She tilted her head to one side. “Why won’t you allow women to fight in battles, by the way? Or serve in any sort of position that requires a weapon? Don’t you think we can be skilled? Or do you not think we deserve a bit of adventure?”
“Women have plenty of options in Harth.” Bram crossed his arms. “You can engage in any profession you choose, but for the one you just named. I don’t allow women to serve as soldiers for the simple reason that magic is no longer used in Cairdarin, making physical fighting skills the only ones that matter. On the whole, you tend to be weaker than men.”
Rora snorted and jerked her thumb at Guy. “I could knock that one down, I’d wager.”
While Guy huffed, Bramwell smothered another laugh and composed himself. This was turning out to be the most enjoyable day he’d had in some time. Not that the standard was very high, of late. “I’ll consider taking that wager one day, for the sport of it. In the meanwhile, I’m afraid we’re in a bit of a hurry.”
“Oh? I suppose if you had executed my father, you’d have said so at the start, instead of indulging me in a bit of chatter.”
“I have not executed him. Though I can’t deny I’m considering it. I hope it won’t come to that.”
“Ah. I’m to be used against him, then.” Rora’s face was impassive.
“Precisely.” Bram saw no reason to lie to the girl.
He still had no proof that Dain was a traitor. In fact, he had some evidence to the contrary; the trap baited with false information had failed to catch Heathbire. Wardin had turned back to stop the attack on Pendralyn, which meant he either hadn’t heard that Bramwell was marching to Corghest, or hadn’t believed it.
Yet Bramwell would still have put silver on Dain playing him false. And as ever, he was guided by his instincts.
“Well,” Rora said, “there’s been little affection between us lately, but he does think I’ll bring him a fortune and a very highborn son-in-law one day, so it might just work. Either way, it gets me out of here.”
She turned to the fishwife. “He’s right, you can keep the silver plates. And I’m sure the king will compensate you as well, won’t you, Majesty? It would be the chivalrous thing. I have not been an easy guest, I assure you.”
“No,” said Bramwell. “I was guessing that very thing as I walked in. The constant chatter alone must have been quite an ordeal.” He nodded at Guy, who took a pouch from his belt and began counting out coins.
“It’s wasn’t the chatter I minded, so much as the words,” the fishwife said. Now that it seemed she was not to be arrested but paid, she’d relaxed considerably. “That one has an evil mouth on her, and no mistake.”
Rora laughed. “I’m sure the king will have plenty of opportunities to hear me swear on the ride back to Narinore. I hope you brought me a horse?”
Bramwell inclined his head. “I did. You’ll need it, as we’re not going back to Narinore. It happens I’ve come to fetch you on my way to another errand.”
“Somewhere exciting?” Rora’s eyes lit.
It will be for me, I hope. “I’m afraid not. Another small Eyrdish village.”
“In that case, I’d have preferred you fetch me on your way back, rather than on your way there.”
Bramwell raised a brow. “Have a care with your tongue, my dear. Refreshing bluntness can slide into irritating insolence quite quickly, even for someone who’s grown in all the right ways, as you put it.”
She curtsied, much more prettily this time, though she didn’t look cowed. “As you say, Majesty.”
“Good.” Bramwell took one last look around the cottage. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything you want to bring?”
“Not a one.”
“Shall we, then?”
Rora took his offered arm, and accompanied him out the door without a word of farewell to her host, or a single glance behind her.
19
Wardin
“We need to turn here.” Erietta—though she little resembled herself—gestured toward the pines to their left. “It won’t be long now. I’d guess a mile, perhaps two.”
“Are you sure?” Arun asked. “I thought the turn would be higher up.”
“I can read a map. We’ve just passed the second waterfall, and I can see Sarn Graddoc in the distance, there.” She pointed at the horizon ahead, where Wardin could barely make out a crumbling spire. “The path will end, but we just need to go through the woods and keep that on our right, and we’re there.”
“Always nice to have a contriver in the group.” Wardin stepped into the trees.
Arun rolled his eyes. “Any of us could have read a map. She just had to do it because it’s mundane enough and she has to balance out these tricks somehow.” He waved a hand at his golden hair, and the plump face that looked nothing at all like his own. Erietta had disguised them as Harthian scouts, on the slim chance they should meet anyone they’d rather not have to take the time to kill.
But it had been a lot of work for her, keeping that up all day, on all three of them. “You might as well drop the trick now,” Wardin said. “Nobody has any reason to come back here. There’s nothing but wilderness, and the average Harth probably doesn’t even know about the well. Or care. All that stuff with Eyrdri and Taslin is an Eyrdish legend.”
“The Harths like to claim Taslin was from the moorlands.” Erietta shook her head, like a dog shaking off water, and returned to her normal self. Wardin glanced down at his own clothes and saw that the illusory blue cloak was gone.
Arun snorted. “I’d forgotten that little trick of Bramwell’s to prove it. There’s no end to the arrogance on that one.”
Wardin laughed. He’d forgotten as well. Some years ago Bramwell had officially declared that they’d found Taslin’s grave in a remote part of the western moorlands—thereby ending the debate over the great bard’s origins, at least as far as the Harths were concerned. They were happy enough to believe it.
Of course, Wardin had thought himself a Harth at the time, and he’d believed it too. He bit his lip, struck by how completely his life had changed in less than a year. How much more he’d become, and how much more was expected of him. It was a little sickening to think of, truth be told.
A short while later, they came to a little clearing, and a rather nondescript well lined with shin-high stones. It was not quite round, and so small Wardin could almost have stretched his arm across the narrower side. “Are we sure this is it?”
“There’s nothing else,” Erietta said.
“This is it.” Arun inched toward the edge, shoulders bent, one arm cautiously extended, as if approaching an angry animal. “Can’t you feel it?”
Wardin frowned, but Erietta nodded and took a step closer. “There’s magic here.”
“Magic?” Wardin raised a brow. “Like an enchanted sword, I hope?”
“No,” Erietta said slowly. “Not like something enchanted. This is like … the land itself. It’s what it felt like in Dordrin.”
Arun looked back at her. “I thought you said they don’t have magic in Dordrin?”
“They don’t practice magic in Dordrin. But the land is magic.”
“There’s nothing in the books about that.”
“There’s not much in the books at all, is there? I suppose the Dords like being mysterious. I had to learn as I went.”
“I don’t understand,” said Wardin. “How can the land be magic? The trees and rivers cast spells?”
“In a way, yes. There’s no sage who can call up a storm, but the river itself might do it, if someone it doesn’t like tries to sail along it.” Erietta shrugged. “At least, that’s how I think it works. I didn’t see it do much. It was more like something you could feel.”
She knelt beside the well and peered into the water. “This feels the same way.”
While Arun crouched beside her, Erietta cocked her head and leaned closer. Then she scrambled back with a stifled cry, nearly falling backward.
“What is it?” Wardin bent to he
lp steady her.
“Faces,” she whispered. “In the water.”
“Dead ones,” Arun added, in a voice that sounded dead itself.
Wardin circled the well—there wasn’t enough room for them all to look on that side—and knelt to see for himself. At first there was nothing but darkness, though now that he was close enough, he finally felt what his friends did. Magic, but nothing like the controlled power of a person preparing a spell, or the hint of vibrating energy in an enchanted object. This was bigger, wilder. Yet quieter somehow. Like it was waiting.
Erietta cleared her throat. “It must be a trick to scare people away from whatever secrets this place keeps. We know better than anyone how afraid Eyrds are of the dead.”
“Perhaps one of those secrets is the sword.” Wardin narrowed his eyes, straining to see into the depths.
“No,” Arun said. “That’s no illusion.”
He was right.
All at once, as though they’d chosen that moment to reveal themselves, two pale, white-haired heads stared back at Wardin from phosphorescent eye sockets. Their skin had a shiny, almost slimy look to it. It was impossible to tell how far below they were. Wardin had a feeling the water was deceptively deep.
He sat back on his heels and swallowed hard. “Well. If those are the mercenaries, I think it’s safe to say their offering didn’t have quite the effect they hoped.”
Arun ran a slightly trembling hand through his hair. “They’re the mercenaries. They have to be. My vision led us here for a reason.”
“Perhaps they offended the well—or Taslin himself—by stealing Dragon’s Edge, and the water took them.” Erietta’s voice was almost dreamy. “They stole it from a dead Rath, after all, and the Raths are Eyrdon’s guardians.”
“Taking an interest in the kingdom is one thing, but are you suggesting Taslin’s ghost is here, haunting this well and dispensing justice to anyone who dares offend a Rath?” Arun chuckled, though it was a strained sound. “The man married a deity. Even without a mortal body anymore, somehow I think he has better things to do than sit around at the bottom of a well.”
Erietta rolled her eyes. “You’d have made a good contriver, Arun, if you had any imagination at all. Shame you don’t.”
Arun stood and backed away. “Well, I’m certainly not drinking that water now.”
“Were you intending to?” Erietta asked with a laugh. “You’re already a magician.”
“I might like being a bard,” he said with a shrug. “Women love a man who can sing.”
Ignoring them, Wardin stared into the empty eyes below. Ghosts? Spirits? Remnants? Figments?
Or perhaps even real bodies, preserved for nearly a decade by the magic of the well?
He closed his eyes and prepared a spell, groping for the dead men. Life could be neither created nor destroyed. If they’d lost theirs in the well, it might still be there, in some form. Perhaps they had fed the water.
And if they’d had the sword, that was still there, too.
“What are you doing?” Arun’s voice was sharp now.
“If the sword is down there, I mean to get it.”
“I hope you mean with some rope and a bit of holding your breath.” Despite her words, Erietta’s voice was not at all hopeful.
“I don’t want to touch that water, do you? Perhaps we can use them, somehow.” Redoubling his efforts, Wardin focused again on his spell, on the dead, cold places in the water. That was what they felt like: not things, but places. Empty spots in the dark, like bubbles, perhaps. Hollows. They certainly didn’t feel like people.
There was no life there to conduct at all.
“Wardin …”
“War, I don’t—”
He looked up at them with a huff. “Just what do you think I’m trying to do, raise the two of them as my new best friends? Feeling jealous?”
“Not at all. We could use the extra help, if I’m honest.” Arun crossed his arms. “You are quite a lot to manage.”
“Excessively headstrong,” Erietta agreed.
“Well then, perhaps I ought to give it a try. They’d likely be better company. They’d certainly smell better than Arun.”
Arun threw a stick at him, and Wardin grinned, glad he’d found a way to break the tension. “I only want to get a sense of what they are. What sort of energy is down there.”
Except there isn’t any.
Still, it wasn’t a coincidence that all their minds had immediately gone to conduction, even necromancy. Those men had stolen what rightfully belonged to the last Rath. Now they were corpses at the bottom of a well sacred to Eyrdri herself. And here Wardin was, looking down on them, newly learned in the art of bringing life to death and death to life.
That sword is my destiny. It couldn’t possibly be more obvious. It’s like a song written by Taslin himself.
Then why can’t I feel anything?
It came to him with a twinge of shame that perhaps it was because he hadn’t learned the life part of that magic. Not really.
When Wardin practiced conduction, even to heal, it always seemed to take the shape of death. His mind always went to the darker place. Not just transferring life, but taking it—from something unwilling, or at least unwitting. He was a thief himself, no better than the men in the well.
That’s Graddoc’s magic. Blood magic. It has nothing to do with Eyrdri.
Nor with Taslin. He was a bard, a man devoted to creation. He didn’t take life. He gave it.
And there, Wardin suspected, was his answer, though he couldn’t have said why, or quite how it all fit together. If he wanted these eerie guardians to rise up and hand over his sword, he would have to prove himself by giving them the power to do it.
He would have to raise them, after all.
But not in the way Arun and Erietta feared. Blood magic might be a necessity, but there was nothing noble in thievery. It didn’t make him worthy.
All the conduction magic Wardin had gathered to try to reach into the well was still quivering inside him, seeking out life. He felt everything. The trees. The beetles and worms in the rotting stump a few strides away. A squirrel. A hawk flying overhead.
A necromancer would have stolen from them all, to get what he wanted. But Wardin would let them go on as they were. He would steal nothing.
Instead he would conduct life freely given. And that, he felt sure, would make all the difference.
Rather than direct his spell outward, Wardin did the one thing Pate and Corbin had taught him never, ever to do: he turned it inward, and took from himself.
It was too dangerous, Pate said. You couldn’t maintain control while you were being drained. There was too much risk of going too far, and not being able to recover.
But who ought to take that risk, if not the caster himself? At least it was his own choice.
Wardin set his jaw and kept casting, reaching inside himself, channeling his own life into those hollow places in the well.
His vision caught, blurred, went away. If Arun and Erietta were talking, he didn’t hear it. Although he did hear himself wheezing.
Just a bit more.
His bones were softening.
“Wardin!”
Only a bit.
“Wardin, stop!”
Rise, and bring me my sword.
Wardin realized his eyes were closed. He opened them and found he could see again, though everything was pink at the edges. Perhaps because his eyes were bleeding. He tasted blood in his mouth, as well.
He was leaning over the rim of the well, his nose just inches from the water.
One of the dead was rising from it.
A pale wraith, neither man nor ghost, but something Wardin had never seen before, and hoped never to see again. Its flesh—or what should have been flesh—squirmed, as if it were made of maggots, and a terrible cold emanated from it. The sort of cold a person only felt when he was dead.
Am I dead? Did I just kill myself with that spell?
The thing that had once
been a Dordrine mercenary, and then nothing but an empty place, wailed.
The awful sound seemed to open Wardin’s senses. The rest of the world was there again. Erietta and Arun both cried out and clapped their hands over their ears. Wardin’s own ears began trickling, and he knew they, too, were bleeding now.
He rose to his knees, and held out his hand.
The specter, still submerged to the chest, stretched out its own arm. All that was visible against the dark surface of the water was a ghastly hand—and the hilt of a sword.
Wardin grasped it, and as his own hand grazed that of the dead thing, a sound, an echo, seemed to reverberate through his body. Was he screaming? Was he wailing, too?
An instant later, the thing was gone. And its companion with it. The water stilled and once again became nothing but a well, free of spirits, free of faces. All was back to how it had been before.
Except for the sword in Wardin’s hand. He had Dragon’s Edge at last. Heart hammering, he held it up.
And then he felt it.
Erietta and Arun rushed to him, staring with a mixture of horror, revulsion, and amazement.
“You did it.” Arun laughed, although it sounded a bit more like he’d taken a blow to the stomach. “That wasn’t conduction, was it? Not really. Nor necromancy. But it was … something.”
“Something dangerous,” Erietta added, quite unnecessarily. Her hands were shaking.
“Well, even so,” Arun said. “I’m not sure I agree with your methods, but … you did it.”
Wardin shook his head, hating himself, the water, the mercenaries, his grandfather. “I did nothing. Nothing at all.” He scoffed. “Destiny. How very dramatic of me. I’m an idiot.”
“What do you mean?” Arun looked aghast at the sword. “Don’t tell me that’s not Dragon’s Edge, after all that.”
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