by T. A. Miles
“No,” Cayri replied, unaccustomed to resistance of this nature at the announcement of going to perform a task. She was no longer young enough to be so overly protected and had not been for quite some time. Her duty as a mage was quite simply to tailor her actions to suit the requirements of the hour. She was no hunter, true, and certainly not a tactical specialist, but she remained an agent of the Seminary and was therefore used to a certain amount of autonomy. Even being female among men who struggled to understand the roles or abilities of mages, she was seldom questioned the way in which Deitir just had. She had witnessed this mode from him, yes, but directed at his family, not her.
Her gaze travelled briefly toward Ilayna, who had once again donned an expression of concern. Cayri said to Deitir, “I would, of course, strive not to be struck.”
“I’ll go with you,” Deitir volunteered, too quickly, and for the first time since taking over for his father, he seemed too young.
“You know that you cannot,” Cayri told him.
She was relieved when he reneged immediately. “Yes,” he said. His expression indicated that he may have even felt foolish for his reaction. “I’ll send others to accompany….”
“No,” Cayri resisted, her brow furrowing helplessly. “They would be more at risk than I, and more a threat to me should any of the Vadryn be present.”
It was clear that Deitir was looking for a way to prevent her going up until that moment. Now he seemed confused by the nature of their true enemy. “But they would have been on a ship. Can such creatures survive in water?”
“In their natural state, it is a risk for them to be too near a moving body of water,” she explained. “The energy can overpower them … weaken them. But if it was embodied upon the ship, it would have empowered itself with the blood of that body, possibly several if they were arranged to be present.”
It was a morbid thought that crossed Cayri’s mind just then; that Morenne might have planted a demon among an unsuspecting crew, as fodder for strengthening a beast.
“Enough to be unaffected by the power of the sea?” Deitir asked.
And Cayri nodded. “Perhaps enough to make it to shore or to one of our ships. The possibility has to be investigated. I shall do it.”
Unhappily, Deitir finally surrendered. “All right, but take care, Cayri.”
He touched her arm lightly and she looked down at his hand briefly before stepping around him and toward the doors. As she departed, she noticed Alledar leaning from the edge of his chair at the end of the main table, where he typically took up a post of worry. He was sweating, as he tended to do when nervous. In the process of mopping his face with an embroidered pocket cloth, he glanced in her direction, then noted the placement of both Fersmyn and of Deitir.
Normally, Cayri might have overlooked that, perhaps secure in her own presence, if not overly convinced of Alledar’s harmlessness—he seemed a man opposed to confrontation most of the time—but it occurred to her acutely in that very moment that she was leaving Deitir’s side for the first time since the planning for the invasion began. She was leaving an opening for opportunity.
Rather than halt in her tracks and draw attention to the fact that she had seen anything—what admittedly, might have been nothing—she passed a gaze to Ilayna along her route to the doors. As she suspected, without any word or fore-planning, Ilayna comprehended covert action and when it was necessary. She made no gesture or comment in Cayri’s direction, but she did make brief eye contact, both with Cayri and with Firard Mortannis, who unobtrusively abandoned his post at the doors in the moments just prior to Cayri’s exit. He began to walk with her immediately once they were both in the hall, as if they had arranged it in advance.
“Did you see something?” he asked.
“Yes,” Cayri replied. “Alledar.”
Firard needed no explanation. “I’ll watch him,” he said, and then took a separate course from her own as casually as he had joined her.
Cayri made her way down the grand stairs of the house, past members of the domestic staff and political office in various states of urgent motion, and to the main doors. There were two men stationed immediately flanking the doors. They let Cayri past and shut them firmly behind her. She was greeted in the manor’s interior yard by several soldiers, forming a small unit on their own, clearly in preparation to defend the house and its members should the situation come to that. She hoped it would not.
Making a path through the soldiers readying their defensive plans, she focused on the task at hand, which was to investigate the situation at the waterfront. She wished very much that….
The thought was pulled away by an unexpected distraction. Nearing the main gates, she caught a distinct glimmer of red in the corner of her vision. She drew to a pause and looked, as if that smear of red were a living being hovering beside her, and perhaps it was. A note of hopefulness chased through her senses and she moved more quickly to the gates, where a figure in white just happened to be approaching from a knot of armored men, a couple of who were pointing the figure in the direction of the gates.
Cayri smiled immediately, even before Korsten’s face was in view, framed by his extremely red hair. “Korsten!” she greeted, to ensure they saw one another. To the man at the gate, she said, “Open the gates, please.”
While the soldier was complying, Korsten caught sight of her and his path angled deliberately in her direction. The gate opened enough for her to pass through and she went, meeting her fellow mage in the street, where she hugged him openly. He returned the gesture, emanating some relief, but she also felt protection from him, as if he had detected her stress—even more than she had noticed it in herself—and responded in kind.
She took advantage of the moment as much as she dared, feeling that she could silently vent in his shelter, which was renewing, as much as seeing him safe was a relief. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said to him as they drew away from one another.
Korsten stayed close, perhaps so that they might hear one another over the rush and clamor of a city in the midst of its first and most important military defense. “I did not expect to be so soon, but I’ll refrain from offering too much explanation just at the moment. It’s good to see that you’re well. What of Vlas?”
Cayri nodded. “He’s well,” she answered, leaving out Vlas’ apparent struggle with emotional matters that she believed he would sort, given time. They weren’t crippling, even if they were somewhat troubling to her. The thought brought her to the last of their party who had been assigned to Indhovan. “Merran….”
“Yes, I heard,” Korsten interrupted, softening the abruptness of his interjection with a small smile that also accentuated the emotion in his eyes, a state similar to her concern for Vlas. It was important to each of them, but they understood their priorities. And in further illustrating that, Korsten asked, “Is anyone else coming from the Seminary?”
“I cannot say,” Cayri replied. “The Superiors are aware of the state of things here, though not of this yet.” She indicated ‘this’ with a look toward the harbor.
Korsten’s gaze followed hers. “There’s more to this than soldiers and ships armed with….”
Cayri provided the term he was searching for. “They’re referred to as fire tactics. We had laid a trap for them using a store that was confiscated from the Islands, but they came with much more than we could have anticipated, and a more effective way to implement them.”
“At least we expected the Vadryn,” Korsten said, in a mild grasp at levity that served its purpose. Cayri felt renewed again, glad to be in his presence; the presence of a hunter, whose talents they could sorely use.
“I was just leaving to look for the potential of possessed soldiers that might have come ashore,” she said.
Korsten nodded in agreement with the plan. “I’m certain it’s more than a potential.”
“Yes,” she agreed, and they dr
ew back from one another and headed in the direction of the harbor.
Merran had submitted himself to darkness. It was harmless, but in its stillness, it was also numbing. It left him to drift, though he instinctively resisted. He attempted to explore and for time that could not be measured, he wandered in a featureless blackness. He persisted.
A sharpness prodded his mind, sourcing from his hand. He raised it automatically, looking upon both it and his arm wrapped in a coiling arm of the crone’s. Her laugh cracked across the darkness and she pulled. The pain was exquisite.
He cried out and was released. The suddenness of it threw him off balance and he dropped to whatever surface was beneath him. He felt the crone’s eyes on him. He felt her bent smile.
And then she lashed out at him. He recoiled, further into dream, deeper into darkness that wrapped him absolutely before disgorging him into a sudden bright space. A space long behind him. Sunlight panned across wide, golden fields and mottled groves of trees fading with the season, with autumn. An autumn centuries removed from the one Merran had last been conscious to, before volunteering to be set into a spell sleep.
I never paid much attention to magic then, Merran reminded himself, searching the peaceful terrain as if a visitor to it, one who knew what he would find. I wasn’t concerned with monsters either, for that matter. They didn’t have much bearing on a normal life, and that was what I had; a normal, quiet life.
“How normal?” cracked an ancient voice in reply to his thoughts. The tone was mocking and belonging to the crone, though she could not have survived. “How quiet? Tell me, defiler.”
Merran had no intention of carrying on a conversation with this figment of recent trauma. Despite that determination, his mind continued to describe what he was witnessing; memories, evidently.
My family and I lived in the small town of Imerenne, a few miles outside of it, actually. We were farmers. No one bothered us and we didn’t bother anyone ourselves. I was the eldest of four children, barely fourteen, but the man of the house behind my father. Schalek came next at eleven, trailed closely by nine-year-old Ervanien with our mother’s blonde hair, and little Brea, our only sister, was just six. I saved the dreams of heroics for my younger brothers and the tales about magic for whimsical Brea.
As his siblings were recounted, he located them visually. They and he were walking along a path among barley fields. The day resurfaced fresh in his memory, as if it had never been buried.
We were on our way home from the harvest festival that autumn and my sister had a small pup in her arms. It was a prize the three of us boys had won for her. The attempts leading up to the victory had cost us all of the coins Father had given us. We couldn’t afford the glazed apples and spiced bread we had looked forward to throughout the year previously, but it was worth it, considering how much Brea loved the little beast. It was reward enough that she shared him with us by likening his blue eyes to mine and giving him the name Erschal, after Ervanien and Schalek.
“Da’ll like him, Merran,” my sister said. “You think?”
“Yeah, Brea,” I answered, touching her shoulder as we walked, since her hands were occupied with the pup. “Da will like havin’ him. Heard him and Mum sayin’ how we could use a good dog about.”
“He’s a good dog,” Brea said, nuzzling the animal. “Good puppy, Erschal. Yer a good little boy.”
“How do we know it’s a boy?” Ervanien asked, patting Erschal’s soft white head.
Always prepared to tease those younger than him, Schalek said, “How do we know yer a boy?”
“It looks like a boy,” I said, glancing at Schalek in reproach. When my father wasn’t around, I tended to act his part. He was always kind with us, and with Mother. There was no meanness in him, only endless patience, even when firmness was required. That was why I was surprised to hear him shouting as we were getting home. It especially worried me to see him up and about the way he was, since he hadn’t been feeling well for most of the past month. Seeing the wildly angry look in his eyes, I wondered if it was a fever that had him.
I heard his voice as we came up the road, but I couldn’t make out what he and Mother were arguing about. Noticing that the sun was near to set, recalling that we should have been home hours ago, I prepared to assume full responsibility for bringing about my father’s rare temper. It was so rare, that I didn’t recognize it. I felt genuine fear in me when he spotted us, and started walking in our direction.
“We took longer than we planned to,” I said at once. “I should’ve paid closer attention. It won’t happen again, Da. I’m sorry.”
Father didn’t say much as he ushered us indoors. “Get in. Now. The lot of you.” He took Brea’s puppy and dropped him just before we reached the stoop heading in. My sister was crying before he closed the door, but Father acted as if he didn’t hear her.
Mother finished preparing our supper and we sat around the table in a strained, foreign silence. Each of us wanted to speak, as we were accustomed to doing so, but none of us knew what to say while Father was in such a mood. It frightened us, to see him this way. I could see that it scared Mother especially. I watched her stealing glances at my father, as if she were looking at a stranger.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to say something. I had to try to make things normal again, and I had to do something that would give Brea back her smile. I hated to see her unhappy. “You were sayin’ a bit ago how you wanted a dog on the grounds,” I said to my father. “I know Erschal’s little now, but—”
“He’s on the grounds, isn’t he?” Father interrupted. He wasn’t shouting, but there was something about the way he looked at me and the tone in his voice that made me feel scolded, berated actually. My father might well have called me a stupid boy at that moment and it could not have hurt worse.
“I thought you’d like ‘im.”
“You think too much, Merran,” my father said, quietly. “Now, shut up and eat. When you’re finished, I want you in bed.” He lifted his gaze off his plate, and looked across the table at Mother. I didn’t like his smile when he said, “All of you.”
The crone chuckled and Merran stepped out of the small house of his memory.
My student, you have a wont for misery unlike any.
Eisleth stood at the bedside of one of the war’s more recent casualties with a lack of expression that may have been considered castigation, had the subject been conscious to witness it. Merran was living, a state which had never been in question since his return from Indhovan with Ceth. The injury was not mortal, though it might have been for an ordinary man, if left unattended. But Merran was neither ordinary nor unattended. His spirits suffered more than his overall health at the moment. And the dismal state of his spirit had been such a lasting condition that many would not presume it an ailment at all, but an aspect of his personality.
Merran’s depression was a minor concern to Eisleth. Their Hunter had a far worse challenge than his heart now, and that was his hand. Though not life threatening, his fight along the eastern shore had cost him more dearly than if he had died. His primary hand—his Healing hand—had been mutilated by the grip of the Ancient. The bones had been crushed, the muscle pulled to tearing and the flesh pressed to separation. The witch who had wrapped it might have done him a better service had she severed the hand altogether. It was no wonder Merran claimed to have not felt it; it had been virtually removed from his body.
Eisleth looked upon the mesh of metallic thread Ceth had created, one of his gadgets finding a use in covering the remains of Merran’s hand while its owner slumbered, spared his conscious misery. Normally, Eisleth might have held some contempt for Ceth’s mesh—Ceth’s inventiveness had its place, kept separate from healing and the body—but as Merran’s hand scarcely held any blood flow, the carefully crafted weave enabled the magic a more stable current and, under the circumstances, could not be justifiably protested
. Through that, Eisleth was expected to craft a Healing. Thus far, he had managed to mend flesh and bone to varying states of imperfection from ruin.
Lowering his hand to the deceptively soft-appearing blanket of metal, Eisleth focused on what used to be, and on bending what was in that direction, toward a restored version of itself. A spiraling line of silver light created an illuminated trail beneath the sleeve of his robe, wrapping around his arm and down to his wrist. The ribbon of magic’s manifestation and channeling coiled around the base of his hand and spun off his fingers, snaking into the mesh and following the course it was given into the hand of his patient.
Eisleth concentrated on the casting for several moments. It created a pattern like stars in the darkened room, as if the fall of night had occurred first within the room rather than the sky above the Seminary. He had performed several such castings since Merran had been brought back to them, as he recalled having done for Korsten not so long ago. But Korsten’s injuries had not been crippling, in spite of their depth and the severity of threat they posed. At the time, their youngest Adept had lost blood and was continuing to lose it, but the circulation of it had not been halted and therefore the circulation of a Healing throughout his body was more readily achieved. When the blood had been stopped, or cut off, as was the circumstance with Merran’s hand, the task became nearly impossible.
“Nearly impossible,” he said, for his brother’s benefit, when he detected Ashwin’s presence nearing. There were always ways with magic, ways that even included the reanimation of the nearly dead, which was, of course, the result of the perverse and toxic magic of the Vadryn’s venom. Making things wrong by use of magic came without boundaries, but reordering things, making them right came with parameters, and limits.
His blonde sibling appeared in the doorway and looked upon Merran first, then raised green eyes to Eisleth and said, “Nearly impossible, but possible still.”