The Western Wizard (33 page)

Episte fixed eyes as blue and deep as the Amirannak Sea on Colbey. “My mommy says that when I’m tired, I should rest. I’m just a little boy.”

Colbey felt a hot flush of fury, which he quickly controlled. “Your mother, gods love her, has never been in combat, and I hope she never is. If you learn to quit when you get tired, you will die when you get tired. You’re not a little boy; you’re a Renshai. Soon enough, you’ll become a man.”

Episte’s face screwed into an indignant knot.

Recognizing the first signs of a rising tantrum, Colbey distracted the boy. He whipped his left sword from its sheath, jabbing it so close to Episte’s side that it pressed his tunic against his skin.

Though the killing thrust would already have landed, Episte sprang backward, pulling his own weapon free. Colbey swept high, and Episte met the stroke with a block. Immediately, Colbey reversed the direction of his cut. The tip of his blade licked under Episte’s grip, catching one of the protrusions of the crossguard. He jerked back, sending the weapon spinning from the boy’s hand. Episte retreated defensively.

Colbey caught the hilt of Episte’s sword in midair. In the same motion, he tossed it back to its wielder. “Now—”

Episte caught the leather-wrapped hilt effortlessly. The instant his fingers curled around the grip, he charged his teacher in anger.

Pleased by his student’s sudden exuberance, Colbey laughed. He parried aside Episte’s sword. The commitment of the boy’s attack sent him skidding past his target. He spun, but not quickly enough. The flat of Colbey’s sword slapped his back twice before he came fully around.

Despite his attention to Episte, Colbey noted a movement at the corner of his vision. Shadimar stepped into the clearing, his long, lean form unmistakable.

Episte slashed, his strokes powerful. Temper stole precision from the techniques, and Colbey dodged the deadly cuts easily. He had taught his students to treat every spar with him as a real combat, trusting his own skill to keep any blade from landing. In fifty years, no student had so much as scratched him. “Hold.” Attention turned toward Shadimar, Colbey met Episte’s frantic upstroke. He parried it in a circle, stepping beneath the crossed blades.
Casually catching Episte’s hilt, he wrested it from the child’s hand.

Shadimar approached, Secodon padding silently through the clearing behind him.

“What can I do for you?” Annoyance colored Colbey’s politeness. Strangers observing a Renshai practice session disturbed him. Interrupting one verged on criminal.

Shadimar’s expression seemed even more serious than usual. “We need to talk.”

“Fine. I’ll see you tonight, after I’ve trained my students and finished my own practice.”

“We need to talk now.”

Colbey frowned. He would not have wasted a moment considering such a demand from anyone else.
Shadimar is my brother
, he reminded himself. “It can’t wait?”

Shadimar dodged the question. “I’m leaving for home immediately after our talk. I have research and work I need to do. The longer I wait to talk, the angrier I’ll get.”

Already prepared to give one student a lecture on controlling his temper, Colbey interrupted. “The angrier you get, the longer you’ll wait.”

“You
won’t
like facing an angry Wizard.” Shadimar’s quiet threat made it clear he would not banter words.

Colbey kept his irritation in check. He returned Episte’s sword, offering it hilt first.

Episte accepted the weapon, clutching it, waiting for Colbey to finish.

The elder Renshai sheathed his own blade. “Very well.” He called to Mitrian. “Show Episte
ulvstikk
, and keep him working until I get back.” He turned to Shadimar, his words meant more for the Eastern Wizard than for Mitrian. “This
won’t
take long.”

Without replying, Shadimar turned, headed into the woods and back toward town. Colbey trailed after, the wolf at his side. Secodon’s ears were swept back to his head, and his hackles spread stiffly. Apparently something had upset the wolf, or else it just echoed the Wizard’s mood.

Shadimar stopped at the edge of the woods. The sparser arrangement of trees allowed glimpses of cottages between
the trunks. Rain pounded through the thinner interlace of branches, soaking Wizard, wolf, and Renshai. Colbey’s tunic clung wetly to his skin.

Shadimar leaned against a trunk. His gray eyes studied Colbey coldly.

In no mood for another battle of words, Colbey went right to the point. “What can I do for you, Brother?”

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Annoyed by the vagueness of the statement, Colbey counted to three before replying. “I would venture to guess there are an unlimited number of things I’m not telling you. Could you be specific, please? I have better things to do than to try to guess your mind.” Colbey seriously considered invading the Eastern Wizard’s thoughts to save time, but he resisted the urge. Even aggravation could not drive him to mistreat a blood brother, and he had to guess that the Wizard would judge such an intrusion as an attack.

“You have mind powers.”

Colbey stared, not daring to believe the Wizard had dragged him away from a training session for such a thing. “I have mind powers,” he repeated. “Fine, I’ve told you. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“I shouldn’t have to ask.”

Colbey snorted. “Shadimar, there’re more than a few things you’ve never told me. Without knowing what you want from me, how can I guess which things to tell you?”

Shadimar’s voice rose nearly to a shout. “You had to know that a thing so powerful would be of importance to me!”

“No.” Colbey kept his tone paradoxically calm. “I don’t have to know anything. What’s important to you isn’t always what’s important to me. If it was, you would have asked me to detail sword maneuvers.” He added carefully, “Which I couldn’t, of course. Blood brother or not, you’re no Renshai. Now, what is it you want to know?”

Shadimar dropped his offended expression for one of eager interest. “Where did you get these powers? When did they start?”

“Childhood.” Colbey leaned against an elm. “It’s part of the Renshai training to learn to control the body with the mind.”

“But not to read minds.”

“True.”

“Yet you stole my words.”

Colbey had done this to people for so long he hated the need to explain it now. “I steal everyone’s words.”

“You do?” Shadimar seemed shocked.

“I do.”

“That makes no sense.”

The comment seemed even sillier than the previous one. “Which word didn’t you understand? ‘I’ or ‘do’?” Colbey glowered. “If you’re going to question my integrity, don’t bother to talk to me. There’s little honor more consistent or treasured than that of Renshai. How many races do you know who would rather face extinction than loss of principle? Even the Northmen who massacred the Renshai admitted that none ran from them. Not one Renshai wore armor or hid behind a shield of any kind. No Renshai hurled rocks, arrows, nor any other cowards’ weapons. No Renshai—”

“I’m not questioning your integrity!” Shadimar roared. Though not loud, the words carried a depth that silenced Colbey’s defense. “I’ve been a Cardinal Wizard for over two centuries, and I’ve read more history than men know exists. In all that time, I have never personally, or through reading, discovered any man nor even any Wizard who could read mortals’ minds.”

The revelation held Colbey quiet.

“Now can you understand when I say it makes no sense?”

Colbey nodded, too many questions occurring to him to ask them all at once. He cleared his throat. “I don’t know if this makes a difference, but I don’t actually read minds. More often, people’s thoughts come to me, and I speak them. Sometimes the meaning of the thought is obvious. Occasionally, it comes to me with enough emotion and detail that I can figure it out. Other times, the thought or emotion comes alone, and I don’t understand it.”

Shadimar’s brows dropped suddenly, turning his eyes into narrow slits. “So you can’t actually read minds?”

“‘Can’t’ may be too strong.”

“What do you mean?”

Colbey fidgeted, torn between his needs to work with the other Renshai and to understand his gift. “It just feels wrong invading other people’s minds, so I don’t do it.”

“Yet you have no compunction about speaking the thoughts that come to you.”

Colbey shrugged. It had taken him time to test and to believe that the thoughts had come from others, not from his own conjecture. By the time he had learned the truth, it seemed too late to concern himself with propriety. “I also have no compunction about guessing men’s moods from their faces, their next attack by shifts in position, or their intentions by the tone of their voices.” He shrugged again. “Anything that a man gives me to work with, I will. I draw the line when it comes to me consciously invading his privacy.”

Shadimar nodded, apparently accepting that explanation.

Colbey had to laugh. “When you have a talent that neither mortal nor Wizard has ever shared, you have to make up the rules.”

Secodon snuffled amongst the roots of an elm, and Shadimar leaned against the trunk. “Actually, there is one precedent.”

Colbey raised his brows.

“The Cardinal Wizards can communicate with one another through their minds.” Shadimar sighed deeply. “We rarely do, though. To do so uninvited would be like drawing your sword in another man’s house in the presence of his wife and children.”

Colbey winced at the analogy, even more certain of his decision to stay clear of friends’ thoughts whenever possible.

Shadimar laughed, the sound out of place in a conversation of consequence.

“What’s so funny?”

“I think I finally figured out how you’ve been beating Santagithi at chess.”

Colbey laughed, too. “I’ve never met anyone who could put a full war strategy into one or two sentences before. He’s good. The Renshai were never much for strategy, but I’ve learned a lot just being around Santagithi for a few years.”

“Now you know why the larger Western kingdoms deferred to his judgment in the Great War. And why a tiny town has managed to survive for so long so near the Northlands.”

Something in Shadimar’s voice cued Colbey to a deeper issue hidden beneath the statement, but he did not pry. “Are we finished?”

“No.” Shadimar’s features again grew somber, and the wolf abandoned his search to stand at his master’s side. “I need to understand just how much magic you know.”

“Magic?” Colbey shook his head. “Less than none. Unless you count the mind thing.”

“Concentrate.” Shadimar raised his arms, chanting strange, harsh syllables in a language Colbey did not recognize. He lowered his right arm, extending his hand toward Colbey. A flame danced on his palm, tiny and insignificant.

Colbey blinked, certain he witnessed an illusion of sunlight. Raindrops sprinkled to the Wizard’s fingers, but they had no effect on the wisp of fire.

Shadimar stopped speaking suddenly, eyes eager, left hand still hovering above his head. The flame sputtered. “Colbey, try to finish the incantation.”

Colbey obediently searched his mind for a thread of knowledge. He discovered nothing but his own neatly filed memories of thrust, parry, and dodge, the mental strength to convert idea instantly into movement, and the control of personal thought and action. Opening his eyes, he shook his head.

The flame shrank nearly to nothing. “Quickly, now,” Shadimar said.

Again, Colbey tried to find a hint of the arcane tongue Shadimar had used to create the flame. Nothing came. Wishing to please his blood brother, Colbey tried to keep the flame aloft by directing his concentration on it.

The fire winked out.

Shadimar lowered both hands. “Nothing?”

“Not a whisper.” Despite his hurry, Colbey could not help asking. “Do you think that mind thing of mine is magic? Is that why you believe I know more?”

Shadimar shook his head in a bobbing, half-committed manner, as if to indicate that Colbey’s guess was only part of the explanation. Apparently, he also took the blood brotherhood seriously, because he explained rather than dodging the situation with his usual self-absorption. “This may sound impossible to you, even crazy. But, for a time, I actually wondered if you might not already be the Western Wizard.”

“What?” The question was startled from Colbey. “That’s absurd.”

“Not really. I considered you as a possible replacement for Tokar. Why shouldn’t I wonder if he had the same thought?”

“I’m no Wizard. I have no interest in becoming a Wizard. And, had Tokar asked, I would have refused.”

Shadimar accepted Colbey’s insistence, but he did not drop the thought. “You have to admit, there’s evidence for the assumption. Tokar asked, nay practically forced, you to come to his ceremony of passage. He talked about making a significant decision that he should have already made.” Shadimar flipped both palms up in a gesture that implied an obvious conclusion. “The choosing of his successor. Haim. An apprentice who always seemed a weak and poor choice to us all. Tokar giving each of you a chance to answer a significant question, the one about decision-making, fairly clinches it.”

Even Colbey could not help considering the possibility. “But could he make me into a Wizard against my will? Without even asking?”

“I don’t know,” Shadimar admitted. “I’d tend to doubt it. I’ve never heard of such a thing. From all recorded history, it’s never happened before.” Shadimar threw up his hands. “And why should it? Why would a Wizard train an apprentice for decades, only to take another successor at the last moment?”

“Because,” Colbey said, trying not to sound too immodest, “he found a better replacement, worth the risks.” He thought of combats in which he planned a
specific maneuver to use against an enemy’s known weakness, only to discover a better killing stroke during the actual battle.

Shadimar frowned dubiously. “That’s not the nature of Wizards. Still, it no longer matters. If you were the Western Wizard, you would have been able to finish that incantation.”

“Magic comes naturally to Wizards?”