Chained Adept Read online

  “Not all neighbors can be friends,” he said, glancing at her slyly. “The Rasesni, maybe they have friends up the tail, but they have few here on the body.”

  “But they’re mountain folk, aren’t they, not a great nation?” Penrys tried to recall the geography books she had glanced at in the Collegium.

  “For people who are not a great nation, they are big pains in the rear of this hound.” He smiled at the image.

  “So. Word came downstream from the western border of raids and people evacuating. Neshilik has always these problems. The Rasesni would take back more of the headwaters if they could, and so they test Kigali readiness to defend them. Every generation or two, they do this. If they can ever reclaim and hold the land up to the gorge at Seguchi Norwan, the gates of the Seguchi, it might be difficult even for the Kigaliwen to shove them out again.”

  “The gorge?” she asked.

  “You’ll see. In about two weeks.”

  Penrys sat her horse and digested the information. That’s another three hundred miles, at the usual pace. So what’s this Zan fellow doing here, in the middle of Kigali?

  “What brought you into this expedition?” she asked.

  “The Kigaliwen are great merchants and not bad farmers. They build well, too. Make things.”

  He gave her a sidelong look. “But they are not famed for their wizards. Not like the Zannib.”

  She stifled a smile, apparently unsuccessfully, for he frowned at her.

  “With the first word out of Neshilik came stories that spoke of wizards. The Rasesni are like the Kigaliwen—no wizards—so where does this come from? Where? Or is it a lie?”

  He straightened in his saddle. “Commander Chang was appointed to lead this expedition, I suppose because he was already at Jonggep, the Meeting of Waters. Or because he is experienced.”

  “Or both,” she said.

  “Or both. Chang asked for assistance from sarq-Zannib, and we listened. Neshilik is on our border, too, and so is Rasesdad, to the west. I agreed to come, and joined him just after they started west.”

  “Why did you volunteer?” His deep voice was misleading—every time she studied him she was surprised how much younger he looked than he sounded. Looking for adventure, were you?

  He spent a few moments fussing over his mare’s mane before answering, with his face turned away.

  “I have been to Kigali before, several times. I have visited their cities. It… interests me, how they do things, how they organize things.”

  He glanced over at her to see if she understood what he meant.

  “This expedition, it is like a building project in some ways—it is an organized response to a problem. I have not traveled with soldiers before, so all of this is new experience for me.”

  She nodded.

  “We do not organize like this, in sarq-Zannib. The Zannib-hubr have independent routes for our taridiqa, our annual migration, and even the Zannib-taghr work independently, farm independently. Our merchants do things in small groups, not large ones—not the caravans, not our western fishermen. Even our clans and tribes are small, compared to Kigali.”

  He gestured at his turban, and Penrys wondered if that identified his clan, if she but knew how to decode it.

  “Wizards work alone. If something happens, we talk about it. A lot. And do little.”

  He looked over at the soldiers riding steadily along.

  “Long time we have been friends with Kigali. Trading partners. Kigali stands between us and all others. They fight for both of us.”

  He turned to face her directly. “This is not proper, for adult peoples. It is not safe. How will we fight, if we have to?

  “I am a wizard, so I am interested in how to organize wizards. This is my journeyman project, how I become a master. I would like to go to your Collegium and find out, but it is too far away and, besides, maybe I don’t meet their standards. So, I go with troopers instead during my tulqiqa, my journey time, so I can at least learn this.”

  He set his mare on a downward diagonal off the low ridge and cantered slowly back to the level they’d started at, expecting her to follow, but refusing to turn his head to see if she did.

  I’d be more impressed with that if I thought the sound of Vekkenfet’s hooves trotting behind him weren’t audible.

  He would never have fit in at the Collegium, I think. They don’t organize either, not really—they’d rather work alone, too, even if they speak about sharing knowledge.

  She pursed her lips. So what happened last night? What are they marching into?

  Penrys caught up with Zandaril once he’d fallen back into a walk to keep abreast of the troopers.

  He seemed to have thrown off his embarrassment at revealing so much of his personal feelings, and smiled at her when she trotted up at her horse’s stately speed. “See, he can go fast enough to run down Badaz when you want.”

  Falcon, it meant. She ignored the tease. “What about last night? Where did that mirror come from?”

  He sobered. “What about you? Where did you come from? Geography lesson free. Time for trading now.”

  All right. Why not? I don’t have to tell him everything. “Agreed,” she said. “You first.”

  Their horses walked companionably side by side, Zandaril again on the outside.

  “Mirror was a stupid trick. Stupid for us, I mean. Old mirror, used by Chang whenever he travels.”

  “Part of his furnishings, you mean? For his own tent?” she asked.

  “Right. Last night, first time, it spoke to us, showed us Menbyede of Rasesdad.” He wrinkled a lip. “So it said.”

  “In the command tent. With the senior officers.”

  “Bad idea. I examined it while Rasesni talked. Don’t know how it worked. Picked up a cloth to throw over it, then… nothing.”

  “You were frozen in place.”

  He nodded. “I saw you. Pop! Then… thump, as you fell down.”

  Penrys felt herself flush. “I was in my workroom. I’d tried my little model of a ryskymmer and it seemed fine. So I got inside the framework of the full-sized detector to make the same adjustment. There was this one lower joint I thought was the problem. When I stepped back out and tried it again, it didn’t work. I did this three more times. It was exasperating. Finally, I just gave the thing a good whack, not remembering I was in the wrong place.”

  “And that time it worked,” he said.

  “Yeah, I was stupid, too. I never thought it would go far if it did work, anyway, so I wasn’t worried. The more fool me.”

  She glanced at him. “I still don’t know what happened, exactly.”

  She rode in silence for a moment, the ache in her unaccustomed muscles from the morning’s ride grounding her in the reality that she had come a quarter of the world from her refuge in the time it took her to fall to the ground. Try again with a new device, built in a wagon from scraps, or walk home? Great choice. And what do I do for power-stones?

  “What are you thinking?”

  The low voice interrupted her thoughts.

  “I was thinking about the difficulty of getting home. Getting back, anyway,” she said.

  “Everyone wants to go home sometimes.”

  She muttered, “Doesn’t feel like home. Just someplace I… work.”

  “Work is good. But it is not the same.”

  She grimaced. “Your turn now. What did the Rasesni say and what did you do with the mirror?”

  He grinned broadly. “This Menbyede, he said we should not bother coming, that he had already taken back Neshilik and fortified the Seguchi Norwan gorge with fine new weapons. He was prepared to talk treaty terms, instead, and warned that we were surrounded. Here! In the heart of Kigali!”

  He slapped his thigh. “Our blood was hot, and then we were… stopped. Very angry, and nothing we could do. Maybe he lied about attack, but maybe not.”

  He snorted.

  “Then, when you released Chang, he bluffed right back. Excellent plan. Now Rasesni don’t know
what happened. Don’t know about you. Don’t know why it didn’t work the way they wanted. And we are still coming to Neshilik.”

  He straightened up as if he were about to charge that instant.

  Penrys hooked a thumb down at the expedition. “But isn’t that an awfully small force against an invasion?”

  “Who says Kigali is invaded? Kigali is very, very big. Very many people. Rasesni live in mountains—not so many people. They attack Neshilik, yes, and they have some new weapon, yes, but more likely this is all a trick to make Kigali give up. We go to see what is really happening. Then we fix it, or we send for real army. Army has a long way to travel, but they are not easy to stop.”

  He looked at her. “I think maybe we fix it. We have new weapon, too.”

  Her ears drew back on her scalp. “Me, you mean.”

  “Of course, you.” He stared at her with friendly interest. “What can you do?”

  CHAPTER 5

  Despite herself, Penrys could feel her face freeze. What can I do, is it? Well, that’s a change from Aergon and his colleagues. They just wanted to know what I was—the rest didn’t matter. Here at least maybe I can be useful.

  “Um, you know about the languages.” She paused. “I didn’t think—would you rather we spoke wirqiqa-Zannib together?”

  He shook his head. “I need practice with Kigali-yat.” He stopped with his mouth half open and crinkled his brow. “But you do not get Kigali-yat from me? You speak it better that I do.”

  “No, I’m using them.” She pointed down at the troopers.

  “Ah! So, how far can you go for language?”

  Farther than I’m willing to admit. For now. “Pretty far.”

  His expression told her the evasion had not gone unnoticed, but he let it pass.

  *And this? You can hear this?*

  She answered him just as silently. *As you know from last night.*

  “Not all wizards can do this,” he commented, “to speak in this way.”

  You have no idea. Almost none in the Collegium. And the few who did didn’t understand how to take it further. “Is it common among the Zannib wizards?”

  He pursed his lips while he considered.

  “Almost all—it’s usually how we first know we are maybe going to be nal-jarghal, apprentices. It is a great blow when a young wizard fails at this, for it is harder for him to find teachers.”

  All! They’d be wasted at the Collegium.

  The cry of a hawk hunting overhead drew both their gazes and gave her time to recompose her expression. “Do you study all in one place, then, like they do in Ellech?”

  “No, very different. Some taghulaj, teachers. they specialize in the young ones, giving them basic instruction and keeping them from trouble—those usually live a settled life in the winter villages. As younglings, those who want to pursue the craft seek out a mentor willing to take them on, if a parent can’t do it, and they stay together until both are satisfied or the student is dismissed.” More quietly, he added, “Or the student dismisses his taghulaj.”

  Penrys filed that away for later. “So, is there a place, a repository, where all, um, craft knowledge is kept?”

  “Sushnib, books, you mean. Wizards have their own books and pass them along to other wizards, their friends or students. Like I said, it is not organized, the way the Collegium is.”

  She could see the envy in his eyes. It’s not fair to let him cherish that illusion.

  “It’s not what you think, the Collegium.” She touched the chain at her throat. “The books are there, like you’d expect, and the wizards and students can use them, but they don’t talk to each other, not about important things, and new books, serious ones, don’t get written. The senior staff, they’re mostly off working on their own narrow specialty, focused on past glories. The young ones, well, if they don’t make themselves fit in, they don’t last long.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I do not think you fit in, with your new detector.”

  Devices, experiments, disruptions—no, I do not fit in.

  “What do your wizards do? How are they useful?” Zandaril put the question politely but Penrys thought he was on the verge of outrage.

  She spoke frankly. “I am not involved in Ellech politics, sheltered at the Collegium, but it seemed to me they do not do much of anything of worth, except produce more wizards like themselves—qualified, unimaginative, and timid. The knowledge is there, but not the will to try new things, to fail until something works. The merchants come with requests, sometimes, but not much happens.”

  He laughed. “Almost you make me glad I have not gone there. If it weren’t for the books…”

  “Yes, if it weren’t for the books.”

  They walked on together for a few moments, upright but swaying slightly to accommodate the movements of their horses. Breakfast was beginning to seem like a distant memory to Penrys and she unhooked the canteen that was affixed to the saddle, hoping that a couple of swallows of tepid water would mollify her stomach for now.

  Zandaril waited until she was done.

  “You are hungry? We will all stop when the sun is high, but we can find something for you now if we ride down.”

  “No, I can wait. Thanks.” She tried to remember whose turn it was, but Zandaril beat her to it.

  “You knew the mind-glows last night, the ones who couldn’t bespeak. I showed you Chang and Kep, and you shielded them from the Rasesni.”

  She nodded.

  “What about them, below?” He cocked his head at the moving men and baggage train.

  She opened her mind briefly. “Too many to count, but in range.”

  “Men? Women?”

  “Yes.”

  He paused. “Horses?”

  She smiled. He was clever. “Yes, animals, too. Have to be choosy about that—do you have any idea how many critters live in the grasslands around us?”

  He grinned wolfishly at her. “Dangerous mice, must be careful or they’ll attack.” He glanced up. “Hawk would like that.”

  “Can you…?” she asked.

  “Not the same for me. Just the mind-glows nearby, and only people.”

  He cocked his head and looked at her. “Maybe you can teach me, bikrajti.”

  “I can try. Um, sometimes that gets a bit… personal. More than mind-speech gets through.”

  At his expectant look, she added, “I don’t recommend that lesson on horseback.”

  “Tonight, then, after dinner.” He nodded briskly as if it were all set. “Language, too?”

  What have I started? “I don’t know if that can be taught.”

  “Maybe we can practice on your language.”

  Her muscles tensed. “And what would that be?” she muttered, bitterly. At his look of puzzlement, she continued, “Do you know Ellechen-guma? We can try that.”

  Zandaril closed the sushnibtudin and retied the heavy cords over the leather wrapping that enfolded the trunk. Putting aside the volume he’d extracted, he shifted it back into its place in the corner of the wagon and evaluated the cleared area he’d left free for lessons, in front of the sacks of beans that still made up most of its load. The square carpet that filled it, with its border pattern of intertwining vines in a riot of colors brought a fond smile to his face. It was good that the jimiz, the scholar’s rug, could serve its proper purpose, even if this would be a meeting between bikrajab, not a lesson from taghulaj to irghulaj, teacher to student. This is my first offer of nibar, hospitality, as one bikraj to another. Not what I expected.

  He could have used their tent, but he’d wanted more privacy for this. He’d sent Hing Ganau off and now all he was waiting for was his guest. Or prisoner. Or even, if Chang’s worse fears had any basis, a spy.

  He didn’t think the latter was true, any longer, not after a day in the saddle together, exchanging stories, asking careful questions. He wanted to know much more, but better to go at it slowly, in these long days covering the vast distances, feeling his way, rather than damage, by clumsy inter
rogation, what he thought could become an alliance of colleagues. For all her peculiarities, he thought Penrys might have much to teach him.

  He did, however, take his responsibilities seriously, and Chang had put her in his charge. He kept a mind-touch on her while she took care of “private matters” after dinner, just to confirm her location. She’d offered as much when she brought it up. “Better a mind-touch than a tether,” she’d said.

  He felt her approach now and moved forward to greet her as she came to the back of the wagon and walked up the steps that Hing had placed there.

  “Come in,” he said. “I’ve made us a place. You can lean against that.” He pointed at a partly filled bean sack over which he had draped his red uthah, the printed mythical animal figures seeming to move in the lantern’s light.

  “This is for you, for now.” He presented the sushnib to her with both hands, pleased with her obvious delight. She ran a hand over the cover and held it up to her face to sniff at it, then she opened it to look at its contents while walking blindly to her place, and stumbled a bit over the sack as she settled herself cross-legged on the rug, still intent on the pages.

  Zandaril smiled to himself. Anyone that clumsy should walk first and read later.

  She looked up as he seated himself and leaned against another sack draped in his sky-tree uthah, all blues and greens.

  “This is a basic primer on magic, for a young student, isn’t it?” she said. “What are you doing with something like that? Did you learn from it, yourself?”

  “Yes, it’s the one I used. Good to be prepared when you meet a new student.”

  “It’s cut down from a scroll, isn’t it? Don’t see many like this at the Collegium.”

  “It’s sturdier, as pages between boards. Hard to get rid of the curl, though—it’s an art, flattening the parchment of an older work to bind it like this.”

  She grunted, and lifted a page to note the absence of text on what would have been the back of a scroll.

  He baited his trap. “But I thought you would need help with the letters.”

  “Not when you’re so close,” she said, absently, buried again in the first few paragraphs. Then she started, and shifted her glance to him in alarm.