Five years ago, before he'd made the original bargain, he’d asked Inari to write out his name and Miren's too. He’d traced those seven letters until their shapes had imprinted themselves on his mind and now he called them forward.
Scanning the letter, Sarn picked out Miren's name and a word or two containing the seven letters he could read. The numbers in today's date confirmed the letter was current. But he had more than hope to rely on, he had magic too. While Olav had read the letter, he'd repeated the contents word for word under his breath. And every word had passed his lips without a struggle confirming the deal was genuine.
Still, Sarn gave the missive one more glance. In his mind's eye, he called up an image of the formal letters the commander received and compared them. This letter appeared to have all the right components including a wax seal bearing the howling wolf emblem of the Nalshira clan making it official.
Sarn stared at the red mark of the Usurper. A cold dread crawled into his belly and dug its claws into him. Why was he associating with the descendants of his heroes' murderer? Because he had no money and no choice.
“Thank you,” Sarn said, and Olav removed the letter.
“You can move freely now.”
At Joranth’s words, the invisible bonds vanished, and Sarn rubbed his temples, his eyes and the bridge of his nose. But neither soothed the ache pounding in his skull. What they'd asked of him was wrong, and they all knew it.
The wood screen with its cross-shaped cutouts was a web, and behind it, a bloodthirsty spider waited. Sarn let his gaze fall to his lap. If he did this, he'd throw away the five years he'd spent defining who he was outside of the magic. He'd be the kid with a power everyone except him coveted. And he'd disappoint his son by breaking the promise he made to the boy every day.
A better man would say no and find another way, but he was like everyone else, grasping after the easy answer, the simple fix. Or in this case, the knife catching the glow of his eyes.
If he did this, they’d have him. But Miren had to go to university, and this was the easiest way to send him there. So Sarn rolled up his sleeve, exposing thick scar tissue.
At Hadrovel's execution, he'd believed he'd put the bleedings behind him. Hope died as he gripped the knife. Someone would always want what was inside him. Then Ran was airborne and frightened as the boy headed for certain death. Sarn closed his eyes, remembering his magic tearing free to catch his son and return the scared boy to him. And for the first time in his life, he wanted to keep the magic in his veins.
Don’t do this, whispered the magic, or maybe he hallucinated it talking in his head.
They only want a cupful. Besides, you always come back whether I want you or not. Except this time, Sarn wanted it to come roaring back twice as strong. Sarn dug the knife into his arm, ending his internal debate. Because the scar tissue had no receptors left to fire off painful warnings, he felt nothing but cold until the knife warmed.
Blood welled red and dull as the magic contracted into his chest, burning his insides. When Sarn called it, it didn’t come because it too had to obey.
You can move freely, his Lordship had said, but the bastard had not relinquished control of his magic.
Five years ago, Hadrovel had tried this, and it had nearly killed Sarn. He stared into the shadows veiling his master and words failed him.
“Don’t move,” Joranth said. His voice was a thunderclap, and it sprang invisible bonds trapping Sarn.
A bell rang as Olav took the knife and cut lengthwise along an artery, parting the skin from wrist to elbow. Blood flowed into the basin too fast and too red without even a glimmer of magic as the bells ceased tolling the twenty-second hour.
A door opened, followed by the whisper of soft soled shoes. Who had entered now? Sarn struggled to focus, but everything was blurring. His head map flickered meaning whoever had entered was not covered by the oaths he'd sworn.
Was it Jerlo? No, this presence was odd, and the more he focused on it, the more unnatural it became. Nausea spiked as the newcomer’s wrongness socked him hard in the stomach. None of the Rangers ever registered as unnatural. So, who had entered and why did this person feel both foul and familiar?
A second shadow appeared behind the ornamental screen, and a voice from Sarn's darkest nightmares hissed through a mouthful of gravel. “Why is he awake? He’ll fight you if you don’t knock him out.”
But Hadrovel was five years' dead, so this was that same imposter again. Why was Hadrovel’s doppelganger here and how did it know Lord Joranth? Were they in league?
“He can’t do anything but lie there and bleed. He can’t move unless I give him leave to and I will not.”
No, his Lordship would give no such command until the emerald radiance flowed. And his magic had no intention of doing that unless forced. Instead, it coiled around his organs cocooning them. Warmth blossomed behind his eyes and nose as it encased whatever lay behind them and it made Sarn sleepy. He struggled to stay conscious. He’d promised his son he would return and he intended to keep that promise.
“Then I’ll do it,” hissed a new voice, this one female.
Stomach acid burned the back of Sarn’s throat making him wish he’d eaten more of those oats as something snaked into view.
“What the—?” Olav let go of his arm and backed away from the woman-shaped mass of writhing snakes.
She regarded Sarn with pitiless reptilian eyes and lowered a claw-tipped hand toward his throat.
Olav shoved between them, brandishing a bloody knife. “Get away from him, demon!”
Snake woman dipped her head and extended a forked tongue to lick the blade clean. “Mmm, mage blood is so much sweeter than regular human blood.”
“Back off bitch.” Then to Hadrovel’s doppelganger, Olav said, “Call off your creature.”
“No!” shouted someone who was not Hadrovel or his evil, magical twin. A body collided with the partition, shaking it. Gray gloved fingers pushed through the cross-shaped holes and in the shadows, two sorrowful eyes caught Sarn’s. A gaze lock pulled at him until the shadowed figure stepped back.
“Don’t hurt him.”
The newcomer’s husky voice was wracked with pain and so damned familiar, but Sarn couldn’t place it. Sleep was calling, and he was losing the fight.
“Very well,” said Hadrovel’s doppelganger and the snake woman slithered aside but remained on the periphery.
“Banish her,” Joranth demanded, “or our deal’s off.”
“Fine.”
Snake woman grayed as she melted, releasing a tangle of snakes. They writhed back into the carvings she’d drawn them from. So, their earlier writhing was real and not a hallucination. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
“Sorry Kid,” Olav said as he covered Sarn’s nose and mouth with a cloth.
Its sweet scent dropkicked Sarn into a gray haze. Something held him to a shred of consciousness. Maybe it was the magic. Or, maybe it was the small spectral hand freezing his arm.
Sarn met the ghost boy’s scared eyes. A chain of shadows leashed the dead child to someone behind the screen. Interesting, because Sarn sensed only one being back there not covered by his oath of obedience, but two voices had issued. What did that mean?
The ghost struggled and the tar weeping off the chains binding it made Sarn's stomach roil.
Unnatural, screamed his magic as it roused, ready to scour the wrongness but it slammed into an invisible wall.
The room spun around Sarn, or maybe he was spinning. Only the specter was still. Ice slid up his bleeding arm and lead flowed into his chest as Sarn struggled to breathe.
“If you want it to be potent, you have to bleed him out. Only then will the magic run like maple sap in February,” said the thing that was not Hadrovel.
Unless Hadrovel had somehow morphed into something else after death. Would his former tormentor register as unnatural then? The ghost boy did. But his thoughts were fragmenting and merging with disjointed memories. Sarn blinked, but t
hey refused to go away.
The last five years vanished in a snap leaving him blinking hard at the noon sun and elbowing his way through a jostling crowd. He leaned on crutches, dragging his broken leg behind him because the thigh-high cast refused to bend. A whip cracked against a broad back as those miserable eyes targeted him and blinked out an apology. The steak knife in his pocket beat a cold tattoo against his good leg.
Jerlo's midnight eyes had fixed on him, and the commander had said, “executions are no place for children.”
“I’m not a child—” he’d started to say, but everything had faded into the commander’s black eyes. Their rapacious hunger had sucked everything in, leaving nothing but unconsciousness behind.
The memory grayed and blew away like so much ash. Sarn blinked, but the chamber was becoming fuzzy around the edges. Even the ghost’s icy hand could not stop his slide towards oblivion. The blessed dark of unconsciousness was calling, and its siren song was so hard to ignore. If only he had permission to move even a fraction of an inch, he could hold on for a little longer.
“Won’t losing so much blood kill him?” The voice sounded like Olav’s. A smooth hand touched his forehead then retracted it. "He's gone cold."
The bargain, yes, Sarn was still in that chamber with Joranth and his cohorts, at their mercy. I’m no one’s victim, not anymore. Anger started a slow burn in Sarn’s belly, and for a moment, it pushed back the Gray Between Life and Death.
“He’s not like you or I. Bleed him, and he doesn’t die. The magic won’t allow its host to perish when it can replace the loss—" rasped a familiar voice as it drew close, but stayed out of sight. Its owner stank of urine soaked dust, body odor and the sweet reek of an aliel eater.
"Why isn't it flowing—the magic I mean? If you cut a mage, they bleed magic, so why isn’t he bleeding magic? " Joranth asked in a worried tone. Why should his owner worry? His Lordship had made this infernal offer.
A shadow crouched beside Sarn, but he could not turn his head to see more than a blurry shape. One that was heartbreakingly familiar. Who the hell was this creep?
"Why do you think? Magic is an organism, and like any living thing, it wants to survive." Lumir light glinted off a knife blade nearing Sarn's eye in an eerie repeat of the past. Five years ago, a last-minute intervention had saved his eye, as the scar on his face attested. But no one would come to his rescue this time.
"I need him undamaged."
"I was just checking if he's still with us." The knife withdrew, but the hand remained. Gloved fingers traced the scar down the left side of his face. And Sarn caught a flash of a symbol he'd seen before—a thirteen-pointed star inside a circle.
Footsteps approached, then Olav seized the shadow and shook it. "How would the magic know what we intended unless—he's done this before."
Sarn tried to throw off the compulsion gagging him, but he was losing focus.
"Of course, he has. How else would I know what to do? You need the magic to flow free and untainted. If you want a shot at a cure,” said not the shadow to his left but Hadrovel’s imposter.
The brute would know since he’d been the last one to trick him into this. Sarn seethed at the injustice.
“How can you be certain?”
The answer was obvious. And Sarn thought nothing more as breathing required all his concentration. His heart pounded, pumping a dwindling blood supply into veins threatening to collapse. The ghost child slipped a little closer to the creep standing over Sarn. Its eyes begged for help. But he also needed a rescue.
“Now, release his magic. It will flow. It has no choice. He’ll die if it doesn’t.”
A hand touched Sarn’s face, and in his mind’s eye, a red line bloomed. As it curved, the line was intersected by thirteen lines forming a star. A voice he’d heard too many times in the last three days shouted: eam’meye erator!
Sarn stared into the empty eyes of a veiled killer. His magic rose in a feeble attempt to push the creep’s hand away.
The jerk leaned close and whispered, “I’m truly sorry for this,” then slid a blade between Sarn’s ribs puncturing an organ made to store magic.
A door closed and for a moment, a familiar icon flickered in the hall before vanishing, but unconsciousness stole the identity of his newest tormentor. Sarn’s heart stopped, and his body seized, sending a black tide to carry him into Death’s embrace.
“I give you back your magic. Save yourself,” commanded his master.
Both types of magic burst from their separate cages and scorched new pathways. Sarn sucked in a breath, and his heart pounded a runner’s tattoo as it pumped magic to supply his body’s demands. Liquid light poured out of the gash in his arm into the goblet waiting to receive it until a luminous clot plugged the wound.
Magic screamed as it leaped and slammed against the lowering lid trapping it inside the goblet.
Run, whispered the magic still inside Sarn, jolting him back to full consciousness. Get away. Don’t let them steal us. We are you, and you are us. We cannot be separated.
What? Sarn reeled from the magic's pleas as the chair splintered, dropping him. The stone floor pushed up at an angle, so he landed on his feet, but he still could not move. His Lordship had not ceded control of his body, just his magic. So Sarn toppled until stone arms caught him.
Why was it so cold in here? Sarn shivered. Something bad had just happened, but each convulsion sent his thoughts skittering away. His cloak rose and enfolded him, but he was still shaking. Fire raced through his veins warming him as his magic sought a way to break his invisible bonds. But it couldn’t.
Something scanned Sarn from head to toe. Green lightning snaked across his body pulling at the bonds created by one stupid promise made five years ago. But his promises were binding and not even Mount Eredren—if it was the mountain doing this—could free him.
A bellow shook Mount Eredren and something shattered. A crimson wave rolled towards Sarn and hundreds of reptilian heads pushed up from the plaster. They surrounded a spreading pool of his blood.
Stop them, shouted his magic, and Sarn would have but—
I’m under a compulsion. I can’t do anything until he releases me. Why don’t you do something?
No answer. Great, the magic was ignoring him, but maybe that was a good thing. He was not clearheaded enough to direct the magic. And the stronghold might collapse if Mount Eredren kept shaking.
Stop. I’m okay, Sarn thought hard at the mountain, and it stilled. But the lightning remained, adding to the intense glow of his eyes bathing the blood-drinking snakes in green. Sarn glared at Joranth who still sat behind the screen, waiting for someone else to deal with the problem. Free me.
Movement in Sarn’s peripheral vision made him wish he could turn his head. All he could do was shout, free me, inside his head and hope his glower convinced his Lordship to release him.
“Do something! Stop this!” Olav shouted, proving he was still here.
“I release you.”
At Joranth’s words, the compulsion shattered and Sarn staggered toward the engorged snakes until a whispered plea halted him. Magic called—his magic—it wanted to rejoin its brethren. Sarn stretched out a hand, and the goblet flew to him.
“Listen to me Sarn. We had a deal, remember? One letter for one goblet. I did my part. Now it’s time you do yours. I order you to stop and repeat after me.”
Paper rustled and the word ‘deal’ reverberated in Sarn’s head, but it failed to shake loose anything. Invisible bonds snapped into place, trapping him in a prison of flesh.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, harped a voice in Sarn’s head as his remaining magic raged against his shackles. Pressure built until his bones creaked. If Sarn could have, he would have thrown back his head and screamed.
“Release him. It must be of his own accord. You can’t force this. Remember what he said. If you try to coerce him, his magic will tear him apart and us with him.” Olav took the goblet and set it aside. “Easy lad, I know you’re confused. W
e were warned you might be. Take a minute to think."
“You can move and speak freely but no magic. You cannot use magic in here.”
A third of the controls vanished, freeing Sarn. The goblet rested on the table next to the remains of the chair. Beyond it, bloody snakes flattened so they could slither under the door. Should he stop them? Putting two thoughts together was so hard while lightheaded and dizzy. Another snake escape. Was it important?
“Sarn!”
The goblet called his name.
Olav stepped into his path holding both hands out in entreaty. The top of the seneschal’s head was level with Sarn’s eyes, and his features were too familiar. Who had worn a variation on them within the last day? The memory swam away back into the confusing morass thrashing around inside his skull.
Olav lifted a sheet of vellum covered in writing but Sarn’s gaze fixed on the Usurper’s seal—the broken sword. Legacy had shattered at the Usurper’s touch, and the tinkling of its shards had set the curse on the Nalshira line—and his master too.
With his index finger, Sarn traced the imprint of a hilt and cross guard—the last Guardian blade. The only one which could restore the order. The pendant under his tunic heated up until the crystal shard threatened to scorch his skin. Through his tunic, Sarn gripped the rough-cut jewel, and as it cooled, his head cleared.
“You and Lord Joranth came to an arrangement. Do you remember?”
Sarn blinked at Olav. The agreement—Lord Joranth—the indenture—yes, he had agreed for his brother’s sake. But this was not part of the deal. Sarn opened his mouth, but no words emerged.
Mine whispered the magic.
Yes, cried a voice from the depths of his soul, one Sarn didn’t recognize. But it startled him enough to break the circle of his thoughts.
“You two came to a separate arrangement. Here let me read this to you. Let’s see if it refreshes your memory.” Olav read aloud from the letter in his hand.
Curse Breaker: Books 1-4 Page 37