“There is so much to do, now that we are back.” The speech he had half-prepared felt awkward in his mouth, and he abandoned it. “This morning, I took apart one of the creatures that attacked us, on the road.”
Jerzy had worried about how much to tell them. These were Vineart things, matters of magic, but they already knew the most dangerous things, about his quiet-magic. About the Guardian, creature of stone and magic, extending House Malech’s reach in ways that surely the Washers would say contradicted Sin Washer’s Command. Telling them what he suspected about their enemy’s abilities, about how it was all connected . . . what he thought it meant . . . all that could be no worse an offense.
The fact that he worried at all, Jerzy knew, was laughable. He had already lost so much, had so much taken away while trying to obey, that had Sin Washer himself appeared and warned him to keep silent, he would have asked the god why. What else could he suffer, for telling?
“Our enemy has been sending beasts against us. You know this already. The serpents who prowl the seas, attacking at random, drawn, I think, by the scent of magic. And now these birds . . . and who knows what else that we have not yet encountered, or heard of. He is creating them, through some spell, some legacy I do not know.”
Jerzy was prepared to explain, although he wasn’t sure how he could describe something he did not know, but the other three instead went after the more practical details.
“Serpents and birds can cross the ocean,” Ao said, leaning back in his chair and staring up at the sky, as though calculating distances. “If we are right that he comes from outside the Lands Vin, far outside, it’s unlikely we have to worry about anything with four legs.”
“Yet,” Kaïnam said darkly. “Do we know how they are made? Can he create beasts from materials already here, or must he send them, intact?”
Jerzy wiped his palms against the fabric of his trou and tried not to think about the things he had seen. How much could he tell them? How much of what he told them would they be able to understand? “It began with things . . . influenced, here. Insects out of season, vermin and rot. That was where it began. The serpents came later, and the bird-creatures after that.
“When the serpents arrived, my master and I took apart one and found they were . . . solid. Like something carved out of flesh, or pressed together, rather than a living thing, and animated via a spell. My master surmised that they had, in fact, been made of dead flesh of other creatures, shaped to resemble serpents, animated by magic.”
“Is there—”
“No,” Jerzy said, knowing Kaïnam’s question before it was uttered. “There was no spellvine, to Master Malech’s knowledge, that could do such a thing.” He did not mention the Magewine, the spellwine that could identify a particular legacy or Vineart. They already knew it was a different legacy, or a legacy that had been twisted, somehow, into new form.
“These birds, I suspect . . .” Jerzy did not have the right words to explain his fears, but pushed forward anyway. “I brought one back and cut it open this morning,” he repeated. “Inside, it looked like a true-born bird, once, but enspelled so that its body changed. Was twisted, and more.”
“Changed, how?” Kaïnam leaned back, as though expecting there to be a back to the bench, and checked himself. “Obviously, the bodies had been modified somehow, their size and those claws, that beak, but you’re saying it as though there was something else.”
“Inside. Not solid flesh but sinew and bone. Their bones were hollow, but thicker than a bird’s should be.” Lil’s knowledge there, not his: he had never thought to wonder. “And their blood . . .” Even now, a wave of nausea threatened, and he forced it down with practice hard-earned while sailing. It was not the texture or the odd stickiness that bothered him, but the half-suspected knowledge of what it was, what it must be, and what it meant, that sickened him. “The blood was mixed with spellwine, as though the creature had been bled dry, and then some new mixture added in.” But not only with spellwine. Lil had not needed to tell him that; the moment he had, carefully, cautiously, touched the blood, he had known that.
Human blood.
“A healspell, changed or twisted,” Jerzy said, before they could ask. “It is the only way I can imagine. Probably when they were hatchlings, not adults. If it was possible, it was possible to do to adults, but they would then have to learn how to fly like that.” He paced the length of the small courtyard, letting the familiar surroundings soothe him while the others digested the news. He did not want to admit how magic could be so misused. Did not want to admit to himself the small step from Vineart Giordan’s means of taming his vines to this abomination. It was not new magic but old, the oldest . . . and more, a twisting of what had always been. Blood and vines. Blood and magic.
Master Malech had warned him against trying to change an existing spell. How much change was safe? A pruning here, a grafting there . . . If the spell that had poisoned the air in the workrooms succeeded, would he have created some living horror?
How close had he come to disaster?
What sort of price was this mage paying, to accomplish such deeds?
Jerzy turned, pacing to the other side of the courtyard, and saw a cool shadow land on the roof ledge, curling itself in a remaining patch of sunlight like a hard gray cat.
I am here.
The Guardian guarded. Against threats from without . . . and within. It would not allow him to go too far.
Jerzy returned to the other three, who were deep in discussion.
“Long-term planning. He is building his strength here, piece by piece, moving more directly with each increase,” Kaï said, speaking with absolute certainty.
Jerzy squatted across from the bench, resting his wrists on his knees, balancing the way he used to, back when he was a slave, and considered Kaïnam’s words.
“It seems probable,” he agreed. “This Vineart, he has attacked directly before—with infestations, and illnesses, and shaped-magic.” The magical attack nearly a year before that had killed his horse and nearly taken his own life had not been forgotten, despite more physical attacks since then. “But these are different: he is decanting magic into these creatures, mixing flesh and spellwine, not merely using the magic to send them . . . but it could have been done from a distance. We cannot assume any limit to his ability. He does not abide by the Commands, is not limited by the same laws.”
Ao was silent, rubbing his hands on the polished wood of his chair as though looking for a splinter to catch. Mahault seemed to be thinking the way Roan unwound a skein of wool, following it back to the starting knot.
“Our enemy knew we were shipboard; he wanted some way to catch us. You.” She frowned. “But he couldn’t trace us on the ocean?”
“Running water dilutes spellwines,” Jerzy said. “A creek or river, not enough to stop a decantation. A lake . . . if it is large enough. An ocean? We are blind. The currents confuse it, the winds diffuse it . . . the serpents attacked randomly. Even Ximen is blind, for all his magic. The birds did not attack until we were well inland.”
“So he is blind on the sea?”
“He might be,” Jerzy said. “It would explain enough to be reasonable.”
“Then we can use that,” Kaïnam said. “A physical attack, a fleet, could strike a blow against him and catch him off guard.”
“Except we have no fleet, and we don’t know where to find him,” Mahault pointed out. “Two important details, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“You were reluctant to use magic,” Ao said, focusing on another angle. “When we were on the ship, coming back. Even healspells, unless I absolutely needed it.” There was no accusation in his tone, only a slow understanding where before there had been dogged acceptance. “You think if these creatures were made from a healspell, however twisted, they would have felt that? Like calling to like?”
“It . . . seemed probable.” Jerzy wasn’t certain, not about any of it, but his passing thoughts and worries were being dragged from him, stra
nd by strand, the most recent event merely clarifying what lurked in his thoughts, mustus turning to vina. “The times I have been attacked, it has always been after I used magic. Specifically, quiet-magic.”
Kaïnam shoved his hands, palms down, on the bench, making a painful-sounding noise. “Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell us, when you suspected any of this?”
Jerzy felt annoyance stir within him, as though Kaïnam were accusing him of having led them intentionally into danger. They looked to him to lead, but he did not know how. His hands fisted at his sides, and he deliberately kept his mouth still, refusing to draw on the quiet-magic he could feel welling within his flesh.
“How could I know?” he asked instead. “This is all guesswork and conjecture, shoving pieces together to see if they fit. You said it yourself: he has planned all this out, while we flail in the darkness. How could I know anything of what he does? You speak as though this should be familiar to me, and it is not!”
There was silence as the other three let the words sink in. Mahault bowed her head, while Ao gripped the arms of his chair even more tightly, until the knuckles turned white under the yellowish bronze of his skin.
“My failure, Vineart.” Kaïnam did not stand to make a formal apology; the words were enough.
Jerzy shook his head, negating the need for any such, even as he accepted them. This was magic. They did not understand—did not know how much he did not understand. And it had to be that way, if he were to keep them focused, standing strong against whatever came. They trusted him, and even if he had to lie to maintain that trust . . .
“Master Malech . . . he could not identify where the serpents came from, or how they had been made. The spellwine was not one that was known to him.”
That had been true, then. Now, Jerzy knew that the five legacies were not all that was left to grow. In Irfan, at least, unblooded grapes, feral grapes, still grew. And where there was one feral yard, there could be another. Esoba, the Vineart who worked those lands, had not known what he possessed . . . but their enemy had.
Irfan had changed everything Jerzy thought he knew. Unblooded vines, stronger and more fierce than anything he had ever dreamed, creating spellwines almost too subtle to detect. Vines that responded to his deepest-hidden wishes, rising up to throttle a man Jerzy had only meant to interrogate—taking his anger and turning it to murder.
Jerzy flinched from that memory, letting the Guardian’s cool stone fill his thoughts instead, focusing on the question being asked: could they counter the attacks? Could they launch one of their own?
Jerzy stared into the sky, unable to look his companions in the eye. “Where he creates them, how he creates them . . . there is a deeper danger than even that. You asked me, once, if there was a spell that could make us do or say things we did not mean.” Back in Esoba’s House, when they had encountered mindspells, the most delicate and difficult of incantations that should have been far beyond that poorly trained Vineart’s abilities, that had let slip the things they kept hidden even from themselves.
“You said there wasn’t.” Mahault had gone very still, and even Ao was focused intently on what Jerzy said next.
“Not for men, nor beasts; Sin Washer made sure of that when he shattered the First Growth. And yet Ximen is strong enough to force a creature that would normally not be violent to attack. To send a seabird, however remade, inland, and cause it to attack where there was neither threat nor food, following the trace of magic used hours before. That sort of bespelling must be made inside the creature, twisting more than its bones and beak.”
“Twisting its thoughts, its instincts, to do what its master needed.” Once again, Kaïnam followed his thoughts before Jerzy had a chance to speak them.
Ao swallowed hard, obviously remembering the beast falling on him as it died, the thick, spellbound blood splattering him. “Could . . . this be done to humans?”
Jerzy had spent the morning putting together everything they’d seen and heard, to one inescapable conclusion. “I think it already has.”
He had thought to shock them. His companions, however, had been less sheltered than he, as a slave.
“The aide in my father’s court, and the merchant in Irfan? You think they were . . . like that? Not coerced or seduced but twisted, changed? Like those birds?” Mahault’s tone was doubtful, but more of her own understanding than the possibility of its truth.
“It makes sense. These birds, the twisted form he perfected with the serpents, the control he had over men”—and Jerzy noted how, despite having a name for their enemy, none of them used it now, as though trying not to attract his attention—”he’s going deeper. He’s not casting them onto his victims, he’s . . . blending them.”
Jerzy had tried blending spellwines before rather than using the established incantations or crafting new ones. They had gone wrong, filling the study with a noxious fume, or given back unpredictable results, like the masthead on the Vine’s Heart that still left him uneasy for all that it seemed like a mark of Sin Washer’s favor.
He was nowhere as skilled as their enemy. He did not use blood. Jerzy swallowed around a strangely dry throat, almost afraid to bring up moisture in his disordered state. What could their enemy do, if he had mastered that?
“The earlier attempts were lighter, touching only the surface of his targets. Like the spell used on us, it pushed a natural reaction, made what was already there stronger, more likely to be acted upon.” Anger, or greed, or fear. They had resisted only because Jerzy realized what was happening, had felt the taint and warned them.
“The whisperers in my father’s ear, the one who murdered Kaï’s sister . . . they acted of free will.” Mahault sounded less certain than she wanted to be, however.
“Ximen took what was there, fear or greed or anger, and used it to his own ends, crafting it the way I would the crush, into something more potent, something that could take direction.”
Blood and flesh and bone and magic.
“If he has progressed to the point where he can twist living things to go against their base nature, twist his own desire into theirs . . .”
Magic could not make a person do what it did not want to do, merely bring forward thoughts, desires, that were buried deep. That was dangerous enough. Changing those desires to suit another’s needs or desires? Forcing a being to go against its nature?
Abomination. The act of a prince-mage.
“To do such a thing, and at such a distance . . .” Kaïnam had already come to the same conclusion Jerzy had been circling around, unable to accept until now. They looked at each other, gray eyes and brown equally worried.
“How?” Ao asked, always curious, even when he looked a little ill at the thought of what that progression could mean.
“I don’t know.” Jerzy stopped speaking to them, and was talking to himself. “I need to know. If I can understand it, I can—” He could do what? Defeat it? Stop it? Use it himself? The thought, the memory, of the taint, coiled inside the bird, made him want to gag. What kind of man—and magic—could do such a thing? An ordinary man might decant a spell without harm or influence, but a Vineart could not separate the two: the man made the magic, the magic . . . created the man. Magic so twisted . . .
Jerzy did not have the time to chase that notion down further, as Kaïnam had already gone to a more immediate, tactical concern. “Those beasts found you there, on the open road. Can you stop them from attacking here, from influencing us?”
Jerzy bit the inside of his lip, instinctively checking for his quiet-magic, although he did not call it. “I think so.” Malech had not been able to protect himself when attacked, but he had not understood the nature of what he faced. Once Jerzy understood, the Guardian had kept the taint out. Both of them here, forewarned . . . yes. He could keep this place safe.
“Then, while you do that, we will prepare a counterattack, taking advantage of his ocean-blindness.” Kaïnam, for the first time in weeks, looked as though he anticipated something
rather than dreading it. “Our knowledge, our contacts, and your magic. We are stronger than any single man, no matter what he has done.”
Jerzy, still worried, nonetheless felt some of the weight slide away. He was Vineart. But he was not alone.
He could feel the Guardian worry, not certain that this was wise, but it did not interfere.
“We’re going to need more information,” Ao said, claiming his own role with relief. “Jer, you have a pigeon coop?”
“In the stables. One of the slaves handles them; he will be able to bring you whatever you need.” He looked at the three of them: Kaïnam, the fierce and proud prince, as much advisor as warrior; Ao, equal amounts worry and mischief in his eyes, his body canted with excitement; Mahault, cool and strong, like a well-tempered blade waiting to be brought to bear. In that instant, Jerzy understood something he hadn’t before. He didn’t know quite what it was, had no word for it, no incantation to make it take form. But it made his throat sore, and his eyes itch.
“What we’re doing . . . whatever comes now . . .” He tried to make them each understand, meeting their gazes as he spoke. “There is no justification under the Commands; I will be in complete apostasy. We have no proof of Ximen’s existence, no court of judgment we may appeal to. The Collegium will have no doubt and no hesitation in killing me, in taking down all of House Malech. I don’t know what they might do to you, perhaps nothing, but . . .”
“And the other option is what?” Mahault tucked a strand of pale yellow hair back into her braid, her gaze steady on his even as her hand shook a little. “To sit and wait, and let whatever happens, happen? To hide, and hope it blows over without touching us? That whatever our enemy wants, it will end well?”
“The Washers,” Jerzy tried again, and Ao made a wet, rude noise, and the words came out of him like a flood, cutting off anything the Vineart had meant to say. “The Washers have chosen their ground, Jer, and it’s right smack in the middle, like merchants who have nothing to sell and don’t want to buy, but don’t want anyone else to sell or buy, either.” The weight of frustration and fear pushed his words out hard, as though it were all he could do to keep up. “I’m not a Vineart, or a lord, or anything that’s important, by Sin Washer’s rule, but I didn’t go through all this”—and although he didn’t draw any attention to his missing limbs, they might as well have been bleeding anew for how aware the others were of the hard-scabbed stumps under the blanket—“to sit back and let someone else decide my fate.”
The Shattered Vine Page 10