Idiot. Idiot. You should have known.
The spell was different because of Brix. She was pushing the magic, making the spell work faster than it ever had before, taking the toxicity. Normally the poison would have been crippling me and making me fly at the speed of a bird instead of, say, a pissed-off dragon.
And she was paying for it. Our time was up.
Even for birds and dragons, takeoffs and landings are the trickiest parts. I had solved the problem of getting airborne by building a whirlwind into the beginning of my spell. I had never, however, figured out how to land gently, since a reverse whirlwind would just suck you into the ground even faster than the normal rate of falling. Up until now I had ended my flights by either slowing the spell so I could spiral downwards, or losing control of it in gradual hiccups and trying to aim myself at deepish-looking water. Either approach was liable to end in bruises, if not broken bones. When it had just been me, a broken bone had seemed like an acceptable risk. But now I had to think about Brix whether I liked it or not.
Besides, if I tried to take control of the spell to land us, she might reflexively yank the magic away from me. Whatever part of it that she was running would unravel. We’d both fall – not spiral, just fall like stones.
So don’t take it. Don’t panic. Share it.
I felt myself relax in the shell of the magic, and looked at her one more time. Even under the stony concentration I saw the curve of her lips.
Trust her, at least for this.
I closed my eyes for a moment and forced my muscles to finish what they had started. I unspooled the tension in my neck and back, quieted the fear and tilted my wings, ever so gently. When I opened my eyes again I pushed the spell, delicately, into a huge downward spiral. It wasn’t a grab, magically speaking. It was an invitation.
The spell flexed. For a second, it resisted.
Then she came with me, more like a dance partner than ever. We slowed, descending on a very wide curve. I watched our pattern, both charmed by its intricacy and afraid that I would snarl it up.
It wasn’t until we were a mere hundred feet or so in the air that I saw the heap of yellow stone, about a mile from where I thought we would land. A few more moments revealed towers and walls, peopled with agitated dark specks – the ruins, in fact, of a very respectable imperial fort, an outpost at the edge of the world.
We had made it to Cor Daddan after all.
Alas, that was when the spiral flattened out. I shot forwards like a bolt from a crossbow, and when I tried to manipulate the spell the magic stayed rigid. We weren’t slowing down anything like quickly enough. I could hardly see Brix, off to my right, but she had abandoned the spiral, too.
I took a breath to shout with, a difficult task with the wind hammering against me. ‘We have to slow it down. Ease up on the spell.’
Her whole body gleamed, transparent, resting and loose inside the cocoon of magic propelling her through the air, wings still swept outwards. She didn’t seem to have heard me. Terror burst back through my bloodstream as I realised what was wrong.
Brix was unconscious.
‘Brix, wake up! Let go of it!’ She didn’t, though. How do you take something that’s twined around another person’s mind? I couldn’t just let go of the magic, either. Someone had to control our fall, somehow. I tightened my attention on the spell, pouring myself into controlling her trajectory, reaching for her.
My fingers brushed hers. I grabbed her, and held on.
We descended in a straight line towards the ruins of the fort. We had slowed significantly – all that propelled us now was momentum and gravity – but we were too high. We darted over the tumbledown curtain wall, men-at-arms shouting beneath us.
Some madness possessed me to tilt my head to look at the wall of the tower as we hurtled towards it. I had a split-second to spot a broad window, covered in oiled parchment.
I flinched.
I deserve no credit for the flinch. I wasn’t really thinking anything beyond please, I’d rather not hit this wall. But that instinct managed to twist my wings and wrench Brix and me sideways. Instead of cracking our skulls against the yellow stone, we went careering through the window and the parchment and into the cavernous room beyond.
My mind took in details with the useless precision of terror:
People in robes. Equipment. Shelves. Altar. Rune circle. Tapestries?
They were tapestries, hanging in loops from the ceiling, which I confirmed when we plunged into the middle of them. We tangled in them and then fell, inept flies in a giant, smothering, dusty spider’s web.
A polished black floor rushed towards us as we tumbled downwards, on a diagonal that pulled yards of fabric after us. I hit what felt like six or seven people, ploughing through them and completely losing my bearings before thudding to a stop against a wooden pillar.
Something snapped in my shoulder. I slumped to the floor, howling like a jackal.
Shut up, the pain means you’re alive. Try to move.
The first impact – tearing through the parchment windowcover – had ruined my concentration and ended the spell. I wasn’t going as fast as I could have been when I hit. But . . .
‘Brix!’ I twisted my head sideways, trying to force my eyes to focus, ignoring the shouts around me and the thorns that seemed to be twisting inside my skull. I was in some sort of . . . big laboratory or library, walls arching away from me in a giant circle. The floor under me was slick black stone, obsidian, maybe, with red painted sigils in a curving line a few feet from my face.
And there were a lot of Guildies in here, occupied with picking themselves up and rushing towards me.
‘Brix!’ I turned the other way, looking for the window I’d crashed through.
She was slumped to the floor, limp, a ghost whose wings were just now flickering out.
The Guildies surrounded me then, approaching me cautiously. They were about my age, and just out of their apprentice robes by the look of them. I picked the one who seemed most senior, based on the wholly inadequate scruff of beard, and addressed him.
‘You have perhaps an hour,’ I croaked, from flat on my back. ‘Maybe less. You’re about to be attacked by a necromancer and a crew of undead. He intends to kill everyone in Cor Daddan. Get Keir Esras, and tell him to throw every weapon he has to the walls.’ I sat up, and regretted it instantly. ‘Oh gods, that hurt. That was stupid.’
The Guildies halted. I have no idea why; anybody should have seen I wasn’t able to stand up.
‘How are you still alive?’ blurted the one with the pseudo-beard.
I fluttered my good hand in the air, fingers spread. ‘Magic.’ I tried to look past him, to see what was happening near Brix. ‘Why is nobody going to find the Guildlord?’
The wizard glanced over his shoulder, and then stepped to one side. Apparently nobody needed to go find the Guildlord because Keir Esras was already standing there. He glared at me for a moment before enraged recognition burst over his face.
‘You? How—’ He stopped himself, and turned to the man with the pseudo-beard. ‘Gwillam, secure the girl. Secure both of them. We’re going to have to figure out a way to get the tapestries repaired before we go on with the experiments.’
Gwillam – if that was actually a name, which seemed improbable – moved towards Brix.
‘Touch her and I’ll burn you, Gwillam,’ I snapped. ‘Esras, did you not hear me? Send someone to the wall, you can probably see the marulaches by now.’ I hadn’t expected Keir to believe my words, but I had hoped he would at least look. Jaern’s appearance should have been convincing, and perhaps terrifying, enough that the Guildies could arm themselves.
‘Maybe—’ began Gwillam, hesitantly.
Keir cut him short. ‘You have been given an order, wizard. Execute it. There’ll be time enough to figure out what this criminal’s plan was later.’
‘Plan?’ I couldn’t keep the disgust out of my voice. ‘You think I came through that window at that speed and landed like thi
s as part of a plan? Do you understand that I’m surrendering, here? Why would I do that if I wasn’t telling the truth?’
‘I think you managed to disrupt our experiment, and you’re offering an extremely thin story in the hopes that we’ll be distracted long enough for you to extract your grandfather.’ He reached into his robe, and from somewhere in the voluminous black-and-grey folds he drew a tube of greenish-blue glass, capped at either end with what looked like a series of pewter rings. ‘Now, secure the girl.’ He handed the vial to Gwillam.
Gwillam approached Brix’s motionless form with the vial held in front of him, like a talisman. In one sickening second I recognised what was going on.
‘Stop,’ I said. ‘Wait. You have to listen. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, just don’t do this.’
Keir eyed me as I tried to get on one knee. ‘She’s gone incorporeal. They’re of no use outside of a flask once that occurs. Gwillam?’
With one quick motion, Gwillam stabbed the vial towards Brix. One rune-carved pewter endcap pressed into her belly. Her eyes flew open, and she gasped.
‘Stop!’ I lunged forwards, only to be met with Keir’s boot in my chest. I sprawled on the stone floor.
Brix’s body swirled, churning like steam or smoke. There was no scream, no blood. Just a low gurgling noise, like an emptying drain. For one moment her eyes found me. Then the smoke condensed into the glass, rapidly.
She was gone.
Gwillam pocketed the vial.
Then Keir grabbed me by the collar and dragged me backwards until I had to face him. Anguish exploded from my shoulder and my bad knee, my whole body mingling in one vibrant red note of pain.
‘Now, on your feet,’ Esras said.
I met his eyes, and he lost some of his smug triumph. For a moment he almost looked afraid, and he was right to.
‘The necromancer will kill you, you stupid bastard,’ I said. ‘And if by some miracle he doesn’t, I will.’
Then, into the silence that followed, came the incongruous and oddly didactic sound of someone clearing their throat.
‘Don’t swear,’ Acarius said, from behind me.
Twenty-Four
Acarius stood in the middle of a circle of red binding runes, looking more frightened than I had ever seen him – with a thin veneer of annoyed-as-hell-with-Gray. He watched as the Guildies picked me out of the pile of tangled fabric. ‘Where’s your shirt? Are you all right?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t swear? I come smashing through a window and that’s what you can think of to say?’ Two Guildies grabbed me under the arms, and blinding, exquisite pain roared from my shoulder. ‘Shit!’
‘You’re hurt.’ Acarius stepped forwards, but he was already at the edge of the circle.
‘How could you tell?’ I knew perfectly well that I shouldn’t have been angry with my grandfather in the first ten seconds of our reunion, but there we were. It was better than being terrified.
‘Put him on the altar until we get the tapestries back in place,’ Keir said.
They hauled me to a spot about twenty feet from Acarius, though not to the stone block that I had assumed was the altar. Here the black floor had carvings, which had apparently been inlaid with metal. Most of the design had tarnished. The place where I kneeled, however, had been polished. Although the brightness of the pewter was marred with mottled brown stains, it was readable. A tight rune spiral spun across the stone beneath me, antique, beautiful . . . familiar.
Nausea pitched into me, bright, insistent.
Except one thing made no sense.
‘Why are we getting the tapestries back in place?’ I said. ‘Apart from using them as busywork, so we can ignore Gray’s warnings that are meant to save our lives, because we’ve got our heads stuck so far up—’
Keir struck me with the back of his hand, hard enough to snap my head sideways.
‘Shut. Up.’ He strode past me, leaving his followers toiling with the cloth. He moved to the stone block, where a roll of tools, several small bottles of red fluid and a bundle of cloth sat. ‘The tapestries are a necessary component of a soul-catching ritual.’ He unwrapped the cloth.
‘That’s idiotic.’ I ran my tongue across the oozing spot where my teeth had cut into the inside of my cheek. ‘They won’t do anything.’
‘They’re copies of the ones that hung in the original temple. We’ve restored it to almost its former glory.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll trust the instructions your grandfather gave us. He had potent incentive at the time not to lie.’
Temple. The room around me suddenly shifted into focus. This was no library – it was the remains of a Jaern-temple, like the one under Ri Dana. Of course, this one lacked the carpet of bones. But the other one hadn’t had tapestries. Why would Acarius have asked for them?
I glanced at my grandfather and took in the signs – the healing cuts, the bruises, the way he was too skinny under his clothes. They couldn’t have cracked his wits, I knew that much; Acarius would have puréed the mind of any wizard fool enough to try such a thing. So they had tortured him, and he had been giving instructions, delaying.
‘Sir?’ A man stuck his helmeted head through a crack in the big double doors. ‘We heard a disturbance? Some of the men are saying they saw something flying—’
‘It was nothing,’ Keir said. ‘Get out, and don’t let anyone disturb me for the next hour.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The man-at-arms withdrew.
A rattle of panic had seeped into Acarius’ voice. ‘Keir. You can’t attempt the ritual on him.’
‘Maybe this time you’ll give us some answers!’ Keir shouted. ‘Four slaves dead in the last week, simply because you wouldn’t tell us the truth!’
Four slaves dead.
Acarius’ face went still. ‘Those deaths are on your hands. I begged you not to do it.’
‘The ritual had to be tested. And when you refuse to tell us – well.’ From the bundle of cloth on the stone block, Keir lifted the gold doll. The damn thing was intact now, jewels glittering in its eye and in sockets on its body. Each socket seemed to relate to a specific organ. I could see how it might be confusing matching the gems to their intended slots. Nothing intrinsic in a sapphire declares whether it should be a liver or a lung. He held the doll up so Acarius could see it. ‘I’m going to start the ritual, and you’re going to tell me where the gems belong. Accurately, this time.’ He smiled, thinly. ‘Or your grandson here will die like the others.’
Acarius’ eyes shifted to me, questioning.
I tapped my bad knee with my good hand. I wasn’t going to be much help, if he decided to start a fight.
Not that he could, as far as I could see. The prison circle had three layers of runes, he was wearing nothing but a pair of ragged trousers and a shirt and there was nothing he could do to scribe runes short of scratching on the stone with his fingernails. He couldn’t get out, and he couldn’t cast. Acarius couldn’t save me. He couldn’t save Brix.
All that was left was me.
‘Experiments.’ I tried to shift to get more comfortable, which was useless; there’s no way to get twisted ligaments and broken bones to feel at ease. ‘I take it that means you’ve been trying to run a necromantic ritual for immortality by trial and error? Isn’t that expensive?’
‘I paid nothing for you.’ Keir was arranging the rest of the equipment from the bundle on the stone table. ‘All I spent on you was time, chasing you across the province, letting your grandfather think he was contacting you unwatched. And after all that trouble, it was a near thing. The slave woman stopped talking to me just before I caught your scent in Ri Dana – had to be convinced to do as she was told.’
‘Brix,’ I said, through my teeth. ‘Her name is Brix.’
‘You’ve been a splinter in my foot for six months.’ He glanced at me, oozing a sickening sort of glee. He selected a brush and a round box of red paint, squatted and began scribing a line of runes on the floor, working his way from the altar towards me. I watched him wri
te my name. ‘I rather think I would pay for the privilege of taking your heart out.’
‘And pay more to get the rennen for the bottle, to catch the soul,’ I said. ‘Tedious, anyway, even if it’s not expensive. Crushing beetle after beetle . . .’
He froze. ‘How did you—’
‘Jaern told me,’ I said.
Keir snorted. ‘Indeed. And have you been having visions of the Moonmother, too? Perhaps Farran’s shown you how to win at dice?’
‘He spoke to you?’ Acarius said. ‘He was awake?’
‘A bit of an understatement, but yes, he spoke to me. At length. We were trapped, and I had to do the best I could. And now there is no time, Grandfather.’ I paused. ‘That prison circle you’re in, the one keyed to soullessness. Why does it work on you?’
Acarius winced. He didn’t answer me. But then, I already knew what he would have said.
‘What next?’ Keir said.
‘Next you do what Acarius tells you to with the doll and, at the same time, take my heart out, I believe,’ I said. ‘Chuck a piece of it into the bottle, and try to curse me with immortality. And it won’t work, because you’re missing a piece. Why are you doing this, Keir?’
‘The throne has ground wizards under its heel for long enough,’ he said. ‘Too many Guild wizards believe that the Charter is some kind of fence, protecting us. It’s time for the power and potential of magic to be unrestrained. Surely you agree? I thought that freedom was the whole point of existence for illegal trash like you.’ He held the doll in one hand and a pair of shears in the other, eyes fixed on me.
‘And who’s to rule instead of the king?’ I said. ‘Some undead version of you? The only “freedom” you care about is being able to kill without consequence. I’d rather be trash any day.’
Keir smiled and stepped forwards, holding the doll towards Acarius. ‘Tell me if this is right.’
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