The Mage Hunter - Chapter 5
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Cassida Rane set the silver Focus in the ankacite box in his room. The lid closed with a thud and he felt a pressure leave his body as if he had been released from a vice. His head cleared, a little, but the weariness of combat remained. That, at least, was remedied in a simpler manner. Memories of his early years of mage hunting came unbidden as he readied for bed. Masters, many now dead, would share stories of their heroics in the tavern or dining hall to inspire the recruits and apprentices, Cassida knew those tales had buoyed his own gruelling training and he held on to them, some he had already regaled Athena with. Tales had blended together with time but he could not recall Vice Master Tiberius ever sharing a story, that wasn’t unusual, a number of masters preferred not to dramatise their feats but he could not even recollect one that mentioned Tiberius save the failed strike he had told Athena. But no-one shared their failings in the tavern or over dinner and that suggested Tiberius had no successes.
Cassida burrowed beneath the bed furs and woven blankets, can't be, he thought. Tiberius is Vice Master, likely to be Grand Master. Such a man must be well accomplished. Otherwise, how would he have attained his position?
Pillars of lingering daylight crept in through the shutters were the wood had shrunk with age splattering Cassida, his bed, and the wall with pale golden bars. Though his thoughts continued to turn he fell into a deep slumber.
Birdsong rolled on the night breeze. Dawn was approaching. Cassida Rane rolled out of bed, dressed in a loose shirt and trousers, feeling refreshed and eager to uncover the many secrets that lay before him. He opened the shutters to feel the final chill of night and admired the stars, the sky had begun to turn from black to dark blue as the eastern sky started to pale. He wondered if Ascalon had thrown his hat into the ring for Grand Master but quickly thought better of his master, he was no politician. Mage, he thought, and returned his thoughts to the vagrant he was hunting.
He called for breakfast and set the scraps of paper he had found in the top floor chest before facing off with Hanro. The language was unknown to him but the letters followed a familiar shape. The tears along the edges were similar so he set the pieces together in different orientations. Two of the five scraps fit together, the wavy text joining along the seam.
A breakfast of boiled eggs, bread, and aged cheese arrived in the hands of one of the young women. She bowed her head and said nothing, leaving as quick as she had come. Cassida mindlessly ate a hard boiled egg, dipping it in salt before each bite, and rotated the other pieces of paper until they fitted together. It was still not a whole… whatever it was but it was possibly half of something, the jagged edge now only along one side. The shape of the letters was familiar, though some were flipped or upside down, but the assemblage of the text remained a mystery to him but now he had something to show the librarians and elders like Ascalon. He finished the egg and began to nibble on the aged cheese thick with blue veins.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Enter,’ Cassida said.
Athena entered, dressed and booted with her greatcloak over one arm. ‘I couldn’t sleep any longer.’ Her hair was brushed and pinned.
‘How long have you been up?’
‘Before the birds,’ she shut the door gently behind her, careful to turn the handle so the lock slid into place rather than clicked. Joining Cassida at the desk she set Hanro’s possessions beside the scraps of a note. ‘That’s the same script that these letters are written in,’ she unfolded one of the letters she had recovered from Hanro, the mage who had tried to kill them.
‘Is it familiar to you?’ Cassida Rane slid the letter closer and squinted at the wavy letters all written neat and singular. A sense of recognition flared in his mind but it alluded him when he tried to focus on it.
‘No, but the letters look similar to our own, well, most of them,’ she set the emerald on the desk. ‘I suspect this was payment for something.’
‘Why?’
‘Why else would someone carry an uncut emerald around with them?’
‘Another mage’s Focus, or a lucky trinket, or he hadn’t had a chance to sell it yet,’ Cassida held the green jewel between his thumb and forefinger, it was a dark, matte, moss colour, and shaped like a small jagged brick. There was no latent corruption to it, but it could have been an old Focus and it was not the sort of thing to find lying in the grass. He set it to one side, unsure if it was of any use in their investigation. ‘Focus on the script while I think of something to write to Master Ascalon.’ He slid the torn paper and letters towards Athena.
‘You’re actually going to do as Malanor Eviren said?’
Cassida took a sheet of parchment from the drawer of the desk, along with a quill and a tray of ink. ‘No, I’m going to make it appear that I am,’ he began to write. It was a short note about his time in the field and reminiscing about similarities to a prior mission he and his master had engaged in. There was an element of truth to it but Ascalon would see the warning hidden beneath the story. As he was signing his name it came to him.
‘It’s a cipher,’ Athena and Cassida said, at the same. Cassida snatched the torn note up but knowing it was written in code did not make the code readable. ‘Were you taught a cipher in your early years?’ Cassida asked.
‘Yes, we were taught two in fact, but I don’t know anyone who uses them,’ Athena said. ‘Only time I did was when I was reading a book of letters from some uprising long ago, I don’t even remember what or why I was studying that.’
‘Some of the Chapter Commanders still use ciphers but most of us regulars see no reason too with so few mages about.’
‘Do you not think that’s a bit… complacent? Coradel is still, after many millennia, where the majority of mages are born and practice, wouldn’t take much for the city to revitalise its mage ruled history,’ Athena shrugged.
‘I think you’ve spent too long reading the paranoid tracts of long dead mage hunters,’ Cassida scolded his apprentice. ‘But enough of these what ifs, we have mages to hunt in Arstar and we must visit the Cartographers’ Guild outpost here too,’ Cassida hid the unreadable cipher texts in the desk drawer, donned his greatcloak, and made to leave. ‘First we must ask about that woman we saw here yesterday. A known mage stopping by a hideout… mighty suspicious.’
‘As you say, Master,’ Athena said, she had not taken Cassida’s opinion of her reading to heart, it was plain by her expression. In fact, Cassida thought she saw him as a naive veteran, comfortable in the world he knew, or thought he knew. Fortunately he was not old enough to be oblivious to that, Coradel could well fall into the hands of a mage cabal again but there was no evidence, or even a whiff, of such a seismic political shift occurring.
The pair exited the hidden rooms into the main hall of the Gilded Shrew to find the proprietor just opening up. ‘You two are up early, I trust breakfast was satisfactory?’
‘Certainly was, thank you,’ Cassida said, though he had not finished it, too distracted. The man walked by, no doubt heading to some task. ‘I had a question, about a woman you were speaking with yesterday on the steps outside.’
The man stopped and wiped his hands on his apron, though they were not dirty. ‘I know who you mean. She’s a regular, when she’s in town, does work for the Cartographers’ Guild. Details are all hush-hush o’course.’
‘Ever see her with anyone else?’
‘Never, she always comes here alone for a glass of port or two, then leaves. Doesn’t talk to anyone else either.’
Athena shared a glance and Cassida shook his head. Revealing a mage had been frequenting a Mage Hunter hideout would result in a slew of interference and noise that would only inhibit Cassida Rane’s ability to investigate. Slaying Hanro in daylight was bad enough and that gossip would have made it twice round the city already. It would be a blessing if the mages had not yet burrowed underground. ‘How does she pay?’
‘Like everyone else, Arstari silver.’
‘Not scrip.’
‘We don’t accept scrip, of any kind,’ the innkeep said, as two men entered. ‘Breakfasts, good men?’
‘Aye, skip the porridge for mine.’
‘Will do. If you’ll excuse me,’ he headed off to the kitchen.
‘All our roads lead to the Cartographers’ Guild today, Master,’ Athena said.
‘It would seem so.’
The Cartographers’ Guild outpost of Arstar was a tall sandstone building with three great pillars, two either side of the main entrance and the third in front of it, atop the tripod was a sculpture of the known world, an incomplete globe of stone with a diameter of four men giving the impression that the three storey building was small. Over time a tradition had emerged where cartographers returning with a new map would enter on the right-hand side while those heading out to explore new lands would leave via the other side, any other cartographer used an entrance on the east side while visitors were to use the side entrance tucked away in a dark alleyway on the buildings west side.
Cassida Rane and Athena waited in the shade cast by the building, flanked on one side by one of Arstar’s treasury vaults and on the other by an academy of the arts. As usual the cartographer on door duty saw anything but the door as a pressing concern. Cassida knocked for a third time.
‘Master, the woman left no trace of herself yesterday outside the Gilded Shrew, I would have thought a mage would leave a trail regardless, all the others we hunted have,’ Athena said.
‘She will not have used her influence in some time. Should a mage refrain from using their power they will appear as you or I do,’ Cassida said. ‘Where you not taught that back at the Castrum?’
‘Of course, I just never believed it. If all a mage has to do to not get caught is to live a normal life why risk it?’
‘Because they cannot help themselves, it would take a man, or woman, with a will of iron to resist the urge to use their power. If you could alter the world with a twist of your wrist, wouldn’t you?’
‘I…’ Athena’s wit failed her. ‘I don’t know.’
‘A great many have tried to resist, no doubt, but they all succumb to the temptation sooner or later,’ Cassida slammed the side of his fist into the door.
A few heartbeats later the door opened, ‘What do you want?’
‘Cassida Rane, Mage Hunter—‘
‘Your outpost is up the road,’ the cartographer began to close to door.
Cassida slid his boot in the way causing the door to jitter and bounce back into the man’s chin, ‘It concerns some of your hirelings.’
‘Our hirelings?’ the cartographer grimaced and rubbed his chin. He was short with a head of dark frizzy hair that seemed to resist any and all attempts at combing. A red mark had already manifested on his chin from where the door hit him and his fingers were black with ink. Realisation dawned and he said, ‘I suppose you should come in.’
Once inside the man introduced himself as Archibald and hurried off to find someone “responsible” leaving the master and apprentice in a cramped atrium beneath the main entrance hall. A long, thin window filled with small panes of glass joined with lead stretched high up along the outer wall and let it far too little of the sun’s bountiful illumination. Oil paintings of various local vistas hung on the opposite wall, the varnish dark with age obliterating much of the detail and vibrant colours. Cassida wondered if the vistas still existed given Arstar’s expansion beyond its own walls.
Athena inspected a bronze globe. The bulk of the sculpture was hollow, with only thin rings holding it together. The continent they inhabited was hanging off a number of the rings in bronze plates, major cities and settlements marked in minuscule engraved writing. ‘How do they know how big the world is if we occupy and have mapped so little of it?’
‘You’d have to ask them.’
Athena let out a single chuckle, ‘I’d have more luck talking to a bull. You could ask your old master, Master.’
‘And receive a scowl, a cane, and a lecture about something unrelated, no doubt,’ Cassida said, recalling more than creating.
‘Are they all so cantankerous?’
‘Only to outsiders, and new recruits, and other cartographers when in competition, and—
‘I get it,’ Athena shook her head. The iron door at the far end of the narrow atrium screeched open, carving into a long worn gulley in the stone floor.
‘I hear we’ve hired a mage, or you think we have or some such nonsense. I trust you have a name or likeness?’ an old man, with more hair than face flew down the hall. He was stooped and the cane in his right hand did more swinging than supporting. The door man was half-running beside him.
‘We have names for some and likenesses of others,’ Cassida said.
‘Multiple, we’ve hired multiple mages now? This beggars belief. Come through to the Chamber of Record and you can see for yourself that you are mistaken,’ the old man waved at Cassida to follow him and barrelled back down the hall. The door man stayed behind.
‘If you think we’re mistaken why are you agreeing so easily?’ Athena asked.
Cassida gave her a disapproving look, it was not good to ask why when you were getting what you wanted. His hobnail boots clacked on the stone floor as he followed the cartographer.
The old cartographer halted and turned to Athena, ‘Because if I don’t your master will make a complaint to the Order or the Guild or both, someone from the Guild will be sent out, someone from the Order will be too, all asking the same questions, reports will be written, files removed, copied, shared around, and I’ll be knee deep in busy-bodies and interferers for months. Easier to nip this in the bud now,’ he imitated pinching a rogue sprout, with a cocksure smile. His attention drifted away from Athena, ‘Archibald, I’m not sifting through the Records on my own!’
‘Of course, Master,’ Archibald dutifully replied and hurriedly followed. Any other visitors would have to wait outside, though something told Cassida the outpost didn’t receive many.
The master cartographer led them down a series of dim corridors with low ceilings, then down a staircase into the bowels of the building, and after sufficient turns to disorient Cassida they emerged in an expansive room with aisles upon aisles of chests all with long, thin square shaped drawers. Each one had a number and a letter on it. ’Name,’ he barked.
‘Tremlor Aralius,’ Cassida Rane said.
Archibald ran to a small unmanned desk in the corner with an abandoned pewter tankard on top of a stack of loose sheets of paper. He went to the large board that hung behind the desk and ran his finger down a mess of writing that Cassida found illegible. Then he sprinted off down one of the rows until he could barely be seen. ‘No such name in our Records.’
Cassida and Athena shared a look, ‘Hanro, then,’ Athena said.
Archibald sprinted back, ‘Is that first name or last name?’
‘First name.’
The former doorman sighed, rolled his eyes, sifted the desks toppings for a small chest, rooted through a forest of square inch wooden placards and then sprinted off again, and again, and again. He eventually returned with six different boxes, ‘These are all the hirelings we’ve had with the name Hanro, their likenesses are in their somewhere too.’
The mage hunters split the boxes between them and found two of the six lacked their corresponding illustrations. The other four were not the man who had briefly captured Athena and then later been killed fighting.
‘Anything else?’
‘We have the likeness of a woman.’
‘A woman? We rarely hire women, far too dangerous a job to go out into the wilds assisting cartographers or, gods forbid, alone,’ the master cartographer said.
‘Should be easy to find her then,’ Athena produced the likeness copied from the Book of Known Mages.
Archibald accepted it, ‘That’s very detailed, more so than what we will have I’d think. There’s a familiarity to her, who is she?’ he showed the image to the master cartographer who squinted and umm’d over her as if recognition was bubbling up but he said nothing.
‘We don’t know, that’s why we’re here,’ Athena said, and Archibald rushed off. ‘As for Tremlor Aralius, we have a wealth of information from the Guild and it says he worked from this outpost. He was quite a popular hireling,’ Athena showed the copied files to the master who snatched them with a growl.
His eyes swam over the pages, ‘This cannot be. Must be a forgery.’
‘I assure you it is not, Master Kosalis has seen the relevant records too,’ Cassida Rane said.
‘Kosalis,’ the cartographer looked up, eyes ablaze, he handed the files back. ‘Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Why someone would want to tamper with the Records I fail to understand but it is clear they have been. I will notify the Guild at once.’
Cassida accepted the copies and swallowed his questions about Kosalis, clearly the name carried weight for the old man. ‘Very good, we will find this mage and put an end to his antics.’
‘I will be grateful when you do.’
The three of them stood in silence while Archibald floundered up and down the aisles of drawers while clutching the likeness of the mystery woman in his hand. After what felt like an entire watch he returned carrying a box under his arm and a bundle of parchment in his hands. ‘The woman in question returned yesterday after two months in the field. Her name is Katriona Evershard and has taken work for the Guild for nigh on five years, one of our best. She resides in the city, or so her record states.’ Archibald set the box down on the desk, ‘The rest is in there.’
‘What’s that?’
‘All of her illustrations, notes, and some recent maps. Katriona had aspirations of becoming a full member but for whatever reason has yet to apply. Judging by her cartographic skill, she’d be accepted.’
‘Enough of that talk, Archibald. Not even I get a say in who is elevated to full membership,’ the master cartographer untied the bundle and began inspecting the woman’s work. ‘Mmm, yes, mmm, how fine, mmm, yes…’
‘Where’s this map of?’
‘An area near the mountains, searching for viable passes to the lands beyond. We’ve almost finished and found nowhere suitable. Our next expeditions will require capable climbers to scale the mountains or parts of them at least,’ he lay the slips of thick paper on the floor next to one another, there were twelve in all. ‘What was the task?’
‘A small section in the fourth quadrant needed checking as another cartographer had returned with something different, not totally different but enough to warrant another look,’ Archibald said. ‘Most of her recent tasks have been small jobs like that.’
‘Not many want those jobs, they pay poorly and are uninteresting to most, but why is such a skilled woman accepting them?’
‘Perhaps she enjoys being close to home,’ Athena said. ‘Or is fearful of dangerous jobs,’ she added.
‘Could be,’ the master cartographer did not pounce upon Athena’s bait. ‘You sure she is a mage?’
‘Certain,’ Cassida Rane lied. A sliver of doubt nibbled at his thoughts. He had never seen the woman before and not witnessed any corruption from her. It was possible the Book of Known Mages was wrong as her portrait was present without any additional information, unless someone had tampered with it but then why leave her portrait. Unless that appeared after the tampering. No, he thought, this a ridiculous chain of thought.
‘I will leave you to copy any information you need for your investigation. Archibald will see to your needs, I have… letters to write,’ the master sauntered off, muttering to himself as he left, failing to ever introduce himself.
‘Athena, copy the information, known residences first. We are going to pay her a visit,’ Cassida Rane said.
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