Work Text:
In the pale gray light of evening, three men left the warmth of St. Cecla’s infirmary and headed to its icy cloister. Even with the vaulted roof above, drifts of snow had blown in from the garden, dusting the hems of robes and numbing booted toes.
“Dr. Kimden, the Abbot . . . will he recover?” asked Brother Baynhold, the tallest of the three.
Dr. Kimden was more frequently known as Salteris Solaris, Archmage of the Council of Wizards, but given the frigid relations between the Council and the Church of the Sole God, he considered it wise to keep that information to himself.
Salteris considered Baynhold’s question. “Abbot Trugius says his illness has been coming on for many years now, and old age has left him brittle. I can make him as comfortable as possible, but I’m afraid this will be his last sickness.”
There was a tense silence between Baynhold and his brother monk, Bloran. Baynhold was the prior and the obvious successor to the abbot, but his haughty demeanor hadn’t won him many friends. Bloran the cellarer was a smoother character, and what was more he had once lived at his order’s mother house in Kymil, a potentially important political connection. Salteris gathered that these two considered themselves top contenders for the position of abbot, and their curiosity about the old man’s condition sprung from more than fraternal concern.
“You’ve missed your supper—after all your work, surely we can get you something?” asked Brother Bloran. Bloran was shorter and fatter than the other two men, and had a habit of gesturing with his pale, almost feminine hands while he spoke.
“If I can get some tea in the kitchen, I’d be very grateful,” Salteris said. Other than the infirmary and a small warming-room, the kitchen was the only room with heat in the entire abbey.
“Of course. The stores are open to you as long as you are with us,” said Bloran.
Beynhold frowned, and Salteris could imagine why. Good tea was an expensive luxury, and only the abbot or his representative might offer it to guests. Bloran had slickly overstepped the bounds of his authority, but it would look churlish for Beynhold to argue over the price of tea in front of someone he knew as a healer and a pilgrim. Still, Salteris suspected there would be a fantastic row over the right to distribute tea as soon as he was out of earshot.
In the cutting wind, the walk around the cloister seemed ten times longer than it was. The monks’ heavy gray robes skirled in the gusts, and their hoods blew back, revealing their shaven heads. Salteris’s long dark hair whipped around his face, but overall he fared rather better. He wore a heavy black riding coat over the dilapidated purple robes of a physician. Well-trained in the healing arts, it was a guise he often assumed while wandering abroad.
At last they reached the door to the empty refectory, and pushed their way through a heavy wooden door to the kitchen, lit only by the reddish glow of a low fire. Delicious warmth radiated from the banked hearth, and Salteris held out his slim, strong hands to the embers. After a moment he placed a new birch log on the flames and looked on with delight as the papery bark caught fire. He was forty-two and had tufts of gray in his brushy eyebrows, but the brightness and comfort of a well-tended fire never ceased to give him joy.
Bloran filled an iron kettle from a cistern, and placed it on the fire. It settled with a loud hiss. Meanwhile, Baynhold was closely examining a sideboard. This time he was frowning so deeply that the firelight picked out plunging lines on his forehead. Beynhold asked, “Dr. Kimden . . . did the abbot call for bread and cheese this evening?”
Surprised by the question, Salteris looked up and saw the tall monk brushing a scattering of crumbs from the sideboard into his hand. “No . . . he wanted only broth.”
Baynhold’s pale eyes hardened as he said, “Bloran, look to your storerooms. We have a food thief.” Bloran looked as horrified as if the thief had desecrated the altar. The storerooms were his bailiwick and his charge. Having a thief rummaging around in them, undetected by himself, was not a very good testament to his potential skill as abbot.
Salteris regretted his slow-thinking comment about the broth. Better to have said that the bread and cheese went to the abbot. The last thing he wanted to do was call down punishment on a poor Brother who only wanted a little more than St. Cecla’s thin vegetable stew to eat.
Bloran darted through a darkened doorway, and then a door slammed. Beynhold grabbed a tin candleholder with a half-melted candle from a shelf, and used a stick from the fire to light the wick. Like all the mageborn, Salteris saw in the dark, but he made a show of waiting for the light.
“Quickly! He’s getting away!” cried Bloran.
“And he will get away, if we’re all blind,” snapped Beynhold.
Salteris followed Beynhold into a storeroom so narrow it was little more than a corridor. The dim, flickering light revealed the edges of canisters and braids of hanging onions overhead. Bloran had the far door open, and the bitter wind moaned across the entrance.
“Hurry,” Bloran urged. Apparently he was not too eager to plunge out after the thief by himself.
“Get out of the way, you fat fool,” said Beynhold, and he held out one hand as if to shove Bloran out of the doorway. Bloran moved rather than be pushed.
Snow had poured over the threshold, and all three of them blundered out into three feet of powdery drift. The wind snuffed Beynhold’s candle out in an instant.
The sun set fast during the winter evenings on the Sykerst’s barren hills, and the sky was already a deep cobalt blue. The little huddle of the abbey’s orchard trees stood out black and naked against it.
“There he is!” cried Bloran, pointing at a dark figure silhouetted against the snow. It was an absurdly tall and bone-thin man, loping through knee-high drifts with the sureness of a deer. He was wearing what appeared to be two or three monk’s robes, along with peasant’s rough sheepskin coat. Most surprising of all, he held a sheathed sword loose in his hand.
“Theabrand,” said Baynhold, as if the name were a curse.
“Sasenna! He’s armed!” shouted Bloran. Like all Church installations, St. Cecla had a group of sworn warriors who would die before breaking their vow of obedience to their masters. They wore black, and ran silently, and whatever they’d been doing before Bloran called out the alarm, they appeared with eerie swiftness out of the gathering dark. Four of them converged on Theabrand, cutting off his route of escape.
The sasenna closed in, encircling the unlucky monk. Theabrand looked around him, and seemed to realize he was trapped. A thickset, red-headed sasennan barked “Put the sword on the ground!”
Theabrand ignored the command, looking desperately back and forth between the warriors as if considering taking on all four of them at once. As one, the sasenna pulled their weapons from their scabbards with a harsh, stinging sound. The last of the sunlight gleamed pale on one sasennan’s blade. At last, the surrounded monk carefully set his weapon in the snow. Slowly, Theabrand raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. It was difficult to tell from that distance, but Salteris thought he saw the man’s hands shaking.
The red-haired sasennan sheathed his own sword and then thrust Theabrand’s into the sash at his waist. Then he spun Theabrand around and wrenched one of his arms up behind his back until the monk’s knees buckled. The group of warriors half-marched, half-dragged Theabrand to the store room door.
“Bring him inside,” said Baynhold, sounding disgusted.
Though blind in the dark, the sasenna walked unerringly through the storeroom, and so did Theabrand, Salteris noted. Bloran and Beynhold, by contrast, made noise stumbling and tripping against things.
Once they were back in the kitchen, the firelight revealed Theabrand as surprisingly young, with prominent cheekbones underneath huge, frightened gray eyes. Those eyes met Salteris’ dark ones for an instant, flared even wider, and then looked away. In profile, his long nose appeared every bit as startling as his eyes were. All his features seemed oddly exaggerated. The young man’s mouth was drawn and grim.
“What were you doing with a stolen sword? Planning to murder us all in our sleep?” Beynhold snapped.
“Planning to sneak off to Parchasten and sell it for all he could get for it, I imagine. He’s a thief through and through,” said Bloran.
Theabrand winced at something the sasennan did behind his back, and then he looked at Bloran. “I’m not a thief. Well, only incidentally. I took the sword to defend myself. There’s a man trying to kill me, you know.” Theabrand had a deep, startlingly beautiful voice, but drawn and thinned with pain.
“Yes, a man trying to kill you. Only you don’t know his name, or where he comes from, or why he’d want to kill you in the first place. We’ve heard it before,” said Beynhold. “It’s all part of your lies, or your madness.”
Despite the monks’ scoffing, Salteris was inclined to believe Theabrand—or at least to believe that Theabrand believed what he was saying. The young man was certainly afraid of something.
“Well, I’d ask the killer, but I don’t think I’ll get very far in the way of conversation when he comes,” Theabrand said. His disconcertingly-wide gray eyes turned to Salteris. His gaze was wary, but his tone had turned oddly congenial, “Dr. Kimden, I’m sorry to bring you into this. As Brother Beynhold says, I am completely mad, and you mustn’t take anything I say or do seriously.”
“Not take a stolen weapon seriously?” Bloran exclaimed. “I’m sure you’d like us to do that. Not to mention that you’ve been hiding and stealing from the abbot’s personal stores since the good doctor got here. Perhaps it’s him you planned to murder.”
“If he meant to murder me, he’s had plenty of opportunities to do it before now,” Salteris said. For that matter, Bloran and Beynhold had been unarmed when Theabrand was discovered in the storeroom, and he never turned his blade on them. Salteris’ immediate impression of this youth was that he was gentle, but desperate. “Theabrand, why did you take the sword? Who are you afraid of?”
Theabrand’s eyes widened again, and for an instant his gaze fixed on Salteris like a hare on the cusp of flight. “No one,” he said. In an instant, he went from motionlessness to animation, using his free hand to dig in the pocket of his coat. “Have you tried the dried apples? I’ve been enjoying them ever since I went into hiding. They’re especially sweet this year.” He tossed a wrinkled red spheroid to Salteris, who caught it out of reflex.
Even as Beynhold said, “Take those from him!” Theabrand pulled out another one and took an enormous bite. A female sasennan, her dark hair cropped close to her scalp, relieved him of the other half of his apple.
“Empty his pockets,” Bloran said. The deep pockets of the sheepskin coat yielded many more apples, a hunk of bread, a wedge of cheese, a small crock of honey, and several raisins.
“That’s the lot,” Theabrand said, sounding forlorn. “I was so looking forward to eating the bread and honey, too. I’m absolutely famished.”
“Take him to the prison cells,” Bloran said, as if he were telling a ratcatcher to rid him of vermin.
Baynhold drew himself up and said, “I am the prior. If this man is to be locked up, I must give the order.”
“And would you challenge my decision, Brother Baynhold?” Bloran said, planting his hands on his broad hips.
“I would challenge it on the grounds of who made it. The abbot is not dead, Brother Bloran. Whatever your private ambitions are, in this matter you must yield to me.”
“And so, upon a point of etiquette, a thief sits in our kitchen, warming himself at our fire?”
“There’s no need to argue,” Salteris cut in, “Theabrand has harmed no one, and he seems to have stolen food simply because he was hungry. Speaking to him about his fear may be more helpful than locking him up.”
“I’ll take myself to the cells if I can have my apples back,” Theabrand said.
That appeared to be too much even for Beynhold to take. “To the cells with him,” he said, sounding disgusted.
The red-haired sasennan yanked Theabrand to his feet and muscled him out of the kitchen. Baynhold followed, self-righteously elegant in his straight-falling robe.
#
About a quarter of an hour later, after Bloran had unlocked the tea casket, snapped it mistrustfully shut again, and then stormed off, Salteris sat by the stout oaken table, finally alone with his tea. The warm liquid was black in the dim light and very good—sweet and full of complex duskiness. It had been imported from the Orient, unless he was mistaken. He guessed it was a gift from one of the noble families of Parchasten. A half-empty and barely-thriving abbey like St. Cecla’s was unlikely to be able to buy such tea on its own.
The fire made a soothing whickering sound and cast its dull red light across the stones of the floor. His wizard’s sharpened senses picked up soft voices echoing off the stone walls of the staircases as the monks made their way to their dormitories.
Reasonably sure he would be undisturbed, he slipped his hand into an inner pocket of his coat and drew out a flat-sided white quartz crystal, about the size and shape of a man’s thumb. He gazed into the largest side and cast his mind beyond its depths, seeking to call up the image of the abbey’s prison cells and the location of Theabrand. He pitied the young man, who seemed more deluded than dangerous, and thought he might be able to bring some comfort or counsel to him.
To his shock, the crystal remained as clear as ice. No image at all swum just below its surface. Salteris’s crystal was some two-hundred years old, and it had been trusted by many mages. He would certainly have known if the room were spelled against magic. There was only one explanation for the blank scrying surface —Theabrand was mageborn. No mageborn person would appear in a scrying crystal except those who consented to be seen.
Salteris sat back on the scullion’s stool he’d pulled from a corner, and wondered what had caused another wizard to not merely visit, but to live here in the very belly of the Church. Then there was the question of who Theabrand was. Not every wizard with enough power to foil a scrying crystal was known to the Council, but the vast majority of them were. It was just possible that the young monk had been overlooked, not only by the Council but by the Church’s small but powerful Magic Office. There was also the possibility that he wasn’t unknown at all, but in hiding.
“Antryg,” Salteris said to himself softly.
Antryg Windrose had been the apprentice of the wizard Suraklin, more often called the Dark Mage. Suraklin had earned the name well—when the combined forces of the Wizards’ Council and the secular authorities broke the walls of his Cidadel, they’d found unimagined horrors inside. What they had not found was a seventeen-year-old boy who was reputed to be the Dark Mage’s servant and right hand. Neither the boy nor his body was ever found, and during the brief time between Suraklin’s arrest and his execution he would not so much as speak Antryg’s name. Opinion among the mages was divided on whether Antryg was alive or dead, and the longer he stayed missing the more likely it seemed that he was dead. But if he’d lived, he would be about nineteen now, the approximate age of Brother Theabrand.
Salteris drained his teacup and set it on the table. His crystal might not show him Theabrand’s location, but it could show him the way to the abbey’s prison cells—if it was even possible for them to imprison a wizard. He was leaving the warm kitchen for the bitter cold of the cloister when he had an idea, and turned back. Salteris pocketed most of the things that had been taken from the young man at Bloran’s command. Theabrand had complained of hunger, and seemed too thin as it was.
The small jail ended up being a squat stone building outside the embrace of the abbey’s four wings. It stood between a pig sty and a poultry house, which Salteris supposed showed the relative status of prisoners in the abbey community at large. Although the Council forbade using magic to affect human affairs, there was a certain gray area, and Salteris took advantage of it. He called on the wind to blow a bit more strongly over his tracks in the snow, muddling them with those of Theabrand and Baynhold. He also nudged it into a thin scream, lessening the chances that the sty keeper would forsake his warm blankets to peer out at the source of any unusual sounds.
The outer door of the jail was not locked—in fact, it stood ajar, and snow had blown in the gap and scattered on the uneven brick floor inside. Salteris opened the door and slipped inside, careful to return the door to its previous position.
The inside was painted with flaking whitewash, which somehow made it seem colder. There were two cells, and the thick wooden door of one stood open. Salteris turned to the other one, and called through the barred, narrow opening that pierced the planks roughly at eye level. “Theabrand?”
To his surprise, the door was pushed open from the inside. Within the cell, Theabrand sat in a pile of squalid straw, huddled in his coat and robes. Far from his insouciant manner inside the kitchen, he now seemed weary and frightened, like a fox run to ground by a pack of hounds.
“Hello, Salteris,”
Salteris blinked, surprised. Being called by his real name in this place could cause him serious trouble if this young man chose to do it in public. Still, although he might be naïve, he had trouble imagining treachery from the imprisoned monk.
“Hello, Antryg,” he said.
Antryg looked away, his face appearing gray and ill. “Who told you where to find me?”
“No one,” Salteris assured him. “I came here by chance. I might ask the same question of you . . . how did you know I was here?”
“A good guess,” Antryg said, wrapping his hands under his arms for warmth. “It’s not a secret that the Archmage wanders the countryside as a healer . . . and it was awfully convenient for the storm to let up just in time for your arrival. I don’t believe you’ve ever given a very satisfactory answer as to what you were doing walking through the empty hills of the Sykerst during winter in the first place. There are no towns out here until Blackmarsh.”
“You’re right . . . you are a very good guesser, and I’ve been sloppy with the weather. I hope no one else in the abbey is as observant as you.” Salteris sat down in the opposite corner of the cell, folding his legs under him so both of them could fit.
“Oh, I doubt it,” Antryg said. “If they were, they’d have seen through my story of being a disgraced sasennan in no time. For one thing, I showed up with ink under my fingernails, which I did everything I could to hide.”
“Well then, neither of us has any reason to identify the other. Brother Theabrand,” Salteris said, very much hoping the young man felt the same.
“No . . . I don’t suppose we do, Dr. Kimden,” Antryg said, with a slight smile.
Relieved, Salteis pulled two of the dried apples out of his pockets. “These are for you.”
Antryg’s wide gray eyes lighted on Salteris’ for an instant, as if wary of trusting, but then hunger apparently got the better of him. He accepted the apples and devoured them in a few ravenous bites, stems and all. Salteris wordlessly produced two more. These Antryg took in a more gingerly manner. “Thank you,” he said. “This is most kind of you. Beynhold would lock you up next to me if he knew you were helping me, no matter who you are.”
“I took that risk when I entered the abbey in the first place,” Salteris said. “You of all people must know that this is a dangerous place for the mageborn . . . why hide here?”
That got him another frightened flash of those eyes. Then, carefully turning his attention to an apple, Antryg said, “I have no idea. I’d meant to ask that of you. You have to admit that it’s a very strange place to find a wizard.”
“Yes. That’s why I was wondering--”
“The late-summer pears are delicious, mind you, but I don’t suppose it’s at all likely that you’ve come for the late-summer pears,” Antryg interrupted.
“No. I—“ began Salteris.
Cutting him off as if he’d never spoken, Antryg continued: “There’s a very nice reliquary containing some of St. Cecla’s toenails behind the altar in the church. Old Trugius is always very kind to the pilgrims who come out to see them. Not that we get many pilgrims in winter. Or any time. Unfortunately, St. Cecla isn’t a very popular saint. Did you know she had her feet bitten off by a whale, only to have them miraculously restored through her ceaseless intercessory prayer?”
“That’s very interesting. Antryg . . .”
“The old road from Parchasten to Kymil used to run past the abbey, of course, but nowadays most people prefer to go further south and take the stage from Angelshand. Speaking of which, rumor had it that you were last living in Angelshand, Salteris. If you wanted to throw yourself into the lap of the Inquisition, you could have saved time by simply walking into St. Cyr.”
Aunt Min, most aged of the mages on the Council of Wizards, had met the boy Antryg some years ago when she’d visited Suraklin’s Citadel. She’d said that he tended to rattle on when he didn’t want to answer a question, but apparently “rattle on” was something of an understatement. Salteris had encountered stranger behavior during his extensive travels, however, and he refused to be to be fazed by the young man’s non sequiturs. He handed Antryg the cheese wedge the youth had tried unsuccessfully to steal, and watched as he wolfed it down.
“I’m here because there are more things to be seen in the world than can be encountered on the stagecoach road,” Salteris said. “And I’m hardly in the lap of the Inquisition. The Church respects us so long as we respect it. We’ve coexisted for five hundred years with hardly anyone getting arrested by the Inquisition.”
Antryg gave no sign of being interested in anything but cheese for a minute or so, but as he polished it off, he said, “That’s not what they used to say in Kymil.”
“The Dark Mage used to rule Kymil,” Salteris said.
Antryg’s eyes widened and fixed on Salteris’ face again. “That name isn’t safe,” he said, in a hushed voice. “People think it’s better than his right name, but it isn’t. He listens . . .”
“No,” Salteris said, shaking his head. “Not anymore. I was afraid you didn’t know. He’s dead, Antryg. I saw him die on the gallows only days after we broke his power.”
Antryg looked away, and seemed to drift off. After he’d stared at the open door of the cell for some time, Salteris began to wonder if this young man really was mad. Then Antryg said quietly, “I would know if he were dead. I can’t explain it, but I would know. We aren’t safe here, Salteris. We aren’t safe anywhere. This is simply the last place he’ll look.” He shuddered as if with something more than cold, and drew his coat more closely around his bony shoulders.
Salteris was becoming more sure that he was dealing with a truly unhinged mind. And why wouldn’t Antryg be unhinged? Suraklin’s lair was the closest thing to Hell that Salteris ever hoped to see. The tentacled things that erupted from the earth and dissolved men on horseback, the half-formed monsters in the depths that slashed flesh to ribbons and wrenched bones from muscle and sinew, the chains and shackles and cages and knives . . . all served as evidence that Suraklin’s was one of the most depraved minds set loose upon humanity in several centuries. Antryg had been with that man since he was only a child. The refuge of madness might have been his only option.
With that realization, Salteris spoke more gently. “Is that why you stole the sword? Because you were afraid he was going to come and murder you?”
“I knew that if you found me, if anyone could find me, then my attempt to hide had failed, and that he’d be coming.” Suddenly he climbed to his feet. “I need to go. I need to leave. Now. Thank you very much, for coming, Salteris. I don’t suppose we shall see each other again.”
Salteris caught one of Antryg’s wrists as he was preparing to flee. He could feel the young man’s hand shaking like an October leaf. “Antryg . . . Antryg,” he said, trying to break through the fog of panic that had come over the other wizard. “It’s plain you can’t stay. They aren’t kind to you here, and they won’t forget the sword. But plan your escape—don’t just go running off into the snow. They don’t know you can leave your cell. Why don’t you spend the night in the infirmary . . . it’s warm, and Trugius isn’t in any condition to tell others you’re there. You can slip back here before it gets light.” Antryg’s wide, wide eyes remained fastened on something Salteris could not see, perhaps on another place, and another time.
“Suraklin is dead, and you’re no longer his prisoner,” Salteris assured him. “Once you leave here, you can go to the Mages’ Yard in Angelshand, or the Citadel of Wizards in the north . . . or anywhere else you choose to go.”
Antryg drew a shaky breath, and seemed on the verge of saying something. Whatever it was, he suddenly veered aside. “They say there are mermaids off the coast of Saarieque. Beautiful creatures that will lure a sailor to his doom. I don’t believe I shall ever see mermaids, Salteris. I don’t believe he . . .” His voice broke, and he placed his hand over his face.
Salteris stood, and placed his hand on the taller man’s shoulder. With deep compassion, he said, “You’ve been afraid so long that you don’t know what it’s like to be free.”
Some watershed seemed to break within Antryg, and he wept openly, his body bowing forward. “It took everything I had to run from him . . .”
“But finally you grew strong enough,” Salteris said, trying to give this half-mad youth some hope.
“No . . .” Antryg said at length, his breath hitching as he wiped his eyes on his coat sleeve. “No, it wasn’t a matter of strength. I knew he was evil beyond reckoning, knew he would use me for his own purposes . . . but he said he loved me like a son. I wished I could stay.” Grief claimed him again, and Salteris bowed his head. Once again he found himself shocked at the sheer cruelty of the Dark Mage. Not only had he gotten what he wanted through murder and torture, but he’d manipulated a young boy into serving him out of love. Doubtless, what he really wanted were Antryg’s powers, which were said to be very great. He wondered how long Antryg had believed there was something more.
Salteris pressed the young man around the shoulders and said, “Come with me. We’ll leave as soon as possible. There’s little I can do for poor Trugius, I fear. If you can find it within yourself to trust me enough, we can work together to help heal your mind, and banish at least the most crippling of your fears.” He released Antryg, who was fighting for composure, and stepped through the doorway of the cell. Salteris held his hand out, as if trying to save a drowning man.
Antryg lifted his gaze to meet the Archmage’s, but his tear-reddened eyes looked wary. “He told me you would say that. He warned me not to let any Council mage inside my mind.”
Salteris bit back a curse. Was there nothing the Dark Mage would not stoop to, when it came to controlling his student? He tried another tack. “Suraklin lied to you, Antryg. I’m sure he lied to you about a great many things. You can continue your study of magic with the Council of Wizards. There are legitimate uses of power that I’m sure he never told you about.”
“I’ve been living without magic for two years, Salteris.” He pulled a scapular with rough embroidery of the many-handed Sun God out from under his robes, and showed the other wizard the slit cut in the top of it. From the resulting pocket, he pulled out an iron key, and cast it on the floor. “I didn’t even use magic to turn the lock in my cell. He can spy me out through my magic use, even as I spied out you.”
Antryg’s shield of paranoia seemed to have no seams or cracks. “You can’t stay here, Antryg,” Salteris urged. “Trugius may have considered you merely eccentric and let you be, but his successor may not. I don’t think either Bloran or Beynhold are kindly disposed toward you, and you crossed a line when you stole a weapon. If you delay too long, you may lose your chances of freedom forever.”
Antryg’s eyes flooded again, but he looked away, folding his arms up tightly against his chest. Beginning to feel truly at a loss, Salteris said, “You’re young, Antryg. Don’t you want to see something of the world besides the inside of prison walls before you die? There are other cities besides Kymil. There are other people who are nothing like the Dark Mage.” When Antryg looked unmoved, Salteris cast around for anything that might convince him, and came up with a desperate argument. “I don’t know—perhaps there really are mermaids in Saarieque.”
The young man looked at him, and at last there was a spark of lunatic hope in his tear-filled eyes. “Really? Do you think they would sing for us? Not being sailors, it’s possible we wouldn’t be doomed.”
Relieved to have found something, however trivial, to break through Antryg’s wall of fear, Salteris said, “Yes, I’m sure we wouldn’t be doomed. Come with me, and we’ll go find out if there are mermaids.”
“We might have to rescue some sailors on the way,” Antryg said doubtfully.
“That’s quite all right. I’m sure the sailors would appreciate it,” Salteris said. He beckoned to Antryg and took a step backward, as if coaxing a spooked horse to come to him. To his relieved delight, Antryg came forward.
“Do you think we might see the monoceros in the Emperor’s menagerie in Chenyseng?”
“It’s quite possible,” Salteris said.
“And the peridexion tree repelling dragons?”
“If it’s there to be seen, we shall see it.” Salteris said. He held out his hand again, and this time Antryg grasped it.
“I’ve always wanted to see a dragon being repelled.”
“So have I,” said Salteris.
Just as if Antryg hadn’t been weeping in fear and wretchedness moments ago, he stepped out of the cell and into the thin, drifting snow of the larger jail building. Salteris embraced him tightly around his shoulders, and the two of them walked toward the light and warmth of the infirmary.
-End-