The Rogue

“Don’t look at me like that! I didn’t know!” He shook his head in exasperation. “He realised we’d both work together to make him promise not to come back to the Guild if he told us before he left.”

Sonea shrugged. “Do you mind if he joins me? Just because he’s moving back to Imardin earlier than planned doesn’t mean he has to be involved in the search.”

Rothen’s eyebrows rose. “I doubt you’d be able to stop him.”

She smiled wryly. “No, not once he starts working at the hospices. I’m sorry Rothen. I’ll do what I can to ensure he stays safe.”

“Why are you apologising to me?”

“For getting your son involved in a dangerous search for a rogue magician.”

“You haven’t done anything to encourage him,” he pointed out. “Instead, I should apologise for raising my son to be such a stubborn, persistent man.”

Sonea laughed bitterly. “I don’t think either of us can be blamed for how our sons turned out, Rothen. Some things are out of a parent’s hands.”

The record books that Dannyl had bought in the market had cost him a small fortune. The seller wouldn’t tell him at first where they’d come from, but when Dannyl had hinted he’d be keen to buy more the man had admitted they came from an estate at the edge of the wasteland which, like many, was failing due to the advance of the dust and sands.

The seller might have meant it as a reproach, but Dannyl had felt a guilty excitement in response. If other estates were selling their property to survive, there might be more records to buy. The drying effect of the wastes had kept the books and scrolls in good condition, too.

Not surprisingly, the records Dannyl had purchased often referred to the wasteland.

Visited Ashaki Tachika. He took me to see the damage to his estate. All within the area was burned. Not even bones of animals to remind us of the deaths here. The exact edge is hard to find, as wind has blown ash into the unburned land, and in the weeks since the blast plants have begun to sprout within the burned parts. The air smelled of smoke and unanswered questions. Agreed to twenty gold for five reber, including a young male.

The record Dannyl was reading was written in an economical style, but from time to time the Ashaki author slipped from strict record-keeping into evocative description. Dannyl was intrigued by the reference to plants growing within the wasteland so soon after its creation. It made him wonder afresh why the land had not recovered. Had these plants struggled for a time, then failed?

Reading on, Dannyl spent hours skimming the record before he found anything interesting again. When he did, he checked dates and was surprised. Nearly twenty years had passed before the author mentioned the wasteland again.

Ashaki Tachika has sold his estate and moved to Arvice. He says he will be dead before the damaged land recovers and worries that the land will never support crops again. It is a pity. He had such success at first, but recently many estates have suffered the same reversal. It is a mystery why this is so.

Mentions of the wasteland grew in frequency after that. Picking up the last of the record books in the set, he soon encountered what he had begun to anticipate.

The wastes have passed the boundary. The slaves reported it to Kova, and when he told me I rode out to see it for myself. It has taken more than thirty years for it to touch my estate, though the dusts have preceded it since the day after the great blast.

Ashaki Tachika’s land is gone. Will mine and Valicha’s die in the next thirty years? Will my son inherit a doomed estate and future? Despite all the Ashaki say to deny it, their rejection of my son’s proposals of marriage to their daughters reveals their lie. Maybe it will be better if there is no grandson to inherit our troubles.

Not long after the entry, the handwriting changed. The son reported his father’s death and continued in the old man’s habit of brief entries mainly recording trade agreements. Dannyl’s heart was heavy with sympathy for the family, even after reminding himself that they were black magicians and slave owners. In the world that they knew and understood, they were sliding toward poverty and extinction.

Dannyl looked at his notes, leafing back to where he’d started. The record had begun a few years after occupation by Kyralia. The original author had been young, perhaps having inherited from an Ashaki who had died in the war. He wrote little about his Kyralian rulers. On the day the wasteland was created he described a bright light coming in his window, and later mentioned that it had taken three days for the slaves blinded by it to recover enough to work.

He did not speculate in the record on the cause of the light or destruction. Perhaps he was wary of putting any accusations or discontent toward Kyralians down on paper.

One last book remained of the pile he’d bought. It was a small and tattered thing, and grains of sand had worked their way into every fold and crack, suggesting it had once been buried. When he opened it he saw that the writing was so faded it was almost impossible to read.

He was well prepared for that. Librarians at the Great Library in Elyne had developed methods for reviving old texts. Some of these ultimately destroyed the book, while others were gentler and could revive the ink for a short time. How effective they were depended on the type of paper and ink. In either case, if pages were treated one at a time a copy could be made before they disintegrated or faded.

Taking out jars of solutions and powders from a box on his desk, he set to work testing them on the corners of a few pages. To his relief, one of the less destructive methods enhanced the ink enough to make the writing just readable for a while. He began to apply it to the first page, and as the words became clear he felt his heart beat a little faster.

The book, written in very tiny handwriting, had belonged to the wife of an Ashaki. Though she began each page with a heading suggesting that the text was about some domestic or cosmetic matter, the writing that followed quickly changed to matters of politics. “Salve for Dry Hair and Scalp”, for example, turned into a scathing assessment of the emperor’s cousin.

“Emperor”? Dannyl frowned. If there is an emperor, then this was written before the Sachakan War.

He read on, carefully treating each page with the solution and impatiently watching the words appear. Soon he realised he was wrong. The woman only referred to the defeated emperor by his title because she did not have an alternative, and the Sachakans hadn’t yet adopted the term “king” for their ruler.

Which means this diary was written some time after the war but within twenty years of it.

The writer had included no dates, so he had no way to know how much time had passed between entries. She never used names, instead referring to people by physical appearance.

Useful Cures for Womanly Times

Once a month a cycle of events brings many ills. Leading up to it there is often much anxiety, bad temper and bloating, and when the time comes it may be a relief, though it is always draining. The challenge is containment. The careless will experience leaks – often not noticing until it is too late. How else do I find out what the pale ones are planning? They trust the slaves, thinking them grateful for freedom. It is not hard to make the slaves talk. The crazy emperor knows. That is why he claimed the betrayer’s slave for himself. Better to keep an eye on it always. Take the hero’s property and you replace the hero in the slaves’ eyes. The crazy emperor wanted the pale ones to take our children and have their own people raise them. Make our little ones hate us. But the kind one argued against the plan and the others supported him. I bet they regret making the mad one their leader.