Chapter 10

The road south of Rheev's Landing, as I'd learned it was called, brought more of what we'd seen recently. Five days travel brought us to another large residence and another Magister, Dag Rhondel. The keep itself was called Cherry Point Terrace, and word of us had obviously traveled the river faster than we had, for we were expected.

Magister Rhondel seemed fascinated by Labo and Kei, as was his pet wizard Aracus. It did not take me long to dislike this wizard, and to come to the realization that those wizards I had met before this were cut from a very different cloth than Aracus.

I guessed Aracus to be in only his second or third lifetime; a sallow-faced man with thinning brown hair and short, stubby fingers on short, stubby arms. It annoyed me to no end that the man seemed incapable of keeping his magic reeled in tightly. Perhaps it was a lack of discipline, or general incompetence, but I found myself constantly running into the edges of his magic whenever we were together. The man had some natural gift for manipulating the air around him and the moisture within it, and this made him a valuable man in Magister Rhondel's eyes, as seasoned fruit woods were one of their prime exports, and examples of the high quality of their wood was evident throughout the keep, and this made him of some great value to the Magister and his operation.

To each their own, I guessed, but I would not want this wizard standing beside me in a conflict, that I knew. Still, I was an apprentice only, and it was not my place to look down on this wizard. I kept my opinions to myself.

"They tried to give us butchered meat," Labo complained when we were on the trail again.

"And it smelled funny," Kei added. "We refused it, saying we had eaten recently and were not hungry."

"Did it smell like spoiled meat, or something else?" I asked them.

"Something else," Labo answered. "We both know what spoiled meat smells like, and even these pampered beasts they raise for meat would not be so different as to confuse us when it comes to that."

"Next time you are offered something that smells wrong, don't be polite about refusing it and let me know immediately," I told them, stopping Deak to stress the point. When I had their attention, I let them know my thinking. "This may have been an attempt to drug you, or worse, to kill you with poison."

We camped that night a good mile from the river and the road, having ridden up a small side creek in search of some game. I had no objections to letting Kei and Labo do my hunting for me, but the exercise let us spend the night away from any traffic the road might have brought our way. Dinner was grouse for me. The pups ate whatever they'd caught in the heavy brush along the ravines to our north and east. They volunteered no details, and I didn't ask, but they both seemed satisfied, and totally uninterested in my roast bird.

I contacted my master, and I updated him on my travels; telling him of the keep at Rheev's Landing and the one at Cherry Point Terrace. When I mentioned the suspicious meat Kei and Labo had refused, he agreed with my concerns about drugs or poison and cautioned me again to be wary of those between me and the king who might seek to harm or influence me in some way. I expressed my continued determination to remain apart from the intrigues of the royal court.

<Pacasin, there is more magic loose in the lands outside the Vale than you can imagine, and it is both grander and poorer than what you have known until now. I caution you again to be alert for it, and do not let yourself be lulled into complacency by the peaceful surroundings.>

Those words were the ones I took with me into sleep that night.

≈

After Cherry Point Terrace was Bellard's Yaw, and after that was Cooper Falls. Four days out of Cooper Falls we reached Sunset Cliffs, where we were faced with our first real choice of paths to take. The river dogged towards the west here, as it swept around a high promontory, the southwestern tip of a large plateau that extended out of a spur of mountains to the northeast. If we took the trail that climbed the cliffs and crossed the plateau, we could save several days of travel, and when we left the plateau, we would be only two days travel away from Montcairn.

"You also avoid having to ride through Sunset Canyon," Dieko, the captain of the Sunset Cliffs guard told me as we looked over the map his boss, Magister Nuncio Tagare, had provided.

After being assured that there was no chance of getting lost on this trail, and again replenishing our supplies, we took the plateau trail. It was cold and dry during the nights and hot and dry during the day, but it wasn't desolate. Oh, there was a fair amount of bare rock and blowing dust and dirt, but it was wet enough when you went looking for water, and there was an amazing amount of ground cover from place to place. Heavy brush and dried grasses wherever there was water. Lighter brush and scrub where there wasn't, and even trees, though none of them could compare to the trees we were used to in the north wood.

Winter may have come in the Vale, but it was still summer here, for a while at least. Hunting was no problem for the pups, as they had discovered the herds of high plains antelopes which ran the plateau in eddying knots that spoke to them of fine dining. They even brought me one.

It had been an odd day, all day. I'd felt a little twitchy for some reason and the fall of night hadn't helped the feeling. It was a cool night, and the grass and scrub around our camp was washed with silvery moonlight everywhere it wasn't tinged by reflected light form the campfire. The reflected moonlight seemed wrong somehow, and the twitchy feeling was not something I was used to. I took a moment, Before I banked the fire up properly for the night and let my magic slip out, as softly as I could, and let it taste the night.

Because a man has eyes and can see, doesn't mean he sees all, and the same is true of magic. I had magic sight, and according to my master, a considerable sensitivity to it, beyond the norm even for wizards. Still, magic had been worked around me, and I had almost missed it.

"Kei, Labo," I called softly. "Come close to me, but softly."

"What is it?" Labo asked, his nose touching the back of my right hand.

"We are in a trap. One worked with magic I almost did not see."

The pair snuffed their displeasure, but did not stir otherwise. Good. They were remembering their lessons. "I will prepare us for our night's work, which is surely coming soon, but first I am going to build the fire back up. Stay close and do not wander."

I had let the fire die some since dinner, but the good bed of coals left from cooking it was easily built back up to a roaring blaze with a good portion of the firewood I'd collected. Once it was, I returned to my previous spot, casually stopping to pick up my kit along the way.

Back at the fire and with Kei and Labo beside me, I cleared a spot and drew a figure in the dirt, a leaf with three blades, evenly spaced. As I drew, I sang quietly into the figure, letting my magic flow along with the music. As the tune was finished the magic molded by the notes and the figure lifted itself up from the dirt, glowing a soft, deep red. I blew on it where it spun, a soft breath that set the tripartite ghostly blade spinning. The red light of it flared, then died, fading to the color of dried blood. When the light was gone and only the color left, I drew the leaf blades into myself.

I repeated this twice more, sending the second into Labo and the third into Kei.

"Kei give me your paw," I asked the pup softly. I brought a small jug of purified water out of my kit and a cloth of soft linen. I began to clean the Vulkai's claws with the water, singing again as I did, this time a tune with a name, Cleanblade. I repeated the song and the washing with his other forefoot and then did the same for Labo. When I was done, I put the cloth and the water back in my kit and closed it. I took a breath and stood, the pups each taking a step to the side to arrange themselves about me.

"I think magic has been laid for us today, and through it we have all been lied to. Let us sit and be still a while. I will work a little lie of my own to make it seem as if we have found our beds and sleep." I warned them softly. "I cannot give you better eyes than you have. I cannot make your noses keener than they are," I told them as I moved to put my kit bag back where it belonged. "Your senses are sharp, and I need them to be, but right now I need your wits to be sharp as well, understood?"

the two of them nodded silently in response and followed me again further away from the fire. We settled into the night and let it wrap itself around us.

Several hours later the first call came, as through the night, we heard a wolf call and from across the night, another answered. I heard on the the pups let out a 'whuff' at that, but whichever one it was, he managed to do it quietly. A moment later we heard the yelping of dogs — a large number of them, and more wolves howling.

"Up boys," I called, standing myself.

"They seek to run us to ground?" Labo said with a snort. "They think they would run Vulkai to ground?"

"Join my song," I called, more loudly than needed, and began singing. It was a bastardized form of the Cathasa Cana, Kei and Labo were the second and third voices, as needed, but this variation had come to me as possible, borrowing on the fact that the three of us were already bonded. The bonding let me take some things away from the song without destroying its integrity. I had tutored the pups in calling, as the Vulkai do, with their voices, specific calls which met the songs requirements. It was somewhat risky for me to take the center of the song, apprentice that I am, and having sung a part in the battle song only once before.

"No, we will run them," Kei answered his brother, after I'd begun to sing, but before their parts would come. When their parts came, they were spot on and energetic, together our voices raised the magic, somewhat lessened because we did not have a king's magic in active support, as we'd had at Warmuth Bridge, but powerful enough for any pack of animals.

"Let us run them then," I called out, drawing my sword and dagger and calling to their magic.

We ran into the night, and with my magic about me, and the modified Cana flowing through us, the night was like day, every sound clear and every smell sharp and distinct. I'm sure it added nothing to what the boys sensed, but for me, the world came alive again, as it had on the plains before Warmuth Bridge.

Our camp site had been in a dip in the land that ran before the long line of a ridge running from the southwest to the northeast across the mostly flat plateau. With the ridge rising to our left and the land rising to meet the rest of the plateau floor to our right, we ran northeast to meet the baying and howling. The mixed pack was surely meant to either drive us to the southwest or pinch us between itself and a more silent force coming from that direction.