by Aiden Bates
We spotted Baz at the other side of the woods, just a little shy of the weyr’s boundary.
“Baz!” I shouted for him, and sped up to close the rest of the distance.
“Tam,” Vance called after me. “Tam, wait, there’s something wrong—”
I realized it too late. I’d been so focused on Baz that I hadn’t paid attention to my senses. Three heartbeats, further ahead. The scents of three other people on the air.
Someone stepped out from behind a tree, and was joined by two others. A bald man with burn scars covering half of his face and scalp, disappearing into the high collared-shirt he wore. His two friends wore thin shirts with hoods drawn up to mostly conceal their faces, but one was a woman, I thought, and the other an older man with gray in the short beard that lined his jaw.
I plowed forward until I reached Baz, and snatched him from the ground and into my arms. He struggled, kicking his legs and trying to bite at my arms. “No, no, no, no!”
Vance’s feet pounded over the dead leaves and undergrowth until he came to a stop beside me.
“Call for Liana,” he hissed.
I held Baz tight, and shifted until my clothes began to tear, enough that I could give a full-throated roar to raise the alarm.
The sound of it was muted. The air didn’t carry it. The man with the beard had one hand raised, fingers stiff and hooked.
“None of that,” the burned man said softly. “Give us the boy.”
I tucked Baz tight against me, and gushed liquid fire at the three of them. The fire struck something invisible, spreading sideways, and a moment later the woman swept her arms out and down, and the fire snuffed out.
More mages.
Magic sang around Vance. His anger and fear hit me, made my heart speed up faster, made my knees weaken.
The burned mage clucked his tongue. “You’re in no shape, child.”
He gave a contemptuous flick of his hand. The shadows around us deepened, and gave only that warning before they swept out and up, extending freezing, grasping tendrils that curled around Vance’s arms and legs and dragged him to the ground at the same time that they curled around mine, spreading numbness and ache like before, when I’d been in the grasp of the mage outside the cabin. Vance’s mind gave a burst of panic, and then nothing.
The tendrils pulled at my arms, forcing them away and down until Baz dropped from me and took off running toward the man. I tried to shift, but the cold reached into me and seemed to keep my dragon locked down as securely as it did me.
The man with the burns, clearly the leader here, strode forward slowly, a smug grin on his lips that only reached one side of his ruined mouth. “I wondered if I might get the chance to see you again,” he breathed. He looked to Vance. “And you. I understand you sent my most promising disciple home to his God.”
“Which is where I’ll put all of you soon enough,” Vance growled.
The man grinned. “I’ve learned a few new tricks since we last met. I don’t think that’s likely. Fool me once, after all...”
Vance’s brows knit. He didn’t recognize the mage.
Neither had I. Not at first. But that voice, and the burns...
“You’re dead,” I rasped through a throat only barely still shaped for speaking.
The mage shrugged. “Didn’t take. Like I said, new tricks. And I have a few friends in, shall we say, low places.”
It was him.
The mage who had nearly killed Vance the first time. Who had taken the pups. Who had taken everything important from me, and now apparently come back to do it again. I tried to gush more fire at him, but the liquids that should have ignited only sprayed from the back of my throat as an inert mist.
He turned to point at the woman. “I also came prepared.”
We were going to die. I knew it, in that moment. He’d done something about Vance’s magic, accounted for my dragon, for dragonfire. I settled my furious eyes on Baz instead. His face was expressionless, watching us with indifference. “What did you do to him?”
The man shrugged. “Barely matters at this point,” he said. He took a step closer, and I snarled at him, but he didn’t seem to even notice. He extended stiff fingers, marred with the same burns that graced his face and head, and pressed them to my forehead. “Sweet dreams, Tammerlin Blackstone.”
And then the world broke.
20
Vance
I tried to stop him. Tried to reach out with my magic and freeze him in place, or strike at his mind. But something black and oily and cold had closed over my magic in a vice grip, and even reaching for it made my insides feel like they were being ripped apart.
“Tam!” I screamed as the burned man let’s Tam’s body fall to the ground.
I don’t know what I shouted at him. It all came out in a blind mix of fury and grief. It left my throat hoarse in just a few seconds as tears streamed down my face, my eyes burning until I could barely see. The mage watched me until I was hoarse before he approached.
“Don’t worry,” he said lightly, “he’s only sleeping. Well... he’s dreaming, anyway. And will be for a while. Probably, oh... a couple of weeks? I’m not sure how long a dragon can survive without food, to be honest.”
“We will find you,” I spat, “and kill you, and all of your fucking abyss-loving nihilist buddies, and I promise that you will suffer. I’ll bring this whole damn weyr down on your head, and the wrath of the Custodes Lunae, and the fucking FDPA and—”
He chuckled. “I admire your commitment. But what makes you think you’ll be around that long? The broken esper. For the dragon, I had a debt to repay. He’ll suffer in agony for many days before he dies. Of course, to him it will be years. Decades, perhaps. But you? You’re a gnat. A traitor to magic. For you, there’s only one sentence. A sentence I should have carried out the first time. That you survived is impressive, boy. That you survived twice, well... you’re practically a cockroach.”
He reached behind him, and drew out a knife. “This time,” he said as he came closer, “we’ll just settle this the old-fashioned way.”
“Master,” the woman said, her voice worried.
He paused, and looked first at her, and then at the direction we’d come from. I looked as well, unable to help myself.
Liana and her people came charging through the woods. A mix of humans and half-shifted dragons. Overhead, a massive black form swooped down, angling for the escape route, and followed by two others.
I barked a triumphant laugh. “You’re fucked, asshole.”
He growled a curse, and turned to leave me, sheathing his knife. “Leda,” he snapped. “Get us out of here.”
Leda. I committed the name to memory. Leda, Leda, Leda. It was all I had, and this was not over. “I’ll come for you,” I called after them. “I won’t rest until I find you. We’ll see one another again, asshole, and when we do—”
Whatever else I was going to say, he wouldn’t hear it. Leda, who had already shown that she had some elemental magic, turned and thrust her hand into the air behind them. When she pulled, a rip in the world opened up. Daylight from somewhere else poured through. I caught a glimpse of mold-ridden walls and an old table. Portal.
She was a prodigy.
They stepped through, and it closed behind them.
The darkness released me and Tam both. I was on him before Liana and her people got to us, patting his face. My magic was back, released from whatever that mage had done to stifle it, but it was shaky inside me, as if frightened by what had just happened. My first instinct was to push into Tam’s mind, see what was happening there, try to release him from whatever dream-spell the burned man had put him under with, but the second I tried, I felt my mind straining at the seams from the effort. I’d already pushed myself to the limit locating Baz.
“What happened?” Liana demanded as her people spread out, looking for the culprits.
I looked up at her, and wasn’t sure if some of that anger in her eyes was reserved for me. “Some kind of d
ream-spell,” I said. “I—I can’t break it, not like I am right now. We have to get him somewhere safe and call Master Nkendi.”
Liana hissed and knelt beside Tam. “The fuck is going on?”
“It’s the same man that took the pups,” I said. “River Valley. I’ll tell you everything, but we have to do something for him, now.”
She nodded quickly. “Obviously. Carter, Sagan! Over here, get Tam to a truck and back to his place. Full complement there.”
I stood to get out of the way as the two hulking security officers in half-form squatted and hauled Tam up and onto their shoulders to carry him back toward the park.
Liana’s jaw clenched as she watched them take him, before she turned on me. “Come with me,” she demanded. “And tell me everything.”
I briefed her on the way to Tam’s house, and continued after we were inside in Tam’s room. He had gradually shifted back to human form, and now lay motionless on the bed, his clothes torn in places where he’d nearly bulged out of them.
“That’s all I know so far,” I told her, after I told her about the connection between the eighteen from the Midnight Incident and Kieren.
“And those people,” she pressed. “They were the same ones from River Valley? Did you recognize them?”
I gnawed my lip, frustrated at the Big Wall of Bad that surged up when I tried to remember the man’s face. “Not... exactly. It’s all part of the stuff I can’t access. I could... I mean, it’s dangerous, but I could try—”
“No,” Liana said, shaking her head for emphasis. “Tam wouldn’t forgive me. He’s told me you don’t remember and aren’t supposed to.”
“Leda,” I said, remembering at least that much. “One of them was a woman named Leda, or at least that’s what he called her. She’s a prodigy—she’s got more than one kind of magic. How many, I don’t know, but the cabals might have something on her, might know who she is. They treat prodigies like fucking royalty, and they never miss them. Prodigies manifest their magic earlier than the rest of us, she’d have been noticed. They’d have fought over which cabal she was taken to.”
Liana was stiff as she gave a nod. “Okay. Make calls.”
“Oh,” I said, raising my hands, “I’m not—”
“You’re the only mage on the grounds,” she growled. “Make the damn calls, I don’t care who you have to kick the ball to, just fucking get it done.”
I cringed as her eyes flashed gold and red. “Yeah,” I squeaked. “Of course. I’ll call.”
She relaxed a little. “I didn’t mean... I’m sorry. We can’t lose another Blackstone. The weyr is strained as it is.”
“Tam,” I said. “You can’t lose Tam.”
Her expression softened a bit more. “Obviously,” she said. “He’s a friend. But he’s also the leader of the weyr now. And he’s the last Blackstone besides Baz, who would be too young anyway. Right now, he’s more than just Tam. He’s the stability of the community. Without him, there will be a power vacuum, someone will have to take over, people will disagree about who—it’ll be a distraction we really don’t need right now. Not if the things you told me point to something bigger.”
Which, maybe, was the point. I sank to the edge of the bed and put a hand on Tam’s knee, wondering if he was right to be suspicious about everything going on with the shifters and cabals. “Shit,” I muttered. “That’s exactly what it is. A distraction. Liana, Tam spoke with Mara, from the Silver Tooth, and she said—”
“I know,” Liana said. “He told me about it. I was looking into it when Nathal called about Baz.”
“This has to be part of that,” I said. “They’ve got to be... I don’t know, sowing chaos or something, to keep everyone looking the wrong way.”
“If so,” she said, “it’s probably working. Look—one problem at a time. Call your cabal, find out about this Leda person, get some kind of expert here to help Tam.”
“And Baz? And this cult?” I asked.
She spread her hands. “One problem at a time, Vance. I’ve got people combing the area.”
“I saw something,” I said as she started to leave. “When the portal opened. The inside of a house, I think, but it was moldy and old. Abandoned, or maybe even condemned. It was daytime wherever they went, so it’s not the other side of the world or anything. It could be close, the cabin was just south of the Vermont border off 91. It could be in the same area.”
She mulled that for a second. “All right. That’s good, something to go on. Let one of my people know when you’ve heard back from the cabal.”
It didn’t make me breathe any easier having been able to help at least a little bit. But, it meant maybe there was a chance of getting through this. Of course, if I were them, I’d have had Leda open a portal to a getaway spot, and then another to wherever they were really headed. Portals had limits, even for prodigies. Her range wasn’t unlimited, but could probably reach as far as Vermont.
I called Master Nkendi first, and had to explain the situation twice. Once at a frantic, breakneck pace, and the second time—after she patiently asked me to slow down and say it again—with more control. “You have to help him, Master,” I begged when I finished. “Please, I can’t lose him now, not after what we went through, not after—”
“Calm, Vance,” she said gently. “Calm. I will come. But it will take time to make the arrangements.”
“Time?” I asked. “I—Master, he needs help now, he—”
“Vance,” she said, with somewhat less gentleness, “when a young second-circle mage involves himself in the affairs of the world, it causes questions to arise. I have protected you on the basis that you have suffered consequences of your actions already. There is no one to protect me, and my unsanctioned involvement will raise more than questions. I will make the arrangements, and be there when I am able.”
I swallowed the retort on the tip of my tongue. “I... I understand, Master. I apologize for raising my voice.”
“You are in pain,” she said. “It is to be expected. Calm, and control. Remember.”
“I will,” I promised, though I didn’t feel remotely calm and my control was definitely slipping. “There’s one other thing, if you could pass it along to the registry, maybe. One of the people that did this was a woman called Leda. I didn’t get a last name. But she was at least an elementalist and traveler. She opened a portal.”
“A prodigy,” she murmured.
“Can you get someone to find out if we have a record of her?” I asked, and remembered that Mikhail was likely still on the campus. “And talk to Mikhail. We found some troubling indicators of a bigger plot at work.”
“I will,” she said. “For now, you must take the time to focus. Stay balanced. I would tell you to return here but I suspect you would not.”
I smiled, though it was half-hearted. “I wouldn’t, Master.”
“You have always been strong-willed,” she said. “It is at times a frustrating quality. But it is a strength as well.”
“One day, I’ll be the obedient pupil you always wanted,” I told her.
“What day will that be?” she wondered wryly.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. A Tuesday?”
She gave a soft snort. “I shall mark all of the Tuesdays on my calendar, then. Just in case it should ever come to pass.”
We ended the call, and I put the phone down and crawled onto the bed. Liana wanted me to let her people know as soon as I had news, but I needed at least a moment before I could face any of them. I put my head on Tam’s chest.
“This isn’t fair,” I whispered to him. “Why can’t it just be easy for us? Why can’t we just have each other? Why is it a constant fucking fight?”
He didn’t answer, of course. I lay there with him for a long time before I finally got up to inform the security posted in the house that I’d contacted the cabal and that they were working on getting someone out.
When I returned to the room, I intended to lay down with Tam and just make sure he wasn’
t alone. But I couldn’t quell my anxiety. I couldn’t stop pacing, wringing my hands. The restlessness and waiting threatened to break me, and I kept checking my phone to make sure I hadn’t missed a call. It had barely been an hour; if there were arrangements to be made, they hadn’t been made this quickly, I suspected, or Master Nkendi would have told me that she’d be here tonight.
I was helpless to save Tam, and it tore me apart.
After what felt like hours of pacing, I settled at the edge of the bed again and tried to calm myself. I breathed, and counted, and went through the mental exercises by rote that were meant to help stabilize my psychic energy and keep me from breaking down.
The tension only seemed to grow. It became painful. I wanted to scream, to break things, to just let out this pent-up emotion. But they’d only drag me out of here and send me back to the cabal if I lost my shit.
There had to be something. Even if I couldn’t break whatever spell the burned mage had put on him. Surely, I could at least contact him in there, remind him that I was here, that I—
I bit my lip as a dangerous thought occurred to me.
The Big Wall of Bad rose up in response. Behind it, there were memories, mental constructs, years of training. And a lot of bad. It wasn’t called the Big Wall of Bad for no reason. It protected me, held back a tide of traumatic experiences that were literally incomprehensible, like my first glimpse at the abyss. I didn’t know what was behind the wall, exactly. That was the point of it. But I knew that a whole broad chunk of my life had been stored there to keep from doing me any harm.
But tangled up with it was a lot else. Parts of my relationship with Tam that I still hadn’t gotten back, for a start.
I contemplated the wall, considering. Wisdom had never been a strong suit of mine, historically. I tended to leap before I looked. If I looked at all. That had gotten me into a lot of trouble, clearly. And doing it again now was borderline suicidal probably.
And yet, I watched Tam’s face. Expressionless, not a whisper of thought on the surface of his mind. Not a single vibration of psychic energy leaving him. He was trapped deep. Like the burned mage said, to him it could be weeks, even years. There were no limits to how the dreaming mind could manipulate time. I had been in my own head for what felt like months, but it was only a week in real time, and that had been in a mind that simply lacked the proper tools to measure one minute to the next.