Jovian leapt onto a table and a jug of wine appeared in his hand as if by magic. He began dancing with Nareene, leading the others in an Esbanian drinking song about bawdy wenches chasing bare-chested young men. They didn’t understand the words but quickly latched onto the tune. I didn’t much care for the others but I’d shared wine and crude jokes with Jovian many a time back in the old days. I liked the mad little Esbanian and as a rule I didn’t warm to many people. Mostly, I found them and their unguarded thoughts insulting and irritating.
I would need to watch that callous side of myself carefully. I was growing into the sort of magus I had railed against all my life, those cold and calculating elder magi that were everything I despised in the Arcanum. Or they had been. Now their mindset seemed to be making a lot of sense. The lives of mundanes were fleeting and fragile things and so very limited in scope, but they had fire and passion, and I refused to let that side of me slip away without a fight. But magic changes a man.
“Be ready, we embark at dawn,” I said. Then I took my two Skallgrim thralls and retreated upstairs to a free room, leaving my people to bond without the big ugly tyrant and his broken toys looming over them. I bid my thralls to take turns keeping watch and then collapsed onto the soft bedding.
I was exhausted and at first light my war would begin, but sleep proved a flighty and fleeting prey filled with all my old mistakes resurrected to join forces with the horrors of the recent past.
We were up and boarding a rugged Ahramish sloop named Y’Ruen’s Revenge before anybody could report my presence back to the Arcanum. The surly hydromancer assigned to smooth our ship’s passage through the still-stormy winter sea was scandalised at being forced into close quarters with the likes of me, but he wisely kept his jaw shut. Didn’t stop him thinking about it though. Unlike most magi, his mind was like a leaky bucket, one brimming full of self-entitled shite. I gritted my teeth and suffered the silent insults. For now.
I stared out at the docks watching the passing carriages, waiting for one to stop and disgorge a high ranking magus to deliver my inevitable dressing down. The deck lurched beneath me and my stomach went with it. Fucking ships!
Hot breath on my ear: “Good morning, Edrin.”
I yelped and flinched as Cillian stepped aboard right in the middle of my coterie. Steps formed from water splashed down behind her as blades whispered from sheathes all around us. She looked powerfully official, wearing warded blue robes and a golden circlet adorning her brow.
“Stand down you dogs,” Jovian cried. “Don’t you know a magus when you see one?” They grumbled but did as he ordered. Not that they posed any real threat to Cillian of course.
“I do hope you stay more vigilant when you arrive in the Clanholds,” she said, earning only a grunt from me. “I have come to wish you well, Commander Walker. The others have already set sail for Barrow Hill.”
She lowered her voice so that only I would hear, “Be careful, I have heard whispers that lead me to believe many magi wish you ill and would perhaps kill you should they get the chance.”
I snorted. “Oh really? I had no idea. Are you only just realising this?”
“Before, I think most viewed you as an inconvenient and dirty little problem. What you did during the Black Autumn, and now with Shadea, has driven many towards terror, which breeds stupidity. Some who feel similar may be among those magi and wardens who will accompany you.” She sighed. “Those who play with gods will inevitably get burned. Should you return I will have many, many questions for you.” Then she smiled at my guards as I stood sick and frozen. “I wish you all the best of luck.” She descended the gangplank and entered a plush carriage.
It was a shitty send-off and no mistake, but it was about all I had expected really.
The accursed voyage passed in a blur of nausea and white-capped waves crashing across the deck. Every hour of every frozen, salt-sodden day I wished an agonising death on the spiteful hydromancer, convinced he was making the trip rougher than necessary. We sailed for four interminable days and then spent a night at anchor in a rocky bay sheltering from black waves high as mountains before continuing on. Over the next two days the only human interaction I had was exchanging green-gilled looks of misery with Nareene and Baldo as we leaned over the rails to spew our guts overboard.
After an age, we finally reached our destination. Barrow Hill was little more than a glorified fishing village with crap drink, crapper food and worse people, but it boasted an impressive collection of ancient snow-capped cairns and stone circles scattered across the surrounding hillsides. The stone monuments bore undecipherable carvings that pulled in curious travellers and scholars from all over Kaladon and beyond. Despite the town’s innate and inescapable crapness, on sighting the smoke rising from warm dry buildings Barrow Hill suddenly seemed like a golden summer land of joy and honey. Dry land. Blessed, solid, dry land!
We dropped anchor just before dusk, sodden and shivering bodies greeted by glowing lanterns that beckoned us onwards.
I would have sold my entire coterie for a mug of hot wine, a dry blanket and a seat next to a fireplace. My legs were jelly as I grabbed my pack and lurched down the icy wharf towards the town’s only inn, my arms outstretched for balance like a pup of a boy just learning to walk.
Glorious warmth rolled over us as we staggered into the inn’s common room and stamped off slush and snow. All talk and laughter ceased as our bedraggled group dripped our way over to a sparsely occupied table of locals. Stools scraped backwards as they made way for us. We were not the first Setharii here: three groups of uniformed wardens cast baleful and disparaging looks over our little pack of villainy, and three robed magi sat alone at a fine table by the fire. I left my people to do their own thing and trudged my way over. I wouldn’t have bothered but the magi were next to the fire. That and at least one of them might try to kill me at some point if I didn’t figure out who was against me.
Red–bearded and ruddy-faced Cormac gave me a perfunctory nod of greeting, but the other two didn’t even make that small sign of acknowledgement. One I knew, a balding grey-robed artificer with hooked nose and bushy eyebrows named Granville Buros, a ‘proper nobleman’ and a real stickler for the rules, but superb with all things mathematical and metallic. None of which endeared him to me, but a second geomancer would certainly come most handy in the mountains. He was one of the senior artificers in the Arcanum, and was in charge of maintaining the Clock of All Hours and its associated mechanisms. He was both potent and a giant prick, which made him a prime suspect for trying to knife me in the back given half a chance.
The other magus was a pale woman with delicate features and long dark hair enveloped by an unusual black and white hood -the illusionist who had volunteered during conclave. She sipped nervously at a small cup of red wine. Her eyes flicked around the room and studiously avoided meeting my gaze.
“Good evening,” I said to them, trying to be polite despite my decrepit state. “I hope you had a better voyage than we did.”
“Fair to middling,” Cormac said. “Granville and Secca were already in the north so I suspect they had a more pleasant journey.”