Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01] Read online

  Kelrob nodded wearily. Reaching into the depths of his robes, he withdrew a platinum polgari, the sacred coin of the Seven Cities. “Compensation for his troubles,” he said, tossing the coin at Glev’s astonished feet. “Make sure it find its way to him, and not into some other pocket. So I command.”

  Glev’s eyes flared with greed for a moment before he bowed and retrieved the coin. “Of course, my lord.”

  “Put him up in another room. And give him his sword.”

  Kelrob had spent the vast majority of his life being discomfited by bowing. The old awkwardness flared anew as Glev dipped head and shoulders in respectful obeisance to his command. Kelrob gave the sword to one of the servant girls, who placed in the ostler’s outstretched hand. The incense smoldered on the mantel, clouding the air with a resinous fume; Kelrob wiped away tears as Glev vanished, the platinum glittering in his cupped palm. Like a flame? No. Like cold metal. A harsh element, whose invocation often gave Kelrob headaches.

  At last the purgation was complete. The floor was swept, the beds redressed and scented with jasmine oil. The girls bowed clumsily to Kelrob as they departed; he spared a mere nod to their dismissal. I just want to be alone! Finally the door shut and peaceful silence fell, broken only by the minstrel’s muffled playing and what sounded like Salinas’s partially-drunken yawp.

  Kelrob sighed and slid out of his robes. The fire in the hearth was burning too high; he sent a mote of will through his ring and shifted the embers, the wood groaning as it settled into a more controlled burn. The gourds flickered merrily, their broad grins mirrored and distorted in the glass panes. Kelrob stripped off his boots and laid down on the bed closest to the windows, his rump burning, insides wild with hunger. He waited impatiently for the tromp of feet that would announce his coming meal, at the same time dreading the further invasion.

  The meal came late. Kelrob was half-drowsing when the gentle knock sounded at the door, accompanied by a potent whiff of stewed meat.

  “M’lord?” came a voice. The mage stiffened. It was Kirleg.

  Kelrob pushed himself up from the overpoweringly fragrant sheets and crossed to the door.

  It opened on the wizened innkeep, Kirleg’s gray eyes still narrowed and watering from Salinas’s prank. He bore a winebottle, a wooden trencher of stew, and an assortment of crude iron cutlery that clinked against his chest; blinking in the light of the hearth, the old man bowed. “My lord,” he said, a teardrop sliding down to dangle from the oft-broken tip of his nose.

  Kelrob gulped and motioned him in. “Just set that anywhere,” he said shortly, “and thanks.”

  Kirleg obeyed silently, laying bottle and trencher on the desk with slow, creaking movements. He had been a warrior once, and was probably a warrior still, the sword at his waist finely polished with oils, its hilt honed to a mirror sheen by the companionship of his hand. Kelrob felt a resurgence of sympathy, and said to the innkeep as he bowed and turned to the door, “I’m sorry for the conduct of my companion. It was dishonorable, what he did.”

  Kirleg halted in the doorframe. With a sigh he turned and stared at Kelrob, his eyes piercing even as they twitched with tears. “This place,” he said, rapping a fist against the lintel, “was built on my warchest. Twenty years of killing Aks out on the Barrier, slaughtering them and watching my fellows slaughtered in turn, drinking the blood of friend and foe mixed in wine.” As he spoke his voice rose and his spine straightened, the tears easing in his eyes. He smiled bafflingly at Kelrob, and the mage merely nodded, inviting him to continue or, more hopefully, to depart.

  Kirleg’s hand fell down to his sword. It was a casual motion, or so Kelrob hoped; the ring burned on his finger, aware of potential threat. “In those twenty years,” the innkeep continued, “I fought beside many magisters. Young, old, stupid, smart, all merely men, but convinced they were more. What my men did at need, they did at pleasure, coming up to the mountains for sport, for a chance to kill. I knew one Taskmaster who loved to strip the flesh from Aks and deserters alike in layer upon layer, keeping him awake and alive for the dressing. Another ate human flesh, loved the taste actually, and read portents in the innards of children. This,” he said, with a brief motion to his dazzled eyes, “is nothing. I said so to my wife, but she is a woman, and prone to worry.” Reaching into his pocket he withdrew the vial of medicinal powder and set it on the floor, not ungently, then straightened with a groan that brought all the weight of age flooding back into his frame. “I don’t need your cures,” Kirleg said, “but you have my...thanks, my lord.”

  Kelrob stood frozen, backed up against the desk, completely at a loss. “But,” he said, without awareness of the words, “it will ease your pain.”

  Kirleg shrugged. “Man is made to feel pain.” He glanced around the room, nodding in approval at its transmogrified state. “Looks like they did a good job cleaning. This is the best room in the house, m’lord, though I know it must seem humble to you.”

  “I...yes, thank you. They scented the sheets.”

  Kirleg’s nostrils flared, taking in the commingled bouquet of incense, oil, and steaming food. “If you need anything else,” he said with a bow, the teeth strung around his neck rattling faintly, “just open your door. I’m leaving my man Rack here.” As Kirleg spoke the brute hove into view behind him, the huge man’s scarred lips curled downwards in a glower. He crossed his muscle-swollen arms and nodded to Kelrob. “Your servant, m’lord,” he said in a voice like a sepulcher.

  Kelrob returned the nod. “And what of Jacobson?” he asked. “Have my orders been obeyed?”

  Kirleg’s lips tightened in a grimace. “Aye, my lord. I can only hope that you’re half as generous with my house as you are with drunkards.” And, with a final bow, he left. Kelrob fell exhausted into a chair as the door swung mercifully shut. His mind spun with Kirleg’s story as he uncorked the wine, poured it into a chipped cut-crystal glass, and took a few hesitant sips, finding it to be a pleasantly cloying malbec. Made from far northern grapes, by the taste; there was an added richness his father’s vineyards couldn’t match. Kelrob took a second drink, then grimaced, his stomach bursting into flame. Belatedly he remembered he’d asked for milk to sooth his unspoken ulcer. He liked wine, but it didn’t like him, at least not in the last year.

  The food was quite acceptable, doused some of the burning. Kelrob ate slowly, puttering between bites. He fed the hearth and doused the incense, which was shrouding the room in a funereal stench. His pack yielded a book, one of the few he had brought with him, a text chronicling the millennia-long struggle between the civilized peoples of Thevin and their speechless blood-thirsting enemies, the Aks. Kelrob flipped to a chapter recalling the first remembered war with the savages of the Dry Lands, and settled in to read as he ate, sinking his unease in scholarly inquiry. Of course he knew a good deal about the Aks, a primitive race who lacked the most basic sorcery and who tried, with mindless brute force, to cross the Ilarks and claim the bounty of Thevin. He had even seen several of the creature’s bodies in a pickling-vat during his schooling at the Rookery; gray-skinned and black-eyed, with long jagged talons and emaciated limbs, they had looked to him like warped parodies of men. When he was younger an opportunity had arisen to tour the Barrier, the spell-reinforced line of high walls and cloud-capped fortresses built along the Ilarks, but Kelrob had declined, preferring to focus on his private studies. It was a choice that had further soured his already-curdling reputation amongst the Masters, earned him the title of coward amongst his peers.

  At length weariness weighed on him. He read and read, but could find no reference to the Taskmaster brutalities Kirleg had described; the brethren of war-magisters were portrayed as noble heroes and selfless gods-in-flesh, as always. Kelrob began to discount it all as an old man’s foolish talk, but some of the bloodier stories Salinas had told him on the road made him hesitate. The Taskmasters were a self-contained brethren, occupying the 8th Circle of the Isdori Arc
anum; their ways and secrets were very closely kept. They could indeed be involved in practices far more barbaric than any nithing harvest festival, and no-one would know it or admit to it. But really, who cared what the brethren did so long as they repelled the Aks, year after year? Kelrob told himself this as he closed the book, intent on sleep. Meaning to get up, instead he drowsed.

  At length he was awakened by loud, frantic music swelling from the common-room below. Kelrob frowned through a stretch and a yawn: Salinas seemed to be having a good time. The mage yawned again and raised his eyes to see that the gourds had flickered out. Darkness yawned beyond the windows, leaves plastering momently to the glass before being gusted away.

  The door to the room creaked open. Kelrob started up from his half-stupor to see a girl framed in the light from the hallway, one of the servants, naked save for a circlet of jingling bells on her ankle. Her eyes were wide-blown, glassy; raising her hands, she ran them down the generous curves of her body. Kelrob recognized her as one of the servants who had cleansed his room, the blonde-headed one. Mantha.

  Kelrob raised his ring, the chromox glowing brightly. His eyes danced over her body, and a little dry gasp made its way up his throat. “I don’t wish to be disturbed,” was what he said.

  Mantha smiled woodenly. She cupped her breasts and stepped towards him, across the threshold. Kelrob rose from his chair and backed himself against the bed, his body flushed with the heat of the wine and his uncertain mortification on the girl’s behalf. By the Gyre, where was Rack? He said nothing, merely trembled as Mantha neared him and pressed her body to his, the rich earthy scent of her body enveloping him.

  “My lord,” she said, her breath hot in his ear, “I am here for your pleasure.”

  Her words rang hollow, coerced. Kelrob bit back a curse and severed the magical threads binding her to the will of Salinas. The large girl slumped in his grip, then began weeping, her hands struggling to conceal her nakedness.

  “Please!” she cried into his shoulder, dampening Kelrob’s tunic with her tears, “no more, no more!”

  Kelrob eased her onto the bed, then raced for the stairs in a flash, burning the remnant alcohol from his blood with one purifying pulse of the chromox. He staggered down the steps and made for the common room, bursting onto a scene of such profanity that he cried out and fell back, bile surging up to lap at the root of his tongue.

  Salinas sat on a makeshift throne of bodies, supported by a seething, straining cradle of naked men. He held high court over the common room, the ring of chromox glowing mercilessly bright on his hand, face covered by the foliate mask whose tendrils of corn-stalk he had enchanted to weave and undulate. Before him the servant-girls lay exposed, some weeping, others frightening still, all naked and some bruised. Around them danced a whirlwind of unwilling bodies, foresters and peddlers suspended on coarse strings of magic. They leaped and bowed, scraped and pranced, some biting into their own tongues until blood dribbled and shone on their chins. Behind, on the stage of cobbled wood, a minstrel played frantically, tears spraying from his eyes. His fingers had flayed against the strings, reducing them to bloodied flaps of skin; with a rising gorge Kelrob saw the glint of bone.

  Salinas crowed on his throne, heels kicking at a man’s already-bloodied head. “More song! More wine!” he cried, throwing up his arms. The ring gleamed on his right hand, engorged with his passion.

  Kelrob summoned his power. It was a different summoning, deeper than any he had experienced, born of need and horror; with a single word he smote the web of Salinas’s magic, blood bursting from his lips with the incantation. The dancers collapsed in groaning heaps, their limbs twitching as the foreign will was drained from them. Salinas’s throne collapsed, and with it the lord of the revels, his voice rising in a pathetic and powerless curse as the ring on his finger went dark. The foliate mask fell aside with a clatter, revealing a bearded face flushed with drink and rage.

  “Kelrob!” Salinas snarled, fighting up from the tangle of bodies. “How dare you! How dare you! How dare -”

  Kelrob stilled his tongue with another word. Bound it, tied it down, along with his limbs. The enchantment cocooned Salinas, and he fell over stiffly, striking the dirt floor with a fleshy thump. Kelrob raced forward and tore the ring from the Taskmaster’s finger, the sacred metal burning his skin as he slid it into a pocket over his left breast. Another word, and Salinas was borne aloft, Kelrob’s sorcery hoisting him on a thin bier of fog.

  Was the girl still in their room? It didn’t matter. Kelrob snapped his wrist in cold command, and the petrified Salinas was swept from the common room, up to the waiting bed. Drawing on his training in the mind-warping Mentatis discipline, Kelrob soothed the bewined brain of his fellow, his superior, and settled him amid the blankets with a spell of slumber so heavy that it caused the bedframe to groan.

  The common room was a mass of tangled limbs and weeping. Salinas had woven a heavy enchantment, and it still lingered on in the individual limbs of his thralls, feet and fingers twitching in a mockery of dance as they struggled to stand. The fire in the great hearth burned a putrescent green, another lingering blot of embellishment; Kelrob dispelled it with a flick of his eyes. He then panicked, wondering whether to run upstairs and lock the door, or bend and minister to the wounded. Remembering the vial of powder that Kirleg had left at his feet (Kirleg, who now lay in a corner convulsing), Kelrob stymied this impulse, and instead wove a deep and peaceful slumber over the writhing assembly. Summoning up strength beyond his training, he took their memories of their debasement into himself, foreign thoughts flooding the mage’s brain with such force that he nearly swooned. Fighting to maintain consciousness, Kelrob created the crude false memory of a brawl and implanted it in the gaping hole he had cut into each mind.

  The thrashing stilled, replaced with groggy stirring, replaced with echoing snores. The air convulsed, overwoven, overspelled; Kelrob gathered his breath and beat a retreat up the stairs, ring burning on his finger. His blood thundered in his temples, hot and unnervingly euphoric. He wondered if the minstrel would die.

  The girl was gone, much to Kelrob’s relief. Salinas snored piggishly against the pillows, his mouth wide, teeth discolored with wine. Kelrob slammed the door and stood over the Taskmaster, his body trembling with fury and exhaustion and the abated dregs of his casting. Kirleg’s recounting flashed in his mind: the flayed man, the eaten man, the steaming bowels of children spelling out portents for a depraved eye. Trembling, Kelrob slid into a chair by the hearth and ran his hands over his sweat-caked face.

  The inn was agonizingly still, the fire dying on the grate. Kelrob pushed it down into glowing cinders. He was numb from what he had seen, from what he had done. Weariness welled in him as the wind rose to a piercing howl; his final thought as he unwillingly collapsed into bed was that he hadn’t seen Jacobson among the enspelled.

  3: Meetings and Partings

  Kelrob woke shortly after noon with a terrible pain in his neck. His skin was sticky with dried sweat, and he blinked crust from his lashes, stirring to full and unwelcome awareness. Sunlight spilled through the windows, which were wet with autumn dew; Kelrob’s ears twitched at the sound of a snore. Turning his head with no small degree of agony he looked over at Salinas, still locked in his enchanted sleep, mouth ajar and leaking drool. The memories (many not his own) of the preceding evening came flooding back to Kelrob, and with a groan of disgust he heaved himself up from bed and stood reeling in the sunlight.

  The air was still heavy with incense. The gourds, somehow, had turned themselves about, their black grins facing inwards. Salinas had vomited on himself in the night, contributing a particularly rich odor to the closed space; Kelrob decided this was the least of his concerns. Staggering to the bedside basin, he splashed his face with frigid water, flecks of ice catching in his hair. The mage shivered as he patted himself dry, realizing by degrees that the room was freezing. He set a fire in the hearth wi
th a few spoken words and crouched before the resultant warmth, wondering what in the world he should do. The inn was quiet, but he heard movement below, and low voices that seemed blessedly devoid of panic. The absorbed memories were dissolving to mush in his brainpan, though Kelrob remembered a few hideous sights and sensations he was certain would endure with him to the end of his days. His stomach sickened, and he looked at Salinas, seeing a monster where lay a man.

  He needed to work fast. Rouse the oaf, keep him befuddled, pay generously, get the horses, and get out. Better yet, let Salinas drool on himself while he tended to the finer details. Kelrob ran an unsteady hand through his hair, his palm coming away greasy. He cleansed himself further, donned his sage-green robes, adjusted his ring, and slipped out the door.

  “M’lord?”

  Kelrob jumped at the sight of a seven-foot-tall man looming at his elbow. Ah, Rack. The brute stood at his assigned post, arms crossed, an extremely black expression on his face. His body was covered with small wounds, the rewards of Salinas’s hideous dance. He bowed to Kelrob with wary respect.

  Kelrob gulped. “Good morning.”

  Rack bowed again. “Hardly, my lord.” He straightened with a wince.

  “Ah. What happened?”

  Rack glanced down at his battered body. “Some kind of brawl in the common room last night. I can’t rightly remember. No-one can.” He sighed, picking at a heavily-scabbed wound. “It didn’t disturb m’lords, did it? Meela was worried you might’ve been kept awake.”

  “No. We slept like babies.” Kelrob glanced back at the door to room number 3. “In fact, my companion is still sleeping. Is...everyone all right?”

  Rack’s dull eyes flared. “Poor Tasy was cut up pretty bad. A minstrel, good one too. He might not be able to play any more.”

  Kelrob’s heart went cold. His hand drifted down to his purse, bulging with sacred platinum. “I will see that he’s taken care of,” he said faintly.