Читать книгу Fire Angels - Jane Routley - Страница 3

By mid morning they had crossed over the pass and to the west the great flat green plain of Southern Moria was spread out before them. Alain, Master Kintore's Morian servant sat patiently as the Klementari mage turned back and took one last longing look back east towards where his beloved country of Ernundra lay. Ernundra the beautiful, the country with in a country, surrounded as it was on all sides by Moria. It was two days ride away and they could see nothing of it through the mornings haze, but he understood something of what Master Kintore felt for his homeland.

"It's like a pulse," Master Kintore had said once. "Or a distant beacon glowing warmly inside your mind. Even when you are far away, even when you are on the other side of the Red Mountains, you can still sense that distant glowing. Even when we cannot see her, Ernundra lets us know that she loves us, that we belong to her, that we are not alone."

It was a beautiful place. Sometimes Alain could not imagine how Master Kintore found to the strength leave it especially for the dubious privilege of living in Northern Moria as Klementari Envoy to Duke Henri at the court of Mangalore. There were few Klementari living in the north, which was not surprising; at best Northerners regarded the Klementari with nervous respect, which could change quite readily to bitter hatred. Alain had had insults, and once or twice even blows from other servants for serving one of the "Moonies" or "Witchpeople". Master Kintore only laughed ruefully and said, "They shall be better when Duke Henri lets our mages come here and the people become used to us." There was something in what he said. To know the Klementari was to love them. Alain was devoted to Master Kintore and regarded him more as a beloved uncle than a master. Personally, though, if he'd been Master Kintore, he would have let those sour northern bastards rot and stayed at home in beautiful Ernundra.

Perhaps Master Kintore was thinking the same at that moment, for he sighed and moved his shoulders as one taking on a burden, before he turned and nodded at Alain to take the road down the Western side of the Red Mountains.

Yet for all their love of home there were many Klementari who lived outside Ernundra. They could be found all over Eastern and Southern Moria, sometimes even married to Morians. Here they were greatly famed for their mage-craft and loved for their strange unearthly beauty, their gentle kindness, and the generous way they dispensed healing and other small magics even to those who could not pay.

At midday the two men stopped for a meal at an inn at the foot of the Red Mountains. When Alain came in from seeing to the horses he found Master Kintore in intense conversation with one whose fair hair, high cheekbones and dark eyes proclaimed her one of the Klementari. From the affectionate glances and greeting of the other customer, Alain guessed she must be their local healer or dreamer.

"The ban on foretelling still stands," said Master Kintore to the woman whom he had introduced to Alain as Enna Thurre. "The madness of the Dreamers continues. While I was in Ernundra, three died while struck by Foretelling. Two more have been driven from their wits and can only babble of darkness." He sighed. "Such a terrible thing."

"What killed them?" asked Thurre. She was a big handsome woman with a face more suited to laughter than the deep troubled fear it showed now. Though who could blame her for being afraid? Visions of the future appeared to certain of the Klementari without their even seeking it. Lately such foretellers or Dreamers as they called them had been dying, seemingly without cause, a matter which had been troubling even the King of Moria.

"We cannot say. Shock and fear we think. The Istari are strangely silent on this matter." Master Kintore's face was bleak.

Usually a trip to Ernundra and a night spent in the Spirit Chamber communing with the Istari, the spirits who guided and protected the Klementari, revitalized Master Kintore but this time he had came away full of anxiety.

"The Istari are blind," he had said to Alain. "For once, they cannot see what comes." He had been absent-minded and worried since then.

Now Thurre caught his sleeve intently. "I have wondered ... Could it be that some terrible fate awaits the Klementari? Could these Dreamers have seen it?"

Master Kintore shrugged his shoulders.

"It has long been in my mind to do a foretelling," continued Thurre. "No, no, not by visions," she went on at Master Kintore's horrified glance. "With the cards. I have some gift with prophecy cards. This morning, it seemed to me they had something to say to me, but I was afraid to look. Can you not feel it too?"

She had taken a cloth wrapped bundle from her bag and placed it on the table between them and with these words she now unwrapped them. They were white cards with a pattern of leaves painted on their backs. Alain saw a look of deep temptation come onto Master Kintore's face.

"Do you have visions when you use them?" he asked.

"Never," said Thurre. "Only a clear sense of their meaning. I am not a strong foreteller. Come, I shall do it, yes? I feel it is time."

"Yes, yes. Why not?" Master Kintore leaned forward eagerly as she shuffled and reshuffled the cards.

The inn was full of the normal noise and bustle of midday. People ate and drank and laughed. The serving wench was arguing with some nearby customers over the quality of the stew. The landlord, a huge beefy fellow, held three tankards under the taps to fill them. Thurre reached for her first card. People nearby glanced at the two mages with mild curiosity. It was an ordinary moment in an ordinary day.

And yet in that moment the world ended for thousands of people.

Thurre gasped. The card slipped from her fingers and fell upon the table. It was the famished land, the death card. In that moment she must have seen Ernundra die.

Suddenly all hell broke loose. Both mages were standing were standing both of them choking, hands on faces, eyes staring with at some terrible sight

"Master!" cried Alain as Master Kintore screamed like a man in his death agonies, pitched over on his side and fell to the floor choking out screams - screaming and screaming, blood flecked froth coming from his mouth. Alain leapt at him, trying to help or hold him.

Then suddenly - Smash! A blast of hot red light burst open the doors and windows and a wave, a great whirlwind of mindless numbing terror swept over everyone. The beefy landlord's fingers dig into his horrified face. People flung themselves on the ground screaming, tears running down their cheeks like a frightened children, thrashing about on the ground. Alain was so unmanned by fear he wet himself as he collapsed clutching his master.

How long did he lie abjectly there trembling and crying at nothing? The next thing he knew people began shouting. He looked up and saw Thurre struggling in a group them, white-faced, rolling her eyes madly.

"Don't leave me. Don't leave me," she was bellowing. There was a knife in her hand and the blood at her throat.

"Help us, Help us," those struggling with her cried.

But Alain was too afraid to stay there. The room stank of abject terror - the stink of sweat, shit and piss. Folk still thrashed about on the floor, screaming and wailing. Yet there was nothing to see to be afraid of.

Master Kintore was silent. His eyes were open, but there was no life in them though his heart still beat. Alain lifted him up and carried him from the room. He ran a rabbit runs from a hawk, hunched over to be as small as possible.

Outside the Red Mountains loomed over the village as they always had but the sky above them was no longer blue. Huge billows of grey ash rose from behind them, turning the sun to a sick red ball. A faint wailing howl could be heard in the distance.

The air was hot and heavy and the distant howling pushed Alain to the edge of panic. He felt a horror that that ash might fall on him. With shivering hands, he tied Master Kintore to his saddle. All the time, he did not know, indeed could not even think about, what he feared so abjectly. He had always thought himself a brave man but now he leapt onto the saddle and took off; whipping the horses hard in a frenzy to be away, though there was no need to do so. They were as terrified as he.

It was a nightmare journey to Mangalore even after the fear had gone. For nine days Master Kintore did not speak. He simply stared into space. Alain had seen him knock thieves of their horses simply by looking at them and change himself into a mighty eagle. Now he was as helpless as a little child – worse, a little child who had no will to live. Fortunately nobody interfered with them. Everywhere people were dazed with shock and grief and the countryside was covered in a sticky, sickly grey ash.

As they got further north and came on people who had not felt the terror that had come over the Red Mountains, there were those few whose love of drama and self-importance had overcome their horror, who wanted to talk and talk of the disaster. It was from them that Alain learned the meaning of it all - how Luisange, Dean of the White College of Magic in Moria, had joined with the White Colleges of several other lands to destroy two necromancers who had been troubling the coast of Moria; how unbeknownst to them, one of them, Jubilato, had recently brought a bound demon through into our plane; how the demon, Smazor, freed by his master's death burst forth in a frenzy of hunger that in a few hours had laid waste to all of Moria between the Red Mountains and the sea, before the United White colleges had managed to send him back to his own plane. In years to come the event would become known as Smazor's run.

Had the terror at the inn been an echo of the cry of horror from so many throats as the demon bore hungrily down upon them, or was it the terror all life naturally felts when close to such a destroyer? The question haunted Alain all though that journey.

Somewhere on the way home, Alain sat briefly outside a tavern with a priest who must have looked through a Bowl of Seeing. He described with knowledge the blackened, ashy land, the skeletons of trees and the endless piles of bones with flesh still rotting on them, like the leavings of a gigantic slaughterhouse. Somehow Alain knew that this was what Master Kintore saw before his staring eyes. Alain wanted to weep unmanfully for the green and peaceful land he remembered from their journeyings beyond the Red Mountains. Over half of Moria had lived on that fertile plain between the Red Mountains and the sea. The capital Ruinac had been there. The King had perished and all the court. All suddenly gone. And Ernundra, the beautiful land. ... Most the Klementari lived there. He wanted to weep for himself and his poor orphaned master, one of the few survivors of his race.

The priest continued contemptuously, "And Luisange has killed himself now, they say. Serves him right. Stuck up mages, now look what their meddling has done." Alain left him quickly before he gave in to his feelings and smashed a fist into his smug face.

Once he knew of the disaster, Alain watched his master closely lest he, like Thurre, try to kill himself. He wondered if Kintore would recover from the terrible shock and if, when he came to himself, he would still have his magely powers.

There was worse to come.

Though he had sent messages ahead, when they reached Master Kintore's house in Mangalore, the courtyard gates were locked against them and there were no lights in the windows. Alain knocked and knocked, but no one answered. But as he stood not knowing what to do, a woman stepped out of the shadows. It was Master Kintore's cousin, Mathinna, a plump jolly woman who had kept house for him. At least she had been plump and jolly. If he had thought of Mathinna at all it was with hope that she had not suffered from this thing as his master had, for though she was a full blood Klementari she had no magical powers.

But she had obviously suffered greatly. She had lost much weight and moved like one in pain and her voice was hoarse as if her mouth was full of ash. Yet Alain was so glad to see her that he threw his arms around her, a familiarity he would earlier not have dared.

"Duke Henri has confiscated Master Kintore's house," she told him. "He says since there is no longer a Klementari nation, there is no need for a Klementari embassy. He has been confiscating much property these last few days and dismissing my people from their positions. It has been foretold that soon he will drive us from the city."

"He cannot dare do that," cried Alain.

"He has pronounced himself King," she said, "and the Electors, those who are left, have agreed that it must be so."

This was terrible news. Not only did Duke Henri hate the Klementari, but he disliked mages as well. He thought the only place for them was in the church being priests.

Mathinna had taken refuge in the house of a healer and this was where she now took Alain and Kintore.

The healer, Nesta was a short dark woman, but she had the high cheekbones and dark eyes of the half-Klementari none the less. She showed Alain a bed for Master Kintore and where to get water to wash him.

"I will make something to ease his grief," she said.

But when Alain returned with the water, he saw that Master Kintore had come back to life at last. He and Mathinna were weeping in each others arms.

"I was left behind," he was crying. "Oh Sweet Mother Earth I was left behind. I want to die, Mathinna. I want to die."

They were the first words he had spoken, these nine days. Alain was relieved to see his tears and yet at the same time it was beyond measure painful for him to see a man he had always looked up to reduced to such a state.

In the other room, Nesta was pounding seeds in the pestle. Her face was tired and wounded looking, but determined. Alain stood and watched her for some time before she noticed him.

"Where is Mathinna?" she said and then, "You left them alone together? You stupid man!"

She rushed into the inner room to find Mathinna standing over the bed uncorking a poison bottle. With a magical blow, Nesta dashed it from her hands and it smashed on the floor sinking instantly into the stones. Mathinna began to scream hysterically.

"You babies," Nesta shouted at them. "How can you even think of it? How can you leave me alone?"

"I want to die," cried Mathinna crouching on the floor dabbing her hands at the poison. And Master Kintore lifted up his face with his swollen red eyes leaking tears and said quietly, "There is no place in the world for us now. The Istari are dead. We are alone."

Alain would have let them take the poison, but Nesta slapped both their faces.

"Hear this," she said. "The end of the Klementari is not here. We have another destiny now without the Istari and it will be revealed in time. And we must live and grow and help each other till that time so that our ways are not lost. I speak with the voice of Foretelling. I saw the vision this very morning and so have others."

Later when they were both safely in drugged sleep and Alain was helping Nesta clean up, he remembered how Nesta had struck his master and he turned to her with a small-minded anger in his heart.

"You lied in there, didn't you?" he said. "I don't believe you saw any such vision."

She gave him a hard determined look, a look that made him feel petty for speaking so.

"It doesn't matter if you believe it, as long as they do," she said.