Magic in Ithkar (12 page)

“Lamok,” she whispered, packing all her work into a heavy, battered wooden box and locking it. She whistled for Pawky to return, asked the baker to watch the box for her, and set off across the fairgrounds as proudly as if she were still a master jeweler in a great house.

She found Niall the fair-ward by a wineseller’s tent that catered to out-of-work warriors, subduing one of that disorderly lot with his quarterstaff. When he was finished, he said cheerfully, “And how can I serve ye, Mistress Cori?”

“There is a proscribed wizard on the fairground among the priests of Thotharn,” she answered. “I knew him once as Lamok, and heard him pronounced banished two years ago, after the wars. He was often a guest at the house where I was enslaved in those years.”

Niall lightly touched the inflamed scar that slashed through her left eye, destroying it and thereby sorely weakening the right. People did not think of her as disfigured; they wondered what had happened to her. “The house where you got that?” he guessed. “At his hands?”

“At the hands of his bullies. It was not me he sought to punish, but I was in his way.” Time had muted Corielle’s anger, but it could still be heard, raw, in her voice. “He did not remember me when we met again, but be very certain I remembered him. That voice, once heard, is not soon forgotten. He now reeks of some alchemical substance, and my neighbors say he wears the robes of Thotharn. How very like him!”

Niall considered this. “I should take you to see my sergeant, but understand it is a very flimsy story,” he warned her honestly. “You say you can identify him, but you are blind, and voices can be readily disguised. It’s many a former captive who would go to any lengths for vengeance; you would not believe the false accusations we had the first year after we restored order to the land! To say nothing of the usual fights, killings, and common thefts.”

Corielle considered that she did not want Niall knowing how she had acquired some of her tools that first year—damn the fair-ward for a sometime clairvoyant!—and said mildly, “You would not believe by what means I freed myself, Niall.”

Niall smiled. “Knife, poison, cord, heavy object? Or did you just burn the place down around their ears? Come on, let’s see the sergeant.”

The chief of the fair-wards was a veteran of the plains wars, well on in years, who listened briefly as Niall said, “This is Corielle the jeweler, who has seen—” He corrected himself uneasily. “Who has identified a banished man, the wizard Lamok. Tell him, Cori.”

Corielle settled herself on a bench along the wall and tilted her head toward him with all unconscious arrogance. “I am Corielle, once jeweler of Ingnoir, now merchant-artisan. When the wars drove my lady, Mareth of Ingnoir, and her lord Rumagh into exile, I stayed behind. My sister was great with child and would not risk the roads, and needed me.”

Her voice grew rough. “Interlopers took the house of Ingnoir, and often invited this wizard Lamok to their table. Not only did the lord wear the skirts in the house, and concern himself with such matters as serving-maids stealing a crust of bread, but he would ask this Lamok to render judgment in such cases! At the time I had been stripped of tools and rank, and set to waiting tables—truly, this new broom swept very clean—and heard his voice and saw him often. Oh, yes, I know him very well.”

“It was he who stripped you of your tools and made you a common drudge, eh?” the old sergeant challenged her.

Corielle shook her head. “That happened early, by the lordling’s hand. It was cruel, but it was his right.”

The older man touched her scar, less gently than Niall.

“How had you this?” he asked in the same half-accusing tone.

Hot anger swept over Corielle. “My sister was delivered, and she named the child Rumara, for the child was born to the name of Lord Rumagh. The interloper had her brought before him like a thieving laborer when this Lamok was here, and demanded to know the father of the child. Then this wizard, as gleeful as a nasty little boy, said, ‘You are not this Rumagh’s wife? Then you are a common whore, and shall be delivered to the king’s brothels with all the others of your kind.’ And it was done.”

Her voice rapped out her rage. “She was no vagabond, but clothmistress in a great house; but it was done. And for what? For abiding by our customs and not theirs, before we ever knew them? I thought it was revenge; for what, I did not know.” She found herself holding back old tears. “I tried to stop it, but the wizard’s bullies carry whips, and I was one to their many, and was overpowered easily.”

She blinked back the tears and said more softly, “The gods granted me a look at Lamok’s mind today. I saw what may have been my sister, Lamok’s cagebird, and now do wonder if the whole thing makes sudden sense.”

The sergeant drew in a sharp breath. “You practice wizardry, mistress?”

“Her bird is her eyes, no more,” Niall put in. “That the gods send her a sight at times is nothing out of the common, and I know her, sir; wizardry to her is only a means to have her sight, one way or another.’’

Softly his chief said, “Was it this bird that saw this wizard?”

“It was,” Corielle answered.

The sergeant set down his pen. “Mistress, if I took this tale to any judge in the land, I would be laughed out of my office. A blind woman and her bird identify a banned man! A suspicion of wizardry yourself, and you know how closely we control the use of these arts. A woman with a grudge; not old, as you say, but as new as this morning, for half the fairground heard his remarks concerning you. I am sorry, but if you could deliver him to me, or find better evidence than this, I will be forced to act. Until then, good day and good business.”

“May yours be as good,” she said politely, then remembered what “good business” was in his trade and smiled.

All that day, sitting at her stand, she pondered the question of how to bring Lamok to justice, and whether or not that was Lirielle held captive in his room, and if so, how to free her. It seemed she was further from an answer than when she had been an unregarded drudge in a house held by strangers, for there she at least saw the wizard daily and could plant a knife in him when vengeance became more important than her life. She listened, and was alert for the alchemical smell that clung to Lamok’s robes, but heard and smelled nothing.

At the end of the day she folded her stand and went, as she always did, to the outer section of the fairground where old Mother Kallille sold and trained her birds. Pawky flew ahead of her, circling the head of his first mistress before returning to the shoulder of his second, then flew back to greet the child Rumara. The woman who had taken in Corielle and her sister’s child when they were fugitive and hungry greeted the jeweler with a hug and said, “Well, I see Pawky’s in rare form today. What have you had him doing?”

Rumara shoved a honey cake into her aunt’s hand. “Aunt, Aunt, I touched a hunting bird’s mind today and made him do what I wanted!”

“It’s a fine apprentice you’ve given me,” the old bird-mistress confirmed with a smile. “Now tell me the whole tale.”

The telling of the tale lasted throughout their simple supper and well into their second cup of ale. Rumara jumped up and down at the mention of her mother. “We’ll get some bravos and raid the wizard’s palace and rescue her,” she told the women.

Corielle shook her head. “Between us, we could not raise enough coins to buy one such man a drink, and coins they must have; it is their livelihood.”

Rumara’s face fell and she tried to argue. Old Kallille looked toward the Temple of the Three Lordly Ones and said, “I have heard that some priests are curious about the cult of Thotharn and about wizardry, and will even pay for information. Every priestess I know loathes the priests of Thotharn. They do not tell common merchants why.”

Corielle thought of her day’s earnings, much reduced by the time spent with the fair-wards away from her stand. Would that she could carry her wares with her and hawk them as she went! But that was strictly forbidden by the temple laws for the fair. “Could I borrow Rumara to watch my stand for the time it would take to see them?” she suggested.

“I could not lose that many years from her apprenticeship,” the old woman said with dour wit. “Well, you know how it is with birds; once begun, you stay with the bird until you have him in your hand. I’m sorry, Cori, but I, too, have a living to make.”

For a moment Corielle was tempted to let the pursuit of Lamok go by. Then her anger rose within her as she remembered his smirking pleasure at the many cruelties inflicted on the artisans, officials, and servants left behind in the house. It was he who had decreed that Rumara should be surnamed “the Bastard” and be called nothing else, and smug was his satisfaction at this torment of a small child.

She herself had suffered at his hands, beyond the whipmark, for the wizard had a horse-keeper who tried to show the world he could impose his will on any woman. In those days, Corielle still innocently cried to her lady, even to the interloper’s wife, for justice; but the interloper was the master of his lady, and the wizard was master of the man. They asked Corielle but two questions. “Are you virtuous? Does this man threaten your virtue?”

The smirk on the wizard’s face warned her not to answer as she wished, that her honor was in her own hands, not his, but that he did threaten her person. Instead she answered yes, truthfully, to both questions, and found herself in sudden horror handed over to the horse-keeper as his wife! Which among these people was a brutal bondage indeed. To disobey him, or seem to, meant a beating, and none would defend her; to kill him was to be burned alive. Not even by perfect obedience and walking in fear was she spared, for the horse-master was a cruel and suspicious man who, like his master, delighted in setting traps for the unwary.

But, said the wizard in satisfaction, her virtue had been saved!

Hers was not the only such story; she had seen how the wizard loved to play with people’s lives. She could bring no great charges against him, to hang him, but if she saw him crawling on the ground, she would step on him like the poison roach he was.

Corielle sat shaking as the bitterness of those years came back. “I will go see those priests tomorrow, at first light,” she said. “Rumara, I may not avenge your mother. But it will not be for lack of trying.” She settled her ragged gown around her and began to plan what she was going to say.

She brought no bribe to the temple precinct. All she had was little enough, and she would not have it rejected in scorn. She walked by the gatekeeper with her usual proud arrogance; he almost let her get by. Then suddenly he bawled, “Here, here, mistress, just where do you think you’re going?”

She turned a lofty blind stare in his direction. “I have information for one of the priests or priestesses concerning an old enemy of theirs.”

Her ragged gown and proud bearing was nothing new in any marketplace since the wars, and his mouth twisted slightly in scorn. “I am their ear, madam, and what you would tell them, you may tell me.”

A slight, amused murmur in the crowd of waiting petitioners told her what she had already suspected, that his price for conveying anything at all to his superiors would be far beyond what she could pay. On the other hand, she lost nothing but some time in telling her tale, as long as she did not believe him. Speaking as if she did, she began.

A burst of raucous laughter interrupted her story. “Your bird saw him, mistress? No doubt it can be induced to talk!” The gatekeeper laughed at his own wit. “Shall we take this bird’s oath, and ask what he does at Ithkar Fair?”

Corielle flushed hot. “He is my eyes, and I see through him.”

“Aha!” the gatekeeper exclaimed. “Wizardry! It could be that my masters would wish to speak to you after all, sorceress.” He held out his hand suggestively.

“I have nothing to give you to save myself from a charge of sorcery,” she snapped, her voice ringing clear. “I keep a trained bird like any falconer, and if you would imprison me, you must not only feed me, but my bird. Or would you roast him for your dinner table in lieu of a bribe?”

People did not talk that way to the gatekeeper of the Shrine of the Three Lordly Ones, but to judge from the murmur in the crowd, most fairgoers were glad somebody had!

An open window high in the wall of the shrine now fell shut with a crash of wooden shutters. Soft footsteps pattered down a stairway, and the crowd parted. Skirts rustled, and through the bird’s eyes, Corielle saw an underpriest of the temple, a weedy youth with deference in his very walk. Well trained, she thought, as if he were one of Mother Kallille’s cagebirds.

“You are Corielle, once of Ingnoir?” his voice came softly. She felt something pass before her face and snorted a little in disgust.

“I am,” she said.

“And you say you have seen this Lamok. My master, Ynet, son of Komal, would have me hear your tale, to judge it for himself. He is ... sworn to stay apart,” the youth said nervously, “so I do this for him.”

Like master, like man, Corielle thought, wondering why her heart did not leap at the thought of a priest hearing her tale so soon. But he questioned her in such detail that she knew at last somebody was taking her story seriously. Over and over again, the boy tried to ascertain just how much she had seen, or known at first hand. At last she sighed. “I know it is a very thin tale, Ynet’s apprentice, but there it is.”

Ynet’s apprentice whistled thinly through his teeth. “You have no man and live alone,” he said.

“Fear not,” Corielle said boldly. “I have friends on the fairground, and a kinswoman”—the gods forfend he ever learn she was only eight years old!—“and a foster mother, and my stall neighbors know my name. I need no bodyguard. But it was good of you to think of that.”

The boy’s breath whistled through his teeth again. “You shall hear from my master soon,” he said at last. “Meanwhile, just go about your business as if nothing were amiss, and my master shall see about . . . correcting your distress.”

Then Corielle’s heart did leap, and she reached for his hand. Not finding it, she shrugged in irritation. “Then thank you, lad,” she said, “and thank your master, too, with all my heart.” Pawky flying before her, she went back to her stall in triumph.