THE CROWD WAS PLAINLY not about to disperse any time soon, and so Lyn decided to take control of the situation. She’d already had to reveal just who she was, and she wore the copper gorget at her throat now, marking her out as on royal business. Which she wasn’t, of course, but it wouldn’t be the first time such trinkets had been misused. It was cold and uncomfortable about her neck, and she would dearly love to be rid of it.
But the people of Wherryover plainly felt they were owed a tale, and Lyn decided that, her cover blown, she may as well capitalise on the situation.
“Yes, I am Fourth Daughter of the Queen, trusted emissary of my mother in times of crisis,” because if you were going to lie then make it a big one. “She has heard of the threat arising across the river in the Ordwood, and has called upon her ancient bargains with Nyrgoth Elder, last of the ancient sorcerers. I travel with him now, to confront the demon and banish it back to its twisted realm of darkness!”
Many of her listeners had fled here across the river from the Ord, and she got a more enthusiastic response than she’d been expecting. The dozen squabbling fiefdoms of the forest were nobody’s priority, neither rich nor strategically useful, and usually at one another’s throats. The idea that the queen of Lannesite would go further than grudgingly allowing the refugees onto her soil was more than most here had expected. With good reason, as Lyn well knew.
Word would now race back to the palace on burning feet, and her mother would wax marvellous wroth, as the songs had it, but by then Lyn and her companions would be across the water and confronting the demon. And returning home with a confronted demon to her credit would set everything straight, she was sure.
Speeches made, and Esha off securing ferry passage over the river, she approached the sorcerer, who was sitting on a bench outside the inn. He looked up as she approached, and actually smiled, which took her aback. She had grown used to his stern, disapproving expression, as though nothing in the mortal world could truly touch or interest him in any way. Now there was a slight twist at the corner of his mouth, and it made him seem infinitesimally younger and more vulnerable.
They had tried to take his horns. She recalled stories of sorcerous beasts whose horns, when severed, would grant the bearer strange powers or cure maladies, and apparently the villainous innkeeper had believed the same of sorcerers. Her fault, for finding them such wretched digs, but she had hoped to pass through the place without much notice, hiding her own identity in the sorcerer’s shadow. When it had all kicked off, she had a moment of utter disgust at her own naivety, at how bad she was at this. And then the sorcerer had not even been offended, had taken it all in his solemn stride and not even cared that she was here without royal writ.
“That was a great doom you pronounced on them, Nyrgoth Elder,” she said to him respectfully.
His expression—now he had expressions—was oddly uncertain. “I don’t understand you, Fourth Daughter,” he said, in that odd way, titles without proper names so that she wondered if she should just be calling him “Sorcerer” to his face like an insult.
“When you prophesied your attackers would never bear or sire children, and cursed the inn,” she prompted. “That was true magic.” Probably such things were commonplace to sorcerers, but she had been deeply impressed. To kill someone’s entire line with but a word, every generation to come, was a true wizard’s retribution. They’d be more careful with their hospitality in Wherryover from now on.
Nyrgoth Elder looked abruptly irritated. “There is no magic, merely the proper application of universal forces.”
Lynesse nodded slowly. That seemed to her to be a scholar’s definition of magic, and the sorcerer was suddenly ill-tempered. She had no wish to provoke him even though she didn’t quite understand the grounds for his offence.
A moment later he had his blank face back on, that spoke only detachment from her and her ignorance. “I apologise,” he told her levelly. “I am not supposed to talk to you of such things.” And that, of course, was probably true. Sorcerers were jealous of their secrets.
Esha came back then. “Lyn, all ready to go.” She pressed a new sword into Lyn’s hands to replace the heirloom the flying monster had ground up. “Ferry wasn’t sure whether to charge double for the sorcerer or take us for free.” She grinned broadly. “And I have something special I picked up last night. One of the refugees had some piece of the demon. I thought the Elder could take a look at it.” She looked enquiringly down at the wizard, who unfolded up from his sitting position. As with all his movements there was neither age nor youth to the movement, as though he was outside time.
On the way to the dock, Esha fell back to match steps with the wizard, and Lyn heard her murmur, “Far be it for me to advise the Elder . . .”
“Speak,” from the sorcerer.
“You have not been much amongst people in the long years since the reign of Astresse Once Regent?”
“That is true.”
“To speak a title to one’s face, that is . . . considered rude. Lynesse Fourth Daughter would not say, but it is as though you consider her a thing. Call me Free Mark when pointing me out to another, yes. Call me Free Mark to my face, you lessen me, as though you cannot spare the time to pick me from my fellows, you see?”
By now Lyn wished her friend had just kept her mouth shut. The sorcerer actually stopped, staring. “Is that the way of it? How was this knowledge kept from me?”
Esha shrugged. “By your separation from the world of men, Nyrgoth Elder. Or so I would guess.”
And again, just as after the attack, the Elder was not offended by any of this. In fact, he seemed positively happy to have learned something, and had a little more spring in his stride all the way to the water. Lyn supposed it was rare enough that a sorcerer of the ancient race was taught something new.
The boat crew were three women of Esha’s people, bowing to Lyn with that calculated respect the Coast-people used with any notional superior outside their own ranks, that stopped just short of insubordination. They watched the Elder warily, and all held their breath when he stepped aboard the ferry, in case the boat turned to live wood and sprouted leaves, or transformed into a fish.
“Surprised he can’t just walk over the water,” one of them said, obviously intended to be out of the Elder’s hearing, but Nyrgoth turned his head and said brightly, “I suppose I could, but that would be wasteful,” and that shut them all up for the voyage.
The thing that Esha had got hold of was nasty looking, more like a claw than anything else. It was a curved spike some six inches long that had obviously been part of some creature, mottled black and green and with the broken end encrusted with what looked like scales. It came wrapped in what had been fine cloth once, and supposedly the seller had been vizier to one of the little forest kingdoms. Easy enough claim to make, Lyn supposed, but it was very fine cloth.
Nyrgoth Elder sat in the belly of the boat with the cloth spread on his lap and studied the thing without touching it, though occasionally he brought his hands close and made what she could only characterise as mystical passes through the air. By the time the far shore approached, he had rewrapped the grisly memento and was frowning a little.
“If I had the assistance of my tower I could probably make more of this,” he told her. “I think your friend may have been lied to, though. I can see no artificial structures within it at all. It’s not a relic of the ancient times, as Ulmoth possessed. Your people may have been scared off by some animal new to their forest.”
Lyn held on to that as they disembarked, and held on to it as Esha paid the boat crew and the vessel put off. She even managed to hold on to it as they wove through the tent-cluttered space that had been the market grounds on the Ordwood river side, turning her face from the plight of the hundreds who had come this far and no farther. The anger was building up inside her all that time, though, and she felt her control over it fraying from moment to moment. She wanted to make a scene right there, where all those displaced people could hear her. She wanted them to share just what she thought of the sorcerer’s words, and join her in her condemnation.
Nyrgoth Elder was patently unaware of her reaction, and so when she finally couldn’t hold it in any longer—after they were clear of the camp and into the trees—she caught him entirely off guard when she rounded on him.
“No, I do not think that all those people were driven out of their homes by an animal!” she snapped at him. “Nor do I believe, Nyrgoth Elder, that the forest folk, who for all their lives, and the lives of their ancestors, have known these lands, would have a single beast within these trees that they did not recognise, be it predator or prey. I believe there is a demon, as they say, and that it controls minds and feeds on people and cannot be fought by normal ways. Otherwise I would not have risked my mother’s wrath and my own life by trekking to your tower and calling on our family’s compact. It is sorcery that needs sorcery to fight it! Not an animal that needs only a bow and a spear!”
She ended up shouting quite loudly, and broke off, horrified at how impolitic she had abruptly become. Inside, she knew with utter misery that what she was really railing against was her mother and her court, because they had said exactly the same thing as the sorcerer. And if, just if, they and Nyrgoth were correct, and there was no demon nor sorcery, then she had done an incalculably foolish thing and confirmed everybody’s bad opinion of her forever.
For a moment there was an expression on his face—such an expression: panic, horror, hurt, offence and fear all crammed into those aquiline features, and none of them looks that a sorcerer’s visage should bear. Then all trace of it was gone, as completely as if she had been entirely mistaken, and his haughty, unruffled stare was back. She waited for him to just go, perhaps walking across the water as he’d said, or disappearing into thin air.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, for a moment just her child-self standing before any number of broken vases and windows, knowing the sentiments were too little and too late. The words bounced off his stiff regard, but then he inclined his head slightly, a superior accepting the contrition of an inferior, which she supposed was her due.
“The apologies are mine, Lyn,” he told her. “These are your rituals. It’s not for me to detract from them. We should continue to hunt this demon of yours.”
Lynesse froze, feeling horribly awkward again. Nothing the sorcerer said or did ever seemed to be quite right, and did he think she didn’t understand that he was humouring her? “Yes,” she got out, forcing a smile to her face. “We shall. And we’ll avoid towns, where we can.”