The Seven Signs: Three Book Collection

by D. W. Hawkins

  Lacelle gave him an irritated glance, and went on. “One such was Indalvian’s apprentice, a man named Asher Timmian. He agitated against the Covenant, and factions emerged within the wizards in Ishamael. There was a fight between these factions—between Indalvian and his apprentice—that destroyed part of the city. Timmian fled, but vowed to return.

  “So Indalvian gathered those who could fight together, and organized them into a discipline meant to protect the Sevenlands from magical threats like Timmian and his supporters. The men who took the oath called themselves the Warlock Brotherhood.”

  “That’s where they came from?” Bethany asked.

  “It is,” Lacelle said. “According to what we know, anyway.”

  “What about Asher Timmian?” Bethany said, her eyes full of the hunger for excitement. “Did he come back?”

  “No,” Lacelle said. “Asher Timmian was never seen again, as far as the Conclave is concerned. The Warlocks, though, continued to honor their oaths. They were given the one privilege within the Conclave that other disciplines are not—the right to choose their own members.”

  “How do they choose?” Bethany asked.

  “They take all the ugliest and most disappointing children, if my brother is any measure,” Allen said.

  Dormael laughed, and shot his brother an offensive gesture.

  “I know what that means, now!” Bethany said, clapping her hands together. She made a little fist and stuck out her pinky, mimicking the gesture that Dormael had given Allen. “It means you have a small—”

  “Bethany!” Shawna cried, clamping her hand over the girl’s mouth. Dormael heard her saying the word through Shawna’s hands, and he couldn’t help but let a small laugh escape. He schooled his features, and regarded the girl with as serious a look as he could pretend to have.

  “Who taught you?” he asked.

  “I can’t tell,” Bethany said, returning his serious look. She raised her chin. “They said it would make me a traitor.”

  Dormael laughed, and waved a dismissive gesture at her.

  “Just don’t be waving that around, alright? That will get you into fights with people—or get me into fights with people.”

  “But you and uncle Allen do it all the time,” Bethany said. “You don’t get into fights.”

  “Because he knows what’s good for him, little pig,” Allen said.

  “You smell like a pig!” Bethany laughed. She launched herself at Allen, and the two of them descended into a mock wrestling match. Dormael snickered and scooted down to lay on the grass. It had been a long day. Stress had knotted the muscles in his shoulders, and his arse was still getting used to being back in the saddle.

  The stars twinkled at him through the canopy.

  ***

  The world crawled into D’Jenn’s eyes.

  The first breath scraped past his mouth dragging flames behind it, setting the soft bits of his gullet afire as it went. The taste of blood was mingled with the sweet tinge of the poison, and there was dirt trapped in his lower lip. D’Jenn let out a low groan, the vibration of his voice enough to give life to the soreness that pervaded the inside of his mouth.

  He sucked in a few harsh breaths before he realized that his mouth was swollen, his throat constricted. He dug his fingers into the damp earth beneath him, and fought down a bout of dizziness as he tried to right himself. His vision was stark with clarity, though it blurred when he started to move his body. He mustered the energy to spit, but found his mouth too swollen to fully complete the task.

  Mataez!

  The thought came to him as his mind returned to functionality, and he scrambled to his feet—he tried to scramble, in any case. His body was so spent, muscles so stiff, that he only managed to claw himself up before falling back to the underbrush in a tangle of half-useless limbs. His whole face hurt with the remnants of the poison, and each movement made it throb in protest. After a moment of struggling against himself, D’Jenn was able to gain his feet.

  Mataez lay on the ground nearby, limbs twisted with the ghost of agony. The axe, which D’Jenn had forgotten, was buried in the man’s neck, right at the joint where it met his torso. The angle was bad—vulgar, even—but it looked like Mataez hadn’t even reached for it while the poison did its work. Judging from the marks in the dirt around him, the man had writhed in torment for some time before he had expired. D’Jenn shuffled over to make sure of him, and saw flecks of blood decorating the skin on his face.

  He drowned in his own blood, then, while the poison make him crazy. Mataez’s face was livid with a reaction to the Widow’s Eye solution, angry splotches of red coloring the skin. His eyes were squeezed shut, his face still twisted with a rictus of pain.

  D’Jenn sighed, and with a quick motion, yanked the axe from Mataez’s neck. Dark blood oozed out from the wound, and D’Jenn wiped the blade on the dead man’s clothing. Turning, he headed for the nearby creek.

  As he stumbled in the direction of the burbling water, he reached up to prod at his face with his free hand. His lips were swollen and tender, the skin around his mouth the same. He took the opportunity to dig the dirt out of his mouth, and winced at the pain in his gums. The taste of blood filled his mouth as it reacted to the touch of his hand.

  He felt the absence of food in his stomach as more of an abstract thing rather than actual hunger. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to eat anytime soon—not with his face screaming in protest. His teeth almost burned at the simple thought of chewing anything. D’Jenn resolved to become comfortable with hunger over the next little while.

  He wasn’t sure how long it would take the poison to recede from the affected areas, but he was relatively sure that it would. The idea offered him little comfort, though, as his gums bled into his mouth. D’Jenn tried to spit it out again, but succeeded only in dribbling effluvia into his beard.

  Once he reached the banks of the creek, he struggled out of his stiff clothing. He couldn’t be sure if the poison had soaked into the fabric or not, and he didn’t want to risk the water activating it again. He dumped it on a large stone that protruded from the bank, and dropped the axe atop the pile. Groaning, he stumbled down into the cold water.

  His body woke as it reached his thighs, and quick breaths hissed through his burning throat. D’Jenn struggled down into the water, submerging himself completely. The frigid darkness didn’t soothe the pain in his face, but the sensation did help to drown out its insistent throbbing. D’Jenn opened his mouth and took some of the water into it, wincing as the movement made his teeth hurt. Concentrating, he forced himself to wash the inside of his mouth again and again. The pain didn’t recede.

  He had fully expected to die.

  D’Jenn had hoped to lure Mataez in close enough so that he could smash the berries into the man’s face, and kill him with his belt knife. If the belt knife hadn’t been an option, a rock would have served. He’d imagined a scenario in which Mataez would come to help him stand, perhaps out of some misplaced sense of kindness. D’Jenn would seize the hand that Mataez offered, and pull his face down into a handful of the poison berries. Killing him after that would have been as simple as holding him down.

  Mataez, though, hadn’t been dumb enough to fall for any of his ploys. He’d stayed out of range, disarmed D’Jenn before deigning to come close. He had been too wary for D’Jenn to have made a swipe at his face, and with his muscles as stiff as they were, D’Jenn had been unsure that he could have hit him, anyway. Slipping the berries into the water and waiting for Mataez to chance a drink would have left too much to fortune, so D’Jenn had taken what he thought was his only option.

  He surfaced, and sputtered a mouthful of creek water through this lips. The touch of air on his inflamed skin made him wince, but a laugh escaped around the hiss of pain. Giddiness filled his chest, and he started to chortle.

  “Fuck the gods,” he croaked, his voice making his throat burn. “I can’t tell if they love me, or hate me.”

  He coughed with laughter
for some time. The burn on his arm still hurt, and his face was a ruin. Blood leaked from his gums with each pained snicker. Still, he could not stop the laughter. It went on for so long that his stomach grew sore with the effort.

  I’m not dead yet, Victus, he thought. We will see each other again, upon a day.

  D’Jenn stayed in the water long enough that his skin grew numb to its chill. His face remained in its horrid, swollen state, but D’Jenn felt that the wash had soothed it somewhat. His fingers were shriveled by the time he decided to crawl from the creek.

  He was relieved when he opened his Kai. His magic was weakened, but it still hummed at the center of his being. It wasn’t enough to affect a transformation, but it would serve to help him through the next day or so. A wind picked up through the trees, and D’Jenn shivered at its chill touch. The cold helped to clear the cobwebs from his mind.

  With an outstretched hand, he beckoned his clothing from the ground. He sent it into the water, and spent some time ensuring that the poison was well removed from its threads. A low hum of heat was sufficient to dry them when he was done. Donning the clean, warm clothing was the nicest sensation D’Jenn could remember having in the last few days.

  He used his hands to pry away the stone under which he’d hidden the spelled bronze mark. His muscles ached with the effort of turning it over, but he knew he needed the exercise. When he had dug it out, he clenched it in his palm and listened to the hum it gave back to his Kai.

  Its sister coin was somewhere to the west—or maybe to the northwest. The distance was too great for the coin to return anything but a vague impression. Still, he could feel it out there, like a beacon across a dark sea. Shoving the axe through his belt, D’Jenn trudged back to where he’d left Mataez’s body.

  It was just before noon by the time D’Jenn made it back. Mottled beams of sunlight fell upon the body, giving a pleasant backdrop to the agonized state in which Mataez had expired. Little tufts of earth had been kicked up in the man’s mad fit, and the dirt was disturbed all around him. He appeared to have thrashed for some time.

  D’Jenn sat against a nearby tree and regarded the dead man. Mataez had been like a brother to him. The man had been a master at composing grand pranks to play on the other Warlocks. He’d had an easy laugh, and had been known for the carelessness of his tongue, though it was hard for anyone to take offense to him for long. Mataez was liked by nearly everyone—or had been.

  D’Jenn tried to imagine him kicking his last breath out, heels pounding the dirt. He pictured the man writhing, gurgling pained screams through the axe in his neck. D’Jenn narrowed his eyes at the wound and wondered how long it had taken.

  He tried to picture Mataez tossing fire and death at their friends—the ones who had turned against Victus. He imagined the man striking down Taglion with lightning, maybe tossing Kiriael from a ledge. He imagined Vera burning while Mataez looked on, his hand extended toward her with flames springing from his palm.

  Mataez had known who killed her. D’Jenn had known the truth as soon as the question had passed his lips, but the bastard had kept the secret. D’Jenn stared down at Mataez’s corpse, willing the knowledge to come drifting up from the rigid, cold limbs. He hated the man for keeping that truth from him.

  But did he hate him, really? Could he? D’Jenn wasn’t so sure.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t put the face of Mataez onto the ghost in his mind that burned Vera. He couldn’t picture the man laying about with his power, killing their brothers and sisters. Mataez must have participated—at least, in some way—but D’Jenn couldn’t picture it. He wanted to hate Mataez, to curse his name for all eternity, to send his body floating back down the river toward Ishamael.

  The Mataez that kept drifting up from the depths of his mind, though, held an easy smile on his face. He told bawdy jokes over a table full of food, each one dirtier than the last, until Kiriael could no longer take it. The Mataez in his mind held that last, sad smile on his face as he came over to offer D’Jenn a hand. Part of D’Jenn felt dirty for that last little betrayal, even though he knew that he shouldn’t.

  Grunting, D’Jenn rose to his feet. He had planned on using the axe to mutilate Mataez’s body, and send it floating back downriver. Some vindictive part of him wanted Victus to know that he was still alive, still lurking around waiting for a chance at his throat. He pulled the axe from his belt, and regarded the bearded blade in the mottled sunlight. His eyes went to the trees.

  He strode into the forest with a sigh, hefting the axe. It would take the greater part of the day, and more magical effort than he wanted to expend, to gather enough wood for a funeral pyre. Part of him knew that it was dumb to spend so much time seeing to Mataez, but it couldn’t be helped.

  D’Jenn needed the exercise, in any case.

  ***

  “This truly pains me, my love.”

  Inera’s breath was light and relaxed against him, the softness of her body like an elixir on his skin. She was long, dark hair and laughing eyes, the smell of wildflowers on the wind. She was writhing atop him, laughing under the stars. She kissed him, wrapped her body around him, and laughed against his chest. How many times had she begged him to stay? His life, though, was ever about the next challenge, ever about the excitement. She would not come with him, and he would not stay with her.

  “This truly pains me.”

  He was chasing her down a low, green hill, her dark hair flying in the wind as she ran. When he caught her, she gave him kisses that tasted of angry tears, and words that cut him like knives. They made love in the grass, but it was a release more than anything else. It felt like an ending. She gave him a sad smile as a parting gift.

  “Take this with you when you go. Bring it back when you feel lost.”

  He was searching for her. She was an echo of a memory sitting by her cold hearth, the whisper of laughter once heard in the night. Her things were ruined, her cabin a smoking shell of what it had been when he had left her behind. He sought her in the hills, through the trees, and in the cities, but she remained a shadow. His heart was a dark hollow without her.

  “This truly pains me.”

  She was cold, blood-tainted kisses over his burning chest. Her eyes were not her own—not the way he remembered her. There was something alien waiting there in the depths, something corrosive and black. Even as he stared in horror, it looked back at him along with her. Her lips tasted waxy, unfeeling. She pawed at him like a beast more than anything else, like a creature seeking to fulfill a hunger.

  “This is going to hurt.”

  She was stabbing him. His eyes locked to hers, cold and empty. They didn’t blink, even as she thrust the jagged little blade into his belly. Her hands were wet with his blood, her mouth full of its taste. He could see in her eyes that she enjoyed it. She ran a single, bloody hand over her face, and showed him her stained palm.

  “This is your legacy. This will be your end.”

  She raised the knife to his eyes.

  When she stepped away, he stood in a burning room. Fire climbed the walls around him, crawled across the floor to consume the scattered corpses that lay on the once-polished wood. The flames were reflected in pools of congealing blood, left by whatever fury that had taken this place, these people. The trappings of affluence littered the floor, left behind to burn with the dead.

  Shawna strode into the room, dark stains defiling the white shirt that hung on her body. She was so wet with blood that it clung to her, dripped from her hair. Her blades were bare, eager for vengeance. He met her eyes, and she ran a single, bloody palm down her face.

  “This is their legacy, and it will be their end.”

  She raised her swords to the burning ceiling and laughed, but tears flowed from her eyes as the laughter tumbled from her mouth. She took a deep breath and screamed, anguish coming from her like a fountain. She didn’t see the woman standing behind her—the woman made of flame and smoke.

  That woman locked eyes with him, and in their depths, he s
aw the destruction of worlds.

  “We are his legacy, and we will be his end.”

  D’Jenn stood in the tunnels beneath Ishamael, the promise of blood in his eyes. He held the words of a lover in one indignant hand, accepted an axe with the other. The shadows cradled him as they always did, and he was confident in their embrace. D’Jenn turned to leave, and the darkness swallowed him whole.

  Only silence returned.

  Why does your mind conjure such torment?

  Dormael stood on a windswept hill. The sky was a pleasant shade of blue, the sunlight like a warm bath upon his skin. Wildflowers dotted the hillsides, painting the landscape in shades of purple, yellow, and red. It took Dormael a moment to come to himself. The memories of flame, smoke, darkness, and pain all crawled through his mind like insects hiding from the sunlight.

  “I’m dreaming,” he said.

  Yes. Aye. Affirmative. Of course. Even so.

  Dormael paused. He had thought the voice another conjuration of his dream. All wizards had the ability to dream lucidly—it was an early indication of being Blessed, in fact—but he had never had the dream itself answer him. He spun, gazing out over the hills in search of the strange voice.

  I am not of you, and you are not of me, but we are in the same space of being.

  “What?”

  The hills were empty. The voice seemed to be coming from the dream itself, or some place within him. There was a strange pulling sensation when it spoke, some exotic tightening of his consciousness. Dormael put his hands to his head as if he could hold the voice inside, or keep it out. He wasn’t sure which.

  I am not a part of your skull.

  “Then what in the Six Hells are you?” Dormael screamed into the wind.

  “I am free,” said a voice from behind him.

  Dormael spun, summoning his Kai. A young man stood on the hill some distance from him, his hands clasped behind his back. His features were pleasant without being definitive, as if his face was one you might see on any street in any town without remembering it. His hair was as black as his robe, and he wore no jewelry or accoutrements of any kind.