The Western Wizard (47 page)

“Doesn’t look like hair to me,” Garn stated the obvious, craning for a peek.

An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of Mitrian’s stomach. “Do you think he left us a message, knowing he would die?” The idea of a note from the grave made her excited and queasy at once.

Colbey shook his head. “He didn’t have time to write anything. At least not since before we left for the final battle.”

Shadimar unfolded the parchment.

“What’s it say?” Rache tried to read the words upside down in Shadimar’s grip.

“It says . . .” Shadimar read: “Why Nantel will let Rache choose his swords from this day forth.”

“What?” The words seemed wildly out of place, nothing distantly approaching anything Mitrian had expected.

Shadimar turned the parchment, orienting the letters in their proper direction for Mitrian. He passed the message to her.

Mitrian read, nodding to confirm Shadimar’s recitation. She recognized the handwriting at once. The elder Rache’s pen strokes had the same competent precision as his sword strokes. “Episte’s father wrote this. Decades ago, I’m sure.” Her face screwed into a knot of confusion. “Why would my father carry it?” She waved the page by one corner.

Episte pinched a loose edge, and took it from Mitrian’s hand. He studied the parchment, as if to glean some understanding from the handwriting, if not from the words.

Suddenly, Mitrian’s question no longer seemed apt. She wanted to describe the man behind the writing, to make Episte know the love and loyalty that would cause a leader to keep an ancient scrap of paper to remember a long dead captain. She wanted to describe the savage courage and beauty that had made Episte’s father attract followers and enemies like a flame draws moths. Yet, she knew that Episte had heard the descriptions and stories so many times before. She passed the medallion back to her son.

“How appropriate,” Colbey said softly. “A memory from both of your grandparents and from your guardian at once.”

Rache tugged at the parchment. Episte released it with obvious reluctance, his gaze rolling to the floor. He said nothing.

Rache refolded the parchment, replaced it into its compartment, then snapped the medallion shut. He studied his older, smaller “brother.” “I have my memories of my grandparents and the knowledge of a guardian hero in Valhalla. That’s more than enough.” Taking the medallion, he pressed it into Episte’s hand. “Brother, I think you should have this.”

Episte stared at the offering, palm open and fingers spread. He looked up, meeting Rache’s gaze. The two boys exchanged nervous smiles that had meaning only for siblings. “Thank you,” he said, at last, fingers closing over the medallion. His voice roughened, betraying impending tears. He turned away from the other Renshai.

Mitrian took a step forward to comfort the teen, then thought better of it. At sixteen, Episte would probably resent her intrusion. Alone, he could gain control of his tears more easily. Instead, she turned her attention to
another who had also said something that, she felt, needed supporting. “Colbey, you know that anywhere you go, the Renshai will come with you. And Garn, too, of course.”

Garn stood behind Mitrian, placing his hands on her hips to indicate that he agreed with her decision, though she had not consulted him.

Colbey tucked his hands behind his head, apparently too weak to sit up again. “Of course.”

Colbey’s matter-of-fact pronouncement struck Mitrian momentarily speechless. She had expected him to at least go through the polite motions of pretending the choice was hers, to acknowledge some sacrifice to her giving up what remained of the town in which she had been born and raised.

Colbey seized on Mitrian’s silence. “The Renshai need to find a place where we can live and practice without enemies to interfere. North and east would be best, I think.”

“North and east,” Garn repeated incredulously. “That’s toward the Northmen.”

“Only if we stay on this side of the Great Mountains.” Colbey made a looping gesture to indicate travel to the Western Plains, through the passes of the Great Frenum Mountains and into the Eastlands.

“The Eastlands?” Mitrian shivered, every racial memory coming to the forefront. Legends of the Great War, now over, had long preceded her birth. Since infancy, she had been taught to hate the evil Eastlanders, to understand that they might, one day, destroy the West. “We can’t go there.”

“Why not?”

Mitrian wondered whether Colbey had lost his faculties in the battle. “Because they’re evil. They’re the enemy. They’d kill us just for entering their part of the world.”

Colbey chuckled. “They wouldn’t be the first to find Renshai don’t die easily. Remember, they just lost a war, too. They’ve had more time to rebuild, but I can’t see them being eager to battle with anyone right now. So long as we put up a strong defense and make it obvious we’re not going to start anything, I think they’ll leave us
alone.” He pulled the blanket nearly to his chin. “Northmen, on the other hand, the Easterners won’t tolerate. I don’t think Valr Kirin or his charges would follow us there.”

“You’re a Northman,” Garn reminded. He glanced at the other Renshai. “Episte looks enough like his father to be a Northman, and I think Mitrian managed to give Rache every drop of Northern blood Santagithi had.”

Colbey did not budge. “Westerners come in a lot of different types. We don’t act like Northmen, and I’m the only one with an accent. I think the Easterners will know the difference.”

Garn remained relentlessly practical. “We don’t speak their language.”

“I speak enough to get by. And at least a few of them will know the Western trading tongue.”

Shadimar cleared his throat. “I speak Eastern. If the Renshai will have me, I’d like to accompany you.” His expression was even more serious than usual. “Colbey, I think I may take you up on your offer, after all.”

Colbey’s brows rose in question. When the Wizard did not clarify, the Renshai addressed the first request. “We’d be honored to have you.”

Shadimar ignored the compliment. “I have enemies, too. My presence may place you in grave danger. Any champion of mine will attract my enemies as well.”

Colbey laughed, a deep rumble of wry mirth. “Are you implying that we’re safe without you? Are your enemies worse than hundreds of Northern soldiers hunting Renshai or the warriors of every nation who consider us such a threat that they kill their own for speaking our name?”

Shadimar met Colbey’s gaze with a silent glare of fury. “Yes, they are. Will you still have me?”

Mitrian glanced back and forth, placing a hand on Garn’s arm. She felt certain that Colbey and Shadimar were discussing matters that went far beyond what she had heard. No matter Shadimar’s enemies, she felt safer with the Wizard.

Colbey did not consider for long. “The enemies of my brother are my enemies already. We’re more powerful together than apart.”

Garn fidgeted. Apparently having regained control of his emotions, Episte returned to Rache, placing a hand protectively on the younger boy’s shoulder.

“Very well,” Shadimar said. “I think we’re safe here. We’ll leave as soon as you feel well enough to travel.”

Episte placed the chain around his neck, and the medallion disappeared beneath his tunic.

Colbey closed his eyes, clearly worn out by the conversation. Shadimar herded Mitrian, Garn, Episte, and Rache from the room.

The Northern Sorceress, Trilless, sat cross-legged on the floor of her stone-walled cottage, a tattered, ancient book in her lap. The Northern Sea had splashed against the protective wall for centuries, gradually rounding the contour to the smoothness of a dolphin’s head. Waves crashed, roiling the waters of the fjords. Yet Trilless’ home had stood for centuries, protected from above by the ragged cliffs and from below by the water animals that were her minions.

Books littered the single table of Trilless’ library, many more scattered across the floor. Shelves rose from floor to ceiling along every wall, holding tomes that ranged in age from millennia to months, from the width of a finger to the breadth of all ten. The one in her lap made the next oldest volume seem infantile. It was as old as magic, written by the first Northern Wizard ten thousand years ago. The binding had hardened like stone, and the title had long ago worn away. Trilless scanned each page with an attention that stole meaning from time, place, and person. Sound turned to silence. Her vision ended at the edges of each page. Dry, airless pressure had kept the book intact, and the simple act of turning a page allowed it to crumble to powder. The strongest of her magics could not rescue the ancient leaves any more than she could retrieve a man from death.

Trilless finished scanning, pausing with a sigh. She guessed that the time she had sat reading and, from painful necessity, destroying the artifact could be measured in days. Still, she paused before touching, despising the feel of the first Northern Wizard’s written wisdom disintegrating between her fingers. For the thousandth time, Trilless reminded herself that her predecessors had transcribed
and updated this information through the millennia. Every word and reference in the ancient tome had become incorporated into another volume. Every word, except the words that Trilless sought, a prophecy spoken by the first Southern Wizard at a time when he was just learning to use his talent. Trilless’ discussion with the demon had raised a distant whisper of memory amid her collective consciousness, a glimmer of remembrance that involved the eighteenth Southern Wizard, Carcophan, and a pale champion of near infinite skill.

Trilless turned the page, her long, lean fingers touching lighter than a spider’s feet. The parchment sprinkled to oblivion. The uniform glow of her magic struck sparkles from the age-old dust that settled between wisps of hair on her arm. The Northern Sorceress closed her lids. The archaic language strained her eyes and her comprehension. Repeatedly, she called upon the oldest corners of her collective consciousness, finding it nearly as faded and tattered as the book. She had tried to consult the first Northern Wizard for the memory of those written words and the number of the page. Yet the seventeen Wizards who had reigned between them overpowered a granule of remembrance that had become all but obsolete.

Opening her eyes, Trilless found her gaze instantly riveted on a standard symbol in the center of the page, referring her to the bottom. A vague, foreign thought trickled through her, bringing the certainty that the information she sought was in a footnote, though not the one she had just uncovered. Hunger rumbled in her gut, and she set the book aside with a gentleness that saved every remaining page. Starvation could not kill her, but it could weaken her, and she had always thought Shadimar foolish for forgetting food for weeks at a time.
Right now, I can’t afford to become frail, even for a moment.
Again, doubts descended upon her, and she wondered whether she had made a mistake by bringing the White Sword of Power back into the world of mortals. For all his skill, Valr Kirin would need the Sword of Tranquillity to kill Colbey. Even that advantage might not prove enough.

Trilless rose. Once Carcophan knew the might of his soon-to-be champion, he would have to guess that the
Northern Sorceress would summon the Sword to oppose him. Surely, he would know that to call the Black Sword would be folly. The Gray Sword bothered her more. Although every predecessor seemed certain that it would take the combined efforts of the Eastern and Western Wizards to create, Trilless could find nothing definite to corroborate the fact. And vivid memories from the fifth Northern Wizard told her that the initial creation of a Sword of Power required only a well-forged blade and a handful of spells. As grueling and costly as those spells were, even Shadimar had enough competence to cast them.

Trilless put that thought from her mind. She had done as she had done. Her seeking magics had tracked Colbey to Shadimar’s ruins. There, her spell could not penetrate, nor was she rude enough to try to override another Wizard’s wards. Eventually, Colbey would leave; and, eventually, Valr Kirin would kill the Renshai. In the meantime, Trilless needed to find the first prophecy of the first Southern Wizard. Once she had the words and the certainty that came with them, she would warn Shadimar that he was harboring and protecting Carcophan’s champion.