Magesong

  MAGESONG

  JAMES R. SANFORD

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text Copyright © 2012 by James R. Sanford

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author.

  To Tom, for many, many reasons

  Table of Contents

  PRELUDE: The Touching Stones

  CHAPTER 1: A Troubadour's Quest

  CHAPTER 2: The Barren Springtime

  1st INTERLUDE: An Object of Desire

  CHAPTER 3: The Song of Returning

  CHAPTER 4: A Message for the Stranger

  2nd INTERLUDE: The Supplicants of the Final Grammarie

  CHAPTER 5: The Magician's Passage

  CHAPTER 6: Partners

  CHAPTER 7: Sailors

  CHAPTER 8: Shepherd

  3rd INTERLUDE: Solicitations

  CHAPTER 9: In the Forecastle

  CHAPTER 10: The Yeggman

  CHAPTER 11: The Far Kingdom

  CHAPTER 12: Hidden Measures

  4th INTERLUDE: The Retainer

  CHAPTER 13: The Poorest Quarters

  CHAPTER 14: A Brief Darkness at Midnight

  CHAPTER 15: The Sound of the Depths

  CHAPTER 16: The Wellspring

  CHAPTER 17: Night Storm

  CHAPTER 18: The Return

  CODA: Harvest Eve

  PRELUDE: The Touching Stones

  Graifalmia held her breath as she placed the spirit box into the shallow notch atop the stone. The power held. It touched.

  “Master,” Lorenna said, “it is very beautiful.”

  “Yes, as the forests and streams of the Pallenborne once were. That was the genius of Derndra — understanding that only beauty could capture the Aevir.” For how long had she tried to release the great elementals? How many months of pouring over every scrap of writing that Derndra had left behind, how many days of ritual incantations? She had even invoked the Unknowable Forces themselves.

  Lorenna went to her master and took her hand. “I know you are disappointed, but this is a great act of power, greater than your defeat of Derndra and the breaking of his grammarie. By using the same craft he used to make the stones of summoning, you have made the touching stones. You have defeated his legacy.”

  “The work is incomplete. I still have hope of releasing the Aevir from their prisons. Yet I fear the very nature of magic is weakening because of their imprisonment, and as that happens it becomes even more difficult to free them. Too much power has been used in these final days. Derndra’s sorcery has almost undone the Essa itself.”

  “Final days?”

  “This war of mages we have finally ended will signal the last days of this age. The high age of the magician is almost gone, and you will be the last of my students to wield power as we now know it. Soon you must become the teacher and take students of your own. You, Lorenna, and those who come after you must learn to live in the new age to come, and you must create a way to keep the art magic alive even as the nature of the Essa changes. This is the burden of your generation, and it is a greater one than any I have shouldered.”

  “Will it really change so much?”

  “It must. Look how the face of the world has changed — coastlines altered, whole islands sunk, grasslands made into deserts. The lifeforce of magic is connected to this world, so it too will be altered. And I will be thankful it was not destroyed.”

  Graifalmia closed the glass doors of the inner shrine and led Lorenna outside. The mountain top stood bathed in sunlight; it was a mild day. Far below, the valley lay dusty and barren. Nothing remained of the camp where the craftsmen and laborers had lived.

  “Master, the stone in the valley, the summoning stone, why did you change it into a touching stone? It would have been simpler to destroy it.”

  Graifalmia shook her head. “I only knew that the Powers demanded it. That stone has been marked by the Unknowable, and many fates are bound to that stone. Perhaps a people will grow up around it. Perhaps they will touch the spirit through the stone. Who am I to say?”

  “We have planted well,” Lorenna said. “With E’alaisenne upon the touching stone the lifeforce of the land is returning. I can feel it. This valley will be lush and fair once again, though we may not live to see it to its fullness.”

  The Essa was strong here. Graifalmia could feel the ebb and flow of time across the years. “We must ensure that this and the other secret shrines are not forgotten. It must be passed down with all the secret knowledge of our order. Because Derndra had many students who were never found, and I can promise you that they will not forget. And they will surely teach their students of the unlimited power they had once wielded.”

  CHAPTER 1: A Troubadour's Quest

  The reach across the inlet was deceptively wide, and darkness, stealing out across the waters, began to encircle the little boat. He never would have tried the crossing had he not seen the pinpoint light on the other side, but now an hour had passed and he had only come to the halfway mark, a steep rocky headland dividing the bay into two deep channels. He had lost sight of the tiny beacon.

  The storm had started as an innocent grey smudge on the horizon, soon becoming a black chariot rolling swiftly landward from the Western Sea. Yet it was only a single squall, the skies to the north still cloudless in the early twilight, a handful of the brightest stars resting overhead. He had guessed that it would pass behind him and started across the bay on a fast broad-reach. Unexpectedly, the wind shifted toward his stern quarter, and the course of the squall shifted with it.

  The boat creaked with complaint, a fierce gust of wind striking it abeam. Fine mist stung the windward side of his face.

  "No more," Reyin said, though no one was there to hear him, and swung the tiller over to run straight at the headland. The wind rose to drive the skiff hard before it, and soon he dropped the sail, removed the centerboard, and started rowing toward a boulder-studded shoreline. Massive upthrusts of bare rock stood darkly over him like the shadows of gargantuan fingers. And he felt the weird come upon him.

  He paused and listened for the pulse of the greater world around him. Soon to be caught in a storm, he thought the moment would be that of the winter dragon — the need for shelter. When he heard the vibration of the Essa, he knew it to be the moment of the hand, and he was surprised, and he was not surprised. He was in the northern lands.

  He had never before travelled farther north than the mist-enshrouded land called Drendusia, still a few hundred leagues south of the Pallenborne. But old Ty'kojin had told him many of the strange ways the Unknowable Forces manifested themselves here. Designing powers existed. One could be touched by them, and that which was seemingly chance often turned out to be no chance at all.

  A narrow gravel beach near the point looked like the only landing place, and as darkness at last closed with him, he jumped from the bow and pulled the boat halfway out of the water. The shore rose steeply and tugging soon became futile as he lost his footing in the loose gravel. Alone, he could do little else but wade into the sea and push.

  The coldness shocked him. He had swum in the ocean at Olorande a month before, on the first day of spring. It had been cold, bracing, not like this. A man would freeze to death in this, he thought as he got a solid foothold on a submerged rock and bulled the skiff onto the land.

  He took all his things from the boat, placing them in a wide hole behind an enormous boulder on the high ground. After unstepping the mast and securing it to the inside, he managed to turn the hull over, keel pointing skyward. Even in the deepest dusk he saw that this was a desolate piece of land. Rock. Dirt. Little else. Not even
driftwood for a fire.

  He returned to the sheltered place, opened his store box, and found the remainder of the morning biscuit on top of the dried apricots and some very ripe Ravvendon cheese. He ate in the dark, avoiding the frustration of trying to light a lantern in turbulent airs. At last he wrapped himself in a wool blanket and listened to the raucous symphony played by the winds and the waves. And he sang softly to himself. And he liked the sound of his singing.

  It had not always been so with him, and in his youth it had not been so with his teachers as well. He thought of the music academy in Tamurr, forgetting the name of the singing master who had tormented him, remembering well the face. He left the school; the master didn't leave him for many years.

  He laid out the spare jib for a bed and tried to doze. He could usually sleep anywhere when he was tired, but the wind continued to rise and now a wall of rain slammed hard against the huge boulder, the air suddenly icy, his blanket quickly getting damp from the backlash, the warmth seeping out of his body. He sat up, then sat still.

  He felt for the Essa. It hid away from him, sat brooding in silence.

  Had he been a true magician it would not have turned away. Artemes could have seized the Essa in an instant, would have bespoke this storm to calm. But Artemes was a master even among true magicians.

  The squall should have passed over by then, yet the wind continued to rise and the rain fell harder, coarse sleet falling with it. Perhaps this storm had sought him, was part of the hand. He pulled his bedding close to the boulder as he could, almost underneath it, and got out of the spray. He found his winter coat and settled down for a miserable night. Blowing at half a gale, the storm bedded there with him.

  Cold. No sunrise. Grey emerging from the black. Low overcast sky. A briny smell.

  He awoke fully, aching with dull tiredness, and stood to face a dark choppy sea. And no boat. Wait, there it was, about twenty yards from the place he had landed. He scrambled across the rocks to where it lay.

  It had not been much damaged, nothing a shipwright couldn't repair easily, but it was no longer useful as a boat. Dimietri's boat. Oh, Dimietri had made it sound easy. Yes, just take my little skiff, stay close to shore, it will be like day-sailing, twelve days with fair wind, winter is long over, it will be beautiful. It had instead been ten days of overexposure to salt and sun and wind. And now not only had he wrecked Dimietri's boat, he still sat fifty leagues from Noraggen in a land of few people and no roads.

  He changed into dry clothing and considered his options. The tiny light he had seen across the bay could have come from a town or homestead. It could have been a bandit camp as well. But it appeared to be only a long day's walk around the inlet, and he would be going in the direction of Noraggen as well. The mountains on the other side lay thick with evergreen forest. If he found no sign of civilization there, at least he could build a fire and cook himself a hot meal.

  He sat on a stone and ate walnuts for breakfast, listening to the sound and rhythm of the morning after the storm. He stuffed a knapsack with food, filled his empty wineskins, then forced himself to drink from the water cask until it nearly made him sick. He lashed his bedroll to the underside of the knapsack, and his instrument cases to the topside. He wrapped the other things in the spare jib and laid the bundle in the dry place where he had slept, under the boulder. He thought about the quadrant Dimietri had loaned him along with the boat. He no longer needed to measure latitude, but it was too valuable to leave behind with the elements. He folded a handkerchief over it and slid it into the oilskin bag with his pistol and powder. With waterskins across one shoulder and the leather bag across the other, he slung the overloaded knapsack onto his back and started down the shoreline knowing that a hard day lay ahead.

  He should have returned to his father after quitting the music academy, to the house in Kandin where his mother had died. He had been too ashamed — why was that? He couldn't remember. Had he felt like a failure at the age of sixteen? That had been part of it. But if he had gone home he would not have met Artemes, found his way to Ty'kojin and learned the ways of the Essa. If only Ty'kojin had lived longer, if only he had found the old magician earlier in life.

  A cliff front that had collapsed onto the shore and into the ocean soon halted his march. The jagged stone shards stood big as houses, the narrow paths between them filled with sharp loose rocks and man-sized boulders.

  The footing treacherous, the going hard, he wound his way through this chance-built labyrinth for nearly two hours and found that he had come only half a league. He looked ahead and saw that it was a waste of time following the shoreline, for even past the place of fallen rocks the steep ground would make for a slow traverse, but close on his right a fallen column of boulders curved upward to the heights of the headland. The way would be better along the ridge.

  He didn't stop to rest until he gained the top. The northwest wind dug into his chest, forcing him to button his coat. It was then that the chills struck. He sat down, shaking hard, afraid at first, but it soon passed. He chided himself for letting his underclothes get so sweaty during the climb, but up here the walking would go quicker, and he might even get to the woodland before nightfall. The days had grown considerably longer as he travelled north, and the sun set, he reckoned, at about nine o'clock. He drank some water and ate two walnuts.

  The way along the ridge was less obstructed and more exposed. The wind pushed at him relentlessly, and as the sun passed its zenith his stride shortened, his gait slowed. A brief rest helped little. It wasn't the exertion, he told himself, it was the awful night and the lack of sleep.

  The afternoon found him almost stumbling with fatigue, and he caught his eyelids falling closed even as he went. He sat down right where he stood, and in the most bitter of springtime winds fought the urge to go to sleep.

  His eyes flew open and he sat up stiffly. He was falling ill. It was suddenly very clear that he suffered from more than weariness. Why did he act as if he were on a summer hike in the Syrolian Alps, with a quaint village in every valley?

  A smile on his lips

  And a jump and a start,

  The minstrel took skips

  With a song in his heart.

  Perhaps for the first time he couldn't just skip off and go down the road, counting on his sense of charm and knowing what pleased people to see him through his current trouble. No one lived on this mountain of stone. The place lay empty except for a lone sea eagle high on a nearby pinnacle. If he were a true magician, he could enter the Dream of the Winged and for a time be one with the sea eagle, seeing through its eyes, flying along the coast as he willed, easily finding the nearest town.

  He had found himself to be a natural talent at dreaming, there in the cabin on the shoulder of Wind Peak. Artemes had taught him much of that craft in the months after Ty'kojin's death. That mountain was a place of power, one of the rare places where the Essa flowed into the mundane world and anyone who knew a spell could perform it as if he were a magician. Only in such a place could a master teach the art magic. The mark of a true magician was that he could summon the life force of magic from the realm of power.

  He reached for the Essa. It was not there. Not for him. Then he felt something else, or the lack of it rather. A wrong, an absence, but he didn't know what it could be. He thought about having to survive alone while marching five leagues a day for ten days. Could he do it? He had never been much of an outdoorsman. He could shoot well enough, but he had only vague notions of how to hunt or how to dress freshly-killed game. And he didn't even have an ax, couldn't build the simplest lean-to. Certainly this last gasp of winter would soon quiet — only a week before he had been sailing warm waters. Maybe he would make it through. But he could do it only if he didn't fall ill. He needed a fire.

  He struggled to his feet and continued following the high rocky way among slender pinnacles, stunted columns, and delicate arches of stone, the spine of the ridge at times rising to allow a view of the Wolf's Teeth, the highest peaks of the
central Pallenborne, some thirty leagues to the northeast. Those summits stayed snow-capped the year round, and immense fields of ice flowed westward from them towards the sea. He would have to pass them to get to Noraggen.

  He at last came to a branching spur of the ridge, and it sloped down to the tip of the vee-shaped inlet. As he shuffled steadily downhill, drowsy and tired, he saw a dark mass lying near the shore and headed straight for it. Little of the day remained, but he was off the tortuous headland.

  As he had hoped, the dark thing turned out to be a tangle of driftwood. One piece looked like it had been cut with a tool. That was a good sign. He built a small fire and sat close to it. Later, he ate boiled noodles and onions. The night was dry, but he spread a tarpaulin over his blankets anyway and slipped his instrument cases under the covers. He slept with his arms around them.

  He knew he was very sick even before he came fully awake, and when he tried to stand he knew it was worse than he thought, his head feeling like an old hard stump and all his bones hurting. Then the chills brought him to his knees. He slid his bedding next to the kindling he had prepared the night before and crawled under the blankets to flick sparks off a piece of flint until one caught hold of the bundle of tender.

  The fire made him feel better, and he thought for a moment that he might be alright after all. But this was how people died in the outdoors — for someone alone a crippling injury was all it took. Perhaps he could get up and walk one league this afternoon. Perhaps this was as bad as it would get. If it got a great deal worse and he was bedridden in this wilderness for several days, then he would likely die of thirst. Tomorrow he would be out of water.

  He boiled four potatoes, ate two, and drank the dirty soup in which they had cooked. After an hour of fitful rest he gave up trying to sleep, rose and packed his things. He still felt bad. Fully laden, he broke into a fierce, feverish sweat before he had gone a hundred steps, even with the easy pace he set for himself.