Trembling with fury, Ranz interrupted. “A girl has just had her throat slit open, then was dragged off by a madman! How can you stand here calmly discussing theory? We must go after them before they do Laria more harm.”
Blind Seer growled, and Firekeeper translated. “Ranz, if you know how to sniff out her trail, then lead the hunt and we will run at your heels. Otherwise, we must give Wythcombe his say. You don’t think he’s worried about Laria?”
“I am,” Wythcombe said, straightening and extending a hand placatingly toward Ranz. “I’m shocked and horrified. I have seen two things that I never thought I would—Kabot awash in human blood, and a transportation spell worked without any previous preparation. I’m sorry if I focus on logistics and theory. And I apologize for failing your expectations as to what a great mage should be able to do.”
Kalyndra cut in before Ranz could speak. “Wythcombe, you may not have seen anything like how Kabot behaved, but I have, many times. That look on Kabot’s face was terribly, terribly familiar. Although you of Rhinadei may not believe this, not all of us who use blood magic are the same. Many of us use very little blood in our workings, and most of that from willing donors. Much of our blood magic takes the form of using blood as a means of blending our mana with another’s. Stealing blood from an unwilling donor is supposed to provide a unique, heady sensation, one that can drive a spellcaster to near madness. That’s what I saw on Kabot’s face.”
Wythcombe looked sorrowful. “I wondered if that was so. Although I have not practiced any form of blood magic, I have shared mana with other mages when doing collaborative workings. Even that provides a peculiar sensation that takes time to grow accustomed to.” He shook his head as if to physically banish distracting thoughts. “However, Ranz is right. This is not the time nor place for theories—at least until we discover what theories we need to take us to Laria.”
“And,” Blind Seer added, “although we have chased Hohdoymin and his people away, they will return, and he will want to retrieve this necklace. Best we make that last, at least, impossible. Let us return to the gate and from there to the Nexus Islands. While we are returning, you should tell us everything you know about Kabot and his companions.”
Firekeeper translated, adding, “Because you must have learned something about them when you were with the elders of Rhinadei.”
Wythcombe nodded, then whistled for Rusty. The goat seemed relieved to have someone take responsibility for him. “I would have done so before, but there didn’t seem a need. Very well, originally, the group consisted of at least five.”
Blind Seer set himself on point, while Farborn winged ahead to make sure no one was lurking near the plateau. Firekeeper dropped back to cover the rear, snorting in frustration at the human fascination with unnecessary detail.
“Old man, originally later. Tell us first about those who remain.”
The awareness that the cut on her throat had been cleaned and bandaged gave Laria very little comfort. The Spell Wielders had never been wasteful of the lives of their slaves. They had too few and were too aware how vulnerable that made them. The situation must be worse for Kabot and his allies. At least the Spell Wielders could periodically trade for new slaves. Kabot and his two companions had only her.
Laria remembered hardly anything after the moment when Kabot had put his knife to her throat and she had realized that the warmth she felt against her skin was her own blood. At some point, she had passed out… Or maybe that had been the spell draining her? Now, as she came back to awareness of herself and her surroundings, Laria kept her eyes closed and her breathing even. Two people were talking, their voices unfamiliar, but their Pellish recognizable by its distinctive Rhinadeian accent.
“Kabot’s still out,” came a deep male voice. “The girl, too. She seems to be resting normally. He looks a wreck.”
“Laria,” a woman’s voice said firmly, and Laria had to stop herself from replying. “The girl has a name. Remember, Uaid, from the start we resolved we would not dehumanize those whose blood we used. Kabot seems to have forgotten that, but I have not.”
“I’m sorry, Daylily,” the deep voice—Uaid’s—responded deferentially, even gratefully.
Laria made a mental note of this. Hierarchy was important. Uaid was junior here, and apparently had no desire to take over. Kabot was not as firmly in charge as Wythcombe had assumed. Both Daylily and Uaid seemed less than delighted with his recent actions.
“Where in the name of the seven acceptable rites are we?” Uaid said plaintively. “We’re fairly deep underground. I can tell that much. However, where…”
“A ruin of some sort,” Daylily added. “Could Kabot have brought us back to Azure Towers?”
Laria’s momentary spark of hope faded with Uaid’s reply.
“No. There’s nothing familiar about the feel of these ruins. Different soil. Not as much burned matter. Nowhere near as much latent mana. I suppose it’s possible that we’re in a section of the university a fair distance from where we were before, but my guess is that we’re somewhere completely different.”
Daylily didn’t argue. This told Laria that, at least where Uaid’s presumed specialization was concerned, he was definitely an expert. Not good. She might have appealed to an apprentice, especially one who doubted his teachers.
When Daylily next spoke her tone was hesitant, tentative. “Have you heard anything from the Voice? I’ve sort of reached out a few times, but I’m not feeling anything. I thought he might know where we are.”
Uaid didn’t reply verbally, which Laria figured meant he’d indicated a negative. If he knew, he’d have said something, wouldn’t he?
But something Daylily had said had set Laria’s heart racing. The Voice? By that could she mean the Meddler?
Like everyone on the Nexus Islands, Laria had heard the tales of how the Meddler had contacted the jaguar Truth, as well as others he had sought to manipulate for his own ends. Truth always spoke of this as hearing a voice, so had Firekeeper. Was this the same Voice? Her teacher? The Meddler? Had he allied himself with the rebels? That wasn’t at all impossible. Many of the Meddler tales that Urgana had told involved the Meddler trying to help the underdog in some particular situation—often to the detriment of those he tried to help.
But the Meddler had been kind to Laria, teaching her how to cope with her newly awakened talent. He also seemed to have taken a fancy to the Nexus Islanders. Then Laria remembered how oddly Arasan had been acting lately. And he had chosen not to come with them to Tey-yo. Was that because he needed to concentrate on helping the three rebels? Rebels appealed to the Meddler. At least that’s what Urgana’s stories all seemed to say. The Meddler helped the underdog, but did the Nexus Islanders still qualify as underdogs? They controlled the Nexus, after all. Maybe the Meddler had decided to move on, find himself a new project.
Oddly enough, thinking about the Meddler and how he’d taught her, gave Laria a fresh sense of purpose to counter the hopeless dread she’d felt upon awakening. If she stayed here like a drooping flower, everything she feared was going to happen. So she needed to do something. But what?
Well, first, maybe she should let on that she was awake. Stories were the only places where captors discussed all their plans and vulnerabilities in front of the clever heroine. If she “woke up,” she could at least learn something about her surroundings—maybe even escape. Sure, she was scared, but that wasn’t going to change if she played dead.
Before she could think herself out of it, Laria tried to shove herself into a sitting position. Volsyl had been taken from her, but she hadn’t been restrained. She didn’t know whether to feel relieved or insulted. Then, she opened her eyes and understood. She hadn’t been restrained because even if she managed to escape, there was nowhere for her to go.
Firekeeper almost wished for an encounter with Hohdoymin’s band or, lacking that, a clash with one of the wild denizens of the Tey-yo jungle. These were problems she could fight or intimidate or, at a last resort, out
run. Any of these were preferable to what she would face when they returned to the Nexus Islands and she had to tell Ikitata that she had lost the cobbler’s elder daughter.
However, doubtless because of the amount of human activity, the jungle offered them no threats larger than insect bites, and Kalyndra had an ointment to deal with those. Farborn winged back to report that Hohdoymin and his associates had not, in fact, gone as far as the village by the lake. Instead, they had turned down a side trail and seemed to be heading for a large village. Hohdoymin was in disgrace but, in light of everything else that had happened, even Kalyndra couldn’t take too much delight in this.
“If matters were different,” she said with a fierceness that delighted Firekeeper, “I would seek reparations for what was done to Nalrmyna, but revenge for the dead must wait upon rescuing the living.”
After they had transitioned through the gate, the others went to brief a hastily assembled council. Firekeeper and Blind Seer sought Ikitata at the workshop where she had once labored with her husband. By great good luck, Ikitata was alone when they arrived. She looked up from the heavy boot she was resoling, looked side to side then, and not seeing her daughter with them, seemed to understand what they had come to tell her even before they spoke.
“Is Laria dead?” The words were spoken with the calm Firekeeper had learned meant that the speaker was actually screaming inside.
“We do not think so,” Firekeeper said and pretended not to see the tears that flooded Ikitata’s eyes. Humans were strangely sensitive about such things. “Nor was she badly hurt, when last we have seen her, but we have lost her. She has been taken from us.”
Ikitata listened without a single word as Firekeeper explained how Laria had been kidnapped. When the wolf-woman finished, the cobbler raised her hammer and drove a nail into the boot’s sole with a precision that was worse than any sort of violence.
“You will find her,” Ikitata stated.
“I will. We will.”
“That’s a promise.”
“On my life.”
Ikitata nodded. “Good. I believe you. Go find her. Bring Laria back or word of her. Do many know of this?”
“No. We bring ourselves through the gate and the only one near was Enigma, who is no one’s gossip.”
“Then tell them to keep the news to as few people as possible. Kitatos and Nenean have been very brave but, although they show it less openly than Laria, they are still suffering from their father’s death. Best they not worry that they may have also lost their big sister.”
“But you?”
Ikitata forced a thin smile. “I am One of my little pack, Firekeeper. For them I can brave my fears. Now go, before the word gets out and I have two frightened pups.”
Gratefully, Firekeeper turned and fled. Loping beside her, Blind Seer said, “That one believes Laria may be dead. But I do not think so. Dead blood is of no use to these would-be blood mages.”
Firekeeper shook her head. “I think rather, Ikitata fears that Laria lives, but will be driven mad. We must find her before Laria is taken to places from where she may never return.”
The council meeting was so secret that the door wasn’t even guarded. Firekeeper and Blind Seer walked in to hear Wythcombe and Kalyndra answering questions from Ynamynet, Skea, and Urgana. Ranz sat leaning against the wall, his expression flat with shock. Firekeeper didn’t fool herself that this was because Ranz was suddenly aware that he was in love with Laria. Rather, from the time Ranz had learned of what his father had done to save him and his mother, Ranz had privately romanticized blood magic. Not even the ruined landscape of Rhinadei had brought home to him the reality of the horrid abuses that could arise. He might even have begun to idolize the unseen Kabot as a hero who was speaking out for what Ranz wanted to believe.
But bright blood over the shining steel of a sharp blade had washed those dreams away, and Ranz was trying to accept the reality revealed in the eyes of a spellcaster drunk on access to the mana that lingered just below a victim’s skin.
Firekeeper waited for Wythcombe to finish, then said, “I have telled Ikitata. She says, please, do not tell that Laria is taken, so that Kitatos and Nenean not worry.”
“Sensible,” Ynamynet said. “I think we can keep this secret—especially if the rest of you depart as quickly as possible, so Laria’s absence will not be noted.”
“Depart,” Kalyndra said, “but to where? We assume that the rebels were using the artifact they took from Azure Towers, but that isn’t enough to tell us where they went.”
The door opened and Arasan entered, closing the door behind him. He leaned back against it as if to make a further barrier with his body. “It isn’t. However, I may know how to trace their general location. Then, if we’re lucky, there will be a gate nearby that we can use to reach them before Laria is harmed. Up to this point, the artifacts have been close to where there were gates—the university in Azure Towers, Nalrmyna in Tey-yo. We can hope the same is true for this one as well.”
The room fell silent with the sort of stillness that isn’t just no one speaking, but occurs when everyone has frozen because they have too much to say. Ynamynet was the first to recover.
“Arasan, I can’t believe you were listening at the door all this time. Even if you were, I think I would have known if you penetrated the silence I put around us. How is it that you know so much?”
When Arasan met Ynamynet’s gaze, the Meddler looked out of his eyes. “I have some very peculiar sources of information. And, even though we’re all worried about Laria and want to rescue her as quickly as possible, I think I’d better tell you about them.”
“If listening will get us fast to Laria,” Firekeeper said, “talk.”
“All I ask is that you don’t argue with me until I’m done,” the Meddler said, moving from where he had slouched against the door to a seat at the table. “Then you can all tell me what I’m telling you is impossible as much as you want.”
“That seems fair,” Wythcombe agreed mildly.
Nods from the rest encouraged the Meddler to begin.
“As most of you know and some of you suspect,” the Meddler began, “there are two of us in this body. The one is Arasan. The other is someone all of you persist in calling the Meddler. I’m stressing this point because, practically from the first time I met any of you, I kept saying that while I may be a Meddler, I am hardly the only one. My long-ago friends called me Chsss.”
He looked at Urgana, who had made it her passion—although she would have likely termed it her religious duty—to make sure everyone heard at least one of the many Meddler tales in her repertoire. That her storytelling had been popular among some segments of the community had been an unexpected bonus, one that had assured that the stories would be retold.
“Chsss,” the archivist repeated. “An archaic word in the language of the Liglim meaning a light that conceals as much as reveals. Sometimes it’s translated, ‘twilight’ or ‘dusk,’ but ‘half-light’ is better, because ‘chsss’ contains no reference to time of day. Go on, Chsss.”
So acknowledged, Chsss continued. “Some Meddlers were murdered. Others, like myself, were imprisoned beyond death. None of those who hunted the Meddler ever seemed to ask themselves the obvious question why, if they had killed the Meddler, new Meddlers always appeared. Or if they did ask, they took this as reinforcement of the belief that the Meddler was a sort of deity.”
Firekeeper shifted to lean more comfortably against Blind Seer, but Chsss took her movement as an unvoiced criticism.
“I am not getting off the point, dear Firekeeper. My point is twofold. One, there has never been the Meddler, but rather a loose association of those who acted where others refused to take a stand. Two, I was not the only Meddler to be sealed away. Nor was I the only one to survive long after my death.”
“Wait,” Ranz interrupted. “I know we’re not supposed to ask questions, but this isn’t a question. It’s a request for clarification. Are you saying there was a sodal
ity of those who liked to meddle? A sort of formal organization? Why?”
Chsss gave Ranz an irreverent grin. “Short answer—which means it has all sorts of holes in it—the reason for our ‘sodality,’ as you call it, was mana. As I just mentioned, there were places, cultures, where the Meddler was worshipped as a deity. Organized worship funnels mana. Creating a sodality to make certain such worship was encouraged was a very Meddler thing to do. There’s another reason but, before Firekeeper starts growling, let me get back to why I might be able to trace Laria.”
Ranz nodded. Chsss’s grin vanished as he continued.
“Until Firekeeper accidentally freed me, I was very effectively sealed away. After that, I was not at my best—again, if you want details, ask me later. Joining with Arasan gave me a body, but it also meant that I lost a lot of my magical abilities—ask later. That meant that I wasn’t aware that when Wythcombe set us on Kabot’s trail, he had also, inadvertently, put us on the trail of another Meddler.”
“What!” the chorus was general. Even Farborn shrieked. Firekeeper felt Blind Seer rumble a low, throaty growl that meant, “We need to deal with more than one of them?” She wondered if Chsss would be flattered to know that Blind Seer, at least, believed his claim of belonging to a pack. She wondered if she believed. After all, having another Meddler to blame would be a very Meddler sort of thing to do. However, confirming Chsss’s assertions could wait until they had rescued Laria, for Firekeeper did believe that Chsss wanted his protégé out of Kabot’s hands. He had always shown a capacity for attachment that bordered on obsession.
“Kabot is the sort who attracts Meddlers,” Chsss went on. “He’s an idealist who, even if he knows other people may get hurt, doesn’t let that stop him from pursuing his ideals. He’s smart. He gathers followers. And he’s not the type to be satisfied with just one lofty goal. Even if Kabot had found the university at Azure Towers active and learned how to use blood magic, he wouldn’t have settled down, taken a teaching position or opened a shop. No, he’d have gone back to Rhinadei, recruited others, fought—possibly literally—to have blood magic accepted.”
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