"The Warrior's Bond" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKenna Juliet E.)

The D’Olbriot Residence Gatehouse, Summer Solstice Festival, Second Day, Evening

Temar drummed impatient fingers against the scabbard of his sword.

“So where’s Ryshad?” Allin asked from the concealing shadow of the hedge.

“I certainly expected him to be back by now.” Having to concede Ryshad wasn’t with the latest flurry of arrivals at the gate, he took a pace back.

Allin hunched her shoulders inside a light cloak. “Perhaps we should just forget it.”

“You wanted to go,” said Temar firmly. “It may be nothing, true enough, but if it is something I will have that something to show for today.”

“But can we go without Ryshad?” enquired Allin meekly. “It’s not too far. I’ve directions if you’re able to walk.”

Temar looked at her with some indignation. “My lady mage, I could walk from the springs to the sea inside a chime when I was last in Toremal. Granted, though, half this city was fields back then.”

“But you were wounded,” faltered Allin.

“I am fully recovered, and I am certainly not one of these lately come Esquires who cannot walk the length of a street lest they muddy their shoes.” Temar resolutely ignored the tender pull of the scar on his back and the ache lurking behind his eyes. “All we need is some means of getting out of here unremarked. We can hardly keep this little adventure quiet if we call up a carriage to take us, and the gate ward this afternoon said he’d orders not to let me leave unaccompanied.”

“Unseen?” Allin bit her lip nervously. “I could do that.”

“You know a back gate?” Temar turned to look back past the shadowy bulk of the residence towards the stables.

“No, but I could hide you?” Allin offered.

Temar looked at her. “With your magecraft, you mean?”

“Velindre’s been telling me I need to learn to take some initiative.” The quaver in Allin’s voice rather gainsaid her bold words.

“Is it safe?” Temar shook his head. “Forgive me, I do not mean to insult you.” He resolutely thrust away the freezing fear of submitting to any form of enchantment.

“I wouldn’t dream of trying if it wasn’t,” said Allin hastily.

They stood, hedged round with silence, faint noises from gatehouse and residence floating past on the cooling evening air.

“By all means weave your magic,” Temar said abruptly. He took a deep breath as Allin closed her soft hands tight around a faint spark of unearthly blue light, an expression of utmost concentration dignifying her round face.

Magecraft is a practical art, Temar reminded himself, well-understood means of manipulating the stuff of creation that generations of wizards have studied and codified. Casuel had told him all about it. Temar didn’t have to understand, it was sufficient that these wizards did. It’s not Artifice, he thought, gritting his teeth. It’s no enchantment wrought inside a man’s head and working its will, holding him helpless to resist.

“There,” Allin breathed.

Temar opened his eyes. “Everything looks much the same,” he said for want of anything better.

“What about your hands?” giggled Allin.

Temar raised one, seeing only a dim outline of his fingers. He looked down and the rest of his body was no more than a faint suggestion in the gathering dusk. Gripping his sword hilt hastily, he was relieved to feel that as hard and reassuring as ever. He realised Allin was looking him straight in the eye. “You can see me thus?” He’d be hard pressed to sneak through the gatehouse if he were no more than an Eldritch-man’s shade.

“You look like a shadow to me, and to any other mage, I’m afraid, but no one not mage-born will see anything.” Allin looked a little downcast. “It’s the best I can do.”

Temar nodded decisively. “It is a marvel, my lady wizard.”

Allin ducked her head to hide a pleased smile. “Stay close behind me, and hope we don’t run into Casuel.”

Temar laughed. “He went out to invite himself to some gathering of mages. It is wherever Velindre is going, I believe.”

“Be quiet,” Allin hushed him as they stepped out on to the empty sweep in front of the gatehouse.

Temar chewed at the inside of his cheek, carefully matching his steps to Allin’s, especially when they reached flagstones where his hard boots could make far more noise than her soft shoes.

“Good evening, my lady,” called the Sergeant reading his broadsheet in the lodge.

Startled, Allin stopped. Temar promptly bumped into her. Allin managed to stifle her exclamation, but as she moved her cloak pulled her up short. Temar realised he was standing on the hem and hastily lifted his foot.

“Fair Festival, my lady,” said one of the recognised men guarding the postern. Temar found his sly suggestiveness faintly offensive.

Allin nodded curtly to the two youths. Temar pressed close to her, holding his breath and keeping arms and elbows close, lest he nudge someone.

As he stepped through the postern his sword caught against the wood and dragged round. Balancing it on his hip took Temar a moment and he caught a brief exchange on the inside of the door.

“Been visiting the young D’Alsennin, hasn’t she?”

“What’s he see in that dumpling? He’s got his pick of the Demoiselles.”

“To marry maybe, but what about a little Festival jig? I’ll bet a wizard wouldn’t have cold hands for your fiddlestick.”

Temar strode hastily after Allin, feeling his cheeks burning with a colour every bit as fiery as her habitual blush.

She had halted to look vaguely at a gig trotting round a distant corner. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

“Quite, yes.” Temar gratefully realised the invisibility hid his embarrassment.

“You’d better stay behind me,” she murmured as she walked slowly down the long slope towards the conduit house.

Temar did as he was bid, careful he didn’t step on Allin’s cloak again. At least there were precious few people out walking and those mostly looked to be liveried servants intent on their own tasks. The last daylight was fading now, and the dusk beneath the shade trees made Temar’s feet even more indistinct to his straining eyes. He stopped, rubbing his eyes, taking a deep breath then hurrying after Allin.

Turning at the conduit house, she headed north and west along the circular road. Coaches swept past them, but hardly anyone else was on foot. Allin strode on, ignoring superior glances from passing carriages until she finally turned down into a busy thoroughfare. The air was cooling now but the stone buildings all around were casting the remembered heat of the day back into the night sky along with the exuberant clamour of the crowd.

Temar had to press close behind Allin, their progress increasingly awkward, Temar looking up and down at every other step, searching for his feet no darker than wisps of smoke. The lesser moon rose over the rooftops, golden circle all but full and unchallenged by the merest arc raised by her greater sister. But Temar had no time for such fancies as the moonlight cast queasy shadows through the hazy darkness that was all he could see of himself. Something in the back of his mind was protesting ever louder that what his eyes were telling him couldn’t possibly be the truth.

He caught Allin’s elbow, steering her irresistibly into a noisome alley. “You have to undo the magic, else I will be sick.” He swallowed hard on nausea thickening his throat.

Allin immediately spread her hands in a decisive gesture. Sapphire light came and went at the edge of Temar’s vision like a jewelled memory of the day and he could see his hands again. “My thanks,” he said with heartfelt sincerity.

“If you’re done, move on, will you?” A man about Temar’s age shifted impatiently from one foot to the other at the entrance to the alley, a slightly older woman on his arm, eyes cynical in her painted face.

“Did they see anything?” whispered Allin.

“There’s nothing I’ve not seen, blossom,” said the woman with a coarse chuckle.

Temar drew a mortified breath, uncertain how to respond. Allin giggled and slid her arm inside his. “We’re nearly there.”

As the road forked either side of an ancient shrine, Allin led Temar up an avenue of lime trees spreading a moist green scent. Mismatched buildings jostled a run of tall, narrow houses with proudly precise gables looking down on the six-sided chimneys of lower dwellings with narrow leaded windows and uneven rooflines.

“It should be down there,” said Allin uncertainly. Bright lights beckoned at the bottom of a small entry, too short to be a street, too wide to be an alley. Lively chatter lilting with unmistakably Lescari accents echoed from an open window.

“Yes, look.” Allin pointed with relief at the great half-circle lock hanging from a sturdy chain above the door. It was all that distinguished the building from its neighbours, each with irregular windows beneath a dishevelled roof of stone slates, oaken beams set for no readily apparent reason in walls crumbling with age and inattention.

Temar drew his arm close to his side to shield Allin with his greater height. “I have not spent any great time in taverns,” he said cautiously. Not this side of the ocean, not since waking from enchantment, he amended silently to himself. Riotous evenings carousing with Vahil so long ago, not a care between them, counted for nothing now.

But they’d never have come to such a sober house, little changed from the dwelling it had once been. Two casks of ale were set on trestles in a parlour furnished with cast-offs from people who could have had precious little to start with. There were no potmen or maids that Temar could see, just an unhurried matron filling a steady flow of jugs brought by men and women in sombre, well-worn clothes who either sat near by or disappeared into the back of the building.

Four newcomers pressed past Temar and Allin as they hesitated on the threshold. Greeting the mistress of the house in Toremal-accented Lescari, two lads took tankards from a rack beside one door for their ale while the others helped themselves to glasses and a flat-bottomed greenish bottle, dropping silver and copper coin into an open box. A crone sewing a slow seam by the table nodded, her smile shrunken around toothless gums.

“Can I help you?” The woman drawing the ale looked over at Allin, polite but cool. Her clipped words carried echoes of the mercenaries Temar knew in Kel Ar’Ayen.

Allin fumbled beneath her cloak for the handbill. “I was looking for Mistress Maedura?” Her own accent was stronger than Temar had ever heard it.

The woman nodded, indifferent. “Out the back.”

Allin smiled uncertainly. “May we see her?”

The woman glanced, incurious, at Temar. “Please yourself, lass.”

“Come on,” he encouraged Allin, doing his best to sound like the Lescari mercenaries he knew back home. Digging a few coins from the purse tied to his belt, he pointed at a bottle of wine inky dark inside emerald glass. “How much?”

The old woman chuckled, revealing a baby pink tongue, and said something Temar didn’t understand. Allin held out some silver of her own, talking hastily in Lescari.

“She says we should wait our turn through here,” she said tightly to Temar.

He picked up a bottle and two thick glasses with uneven rims. “What did I do?” He was used to struggling with the indecipherable mysteries of female disapproval from Guinalle and Avila, but had thought he’d made a fresh start with Allin.

“Tried to pay her about ten times what that wine’s worth.” A faint smile was tugging at the corners of Allin’s mouth. “I said you thought she was taking money for the seer.”

People were waiting on chairs beneath an unshuttered window and by a door opening on to a small yard. A second door, cut through the wall to give access to some afterthought of an outbuilding, was firmly closed, though faint sounds of conversation filtered through to the expectant room. Everyone looked at Allin and Temar, some curious, a few defensive, but all with unspoken determination to protect their place in the line.

“We have some time in hand.” Temar rattled the coins in his hand absently.

“Don’t do that,” Allin reproved him. “Hasn’t anyone told you what an Empire Crown buys?” She moved two rickety chairs to a small table with a dull, much wiped surface.

“No.” Temar looked at the thick white-gold coin. “Camarl only gave me a purse today. I remembered what that handbill says, so I asked.”

“Did he ask why you wanted it?” Allin looked like a child caught in mischief.

Temar grinned. “I said it was because Tor Kanselin’s surgeon said I probably only took that knife yesterday by way of payback for having nothing to steal.”

Allin frowned. “Don’t you use coin in Kellarin?”

“Odd copper and silver, but the mercenaries brought most of the coin, so it comes from all manner of places.” Temar set down the glasses and wondered how he was supposed to get the cork out of the bottle. “They only seem to use coin for gambling anyway. We mostly deal between ourselves by swapping work on a man’s barn for a share in his corn, half a sheep for a side of beef and suchlike.”

Allin took a small knife from her purse and chipped at the wax sealing the wine. “Camarl doubtless thinks an Old Empire Crown is a trivial enough sum, but round here three of those would feed a family for a week and leave table scraps to fatten the pig.” She worked the cork out of the bottle with the point of her knife. “Get Ryshad or someone to change those Crowns for some common coin if you don’t want everyone eyeing your purse.”

“How does common coin differ?” Temar took the bottle from Allin and poured them each a measure of wine.

“I’m not surprised they don’t want you going out on your own.” Allin narrowed her eyes. “Old Empire coin is noble coin, purer metal than anything minted these days, less of it to be had. Common coin is what we commoners use, what the various cities and powers mint for themselves.”

Temar fell silent for a moment. There was still so much he didn’t know, wasn’t there? “Why would Camarl give me Old Empire money?”

“I don’t suppose he thought you’d be spending it in places like this.” Allin was unconcerned. “And you’re a noble, aren’t you? If you can get it, it’s the best coin to carry.”

“Four copper pennies still make a bronze?” Temar looked for some reassurance. “Ten bronze pennies to a silver and four of those make a silver Mark?”

Allin shook her head. “No one’s used bronze pennies since the Chaos. Ten copper to a silver penny and when six silver Marks make a gold Crown that’s an end to it. Only the Old Empire used gold Marks.” She smiled but this time without humour. “Don’t take Lescari Marks off anyone. If any of the Dukes mint a coffer of coin, they add enough lead to roof a moot hall.”

She paused as a young woman carrying a baby on her hip came out of the far door, her expression half hopeful, half puzzled. The low murmur of conversation stopped and all eyes turned to the girl. The only one not looking was an old man in much mended homespun who hurried in, heavy boots clattering on the floorboards. The girl lifted her chin, hoisted the child more securely inside her shawl and strode out of the room.

“She looks as if she got something for her coin,” commented Temar in low tones.

“I don’t think she’s quite sure what she’s gained though.” Allin drank her wine. Silence hung heavy between them for quite some moments.

Temar rolled a sip round his mouth thoughtfully. “This is far from—”

A cry from the seer’s room silenced him, a hoarse sob hastily stifled. The old man came stumbling out, one shaking hand hiding his eyes, the other groping blindly in front of him. Four of those waiting jumped to their feet, a sturdy woman in serviceable maroon offering resolute comfort in fast, unintelligible words. A gaunt man with one empty sleeve to his coat reached his good arm round the old man’s shaking shoulders, while a pretty girl with haunted eyes supported an elderly female in rusty black, whose face had gone as white as her shabby lace cap. At brisk words from the stout woman, the family walked out with fragile dignity.

Everyone avoided everyone else’s eyes as an apprehensive youth walked slowly through the door.

“What are we going to say to this seer, whoever she is?” Allin turned beseeching eyes to Temar.

“Have you some question you already know the answer to?” asked Temar thoughtfully.

“I could ask about someone still alive.” Allin nodded reluctantly. “If she gets that right, I ask about someone I know to be dead?”

Temar looked at her in some concern. “Does this distress you?”

Allin looked down, her hands knotted in her lap. “We’d best find out, now we’ve come all this way.”

New arrivals prompted Allin to move hastily to one of the vacated seats, to claim their place in the queue. Temar grabbed the wine and moved after her. Hemmed in on either side, they exchanged silent glances over their glasses. The second chime of night was sounding by the time the portly man who’d been before them came back out, face dark with stubborn resentment.

Allin stood up, brushing decisively at her skirts. “Let’s see what’s to see.”

Clutching the wine bottle for lack of anywhere to put it, Temar followed the mage girl into a bare room. All they saw was an iron-bound chest set on an unwieldy table in the middle of a rug woven from strips of threadbare cloth, two females sitting on stools beyond it. Tallow candles in sconces lit damp stained walls, smoky flames briefly fluttering to add more soot to the dirty lath ceiling.

Allin said something courteous and the older woman stood up. Her white hair was all but invisible beneath a pale blue kerchief, and she wore a full, shapeless skirt and sleeveless bodice of the same material laced over a loose linen blouse. No one in Tormalin dressed like this though Temar had seen some of the mercenary women in Kel Ar’Ayen wearing such garb. Poldrion’s touch had whitened this woman’s hair unduly early, he decided. Her firm face suggested she was still in her middle years but the lines that furrowed her brow hinted those years had been hard.

“Mistress Maedura.” Allin gestured to Temar. “My companion, Natyr.”

“All who seek answers are welcome,” said the woman in passable Tormalin. Her shrewd eyes rather unexpectedly lacked the hard calculation Temar expected from a trickster. They were also the colour of a rain-washed sky and he realised how seldom he’d seen anyone with light eyes since arriving here.

“Your questions?” Mistress Maedura prompted.

“Of course,” said Allin nervously.

Temar looked at the younger woman sitting silent beside Mistress Maedura. She had the same pale eyes but hers were as empty as a summer noon, staring fixedly at the wall behind Temar. She was dressed in a soft green weave, skirt spotted with spilled food, and her sparse dull hair was cut short in a ragged crop. The laces of her bodice pulled unevenly over a mature figure yet her face had the unlined vacancy of a child.

“My daughter was caught between the realms of life as a babe,” said Maedura without emotion. “Lennarda’s mind wanders the shades, but from time to time she encounters those crossing the river with Poldrion. When Saedrin opens the door to admit them to the Otherworld, she glimpses what lies beyond and hears some small snatches of lost voices.” Despite her rehearsed words Temar nevertheless felt she genuinely believed what she said.

Maedura gave Allin a handful of three-sided bones and gestured her to the single stool facing the chest. “Set out your birth signs on the lid.” Allin fumbled through the bones, finally picking out three separate runes.

Temar took a step closer, recognising the Deer, the Broom and the Mountain. “You draw three separate bones?”

Allin shot him a piercing look of rebuke. “But your father would have insisted on the Tormalin way, wouldn’t he, just the one bone?” She turned to Maedura, speaking in rapid, offhand Lescari. Temar would have preferred to know what was being said about him but whatever yarn Allin was spinning, the suspicion flaring in Maedura’s eyes faded to an ever present watchfulness.

Allin turned to Temar again. “Your grandmother favoured the runes, didn’t she? She swore there was art to casting them.”

Temar nodded hastily. Holding his wine glass up to shield his mouth, he began whispering under his breath, reciting one of the few charms Guinalle had managed to drill into him. If Artifice was being worked here, it would echo in his hearing with unmistakable resonance. He forced himself to concentrate despite the faint dizziness aggravating his lurking headache, reluctantly realising he wasn’t as recovered as he’d boasted.

“Ask your question,” Maedura commanded.

“Where’s my cousin Chel?” Allin demanded abruptly. Temar could see the tips of her ears going scarlet.

Maedura took her daughter’s hands and laid them on the runes. Aversion flitted momentarily over Lennarda’s blank face then her shoulders sagged, head drooping to show a scabbed and sore scalp. Temar nearly lost the rhythm of the enchantment he was attempting as he realised someone had been pulling the girl’s hair out in handfuls.

“I see a river.” Lennarda sat bolt upright, startling Allin into a muted squeak. Temar’s fingers tightened on the neck of the bottle.

“I see a river curving over a plain.” The girl’s voice was deep, firm and assured. “A big river, wide-mouthed as it enters the sea. The water is brown, bringing goodness down from the high land. Then this will be fertile ground. There are marshes, saltings full of white birds. No birds I ever saw before, but we should try bringing down a few, to see if they make good eating. See, there is a fair landing yonder, open grass above the tide line. We can build a wharf along the bank. There is plenty of timber for shelter too, goodly stands of trees.”

Lennarda stopped dead, pulling away from the coffer and folding her arms awkwardly against her chest. She hunched over, rocking back and forth with incoherent whimpers.

Allin turned to Temar, her face an eloquent mix of embarrassment and disappointment. “Shall we go?”

“Your payment?” Mistress Maedura held her daughter’s hands down as they hooked into impotent claws.

“Your fee?” asked Allin icily. She stood and pulled her cape around her.

“Whatever you think the information is worth.” Maedura got to her feet as Lennarda subsided into her earlier vacant stillness.

“Not very much, to be truthful.” Allin drew a resolute breath.

“No, wait,” Temar broke in, blood pulsing behind his eyes. “Allin, ask again, about anyone.”

Allin looked doubtfully at him and Maedura laid a protective hand on her daughter’s uncaring shoulder. Temar held up one of the Tormalin Empire Crowns. “My payment in advance.”

“If this is your question, you must set out your runes,” said Maedura in some confusion.

“Here.” Temar pushed at the single bone bearing the Salmon, the Reed and the Sea. “I was born under the greater moon, does that make any difference?”

Maedura shook her head as she lifted her daughter’s hands with their chewed, split fingernails towards the rune and Temar hastily withdrew, flesh crawling at the thought of touching the unfortunate.

“I seek a little girl.” He coughed and forced his voice to stay level. “A little girl wearing a yellow dress with red flowers sewn around the hem. I do not know her name but she has an older brother and a sister. They all sleep together wrapped in a brown cloak.” His throat closed with emotion and he couldn’t say any more.

Lennarda’s low, unintelligible noises of distress were abruptly cut off as she slumped forward. Even forewarned, Temar still jumped as Lennarda suddenly reared up again. Allin clutched at his arm and he reached for her, grateful for her hand warming his fingers, which felt suddenly chilled to the bone.

“Where am I?” This time Lennarda’s voice was light and wondering. She looked around, hands held to her cheeks in a parody of childishness. “Where am I? It’s all dark. Where am I? Mama?”

As she lifted her eager, searching face to him, Temar felt his heart miss a beat. For an instant Lennarda’s empty eyes shone a vibrant grassy green in the candlelight. “Can you hear me? Mama? Is it all right now?”

After a moment of utter silence, Lennarda began an ugly keening, empty face crumpling, rocking backwards and forwards again but faster this time, with a growing violence. Her hands clawed and she began tearing at her own head.

“Hush, hush.” Maedura tried to gather her child in her arms, fending off the raking nails with difficulty.

“Let’s just go.” Allin tugged at Temar’s arm.

He resisted. “How many questions does that gold buy me?” he demanded roughly.

Maedura’s expression was a turmoil of desperation and self-loathing. “As many as you need to ask, what do you think? But only for tonight.”

“I will be outside,” said Temar with sudden decision. “When you are done with everyone else, we will speak further.” He pulled Allin out of the room so fast she nearly stumbled on top of him.

Ignoring the covert curiosity of the people waiting, Temar strode rapidly into the front room. “Do you have spirits? Strong liquor?” he asked the serving woman curtly.

“White brandy, if you have it,” Allin shoved Temar towards the inglenook by the fire. His knees gave out as he reached the low bench so he waited while Allin brought over a black bottle and two small glasses fetched from the cupboard behind the crone’s chair. She watched the pair of them with considerable interest in her watery old eyes.

“What was that all about?” demanded Allin, handing Temar as large a measure as she could safely pour. “Aetheric magic?”

Temar swallowed the colourless liquor in one breath, gasping as it jolted him out of the shock numbing his wits. “Not being worked in the room,” he said hoarsely. “Neither of them have any notion of enchantments.”

“That girl doesn’t look as if she’s a notion in her head,” commented Allin with pity, sipping cautiously.

“Not unless she catches some echo from some other mind;’ said Temar slowly.

Allin looked confused. “But she didn’t know anything about Chel. I know for a fact he’s alive and well and trading leather from Dalasor to Duryea. I had a letter from his mother at Equinox and you can’t get much further away from the sea than that.”

“What she saw was Kel Ar’Ayen.” Temar leaned forward intently.

“A big river, a wide empty plain? Couldn’t that be, oh, I don’t know, anywhere from Inglis to Bremilayne?” said Allin doubtfully. “And I suppose Chel might have gone travelling.”

“What she saw, what she thought, we all thought the same when we made landfall in Kel Ar’Ayen.” Temar laid his hand on Allin’s in unconscious emphasis. “I remember looking at that river, wondering if the land would be fertile, picking out the best place to build and noting timber we might build with. Believe me, Allin, for Saedrin’s sake!”

“Then how does that unfortunate know?” She extricated her hand, flexing her fingers with a slight grimace. “Could it be something to do with the runes? Isn’t Ryshad’s friend Livak looking for an aetheric tradition hidden in old rune lore in the Great Forest?”

Temar shook his head crossly, regretting it instantly as pain lanced through his temples. “No Artifice is being worked here. I can detect that much with the charms I know.” He looked up at Allin. “I would give all the gold Camarl can spare me to look inside that chest.”

“They’ve got an artefact?” Allin nodded slowly. “And that unfortunate child has somehow become linked with it, like Ryshad and your sword?”

“More than one,” said Temar with rising certainty. “That second voice, that was a girl I saw Guinalle lay beneath the enchantments. I saw the child’s green eyes, eyes from the northern hill country, I saw them reflected in the imbecile’s face.”

Allin frowned. “Where did that woman get a chest full of Kellarin artefacts?”

“Cannot such questions wait?” Temar demanded impatiently. “We must secure that chest!”

“How?” countered Allin. “Fraud or folly, that masquerade’s their only means of earning bread. The woman at least must know the coffer’s vital to the girl’s supposed powers. They’re hardly going to give it up to you.”

Temar chewed at his lower lip. “What if we offered her the weight of the chest in gold?”

A startled laugh escaped Allin. “Are you serious?”

“Entirely.” Temar kept his voice low, face grim. “I would pay that to bring only one back from enchantment. I would pay the same time and again to bring every single sleeper back to themselves.”

Allin sipped her brandy with a faint shudder. “So the rumours of Kellarin gold are true, are they?”

“For now, Camarl can advance me the coin,” Temar said with a confidence he didn’t entirely feel. “There are riches to be had over the ocean in time and we can repay him then. Perhaps I should pursue those claims the Relict Tor Bezaemar mentioned as well,” he added thoughtfully. “That would at least give me means to buy any other artefact we find.”

“First we have to look in that chest and make sure there are artefacts in it.” Allin shifted to look through to the back room and the outbuilding beyond. “Then we have to make some deal with the woman tonight. Otherwise she’ll take to her heels, coffer and all. I would like to know just how this business of linking to an artefact works.”

It was Temar’s turn to laugh. “Do you always have to have the answers?”

“First, I’m Lescari, and secondly, I’m a mage.” Allin smiled a little guiltily. “Both mean you never take a thing on trust. You ask all the questions you can think of and only go on when you’ve all the answers.”

Temar glanced into the far room still full with hopeful suppliants. “What’s it like, being mage-born? No wizard I have met will ever spare time to talk about it.”

“We’re not encouraged to, not once we’ve been to Hadrumal.” Allin coloured slightly. “I told you, there’s a lot of mistrust.”

Temar shook his head. “Granted, it is sorcery of some different nature, but I grew up with aetheric enchantments. All right,” he amended hastily, “perhaps not used every day, but everyone knew Artifice was there, for healing and truth-saying, for sending urgent word across the provinces. So what is it, Allin, to be mage-born?”

“Oh, I don’t know how to explain it.” She blushed pink. “Imagine oil spilled on water but you’re the only one who can see the rainbow when the light strikes it. Imagine hearing some counterpoint to music that everyone else is deaf to. You touch something and you can sense the element within it, like feeling the vibration in a table when a timepiece strikes the chimes. You can sense it, you can feel how it affects things around it. Then you realise you can change it, you can shade that rainbow to light or dark, you can mute that note or make it sound twice as loud.” Allin’s face was animated in a way Temar had never seen before.

The slam of the outer door shattered the calm of the room.

“Where’s this charlatan hiding out?” A thickset man in everyday Tormalin garb marched into the centre of the room. “Seer she calls herself? I’ll teach the bitch to take honest coin off a stupid girl!” He glared at everyone, sharp-featured and furious.

“Well? What’s the fakery?” A younger man, unmistakably slurring his words through drink came in to the tavern. He was dragging a struggling girl, fingers biting into her arm as he forced her along. A frown gave his angled black brows a predatory air.

“Let me go! It’s no business of yours!”

The second man gave the girl a vicious shake. “Shut your mouth, you stupid slut.” She tried to hang on to the doorjamb and he slapped her hand away with a brutal oath. More men crowded round the doorway, some intent and indignant, others brought along by casual malice or idle curiosity. Many still had wine flagons in their hands.

Temar realised the girl was the one they had seen earlier carrying a baby.

“Masters, this is a quiet house.” The woman minding the ale casks stood a prudent distance from the thickset man. “We want no trouble.”

“You get trouble when you let some trickster use your place,” spat the man, taking a step forward to shove the woman back with one broad, calloused hand. “Where’s this seer?”

“It’s an insult to all rational thinking,” piped up someone from the back of the crowd at the door. An ominous murmur of assent backed his spite.

“Superstition. Falsehoods. Preying on an idiot girl’s folly.” The man emphasised each assertion with another shove, backing the woman hard up against her ale casks. “Taking her coin and telling her to go off Saedrin knows where after some feckless Lescari tinker we thought we were rid of?”

“Well rid,” the younger man panted, still struggling with the girl, who was trying to kick him, her face contorted with tears. “Until her belly swelled. Got his irons hot in your hearth, didn’t he, you whore?”

“I loved him,” screamed the girl in hopeless rage.

As the man gave her another vicious shake, she stumbled over a chair. Stretching her free hand out to save herself, she encountered a jug of ale. In one swift move, she smashed it on her tormenter’s head.

The crash of breaking crockery acted like a war horn on the mob outside. Men surged through the door, shoving tables and chairs aside.

“You Lescari are all the same, cheats!”

“Never set to and earn honest coin if you can steal it!”

“Go swallow yourself, you dripping pizzle!” A man who’d been sitting quietly over his ale stood up. Others braced themselves, ready resentments rearing their heads.

“Rational men have a duty to combat pernicious superstition,” one voice from the back of the mob rose in a sanctimonious bleat.

“Rationalists are soft in the head,” an incensed Lescari voice called out to considerable agreement.

“Soft as shit and twice as nasty,” shouted someone from the back room.

The rapid accents of latterday Toremal and sharp Lescari lilts left Temar struggling to understand but the mood of mutual hostility needed no explanation. He realised Allin was clutching his arm, trembling with fear. With a spreading m#234;l#233;e at the outer door and indignant Lescari pushing through from the inner room, getting through the throng was going to be no easy task. Temar tucked Allin close behind him, keeping firm hold of her hand.

“Is there a way out through the yard, do you think?” she asked nervously.

Temar used elbows and boots to force a way into the back room, ignoring the protests of those few still seated. “There will be no more answers from the lady tonight,” he told them as he pushed Allin through into the outbuilding.

He looked at the door doubtfully. It wouldn’t take much to break down that single thickness of warped plank. The first sound of splintering furniture came from the front of the tavern, a startled yell and someone crying out in pain. Temar pulled the latchstring through, tying it as tight as he could.

“What’s going on?” Mistress Maedura was white and frightened but trying to calm Lennarda, who was rocking on her stool, moaning like an animal in pain.

“You saw some girl earlier, with a child,” Allin told her curtly. “Whatever you told her, it’s got her relatives all fired up.”

Maedura spread helpless hands. “It’s just what Lennarda sees and hears, echoes from the Otherworld.”

“You really do believe that, don’t you?” Temar paused on his way to look out of each window. Maedura stared at him in confusion.

“Never mind that,” Allin snapped, voice taut with anxiety. An outraged scream cut through the rising turmoil beyond the door and made Lennarda wail in confusion.

“We will help you leave here.” Temar strode to the door in the far corner of the room but opening it only revealed a large closet, two strides wide and less deep. His jaw dropped before the thud of something heavy against the painted planks of the door brought him swinging round. The noise outside sounded like a full-blown riot. Temar drew his sword, wondering what to do with growing unease.

Lennarda began shrieking, eyes wide and staring at the silvery steel. She backed into the corner, grabbing at her ragged hair.

“Put the blade away, you fool!” Maedura had tears on her cheeks. “She thinks you’re going to hurt her.”

“Into the closet, all of you—and that chest.” Allin ordered suddenly. She tried to lift the heavy coffer from the table.

Temar stepped forward to take the other rope handle. “Get her inside,” he yelled at Maedura, who was struggling with the frantic Lennarda. Once he had Allin and the chest inside he dragged the frenzied imbecile bodily towards the closet, Maedura following, nearly as hysterical as her daughter.

As the door to the outbuilding splintered and broke, Temar pushed the closet door shut, doing his best to brace himself against the frame. Barely a glimmer of light made its way through the cracks around the door and Temar felt the breath tightening in his chest. Was the darkness deepening, pressing in on him, threatening to steal away all sensation, as it had done before?

“You wanted us in here, Allin,” he panted. “Now what?”

“Now this.” She brought her hands together on a flash of incandescent scarlet that changed in a heartbeat to azure flame that danced around the four of them like a silken veil. Maedura’s mouth was a silent gape of terror but Lennarda’s pitiful cries stopped, to Temar’s inexpressible relief. The unfortunate girl put forward one bitten finger to touch the radiance but the teasing light retreated from her groping hand.

There was a crash as the table in the room outside was thrown over, stools clattering in its wake. “As quick as you can, Allin.” Temar struggled to hold the door closed as someone gave it an insistent shove.

Allin took a deep breath. The intensity of the blue light all around grew rapidly more intense, reflecting back from the whitewashed walls. Maedura and Lennarda faded into nothingness before Temar’s astounded eyes. Everything faded, vanishing into the brilliant flare of power. Heat enveloped him, the dry warmth of a furnace hearth. The light flashed incandescent and he had to shut his eyes but the radiance still beat against them, printing the pattern of the blood vessels against the back of his eyelids. His face began to sting under the searing ferocity of the heat and just as Temar thought he could not stand it an instant longer the light dimmed as suddenly as it had arisen. He shivered and coughed on an acrid smell of burned wool.

“What the—”

Temar opened his eyes as Ryshad remembered his manners and swallowed whatever barracks obscenity he’d nearly let slip.

“Hello, Ryshad.” Temar couldn’t help an idiotic grin. They were in the D’Olbriot library he realised, carried right into the heart of the residence by Allin’s magic. The chest was cooling gently beside his feet as it seared a black mark into the costly carpet. Ryshad sat at the table with the Sieur D’Olbriot, an array of papers in front of him, a penknife in one hand and a half-mended quill in the other. The Sieur was leaning back in his chair, his expression quizzical.

“My compliments, my lady mage!” Temar turned to Allin and swept a low bow, unable to stop himself laughing.

“What in the name of all that’s holy do you think you are doing, girl?” Casuel was standing on the far side of the mantel, a book open in his hands. His savage question overrode Allin’s nervous giggle and Temar saw all the delight in her achievement instantly wiped from her face.

“How dare you intrude like this—and how can you have been so stupid as to try such a translocation unsupervised?” Casuel strode forward. “Raeponin only knows what saved you from your folly. Planir will hear of this, my girl! This is the care Velindre takes of her pupils?”

Temar wanted quite simply to hit the wizard. “Allin has distinguished herself this evening by leading me to a vital collection of lost Kel Ar’Ayen artefacts.” Temar spared a breath for a fervent prayer to Saedrin that the chest did indeed contain something of real value. “Please do inform the Archmage of that, with my sincerest compliments.” At least he had the satisfaction of seeing his words strike the mage like blows. “When some mob of Rationalists attacked the place, she brought us all safely here.”

“May I ask who your companions are?” As Casuel subsided in confusion, the Sieur D’Olbriot sat forward, pushing a counting frame to one side, an inkstand to the other. Dolsan Kuse hovered at his elbow, clutching a roll of tape-tied parchments.

“My pardon, Messire.” Temar bowed low. “Forgive the intrusion; it was a matter of some urgency.”

“Doubtless,” said the Sieur drily. His faded eyes were shrewd in his plump face. “My lady mage, we meet again. An unexpected pleasure, in every sense.” Dapper despite his informal shirt and breeches, he smiled at Allin, who managed a curtsey of more elegance than Temar might have expected.

“You’re looking well, Messire,” she replied politely.

D’Olbriot ran a hand over his receding grey hair. “For a fat old man, my child.”

“Oh you’re hardly that, Messire,” fawned Casuel.

D’Olbriot ignored him. “And who are these other two?”

“Mistress Maedura and her daughter, a natural simpleton.” Temar shot a hasty glance over his shoulder but Lennarda seemed in some stupor within her mother’s protective embrace. Maedura was all but frozen with apprehension. “They had Kel Ar’Ayen artefacts in their possession, all unknowing,” Temar added hastily. “We had to rescue them, else they would have been beaten or worse.”

The Sieur D’Olbriot raised a hand. “Beyond question a complicated tale. Tell it tomorrow, D’Alsennin.” He snapped his fingers and Dolsan moved instantly to tug a bell pull hanging by the chimney breast. “Ryshad,” the Sieur continued. “See these women comfortably lodged and Temar may tell you his tale. Report to me before I retire.”

Ryshad was on his feet at once, shepherding them all towards the door. Maedura made a futile move towards the chest but Ryshad shook his head. “It’ll be safe enough there.”

Casuel touched a hand to it and hissed with surprised pain. “You really must work harder on controlling your elemental affinity,” he said spitefully to Allin, words indistinct as he sucked burned fingers. “There’s far too much fire in your working. Who’s been teaching you anyway? Velindre?”

“And Kalion,” retorted Allin with some spirit. “I’m sure the Hearth-Master will be delighted to hear your criticisms of his technique.”

“Enough.” Ryshad ushered them all into a small withdrawing room across the hall from the library, where a page was hastily lighting lamps. “The Sieur requests the Demoiselle Tor Arrial join us here,” he ordered the lad. “Now, Temar, explain yourself.”

“Allin and Velindre have come to the Festival to see what Toremal makes of magic’ Temar spoke rapidly, ignoring Casuel’s suspicious gaze. “They have been looking for hints of magic in any entertainment offered and Allin came across mention of this woman.” He indicated the still overawed Maedura. “She was claiming to have some means of contacting the Otherworld, getting word from the dead.” Temar hesitated. This was all starting to sound ridiculously implausible. “We wondered firstly if somehow it might be Artifice and I know you are interested in lost lore. Beyond that, if it proved true, I thought it might give us means to contact Vahil, Esquire Den Rannion that was.”

“I remember him,” Ryshad said softly, eyes dark in the golden lamplight.

Recalling how Ryshad had shared his life in dreams prompted by Artifice knocked Temar off his stride. “There was no enchantment,” he said simply. “But they have this chest and I’ll swear by Poldrion’s demons it has artefacts within it. The girl, the natural, hears echoes of the sleepers.”

“Where did you get the chest?” Ryshad demanded grimly.

Maedura clutched Lennarda to her. “A shrine to Maewelin, on an island in the Drax. The goddess looks kindly on the simple. They said it was a miracle, the priestesses, when my girl spoke. She’d never said a word before, not one.”

“And you repaid their kindness by stealing that coffer?” sneered Casuel.

“Mercenaries went raiding into Dalasor from Draximal,” Maedura said bitterly. “They sacked the shrine and everything for leagues around. Lennarda wouldn’t leave the chest, wouldn’t leave her voices, so I had to take it with me.”

“No one is calling you to answer for anything,” said Temar with a scowl at Casuel.

Maedura ignored him, her fear and fury fastening on Casuel. “You’d have had us stay to be raped and murdered? If the goddess chooses to speak through my poor child, who am I to deny her? Maewelin was a mother; she’d never grudge me earning coin to buy bread. We never took more than folk were willing to pay. We never feigned or deceived or—” She broke into dry, angry sobs that set Lennarda whimpering.

Temar looked helplessly at Ryshad, who clapped his hands together. “Cas, you see Allin home. Go on, lass, we’ll untangle this coil.” The swordsman gave Allin a kindly smile before turned a stern look on Casuel.

“Oh, very well.” The mage stalked crossly to the door. “We’ll call for a coach, shall we? A safer way to travel in your company, I think.”

Temar caught Allin’s arm as she meekly followed Casuel. “I am deep in your debt, my lady mage.”

She managed a faint smile before Casuel snapped an insistent summons over his shoulder.

Ryshad beckoned in two doubtful maids hovering outside in the hall. “See these two settled for the night in a garret room. They’re guests, but they’re not to leave the residence without my say-so, do you understand? Send word to Sergeant Stolley.”

“What’s all this?” Temar turned to see Avila rolling up the sleeves of her elegant gown as she appeared at the turn of the corridor. He raised his voice above the anguish of the two women now locked in desperate embrace. “They had artefacts—”

Avila snorted. “Some other time, my lad.” She laid a gentle hand on Maedura’s skewed kerchief. “Come with me. I can offer some respite from your grief.”

As Maedura looked up, wondering, Avila took Lennarda’s hand with irresistible gentleness. Gathering up the maids with an imperious glance, she led everyone out of the anteroom and Temar shut the door gratefully on the fading commotion.

“Remind me about that the next time I find Avila’s self-importance intolerable, will you?” he asked Ryshad lightly.

His high spirits sank beneath the stern look in Ryshad’s eyes. “If I even so much as suspect you’re thinking about going off on your own again, after something like this, I’ll chain you to your bedposts myself. Are we clear on that?”

Temar braced himself. “I wanted your help. I waited for you by the gates as late as I could. You did not return and this was too important to ignore.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Ryshad said bluntly. “Not then, when you’d no idea if this was all moonshine in a mustard pot.”

“It is the second day of Festival and I have achieved all but nothing,” Temar retorted. “I will try raking moonshine if there is any chance of finding gold. Anyway, I came to no harm.”

“Thanks to little Allin,” Ryshad pointed out.

Temar opened his mouth to deny this but thought better of it. “Thanks to Allin,” he agreed stiffly.

“I’d still rather you’d had a swordsman at your back.” A reluctant smile finally cracked Ryshad’s severity. “There’s no doubt you were born under the greater moon, my lad. Halcarion certainly polishes up your luck nice and bright.”

Temar grinned. “As the mercenaries keep saying, he who plays the longest odds wins most. Shall we take a look in that coffer?”

“We won’t disturb the Sieur, not if we don’t want to feel the sharp edge of his tongue,” said Ryshad with feeling. “We’ll have to make time in the morning, and that’s going to be plenty busy enough to satisfy you, believe me. Someone’s setting up D’Olbriot and D’Alsennin both for a whole new game, and if you’re not to lose your boots and breeches you need to know all the other moves played out today.”