Then I got mad. Really mad, really fast. I struggled to get loose but his hold was solid as iron and just as likely to give out. “Put me down,” I said, between my teeth.
He stopped smiling and let me down. I heard the door close and realised Jamie was leaving us to it. Wise man.
“What in the hells made you do that?” I asked him, walking away from him towards the door, shaking with anger. “I hate that feeling.” I clenched my fist, turned my back to the door and hit it as hard as I could, putting my body into the blow. I just about noticed something splinter but I didn’t care. “I hated it when I was a child and I hate it even more now. How would you like to be caught and held helpless by one stronger than you?”
“Forgive me, dearling,” he said quietly. “I see now that it was ill-judged. I thought—” He stopped.
“You thought what?” I asked sourly, rubbing my hand. “Stupid bloody thing to do.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “As I was walking with Jamie around the stead today, one of the—hands, you call them? The men who work with the horses—I saw one of the workers do so with his lady when she brought him his midday meal. She laughed and seemed to enjoy it.” I never thought I’d see such a thing, but it looked to me like Varien was blushing. “Jamie told me then that they were new-wed, just this month past. I thought perhaps this was a Gedri custom—”
I laughed then, my anger gone as fast as it had come, and held him tight. “You idiot,” I murmured to his hair. His body was warm and strong against mine, and his arms encompassed me like every promise of home I had ever longed for. “Please don’t try to be like a human, my heart. Just be what you are. You are the one soul I love most in all the world. We’ll find our own way.” I drew back just long enough to look in his eyes. “I appreciate you trying, my dear one, but Jamie’s right. There is nothing worse than trying to be something you aren’t.”
“Very well, then, I shall be what I am,” he said with a smile, his hands moving sensuously across my back. “I am your beloved and your new-made husband. You are weary and I must think ever of your welfare. Come to bed with me, my dear one, my heart’s own, and I shall see if I can banish your weariness for a while.” He kissed me then, hard, his passion swift as fire awakening mine.
We only just made it to the bedroom.
iii
So Much to Know
Berys
I must be cautious a little time longer. As I was leaving the Great Hall of the College of Mages this morning, Magister Rikard looked long at me. “I still say you are ill-advised to leave the College just now, Magister Berys, but at least you are fit for the journey,” he said sourly. He is always sour. He has been sour every moment of every day of all the years I have known him. “Indeed, I have never seen you look so well. It must be the morning light, I’d swear you look ten years younger.”
I laughed and said it was the effect of the heavy mist. “If the ladies knew it smoothed out so many wrinkles, we could turn to weather-mastery to earn our keep,” I said to him.
“It is no light matter,” he replied nastily. He is very full of himself, Rikard, though he is but a kestrel in human form—small and skinny with a nose like a hawk. Suspicious bastard. “I am not the only one who knows what the essence of lansip can do, and it is known that you have lansip and to spare since you financed that poor mad Merchant to the Dragon Isle. You meddle with forbidden knowledge, Berys, though I am certain you would deny it.”
“Deny it! There is nothing to deny. Rikard, I know your motives are of the best, but you make much of nothing. You know I have not been well lately. If the lansip I have had the luxury of taking for healing has restored a brief semblance of youth so much the better, but I am no fool. Youth once gone has gone forever.”
He just looked at me. “’Ware pride, Berys,” he said at last. “It has brought down greater men than you.”
I smiled at him, secure in the knowledge that sometime in the near future I would be able at last to plunge a dagger in his heart. I have known Rikard for the last twenty years, during which we have cordially hated each other. However, he comes perilously near the truth and I am not quite prepared to let all my secrets go. None have connected Malior the demon master of the Sixth Circle with Berys the Archimage of the College of Mages in Verfaren, and I do not wish that to be known just yet. Not long now and I will not care, but for the moment my respectable life as Berys is worth protecting. Rikard may have to be—well, accidents happen, and I begin to tire of Rikard. He is the only one of the Magistri who knows anything of demon lore, apart from me, and his knowledge is not convenient.
We have made good time on our journey so far. The weather has favoured us, cold but clear and sunny. If it holds thus, Elimar is only six days’ travel from where I stand. Had I prepared a demonline I had been there and returned in moments, but I carry one with me on this journey—one end anchored in my hidden chambers in Verfaren, the other to be set in Elimar when I arrive, to allow a future visit to be swift and untraceable. It will be good to have an escape route to Elimar. I will also establish the return journey, in case I require it, and will fix the “destination” at Verfaren when I return. Demonlines must be established physically at either end and they are not easily erected. Still, though they last for only one use they are worth the price—instant transportation between two places, no matter how distant. Even dragons cannot move so swiftly; and once used the lines disappear and none but the maker knows where the traveller has gone. Well worth the price. One never knows when such a thing might be useful. I believe in being prepared for all eventualities.
I am no closer, as yet, to learning how the dragons might be defeated, but I have collected every reference book from the library at Verfaren and I am reading them through. Surely someone, somewhere, has learned a better way of defeating dragons than risking themselves in combat! The Ring of Seven Circles works, but the worker must be within range of the beast, and when Marik used the one I prepared for him the creatures broke into his mind. I do not wish to take that chance.
I had not known they could do that. I must be more wary in my dealings with them.
First, though, I must heal Marik and learn all that he knows. I cast this very recording spell upon him when he went on his journey to the Dragon Isle, so that every thought, every word, was written as he thought it in a book in my own chambers. That was well, as far as it went, but when his mind broke so did the link. The book finished long before I had intended it to.
Poor fool. He thought, to the very end, that I aided him in his search for his daughter that he might be rid of his pain. He promised her to demons before she was born, in exchange for the making of a Farseer. Marik’s incompetence allowed that particular object to be stolen as soon as it was made by Lanen’s mother, one Maran Vena, but since the price was never paid the demons put pain into Marik’s leg to remind him. The pain would never cease until his firstborn child should be given to the Lords of Hell. Search though he might in the years between, he could never find Maran again, or her child. However, the Powers Below look after their own; he met the daughter by chance last autumn. He intends to give her to the Lords of Hell to pay his debt and so be freed of the pain that has haunted him since that day.
I let him believe that I would assist him in return for the body of his daughter after her soul was taken by the Lords Below. Marik has always been a credulous fool. Let him suffer agonies from now until the end of the world. I need his daughter, whole and unharmed, to fulfill the prophecy spoken by one of our number many long years ago.
When the breach is healed at last,
when the two are joined in one,
when the lost ones from the past live
and move in light of sun,
Marik of Gundar’s blood and bone
shall rule all four in one alone.
The first two lines are yet unclear to me, though I have considered them. I have long wondered if the “breach” refers to the time the dragons left Kolmar, the day the Demonlord defeated so
many of them. It has occurred to me that the breach—if it is the one between the Kantri and the Gedri—might already be healed, for I heard from those who accompanied Marik on his journey that his daughter Lanen and her companions were carried to the ship by the dragons themselves. I have no idea what the “two joined in one” might be. However, in the absence of other interpretations, I assume that the lost ones from the past are either the Trelli or the Rakshi, the demons who were banished from this world at the time of the Choice. The Trelli dwindled and died out many long ages since, and there is not one left that could ever live or move again. I therefore assume that the lost ones referred to are the Rakshi, who have no bodies as such and cannot live on their own in this world. It is therefore my task to find a way to provide a body or bodies for at least one of the Rakshasa, that the prophecy may be fulfilled.
However, I have learned much from my research. He who trusts in the power of prophecy without making adequate preparations is at best a fool and at worst a dead fool. I have therefore been quietly ensuring that the children of the Kings of Kolmar have been meeting with dreadful accidents. Many years apart, mind you, and with no trace of any evildoing, and certainly with no way to trace the deaths of the poor creatures to me. It has been most useful to have Marik’s Merchant House at my disposal. Each branch in each town has its own healer and many of them are my own carefully chosen men and women. After all, Healers are accustomed to working with power. It is only a small step from there to working with demons, and if the step is paved thickly enough with silver there are many willing to take it.
As for the healed breach, it is very much in my mind that the greatest threat to my ambition is the Great Dragons, now that they are again aware of us and have made a bond with the one person in the world I require for my purposes. I had thought them all safely out of the way on that island in the west and had left them out of my plans altogether, until Marik’s ill-fated quest for the precious lansip leaves that grow there roused them like a stick in an anthill. By all accounts, three people had been carried to the ship by the dragons themselves; carried and protected, by those who before only killed! Until that journey, the beasts had done no more than allow the gathering of lansip—which will grow nowhere else—and kill any who crossed their boundary. Then of a sudden they were become the champions of a hunchbacked old woman, a silver-haired man who came from nowhere, and Marik’s long-lost daughter, Lanen. So much the accounts of those who were there had taught me.
I lit my dark lantern and blew out the candles in my summoning chamber. With a swift gesture and a whispered word I locked the door and sealed it against prying eyes. Any could find the door or knock, but should he touch the handle he would forget why he was there and wander away. It was unlikely that anyone would do such a thing, but safe is best. All perfectly harmless, all done with pure Power untainted by the Rakshasa.
The lantern lit my steps back up the narrow stair to my very sedate College chambers. Once through the hidden door beside the fireplace, I stirred up the fire and sat at my desk. There was much to consider.
The hunchback the dragons favoured was one Rella, a highly placed member of the Silent Service and long an enemy of mine. When I learned she was on the ship I had arranged to have her killed if she should manage to return from the voyage. A swift knife in the ribs appeared to have done the deed, but I have had a report in the last few days from the Corlí branch of Marik’s Merchant House—Rella lived. It appears that Marik’s daughter Lanen and the silver-haired stranger had taken the woman to a Hospice and left her there. The Healers were well-paid enough not to be willing to release her until she was fully fit, they would not allow any of the “visitors” I sent in to see her, and by the time she was healed she was on her guard and gave my men the slip. They had been able to find no trace of her. Pity, really. They had never failed me before. Still, there are always others willing to take on such tasks.
I opened my ink-pot and drew the candle closer to the paper.
“Devlin, I require your services. You and each of your men will earn four silver pieces for every fortnight you serve me, as well as expenses for your journey, and a bonus of ten silver each will go to the men who find what I seek, upon delivery. You must divide your forces into two groups. One is to search the country just north of here, in the Súlkith Hills between Verfaren and Elimar. The other will go to the north of Ilsa, west of the River Arlen and south of the Méar Hills. Find for me a tall, plain, grey-eyed woman with light brown hair, of about five-and-twenty winters; one who has been away through the autumn, or one who has recently arrived in a new place and acts in a strange manner or has peculiar companions, notably a man with long silver hair. If she is using her right name, it is Lanen Hadronsdatter. Bring her to me unharmed.”
It would do for now. When my preparations are further advanced I may seek her more urgently. I could use demons, but the price they demand for such things is far higher than silver, and I must conserve my resources. There is much to do, and most of it men cannot accomplish. Let Devlin and his men do what they can, it is a simple enough task. I shall need all I have to bend the demons to my will when the time comes.
On a slightly different note, I should mention that I have been engaged in a little experiment since Marik returned. My share of the lansip harvest was considerable, and I had found in the archives of the College of Mages a method for extracting the essence of lansip that legend said could restore youth. It had cost a third of a ship’s crew, Caderan’s life and Marik’s mind to get the lansip back to Kolmar from the Dragon Isle, and to me it was cheap at that. The wretched plant grows only on that one island: every sapling, every seedling, every half-grown tree that has been taken away in the past and planted in the earth of Kolmar has died.
Lansip is a heal-all, strong to cure all the ills that beset men. A weak infusion of even a single dried leaf in water is said to be a sovereign remedy for everything “from headache to heart’s sorrow.” The rare lan fruit, of which an astonishing three dozen were found on Marik’s ill-fated journey, can heal all wounds save death alone. I sold the dozen that were my right for enough silver to purchase anything I might need for the rest of my life. Their worth was roughly that of Verfaren, this town that supports the College of Mages where I reside as the beneficent Archimage. Is it not a supreme jest?
Better than that, though, better than all, is what I have learned about lansip and its properties. Legend, that true servant of those who would learn from the past, records the old belief that essence of lansip can restore lost years. I have long known the tale of the rich merchant who was found dead and forty years younger than he should have been, for though that tale has been much corrupted in the telling I found the original report here in the great library at Verfaren. I have not repeated his mistake. He took a great draught all at once and died of it. I have been taking infusions regularly but in small quantities.
Legend was right.
I am growing younger by the day.
Lanen
“Good morning,” I murmured happily, turning to face Varien. He stretched and casually put a long arm around my waist. “Good morning to thee, my dearling,” he replied, kissing me lightly. The sun was only just up; it was pale and grey behind the shutters and I was glad to be still warm and in bed. Even in that light Varien all but shone. I braced my head on my hand and leaned back a little, just looking at him. Sweet Lady, but he was beautiful.
“Surely, I have not changed so much in the night?” he said, smiling at me. “Or is there something amiss that I should know?”
I reached over to stroke his hair. “Every now and then I still have to convince myself that you’re real,” I said, smiling back. “Sometimes I wonder.”
“I am here and I am real, my heart. Why should you doubt?”
I ran my hand across his chest, revelling in the feel of him, of his skin beneath my fingers. “Until I went to the Dragon Isle I had spent the whole of my life alone, and I expected to spend the rest of it so. And now here you are, my own hu
sband, so much more than I …” My voice faltered for an instant before I spoke my worst fear aloud. “I swear to you, Varien, sometimes I dread that I shall wake one day from this dream and curse the waking forever.”
He drew me to him and held me tight, his arms strong around me. The scent of him was making me giddy, like too much strong wine. “I am here,” he murmured in my ear. “I am no dream to fade with waking.” He drew back just enough to kiss me, a blessing, a promise. “You had best believe that and grow accustomed to my presence, for you are mine, proud Lanen Kaelar, and I will not leave you as long as life remains.”
“You’d better not, or I’ll bloody well come after you and find out why,” I growled.
I’m afraid my anger wasn’t very convincing.
After Varien had shown me how un-dreamlike he really was, and we were resting again in each other’s arms, I said quietly, “You know, Varien, I was wondering—have you ever yet wakened in the morning and wondered what happened to your tail?” I grinned. “Or why you were lying on your back? I’d wager the Kantri don’t do that.”
He smiled back at me. “Ah, but we do—at least, younglings do so sometimes, while their wings are still quite small, but it quickly becomes uncomfortable.” He grinned. “As an adult I have only rolled on my back a few times, when I had a terrible itch and there was no one around to help scratch it. I did so envy human their long arms! Why do you ask, dearling?”
I took a deep breath. “I was wondering if you were regretting the change.”
He was silent for a moment, thinking. I have always loved that in him—that he never replied with some easy answer but thought about everything that he said. “I will not lie to you, my heart. There are times when I miss my life as it was,” he replied honestly. “We are creatures of fire and our feelings are deep and strong, and we are not used to sudden change. But even if I have mourned the loss of my wings and the joys of the air, if I have missed the strength that could protect us both, I have not yet wished to undo this change that the Winds have sent. I know not the purpose of it, beyond loving you and seeking to aid the Lost, but I have so far delighted in being human.” He gently swept an errant lock of my wild hair away from my face. “Lanen, Kadreshi, the love of the Kantrishakrim is not given lightly. I would have loved you my life long no matter what shape my body held. Why should I regret that we now may join in body as well as in spirit? No, dearling, I do not regret being human.” He leaned across to kiss me again and smiled. “What wind blows that shakes you so this bright morning?”