“No. That is, you could break the rock and get rid of it that way, but it doesn’t wipe or smudge and it smells…take a sniff.” Wit pressed his nose to the wall and inhaled. Sienne eyed him dubiously, but imitated his actions.
Instead of old, damp stone, she smelled fresh air and roses, and under that the musty smell of old paper. She breathed it in again and said, “This is definitely magic.”
“So what does it do?” Wit asked.
Sienne stepped back so she could see more of the writing. “It’s a ritual,” she said. “That’s like…a set of instructions for doing wizardry more powerful than a spell. The ancients used them—at least, that’s what we’ve learned in our studies.” No need to tell Wit they had a more recent witness to non-necromantic ritual in Alaric. “I think this is for summoning rain. That’s supposed to be impossible!”
“Could you do this ritual?”
“I don’t think so.” Sienne ran her fingers across the lines of text. “It’s in Ginatic, and I don’t read that very well. No one does, really. But I can tell this calls for spells I don’t have. And this—” she tapped one line—“calls for a spell I’ve never heard of. So summoning rain will have to stay a mystery.”
“Well, there are lots of them,” Wit said, gesturing at the room. “They’re spaced far apart, but they’re all in the same handwriting and they all have the same structure.”
Sienne moved to the next one. “I can’t tell what this is for. The next one is to summon…something. I think it’s to call a creature to the place where you perform the ritual from wherever it is in the world. That’s powerful wizardry. Wit, this place is amazing.”
“Is it? So it’s useful?”
How could she explain the weeks and months of searching for evidence that non-necromantic ritual existed, let alone that the particular ritual they wanted could be found? “It is,” she said, her heart too full for more words.
She examined another set of words. “I think this must have been a school,” she said absently, half her mind occupied with translating the Ginatic text. “Everything written on the walls, for easy reference…and these all do very basic—”
She stopped, numb with shock, in front of the next ritual. A single phrase had leapt out at her as if outlined in gold—I am forever faithful. The words engraved on a ritual cup that had started them on this quest. She reached out to touch the letters, written just at the level of her eyes, with a shaking hand.
From the center, to the heart, to open what is closed, I am forever faithful. That the center will accept the offering, let this cup by my hand open the path. That was it. The full litany.
She traced the lines back up the wall to the beginning, almost too high for her to reach. This was the scrap of ritual she’d found, this beginning: two people pricking each other’s fingers, each drawing a symbol on the other’s palm. The scraps she’d found hadn’t showed the symbol, like it was so common it wasn’t necessary, but here it was, a spiral with a diagonal bar through it. It wasn’t the same ritual; the one she’d found, that she’d named the binding ritual, called for the two participants’ wrists to be bound together symbolically, by a ribbon or scarf, and this didn’t mention anything like that. But there were the words, that this ritual said were spoken by one and repeated by the other: From the center, to the heart…
“Dear Averran,” she murmured. “This is it.”
“Are you all right?” Wit asked. “You’re crying.”
Sienne shook her head and dashed a few tears away. “I’m fine. This is…I’ve been looking for this for so long.” She reached for her pack and realized she’d left it in her tent, her actual tent, not the one she’d borrowed from Faith. “Damn it. I have nothing to write with.”
“I don’t either,” Wit said. “Sorry. You need to remember this?”
“I can memorize it, but I’ll feel more secure if I write it down, too.” Sienne opened her spellbook and leafed through it as if a blank, untreated page might leap out at her. She drew in a deep breath and willed herself calm. “All right. I should look at the rest, just in case. But then I have to memorize this one.”
She made her way around the room, which was a big oval she was increasingly sure was bigger on the inside. Moving slowly and examining each ritual drove her mad with impatience to get back to the one that mattered, but she made herself pay attention to them at least long enough to establish she didn’t know what they were for. Another three down the line, she found the binding ritual—the full ritual, not the fragments she’d pieced together. That one, she also knew by heart, and it was nice to see she’d guessed properly.
Finally, she raced back to her ritual and read over the lines, committing them to memory. This had to be the ritual the wizard had corrupted, and thanks to Alaric, they knew a few of the alterations. But the entire second half of the ritual—the wizard’s ritual, the one that bound the Sassaven to him even as it unlocked their full magical potential—was a mystery. Or had been. She still wasn’t sure if the wizard had made alterations to that second half, but at least they now knew what the original was.
She closed her eyes, turned her back on the wall, and recited what she’d memorized. “Is that what it says?” Wit said. “It sounds…I don’t know. Ordinary and extraordinary all at once.”
“I’m coming back with paper and pencil,” Sienne said, opening her eyes. “Though I won’t try to jaunt into this place. I think the best I could hope for is that it would just fail, and the worst…this place isn’t natural.”
“You see what I mean,” Wit said. “I take it you want to go back to camp.”
“Can we? I mean, if there are other things to see…”
“The rooms upstairs are where some of us go for sex. Not something you’d be interested in.” Wit grinned at her, and she laughed.
“No, not now. Once we get outside, I can ferry us back to your camp.”
“You really are in a hurry.”
The words of the ritual bounced around inside her head, fighting to spring free and vanish from memory. “You have no idea.”
After the spongy flagstones, the hard, bumpy cobbles of the courtyard were almost a comfort. They strolled across to the gate, but before they got there, Sienne turned and looked back over the keep. “I wonder what magic does it,” she mused. “Or if that corridor is some kind of transport that takes you elsewhere. If you climbed out through the windows, where would you end up?”
“Now it makes me nervous to go there again,” Wit said.
“It’s probably perfectly safe. Unless it does lead somewhere else, and you were inside when the little hallway collapsed. And it doesn’t look in danger of that.”
Sienne turned to find Wit had stopped. Facing them, outside the gate, was a werebear with iron-gray fur, standing on its hind paws. It reminded her of the man she’d noticed the night before, the one with gray hair who’d stared back at her. Wit was very still. “Is something wrong?” Sienne asked, pitching her voice so the bear couldn’t hear her. She hoped.
“I don’t know,” Wit said in the same low voice. “Silver, shift forms and greet our guest,” he called out, emphasizing “guest” in the way Sienne’s mother had always used to warn her when she’d violated protocol in some way.
Silver stood watching them. He made no move to shift into human form. Five more bears, dark or reddish-brown or even pale gold, emerged from the forest behind him. Sienne’s heart pounded faster. Six werebears against the two of them. It felt like an attack. Their silence unnerved her more than a screaming rage would have.
She took a step forward and brought her spellbook up, letting it fall open to fury. Silver dropped to all fours and charged.
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The other werebears immediately followed Silver’s lead. Sienne forced herself to read calmly, even though Silver had closed half the distance between them and she wasn’t sure she’d finish the spell before his jaws closed on her throat. Beside her, Wit was taking off his boots and swearing viciously. He flung the second boot away
and shifted, disregarding his remaining clothes. As his body transformed, the clothes tore along the seams, not quite falling off him, but definitely ruined. He roared, and ran at Silver.
Silver checked in his run and altered his course to attack Wit. Sienne wished she could curse and cast spells at the same time. Wit was going to be caught in the spell, and there was no way to warn him.
The spell burst away from her as she spat out the last acid-etched syllables. It fractured into half a dozen bolts of magical energy that sang through the air with a chime like steel striking steel. Each bolt slammed into a bear, making them sway before collapsing motionless on the ground. That left one bear standing. Unfortunately, that one wasn’t Wit. It was the golden-furred bear, who’d been farthest back when they began their charge. He halted now, taking a few stumbling steps until he lost momentum and stopped.
Sienne flipped the pages to scorch. “You’ve seen what I can do,” she said, hating that her voice shook with anger. The bear might mistake it for fear. “That’s just the beginning. Come any closer, and it’s going to smell like burnt hair around here for years.”
The bear stood poised to advance. He put a single foot forward. Sienne began reading, casting swift glances at her enemy in between syllables. The bear put another foot forward. Then he turned and ran. Sienne lowered her book and breathed out in relief. She had no qualms about defending herself, but she’d never been in a fight without her friends to back her up, and she felt unexpectedly afraid.
She hurried to Wit’s side and tried to check his pulse, but in bear form that turned out to be impossible. Nervously, she lowered her cheek to rest near his nose and relaxed when she felt air sighing in and out. As far as she knew, a force bolt couldn’t kill by itself, but hit someone who had a heart condition with it, or a child, and that fact would be cold comfort.
Now she needed to get Wit back to camp—or was that best? If weres had attacked them, might they also have attacked her friends? Or was she the lucky one because she’d gone merrily into the wilderness without her team? She shook her head. That was crazy thinking. They should go to the camp, and everything else could follow from there.
Wit was far too big for her to carry, even in his less bulky but taller human form. For the briefest moment, she thought about leaving him to jaunt back to the camp and fetch help, but without knowing what the situation was there, she couldn’t be sure she could return immediately. Leaving him surrounded by enemies, any one of whom might recover from fury sooner than he did, was a bad idea.
She walked around him, considering, then opened her spellbook to float. The honey-sweet taste of the transform filled her mouth, calming her somewhat after the terror of the short battle. If you could call it that. The last syllables drifted away on the morning breeze, and Wit’s recumbent form floated three or four inches off the ground, shifting slightly in that same breeze.
Now, getting him back… Sienne nudged him with her toe, then gave a slightly harder shove when that failed to move him more than an inch. Normally when she had to move a load lightened by float, she tied a rope to it, but she had no rope and, again, no means of getting one short of abandoning him. She sighed. This was going to take forever.
She squatted and got her hands under his shoulders. With a heave, she shoved Wit higher so he now lay canted diagonally in the air, his feet brushing a spotty fern and his shoulders just above Sienne’s waist height. She repeated the maneuver on his feet so all of him was at the same height. Then she pushed on his body until he rotated so his feet were pointed in the direction she wanted to go. Walking slowly, she took hold of Wit’s furry shoulders and pushed him away from the keep’s gate and toward the woods.
She hadn’t been paying much attention to their path earlier, a fact she now cursed herself for. She was fairly certain she knew where they’d entered the unnaturally circular clearing, and she headed that way, around the southern end of the keep. Wit wasn’t heavy in this state—float took care of that—but he still had mass, and he tended to keep moving in the direction she pushed him unless she stopped him. The first time he hit a tree, she winced. The fifth time, she wearily accepted it as collateral damage. The last time she’d done this, she’d been towing a corpse that hadn’t cared if she slammed it into walls. Wit was probably going to be bruised after this, no matter how well padded he was with fur.
After about ten minutes of pushing, cursing, and bumping into trees, she was regretting her decision to take Wit along. How long before he regained consciousness? The response to force or fury varied by individual. She hadn’t dared cast the weaker version of the spell that left someone conscious but immobile, so she was stuck with waiting for him to wake up. And now she was lost.
Quickly, she worked the small magic that told her where true north was. If she’d had that working when they came, it would have been far more helpful, but with Wit as her guide, what had been the point? She knew they’d headed north and west, so she aimed south and east and prayed the camp was big enough that she’d hit it even if she was a little off.
The sound of birds in the trees maddened her, all those cheerful little chirps singing out in complete disregard for her troubles. Too bad they couldn’t be useful, guiding her toward camp or warning her of—
She stopped, and grabbed hold of the hair on Wit’s shoulders to stop him as well. Ahead, two dark shapes slinked through the trees, lumbering toward her. They stopped as well, and one werebear rose up on his hind legs, front paws dangling before him in a limp-wristed way that would have been funny if she hadn’t been painfully conscious of the terrible sharp claws tipping those paws. “Hello?” she called out. “Wit needs help. Are you…”
The bears didn’t shift into human form. The one lowered himself to the ground and raised his head, sniffing the air. Sienne opened her spellbook and began reading fury. At the sound of her voice, the two ran at her, slowing to dodge the skinny trees but otherwise terrifyingly fast. Her heart pounding, Sienne spoke the final syllables, and force bolts blasted away from her. Two slammed into the werebears, dropping them both just feet from her. The others impacted on the trees, leaving fracture lines and splitting one completely in half. It crashed to the ground with a solid thump.
Sienne took in a deep, green-scented breath and waited for her heart to slow. That had been close. She hadn’t appreciated before how much she depended on her companions to protect her. As they depended on her. She wished they were with her now. She wished even more she knew what had happened at the camp.
She let her spellbook fall to hang at her side and steered Wit around the fallen bears. If they were hunting her— She stopped again and cursed herself. If they were hunting her, she needed to be impossible to find.
She turned to vanish and began reading off the confusion, blinking away the doubled images the spell left behind. Laying her hand on Wit’s shoulder, she let the spell encompass him, rippling around his body and turning it first translucent, then invisible. Keeping a hand on him so she didn’t lose him, she read it off again, this time turning it on herself.
Vanish did the strangest things to one’s perceptions, making sounds echo slightly and giving objects a faint rainbow aura. She drew in a couple of calming breaths, then tucked her spellbook away inside her vest as she’d carried it back when she was starting out as a scrapper. Her invisibility only extended to things she was wearing, not to things she held in her hands, and even the stupidest werebear would notice a floating book.
She fumbled about a bit until she got a good grip on Wit, then began pushing. Almost immediately, his invisible body hit a tree, jarring her. She clenched her teeth and steered him for the biggest gaps between trees. This was going to take forever, and she might not have forever. Averran, she prayed, protect my friends, wherever they are.
Her whole world narrowed down to her invisible hands gripping Wit’s invisible fur and trying to guess which way he’d drift. She soon fell into a fugue state, in which her feet scuffing the dry fallen needles echoed a hollow chorus of rustlin
g that reminded her of birds flying north for the summer, their wings beating the air into submission. Her arms and legs ached with effort. She pushed Wit a little to the right, following her internal compass, and prayed again, though she didn’t think Averran was required to listen. She remembered what Octavian had said, about asking Perrin about Averran’s guidance for her personally, and wished she’d thought to do it when she had the chance.
The rustling grew louder, breaking through her stupor. She grabbed Wit’s shoulders more firmly and brought him to a halt. More bears, three of them this time, headed her way. Sienne held onto Wit and tried to calm her breathing. Breathing. Smell. Didn’t were-creatures have an excellent sense of smell? She cursed silently and fumbled her spellbook halfway out of her vest, then paused, torn by indecision. If these weren’t the enemy, blasting them would only give her three more unconscious bodies to wrangle.
The bears were going to pass well to the left of her. They lumbered along, their heads swaying—oh, by all the avatars, they were casting about for scent! One raised its brown head, then halted. The other two stopped. She didn’t know if they could communicate in bear form, though it was unlikely they were capable of human speech in that shape. And yet the way they stood, tense and with their heads tilted slightly, told Sienne clearly something was passing between them.
The first bear swiveled its head to look directly at her, or at least at the space she occupied. She held her breath. It turned back to its comrades, and again there was a voiceless communication. Then they moved on, slowly, still scanning the ground. Sienne waited for them to pass out of earshot, then went back to pushing. If that many bears were out looking for her, maybe the camp wasn’t friendly territory, but it was all she had left. She was barely sure she could find the camp, and dead positive she would never find the place where she and her friends had camped the night before.
Minutes passed. She saw no more bears, heard nothing but the inane chatter of birds high above whose songs the echoes of vanish turned discordant. Bright. This had to be Bright’s doing. Though why she would try to kill Sienne…no, it made sense. With Sienne and her companions dead, there was no one to speak on the werebears’ behalf, and the bears would be forced to follow Bright’s plan. But surely Clever wouldn’t let Bright get away with it? Which would be small comfort if Sienne were dead.
Shifting Loyalties Page 17