Drifter Mage Read online

  "You survived, Deeb. You're back with us, your family. That's what matters."

  "That man's dead. Due to me." Deeb's hands trembled.

  She put her hand on his. "You've been very brave. I'm proud of you," she murmured. "You were taking care of us. That ruffian was trying to hurt us, Deeb, trying to kill you. He was a thief and a murderer. A foe of all good people when he set out to hurt others for his own gain."

  #

  As their wagon set out that morning, Deeb kept looking back, expecting to see the men in pursuit. They would come after, he felt sure.

  The prairie ahead seemed featureless, a long sea of grass. Only as they topped a nearly invisible hill could they see the true lay of the land, vast swales between low hills pierced here and there by gullies that could hide an army. At noon they rested, several thousand paces further on their journey.

  The whirligigs followed closely until Deeb pointed at them, chanted the ritual phrase that formally got his imp's attention, and then gave Lok the trigger word: "Protect."

  Deeb felt the harsh determination that came as a side effect of casting a conjuration. Conjuring could make a person cold, cruel -- he tried to avoid using magic for that reason alone. Mara did not like him to use it, either. He understood that.

  The imp wriggled like a puppy and darted after the whirligigs. They scattered, but not quickly enough. Lok caught and briefly tussled with one. It jerked itself free and skittered away, but now flying at a slight tilt. The others backed off.

  Lok floated back to the wagon with a sort of back-and-forth oscillation, as though proud of himself. The imp came and briefly enveloped Deeb, taking in a tiny bit of the man's life force as food and reward, then separated again and began circling the wagon, on guard, acting alert and energetic. Most imps were better at protection than attack -- the thugs had not sent their imp after Deeb for that reason, he supposed. He was grateful for that.

  But despite Deeb's imp, the whirligigs still paced them at a distance. Lok occasionally rushed out in one direction or another, backing the creatures away, but when the imp returned to his master, they drifted closer again.

  "It's like they're waiting for any weakness," Galle said.

  "You stay near the wagon," Mara told him, and he nodded.

  Flies buzzed around the mules, so Deeb and Galle kept busy chasing the pests away until lunchtime, when they paused to rest.

  As they ate a brief meal of coffee and jerked beef, Deeb brought up what happened. "I'm thinking we haven't seen the end of them, Mara. They'll be following along behind us."

  She nodded, but did not look up so that he would not see her concern. "You'll be ready for them next time." She kept her tone confident to show she believed in him. But he shook his head unhappily anyway.

  They had history between them on this subject. Mara was raised in very modest circumstances. Her family came from genteel stock, but her father grew arthritic at a young age and not able to keep to steady work, so her mother took in laundry while her father did what odd jobs he could handle.

  They lived in a difficult area of the city, with violence and brutality constantly around them. Mara was determined to free her parents and sister from this world -- she saw it as her duty to work hard, educate and improve herself as best she could, so she could raise her whole family to a better life.

  When she won the attention of a scion of one of the grand families in the city, she had been glad more for her parents, almost, than herself. Deeb Parten was a wonderful, kind, attentive man, and she fell in love with him.

  But only after they married did she discover the genteel aspect of the Parten family was a façade -- they were a nest of gangsters, brutal and violent, everything from the bad side of the city she had tried so hard to put behind her. She was devastated and horrified.

  Knowing this, Deeb proved more than willing to separate himself from that world for her. He became a scholar and a teacher, and they lived modestly but with dignity at a remove from the chaos and danger of his family's life. Her parents lived with them for a time, but passed away together of a fever shortly after Galle was born. She never had given them the life she hoped.

  Now, even in their current circumstances, Deeb clung to the changes in himself that had won her originally.

  "I don't want to fight anyone," he said. "That's why we left Thehar. There's been enough killing. What would it gain us? My brothers were already dead, there wasn't anything we could do about that."

  "It was the right choice," she said. They'd had this discussion before as well. "But this morning? Deeb, if the stranger hadn't killed that man, you'd be dead. And where would I be without you?"

  "You'd have been with that stranger, that drifter mage."

  "No, I wouldn't. But we'd be forced to return to Thehar. Galle would be right back in that world, Deeb. I suppose I'd find work as a scribe, what I did before I met you."

  "You have such clear handwriting," Deeb agreed. He raised his head, looked toward the horizon. "But that whole life is behind us. All the history of Thehar, the knowledge, I don't think it can do us any good out here. We have to start fresh."

  The clouds on the horizon were almost the same grey-brown as the grass, as though the land out here somehow blended into the sky, as though it were all one, somehow. They were pointed into the heart of the Magic. Only their little party existed, it seemed, a tiny family alone in a wide world of grass. The mules acted more grateful for the breather than Deeb would have thought -- this was harder going for them than he had guessed. Their lone horse, tied to the wagon, also cropped at the grass steadily.

  Deeb looked back, where the long line of their trail stretched away through the grass, a marker pointing out their location to any pursuit. It disturbed him, as they set out again, but he couldn't think of what to do about it. Anyone on a horse could catch them in a trice.

  He saw how the wheels sliced into the earth. The wagon was weighted down, even with the three humans walking. He looked ahead, northward, but all he saw was prairie. Somewhere out there were mountains, a place of refuge.

  Mara was considering that stranger, that drifter mage, rough, uncivilized...but he had helped them, even risked his own life for her husband. Why, when there could be no benefit to him? Chivalry? There was little enough of that in the city of Thehar, much less out here in an empty wilderness.

  She remembered the impeccable manners of the gangsters in Thehar, their fine clothes, their charming words. That had been called chivalry, and yet they slaughtered each other at every chance. Deeb's brothers had been the most mannerly of the lot, but now they were dead like the rest. Deeb was right -- she could not go back, not if she wanted to keep her son Galle out of that life. The day he came back in a little gangster's outfit, the fine suit, the sporty hat, bought for him by his uncles a few days before they were killed, was the day Deeb and she agreed to get out.

  What would she do if her husband were to die? It scared her. Go back? With those ruffians behind them? No, there had to be another way.

  People talked of these plains of magic in hushed tones -- speaking of the deadly magnificence, the unexpected dangers, the rough men and women who traveled here, living as free mages in the Wilderlands where no law would follow, drawn by the raw magic mines, or by the opportunity to hunt the wild buse in their endless herds, beasts bigger and shaggier than buffalo, as impervious to magic as any dwarven.

  The Magic, they called this region of the Wilderlands, for the world itself was Magic here. In this endless prairie, huge storms blew that blurred the reality of things, that changed things. Ravenous packs of weird, wolf-like creatures could appear in the blink of an eye and tear the flesh from their victims. People could age a decade in the blink of an eye.

  And the emptiness -- flatlands that went on nearly forever, driving the occasional farmer or rancher who tried to make a go of it out here utterly mad. Mage disease, they called it. Had that stranger suffered from mage disease? He hadn't acted so.

  And what of her husband? She look
ed at him, where he trudged beside their wagon, keeping open a faint band of energy, a connection visible as a slight brightening of the air, between him and their imp. Ready for a sudden attack. He was not used to this -- the courtesies of his family had taken a deeper hold with him -- he was a gentleman of the old ways, who made his way modestly as a scholar, taking in pupils and teaching with passion and a quiet humor. His students had loved him. His background just made him believe even more fiercely in law and the need for order.

  How many people had they known who perished in street battles, or by retaliation? But his brothers had sheltered him as well -- she wondered if he knew that. Their small family occupied an eye of peace in a maelstrom of violence.

  But out here, there would be no sheltering of anyone, not even their son Galle.

  Deeb had been deeply disturbed by that incident this morning, more than he would let on. He was a man of doubts -- she knew him, knew it would be eating at him, the thought of someone dying due to him, wondering if the savagery of his brothers was coming out at last in him. He would do almost anything to avoid that, even cross a mad wilderness, looking for a haven where his family would be safe, not only from gang retaliation, but also from the larger, worse changes coming in the world. The approaching war from the east had swallowed up a dozen nations, already -- their little family would avoid that, at least, in the Wilderlands.

  Deeb had applied his skills in scholarship to the question of managing a small farm, and running a few head of stock, and had learned much. They sought a quiet dale somewhere on the far side of this plain of magic, where they could safely settle down. When he visited the Wilderlands as a child, staying in a town far north of here, he learned of a number of such little valleys, where a family could settle, and was able to talk her into it in those days when she knew they must leave their home.

  But she had not anticipated this much emptiness, nor realized they would be at the mercy of the lawless -- foolish, she saw now, to expect everyone they would meet being law-abiding and friendly -- but even the gangs back home followed certain rules, civilities towards woman and children. Out here, even those fragile rules were gone.

  Deeb called a halt. "Stock's getting pretty tired."

  She remembered what the stranger had said. "Deeb, is the wagon too heavy?"

  "I think we'll be fine." But his tone was more uncertain than his words. "Wagon wright said two pair of mules would be plenty going across flats like we are."

  "But maybe he didn't think of how thick the grass would be out here."

  "Mara, that's your family in the wagon. The magic in there has preserved hundreds of years of your history. Your mother's voice; your father's smile; you can still have those. Their wisdom is there for us. That history is all gone for me, I can't have you lose that as well."

  But he would not look at her as he said that. "And it's Galle's heritage as well. We can't just leave that at the side of the road."

  She let herself be persuaded, despite a hollow, guilty feeling. The memories contained in the magic meant more to her than just about anything. And it represented the only female companionship she had out here, someone to turn to, with whom she could discuss raising a boy who was otherwise so alone. Even if the statues were really just simulacra, they held some of the true memories of her family, some of the personality.

  As Deeb signaled for them to set out again, the sun beat down, glinting off the whirligigs, which had drifted farther away. Deeb eyed them sourly -- even if the trail of the wagon were not screamingly clear through the tall grass, the flock of magical creatures hovering around them would point the way for any pursuit. So far Lok had proved effective at keeping the creatures at bay, but not at chasing them away entirely. There were too many of them, and they clustered together so that even the imp must be careful. If the whirligigs mobbed him he could be overwhelmed.

  Shortly after noon their wagon reached a low spot where something had dug out a big hollow in the soil -- animals, Deeb concluded, though he didn't know which nor why. They approached cautiously, but all was silent aside from the buzz of a few flies. At the bottom of the hollow rainwater had gathered, and they watered their stock before letting them graze a bit.

  Lok darted about, closer and then further away, trying to lure one of the family into play. The imp didn't really understand about being tired. Deeb felt guilty, knowing his friend needed a little attention just as much as the stock did. So he made a few feints with his shoulder, as though ready to give chase, and the imp dashed around him merrily, delighted. At last he let the creature feed briefly, though he felt the drain on his energy.

  They moved on.

  As the sun sank into clouds on the horizon, they reached the bottom of a hill so long and low they had barely registered its existence, but a small creek meandered through the bottomlands here, with willow brush and cottonwoods lining it. Dark had nearly arrived before they finished crossing the creek -- an old fur trapper at a caravanserai on the Great Spice Road before they turned off to go their own way had told them always to cross a creek before stopping, since rains might come and fill the creek, making it impossible to cross for days. It made sense.

  The crossing made for hard work when everyone was already tired, but Deeb brooked no argument -- what must be done, must be done. Finished at last, they pulled a few paces away from the creek and stopped. Deeb started along the creek for firewood.

  "Best if you camped over here a mite," came a voice from the darkness ahead.

  Deeb stopped, scared into remembering he had left his bow back in the wagon.

  The stranger emerged from the brush like a ghost.

  "How did you..." Deeb's voice trailed off as he realized his question had an obvious answer, with how slow his wagon traveled. "I need some advice on getting rid of those whirligigs," he said, instead.

  "You got worse things to worry about first," the stranger said.

  "The thugs?"

  "They'll be here later tonight."

  Deeb felt a tightening in his stomach. That corroborated his fears. "You think they'll attack straight out?"

  "Them boys? Nah. They'll try to weaken you first. Steal your mules and horse, if they can. This way." The stranger led them over a small rise, behind which he had a camp.

  As the wagon pulled up to his fire, Mara said, "We must thank you, sir, for saving my husband's life."

  He waved it off. "Never much cared for any man would lie in ambush, not take on his man face-to-face. Scotching a snake, the way I see it. His brother is different, he'll face you straight up, nasty as he is."

  Mara wondered who the stranger meant, then realized he must be describing the man he had just killed. It astonished and dismayed her. He was capable of meeting a man, even socializing with him to some extent, then killing him?

  Unsettled, Mara took out her utensils and commenced cooking supper at the fire as Deeb cared for their stock.

  "Mister, what's your name?" asked Galle.

  Mara noted with some alarm the shiny, hero-worshipping look on her son's face, but then she remembered the stranger's unasked-for kindness to them, and felt a little better -- he was a good man, no matter how rough he looked.

  "A name don't mean much in the Wilderlands, son," the man answered. "Too many things change out here -- better to measure a man by what he does, not what name he bears. But I'm Compher. Arch Compher."

  "We're the Partens. I'm Galle. Mr. Compher, you think we can beat these thugs?"

  "Son, a fight's a serious business, to be avoided if you can. Folks get hurt. You and your whole family could get hurt."

  Galle looked in alarm to his mother. "They'd even hurt my Mama?"

  "Most men treat a woman with respect."

  "But not all? Not those men out there?"

  "We got to each do our part, son. That means you, too. And your part is to listen to your Mom and Dad and follow their orders quickly, without question. Will you do that?"

  Galle's eyes were round. "Yes, Mr. Compher, I will."

&nb
sp; He turned with a sudden fierceness. "I'll take care of you, Mama, me and Papa and Mr. Compher here."

  "Thank you, Galle," she said simply. "Go fetch some water, then supper will be ready."

  After they ate and finished cleaning up, they put out the fire.

  "Best bed down the stock in the hollow here," Arch said. "Stake 'em good so they don't run off and then you take up watch beside the fallen tree, there. They'll be here, certain."

  As Deeb and Galle hobbled the stock and set their picket pins, Mara paused near Arch. "Thank you for all you've done for us."

  Arch nodded at her husband. "He's learning, ma'am. They had him set up, but he'll be better ready for that next time. He's got a chance."

  "He knows a great deal."

  "Book learnin's just likely to get in his way out here. Seen them that relied on the book instead of learnin' for themselves. They don't generally expect it to be so hard."

  "My Deebin is solid, Mr. Compher, you will see."

  The mage nodded. "I expect I will." He paused. "I'm thinking to get a sense of what's going on out there."

  With that he eased away into the night beyond the fire, moving as smooth as a cat.

  "He doesn't give us much of a chance, does he, Ma?" Galle said, coming up to his mother.

  "He doesn't know our history, or our strengths," she answered.

  "He knows a lot, I think."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Because he's been here in the Wilderlands just about forever, I bet, and he's survived."

  She nodded. "Then we must learn from him, as we can."

  The night deepened, as crickets along the creek sounded their raspy songs.

  Chapter Three

  The crowd of stars blazed overhead as Arch crouched down near Deeb. "You set your imp to watching, but keep it in camp so's they don't trap it again."

  "Lok will be limited in what he can do if he stays in camp."

  Arch shook his head. "You need that imp to protect you and yours from any spells. This is going to get unfriendly. So what you do is have it keep an eye on my horse -- he was born wild here, bred to this country. He'll hear 'em on the way in, before any of us could. If his ears come up, have your imp wake us. Either way, have it touch my blanket at moonrise. That'll wake me."