Wild Magic (40 page)

Firming his resolve, he walked up the wooden steps to the stars-and-moon door and rapped softly in the old way they had once devised. At first there was silence: but it was the kind of silence which denoted that the occupant within was holding her breath and listening with absolute and anxious attention. ‘It’s me,’ he whispered loudly. ‘Virelai.’

There came a rustle of movement inside the wagon and then the door opened just a crack. Light shone on the eyeball gazing through the aperture. He saw the eye widen; and then, a second later, the door followed suit and Alisha Skylark, clad in a thin shift and a thick shawl stood there, her wild hair disarranged by unquiet sleep and her mouth hanging open in disbelief. She regained her composure quickly, even to the point of raking her hands through her unruly hair. Then she put an urgent finger to her lips, took Virelai by the arm and led him through the camp until they were well out of range of the other wagons.

They came to a halt beneath a stand of willows on the riverbank. Below them, the water rilled swiftly past on its endless journey to the sea.

‘I need your help,’ Virelai said, at the same time as Alisha asked: ‘Where have you been?’

They gazed at each other in some dismay, until at last Virelai repeated his request. ‘I am falling apart,’ he added.

‘Life has been hard on all of us,’ she answered automatically, but he shook his head.

‘No, no: look—’

The moon was full and its light reflected from the river’s surface, lightening the air between them. Virelai rolled up his sleeves, revealing the true horror within. Alisha gasped. ‘What disease is this?’ she asked, but he just shook his head miserably. For that question he had no answer.

‘It has been getting worse for some weeks now,’ was all he could think to say. ‘I fear there is some curse upon me.’ And then, for the first time, though they had been intimate so many times in other ways, he told her of Sanctuary and the Master and the geas that he suspected he had brought down upon himself.

Alisha listened throughout, frowning and nodding. She had always thought the pale woman was his sister; but the story he told was more strange by far. When he came to recount his current terrors, she blanched. ‘As if things were not already bad for my people, now you talk of demons?’

Virelai hung his head. ‘There is no one else I can turn to.’

‘And what about the cat?’

That gave him pause: he had never realised she understood the magical nature of the beast. After a while he said simply, ‘It hates me. I have used it too often against its will and now it withholds its magic from me. Indeed, I fear if I were to ask it to cough up a spell for the repair of my flesh, it would reverse it out of spite, and then where would I be?’ As a further thought struck him, he added: ‘In truth, it frightens me as much as any prospect of demons.’

Alisha raised her eyebrows. ‘Frightens you? A little creature like that?’

Virelai shuddered. ‘You have not seen it as I have seen it.’

A sudden image of the night-dark beast with the flaming mouth insinuated itself into a recess in the nomad-woman’s mind. It was as demonic an image as any she could conjure . . . But Bëte? It seemed just too unlikely. After all, they had travelled together for months on end: surely she would have discerned during that time if the cat hid within it the monstrous presence Falo had spied in the crystal. And Virelai had always been bad with animals: something about him set them off, made them nervous and skittish, and cats were notoriously neurotic creatures at the best of times. She shook her head minutely as if to dislodge the image. It was a gesture which reminded Virelai of her mother.

‘How is Fezack?’ he asked belatedly. ‘I see you have moved into the old wagon.’

‘My mother is dead,’ Alisha replied flatly.

‘Ah. I am sorry.’ Silence lumbered awkwardly about between them like some hulking, blind beast. As much to put an end to it as out of genuine interest, Virelai said, ‘And Falo?’

‘Well, and asleep,’ she answered shortly. ‘And I intend that he should stay that way. Wait for me here.’ And with that, she caught up the skirt of her shift and ran back towards the wagon, her calves and feet white against the dark grass.

A few moments later, she returned bearing a large and heavy object which she set down on the ground between them. Virelai shivered, recognising the great stone. It was a far more powerful crystal that his own: he knew its history.

‘Place your hands upon it,’ Alisha ordered. ‘Here, between mine.’ He did as he was told but minutes later the crystal still remained inert, devoid of reaction. The woman frowned. ‘Concentrate,’ she chided, but still there came no spark of life. Again she clicked her tongue, and with all his effort Virelai bent his will once more upon the crystal. As if the great stone had been sleeping, suddenly lights shot across its surface and its core became lit with inner fire. Weird lights played across their faces, illuminated the ground around them with purple and red, cyan and gold. When at last the nomad woman took her hands from the stone and sat back upon her heels, her face was stark with repressed emotion.

Virelai scanned her expression anxiously. He had seen nothing but coloured mists, as if the crystal deliberately held back its secrets from him. ‘What did you see?’ he demanded at last.

‘No demons,’ she said softly, and her face was full of fear and wonder. And maybe the slightest hint of disgust. ‘Poor Virelai. There are no demons. And no sign of any geas, either.’

This confused him greatly. If there were neither curse nor demons whence came this malady? He opened his mouth to ask just this, but she leaned across the great stone and, after a momentary hesitation, touched her fingers to his mouth.

‘You must go north,’ she said. ‘And take the cat with you. Only the Rose of the World can truly heal you.’

‘But she—’ he started in dismay. The Rosa Eldi was his nemesis; of that he was sure. If he had never spied her in Rahe’s chambers he would not have been tempted to drug the Master, nor to steal away from Sanctuary; he would have remained safe in that sorcerous haven, sheltered from this terrible, confusing world in which men schemed to do harm to one another, and in which his very fabric seemed unable to endure.

Then a new thought occurred to him: what if he were to take charge of the Rose of the World once more – steal her away from the northern king when his new masters made their attack upon his capital; and then (somehow) spirit her away her from the obsessive grasp of Lord Tycho Issian? What if he were to take her, and Bëte, and return them to Sanctuary, and there seek Rahe’s forgiveness, abjectly throw himself on the mage’s mercy? It was at this point that his imagination ceased to function: it was impossible to envisage what might happen then. The Master was not by nature a merciful man; but would he not be grateful for the safe return of his woman and his cat, if not his errant apprentice? It seemed the best plan he could conceive. The Rose would heal him, and with his renewed strength he would draw sufficient magic from the cat to enable them to slip unnoticed from the grasp of his tormentors. The order he had known all his life would be restored to the world; the damage he had done would be undone. All would be well.

He beamed at Alisha Skylark, who was watching him with intense curiosity. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I know now what I must do. I cannot imagine why I could not see it before.’ And then he turned to leave.

Just like that. Alisha stared at his back in disbelief. How like a man: to come to her full of doubts and fears and in need of reassurance, only to leap away again as soon as she had set matters to rights, with all his thoughts bent on a new course of action and no consideration of her at all. ‘Wait!’ she cried, caught between vexation and concern. ‘You will not get far without my aid.’

That made him turn. A deep furrow had appeared in the lily-white forehead. The sight of him so made her anger ebb away abruptly.
At least his face is unmarred
, she thought. Despite his oddness, he had always seemed quite beautiful to her: it was, she realised now, his very strangeness that drew her; he was unknowable, an unfathomable mystery; a man full of contradictions. A man who might do anything,
be
anything. And no wonder, having come from such strange beginnings . . .

With difficulty, she drew her eyes away from his piercing gaze. ‘Your skin,’ she reminded him, as if he could forget so fundamental a thing. ‘You will need some unguent for your skin.’

He smiled, and she remembered suddenly one bright morning when they had lain together as the sun slipped through the wagon’s shutters and turned those pale eyes a blazing gold and she had felt her belly flicker with desire and something akin to awe. A terrible sadness swept through her for what might have been, and she turned away, unable to bear the sight of him with all that brightness back in his face, his voice, burning away with new purpose.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I did not think.’

He watched Alisha disappear into the shadows of the wagon once more; heard the quiet chink of pots and glasses, the grinding of pestle against mortar, a tender reassurance to the stirring child. Then she came out to him again and with gentle fingers applied the paste she had made to his hands and forearms, where the damage was worst. As it always had, her touch rendered him speechless and languorous, so that his blood seemed to rush to the surface of his skin to meet her. When she stopped, he stood there for a moment, swaying like a man in a trance.

‘You are not a bad man, Virelai,’ she said softly. ‘Please remember that, when the world seems dark around you. What you are is not your fault; no matter how we come into this world, we all have choices as to how we make our lives. I saw no demons in the crystal: no demons, other than men themselves. You will have a great choice to make soon, Virelai, and upon it will rest all there is that is worth saving in the world. Go with love; and do your best.’

And then she pressed a heavy pot of the stuff she had made into his hand and slipped away from him, closing the door of the wagon with a firm click behind her. She stood there for several minutes with her back pressed against the cold wood and her heart hammering away like a wild thing, and listened to his footsteps retreating through the grass.

All the way back to the Eternal City, ducking automatically beneath low-hanging branches and oblivious to the sounds of the night-creatures his passage stirred, Virelai sat the ambling horse in silent speculation as to what on Elda Alisha Skylark might have meant by her curiously hieratic pronouncement. But even by the time the sun came up and he had stabled the animal and made his way without detection to the safety of his chamber, he was still unable to fathom the true significance of her words. But a plan was forming in his head: a plan which involved not only recapturing the Rose Eldi and returning her and the cat to their master; but also the boy called Saro, and the powerful stone he wore about his neck . . .

That very evening the Lord of Cantara came to his chambers. He burst in through the door without announcement, out of breath, and in uncharacteristic disarray for such a deeply fastidious man, let alone one who had just come from making his observances to the Goddess. Virelai could see the safflower stains on his hands, the tracks of orange pollen down the front of his robe, and something else, too; something darker and more obdurate in nature, for where the safflower marks were smeared, as by a hasty brushing of the hand, the other had taken a firm and steady hold of the fabric. It looked, to Virelai’s untrained but keen eye to be a significant spattering of blood.
Sacrifice
. Yet another, which surely made it three days in a row. Virelai knew about the cockerel and the lamb: he had had the onerous task of selecting and purchasing both poor creatures, then washing them with all the necessary preparations before they were taken into one of the contemplation gardens and given (usually loudly and against their will) to Falla by one of her grim-faced priests. Today, however, it looked as if the Lord of Cantara had made the killing himself rather than wait for the ministrations of a holy man. The sorcerer found himself wondering what unfortunate beast had had the pleasure of being sent to the Goddess by Tycho Issian’s hand, and shuddered. Truly, something must be afoot; and not just as indicated by the number of sacrifices: the Lord of Cantara had a loathing of grime, yet he had clearly not stopped to wash his hands, or to change his clothing. Moreover, his eyes were bulging, and so was the front of his robe.

All this Virelai observed in the few seconds it took his master to cross the chamber. He had learned to read Tycho Issian’s moods swiftly: it was a matter of self-preservation. The tented robe was a cause for some concern, though. It was not that Virelai objected to the idea of two men taking pleasure of one another – among the nomads such things were commonplace enough and seemed to do no harm – but the Lord of Cantara terrified him and he could not imagine there being any pleasure to be had from him at all. Reflexively, he stepped between the lord and the ornate desk on which the scrying-stone sat, safely sheathed beneath its dark shroud.

‘Show her to me!’

Tycho Issian’s voice was hoarse with urgency.

‘My lord—’

‘Show her to me, now! I must see her.’ The Lord of Cantara buried his hands in his hair, clutched his head as if in agony and began to pace the room. ‘I have never felt such fire for any woman— It’s true that females have always been a curse to me, with their provocative mouths and their lush bodies . . . but usually I worship the Goddess with them and then my desire is slaked, for a time. I’ve never wished for a woman I could not buy – even at great expense; but
she
– she is different . . . I can’t stop thinking about her. She is all I see all through the day; and at night she haunts my dreams. I smell her wherever I go, I hear her voice, even though I’ve never heard her speak— It’s beyond comprehension—’ He stopped suddenly and turned to stare at Virelai, his hands falling limply to his sides. ‘I think I’m going mad,’ he said in anguish.

Virelai did not know what to say. ‘Surely not, my lord,’ was all he could manage, though he knew in his own mind it was a lie. Mad, yes, and much more . . .