After our morning mediation and wand-charging we were on our way
down the road to Hymas, the largest town in the Boval Valley.
Hymas is the central market for all of the villages in the more-populous
southern part of the Vale. As cities go in the far west it is large, nearly two
thousand souls in and around it. The shops and houses are all made out of
the abundant local gray stone, with thatch or tile roofs and wooden shutters.
The four main avenues are all paved with cobbles and define the citylimits nicely. There is no city wall – the idea of such an expense for such a
small town is laughable with Boval Castle only a few miles away – but
there are stone watchtowers scattered throughout the town, providing light
and security through the night.
Hymas sits just half a mile from the shores of Lake Hyco, where a tiny
fishing village of the same name provides fish and eels to supplement the
beef, poultry, wheat and, of course, cheese, found in the Market.
The Market, just off of the square, was elaborately decorated with
hanging posts and little shrines to the gods, to Bova, the cow goddess, and
Trygg and Ishi, mostly, but to others as well.
It was an interesting point about Boval Vale that it had no real temples
to the gods, something I found very strange. In most Alshari towns larger
than five hundred people you can almost always find an enterprising
landbrother, herbmother, or birthsister who has set up a temple or at least a
shrine– but not here.
I tried to find out why, of course, and the rumors varied from Sier
Koucey's desire to keep his people's money in their pockets (or his) to the
whisper that the valley was cursed and no priest would try to sanctify
ground here.
That didn't mean the gods werent' worshipped or prayed to, just that
they had no place to live in between prayers.
The tiny shrines in the market, tended by lay societies devoted to
particular deities, were the extent of organized religion in the region. Except
for the religious festivals where ordinarily-virtuous women found religion
and drink a heady enough combination to lay aside their virtue for an
evening, I can't say I missed it.
About half of the population fished the waters of Lake Hymas and
traded their catches with the other half of the population, which farmed the
loamy soils around the lake. There were plenty of artisans for a town of its
size. Hymas was practically a metropolis, compared to the other villages,
having two blacksmiths, a large stable, a sprawling market area, potters,
several cheesemakers, flax weavers, and even a glass blower.
The Market was comparitively quiet that day, but with autumn already
hinting its arrival, there was a small but steady stream of merchants
preparing for the caravans that would soon come to buy the cheese made
over the summer.
We skimmed the edge of the quiet confusion, dodged a few porters and
waited for a cart to turn around before we found the house we were looking
for.
Just off the main square on the affluent northern side of the town,
tucked in between the apothecary shop and the glassmaker, was the
residence and laboratory of my biggest competitor, a self-important little
twit with the pretentious and unlikely name Garkesku, self-styled "Master
Garkesku the Great."
He was the only other Imperially-trained mage in the valley, though
some of his techniques seemed closer to hedgemage styles than the
Academy classics. He had been practicing here in Boval for about ten years,
and had a decently prosperous urban practice and three long-suffering
apprentices. His position so close to the Market kept business coming to his
door.
His shop was well-kept and cluttered with many mysterious looking
objects of no real magical value. So was mine, but his looked tacky.
I wasn't fond of Garky. He was just the kind of pretentious ass my
profession can do without. Condescension and pretense dripped off of his
tongue like honey, and he frequently resorted to vague threats of "the
Higher Powers" and "Unclean Spirits" during fee negotiations.
He did quite a bit of oracular business, which most Imperially-trained
magi shun, as well as the usual sorts of love and fertility charms that are
every spellmonger's bread and butter. He skirted that line between
legitimate practice and hucksterism as closely as any professional mage I'd
ever met.
Garkesku built his practice on impressing the bumpkins with his
greatness and magical power, and until I showed up he half pulled it off.
His bearing was haughty and supercilious. He dressed in outrageous
costumes, many with colored feathers or brightly-colored silks, including a
truly shocking rendition, in black velvet and cloth-of-gold, of the traditional
four-pointed mage's hat.
From the moment I met him, I knew I could compete successfully
against him and have a lot of fun doing so. There's an old adage that a
spellmonger practicing in a village will starve to death . . . until a second
one moves in, whereupon they will both prosper from their clients paying to
fling spells at each other.
We hadn't actually flung spells at each other yet, but there was
definitely some lively competition between the two of us.
He was terribly polite to me when I first showed up, and even
graciously offered to allow me to apprentice with him for a year or so
before setting up, say, at the far northern end of the valley (where his
previous biggest competitor lived before his death a few years before). I
politely declined. I hadn't been apprenticed, I was academy trained, but I
had studied for months with some of the better Alshari spellmongers. I
didn't need his help, or his hand in my purse.
When I told him I had taken a shop in Minden's Hall, the tiny hamlet in
the west, he had a very hard time controlling the level of his vitriol. I found
out later that he had bought the bookseller's shop across the street from his
own – at great price – on the misplaced rumor that I was planning on setting
up there.
Minden's Hall might as well have been across the street, not half-way
up a mountain, as far as he was concerned. I would be just as available as
he to the rural clients, and Minden Hallers wouldn't be coming his way,
anymore. Garky viewed the competition as a subtle personal attack. I tried
not to antagonize him, but it was hard, sometimes.
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against a little harmless selfpromotion in the course of performing your duties as a spellmonger. When I
took up residence in Minden's Hall one of the first things I did was dress up
the reception area of my shop with dark fabrics painted with glowing runes,
added a few animal skulls and other revolting stuff, put out a few books of
poetry (almost no one in Minden Hall could read) and always kept some
incense going on the brazier, just to add to the spooky atmosphere. It
contributes positively to a spellmonger's reputation, and even in a town
where there is no competition, a wizard's reputation is still worth quite a bit.
I won't go as far to say that everything I did was quackery – far from it.
But the locals feel better about plunking down their hard-earned silver (or a
chicken, a wheel of cheese, a sack of potatoes or whatever else they have to
trade) if they get a bit of showmanship along with the spell.
After all, removing warts is a pretty simple affair. If I just walked in, did
the spell, and walked out, it would do little for my reputation. So I add a
few nonsense words, wave my arms about vigorously, and burn some nasty
smelling incense before I complete the spell. It keeps my customers
satisfied that they're getting their money's (or their chicken's) worth, and
every wizard and spellmonger I've ever known does the same thing.
Garkesku, though, took it a bit far. He had apprenticed to the former
court wizard of the Duke of Alshar (well, the former Duke of Alshar, since
Duke Lenguin had assumed the Coronet a few years before Farise), and to
hear him talk it might as well have been Yrentia herself who schooled him.
He used the title "Master" though I knew he had no more than a
journeyman's letter tucked into his papers. He had never been to any of the
Academies – he had never been anywhere south of the northern Riverlands
– and was slightly scornful of me the first time I met him and mentioned it.
Hymas was his city, he made clear, and he didn't need any fancy Academytrained mage to mess up his business.
Garkesku had a corner on the magic market in the southern part of the
Vale for a decade, now, and to prove how powerful he is he stopped riding
about on a horse, like a normal person. Instead he had a Remeran-style litter
built, and he hired four big strapping farmboys to haul his lazy ass around
town. He looked ridiculous, and the people said so behind his back, but it
did get attention. But that's Garky's style.
Around forty-five years old, two decades my senior, he regularly wore
the most garish purple silk robes I've ever seen. He treated his hair with
lime (an old magi trick) and he weaves bleached horsehair into his beard to
appear much older . . . and presumably wiser.
To complete the picture he wears a hat in the old Imperial style –
centuries out of date and completely ridiculous looking, with gold tassels
sprouting from every peak and two long firebird feathers poking out at odd
angles. The three surrounding points weren't even sewn to the cone, they
flopped around his ears like a beaten dog.
Garky hobbled around on a staff he didn't need for support to make
himself appear more venerable. Before I showed up, it had been working.
People paid him a fair amount of respect for the comparatively simple work
he did, and didn't complain about it until I began undercutting his high
prices. Had he chosen to work (or even travel) anywhere outside of Boval,
any serious wizard would have laughed him out of the country.
Now that I was around he had lost all the business he used to have from
Minden's Hall and quite a bit from Hymas. Every now and then he tried to
sully my good name without seeming to do so; but he wouldn't challenge
me directly, as he knew I was a warmage and in any magical duel I'd win,
no question about it.
Mostly, I ignored him, and occasionally sent some of my sillier clients
to him as referrals to keep him from getting too nasty. Every tradesman
needs a rival he can pawn the worst of his clients off on.
I didn't really want to spare the time, but I felt obligated to warn him
about the irionite in gurvani possession. As the second-best mage in the
Valley (Okay, maybe third best – Zagor the Hedgemage up in Malin was
actually pretty good at most practical kinds of magic, for a self-taught
fellow, and he didn't take himself nearly as seriously as Garky) I thought he
deserved to know that the possibility of serious magical attack existed.
I had Tyndal take the horses down to the market to be watered and
rested while I told him. The boy has a great understanding of horses. I'd
discovered him doing simple wild magic in a stable.
I didn't bother knocking at Garkesku the Great's ornate and ostentatious
shop. I went right in and felt the pull of a minor door-warding spell that
obviously alerted Garkesku – a pointless expenditure o
His reception area made mine look barren by comparison. He had an
entire stuffed catbear in one corner, its glass eyes glaring balefully down at
his visitors, and there were three times the number of skulls, musty books,
bizarre looking rocks, and dead things in jars of alcohol sitting around. The
reek of cheap incense was overpowering.