by Dan Wingreen
Black and pulsing, the threads of it moved through the tapestry, hiding in the blue of the sorcerers' magic and temporarily corrupting it before being expelled and moving on. Every time it moved, it shrank, growing weaker as Noah watched. But even weak, he could still smell it. Like a body after three days dead baking in the hot sun, but worse; it wasn't just a person that was dead, it was the magic itself that had died. Magic that was killed and brought back by an evil will to seek out other dead things and give mastery over them. It called to him, begged him to absorb it, told him he could be even more powerful than he was now if he'd only just let it in and use it—
Noah recoiled in disgust and cut off the tendrils of magic connecting him to the world. They hovered in the air for a moment, like abandoned children, before quickly fading into nothingness. There was a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest—cutting one's own magic off in such a way was never pleasant—but he couldn't risk pulling it back inside himself after it had touched that foul, tainted blackness.
Necromancy. There was a necromancer in this village.
Or, there had been, he realized a moment later. Necromancy never died as long as there was someone around to use it and the magic he'd sensed was most assuredly dying.
Now that there were new pieces to the puzzle, his hunter's instincts took over, rearranging and slotting them into the pieces he already had, trying to build a clear picture even as he burned with the righteous urge to reach back out and tear those tendrils of filth from the air and rend them into pieces. Black magic, necromancy in particular, was the foulest of arts a person could perform. It had been drilled into him since he was a child, first by his daddy and then by the government that trained him; there was no more important duty a citizen held than destroying black magic wherever it was encountered. It didn't just tear at the fabric of society; it tore at the very fabric of the world itself and there was no deed forbidden when fighting that type of evil. Hunters had even been known to team up with the terrorists they were hunting in order to kill a practitioner of the black arts.
And just like that, the pieces finally started to make sense. He could have laughed at the sheer simplicity of it.
The man in black had helped the shaman destroy a necromancer.
It explained everything. The empty tents, the sense of exhausted relief, the aftertaste of magic in the air after several drawn-out battles, the fact that he couldn't find a single trace that his prey had died at the hands of the shaman. It was because they hadn’t. They'd killed the necromancer and had either died in the attempt or had been allowed to leave as a reward for their help. The pleasure of having a theory that fit was tempered by the fact he still needed to find one of the shaman to interrogate, but at least now he better knew what questions to ask.
And it was in that split second of perfect distraction, between recognizing the necromancy and figuring out what that meant, when one of the shaman stumbled upon him.
Noah and the shaman stared at each other, equally surprised. The shaman was bleary-eyed and unsteady, obviously not even fully awake, with one hand frozen mid-way towards the stiff looking strings that tied his pants together. Sneaked up on by a man shuffling outside for a piss. Noah clearly didn't get beaten enough as a child if he let something that idiotic happen to him.
The shaman, much to Noah's additional self-chastisement, recovered first.
"Who are you?" he asked in a lilting, half-awake voice.
With a sharp gesture, Noah slit his throat with a blade of wind.
Or at least that's what was supposed to happen. Noah still wasn't used to the power he'd stolen from the other shaman so instead of a nice, clean cut like he'd wanted the razor sharp wind sliced through his entire neck with enough force to send his head flying off farther into the village, where it bounced off one of the tents. Blood sprayed from the shaman's severed neck as the rest of him collapsed into a heap.
Noah tensed, waiting for the screaming that would wake up the rest of the village, but it never came. The head must have hit an empty tent. Or one with a heavy sleeper inside. He relaxed slightly.
That was too careless. He'd have to have a tighter rein on his magic for as long as he had this much power pulsing through him. It was too easy to use too much when a little would do, something his daddy had always warned against.
He turned around to check one of the tents behind him, when he froze in surprise for the second time in as many minutes. The shaman woman staring at him in horror was definitely not half asleep.
She screamed something in a strange, lyrical language before Noah could react. He swore at himself and slit her throat, only slightly mollified by the perfect, restrained cut as her scream turned into a pained gurgling and she fell to the sand, dying.
All around him he could hear the sounds of a village waking up. Not as many people as there should have been, and even less than that considering how far he'd gotten with his bloody work, but it was more than he felt comfortable dealing with on his own. Especially when he wanted prisoners and wasn't sure how much control he had over his own magic.
It was a good thing he'd planned ahead, then.
As the first shaman raced out of their tents, Noah raised his hand up, fingers pointed directly at the sky, and shot a ball of near blinding light into the air above him. It went up several hundred feet, bathing the village in a harsh white light, before exploding with a loud crack of thunder. It was a signal no one could miss, even if they were trying.
He just hoped Bryce and Barnes had stayed around to see it.
◆◆◆
Two Rivers shifted uncomfortably on his cot in the Shaman's yurt. He hadn't exactly given up on sleep yet, but he sort of had a habit of holding onto things which were already long gone. He still got pangs of jealousy every time he saw Swift Cloud with her husband even though they'd been joined since he was fourteen. Two Rivers kicked the thin blanket off with a sigh and stared up at the conical ceiling. He hated blankets. They always made him feel trapped, ever since he had that stupid vision where he was tied up and helpless as a coyote slowly stalked towards him with saliva dripping from its teeth, hissing and burning as it hit the ground…
And yeah, that was a pretty good spot to give up on sleep.
He sat up on his bed and wrapped his arms around his knees, looking at the second cot where the Shaman usually slept. He was gone, but that wasn't much of a surprise. The Shaman never really slept through the night anymore. Sometimes he walked the village, talking to the guys on monster watch—when there were guys on monster watch; everyone was probably drunk or coupling again while he was stuck here not sleeping—and sometimes Two Rivers knew he walked deep into the desert. He didn't know what the Shaman did out there, but he knew most Shaman spent time in the desert before they passed their cloak on to their successor. Since they only passed it on when they were on their death bed, it was something else Two Rivers didn't want to think about. He'd already lost one set of parents and, despite both their best efforts to the contrary, he thought of the Shaman as a second father. And even though there was a distance between them because of his apprenticeship, the Shaman cared about him as more than just the next Shaman he had to train.
Or, Two Rivers thought the Shaman did. Sometimes Two Rivers didn't know if he was just imagining it, seeing things that weren't there because he wanted them to be. Even if he was just imagining it though, being around the Shaman was usually the only time Two Rivers ever felt like a person instead of a position. He dreaded the day he finally lost that little bit of normalcy, almost as much as he dreaded losing the Shaman himself.
Hopefully, he still had a lot of years left, since Shaman sometimes walked the desert for a long time before they actually died. He'd still like to know, though. Even if the Shaman was going to die tomorrow, he'd rather know than have to rely on hope. What was the point of having this stupid prophecy thing if he never had any useful visions?
Although, speaking of visions…
His thoughts drifted back to the two outsiders, just
like they'd been doing since the night before. At first, he'd thought he couldn’t stop thinking about them because he was upset he’d been wrong about them being necromancers, but the more he thought about it, the more he came to the horrifying realization that he actually liked them. Even now, his mind still rebelled at the thought. Outsiders were supposed to be hated and distrusted. They'd all but wiped out his entire race, forced them to leave lands which had been theirs for thousands of summers, and would happily finish the job if they got even the smallest chance.
Yet, still…he liked them.
Well, he liked Aidan, anyway. They’d only spoken for a short time, but he was so easy to talk to and he actually listened to Two Rivers instead of saying whatever he could to get away from 'the next Shaman' as fast as possible without offending him. He didn't see Two Rivers as anything other than a kid. Two Rivers knew that was something a lot of people his age complained about, but it was something he would have killed for. Everyone always held him at a distance, no matter how hard he tried to act like a normal teenager around them, and it was rare when the Shaman didn't try to turn everything he said into a lesson, so he barely even got that from him. But he'd gotten it from a couple of outsiders.
Or one of them. He swallowed roughly as he thought about the other one with the dark clothes and the hard to pronounce name. That one…scared him. And he hated admitting that even more than he hated admitting he liked Aidan. There was just something about the one in black…something dark, and not just his clothing or his coloring. Two Rivers could almost see it if he looked at him long enough, almost like a vision, but not exactly. More of a vague impression he couldn't stop seeing once he noticed it. Death followed the man called Eallair. But not the way it would follow a necromancer. The impression he got was that death was more like a starving dog, following him around hoping to get fed but only ending up with scraps.
It might as well have been a vision for all the sense it made, but somewhere deep inside him something whispered that having a vision about that man, truly seeing him, would be enough to drive him insane.
Which just made it even more surprising that the Shaman was so sure they were the rivers from his very first vision.
And that, more than anything, was what was keeping Two Rivers awake. Could they be his two rivers? Even though he never forgot any of his visions, years later that vision blazed bright in his memory with a special clarity. If he concentrated, he could almost feel the still, dead air of the ruined landscape; smell the fresh sunlight and life which sprung up when the rivers met. He could taste the heartbreaking hope, sweet like the honey the eastern villages sometimes traded to them. It was never something he thought he'd ever actually see. Or if he did, he pushed those thoughts out of his head as soon as they popped up. Hope didn't have a place in the desert. Not that kind of hope. That kind of hope distracted a person, made them careless, got them killed. Because in his world, hope wasn't sweet; it was bitter and always just out of reach.
Except…now it might not be. Now it might have been right in front of him, so close he could almost touch it if he tried.
He threw his pillow across the room in frustration. These thoughts were pointless, yet he couldn't push them away. The Shaman was so sure and he was almost never wrong, and Two Rivers couldn't keep the stupid, idiotic hope from catching inside his chest like a hook he'd accidentally swallowed. Maybe if whatever good thing his vision was about actually happened, they could finally leave the desert. Maybe the Shaman could finally have some peace before he died, maybe Two Rivers wouldn't have to be responsible for the lives of a whole village someday, maybe they could stop being teacher and student and be more like father and—
"Outsider! An outsider murdered Red Fox! He—"
He didn't react to the screaming voice at first, even though it was difficult to sound so distressed in the language of the People. It sounded like Running Turtle, and she was kind of an idiot. This wouldn't have even been the first time she'd gotten drunk and woke everybody up screaming about wolves or fire or something and having it be nothing more than an alcohol-soaked nightmare. Although he might as well at least get his pants back on because somebody would be coming here to get the Shaman to deal with her at some point…
Before he could force himself out of bed, a bright, near-blinding flash of light lit up the sky outside of his yurt. There was a sudden bang which was louder than the worst thunderstorm he'd ever heard, and he screamed and fell off the cot. He scrambled to his feet just as the light disappeared then fumbled around on the floor for his pants and vest, the dozens of spots dancing in his eyes making it harder than it should have been.
That was definitely not a drunken nightmare.
By the time he shoved himself into his clothes, not even bothering to lace up the pants or pull his hair back in a queue, there wasn't any doubt they were under attack. Screams, both angry and pained, filled the air; the only thing drowning them out were the sounds of spells being thrown and shields intercepting them. A few people ran past him as he pushed his way through the flaps of the yurt, but it seemed like most had reacted before he did and were already out of their tepees.
Two Rivers froze as his throat went dry. He had no idea what to do. He didn't think he'd have to hear this again. Not since the necromancer was dead. Except this was worse. At least when he was being attacked by Rumbling Boar, a powerful, cheerful man who used to sneak him honey candy when he was a boy and died in a wolf attack when Two Rivers was fifteen, or Big Johnny, who nobody really liked because he'd taken an outsider name and was accidentally killed when the carriage he was repairing fell on top of him last spring, he knew exactly what he had to do. There wasn't this insane panic of not knowing what was going on or why. It was horrible, but familiar.
Who would attack them now that the necromancer was dead? Running Turtle had said an outsider had killed Red Fox, but that didn't make any sense. Outsiders never came to the village.
Unless…maybe Aidan and Eallair had come back? Maybe he was right all along, and they were necromancers and they only killed the other necromancer because they were rivals, or something. Or maybe they were just typical outsiders and came back to kill them because they were cruel and evil. Except that made no sense because they could have done that before without killing the necromancer and Aidan was nice to him and—he had no idea what was going on. He was panicking and he knew it, but he couldn't stop.
He had to find the Shaman.
That thought broke through his terror enough to get him to move. He looked around, but he had no idea where the Shaman could be. With a frustrated growl, he took off in a random direction, pointedly trying not to notice he was running away from the sounds of fighting. He wasn't a coward. He wasn't! He just…had no idea how to finish that thought.
Two Rivers swallowed the shame welling up in his throat like bile as he sprinted through the maze of tepees and yurts, calling out for the Shaman. Where was he?
The smell of burning flesh hit him seconds before he saw the first body. He barely stopped himself from tripping over it, instead slipping on the sand and almost falling on his back as he came skidding to a stop. He retched and covered his mouth with both hands, trying not to throw up. He would never get used to that smell no matter how many times he encountered it. The still smoking corpse was so blackened and burnt that he couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman, let alone who it might be. It wasn't the Shaman though. It couldn't be. The Shaman was too… He wouldn't just die like that!
Right?
"No!"
A scream cut through the air close to him and Two Rivers flinched. He wanted to run away, hating himself for the impulse and wondering when he became such a coward, but then he recognized the voice, and stopped. His head snapped around and a different kind of panic filled him as he took off in the direction of the scream.
Moments later he rounded a burning tepee and came into an open area. There were two more burned bodies, both still on fire, and beyond them was a man he'd never seen before. He
was facing away from Two Rivers, so he couldn't see his face, but he was short and wide. He was wearing the same kind of odd pants Aidan had been wearing, and what looked like one of Two River’s own winter shirts, except much lighter with the sleeves cut off a quarter of the way down exposing two compact, muscular arms.
An outsider, then.
His relief that it wasn't actually Aidan or Eallair—and his shame at ever thinking it might have been in the first place—was short-lived. After he saw who the outsider was stalking towards, everything else fell away.
It was Swift Cloud and her two children.
His chest ached, the same familiar pang he got whenever he saw her. He'd been in love with her almost since he started looking at girls as anything other than annoying pests who liked to giggle and pull his hair. She was ten years older than him, already promised to Lightning Storm when he decided he loved her, but it still felt like rejection when they married even though he knew she had no idea how he felt. It was a stupid, childish infatuation he'd held onto for years, but it didn't matter. He couldn't help how he felt, and he couldn't help the pained sob that tore out of his throat when he realized he couldn't do anything to save her.
She shoved her sons, both barely out of diapers and still unnamed, behind her and fired off a dozen, rapid blue-black bolts of magic at the outsider. They struck his shield, turning it opaque and holding him back, but the second she stopped casting, the dark discoloration faded, and the stranger started towards her again. She froze, and Two Rivers imagined that the outsider could see the helplessness in her eyes.
She'd never been the strongest magic user, but she'd always volunteered to be right at the front of the fighting when the necromancer sent the undead out to attack. She'd been exhausted for days. He knew because he watched her all the time, and it was obvious that last, weak flurry was the best she could do. Still, she didn't give up. With a defiant yell she threw a rock at the outsider. It bounced off his shield, barely even causing it to flash, but he stopped in surprise anyway and when he did, she ran, dragging her children behind her.