A mounted rider sat his horse ten yards away. Neither of the hradani nor any of their animals had as much as noticed his arrival; he was simply there , as if he’d oozed up out of the herringbones of snow and stems of dead grass, and Bahzell’s ears went flat and the nape of his neck prickled. Snow or no snow, no one could have crept up that close-not on a horse-without his noticing! Zarantha’s mule stamped, steel rasped, and saddle leather creaked behind him as Brandark drew his own sword, and the background moan and sigh of the wind only made the stillness seem more hushed.
Bahzell watched the rider, poised to attack, and the horseman cocked his head to gaze back. He was tall for a human-almost as tall as Brandark-and he sat his saddle as if he’d been born in it. The raised hood of his snow-stippled Sothōii-style poncho shadowed his face and hid his features, but he wore a longsword, not a sabre, and there was neither a quiver at his saddle nor a bow on his back. The stranger let the silence linger for a long, breathless moment, then touched his mount with his heels. The horse walked slowly closer, and the Horse Stealer’s ears folded even tighter to his skull. That winter-shaggy warhorse was no courser, but only a Sothōii-or someone with a prince’s purse-could own its equal. The hradani held his breath as the rider drew up again, well within the reach of Bahzell’s sword, and rested both gloved hands on the pommel of his saddle.
“Impressive,” he said dryly. His voice was deep for a human’s, though far lighter than Bahzell’s own subterranean bass. “Very impressive. But there’s no need for all this martial ardor, I assure you.”
“Do you, now?” Bahzell rumbled back.
“Of course I do, Bahzell Bahnakson.”
The Horse Stealer gritted his teeth in pure frustration. Dreams, magi, wizards, gods, missions-his life had become entirely too full of portents and omens without mysterious horsemen materializing out of the very ground to call him by name, and there was a hard, dangerous edge to his voice when he spoke again.
“Suppose you let me be making my own mind up about that. And while you’re being so free with my name, who might you be?”
The stranger chuckled. The pure amusement of the sound flicked the hradani like a whip, and he felt the first, hot flicker of the Rage. He ground his heel down upon it, but it was hard in his present mood. He’d served as the butt of the universe’s bad jokes long enough, and he growled deep in his throat as the newcomer reached up and drew back the hood of his poncho.
The horseman was older than Bahzell had assumed from his voice and the way he sat his horse. His neatly trimmed beard and hair were whiter than the snow about them, and his lean face was dark and weathered. There were surprisingly few wrinkles to go with that silver hair, yet something about his features suggested an ancient hardiness that went far beyond mere age. The Horse Stealer noted the Sothōii-style leather sweatband that held back his hair, the strong straight nose, the square jaw whose stubborn jut not even the beard could disguise, but they hardly registered, for they were dominated and eclipsed by the horseman’s eyes. Strange eyes, that called no color their own but flickered and shifted even as he watched, dancing like wildfire in the dull winter light. They had neither pupil nor white, those eyes, only the unearthly flowing fire that filled the sockets under craggy white eyebrows.
Bahzell stared at them, shaken and half-mesmerized. An alarm bell seemed to toll deep inside him, battering at the fascination which held him motionless, and he heard Brandark hiss behind him.
“I think Brandark recognizes me, Bahzell,” the stranger said in that same, dryly amused tone.
“That’s as may be, but I don’t,” Bahzell shot back, shaking off the impact of those fiery eyes with an effort, “and I’ve had a hard enough day without riddle games in the snow.”
He took a half-step forward, sword ready. The horseman only smiled, as if at a child in a tantrum, and Bahzell felt the Rage flare at his core once more at the other’s amusement, but Brandark spoke suddenly from behind him.
“I wouldn’t do anything hasty, Bahzell,” the Bloody Sword said in a very careful tone. “Not unless you really want to spend a few years as a toad.”
“What?” Bahzell’s ears twitched, but his attention was so focused on the stranger that his friend’s words hardly registered.
“That sort of thing happens to people who attack wizards,” Brandark said, and a bolt of sheer fury lashed through the Horse Stealer at the word “wizards.” The Rage slipped the frayed leash of his will, and he lunged forward with a murderous snarl. The tip of his sword thrust straight for the stranger’s chest, but the horseman didn’t even move. He only gazed at the hradani, and his eldritch eyes flashed like twin suns.
Something Bahzell had no words to describe slammed into him. It struck like a hammer fit to shatter a world, yet there was a delicacy to it, as well-almost a gentleness, like a man snatching a hummingbird from midair without so much as ruffling its feathers-and unaccustomed panic sparkled at his heart as it did the impossible and froze a hradani in the grip of the Rage. He found himself utterly unable to move, his murderous lunge arrested a foot from its target, and the stranger shook his head apologetically.
“Excuse me. I know you’ve had a difficult time of late, and I really shouldn’t let my questionable sense of humor get the better of me. But I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a very long time, Bahzell, and I just couldn’t resist.”
Bahzell stood motionless, and fresh shock rippled through him as he realized the Rage had vanished. Somehow the stranger had banished it as if it had never come, and that was the strangest thing of all.
The horseman moved his mount aside, out of the line of Bahzell’s lunge but still where the hradani could see him, and he bowed from the saddle.
“Again, I ask your pardon for my behavior,” he said gravely. “And in answer to your question, Bahzell, my name is Wencit. Wencit of Rūm.” This time he made a tiny gesture with one hand, and whatever had held Bahzell fled. He staggered forward with the force of his interrupted attack, but a fresh paralysis-this one of sheer disbelief-held him as tightly as the vanished spell. He gawked at the man on the horse, jaw dropping, stunned as even Tomanāk’s appearance out of the night had not left him, and lowered his sword very, very slowly.
Wencit of Rūm. It couldn’t be. Yet, at the same time, it had to be. Only one man had eyes like that, and he’d been a fool not to realize it, but even as he thought that, he knew why he hadn’t. A man didn’t expect to meet a figure out of legend in a snowstorm a hundred leagues from anywhere.
“Wencit of Rūm?” he repeated in a dazed tone, and the horseman nodded. “The Wencit of Rūm?” Bahzell persisted with the numbness of his shock.
“So far as I know, there’s only one of me,” Wencit said gravely. Bahzell darted a look at Brandark, and the astonishment on the Bloody Sword’s face was almost deeper than his own. Of course. Brandark was a scholar who’d always wanted to be a bard. No doubt he knew all the tales of the Fall and the part Wencit of Rūm, lord of the last White Council of Wizards, had played in saving what he could from the wreck of Kontovar. But that had been twelve centuries ago-surely the man couldn’t still be alive!
But he was a wizard, Bahzell reminded himself. A wild wizard. Possibly the most powerful single wizard who’d ever lived. Who knew what he could or couldn’t be?