Mandes had weathered his personal catastrophe well. The loss of his left arm was a hard blow-a wizard needed two hands to perform most incantations-but Mandes proved surprisingly adaptable. By the time the imperial hordes returned from clearing out the last Tarsan garrisons, Mandes was up and walking. He spent most of his time in Old Port, drinking in noisy kender taverns or prowling the seedy shops lining the waterfront. Such shops were treasure troves of odd merchandise, brought in by wandering sailors or “found” by kender on their wide-ranging travels.
One afternoon, with the chill of early autumn in the air, Tol found the wizard in the Wave Chaser Inn, the same place they’d captured the Tarsan soldiers. The wizard was seated in a snug corner by the hearth, at a table heaped with moldering manuscripts. A wooden tankard of mulled wine steamed by his right hand.
Tol greeted him. Unlike nearly every other soul in Hylo, Mandes did not rise and salute the now famous warlord, but he did bid Tol join him in a pot of warmed wine.
Tol dragged up a three-legged stool and accepted the offer of a drink. When the wine arrived, it proved to be heavily spiced. Though not to Tol’s taste, he sipped it politely.
“You’ve heard I’m sending men home to be discharged for wounds or work?” he said. Mandes grunted assent. “Would you like to go along?”
That brought the wizard upright on his bench. The wool blanket draped around his shoulder fell away, exposing the empty sleeve of his velvet robe. The cuff was pinned to his chest.
“I, go to Daltigoth?” he said, and Tol nodded. “That is a handsome offer!”
Tol smiled. “There’s a price to be paid. Some letters and dispatches I’ve written must be delivered. Will you see to it?”
Mandes leaned forward, knocking old scrolls from the table top. “Gladly, my lord! To whom will I give them?”
“Crown Prince Amaltar gets the reports bearing Lord Urakan’s seal.” Tol had inherited the old warlord’s signet with command of his army. “The remainder-only one-goes to his wife, Princess Consort Valaran.”
He expected some comment, but Mandes showed no sign of recognizing the unusual nature of the second recipient.
“I’ve long dreamed of going to Daltigoth,” the sorcerer said, sinking back in his bench. “Tarsis was too tight-fisted, too mercantile for me. In Daltigoth, a man can be recognized for his talent and rewarded for his deeds. When do I leave, my lord?”
“Tomorrow morning, first light. I’ve secured a conveyance for you. Not a wagon or a kender’s cart, but a real coach-and-four. You’ll have company on the ride, but it’s still better than a ox-drawn wagon, eh?”
Tol called to a pair of soldiers waiting by the inn door. They brought a strong box, strapped with iron, and set it on the floor at Mandes’s feet. Tol opened it. Nestled inside were eight short, thickly wound scrolls. Seven bore the seal of the warlord, pressed into the red wax enclosing the parchment. The eighth scroll was tied with white ribbon and sealed with ordinary white wax.
Tol looked over the brief legends inked on the outside of the rolls. Finding the one he wanted, he tapped it with a finger.
“I haven’t forgotten you,” he said. “This dispatch mentions the bakali, your role in helping to stop the Red Wrack, and our battle with XimXim. I would be very surprised if His Highness Prince Amaltar didn’t reward you for your deeds.”
He closed the box and clamped a soft lead seal around the hasp. Rising, he said, “I thank you, Mandes-for everything. And I know you’ll see my words safely into the proper hands.”
After Tol departed, Mandes rose from his chair, swaying slightly from too much wine. He summoned two kender from the kitchen to carry the box to his room on the second floor. Gathering up his old manuscripts, he followed them upstairs.
Alone in his room, he sagged heavily on the straw-stuffed mattress. His features lost their carefully neutral expression and twisted with omnipresent pain. Agony lanced through his shoulder, throbbed down his left arm, and ended as it always did, in the tips of the fingers of his left hand-arm, hand, and fingers he no longer possessed.
Mandes held up his right hand, palm down, and felt his crippled shoulder flex as though lifting his left as well. He could see his left arm and hand alongside the right; the phantom limb glowed faintly in the gloom. His searches through the scrap shops of Old Port were not merely a cure for idleness. Mandes was looking for magical tomes that might contain secret recipes to restore his arm, or at least give flesh to the phantom limb he was certain he possessed. He’d found nothing so far and had begun to despair. But now-
Now he was to go to Daltigoth!
The empire’s capital contained perhaps the greatest concentration of wizards and sorcerous literature in the world. Only the libraries of Silvanost could rival it, and they were beyond the reach of a mere human.
Mandes shivered, more in anticipation than from the autumnal chill. Lord Tolandruth’s offer was a gift from the gods. Yet it was a gift he felt he had more than earned with his suffering.
Pain was replaced by the equally familiar rage. Mandes stood and flung the useless manuscripts across the room.
Tolandruth! It was that fool’s fault he’d lost his arm! True, he had consented to help in the fight against XimXim, but he’d never imagined he’d have to battle the monster himself in that hellish cavern!
Now, Gilean’s book of fate had turned a new page. He was getting that which he most desired: access to the great and powerful. In Daltigoth he would place his magical skills at the disposal of whomever offered him the highest rewards. It was only right and proper. Wealth and power belonged to those who could do, whether they were warriors, woodcutters, or sorcerers. One day, he vowed, he would be the most powerful wizard in Ergoth. When that happened, his persecutors in Tarsis would have cause to regret their past injustices to him.
Giving the bakali the Balm of Sirrion had been a mistake, he now realized. Embedding the Red Wrack in the mist had been an even greater folly. The lizard-men hadn’t asked for a plague. That had been his own idea. Since the Tarsans and kender were not sufficiently admiring of his talents, he’d decided to repay them with pestilence. But the dead bakali had taken the blame, and no one living knew the truth but him. Even so, he wondered if Tolandruth still suspected.
The sealed box sat by the door, black and bulky. Within were Tolandruth’s thoughts on the events of the past sixty days. His decisions, his opinions, his praise, his condemnation-all were locked inside that box. Mandes needed to know what had been written. It would be to his advantage to embellish adulation of himself and expunge any criticism.
The lead seal was weighty in his hand. He knew no spells to remove seals intact, but he did know how to re-forge broken ones.
Mandes was awake till dawn. He read and wrote all night, scraping off Tol’s carefully penned letters and inking in his own. The former farm boy had little skill as a writer; his simple handwriting was easy to alter.
The last scroll, addressed to Princess Valaran Mandes found most interesting, but it mentioned him not at all. He did not bother changing any of it. Instead he made a copy.
The caravan rolled out at sunrise. Tol saw it off. Egrin led the homeward-bound column on horseback. He saluted his former shield-bearer proudly, and Tol returned the gesture with enthusiasm. Egrin bared his dagger and raised it high, holding it there long after he’d passed Tol.