“It is.” Jean ate, and studied Locke. He’d cleaned up, shaved, and pulled the lengthening mass of his hair into a short tail. The removal of his beard made the marks of his convalescence plain. He was pale, looking far more Vadran than Therin for a change, and the creases at the edges of his mouth were graven a bit deeper, the lines beneath his eyes more pronounced. Some invisible sculptor had been at work the past few weeks, carving the first real hints of age into the face Jean had known for nearly twenty years. “Where on the gods’ fair earth are you putting all that food, Locke?”
“If I knew that I’d be a physiker.”
Jean took another look around the cabin. A copper tub had been set near the stern windows, and beside it a pile of towels and oil bottles.
“Wondering about the tub?” said Locke. “Water’s fresh—they replaced it after I was done. They don’t expect us to go diving in the lake to make ourselves presentable.”
There was a knock at the cabin door. Jean glanced at Locke, and Locke nodded.
“Come,” yelled Jean.
“I knew you were awake,” said Patience. She came down the steps, made a casual gesture, and the door shut itself behind her. She settled into the third chair and folded her hands in her lap. “Are we proving ourselves adequate hosts?”
“We seem to be well-kept,” said Jean with a yawn, “excepting a barbaric absence of coffee.”
“Endure for another day, Master Tannen, and you’ll have all the foul black misuse of water you can drink.”
“What happened to the last person you hired to rig this little game of yours, Patience?” said Jean.
“Straight to business, eh?” said Locke.
“I don’t mind,” said Patience. “It’s why I’m here. But what do you mean?”
“You do this every five years,” said Jean. “You choose to work through agents that can’t be Bondsmagi. So what happened to the last set you hired? Where are they? Can we speak to them?”
“Ah. You’re wondering whether we tied weights around their ankles and threw them into the lake when it was over.”
“Something like that.”
“In some cases, we traded services. In others we offered payments. All of our former exemplars, regardless of compensation, left our service freely and in good health.”
“So, you ruthlessly protect every aspect of your privacy for centuries, but every few years you pick a special friend, answer any questions they might have, show them your fuckin’ memories, begging your pardon, and then you just send them off when you’re finished, with a cheerful wave?”
“None of our previous exemplars ever crippled a Bondsmage, Jean. None of them were ever shown what you were. But you needn’t flatter yourself that you’ve been made privy to some shattering secret that can only be preserved by the most extreme measures. When this is over, we expect confidentiality for the rest of your lives. And if that courtesy isn’t granted, you both know that we’ll never have anydifficulty tracking at least one of you down.”
“I guess that works,” said Jean sourly. “So who took the ribbon, last time you did this?”
“You’re being entrusted with a winning tradition,” said Patience. “Though two victories in a row doesn’t quite make a dynasty, it’s a good basis from which to expect a third. Now, we will discuss your work in Karthain, but I made an unusual promise to get you both here. I would have it fulfilled for good and all. Have you any further questions about my people, about our arts?”
“Ask now or forever bite our tongues?” said Locke.
“I offered a brief opportunity, not a scholarly treatise.”
“As it happens,” said Locke, “I do have one last thing I want a real answer to. Jean asked about the contracts you take. He asked why, and you gave us why not?But I don’t think that cuts to the heart of things. I can’t imagine that you people actually need the money after four hundred years. Am I wrong?”
“No. I could touch sums, at an hour’s notice, that would buy a city-state,” said Patience.
“So why are you still mercenaries? Why build your world around it? Why do you call yourselves Bondsmagi without flinching? Why ‘ Incipa veila armatos de’?
“Ahhh,” said Patience. “This is a deeper draught than you might wish to take.”
“Let me be the judge.”
“As you will. When did the Vadrans start raiding the northern coasts, where the Kingdom of the Marrows is now?”
“What the hell does thathave to do with anything?”
“Indulge me. When did they first come down from that miserable waste of theirs, whatever their word for it—”
“ Krystalvasen,” said Jean. “The Glass Land.”
“About eight hundred years ago,” said Locke. “So I was taught.”
“And how long since the Therin people moved onto this continent, from across the Iron Sea?”
“Two thousand years, maybe,” said Locke.
“Eight hundred years of Vadran history,” said Patience. “Two thousand for the Therin. The Syresti and the Golden Brethren are older still. Let’s generously give them three thousand years. Now … what if I told you that we had reason to believe that some of the Eldren ruins on this continent were built more than twenty thousand years ago? Perhaps even thirty thousand?”
“That’s pretty damned wild,” said Locke. “How can you—”
“We have means,” said Patience with a dismissive wave. “They’re not important. What’s important is this—no one in recorded history has ever made credible claim of meeting the Eldren. Whatever they were, they vanished so long agothat our ancestors didn’t leave us any stories about meeting them in the flesh. By the time we took their empty cities, only the gods could know how long they’d been deserted.
“Now, one glance at these cities tells us they were masters of a sorcery that makes ours look like an idiot’s card tricks by comparison. They built miracles, and built them to last for hundreds of centuries. The Eldren meantto tend their garden here for a very, very long time.”
“What made them leave?” said Locke.
“I used to scare myself as a kid by thinking about this,” said Jean.
“You can scare yourself now by thinking about it,” said Patience. “Indeed, Locke, what made them leave? There are two possibilities. Either something wiped them out, or something frightened them so badly that they abandoned all their cities and treasures in their haste to be gone.”
“Leave the world?” said Locke. “Where would they go?”
“We don’t have the faintest speck of an idea,” said Patience. “But regardless of how their marvelous cities were emptied in advance of our tenancy, it happened. Something out there madeit happen. We have to assume that somethingcould return.”
“Gah,” said Locke, putting his head in his hands. “Patience, you’re a regular bundle of smiles, you know that?”
“I warned you this might not be cheering.”
“This world and all its souls are the sovereign estate of the Thirteen,” said Locke. “They rule it, protect it, and tend the mechanisms of nature. Hell, maybe they were the ones that kicked the Eldren out.”
“Strange, then, that they wouldn’t mention it to us explicitly,” said Patience.
“Patience, let me reveal something from personal experience,” said Locke. “The gods tell us what we needto know, but when you start asking about things you really just wantto know, you’d best expect long pauses in the conversation.”
“Inconvenient,” said Patience. “Of course it’s possible that the gods are keeping mum about what happened to the Eldren. Or they couldn’t act to stop it … or wouldn’t. We’ve spent centuries arguing these possibilities. The only sensible assumption is that we’ve got to take care on our own behalf.”
“How?” said Locke.
“The use of sorcery in a long-term fashion, in a grand and concerted manner, with many magi working together, leaves an indelible imprint upon the world. Persons and forces sensitive to magic can detect this phenomenon, just as you can look at a river and tell which direction it’s flowing, and put your hand in the water to tell how fast and warm it is. Great workings are like burning beacons on a clear dark night. Somewhere out in the darkness, we must assume, are things it would be in our best interest not to signal.