Sorcerer's Spin

by Anise Rae

  He estimated that he’d been here for one day and part of a night. He should have listened to Daegan’s warning. He wasn’t even sure what to call the spell he’d cast to come here. Could a mage misplace himself?

  When he’d first arrived, he hadn’t been sure he’d had the strength to take another breath. He didn’t remember much of the first day except for dreams of Mara.

  Now, he was so thirsty he fought not to choke on his tongue with every dry breath. His mage sense ached like the ringing of an out-of-tune orchestra. His body, too.

  He’d lost everything he’d packed…his invisible pocket, his guns, his knives, even his boots. The only things that had stayed with him were his clothes, his supposed good luck charm…the king’s necklace that Gregor had refashioned with a leather cord and fastened around his neck…and the webs he’d stuck in his pocket.

  He held them in his hands.

  Heal me, he thought, too tired for worry or fright. He closed his eyes at the impossibility of being full of hope and completely empty of it at the same time. No cure existed for the needle’s damage. But perhaps the webs could restore the energy he’d drained getting here.

  He stuffed them in his ears like cotton balls.

  In a blink, the world of sound he’d known for so long returned, the energy of the universe hummed, alive and loud in his ears, suddenly resuscitated.

  It was like a kiss from the Goddess…a breath from Luck.

  Mara had been right. And all he wanted to do was tell her. His hands ached to hold her as the universe sang its eternal song to his listening ear. He would have fallen to his knees if he’d been standing. He didn’t fool himself that this was permanent, but he’d gladly take whatever the webs offered him. It was a complete surrender of his fear.

  Safely hidden, he soaked in the webs’ power until the sun went down again, sleeping without choice. When he woke, he found the strength to stand, his socks already coated with dust and dirt.

  The town was empty. Damn it. It hadn’t been that way when he’d arrived. He remembered popping into place and seeing the town bustle around. Where the hell had everyone gone?

  He reached out with his mage sense, gently probing the buildings. A few mages were down to the right, but their energies were subdued and weak. Whoever they were, they were in no shape to fight. Perhaps there were Nons or fairies around, but he needed to push more power out to search. Not a risk he was willing to take at the moment.

  Mara’s energy signature was absent. Though her power might have been tucked down tight, he bet his firefly had pulled her escape act again. He’d had plenty of opportunity to hone his instincts when it came to that. He was back to searching for clues for her location.

  He prowled though the town, heading for the saloon, the most intact building. He opened the door and peered in. A vacant table, still laden with food and drinks, sat in the middle of the room. Starving and thirsty, he scavenged for bread and water. A spare pair of boots would have been nice too, but apparently everyone had kept their shoes on at this meal.

  A moan reached his ears. He followed it to find the fairy who’d tried to hypnotize him. The man was on the floor in a puddle of blood. He opened his eyes when Gregor nudged his leg. His eyes went wide at the king’s necklace around his neck.

  “Where is she?” Gregor demanded.

  “The king,” he whispered. “The king returned.” His eyes darkened. Power waved out from him, but no silver shined in his eyes. The questing power passed through Gregor, whispering faintly in his ear, a message he couldn’t quite catch.

  He crouched beside him. The glister wore no shirt and the gaping wound in his belly bled sluggish and dark. There was no healing spell that could fix this.

  “River. They took her to the river…with the geo mage. Portal. You just missed them.”

  “Why?”

  “Moving it.” He panted for air. “Uniting the lands.” The man let go of a breath and the light faded in his eyes.

  The first sound of death was silence, a stillness in the liminal moment between realms. The second was a blend of tones, high and low and everything in between. It should have sounded like a crash of noise but there was something undescribably light within it.

  Gregor reached out and closed the man’s eyes. “Thanks,” he whispered though, right or wrong, he felt no grief for this loss.

  He didn’t have the energy to spell himself to the river. Stealing a motorcycle wouldn’t work either. He’d never get there in time to stop the geo mage from destroying the Republic’s border. But maybe that didn’t matter anymore. He wasn’t a soldier. He was the guard of the glister princess. And he would save her regardless of the border or the Rose Moon or the white wheel.

  He headed out the door and came face to face with a nightmare. The river maiden queen was naked except for the white lacy scarf on her head. Her body dripped with water and a puddle formed around her. Water spread into the dirt until the puddle became a small pool. Her wide eyes were too big for her face and her lips were nearly colorless.

  She pointed at his chest. “He told me the king returned.”

  “Who told you?” Gregor backed up a step. “Daegan?”

  She pointed at the saloon. Maybe the whisper of power from the dead fairy was a message spell to the river queen. Was every glister on speaking terms with these creatures?

  Her expression didn’t change. “You are the guard. I will take you to the battle.” The pool around her shimmered with an impossible current.

  “Is that where Mara is?”

  But she gave no indication she’d heard. A sailboat appeared behind her, bobbing in the growing water. She turned to it and sank into the pool as if it were six feet deep. The boat was no battleship, but he got on, his chest tight. The boat sailed away, the stars and clouds stretching beside him until it suddenly stopped. The Mississippi, wide and deep, slapped against the boat as if they’d blinked into existence right there. Gregor stood in the boat and studied his surroundings.

  On the eastern shore, the Republic’s soldiers lined the bank. Vin and Dane were over there somewhere, guaranteed. Gregor was much closer to the western shore. It was less than fifty yards away. It held an army of Black Skulls.

  The outlaws were armed, some with guns in both hands, all pointing at Gregor and his unexpected company of river maidens. The river was now populated with hundreds of the creatures, all bobbing in the water and eyeing the Skulls.

  Prophet stood in the middle of his outlaws at the shore’s edge. The Prowers were on one side of him, Nils on the other, along with a handful of other wealthy Republic mages…Gregor identified them by their dress.

  Mara stood near Nils. Chains wrapped around her legs all the way to her waist, her hands behind her. Three Skulls pointed guns at her.

  The sight sent a wave of fury boiling through him. His vibes shot into his throat.

  The river maiden queen treaded water in front of him.

  “What can you do to them?” he asked her, his voice a low growl.

  “We can eat them.”

  Goddess above. A pulse of alertness jumped through him. He didn’t want to call it fear, but she looked back at him as if she’d sensed it.

  “They’ll shoot you.” He kept it as simple as he could, not sure how much she understood.

  “They will kill us.”

  So they had no fancy tricks like Daegan’s ability to repel bullets. They’d all die before they could get close enough to eat anyone. Gregor pondered his options. He couldn’t risk a thunder spell. It would be too draining. Worse, the force of his vibes might jostle a slippery finger on a gun pointed at Mara.

  If he’d understood how to use the unsung song, this would have been the moment to deploy it.

  Across the water, Prophet’s old scribe stepped up to him and held up his fist, sideways, just below the leader’s mouth. Prophet’s voice boomed over the distance with the scribe’s voicecaster spell.

  “You ought to thank me for taking her off your hands, General Rallis!” The
words reverberated and he waited for them to stop before continuing. “You know who she is?” Prophet paced over to Mara and shook her by the shoulder. He recited the prophecy.

  “Glow Eyes spins webs as Luck commands,

  Abandoned to the dance in the western lands.

  The relics await her touch. Their fate?”

  You want to know their fate?” he hollered.

  This was as far as the High Councilor had gotten in the prophecy.

  Prophet shouted out the rest.

  “Spin, snip, and stitch for the king’s half-witch!

  You hear that? She’s a fucking half-breed by the king, no less. The fairy princess is my bitch now!” He rattled Mara like a rag doll.

  From the east bank, Vin replied sharply with his own voicecaster spell, stating that Mara was a citizen of the Republic with all the protections that entailed.

  “She is mine,” Gregor whispered to Prophet, pushing the words with a furious stream of vibes straight to the man’s ear. “And this will be the last time you ever touch her.”

  Prophet smiled, the expression full of madness.

  Lady Prower lifted her hands. The Mississippi rumbled with a fury, tossing the river maidens. Within seconds, waves built high, sloshing over the boat and dousing the white sail. Gregor stumbled back, his foot catching on the edge of the boat just before he tumbled in. His necklace bumped against his chin. His ears sloshed with water. The world went silent.

  Shit. The webs. They’d fallen out as if Prower’s spell inspired the water to wrench them away. His songs were gone. He scanned the water. The webs were nowhere in sight.

  Waves rose again, and the water foamed. The river maidens screamed a battle cry, but Mara’s shout carried above them all.

  “Gregor!”

  He’d never heard her sound like that. Terror drenched her voice. Her cry hurt his heart like a sharp punch jabbing through him, a blow to his core so strong it left a gaping hole. A new noise resonated free, like her fear had blasted through a wall inside him. A symphony of chaos blared out. The noise was savage and wild. He looked around for its source. But he couldn’t pinpoint it. It came from everywhere…and everyone.

  From Mara. From Prophet. From the Republic’s soldiers on the other side of the river. From the river maidens fighting to swim against the turbulent waves.

  This was what Daegan had been trying to get him to hear. But the glister had been wrong. This primal sound was not about love. It wasn’t even about hate. It was something else entirely and it took him a moment to figure out how to define it. He knew he hadn’t experienced enough of the universe to truly understand it. The closest he could come was to call it something like the power of a vow or an oath. The sound held the promise of a future, but that promise could only be given if it was bound in the turmoil of transformation and change.

  This song was the feathered wing of chaos that swept through every second of life. It wasn’t soft and pretty. It wasn’t happy or sad or any other emotion. It was ferocious and unrelenting, moving all life with a tempestuous force. It saturated every person, every creature, every spark of life around him, constant and changing at the same time.

  How could he have missed hearing this his entire life?

  Daegan’s words came back to him.

  I know that you, wayward monk, have what is necessary to hear it.

  Wayward…Gregor had needed his other songs silenced before he could hear this one. The needle had given him this.

  None of his mage teachers had mentioned this song because they didn’t know it existed. Perhaps the unsung song resonated not with the Goddess’s vibes, but with the vibes of Luck.

  Or maybe that was all a bunch of vibe shite. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he knew how to access it, to listen for it…and to control it.

  He focused on the western shore and gathered their chaos—their futures—to him, yanking it from the depths of their souls, leaving them trapped in the sameness of a single moment, frozen, their energies caught tight. A person couldn’t move to the next second, the next minute, the next day without the power of change.

  The Black Skulls and their allies, the enemies of the Republic, went motionless on the western bank, an army of statues.

  With the geo mage’s power now bound by Gregor’s, the river stilled. Her spell was erased. The river maidens surged forward to attack, the queen among them. He dove into the water after them. One of the maidens grabbed him, dragging him to shore in the span of a breath. The water was red before he made it to the bank.

  He raced to Mara, casting his vibes into the lock spell of the cuffs and chains. They tumbled to the ground. Mara’s eyes were wide and panicked.

  “Close your eyes, firefly.” He lifted her into his arms, his world righting, and headed back into the water, swimming for the boat.

  Behind him, the battle raged. It wasn’t a fair fight. The Skulls couldn’t move. All they could do was watch while bloodied teeth came for them. The silence of a conquered enemy lay heavy in the air.

  The boat bobbed in the river as Mara rested her head on Gregor’s shoulder. They were both dripping wet and she shivered though the evening was still warm. “You swam the Mississippi for me.” Her teeth chattered. Gregor’s vibes drifted around her with a hum of his power. The warming spell soaked into her. She gave a laugh that turned into a sob. “You came for me.”

  “I will always come for you.”

  “But don’t you know who I am?”

  He looked down at her. “I know who you are. You’re the woman who knew I wasn’t broken, who braved the threat of an internment camp for a chance to collect spider webs to heal her friend, who dances with such power that it captivates a mage’s mind.”

  “Spellbinds,” she corrected. Her teeth chattered again, but it had nothing to do with cold and everything to do with fright.

  He put his hand under her chin and looked into her eyes. “Hey, now,” he crooned. “We’re together, Mara. There’s nothing to be scared of. Not anymore. I know what your power can do. And I’m thankful you can.”

  “Why?”

  “Almost every mage has a dangerous side to their power, though I swear to you that yours doesn’t work on me. But you need a way to protect yourself. If yours is through dancing—though I’d rather you kept your clothes on—then so be it.”

  “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t dance in that place. I was so worried about….” She bit her lip. “I want to go home,” she whispered. She was tired inside and out.

  “Worried about what?”

  “You. My power is like a glister’s. You hate them.”

  His blue eyes gleamed like the water reflecting moonlight. “I was wrong. I was afraid.”

  “And now you’re not?”

  The boat rocked in the river as his vibes pushed it east. “The only thing I’m afraid of right now is that you’re going to tell me again that you don’t need me to be your hero, that you work better alone.”

  “I’m part glister.”

  He pulled off the spell that covered his glowing eye. It was only the left, the side of his heart, the side of his scars.

  She gave him a small smile. “I like it. It adds a roguish touch to your handsome charm.”

  “I may not have been born of a glister, but I’m part glister now, too.” He pulled off the necklace and held it out. “Daegan said it was your father’s.” He put it around her neck and fastened it there. “It was your father who….”

  She gasped. “Who picked apart your brain when you were sixteen?” Dismay flooded through her, along with a wicked whisper of envy that he’d met the man.

  “I probably shouldn’t have put it like that.”

  “You met my father.”

  “Somehow he knew.” He took a breath and cupped her cheek. “He knew that I’m the one for you. Say you’ll have me, that you’ll dance to my songs and that you’ll let me stand by your side.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Let’s go home, firefly.”
r />   41

  Thirteen sorceresses stood in a semi-circle around the concrete picnic table where Mara sat, a scroll open before her. Above, the Rose Moon shined down from a pre-dawn sky. Luck’s Lady’s wheel stood next to the blue walls of the mill, glowing white beneath the moonlight. Its proper spindle was attached—she still planned to use it as a sword when in the West.

  The sorceresses here this morning were formerly of the Wild West, Prophet’s victims. They were the only ones who’d accepted Mara’s offer to sponsor them in the Republic.

  They eyed the wheel warily and stayed far from it. They were still tired and weak from the wheel’s effects. It would take them a long time to recover. Mara had already told them they didn’t need to be here this morning. They should be resting. They’d only been here for two days.

  She started to suggest it once more, but Susette caught her eye. “Uh-uh. Don’t even say it. We aren’t leaving. You saved us from that wheel and from Prophet. And you got us new jobs.” She was one of the girls stolen from the house that was Fancy’s main competition. “We’re gonna make sure you’re saved, too.”

  They were worried about the coming meeting ever since Lincoln had let something slip about the suspended death sentence.

  Gregor smiled at the woman as if he appreciated her sentiment. He sat beside Mara, sharing her bench, reading the details of the treaty with a great deal more focus than she was.

  Lady Harry marched around the corner. “They’re here.”

  The chain-link gate squeaked as Harry cast the unlock spell. It took a moment before the gate started to move. Gregor cleared his throat and gave Mara a sideways look.

  “It’s just a little rusty.” Mara shook her head at him. “That’s all. It works fine.”

  A line of four limos paraded into the back lot. Their sleek shapes spoke of untold wealth, sophistication, and power.