The Silver Mage

‘As you wish, Master,’ Paraberiel said.

‘I won’t lie to you all,’ Jantalaber continued. ‘Things are looking very grim. Apparently the Meradan have wits, after all. They’ve simply bypassed Ranadar’s realm and are striking at the heart of the Seven Princedoms.’

Nalla’s face turned white, and she caught the edge of the table so hard that the blood drained from her knuckles as well. Hwilli laid a gentle hand on her friend’s arm.

‘The prince is beginning to think that the best we can hope for is to fall back to Rinbaladelen eventually,’ Jantalaber continued speaking, ‘and help defend the city, but no one’s ready for that move yet. Still, who knows? With luck and the favour of the gods, I may see you all again in Rinbaladelan one fine day.’

No one spoke. Only a few of the apprentices so much as moved in their chairs or glanced around. Hwilli felt as if a north wind had swept into the refectory and laid a coating of dirty grey frost over everything in it.

When they finished eating, Hwilli helped Nalla fold her clothing and place it into two leather sacks for the travel ahead. Her few other possessions – combs, a silver brooch, a pair of blue ribands – Nalla tucked into a small pouch that she’d carry on her belt. Neither of them spoke until they’d finished.

‘Hwilli, this is horrible,’ Nalla said. ‘The prince believes he’ll lose the war, doesn’t he?’

Hwilli tried to speak, but tears clogged her voice.

‘You see it, too,’ Nalla continued. ‘And your family – ai! they live outside the walls.’

The tears spilled and ran. Nalla threw her arms around Hwilli and held her, just for a moment, before drawing back. Hwilli tried to speak, then hurried to the door before she wept again.

‘I’ll pray I see you in the spring,’ Nalla called after her. Hwilli ran down the corridor and took refuge in her chamber. The last of the sunlight gleamed through the window, a distant gold. She flung herself onto her bed and fought down her tears. This is no time for weeping, she told herself. We all have to be strong. Perhaps if she pleaded with Master Jantalaber, he could convince the prince to allow her mother to come into the relative safety of the fortress. Perhaps.

‘Beloved?’ Rhodorix opened the door and stepped into the chamber. ‘Have you heard the news?’

‘That the healers are leaving?’ Hwilli sat up and turned on the bed to sit facing him.

‘Not just the healers.’ He paused to shut the door. ‘The prince is sending all the farm folk with them. The Vale of Roses isn’t a safe haven anymore, the captain told me. Tomorrow our warband’s going to strip every bit of food they don’t need for the journey south.’

‘I hadn’t heard that.’ How like a man of the People, even Master Jantalaber, to forget to tell me! What does he care about the slaves outside?

Rhodorix sat down next to her and caught her hand between both of his. ‘Do your bloodkin still live out there?’ he said.

‘Only my mother. She’ll be safe, then, for a little while. Well, if she doesn’t starve at the gates of Rinbaladelan, anyway.’

‘The prince won’t let his people starve.’

‘Our prince wouldn’t, true. I know naught about the prince of Rinbaladelan.’

Rhodorix started to speak, sighed instead, and drew her into his arms. His love-making gave her more comfort than any words could have done.

In a grey dawn turned cold by a drizzle of rain, the healers led out their expedition from the fortress. Hwilli walked with them down to the valley, where the farm folk waited for them in a mob of weeping humans, bleating goats, and lowing cattle. The farmers pushed wheelbarrows and handcarts laden with pitifully small bundles of household goods. Hwilli worked her way through until she found her mother, Gertha, a big-boned woman who wore her long grey hair bound back into a single braid. In one hand she held the halter ropes of two milk goats, who were complaining softly and rubbing up against their human’s hips.

‘Mama!’ Hwilli threw an arm around her shoulders. ‘I’ve brought you a cloak and some extra food.’

‘Well, thank you.’ Gertha’s smile displayed the few brown cracked teeth left to her. ‘I was thinking I was going to have a cold walk of it.’

Hwilli laid the cloth-wrapped bundle of bread at her mother’s feet, shoved a curious goat away with one foot, then took off her cloak and placed it around her mother’s shoulders. She pinned it at the neck with a bronze pin. She’d considered giving her the golden bird brooch, but she knew that someone would only steal it along the way if she did. Gertha stroked the cloak with her free hand.

‘Very nice wool,’ she said, ‘but don’t you need it?’

‘No. Master Jantalaber will give me another one.’ She picked up the bundle again and handed it over. ‘Bread and cheese. Eat it first, before the overseers take it.’

‘I will. It’s kind of you to remember me. I wondered if you did, up there in the palace and all.’

‘Mama, how could I ever forget you?’

Sudden tears ran down Gertha’s face. Hwilli hugged her again and wept with her. The horse soldiers were riding up and down the line, yelling at everyone to get ready to move. Whips cracked, the horses tossed their heads and snorted. Hwilli gave her mother one last embrace, then turned away, half-blind with tears. She worked her way free of the mob just as the villagers began to walk away. Some turned for a last look at Reaching Mountain, the huge slabs of rock that had loomed over them every summer of their lives. Most concentrated on pushing their belongings ahead of them down the rocky path.

Hwilli stood on the first terrace and watched until the last figure, the last wisp of dust, had faded from sight. By the time she returned to the fortress, she’d managed to stop weeping.

A few nights after the refugees had started their trek to Rinbaladelan, the first snow fell, but it stayed up high on the mountains. The fortress itself received an icy rain that froze only in the deepest shadows. As soon as the sun climbed half-way to zenith, the frost melted again, but winter had arrived in a swirl of north wind as cruel as thrown knives. Hwilli worried about her mother and Nalla incessantly. Not even Rhodorix could lift her spirits.

‘I feel an evil wyrd coming,’ Hwilli told him one night. ‘I don’t know what, but I can feel it deep in my heart.’

He said nothing, merely stroked her hair, twining it lightly around his fingers, then releasing it.

‘Do you feel it, too?’ Hwilli said.

‘I don’t.’ He smiled at her. ‘In the spring, now, when the Meradan are on the move again, then mayhap I will. But we’ll have a winter here first.’

For his sake she voiced nothing and let his kisses distract her. The spring will come too soon, she thought. Far far too soon.

With Nalla gone, Master Jantalaber took over the task of teaching Hwilli her first lessons in dweomercraft, which amounted to her learning proper words and definitions. The universe, it turned out, encompassed far more than the world Hwilli had always seen, and each of these worlds contained their own proper order of beings and creatures. At times, the lesson over, Jantalaber would talk of his dream of building a place of healing as well, particularly when Paraberiel joined them.

‘I’d thought of building it of stone in the usual way,’ Jantalaber said one evening. ‘Down by the Lake of the Leaping Trout, I thought.’

‘That’s a lovely place,’ Paraberiel put in. ‘Very restful, if someone was ill.’

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