“I would rather stay here and keep working….if you don’t mind. I’ll pay you back for the candles I use.”
“Oh, no worry about that. But…”
“I just can’t rest until I’ve given him a new home.”
“I understand.” He gave her a wan smile, and she knew he was probably thinking of souls that refused bodies.
“I can’t move forward until I know,” Velsa said, trying to reassure him that she wouldn’t blame him if it failed.
Velsa worked alone now, as the summer sun faded away. Madam Peroneel claimed Fanarlem never needed to rest their eyes or move around, and for once it felt true. Velsa saw nothing but the body taking shape. She couldn’t rest until it was complete. She even took charge of the stuffing; she had watched Alsan carefully to see how he arranged it. In the morning the assistants would only have to tweak things and Mr. Trinavel would apply illusions, and then they could call Grau’s soul out of the crystal.
She kept the crystal beside her, to remind her why she worked, trying to tell herself that he was here with her, although sometimes she couldn’t shake the sense that she was very alone. The shadow of her bowed head was stark against the white wall, and the room seemed very quiet. She didn’t feel him the way she would if he was alive.
What time was it, when she finally put down the needle? The bells of the city clocks had stopped ringing long ago. It was profoundly dark outside, and only rarely did she hear a carriage go by. Grau’s body was complete, with his head attached but eyeless. It was hard to tell if it looked right, without eyes. But she thought…maybe it wasn’t too bad a likeness. Of course his skin looked smoothed out, a little younger. Grau always had those sun lines around his eyes and Fanarlem couldn’t pull off wrinkles; there was no way of making them look natural and distinguished. But his nose was very like. His mouth, even. Mouths were the hardest part. Mr. Trinavel had a skilled hand.
She took his hand, put it to her face, and closed her eyes. “Tomorrow,” she whispered.
She had brought some of Grau’s clothes with her, and tired as she was, she still didn’t think she could sleep, so she decided to work on altering them. She dressed him in them first, to mark what needed to change. She blushed as she buttoned his pants over his naked body, and then bit her lip, amused at herself for being so childish about it. The assistants sewed that section together with no apparent embarrassment, but Velsa wished she could drop through the floor. It didn’t look like much had changed from his flesh and blood body, which was a relief. It made some sense that the spells for intimate parts were some of the best since that was one of the reasons Fanarlem were made in the first place.
Anyway, it wasn’t really him yet.
She fastened the clasps on his tunic and regarded him a moment, struck by another wave of sadness. She was probably just getting too tired to think straight anymore, and being alone in a dark, unfamiliar room wasn’t helping. Soon, they would be safe and sound in their own bed.
Something bright crashed through the shop window, shattering the glass.
A flaming projectile hit the ground not two feet from her and scattered into smaller flames.
Tiny fires were everywhere. She hurriedly stomped out a few of them, while reluctant to leave Grau’s body unattended.
Three-Tongues?
Who else would set fire to the best Fanarlem shop in town?
Maybe one of his people had succeeded in tracking her. Even if not, it wouldn’t be hard to guess that she would be relying on this shop to try and revive Grau. If the whole shop went up in flames, there would be nowhere else to go for many miles. Grau’s soul could be lost in the spirit world if they waited too long, and Mr. Trinavel’s business might be ruined.
One of the flames caught the edge of a sack. She stomped that out quickly, just as another flaming projectile flew at her through the hole in the glass. She heard laughter outside.
Quickly, she scoped them out. Three people: Three-Tongues, a woman, and a man. She couldn’t take them alone and protect Grau too.
She grabbed his crystal. It hummed in her hand, like it wanted something from her.
She glanced at his body.
Would you come if I called you? she wondered.
One of the flames had dropped on a stack of papers, which burned hot and quick. The rising flames lapped at other objects around the desk. A tiny bottle exploded. She jumped out of her skin.
More laughter outside. She couldn’t see them, out in the dark street, with the flames in her eyes. But they could surely see her through the windows. As yet, they weren’t attacking. They were waiting for the fire to run her out.
She grabbed a pair of eyes off the shelf and put them in Grau’s sockets, then tapped the crystal to one of his eyes. She had grabbed a mismatched pair; one green and one golden. But that could be fixed later. She held his crystal in her palm, so tight it dug into her.
Grau, wake up. Please wake up—I need you—and there’s no time.
She heard the crackling of the flames, saw them spreading in the corners of her eyes, felt their heat on her glowing skin.
If you don’t wake up now, I might join you in the spirit world tonight.
Three-Tongues shouted something; she didn’t really hear him.
Grau. Her tired body folded over him, giving everything she had to calling him from that mysterious place beyond death. Even though she wasn’t trained in calling souls, she felt that surely, if anyone could bring Grau home, it would be her. He would know her voice. He would feel the tug of her soul. Surely he would.
She felt a push and a pull.
A soul, trying to reach her. But hesitating.
Of course he would hesitate. The souls always did. So the books said.
Grau! She had one moment to reach him. Grau, please come to me!
She started to wonder if it was him hesitating, or her.
Grau, I want you this way. I want you here. I love you, and I don’t care if you’re a flesh and blood man or a Fanarlem. You’ll never be strange to me, not an inch of you. I want you to grow old with me.
His body twitched.
She straightened. His eyes had shifted.
“Grau?” Her voice was a whisper.
“Velsa—” He coughed.
“Grau!” She wanted to cry of joy, but there was no time for celebration. “Three-Tongues is here!”
“What happened to me?” He tried to move, and she pulled him up and pressed his crystal into his hands.
“You’re a Fanarlem. There’s no time,” she said. “Please.”
His subconscious may have spoken to her before, but his waking mind seemed to have no idea what had happened. She felt how disoriented he was. But within seconds he seemed aware of all the fire around them. He slid off the table and flexed his hand, dispelling the flames on the desk, and then moving from there to other fires. Velsa shifted her attention to Three-Tongues, keeping his gang at bay telepathically. She grabbed the scissors she’d been working with, although they weren’t much of a weapon compared to the bandits’ knives.
“Shit, who’s that?” the other man called.
“It’s the sorcerer,” Three-Tongues said. “She turned him into a damned doll too.”
Grau drew one of the remaining flames into his hand and huffed his breath at it. In a neat trick, this transferred the flames right into the hair of one of the bandits outside.
She used the distraction of them all trying to put the fire out to sense the best telepath among them. It was a woman again, this time not an older woman with fussy hair, but a young one with a short, messy brown frizz of hair and a loose shirt that hung off one bare shoulder.
Velsa thrust a wave of power at her mind. The woman caught the attack and held up a hand reflexively to fend her off.
You killed my husband. Velsa’s anger gave her fuel. Maybe it was a hot, short-lived fuel, but it worked for now. With a small gasp, the girl slumped forward on the horse, unconscious.
It took more out of Velsa than it usually did. S
he felt like she could pass out herself. She looked at Grau, forcing herself to stay alert.
Grau glanced around the room, perhaps looking for weapons. His eyes alighted on the fireplace tools and he started creeping over, barefooted, around a mess of broken glass.
“You can’t hurt your feet,” Velsa said.
“None of my body parts feel like they belong to me,” he said, but he picked up his pace a little.
He lifted up the iron poker, arms wavering before he adjusted to their heft and his own strength.
“Three-Tongues killed me, didn’t he?” Grau asked. His eyes were serious. A few remaining licks of flame lit the edges of his shadowed face. His expression had a terrible calm that sent a thrill to her toes.
“Yes,” Velsa said. “He did.”
Grau ran forward, the tip of the poker growing red. He tripped a bit but somehow managed not to break his pace, slashing the poker at the glass to break a larger opening. He crawled through, heading toward Three-Tongues.
Velsa followed behind him, although her feet were like sludge.
Three-Tongues hissed as the red tip of the poker struck his arm.
Grau was still a little unsteady on his feet. The other man was trying to revive the telepathic girl. His telepathic skills weren’t as strong as hers. Velsa blocked him, her head pounding. Some sleep definitely would have been a good idea, but then Grau wouldn’t be here.
Grau used his sorcery to choke Three-Tongues as the other man took out a knife and pointed it at Velsa, his scowl menacing in the moonlight.
“You,” he said. “You’re the little doll girl who killed Luska.”
“That was actually Dalaran. And your brother killed my husband.” He dared to look at her as if she was the enemy. Anger rushed down her arms, and it felt like a second wind.
“You should’ve known better than to cross us,” the man said. “Killing people—ain’t nothing to us.”
“You can’t hurt me with a knife,” Velsa said. “You won’t hurt me at all. You killed Grau for the sake of a little bit of magical dust. You know this wasn’t his fault. Dalaran is the one who stole it from you in the first place.”
“That’s in the past,” he sneered. “You joined Dalaran’s fight.” He rushed at her, grabbing her wrist and yanking her toward him. He pressed the knife to her throat. “I can’t kill you, no, but I can damage you.” He slashed her skin.
She coughed as her stuffing spilled out of the gap. He was holding her against him with two muscular arms now, lifting her feet off the ground.
She struck at him with her mind. He tried to block her again. She was too tired. He was managing to ward her off, albeit with a groaning noise emerging from his throat. His arms tightened around her.
We need Dormongara, she thought. He needs to know what they’re plotting.
She couldn’t call Dormongara. Certainly not in this busy city, when she didn’t even know what direction he had gone. Telepathic communication over a distance required some sort of link or sense of direction, unless of course you were extremely skilled. Velsa’s telepathic talents had always been at their best when she was reading emotions and turning those emotions back on her attackers.
If I kill him, Dormongara might sense it.
Battling past her exhaustion, she kept pushing at the man.
She dared to glance at Grau. He had fought Three-Tongues back with the poker. The bandit was breathing hard; he coughed and spat blood on the ground, but now he pulled out a sword with licks of fire springing from the blade.
Looking at Grau broke her concentration just enough that the man was able to get something from his pocket.
“Eat it, bitch.” He pulled her jaw open and shoved something glowing red in her mouth.
It was one of their magical fire starters, searing her tongue and the roof her mouth, but she quickly tipped her head back and sent the fire stone into the portal at the back of her throat. Her mouth tasted charred.
The man seemed startled. Maybe he didn’t know any Fanarlem could swallow, or maybe he just didn’t know how it worked and that objects would vanish there. Flower never had the spell that allowed it.
“Thanks for the suggestion,” she snapped. Her mind lashed out at him, and he took a step back. She rushed up to him and stabbed him in the gut with the scissors. Revenge for poor Grau. But the feel of the scissors jabbing his flesh was so disgusting that she immediately let go and withdrew. He made a gurgling sound of pain and was now distracted by trying to heal himself.
Meanwhile, a plume of flame came from the fire sword, engulfing Grau’s hands and the ends of his sleeves. They really juiced up the fire spells, Velsa thought. One of the only ways to kill a Fanarlem was to burn them to death right down to the eyeballs. So they had meant to kill her along with Grau. All this, just for sport. Killing her would offer them nothing.
But she had some fire spells of her own, didn’t she? Velsa reached for her own crystal, still warm with the magic that it had been enhanced with.
As the flames consumed Grau’s fingers, he dropped the poker. He still managed to clutch his crystal. He seemed to be struggling, shaking his hands as his skin burned away. She knew he was capable of dispelling fire. But maybe his new body was throwing him off. Elemental powers grew stronger with familiarity to objects and places. Grau’s own body was a stranger to him now.
Quickly, Velsa used telekinesis to drag the poker across the ground toward her, so Three-Tongues and the brother couldn’t get it, although she didn’t try to pick it up herself. A heavy weapon would burden her more than it would help.
We need to kill him, she told Grau. We need to send him to the spirit world so Dormongara can question him.
Grau looked a little confused. He had missed all the action with Flower, but he nodded.
Three-Tongues was laughing, watching Grau burn. “I think that’s enough for now,” he told the other man. “We’ve left them much worse for wear. Flower would be happy to see this one turned into a doll. We need to make sure our other business has been taken care of.”
Grau lunged, grabbing Three-Tongues’ hair and pressing his burning thumbs to his eyes.
Three-Tongues shrieked, stumbling back. He clutched his eyes and choked, “Curse you!”
Velsa ripped her crystal off her neck and forced it into Three-Tongues’ mouth, the same trick his accomplice had just pulled on her. Burn, she told the crystal. She knew this crystal, even with the new spells, and this made it easier to use.
Three-Tongues tried to shove her off him, while Grau grabbed one of the knives from his belt.
The crystal burst into flame within the tender flesh of Three-Tongues’ mouth, and although it burned Velsa too, although Three-Tongues chomped down on her fingers, she hardly seemed to feel the pain. She held it there, scorching Three-Tongues from the inside.
Grau drove the knife into Three-Tongues’ back and yanked his head back by the braid. “This is for my body,” he said. “For my hair. For my stomach. For everything you took from me. And for Velsa’s heart, because I know you must have broken it.”
Three-Tongues lashed at Velsa telepathically, and finally she had to let go of the crystal.
He spat out the stone. His knees slumped, dragging Grau down as he still clutched the blade.
“You win, doll boy,” he choked. “But we’re…pretty even, aren’t we?”
His head fell to the ground, his spirit slipping away.
Grau stood over him, his sleeves charred, his hands burned away down to metal fingers.
Velsa understood the bandit’s parting words. To most men of pride, becoming a Fanarlem would be a fate almost as terrible as death—or maybe worse. Her heart ached for him all over again.
The man was pulling the fallen girl to her feet; she was finally starting to revive. Velsa braced herself for another fight, but without their leader, the remaining bandits seemed to have the wind taken out of them. Grau shot them a warning look.
For a wild moment, Velsa was sorely tempted to try to take a
nother one of them out anyway. There was still the concern of this plot against the royal family, but—did she have the strength to make that her problem? Three-Tongues made it sound like that was someone else’s responsibility anyway, if that was the “other business” he needed to make sure of. She brushed Grau’s mind. Do we let them go?
He shared her thoughts, shared her fury, but he also hesitated from a final attack.
“If you cross any of my family again, I will cut off your hands and make you eat them,” Grau said.
The man and woman fled. They had left their horses at the end of the lane.
She clutched his hand in hers. “Are you all right?”
He looked at her a moment like he was trying to decide how to to explain.
Instead, he grabbed her close and kissed her hard.
She made a peep of surprise. “They burned my tongue.”
“I don’t care. I just didn’t want to leave you. That’s the last thing I remember. Thinking how I could not leave you.” He clutched her cheeks.
Deep down, she had expected to be a little disappointed by his touch now, but there was something weirdly alluring about his hard metal fingers touching her soft cheeks that she wasn’t sure she would forget, even after she patched him back up. “Grau…I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“I’m sorry it happened.”
“No,” he said. “Not even that.”
“I’m so grateful you came back to me,” she said.
He kissed her again, and then stroked her torn throat. She shivered.
“Let’s fix that,” he said, hoisting her up by the legs to carry her, as if for no other reason than to prove he still could. She was the one wearing proper footwear, after all. He chose his steps carefully around all the glass and set her down on the work table. Then he went back out the front door of the shop and hauled in Three-Tongues’ body, refusing any help from her.
“There’s a gift for Dormongara,” he said.
The Sorcerer's Equal (The Telepath and the Sorcerer Book 3) Page 20