Hawkswood's Voyage

“Yes. Shape-shifting is one of the Seven Disciplines, though perhaps the least understood.”

She brightened. “Could I become a mage, then?”

“To be a mage you must master four of the Seven, and shape-shifters are rarely able to master any discipline other than shifting. There was a debate in the Guild some years ago which contended that shifting was not a discipline at all but a deviancy, a disease as the common folk believe. The motion failed. You and I both have magic in our blood, child.”

“The black disease, they call it, or sometimes just ‘The Change’, Griella said quietly. Her eyes were huge and dark.

“Yes, but despite the superstitions it is not infectious. And it can be controlled, made into a true discipline.”

She shook her head. Her eyes had filled with tears.

“Nothing can control it,” she whispered.

He set a hand on her shoulder. “I can help you control it, if you’ll let me.”

She buried her head in his barrel-like chest.

Someone hammered on the door downstairs.

Her head snapped up. “They’re here! They’ve come for you!”

Under his appalled stare, her eyes flooded with yellow light and the pupils became elongated, cat-like slits. He felt her slight body shift and change under his hands. A beast’s growl issued from her throat.

While she is changing. Before it is too late.

He had had the construction of the spell memorized all morning. Now it left him like a swift exhalation of breath and swooped into her.

There was a savage conflict as the birthing beast fought him and the girl writhed, agonized, caught between two forms. But he beat the thing down. It retreated and underneath it he could sense her mind—human, unharmed, but utterly alien. The revelation shocked him. He had never looked into the soul of a shifter before. In the split second before the spell took hold he saw the beast spliced to the girl in an unholy marriage, each feeding off the other. Then she was limp in his arms, breathing easily. He shuddered. The beast had been strong, even in the moment of its birthing. He knew that if it ever became fully formed he would not be able to control it. He would have to destroy it.

Sweat was rolling down into his eyes. He set the girl down, still trembling.

“Prettily done, my friend,” a voice said.

Standing in the room’s doorway was a tall old man who looked as thin as a tinker’s purse. His doublet, though expensive, hung on him like a sack and his broad-brimmed hat was wider than his shoulders. Behind him a frightened-looking young man bobbed up and down, crushing his own hat between his hands.

“Master,” said Bardolin, a swell of relief rushing through him.

Golophin took his arm. “I must apologize for the rowdiness of our entrance. Blame young Pherio here. He does not like me walking the streets in these times, and he sees an Inceptine on every corner. Pherio, the girl.”

The young man stared at Griella as though she were a species of particularly poisonous snake. “Master?”

“Put her on a couch somewhere, Pherio. You need not worry. She will not rip your head off. And hunt up some wine—no, Fimbrian brandy. Bardolin always has a stock in his cellar. Run now.”

The boy staggered off carrying Griella. Golophin helped Bardolin into a chair.

“Well, Bard, what’s this? Consorting with nubile young shifters, eh?”

Bardolin held up a hand. “No jokes if you please, Golophin. It was too close, and it has wearied me.”

“Worth a paper in the Guild’s records, I think. If this is in the nature of research, Bard, then you are certainly on the cutting edge.” He chuckled and swept off his preposterous hat, revealing a scalp as bald as an egg.

“We were expecting soldiers with an Inceptine at their head,” said Bardolin.

“Ah.” Golophin’s bright humour darkened.

“They took Orquil away yesterday. I had thought today they would take me.”

When Pherio came back with the brandy Golophin poured two glasses and he and his one-time apprentice drank together.

“You bring me to the reason for my visit, Bard: these atrocities that the Inceptines practice in the name of piety.”

“What about them? In the name of the Saints, Golophin, they can’t be after you. You’ve been the adviser to three kings. You had Abeleyn sitting on your knee when he was too young to wipe his own arse—”

“Which is why I am the one man the Prelate must bring down. Without me the King has no disinterested advisers—nor any who can tell him what is going on halfway across the world at the drop of a hat, I might add. Abeleyn knows this too, as I hoped he would. With the Prelate on his way to the Synod at Charibon he has a breathing space. Already the burnings have abated, which is why you are here today, my friend. Only the hopelessly heretical are going to the pyre at the moment, but the catacombs are still filling. By the time the Prelate returns there will be thousands there awaiting his pleasure, and if the Synod approves his actions here then there will be nothing Abeleyn can do, unless he wants to be excommunicated. Worse, the Prelate of Abrusio will no doubt try to persuade the other Prelates of the Kingdoms to instigate similar purges in their own vicariates.”

“I have already written to Saffarac in Cartigella, warning him.”

“So have I. He can speak to King Mark. But there is another thing. Macrobius has not reappeared. He must be dead, so they will have to elect a new High Pontiff, a man who shows by his actions that he is not afraid to incur the ill-will of kings in the struggle to fulfill God’s plans, a man who has the good of the Kingdoms at heart, who is willing to purify them with the fire.”

“Holy Saints! You’re not telling me that maniac of ours has a chance?”

“More than a chance. The damned fool cannot see further than his own crooked nose. He will bring down the west, Bard, if he has his way.”

“Surely the other Prelates will see this also.”

“Of course they will, but what can they say? They are each striving to outdo one another in zealousness. None of them will dare denounce our Prelate’s actions in common-sense terms. He might face excommunication himself. There is a hysteria abroad with the fall of Aekir. The Church is like an old woman who’s had her purse snatched. She longs to strike out, to convince herself that she is still all of a piece. And do not forget that almost twelve thousand of the Knights Militant went up in smoke along with the Holy City, so the Church’s secular arm is crippled also. These clerics are afraid that their privileges are going to be swept away in the aftermath of the disaster in the east, so they make the first move to remind the monarchies that they are a force to be reckoned with. Oh, the other Prelates will jump at the chance to do something, I assure you.”

“So where does that leave us, the Dweomer-folk?” Bardolin asked.

“In the shit, Bard. But here in Abrusio at least there is a slim ray of hope. I talked with Abeleyn last night. Officially we never see one another these days, but we have our ways and means. He has intimated that there may be an escape route for some of our folk. He is hiring ships to transport a few fortunates away from these shores to a safe place.”

“Where?”

“He would not tell me. I have to trust him, he says, the whelp. But he does not want our sort fleeing wholesale into the hands of the Merduk, as you can imagine.”

“Gabrion?” Bardolin said doubtfully. “Narbosk maybe? Not the Hardian Provinces, surely. Where else is there that is not under the thumb of the Church?”

“I don’t know, I tell you. But I believe him. He is twice the man his father was. What I am saying, Bard, is would you be willing to take ship in one of these vessels?”

Bardolin sipped his brandy. “Have you put this to the Guild?”

“No. The news would be out on the streets in half an hour. I am approaching people I trust, personally.”

“And what about the rest? Is it just we mages who are to be offered this way out, Golophin? What about the humbler of our folk, the herbalists, the oldwives—even shifters like poor Griella there? Have they a choice?”

“I must do what I can, Bard. I will not be going. I stay here to save as many of them as I can. Abeleyn will hide me, if it comes to that, and there are others of the nobility with sons and daughters in training with the Guild who are, naturally, sympathetic to our cause. It may be that we will be able to evacuate a shipload from time to