The Riftwar Saga Series Books 2 and 3: Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon

Pug tried to look mysterious. ‘We magicians have our ways.’

Tomas snorted. ‘Some magician. You’re no more a magician than I am a Knight-Captain of the King’s army. Tell me, how did you know?’

Pug laughed. ‘It’s no mystery. Every time you see her, you puff up in that tabard of yours and preen like a bantam rooster.’

Tomas looked troubled. ‘You don’t think she’s on to me, do you?’

Pug smiled like a well-fed cat. ‘She’s not on to you, I’m sure.’ He paused. ‘If she’s blind, and all the other girls in the keep haven’t pointed it out to her a hundred times already.’

A woebegone look crossed Tomas’s face. ‘What must the girl think?’

Pug said, ‘Who knows what girls think? From everything I can tell, she probably likes it.’

Tomas looked thoughtfully at his plate. ‘Do you ever think about taking a wife?’

Pug blinked like an owl caught in a bright light. ‘I … I never thought about it. I don’t know if magicians marry. I don’t think they do.’

‘Nor soldiers, mostly. But Master Fannon says a soldier who thinks about his family is not thinking about his job.’ Tomas was silent for a minute.

Pug said, ‘It doesn’t seem to hamper Sergeant Gardan or some of the other soldiers.’

Tomas snorted, as if those exceptions merely proved his point. ‘I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like to have a family.’

‘You have a family, stupid. I’m the orphan here.’

‘I mean a wife, rock head.’ Tomas gave Pug his best ‘you’re too stupid to live’ look. ‘And children someday, not a mother and father.’

Pug shrugged. The conversation was turning to provinces that disturbed him. He never thought about these things, being less anxious to grow up than Tomas. He said, ‘I expect we’ll get married and have children if it’s what we’re supposed to do.’

Tomas looked very seriously at Pug, so the younger boy didn’t make light of the subject. ‘I’ve imagined a small room somewhere in the castle, and … I can’t imagine who the girl would be.’ He chewed his food. ‘There’s something wrong with it, I think.’

‘Wrong?’

‘As if there’s something else I’m not understanding … I don’t know.’

Pug said, ‘Well, if you don’t, how am I supposed to?’

Tomas suddenly changed the topic of conversation. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’

Pug was taken by surprise. ‘Of course we’re friends. You’re like a brother. Your parents have treated me like their own son. Why would you ask something like that?’

Tomas put down his plate, troubled. ‘I don’t know. It’s just that sometimes I think this will all somehow change. You’re going to be a magician, maybe travel over the world, seeing other magicians in faraway lands. I’m going to be a soldier, bound to follow my lord’s orders. I’ll probably never see more than a little part of the Kingdom, and that only as an escort in the Duke’s personal guard, if I’m lucky.’

Pug became alarmed. He had never seen Tomas so serious about anything. The older boy was always the first to laugh and seemed never to have a worry. ‘I don’t care what you think, Tomas,’ said Pug. ‘Nothing will change. We will be friends no matter what.’

Tomas smiled at that. ‘I hope you’re right.’ He sat back, and the two boys watched the stars over the sea and the lights from the town, framed like a picture by the castle gate.

Pug tried to wash his face the next morning, but found the task too arduous to complete. His left eye was swollen completely shut, his right only half-open. Great bluish lumps decorated his visage, and his jaw popped when he moved it from side to side. Fantus lay on Pug’s pallet, red eyes gleaming as the morning sun poured in through the tower window.

The door to the boy’s room swung open, and Kulgan stepped through, his stout frame covered in a green robe. Pausing to regard the boy for a moment, he sat on the pallet and scratched the drake behind the eye ridges, bringing a pleased rumble from deep within Fantus’s throat. ‘I see you didn’t spend yesterday sitting about idly,’ he said.

‘I had a bit of trouble, sir.’

‘Well, fighting is the province of boys as well as grown men, but I trust that the other boy looks at least as bad. It would be a shame to have had none of the pleasure of giving as well as receiving.’

‘You’re making sport of me.’

‘Only a little, Pug. The truth is that in my own youth I had my share of scraps, but the time for boyish fighting is past. You must put your energies to better use.’

‘I know, Kulgan, but I have been so frustrated lately that when that clod Rulf said what he did about my being an orphan, all the anger came boiling up out of me.’

‘Well, knowing your own part in this is a good sign that you’re becoming a man. Most boys would have tried to justify their actions, by shifting blame or by claiming some moral imperative to fight.’

Pug pulled over the stool and sat down, facing the magician. Kulgan took out his pipe and started to fill it. ‘Pug, I think in your case we may have been going about the matter of your education in the wrong way.’ Searching for a taper to light in the small fire that burned in a night pot and finding none, Kulgan’s face clouded as he concentrated for a minute; then a small flame erupted from the index finger of his right hand. Applying it to the pipe, he soon had the room half-filled with great clouds of white smoke. The flame disappeared with a wave of his hand. ‘A handy skill, if you like the pipe.’

‘I would give anything to be able to do even that much,’ Pug said in disgust.

‘As I was saying, I think that we may have been going about this in the wrong way. Perhaps we should consider a different approach to your education.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Pug, the first magicians long ago had no teachers in the arts of magic. They evolved the skills that we’ve learned today. Some of the old skills, such as smelling the changes in the weather, or the ability to find water with a stick, go back to our earliest beginnings. I have been thinking that for a time I am going to leave you to your own devices. Study what you want in the books that I have. Keep up with your other work, learning the scribe’s arts from Tully, but I will not trouble you with any lessons for a while. I will, of course, answer any question you have. But I think for the time being you need to sort yourself out.’

Crestfallen, Pug asked, ‘Am I beyond help?’

Kulgan smiled reassuringly. ‘Not in the least. There have been cases of magicians having slow starts before. Your apprenticeship is for nine more years, remember. Don’t be put off by the failures of the last few months.

‘By the way, would you care to learn to ride?’

Pug’s mood did a complete turnabout, and he cried, ‘Oh, yes! May I?’

‘The Duke has decided that he would like a boy to ride with the Princess from time to time. His sons have many duties now that they are grown, and he feels you would be a good choice for when they are too busy to accompany her.’

Pug’s head was spinning. Not only was he to learn to ride, a skill limited to the nobility for the most part, but to be in the company of the Princess as well! ‘When do I start?’

‘This very day. Morning chapel is almost done.’ Being Firstday, those inclined went to devotions either in the Keep’s chapel, or in the small temple down in the town. The rest of the day was given to light work, only that needed to put food on the Duke’s table. The boys and girls might get an extra half day on Sixthday, but their elders rested only on Firstday. ‘Go to Horsemaster Algon; he has been instructed by the Duke and will begin your lessons now.’

Without a further word, Pug leaped up and sped for the stables.

• CHAPTER FOUR •

Assault

PUG RODE IN SILENCE.

His horse ambled along the bluffs that overlooked the sea. The warm breeze carried the scent of flowers, and to the east the trees of the forest swayed slowly. The summer sun caused a heat shimmer over the ocean. Above the waves, gulls could be seen hanging in the air, then diving to the water as they sought food. Overhead, large white clouds drifted.

Pug remembered this morning, as he watched the back of the Princess on her fine white palfrey. He had been kept waiting in the stables for nearly two hours before the Princess appeared with her father. The Duke had lectured Pug at length on his responsibility toward the lady of the castle. Pug had stood mute throughout as the Duke repeated all of Horsemaster Algon’s instructions of the night before. The master of the stables had been instructing him for a week and judged him ready to ride with the Princess – if barely.