“I don’t suppose you want to stay in the hall, so I told Pered you’d be staying with us.” Shiv was talking blithely as he led the way out along the main street, heading inland where I was relieved to see the lofty halls give way to more normal row houses of pitted gray stone and tile-hung roofs. I began to notice all the other businesses that kept these wizards free to pursue their arcane studies; scribes, booksellers, apothecaries and not a few tisane houses where younger mages laid aside their parchments and robes to gossip with their fellows over a cup of steeping herbs. Wizards had to eat as well, it seemed; shopfronts had their shutters laid down to form counters laden with summer fruit and plump vegetables where canny eyed women were doing their marketing and catching up on gossip with their cronies. Children hung at their skirts and a more venturesome group scampered in the roadway with a rag ball. There was a light drift of debris around a barrel fallen into a gutter and two men were arguing over who exactly had let it fall from their handcart. Hadrumal began to seem less outlandish, but I warned myself not to let apparent familiarity breed carelessness.
“We prefer to live down here; most of the other mages don’t give a cut-piece whether someone’s sleeping with a man, a woman or a donkey but there are always a few who are Rationalist enough to make themselves offensive. You remember Casuel, don’t you? Anyway, we find it’s better this way; nails that stick up get hammered down, after all.”
Shiv’s back was to me as he stepped ahead through the gap between two carts. I allowed myself a grimace. Still, unsure as I might be about meeting Shiv’s partner, anything had to be better than lodging in one of those grim halls with a covey of wizards staring at me from every side like crows waiting out a dying beast. I got on well enough with Shiv, didn’t 1? A more urgent consideration that had been tugging at my cloak since I landed now seized my attention and held it.
“Where’s Livak?” I inquired, stepping off the curb to draw level as Shiv made his way along the crowded walkway.
“She went to see Halice. There are some Soluran scholars here who are trying to improve her leg. Some aetheric magic has remained in their healing traditions, but you knew that, didn’t you?”
I have to confess I’d hardly given Halice and her problems a passing thought since we’d been separated. Mentally shaking myself, I determined to stop dwelling on my recent experiences and get a grip on the reins again. Would there be some magic that could mend so severe a wound, and one now several seasons mended and healed? That would certainly be something to see and, more importantly, something to bring to Messire’s attention. I’ve not seen too many men left with only stumps of leg or arm in order to save them from green rot, but hearing one screaming, weeping, pleading with the surgeons to no avail had been enough for me when Aiten and I had been working for Messire along the Lescari border. The reminder that I was not the only one with troubles was salutory as well.
“What about Viltred?”
“He’s back in his old hall, catching up with whoever he trained with who isn’t dead yet.” Shiv’s tone was nevertheless affectionate. “Here we are.”
He opened a stout door to usher me into a modest abode in the center of a well-weathered terrace. I blinked as my eyes adjusted after the sunlight outside and I saw the front of the lower rooms was laid out as a workplace, a sloping desk set to catch the best of the light, parchment, pigments and binding agents neatly arranged, ready for use. I vaguely recalled hearing that Shiv’s partner was a copyist or an illuminator, something of that kind, certainly not a wizard, which was the most significant thing to me.
“Pered!” Shiv stepped into the rear room and then shouted up the tight curve of the boxed staircase. “No, he must be out, probably getting some food in. Look, make yourself at home, there’s wine in the kitchen or you can have a tisane. I have a few things I need to do but I’ll be back soon.”
Before I could protest he was out of the door, pulling it to behind him with an emphatic slam. Not wanting to upset anything in the study, I went through into the kitchen, a little surprised to find a modern charcoal stove standing in the fender of the hearth where a damped-down fire was making the room stuffy in the summer heat. Other than that it was an unremarkable place apart from a collection of wildly differing and highly decorative herb jars with a shelf to themselves on the far wall. I opened a couple, sniffed, stoked up the fire and put a kettle onto boil, but then decided I didn’t really want a tisane after all, took the kettle off again and went out into the narrow yard at the back. Shiv’s neighbors evidently kept chickens and on one side a pig, as you might expect, but the sty and run in this yard were swept bare and empty. I poked around a bit, finding a handful of stones and tried my hand at hitting a large, pale stone high on the wall of the piggery. Striking it every time, I was about to look for more missiles when I heard the door behind me open.
“You should follow a plow and earn yourself some coin stoning the crows. That’s some skill,” a cheerful voice complimented me.
“It is, but it’s not my own,” I said without thinking.
“That sounds like a line from a bad ballad! You must be Ryshad, I’m Pered.”
I turned to see what manner of man Shiv had returned to so fondly. As with the island of Hadrumal itself, I couldn’t have told you what I was expecting. I had the sense not to be looking for a masquerade matron, all feathers and flamboyant gestures, but perhaps I was anticipating something a little more obvious than a stocky, blunt-featured man with curly brown-blond hair and hazel eyes. His Tormalin was excellent, his accent that of Col and I recalled that city’s reputation for letting folk follow their own path.
“Go on then, tell me the tale.” Pered sat himself in a bench to enjoy the sunshine, arms folded, muscular legs outstretched at his ease.
I hurled my last stone and struck a chip of rock from my target. “I have a fair eye but this particular talent belongs to a man many generations dead whose memories are somehow cluttering up my dreams.” It sounded rather improbable put like that, but Pered didn’t look surprised.
“So our revered Archmage has entangled you in one of his schemes, has he?”
I liked the almost total absence of respect in his voice and thought that Pered and I could probably be friends.
“Like a fly in a web.” I nodded.
“This is all to do with some lost colony and this unknown magic that has all the mages fluttering like doves with a cat in the cot, is it?” Pered shook his head. “Good thing too, if you ask me. It’s nice to see some of them learning a little humility for a change.”
No, I decided, we were definitely going to be friends. “Shiv’s told you about it?”
“Enough,” shrugged Pered. “So, what’s he like?”
“Sorry?”
“This lad who’s wrecking your nights, the one with the throwing eye, what’s he like?”
I looked at Pered and found myself at a loss for words. The Archmage had asked so many things, teased out so much detail about the colony, found far more information that I had realized I knew, but he hadn’t once asked about young D’Alsennin himself.
“He’s not a bad lad. He still has an unholy amount to learn about women but he’s growing up fast, squaring up to his responsibilities all right. He has got plenty of character but it needs tempering, polishing up.” It seemed strange to be talking about Temar like this.
“What does he look like? Can you describe him?” Pered pulled a scrap of reed paper from the breast pocket of his shirt and found a broken length of charcoal in his breeches pocket.
I closed my eyes to picture Temar more clearly and Pered sketched swiftly as I spoke, charcoal deft in his stubby fingers. “He’s a skinny lad,” I concluded. “He’ll fill out a bit in a few years, but he’s outgrown himself just at the moment. I suppose you’d call it a wolf’s face, long jaw, thin lips, angular, if you know what I mean. He certainly has a wolf’s eyes, really intense light blue, which is strange when you consider he has black hair.”