Blood & Bond

by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

  On the shelf below sat her own sketched map of the Ryuven city where she had stayed. It was incomplete and rough, but it was their first glimpse of the Ryuven world. The lines were blurred, however, and she realized it was not her own drawing, but a tracing on onion paper lying atop her own map. Why had her father bothered to trace her incomplete map?

  She turned back to her ink and brushes. She would try the ink again anyway. It was a small spell, not too risky.

  Ariana carefully inked a rune and blew to dry it. Shifting the paper to a separate worktable, judiciously away from the inkwell, she placed her hand over the figure and began to form a spell. In her mind’s eye, thin strands of color began to wrap together, forming the shape of the rune and knotting into—

  Flame burst from the paper and licked at her palm, making her yelp and jerk her hand away. The half-finished magic spiraled away and a shelved bottle shattered. Ariana gasped and recalled the spell, collapsing it upon itself and absorbing the errant energy. It tingled up her arm as she upended a jar of sand over the burning rune.

  The damage curtailed, she stepped back and sighed miserably. She confirmed that the flames were extinguished and then scooped the sand together to scrape back into the jar.

  “Hello, Father,” she said to herself in a mocking tone. “I came for help on a containment issue. Sorry about the mess.”

  A clear liquid dripped from the shelf and broken glass. She picked up a rag, hoping the spilled contents had not been too valuable, and went to check the label.

  A shock wave rolled across the room, staggering her. She whirled as jars and bottles rattled around the workshop. She was certain the fire had been out, and surely a single rune could not cause this—!

  Pressure squeezed at her eardrums. Ariana gulped and raised her hands, though she hardly knew what magic to form or what would actually come. It could not be Ryuven—the shield was raised, it was perfectly functional, it could not be Ryuven...!

  The ceiling seemed to open, timbers rippling in bending light, and a flash of membranous wings made Ariana blink and shrink back. Ryuven! It was impossible, but somehow, somehow they had found a way through the shield.

  There was no time to call for help—her father’s board of harmonic crystals was across the room, beyond the appearing enemy. The shield had slowed the Ryuven’s entry, but he was coming, and this moment of stretching between worlds was her best chance to attack. She raised her hands, eying the winged form between her outstretched fingers, and reached frantically for magic.

  And then the ceiling wavered and she saw his face.

  “Tamaryl!” She dropped her hands, dissipating the frail magic, and rushed forward. What was he doing? “Tam!”

  He seemed to push downward through an invisible boundary, becoming clearer to her vision and lowering slightly beneath the ceiling. She could see now the lines etched on his face, concentration and determination as he fought his way, layer by layer, through the shield. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut and his teeth gritted, exerting all his considerable strength.

  “Tamaryl!” She reached for him, but her fingers passed smoothly through his clenched fist. He cried and jerked his hand away, and she watched as the skin seemed to trail behind the quick movement, resolving itself once more as it caught him.

  The mages! Surely they would feel the arrival of a Ryuven so near, especially one so powerful as the Pairvyn ni’Ai! But as she started for the door, she realized she felt no telltale swell of power. The disruption of the shield was specific to the point of intrusion, and all of Tamaryl’s natural essence was feeding directly into the shield, masking his arrival.

  She stood unhappily, afraid to attempt to help, unable to move. He dropped another few inches, his face twisted with effort, and he clawed at something invisible between them, ripping at air. Iridescent strands appeared around him, streaming backward from his arms, his face, his wings, pulling like taffy into the outer plys of the shield. They stretched impossibly far, clinging to him and drawing him back, but with a final grunting cry he broke forward. The strands whipped backward and vanished, and Tamaryl dropped leadenly to the floor.

  Ariana rushed forward, kneeling and reaching for him but, remembering how contact had hurt him after the sealing, not quite touching him. He had made no effort at all to catch himself. Had the shield killed him after all?

  She could not help him without touching him. She tentatively took his shoulder, noting blood at his ear, and rolled him from his prone position. Blood streamed from his nose as well, though that could be from the fall, she reasoned desperately. And the other ear, and his nose, and—and tiny rivulets of blood showed in the corners of his half-opened, unseeing eyes.

  The shield was designed to penetrate a crossing Ryuven and shred his innards or leave them outside as he came through. It was only by Tamaryl’s massive expenditure of power that he had impressed it and finally punctured to the center. He had not been able to blunt its effects entirely.

  But he was not dead yet. Ariana looked at her father’s shelf of medicinal supplies. There weren’t many—the White Mage was more occupied with innovative magical defenses and theoretical experiments than routine healing—but she should be able to render some help.

  She did not waste time with the few healing amulets. They worked in harmony with the natural healing of a human body, and she did not know how they would interact with the wildly different magical healing of a Ryuven. She remembered Tam lying broken at the base of a steep valley, beaten by hateful Ryuven and drained by Oniwe’aru. Maru had given him power, raw power, to let his body begin healing.

  Power, then. She looked about her father’s workroom. Raw power... Over months they compressed power into amulets, creating a reservoir which was then magically manipulated toward the appropriate system. That was one way to handle raw power...

  She took down a jar of deep emerald salve. Maru had directed his power into Tamaryl’s face, but he was a Ryuven, presumably more comfortable with the transfer of power than Ariana in her first attempt. She would not dare to experiment so near the brain, and the damage was likely to be worst in his torso, as that was where the shield had hurt him when they’d first created it. That was where it was designed to kill.

  She scooped out a handful of the glistening salve. His skin was feverish as she first touched it, and then as she spread the salve she hit icy, clammy patches and then hot again. She didn’t pause to wonder at the mottled temperature but spread the ointment evenly, making sure it was level across his skin. She did not want to concentrate power into one area over another.

  The salve would draw the power she generated, pulling it like a lodestone drawing needles or honey trapping a fly. Usually they used only a tiny dab on an amulet—her father would not be pleased to see so much of the precious material gone—but she needed to do in minutes what they usually infused over months. She needed to generate a phenomenal amount of power and she could not lose a particle of it.

  A phenomenal amount of power... She had been warned. But she could not watch Tamaryl die. There was no time to weigh the risks; she had to save her friend.

  If only there had been a way to store his own power she’d drained during the binding...! But there was no time to regret the impossible now. His shallow breathing was taking on a wheezing, gurgling sound, and she did not want to think about what fluid was filling his lungs. She spread her hands over him and concentrated.

  Power sparkled around her when her eyes closed. She began to gather it, condensing it within her illusory grasp, funneling it downward toward the emerald ointment which sucked at her weak stream like thirsty cloth, wicking it into Tamaryl’s ravaged organs. She pulled at the atmosphere, keeping a steady drizzle transferring to the inert body.

  She steadied herself, balancing the collection of power, and spared a quick internal glance at Tamaryl’s form. There was no shining power there, as there had been when she’d drawn it from him. The thin stream she fed into him was diluted instantly in the magic-hungry Ryuven. There wa
s not even the flickering light which had struggled in Maru. He had no magical signature at all. It was as if he were human, or dead.

  Not dead. She could, if she drew back from funneling power, hear the bubbling gurgle of his strained breathing. It was worse than before. In a moment, he would drown in his own blood—

  If only she had the nearly unlimited magical atmosphere of the Ryuven world! If only she had the ability she once had. If only she could open herself somehow again, as she had done to save Maru, and command so much power...

  Oh no—Holy—please— Thoughts slipped brokenly in her mind.

  She gulped and braced herself, throwing wide her arms. Magic was dangerous. All of her magical training had been about control, about safety and preservation. But she had unthinkingly done this once before, in another world with other magic—

  Brilliant sparkles of power flew across her closed eyelids, burning her skin where they struck her. A bright stream coalesced around her and spiraled downward, plunging into Tamaryl in an ever-widening torrent of energy. Ariana gasped for breath as power spread through her, an endorphic exhilarating rush that fascinated and terrified her.

  Ariana. She heard her name whispered from a long, long distance. Tamaryl? Her father? Shianan?

  Abruptly another flame of power rose beside her. The cataract of energy twisted, bending to the direction of this second will, and she felt the power tamed, no less than what it had been but now under greater control, diving into a ready channel now rather than splashing over the well which could not admit all at once. The emerald ointment sucked up the energy and poured it into Tamaryl.

  And then the channel was filling, and the power began to rebound. Tamaryl could absorb no more. The second will ceased to direct the stream, letting it spread where it would. Ariana...

  She stopped drawing the cascade and tried to close herself to the influx. But the power would not be deterred—it pressed upon her, prying into her pores, filling her beyond capacity and stretching her painfully—

  An audible crack shattered her concentration and she gasped, falling backward. But arms caught her as she fell, pulling her close to white robes. “Ariana,” breathed her father. “Ariana, can you hear me?”

  “Father?”

  “Oh, sweet Holy One.” He embraced her close. “You—I can’t—oh, Ariana. Can you hold yourself? Are you all right?”

  She did not understand his concern. She felt well enough. Well, her skin hurt in a peculiar way, as if it had been inflated around her, stretched uncomfortably and still too large, but that was all. “I’m fine.”

  “We’ll see about that.” He looked down at Tamaryl’s unmoving form. “He came through the shield?”

  She nodded. Her head felt a little loose as she did. “I was waiting for you, and he came—I saw him break through the shield, but it—well, you can see.”

  “Only the Pairvyn ni’Ai,” he muttered. “You had the right idea, anyway. I’m sure it saved his life.”

  She looked at him. “But he’s not moving. Shouldn’t he...”

  “I doubt he will move for quite some time,” Hazelrig said. “We put a tremendous amount of power into him, true, but he is rebuilding himself from the inside outward. Only someone so powerful could perhaps have come, and I doubt a silth or aru would heal more quickly. Let me get him on a table, where we can deal with him more easily.”

  Ariana tried to stand as her father lifted the Ryuven, but her legs were wobbly and disobedient. He left Tamaryl supine on a worktable and turned back to her. “You,” he said firmly, “know far better than to ever do such a thing. Especially when your ability is so tenuous! If I hadn’t come—if I hadn’t cut your magic and risked injuring you...” He checked himself, looking older with worry. “I know you were thinking of helping him. But what would it have helped if I’d come to find two bodies instead of one? And one my own daughter?”

  She understood. She had been caught in the stream of her own magic, unable to control it and unable to end it. It would have poured through her until it killed her, just as every instructor warned novices with dire stories and threats. Her father had saved not only Tamaryl’s life, by directing the raw power, but hers, by ending her wild spell.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice was subdued to her ears. “And thank you. For helping both of us.”

  He nodded and hugged her again. “Now, let’s make him as comfortable as anyone with half a kidney and a pulverized liver can be.”

  They wrapped him warmly in their mages’ cloaks, cushioned his head gently on some workroom towels, and bathed away the blood, which mercifully had stopped streaming from every orifice. Ariana turned her back as her father stripped and cleaned the wounded Ryuven, thinking again of Shianan’s inference. Of course they had not—Tamaryl had not tried to force her. How could Shianan have believed such a thing?

  “You may turn back, Ariana,” came her father’s voice, and she did. Tamaryl’s breath still wheezed in his chest. Hazelrig frowned. “I don’t like the sound of that. Let’s turn him onto his shoulder. Have him? Ready?”

  As Tamaryl’s head lolled toward the edge of the table, more blood began to drain from his mouth. Ariana stared in sick fascination as a thin gleaming rivulet ran from the corner of his lips. “He looks like a slaughtered pig,” she whispered.

  “We’ll hope that he gets over that.” Her father sighed. “Why did he come back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you?” He gave her a piercing look.

  Ariana stared back at him. “No, he couldn’t say anything—‍” She stopped, wondering suddenly at the look in her father’s eyes. She thought back to Tamaryl’s final words to her before departing for his own world. No, his final action—when he had bent and kissed her, leaving her with only the taste of him...

  “No,” she protested, only half-meaning it. “No, he said he never wanted to see us again.”

  “Seeing us again would have been in battle.” He gave her a narrow, paternal look. “But I wasn’t the one he kissed.”

  She flushed hotly. “I—I didn’t—he never...”

  Her father had mercy and turned his piercing eyes away from her. “Let’s not speculate until he can speak for himself. In the meantime, we’ll have to keep him protected. We can’t move him in this condition.”

  Ariana looked down at him. She had been helpless and in pain in the Ryuven world, and Tamaryl had somehow kept her safe.

  She had used her magic, had pushed it dangerously beyond what she should have. Somewhere too deep to really feel it yet, fresh terror seized her. She had done the worst, had destroyed her magic.

  She did not have time to think on it. Tamaryl’s breath burbled wetly and then he began to cough.

  “Get a towel,” ordered Hazelrig, reaching for him.

  Ariana turned to find one as spatters of bright blood struck her dark robes, disappearing into the black. She turned back and held the towel over his mouth, catching the droplets and gobbets of gore as he tried to clear his lungs.

  Her father seemed pleased. “That’s good. At least he’s trying to breathe now, and has the strength to do it properly.”

  Ariana left him with the towel and took another to mop up the scattered spray over the table and floor. Too many questions hung over her, smothering her.

  When Tamaryl’s breathing had steadied and quieted, Ariana and her father covered him and then looked at each other. They had a Ryuven again, one who had to be hidden.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  COLE WAS STRUGGLING, Luca observed. It had to be disorienting, for a man accustomed to a dizzying mix of authority and responsibility and vulnerability as an enslaved overseer, to find himself reduced to the lowest of common labor and then sold to a fellow slave. Now Cole was trying his best to be careful of the man chained beside him, taking care to avoid jostling Luca in the line and calling him “master” despite the snickers of the slaves around them. Luca guessed he had weighed their present derision against the weeks or years which lay ahead under Luca�
�s authority and judged it better to ingratiate himself.

  The thin, dark-haired slave was the worst. He made a point of repeatedly stepping into Cole or Luca, and when Cole meaningfully bumped him in return, he whined and stumbled and earned Cole a switch across the shoulders. Cole waited until the nearest overseer had gone behind another wagon, and then he did something Luca could not quite see which drew a gasp and whimper, a tiny movement which kept the other slave at bay for a few hours. Luca was uncomfortably reminded that Cole had been an overseer, a driver, one of the enemy.

  “I’ll find you,” the thin slave muttered as they stood close while a front wagon was rocked out of a hole. “I’ll earn my freedom, and then I’ll find you and I’ll make you pay.”

  Cole snorted. “You won’t.”

  “I knew a litter bearer who was freed when—‍”

  “Oh, it happens, sure, but not to you, and anyway you’d be a slave again inside ten days,” Cole sneered. “I saw it, slaves brought in to have cuffs pulled off and next month we’d have them back to sell to someone else.”

  “How is that?” Luca’s slavery on the road and with the Gehrn had been more isolated.

  Cole checked most of his disdain to answer his new master. “Most slaves are too stupid to manage their own selves. I’ve seen them given their own price and more with their freedom, and they’re bashed with coin. They drink it and whore it and eat viante or worse until they’re starving in a gutter and get picked up, or even sell themselves back.”

  “But, if they have money...”

  Cole laughed. “Master, you should see them. I watched a man handed two thousand pias on his release. Two thousand pias! He’d been some favorite cook or table server or something. Three months later he came through again on a caravan to Vandoga, draft and half-skinned. He’d spent it all and lost his own self in a dice game. There are people too stupid to be freemen.”

  “How can someone lose two thousand pias?” Luca was calculating food and rent and how long it might take to find new work.