The Magehound

Perhaps especially not to the queen.

Clearly she had erred when she sent the young jordain to Beatrix. She didn't doubt her assessment of Matteo. The young man was impulsive and passionate, and such people tended to attract trouble. Wasn't his apparent friendship with Keturah's daughter proof of this? What Cassia had neglected to consider was that where there was great risk, there was also great potential.

Fortunately she had other ways to bedevil the queen. Cassia glanced toward the cot, where a grotesque figure writhed and moaned as it struggled against its bonds, near death but taking its time.

Her «guest» was the Cabal's latest find, a misbegotten creature that was obviously intended to be a centaurlike warrior, half panther, half Crinti. The result was horrific: an elflike body supported by four twisted, feline limbs, and a dark, feral face that was neither elf nor panther, but a mirror into some nether world. The creature's body was covered with a mottled mixture of dusky skin, patches of gray fur, and reptilian scales. It was, beyond doubt, a wizardly experiment gone wrong.

The jordaini had a proverb about the danger of dancing to songs that gods had written. Never had Cassia seen such vivid proof as this wretched, dying cat-thing.

But the greatest crime, in her opinion, was that the creature had been allowed to live this long. Halruaa was a land of powerful magic carefully constrained by rules and customs. This was necessary, or ambitious wizards would soon reduce the land to chaos.

But such control had its costs. Magical experiments that went wrong, and often the wizards who erred, were quickly done away with. The «crintaur» should have been slain before it drew its first breath. Yet it had been found wandering in the queen's forest. Cassia's scouts had shot and mortally wounded it. Nor was it the first such creature her scouts had found.

That led to an interesting question. Few people knew of the Cabal, a society of wizards who controlled magical use and dealt out penalties for misuse. Cassia had little doubt that Beatrix was somehow involved with this mysterious group. But did the queen work against the Cabal, or did she command it?

There were possibilities either way. Most wizards feared the secret Cabal and wouldn't take kindly to news that the queen controlled its activities. Of course, Zalathorm knew of the Cabal, but he kept himself apart from the darker realities of his realm. He was widely loved and revered. He had ruled well and led his people to victory in many battles. His people would forgive him much. But if it was proved and quietly revealed that Beatrix was connected with the Cabal, he might be forced to put her aside.

But the fact that this creature had been caught in the queen's forest was not sufficient proof of the queen's complicity. The girl Tzigone, on the other hand, might be. She had escaped the Cabal. Perhaps she could be induced to remember who had questioned her and who had aided her escape. This would yield the first steps along a path that Cassia dearly hoped would end at the door of Queen Beatrix.

There was much about Tzigone that interested Cassia. Her inquisitors hadn't been able to detect a drop of magical ability, but simple observation indicated that the child possessed a volatile combination of wild talents, as well as an almost total resistance to magic.

Magic resistance was a highly desirable trait, and the regard that Cassia and her fellow jordaini enjoyed was proof of this. But a wizard who possessed a jordain's resistance provided new and unpredictable possibilities. No one knew how talents such as Tzigone's might develop if trained, and, even more ominous, how they might pass down to future generations. Magical gifts were to be strengthened through careful selection and guided marriages, but only along prescribed lines. Tzigone would not have been the first wild talent removed by the Cabal. Society demanded it, much as it safeguarded itself through the destruction of a rabid and unpredictable hound.

Yet Tzigone lived. More interesting still, she seemed to have caught the interest of the magehound Kiva.

The same magehound, Cassia noted, who had examined Beatrix before her marriage to a smitten Zalathorm.

There was a connection there, but one that eluded Cassia.

The jordain sat down at her desk and began to write, meticulously piecing together the information from a dozen scrolls. She traced the magehound's path over the past several years and noted that Kiva's travels intersected frequently with reports of trouble caused by someone who was variously described as a street urchin, a street performer, or a young girl. Tzigone, it seemed, had had a very busy life.

A pity, thought Cassia, that she couldn't trace Tzigone back to her origin. She would have given a great deal to know the name of the girl's father. Perhaps then she might be able to find a damning connection between the girl, the magehound, and the queen.