Having no desire to burn down a city, Pen dismissed that last. “I wish I’d had this skill when struggling with all those rainy campfires, when we were up in the hills trying to make meat out of sheep. I would have been the most popular man on the hunt.”
Desdemona was silent for a moment, then said, “It is one of many skills best kept discreetly hidden. For if it is known, any accidental fire within a mile could be blamed on you. And no way for you to prove your innocence.”
“Oh.”
“In fact, most of the skills are dual-edged that way.”
Pen digested that. Was that one more reason that real Temple sorcerers were so quiet and elusive?
He turned the next page.
* * *
It was the succeeding afternoon before he could steal another session with the book, feigning to be going up to his room to work on repairs of his new old clothing. After the first few chapters, all seeming very practical, Ruchia’s prose grew denser, and the subtleties of what she was trying to describe more slippery.
“I don’t wholly understand what she’s trying to say about the magical friction,” he complained to Desdemona, who had been silent for so long he’d wondered if she’d fallen asleep.
“Hm. Pull that candle over, and light it and blow it out a few times, as fast as you can.”
He did so, fascinated with the process. He still found it easier to point when making the little flash shoot up where he intended, though not with his hand held so close. He could dimly sense how, with practice, he might not even need that aid. After a dozen rounds of the exercise, he shook out his hand, which had grown uncomfortably hot even though he’d not touched the flame. He rubbed it with the other.
“Feel that, do you?”
“Yes?”
“If a sorcerer demands too much strong magic of his demon, too quickly, his body will go beyond mere fever to its own destruction.”
Pen’s brow furrowed. “Are you saying a sorcerer could burst into flames?”
“Mm, no, the body is too wet for that. He would more just . . . burst. Like a grilled sausage splitting its casing.”
Pen stared down at his torso. “Yech. Does this happen often?” Surely any demise so spectacular would have been talked about more.
“No, not really. Usually the sorcerer will pass out before that. Perhaps suffer the usual aftereffects of a bad fever. But it is certainly possible in theory.”
Pen wished she didn’t sound so enthusiastic about the idea. Revolted but not deterred, he returned to the book.
A long while later, he frowned and thumbed back to the title page. “Where is volume two? What is volume two? Should I have it? Is there a copy in that cabinet?”
“There is, but it is beyond you for the moment. It is mostly about the application of sorcery to medicine.”
He wrinkled his nose, staring at the page. “Did Learned Helvia and Learned Amberein help Ruchia with that part?”
“Oh, yes. Ruchia also consulted with another physician or two from the Mother’s Order, on the more obscure points.”
He considered the timing. It didn’t add up. “Wait. Were Helvia and Amberein still alive at the writing?”
“Not exactly. Maybe in the sense that their knowledge survived the way Ruchia’s voice has survived on those pages. Ruchia still credited them anyway, by way of a memorial. She spent the most time on the second volume, by way of restitution, she said, for the unplanned loss of us from the Mother’s hand.”
Pen wondered if there was a very disappointed young physician somewhere, missing, due to Pen’s roadside accident, the Temple demon she or he had been promised. “Can I learn all of that?”
“Perhaps. In due course. You would do well to spend some time studying with the Mother’s people first before trying much. But how much of your life do you really wish to devote to treating people’s worms?”
“Leaving aside the views of the worms, healing seems a safer sort of magic than some of these other things.”
“Oh, no. It is by far the most dangerous. And the most subtle. Most dangerous because most subtle, we suppose.”
“I suppose . . . if anything went wrong . . . is it possible to kill a person by magic?”
“No,” said Desdemona firmly, but then, after a long pause, “Yes. But only once.”
“Why only once?”
“Death opens a door to the gods, through which they can, for a moment, reach into the world directly. The demon would be naked and helpless before our Master, and be plucked out like an eyeball before the sorcerer could take a breath. And be delivered to the Bastard’s hell, and its utter destruction.”
“Even if it were not murder, but, say, a medical accident while trying to treat a person? The intent not harm, but good?”
“That is part of what makes the practice so challenging. And not for the novice.”
Pen curled up atop his blankets and hugged his knees. “Desdemona—what happened to Tigney’s demon? Do you know?”
A sense of deep discomfort. “Yes, for Ruchia supervised it.”
“What, then?”
“The theory is covered four chapters on.”
The last chapter in the book, Pen realized. “Yes, but I want the story. The short tale, at least.”
A long silence. Surly? Uncertain? Untrusting . . . ?
Pen drew breath and said more firmly, “Desdemona, tell me.”
Compelled—so, he could compel—she reluctantly replied, “Even at the beginning, he was overmatched with a demon too strong for him. For a few years, all seemed well, and he reveled in his new powers. But then his demon ascended, and made off with his body. He fled to Orbas. It took the Temple a year to find him, subdue him, and bring him back.”
“And?” he prodded, when she did not at once go on.
“And they brought him before the Saint of Idau.”
“The town of Idau possesses a saint? I had not heard of such.”
“A very specialized saint, dedicated wholly to the Bastard. Through him, the god eats demons, and so draws them back out of the world.”
“What happens to the sorcerer?”
“Nothing, save whatever grief he may suffer at the loss of such powers. However balanced by relief at the return of his own control. Tigney,” she said bitterly, “recovered entirely.”
Pen’s face scrunched. “Desdemona—did you witness this event? This . . . eating?”
“Oh, aye.”
“What was it like?”
“Have you ever witnessed an execution?”
“Once, at Greenwell. There was a man hanged for robbing and murdering on the road. Learned Lurenz took us, he said, so that we might learn the true wages of crime. Just the boys, though.”
“And did you?”
“Well . . . highwaymen did not seem so thrilling to me after that.”
“Just like that, then, I expect. If you were a demon.”
“Ah.” It was Pen’s turn to fall silent.
He was several pages farther on when Desdemona said, “But if you ever try to take us to Idau, we will try to fight you. With all our powers.”
Pen swallowed. “Noted.”
* * *
Pen was closing on the end of the same chapter, a little stiff from sitting, when the door rattled. Swiftly, he thrust the book under his pillow and took up the bit of half-done mending he had ready for such an occasion, but it was only Clee.
“Ah, there you are,” said Clee. “I was looking for you.”
“Does Learned Tigney want something of me?” Finally?
“Not at all. But my brother Rusi has invited the both of us to dine with him at Castle Martenden this evening.”
Pen’s interest was caught, despite his frustration at being interrupted in the middle of a difficult passage. Castle Martenden, it was said, had never been taken by force of arms, although that might partly be because no great wars had yet come to it, merely local squabbles. Which could be as fatal as any wider struggle to those involved, no doubt.
&nbs
p; “I should like that. But, tonight? It’s a long walk.”
Clee smiled. “Rusi is a better host than that. There are horses waiting for us outside the gate.”
“Are we to stay the night?”
“There’ll be a good moon later, so if the weather holds fine, we need not. But Rusi will provide all that we need if we decide to delay till morning.”
Gratified both with the prospect of escaping this narrow house for an evening, and an opportunity to see so fascinating a fortress, Pen hurried to don what of his new clothes were now usable. Clee gave him no opening to better hide Ruchia’s book, unfortunately, as he waited politely for Pen to ready himself, and then ushered him out the door before him.
“I should ask leave of Learned Tigney,” Pen remembered as they started down the stairs.
“No need,” said Clee. “I already have. You aren’t a prisoner here, you know.”
And yet not quite free, if Clee was detailed to be his duenna. The scribe was by way of being Tigney’s private secretary, trusted with his correspondence; also with his captive, it seemed. Pen wondered if Clee also worked with the ciphers, and if it would be wrong to ask him about them. “Good.” Giving Learned Cautious no chance to reverse his ruling, Pen followed Clee directly out to the street.
A brisk walk brought them to the old stone bridge; upstream and down, several millwheels turned and creaked in the steady outflow. They passed over the arch and through the lesser half of Martensbridge. This part of town was devoted to serving the caravans that came down from the north passes, and boasted warehouses, tanners, saddlers, smiths, and lodgings for travelers who wished to stay close to their goods. Beyond the gate that served the road flanking the lake, they found a small livery. Two horses waited, bespoke and already saddled. They seemed better mannered than the usual rental remounts.
Watching Clee swing up readily to his saddle, Pen asked, “Are these your brother’s beasts?”
Clee nodded, and reined around confidently to lead Pen onto the road north. They walked their mounts along side by side for a while, threading local traffic; farm carts going, at this hour, mostly home from the markets, animals being walked to their fates at city butchers.
“Were you taught horsemanship as a child?” Pen asked.
“Yes, we had all the usual castle sports. Castle Martenden was a good place to grow up. I wasn’t apprenticed to the Order till I turned fourteen, as directed in our father’s will.”
The usual age for such placements. “Had the old lord a large family?”
“Not very, to my benefit. Rusi and I were the only boys. Rusi’s elder sister is long married, and mine chose the Daughter’s Order, and now teaches at a Lady-school down the valley of the Linnet.”
“It sounds a reasonably happy family life, then.” Pen hoped Clee would hear the delicate inquiry in that; or, if he didn’t, so much the better.
Evidently he did, for his lips turned up, wryly. “Rusi’s lady mother always treated us children fairly. And Rusi is my elder by a decade. So even if his parents had died in the opposite order, and our father had married my mother, very unlikely considering her station and lack of dower, I still would not be the heir. Nor greatly suited to the task.”
“You aren’t jealous of Rusillin’s rank?”
Clee eyed him sidelong. “I’d have been a fool not to have thought of it, and a greater fool not to have thought better of it. Are you jealous of your brother Rolsch?”
“No,” Pen realized, never having considered it quite like that before. “Rolsch plagued me in many ways, when I was growing up, if not how Drovo did—he was enough older to be above such humor, I think, as well as not being naturally inclined to it. But I never wanted his place. Still don’t.”
“That’s fortunate, then.”
As the road grew less crowded farther from town, Clee led them first to a trot and then to an easy canter, and Pen followed, heartened to have found another commonality with the prickly dedicat. After about an hour’s ride in the late spring afternoon, the waters sparkling to their right and the hills rising to their left, they rounded a curve of the lake, and the gray bulk of Castle Martenden loomed up before them.
It perched on an islet only a dozen paces out from shore, its walls seeming to grow out of the rock that was its foundation. High and solid and forbidding, they followed the contours of the islet’s bounds. This had resulted in something other than foursquare, though four round towers with conical slate caps jutted up at its corners, with a fifth for luck over the drawbridge.
The village of Martenden straggled along the road, a mere farm hamlet, though the fields and vines climbing the slopes beyond looked fair enough. A smithy, an alehouse, a leather-worker’s, a carpenter’s shop, a small inn for travelers too soon benighted to push on to the city at the lake’s end. Clee followed his glance.
“Its earlier lords had more hopes of this place,” he observed, “but they were all siphoned away by the Temple and the city merchants.”
“Mm,” said Pen. “I expect the city exploits the river for its mills, as well. And it is the logical end-point of lake traffic.”
“There is that.”
Clee led them right up to the small arched bridge and drawbridge, clopping across and returning the salute of a soldier standing guard with easy familiarity. Door and portcullis were all blocked open on this peaceful day. Inside the court, paved with fitted flagstones, the place was not so bleak. Arched porticos with stone columns ran along two sides of the irregular space. Atop them two stories of wooden galleries overlooked this light well, suggesting that those living within did not actually have to grope about in darkness at all hours. As they dismounted and a groom hurried up to take charge of their horses, Lord Rusillin himself came out on a balcony, saw them, and waved. He made his way down an end staircase, boots scuffing in an alert man’s rhythm, to the courtyard.
“Ah, you have secured our guest,” said Rusillin amiably to his brother. “Any difficulties along the way?”
“None whatsoever,” Clee assured him.
Making the hand-over-heart salute, he went on to Pen, “Lord Penric. Welcome to Castle Martenden.”
“Thank you for your invitation, Lord Rusillin. I was most interested to see it.” Pen looked up past the galleries toward the battlements. “And from it.”
Rusillin smiled. “Our supper is almost ready. But we could certainly take you up to the sentry walk.”
The castle’s lord led back up the stairs he had descended, and from the third floor over to a short set of stone steps. Pen followed eagerly, Clee bringing up the rear. Then onto the walkway behind the high, crenellated outer wall. Pen leaned over to gaze up and down the lake, imagining being a sentry here, on the watch for enemies. Or, he supposed, merchants’ boats laden with rich cargo from north or south, but he had not heard Castle Martenden accused of lake piracy.
Ten miles distant to the south, he could just make out the walled city. The lake curved slightly here, narrowing, then its northern arm struck out an even longer distance to the smaller town that overlooked its headwaters, lacking a princess-archdivine to raise its status and its walls, but doing well as an embarkation point for trade. Beyond the curve, a pair of small green islands decorated the blue surface, home, he understood, mainly to goats, sheep, and a few reclusive religious mystics. The westering sun breathed a golden glow over it all.
“Beautiful,” Pen said, awed. “Has this place ever been besieged in your time, Lord Rusillin?”
“Not in mine,” Rusillin replied easily. “My father fought off an incursion of the Earl of Westria, in his day, but at the ridges and along the roads. His troops never reached here. Or Martensbridge, little though the town remembers.”
“Yet now you work for Westria?”
Rusillin’s lips stretched. “The earl palatine learned his lesson. Far better to have us with him than against.”
Jurald Court really was a farmhouse, compared to this, Pen conceded.
“What lies beneath?” Pen asked, tur
ning back to look down into the paved courtyard, grown shadowed as the light angled.
“You’ll see the lower levels after supper,” Rusillin promised. “There is an interesting water gate off the main stores. Very useful for bringing goods in and out.”
“I suppose this place would never run short of water in a siege,” Pen mused. “Another advantage over a crag.”
“To be sure,” Rusillin agreed, and led the back to the stairs. He pointed out a few more militarily useful features along the way, sounding as house-proud as any goodwife. Were the goodwife enamored of serious mayhem.
They walked, boots sounding on the boards, along the third-floor gallery to what proved not a lordly dining hall but a small chamber. Two slit windows on the lake side, framing an unlit fireplace built into the stone wall, provided a faint illumination, and Pen blinked, tempted for a moment to call on Desdemona’s seeing-in-the-dark skill, but his eyes adjusted soon enough. Good wax candles, only one frugally lit, graced an age-darkened sideboard crowded with covered dishes. Clee went to share the flames around among the holders there and upon the round table set only for three. The lord meant to have the luxury of privacy tonight with his interesting guest, apparently. At his brother’s polite request, Clee took the role of server, cheerfully and without resentment. Smiling, he offered Pen the pewter basin to wash his hands first.
The repast was rich in meats and thankfully sparing of cheese: venison, slices of beef, racks of lamb, and a whole chicken were presented, which Rusillin carved with the speed and dexterity of a surgeon accomplishing an amputation. A stew of spiced root vegetables, any winter-stored tiredness masked by their buttery sauce, and a salat of fresh spring greens improved the variety still more. The wine was pale yellow, sweet, and from kin Martenden’s own land, Pen learned. The two brothers, Pen noticed, drank sparingly, so he tried to do the same, for all that each took turns topping up his glass.
Plainly primed by Clee, his host exerted himself to draw Pen out about his youth at Jurald Court. Pen chose not to spoil the mood by mentioning Drovo’s death, but he did ask questions in turn about the mercenary life, wondering if his brother had found it satisfying before its truncation. Talking about his command, Rusillin sounded more like Rolsch than like Drovo, more calculations and logistics and complaints of dubious suppliers than thrilling tales of heroism. Garrison life ran mostly dull, but Rusillin’s company had seen bloodshed in two clashes over a disputed valley on the earl palatine’s far borders, and in one peasant revolt over, of all things, an attempt by the earl to eradicate packs of feral dogs plaguing the region.