Hazard, p.1
Hazard, page 1
HAZARD
By
Barbara Hambly
Published by Barbara Hambly at Amazon
Copyright 2017 Barbara Hambly
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Table of Contents
Hazard
About the Author
Hazard
They said he was a wizard.
Mira didn’t believe it. She’d seen him outside the Pissing Dog Tavern in Wrynde, when she’d gone into the little town with her uncle to help with the milk-jars on market-day. The man they called Sun Wolf looked far more like the mercenaries whose camp lay some ten miles to the north of Wrynde – the camp which was the reason her father would only take her into town in the summer, when the soldiers were away at war. A tawny man, like an ageing lion: red-gold hair thinning back from his forehead, a single yellow eye in a broken-nosed face crossed with scars. A damaged voice like chain scraping on stone. He carried a sword, and a dagger large enough to gut a bull.
From the path below his hermitage she stood for a long time watching him in the shadows of the red and golden trees.
Because a man is ugly and hard doesn’t mean he’s evil.
The other wizard she had met had the grave, smooth face and gentle voice of a priest, and she knew – to the deeps of her soul – that he was not good.
For Nicky, she thought, steeling herself. I have to speak to him to save Nicky.
They said he shared his hermitage, halfway up Sprites Mountain, with a woman, and that a gray-haired scholar occupied the hut behind the kitchen. In the end, Mira waited til the woman emerged from the kitchen with a water-jar and crossed toward the stream: a tall woman, slender, maybe ten years older than Mira. Her pale hair was cropped short like a soldier’s but her face had the cool serenity of a nun. By the way she glanced toward Mira as the girl stepped from the concealment of the forest-edge, Mira realized that the woman had been waiting for her. Had known she was there.
Despite her seventeen years – and her total responsibility for her father’s herd and household – a Mira felt very childish.
The woman – someone in town had said her name was Starhawk – swept the edge of the trees around the clearing with a gray glance as Mira approached, as if making sure that the visitor wasn’t a diversion to cover an attack. Then she set down her jar and moved toward her visitor, like a teen-aged boy in breeches, boots, and a man’s patched doublet smutched with flour. Even doing work about the kitchen, she wore a dagger and had another in her boot.
“Welcome,” she said. “Can we help you?”
*
“It’s Nicky.” Mira had meant to be calm and not cry, and struggled hard against the fear that suddenly threatened to close her throat. She took a deep breath. “My—“ She faltered, since it was forbidden for a slave to be betrothed to a free woman and her father would have boxed her ears even for describing Sarve Bridgeward’s slave as my young man. “A friend of mine. A good friend.”
The man Sun Wolf nodded. Up close he was more forbidding than he’d been glimpsed coming and going from the tavern, unshaven and sweaty. He’d been practicing with sword and staff on the far side of the herb garden, and his long hair was sleek-wet from a ducking in the water-trough as he’d come up to the veranda around the kitchen to speak to her. That single pale-amber eye was like a wolf’s as it studied her, and his mouth was hard and heavy beneath a badly-trimmed ginger mustache.
His voice was as scarred as his face. “This would be Nicky Spurren, Bridgeward’s slave?”
Mira nodded, and pressed her hand briefly to her mouth to hide its involuntary flinch. “That’s right, sir. Master Bridgeward’s going to sell him to a wizard, an evil wizard, who’s staying at the Dog.”
The long red eyebrow, tufted like that of a lynx, shot up; the gold eye didn’t waver. “You got a wizard at the Dog? Since when? You want some ale?” he added. “Small ale – or plain water, the water up here is as good as any ale I’ve had…” He started to rise, powerfully-built as his namesake, the great golden wolf of the northern steppes, and Starhawk said,
“I’ll get it, Chief.”
He resumed his seat on one of the empty barrels that did duty as chairs on the kitchen’s wide veranda. His hand, knotted and furred with gold, like the paw of an animal, rested on his knee. His single eye narrowed: “Your father’s Barsed Heddle, isn’t he? Over on the other side of Wrynde? He came up here last month, asking would I put a love-spell on his eldest daughter so she’d fall in love with the son of one of their neighbors…”
“That was me.” Mira rolled her eyes, exasperated. His matter-of-fact account of the negotiation steadied her, and the fact that he didn’t look at her the way the men did, when she’d go with her father to the tavern in the village. Nicky often told her she was beautiful, but that, she suspected, could be because he loved her. The men who whistled at her, or tried to touch her long braids – dark as a blood-bay horse – only made her wonder if she was pretty or not.
This man looked at her as if it didn’t matter.
“Of all the… He’s been telling me for months how much he’d love me to marry Murmis. I hope you didn’t—”
“Oh, hell, no.” The big man waved away the incident. “For one thing, I have no idea how to make a love-spell.”
“The best one I know,” put in Starhawk, emerging from the kitchen with a pitcher of small ale, “is to write I love you on a piece of paper and wrap it around a gold piece.”
“Works better than anything I know,” rumbled Sun Wolf in his scratchy voice. “I don’t do this for a living, you know. Your father go to this new wizard that’s staying at the Dog?”
“He probably did.” Mira pressed her lips together, fighting the sudden urge to weep. “This… This mage, this wizard… He’s called Pushad. Pushad Alorsen, out of Dalwirin. A gentleman,” she added. “He speaks like a man of learning, and a scholar.”
“We’re a damn long way from Dalwirin.” Starhawk set down her pitcher and cups. “What’s he doing out here?”
Mira shook her head. “He says there are things – magical things – which are only found in the wild lands: the bones of the great lynxes of Serrend, and the roots of the sitchend that grows in the Kammy Bogs. But Opium – Bron’s wife, who runs the Dog – told me that Lord Pushad has a stone, or a glass jar of stones, in which he imprisons the souls, the lives, of dying men, and so makes magic from them. That he cuts their throats and catches their blood and their breath—”
She pressed her hand quickly to her mouth again, and steadied her voice. I will NOT cry…
“Then yesterday Father learned about me and Nicky. He… He saw us together, and he went storming to the Dog in his anger to find Master Bridgeward, to demand that Nicky be punished. Lord Pushad was there, dicing with the men, and said he would buy Nicky. And I’m afraid…”
She swallowed, and struggled to keep her breath steady.
“What do you want me to do?”
He didn’t use her father’s tone – What do you want ME to do about it, girl? – and that, too, was reassuring.
Rather, What COULD be done about it? An invitation, to hear what ideas she had.
But for the moment all she could do was whisper, “Help me.”
*
Sun Wolf sat for a time pulling on the ends of his mustache while Starhawk poured out ale for the three of them. “The Wolf makes it,” she explained, when Mira remarked on how good it was: the light sort of ale that one drank in the daytime, when there was still an afternoon’s work to be done. “A woman in Ciselfarge taught him. Me, I couldn’t make the stuff if my life depended on it. At the convent they’d never let me anywhere near the brew-houses.”
If she had been a nun, reflected Mira, it had been a long time ago. In addition to her cropped hair, the woman’s delicate nose had the bump of an old break in it, and the pinkish line of a sword-scar marred one high cheek-bone.
Mira glanced across at the wizard, who was gazing out past the shadows of the sheltered veranda and into the chilly autumn sunlight. The herb-garden had the ragged look of plants that have been harvested repeatedly of their leaves – only a few late-bloomers remained to be picked when they were large enough, or when the moon’s dark had passed. This high mountain land was too rough for crops, but a line of thatched outbuildings marked where chickens were raised, and pigs that were pastured in the woods. Mira knew also that in the two years that the mage and his woman had been there, folk from the tiny settlement of Deepvale, and even from Kammy, had begun to bring him their sick, for healing. So, too, she had heard, did the mercenary troops that camped in the winter on the far side of Wrynde. Rumor had it – again, from Opium at the tavern – that Sun Wolf had been the mercenaries’ captain, before it had become safe for wizards to practice their art.
Curiously, though his face was still the face of a hard-bitten warrior, his eye now suddenly seemed to her the eye of a wizard, trained on distance while thoughts flickered in the shadows behind it.
“And Bridgeward’s willing to sell?” he asked at last.
Mira nodded. “Pushad offered him twenty-five pieces of silver.”
“Twenty-five?” Starhawk whistled. “You can get a man – How old is he? Nineteen? – You can get a man that age for f
Mira flinched, tears stinging her eyes once more. She knew that buying Nicky free was out of the question, even had she dared to ask a stranger to do such a thing.
“And it’s three weeks ride down there,” rumbled the Wolf. “And with winter coming on, if Bridgeward doesn’t get his butt in motion he’s going to be all winter without a plow-hand and someone to keep his ditches clear and his stables mucked… That’s still a lot of money. And a lot of coin money for a man to be carrying around in his pockets, even if he is a wizard.”
“Some of it he won at dice,” offered Mira. “He dices constantly—”
“I wonder he can find anyone to play him,” remarked the Hawk. “I wouldn’t.”
“He doesn’t cheat.” Mira saw the expressions on their faces, and went on – unwilling to ascribe even that virtue to Pushad, but determined to be fair, “He loses as often as he wins. More, really. He says it would be a… a desecration of the noblest game of mankind, to tamper with it with magic. The gods of fortune control the fall of the dice, he says – Otys, Melkoth, and the lady Jodurian – and if he tried to cast spells on the dice while they’re rolling, those gods would take against him in indignation, and fortune would desert him in all other things. I didn’t believe him either,” she said. “But he really does lose a great deal some nights.”
“And he still keeps playing?”
“Chief,” said Starhawk patiently, “the Big Thurg back in the troop lost every cent of an entire summer’s pay to Opium, and he kept playing until the boys had to take up a collection to buy him a shirt.”
Sun Wolf made a hoarse growl in the deeps of his throat, but nodded agreement in time. “Maybe. But there’s still something about this that smells funny.” Cold wind – the reminder that winter was no more than a half-moon away – stirred his long hair and flattened the threadbare linen of his shirt against his body. His glance returned to Mira. “Can you get a look at this crystal, or ball of crystals, or whatever it is that he’s supposed to store lives in to make magic? Sketch a picture of it, if you can. But don’t touch it. Tell Opium I told her to to help you… and find out when this sale’s supposed to take place. I’m betting,” he added, as if reading Mira’s frightened protest in her in-taken breath, “that old Bridgeward isn’t going to turn loose of a good slave til after the winter plowing’s done.”
His hoarse voice was almost kind. “And find out if you can – again, Opium would be the best person to ask – what this Pushad has to say about the sale being delayed for a couple of days. He’s trying to get sitchend-root from the Kammy Bogs at this time of the year, and he’s still hanging around the Pissing Dog playing dice in the middle of the day? Can you come back tomorrow?”
Mira nodded, feeling much better at this prosaic estimate of the situation. She, too, knew Sarve Bridgeward and knew this big, golden man was perfectly correct: Bridgeward (who had also been hanging around the Pissing Dog playing dice in the middle of the day) wasn’t about to let Nicky out of his household until the heavy work was done. “Most of Father’s cattle are drying, so I’m supposed to be out collecting cranberries in the Sourbogs. He won’t miss me, because he hires out to help Shesu Hay – that’s our neighbor, the one whose son Papa wants me to marry – with his fall plowing.”
“Good girl.” He rose, and gave her his hand (unnecessarily but politely) to help her up. “Bastard’s up to something,” he grumbled. “I’ve spent two years trying to find another wizard to teach me something – anything – about my powers, and I haven’t found one yet I’d trust across a room. While you’re digging around for that soul-crystal-bottle of his, check and see if he’s got any books in his luggage.”
Mira nodded, and glanced toward the open doors of the hermitage. Against the wall of the room within she could see two chests, of the sort that merchants kept money in, and, on the low table, an age-blackened old codex, a scattering of waxen note-tablets, a battered scroll and a couple of loose parchment pages. Scholars’ litter, incongruous in the house of this scarred, heavy-muscled man.
“Again, don’t touch ‘em,” he warned. “Just let me know if he’s got any.”
“All right.”
When Mira walked down the steps of the kitchen veranda, and back toward the trail, she felt better than she had for two days.
*
“Can you win him at dice?” she suggested timidly, when on the following afternoon she sat once more on the wide veranda which surrounded the kitchen. The day was chill and damp, but soft warmth flowed from the kitchen’s open doors, and the scent of baking bread. “I went with Father to the tavern last night, and watched the men play hazard. Lord Pushad plays very recklessly, and when he runs out of money he’ll wager anything – his horse, his gloves, his boots – just to go on playing. You’re… You’re a mage,” she added, made even hesitant by the narrowing of that yellow eye. “Just because Lord Pushad thinks the gods of good fortune wouldn’t approve of him putting spells on the dice doesn’t mean you couldn’t.”
“I think,” said Sun Wolf slowly, “that’s exactly what he wants me to do.” He glanced sidelong to the man who sat beside him at the little worktable. A little to her surprise, Mira recognized that thin, gray-haired, bespectacled gentleman as Moggin Aerbaldus, who taught the winter school in Wrynde. He must, she realized, be the “scholar” reputed to share this odd mage’s hermitage.
Aerbaldus took the little drawing Mira had made of the wizard Pushad’s “soul-bottle” – scratched carefully in wax on one of Opium’s kitchen-tablets – and studied it, both Sun Wolf and Starhawk leaning over his shoulders.
“It looks like salt-crystals inside it,” provided Mira, shivering at the recollection of her fear that morning. Both her father’s voice and that of the wizard had risen to her from downstairs the whole time she’d searched the wizard’s chamber. Opium’s soft contralto, rich as date wine, had purred over some trivial item of gossip she shared with the two men, and though Mira could readily believe that no man would break off conversation with a woman of such beauty, her heart had been pounding at the thought of what her father would do were she caught.
Of what Lord Pushad would do…
They’d been dickering innocuously enough, she recalled, over the purchase of a love-spell (As if even WITH a love-spell I’d look twice at Murmis Hay!). And Lord Pushad’s long-jawed face and pleasant dark eyes were as gentle and friendly as a trusted uncle’s. Yet she remembered what Opium had told her about what this gentle-looking man intended to do to Nicky – with his vile bottle of crystals and salts – and she sensed that the face he showed to the world was a false one. A mask, donned to deceive those whom he deemed stupider than himself.
The thought of what he’d do if he found her searching his room had nearly stopped her breath.
“That’s a chersyn, all right.” The scholar handed Sun Wolf the tablet, and carefully opened the book that lay on the table at his elbow: stained, decrepit, and missing whole signatures of pages. His spectacles flashed as he turned toward Mira. “Was there anything besides salt in the bottle? Bits of crystal of a different color?”
She nodded, recalling it with the detail that she used on hedgerow flowers and variations in the color and consistency of the cream in her father’s dairy. “Purple – light purple – and a couple that were light brown. I thought they’d stained that way from… from blood. There was a little dried blood in the bottle as well. Old blood. Opium told me,” she added hesitantly, as Moggin glanced at the pages under his hand and nodded, “that Lord Pushad spoke of… of old wizards putting the blood of young men – and young girls – into bottles like that, to make magic with, after they’d killed them.”
Only the thought of Nicky having his throat cut, Nicky dying as that smooth, smiling wizard in his expensive velvet robe dripped some of his blood into the bottle, had given her the strength to take her time in sketching it, to stay in the room long enough to make sure she had every detail exactly so.
“Wizards did that,” agreed Sun Wolf in his rasping voice. “Still do, for all I know. But not in a bottle like that. Was it sealed? I see you’ve drawn a stopper separately.”
“The stopper was separate, sir. It was wrapped up in the same piece of chamois-leather as the… the chersyn…” She pronounced the word carefully. “And I wrapped a kerchief around my hand before I touched anything…”
