Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01] Read online

  Jacobson watched him intently, one hand straying up to play with the gray-blond stubble on his chin. “Will you be traveling on tonight?” he asked.

  Kelrob answered by trying to swing his legs out of bed. The operation was a success, but it left him trembling. “I think I should probably eat something first,” he said uncertainly. The pain in his head was dulling, courtesy of the powder (which was nothing more arcane than ground willow bark), but his mind was swimming with weariness and burdened by black memories. The thought of getting up on a horse made him want to retch.

  Jacobson nodded, rising with a grunt. He took Kelrob’s cup and refilled it, this time sans medicine, and pressed it into Kelrob’s shaking hands. “I’ll go see what’s on the spit,” he said, brushing a hand through the coarse tide of his hair as he turned towards the door.

  “Why are you doing this?” Kelrob asked suddenly. “I can pay you, if that’s what you want.”

  Jacobson waved aside the offer. “Money again! Lad, you are generous to a fault, but know this: despite popular perception, not every nithing is a greedy drooling money-scrounger, desperate to heap up as many coins as he can before death. My only wish, my truest desire, is to be left alone, and you seemed like a fellow spirit in that regard. Thus my actions, and nothing more.”

  For the first time Kelrob noticed the vast clutch of empty liquor bottles stacked by the hearth. He said nothing else, watched as his drunken benefactor swayed into the hall and shut the door behind him. He then returned his attention to the window, watching as a lone starling lit on the casement and set to preening its iridescent plumage. Three days...which would make it the 31st of October, a high day of festival and feasting in many rural communities. Kelrob had hoped to spend the celebration dining with Lord Azumana, a merchant-noble and old friend of his father’s whose great manse was his destination in Tannigal. Instead it was to be boiled meat and potatoes. With a curse Kelrob realized he’d forgotten to tell Jacobson to bring him milk instead of wine.

  A wet thump sounded at the window, followed by another. Kelrob looked up to see the starling hurling itself repeatedly against the glass, glistening feathers ripping from its wings. Its eyes burned with a sickening red light as it wheeled in the air and piped several strangled notes, then returned to its self-destruction, the glass cracking into bloody spiderwebs. Kelrob watched with his mouth ajar, horrified but unable to look away.

  After several minutes of frenzied attack the broken, bleeding wreck of the bird fell twitching on the casement. The glass had held, though the blood-laced cracks had expanded. Kelrob lay rigid in bed and stared into the starling’s eyes, bulbous with death but still blazing, its beak yawning to the sky as if in desperate thirst.

  5: Sowen Night

  The drums began beating in the forest before Jacobson returned. Kelrob heard them as he heard his own heartbeat, swelling through the floorboards and beating in the jelly of his eyes. He had disposed of the bird and stood shivering in the open casement, staring out into the fiery labyrinth of trees when the first thrumming reached his ear. Soon there were other instruments, lutes and timbrels and wildly screaming flutes; Kelrob had to shut the window and pull the heavy woolen curtains, dulling the music to an undulate drone. The drums, however, were not so easily exorcised, nor was the rising scent of unseen bonfires and burning straw. Kelrob busied himself with the chamberpot, emptying his bladder and bowels from a crouching position that reminded him of a dog. The drums beat up the skinny sticks of his legs, reverberated in the depth of his groin.

  When Jacobson did return, he was presaged by the welcome smell of food. Not grand food, but good food, Kelrob reminded himself, though his palate — and stomach — longed for subtler fare. He looked up from his new robe-wrapped position by the fire as the big man entered balancing several bowls, a bottle of wine, a clay jug of something stronger, and a small iron cauldron of stew. Of the bird he would say nothing, he had already decided.

  “Jacobson,” said a shocked voice from the hallway, “surely you should have knocked?”

  Meela. Kelrob shrank for a moment at the thought of confronting the woman of the house, then straightened in his chair. He brushed the wrinkles from his robes, slicked a hand through his tangle-ridden hair, and called out in the firmest, strongest voice he could muster, “Please enter, lady.”

  Meela obeyed, slipping in behind Jacobson with a quick bow and a perturbed glance at the big man, who was noisily piling his provisions on the table. Kelrob winced as Jacobson swept aside an inkwell and several heavy books (he appeared to have read most of Kelrob’s traveling library) and set down the cauldron with a noisy slosh. His foot, the mage noticed, was tapping in time with the drums.

  “M’lord,” Meela said. She looked exhausted, frail and old, her silver braids undone and left to tangle around her weathered face. She bowed to Kelrob again, lower and less perfunctorily, her dark eyes haunted with worry. “Please, m’lord. I am sorry.”

  Kelrob smiled and stared at the woman’s slipper-clad feet, unable to meet those eyes. I know what happened to your daughters, his mind screamed. I can feel their tearing inside me. Instead he said, in a gentle voice, “Sorry for what?”

  Meela eased at his words, though her hands remained clasped. “For trusting you to this brute,” she said. “We’d have cared for you ourselves, but...my three youngest are very ill, sir. Injured in a brawl. Jacobson offered to do for you, promised to stay sober while he did. Though I see he snuck a few bottles up when I wasn’t looking.”

  “I said relatively sober,” Jacobson corrected. He stirred the stew, then uncorked the clay jug with his teeth and took and long, savory swig. “An obligation from which I am now gratefully free. Carry on.”

  “Jacobson is a brute,” Kelrob said pointedly, “but he is a kind brute. I feel much better thanks to him, and the generosity of your house.”

  Meela bowed lower still, a true token of respect. “This house stands because of you,” she said. “We will thank you always in our sacrifices.”

  Kelrob blushed. He couldn’t help it; the shame was too great. “Thank you,” he managed in a cracked voice. “You do me a great honor.”

  Meela smiled, her hands finally disentangling to hang warily at her sides. “Will you be riding on tonight, my lord? You should be able to make it clear of the Umberwood before nightfall. I only ask because the revels are starting, as you can hear. I wouldn’t want your lordship to be...offended, by our ways.”

  Kelrob shuddered, seeing anew the starling’s crimson-tinged eyes. “I will be riding on, yes. Please ready my horse.”

  The lady of the house nodded, said, “Please drink an ale with us before you go, good magister. And may the gods watch over you.”

  I have no gods, Kelrob thought sourly. Only superiors. He thanked Meela again and dismissed her, breathing a sigh of relief as the door shut and her footsteps retreated down the hall, blending into the growing swell of drums.

  “What the hell happened to the window, lad?”

  Kelrob started, looked up guiltily. Jacobson had tugged the curtains aside, was glowering at the bloody mess.

  “A bird hit it,” Kelrob said vaguely.

  “Must have been a damn big bird. Kirleg’ll take it out of my pocket, I’m sure.”

  “How are the festivals celebrated in this region?” Kelrob asked, eager to change the subject. He glanced at the wicker charm hung over the bed, which was swaying in time with the drumbeats.

  Jacobson left off his examination of the window and returned to the stew, which he began doling into a deep wooden bowl. “Interested in getting caught up, are you?” he asked with a wink.

  “Hardly. Just curious.”

  “Very odd question for a magister to ask.” Jacobson rubbed the back of his head for a moment in thought. “It’s same as most places, I suppose. Lots of drinking and capering and fornication.”

  Kelrob winced. “I meant the more del
icate aspects of the rituals.”

  “Ah.” Picking up the bowl, Jacobson pressed it into Kelrob’s hands along with a bent spoon. “I’m a newcomer to these parts myself, but I’ve been around for a few cycles. Around noon the farming-families come in from the fields and the wild men come from the Tangle, all manner of folk, and congregate at the House of the Setting Sun. Kirleg is the master of those revels, and he cracks open the first ale of last year’s harvest in offering to the ancestors. There’s music and revelry, of course, and masks are worn to stave off bad spirits, though they’re generally half-masks so as not to impede the good along with the bad.”

  Kelrob listened intently to the beating drums. The inn was eerily silent in contrast. “I hear no revels,” he said.

  “You slept through them. Not surprising, as they were a little subdued this year. Kirleg sent everyone off after the third round and went back to tending his girls.”

  Kelrob paled slightly. “I see.”

  Jacobson dragged his chair over by the fire, situated himself, and raised the clay jug to his lips with hand- quaking anticipation. Tilting back his head he took a long, gulping drink, foot still tapping to the growing thrum. “After everyone’s good and drunk,” he said as he wiped alcohol from his stubble, “they go into the woods, to clearings and hollows, where bonfires are waiting to be lit. The more daring go to the old stone circles deep in the Tangle, where I’ve been told lambs and doves are offered up for the slaughter. As night moves on the gods of field and forest are invoked, the shades of the dead placated with offerings. Though sometimes they manage to break through.”

  Kelrob glanced towards the cracked window with a shiver. “And then?”

  Jacobson smiled, and raised his jug on high. “And then Tamrel comes.”

  The name sent a shiver along Kelrob’s spine. The bowl of stew lay steaming and untouched in his lap; he set it aside. “Who is Tamrel?”

  Jacobson took another slug of spirits, the liquid dribbling unheeded onto his chest. “A minstrel from the deep forest, deeper than I’ve ever tread. He comes once a year, on this night, and plays for all and sundry.”

  “A minstrel? Is he good?”

  The big man mulled over this question for a moment. “He is Tamrel,” he said at last. “If ever there was a wild thing left in this world, it’s him.”

  Kelrob nodded, not understanding, somehow afraid to understand. Clasping his hands in his lap he stared into the fire, which, like the wicker charm, seemed enslaved by the beating of the drums, flickering in uncanny time.

  Jacobson took a third swig, and frowned at him. “You’re not eating.”

  “Neither are you.”

  “This,” he shook the jug, which sloshed dankly, “is all the nourishment I need. Eat up, lad. You’ve a road to travel.”

  The drums increased their intensity. Kelrob curled his toes against the floorboards, dreading the ride, dreading to remain. He lost himself in the fire, and was only drawn back by Jacobson’s plaintive question.

  “What about you, m’lordling? I’ve no idea where you’re from, but surely your underlings perform similar rituals.”

  Kelrob squirmed in his chair. “I come from demesne Kael-Pellin, in the Rolling Lands. And yes, the drums beat there too, but further in the distance, as the revelers are forbidden to stray on my family’s estate. They light fires on the hillsides and dance around them, and sometimes I’ve seen them burning things shaped like animals or human beings, but made of woven grapevine.”

  Jacobson nodded sagely. “The sheltered heart of wine country,” he said. “I figured.”

  Kelrob shifted uncomfortably, unsure whether or not to be offended. “I know that they slaughter animals,” he said, “but I’ve never seen that. In my father’s house there are no ceremonies permitted, except for tonight; on Sowen the servants always leave out a dumb supper for the departed. My father allows the tradition to sooth their primitive minds, so he says. Towards evening they are all dismissed, and head into the nearby villages, where the drumming begins.” Kelrob broke his eyes from the fire, the throb of drums in his memory intermingling with the throb of drums in the present. “When I was younger my brother Aldric and I would go down to the village of Barlvine on high days, to help my father perform his ceremonial duties as laird. We would crack a cask of wine and fill all the villager’s cups, and they would throw little charms woven of grapevine at our feet. It was always...exciting.”

  Jacobson listened to Kelrob speak with a faint grin on his face, the jug turning between his fingers. “So you watched the fires on the hillsides,” he said wistfully. “But no, that can’t be all. Surely you snuck out once when you were young, just once, and joined in the revels yourself?”

  Kelrob blushed at the suggestion. “Absolutely not. It would have been highly improper.”

  “But you wanted to. I can tell.”

  Kelrob looked down at his thin-fingered hands. “I will admit to a certain level of fascination. In fact I spent my last two years at the Rookery researching nithing cultural practices in my spare time. I know about the symbol of the Green Man, for example, the Verdant Jack, and his meaning of death and rebirth, and about the Witch’s Wheel with its four high holidays corresponding to season and harvest. But I’ve never actually been to a proper festival.”

  Jacobson’s smile expanded into a grin. “Well lad, here’s your chance, and a better one you couldn’t have. The drums will grow much closer tonight, I promise you; even Kirleg’s black mood can’t keep Tamrel from coming. My lord, I think you should stay.”

  Kelrob blushed, his long fingers twisting together. “That would be improper indeed,” he said.

  Jacobson drank, belched, and leveled a finger at him. “I’m not suggesting you strip off your lendings and go writhe about a burning effigy. Probably be best if you didn’t; nothing smothers a good time quite like a magister, however well-intentioned. Stay up here and keep me company through the revels. I’ve no head for joining in a crowd, and you’re in no condition to travel anyhow.”

  His words turned sweetly in Kelrob’s ear. Riding was clearly out of the question; his legs were still quaking faintly, knees wobbling beneath his robe. Also, the absence of his chromox (Kelrob winced) would make the road far more perilous, whichever way he took. Better to travel by day, and probably hire a guide. He nodded slowly, picked up his bowl of stew, and began eating with such ravenous hunger that the portion was half-gone before he came up for air. The food was crudely delicious, roasted hunks of venison suspended in a thick mixture of carrots, potatoes, onions, and celery. It lent him strength, but also a heavy contentment, and when he finally scraped the bowl clean and set it aside all thoughts of riding out that night had left him. The drums were growing louder; dusk was settling.

  “I will stay,” Kelrob said to the flickering, throbbing half-darkness.

  Jacobson smiled at him, hoisted his jug. “Good. I’ll go tell Glev to put your horse back in the stables.”

  “And tell Meela not to worry,” Kelrob called after him. “Tell her that I won’t interfere, and I won’t be offended.”

  “I’m sure that will ease her poor mind.” Jacobson disappeared downstairs, and Kelrob re-filled his bowl with stew. He ate half of it, set the rest aside, and was half-drowsing by the time the big man returned, significantly drunker, a bottle of sickly golden liquor clutched in his hand.

  “Meela sends her blessings,” the big man said, raising the bottle and sloshing it. “Honestly, lad, you’d make a fine companion. Best rooms and best grog in every house!” Laughing at his own jest he uncorked the bottle, slugged down a fourth of it, then held it out to Kelrob, who demurred with a wave of his hand.

  “I have a bad stomach,” he confided. “But thanks.”

  “At your age? A terrible thing. Well, waste not.” Jacobson took another gulp, then stumbled towards the table and poured Kelrob a glass of commingled water and wine. Kelrob accep
ted it gracefully, watched as Jacobson collapsed back into his chair and nestled the liquor-bottle up against his chest. “So where were you headed to, anyways? To Tannigal, I know. But it’s rare to see a magister traveling sideroads like an ordinary mortal. What’s the story?”

  Kelrob sighed, sipped at the wine, which bit pleasantly without inflaming his stomach. “Not much of one. When an apprentice reaches the 16th Circle he becomes an adept, with all that title entails. Most are encouraged to undertake some physical excursion as a part of their initiation—those adepts desirous of becoming Taskmasters leave the Rookery and go west to begin their training on the Barrier, along with the prospective Healers and Binders who choose the battlefield as their specialization. Others go where their specializations take them, Biomancers to study agriculture and animal breeding, Wonder-Workers to the halls of minor lords to practice their showmanship, Weathermongers to the great node-towers where storm and season are carefully arranged, and so on. Always the choice should involve travel, which is why I was on the road.”