by Jenna Rhodes
She stepped back, her face warming at Tolby’s reprimand. She looked down. Swollen ankles, tight sandals, dirty barn floor. “My regrets, Lord Verdayne.”
“Accepted, although I admit you have a point. Of sorts.”
“Of sorts?” Her voice rose.
“There is bad magic and there is magic which has failed. If—or when—it fails, it simply dissipates. It doesn’t turn into a morass of chaos and toxin.”
“Like that?” Nutmeg pointed at the near-destroyed book.
His jaw worked. “Ah.”
Tolby took her hand and pointed it at the bell in the center. “On the other hand, sometimes mold is merely mold.” He looked down at his handiwork and smiled.
The newly misted book looked near pristine at the page where it lay open, with only a slight rust stain where black mold had been festering but moments before and even that disappearing. Verdayne leaned in. “Very effective, Master Tolby!”
“With little damage to the ink or binding.”
“So it seems! We’ll have to treat it page by page.”
“I think that’s wisest. And dry between each application. We don’t want to warp it, nor do we want to give the mold a chance t’come back.” Tolby scratched the back of his head. “I’ve enough on hand to do the job here, but we’ll have to tincture far more for Ferstanthe.”
“Will there be any trouble transporting it? How virulent is it?”
“Stoppered kegs should be good enough. I might have a bit of trouble rounding up all the herbs I need—once I start buying, the price will shoot up. Demand and all bein’ what it is.”
“We can afford it,” Verdayne told him firmly. “Perhaps you should make the solution at the library itself. I can send to Azel to gather the quantities.”
Tolby shook his head. “I won’t be leaving my stead here at this time of year, but I could send Keldan. The lad has a good head.” He looked past Verdayne to Nutmeg. “I’d send you, lass, but I think the journey would be difficult on you, and your mother would never forgive me for putting distance between her and that baby. She’d have my head.”
“On a stick,” agreed Nutmeg. She leaned over the first bell-shaped lid. “Was this treated already?”
“With an earlier potion. We thought to strengthen it a bit.”
She nodded. “Good. Because the mold is coming back here, ever so slightly, on the edge.”
Tolby bent over. He swore. “There’s the fly in our success.”
“No, no, that could be expected with the weaker application. Reapply, let it dry, and we’ll check it in the morning.” Verdayne lifted the cover.
Nutmeg took it from his hands. “Men,” she said. “Treating the book and not the dish.” She showed him the inside lip of the glass bell. “Spray everything. It contaminated itself again.”
Tolby peered down his nose. “She’s right. There’s mold on the glass. Not much, but it doesna take much.”
“We’ll have to put scalding water over the lids after you spray the books. Then dry them.” She set the lid aside. “Would not hurt to scour the table as well. Any decent cook could have told you both that.”
Dayne gave her a slight bow. “Your sharp eyes saved us a bit of work on that. We might have been set back days.”
“Aye,” her father said and hugged her about the shoulders. “Now I suggest you get inside and put your feet up for a while, or Lily will have my head on a stick anyway.”
“Going, going,” Nutmeg said reluctantly. “But only to save you.”
She left the barn, dropping the scarf from her face gratefully, the cooler air pleasant on her face. Her two guards abruptly left their game and fell into place, one at her flank and the other at her heels. They left her, reluctantly, when she closed her bedroom door.
Nutmeg bent over as far as she could comfortably to stare at the shadows under her bedstead. Then, carefully, she lowered herself to her knees and scuttled under as far as she could until she found Bistel’s journal and fetched it out. Getting up took a moment or two, and left her huffing a bit for breath, the worn leather book firmly in her hands. When she sat in her corner chair, she opened it, sunlight coming through her window in slats, patterned by the half-opened shutter.
She could read it now, without strain or worry, and opened it to a page at random. Bistel’s careful penmanship filled her vision. “My aryns,” it read, “both define and deny all that I have written heretofore about Ways. Firstly, it involved an item that was living. An item that was not native to Kerith. And, for all that I was the one who planted it and willed it to grow, I had not made preparations to create a Way nor did I generate incredible amounts of power and Talent to induce it to do so. That a greenstick staff would grow—that in itself was somewhat remarkable, although the staff had developed tiny buds suggesting that it wished to grow—that it would grow if only given a chance—and I could feel the intense need and longing within the staff to do so. I planted it with a tremendous surge of hope within myself that it would succeed at its goal, fulfilling both our longing, myself and the staff’s.
“That it grew, and its seeds grew, and its saplings flourished, and that they became a barrier against the corrupted energies left by the Mageborn Wars, astonished no one more than I. And yet, the phenomenon pleased no one more than I. The aryn tree grows to be a majestic, logging-worthy tree, with immense benefits while it grows and flourishes. It resists insects and fire. It increases the watershed capability of any plain on which it is introduced. Its bark can be eaten by forest animals in times of famine, and the tree survives. Its canopy does not starve the forest so that other saplings can flourish. Its boughs are fragrant, I’m told its needles make an excellent herbal tea with healing properties, if steeped properly, and when it drops a limb and goes to the lumber mill, the wood is hard, well-grained, and faintly aromatic.
“All of that takes a back seat to what has become its primary purpose, which is to absorb and filter the chaotic evils of magic dregs left behind by decades of war long before we came to tread these lands. The aryns do not do this overnight; it has taken decades, even a few centuries, to cleanse the soils and borders they guard. Their presence is valuable and desired. Thus it bothers me that they now seem to be under attack, from a pernicious mold, which is not accidentally introduced nor exists naturally. I believe this same mold is a variant of the one introduced to the library of Ferstanthe. While I cannot with any certainty point out the perpetrator, I have narrowed it down to a few possibilities: a Master and his apprentice. It is a crime of more than opportunity, it is aimed at the very hearts of the Vaelinar.”
Nutmeg closed the book on her finger. So Bistel had known of the library’s problems even before Azel d’Ferstanthe had. She wondered how he’d given notice to the big, burly librarian before the battle that was to take his life. She knew he had, he must have, but even so he did not trust the library enough to leave this book there.
Perhaps the mold had even been spread to destroy this book, if he’d left it behind. She frowned.
Yet another reason not to reveal its existence, even with Verdayne here and being so . . . appealing. Strong, perceptive, and appealing.
Nutmeg sighed. The baby moved sluggishly inside her, as if stretching a bit and finding little room to do so. Her skin ached. She stood and put the book back in its hiding place, manipulating the wood boards carefully so they would not creak and then found her skin cream. A light rub and perhaps a nap before she started dinner. That sounded like something she could handle, in place of Vaelinar mysteries and destinies. She put her head down, wondering what Rivergrace would make of Verdayne.
RIVERGRACE DISMOUNTED at the edge of a tiny freshet and drank first, despite the horse’s impatiently yanking at its reins, for he would muddy the waters if she let him drink first. Only a moment or two after she gulped down what she could, he nudged her aside with his thick, heavy head, chomping at his bit, and took
her place.
She stepped back after tying the reins loosely to the saddle, giving the beast enough room to drop his head for grazing as well, and walked back to a knoll and sat wearily. Her legs ached, her clothes felt as if they could walk away without her in them, and her thoughts were not her own. Not really, not anymore. She could feel the tiny fibrous tethers of the others tied to herself, her making of them. They drank at the brook’s edge as well, slurping through mouths that sounded as if they must be numb, but she could feel the real thirst that drove them—blood.
Grace closed her eyes. Quendius would let them beat the meadow for whatever they could scare up and devour. Mice, hares, even the disgusting stinkdog made prey for the Undead. They would cut off limber tree switches and walk through the growth, scaring up whatever they could and then pounce on it, devouring squealing bodies alive. She opened her eyes, knowing herself not to be safe if she did not keep watch, not even with her father about. Did their desire for blood influence him? It had to. She held no confirmation of it, but she knew it had to, if she as a living being felt the palpable hunger. She wouldn’t watch it and wished she could not hear the hunt.
Quendius walked past her without a glance. He moved to each of the Undead in his charge now, nearly twenty, for he had picked up a patrol or two and no one escaped his sword now. Each man stopped as he approached them. Then he did something Grace had never seen him do, and she felt it to the very core of her being.
He put his palm on the chest of each of his men. When he moved away, he carried a bit of their thread with him, a thread torn from Grace and from Narskap, for she saw him stagger and go to one knee, his face even more pale than his Undead state normally colored it. She felt a twisting ache inside of her but kept herself steady and her face neutral. She could not let him know he affected her somehow. Quendius raised his face to the sky and grunted faintly each time, as if he felt the impact of what he was doing. When he had finished, he swung about and eyed Narskap.
“You’ve done good work for me.” He pressed the heel of his hand to his own chest. “Cerat holds them for me, as you promised. It stands for me to gather more and have an army no one can face. The Demon smells a war brewing. All I must do is let them fight themselves, and reap the dead.” He looked briefly at Rivergrace before turning and walking upriver to find clean water of his own.
Narskap searched wildly until he met her gaze and they stared at one another. Dread gathered in her bones and sent a chill arching through her as she realized whatever Quendius had done had shocked Narskap. Fear shivered deep inside of her at the look on his face as he ducked away from her quickly. It did not stop when a flock of silverwings streaked the sky overhead and circled about her before winging off.
She knew the birds well. They were wont to follow her whenever she traveled their territory, often thought to be favored by the Goddess of the Silverwing River. She’d always considered them lucky.
Grace turned about. She had not, she realized, been paying much attention to their travels, thinking they had continued to move north and east toward the badlands, which hid the fortress Quendius called home. But silverwings did not range so far north or east.
No. Quendius had slowly circled them. They were headed south and were far closer than she realized, not far from the Silverwing River and the sacred Andredia.
She forgot to breathe for a moment. Would it bring her back toward Sevryn, or would she be lost forever?
Quendius lifted his hand and turned, tugging on all of them invisibly. “We have a war to scavenge. Every being that falls will become a brother of ours! We ride and we ride hard.”
The Undead let out a grunting cheer.
Sevryn
SEVRYN SLEPT as he’d trained himself to do, dropped into a light doze that would refresh him but not cloud his awareness of what happened around him. When the Kobrir sleeping around him had dropped into that trough that the dead of night often brings, he rose and made his way to the latrines as quietly as he could but not so quietly that it seemed he wanted to avoid detection. To be too quiet would betray that it was silence and sneaking that he sought, bringing attention he did not wish. To be too loud would be just as problematic.
Once in the relative solitude of the jakes, he undressed quickly, stripping down and repositioning each of his weapons in a different, more expedient location, including the ithrel. Bretta’s sharp eyes had caught the placement of each and every one as he’d dressed before, and he’d no doubt that she had noted the positioning carefully and reported it. He’d taught himself years ago to position his weapons where they would likely not be spotted, and thus when he reached to draw one, he would not be noticed. Surprise was as much an element of his success as ability. His training now gave him even more of an edge and he wouldn’t relinquish that because Bretta had watched him arm and dress. Why? Because they told him he had graduated and he knew full well they had not given him a final exam.
When he returned to his sleeping spot, at least two nearby Kobrir stirred and turned, noting his activity even if they did not react openly to it, and he curled into his blanket, his wariness ever sharper. The morning would bring the answers he sought—and more questions, he was certain, he’d overlooked asking.
He woke just before what he knew to be dawn. He could feel the bare warmth of the sun just touching the bones of this desert, and its glow ate across the sands and up into the rock. The rustle of moving bodies, combined with the sharp tang of fires, stirred in the morning breeze. The pungent aroma of spices being tossed directly onto the firewood as well as into the cooking pots sizzled into the air as he stretched and moved toward the cooks. He searched, as he always did, within himself for signs of Rivergrace. He ached for the barest touch of her, at the thought of stroking the curve of her throat, of untangling her hair from her temple, of feeling her lips swell beneath his. What would she think of him now, what the Kobrir had made of him, finishing the job that Gilgarran had begun and Quendius had, unwittingly, contributed to, as well? Would she accept him as she always had? Would she understand that what he had done and would do, would be for her? She would not, he thought, as gentle as her soul was, but she might listen to him long enough to explain . . . once he found her. And he would find her as soon as he won his freedom here and took care of the obstacles that threatened her.
They parted for him as he strode near. They stared without staring, their gazes darting away as soon as they had been noticed, tugging their veils into place in case they had revealed something unseemly. As he walked through, he noted at least eight fighters missing.
Eight, then. Or more. If he had been one of them, he would not have tipped his hand as to how many able-bodied fighters he had. He didn’t expect they had either. They had always had his fear, but now they had earned his respect. He still did not know what they were as a people . . . they had a sinuous quality to their movement as if they might have joints he did not, and bent in ways he could not . . . and they had not dropped the veil of secrecy from their lives despite his living in the midst of them. Not much of it, at any rate. He knew a little more than he had and, as far as he could tell, he knew as much of them as anyone alive on Kerith today.
And that, too, made him cautious about stepping away from them. There would be those who would argue he was not worthy, he would never be worthy. There would be a few who merely regarded him as a contract to be collected upon, and he knew that Lariel had most likely put a price on his head. It would have been done discreetly, but he had little doubt. It was probably what he would have done in her position, barring taking care of the problem himself. She could not: she had to keep her hands relatively clean and direct a defensive war against an enemy who would not give her advance warning. But he would have trusted her, despite the seeming betrayal, because they had years between them of loyal service and friendship. He would have trusted her until proven otherwise.
The last of the Kobrir parted before him and he saw that they had le
d him to a massive cavern arena he’d never seen. It had little ceiling left, the elements having broken through ages ago, and sun and shade striped the area brightly, the sharp rock walls sending spear-like projections against that backdrop. He halted, heard the murmur of voices drop to nothing behind him, and did not turn. One voice instructed him: Find your guide. He sidestepped into a shadow and loosed his Voice, telling the rock and sand and shale to accept him, and melded into their presence.
Still as stone. Dark as shade. He balanced on the soft soles of his shoes, his senses so alive that he could nearly feel every grain of sand and rock beneath him. He inhaled as quietly as he knew how, sussing the air long and slow and deep inside his lungs. When he moved, he did so as a splinter of darkness, another step, then two, sidelong to pause again, his eyes growing in his ability to see in the dark, knowing that as he adjusted, so did his opponents. They would not see him, however, not as long as the shadows held him close as a brother.
In that closeness, he found his first opponent and took him out, quietly, silently, with no more sound than an outward gust of breath from the fallen Kobrir. In other circumstances, Sevryn would have left him dead. This time he left him unconscious and curled on his side. He moved away from the fallen quickly before being revealed.
Stone fingers pointed his way to another assassin. Sevryn used one hand and the crook of his elbow this time disliking the noise of the first conquest. When the man fell limp in his hold, he left him propped against the cavern wall where he’d found him and none the wiser that he did not just simply remain lying in wait for Sevryn to pass.
Three, four and five were nearly as easy. Five almost broke his cover, thrashing one leg out as he fell into unconsciousness, but Sevryn flicked his shadowy coverage about them and the movement was swallowed up hungrily. He saw then his objective, a hunched-over being at the far end of the cavern’s progress, his head in a burlap bag and his voice mumbling in a low-pitched monologue which might or might not contain sanity. His guide.