Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series (5 page)

“Right.  Which means the place is being protected, or at least watched.”

“The neighbor?”

“It’s a place to start,” conceded Rondal.

They had to wait until dusk before the man who lived on the other side of the sewer returned from his day’s labor in the broad estuary of the river.  He bore his light punt on his back as he trudged up from the shoreline, and carried a heavy basket of small fish and crustaceans over his shoulder.

“Hail, fellow!” Rondal called, in a friendly tone.  The fisherman halted in front of the door, and dumped his boat unceremoniously next to the path with a splash.  “We’d like a moment of your time, if you can spare it.”

The man, whose dark brown features had been beaten by the sun and the brine, eyed the two of them suspiciously.  He straightened, allowing the basket to tumble at his feet, and he put his hands on his belt . . . near to the brass handle of a long knife the basket concealed.

“What would a couple o’ gentlemen like yourselves be doing at my home?” he asked, cautiously but boldly.

“Just a few words, my friend,” Tyndal called.  “No harm is intended.”

“Yet you are between me and my door,” the fisherman said, darkly. 

“Just to get your attention,” Rondal assured.  “Please, carry on.  We merely wish to ask you a few things about your neighbors.”

“The widow and the lad?” the man asked, surprised.  “They’ve been gone for more’n a year, now.”

“Any idea where they went?” Rondal asked, congenially.  The man stiffened.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked, plainly suspicious.

“Relax, my friend,” Tyndal assured him.  “We’re not thugs or cutthroats.  We’re friends of Ruderal, come to repay him handsomely for a boon he granted us.”

“You’re not with them ruffians, then?” the fisherman asked.  “I hate those godsdamned Rats, Shipwrecker take them all!”

“Indeed, we’re here to contend with those ruffians for what they have done to the poor boy,” Rondal agreed.  “And his mother, if she still lives.”

“Oh, aye, she still lives,” the fisherman admitted.  “Leastways, from what I can tell.  Every few weeks one o’ them ruffians comes down to glance at the place, make sure it hasn’t run off or been taken by the waves.   Says he’s watching the place, keeping it safe,” the man reported, skeptically.  “Doesn’t dress as . . .
oddly
as you gentlemen, though,” he added.

Both lads were wearing their traveling gear, common in the Castali Riverlands or Gilmora, but decidedly out of fashion here in cosmopolitan Enultramar.  Though the wharfs and riverfronts teemed with all manner of strangely-dressed folk when ships put into port, Tyndal and Rondal were announcing their foreign nature merely by the clothes they wore.

“We’ve just arrived in Enultramar,” offered Tyndal.  “And we’re planning on leaving quickly . . . once we’ve found Ruderal.”

“And quietly,” Rondal agreed, taking a few silver shells from his pouch.  “We’d appreciate your discretion about the matter,” he said, handing them to the man.  “If the Rats catch wind of us, they might move him, or worse.”

The man took the coins slowly, as if in great thought.  “You intend no harm to the boy?” he asked.

“On our words as gentlemen,” Tyndal agreed.  “In fact, if all goes well, Ruderal will soon begin study in a profession he’s profoundly talented in.”

“Ah, then you’d be sorcerers, then,” the fisherman said, knowingly, pocketing the coins.  “After that ruckus two years back with the lad, I
thought
he might have the spark.  So aye, I’ll keep your secret,” he added.

“He has it by the bucketful, we think,” Rondal nodded.  “And we intend to see it properly developed.  If you could point us in the direction of where they are keeping him and his dame, it would go a long way toward that end.”

The fisherman’s manner changed subtly.  “I don’t have business with that kind of folk,” he said, with a sneer of disgust.  “They take the coin out of the purse of too many honest folk, and do naught but drink and fight.  Since the duke died they’ve been a’thumpin any regular folk who complain.  But there is some group of them in town,” he admitted.  “Hells, they nearly run the place, now that the Viscount fled, too.”

“Anything more particular?” Tyndal asked, adding to his bribe.

“They frequent the waterfront, near the market, so it’ll be thereabouts,” the fisherman said, scratching his beard.  “They associate with porters and pirates, mostly.  Don’t know many names, save one: he’s Skrup, and he’s often shaking the poor clammers and crabbers in town for their extra coin; sometimes he’s called Hard Skrup on account of his manner with those who don’t pay.”

“We’re familiar with the ruffian,” Tyndal assured him, contemptuously, at the thought of the man.  Tyndal did not like Hard Skrup.  Neither did Rondal.

Hard Skrup was the Rat who was directly in charge of Ruderal, apparently because he was the one who’d discovered him and his abilities.  The thug had seen his possession, rationalized under the Brotherhood’s convoluted code covering such things, as a means of advancing himself.  He’d protected the boy jealously, though he’d treated him foully.  And then he’d nearly killed the both of them, and had slain one of their Kasari friends, at the orders of his master. Rondal had sincerely hoped that something awful had happened to him, coming out of the Land of Scars, but another part of him looked forward to some much-deserved vengeance.

“I don’t know where he works from.  But if you’ve silver to pass around, someone there will be able to lead you to him. 
They
aren’t hard to find,” he added, ruefully.  “This lot is particularly bad.  I heard from folk in Pearlhaven and upriver that their Rats are better behaved, but this lot is brutal with the townsfolk.  The warden raised market fees, and the poor folk protested.  Those bilge-dwellers broke it up.  Two fishermen died,” he added with disgust.  “Honest men, who just wanted a chance at an honest wage.  While Hard Skrup and his lot are eating beef on
our
coin!”

“I’ve heard that life in Enultramar can change on the shift in the breeze,” Tyndal said, philosophically.  “Who knows how a chance meeting with a couple of foreign gentlemen might change that?  What can you tell us about the boy and his mother?”

“Oh, good folk, good folk,” he assured, warming up to the boys.  “She was raised on the wharfs, met up with a mariner, she said, and fell in love.”

“Do you know of the father?” Rondal prompted.

“Typical story in the Bay: he shipped out with presents and promises to return when she come expecting, but o’ course he never did.  Shipwrecker likely has him, now.  She had the babe, of course, but didn’t send him to an orphanage.  Moved in here seven years ago, mending nets or taking in washing or whatever other respectable work she could do to raise her boy. 

“When he was old enough, he started digging clams and crabbing on the banks, and when he started to get big he got hisself a punt and started fishing.  Started with
nothin’,
” he said, proudly.  “Afore the trouble started, he was starting to make a little coin in market, even.  Had a real knack for it.  Could have been a
great
fisherman,” he said, sadly, as if being cursed with magical talent had prevented the boy from a lofty career harvesting the sea.

“Was she . . . wild?” Tyndal prompted.

“Oh, no,” assured the fisherman.  “She was chaste as a nun.  Tried to sweet-talk her with some rum, a year after she moved in, but she wasn’t having it.  Completely devoted to her boy.  Didn’t want no man to come betwixt them.”

“Ruderal mentioned his sire was a Seamage,” Rondal prompted.  “Do you know anything about that?”

The man looked a bit embarrassed.  “Maybe he was, maybe not.  She wouldn’t be the first lass to invent a colorful sire to explain a swollen belly, and I was too polite to ask more than a few questions about it.  He
could
have been a Seamage, a scoundrel, or the bloody Duke of Alshar, for all I know.”

“I think we can safely rule out the last,” Rondal decided, “but we’re curious because of his great Talent.  If Ruderal’s sire was a mage, then knowing who he was and what his abilities were might be important,” he explained.  “Magical talent doesn’t always flow from generation to generation, but the children of magi tend to have a higher degree of Talent than most.”

“Stands to reason,” conceded the fisherman.  “But if Rudi’s sire was more than a rut in the dark after too much brandy, as is likely with a young and ignorant lass on the docks, then she alone knows the tale.  I do hope you find them,” he added.  “Since they left, I’ve been worried.  You see them, tell them that Chestnost was asking after them.”

“We will, my friend,” agreed Tyndal, handing him another shell.  “And remember: your discretion is
very
much appreciated.”

After securing the door to the hovel as best they could, the lads walked back to the ancient walled town that overlooked the river mouth, ancient Solashaven.

A long bridge of stonework covered with a timbered roof spanned the inlet, and another town, Pearlhaven, even larger and grander than Solashaven, was on the other side.  The two towns were the seat of two different viscounties, politically, but the folk of both towns traversed the bridge and conducted business without regard to that.

That was the normal routine in Enultramar, they’d found.  Whereas in the Riverlands territorial boundaries were jealously guarded as opportunities for revenue through tolls, in the wide gray-rocked Bay of Enultramar there were few such fees.  It was far too simple to avoid them, if they’d been in place, by taking passage on the thousands of boats and skiffs that raced across the far-flung towns of the Bay.

“So, what do you think of storied Enultramar, now that you’ve seen it?” asked Rondal.

“It’s amazing,” Tyndal said, happily.  “I never knew Alshar was so . . .
big.”

“Considering you could fit most of this valley into the Wilderlands south of Vorone and still have plenty of room to rattle it, calling it ‘big’ seems a little misspoken,” Rondal observed.  “But I take your meaning.  Solashaven is one of the smaller ports in the Bay, silted up and economically depressed.  But it’s still half the size of Vorone.”

“There must be over a million people living on the Bay, alone,” agreed Tyndal.

“Closer to two, once you add the Coastlord havens,” Rondal replied.  “I looked it up before we left Sevendor.  Once you get to the fertile coastlands, things aren’t as densely populated, but there are still some big cities amongst the orange groves and apple orchards.  Rhemes, Bortiner, and of course, Falas.” 

The magnificent castle overlooking the central river of the valley, just south of the escarpment that divided the Coastlands, proper, from the Great Vale, had impressed both boys powerfully.  Seven giant towers, each as big as a keep of a lesser castle, enclosed the massive walls of the central keep. 

Behind the castle the many spires of Falas rose to heights unequalled in engineering since the fall of the Magocracy, and a sprawling city of over half a million glittered brightly as they’d changed boats at the docks on the river there. The Duke’s Palace, where Anguin II should rightfully be installed, rose above the great walls of the castle above even the sentry towers, terminating in a grand spire bearing the gilded anchor motif.