“I have a few ideas, but I don’t want to share that information with you just yet. You need to attempt this without any preconceptions so that you are equally open to all possibilities, not swayed by the possible errors of others.”
Her mouth twitched. “Of men.”
“Is there anything else you will need? Other than that?”
“Aye,” she nodded. “One thing more.”
“Name it.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “How do I know that when all this is done, you won’t simply discard me? I’m sure many Magisters would consider that the wisest course, under the circumstances.”
She could see a muscle along his jaw tighten. Clearly he hadn’t expected her to be so forward about this.
You tested me, Magister. Now I test you in turn.
“What is it you want, then? A heartfelt guarantee that I won’t kill you? I think you know what that would be worth.”
She nodded. “But there is one kind of guarantee that would have meaning.”
How badly did he want her help? He had already stressed the bounds of the Law just by talking to her; would he take this final step to win her as an ally? She could see his expression darken as he considered the ramifications of what she was asking for. She waited in silence.
“Very well,” he said at last. It seemed to her that his voice was hardly louder than the beat of an insect’s wings. “You have my Oath.”
Triumph rushed through her veins like wildfire. The sensation was so powerful that it left her breathless; for a brief moment she felt connected to him, as one might be connected to a lover. The ultimate intoxication.
You see, Ethanus? This Law is not some mystical compact that Magisters are bound to, but simply a collection of words. If Colivar is willing to set it aside for the moment’s convenience, then surely the others will to choose to do the same. It is only a question of learning what their price is and paying it.
She looked away from him as she gathered the ebony box into her arms; she did not want him to see the triumph in her eyes. The foodstuffs vanished one by one as she rose to her feet, along with whatever sorcery had been holding the insects at bay; a dragonfly flitted by, seeking its midday meal.
“I will leave you a note in this place when I find what you seek,” she promised him.
Not if, but when.
Then she gathered her sorcery about her, wielding her power openly, shamelessly. Calling up the stolen athra that was in her soul as only a true Magister could do, setting it alight, bidding it to consume her flesh. A firestorm of transformation blazed about her, molding her skin into feathers, her arms into wings. No witch would ever have summoned her power so wastefully. She knew it. He knew it. She celebrated her sorcery as he watched.
The wind caught her up then, and she could not resist one wild cry of exultation as she took to the air, heading westward toward the sun.
He stared at the sky for a long, long time. Long after the point when she had passed from sight and sorcery would have been required in order to watch her further.
So this is what it feels like to break the Law.
Amazingly, the gods had not arrived in a storm of black thunder to strike him down for his transgression. Nor had the earth opened up beneath his feet to swallow him whole. But those things were still possible, at least in a metaphorical sense. There was no guarantee they would not happen in the future, because of this.
But for now . . . there was only his memory of the moment. Nearly as ominous as the thunder of the gods. Nearly as daunting as the Abyss itself.
The Law of the Magisters dictated that Kamala must die.
He had sworn by the Law that he would not kill her.
He thought he could feel his darker half stirring, as if the paradox had awakened it from long slumber. Had Colivar’s long centuries of civilized existence weakened its grasp upon his soul enough that he could rise above this moment, or was he putting himself in genuine danger? The beast within him had nursed its grievances for a long time now, trapped within its prison of human intellect, ready and waiting to devour him whole the moment he showed the slightest sign of weakness. If it rose to the surface once more, if it took control of him, would he even remember what it was like to be human?
It does not matter what the Law is, Ramirus had declared, back in the days of their early negotiations. It only matters that we follow it without question.
But a female Magister existed now. He could think of only two ways that might be possible, and one of them shook him to the core of his very soul. If that was the process that had brought her into being, then her very existence rendered his Oath—and the Law itself—irrelevant. No Magister would be able to kill her. The darkness that lay coiled within their souls simply would not allow it.
That darkness was whispering to him now. Stirring his blood. He remembered the taste of her sorcery upon his lips, and a tremor of dread and desire coursed through his flesh.
To deny that darkness was to deny his own history. His very soul.
To surrender to it was to risk . . . everything.
Which did he fear more? he wondered.
Chapter 6
“T
HIS IS the place.”
Hushed by the reminder of her loss, Hedda’s voice was hardly louder than a whisper. It was the second time she’d been back here with her husband. The first time had been to point the way out to a skilled tracker. That man had managed to find a human footprint pressed into the loam where the hollow-eyed girl had once stood, which had set Hedda’s heart pounding with hope, but in the end he’d lost the trail as it wound up into the mountains. Too much bare granite, he’d told the grieving mother. Too many other animals scuffing over whatever traces had been left behind, in the time that it had taken Hedda to hire him.
One more thing to feel guilty about.
Merely coming back to this place made her feel overwhelmed by guilt. Never mind that her husband had stood by her side through all of this, without a single note of accusation crossing his lips. “We’ll find the trail,” he assured her, squeezing her tightly against his side. Dura was a stonemason in Lord Cadern’s service, and his strong, calloused hands raised prickles along her arms as he rubbed her briskly. It had been hard for him to get a day off from his current project to tend to this matter, she knew, and he’d had to go deep into debt to pay for a witch to come all the way out from Esla to help them. But she knew he would offer up the very blood in his veins to get his son back, if that’s what the gods required of him. And thus far he seemed to believe her story about what had happened.
Unlike the rest of the townsfolk.
She’d heard the whispering, of course. How her baby had fallen into the river and drowned. Or he had crawled off a cliff while she wasn’t watching. Or he had died of some illness that she’d failed to detect in time. Now she was just covering up the truth by making up a crazy story about some dirt-covered waif stealing him away, so that her husband would not turn her out of the house. Poor Dura, they whispered. How long would his faith in her last? How much evidence would he need to see before he realized he’d been duped? Crazy Hedda, pressing him to hire a witch who could well reveal her little plot! Did she think he would just go along with her little game?
And now they were here again, looking for her baby, and the witch was picking his way through the piles of branches that a recent windstorm had brought down, using his powers to search the ground for any sign of Hedda’s mysterious visitor. He was surprisingly young, to her eyes, barely past the age of puberty, and clearly he was not very experienced in this kind of investigation. But witches were few and far between in the region, and most of the good ones restricted their efforts to healing the children of rich lords, where bringing a moderate fever down a few degrees might earn them enough coin to feed their own families for a month or more. Had Dura been able to meet this witch’s price, or had the youth agreed to take less than usual out of compassion? Hedda didn’t dare ask.
She watched for what se
emed like an eternity as the boy scoured the countryside, squinting intently as he turned over nearly every stone and twig in the area, searching for what he called “an anchor.” He seemed particularly interested in the place where Hedda had left food for the strange girl, near where the tracker had later found a partial footprint that he said might belong to her. But after contemplating that location in silence for many long minutes, the witch finally shook his head in frustration and moved on. What exactly was he looking for, Hedda did not know. When the tracker had gone over this turf with his hounds, she’d understood the goal. Scent might still cling to the earth. Broken twigs or scuffed earth might mark the flight of a human girl (or something else?) carrying an infant in her arms. But this random-seeming search, this strange dance of ignorance . . . try as she might, she could not decipher it. She could only watch in abject misery, huddled against Dura’s side, praying silently to her gods. Give me back my child, she begged them, and I will do whatever you ask of me. You can even have my life, if you want it. Just bring my son back safely.
By the time the witch finally turned back to them the details of the surrounding landscape were beginning to fade, as day slowly prepared to give way to night. The minute Hedda saw his face she knew what his answer was going to be, and something within her heart that had been clinging to hope since her son’s disappearance finally, irrevocably, let go its grip, and plummeted down into the abyss of absolute despair.
“I am sorry,” the witch said softly. Only that.
“Nothing?” Dura’s voice was desolate, echoing as if in an empty cave. “Nothing at all?”
The witch shook his head. “There’s no good anchor. I found a few traces of a female presence that might or might not belong to the girl you told me about, but nothing clear enough to focus witchery on.”
“Maybe it’s not the traces that are lacking quality,” Dura said, “but the witch.”
The youth flushed. “If you want to hire someone better, you’re welcome to try.”
“My husband didn’t mean that,” Hedda interjected. She knew from the pain in Dura’s voice that he was just striking out blindly, venting his despair at the nearest target; later he would regret such cruel words. The young witch had offered up a portion of his own life-essence in order to help them, after all. “We’re both half mad with worry. I’m sure you can understand that.”
The youth nodded stiffly. His failure to garner useful information would not impact his fee, of course—a witch was paid for the life-essence he sacrificed, not for the quality of his results—but he seemed genuinely distressed that he had been unable to help them.
What was she supposed to do now? Hedda wondered. Put on a black veil and mourn her son as if she knew for a fact that he was dead? Even if he might still be alive, in the hands of some half-mad waif? What on earth did the girl want him for? The fact that she couldn’t even begin to imagine an answer to that question made her feel sick inside.
“There are others, you know.” The witch spoke quietly.
“Others?” Dura asked.
“Other children that have disappeared.”
Hedda blinked. “You mean . . . like this?”
“Don’t know the details. They’re just witch rumors, mind you. But I heard there’ve been a number of infants stolen, from towns all around here. Witches were called in a few times to look for ’em—that’s how I heard about it—but no one could find any clues worth a damn. What traces they could find led nowhere. Just like here.” A wave of his hand encompassed the surrounding woods. “Now that I’ve seen it for myself, I give more credit to such stories.”
“Did the others . . . did the parents . . . was a strange girl involved?”
He shook his head. “As far as I know, you’re the only one who’s ever seen anything like that. The other children just disappeared when no one was looking at them. One minute there, the next minute not. All outdoors, I think.” He wiped a long straggle of dun-colored hair back from his eyes. “That’s the rumor, anyway.”
Hedda struggled to absorb this new information. Did this mean that her own loss was part of some greater pattern? If so, what on earth was its purpose? Try as she might, she could not come up with any motive that made sense to her. It wasn’t unheard of for children to be stolen away by bandits, this close to the wild—one could get good coin from the slavers for a strong, healthy child—and Lord Cadern kept a wary eye on the woods surrounding his lands for that very reason. But it was rare for an infant to be taken, because a child that young would require too much care. Every now and then there were stories about some noblewoman who stole a peasant’s baby to replace one that had been stillborn, but even if those tales were true, it was at best a rare occurrence. Nothing like what this witch was suggesting.
If something like this was happening repeatedly, she told herself, then his Lordship might take note of it. The life of a single peasant meant little to him, but the knowledge that someone was persistently offending against the law and order of his domain . . . that might move him to act. And he had the kind of resources that Hedda and Dura could not possibly muster. Perhaps even access to a Magister.
A faint spark of hope took light in her soul. And she knew from the way her husband’s touch shifted on her arm that he shared her moment of insight, and his soul now housed a similar spark.
“Can you bring us more information?” Dura asked the witch. “About the other children who were taken? I’ll pay for it, of course.”
Again the witch flushed. “You don’t have to pay me. There’s no athra involved. I’m just sorry I couldn’t do more for you today. What information are you looking for?”
“Whatever you can gather. The towns that those incidents took place in. Name, dates, the circumstances of any incidents . . . .”
Please, Hedda prayed to her gods. Please let these crimes be within his Lordship’s domain, so that he will care about this. Give us that much, I beg you.
“I’ll find out what I can for you,” the young man said. “I promise.”
He glanced up at the canopy, where dark shadows were beginning to mottle the highest reaches of the treetops, random golden sparks picking out branches on their undersides. The sun would be setting soon. “We should be heading back,” he said.
“Aye,” Dura agreed, but he did not move.
Hedda watched as the young witch shouldered his travel pack once more, offered them a last parting glance, and then headed back the way they had come. And then, in his absence, the woods were still. So still. Only her breathing and Dura’s, the soft thud of their heartbeats, and the distant rustling of nocturnal creatures as they began to stir from their burrows, waiting for night to fall.
“We’ll find him,” her husband promised her. “I swear it.”
Chapter 7
D
ESERT BREEZES stirred the gauze drapes, rippling them like ocean waters ahead of a storm. Now that the blazing summer sun had set, Jezalya was finally cooling, and the crowds of people who had been coursing through the palace all day were finally taking their leave. Priests and counselors, diplomats and elders, all gone at last. Silence had not fallen upon the palace yet, but its approach was inevitable. Thank the gods.
Siderea touched a hand to her hair, binding a bit of power to urge some straggly bits back into place, refreshing the curls she had set that morning. How strangely exhilarating it was to be able to do such a thing! A witch would not have had the luxury of expending soulfire for such casual cosmetic purposes, but a woman who was bound body and soul to an ikati, and might draw upon that creature for power, could expend life-essence without limit. As long as there were humans in the world for her consort to feed upon, there was athra to spare.
What happens next? The thought from her ikati welled from the shadowy recesses of her mind, taking on human language and structure only as it surfaced in her consciousness. Siderea knew that the original thought had not been expressed in human terms, but in the formless animal instincts of its winged source. It was her own mind
that translated the thought into more familiar terms, adorning it with the trappings of civilized understanding, until it manifested in her head as a quasi-human voice. The process was still new to her, and was sometimes a bit unnerving, but the moment of direct contact with her other half always brought with it a sense of soul-deep satisfaction. What a miserable, incomplete creature she had been, before the ikati had come into her life!
We will do what must be done, she responded. Letting her sense of satisfaction with the day’s events seep through the mental connection, soothing her winged consort.
Moving to the window, she looked out over her new empire. It was a small thing by the measure of her former life, but it was enough to begin with. Beyond Jezalya’s walls there was only wasteland as far as the eye could see. To the north and east, flat-topped mountains with wind-scored slopes dominated the landscape, offering some cover from Jezalya’s scrutiny; to the west there was only open land, windswept and empty. Somewhere in the distance—many days’ march distant—was a great river, its silt-laden waters flanked by narrow bands of rich farmland, its cities protected by Anshasan troops. There were no easy riches at hand in this region, nor cities close to Jezalya that one might wish to claim . . . but that also meant that there were no enemy armies nearby, nor any foreign prince keeping close watch on Jezalya’s business.
Soon the desert tribes would begin to flock to Nasaan’s banner. How could it be otherwise, once the gods made it clear how much they favored him? Those tribes who swore fealty to Jezalya would remain healthy and prosperous, while the ones who remained independent would be stricken by a strange ennui, in which even the bloodthirsty passions that normally drove them would fail to arouse any interest. Perhaps the Black Sleep would appear in time, that dread disease that drew all of a man’s strength from his limbs until he could do nothing more than lie in a mindless state, drifting in and out of a sleep akin to death. The desert folk believed that the only way to contain the terrible Sleep was to burn its victims to ash, along with all those relatives who might carry the disease. Considerable incentive for a tribe to seek the protection of Nasaan—and through him, the favor of the gods—before the Sleep put all its members at risk.
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