Winter Be My Shield (40 page)

The image flickered through his mind for just an instant before he lost it in surprise. He had the impression of warmth and movement, a jerky, swaying motion that made him momentarily dizzy.

‘What do you see?' she asked him softly.

‘Something's moving. Swaying, really. And it's warm.'

‘Really? Well, you are a curious one, aren't you?' She gestured to him to move back against the crates. ‘Lift your arms. I'm going to fasten the chains again so Alameda can try out her device.'

If he didn't cooperate, Isidro suspected, she was quite capable of forcing him to obey. Lifting his right arm was agony and he had to support it with his left hand until she tightened the rope to take some of the weight. She frowned at him as he pressed his back against the rough wood and tried to breathe through it. ‘It's painful, isn't it? Well, we'll soon see if there's anything to be done about it.'

She tightened the other chain so he was once again pinned and helpless. Isidro began to sweat. His subconscious mind associated it with unpleasant things and he couldn't keep the dark memories at bay.

Delphine never lifted her gaze from him as she gestured to the girl, Alameda, to come around the crates and into his small prison. Watching him shyly from beneath her lashes she ducked behind her teacher as she unwrapped the parcel she carried.

At first glance the device she revealed looked like a kind of tray. It was a flat sheet of translucent stone, two hand-spans wide and a little
over one span high, with holes drilled around the edges and wrapped with copper wire. There were handles fixed to each of the short sides and the girl grasped these as she raised it and held it over Isidro's broken arm.

He felt a pulse of power wash over him as she activated the device and began to tremble uncontrollably. It was too close to the other times he'd been helpless under an assault of power.

Alameda glanced up at her teacher. ‘Madame —'

‘Be still,' Delphine urged him. ‘It won't hurt, I promise.'

He couldn't even speak to reply. Delphine assessed his distress with a glance and slipped one hand under his elbow to support it and the other under his splinted wrist. ‘Does that help?' she murmured to the girl. With her support the pain eased and he was able to breathe again.

Alameda peered at the stone. ‘Ahh … yes! Look, madame, it works! You see there are the splints and the finger bones …' Her voice trailed off and for a moment they were both silent.

Isidro glanced over. The device gave off green light which played over their faces. Curiosity pricked him and he craned his head trying to see what was on the sheet of stone.

A tracery of green light illuminated the shape of the bones buried beneath flesh and bandages. The hand itself was whole, but the wrist and the forearm were a jumbled mess of spurs and fragments of bone.

‘That's enough, Alameda,' Delphine said to the girl. ‘Loosen the end of the rope and then go back to the end of the passage.'

The girl loosened the knot and then scrambled back out of the way. Gently Delphine lowered his ruined arm and loosened the other chain. Once he was free to move again Isidro cradled the ruined limb to his chest and focussed on breathing deeply until the pain passed.

‘I have need of a translator,' Delphine said after a moment. ‘But I doubt you'll ever have enough use of that hand to hold a pen. I don't suppose you're left-handed?'

Isidro shook his head. ‘I don't suppose you can heal the wretched arm'

‘No,' she said. ‘You can't manipulate living matter that way, only dead stuff like stone and water. Still, you can learn to write with the left. Your Akharian is passable. Tell me, do you write it as well?'

‘A little,' Isidro gasped. All he wanted was for her to go away and leave him alone and answering her questions seemed to be the easiest way to reach that end.

‘What about Mesentreian?' she asked, in that language.

‘Yes,' he replied.

‘As well as you know Akharian?'

‘Better.'

She gazed down at him thoughtfully with her arms folded over her narrow chest. ‘Have you ever heard of a man called Vasant?'

Isidro went very still and slowly lifted his gaze to meet hers.

‘He was a great mage of your people.'

‘The last,' Isidro said. ‘The Last Great Mage.'

‘In the war when your people destroyed their mages, while the others were fighting, Vasant gathered up all the recorded knowledge of the Ricalani mages and hid the books. Have you heard the tale?'

He nodded.

‘Well, we've come here to find them. You must have wondered what your life would have been like if there were people who'd recognised your talent when you were still young enough to learn how to use it. They stole your potential when they killed the last of the mages. Aren't you curious to see what might have been?'

‘You want me to help you find Vasant's lost treasure?'

‘Yes,' Delphine said. ‘We would most likely find them with or without you, but I need a translator.'

Isidro tipped his head back against the crate and closed his eyes. Last night it had all seemed so simple, but now … What he'd thought was a clear path had become a maze.

He was a fool to let her words from the night before weaken his resolve, but he couldn't deny she was right. Rasten had survived a decade of this treatment. Was he really going to give up after just a few days? If it was only himself he had to worry about, then perhaps the question would be easier to answer, but there was the matter of Sierra and Cam, as well. If Kell took Sierra back and succeeded in turning her into an obedient weapon, Cam would be doomed. Sierra's best hope for freedom was to master her powers independent of Rasten and Kell. Vasant's books, if they existed, would be her best chance of that. If he only considered himself, the choice was simple, but escaping this pain-filled existence
was a purely selfish solution. He could do more good if he stayed. If he could bring himself to stay.

Just the thought of it made him cringe. His soul-destroying despair wouldn't respond to logic or rational thought. If this was the path he chose it would likely be the longest and hardest-fought battle of his life.

‘I'll let you think it over,' Delphine said. ‘I'm not interested in compelling obedience from a recalcitrant and rebellious slave. If you come with me I expect you to do as I say willingly. I'll see you are treated well. You'll have decent food and a warm place to sleep.'

‘What about the interrogations?' Isidro said. ‘The experiments. I had the impression they're just getting warmed up.'

‘Those will continue,' Delphine said with a toss of her head. ‘The information you have is valuable. We've never had a survivor of the Blood-Mages' rituals to study before. Once you've demonstrated you're willing to cooperate, they will be easier on you. If you work with us you'll probably end up as a Collegium slave and there are far worse fates for a man in your position. I'll come and see you again in the evening and you can tell me what you've decided.' She turned to go, but then hesitated and came back to retrieve the enchantment she'd given him.

It was lying on the spruce where Isidro had dropped it when she tightened the chains. He picked it up and handed it to her. ‘What is it?'

She frowned at him. ‘You should address a free woman as madame and a man as sir. As for the enchantment, I've no idea. This place has given us a whole world of puzzles to solve — this is just one of them.'

 

The Akharian army broke camp that day, moving on from the temple and its village, which had been stripped of valuables and reduced to rubble, so that none who escaped the raid could find shelter there. It was past midwinter, but the days were so short the army set out while it was still dark and made camp well after sunset. Their route had been chosen to take them along the path Barranecour had theorised that Vasant took, and while she waited in the pre-dawn gloom for the last of the gear to be loaded onto the slave-hauled sleds, Delphine pulled her well-worn notes out of her satchel to study them again.

‘Any progress, Delphi?'

‘Hmm?' She turned to see Harwin coming towards her with his slave-girl Lucia trotting behind him, leading the pony Harwin would ride.

Delphine shook the papers to dislodge the scatter of snow that had settled over them. It was open to the map that had been copied from Barranecour's log. ‘Just wondering if this whole cursed mission is nothing but a wild goose chase. A very expensive, drawn-out, painfully slow and miserably cold wild goose chase. I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't have burned that wretched book the day Darius dumped it on my desk.'

‘Oh come now, Delphi, it's not that bad. Maybe we haven't found Barranecour's treasure yet, but we've found enough abandoned and forgotten devices in the temples to keep us busy for a while. And just think of the tales you'll be able to tell your children.'

‘Children? I think I've lost my chance for that, Harwin.'

‘Then you could write about it instead. When we first set out you were talking about how you were going to write of your experiences in the barbarian lands.'

Delphine sighed and Harwin cocked his head to one side, regarding her with concern. ‘What's the matter? Is that slave of your cousin's getting to you?'

‘Ah, ye Gods, Harwin, I've never seen man or beast so wretched. But it's not just him — it's all of them. We've torn their lives apart and we have nothing to show for it. Oh, I know it would have happened even if I hadn't written that cursed paper on Barranecour's expedition. It's just … it's weighing me down. I'm trying to hide it from the girls but it's getting harder and harder.'

‘So forget about this slave. He's Torren's problem, not yours.'

Delphine shook her head. ‘I thought about it. But he's the closest thing to a translator we have. By the Good Goddess, a young barbarian male is not what I had hoped for, but at least in his condition he's not going to give us trouble. No, I can't give up on him, not when he's the best chance we have of finding and using the relics. And if we can do that, I can at least convince myself that all this has been worthwhile. If he hasn't come around by this evening, then the next interrogation will do it, I'm sure.'

Delphine intended to look in on the slave again once the camp was pitched and her students were safely settled to their work for the evening, but Torren sent for her almost as soon as the general sounded the halt.

The slave had been secured on a sled for the day's march and wrapped in blankets and furs to keep him from freezing. Despite those precautions
he was so thoroughly chilled his lips were tinged with blue. His clothes were drenched with sweat and there was a flush of fever on his cheeks. When Delphine spoke to him and waved a hand in front of his eyes he made only a brief effort to focus on her before retreating to whatever fevered dream was lurking within his mind.

‘Do you know his name?' Delphine said to Torren.

‘Of course not,' Torren said. Captives were never permitted to keep the names they had borne as free men or women and no one would assign them a new one unless it was needed. His old name might have been enough to reach him, lost in the feverish haze as he was, but no slave-name would have the power to call to him.

‘It looks bad,' Delphine told him, wrapping her arms around herself against the chill. She wanted to be in the familiar surroundings of her tent, warming her hands and her belly with a bowl of hot tea, not standing around in the Battle-Mages' quarter. ‘Have you had a physician look at him?'

‘The slave-doctor's been around once or twice.'

‘Slave-doctor? Torren, I wouldn't trust one of those fools to treat a dog for fleas. Look, even I can tell he's feverish and he must be in pain from that arm bouncing around on a sled all day. He needs willow-bark at the very least and probably tincture of poppy as well. Call the cursed physician or you're going to lose him. It might already be too late.'

‘Presarius won't authorise the budget for it,' Torren said. ‘He's just a slave and a cripple to boot. I can't justify the expense.'

Delphine shifted the satchel slung over her shoulder to ease the weight on the strap. She'd been planning to show the slave one of the Ricalani texts Barranecour had collected, hoping it would tempt him to accept her offer. She doubted he would be able to make out the words in his current state but as she shifted the bag around she felt the lumpy tangle of stones and leather harness she'd had Alameda construct. The girl would be disappointed if she didn't get the chance to find out if the device acted as they'd hoped. ‘Don't you have some supplies of your own, Torren?'

‘You want me to waste them on a slave who's likely to die anyway?'

‘Just give him a dose. If it lifts the fever and the pain enough to make him lucid I'll see if he can read enough to be useful to me. If you sign him over to me I'll pay for the physician myself if I have to — but I want him for a translator, Torren.'

‘I can't, Delphi,' Torren said. ‘Presarius assigned him to me.'

‘Because he knew he was likely to die! Presarius wants to knock you down a peg. How do you know he hasn't set you up for this? Of course he won't survive if you keep treating him like this. Even a slave needs something to live for and you've set it up so he has nothing. Pass him over to me and then when you come to interrogate him he'll be so afraid of being pulled out of his comfortable position you won't even have to rough him up. He'll be happy to cooperate.'

Torren snorted. ‘He's a warrior, Delphi, or at least, he was. Not some milksop coward of a priest.'

‘He was, Torren, but he's not now. Pain changes a man. I know, I saw it happen to my father. In any case, what do you stand to lose? He'll die if you do nothing.'