Caitlin Brennan - White Magic 03 by Shattered Dance

Author:Shattered Dance
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-02-09T16:18:30+00:00

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Chapter Twenty-Six

Valeria had crossed the river during the war, but she had gone only half a day’s journey into the lands that belonged to the tribes. At that time the empire’s magic had reached no farther than the water. Everything past it was wild, untamed, with magic running free in earth and water and air. No orders contained it and no ranks of mages kept it tightly bound.

Now that the war was won, she had expected to find the wild magic at least partly tamed. Imperial legions had been building camps and fortresses, with roads and the beginnings of towns, three and four and five days’ ride from the river. Tribute parties had ranged farther than that, though what they could have been collecting after the tribes’ great defeat, she could not imagine.

And yet even along the river, the air was different. The veneer of imperial order was as thin as a sheet of parchment and hardly more substantial. Dark things, wild things, surged beneath.

For any mage of the empire it was not the most comfortable country to travel in. For Valeria, even with the stallions to ground and center her, it was almost physically painful.

Here the Unmaking had been worshipped for time out of mind. It was close to the surface of things, urging the nothingness inside her to wake and grow and swallow her whole.

She should not have come here. She knew that within a day. By the fifth day she decided to turn back. Whether that was cowardice or foolishness or simple good sense, it was the only safe course.

That night the caravan camped outside the easternmost outpost of the legion, which had been named Artoria in honor of the late emperor. The rest of the caravan could eat and rest in peace, but Pretorius and Valeria, in their office of imperial envoys, were obliged to dine with the commander.

He was an older man, hard-bitten and devoid of illusions about this country he had been sent to tame. From his age and accent Valeria concluded that he had come up through the ranks—a rarity in this age, and testimony to the quality of the man who had done it. Pretorius the commoner-mage and Valeria the centurion’s daughter received as warm a welcome as Gerontius was capable of.

The dinner he served was plain but well cooked, roast venison and summer greens and fresh-baked bread. Valeria had not expected to have an appetite, but the emptiness in her craved to be filled.

Gerontius was a taciturn man, but with a little wine in him and the evening light to soften his mood, he unbent enough to ask, “You really mean to go on into the wild country?”

“It’s not as wild as that,” Pretorius said. “The tribes are civilized after their fashion. They spend the winter in duns, which are built rather like this fort, and in the warm season they farm and hunt.”

“And wage war,” said Gerontius.

“Not this year,” Valeria heard herself say.

“You don’t think so?” Gerontius said. “War is their life’s blood.

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