The Silver Mage

‘Meditate on that,’ Nalla told her. ‘The teachers say that it’s the key to everything. I don’t know why, because I’m not advanced enough.’

‘You mean you’ve not worked hard enough,’ Jantalaber said, grinning. ‘Follow your own advice, Nalla.’

Nalla blushed, but she managed to smile.

For the rest of that day, Hwilli felt as if she were floating through her usual work and study. The door to the treasure chamber had swung open, a door that she’d been sure would always remain shut and locked. When she went to Gerontos and Rhodorix’s chamber to examine her patient, her splendid mood withstood Gerontos’s own foul temper. That evening he did little but complain into the black crystal. The leg ached, when could he walk on it, he hated lying still all day, the cast smelled bad and itched him, on and on until she was tempted to drug him into silence.

‘If you’re patient now,’ she said instead, ‘you’ll heal properly. If you refuse to lie still for a few more days, the leg will be twisted and strange. Which do you want?’

Gerontos set the crystal down, then crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her. Rhodorix got up from his seat by the window and walked over to pick up the black pyramid.

‘There’s a third choice,’ he said, grinning. ‘Your older brother can tie you down to the bed so tightly that you can’t move until the cursed leg heals.’

Gerontos said something that made Rhodorix laugh. ‘Just try,’ he answered. ‘Not that you could right now, anyway.’

Gerontos said something else in a less angry tone of voice.

‘That’s better,’ Rhodorix said. ‘He tells me that he’s sorry if he offended you. Offending me is somewhat else again, but I can’t begrudge it to him.’

‘Just so. Please tell him that he really will get better if he lets the leg heal in its own time.’

Rhodorix repeated what she’d told him. With a sigh Gerontos nodded his agreement. Hwilli gave him his carefully measured dose of the opium tincture, then packed up her supplies.

‘I’ll carry those back for you,’ Rhodorix said, ‘if I may.’

She hesitated, but the night had turned late enough that Master Jantalaber would have left the herbroom.

‘My thanks,’ she said, ‘I’d like that.’

Rhodorix carried her sack of medicaments, then waited, glancing around the herbroom, watching her put things away by candlelight. Without asking he escorted her back to her chamber. Neither of them spoke on the short walk, but Hwilli could feel her heart pounding so hard that she wondered if he could hear it. At the door she hesitated, clutching the white crystal in one hand while he held up the black.

‘You look particularly beautiful tonight,’ he said. ‘Your hair’s like the winter sun, it gleams so.’

‘Oh, listen to you! You should be a bard.’

‘You inspire me, that’s all.’

He caught her chin in his free hand and kissed her, a long lingering kiss that made her gasp for breath. She leaned back against the corridor wall, and he stepped closer to kiss her again.

‘Could you favour me?’ he murmured.

‘Can’t you see I already do?’ She regretted her bluntness the instant she’d spoken.

He laughed. ‘I had hopes that way, but I’d not get you in trouble with your master. What will he do if he finds out you’ve got a man?’

The question puzzled her. The women here in the fortress had always taken lovers when they wanted them, whether anyone else had approved or not.

‘Naught,’ she said. ‘Why would he do anything? I’m only his apprentice, not his daughter or suchlike.’

‘Well, then.’ He smiled, his eyes eager, as if he were waiting for something.

‘Then what?’

‘Then will you invite me in?’

‘Oh!’ She realized that despite everything he’d said and done, she’d still been doubting herself. ‘Of course.’

As they went inside, he shut the door firmly behind them. He put his crystal down on the stool by her lectern, then slipped his arms around her before she could do the same. He drew her close and kissed her with the white pyramid caught between them. When his hands slid down to her buttocks, she felt so aroused that she nearly dropped the precious crystal. He laughed, caught it in one broad hand, and turned away to put it down next to the black.

Hwilli pulled her dress over her head and let it fall to the floor. She lay down on her bed, so narrow that he barely fitted next to her, but once his arms were around her, it became all the comfort they needed.

After their love-making, she drowsed in his arms, only to wake when a pale grey light filtered through the window. He woke as well, to turn onto his side and contemplate her face. He was smiling, and with a gentle finger he traced the shape of her lips.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said. ‘I’m honoured that you’d favour a man like me.’

‘Oh don’t say daft things.’ She kissed his fingertips. ‘I’m the one who’s honoured.’

‘Indeed? You’re a healer, you can read and write, and what am I? Just a fighting man who happens to know horsecraft.’

‘I’d say you know women just as well. I –’ Hwilli stopped, abruptly surprised. ‘Wait! I’m understanding every word you say. The crystals are still over there.’

Rhodorix sat up, twisting to look at the lectern and the stool, where indeed the two crystals sat some five feet distant.

‘Ye gods!’ He lay back down. ‘Well, that’s a handy thing, then.’ He started to say more, but the priestly gongs began announcing the dawn in a racket of struck bronze. Rhodorix swore and winced, then waited till the sound died away. ‘Why in the name of every god do they keep making that wretched noise?’

‘In the name of every god, just like you said.’ Hwilli grinned at him. ‘It’s the priests’ duty to mark the points of the passing days, and the days themselves, the cycles of the moon and the sun, the rising of some of the stars, all of the heavenly things. That’s why the prince built this fortress up so high, so the priests would be closer to the stars.’

‘I think me that the sun would rise without them making all that cursed clamour.’

‘So do I, but the priests don’t.’

‘Ah. Like the cocks that crow on the dungheap, then, and the sun obeys.’

She laughed until he kissed her again, and neither of them had any need of words or laughter.

Yet once their love-making finished, sunlight was flooding in the window, and he needed to leave to rejoin his men out in the horse yard. Hwilli lay on her side and watched him pull on the funny, baggy legging-things he called brigga.

‘Will you come back tonight?’ she said.

‘If you’ll have me back,’ Rhodorix said.

‘Of course!’

He paused to grin at her, honestly thankful that she would want him. Me, she thought. He loves me. Nalla was right!

‘Well, then, let’s settle somewhat.’ Rhodorix turned solemn. ‘From now on, you’re my woman. I don’t want you looking at any other man.’

‘Fear not! There’s not a man in this fortress I’d want, not after you.’

He smiled again, as bright as the sunlight coming through the windows. ‘Let me take the crystals with me,’ he went on, ‘and at the morning meal today, I’ll tell the guard captain that if any other man looks at you wrong, he’ll have me to answer to.’

‘Truly?’

‘Truly. That way if I get you with child, everyone will know the child’s mine, so you’ll not have to worry that I’ll refuse to maintain it.’

His generosity surprised her so much that she had a hard time answering with more than a murmured ‘my thanks’. He sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on his boots. She cuddled against his back and tried to think of some generosity she could offer in return.

‘Rhoddo?’

‘Imph?’

‘Then from now on, your people will be my people, and if I have a child, I’ll raise him that way.’

‘Well and good, then.’ He turned to look at her. ‘That’s a grand thing you’re giving me.’

‘You’ve done the same for me. I’ll swear it on your gods, because they’re my gods now.’

‘Then swear it by Belinos and Evandar.’

‘Evandar’s not truly a god, you know.’

‘Of course he is! Our priests said so. When he saved my life, I promised him I’d swear all my vows on his name.’

If it pleases him, she thought, why does it matter? Belinos she knew nothing of, but if Rhodorix considered him a god, then she would honour him too. ‘I swear by Belinos and Evandar,’ she said.

‘So do I, that you’re my woman now.’

They both smiled, yet deep in her heart she felt sombre, as if a cold wind had touched her. Somehow, she knew, they’d sealed some sort of bargain, one that resonated far beyond the first days of a love affair.

The guardsmen ate in Prince Ranadar’s great hall, a long narrow room with tables enough for several hundred men. At one end stood a narrow dais, where the prince dined with his intimates. Frescoes covered the walls with pictures that reminded Rhodorix of those in Rhwmani villas, though these were far more magnificent. Painted roses bloomed in a vast garden that wrapped around the entire room. In the landscape behind the garden, one wall sported a view of rolling hills and forest; the other, a distant city on the far side of a river. A spiral made of bits of white glass covered half the ceiling. At night this spiral glowed with an eerie blue light, but during the day it merely glittered in the sun streaming through the windows.

Since Rhodorix sat next to Andariel at the warband’s head table – an honour, he realized, to a stranger who knew so many useful things – he could talk with the captain through the crystals. When he told Andariel that he considered Hwilli his property and his alone, Andariel relayed the warning to the guardsmen, who mostly laughed and saluted him with their wine cups.

‘She’s always been the stand offish sort,’ Andariel remarked. ‘Cold as ice, we all thought. I’m impressed that you could warm her up, and so are the rest of the lads.’

As the days went by, the warning had the desired effect. From time to time, Hwilli came down to the terrace to watch the riding lessons. The other men made a great show of looking elsewhere whenever she did, and if for some reason they needed to speak to her, they made the encounter as brief as possible.

‘They’re afraid of you,’ Andariel said. ‘If you’ve not noticed.’

‘Why would they be?’ Rhodorix was honestly surprised. ‘I’m naught, just an exile, in a way, a man who’s lost his tribe.’

‘Just for that reason. You have every reason to be desperate. You’re more than a little reckless, I’d say, judging from the way I’ve seen you ride. No one wants to face you in an honour duel.’

‘I see. Well, truly, the only trouble I’d ever cause you and the warband would be over Hwilli.’

‘Good.’ The captain smiled briefly and put a sliver of ice in his voice. ‘That’s the answer I’d hoped for. There, you’d be within your rights.’

But nowhere else, Rhodorix thought. ‘Well and good, then,’ he said aloud. ‘That’s fair.’

Once they’d eaten, Rhodorix and Andariel left the great hall together. They were walking across the rear courtyard when the gongs boomed from the priests’ tower. A blare of horns answered them from a doorway at its base. Andariel caught Rhodorix’s arm and made him stop.

‘They’re coming,’ he said. ‘We have to kneel.’

‘Who?’

‘The priests. Don’t say a word to them unless they ask you a question.’

‘Well and good, then.’

Rhodorix knelt beside the captain on the hard cobbles. When he glanced around, he saw that everyone within sight had knelt as well. Bronze horns, as harsh as the tubae of the homeland, blared from the fortress walls. Silver horns answered with a chiming melody. To the beat of small drums, carried before them by two lads, four men emerged from the tower.

Long robes of cloth of silver swirled around them with each measured step. They held their heads high and rigid, balancing the weight of their plumed and studded headdresses. Gold and sapphires gleamed at their throats and in their earlobes; a long trail of peacock feathers swayed down their backs. As they passed each person kneeling along their route, in perfect unison the priests raised one hand and lowered it again, most likely in blessing, but they never spoke a word. Behind them came eight lads marching two abreast, dressed in dark blue linen, each carrying a silver sword two-handed and upright in front of him.

They marched the entire length of the fortress, turned in a perfectly executed sweep, and marched back again. The horns blared, the drums beat steadily, until the priests and their retinue returned to their tower by the door they’d left from. After so much processional music, the silence rolled around the courtyard like sound.

‘Ye gods!’ Rhodorix shook his head to steady down his hearing. ‘What was all that about?’

‘I’ve got no idea,’ Andariel said. ‘Maybe they just wanted a bit of fresh air.’ He stood up, dusting the dirt from his knees. ‘They don’t tell us anything, and we don’t ask them anything. Those young lads with the swords? They have the right to kill anyone who insults a priest, and you never know what might insult them.’

Rhodorix got up to join him. ‘Those swords don’t look like they’d cut meat at table.’

‘They look soft, but they’re not true silver. It’s some kind of mix. I don’t know what it is, but the Mountain Folk up in Lin Rej make it.’

‘Oh. Well and good, then, captain. I’ll remember what you say about the priests. They look a fair bit different from the ones from my own tribe, not that I would have crossed them, either.’ Rhodorix paused, remembering Galerinos. ‘Well, except for the one who was a cousin of mine, but he was just an apprentice. Ye gods, no doubt I’ll never see him again, and that’s a pity.’

‘It’s a hard thing, exile.’ Andariel paused to look up at Reaching Mountain and the huge slabs of stone towering above. ‘I hope to the gods I never have to face it.’ He reached out and gave Rhodorix a friendly slap on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go round up our lads and get to work.’

After the day’s riding lessons, Rhodorix went first to the bath house, then back to the chamber he shared with Gerontos. His brother was sitting in a chair by the window and eating bread and fruit from a tray on the table.

‘What’s this?’ Rhodorix said. ‘Does Hwilli know you’re out of bed?’

‘She does. I’m not to walk any farther than this, but it’s time, she said, to see if the leg can bear weight.’ Gerontos gestured at the tray of food. ‘There’s more there than I can eat.’

Rhodorix sat down across from him and picked up a chunk of bread and a knife to butter it.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ Gerontos said. ‘Does Hwilli have a sister or a friend who might –’ He let the words trail off.

Rhodorix grinned at him. ‘She doesn’t, not one who’s our kind of people.’ He let the smile fade. ‘But she’s mine, Gerro. I know we’ve shared women before, but not this time.’

‘Well and good then. I just asked.’

‘Naught wrong with asking.’ Rhodorix bit off a mouthful of bread and ate it while he thought. ‘She has a friend named Nalla, though, who’s a bit of a spark in tinder, if you ask me. She might find a different sort of man interesting, like, if you can ignore the ears.’

‘I’ll ask Hwilli if I can meet her, then. It’ll let her know that it’s not her I want to bed.’

‘Very gallant of you.’ He grinned again and reached for an apple. ‘How is the leg, by the by?’

‘Healing, she says, and fairly fast as these things go.’

‘Good. You’ll be riding again by winter, or so I hope.’

Eventually Gerontos managed, with the aid of a crutch and with Hwilli’s help as well, to hobble out down to the terrace to teach beside his brother, though generally Rhodorix and one of the men carried him back up again. The forty men under their instruction learned to handle the captured mounts in a much shorter time than Rhodorix had been expecting, not that any of them turned into splendid riders in a fortnight’s work.

The difficulties lay in the mount and dismount. Eventually the guardsmen all learned how to leap onto the wooden horse, but their nervousness communicated itself to the real horses, who usually refused to stand and hold for the practice. Until they could mount, the men would never learn anything else about riding, so Rhodorix reluctantly agreed to a set of wooden steps, such as the kitchen servants used to reach the nets of onions and apples, the smoked pork and other such preserved foods that hung from the kitchen’s high ceilings. Rhodorix made his men pay for the device with jests and shaming remarks that made them struggle all the harder to learn.

On a sunny day turned cool by a crisp wind, Prince Ranadar himself and his retinue came down to watch the riding practice. Skipping along beside him was his little son, Berenaladar, or Ren, as he was usually called. Through Andariel and the crystals, Ranadar asked Rhodorix to show him what ‘this riding thing is.’

Rhodorix whistled for Aur, the name he’d given his chosen horse, who trotted out of the herd at the command and joined him. His previous Meradani owner had trained Aur well; Rhodorix had spent many a morning learning what his new mount could do. When Rhodorix surreptitiously tapped the gelding on his off-fore, Aur bent the leg and seemed to bow to the prince. Ranadar smiled, and Ren clapped his hands with a laugh.

‘I want one of those, Da,’ the child said.

‘You shall have one when you’re older,’ Ranadar said. ‘Now hush!’

‘Begging the cadvridoc’s pardon,’ Rhodorix said, ‘but he’s of an age when he should be learning to ride. The younger, the better, honoured one.’

Ranadar considered him with a twisted smile, then shrugged. ‘Very well, perhaps we’ll both come have some lessons with you. Show me what this all entails.’

Rhodorix saddled and bridled Aur, then leapt into the seat and caught the reins. He walked the horse down to the end of the terrace to let it warm its muscles, then trotted back. He dismounted, made Prince Ranadar a bow, then turned to the guardsmen.

‘Saddle up, lads!’ Rhodorix said.

The men rushed off to fetch their horses, since none had yet trained them to come when called. While they struggled with the tack under Andariel’s supervision, Rhodorix lifted young Ren to Aur’s saddle and told him how to sit properly. The boy’s catslit eyes, lavender like his father’s, widened with delight at the sensation of being up so high on horseback. He followed every instruction Rhodorix gave him, then repeated every move on his own. If we live long enough to teach the lads, Rhodorix thought, the People will be as good as we are with horses.

The presence of their rhix and cadvridoc made the guardsmen even more nervous than usual. Several of them refused to use the wooden steps, but the first man to try the leap put too much spring into his jump, overbalanced on the saddle pad, and slid off to fall in a heap. His horse snorted, danced, and very nearly kicked him. He got to his feet, his face as red as a sunset, and stared at the grass to avoid looking the prince’s way until Rhodorix sent him and his mount back to their respective herds. A second man and a third tried and failed. The entire guard unit turned hang-dog, standing heads down with humiliation.

‘Ye gods, that looks difficult!’ Ranadar said. ‘Here, let me try.’

Andariel protested in a flood of words that Rhodorix couldn’t follow, not even with the crystal, but the prince laughed and insisted. Rhodorix brought Ren down from Aur’s saddle.

‘This is the best trained horse in the lot, honoured one,’ Rhodorix said. ‘He’ll stand still for you.’

On his first try the prince very nearly managed the leaping mount. In fact, Rhodorix suspected that if he’d wanted to, Ranadar could have got himself onto the saddle, albeit in an ugly flurry of arms and legs and clutching hands. Instead, the prince made a great show of sliding off and falling into the grass. He laughed and picked himself up before anyone could rush forward to help him.

‘Very difficult,’ Ranadar announced. ‘Don’t feel dishonoured on my account, men.’

The guardsmen cheered him. Rhodorix felt utterly stunned. He’d never seen a man of authority, not Devetianos nor Rhwmanos, voluntarily shame himself for the sake of the men who served him.

On a wave of good feeling all round, Ranadar collected his retinue and his son and left the guardsmen to their practising. Rhodorix watched them as they walked uphill. He’d finally found a leader worth dying for, he realized, someone with ten times the honour of a Vindex or even a Brennos.

At the end of the day, when they returned to the fortress to let the men care for their mounts in the newly built stable, Rhodorix and Andariel discussed the various problems that the lesson had shown them.

‘If we ride to battle, then dismount,’ Andariel said, ‘how are we going to get them mounted again after the fighting’s over?’

‘It’ll be worse yet if they’re unhorsed during a retreat,’ Rhodorix said. ‘You’ll have to leave them behind. They’ll never manage to remount a panicked horse.’

‘We don’t have enough men to leave anyone behind.’

‘Well, then, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s all very well to provide a set of wooden steps here in the fortress, but we can’t carry those with us to battle.’

Andariel sighed and considered the line of saddles perched on a railing. Crystals in hand, the two men were standing in an improvised tack room, part of a storehouse that the prince’s servants had roughly converted to a stable. The saddles were much like those Rhodorix knew from the homeland, simple leather pads with a cinch that went over a heavy saddle blanket.

‘Carry the steps with us?’ Andariel said eventually. ‘That gives me an idea. What if we hung a step of sorts from the saddle itself?’

‘What?’

‘I’m thinking of the rope ladders that lead up to the catwalks on the walls. What if we put straps down on each side of the saddle with loops for a man’s foot to go into?’

Rhodorix grinned in sheer admiration. ‘That just might work splendidly, once we got the horses used to the device. Stick your foot in the loop and swing your free leg over.’

‘Just so. I’ll go to the armoury and ask.’

The People knew their craft work. One of the prince’s armourers delivered a saddle with the new idea attached the very next morning. Rhodorix first accustomed Aur to having straps dangle against his sides, then tried out the new way of mounting while the armourer stood watching. Although the foot-loop certainly made getting onto the horse’s back easier, the simple saddle twisted to one side under the pull of his weight. Rhodorix dismounted and led the horse over Andariel and the armourer.

‘We need to work on the saddle,’ the armourer said through the crystals. ‘Give it back to me. I think I see what’s wrong.’

Back and forth the saddle went over the next eightnight between the armoury and the horse yard. Each time it returned, it was heavier and stiffer, until finally the leather ended up stretched over a wooden frame. The cinch had spawned two additional straps. One went round the horse’s chest, one round its behind, and the new side loops included iron bars to keep them open and stiff. Although Aur disliked this new version of its usual tack, Rhodorix heartily approved.

With the armourer and Andariel in tow, he rode down to the first terrace, then galloped along its length once. As he walked the horse back to the waiting men of the People, he tried standing with his weight on the new, reinforced loops, then sat back down and howled with laughter. He walked the snorting, dancing horse over to Andariel, who was watching from the side of the courtyard. Still grinning, Rhodorix leaned down to retrieve the black crystal from the captain.

‘A man could swing a sword from horseback like this,’ Rhodorix said. ‘It’ll take some practice, but I think we can put the fear of our gods into the Meradan with these.’ He leaned forward and patted Aur’s neck. ‘Whist! You’ll get used to it in a bit, lad.’ He straightened up again and looked at the grinning armourer. ‘A splendid job! Captain, can he make us more of these things?’