Dhiammara

7 Wind on the Plains

Eliseth arrived in the Southlands with little more than Bern, the useless Sword of Flame that the Mortal carried slung on his back in an old cloak, and Anvar’s stolen memories to guide her through these strange new lands. It was scarcely a triumphant arrival—considering that she planned to rule these Southern Kingdoms before much longer.

The Magewoman stood on the lonely, windswept beach, watching the ghostly outline of the grey Nightrunner ship disappear into the rainy darkness. She was mightily relieved to see the back of it. This had been her first sea voyage, and she hoped it would be her last—the seas had still been violently rough following the Nexian earthquake, and she had not known it was possible to be so wretchedly ill.

Eliseth shivered with something more than just the raw, damp cold. She had never known what it was to feel so vulnerable. She was unaccustomed to being without the privileges conferred upon her by tradition: the luxury and security of the Academy, and the protection and authority of her rank as Magewoman, one of the city’s powerful elite. Now she must set out to sculpt her future from the raw materials to hand, and her feelings were an unsettling mix of trepidation and anticipation as she set foot on the shores of an unknown future.

“Lady—please, what do we do now? I’m cold and I’m hungry, and this burden you’ve given me weighs so heavy....”

Eliseth rounded on the petulant Bern. “Stop whining, Mortal—ere I give you a reason for your spineless sniveling! Don’t just stand there—go and find us somewhere to shelter until this accursed rain stops.”

“Have pity, Lady. Where will I go? I can’t see in the dark like you,” Bern wailed.

The Magewoman gritted her teeth in exasperation. “In the name of all the Gods—why did I ever drag you along?” she snapped. In search of a target for her temper she gathered her powers and lashed out with her will against the looming clouds above. Abruptly, the rain cut off in a sudden silence as though the world itself was startled by what she had done.

She turned back to the gaping Bern. “Come on, follow me. And take this, since you’re only useful as a beast of burden.” Eliseth threw him the bag containing the few belongings she’d salvaged from Nexis, with a flash of spiteful satisfaction to see him stagger beneath the additional burden. Then, without a backward glance, she strode off along the beach confidently expecting her Mortal slave to follow. She had no time to waste on him—there was too much to be done. The next months would be challenging times indeed, but Eliseth had no doubt that she would soon make this place her domain. After all, Aurian had done so—and wherever that red-haired bitch could succeed, the Weather-Mage expected to do a damn sight better.

It was as well that Eliseth had her determination to sustain her. She spent the most uncomfortable night of her life shivering in the lee of a pile of fallen rock that had clearly, at one time, been attached to the overhanging cliff that provided scanty shelter from above. Though she had formed a magical shield around herself as a protection from the cold wind—not to mention any further rockfalls from above—she was unable to warm the raw night air, or soften the stony ground on which she lay. Between the strain of maintaining the shield and the fear of what might happen if she did not, she didn’t close her eyes all night.

A grey dawn crept reluctantly forth, heralded by the sound of Bern’s coughing.—Eliseth scowled at the shivering, sunken-eyed Mortal. Since the deaths of his family, Bern had been neglecting himself, and the rough sea voyage and the night spent on the exposed, inhospitable beach had been too much for his feeble Mortal constitution. Typical! Had she not known better, she could have sworn he did it deliberately, to plague her. Really, these accursed Mortals were no earthly use whatsoever—they were so frail that the slightest hardship finished them. She was reluctant to leave him, however. It was too convenient to have a servant—especially one whose mind she could control. Besides, she needed Bern to carry the Sword of Flame. The Artifact still reacted to her powers with dangerous violence, but in the hands of the magicless Mortal it remained dark and dead.

The Magewoman hesitated—then sighed, and shouldered her heavy bag herself, leaving Bern to bring the Sword. “Come on,” she snapped. “The sooner we find something to eat, the sooner you’ll get your strength back and be some use again.”

Eliseth felt horribly exposed on the endless flat expanse of the coastal plains, like a fly crawling along the top of a vast table. Once she had left the coast there was nothing, as far as the eye could see, but league upon league of waving grass:, a pale, tawny gold beneath the steel-grey autumn sky.—With nothing to obstruct it, the perpetual wind had an edge like a whetted knife. It came moaning across the plains like a soul in torment, hissing and whistling between the dry grass stems until the Magewoman wanted to scream.—On foot, it was a long and wearisome journey. Eliseth traveled mostly at night, scrying frequently in the grail to foresee and avoid any approaching Xandim patrols. The trek also proved to be a hungry one—for the town-bred Bern, inevitably, proved worse than useless as a hunter, and the Magewoman was forced to obtain most of their food herself, using her magic to kill rabbits and the small deer that grazed the plain.

Eventually, after about eight days—the measureless monotony of the vast prairie made it all too easy to lose count—

Eliseth had found what she had been seeking: two young Xandim herders, a man and a woman, out on the plains alone, guarding a small cluster of shaggy white cattle. In order to get close to her prey, the Mage used her air-twisting spell to blur and disguise the outlines of herself and Bern, so that from a distance they would appear as a passing cloud shadow, a swirl of dust, or a flicker of sunlight on the windblown grass.

For a night and a day she followed the Xandim as they tracked the slow-moving bovines, noting the pattern of their activities. Every few hours they would take turnabout as rider and mount, one resuming human shape, and the other changing to equine form. When night fell once more they herded the cattle back to the deep grassy dell where they had pitched their camp—a sturdy hide tent and a fire in a shallow pit cut out of the turf to protect it from the worst of the omnipresent wind. The location was well chosen—there were few sheltered spots anywhere on the grasslands, but here the soil lay thin across the bones of the earth, exposing, along one side of the hollow, a slanting wall of fractured stone that dropped sharply to the grassy bottom of the dell. A spring oozed out between two cracked rock faces, its waters trickling down to collect in a mossy, reedy pool at die foot of the steep and stony gradient.—During the day, as the cattle grazed, their herders, a dark-haired man and a girl with tanned skin and long brown braids, had hunted hare and wild birds with bow and sling whenever an opportunity arose. Now, as the red sun dipped behind the edge of the dell, the pair moved into what appeared to be a well-rehearsed routine, with one skinning, drawing, and spitting the game while the other lit the fire and fetched water from the spring. When all was organized and the supper was roasting over die fire, the man stood up and smiled, holding out his hand to the woman. They vanished into the tent together, and were gone some time before the woman emerged once more, pulling on her shirt as she came. She turned the meat and went down to the pond to wash as her partner, stretching and whistling, crawled out of the tent and set a pot of water at the edge of the fire to boil.

When the Horsefolk had eaten and settled for the night they took turns at watch, one guarding the camp while the other slept. At last the Magewoman was ready to make her move. She waited an hour or two, shivering in the frosty moonlight until she was sure that the Xandim were well settled. At last, when the time was right, she slipped into Bern’s mind, controlling him as he crept up on the drowsy woman and cut her throat. The herder died without a sound, and her partner, still fast asleep within the tent, drew his last breath without even waking.

Smelling the blood, the cattle began to bawl uneasily and mill around the far side of the hollow. Eliseth, abandoning Bern’s body, darted out from her hiding place behind the tent and the shaggy white beasts exploded into terrified flight, stampeding away over the rim of the dell into the grasslands beyond. As the Magewoman came round to the front of the tent she almost fell over Bern, who knelt, retching, by the fireplace. Ignoring him, she filled the grail from the herders’ own waterbag and restored the first victim to life.—Eliseth took control of the Xandim’s mind almost before the girl had a chance to regain consciousness. There she planted the instruction that the herders must obey the silver-haired Outland woman without question, and serve her in any way they could. Once the girl’s mind had been enslaved, the Magewoman left her and repeated the process on the male herder.

Much to Eliseth’s amusement, the Xandim, Saldras and Teixeira, were most astonished to discover that a strange woman had suddenly appeared in their camp. They remembered nothing of what had happened to them—but now they were so gripped by the strange compulsion to devote themselves to the newcomer that they didn’t even spare as much as a thought for their vanished cattle.—For the first time Eliseth discovered, as Aurian and Anvar had so long ago, that the Magefolk possessed an innate facility to understand new languages.—Once she had questioned the herders about the habits, numbers, and whereabouts of the local Xandim, the herders were of no use to the Magewoman in their human form. Taking control of their minds, Eliseth forced them to change to equine shape and stay that way, hobbling them tightly so that they could not escape while she slept.

The Weather-Mage returned to the Xandim tent, now her own, in a glow of satisfaction. At last! No more trudging for mile after weary mile across these endless bloody plains! Now she could continue her journey quickly, for she had decided that the Horsefolk as a race would be of little use in her plans of conquest—she could come back and deal with them later, at her leisure. No, the secret of power in the Southern Kingdoms was control of the skies—and, among the scraps of knowledge she had gleaned from Anvar’s mind, she had found the names of Winged Folk who would be only too glad to help her oust the rightful Queen. Now that she had the Xandim to transport her, Eliseth intended to head for Aerillia with all speed.

In the meantime, however, there was one small detail to take care of. The Magewoman had not forgotten her plan to force Vannor to mount an attack on the Phaerie. Eliseth shared the remains of the herders’ supper with a ravenous and grateful Bern, then dismissed him, with a blanket, to sleep outside the tent.—Even as he drowsed in the almost-forgotten warmth of blanket and fire, she slid into his mind and obliterated his memories of the murder and resurrection of the Xandim. Not before time, too. Already, the baker had been starting to wonder if she had not dealt with him in some similar fashion.

Once the Mortal had settled, Eliseth took a candle and filled the grail with water. Looking into the dark and shifting depths of the chalice, she bent her will upon Nexis, and sought the unsuspecting mind of Vannor, High Lord of the City.

Vannor was trying hard to keep his temper, but that fat fool Pendral just got right under his skin and stuck there. If the idiot’s brain was as big as his mouth, the exasperated High Lord thought, then I wouldn’t be having all this trouble. He set down his goblet so hard that the wine splashed out in a streak of crimson over the polished surface of the library table.

“For the last time, man, what the thundering blazes do you expect me to do about the bloody Phaerie? Poor old Parric’s near demented—how can you expect the troopers to beat off an airborne attack? The enemy can shield against our arrows with their magic, and wherever we station our soldiers in the city, the bastards just come down somewhere else!”

Pendral’s piggy little eyes narrowed into slits. “But I do expect you to do something about the problem, Vannor. You are High Lord of Nexis—a position, I might remind you, that you took upon yourself. The citizens have every reason to look to you for help—and they’re getting damned tired of waiting for an answer from you and that drunken tosspot of a Garrison Commander.”

Vannor leapt to his feet, upsetting his goblet. He leaned across the table, glowering at Pendral. “Given your own collection of vices, you’ve got a bloody nerve to complain about Parric,” he growled.

Pendral’s face turned the color of the spilled wine. “Vicious lies?” he spluttered. “I challenge you to prove your baseless accusation, or .. .”

“Oh, shove it, you debauched little pervert,” Vannor retorted, “and shove your sham concerned-citizen charade right after it. You couldn’t care less about the poor folk of Nexis. What’s eating you is the fact that these Phaerie raids are robbing your goods, shaving your profits, and ruining your custom.”

Pendral also leapt to his feet. “Well so what?” he blazed. “It’s true! And it’s affecting everyone, not just me.” He drew himself upright, sticking his massive paunch out in front of him like an indignant pigeon. “I’m not just here for myself, you know,” he went on pompously. “I represent the entire Merchants’ Guild—and we’ve had enough of your spineless refusal to deal with this situation. If you won’t, maybe we should find ourselves a High Lord who will... .”

“All right! All right!” Vannor roared. “Enough! Very well—I’ll declare war on the Phaerie. We’ll start conscripting extra troopers first thing tomorrow. Now get out of my house!”

Pendral gaped at him. By the gods, Vannor thought—it was almost worth it just to take the wind out of that bastard’s sails.

“I’ll go and report to the Guild at once!” Pendral cried. “We must issue a proclamation.”

Really, that was Vannor’s responsibility, but if it got this wretch out of his hair, he was willing to let the matter slide. It was only when Pendral had gone that he suddenly realized, with a chill of horror, what a terrible thing he had done. But before the regrets had time to take root, they were whisked from his mind, vanishing without a trace.

“Make war on Hellorin? You must have taken leave of your senses!” Parric’s voice was so soft it was almost inaudible. Having heard the announcement of the crier from the Merchants’ Guild, he’d come storming up to Vannor’s house in a blazing rage, but the tidings, finally confirmed by the High Lord himself, were far too serious a matter for mere temper.

Vannor’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve made my decision, Parric,” he said stonily.

“There’s no altering it. As High Lord, It’s my responsibility to put a stop to the Phaerie depredations—”

“Yes, but you won’t be getting carved to pieces by those bastards. My troopers may be sworn to defend Nexis, but there must be some other way? By Chathak’s bones, Vannor—I can see why you didn’t dare break this news to me yourself.—You never did have a head for strategy. An outright attack on Hellorin is a hopeless cause, doomed to failure from the outset. You’ll be wasting all those lives for nothing.”

Vannor’s face was expressionless. All the bluff warmth and zest that had formed the core of his nature had fled. What can have changed him so? The Cavalrymaster thought. That poison didn’t take his life, but it robbed us of the true Vannor, just as though it had killed him outright.

“Are you going to carry out my orders?” Vannor demanded coldly. “Or aren’t you man enough for the job? In that case, I suggest you crawl back down the neck of a bottle, and I’ll find someone else to command the Garrison.”

I’ll kill him, was Parric’s first thought—but fortunately for Vannor, his anger was so intense that it turned to ice, instead of fire. “If that’s the way you want it,” he said stiffly, “you can have my resignation right now—but I warn you, you’re making a big mistake.” Walking up to the former merchant, he looked him straight in the eye. “For once, I’m actually glad that Aurian is gone. To see you acting like this would break her heart.”

Eliseth watched from behind Vannor’s eyes as the Cavalry-master walked out of the room without looking back. If it breaks Aurian’s heart that’s an additional bonus, she thought.

Parric was busy clearing his belongings out of the Commander’s quarters that had once belonged to Forral, when Sangra walked in, looking pale and strained.

“It’s no good,” she burst out. “There’s no easy way to tell you this. I’ve just been talking to Vannor. He asked me to take over command of the Garrison—and I told him I would.”

The Cavalrymaster’s stomach clenched with a sick feeling of dread and a prickling chill crawled between his shoulderblades. Someone walked over my grave, his mother used to say—only this time, Parric knew, with a sinking certainty, that the grave would be Sangra’s, not his own.

“Parric?” Sangra was looking at him with a puzzled frown. “In the name of all the Gods, say something.”

Taking a deep breath, Parric tried to haul himself back to some sense of normality. “Sangra, you can’t do this,” he said urgently. “Whatever possessed you? You know as well as I do that the whole idea is insane. Why, you may as well tell the troopers to fall on their swords right here in Nexis, and save themselves the trek.”

Sangra went, without asking, to Parric’s table, and poured two cups of rough wine from the pitcher that stood there. She took a sip and he saw her raise a disapproving eyebrow. “It’s been a long time since you touched this filthy stuff.”

Parric glared at her. “I’m retired,” he snapped. “I can take up getting drunk again if I want to. Now you’re the one who should be staying sober.”

Sangra flushed. “If you start that business again you’re a bigger bloody fool than I thought.”

“You’re calling me a fool?” The cup of wine smashed against the wall as Parric’s temper finally snapped. “At least I’ve got more sense than to walk open-eyed into a fight against a foe who has not only magic but the power of flight!” He grabbed Sangra by the shoulders, disregarding her startled curse as her own cup fell to the floor. “Don’t do it, love. Think again. We’ll both resign—what can Vannor do? We can always go south, like Aurian did. We could hire out our swords again....”

From the bleak look that came into Sangra’s eyes, Parric knew he had already lost. Shaking her head, she covered Parric’s hands with her own. “And can the entire Garrison resign?” she asked him softly. “You know they can’t—they’re sworn to serve. And Vannor has already ordered additional conscription. Think of those troops: raw, green, inexperienced—somebody’s got to take care of them. Now that Hargorn has retired, you and I have the most experience in the Garrison by a long chalk—and if you won’t go, then I certainly must. You’ve got to understand, Parric—if I left those lads and lasses to their fate I could never face myself in the mirror again.” She sighed bitterly. “I’ve got to go—even if it is a fool’s errand. All I can do is try to save as many of them as possible.”

Parric sighed. Maybe it was my grave, after all, he thought.

“All right,” he said resignedly. “If I can’t persuade you to come to your senses, then I suppose I’ll just have to join you in your insanity. At least I can make sure you don’t do anything too daft.” Shaking his head, he reached for his sword belt and began to buckle it on. “I don’t know which of us is more insane.”