Rowan let me walk for the rest of the day, leading them along the trail. As the sky darkened, they stopped.
Before Argent could pull me out of the spell, I started running, but his legs were longer than mine. He caught me and jerked me off the path.
The moment my feet touched the ground beside the spell-line, I felt the tiredness of a night without sleep and a day of walking and riding. I stumbled, and Argent grabbed my arm to keep me on my feet.
“Idiot,” Argent said.
We traveled like that for four more days through the forest followed by the black birds. My locus magicalicus kept calling me, but it didn’t get any stronger. We should’ve reached it by now. Time was running out—I had to get back to Wellmet!
Rowan was worried about being away from the city for so long. “If you rode,” she said, “We could go faster.”
True. But I didn’t like that horse. So I walked, and walked, and walked.
One evening, after studying the spell-book and memorizing more of the spell-language, I wrote a letter with pencil on one of the papers Nevery’d put into my knapsack.
.
* * *
Dear Nevery,
I haven’t found my locus magicalicus yet. It must be farther away than we thought. This is taking too long. Have you seen any sign of Arhionvar yet? Are you working on the pyrotechnic defenses? I will come back as soon as I can.
Rowan’s here, too. She brought horses, but they don’t work very well.
Rowan told me about the death sentence on me. I’ll be careful when I get back. Did you get in trouble because of the finding spell?
Hello to Benet. Thank you for the book. I have been learning the spellwords.
—Conn
* * *
I rolled up the paper and tied it with a bit of thread, then tied that onto one of the black bird’s legs. It’d fly straight back to Wellmet, to Nevery.
“D’you want to send a letter to your mother?” I asked Rowan.
“No,” she said.
“The bird can carry a letter to Nevery,” I said, “and he’ll send it on.”
Rowan folded her arms. “I don’t want to write to her.”
“She’ll worry if you don’t,” I said.
“Let her worry,” Rowan said, and walked away.
I gave the bird a few biscuit crumbs and sent it flapping toward Wellmet.
Nevery’s answer came the next day.
* * *
I know about the death sentence, boy, and it is a problem, I agree. We must be circumspect.
The aftermath from the finding spell is nothing I cannot manage. Captain Kerrn may suspect all she likes, but she can prove nothing, nor can the duchess or the other magisters, who are fools.
I am more concerned at the moment with Arhionvar. You are right to worry about being gone from the city for so long. The dread magic could arrive at any time.
Make all haste.
—N.
* * *
Nevery was safe, then. That was good.
I wasn’t sure what circumspect meant. Very, very careful, I figured, or I’d end up swinging from Wellmet’s gallows tree.
CHAPTER 14
Rowan had a map. She kept it folded inside a square of oiled leather so it’d be dry in case of rain.
Nearby, the burnt-black spell-line cut across a wide trade road, which led through a clearing edged by tall, straight pine trees. Rowan pulled out the map to have a look at where we were. “I think we’re about here,” she said. She’d put the map on the pine-needly ground and squatted down, pointing. Her gloved finger rested on a line leading to a dot with the word Torrent next to it. A city.
“Have we traveled that far south already?” Argent asked, kneeling next to her.
“I think so.” She shot me a sideways glance. “We’ve been making very good time, for some reason.”
Because they had to drag me off the trail every night, she meant, and catch up to me in the morning because I’d set off, munching on a biscuit, as soon as the sun came up.
“I didn’t think we’d be gone this long,” Rowan said. “We didn’t pack enough supplies, so we’ll have to get more.” She stood and, after squinting down at the map once more, folded it into its leather envelope. “We’ll follow this road into the city, stock up, and come back to the spell-path.”
Leave the spell-line, did she say?
Rowan looked at me and raised her eyebrows. “All right?”
She was right. We needed supplies; we were out of bacon. But leaving the spell-line…
“All right,” I said slowly.
We mounted up, me on Mud-brown, and pointed the horses down the rutted road toward the city of Torrent. As we clip-clopped away, the spell-line hummed and tugged at me as if it was the line and I was the fish, caught.
I pulled back on the reins, and the horse plodded to a stop. Call, call, call, went the spell. I climbed down off of Mud-brown’s back.
Rowan turned her horse and brought it to stand next to me. “Can’t do it?” she asked.
I shook my head and handed her Mud-brown’s reins. “I could wait for you,” I said, backing up a step toward the spell-line.
Rowan nibbled her lip. “No, I don’t think you can.” She stood up in her stirrups and called over her shoulder. “Argent!”
Argent rode back to us. “Yes, Lady Rowan?”
Rowan pointed at me. “Conn can’t come along. You’ll have to stay here with him.”
“Lady Rowan!” Argent protested.
She gave me her sideways smile. “I suspect that as soon as we’re gone he’ll jump back into the spell, and we’ll spend the next four days trying to catch up to him.”
She was probably right.
“That would be four days without him,” Argent muttered. “We should just let him do it, if he wants to. Or tie him to a tree until we return.”
Rowan gave him her most duchess’s-daughterly smile. “Oh, I don’t think we’ll do that. You’ll stay with Conn. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Argent tried to tell her she wouldn’t be safe going to a city alone, but since she had her sword and was better at swordcraft than he was, he lost that part of the argument. I left them to it, heading back toward the spell-line.
Before I reached it, Argent caught up to me, riding his tall black horse and leading Mud-brown by the reins. Without speaking we went back to the place where the spell-line cut across the road, a wide clearing in the middle of straight, dark pine trees. We took the saddles off our horses, tied their reins to a tree branch, and I put my knapsack and scab-barded sword on the ground.
Argent took out his own sword and started doing practice lunges in the clear area beside the road. I wanted to go over to the humming spell-line, but he stayed between me and it. I went and sat down against a pine tree and watched him parrying an invisible blade and skewering an invisible opponent that I bet looked a lot like me.
After a while he got out of breath. He fetched my sword, then came to where I was sitting and glared down at me. “Come and spar,” he said, tossing my sword onto the ground beside me.
With him? With real swords? Not likely. He’d beaten the fluff out of me before, trying to teach me swordcraft.
“Coward,” he said. He lifted his sword and pointed at me, sighting down the blade. “You are not fit company for Lady Rowan. You’re nothing but a mannerless gutterboy.”
“I know what I am,” I said.
“Oh, of course.” Argent snorted and lowered the blade. “You’re a wizard.”
Right. I nodded.
“You are a wizard’s servant boy. If you were a wizard yourself, you would have a locus magicalicus to do magic.” He curled his lip. “Go ahead, wizard, do some magic.”
I got to my feet. Only one way this was going to go, but I didn’t want to fight with him. I pointed at the spell-line. That was magic I’d done.
Argent narrowed his eyes. He turned away, walked over to a saddlebag, and took something out, which he held behind him. The
n he came back to where I was standing. Slowly he brought up his sword, resting the tip just below my throat. I backed up until I was pressed up against the tree.
“My other idea was a better one,” Argent said.
Before I could jerk away, he dropped his sword, grabbed me, and spun me around, then pressed my face into the rough bark of the tree with a hand on the back of my head. I squirmed a bit to get away, and he pushed harder, mashing my nose. “Stop it,” he said. Was he going to slice me open with his sword? I kicked backward with my heels, and he put his leg across my legs to hold them against the tree. He caught one of my hands and, leaning against me to keep me still, tied an end of rope around my wrist. Then he flipped me around, and tied my arms behind the tree.
I blinked bits of pine bark out of my eyes and caught my breath.
“Little squirmer,” Argent said, backing away from the tree and dusting off his hands. “Like putting a worm on a fishhook.”
I glared at him.
“Wizard your way out of that, boy,” he said. He went across the clearing and saddled his horse, then came back and fetched his sword and kicked my sword farther from the tree so I couldn’t reach it. Then he swung up into the saddle.
“I am going to join Lady Rowan,” he said. “And you”—he pointed at me—“will be here when we return.” He kicked his horse into a high-stepping trot down the rutted road.
As he rode away, I heard him laughing.
* * *
Am beginning to think I made a mistake allowing boy to leave city. Magic is behaving oddly. Spells are working erratically or not at all. Magisters a quivering mess. People of city nervous. Duchess unresponsive. Have visited Dusk House pit; the magic seems to be focused there. Why? Gathering its strength? In hiding? Can Arhionvar be closer than we realized? I do not quite understand this conflict between magics. The boy has proven well enough that the magics are beings that live—if “live” is truly what they do—in our human cities, but I have not carefully considered what this might mean, and why a living magic such as Arhionvar would seek to kill another city’s magic.
I wonder, too, where the magics came from, what they truly are. Must look into historical grimoires, see if I can find further information. The more we know, the more likely we are to find some way to defeat Arhionvar.
* * *
CHAPTER 15
When Argent had tied me to the tree, he’d left a length of rope between my wrists so my arms weren’t pulled back too badly. I edged down the trunk until I was sitting on the soft, pine-needly ground.
Across the clearing, Mud-brown was still tied by the reins to a tree branch. The horse stood quietly, ignoring me. In a tree over the horse’s head sat the three black birds.
“Come down and peck at these ropes, birds,” I called. At the sound of my voice, Mud-brown twitched an ear. A bird sailed down from its branch and landed on the grass beside my leg, then hopped up to my knee.
Awk, said the bird. It cocked its head and looked at me with its yellow eye.
“The ropes,” I said.
Awk-awk-awk, it said. Was it laughing at me?
It fluffled its feathers, then hopped off my knee and flapped back to its branch. The other two birds moved over to give it room. They sat there like feathery black lumps, watching me.
Bits of pine needles and bark were stuck in my coat and prickled against my back. I had a lockpick sewn into my shirt sleeve, but that wasn’t going to help with knots. I pulled at the ropes for a bit with no luck getting them loose.
Drats. I’d just have to wait until Rowan came back.
I leaned my head against the bumpy bark of the tree, closed my eyes, and listened to the singing of the spell-line. After a while, I fell asleep.
I woke up hearing the cackle-crackle of the birds across from my tree. They muttered to each other and hunched into their wings, looking at the sky.
The sun shone orangey-gold through the trees. Late afternoon. Rowan would be back soon, wouldn’t she? My arms were getting stiff.
The birds’ chattering grew louder. The horse lifted its head and snorted. In the distance I heard a deep rumble-hum, and then a grating shriek racing up the spell-line toward me; I was halfway to my feet when it slammed into me and echoed around in my skull, making my teeth hurt. I slid back to the ground. A swift black shadow passed over the clearing.
Quick I shook the shriek out of my head and looked up to see what had made the shadow.
Nothing, just late-afternoon sky.
A cloud?
No. No cloud moved that fast.
I pressed my back against the pine tree. Across the clearing, the horse snorted again and lifted its head, looking around with wide eyes. The birds had disappeared. Everything was silent and still.
From the direction of the road came the sound of clopping hooves; after a moment, Rowan rode into the clearing, looking around. Seeing me tied to the tree, she shook her head. She got down from her horse and tied it next to Mud-brown, then headed over toward me and my tree. “Argent told me what he did,” she said, taking off her gloves. “He thought it was funny. I sent him on to Torrent to get supplies. I suppose I should have expected it.”
Never mind stupid Argent. “Did you see it?” I asked, staring up at the sky.
Rowan frowned. “No. See what?” She pulled her sword from its sheath, to cut the ropes, I guessed.
The spell-line hum-shrieked again, making me squeeze my eyes shut and hunch my head into my shoulders.
When I opened my eyes, something huge and winged, blazing with flames and heat, hurtled across the sky. Then it turned.
Down it swooped. Coming for me.
CHAPTER 16
It roared down over the forest, snapping off the tops of the pine trees as it flew, banking on huge golden wings.
With a crash that shook the ground, it landed in the middle of the road. Its four taloned feet gouged deep ruts into the dirt.
I knew what it was. Nevery’d told me they were extinct, but I’d seen pictures.
Dragon.
It was as if the sun had fallen down from the sky. The spell-line keened a high song. The dragon was as big as a house, with red-gold, liquid-looking scales covering its broad back and muscled legs and tail, smoothing out over its chest and belly. Its head was mostly muzzle and long teeth; it had horns and a spiked crest that ran in a double row down its back to the end of its tail, which ended in a bristle of spikes.
It folded its golden wings and turned its head, glaring around the clearing with flame-bright eyes.
Across from me, Mud-brown the horse was jerking at its tether and making a high whinnying sound, almost like screaming; so was Rowan’s gray horse. The dragon cocked its head to look closer, and Mud-brown shrieked and tore loose its reins, then galloped off into the woods followed by Rowan’s horse, its tail flying like a flag.
The dragon let them go.
“Conn, is that a dragon?” Rowan whispered. She stood ten paces away from me, gripping her sword, her face white, her eyes wide.
Trying to move slowly, I got to my feet. If the dragon wanted to eat me, I couldn’t do anything about it, not with my arms tied behind the tree. Not with them free, either, even with my sword in my hand.
As soon as I moved, the dragon’s big head swiveled around and it stared at me, lowering its head, moving closer. I stared back. Its eyes were the deep red-gold of embers in a banked fire. It shifted to the side, its scaled tail sliding over the ground, and raised one of its taloned feet, then brought it toward me. The talon was a curved knife.
Closing my eyes, I pressed myself against the tree, then felt the heat of the talon getting closer.
“No!” Rowan shouted.
My eyes popped open again.
Rowan leaped between me and the dragon, her sword drawn. Her hair had come loose and floated around her head like long, flickering flames. With a quick, silver flash, her sword leaped out and hacked at the dragon’s talon. The dragon loomed over her; its claw flinched back. She jumped back, closer
to me, and raised her sword again.
“Leave him!” she shouted.
The dragon shifted, then its claw came swooping down to brush her out of the way. Rowan leaped aside, her sword slashing. The blade cut through the dragon’s scales, but they healed up again, like water flowing over the wound. She whirled and slashed again. The claw drew back; Rowan watched it, breathing hard, her sword ready. The dragon shifted; I saw it bringing its tail ’round.
“Ro—watch out!” I shouted. Too late.
The dragon’s tail slithered from behind, knocking Rowan to the ground, then pinning her there, lying across her chest like a heavy log. Her sword lay a pace away from her hand.
She stretched her arm, reaching for the sword. “Conn,” she gasped. “Stay still. Don’t draw its attention to you.”
But the dragon swung its head back to me and raised its claw. It brought the talon forward again. My heart pounded so hard, it was making my whole body shake. The talon went past my face and ’round behind me. A quick slice and it’d cut the ropes tying my hands. I fell forward on my knees onto the pine-needly ground.
I looked up, and the dragon was standing over me, its front legs like two pillars to either side. Before I could scramble away, it lifted a claw and knocked me onto my back, then lowered the claw. One of its talons gouged into the ground next to my neck; the other went through the shoulder of my coat and sweater. I squirmed to try and get away, and the dragon leaned forward, pressing me into the ground.
“All right,” I gasped. “I’ll keep still.”
With its other taloned foot it poked at me, first at my feet, then my shoulder, pushing aside my coat and pulling down the neck of my sweater with a sharp talon-tip.
“Conn, what does it want?” Rowan asked from where she lay under the tail.
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