Ixchel pointed to Forerunner. Amongst the crowd, Dravid spotted dark hair and a blue robe. He started toward her, but Ixchel grabbed his arm.
“Listen!” she said. “Something is not right here!”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve lost an entire day. And he has something to do with it. His magic is strange.”
“Indeed. I slept too long as well. I missed my morning prayers. My Lady says her Lady of Arazu has a similar magic,” Ixchel said. “I don’t know what that means. She seems quite fascinated by it. I’m worried about her.”
“I’m worried about all of us! The things he promises are… they’re impossible.” Dravid hesitated. “Either he is a great deceiver, or he really can do what he says. I’m not sure which frightens me more.”
“He must be a deceiver,” Ixchel said.
Dravid looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “When we met him, you seemed pretty shaken,” he said. “You even let him hug you.”
Ixchel’s face did not change. “I do not know what happened there.”
“Really? Because you seemed—”
“My friends!” Forerunner’s voice projected across the room. All eyes turned to see their host now standing atop one of the tables. He clapped his hands and gestured broadly to include them all.
“Welcome to my home! It is a temporary dwelling, of course, as I have many travels to make. But for now, let us eat and drink! When we are satisfied, we shall speak further of the days to come. Enjoy!”
At his wave, a dozen or so women in white robes emerged from the curtains, bringing trays filled with food and drink. The crowd surged to find seats at the tables. Dravid tried to move toward Seri, but found himself urged to sit down, instead. Ixchel stepped in front of him and made a path. He followed her until they reached one of the central tables.
Seri sat beside Forerunner. Though no seats were available anywhere near her, Ixchel strode up directly behind her, followed by Dravid. “My Lady,” Ixchel said.
Seri glanced up and gasped a little. “Oh, Ixchel. There you are. How did we get separated? Oh! You found Dravid!”
“Ah, there are your companions!” Forerunner interrupted. “Make room for these new arrivals, my friends! Make room!” At his urging, several of the other guests rose or slid down the benches. Ixchel sat beside Seri, and Dravid joined them.
“Seri, have you—”
A tray of food came down in front of Dravid, cutting him off. He looked it over. Fruits and vegetables of all shapes and colors were spread before him. Among the fruits, he recognized oranges and a wide range of berries. He spotted apples, a fruit he had first encountered on Zes Sivas. All of these must be native to Varioch, as he saw no grapes, bananas, litchi, or others he knew from home.
The vegetables also contained a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar. He saw carrots and a wide range of leafy greens. A plate of steaming potatoes completed the arrangement.
“No meat,” Dravid observed.
“All life is sacred,” Forerunner said. Dravid hadn’t even noticed him get up and stand behind them. “Are there not many in your homeland who practice this?”
“Yes,” Dravid admitted. “I grew up without meat. At least until I left my parents’ home.”
Forerunner tilted his head. “While you’re here, I suppose you’ll have to return to that diet.”
“And I suppose I’ll go hunt my own food,” Ixchel said in a low voice. Dravid suppressed a chuckle.
Forerunner stood so close again, his power so close. Dravid turned and found their host looking straight at him. He smiled.
“Who are you?” Dravid asked. In the pause that followed, Dravid felt a longing he did not understand, pulling him toward Forerunner. The magic of Antises could not explain this. It felt different, like a genuine thirst for the answer to his question.
“I am the forerunner. I am the harbinger. I am the omen. I have come to pave the way, to restore that which was lost.”
“Where have you come from?” Seri asked. Her voice startled Dravid, as if the sound pulled him back from somewhere else. He blinked and looked toward her.
Forerunner eyed her, still smiling. “I have been many places, and I may not truly be from any of them. Though most recently, I have come from another land.”
“Far from here?”
“So very far. And yet, so very close.”
Dravid groaned and rubbed his face. Forerunner spoke in riddles and veiled secrets. Why couldn’t he give a direct answer to anything?
“You mean the Otherworld,” Seri said.
Forerunner’s smile faded ever so slightly. He sat back down next to Seri and said something to her Dravid couldn’t hear.
Still the magic called to him.
With her star-sight, Seri could actually see magic and take hold of it. Dravid could not. Seri and Master Hain had both instructed him, though, teaching him the traditional method mages throughout history used to find and manipulate magical power. He closed his eyes and placed his hands flat on the table.
“Are you all right?” asked the woman on the other side of him.
“Yes, I just need to think.”
Focus. That’s what he needed. Focus. Feel the vibrations of the magic all around. As his senses sharpened, he could feel a tiny bit of power within himself, and some within Seri. That would be expected, as mages unconsciously absorbed minuscule amounts of magic from time to time.
But what about Forerunner? He possessed a different magic. Dravid could not feel it as vibrations, at least not like he usually felt. Instead, he felt occasional pulses of power radiating outward from what seemed a massive source. Once he knew the pattern, Dravid waited until just before another pulse expanded… and he opened himself up to it.
The pulse struck and Dravid took hold of the magic. He gasped. That one pulse filled him with power more than anything he had experienced at Zes Sivas. He would need to release it quickly. But instead, he realized he had grabbed hold of the power source and pulled it toward him. More power rushed into his body. He tried to stop the flow, cut himself off from it, but failed. It kept coming.
Earlier experiments with absorbing magic usually resulted in spasms in his chest and pools of saliva within his mouth. This power behaved differently. He felt his chest tighten. A burning sensation swept up his throat, leaving his mouth painfully dry. He could feel heat building behind his eyes. They flew open.
Everything glowed around him. Ixchel leaned closer to look at his face. Her lips moved, but he heard nothing but a dull roar building within.
He pushed against the table and fell off the bench. He rolled on the floor, feeling both exhilaration and terror. The power was everything. The power was too much. His body was not meant to handle this.
Seri knelt beside him, grabbing at him. Fear decorated her face, fear he could sense vibrating from her, as if it were a type of magic itself. Forerunner stood behind her. Dravid could not read his expression, but he glowed with the power, releasing another pulse that rushed into Dravid, filling him beyond his capacity.
In that moment, he knew. Somehow, he understood. Forerunner’s power source did not come from Antises. He did not carry a portion of it within him like the Lords. His power, so strange and alluring, existed as a part of him, intrinsic to his nature. He could not possibly be human and contain such power. Only seconds remained to Dravid before the power tore him apart.
Forerunner gestured ever so slightly, and the power rushed back to him. Dravid felt it leave him like a tearing of cloth. He felt drained, more exhausted than he’d ever felt in his life, even after he lost his leg.
“Foolish acolyte.” Forerunner’s words reverberated within his head before he lost consciousness.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SERI RELAXED IN her own bathing pool, surrounded by lit candles. Such a stressful evening, but the warm water certainly helped her relax.
What had Dravid been thinking? The moment he connected to Forerunner’s power, she felt it and understood. Forerunner called him foolish, an
d she couldn’t deny it. Trying to tap into an unknown power source was like… like trying to grab one of these candles by the flame. Except the flame was a raging inferno. And Dravid tried to grab it with his whole body.
Seri frowned. She needed to work on her similes. That one didn’t quite grasp the reality of what had happened. Fortunately for Dravid, Forerunner could reabsorb his own power.
Forerunner. What an intriguing mystery the man created. He certainly wasn’t what she had set out to find on this journey, but he needed more investigation. Powerful. Oh, so powerful. At least as powerful as one of the Lords, if not more so. And yet he didn’t fit within the structure of magic as she knew it. How was that possible?
He considered himself so clever with his implications tonight, but he let something slip. He tried to cover it up with smooth words, but he definitely implied he came from the Otherworld. The Eldanim lived in the Otherworld, at least sometimes, and they were beings of magic. Yet Forerunner looked nothing like them. Not human. Not Eldanim. So what was he?
Ixchel pushed aside the curtain and entered the room. Despite being given her own room, she had dragged a feather-stuffed mattress to the floor of Seri’s room this morning, announcing her intent to sleep there.
“Is Dravid all right?” Seri asked.
“He is sleeping,” Ixchel said. “The white robes raised quite a fuss. They objected to my presence in the men’s housing. But I did see that he was well treated. His sleeping chamber is much like yours.”
“I hope he doesn’t suffer any ill effects,” Seri said. “Forerunner’s magic is… unusual.”
“Is that what happened to him?” Ixchel snorted. “Yet another reason to distrust that man.”
“Distrust? I don’t know.” Seri rolled over and rested her elbows on the side of the pool.
“What is wrong with you?” Ixchel knelt and stared directly into Seri’s eyes.
“What do you mean? Nothing’s wrong with me.”
“You are not yourself.”
Seri’s anger rose. “What do you know, anyway? I’m enjoying this place, and Forerunner is amazing.”
Ixchel drew a dagger Seri didn’t even known she had. She scratched a mark onto the paving stone in front of Seri. “You have said it yourself: we must be wary of all magic users,” she said.
She scratched a second mark.
“Forerunner is using magic within his voice. It influences everyone around him. I fell prey to it at first, to my shame. I have to fight not to do so again.”
“He is…” Seri wanted to object, but found she couldn’t. She knew the truth of that statement.
Ixchel scratched a third mark. The screech of metal against stone made Seri wince.
“You have behaved in a leisurely fashion lately. Since coming into Forerunner’s presence, in fact.”
“I’m just happy to be in such a nice place!”
Ixchel scratched a fourth mark, and pointed the dagger at Seri.
“Finally, you are lying in the water totally naked. You have previously displayed a fear and aversion to this. You have avoided removing any clothing in another’s presence, even mine.”
The shock washed over Seri like ice water, and then her face flamed. She snatched a towel, scrambled from the water and wrapped herself. What had she been thinking? Her mother would be so ashamed of her!
Water dripped from her hair as she tried to calm her rapid breathing. How could she have done that? It did not make any sense! Except… she looked down at Ixchel’s marks. Forerunner. His voice had been affecting her, altering her mood, her inhibitions.
“Are you yourself once more?” Ixchel asked.
“I think so.” Seri took a deep breath and let it out in a shudder. “I was—I was becoming like—”
“Like one of the white robes,” Ixchel finished. She pointed to the foot of Seri’s bed. “They even have a robe laid out for you.”
“How did you know? How did you resist it?”
Ixchel sighed and sat, crossing her legs. “I didn’t, for a while. Then this morning, I was alone. I decided to check on you.” She hung her head. “I couldn’t find you.”
“But isn’t your room right next door?”
“It is. But I mean I could not… sense you.” Ixchel looked up. “We are Bonded, you know. In more ways than you realize. My oath, my… promise as your guardian. It behaves in a similar way to a normal Binding.”
“Like the Binding I have to you, and the one I had to Master Hain?”
Ixchel nodded. “That is more powerful. It is to my great honor that such a Binding exists. Except… It no longer does.”
“What do you mean?” Seri felt a sick tightness in her stomach.
“The Bond is gone. Not broken. We would have felt that. But it’s not there now.”
“That can’t be right.”
“Close your eyes.”
Seri did so.
“Now find me with our Binding.”
Seri let herself relax. She tried to sense the magic, the vibrational hum that drew her toward Ixchel in their Bond. But she couldn’t find it. In her mind, she turned back and forth, trying to sense.
“There!” She threw out her arm, pointing to her right.
“No.” Ixchel’s voice came from her left.
She opened her eyes and stared at her friend and bodyguard. “How can this be?”
“You are the mage.” Ixchel’s face softened. She looked… frightened. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“The Laws of Cursings and Bindings are inviolable,” Seri said by rote. “I mean, they can’t be broken. Curses and Bonds cannot be removed.”
“And yet.”
Seri paced, leaving wet footprints across the floor. “The Masters all insisted that a curse had been lifted here, in Varioch or Rasna. They saw it as more important than anything else that’s been happening. Now we find someone who is removing—or blocking—Bindings. Is it connected? Did Forerunner lift someone’s curse?”
“The travelers spoke of healing magic,” Ixchel said.
“But we haven’t seen anything like that since we’ve been here. But he promises all kinds of things, healings, restorations. For Theon’s sake, he even implied he could restore Dravid’s leg!”
Seri stopped pacing as a thought too impossible struck her. “It couldn’t be. Could it?”
“What is that, my Lady?”
Seri turned back to Ixchel. “Could Forerunner be Theon?”
Ixchel’s face twisted in skepticism. “Theon is not a man,” she said. “He dwells in the light.”
“But what if he came down here? Who else could change the Laws?”
“Your pardon, my Lady. If Forerunner is Theon, then… he is not a god I wish to follow. Would he treat you this way?”
“What way? I mean, don’t take me wrong.” Seri’s words spilled out in a torrent. “I don’t like what was happening to me. But was it all bad? I felt good. I’ve enjoyed our time here. I don’t know. Maybe he’s not Theon. Maybe he’s one of Theon’s servants or something? Even his name implies that something or someone else is coming, right? Forerunner?”
Ixchel opened her mouth to answer, but Seri hurried on.
“He says he can restore my star-sight. I can’t—I can’t tell you how desperate I am for that. I know you don’t understand. No one can. Losing it was like… like losing one of my eyes. If he can bring it back, maybe he is someone we should listen to.”
“I still do not trust him. He must be a deceiver.”
Seri frowned. “How? What has he lied about?”
“He says he can restore what we lost, yes? He knew my loss came when I was a child. Yet he claims he can restore it.”
“Maybe he can?”
“No. No one can raise the dead.”
Dravid’s eyes still burned when he finally forced them open. His entire body ached with a dull pain and a lethargy that pulled at every muscle. He looked up at the ceiling of his room in the men’s quarters.
“I need to speak with him a
lone.” The voice of Forerunner. Dravid could feel the tiny vibrations in each syllable. But this time, they generated sharp but tiny pains in his head.
He rolled his head and saw two of the white-robed women leaving his room. Forerunner stood alone a few feet from his bed, arms crossed. He waited until the women were gone and then spoke.
“You have behaved in a childish, foolish manner.”
Dravid groaned and looked back up at the ceiling.
“What made you think you could draw from my power, anyway?”
“It called to me.”
Forerunner snorted. “And when one tiger calls to another in your native land, do you try to take its teeth?”
Dravid frowned and then winced from the effort. “Who’s the other tiger, then?”
“What?”
“If you’re a tiger calling to another tiger, who is the other tiger?”
“That—it was an analogy. And apparently not a very good one. It’s been some time since I’ve visited these lands.”
These lands? Did he mean all of Antises?
“At any rate, you could have killed yourself. That would not be a polite action for a guest to take.”
“I apologize.”
“Well, that’s something, at least. I suppose I forgive you.”
“Can you stop… using magic with your voice? It hurts my head.”
“Oh.” Forerunner paused. When he spoke again, his voice no longer held the vibrations. “That comes natural to me. I have to make an effort not to do it.”
Dravid lifted himself up on his elbow and looked at Forerunner. “I’m revising my earlier question. What are you?”
“Ah.” Forerunner lifted a finger. “Now that’s an interesting question. And yet the answer is the same as before. I am Forerunner.”
“So… Forerunner is who you are, and also what you are?”
“I suppose it’s also how I am and why I am.”
Dravid sank back down. “Why can’t you give a straight answer to anything?”
“I am answering as best as I can, as best as you can understand. It is quite frustrating for me, as well. Why do you not trust me?”
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