The Magic of Recluce (39 page)

A
FTER TWO DAYS
of riding through the boring rolling hills of Southern Gallos, two days of avoiding towns, and two days of dried fruit, travel bread, and hard cheese, and stream water, I was ready to leave Gallos.

Only twice had we had to leave the road to avoid the hard-riding troops of the prefect. In both cases, the cavalry detachments were headed toward Kyphros, not back to Fenard. On one other occasion, we caught up with three wagons filled with supplies and had to sneak around them.

Except for that time I rode openly, without shields, feeling that the locals wouldn't care who rode by, and that using order might call more wizardly attention to me than necessary.

Late on that second day we came to the first bridge over the Southbrook, a structure half-timber, half-stone, which required three spans to cross the slow-flowing water. But it was past mid-morning the next day before we reached the second bridge—a single stone span.

With that second bridge over the Southbrook came the reminders of war.

The odor of smoke drifted toward me first, faint, like the leftover burnt wood smell in an uncleaned fireplace that has stood unused over the summer. Acrid, like charred leather, like the hides left from burning diseased animals. Pervasive, like the unseasonable clouds and fog that had clung to Freetown.

Wheee…eeeee
…Gairloch tossed his head.

“I know. If it smells that bad to me, it's worse for you.”

His steps clattered on the paving-stones of the bridge, echoing into the morning. The echoes rebounding from the stone walls of the bridge were the only sounds. Even the insects were hushed, and not a single birdcall warbled or whistled through the air.

I shivered.

Beyond the bridge, the road began to wind and climb toward the not-so-distant hills beneath the Little Easthorns. Everything was relative, I supposed. Without having seen the Easthorns, I would have found the dark slopes on the horizon impressive. Now they just appeared as another barrier.

The hills belonged to the autarch, which meant that we were nearing the border between Gallos and Kyphros.

With the wind from the south came more of that lingering acrid-sweet odor of ash and charred hide. Gairloch
whuffed
again as he carried me southward over the stone bridge and onto the packed-clay highway heading uphill. The browning grasses beyond the road edge were damp, and not with dew. Gairloch's hooves left clear imprints in the dark-red clay of the road. Whatever rain had fallen the night before had not carried much beyond the Southbrook or the hills of the Little Easthorns.

The sky was a crystal blue and cloudless, promising one of those late fall days that reminded me more of summer than the approaching winter.

Yee-ahh! Yeee-ah!
The distant call of the vulcrows echoed through the stillness of the morning. Ahead and slightly to my right, over the crests of perhaps three hills, circled two of the black birds.

My hand edged toward my staff, which I had not bothered to conceal. The sun was a white-yellow point in the sky, somehow not really connected to the damp road clay, the circling scavengers, or to me.

Gairloch was thirsty, and I pulled up on the reins and guided him back off the road and down toward the shore of the placid river, stopping on a sandy stretch not much wider than Gairloch's length. From a half-submerged log, a small turtle glared at us, then scuttled off his perch.

Ploppp
…Only a faint rippled pattern even marked that the turtle had been there.

I dismounted, looping the reins over the saddle, and let Gairloch do his own drinking.

Yee-ah! Yee-ah!

My eyes returned to the vulcrows circling in the distance, but the calls had come from closer birds. Closing my eyes to what I could see with my eyes, I cast out for the vulcrows and the source of their interest.

With my still-sharpening sense of place, I could sense Gairloch placidly chewing leftover green grass by the river bank, and almost could I feel the color of the grass. Then…it could have been my imagination.

Beyond Gairloch, beyond the near hills…someone…something…was out there. I tried to project my senses beyond Gairloch, beyond the river, more toward the hills ahead, in the direction of the vulcrows' calls.

…darkness, and shiny brass, and blued steel…

The prefect's soldiers. Waiting ahead.

Turning my attention behind me, back into Gallos, I searched…and found more darkness, more brass and blued steel, riding up from behind me on the road that would lead them and me onward into Kyphros and into more death on both sides. Wonderful! I had the prefect's troops in front of me and behind me.

I opened my eyes and looked back across the bridge toward the rolling brown plains that I knew remained behind me, behind the hill, then eastward at the light dusting of snow on the very tips of the uncovered rock of the Little Easthorns. Further to the west, to my right, just barely visible, a hint of gray clouds had begun to billow, as if to represent the chaos of the wizard who resided in the rocks of the unseen Westhorns that lay beneath or beyond those distant clouds.

The Westhorns, and Antonin, would have to wait, at least for a while, until I had seen enough of Kyphros and the autarch to ensure the answers to Brettel's questions and my own doubts.

While it was just past mid-morning, the menace that awaited me lay some distance ahead, and like Gairloch, I was thirsty. Hungry or not, I also needed to eat.

The river water was cold, cold enough both in drinking and in washing the grime from my face to encourage my appetite, and to open some trail bread and dried fruit from two packages near the top of the saddlebags provided by Brettel. Being able to perceive what was inside closed sacks had some advantages in the dark and when you didn't want to open sealed provisions. I grinned, thinking how I had wondered how Justen always knew where things were.

Still munching on the bread, I wondered about the soldiers ahead, and about the vulcrows, the ones I had not seen, only felt, over the next hill, and those circling further away.

The breeze from the south increased, and with it came the odor of ashes and charred hides. I had to concentrate to finish the slice of the second dried apple. After filling my canteen and taking another long swallow of cold river water, I reclaimed Gairloch from his browsing.

“Come on. It's time to figure out what's ahead.”

Whufffff
…

Gairloch's steps became more skittery as we neared the top of the hill beyond the bridge.

Yeee-ahh, yeee-ahh, yeee-ahh
…

Just before the crest of the hill at the right edge of the road was a square limestone marker, no more than knee-high. Only two words—“Kyphros” set above “Gallos,” with a line separating the two. But someone had tried to scratch a skull next to the “Kyphros.”

Casting my senses ahead of me, I could feel nothing living…except for the vulcrows perched in a barren low tree just beyond the hilltop.

Whuffff
…

We passed the marker and continued over the crest, the odor of ash even more pronounced in the light breeze.

“…uuugggghhhh…”

My guts nearly wrenched out of my body, and I swallowed hard to keep the just-eaten bread and fruit within me.

Except for the two vulcrows perched on the leafless trunk of a white oak, nothing lived.

Except for the road, which only bore a white dusting, thick white ash covered the entire hillside nearly a kay in every direction, so white that it first looked like a blanket of snow. Only a few blasted tree trunks, all white oaks, poked through the calf-deep ash.

Yeee-ahh
…

The pair of vulcrows flapped into the late morning sky, heading south toward those circling the higher hills.

Wheeeeeeee
…

I didn't blame Gairloch as he pulled up short of the ash.

“Easy…easy…”

There was nothing there. My staff was cool to the touch, and nothing lived. Nothing.

But I knew that the white ash represented the remains of men, women, horses, grasses, trees, birds, insects, and even fall flowers.

My guts twisted again.

Wheeeee…eeeee
…

“Easy…easy…we have to go on.”

More than ever I had to go on, deeper into the war zone that was Northern Kyphros, deeper into the destruction that seemed so unnecessary to me, and so critical to Antonin and the white wizards.

“…come on…” I patted his neck and flicked the reins.

Skittish step by skittish step, Gairloch carried me straight down the ash-dusted road.

At the bottom of the hill the ash ended, almost as though a line had been drawn, and the fall grasses and the scrub brush resumed. The road clay was again damp, and I wondered if the rain had been created to damp the ash into place.

I shook my head. Who knew why the chaos-wizards did all that they did?

Yee-ah
…

The echoing cry of the vulcrow reminded me there was more of the same—or worse—yet to come.

At one time, the hills had been farmed. The stone pillars of fences remained, as did a few rotting split rails. Every so often, we passed a chimney emerging from a thicket of bushes or even standing alone and rising out of a hummock of grasses.

The hills were not wild again, nor were they tame, but somewhere in between. Abandoned apple trees still ran in orchard rows with gaps showing those that had died and not been replaced. Taller blocks of mixed oaks and conifers outlined old woodlots, while scrub oak and redberry meadows indicated once-cleared fields.

With each hill, we neared the circling vulcrows, and an underlying sense of white menace.

Yeee-ah, yee-ah
…

To the west, the clouds kept building. My stomach continued to churn.

Finally, I put a shield around me. Not one that would just keep me from being seen. Like me, any chaos-wizard could have seen through a visual reflective shield. This shield would keep someone from throwing energies at me. Light is energy, and if I could keep light from touching me, I ought to be able to keep from being turned into white ash. The only problem was that I still couldn't see with my eyes because the shield kept light and energy from touching me.

I wondered why I didn't cool off, but my body did generate heat. That brought up another question—like why my body heat didn't fry me inside my shell—but I let my thoughts work on the shield…and the shield let energy escape.

Could I build a shield that worked both ways—letting no energy enter or escape? Probably, but for what reason?

Wheeee…eeee

Yeee-ah
…

By now it was early afternoon, and we had nearly reached the top of a particularly long hill. From what I could tell, the vulcrows were circling over the next hill.

I cast out my senses.

The fight was over, for the soldiers were methodically moving on foot, their horses tethered or picketed.

A point of white resided there as well, a living point of white, a chaos-wizard.

There was no point in trying to avoid the soldiers, not with more than a score of them plus a wizard who could track me. But I didn't like it. I had no desire to be any sort of hero. I just had less desire to be run down until I was too exhausted to fight. Besides, the soldiers couldn't fight what they couldn't see.

The wizard was another question.

Still…I looked behind me, as far as my senses would carry me.

I wished I hadn't.

Wheeee
…Gairloch tossed his head, as if in warning.

More than twoscore cavalry had passed over the Southbrook bridge and now trotted onward, less than two long hills behind. Behind them…much further behind, I could sense a rolling wave of chaos; and I couldn't tell for sure, but would have been willing to bet that it centered on a white-gold coach and Antonin. Where he had been when I disrupted the prefect's chaos-fountain, I didn't know, but he was definitely on my trail.

All of this had developed because I'd wanted to do something to repay Destrin for his support and to ensure a future for Deirdre. But given the results, and Justen's warnings, and Antonin's meddling in the war between Gallos and Kyphros…it wasn't as though I had much choice. Someone thought there was a real wizard loose, and all my actions had pointed to me—and I scarcely knew what I was doing.

So they wanted me, whatever the cost. All too predictable.

I glanced back over my shoulder.

Wheeee…uhhhh…wheeee
.

Gairloch's protest jerked my head back toward the crest of the hill before us.

Right-handed, I chucked the reins. “Come on, old fellow. We can't exactly turn back.”

Whheee
.

“No, we can't. The prefect might let you haul baggage carts, but I'd end up at the festivities in his central square. The central attraction, you might say.” I extended my left hand toward the staff, still safe and waiting in the saddle holder. “Oooo…” The subjective heat flashed to my fingers even before they reached the black lorken of my staff.

Something was definitely waiting over the crest of the trail, where those soldiers and their attendant wizard waited.

I shrugged. What choice did I have? A few worn-out soldiers and a less capable wizard ahead, or fresh troops and Antonin behind?

The choice was clear enough. I just didn't like either alternative.

I wiped my forehead, even though I knew neither the sun's heat nor glare had reached through my shield.

Wheeee…eee
…

“I know. There are evil types behind us and worse in front of us. But you're going to have to give up the idea of hauling baggage for the prefect.”

Again, I tried to sense what lay over the hillcrest before me, whatever it was that Gairloch disliked. All I could feel was a sense of heat, of the fire that was the chaos trademark.