by T. A. Miles
Bael’s smile slowly left him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“You can’t stay,” Korsten repeated.
“It isn’t as if I’ve killed Bael. He’s still here.” The arms master unfolded his arms and touched one hand to his chest. “His body is in perfect health. And I’ve kept up his reputation, his life as he made it.”
“His life, as he made it. Not you.”
“No one knows the difference.”
“I do,” Korsten said before Bael was finished, his tone firming along with his frown. “And so do twenty-two young men and one young woman, whose lives you’ve been stealing from them, a little at a time.”
Bael firmed his chin with a hint of indignation. “I never touched that silly girl. But some of the soldiers you’re so concerned about would have surely enough, had they known what I knew, what I could smell. Think about who you’re protecting, mage. Decent men, yes. Some of them. But some of them are also lechers, thieves, liars, rapists….”
Korsten listened to this … thing talking, speaking as if it were human and had rights in this world. As if it were perfectly natural and just for a demon to take over a human life. “You’re leaving that body,” Korsten determined. “I’ll force you from it, if I must.”
“Now you’re beginning to annoy me.” Bael stepped further into the hall. Korsten didn’t know what he was waiting for. He should have been working the Release spell, but he wasn’t. The arms master drew his sword and charged at Korsten quicker than he could rethink his hesitation.
Korsten summoned his own weapon almost too late. Bael’s blade slammed against his own, forcing Korsten back a step. The shock of the blow resounded through his hand and up to his shoulder. Quickly, Korsten closed his left hand into a loose fist, opened it again, and extended two fingers, then raised his hand in Bael’s direction. The arms master’s next attack was slightly off. Korsten batted it away and put more space between them, watching his opponent stagger under the influence of a Megrim spell. Korsten didn’t dare put his weapon away yet. They were still too close and Bael wasn’t as disoriented as he should have been. Perhaps the spell had been rushed too much, or channeled in such a way that it didn’t quite envelop Bael.
The arms master spun himself and his sword about aimlessly, but still determinedly. Korsten leapt back from his errant swing and continued with defense when Bael found him again. The other man’s movement was less confident, his attacks as unsure as a drunkard’s steps. Korsten waited, and found an opening. Taking full advantage, careful not to actually harm the man, he locked up their blades, freed Bael of his larger sword, and gave him a solid shove backward. Bael staggered, but didn’t drop. The look on his face was one of rage, unreasonable. He came at Korsten, armed with just his hands.
Korsten could have extended his blade and let Bael run onto it, he was so hapless in his rage, but that would have killed him and empowered the demon as it abandoned the corpse. Instead, Korsten put away his sword and flipped twice over backward, putting ample space between himself and his opponent. He brought his hands together without touching and made the necessary gestures to perform a Release. The patterned movement ended with both Korsten’s hands thrust out toward Bael, the heels of them touching. A near invisible burst of magic thundered out of Korsten’s hands, soaring at the oncoming man and bowling him over. Bael rolled over once as he hit the floor and then lay still on his stomach.
Shocked and a little excited by the power he’d just used, that had come out of him for the first time, Korsten could only stare at his victim. He wondered if he’d done it wrong or too close and wound up killing Bael after all. And where was the demon? He hadn’t seen it come out of the arms master. He remembered that it had taken a moment with Markam, but that was different, Markam had died. Bael wasn’t dead. Please, he can’t be.
Slowly, Korsten lowered his hands. He wasn’t sure what to do, but he knew one thing certainly. He wasn’t going anywhere near that body until he knew for a fact that the demon was out of it. Maybe the spell didn’t work. Merran never said it would take this long. I must have done something wrong.
“Bael….” Korsten began, then noticed the stream of gray mist that blended almost perfectly with the dusty floor, coming at him. He backed up just when the demon decided to manifest its hand and reach for Korsten’s ankle. He thought instantly of Areld, clawing up his leg. Panic jolted his nerves, but he managed not to fall down screaming. He summoned his silver blade once again and stabbed the rising arm.
The demon howled, then shot wholly out of the floor. A sudden deathly chill fell over Korsten as the wraith loomed over him … just like the one that had come out of Markam. In his moment’s hesitation, the Vadryn lashed out and caught Korsten’s throat in one painfully icy grip. Its arm was unnaturally long, too long for Korsten to accurately attack with his blade. He could try severing the limb that had him, but the angle was all wrong. He wasn’t strong enough, nor was his blade. It came out thin and light; he couldn’t add mass to it and there was only so much. If he manifested it thicker, it would inevitably be shorter. Maybe he could cause the demon enough pain to make it recoil. Or maybe…. Even as Korsten considered his plan of action, while he was in the process of attempting to pry the demon’s clawed grip from his throat … on the verge of letting out his blade and hoping to injure it, the beast grabbed onto his right wrist and pulled back his hand. The demon lifted Korsten’s arm up and away from his body, rendering the sword useless before it was even summoned.
Korsten thought suddenly of Hedren, torn open … blood everywhere. His heart seemed to rise up and clog his throat. He realized in a moment that that was the demon’s hand, choking him.
“Clever mages,” the wraith hissed. “Spells to block us getting in? I’ll bring you to the brink of death, so that your concentration and your will barely exist. When your spell becomes weak, I will break through it, and wear you for a while.” The demon’s gray face distorted in a nasty little smile. “Won’t we be pretty? It will be that much easier taking others.”
The demon was wrong, but didn’t know it. It couldn’t control what wasn’t there, what Analee was holding on to. Still, let it think what it wanted. Perhaps Korsten could use that to his advantage. If he could just breathe…. The edges of Korsten’s world were beginning to black out. He couldn’t afford to lose consciousness. Sleep spells didn’t work on the Vadryn while they were away from a human host, nor did Megrim. The only assault spell Korsten knew was a Blast spell and while it was universal and relatively easy to cast, at this range it would cause the caster just as much harm as the target. He needed his sword … or did he?
Korsten knew the magic substance was inside him. He could feel it just beneath his skin. With the merest push of his will, he could make it surface. When he was finished with the blade, he always pulled it back in and stopped after letting the material spread in his hand. An entire sword didn’t form of a tiny lump of silver. He knew that. Some of the blade was forged purely of magic. That being the case, could he pull that material in deeper? Could he draw some of it away from his hand, down his arm…. He decided to try. Closing his eyes, he felt for the magic that wasn’t a natural part of him. He found it quickly, and began to pull. At first it tried to come all at once, and that hurt like Hell’s depths. He stopped, forced himself to ignore the sudden ache in his wrist, then tried separating a fragment of the magic from the whole. Korsten felt the separation like a pulled muscle. He gasped, twice as the Vadryn gave him a shake to see if he’d suffocated yet. Korsten flashed his eyes open, then let them flutter closed, concentrating on the dabble of magic he’d succeeded in migrating from the rest … down his arm … toward his shoulder … into his chest…. His heart tripped over it, causing more brief pain inside. Frowning in concentration, pulling the magic against his brain’s wanting to snuff out like a candle flame deprived of air, Korsten sucked the silvery substance toward his neck, into his throat, where it ricocheted suddenly a
gainst the walls of his windpipe. Korsten almost swallowed instinctively. And then he coughed, catching the magic in his mouth.
“Aren’t you finished yet?” the demon grumbled, closing its burning cold fingers even tighter, almost hard enough to snap Korsten’s neck.
Korsten opened his eyes, staring up at the beast with a sudden, chilling sensation of calm. The beast glared and maybe would have broken Korsten’s neck, but Korsten suddenly spat silver out at it. As the substance flew, it took shape, that of a short, narrow spike, and embedded itself deep into the Vadryn’s skull.
The demon’s head snapped back. In the next moment, the clawed hands released Korsten, and the beast fell. Korsten collapsed to his knees, choking, gulping down large swallows of air and massaging his hurting neck. In front of him, the Vadryn dissolved into a misty puddle and evaporated harmlessly into the air. Edrinor had one less demon to be concerned with.
Korsten crawled forward to reclaim the silver spike. Rather than simply pick it up, he discovered that he could will it into a semi-liquid state, reshape it into a tiny bead, and finally take it back into his hand, where he felt it join with the rest. As his mind and body began to calm down, he came to realize that he never wanted to do what he’d just done again. Drawing the magical substance through his body like that had caused him to ache from wrist to shoulder, chest and throat. He would simply have to be quicker the next time he faced one of the Vadryn.
The next time? Gods, I must have lost my senses entirely. Do I truly mean to do this again? To go on doing this, like Merran?
Before Korsten could dwell on the matter, Bael groaned a few paces away. Korsten got to his feet and went to him, helping the dazed arms master to his feet. “Are you all right, Bael? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Am I….” Holding his head as if to steady it, Bael struggled with his answer. And then he looked up at the mage supporting him. A look of bewilderment crossed his once cunning features. “I don’t think I’m injured, no.” Frowning with one side of his mouth, smiling with the other, he said, “I don’t seem to remember your name, lad. Did you just arrive?”
“Actually, you’ve just returned,” Korsten said, smiling at him helplessly. Relieved and happy to have saved the other man’s life, he added warmly, “Welcome back, Master Bael.”
Merran returned to the disused library feeling routinely ill after performing his duty to the Seminary; to himself and to humanity, he reminded. Eighteen young men were dead. Not by his hand. They were dead before Merran went to them and put an end to the unnatural lives they’d unknowingly been leading. Three of them were difficult, awakening at the last moment. Most of them he scarcely had to face, but those three who fought him, and Trev…. He’d Reached to the tavern in Lilende after finishing his task at the outpost. Osley was dead, recently slain by the infected boy he’d been harboring. Trev had been in the process of devouring the elder when Merran came upon him. The tavern’s patrons were oblivious to what went on in the tiny room behind the kitchen where a few of his employees lived. During business hours, only Trev occupied the room while his sister, who should have been at work in the kitchen or common room, pretended to be him at the keep. Apparently, Osley had come in to check on the lad, who had evidently awakened hungry. Merran did what he had to, and hated it. In his haste to move from one potential crisis to the next, he had forgotten to check up on Korsten, whose own tasks were nothing small. He trusted his fellow mage. Korsten had the power and the skill to do what was expected of him where the Vadryn were concerned. He had only lacked the courage before, but what Korsten didn’t seem to know about himself was that he had never failed when faced with a demon. True, he panicked more than a bit at first, but he had yet to run from an enemy. And that was why Merran was not surprised to find Korsten in the library ahead of him, standing near the web-veiled table at the center of the room, his arms wrapped around a certain young woman as she wept.
Korsten looked at Merran as he entered, showing his friend the sorrow in his deep brown eyes. He was without a doubt the most sensitive person Merran had ever known. Not even Ashwin shed a tear quite so readily, at least not recently. Merran could only assume Korsten’s current unhappiness was owed to Serra’s upset and to lingering remorse for having killed Bael in his attempt to extinguish the demon occupying his soul.
“It’s done,” Merran said, knowing that that was all he needed to say.
Korsten nodded, then gently pushed Serra out of their embrace. He just looked at her for several moments, and then said softly, “This isn’t over. The Morennish are still coming. It isn’t your duty to stay here, Serra, but I can’t guarantee you that town will be any safer than here.”
“I want to stay here,” the young woman said, wiping at her eyes with one hand. “And I don’t want to hide. I want to fight. I’ve been training. You’re going to need all the soldiers here, whether they’re supposed to be here or not. I want to help. I can do it.”
Korsten didn’t try to argue with her. In a moment he said, “Keep your secret and your brother’s name for now.” When Serra nodded, he added, “You’ll find Bael in the armory. I’m sure he’ll have something for you to do.”
The girl wiped at her eyes again and started to leave, turning back just long enough to rise to her tiptoes and place a light kiss on Korsten’s jaw. Korsten smiled at her a little, fondly perhaps but not encouragingly. Serra left with nothing more exchanged between them.
Absently touching his face where Serra had kissed him, Korsten gave his attention fully to Merran, who was both surprised and proud of the evident fact that Bael had survived after all. Korsten had accomplished on his first try what Merran and other mages with centuries more experience still had difficulty accomplishing. In spite of that, the redhead appeared depressed and concerned. Soon he revealed why. “There was a mage here. An old one.”
Merran listened patiently to Korsten’s story and wasn’t surprised that it ended with the other man sitting down and despising himself after giving the details of his encounter with Ecland. That name was not one that belonged to any mage from the Seminary and Merran could not say that he recognized Ecland in appearance beyond another young soldier at the outpost. Perhaps Ashwin or one of the other Superiors would know who he was and how he’d held onto his youth for so many years after having left the Seminary, as he’d claimed to. In the meantime…. There was Korsten to deal with. Crying again, making a good show of being weak, though Merran knew very well that he was not. He knew that the other man was more resilient than he would admit to himself, far braver than he would ever let on, damned talented in magecraft … and the person Merran couldn’t help but to care for with all his heart.
I’m in love with you, Korsten Brierly … and you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. You’re so sure that you seduced me, you won’t accept the possibility that I wanted to be with you. If you could, you’d push me away, like you do Ashwin. I know I’ve condemned myself with this lie, but I also know I’d be damned for revealing the truth. And the truth is … quite simply … that I love you.
Korsten felt like a helpless and foolish child, crying the way that he was, but he couldn’t help himself. Recalling what he’d done with Ecland, and to him … he hated himself. He knew better than to cry on Merran and he refused to ask for the other mage’s healing. It was wrong of him to be so reliant on someone else. Renmyr was proof of that and besides, he didn’t like using his friend that way. And he was using him. Korsten knew that he wasn’t the answer to Merran’s loneliness. He could convince the man otherwise for the span of a night, but it wasn’t fair, not for either of them. In the end Merran was still alone, and Korsten still hurt.
“We’re not finished yet,” Merran said, crouching down before him, keeping his healing hands to himself. “Morenne still has to be dealt with. We have to defend this outpost.”
“I know,” Korsten said, slowly regaining control. “You’re right, Merran.”
“I’ll re
port to Grisch,” Merran offered. “You should get some rest before things escalate. Take my bed. Try to relax and put what’s happened out of your mind for now.”
Korsten nodded unhappily, thinking about the body he’d left in his own bed. He was never going to be able to put that out of his mind. Not ever.
Once in Merran’s bed, Korsten lay still for what felt like a long time, but didn’t sleep. He listened to the sounds rising from the yards below as everyone else assisted in preparations for the keep’s defense. I should be helping. I was tired, but Merran must be also. Confronting eighteen undead youngsters in only a few hours…. The door opened and someone entered the room. On edge still, Korsten shot upright, prepared for a confrontation. With what, he didn’t know. The demon and its hapless underlings were gone. Ecland was gone. The only threat remaining was still on its way. It could be days before the Morenne army finally arrived. That could be days to evacuate Lilende, or at least warn them. Merran wasn’t worried, though. That much was obvious still as he carried himself across the room.
“I explained things to Grisch,” the blue-eyed mage said. “He doesn’t like it, of course, but he’s forced to accept it. Near twenty soldiers were lost, but the Vadryn’s oppressive shadow was lifted. Lars is already doing a fine job rallying the others. I think Morenne sent a small army thinking it would be easy to take this outpost. Osley’s reports about the Vadryn—what would seem like a shared case of insanity to the Morennish—probably made them believe there wouldn’t be much left once they arrived and that they would simply have to occupy the keep, suffering minimal resistance. Fortunately, because of Trev’s condition and our discovering Serra before she was ready to report back to Osley, word of our presence never reached the Morenne troops. Possibly, that is what they have been waiting for.”