The door led to Jaggus’s workroom, sure as sure. He couldn’t have left it unguarded. It’d be locked, anyway. I felt in my pocket for my lockpick wires.
“Wait here,” I said over my shoulder.
Leaving Rowan, Kerrn, Argent, and the guards at the top of the stairs, I bare-footed across the landing to the door.
I crouched down to have a look at the lock, putting my sheathed sword on the floor next to me. Taking out a wire, I probed inside to see what I was dealing with. Steady hands, and then a faint, oily click.
Drats. Quickly I pulled out the wire. A fretlock. It had a set mechanism inside, and if I tripped it, the lock would realign itself and I’d have to start over again. This would take some time.
I glanced back toward the stairs. I couldn’t see the others. Outside my circle of greenish light, shadows flowed. A finger of clammy, dusty air stroked across the back of my neck. “Shadows!” I whispered. I caught a glimpse of a purple-black eye and boiling black shadows.
I heard the sound of bootsteps rushing up the stairs and the hiss of a blade being drawn from a sheath. “On your guard!” Kerrn shouted.
I shoved the lockpicks into my pocket, grabbed up my sword from the floor, and leaped to my feet. Three Shadows gathered at the edge of the light, reaching toward me with long tendrils of darkness.
I fell back against the door and wrestled the sword out of the sheath and swung it one-handed ’round at the Shadows. The blade sliced through one of them, and it dissolved into black rags of shadow that swirled, then re-formed around the pulsing eye.
From the stairs, I heard more footsteps rushing up, and shouting—Half-finger and his men had snuck up on the others from behind. Another werelight flared. In the faint greenish light, the landing was full of swooping Shadows, and a swarm of fortress guards with swords, fighting with the Wellmet guards.
“Conn!” Rowan shouted. She was in the middle of the fighting. Her sword flashed in the dim light as she parried a thrust by a fortress guard. With her other hand, she reached out and yanked his head scarf over his eyes, then reversed her sword and clubbed him across the back of the head. He crumpled to the floor. Another fortress guard lunged at her and she whirled to catch his blade on her blade.
Yet another guard attacked her, and Argent leaped to her side, his blade slashing across the man’s chest, spattering the floor with blood. The guard groaned and fell backward. Two more fortress guards attacked them.
I couldn’t hide in my bit of light while Rowan and Argent did all the fighting.
With a quick lunge, like Kerrn had taught me, I poked my sword into one of the Shadows. The blade went right in, then I pulled it out with a pop. Dust crumbled along the sharp edge. The Shadow swooped down on me again, and this time, when I swung the blade around, it sliced through its darkness, hitting the darksilver eye with a clang that vibrated up my arm. The Shadow exploded into black dust, and darksilver rained down around me, burning where it touched my skin.
Brushing off the steaming drops of darksilver, my bare feet sliding over dust, I stepped out of the circle of light, heading for Rowan and Argent, where the fighting was thickest. They stood back-to-back, their swords flashing, defending themselves from three fortress guards.
Keep your guard up, I told myself. I gripped my sword and plunged into the fight. A guard swung his blade at me, and I ducked out of the way and swiped back at him, but missed. Rowan caught my eye and nodded, then said something over her shoulder to Argent, who glanced my way.
A swathe of shadow reached from behind me and tightened around my neck. I spun around, slashing with my sword, but it cut right through the shadows. The numb-stone feeling spread. I gasped for breath. Then a sword plunged past me and straight into the Shadow’s staring eye.
The Shadow blew apart into a cloud of dust, releasing me.
I whirled back and caught Argent’s nod as he brought his blade back around to block a thrust from a fortress guard.
Another guard came at me, his blade feinting and glinting in the dim light. I flailed out with my sword, just missing Argent. “Careful!” he shouted, blocking my wild swing.
“Sorry,” I gasped.
The fortress guard came at me again. I ducked to the side, and then somehow his blade cut around, slashing toward my head.
I brought my own blade up in a desperate parry. The guard ducked as I swung wide; then my sword slipped from my grip, spinning ’round until its tip sliced across my arm, right below the elbow, tearing a ragged gash through the cloth of my shirt. The sword clattered to the stone floor and spun away. I scrambled after it, ducking another blow from the fortress guard.
“Get out of the way!” Argent shouted, doing some fancy footwork to keep from tripping over me.
He was right; I wasn’t any use to them. I needed to get back to the door. I grabbed up my sword and tried to get my bearings.
“Conn!” Rowan shouted. She kept her eye on two Shadows, hovering just out of reach of her blade.
“Here!” I answered, from behind her.
She spun around and grabbed my arm, right where my own blade had cut me. Ow. It hadn’t hurt right away, but I could feel it now, a nasty gash cutting deep into the muscle.
“To the door!” She dragged me away from the fighting and over to the circle of light by the door. “Do what you have to do,” she ordered, and let me go. Her hand came away covered with blood. She looked at her hand, then at me, with wide eyes.
“I’m all right,” I said, and went to crouch by the door. I dropped my sword onto the floor and pulled out my lockpick wires.
I closed my eyes, feeling my way into the fretlock. The sharp end of the wire brushed over the set mechanism. Two tumble-bolts, I thought, and a spring-set puzzle ratchet, and in front of it, the fretwork. Right.
Closing my ears to the sounds of fighting, I took the other wire from my mouth and probed into the lock, listening for the snick of the set. There. Steady hands, and I flicked the other wire into place.
An oily click, and the lock reset itself. Curse it!
“Hurry!” Rowan said from behind me.
“Ro, I need you to hold this,” I said.
I heard a swish of cloth, and she was crouched beside me. “What?” she said.
I took the wires out of the lock and steadied my hands to try again. “Hold the wire when I say,” I said.
She nodded.
Careful, careful, past the fretwork and bolts and ratchet. Then the second wire.
“All right, hold it,” I said.
Rowan reached out and held the end of the wire. Her hand stayed absolutely steady.
I probed the fretlock. Then a quick twist and a double flick, the lock turned smoothly over, and I was in. I glanced aside at Rowan. “You’d make a good lockpick,” I said. She gave me a quick grin and leaped to her feet.
My ears opened again to the sound of fighting, and I glanced back over my shoulder.
Half-finger and a Shadow were headed for Rowan.
“Can you hold them?” I asked.
“Go!” Rowan shouted, and brought her blade up.
I grabbed up my sword and leaped through the doorway, slamming the door behind me.
CHAPTER 35
The stairway was completely dark. With the door closed, the sounds of fighting were muffled.
I had to hurry. Rowan and the rest were outnumbered, and if Jaggus brought the dread magic to bear on them, they wouldn’t last long.
My bare feet silent on the stone steps, I raced upward. The stairs twisted ’round and ’round, higher and higher. My legs grew tired and my breath tore at my lungs. Blood from the gash dripped down my arm.
As I climbed, the dread magic grew thicker in the air, pressing down on me. Arhionvar knew I was coming. I took deep breaths and made myself go faster, step, step, step through the darkness.
The door at the top of the staircase was open; white-bright light blazed from the doorway. I slowed down, catching my breath, waiting for my eyes to adjust. The air was thick with the
dread magic; it made every breath heavy; it made my bones shaky. I’d gotten this far, and now I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Still, I climbed up the last two steps and stood in the doorway.
The room was at the very top of the tower; it was clean and full of sharp-edged shadows, and set in each of the four walls was a tall, wide-silled, open window looking out at darkness. White-bright flames flickered along the edges of the ceiling and floor, and light blazed from Jaggus’s locus magicalicus, which rested in a dish full of sparking darksilver in the middle of a high table. Three white cats lay on the table around the dish. Jaggus himself sat on a stool, staring into the locus stone, carrying another cat on his shoulders. I wondered what he was looking for.
“Ah, Connwaer,” Jaggus said. “We knew you would come back to us.” He turned slowly to face me. The pupils of his eyes were huge and blank-dark, like the windows.
The dread magic was in his head, clear as clear. Was it looking out at me through his eyes? Did it make his thoughts heavy and numb?
“Are you going to attack us?” Jaggus asked.
I’d forgotten I was holding the sword. Slowly I bent and put it on the floor. As I straightened, drops of blood from the gash in my arm spattered onto the white stone; the blood looked black in the bright light. “I don’t want to fight you, Jaggus,” I said.
And I didn’t. He was right. He and I were just alike. We’d both been alone. I wasn’t alone anymore, not with Nevery and Benet and Rowan for friends. But Jaggus was alone except for Arhionvar in his head all the time, using him, and his loneliness. Now I understood his true name. No wonder he was broken.
“You did not come to attack us?” Jaggus said.
“No,” I said. “I’m not a guardsman, I’m a thief. I came to steal your locus magicalicus.” On the table, the stone rested in the sparking dish of darksilver. It was darker than before; the poisoned part in its center had grown. It was nothing but rot.
“To steal it?” Jaggus pushed away the cats and picked up the dish, holding it with the tips of his fingers, as if it burned. Darksilver smoked and sizzled all around the locus stone. Even from where I stood, I could see how deeply rotted it was. “You cannot steal my locus magicalicus. If you hold it in your hand, Arhionvar will take you, and you will be ours. Here it is.” He held out the dish.
I took a deep breath and stepped forward.
Slowly I raised my hand and reached into the dish and picked up the sorcerer-king’s locus magicalicus.
Like a thick, black wave, Arhionvar surged through the stone and into me. I gasped for breath as it wrapped around me, prying with fingers like knives into the darkest corners of my head. It was far stronger coming through the stone than it had been when I was alone in my cell.
“You will belong to it, just as I do,” Jaggus whispered. His eyes were wide and dark.
The dread magic howled around me. I struggled, and it squeezed tighter. Pain slashed into me, blazing into my bones. Darkness came with the pain, pressing down on me heavier and heavier with dark dread. Arhionvar had attacked Jaggus the same way once, and Jaggus had let it take him.
With every scrap of strength that I had, I pushed the magic away. “No!” I cried out loud.
As I pushed, the darkness all around me became the fluttering of black-feathered wings. It became the black yarn of the sweater Benet had knitted me, and the black silk dress Rowan had been wearing the first time I’d met her. It was Nevery’s black eyes, glaring sternly at me. Get on with it, boy, he said.
Right.
I opened my eyes.
Jaggus stood staring at me. “We knew you could not resist. Now you will join us.”
“No,” I said sadly. “You are going to join me.”
I was a wizard with no locus magicalicus. And Jaggus would be, too. I held up the red jewel stone. I could see the soft, slimy rot at its center. I didn’t need to be a wizard to do this. I closed my hand and squeezed as hard as I could. With a muffled pop, the locus stone burst apart like an overripe plum, then turned to dust in my hand.
Jaggus stared at me, his mouth wide, then stared at the dust falling to the white floor. The black windows in his eyes snapped shut, he blinked, and his eyes turned blue. The cat leaped from his shoulder and dropped to the floor. “No,” he whispered.
He fell onto his knees and, using his hands, started sweeping up the dust that had been his locus stone. “No, no, no, no,” he said. He scrabbled up two hands full of dust. It leaked out between his fingers.
He looked up at me. His braids had loosened and hung in his face like white cat tails; his blue eyes were wide and streaked with blood. “Arhionvar!” he screamed.
The words echoed against the white walls. The magic couldn’t hear him, not without a locus stone. I knew how he felt; I’d lost a locus stone once, too.
“Don’t leave me,” Jaggus moaned. He climbed to his feet.
Then he whirled and staggered across the room to one of the tall windows and stepped up onto its wide sill.
I knew what he was going to do, to prove his tie to the magic. But Jaggus was nothing to Arhionvar now.
“No!” I shouted, starting after him.
“Arhionvar!” Jaggus shouted, and he stepped out of the window.
I flung myself after him, flat down on the sill, reaching down with my hand.
I caught him. His hand was like a claw. “Hold on!” I gasped.
He stared up at me, his eyes wide. Blood from my arm dripped down onto his face.
“Don’t let go,” I said.
“Let me go,” he whispered. “Arhionvar will not let me fall.” He jerked himself upward and dragged his fingernails along the gash in my arm. His hand slipped out of mine.
Jaggus hung in the air for a moment; he stared up at me, and his laugh was a high, scared sound. Arhionvar held him, and then it let him go. Jaggus’s laugh turned into a scream. Down he fell, turning over and over like a leaf in the wind, until the blackness swallowed him up. He was gone.
Rowan Forestal
Argent and I fought the remaining fortress guards and the Shadows to a standstill, and then we raced up the winding stairs of the tower to the room at the top. We found Conn there, hanging half out of one of the room’s windows.
I feared that he was dead, he was so still and pale.
We wrapped him in a blanket, and Argent carried him out of the fortress. We found Nimble, Kerrn brought up the rest of the guards, and we fled across the desert.
I looked back at the fortress. The desert sand blew around it, and I saw Jaggus’s guards fleeing it, on horseback and on foot. The wind whirled, sucking up sand until the fortress was hidden by a huge, swirling vortex of sand and wind and black clouds.
We didn’t stay to watch any further.
When we arrived at the crossroads, I had Nimble take a look at Conn, who was still unconscious. Soon after, Conn woke up long enough to drink a little water and mutter something about Arhionvar, and then he fell asleep.
He slept in the wagon until we reached the posting inn. When he awoke, I asked him how he had defeated the sorcerer-king. He looked unhappy and said, I didn’t. He defeated himself. He refused to say any more about it. Then he asked for something to eat. I assume this means he will be all right.
CHAPTER 36
At the posting inn, I woke up long enough to eat and to write a long letter, which I sent off with a connwaer.
Dear Nevery,
We’re all well. I’ve figured out what’s going on.
Our magic knew all along that the trouble came from Desh. Nevery, I really didn’t use that much explosive material when I blew up Heartsease. The magic was trying to tell me, and I didn’t listen.
Our Wellmet magic is afraid, and it can’t do anything but wait. It trusts us to help it. Our magic knows about the dread magic because the dread magic helped Pettivox and Crowe with the prisoning device, and it sent the Shadows as spies to see if our magic had gotten weaker and as attackers to make the Wellmet people weaker, and more afraid. I don’t
know what it wants to do. Maybe kill our magic, but I don’t know why.
The dread magic is terrible, Nevery. Its name is Arhionvar. We have to stop it.
I am coming home soon. Please tell Benet that if he makes biscuits, I will eat every last one.
—Conn
We passed slowly from the posting inn through the grasslands and into the forest, the days getting colder and the nights even colder than that. Rowan had brought my black sweater with her from Desh, and she found me new boots and socks at the posting inn, so I was all right, though as we got closer to Wellmet I wished for a coat.
As I walked along at the back of the envoyage, I thought about what had happened in Jaggus’s fortress. I wondered if the Wellmet magic really had chosen me because I’d been alone. I had a feeling Jaggus had been wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about that. He knew what it was like to be completely alone. He’d said his family had sold him into service. His master must have been very cruel for him to turn to Arhionvar instead. I had Nevery and Benet and Rowan and Wellmet’s magic protecting me; he had been alone and empty, and his magic had poisoned him. I wished I could’ve helped him.
During our travels, Kerrn watched me like a hawk watches a mouse. She gave me and Rowan and Argent swordcraft lessons. I still got the fluff beat out of me every time, and Rowan teased me about dropping my sword in the middle of the fortress fight and about almost cutting my own arm off.
She’d ended up that night with a sword cut across her cheek, and it scabbed over and left her with a pink line of a scar.
I knew we were getting close. The rain started up. I walked along at the back, but I wasn’t plodding or thinking bad thoughts about the rain. From ahead, I felt the magic of Wellmet. When I’d left, it had wanted me to go so much that it had pushed me down the hill and made the bird scoff at me. But now it pulled at me, wanting me to hurry home.
I looked up. At the top of the hill, ahead, I saw where the road led into Wellmet, and on the buildings alongside the road perched hundreds of black birds, all rustling like leaves in a breeze. More birds flew in wide circles overhead, calling awk, awk.
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