Magefall

by Stephen Aryan

  “The sea. Listen for the sea,” said Munroe. Sianne was hurrying towards her down the corridor with another woman she’d not seen before. Rather than looking worried they were both grinning with excitement about something. “It’s always there, at the edges of your perception.”

  “What is it?”

  “The Source,” whispered Munroe. She made a shooing gesture with one hand and Dox took the hint.

  “Is everything all right?” asked Sianne, coming into the classroom. Perhaps she’d been expecting a bloodbath as she seemed oddly disappointed at finding a quiet game of cards.

  “No problems. How is Tommi?” asked Munroe.

  “It looked far worse than it was. Thank the Maker,” said Sianne, which caught Munroe by surprise. The other woman, a fortysomething redhead, didn’t react. Either she hadn’t noticed because she was so giddy about something, or she was a far better actor than Munroe gave her credit for. With a final squeeze of Sianne’s arm the other woman practically skipped away down the corridor.

  “Did something else happen?” asked Munroe, lowering her voice to a whisper. “You both seem very excited about something.”

  “I’m not supposed to say,” said Sianne, biting her bottom lip.

  “I understand. I don’t want you to break a promise,” said Munroe, going against every instinct in her body. Part of her just wanted to shake Sianne until all her secrets came tumbling out of her head, along with a portion of her brains.

  “It’s not that,” said Sianne, struggling with something. She came to a decision and pulled Munroe a short distance away down the corridor. “Promise me, you won’t tell anyone.”

  “I swear,” said Munroe, putting her right hand over her heart.

  Even though there was no one in sight Sianne lowered her voice. “Do you remember I mentioned our patron?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ve been told that she likes to visit all of the orphanages, especially the new ones like ours.”

  “Is she coming here?” asked Munroe, holding her breath.

  “There was a rumour that we would be seeing her in the next few days. Gorell just confirmed it. Isn’t that exciting?” asked Sianne.

  Munroe was stunned but eventually managed to speak. “Oh yes. That sounds like an unforgettable day!”

  Sianne was so wrapped up in her excitement she was oblivious to the emotions that flickered across Munroe’s face. Her vengeance was almost at hand and Akosh wouldn’t see it coming until it was too late.

  CHAPTER 31

  A few hours after Wren and the others left Gillen’s Jaw the raiders set off for their camp. Wren had no way of knowing what Boros and the others had done to the villagers, or their children, but as Danoph kept reminding her she was not responsible.

  She and Danoph hid a fair distance away from the main road in a dense copse to conceal the horses from view. By augmenting her eyesight with magic Wren was able to watch the raiders leaving from her concealed position. She couldn’t hear what they were saying but it was clear how the others deferred to Boros. At her previous encounter with the raiders in Sour Crown, fear of their leader had been apparent. Now she witnessed first-hand how they acted with deference and a peculiar sensitivity, as if she were brittle. Wren had seen such behaviour before.

  As a small girl she used to play with the children on her street. They spent so much time in each other’s houses she came to know everything about their lives and families. She knew whose parents were generous with treats, whose wouldn’t tolerate running or noise in the house and whose parents were terrifying. There was no noise, no running and little fun to be had in Yortem’s house. Everyone treated his father as if he were a bear in hibernation, afraid of what might happen if he fully awoke. A year later the village found out when he flew into a rage, killing seven people, including Yortem and his mother before he was finally stopped.

  She wondered what Boros had done to create such fear among her peers. Raiders were not known for being kind and polite, but all of them rushed around Boros, all but bowing and scraping like she was royalty. Wren had witnessed the casual way she’d threatened the children in Gillen’s Jaw. Whatever Boros had done in the past, such a savage act must have seemed tame by comparison.

  Wren waited until the raiders were almost out of sight before they followed at a sedate pace. The dozen men and women rode with confidence and no fear of reprisal for their actions. Such an attitude made them arrogant, something Wren hoped to use against them.

  For the next few hours they trailed after the raiders who stopped off at two other villages to collect a tithe. Part of her wanted to rush in and help them, despite knowing the villagers wouldn’t thank her for getting involved once they witnessed her magic. The colder, more logical part of her knew that such an heroic act would serve little purpose in the long run and so she did nothing. Even if she somehow managed to overwhelm Boros and the dozen raiders with her, Wren wasn’t sure she could kill them. Besides, there were more raiders back at their camp. Killing a dozen and their leader might slow them down but it wouldn’t stop them.

  Danoph had tried to prepare her for such a moment, and he believed she could bear such a burden, but Wren wasn’t as confident. One violent act against Brunwal, even in defence of her life, had left her isolated from the other students. She worried how the others in the community would treat her if she killed again. Even worse, Wren was terrified how such an act would change her. Master Yettle’s advice about not lying to herself was difficult to maintain. It often left her feeling fragile, but she persisted by trying to understand the repercussions.

  One thought kept rattling around inside her head. It refused to give her a moment’s peace and sometimes woke her in the middle of the night. What if she discovered that she enjoyed killing?

  It sounded ludicrous and yet it was not unprecedented, even in Drassia. Some men who wore the mask refused to give it up, even when their bodies were too old and slow to fight. They often died on their feet with a weapon in hand and thought it a life well spent and a worthy death. Over time they had come to love the sound of steel cutting through flesh, the misting spray of blood, the anguished screams of the dying.

  She could imagine it becoming addictive. To remove people from the world and carve your own path through history. To be, as a god, deciding the fate of others.

  Others were addicted to seeing death reflected in the eyes of their victims. She’d even heard wild stories of a secret group of Drassi warriors that worshipped death, dedicating every kill in her name as if she were a black-hearted goddess.

  All of it sounded like madness, and yet Wren found herself at a crossroads. When the moment came her head might take her in one direction but her heart could lead her down a darker path.

  Magic gave her abilities far beyond that of most people. It allowed her to do wonderful and terrifying things purely on a whim. She was beginning to believe that such power should not be randomly given to any person as a chance of birth. Magic carried a heavy responsibility that, only now, was she beginning to understand.

  If she were more like Boros and cared only about herself, Wren could live as a queen. She could kill and maim with abandon until people were terrified to speak her name. But she had walked away from the path of violence, away from Garvey and his rage, and yet now she found herself struggling with an impossible decision.

  “I can hear you brooding,” said Danoph, startling Wren from her reverie. They were still trailing after the raiders at a distance. Light was beginning to fade from the sky overhead as dusk approached. They must be getting close to the raiders’ base.

  “It seems as if the only choices left to me end in murder. It’s either me or her,” said Wren, gesturing at the distant figure of Boros.

  “Perhaps,” mused Danoph.

  “Do you know something?” asked Wren. “Have you had a vision about her?”

  “No, but perhaps you should gather more facts about her and the raiders before making a decision.”

  A short tim
e later Wren saw the raiders turn their horses away from the main road and head east. By the time they reached the same spot night had fallen and they were forced to dismount and walk. The countryside was pitch-black and she didn’t want to injure their horses. She was tempted to summon a mage lantern, which she’d finally mastered after weeks of practice, but decided not to take the risk in case they were discovered. Instead she relied on the Source to enhance her vision, peeling back the deepest shadows.

  After fumbling ahead at a slow walk, noise and then light from up ahead made them pause. They tied up their horses and then crept closer to the raiders’ camp. After checking for scouts, she and Danoph crawled into a dense thicket where they could observe the raiders’ camp without the risk of being discovered.

  In some ways that she found unsettling, Wren noticed a number of similarities between her new community and the raiders’ base. On one side of a secluded valley the trees had been reduced to a sea of sawn trunks. Stacks of firewood were haphazardly piled up alongside their dwellings, which were a mishmash of crudely fashioned lean-tos, tents, rough log cabins, mud huts and hovels that went underground. There was no order to their layout in the camp. In one area she saw a shantytown with several homes clustered together, but a sea of space between them and the largest log cabin towards the back of the camp. She guessed it belonged to Boros but was surprised to see several raiders leading their horses inside. It made sense. They travelled all across the western region and relied heavily on their horses to cover so much ground.

  A large well sat at the heart of the camp where several people were drawing up buckets of water. Three people were cutting up vegetables and throwing them into a large pot while others stoked the fire. All of it seemed incredibly mundane and normal, except that everything the raiders touched was tainted with blood.

  Not far from the stable door Boros was distributing the tithe they’d taken from the villagers. Food was taken to a sturdy-looking log cabin while the other items were laid out on a sheet and a bidding process began between the gathered crowd.

  “I need to know more about her,” muttered Wren, but Danoph overheard.

  “They’re scared of her,” he said. “As vicious as they are, as cruel and without compassion, she is worse.”

  “I thought as much,” said Wren, having seen how they deferred to her. “Can you tell me anything else? Can you sense anything?”

  It seemed as if Danoph was about to say he couldn’t help, or that his Talent didn’t work that way, when his expression changed. Perhaps he was beginning to embrace his gift, or perhaps he simply understood the personal stakes for her, in addition to the survival of their community.

  “I will try,” he promised, focusing on Boros. As far as she knew he had never tried to use his Talent on purpose. Wren really wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. An echo through the Source as he embraced his power. A disturbance in the air around him, or perhaps something more extreme given his violent nightmares.

  Danoph lifted his right hand towards Boros and she thought light blossomed on his palm, although it was difficult to be sure.

  There was no rush of energy and Danoph didn’t move a muscle. In fact, it was as if he had suddenly been frozen solid. Despite being close enough to reach out and touch him, she felt he had suddenly become part of their surroundings. He was beside her and yet she had the impression his mind was elsewhere, travelling to places unseen. Wren wasn’t even sure if he was breathing and almost reached out to touch him but stopped herself in case she broke his trance.

  When Danoph spoke she let out a squeak of surprise, but he didn’t notice. “She’s hollow,” he said in a voice that sounded different as well. If she hadn’t seen his lips moving Wren wouldn’t have said that it was Danoph speaking. The voice was older and more cultured. “Her future is murky but all of it is violent.”

  “What about her past? What can you tell me about that?” asked Wren.

  “It’s very clear. There’s only one road.” Danoph’s sudden smile was unnerving. He was staring at something far away and Wren felt goosebumps cover her skin. “It is drenched in blood.”

  “Tell me,” said Wren, going against her better judgement.

  “She was a child growing up in Seveldrom when the war began. Her village wasn’t famous and held nothing of worth. But it was remote and found itself on the front line of the invading western army.” Danoph spoke clearly and with such an icy detachment she heard neither compassion nor grief in his voice. “Some of her earliest memories are of moving house. Her parents arguing about which belongings to leave behind and which to take with them. All the children rode out of the village on the back of an old wagon pulled by a pair of donkeys. She thought everyone was going on a trip together, except they never went home again.”

  It was a common story in the western region of Seveldrom as many villages had been abandoned. The people fled east to the safety of the capital and beyond into the countryside. When the army arrived it passed through the empty settlements and, like a swarm of locusts, stripped the land clean, leaving nothing behind. After the war many of those who’d fled had nothing to go back home to and were forced to make new lives elsewhere.

  “After that there were a lot of strange faces and shouting. She remembers weeks spent living in a tent, exploring fields with other children during the day and cooking food over fires outdoor at night. She remembers the smell of many people living close together and always wearing muddy clothes. Sometimes people argued over food and that was when she saw her first dead body.” Danoph’s smile was out of place and Wren wondered what he was seeing.

  “Who died? Was it one of her parents?” asked Wren, but either he didn’t hear or chose not to answer.

  “There was an argument. She doesn’t know what it was about, but she saw one man hit the other on the head. He fell down and didn’t get up again. Boros found him lying in the field, his body hidden from view amid the long grass. At first she was afraid to go near him because he kept staring at her. Eventually she approached and touched his face.”

  To see a dead body at such a young age was one thing, but witnessing a murder would leave a permanent scar. Wren watched as Boros moved around the camp and the way the other raiders always kept one eye on her. It was difficult to bring together the two images of the innocent young girl and the ruthless leader.

  “Is that what changed her?”

  “Oh no,” said Danoph with a half-smile, and this time she saw he was looking at her. Wren gasped in surprise when she saw his eyes, glowing from within with an intense white light.

  “What happened?”

  “A pattern began to form, one which she eventually changed. Her family travelled south in Seveldrom and started a new life. But violence found them again as the village was attacked by a group of thieves. No one there put up a fight. They gave the thieves what they wanted and they left. This went on for months until her parents decided to move on and start again. Violence and bad luck seemed to follow them wherever they went. And each time her father refused to get angry, refused to fight back and said faith would provide. Boros killed her first man when she was eleven.”

  Around the same age that Wren was discovering boys and daydreaming about the future, Boros had already taken a life.

  “It was a chance encounter,” said Danoph. “Boros recognised him as one of the thieves who had come to her village a few years before. He was older now, overweight and slow. She tempted him into a dark alley with a promise and stabbed him to death with his own dagger. Afterwards she expected to feel something. Joy. Satisfaction. Relief perhaps. But there was nothing. Just an emptiness and a hunger inside. She took his money, his dagger, and began to hunt the others. Moving from place to place she cut purses and throats. At fifteen she met a group of thieves and killers who laughed at her until she killed two of them. She was leading them by the time she was eighteen. The Queen of Seveldrom stamped down on raiders and they were hunted down by soldiers and a man called the Gath. Boros fled and came west wi
th the survivors. Ever since then she’s moved from group to group, butchering anyone who challenges her authority.”

  “Why does she do it?” asked Wren, hoping to understand what continued to drive Boros to commit such acts of brutal violence.

  “She came to believe something.” Danoph’s eyes were still glowing in the dark. Wren felt more than a little unsettled by his impenetrable stare when it formed on her. “That people are fundamentally weak. That if you threaten them, they’ll fall in line. All it takes is someone whose will is stronger, and she is merciless.”

  “Is it greed?” asked Wren. “What is driving her to do all of this? The murders and intimidating the villages in this area. What does she want?”

  For the first time since he’d embraced his power, Wren saw an emotion briefly flicker across Danoph’s face but couldn’t name it. She didn’t know if it was disgust or sympathy. “She desperately wants to feel something. Because no matter how much pain and suffering she causes, no matter how many people she kills or how much money they make, all of it means nothing to her. She simply doesn’t feel anything.”

  The glow faded from behind Danoph’s eyes as he lowered his right hand, coming back to the present. They stared at one another in silence for a long time, shocked at what he’d revealed about Boros, but also at his latent power. It went far beyond dreams and nightmares about the future. It was something they would have to deal with, but tonight there were more pressing matters.

  Wren gestured for him to follow her away from the raiders’ camp. They walked back to their horses and she came to a decision. “I need you to do me a small favour,” she said. “Take both horses a little way down the road and wait for me there.”

  Danoph was still slightly dazed but he was present enough to look worried. “What are you going to do?”

  “Show her that I’m not afraid.”

  His tendency to say little had never bothered her before, but now she wondered what Danoph was seeing when he looked at her. “Be careful,” was all he said before slowly riding away.