by Tanya Huff
Unseen beside her, Lord Death reached out a hand. It hovered a moment close above a shoulder he couldn’t touch and when he withdrew it, the fingers closed to form a fist. The comfort of Death, he thought, is a cruel joke.
* * *
“Crystal?”
The banging on her door was persistent and loud.
“Crystal, open the door!”
Slowly she unfolded and still more slowly stood. She waved a hand and the door swung open.
Raulin, his hand raised to bang again, took a quick step into the room. “Are you all right?” he demanded anxiously. “Dorses says you’ve been up here since morning. She figured if you could keep the door closed you must be fine, but me, I wanted proof.” He moved forward and brushed her hair back off her face, leaving his hand resting gently against her cheek. He had to tilt his head slightly to meet her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Crystal wet her lips, She’d fought all day, banishing the voices, building and reinforcing shields in her mind. Her nerves hung balanced on the dagger’s edge and she could not allow herself the luxury of hysterics, not inside, not where others could be hurt. “I think,” she said softly, “I don’t want to be alone.” Then, as Raulin continued to meet her eyes, she blushed deeply.
His answering smile banished much of the day’s terror.
“No,” she corrected hurriedly, not that. She moved her face against the warmth of his hand. “Not yet.”
“Then come down to the common room,” he suggested, marveling at the satin feel of her skin, daring to trace one finger down the curve of her throat. Not yet meant later. He could wait. “Jago’s down there now, he’s enough of a wonder to hold them. They won’t even notice you.”
She cocked her head to listen and noticed for the first time the noise sifting through the floor. “Is it as late as that . . .”
As she obviously didn’t require an answer, Raulin concentrated instead on coaxing her to the door. When she balked on the threshold, he slipped an arm around her waist. “You did say you didn’t want to be alone,” he reminded her. He withdrew his arm as an emerald glow reminded him who he held. Cautioned but undaunted, he tucked her arm in his and, when that provoked no objection, kept her moving toward the stairs.
The common room was packed and, as Raulin had said, Jago stood in the center of an admiring court, the more vocal of whom were trying to get him out of his pants.
“Come on, laddie,” called an old woman with a voice like crushed stone, “let’s see them legs!”
“Let’s have some skin,” cried out a much younger one.
Most of the crowd had obviously been drinking heavily. Jago did not appear to be having a particularly good time.
“He hates being the center of attention,” Raulin confided to Crystal as he steered her to a table in the back, the same table she’d sat at the night it all began.
“And you’d have your pants off?”
“In a minute.” He grinned. “There’s little I hate more than false modesty.”
Over the multitude of heads, Jago—boosted up on a table by Nad, partially to give everyone a good view, partially to keep him safe—met Crystal’s eyes. She knew he saw her, it wasn’t a mistake she could make, but in no way did he acknowledge her presence. It showed a sensitivity to her feelings she hadn’t expected and she found herself warming to the younger man. With nothing to draw their attention, the crowd indeed didn’t notice her and she sat unseen until Nad innocently gave it away, only wanting Crystal to share in the glory. “And there’s the Lady,” he called, with a happy smile and a pointing finger. “The one who did the healin’.”
The crowd fell silent as they turned and the weight of their gaze pushed Crystal to her feet. She felt her power build in answer to theirs. A crowd could become a mob very quickly, she knew, and quicker still when drink had blurred the boundaries.
“Wizard?”
The sound rose in a questioning wave and could still break either way when a man with an eye patched pushed to the front of the pack and said, “Where’s my son, wizard. Where’s my boy?”
Crystal kept silent. No answer she could give would satisfy. It never had before. She felt the familiar tightness in her stomach.
A woman, with a steel hook where her right hand should be, stepped forward to stand by the one-eyed man and the mob took them as their center and formed about them. Some murmured names. Others rubbed scars. They all remembered the day, twelve years before, when the Wizard’s Horde had come.
“Wizard.”
A growl now, an unpleasant rumble.
The funny thing was, if she actually was what they accused her of, they wouldn’t dare accuse.
She saw Jago tense, his place on the table giving him an advantage in the fight that was sure to begin. Nad, his honest face puzzled, looked from one friend to another, unsure of what was happening. Beside her, she heard Raulin stand, and felt him ready for battle. She was very glad Ivan stayed safely in the kitchen.
“Wizard!”
Their common voice rising to a howl the crowd surged forward, arms reaching to clutch, but they slammed against a barrier and continued to slam against it as the wizard walked through them and up the stairs.
In the upper hall she paused. The crowd had not yet turned its attention on those who’d stood beside her. Before it could she reached out, wrapped Raulin and Jago in her power, and twitched them to safety; one heartbeat there, the next gone. Even if Raulin hadn’t enough sense to stay in their room, Jago, she strongly suspected, would keep him locked inside. She heard Dorses’ voice, falling like cold water on the din, slapping down and relocking the passion.
Not until she reached the safety of her own room did she allow the barrier to fall. They were all the same, the ones who hated, they never realized they couldn’t hurt her.
Physically.
The voices kept her company all through the long night that followed. Not until morning did she regain enough power to push them back in their place.
THREE
“Chaos, Jago, you owe her! The least we can do is tell her and let her choose.” Raulin stuffed a heavy wool shirt into his pack, and reached for a pair of thick gray socks. His brother’s hand clamped down just above his wrist.
“Those,” Jago pointed out, grabbing the socks and tossing them in his own pack, “are mine.” He released Raulin’s arm and returned to methodically folding his own spare clothes and neatly placing them inside the oilcloth bag.
“I don’t believe you, that you’d begrudge your own brother a pair of socks,” Raulin muttered. “Your own brother . . .”
“I remember what old Dector told us; up in the mountains a pair of warm, dry socks could save your life.”
Raulin released his pack and threw both arms up into the air. “Which is exactly the point I’m trying to make. Do you want to depend on a pair of socks? She’s a wizard, Jago! For the Mother’s sake, think of what that means!”
“I have thought of it, which is obviously more than you’ve done.”
“Look,” Raulin managed to keep his voice reasonable as he began ticking points off on his fingers, “she saved your life. If that sort of thing happens again wouldn’t you want to have her around?”
Jago’s lips tightened. “Yes,” he admitted.
“And then last night, you know as well as I do that she pulled our asses out of the fire with that trick. We’d have been sleeping with Lord Death if she’d left us there.”
“That’s not what you said last night.”
When the brothers had found themselves suddenly up in their room instead of in the middle of a howling crowd, Raulin had been furious. First, at the crowd for daring to raise a hand against the woman who’d cured his brother. Second, at Crystal for removing him before he could lift his hands in return. Had Jago not kicked his feet out from under him and then sat on him until he settled down, Raulin would�
�ve stormed back down the stairs and thrown himself into the fray.
Causing exactly the sort of riot Jago suspected Crystal was trying to prevent.
Raulin, once calmed and convinced Crystal would not want to see him, went to bed and fell quickly asleep. Knowing why, he didn’t care how she’d gotten them out of the tavern and into their room, nor did he worry about the implications of the act.
Jago, however, lay for hours, staring at the ceiling, his thoughts tumbling to the cadence of his brother’s snoring. Such power expended on their behalf made him nervous. One hand dropped to rest on his thigh. They already owed this wizard more than they could repay and now the debt had grown. With Raulin so ready to take up arms in her defense, he’d have no choice but to stand by the wizard’s side. Although, he was forced to admit, he’d have stood there for the debt’s sake as well. And for hers . . .
For two and a half days he’d carried a piece of her life and that tied them in ways he had no wish to be tied. Not to a wizard. Not even this one, beautiful and desirable as she undeniably was.
Their city had been conquered by Kraydak’s Horde in their great-grandfather’s time—although Kraydak was not known as a wizard then—and by the time of Jago’s birth the excesses of the conqueror were an accepted part of existence. People lived their lives and did what they could to avoid coming to his attention. During the Great War, when Kraydak had stood revealed as what he was, nothing had changed. People tried harder not to be noticed and prayed to whatever they still believed in that they wouldn’t be called upon to serve.
“And now,” Jago had muttered to himself, “twelve years after surviving that we’re not only noticed but serving.” He’d sighed, elbowed Raulin to stop the snoring, and finally fallen asleep.
“I said, last night was different!”
Jago started, snapped out of his reverie by Raulin’s voice. “Sorry. I was thinking.”
Raulin tied down the last thong on his pack. “You think too much.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m thinking for two.”
“And,” Raulin continued, ignoring the dig, “you never, listen.”
“I never . . .” Jago yanked at the cord around his neck and pulled a small leather pouch up from under his shirt. “Well, all right then.” He whipped it over his head and threw it across the room. The pouch smacked in the center of Raulin’s chest. “Go ahead. Give it to her. But don’t be surprised if she thanks you very kindly, tells us we’ve no business meddling, and pops off with it. Remember your own words; she’s a wizard.”
“And so, in spite of everything she’s done for us, we’re not to trust her?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“You think she’ll betray us?”
“I didn’t say that either.”
“Then what are you saying?”
Jago opened his mouth to remind his brother of the creed they’d lived their lives by and then closed it again. They’d been noticed; there was no retreating from that. And he did trust her; he couldn’t not. But still, she was a wizard and accepting her did not deny that wizards had always, without exception, made their own rules. “I don’t know,” he said finally.
Raulin reached out and gave one of Jago’s braids an affectionate tug. “Don’t worry, little brother. We’ll just ask her, she’ll say yes or no, and that’ll be the end of it.” He slipped the cord over his own head but left the pouch hanging loose. “We’ll pack the sled later.” He headed out the door. “Come on.”
“Who never listens?” Jago sighed, grabbed up his vest, and followed.
* * *
“So you’re really goin’ then?”
Crystal nodded, gray circles beneath her eyes mute testimony to a sleepless night.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Nad muttered, staring down into the deep mahogany of his morning tea. “I’m sure they’d come ta like you in time.” Then his lips twisted and he shook his head. “Nay, they wouldn’t either.” He looked up and sighed. “It’s too bad there’s nothin’ great for you ta do, nice a shaft collapsin’ or the plague or somethin’ that’d bring them ta need you.”
“You’re not suggesting she collapse a shaft, are you?” Dorses asked, wrapping Crystal’s nearly unresponsive fingers about a mug of steaming tea. She kept her tone light, hoping to lift the pall of gloom that hung about the woman. A half smile rewarded the attempt while Nad sputtered and tried to explain.
“I understand,” Crystal said finally as Nad’s sentences became more and more confused, “but it doesn’t matter, not really. If a shaft collapsed while I was here, no matter how many lives I saved the fault would end up mine. And any plague I cured I would also be accused of causing.”
Nad’s eyes glistened. “You can’t win.” He blinked back tears and cleared his throat. “You just can’t win.”
Crystal felt her own eyes fill and bit her lip to keep the tears from spilling. Nothing undid her control faster than sympathy and understanding. She took a hurried gulp of tea, scalding her mouth but glad of an action to hide behind.
“Yo, Crystal!” Raulin peered in from the empty common room. “Can we talk to you a moment?” His brows waggled and beneath his mustache was an enthusiastic grin.
The Nugget’s kitchen was warm and safe and with the prospect of leaving the inn before her, Crystal wanted to stay both warm and safe for as long as she could. But Raulin had stood beside her and Jago had shared her life so she set down her mug and got slowly to her feet.
As she brushed by Raulin—he remained in the doorway holding open the door, leaving very little room for her—she wished for an instant he’d come to her last night and she could have lost the pain in his arms. Except she wouldn’t have, and she knew it. Too late now . . .
“We . . .” He pushed the door shut and stepped away from it into the common room. “Jago and I have a proposition for you.”
Crystal looked from one to the other, from Raulin’s enthusiasm to Jago’s wary stare. “What?” she asked finally.
“We have a map that will lead us to one of the ancient wizards’ old towers.” Raulin patted the pouch hanging on his chest. “We want you to go with us.”
Emerald eyes blinked twice and Crystal shook her head. “What?” she repeated but with an entirely different emphasis.
Raulin put a foot up on a bench and propped his elbow on his thigh. “Look, I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. After you defeated Kraydak, things went a little crazy in the Empire, every two-copper power mogul trying to gain control. While things were, well, stirred up, we found this map.”
“We stole it from the office of Kraydak’s city governor.”
“Jago!”
“If you’re telling her at all, tell her the truth.”
“He was dead. He didn’t need it.”
“Wait.” Crystal held up her hand, cutting the incipient argument short. “Did you kill him?”
Jago showed teeth in an unpleasant smile. “Not exactly.”
“While I warned His Excellency that a lynch mob waited out front,” Raulin explained in a flat voice, “Jago led them to the rear exit.”
“And when he tried to slip out the back they ripped him to shreds?” Crystal asked, although she didn’t really need to.
Once again Raulin’s smile matched his brother’s. “Eventually.”
The city governor had been Kraydak’s hand, a hand holding Kraydak’s whip; Crystal spared him little sympathy. After twelve years of being the only wizard in a mortal world, Crystal had come to feel there was almost an excuse for what Kraydak had become; there wasn’t so much as a rationalization for the mortals who had turned on their own kind. What the brothers had done had been as necessary as stepping on a roach.
“You found a map?” she prodded.
“Oh, yeah.” Raulin pulled himself free of memories. “I only noticed it because the Right Honorable Scum-sucker dropped it scurryin
g out the door. I grabbed it . . .” He paused, decided the rest of what he’d stripped from the room had no real relevance to the tale, and continued. “Mother wanted to be a Scholar, couldn’t of course, it was an outlawed discipline, but she read constantly and even managed to get her hands on a number of the forbidden texts. She recognized the sigil on the map.”
“A bleeding hand,” Jago interjected, “on a circle of black. Aryalan. One of the ancient wizards.” His tone, unlike Raulin’s, held no enthusiasm, no excitement. Raulin told a story. He reported facts.
Crystal felt Jago’s disapproval, it surrounded him like a fog, but she was uncertain whether he disapproved of the weight of history that accompanied the wizard’s name, the situation he and his brother now found themselves in, or her hearing of it.
“How can you be sure,” she asked, “that the map leads to her tower.”
“We can’t,” Raulin admitted cheerfully. “No one can read the script. What’s more, it must have been recopied so many times over the centuries it’s got a virgin’s chance in Chaos of retaining any of the original wording. But it does lead to something of the wizard’s, something important and big. That much we’re sure of. Think of it, Crystal,” he leaned forward and his hands clutched at dreams, “a treasure house of the ancients, lost since the Age of Wizards ended. Ours for the taking. Yours too if you’ll come. Chaos knows, your talents could come in handy.” Then his voice softened. “And we’d like your company.”
For an instant Crystal thought, So, he would find use for me after all, then realized she did Raulin a disservice. It took no wizard to see that he wanted her more than he wanted her power. The power was only a useful addition. She glanced at Jago and he answered her silent question with a terse nod; more conscious of the wizard than his brother and therefore more wary of the woman.