158

A WIZARD IN ABSENTIA

“For now, breakfast.” Oswald rolled up the map.

“Then you can start roaming the city—and looking for weak spots in the social wall.”

The day passed quickly, in a dizzying kaleidoscope of dialects and locations—markets, workshops, churches, prison. Before long, Siflot was juggling in front of an audience, then demonstrating his exper-tise as an acrobat, which none of his team had known about. He brought home quite a haul in cop-per coins, too.

The others didn’t trust themselves to say much, especially Magnus, who stood tall enough to stand out horribly, and drew suspicious looks from guardsmen all around town. He was challenged on more than one occasion, but the guards seemed satisfied with his explanation that he was a new bodyguard from a small village, hired by Master Oswald to protect his shipments of cloth.

It made Magnus realize how strong the police presence was.

Ragnar found out, too, by pretending to get drunk and picking a few fights. The guardsmen were there very quickly, though they just stood and watched.

 

“Three fights, and not a single criminal contacted me,” he told the rest of them that night, in disgust.

“Don’t they have any crime here?”

“Only as much as the aristocrats want,” Oswald assured him. “The vices flourish, because the lords like to take advantage of them now and then—but theft and violence are squashed at the first sign; they don’t want to take any chances that serfs 159

might learn to fight back. They don’t waste criminals, of course—they just send them to the mines, or the galleys.”

Magnus shuddered; there was something inhuman in back of it all.

The days passed quickly, and before he knew it, he and Ragnar were out riding guard for a pair of wagons driven by husky serfs, with Lancorn and Allouene to take care of the goods and do the buying and selling.

Siflot disappeared about the same time, to go wandering from village to village and eventually castle to castle, singing songs, doing gymnastics, carrying news—and spreading hints that serfs were fully human, not a subspecies. He surfaced every few weeks, either at Master Oswald’s, or just “coincidentally”

showing up in the same village the others were staying in for the night—at which time, they exchanged news of a different order from Siflot’s stock in trade.

“I always wanted to be a journalist,” he confided to Magnus one evening.

Magnus, however, had not always wanted to be a bodyguard. Two trips riding shotgun for Lancorn and Allouene, and Master Oswald officially discharged him from his service, sending him out to look for employment on his own. Magnus found that his size made him very desirable to other merchants, and even for one lord who wanted a larger-than-usual troop to march around his estates for a week, to overawe his serfs. Magnus was glad there was no offer of permanent employment; he wasn’t anxious to be tied down to one lord just yet.

There actually was a battle; two lords had a bound-160

ary dispute, and let the serfs fight it out for them.

 

Magnus found himself in the position of temporary lieutenant, trying to train and command a bunch of plowboys. He devoted himself to trying to get as many of them as possible through the skirmish alive.

His tactics worked in more ways than one—he lost only two, and his side won; a quick victory was the easiest way to save lives. The other officers were suspicious of him, knowing he’d had a great deal more to do with the victory than he should have, but unable to say why—so they were very glad when the lord discharged him and sent him on his way.

So was Magnus; the oppression of the serfs was beginning to sicken him, and seeing men toss away their lives just to settle a lord’s argument was the worst yet.

In between, as he rode the dusty roads looking for work, he studied the other travellers he saw—

clerics and merchants, couriers and farmers with carts, lords with their entourages, vagabonds and, yes, madmen—or, at least, very simple-minded beg-gars. No one gave them much money, but no one paid them much attention, either—and Magnus began to realize that he had another cover available, if ever he needed one.

All through it, he waited impatiently for an escaped serf to rescue, or even to hear of one—but there was never a word. Apparently, no matter how oppressed they were, the serfs knew better than to try to flee.

Finally, though, a troop of soldiers stepped out 161

from a tree and stopped him with raised pikes. Magnus stopped, but did not raise his hands, only frowning down at the men.

“State your name and business!” the sergeant barked.

“Gar Pike, and I am a mercenary looking for work.” Magnus took him in at a glance. “From the look of you, I’d say you could use my services.”

“We’ll do well enough without any strangers!” the sergeant barked. “You know the law—say if you’ve seen a serf boy fleeing.”

Inside, Magnus’s heart sang, but he didn’t let it show in his face. “Not a trace.”

“If you do, Milord Murthren will pay you five pounds of silver for him,” the sergeant growled.

“Three pounds, if he’s dead.”

 

Magnus gave him a wolfish smile. “I’ll see what I can find.” Two more pounds, alive! What information did the boy have that the lord wanted?

“Watch carefully,” the sergeant warned. “He’s only ten, and not yet branded.”

That by itself was something of a shock. Magnus had never yet seen a serf without the telltale brand on the back of one hand—a gothic letter S, for “serf.”

He hadn’t known there was an age limit.

He nodded, and assured the sergeant, “I’ll bring in anything I can find.” But he didn’t say to what desti-nation he would bring the boy.

He hunted, and eavesdropped telepathically—so, although he hadn’t heard the Safety Base’s radio beacon himself, he read Lord Murthren’s thoughts and/p>

learned of it. It was going to be a race, he knew—to see if he could get there before the soldiers did.

But he had, and lan was hiking by his side now, safe unless Lord Murthren could recognize every single one of his serfs. All in all, Magnus felt fairly secure.

The house seemed magnificent to lan. It was two stories high with a gable above the second story, and half-timbered—the walls outside were very rough plaster, with the great wooden beams of the house-frame showing clearly. The windows were divided into twelve little squares, each filled with glass, real glass, and the door had a metal lock as well as a bar-latch. The shop was open, though it was barely past sunrise, so Gar and lan went right in, and stepped into a heady scent of dye and cloth.

Inside, the house was divided into two rooms. The front was huge, as wide as the house, and square. It was filled with tables, upon which were piled bolts of cloth in all manner of colors and textures. There were velvets, satins, even silks, as well as common broadcloth and monk’s cloth. Gar’s friend was a draper, a cloth-merchant.

The back room, in which they met the merchant/p>

Oswald, was much smaller, only twelve feet deep and half the width of the house. It was still quite large to lan’s eyes, and was Master Oswald’s office.

He had a great wooden table for a desk with a counting-frame propped up at an angle, and his most precious bolts of cloth locked in great wooden chests with huge iron padlocks. Master Oswald looked up, surprised, when Gar walked in. Then he saw lan, coming in behind Gar, and stared, astonished—and, yes, alarmed. He recovered quickly, though, and stood up, arms open in greeting and smiling. “So, you are back so soon, Gar!”

“It was this young fellow who speeded me, Oswald.” Gar clapped lan’s shoulder. “Meet my new apprentice. His name is lan Tobinson, and he has agreed to bear my shield, should I have one, and to cook my meals and pitch my tent.”

lan looked about him, wondering. He had hoped for a home for a little while—but he had scarcely imagined something so grand as this!

“Well, well!” Master Oswald’s gaze swiveled to the boy. “And young enough to have no brand, I see!

We shall have to dress him as befits his station.” He frowned. “You’ve apprenticed yourself to a hard trade, my boy.”

lan felt obliged to say something. He thought quickly and forced out the words: “I am thankful to Master Gar for taking me, sir.”

Oswald smiled, amused, and nodded. “So you should be, my boy. Days of strife are coming for this land. It will be well for a man to know how to use a/p>

sword, and you could have no better teacher than Captain Pike.”

lan looked up at Gar, astonished. He hadn’t known the freelance was a captain!

Oswald cocked an eyebrow at Gar. “Have you fed?”

“Not for hours,” Gar said, grinning.

“Well enough, my lad,” Oswald chuckled,

“though you’ve called me an old mother hen often enough.” He thrust back his sleeves. “Naetheless, I think we can fill that belly of yours, even if ‘tis with naught but porridge. Come along.”

He led them down a short flight of stairs, and lan found himself marveling. This was the second time in his life he had seen such a staircase, the first having been in the Stone Egg. What a fine thing it was to be a gentleman!

They came down into a hall walled with rough plaster. Oswald turned to his right and led them through a narrow door into a kitchen. A lean woman with a sharp chin leaned over a pot, eyes narrowed against the smoke.

“Two more for breakfast, Matilda!” Oswald called.

“We would be grateful for the porridge, Matilda,”

Gar said. “I have journeyed all night on your master’s business, and the least he owes me is a hearty meal.”

The old cook gave him a gap-toothed smile, which seemed surprising in so severe a face. “Eh, seat yourself, Master Gar. I’ll have your porridge shortly—

another pot for me master.” She squinted, peering at lan. “And who is this?”

“My new apprentice,” Gar said easily. “His old master thought him too quarrelsome to be a weaver.”

Matilda frowned. “A blank-shield soldier, taking an apprentice?” She hobbled over to lan and bent down to peer into his face. Then she grinned again and turned back to her stove, cackling and shaking her head. “Aye, he’s naught but your apprentice, Master Gar! Aye, surely!”

“How now, you old hag!” Gar’s voice was still good-natured. “He is my apprentice, nothing more and nothing less, I say!”

“Aye, aye.” Matilda nodded, stirring her porridge.

“Your ‘prentice and nothing more, I’ll be bound, and no reason to take him save to aid a poor weaver who had a ruffian on his hands! Oh, aye, Master Gar! And there is none of your blood in him, as these old eyes can see!”

“Well…” Gar contrived to look embarrassed, and cleared his throat. “You have caught me fairly, Matilda. He is, my, uh, nephew.”

“Oh, aye.” Matilda looked up at him wide-eyed, then nodded wisely. “Bless thee, Master Gar. Oh, how you could have fooled me.”

lan looked up at Gar in surprise. Could there really be any resemblance between himself and the swordsman?

Then he realized that the cook was old, near-sighted, and probably half-blind, and the resemblance was probably more in her mind than in his face.

Gar squeezed his shoulder, and lan looked up to 168

see the freelance wink and smile. He grinned back.

If the cook believed the story Gar had intended to tell anyway, so much the better.

“Seat yourselves,” Matilda called, tilting the pot and scraping out two huge bowlfuls of porridge. “Sit and eat your breakfast, before it sets.”

They ate in a room just for dining, with Master Oswald—and they ate hugely, with milk and honey on their porridge. lan could scarcely believe his eyes, or his mouth—milk and honey were for the lords, and thick porridge was only for the gentry! His own breakfast, as long as he could remember, had been only thin gruel.

He ate his fill and a little more, until the bowl was empty; then he sat back with a great sigh and a very full stomach.

Gar looked up and smiled. “Had enough, lad?”

lan nodded and blinked. Suddenly, he felt very sleepy. He yawned hugely, and Gar chuckled. “Aye, I’m beginning to feel the night’s strains a bit myself.”

He turned to the cook. “Where shall my nephew doss down?”

“In the attic, good soldier,” the cook answered.

“He can fall asleep on a pile of straw, like any other young ‘prentice.” She hobbled over to lan and scooped him out of the chair, more by gesture than by strength, and ushered him out into the kitchen.

Once there, though, she paused, pursing her lips.

“Nay, I think not—the other ‘prentices will be just waking as you’d be lying down. Bad for them, that—

give them ideas of laziness, it would. Besides, you’ll need long sleep, after being on the road all night, 169

with Master Gar.” She glanced down at lan. “You did ride by night, didn’t you?”

 

lan wasn’t sure whether or not he should tell her, then realized he couldn’t dissemble much if he were going to sleep during the day. “Aye, mum.”

“So I thought.” Matilda thrust her lower lip out and sucked on her few remaining teeth, considering.

“We’ll put you in the pantry for the day. Let me see, now—what stores will I need? A sack of potatoes, another of flour, and two measures of dried pease.” She nodded, satisfied, and pushed him toward the door at the back of the kitchen. “Bring me those, then settle yourself!”

lan made two trips of it, reflecting that this fetch-ing and carrying didn’t guarantee him a sound sleep.

Matilda was bound to think of something she’d for-gotten, and come bustling in to fetch it, or to send her scullery maid, if she had one—and she might make a second trip, or a third. lan determined that he would sleep soundly no matter how much noise she made. He brought the sack of flour last, and could just barely manage it—it was very heavy. Matilda blinked at him, surprised. “Well, then, manikin!

Master Gar may make a soldier of you yet!”

But lan scarcely heard her; he had already turned away to the pantry, nodding. He threw himself down on three huge bags of flour, and was instantly asleep.

lan was awakened by a loud clatter of dishes and Matilda scolding at her scullery maid. He sat bolt upright, startled by the noise, then realized what it was, smiled, and lay down. The sun was coming in the 170

eastern window; he could only have slept a few hours. He closed his eyes and settled himself for sleep again… .

“But how did the boy find the entrance to one of the Safety Bases?”

lan opened his eyes, surprised. He frowned and looked over the side of his improvised bed. There was a crack between the floorboards; through it, he could see Master Oswald’s bald head. Was there a secret room beneath him? No, surely not, he chided himself—only a very ordinary, and un-secret, cellar.

Surely. He heard Gar’s voice rise in answer to the draper: “It must have been an accident. He certainly could not have reasoned out how to open the hatch.”

lan squirmed. It wasn’t right to eavesdrop. He was sorely tempted, but he resolved to be good. He forced himself to turn over, face away from the crack in the floor, and closed his eyes tight, willing himself to sleep.

However, he might have been willing, but sleep was not, and he couldn’t shut out the voices—nor could he come out into the kitchen after so short a while. What would he say if Matilda asked him what he was doing up and about when he’d been told to sleep? That he was turning away from the voices?

When he wasn’t even supposed to know about them?

“How could they have known he was there?” It was Master Oswald’s voice. “They must have, for they came to bring him back.”

“He must have activated the beacon by accident,”

Gar answered. “Certainly a boy from this culture 171

would never have figured out a control panel by himself. Serfs can’t even read.”

“True,” Master Oswald rumbled. “Even the freelance who hid there with me couldn’t figure it out, and he was a gentleman, who had had some education, or what passes for it in a medieval culture. But how do you know this boy isn’t a spy from the lords, who does know how to operate such controls?”

lan stiffened. Could Master Oswald really think such of him? But no—Captain Gar’s voice indicated that by its tone, as he answered. “Possible, of course—but unlikely, since he’s a child. And if he were, why would he have come out before his help arrived?”

“Perhaps he knew it was close.”

lan could hear the smile in Gar’s voice. “If his help had arrived, why would he have run away with me?

No, I’m almost certain he’s a local boy.”

“Almost certain.” Master Oswald pounced on it.

“You’re not really sure, then.”

“Quite sure.” Gar was still amused.

“But just in case, we have him where we can watch him.”

So that was why Gar had helped him! A knot twisted itself up in lan’s belly. Had the freelance aided him only because he did not trust him?

“Besides,” Gar went on, “I like the boy.”

The knot loosened, a little.

“You’ve taken a liking to him awfully quickly.”

Master Oswald growled.

 

“Amazingly so,” Gar agreed. “Any kid who’s willing to brave the dangers of that forest, and take on a/p>

two-hundred-mile walk at his age, just because he wants to be free … well, I’m on his side.”

“So am I,” Master Oswald admitted. “But encum-bering yourself with a child could be very foolish. I needn’t remind you how much of a liability he could be, to someone who has to stay on the move—and secretly!”

“Or how much of an asset,” Gar countered. “He knows things about this culture I could only guess at—and I’d trust him a lot further than any adult.”

The knot loosened the rest of the way, and lan resolved that he would prove Captain Pike right to have trusted him. *

“Yes,” Master Oswald mused. “That brings us to why he ran away from home. As to that, I had some news last night, after you had gone. It seems one of Lord Murthren’s serfs had helped his daughter to escape into the forest—just in time, too, because Lord Murthren had noticed her, all too favorably.”

Gar whistled. “The lord himself? The poor lass was in for trouble!”

“A lot,” Master Oswald agreed, “a great deal of trouble. Her father helped her escape, and they whipped him within an inch of his life for it.”

lan squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw, fighting to keep from crying out, trying to banish the sight of his father lashed to the post.

“Brave man,” Gar whispered.

“Very,” Master Oswald agreed. “He went on to urge his son to run away—when he’d just been taken down from the whipping-post and needed somebody to care for him, he told his son to run away right/p>

then, when they’d least expect it. The kid ran—a boy too young to have a brand.”

“And they flogged the father again?” Gar asked.

“No, he cheated them. He died first, before they discovered the boy was missing.”

The cellar was very quiet. lan felt the ache within him expand, hollowing him out; two hot tears forced their way through his clenching eyelids.

“So.” Gar’s voice was soft. “Our young guest really needs a friend.”

“He’s a brave boy,” Oswald admitted, “and an orphan now—the mother had died a while before.”

“You had the news quickly,” Gar said, in tones of respect, “and thoroughly.”

“That’s my job,” Oswald growled.

“Well, I have some information for you, too,” Gar said, “something we very narrowly managed to avoid on the way back here.”

“A troop of soldiers, of course.”

“More than that—Lord Murthren himself.”

“Lord Murthren!” Master Oswald sounded amazed—and, yes, alarmed. “Out hunting a simple serf boy by himself?”

“No, he had a troop with him,” Gar said grimly,

“but yes, he was definitely leading them in person.

He said something about the boy having violated one of the Secret Places of the Old Ones.”

It was very quiet in the room below. lan lay very still, and tried not to breathe.

“He couldn’t have known that when the boy escaped,” Master Oswald said.

“No,” Gar said. “So …”

“So he received the distress beacon, too,” Master Oswald snapped, “which means he has a scanner.”

“And knows how to operate it,” Gar pointed out.

“Yes.” Master Oswald’s voice had hardened, but began to sound sarcastic now, too. “And, although Lord Murthren is one of the two or three top aristocrats in the land, he’s hacked his way to that position on his own. His father was only a count.”

“Of course,” Gar said, “it’s possible that the King gave him a scanner, and taught him how to use it after he’d become a top counsellor. However …”

“However.” Master Oswald sounded as though he were grinning like a cat, licking cream from his whiskers. “However, he probably inherited the rig from his father, who inherited it from his father—

and on and on back.”

“Chances are that it’s probably been there since the colonizing ship landed,” Gar put in.

 

“Exactly,” Master Oswald grumbled. “And if even a petty count in the backwoods has a scanner and knows how to use it…”

“Probably,” Gar finished, “all the lords do.”

“So that’s one more piece of technological knowledge they’ve kept,” Oswald said, with an air of satisfaction. “Possibly ritualized—you know, you push this button, and then that button, and twist this dial, and the thing does what it’s supposed to do, and they do it as part of their daily duties. …”

“The same way that they know how to operate their machine guns and pocket nuclear bombs,” Gar agreed, “and how to make more ammunition. And/p>

they’re lucky their ancestors made the blasted things damn near indestructible.”

“They know how to clean them and maintain them, presumably,” Oswald said, “but again, only as a ritual. ‘You must do this and this and this to your machine gun when you waken every morning, or it will fail you when you need it.’ That’s how they know how to make gunpowder, too—just follow the recipe, pour the powder into the casing, and squeeze the bullet in on top.”

“Making brass casings is a strain on a Baroque metalsmith, I’ll agree, but it’s possible, especially with hand-me-down equipment from a high-tech culture,” Gar said, “once he’s been shown how. He wouldn’t understand what he was doing or why, but he could do it.”

“Rimfire,” Master Oswald said. “Who couldn’t?

And that’s why the ancestors went to slug-throwers instead of beamers, of course—something just barely within the capabilities of a Baroque society. That’s probably the way they use their safety bases—by rote.”

“Self-repairing,” Gar said, “not that they’d need anything beyond cleaning, hardly any maintenance.

Last forever.”

“As they have,” Master Oswald agreed, “or for five hundred years, at least.”

 

They were silent a moment. Then Master Oswald said suddenly, “Where’s the boy heading, anyway?”

“Castlerock,” Gar said. “So he says, anyway.”

“Castlerock!” Master Oswald was delighted. “No!