Ignoring the assault, Caldan began walking east, toward the river and Gazija’s ships. If he stayed here, he might have to kill some of them before they backed off.
“Stop!” Caldan roared at the Quivers coming toward him.
Some of them faltered, and the rain of arrows lessened.
“Do not come against me!” he shouted. “Or you’ll regret it.”
As if they sensed the truth in his words, the warlocks’ pummeling also tapered off.
Caldan resumed his march toward Quiss’s ships, not caring whether Felice or Quiss followed.
After what he’d done, he hoped Miranda would forgive him.
CHAPTER 38
Amerdan sat cross-legged on patchy grass. Only the talon and the vormag had tents among these savages. Inside the talon’s was a pile of rags that served as bedding and a wooden chest two feet wide and half as deep. It sported a heavy lock, though he hadn’t tested it. He couldn’t imagine what these beasts possessed that he’d want for his own. There was a musty scent in the air, overlaying a fetid stench of rotting meat.
Xarlas had bade him enter, then gone to talk with the jukari and vormag. Amerdan was grateful for the reprieve, as he was still light-headed from the gifts his trinket had delivered to him, whatever they were. He hoped for Gamzegul’s well. The vessel wouldn’t be needing it anymore, now that Amerdan had cut out its throat. He’d tried searching for the well, to no avail. Whatever his trinket had done to his mind left him unable to focus on sorcery.
But vast were the possibilities before him. Striking were the potential rewards.
First, though, the jukari and vormag must yield to him.
The tent flap rustled, and a draft washed over him, humid with the sharp scent of musk. It lay open a crack, a sheet of light cutting across the space, illuminating particles of dust. Leather-bound feet scuffed across dirt. Metal tinkled and bones clacked together. He opened himself to his wells, sensing the bruise of the talon’s. He licked his lips, counting. Seventeen. She had seventeen! But they were blocked. A few were straining against the barrier separating the creature’s mind from the source. There were thinner patches, as if the wall had been scraped at. Two of them had holes, but they were tiny. Only a trickle of power could seep through. Which meant she had taken wells much as he had, but hadn’t been able to break the blockages. Whether it was because of the difference in their trinkets or a lack of sorcerous skill to help her break through was unsettled. Whatever the reason, the talon was stumbling along a similar path to Amerdan’s. One that was for Amerdan alone. That couldn’t be allowed.
How dare she?
He remained still, even when the talon came so close her rags brushed his back. Whatever her motives, his were above her.
“I would know,” Xarlas said as she made her way to her nest of rags and sat down, “more of you.” The talon rested her clawed hands on her knees and regarded him, violet eyes unblinking.
She was uncertain.
Amerdan marshaled his concentration. Here lay both opportunity and danger. Of all his encounters since childhood, no other had held more promise or more peril.
Dotty stirred against his chest, and he smiled.
“I am an Old One,” he said.
Xarlas frowned, replacing the expression in an instant with blankness. “What city did you live in? Who was your master? What talons were yours?”
All questions Amerdan could not answer. But he didn’t have to. How were these creatures used to being treated? Since the Shattering, they’d obviously assumed command, taken fragments of power unto themselves. But before . . . they were servants.
“Fool!” he hissed. “I had no master! I am beyond them!”
The talon stirred, clawed fingers clenching and unclenching. Amerdan deciphered her intent. Before, she had been a slave, but now she had tasted freedom for centuries. There would be no persuading her. Xarlas’s actions were inevitable.
“You cannot kill me,” he said anyway. “I have remained hidden for eons, gathering power to myself. Test me if you must. But know this: If you go against me, you will die. I will take you into myself, as I have done to others countless times.”
“We have no wish to be servants again.”
“But that is your place. You were created to serve. You know this. Denial ill suits you.”
Xarlas shuddered, as if she could feel chains of cold steel sliding across her body, claiming it. “We will not—”
“You will.”
She gazed at the ground between them, expression unreadable. Abruptly, she stood and moved to the chest. From around her neck, among the myriad metal and bone objects, she selected a key. Xarlas paused then, as if considering her actions, then unlocked the container.
I should kill it. Dotty brushed his skin, slid over his nipple. She had been quiet of late. Speak to me! he pleaded to his sisters.
Xarlas paused in the process of lifting the lid and turned. “Did you say something?”
“No. Open your box, talon. What is inside you’re so eager to show me?”
A weapon? His death? No. If that were the goal, the talon would have taken it out before he was here.
I’ll find out what’s inside later.
Because with the talon dead, he could look at his leisure. And that’s what he wanted: to kill it. His trinket wanted this. He could feel it. One hand reached into his shirt and drew it out. The spherical pendant rested in his clenched fist. His hand began to glow; light shone through the flesh of his fingers. The need filled him. He shivered with delight.
The talon had its back to him. It either didn’t fear him or had defenses. Not sorcerous ones, judging from its blocked wells.
Amerdan’s blade struck with barely a glimmer. The creature fell almost silently, choking on her own blood. He pushed it to the ground and sat astride it. It groaned faintly, lips bubbling scarlet. A radiance rose from its face, growing stronger as Amerdan sensed his trinket’s power encompass the thing’s essence. He raised his hand as a thread of sparkling light erupted from his trinket and snaked toward the vessel. The light thickened, swelling. Pulses traveled along the cord to him. Pain racked Amerdan’s body, and he clenched his teeth together. Only a whimper escaped. Good. He was getting stronger.
As he watched, the skin covering the vessel’s face leached of color, turning a corpse gray, its covering cracked, drained of vitality.
Which was now his.
The cord vanished, cutting Amerdan from the ecstasy, from the agony. The loss of any feeling was so sudden, the absence of pain became like pain itself. He gasped, and a shudder ran through him, tendons in his neck straining. With a croak, he collapsed onto the desiccated remains, panting.
A commotion outside reached his ears. Vormag arguing in hushed tones. Jukari howling and slavering.
Amerdan pushed himself to his feet.
He sawed at the vessel’s neck until its head came free, defiling the corpse for following a path that was for him alone. The meat was like dried leather. He wiped his knife on the talon’s rags, once more vowing to give the blade a proper cleaning later. The creature reeked of decay, of unopened tombs. The chain with the talon’s trinket had slipped off the stump of its neck, and Amerdan picked it up to examine. He could sense it calling to him. Or was it the other way round? His called to this one?
Acting on impulse, he drew his spherical cage out and held it close to the talon’s. A pulse of energy passed between them, a spark so faint he thought he’d imagined it.
Except now . . . he had a greater sense of the second trinket. He felt where it was, and, somehow, that it was now unbound to any creature. It was . . . enslaved to his.
Amerdan couldn’t help himself. He laughed. Possibilities were opening up before him.
And another thing dawned on him: Where there was one, there were others. Like and unlike his own. He could pass one to his sister in the hospice. Would it be able to heal her? Could absorbing the contents of vessels lead to her cure? His salvation?
There were no cer
tainties. But for the first time in many years, Amerdan felt he had a mission.
The contents of the chest lay in shadow, and he tilted it to the light beaming in from the tent flap. A few polished rocks. Scraps of metal with strange runes. Scraped leather covered in ancient writing. A dried flower? Personal items.
Junk.
Why did Xarlas move to open the chest, then? Was the rune-covered metal some sort of crafted weapon? Amerdan snorted, dismissing their importance. He was beyond such playthings.
He dropped the chest, and the contents scattered in the dirt. He tucked the talon’s trinket into a belt pouch. The vormag must know where the other talons were. Killing Xarlas and assuming her place was only the start. The vormag would be uncertain. Hesitant. He had to take control of them.
They must fear him.
Amerdan opened his wells and strode from the tent.
CHAPTER 39
A cool breeze blew over Caldan from open windows. The captain’s cabin. Luxurious, even though it was compact. He sat on a chair on which hung his sheathed sword. Drained, both emotionally and mentally, he held his face in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees.
Quiss stood by the windows. He was gaunt and pale, staring out into the night.
There was a knock at the door, and the latch turned.
“Come in,” Quiss said in his strange accent.
When Quiss spoke, Caldan looked up. He wiped his tear-streaked cheeks. Seeing Felice, his eyes widened slightly.
Felice pursed her lips and entered. She examined Caldan, taking in the jagged cuts in his leather boots and the trinket ring on his finger. His hand reached up to touch the bone trinkets through his shirt, and her eyes followed his movement.
“I have to know why,” Felice said plainly. “Devenish stood firm against the assault, and then you killed him when I was only a few dozen paces away. You walked calmly away while the warlocks and Quivers tried to kill you.”
Caldan laughed softly. “You’re wondering if I’m now a threat. Tell me, Felice, was the innocent man you played Dominion with a threat?”
“No. But people change. The warlocks think Devenish was killed by a rogue sorcerer. An infiltrator of Kelhak’s, if the rumors are to be believed. A young man recently arrived in Riversedge. A false Protector from Anasoma. You. Except . . . I know you’re not a spy. You’re not a traitor. Which begs the question: Why did you behave like one?” She held up a hand to stop him answering. “You must have had a good reason. One you considered moral.” She looked at Quiss meaningfully. “What does he know?”
“Everything,” said Caldan.
Felice sighed. “I need to know—”
“No,” growled Caldan. He stood, face twisted in barely constrained fury. “You’ll tell me what you know about the bone trinkets. Now.”
Felice took a half step back, swallowing. “During the Shattering,” she said, “or before—no one really knows—the sorcerers created trinkets of immense power. A very few were . . . the antithesis of what many of them revered—sorcery. Instead, they expunged sorcerous power from an area. Destroyed all life. And the sorcerers didn’t hesitate to use them.”
“The Shattering,” whispered Caldan.
Felice nodded. “Yes.”
“Partly,” broke in Quiss.
“What do you mean?” Felice asked.
“You’re partly correct,” Quiss said. “But do go on.”
She looked at him in consternation, then turned back to Caldan. “Whatever happened thousands of years ago, the world was almost destroyed. A few brave men and women, heedless of losing their own lives, fought their way to and seized the trinkets. They saved all of us. Then one of their number betrayed them and took the artifacts for himself. He killed them all and reputedly destroyed the trinkets.”
“Who was it?” Caldan said, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter who he was—”
“But it does. It was the emperor.”
Caldan stared at her in disbelief. “The empire was created centuries after the Shattering. He couldn’t have—”
“He already knew the secret of the Touched.”
“You knew about their blood?” Caldan said.
“Yes.”
“And did nothing?”
“And achieve what?” she snapped. “Commit suicide? You may think you know the truth, but you clearly haven’t looked at it fully. Politics often trumps truth, young man.”
“So the emperor took the bone trinkets,” Quiss prompted.
“Yes. I thought,” Felice said, “that there was only one such trinket left. I was mistaken.”
Caldan nodded in agreement. He settled back into the chair, one hand close to his sword hilt. Quiss watched with emotionless eyes.
Felice continued. “My master called the trinket the Waster of Life. She told me everything she could about it before she died . . . except for the fact that there was more than one.”
Caldan made the connection immediately. There was no mistaking the feel of the purified land, its deadness. A Waster of Life, he mused, is a good description. Then Felice had to have made the connection to his bone trinket. She knew he’d lied about not possessing it.
A silence hung in the air, broken only by the lap of water against the side of the ship.
Felice continued. “She said to me, ‘If you ever get the chance, to possess or destroy one of these trinkets, take it. No matter what the cost.’ You, Caldan, possess one: the bone ring. Stolen from the emperor decades ago by your family. Kept by them . . . They tried to keep it out of others’ hands so it would never be used. And the warlocks have—had—one. Sorcery that didn’t simply kill; it destroyed utterly. I didn’t know what form the ancient relic took, only that it had to be in the warlocks’ keeping. They hadn’t used this knowledge for any ends, merely kept it in case it came in handy.”
“Handy,” snorted Caldan. “That’s one word for it. So now you’ve worked it out, you understand why I had to kill Devenish.”
Felice nodded and swallowed. “But it puts me in a difficult position.”
“What are you going to do with me? Turn me in? Do you think I’ll go quietly?”
“I don’t expect so. Not after your display. I know a great deal about sorcery, both what is public knowledge and much that isn’t. I know things I shouldn’t.” Felice wrung her hands. “Terrible things. But . . . what you did frightened me. And now I find you lied to me about the Waster of Life. You had it all along.”
Caldan spread his hands. For some reason, he felt embarrassed. “I didn’t know who to trust. I still don’t.”
“Do you trust this man?” She pointed at Quiss.
A fleeting smile passed across Caldan’s face. “More than I trust you.”
“I didn’t know what it was, back then,” she said. “I do now. And I believe you killed Devenish so that you could take his Waster of Life. Since you didn’t immediately try to set yourself up as the new leader of the warlocks, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a power play. The man who defeated me at Dominion had been content to devote his life to studying crafting and had joined the Protectors. Except, he already possessed a Waster of Life, one kept hidden by his family for decades. Then you stumbled across another. And you had to follow your parents’ path, their familial mission . . . to conceal a terrible artifact from those who would abuse its power. So you committed murder. Now, all you can do is run.”
“I’ve had enough of running,” Caldan said. He shifted in his chair.
“Yes,” Felice said. “You’ll be needed to fight Kelhak. We all will.”
Caldan watched as her lips trembled and her legs wobbled. He felt ashamed. But he’d needed to know what she knew. She’d come alone against him, when she knew what he’d done to Devenish. And that implied she trusted him not to kill her. Perhaps she was on his side . . .
“You do have the Waster of Life Devenish used, am I correct?” Felice said.
Caldan nodded. “And mine.”
“Beware calling it your own. And about Devenish
: Why did you kill him?”
Guilt rose in Caldan, twisting his stomach and forming a lump in his throat. He swallowed. “Devenish wouldn’t have stopped. He protected the warlocks and the Quivers from Kelhak’s storm, and the purified lands. But he was . . . flawed. He only wanted power. He had to be stopped. It was the only choice.”
“And who are you to make that judgment?”
“I’m no one. And I’d like to stay that way.”
Felice studied him. He felt himself being evaluated, his actions weighed. Judged. It reminded him of the monks’ gazes when they had found out he possessed a well. They’d looked at him as someone of consequence then. And now, he realized that’s what he was. From the moment he’d been banished from the monastery, his path hadn’t been his own. His blood, destructive and coercive sorcery—everything that had happened to him since would have happened no matter what path he’d taken. Of course it would; he was a fool to think otherwise. He’d stumbled along, blind to the future. He’d been content to live in the now, and look where it had taken him.
It seemed impossible that he hadn’t realized this sooner. Killing Devenish had filled him with a clarity of thought he’d previously lacked. The clarity of someone with nothing, and everything, to lose.
“I—”
“You bring conflict with you,” Felice said, before he could finish. “You are sorcerer and Touched both. Greater than the sum of the parts.”
For several moments, he heard nothing but his own breath rasping through his throat, his own heart hammering in his chest.
“That’s what Devenish said. He lusted after my abilities.”
“And your blood.”
“Yes. It came together for me with Elpidia. She didn’t know about the Touched, but she knew the power I had flowing through me.”
“Who is this Elpidia? And where is she?”
“Dead. Amerdan murdered her.”
Felice frowned. “And who is he?”
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