Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01] Read online

  For Mom and Dad

  “Before the coming of the Gyre Itself, Man was a stupid and lawless beast, enslaved to the elements. He had no fire, no speech, and crawled on all fours like the most loathsome creature of the field. Magic, the primal force of the earth, took delight in plaguing Him; all the natural world was thus His enemy, for it knew Man came as a conqueror. Lightning sought Him out, earth crumbled maliciously beneath Him, the sea sent forth the tendrils of leviathans to crush and consume Him, and yet Man endured, His primitive mind ever-bent towards evolution. Yet he could not achieve speech, nor craft any material invention, until the coming of the Gyre Itself.

  Who was and is the Gyre? In the depths of unrecorded time a wordless primitive was struck with the collective revelation of his race. This nameless being stood erect and began to speak the words of power, in which all the elements of the world are bound up. He found that he could tame the sea, that fire bowed to his will, that the earth and the air became his humble chariots. So was magic harnessed, and the Gyre Itself born from the husk of a dumb savage.”

  —Isdori Doctrinal History, as dictated and decreed by the Gyre Itself

  1: Into the Woods

  Two opulently attired young men sat astride their equally opulent mounts. They stared up at a crude wooden sign, a pair of arrows angling down separate veins of roadway. One man was munching on an apple, while the other struggled with a heavily creased map drawn on parchment. It was a chilly day, a day studded with gray clouds and chattering leaves, the air ripe with the smell of decay. Trees crowded close on all sides, hanging over the roadway and spilling fire-colored leaves to the wind.

  “I think we go left,” the man with the map said. He was young, almost a youth, fresh-faced but narrow, with thin lines already forming at the corners of his eyes and mouth. He rotated the parchment, braced it against his horse’s neck. “Unless I’m reading this wrong.”

  The man with the apple shrugged and took a bite. He was older than the map-reader by several years and larger of build, his face shrouded with a heavy auburn beard. “We want to get to Tannigal. That’s north from here.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Then why are we wasting time? It’ll be night soon.”

  The young man with the map bent over it, brushing away a vivid yellow poplar leaf that fell and obscured the majority of the northern realms. His name was Kelrob Kael-Pellin, and he was a magician. “We wouldn’t need to be wasting time if we’d just stayed on the main road.”

  “Academic. I was sick of being stuck behind that caravan and trudging through their offal. Read the map.”

  Kelrob sighed. “If we go to the left,” he said, casting the sign a dubious glance, “we’ll enter the outskirts of the Umberwood.”

  “So?”

  “That’s dangerous country.”

  The bearded man laughed. He, too, was a magician, his azure robes cut from dew-retted linen, his boots high-topped and glistening. His name was Salinas, and he came from blood older than the mountains. “Dangerous? For a tinker or lonely merchant, perhaps. Not for us.” As he spoke he raised his right hand and flashed a ring of pure, unpolluted chromox, the metal beyond gold, the philosopher’s media. “We have power, Kelrob. It would do you good to start remembering that.”

  Kelrob ducked his head half-submissively, glancing down at the ring glistening on his own finger. He felt the tidal pull of the metal on his bloodstream, the whispers passing into his marrow, sustaining and demanding. Raising his other hand, he opened it and spoke a quick word of power. Fire sprang to life in the nest of his palm.

  “You’ve got a way with flame,” Salinas observed grudgingly.

  Kelrob felt a tingle at the older magister’s praise, his distraction causing the fire to flicker and go out. “I’ve been practicing,” he said, rubbing his fingers against the warmth lingering in his palm. “It’s my favorite element.”

  “You’ve got the skill. Ever considered the path of a Taskmaster?”

  Tasmaskers, the butchers and battlers of the Isdori Order, Salinas’s own brethren; Kelrob’s full-lipped mouth turned down in distaste. “I don’t enjoy conflict,” he said.

  “Oh? You might change your mind after you fry your first Ak.” Salinas’s eyes glowed as he spoke. He had just returned from his first tour of duty on the grim Barrier, defending the country of Thevin from the vicious, mindless hordes that dwelt in the desert beyond the Ilark mountains. The majority of his journey with Kelrob had been filled with gore-laden accounts of his exploits, Aks withered in fire and frozen in ice, dismembered by blades of magic, disemboweled and blinded and stripped of flesh. It had put Kelrob off his food, and set his unwilling mind to brooding on the ever-present threat from the east.

  Now the young magister wrinkled his nose. “My interests lie elsewhere,” he said. “I had three or four specializations to choose from, and Taskmaster wasn’t on the list.”

  Salinas’s eyes darkened with anger. “And yet you chose the path of a Hedgewizard, dedicated to hiding in libraries with your nose in a book.”

  “It is just as noble a path as yours.”

  “It is cowardice. But come, the sun is westering, and the dreaded Umberwood awaits.” With a flashing smile Salinas spurred his mount down the path, faded sunlight catching in his flowing hair. Kelrob scowled and urged his horse to follow, a cold sweat prickling at his temples.

  The forest quickly closed in. What had been a broad, comfortable road, rutted with the frequent passage of wagons, became a narrow leaf-embalmed trail. The trees were thick and old here, profuse oaks, their contorted boles stretching up to heads warped by ancient copping. Moss lay in thick profusion, blending earth and root together. Kelrob gulped uneasily, but resisted the manic urge to hum. He kept thinking that he saw faces forming in knotholes or amid the thick incarnadine clusters of leaves.

  Salinas seemed to be above such worry, chomping carelessly at his apple, his sandy hair fluttering on the autumn wind. He was tall and slim, long legs folded into gemstone-studded stirrups, his patrician features only partly obscured by his beard. He guided his horse with ease as he ducked beneath an overhanging branch. “Look out,” he called belatedly back to Kelrob, who hurried to duck in turn. The branch rasped against the top of his scalp, hurting little but leaving flecks of bark in his hair.

  Kelrob was younger than Salinas by two years, a mere Adept of the 16th Circle who had yet to confront his twentieth year. He was thin and light boned, a bird of a man, with sunken cheeks and dark brown hair and eyes, almost black; when he was a child he’d eaten a raven’s feather that had blown into his cradle, so said his father. His nose was long and faintly hooked, his lips surprisingly full, marking his only true voluptuousness. The rest of his body was long and lean, narrow hips and gangling legs, resembling a man stretched on the rack until his physiognomy had adapted to the torment.

  The wind rose, chattering amid the branches and sending stray leaves across the path. Kelrob shivered, drawing deeper into his robes. A gift from his father and signifier of his new-won adept status, the mantle and cowl were unadorned with jewels or other fetishes of class, but the sage-green fabric was exquisite, soft and enveloping and riddled with cunning pockets. These Kelrob explored nervously, holding the reins with one hand and darting the other from pocket to pocket like a bird hunting for a roost. His fingertips touched many secrets, and he smiled to himself, strangely reassured.

  Salinas rode easily in the saddle, his face serene, if tight with impatience. He spared no glances into the forest, but kept his eyes firmly locked on the path, his ring gliste
ning like a fallen star on his finger. This was accomplished by feeding the faintest thread of his will into the chromox, which consumed his intention and manifested it as light. It was a demi-spell that served little purpose beyond arcane pageantry, though it served potently in this capacity, a tiny shiver of power indicating vast reserves. The bearded Taskmaster was at ease, but it was not a fool’s ease; beneath his carefree veneer muscles twitched with caution. He said nothing to Kelrob as they rode, and Kelrob said nothing to him. Together they listened to the forest, their horses’ hooves impacting dully on the loam. The air was riotous with foliage, weltlike purples and hellion reds and sad withered browns, yellows like the backs of honeybees, orange like a pumpkin’s candle-flushed rind; autumn was Kelrob’s favorite season, and he managed to savor the ride through his unease. As for Salinas, he had no favorite season, though he grudgingly admitted the leaves very pretty when Kelrob broke their mutual silence long enough to comment on them.

  At length, hearteningly, the path began to widen. The impenetrable vault of tree-limbs parted, revealing a sky heavy with oncoming twilight. Salinas, glancing up, broke his long silence with a grumble. “I hate riding in the dark,” he said.

  Kelrob scented the air. “I smell woodsmoke,” he said. “And something cooking.”

  Salinas inhaled deeply, frowned. “Boiled meat.”

  “It’s better than what I have in my pack.”

  “It can’t be an inn. Not all the way out here.”

  Kelrob nodded down the broadening path. “Well? Let’s ride forward and see.”

  Salinas tugged uncertainly at his beard. Thoughts of meat-boiling bandits flitted through his mind, and his ring began to glow brighter. “Men of power fear no road, however dark,” he said to himself. “Very well. Hopefully it is an inn. With a bathtub and something resembling a fine selection of wines.”

  They proceeded forward, moving with greater caution, Salinas muttering incantations beneath his breath. After a few minutes something glittered in the distance, along the path. “I see a candle!” Kelrob said. He urged his horse forward, and Salinas followed with a curse, calling for Kelrob to wait. The path spilled into a clearing dominated by a twisted and promethean oak, its limbs bristling with fiery leaves. Beneath it stood a scarecrow made of an old laborer’s tunic and trousers, the loose garments stuffed with corn husks and chaff. Light fluttered from within its grinning head, a hollowed turnip carved into a macabre visage and lit with a fat tallow candle; a ewe’s heart was pinned against its chest with a stake of ash-wood, still glistening with blood, ventricles yawning. Kelrob rode closer and peered at the organ, his scholarly interest piqued.

  Salinas bent to stare into the turnip’s flickering interior. “What is this?” he demanded.

  “A superstition amongst farmers,” Kelrob said promptly. “This scarecrow stood in the fields all summer, keeping the crops safe. In that time, so it’s believed, he became a very capable watchman. When the harvest comes in, it’s customary in some communities to take the seasoned scarecrows and place them on paths that travelers use, to guide them to comfort and to ward off evil spirits.”

  “And the heart?”

  “A sacrifice to appease some god or other, I’m sure.”

  Salinas’s face darkened. “Savage superstition. Get a few day’s ride out of a city and people will believe anything.”

  “Still, it’s a good sign. It means fair lodging ahead.”

  “So it’s true what I’ve heard. Not only do you bury your nose in books, but you waste your time reading about weird customs and practices among the nithings.”

  Kelrob blushed and tried to sink into his robes. “It’s a fascinating branch of knowledge,” he said in a low voice. “Each village has a deity or deities, generally, and they revere them at times of planting and harvest.”

  “Useless barbarism. Commoners are no better than Aks. I can’t believe the Masters are allowing you to research this claptrap.”

  Anger stirred at the heart of Kelrob’s embarrassment. “At least I knew how to interpret this sign,” he said, a little cuttingly. “We’ll have beds tonight.”

  Salinas spat on the heart. “Let’s go,” he said, baring his ring against the candlelight. “We’ll bring the light of civilization with us.”

  They followed the path down into the hollow, the wind rising as the sun vanished, leaves tearing from their branches. Kelrob cast the scarecrow a final glance as it vanished behind the oak tree, the light of its grin winking out, but lingering as a jagged smear in his eye. He thought of the flame burning away inside the turnip, of the flame dancing in the pit of his palm.

  The inn squatted in the hollow like a toad in its hole, a ramshackle edifice with a roof of rotting bark shingles and windows sealed with tarp against the chilly night. It wasn’t on the map, but the warm glow of fire through the hides and the presence of several peaceably munching horses in the stables put Kelrob at ease. A sign hung over the door, wordless, but depicting a frothing mug pouring down a green man’s decapitated head. The ale spilled into his grinning mouth and out the stump of his neck, accompanied by a burst of vines that writhed upwards towards the bloody disc of a setting sun.

  Salinas eyed the sign with distaste. “See? This is why I avoid the country.”

  Kelrob stared up at the sign, eyes wide. “Fascinating,” he said.

  “Fascinating! It’s all a bunch of primitive nonsense. Hot water is fascinating. Silk sheets are fascinating. When we get to Tannigal I’m going to spend a whole week in bed.”

  An ostler came out to greet them as they rode towards the stables. He tipped back his leather cap in surprise as Salinas held up his ring.

  “Do you know what this is?” the war-mage asked calmly.

  The ring glowed blue, glittering in the ostler’s eyes. “I rightly do,” the man said. He was a rough-cut fellow, thick of body and, assumedly, of mind. A leather apron strained against his considerable gut, speckled with horse dung. Bright leaves clung to the manure.

  Salinas’s eyes narrowed. “Then you should know to remove your cap.”

  The ostler blinked, then complied with a jerk of his hand. “My lord,” he said, the words emerging uneasily, untrained, “forgive me. We’re a poor wayside here, not used to visits from such as yourself.”

  Salinas inclined his chin, his eyes glowing faintly. “Tell me, how much farther to Tannigal?”

  “A good five hours’ ride. Perhaps four, with mounts like that.” The ostler cast the woods a wary glance, his hands clutching his cap against his chest. “Wouldn’t suggest it, though. Not at night.”

  Kelrob finally glanced away from the inn’s placard, which was swaying slowly and persistently in the heavy air. The green man’s face lingered on his retina, like a sun-blast. “Why? Is it dangerous?”

  The ostler shuffled from foot to foot, seeming to weigh his answer. “Why, no, m’lord, not at all. We’re peaceful folk hereabouts. But the path is best taken in daylight, if you take my meaning.”

  Salinas sneered. “In other words you think we should lodge here tonight?” As he spoke his ring began to glow brighter.

  The ostler shied back, his head dipping in a bow. “I mean, if it please yer lordships. You’ll find no better lodgings ‘twixt here and Tannigal.”

  Salinas winked at Kelrob. “Hm. Perhaps we should speak with the good innkeeper? Get him out here.”

  The ostler dipped his head again, lower, a hint of fear in his watery eyes. “Of course, of course, but a moment,” he said, bobbing back towards the inn’s doorway and slipping within. Warm light spilled into the evening, accompanied by a brief flutter of music.

  Kelrob shifted uneasily in his saddle. “Can’t we just go inside? My backside is throbbing.”

  “What, like desperate rag-clad squatters looking for a flop?”

  “Minus the rag-clad, but yes.”

  Salinas shook his head in mock wea
riness. “When I stayed at the Golden Tankard in Ixthis, I was brought seven different fruits every hour, on platters of gold. I drank the finest wine, I slept in the finest bed, with three of the finest women I’ve ever tupped. If these primitives want my coin so badly I at least expect them to scrape for it.”

  Kelrob groaned and slid around in his saddle, cursing Master Kenlath for pairing him with this lummox for protection on the journey north. It was obviously another of his mentor’s notorious tests of patience. He shivered as the wind blew cold, sending the placard into a frenzy. Hides were peeled back from the windows and faces appeared, eyes glittering with animal-like curiosity. Kelrob averted his gaze, examining the ripe sheaves of corn nailed to the inn’s door. Some had been fashioned into crude human forms, their husk-limbs fluttering, faces globular with ripe kernels. Similar dolls dangled from the eaves. A carven gourd flickered by the stables, its face frowning and fierce where the scarecrow’s had been welcoming and jovial.

  The inn’s door opened cautiously. A hunched, sharp-eyed man emerged, his face framed with long braided locks of silver. He walked with a dignified limp, his body withered with wound and age; a necklace of Ak teeth hung from around his neck, marking him a veteran of the Barrier. Kelrob noted with some small alarm that he wore a sword at his hip.

  Salinas also took notice. He raised his ring, and it began to glow with an ugly light. “Who dares approach us bearing arms?” he demanded.

  The man shielded his eyes from the glow, peering through the steady web of his fingers. “I am called Kirleg,” he said, “and I am innkeep here.”

  The ring dimmed into a low threatening luster. “Approach,” Salinas said sharply.

  Gross display of power, betraying cowardice. Kelrob kept the thought very much to himself. His mount shifted uneasily, scenting other horses and ready grain; reluctantly he restrained it from wandering towards the stables.

  Kirleg came forward, bowed towards Salinas, Kelrob, Salinas again. “How can I serve my lord magisters?” he said.