Terec and the Wild Read online

  In the Geir, those were the two points on the axis of life: south to Astandalas and all the glory and wealth of the capital, and north to … the opposite.

  It was a good cloak, Terec thought. That night he slept rolled in it, his horse tethered on a long line, in an empty meadow behind a good hedge. The ground was damp but that was all the better, he thought, less chance of any sparks catching.

  He was already an hour into his ride the next morning when the Pax fell over him. His horse whiskered and pranced a few steps, ears pricked against the familiar, welcome magic. Terec hunched his shoulders against the blow of the bindings passing over him and rode on.

  Kilusz into Awlusz, Awlusz into Yttergorick, and he was out of the Geir and into the northern woods. The road took him through Yttergorick itself, a town of some three or four thousand inhabitants. It was the largest community this far north, and Terec decided he needed supplies before he continued.

  He was already desperate for companionship. Four days from home and he knew it was almost time to send his letter.

  Conju would be going home from Forgellenburg soon, and ask after him.

  He found an inn near the northern gate, shabbier than those in the centre and quiet, this time of year. It was, he was told, the in-between times, and planting season moreover: all the locals were busy about the farmsteads or in the sawmills north of the city, and the merchants who traded north and south were still travelling.

  “Where are you going?” the barmaid asked him, flirting desultorily. She was maybe in her thirties, pale and pretty, her hair a soft auburn and her nose freckled. Terec wasn’t interested, of course, but he did his best to smile politely.

  “North,” he answered.

  The barmaid raised her eyebrows and gave him a speculative look. It was a cool, damp day, with a raw wind out of the north. Terec hadn’t been expecting such inclement weather this far south, and he was wearing the Turgyeni cape over his regular clothes.

  “The cloak works,” she said at last, “but you’ll want some other clothes before you head up the long road. I know someone who’ll trade for what you have.”

  Terec had chosen his least fancy clothes. He would not need anything he’d wear to an assembly or a dinner party or a ball, let alone the glorious costumes they’d worn to court that one time; he’d left all that behind. He’d chosen riding clothes, hunting clothes, ordinary clothes.

  “Look,” the barmaid said, her eyes softening at his confusion. “You’re, what, eighteen?”

  “Nineteen,” he said, He wasn’t slim and handsome like Conju, he knew that: he was built like a tower, all square and uncompromising except for the sharp axe-blade of his nose.

  “So young,” she murmured. “You don’t look much like a criminal, so you’re running away for another reason. You’ll be chewed up and spit out up there if you even make it.”

  Terec shrugged. He did not want to die, but then again, there really didn’t seem to be a lot of options for him to live, either.

  “No one goes north on their own unless they’re looking to escape who they are,” the barmaid declared. “I’ll get my friend—”

  “It’s fine,” Terec interrupted. “I’m sure my clothes are fine.”

  “If you want to be robbed, sure.”

  “I—” He stopped and rubbed his face. “Why are you telling me this?”

  She glanced around the room, which was empty at this time of the day, and gestured for him to sit down on the stool. “I’m from Tukong,” she told him, leaning forward so she could fix her eyes on him. “Nobody’s from Tukong, you know. Everyone comes from somewhere else, up there.”

  Tukong was the border outpost. “What about the people who live there?”

  She laughed darkly. “What people? No one lives in the forest this side of the Border. The only reason there’s a town there at all is because of the garrison, and the only reason there’s a garrison is because someone needs to hold the northern point of the Border.”

  “But people go there,” Terec objected. He’d grown up on stories of people going North: not exactly seeking their fortunes, because you went to Astandalas for that, but seeking to escape. There was a beauty in the North, people said uncertainly, whispering of coloured lights in the sky. (That was the Border, other people said, scoffing.) There were soldiers who were posted there, merchants who went there, trappers and miners and gold hunters, and even people who crossed the Border for the resources on the other side.

  “Only those who have to,” the barmaid said. “And those of us who were born to those who did. Let’s face it, laddie-boy: you’re not a trapper or a trader, a miner or a soldier. You might be a criminal. Are you a minstrel, a wizard, or a whore?”

  Terec slumped. “A wild mage,” he whispered. “I’m crossing the Border.”

  “And you picked that one?” the barmaid said, eyebrows crooking. “Do you even know what’s on the other side?”

  He shook his head. “Do you?”

  She gave him a patronizing smile. “Laddie-boy, the stories I’ve heard would curl your short hairs. Give me a sunburst as a token and I’ll see what I can get you by way of supplies. I’ve seen too many sad boys die because they weren’t prepared not to try, at least.”

  She brought him rough clothes of wool and fur and leather. Terec kept his own boots and his own hat, and three of his handkerchiefs. (“Useless things,” the barmaid sniffed, “but if it makes you happy…”) She had only brought him two changes, which he found frankly incomprehensible.

  “But what about cleaning them?”

  The barmaid snorted. “On the other side of the Border? You’ll be lucky if you can wash your hands once a week. There’s a bathhouse in Tukong for those coming back across. Not that that’s going to matter, not for you.”

  The more stories she told, the less Terec quite believed her. Astandalas was civilized: that was the whole point. Even those who had reason to cross the Border surely took those values with them. The guards on the outpost were not barbarians, and the trappers and traders, wizards and even whores surely still felt something of the Pax. Even that far north it was still the Empire.

  “This is as far south as I can handle,” the barmaid told him frankly after he had changed into his odious new garments and handed her all the clothing of his old life. “I tried—went all the way to Astandalas, just to see it, you know?”

  He did know.

  “And the magic there … so thick the air was like wading through cream! I felt drunk half the time, and that’s no good state to be in, not when there’s no demons chasing you. Even when there are demons chasing you,” she said, more thoughtfully, “though admittedly I understood the impulse better then. I came back up here, and this is where I thought things seemed well enough. Didn’t fancy going back up the Long Road, not when no one’s still at home. I’ll probably go back eventually, once I’ve saved up enough to buy my own place.”

  “Perhaps when you do I’ll be able to come back and visit,” Terec said.

  “You do that,” the barmaid said. “You’ve got all you need?”

  “All you told me I did,” he replied, gesturing at the extra bags of food she’d told him to buy, along with the small hand-axe and hunting bow, and a coil of rope and a bedroll.

  “Good,” she said, then stuck out her hand in a strange northern custom. He shook it gingerly. “Good luck, wild mage,” she said. “Enjoy the stars on the other side of the Border.”

  He nodded shortly. Yttergorick held nothing else for him: not even the letter he had posted to Conju, which had taken him a thousand tries to write.

  3

  On the maps the road between Yttergorick and Tukong did not look so very long.

  Yttergorick had already seemed very different from Lund, even from Kilusz or Awnusz. There had been a rough-and-ready sort of atmosphere to the place, a sense of thinness in the air, a bit of excitement. People wore furs, not for elegance and fashion but for simple practicality, because they had furs.

  The northern
road was paved. All the great highways of Astandalas were paved, for they bound the Empire together. Each person riding or walking or driving a carriage down their lengths helped to power the magic laid in runes along their lengths. Terec could feel that he was assisting in that great work; when he walked beside his horse his feet tingled, as if they were about to start burning.

  The first part of the road was just as it had seemed to the south: straight, well-maintained, sturdy, strong. There was no traffic on the day Terec left Yttergorick, and he cantered and walked his horse steadily away from the town. There was a wind at his back, blowing magic past him.

  He went up and down two low ranges of hills that first morning, passing farms and increasingly large swaths of forest. The trees here were different than he’d known to the south; pines and birch took the place of oak and ash. There was some tree he didn’t know the name of, with leaves like green coins that fluttered madly in the breeze, whispering endlessly.

  The sky was very blue, the trees very green. The exposed ground was no longer rich black earth, but sandy, and the few farms he passed were rickety, marginal-looking places, scruffy and small and with dogs in their yards.

  The highway was protected. None of the dogs did more than bark at him and his horse.

  After the second range of hills the farms ceased entirely. There were still paths branching off the highway, winding back into the trees. Some of them had stacks of logs near the highway, and he guessed they were for loggers working in the bush. Later in the day he passed a heavy wagon drawn by oxen, the bed piled high with logs. He greeted the driver uncertainly, but the man had just stared at him, eyes hooded and flat.

  Terec shivered and rode on.

  The wind died down and the insects came out towards evening. Mosquitoes first, which Terec knew about—everyone knew about—but had never encountered in such quantities. He’d laughed when the barmaid in Yttergorick told him to acquire lotions against insects, though she’d been so insistent he’d bought them.

  At a roadside well he rested his horse and applied some of the lotion to his face and hands. His horse drank and ate grass and he nibbled at one of the loaves of bread he’d bought in Yttergorick, not hungry but knowing he needed the sustenance if he wanted to make it anywhere.

  He sat on the grass, back against the stone of the well, his horse’s reins loose in his hands. If. If he wanted.

  He wanted to go home, so intensely that he could not breathe. He sat there, longing crashing over him. He would never go home again. He would never see his father, mother, brothers, sisters … Conju. He would not even hear from them, probably. They would be better off telling everyone he’d died, than that he’d shamed them by being a wild mage unable to control his power, that he’d run away to the North.

  The reins slipped from his loose grasp as he fought back tears. He let the leather go, his throat sore with the attempt not to lose control, and sat there gasping, face contorted, while his horse lipped unconcernedly at the grass.

  It was very still. Hot, the air still heavy on his head, the mosquitoes not as bad as earlier but buzzing around. Terec hugged himself, biting his hand to keep from crying out. He had never been so far from home before, not by himself, and yet … and yet this was only the beginning.

  Then some animal or bird screeched. His horse shied, Terec himself jumped, and at his motion the horse bolted into the woods. Terec stared dumbly, then scrambled to his feet. He hadn’t unsaddled the mare: all his belongings were still tied to her saddle.

  She hadn’t gone far, thankfully. Just out of sight of the highway was a rocky cliff, just long enough and high enough to block her free movement. She’d been startled, not panicked, and came willingly enough to his familiar call, let him stroke her nose and calm her down. Calm himself down, really.

  He led her back towards the highway, only to stop at the sound of voices.

  “Did we lose him?” one said.

  “Can’t have gotten that far ahead of us,” another objected. “There’s nowhere to go up here.”

  “Except north,” the first voice said, laughing coarsely. “Don’t see the point in taking him back if he wants to go there, myself.”

  “You’re not paid to make that decision,” the second said. “Come on, we’re never going to make the Ghost at this rate.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “We can wait for him there. Everyone stops.”

  “Their bar is pretty good,” the first acknowledged, with another coarse laugh. “Come on, then.”

  Terec heard jingling and clatter as they remounted their own horses and set off at a loud gallop. He stood there, his own horse’s nose pressed into his chest, heart thundering.

  They couldn’t have been sent after him, he told himself. He hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t illegal to be a wild mage, not if you didn’t practice your magic, and his father had clearly known he was leaving, and wouldn’t send anyone after him.

  No one would be coming for him. He wasn't worth the effort.

  He reached the Ghost—the Ghost Tavern, it turned out—just as the light turned from dusk to dark. Lund was far enough north that the spring nights were short, but even four or five days (had he already lost track? Was there any point in keeping track, anymore? The letter had been sent, and … that was that) further north and there was a difference in the quality of light in the evenings, the hour of dawn and sunset.

  Or that might have been the shifting magic. It was noticeably thinner up here. The Pax had washed over him this morning, but more lightly than he’d ever felt it before.

  Terec thought of the barmaid back in Yttergorick, who had found that a good enough distance from Astandalas to stand the magic. Perhaps he didn’t need to go all the way north. Perhaps he could stay here—

  He paid an exorbitant fee to stable his horse and spend the night. He unsaddled and groomed her, taking his time over the familiar chores. The stable was half-full, with animals ranging from a stocky, shaggy pony all the way to a pair of superb grey Allandales from the west. Most of the horses fell somewhere in between, with his own mare on the better side of average.

  He patted her after he’d filled her net with hay and put a scoop of oats into the trough. She was familiar, friendly, his. A gift from his father on his sixteenth birthday. Conju and he both loved riding—both their families did—though neither he nor Conju were interested in hunting. They often trailed along behind the Hunt when it came to Vilius or Lund, leaving the pack to explore the small byways of their fathers’ lands.

  He leaned his head against the mare, breathing in the familiar, comforting scent of horse.

  Someone came in, grumbling and swearing as they stumbled on a raised board. Terec tensed, disliking the uncouthness, the pressing sense of danger, the … fear.

  He’d never felt so afraid. Only of his magic, which warmed his fingers, singed his sheets, otherwise—

  He hesitated and felt stupid, but in the end he went back out of the stable and into the woods off the road, finding a thicket of some prickly conifer where he could hide his bag. He scuffed last year’s leaves around, and took a long walk around back to the road and the tavern. He’d feel better after a bite to eat, he decided.

  Everything was always better after food and a bath, Conju said.

  —he should stop thinking about Conju.

  Inside the tavern he felt immensely out of place.

  It was not so much his clothing or his accent. Everyone fell silent when he entered, and he felt many eyes on him. He set his jaw and made his way as confidently as he could to the bar, where he ordered a pint of the local and a plate of supper. That was his first mistake: when he asked what was on offer he was informed with a harsh laugh that he would get what he got.

  It was a plate of dry and stringy venison and a plop of mashed turnip, a smear of gravy, and a small oblong loaf of surprisingly good bread. No butter, of course. The ‘local’ was a thin, sour beer. He sipped it, trying not to show his distaste.

  He sat
at the only free table, a rickety thing in a corner by the entrance, where a draft gusted on him every time the door banged open. It had started to rain while he was grooming his horse, and he was spattered as well.

  He watched the people entering warily and said nothing, not even when one woman slammed the door open so hard it knocked into his table and nearly toppled his beer. The woman was tall and thin, her face plain: all pale, faded brown, from her hair down through her leather vest to her leggings and boots. The only bright thing about her was the green and yellow tassels hanging from the hilt of her sword.

  Terec had heard that some of the northern mercenaries hung tassels to count their battles. Each would be in the colours of the battalion with which she’s fought. She had at least six, green and yellow and white, and one in sumptuous royal purple for the First Army.

  Six battles, and not a visible scar on her. Terec did not say anything when she knocked the door against his table, no indeed.

  He tried to guess who owned the Allandales—surely the well-spoken and well-dressed woman in the corner, a lady if Terec had ever seen one, whose table the mercenary had joined. A lady travelling somewhere in the north country, a hired guard at her side. She could have called in on his father's house, met Conju's family at court.

  Terec considered and decided that he did not want to talk about his origin or destination, and he really had nothing else to say to anyone.

  For good or for ill, however, some of the other patrons had words to say to him.

  The Ghost Tavern was a travellers’ hostel, but there were locals here, too: the last few farmers eking out a hardscrabble existence, a larger handful of miners, the grime from their trade worked deep into their wrinkles. It was iron around here, and along with the miners came smelters and smiths who worked the raw ore into the bars that were transported to the south and sold.