Elder Race(12)

“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.