The Ambassador's Mission: Book One of th - By Trudi Canavan Page 0,138

a magician if it were not for you. And what is this talk of your life ending? It’s going to be years – decades – before you need to start planning a gravestone to outdazzle everyone else’s.”

He grimaced. “A plain one will do just fine.”

“That’s good, because by then there’ll be no gold left in the Allied Lands except what’s on magicians’ headstones. Now, that’s enough talk of death. Regin is, no doubt, pacing outside my door wanting to know how we decided, and I’d like to get that little interview over with so I can get some sleep in before tonight’s shift.”

Nine men now rode on either side of Achati’s carriage each day – four Sachakan magicians, their source slaves and one of the grey-skinned Duna tribesmen from the north, who had been hired as a tracker.

Dannyl had been acutely aware that these powerful men had left their comfortable homes and joined the search based on a mere guess that Lorkin and Tyvara were heading for the mountains, and that the Traitors would continue working toward the pair being captured. If he was wrong … it would be embarrassing at the least.

If the four magicians doubted Dannyl’s reasoning, they hid it well. They and Achati had discussed their plans in a way that had included Dannyl, but made it clear he was not in charge. He decided it was best to accept that, to seek their advice on everything and go along with their plans, but always make it clear he was determined to find his assistant and would not easily be persuaded otherwise.

One had asked the Duna tribesman, Unh, if he thought Lorkin and Tyvara were heading toward the Traitor home. The man had nodded and pointed toward the mountains.

The tribesman rarely spoke, and if he did he used as few words as possible to get across his meaning. He wore only a skirt of cloth on top of which a belt was strapped, hung with little drawstring bags, strange carvings and a small knife in a wooden sheath. At night he slept outside, and though he accepted food brought to him by the slaves he never spoke to them or ordered them about.

I wonder if all his people are like this.

“What are you thinking?”

Dannyl blinked and looked at Achati. The Sachakan was regarding him thoughtfully from the opposite seat in the carriage.

“About Unh. He has so few possessions and seems to need so little. Yet he does not behave like a poor man or beggar. He is … dignified.”

“The Duna tribe have lived the same way for thousands of years,” Achati told him. “They are nomads, constantly travelling. I suppose you would learn to keep only what you most needed if you had to carry it all the time.”

“Why do they travel so much?”

“Their land is constantly changing. Cracks open up and leak poisonous fumes, molten blackrock from the nearby volcanoes spills over the land or scorching ash falls on it. Every few hundred years or so my people have tried to take their lands, either by force or by establishing towns and claiming the land by settling on it. In the first case the Duna vanished into the dangerous shadows of the volcanoes, and in the latter they simply traded with the settlers and waited. It soon becomes clear that crops won’t grow consistently and animals die there, and each time my people have abandoned the villages and returned to Sachaka. The Duna returned to their old ways and …” Achati stopped as the carriage turned, and looked out of the window. “Looks like we have arrived.”

They passed low white walls, then a pair of open gates. As soon as the carriage stopped, Achati’s slave opened the door. Following his companion out, Dannyl looked around at the estate courtyard and the slaves lying, face-down, on the dusty ground. The rest of the magicians, their slaves and the Duna tribesman dismounted, and Achati stepped forward to speak to the head slave.

I wonder how many of these slaves are Traitors, Dannyl thought. At each estate they’d stayed at, with the permission of the owners, the Sachakans had read the slave’s minds. Many believed that some of the country estates run by slaves, and a few by Ashaki, were actually controlled by Traitors, and were secret training places for spies.

This estate was run by an Ashaki. Dannyl’s helpers had decided it was the safest one in this area to investigate. Even so, the thought that they might be in