

“Captain Malingar has explained to the council that King Borman always travels with a large escort.”

Jarrul raised his eyes in disbelief. “Go on.”

“Lord Istan and the Guildmaster have gone to the camp to discuss the terms under which King Borman may enter Tarmin, after which they’ll return. Lord Istan makes two requests of you, sir. Firstly, that the freshest and most experienced soldiers are manning the walls in case of trouble and he’s asked me to assist you with this. Secondly, that should any harm come to himself or the Guildmaster, then the city gates should remain firmly shut and you should resist the entry of King Borman into the city with whatever force you can muster.”

Jarrul thought about it for a moment and then nodded his head in approval. “I suppose that’s a reasonable way to proceed.” He broke out into another coughing fit which left him white and gasping for breath. “Please proceed with reinforcing the wall.”

Tordray looked concerned and offered his arm in support. “Sir, you look exhausted. Would it be for the best if you took a brief rest so that you’ll have the strength to command if there’s trouble. I will keep watch and let you know if anything changes. If there’s a problem the city is going to need you.”

Jarrul went to refuse but a wave of tiredness made him stagger. “You’re probably right. I’ll be in the guard post below. Wake me in one candle length, or less if anything happens.”

He made his way shakily down the steep battlement stairs, shivering slightly, and across the guard area in front of the gates. There were beds and a fire in the guard post and it was warm and comfortable. He lay down on one of the two bunks for off duty guardsmen and was asleep in moments.

Master Zott was more used to counting coins than soldiers, but the moment he stepped out into the fortress’s courtyard he knew there was something wrong. Usually, at that time of day, there would be two guards at each gate and at least a dozen on the walls, but today there were just the two guards at the main gate looking worriedly across at him. He knew that extra guards had been taken to defend the city walls, but to leave the fortress defenceless was not acceptable. He hurried over to the two guards who looked relieved to see him, and when asked, confirmed his suspicion that they had all been taken to accompany Lord Istan, or for the defence of the city wall.

Zott was reluctant to take the last two guards from the fortress but he needed an escort through the crowds to the city gates, and in any case, two guards were not going to make a lot of difference if an invading army made it as far as the fortress. He set out across the city with the two guards following but he needn’t have bothered about needing them to clear a path for him; the city was deserted. Instead of the usual mid-day bustle as workers bought hot and cold food from roadside stalls for their lunch, the roads were empty and the stalls were missing. In the market square the stalls, which were put up each morning and taken down at night, were deserted, and all the shops, which at this time of day should have been doing a lively trade, were boarded up. Even the inns were closed, although the noise from behind the shuttered windows as he passed suggested that this was where the market stall holders had taken refuge.

He reached the city gates with his two guards still following him and took the steep stairs to the battlements, two at a time, arriving at the top of the city wall out of breath. Zott took a quick look along the wall and was pleased to see it was well manned, although he didn’t recognise many of the men who stood there. That wasn’t a great surprise to him; he had little to do with the military except to make sure there was sufficient coin in the treasury to pay them. He joined Captain Tordray at the edge of the bastion and looked out, feeling a sudden alarm at what he saw.

“Where’s Lord Istan?”

“He’s out there, sir, with the royal party riding towards us.”

Zott peered out and blinked several times trying to refocus his eyes on the approaching riders. “What’s going on, Captain? Why are they all coming this way?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Zott blinked again and stepped back in alarm. “There’s something wrong! Captain Tordray, can’t you see that something is wrong with Istan and the Guildmaster, they are all blurred.” The captain said nothing but waited whilst Zott stared at him in confusion. “Where is Master Jarrul?”

“He’s asleep, sir.”

“Quick! Sound the alarm! Order the bow men to fire!”

 “Sorry, sir, I can’t do that,” Tordray stepped forward smartly and Zott gave a loud grunt of pain collapsing with a knife caught between his ribs.

Behind him the two guards went down with their throats cut and all along the wall the city and fortress guards died, many without drawing their weapons, as men loyal to Malingar and Northshield took their cue from captain Tordray. He watched in satisfaction and then returned his attention back to the riders approaching the main gate. Zott had been right; Istan and the Guildmaster did look blurred. He laughed to himself and called down for the gates to be opened.

*

Jonderill stormed into the room without knocking, his eyes dark with anger and his fists clenched. “Out! I need to speak to your master in private.”

Allowyn bristled, his sword already half drawn, but Callabris shook his head. “It’s all right Allowyn; despite Jonderill’s rudeness, I don’t think he means to do me any harm.” Allowyn reluctantly sheathed his sword and left, giving Jonderill a warning look before quietly closing the door behind him.

“What did you do to them?” demanded Jonderill.

“What did I do to whom?”

“Don’t play your games with me, old man, you know who I mean.”

Callabris held up a placating hand. “Sit down, Jonderill, and calm yourself.”

“Not until you tell me what you did.”

“Please sit, Jonderill. I can’t explain whilst you are standing over me looking as if you’re about to explode.” Jonderill sat feeling angrier than he could ever remember. “I put a small enchantment on them, nothing that would hurt them but just enough to make them cooperative.”

Jonderill leapt to his feet again and took a threatening step towards Callabris. “Cooperative! You tricked them into giving away their kingdom. You used your magic to put Borman on a throne which isn’t his. I thought you were only meant to use your magic to do good, not to give an arrogant, greedy and powerful man more power with which to oppress people.”

Callabris shook his head. “I am sorry, Jonderill. I’m not the saviour of mankind and in any case what I did was necessary.”

“What was necessary? Was it necessary to take away their minds so they betrayed the people who trusted them?”

“It was.” Callabris sighed and shook his head. “Please listen, Jonderill, and try to understand why I did what I did. I may be a magician, but I still need the support of a powerful man to provide for me and protect me from other powerful men. In return, I serve that man and obey his commands. In the case of King Borman, I try to anticipate his actions and I do what I can to moderate them. If I hadn’t made it possible for him to ride into Tarmin unopposed then he would have taken the city by force. Then many hundreds of people would have died, including those three children you have become fond of and many more innocents just like them. I did what I had to do to keep the deaths to a minimum.”

“You think that was a minimum? What about the soldiers who were slaughtered on the city walls whose only crime was standing and watching your little charade unfold.”

“I’m truly sorry for their deaths. It was not as Malingar and I planned it.”

Jonderill shook his head angrily and sat glaring at Callabris. “I suppose you planned for me to be out of the way whilst you played your little games?”

“Yes, I did. I knew you would object and that would have put you in harm’s way. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“But you have no conscience when it comes to putting others in your master’s way, have you? What about Lord Andron, did you know Borman was going to kill him?”

“I suspected as much,” Callabris said sadly.

“You could have stopped it.”

“If I had there would have been a battle and more men would have died.”

“And what about the men you enchanted today?  It was you who you put them in harm’s way.”

“They’re being held in the cells below the fortress and I regret they’ll be executed along with the other city leaders as a warning to others.” Jonderill jumped to his feet in anger and went to say something more but Callabris held up his hand to stop him. “They’ll be executed but as long as the people obey their new king there will be no more deaths. Can’t you see, Jonderill, what I am trying to do?”

“No I can’t. All I can see is a sad old man playing at being a god and deciding who should live and who should die. What you’ve done appals me and if that’s what magic is for then I want nothing to do with it.” He turned around and marched out of the room slamming the door behind him.

A moment later Allowyn slipped into the room and poured his master a goblet of wine. “Do you want me to go after him?”

Callabris shook his head. “No, my friend, let him be. The boy’s angry and needs time to think about what I have said. It may be a good idea though to warn Tissian that his master is upset so that he can keep an eye on him. Young men, especially those with Federa’s gift, are apt to do foolish things when they’re angry and I wouldn’t like Jonderill to do something which we would all live to regret.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~

Right from Wrong

Jonderill lay on his bed, his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He had considered Callabris’s words for a candle length or more but still came to the same conclusion. If Federa had given her servants the gift of magic then surely that gift had to be used to do good and not just to support the ambitions of powerful, greedy men. If Callabris had been of the black he might have understood his lack of conscience. He knew that Maladran had done many evil things in the service of his master, and for his own ends, but Callabris was a white robe and surely that meant something. Of course he had considered his mentor’s point that a magician, particularly a white robe, needed the protection and patronage of a powerful man but it seemed to him that Callabris had sold his soul for a comfortable bed and a full stomach.

The question he needed to answer was what would he have done if he had been there. Would he have had the courage to challenge Callabris? He didn’t know the answer to that, Callabris was a powerful magician and his protector was as lethal as any man alive, so to challenge him would have been difficult and dangerous. But could he have just stood by and done nothing, whilst the white robe did what he had done? Callabris obviously thought not, otherwise he wouldn’t have found a pretext to keep him out of the way for the laying of the enchantment which allowed Borman’s uncontested entry into the city. By the time he had been allowed to follow them, King Borman was in the fortress and Leersland’s defeated leaders were in their cells.

That was bad enough, but to add further insult, he had been escorted into the fortress under armed guard, assigned a room out of the way, and ordered to stay there. He hadn’t of course. He had told Tissian to watch out for Callabris’s return and had then confronted him. It hadn’t helped much, except to change his anger from a raging furnace to something cold and hard deep inside of him. Whatever reasons Callabris gave to justify his actions he couldn’t just sit back and let innocent men, whose only crime was to try and protect their own people, die at the hands of a tyrant. He wondered if all kings were tyrants and if there wasn’t a better way to govern a kingdom.

He sat up on the edge of the bed and called for Tissian, who he knew would be on guard outside his door. His protector entered with a curious look on his face. He had removed his armour, which was stacked in the corner of the room, but with the exception of his bolt bow, he still wore a full array of weapons. Jonderill was surprised that Borman’s jumpy guards had allowed him to remain so heavily armed within the palace. On the other hand he supposed that they were used to having a protector around, and knowing what they were like, would be very reluctant to try and disarm one.

Tissian looked at Jonderill and gave him one of his mischievous grins. “That took you long enough.”

“What did?” asked Jonderill in surprise.

“Deciding what to do about whatever it is that has you all fired up.”

“How do you know?”

“You mean apart from you having a look on your face as dark as thunder and slamming the door so hard it nearly came off its hinges? Allowyn warned me to keep an eye on you as you might want to do something stupid. Do you?”

Jonderill thought about it. “No, not stupid, but not without risk either. I’m going to try to put something right which Callabris did wrong, something which dishonoured his gift of magic.”

“What exactly are you going to do?”

“I’m going to set the prisoners free who were taken through Callabris’s misuse of his powers.”

Tissian whistled, “Hellden’s balls, Jonderill! You’ve got to be joking. That’s not just risky it’s downright suicidal.”

“Not for me it isn’t, I’m too valuable to Borman for him to hurt me too much but you can’t come with me, if you were caught he would have you sliced into little pieces and fed to his fanghounds.”

“If you think I’m going to let you do this on your own then you’re mistaken. Where you go, I go.” Tissian crossed his arms and looked determined.

“That’s not what I need right now. I need you to do something far more dangerous than following me around, and for you, something much more difficult. Firstly, I need you to get me a guard’s uniform. There are so many new faces in the fortress that another stranger wandering around looking lost won’t be questioned, as long as they’re not wearing a long white robe that is. After that, I need you to guard this door with your life and let nobody in. This room is going to be my refuge and my alibi, and if things go wrong, I’m going to need you in one piece to rescue me.”

Tissian shook his head. “That’s not what a protector is meant to do. But on the other hand I can see the sense behind your plan; only don’t tell Allowyn that I allowed you to do this crazy thing or he will have me doing double penance for weeks.”

“Have no fear, I won’t. He would be obliged to tell Callabris and then all hellden would break loose.”

Tissian laughed, but without much humour, and began to remove his weapons until only a small knife remained visible tucked into a leather sheath at his side. He gave Jonderill a quick grin and slipped out of the door. Jonderill went to the bed and stripped off the top sheet which he wound around his hand and up his arm. With some trepidation he rummaged through their belongings and pulled out Plantagenet’s old iron blade. A wave of dizziness washed over him and he retched twice but once he had the sword well wrapped up in the sheet and then in a blanket, his aversion to touching weapons passed. He hoped that the blade’s ability to open doors would work through the wrappings; he didn’t fancy being sick and dizzy and vomiting all over the floor every time he came to a door that needed opening.

Thoughtfully he sat on the half stripped bed, and tried to work out how he was going to get to the cells. Apart from guessing that they were somewhere below him, he hadn’t a clue where they were, but he thought he might ask someone the way on the pretence that he was new to the fortress and had been told to deliver blankets to the prisoners. How he was going to get the captives out was also a mystery, but he was hoping that the prisoners themselves would come up with some ideas, after all, they knew the fortress better than he did.

He was still thinking about possible solutions when Tissian returned carrying a sizable bundle of uniforms. He dumped them on the bed with a satisfied grin on his face and then went straight over to the small desk in the corner and started scribbling with a tattered quill, which had seen better days, onto a scrap of old parchment. By the time Jonderill had changed from a magician into a soldier, Tissian had finished his mysterious task and handed Jonderill the parchment looking pleased with himself.

“I’ve drawn you this plan which shows how to find the cells and I’ve marked on it where the guards are posted. I’ve also brought some extra uniforms for the prisoners to wear when you let them out. It’s not much of a disguise but it should help a bit.”

Jonderill was impressed and picked up a couple of uniforms that should fit the prisoners reasonably well even if they did smell of sweat and stale beer. “Thanks, but how did you manage all that?”

Tissian shrugged. “Protector training teaches you all sorts of odd things. How are you going to deal with the guards?”

“Bluff?”

“How about using magic?”

It was Jonderill’s turn to shrug. “I’ll see you later.”

Jonderill added the uniforms to the blanket roll until he had a large bundle which could pass as a pile of extra blankets if it wasn’t inspected too closely. He gave Tissian one last smile, opened the door to peer down the corridor and left. Tissian looked around the room and decided that if someone came in now looking for Jonderill, they would guess that his master was up to something. He quickly tidied the room and remade the bed leaving Jonderill’s robe, which was draped over a chair in front of the fire, for his last task. It looked odd without Jonderill in it; somehow dangerous and forbidding and he picked it up with reluctance.

The cloth felt rough and the coarse fibres snagged the calluses on his hands. It made him itch as well as if insects had crawled up his arm. He quickly laid it out on the bed and stuffed it with anything he could find until it could just about pass for a sleeping man with a hood covering his face. It wouldn’t stand up to close inspection, but might just do if someone caught a quick glimpse of the bed from the door. By the time he had finished, he was sweating heavily and felt as if he had spent a whole day labouring in a weaving shed. He wiped himself down as best as he could, donned his amour and weapons and took up his place outside his master’s door, straining his ears for any sound of alarm.

Jonderill was sweating too, and not just because the bundle he was carrying was heavy and cumbersome. So far his disguise had worked well and nobody had stopped him. He had even managed to ask another guard the way when he had become lost without raising the guards suspicions, but now was the real test; the first of the guard posts. Two guards stood in front of the heavy wooden door, which led down to the cells. They looked tired and bored and showed very little interest as he walked towards them carrying his bundle. He stopped and peered over the top of the rolled blankets.

“I’ve been ordered to take extra blankets to the prisoners, ‘spose with them bein’ nobles like they gets extra cold.”

“I could do with a blanket myself, it’s enough to freeze your balls off out ‘ere.” One of the guards laughed. “Go on then, but you’ll have to stop at level one and ring the bell; the prisoners are bein’ ‘eld at the bottom level. I ‘ope you ‘ave waterproof boots, it’s a bit damp down there.”

Jonderill laughed too and waited for the guard to open the door before walking confidently through and then leaning against the closed door on the other side, waiting for his pounding heart to slow and his hands to stop shaking. He didn’t think he was cut out for this sort of thing. When he had his breathing under control again, he hurried onwards, down several flights of stone steps until he reached another door with a bell pull. He pulled the bell rope and waited for a guard to open a small grill in the door and then repeated his request.

The guard nodded and opened the door revealing a long row of barred doors. He could hear people moving behind them, some of them groaning and one sobbing. There was a smell of burning flesh and half way along the row was a small brazier with irons heating in it. He tried to ignore what that meant and kept his eyes fixed on the door at the far end. It was guarded by a huge man with a bristling beard and, apart from his naked arms with bulging muscles, dressed all in dark leather.

“That’s as far as yer go, mate. I’s the only one allowed down there.”

“But I’ve been ordered to take these ‘ere blankets to the prisoners,” muttered Jonderill into the blankets.

“Yer just give ‘em to me, I’ll sees they get ‘em.

Jonderill froze, if ever he needed his magic it was now. He desperately tried to think of the compunction magic Callabris had tried to teach him, hoping that this time, as his need was great, it would work. As he passed the bundle over he touched the guards hand and released his power. The guard staggered slightly, his eyes rolled upwards and he collapsed to the floor as if he had been poleaxed. Almost immediately Jonderill followed him down, the backlash of the overdone magic sending bolts of agony through his head.

“Oy! What’s goin’ on ‘ere?”

The second guard ran over to them and bent down to see what had happened. Ignoring the pain in his head, Jonderill grabbed the iron blade which had fallen free of its wrappings and swung it into the side of the guard’s head. The guard and the sword both dropped to the floor and lay there, whilst Jonderill vomited uncontrollably next to them. Still feeling sick, dizzy and with bright lights flashing in front of his eyes, he grabbed the blanket, wrapped it several times around the iron blade so his hands wouldn’t touch it, and staggered to the heavy door which led to the lower levels.