The Silver Mage

PART I
The Northlands Autumn
Five Years Before the Founding of the Holy City

The Greggyn astrologers tell us that the end of a thing lies curled in its beginning like a tree inside an acorn.

The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid

‘You should leave me,’ Gerontos said. ‘Just leave me here and save yourselves.’

‘Never!’ Rhodorix laid a blood-stained hand on his brother’s shoulder, then glanced at the druid, standing nearby. ‘Think your god will intervene and save us?’

Galerinos merely shook his head, too exhausted to speak, and leaned, as bent as an old man, onto his heavy staff. Rhodorix considered his cousin’s wounds, slight if Galerinos had been a warrior, but grave enough for a softer man. The young priest’s arms, bare in his linen tunic, bled from a hundred scratches, the work of the thorny bushes and low-growing trees of this stretch of countryside. Blood stained the hem of his tunic as well from the cuts and scratches on his bare thighs.

All that hot autumn day the three of them had been scrambling through the underbrush in the rocky hills, trying to find a hiding place, taking turns supporting Gerontos, whose broken leg could bear no weight.

‘No use in you dying with me, Rhoddo,’ Gerontos said. ‘Either of you.’

Rhodorix helped his brother sit down among the boulders. Gerontos’s leg, snapped below the knee by a savage axe, had turned purplish-black; blood oozed from under the bandages Rhodorix had improvised from strips of their tunics. He helped Gerontos settle himself, then got up and looked down the long slope of the hill to the valley below. Somewhere among the tall grass and the patches of forest waited their clan and safety, somewhere too far to see. Unfortunately, he could all too clearly see a small mob of their enemies, still some distance below them, but coming inexorably up the hill.

Just after dawn that morning, Rhodorix, eldest son of the Dragon clan, and his warband had been guarding Galerinos as he dowsed for water. Instead of a spring they’d discovered a trap set by the white savages. All fourteen of his men lay dead down in the valley; only he himself, his brother Gerontos, and the druid had survived the attack. Unhorsed, desperate, they had taken too many wrong paths during their attempt to escape.

I made too many bad decisions, not anyone else but me, Rhodorix thought. ‘The shame’s mine,’ he said aloud. ‘Better I just die with you here. Even if we got back, what am I going to tell the vergobretes?’

Neither Galerinos nor his brother could look him in the face. Neither said a word.

‘But Gallo, you can hide or suchlike,’ Rhoddo went on. ‘Get away after they kill us.’

‘If Great Bel wants me to die, then die I will,’ Galerinos said. ‘There’s no use in running.’

‘Well, how by the hells do you know what he wants? You keep praying, and we keep getting more and more lost.’

‘That’s why I think he wants us to die. If he’d only led us to water right away –’

A cry drifted up on the hot and dusty air, a shriek of triumph, an answering howl from a band of men.

‘They’ve spotted us,’ Rhodorix said. ‘Naught else matters now.’

‘Help me up!’ Gerontos said. ‘Cursed if I’ll die sitting down.’

Between them Rhodorix and Galerinos hauled him up and helped him prop himself against a boulder. Gerro’s face had gone pale under the smears of dust. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead. Had his leg been sound, Rhodorix knew, the two of them could have scored some kills before the superior numbers against them brought them down. As it was, they could no longer fight back to back. Not long now, he thought. Soon we’ll all be drinking in the Otherlands.

Twelve men were making their way uphill through the rocks and the underbrush, twelve savages with manes of dark hair and milk-white skin, scored with the black lines and dots of tattoos. Ten of them carried spears; the others bore the heavy war-axes that had so efficiently shattered the Devetians’ wooden shields that morning. Some hundred yards downhill they paused to argue among themselves, pushing each other in their eagerness to be the first to attack.

‘Gallo, run!’ Rhodorix snarled. ‘Get out of here now!’

‘I won’t.’ The young priest stepped forward and raised his staff to the sky. ‘I’ll beg Bel’s help and try to curse them.’

‘A load of horseshit would do us more good than that.’

Galerinos ignored him and took another step forward. He stared straight at the enemy and began to chant, a low rumble of sound at first, then louder and louder. His words came punctuated with deep breaths, and every breath seemed to draw power from the very air around him. Each curse vibrated like a swarm of angry wasps as it streamed toward the enemy below. Rhodorix had never heard such a sound out of any man’s mouth. He felt himself turn cold as the chant rose and fell. More to the point, their enemies seemed as transfixed as he. They stood and listened, weapons slack in their hands as Galerinos cursed them, their women, their offspring, their clans, their future offspring, their crops, their herds, and anything else they might touch or cherish.

With one last bellow of sound, Galerinos cried out, ‘Begone!’ and swung his staff down to point straight at them. All of the ill luck of the curse sprang out at them – and a good deal more. With a hiss and crackle like lightning from a clear sky, blue fire leapt from the staff in a long sizzling bolt and struck among them. They screamed, began to back away, screamed again as a further shower of blue flames burst out of the staff and struck. One man fell backward, writhing and foaming at the mouth. Two others grabbed him, but he continued to twitch and foam. All at once the enemy band broke. They ran this way and that, for a brief moment hysterical and leaderless, then turned and began to race downhill, howling as they ran. A last bolt of blue fire followed them.

Galerinos stood staring, his mouth half-open, his eyes stunned.

‘What did you do?’ Rhodorix grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘How did you do that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What – you have to know!’

‘The curse never worked like that before! Back in the homeland, I mean.’ Galerinos paused to gasp for breath. ‘You heard me. I asked the god to send ill-luck down upon them, and from the look of things, I’d say he did.’

Laughter sounded behind them, an odd laugh, more like the plucking of a cithara’s strings than a sound made by a throat. Rhodorix spun around. The strangest man he’d ever seen stood leaning against a tree trunk and smiling at them. A slender fellow, he had yellow hair as bright as the paint on a Rhwmani standard, and his lips were a paint-pot red as well, while his eyes gleamed sky blue. His ears, however, were the strangest feature of all, long and furled like lily buds.

‘I doubt if your god had anything to do with those bolts of fire,’ the fellow said. ‘You know sorcery, don’t you?’

‘What?’ Gallo gaped at him like a dolt. ‘But that’s unclean!’

‘Sorcery such as my friend Caswallinos studies is not unclean.’ He pried himself off the tree trunk and walked over. ‘My name, by the by, is Evandar.’

Rhodorix dropped to his knees. ‘Forgive my brother, Mighty One,’ he said. ‘He can’t kneel before you. He’s badly hurt.’

‘So I see,’ Evandar said to him, then turned back to Galerinos. ‘Your master, in fact, that very same Caswallinos, asked if I might find you for him. Come walk with me.’

Galerinos obeyed, striding uphill to join the being that everyone in the migration of the Devetii assumed was a god. Together they moved a few paces off. As Rhodorix got up to keep a watch downhill, he felt the air turn cool around him. He glanced up and saw a mist forming in the sky, a strange opalescent cloud shot through with pale lavender gleams and glints. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.

‘Ye gods!’ Gerontos said abruptly. ‘They’re gone!’

Rhodorix spun around to look where his brother pointed. Sure enough, Evandar and Galerinos both had vanished. As he watched, the cloud of peculiar mist began to shrink into a swirl of grey and lavender. In a heartbeat it had disappeared as well. Rhodorix tried to speak, then merely shook his head in bafflement.

‘Do you think Gallo will bring us back some aid?’ Gerontos said.

‘I hope so,’ Rhodorix said. ‘I’d think so.’ Yet he felt that he lied. Why would the clan care about two shamed men such as themselves? Especially me, he thought, I’m the one who led us right into the trap.

With a curse and a groan of pain, Gerontos let himself slide down against the boulder until he sat upon the ground. Rhodorix sat down next to him and prayed that the gods would allow his clan to take mercy on his brother.

To Galerinos it seemed as if he and Evandar had walked but a few feet away. The god, as he thought of the being next to him, paused and turned to face him.

‘Your master worried when you lads didn’t come back,’ Evandar said. ‘He and some of the other men found that battlefield, if you can call it that. A slaughter yard, more like.’

‘So it was,’ Galerinos said. ‘I’m surprised that any of us got away.’

‘They assumed you’d been taken prisoner, so I said I’d fetch you back.’

‘You have my humble thanks.’ Galerinos glanced around and saw nothing but mist all around them. ‘Where are the other two?’

‘Back where I left them. I told Casso that I’d bring you back. He said naught about your friends.’

‘I can’t desert them!’

‘You already have.’ Evandar grinned with the wide-eyed innocence of a small child and pointed off in the distance.

Galerinos spun around to look downhill. The mist was lifting, revealing a clear view of the camp, only some five hundred yards away. Horses, wagons, people – they spread out in a dusty spiral on the plain, desolate except for grass, crisping in the autumn heat, and a few straggly trees. A faint umbrella of brown dust hung in the air above the conjoint tribes of the Devetii, refugees from the Rhwmani wars.

Out in the open grass stood Caswallinos, his hands on his hips, his staff caught between his side and the crook of his left elbow. For someone so blessed by divine power, he was an unprepossessing fellow, almost as skinny as his staff and bald except for a fuzz of grey stubble round the back of his skull. As they hurried down to join him, Galerinos was expecting his master to kneel before the god. Instead, the old man merely smiled and bobbed his head in Evandar’s direction.

‘My humble thanks for returning this stray colt to me,’ Caswallinos said. ‘I take it the other lads are all dead.’

‘Two were still alive last I saw them,’ Evandar said.

‘Then where are they?’

‘Still up on the mountain. They were wearing iron, and so I left them there.’

Caswallinos sighed and ran a hand over his face as if he were profoundly weary. ‘What have I told you about wyrd?’ he said. ‘And how things undone redound upon you?’

‘Do you think those two are part of my wyrd?’ Evandar said.

‘They are now, since you left them somewhere to die.’

‘But they were wearing iron.’ Evandar stamped his foot like an angry woman. ‘Iron swords, iron shirts. It aches me.’

‘I know that,’ Caswallinos said. ‘No one was asking you to touch them.’

The supposed god – Galerinos found his belief in Evandar’s divinity crumbling – stared at the druid for a long moment, then turned away. He seemed to be watching the white clouds drifting in from the south.

‘We need our two lads back,’ Caswallinos said, ‘and we need water.’

‘You’re not far from a big river.’ Evandar kept his back to the druid. ‘Head to where the sun rises. It won’t take you long to reach it.’

‘I wish you’d told me that this morning.’

Evandar merely shrugged.

‘If you had,’ Caswallinos went on, ‘those lads wouldn’t be dead, and the last two stranded on a mountainside.’

‘Oh.’ Evandar turned around to face him. ‘Mayhap their wyrd is mine, then.’

‘It is.’

Evandar pouted down at the ground for a long moment. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said at last. ‘But I shan’t bring them here.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ll be leaving to find that river.’

‘Will you bring them to me there?’

‘I shan’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the river’s too wide. Too much water!’ He vanished, completely and suddenly gone without even a shred of the opalescent mist to cover his departure.

Caswallinos muttered a few words under his breath, something highly unpleasant from what Galerinos could hear of it.

‘Master?’ Galerinos said. ‘Is Evandar truly a god?’

‘Of course not! I’m not sure what he is, mind, but he’s most assuredly not divine.’

‘But he opened the sea road for our ships, and he comes and goes –’

‘Just as the gods are supposed to come and go?’ Caswallinos snorted profoundly. ‘In the old tales, fancies of the bards, lad, fancies of the bards. I’ll explain later. Come with me. We need to tell the vergobretes about this river.’

‘True-spoken. We’d best get there today. The horses have to have water.’

‘Indeed. My heart aches for your two friends, but I’m afraid we’ll have to leave them to Evandar.’ Caswallinos paused to look Galerinos over. ‘Ye gods, your arms, lad! It looks like you’ve been fighting a few savages yourself. By the by, did Evandar drive your attackers off?’

‘He didn’t.’ Galerinos paused, wondering if his master would believe his tale. ‘I uh well er I did. Not that I know what I did. I mean –’

‘What by all the hells do you mean?’

‘I cursed them by the power of Great Belinos, just as you taught me. I pointed my staff at them, but then these long bolts of blue fire leapt out of it. Evandar called it sorcery.’

Caswallinos glared at him with narrow eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, seemed to think better of it, opened his eyes wider, then shrugged. ‘He warned me, Evandar that is,’ the old man said, ‘that our magic would be a fair bit stronger here than in the homeland. I had no idea what he meant until this moment.’

‘What did he mean?’

Caswallinos smiled. ‘Let’s find Adorix,’ was all he said. He turned and strode away with Galerinos hurrying after him.

The tribesfolk stood beside their horses or sat on the ground in the little squares of shade cast by the loaded wagons. A fine film of brown dust covered everyone and everything. Children whined or wept while exhausted women tried to comfort them. The horses stood head-down; the dogs were panting open-mouthed. As Caswallinos walked through, people turned to him and wordlessly held out desperate hands.

‘There’s a river ahead!’ the elder druid called out repeatedly. ‘The gods have promised us water. Not far now. Big river ahead!’

The news spread in ragged cheers. Even the slaves, white savages captured in one battle or another, managed tired smiles in their chains.

Eventually the two druids found Adorix in conference with the cadvridoc, Brennos, as well as Bercanos, head of the Boar clan, and Aivianna, the Hawk woman and moon-sworn warrior. Although none of them wore armour or carried shields, each had their long sword slung in a baldric across their chests, and all four of them had warriors’ hair: bleached with lime until it stood out stiff and straight, as if a private wind had blown it back from their faces. The faces in question were all grim, tight-lipped, narrow-eyed, as they turned to the druid and his apprentice, though Avianna’s was the grimmest of all, scarred as it was by the blue tattoo of the crescent moon on her left cheek.

‘Water straight ahead to the east,’ Caswallinos said. ‘Evandar his very self told me that a big river lies nearby.’

Brennos smiled briefly. The others nodded.

‘I don’t suppose,’ Adorix said, ‘that he had any news of my two cubs.’

‘He didn’t.’ Caswallinos lied smoothly. ‘But Galerinos does. They’re alive up on the mountain. He can lead some horsemen back to them.’

‘There’s no time for that now.’ Bercanos stepped forward. ‘If the savages attack us, our men and horses are barely fit to fight. We’ve got to reach that river.’

Adorix laid his hand on his sword hilt and turned toward him. Aivianna stepped in between them. She stayed silent, merely looked at each in turn, but Adorix took his hand away from the sword hilt and Bercanos moved a good pace away.

‘There’s no time for arguing amongst ourselves, either,’ Brennos said.

The heads of the two clans agreed in sullen mutters. Aivianna’s expression never changed as she returned to her place by the cadvridoc’s side.

‘Evandar brought my apprentice back but not the others,’ Caswallinos said. ‘I don’t know why. The gods are like that, truly. But Gallo here can tell us what happened.’ He cocked a thumb at Galerinos. ‘Tell them the truth, lad.’

‘Just at dawn we rode out to find water,’ Galerinos began. ‘I chanted the prayers and held out my staff, but we rode till the sun was halfway to zenith before my staff began to tremble. It seemed to be tugging toward the hills, so that’s the way we went. We saw a little valley twixt two of the hills where the trees looked fresh and green. You couldn’t see clearly into it, though, and our god sent me an omen about it. Just as we reached the trees a raven flew up, squawking and circling over the valley.’

‘Here!’ Brennos interrupted. ‘Didn’t Rhodorix realize you were riding for an ambush?’

Galerinos felt his stomach clench. He hated to betray his cousin, but Caswallinos was glaring at him, his arms crossed over his chest, in a way that brooked no argument.

‘He didn’t,’ Galerinos said. ‘He led us right into it. I tried to warn him, truly I did, but Rhoddo just spurred his horse forward, and everyone followed him.’

Adorix grunted once, then shook his head. ‘Let them rot, then.’ He held out his hand to Bercanos, who laid his own palm against it.

‘Forgive me,’ the Boar said. ‘My foul temper –’

‘Mine’s no better,’ Adorix said. ‘We’ve got more to worry about at the moment than my stupid son. If he was coward enough to live when his men died, then he can freeze in the hells for all I care. I have other get to take his place.’

‘But –’ Gallo began, then swallowed his words. Arguing with Adorix was a good way to die young. ‘As you wish, honoured one.’

‘Well and good, then.’ Brennos took command. ‘We can’t stand here jawing like a pack of old women. If there’s a river ahead, let’s get on the move. We can’t risk losing our horses.’

‘Let us hope that Belinos and Evandar lend us their aid,’ Caswallinos said and folded his hands with a pious expression on his face, one that Galerinos had seen before, whenever his teacher was hiding something.

Shouting orders, the warleader strode away with the other warriors trotting after. Galerinos turned to Caswallinos. ‘I thought you said Evandar wasn’t a god.’

‘He’s not,’ the old man said, grinning. ‘But they don’t need to know that, do they now? Keep silence, lad, whenever you can, and your life will be a fair bit easier. Now let’s find you a new horse and move out with the wagons. Tonight, however, I want to hear more about this curse of yours.’

The sun crept down the western sky and shone full-strength onto the hillside. Gerontos’s face had turned a dangerous shade of red. ‘If only we had some water,’ he whispered.

‘True spoken,’ Rhodorix said. ‘This cursed stretch of country is all dust and thorns.’

‘I wish we’d stayed by that harbour. We could have built a city there.’

‘The omens weren’t right.’

Gerro nodded, then closed his eyes.

‘It’ll be cooler when the sun goes down,’ Rhodorix said.

Gerro never answered. It’ll be too cold, most likely, Rhodorix thought, and us with not one cloak between us.

As if in answer to his thoughts, a shadow passed across the sun. He looked up to see a lavender cloud, a small smear of colour at first against the blue. The cloud grew larger, sank lower, and formed a perfect sphere of mist. Out of the mist swooped a hawk, an enormous red hawk, shrieking as it glided down toward them. For the briefest of moments it hovered a few feet from the ground, then with a shimmer of silver light Evandar dropped down lightly and stood, back in his more or less human form. The lavender sphere vanished.

‘I’ll take you somewhere safe,’ Evandar said. ‘Can you get your brother onto his feet?’

‘He can’t stand up,’ Rhodorix said. ‘Maybe I can carry him over my back.’

The god frowned, considering Gerontos, who had slumped down against the boulder. Rhodorix had a panicked moment of thinking him dead, but he opened his eyes with a groan.

‘I’ll bring help.’ Evandar snapped his fingers and disappeared.

And how long will that take? Rhodorix wondered if Gerro would live long enough for this promised help to arrive. He scrambled up and stood between his brother and the sun to cast a little shade. He heard Gerontos mutter something and glanced back to see him trying to swat away the flies that were crawling on the blood-soaked bandage.

‘Leave them be,’ Rhoddo said. ‘Save your strength.’

When he returned his gaze to the hillside he saw the lavender mist forming in mid-air. A vast cloud of it hovered in the form of an enormous ship under full if ragged sail, which first settled to the ground, then began to thin out, revealing Evandar and a tall man wearing what seemed to be a woman’s dress, a long tunic, at any rate, with gold embroidery at the collar and hem. Around his waist he wore a belt from which hung a good many pouches. This fellow had the same peculiar ears as Evandar, and his hair was just as yellow, but his cat-slit eyes were a simple grey. He started to speak, saw Gerontos, and trotted forward, brushing past Rhodorix to kneel at the injured man’s side.

The last of the mist-ship blew away. Four stout young men appeared, carrying a cloth litter slung from long poles. They wore plain tunics, belted with leather at the waist. From each belt dangled a long knife in a leather sheath.

‘A healer,’ Evandar said, ‘and his guards.’

‘You have my humble thanks, Holy One,’ Rhodorix felt himself stammering on the edge of tears. ‘My humble undying thanks! I’ll worship you always for this. If I swear a vow, I’ll seal it with your name.’

Evandar smiled in the arrogant way gods were supposed to smile, judging from their statues, and waved one hand in the air in blessing.

The healer pulled a glass vial filled with a golden liquid from one of the pouches at his belt. He slipped one arm under Gerontos’s shoulders and helped him drink, one small sip at a time. Gerontos’s mouth twitched as if he were trying to smile. The healer got to his feet and began barking orders in a language that Rhodorix had never heard before. With a surprising gentleness the guards lifted Gerontos onto the litter. The healer put the vial away, then from another pouch took out a peculiar piece of white stone – a crystal of some sort, Rhodorix realized, shaped into a pyramid. For a long moment the healer stared into it, then nodded as if pleased by something and put the pyramid away.

No time for a question – the lavender mist was forming around them with a blessed coolness. Everyone followed Evandar as he led them uphill, only a few yards, or so it seemed, but when the mist lifted, they were standing on a different mountain, and the sun was setting over its peak. Rhodorix felt as giddy and sick as if he were drunk.

He tipped his head back and stared uphill at a massive fortress above them, huge, far grander than anything the Rhwmanes had built in the homeland. To his exhausted eyes it seemed almost as big as an entire Rhwmani walled town. Over the stone walls he could see towers rising and the slate-covered roof of some long structure in their midst. Beyond, at the peak of the mountain, three huge slabs of stone loomed over the fortress, dwarfing it. The sun had just lowered itself between two of the slabs, so that a long sliver of light flared and gleamed like a knife-blade on the mountainside.

‘Garangbeltangim,’ Evandar said. ‘And safety, at least for now.’ He tipped back his head and laughed in a ringing peal. ‘Indeed, at least for now.’

His laughter lingered, but the god had gone.

As they walked the last few yards, massive wooden gates bound with bronze bars swung open with barely a squeak or puff of dust. Rhodorix looked around him, gaping at everything, as he followed the healer inside. Big slabs of grey and reddish slate covered the courtyard in a pattern of triangles that led to a long central building. Its outer walls gleamed with tiny tiles of blue, white, and green, set in a pattern of half-circles so that the enormous rectangular structure seemed to be rising out of sea-foam. To either end stood towers, built square like Rhwmani structures, but far grander, taller, and the top of a third tower, standing behind the main building, was just visible. Off to each side he could see various small huts and houses. Even the lowliest shed bore a smooth coat of bright-coloured paint.

A number of people were standing around, watching their procession straggle into the courtyard. They all had the same furled ears and cat-slit eyes as the healer; they all wore tunics and sandals like his as well. Off to one side someone was leading a horse around the end of the main building, a stocky warhorse whose coat shone like gold and whose mane and tail flowed like silver. Rhodorix had a brief moment of wondering if he’d died without noticing and now walked in the Otherlands, but his thirst drove the fancy away. Dead men didn’t long for water.

Bells chimed over the courtyard, followed by the louder boom and reverberation of huge metallic gongs. The sound came from the top of the tower to his left. When he looked up, Rhodorix saw men on the roofs, and the gleam of metal swinging as they struck the gongs. Up on the mountain peak the sun slipped a little lower. The long knife-blade of light disappeared. The gongs fell silent as the healer urged his men forward again.

They entered the largest building by a narrow door at one end. More colours, more mosaic walls – they turned down a corridor with walls painted with images of trees and deer, then passed red-curtained alcoves and went through a gilded room into a mostly blue corridor, decorated with a long frieze of circles and triangles. Glowing cylinders topped with flame burned in little tiled alcoves on the walls. In this maze of design and brightness, Rhodorix could barely distinguish what he was seeing, nor could he tell in what direction they walked.

At last the healer ushered them into a small chamber with a narrow plank bed, a round table, a scatter of chairs, and a window open to the air. The men with the litter transferred Gerontos to the planks, then pulled off his hauberk and his boots. They bowed to the healer and left.

Rhodorix was just wondering how to ask for water when four cat-eyed servants came trotting in. He assumed they were servants because they carried plates of bread, silver pitchers, and a tray of golden cups. One of them filled a cup with water and handed it to Rhodorix without being asked. Thirst and dust choked his mouth so badly that he could only smile for thanks. The fellow pointed to the food on the table with a sweep of his arm that seemed to mean ‘help yourself’.

Other servants carried in big baskets and set them down beside the plank bed. The healer took out several sticks with spikes at one end and put them on the table. Onto the spikes he put thick cylinders of wax with a bit of thread coming out of their tops. When he snapped his fingers, the threads caught fire, and a soft glow of light spread through the shadowed room. Rhodorix took a fast couple of steps back. The healer smiled at his surprise, then pointed to the food and water before returning to Gerontos’s side.

Rhodorix drank half a pitcher of water before his head cleared enough for him to consider food. He took a chunk of bread and stood eating it while he watched the healer and two of the servants washing Gerontos’s broken leg. By then his brother had fainted. And a good thing, too, Rhodorix thought when the healer grabbed Gerontos’s ankle with one hand and guided the leg straight with the other. Gerontos woke with the pain, groaned, and fainted again. A servant came forward with a bowl of some thick, reddish substance. At first Rhodorix thought it blood, but the smell told him that it was in fact honey mixed with red wine and some ingredient that made the liquid glisten.

The healer dipped strips of cloth into the mixture, then bound them round the break in the leg, over and over until he’d built up a thick layer. A servant came forward with a bowl of water and held it out while he washed his hands. Another slipped a pillow under Gerontos’s head. At that Gerontos woke again, groaning repeatedly, turning his head this way and that. Rhodorix strode over to the opposite side of the bed from the healer and caught his brother’s hand. Gerontos fell silent and tried to smile at him. His mouth contorted into a painful twist.

Two servants hurried over to help Gerontos drink from a cup of the yellow liquid. A third handed Rhodorix a cup of red wine, which he sipped, watching his brother’s pain ease with every swallow of the yellow drink. The healer himself considered Rhodorix, seemed to be about to speak, then smiled, a little ruefully, as if perhaps remembering that Rhodorix wouldn’t understand a word he said. He went to the doorway and spoke to someone standing just outside. A woman’s voice answered him; then the woman herself strode into the chamber.

She stood by the bed and set her hands on her hips to look Gerontos over while the healer talked on. Now and then she nodded as if agreeing with something he said. Tall, nearly as tall as Rhodorix, she wore her pale hair pulled back into a pair of braids. Under thin brows her eyes were the blue of river ice and deep-set in a face that most likely became lovely when she smiled. At the moment, frowning in thought as she considered Gerontos’s leg, she looked as grim as a druid at a sacrifice. Gerontos looked at Rhodorix and quirked an eyebrow. Once, during Vindex’s ill-fated rebellion, they’d seen a contingent of Belgae warriors, all of them as pale-haired and pale-eyed as this woman.