“Albayero had intended to make landfall in the Brenn Isles, but a northerly hit us, taking us down to North Cape in the Hebrionese. We rounded the point with the help of the weather-workers amongst us, but not even they could help us make up our lost northing. The storms we rode would brook no interference, even from the master-mages amongst us. So we rode them out in our little ship, the weather-workers having to labour merely to keep us afloat. We were driven into the limitless wilderness of the Western Ocean, and there we despaired, thinking that we would topple off the edge of the world and plummet through the gaps between the stars.
“But we did not. We had hoped to find an uninhabited island among the archipelago of the Brenn Isles—for there were still such things, back in the second century—but now we had no idea where we might be cast ashore. The winds were too strong. It seemed almost as though God Himself had set His face against us, and was bent on driving us off the face of His creation.
“I know better now. God was at hand, watching over us, guiding our ship on the one true road to our salvation. We made landfall seventy-eight days after rounding North Cape, ninety-four after our departure from Cartigella.
“We landed on a continent which was utterly alien to anything we had experienced before. A place which was to become our home.”
Aruan paused, chin sunk on breast. Bardolin could imagine the amazement, the joy and the fear which those first exiles must have felt upon walking up the blazing beach to see the impenetrable dark of the jungle beyond. For them there had never been any question of turning back.
“Half of us were dead within six months,” Aruan went on, his voice flat, mechanical. “Albayero abandoned us, weighed anchor one night and was across the horizon before we had realized he was gone. He sold his knowledge to the nobility of Astarac, I afterwards found, enabling others to attempt the voyage in times of desperation. A good thing, as it turned out, for it meant that once or twice in the long, long years and decades and centuries following we had injections of new blood.
“We tamed the Zantu with feats of sorcery, and they came to serve and worship us. We lifted them out of savagery, made them into the more refined people you see today. But it was a long time before we truly appreciated their wisdom and learned to leave behind the prejudices of our Ramusian upbringing. We cleared Undi, which was an overgrown ruin lost in the belly of Undabane, and made it our capital. We made a life, a kingdom of sorts if you like, here in the wilderness. And we were not persecuted. You will never smell a pyre’s stink in this country, Bardolin.”
“But you did something, didn’t you? I have seen man-beasts here, monstrosities of Dweomer and warped flesh.”
“Experiments,” Aruan retorted quickly. “The new power we discovered had to be explored and contained. A new set of rules had to be written. Before they were, there were some regrettable . . . accidents. Some of us went too far, it is true.”
“And this no longer goes on?”
“Not if I do not wish it,” Aruan said without looking at him.
Bardolin frowned. “A society glued together by the Dweomer. Part of me rejoices, but part of me recoils also. There is such scope for abuse, for—”
“For evil. Yes, I know. We have had our internal struggles over the years, our petty civil wars, if I can dignify them with that title. Why else do you think that out of all the founders of our country I alone remain?”
“Because you are the strongest,” Bardolin said.
Aruan laughed his full, boisterous laugh again. “True enough! Yes, I was strongest. But I was also wisest, I think. I had a vision which the others lacked.”
“And what do you see with this vision of yours? What is it you want out of the world?”
Aruan turned and looked Bardolin in the eye, the moonlight crannying his features, kindling the liquid sheen of his eyes. Something strange there, something at once odd and familiar.
“I want to see your people and mine take their rightful place in the world, Bardolin. I want the Dweomer-folk to rise up and cast away their fears, their habits of servitude. I want them to claim their birthright.”
“Not all the Dweomer-folk are men of education and power,” Bardolin said warily. “Would you have the herbalists and hedge-witches, the cantrimers and crazed soothsayers have their say in some kind of sorcerous hegemony? Is that your aim, Aruan?”
“Listen to me for a moment, Bardolin. Listen to me without that dogged conservatism which marks you. Is the social order which permeates Normannia so fine and noble that it is worth saving? Is it just? Of course not!”
“Would the social order which you would erect in its place be any more just or fair?” Bardolin asked. “You would substitute one tyranny for another.”
“I would liberate an abused people, and remove the cancer of the religious orders from our lives.”
“For someone who has spent the centuries here in the wilderness you seem tolerably well informed,” Bardolin told him.
“I have my sources, as every mage must. I keep a watch on the Old World, Bardolin; I always have. It is the home of my birth and childhood and young manhood. I have not given up on it yet.”
“Are all your agents in Normannia shifters, then?”
“Ah, I wondered when we would get to that. Yes, Ortelius was one of mine, a valuable man.”
“What was his mission?”
“To make you turn back, nothing more.”
“Our ship carried the Dweomer-folk whom you would like to redeem; they were fleeing persecution, and yet you would have sent them back to the waiting pyres.”
“Your ship also carried an official representative of the Hebrian crown, and a contingent of soldiers,” Aruan said dryly. “They I could do without.”
“And the other vessel, which ran aground and was wrecked on these very shores? Did you have a hand in that?”
“No, upon mine honour, Bardolin. They were simply unlucky. It was not part of my plan to massacre whole ship’s companies. I thought that if I made the carrack, the ship with the leaders aboard, turn back the lesser vessel would follow.”
“Am I then to thank you for your humanity, your restraint, when the beast you ordered aboard was responsible for the foul deaths of my shipmates?” Bardolin was angry now, but Aruan answered him calmly.
“The exigencies of the situation allowed no other recourse—and besides, Ortelius was outside my control. I regret unnecessary death as much as the next man, but I had to safeguard what we have built here.”
“In that case, Aruan, you will have to make sure that none of the members of this current expedition ever leave this continent alive, won’t you?”
There was a small silence.
“Circumstances have changed.”
“In what way?”
“Perhaps we are no longer so concerned with secrecy. Perhaps other things occupy our minds.”
“And who are we? Creatures such as your were-ape Gosa? Why must you always choose shifters as your minions? Are there no decent, proper mages left to you here in the west?”
“Why Bardolin, you sound almost indignant. You surprise me, you of all people.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you earlier.”
“You’ve told me nothing, nothing of importance. What have you been doing here for all these centuries? Playing God to the primitives, indulging in petty power plays amongst yourselves?”
Aruan came close to the sparkling phantom that was Bardolin’s presence.
“Let me show you what we have been doing over these lost years, Brother Mage, what tricks we have been learning out here in the western wilderness.”
There was a change, as swift as breath misting a cold pane of glass. Aruan had disappeared, and in his place there loomed the hulking figure of a full-blooded shifter, a werewolf with lemon-bright eyes and a long muzzle glimmering with fangs. Bardolin’s imp whimpered and hid behind his master’s translucent simulacrum.
“It’s not possible,” Bardolin whispered.
“Did I not tell you, Bardolin, that we had found new and powerful wisdom among the inhabitants of this continent?” Aruan’s voice said, the beast’s muzzle contorting around the words, dripping ropes of saliva which glistened in the moonlight.
“It’s an illusion,” Bardolin said.
“Touch the illusion then, Brother Illusion.”
Of course—Bardolin at this moment was no more than an apparition himself, a copy of his true self, conjured up by the incredible power of this man, this beast before him.
“I am no simulacrum, I assure you,” Aruan’s voice said.
“It is impossible. Sufferers of the black disease cannot learn any of the other six disciplines. It is against the very nature of things. Shifters cannot also be mages.”