Miriam (1)
A woman with light brown hair.
If Elvira was the sort of beauty that dazzled at a glance, Miriam was the sort that drew the eye naturally, almost without one noticing.
“Thank you for accepting this sudden traveling companion. Mr. Lionel of the Mistra Merchant Group—and the mercenary assigned to this escort request. I’m Miriam, a bard.”
The moment Lawrence heard her voice, he knew.
She was the very bard who had sung at the inn.
“Oho. We’re well ahead of the appointed time, and you’ve come early.”
Lionel welcomed her with a big, good-natured smile.
Seeing how sincerely pleased he looked, Lawrence asked quietly, “Mr. Lionel. This really is a request from the merchant group, right?”
“Hm? Of course it is. Why else would I have gone looking for a companion?”
No matter how he looked at it, it didn’t feel that way at all.
What was more, from the way Miriam spoke, it was already a settled matter that she had been accepted as their companion.
“Miriam here is an excellent bard. If she’s traveling with us, at the very least the road won’t be boring.”
“Safety comes first on an escort job. Is she someone we can trust?”
Being a woman didn’t make her an exception.
In fact, the fact that she was a woman meant there were other things to be careful about.
“She came recommended by the merchant group. You don’t need to worry about that.”
After a brief moment of consideration, Lawrence nodded.
“Understood. But I’ll put this down as a debt.”
Lionel had a position of his own, after all.
So Lawrence would take one step back here—but only after making sure he got something in return.
“Hmm… would a cold glass of milk be enough?”
At the earnest look on his face, Lawrence burst out laughing.
* * *
The Mistra that had seemed impossibly high and distant slowly receded behind them.
Sitting in the carriage, Lawrence took out Wind from his bag.
The road to the Magic Tower would take roughly two months.
Even while serving as an escort, he couldn’t afford to waste the time.
Lionel was on the driver’s seat, holding the reins.
At first, Lawrence had sat beside him and chatted about this and that.
But Lionel talked so much without even pausing for breath that Lawrence had eventually given up and retreated to the back seat.
It was noisy. Far too noisy.
His nonstop stream of words was exhausting just to listen to.
For now, he didn’t need to pay much attention to his surroundings.
The road, crowded with travelers coming and going from Mistra, was busy enough that even patrol soldiers were occasionally visible.
If anything happened, the soldiers responsible for keeping the peace around the city would deal with it.
How long had he been concentrating on Wind?
Without a sound, someone had approached and sat down beside him.
“It was such a sudden trip, but thank you for taking me in.”
A soft, clear voice that tickled the ear.
It was the unexpected companion, the bard Miriam.
“I was only respecting the client’s wishes. So…”
“You can just call me Miriam.”
“Then please call me Lawrence, too.”
Judging by her looks and her voice, Miriam couldn’t be much older than her early twenties.
If they could get along easily, the journey would be far more comfortable.
“You sing beautifully.”
“You heard me sing?”
“I heard Margaret’s song at the inn.”
“Ah… that’s embarrassing. I’m not very good, but thank you for listening.”
Her face turned a little red, and she looked away.
That surprised him a bit.
When she had been singing, she’d seemed so full of confidence.
But the moment she set down her lute, she only looked like a shy young lady.
“Not very good? Compared with the bards I know, you were incredible.”
“Do you know any bards personally?”
“Yes. One named Cedric. He’s a bard who was active in Rombamel recently. His singing skills… well, ‘good’ might be stretching it.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Lawrence could almost hear Cedric letting out a scream, but he ignored it.
He had some conscience, after all.
No matter how you looked at it, Cedric’s singing wasn’t something he could praise.
“Cedric? Do you mean the blond, handsome bard? The one with the habit of saying that if you count to one, two, three…?”
“All painful memories will fly away.”
Lawrence finished the sentence for her.
“Yes, exactly. He said that sort of thing all the time.”
“What a coincidence. I had no idea you knew Mr. Cedric.”
Did bards have some kind of network?
“Ah, well… whether in a good way or a bad way, he was the kind of person you couldn’t forget after meeting him once.”
She looked a little troubled.
Lawrence quickly understood why.
Miriam was a woman.
And more than that, she was the sort of beauty Cedric would go mad for.
It wasn’t hard to guess what must have happened.
“Is Mr. Cedric still kind to women these days?”
“Too kind, if anything. By the time he left Rombamel, something had finally happened, and he ended up lying flat in a carriage for the road.”
“Ahaha.”
Miriam gave a dry little laugh.
Not asking what exactly had happened was probably her own way of being considerate toward Cedric.
“Mr. Lionel told me. That Lawrence is a very skilled mercenary.”
“I’m at least good enough not to get beaten to death wherever I go.”
“You don’t look very old, either. That’s impressive.”
“Being old doesn’t automatically make someone skilled.”
His years as a mercenary might have been short, but the experience Lawrence had built up was by no means small.
The Forest Spiders of Spider Forest.
The Bugbear and Eligator of Ulbazar Swamp.
The straggler orcs of Rival Plains.
The horn boars of Frang.
And the gnolls he had encountered on the road to Mistra.
The many battles he had fought had made Lawrence stronger.
“That’s because you’re a mage, then?”
“I can’t exactly deny that reason.”
So Lionel had told her.
At her cautious question, Lawrence nodded.
There was no point in trying to hide it.
They would be spending the next two months together.
It was better to make it clear from the start that he was a mage.
“I see. Then I suppose you’re going to the Magic Tower to learn magic as well.”
“Yes. Well… that’s the biggest reason.”
There was something else he wanted to confirm personally, too.
It was well known that relations between the Magic Tower and the Holy Cross Order were poor.
That was the reason Lawrence had taken off his vestments and disguised himself as an ordinary mercenary.
If so, he should make the most of this opportunity.
Since he was already heading to the Magic Tower, he intended to search the area around it for the Lost Sanctuary that might still be hidden there.
With the clergy of the Order unable to move freely in and out, there was a chance that some sanctuary had yet to be discovered.
“What about Miriam? What business do you have at the Magic Tower?”
“I want to see magic.”
“Magic?”
“Yes. There are so many mages at the Magic Tower.”
Her lips curved with open anticipation.
“I heard the villagers living around the Magic Tower are used to magic. I imagine that’s because there are so many mages there that they get to see all kinds of spells and techniques, don’t they? I’m planning to spend some time going back and forth through the villages around the tower and seeing magic for myself.”
“May I ask why you want to see magic?”
Was it for the sake of her songs?
“I want to turn what I see and experience with my own eyes into songs. Otherwise, I don’t think there’s any sincerity in a song at all. How can I possibly move people with a song if I’m singing about things I don’t even understand myself? If I want to sing something that truly touches people’s hearts, I think I have to know it first.”
She raised a finger to her lips, then continued.
“So I’m planning to see as much magic as I can this time. The more experience I gather, the more life my songs will carry. That’s what I mean. Even if I die, my songs will remain behind and live on in people’s hearts.”
“…Your mindset is quite different from a certain someone I know.”
“I hope that person isn’t Cedric.”
“I’d hope so too.”
The two of them met each other’s eyes and laughed.
“Still, it would be best to stay cautious. Rumor has it the mages at the Magic Tower don’t like showing their magic.”
“Is that so? It’s fine. I can just stay longer.”
Miriam answered brightly, as if that wouldn’t be much of a problem at all.
* * *
“…So this trip is mainly carrying supplies for daily life.”
“That’s about right. Mages, one and all, are terribly lacking in practical living skills. I suppose that’s why the villages around the Magic Tower manage to survive from time to time, but however you look at it, that isn’t a healthy arrangement.”
Lawrence turned to look back at the carriage.
Inside, where Miriam was sleeping soundly, several neatly stacked crates were lined up.
Apparently, all of them were full of daily necessities.
“Just in case—you're not like that too, are you?”
“I’m not a mage from the Magic Tower.”
“No reason only mages from the Magic Tower should be like that, is there?”
“Hmm… I haven’t exactly met many other mages, so it’s hard to say.”
If he had to name one, there was Lurizisa.
Still, he felt that using a noblewoman like her as a reference didn’t quite fit.
“Quite right. Then this must be your first time going to the Magic Tower, too.”
“Is there something I should be careful about?”
“Well. If I were a mage, I could tell you a thing or two. But as you can see, I’m just a flavorless old peddler, so it’d be faster for you to go find out yourself, wouldn’t it? Especially with the female mages.”
“Mr. Lionel….”
There was a hidden barb in that line.
Before Lawrence could even decide how to answer the grumbling tone, Lionel went on with a gloomy expression.
“Tch. I suppose youth really is everything. A wrinkled old bachelor like me probably spends his whole life buying women with money.”
“That’s not true. Honestly, I think you’d be a pretty impressive middle-aged man, Mr. Lionel.”
“An impressive middle-aged man?”
“Yes. You’re a peddler affiliated with the Mistra Merchant Group, after all. It’s not easy to still be peddling at your age. You always turn a profit, and you know people all over the kingdom, don’t you? If I may be so bold as to guess—if you settled down in some nice village and opened a shop, women would flock to you before long. That’s the charm of a capable man.”
“A capable man? Hmm. Well, I suppose I do have quite a bit of charm.”
He was simpler than Lawrence had expected.
Maybe it was because he loved talking so much.
The moment Lawrence praised him a little, his face brightened right up.
“Since a man like you surely knows a great deal about the Magic Tower, I’d appreciate it if you could tell me a few things. If it’s not too much trouble, could you give some advice to an escort who’s going there for the first time?”
Seeing his slumped shoulders straighten up at once, Lawrence changed the subject.
“Can’t be helped, I suppose. Well, it’s not that difficult. I haven’t visited the Magic Tower all that often myself, but I do know the things a fellow should be careful about.”
As if to say to trust him, Lionel thumped his chest.
“The reason I’m going to the Magic Tower this time, actually, is because I heard they’re erecting a statue.”
“A statue…?”
“Well. Maybe of a great mage who used to be Tower Lord? I’m not exactly sure. What matters is that they’re building one, isn’t it? So there’s been a lot more goods moving into the Magic Tower than usual.”
No wonder there seemed to be so many peddlers around.
“I mostly sell daily necessities, of course, but around the Magic Tower there are quite a few peddlers selling things that shouldn’t be touched.”
“Things that shouldn’t be touched? Do you mean drugs?”
“That too. You’ll understand as soon as you arrive at the tower. Believe it or not, the mages of the Magic Tower openly deal in slaves. More precisely, they call them human resources for extracting experimental data. A truly foul hobby, if you ask me.”
“…….”
Slaves.
The revelation struck Lawrence like a blow.
“Since the teachings of the Order spread through the kingdom, slavery disappeared from the land. And yet, within the kingdom itself, the Magic Tower is the only place that still deals in slaves. Humans, monsters, magical beasts—everything’s treated equally, as tools for magic. Rumor has it that dozens of coffins a day are dragged out by undertakers.”
“That’s something a sane person couldn’t do.”
There were no exceptions.
Human, monster, magical beast.
All were treated as tools for magic.
Nausea rose in his throat.
He understood at once what that really meant.
It was no different from when Lawrence learned a new spell and then tested it in real combat.
For instance, how much mana should be poured into a spell to make it most efficient.
How it should be handled in order to kill an enemy most efficiently.
The mages of the Magic Tower were repeating that kind of experiment on slaves who could not move.
“Once you get to the Magic Tower, you’ll probably see slaves with no trouble at all. I hate bringing this up, but until then, you’d do well to get a little used to the idea.”
“…….”
He knew.
Just as there was light if there was shadow, magic didn’t have only a bright side.
Blindly seeking the mysteries of the world and calling it progress was nothing more than a pretty lie.
“Don’t get it wrong. Miracles, magic—what matters is the person who holds and uses that power. Not the power itself.”
Yerina’s words.
It wasn’t magic itself that was the problem.
The truly frightening thing was the person who held magic in their hands and used it.