‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘I have forgotten my manners.’ Lifting my right hand I pointed at him and spoke the words of minor enchantment that warmed the air within his clothes.
‘Now that is a talent!’ he exclaimed. ‘I hate the cold. How long will the spell last?’Until I fall asleep.’Then stay awake for a few hours,’ he ordered me. ‘If I wake up cold I’ll cut your throat. And I mean that! But if I sleep warm I’ll treat you to a fine breakfast. Is it a bargain?’A fine bargain,’ I told him, but he was immune to sarcasm.
‘Good,’ he said, and without another word stretched himself out on the ground beside the fire and closed his eyes.
I leaned back against the broad trunk of an oak tree and watched the sleeping man, my thoughts varied but all centred on Jarek Mace. My life as a bard and a storyteller had been filled with tales of men who looked like Jarek, tall and spectacularly handsome, confident and deadly in battle. It had almost become second nature in me to believe that a man who looked like him must be a hero. Part of me still wanted . . . needed … to believe it. Yet he had spoken with such lack of care about the poor dead woman back in Ziraccu. I did not know her, yet I could feel her grief as she tied the noose around her neck. I tried to tell myself that he did care, that he felt some sense of shame but was hiding it from me. But I did not believe it then, and I do not believe it now.
He had been drawn to my fire by the sound of the harp, but he had come to rob a lone traveller. And had I been carrying a coin I don’t doubt he would have taken it and left me, throat slit, on the snow of the forest floor.
Now he lay still, his sleep dreamless, and I, frightened of his threat, remained awake, my spell keeping him warm.
I thought back to our conversation, and realized that I had seen yet another Jarek Mace. His speech patterns were subtly altered. In Ziraccu he had sounded – for the most part – like an Angostin, except in those moments when anger flared and his voice had lost its cultured edge. Now, in these woods his speech carried the slight burr of the Highlander. I wondered if he even realized it. Or did he, like the chameleon, merely adjust his persona to suit his surroundings?
A badger moved warily across the hollow, snuffling at the snow. She was followed by three cubs, the last of whom approached the sleeping man. I created a small globe of white light that danced before the cub’s eyes, then popped! The cubs scampered away and
the mother cast me a look that I took to be admonishment. Then she too disappeared into the bleak undergrowth.
I was hungry again – and growing cold. Two spells of Warming were hard to maintain. Banking up the fire, I moved closer to the flames.
My father’s castle on the south coast would be warm, with heavy velvet curtains against the narrow windows, huge log-fires burning in the many hearths. There would be wine and spirits, hot meats and pastries.
Ah, but I forget, ghost! You do not yet know me, save as the threadbare bard. I was the youngest of three sons born to the second wife of the Angostin count, Aubertain of WestLea. Yes, an Angostin. Neither proud nor ashamed of it, to be sure. My eldest brother, Ranuld, went to live across the sea, to fight in foreign wars. The second, Braife, stayed at home to manage the estates, while I was to have entered the church. But I was not ready to wear the monk’s habit, to spend my life on my knees worshipping a God whose existence I doubted. I ran away from the monastery and apprenticed myself to a magicker named Cataplas. He had a twisted back that gave him constant pain, but he performed the Dragon’s Egg like no one before or since.