The Knife in the Dark

by D. W. Hawkins

  He chewed on the problem as he entered the Conclave Proper.

  The halls of the lower level were choked with petitioners. People waited on benches, lounged against the wall, and stood amidst a low buzz of conversation. Initiates made their way through the crowd, acting as ushers. His footsteps tapped against the black marble floor of the Common Hall as he hurried through, trying to get to his rooms. He needed to think before he brought this to anyone.

  “D’Jenn! There you are, boy!” Victus called out from behind him.

  D’Jenn almost gave himself away by freezing in place. Apprehension crawled over his back like a hundred spiders made of ice, and he loosened his spine with an effort of will. He used every bit of training he’d received to smooth his features, and turned to face his former mentor.

  His former mentor, the traitor.

  “Deacon,” D’Jenn said, inclining his head in respect. “Did you need something?”

  “I’ve been looking for Dormael,” Victus said, pushing through the crowd. “Have you seen him?”

  “Not since the morning.”

  “Probably went out cavorting,” Victus said. “He does that when he’s troubled.”

  D’Jenn felt a pang of sorrow at the comment, and then hot anger on its heels. Some dark, jealous part of him rose up and wanted to punch the man. He had no right to be so close with them anymore—not when he had used his position for so much personal gain.

  “Probably,” was what he said.

  “I’ll have to straighten him out when he comes back,” Victus said, letting out a long sigh. “Walk with me a bit, I’ll put the idea to you, and you can pass it on to your cousin.” Victus walked up and put an arm on D’Jenn’s shoulder, turning him back down the hallway and falling in beside him. D’Jenn wanted to squirm out from under the man’s grip, but he resisted the urge.

  “What did you need, Deacon?” D’Jenn asked, trying to speed the conversation along.

  “It’s about the girl—the child, Bethany,” Victus replied.

  D’Jenn felt another irrational spike of anger.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “It’s my understanding that the girl will begin her training soon,” Victus smiled. “Her gift is substantial. She could be the greatest wizard that the Conclave has seen in generations. Quite the spunky little thing, too, isn’t she?”

  D’Jenn had always found Bethany to be reserved, but he agreed anyway.

  Victus went on. “You know that the Mekai and Lacelle have been talking about her connection with the artifact. How she used it, how it…talks to her. It’s still strange to say that, to think it aloud.” He laughed for a moment, and ran his hand through his wild mass of hair. “They wish to perform a series of tests on her, to gauge her connection with the thing.”

  D’Jenn stopped in his tracks.

  “You mean they wish to put the girl and the armlet together? Just to see what happens?” he asked in an incredulous tone. “We’ve done that before, on the road here. It didn’t work out well.”

  “I’m sure they want to test them separately first, but I would think that putting them together would be part of the process,” Victus said. “And a chance happening on the road is very different from something happening in the controlled environment of an experiment.”

  “The armlet doesn’t much like control,” D’Jenn said. “It does whatever it wants most of the time.”

  “Regardless, they wanted me to put the question to him. Probably hoping it would sound better from my mouth than theirs,” Victus said. “It brought up another point, something else I’d wanted to speak with him about.”

  “Such as?”

  “You boys are going to be back out in the field soon, if Dormael doesn’t have another episode. As I said before, the girl could be the most powerful wizard in generations. Her training is important, her guidance even more so. I thought I would offer to watch over the girl while he was away on missions, to take a personal hand in her training,” Victus said.

  Something black and angry twisted in D’Jenn’s stomach.

  “Oh?”

  “Listen,” Victus said, “we both know the girl’s talents would be wasted as a Hedge Wizard, a Scout, or a Philosopher. She has been traveling with you for a while, and she’s dealt with so much more than other Initiates of her age group. You and I both know that her place will be here, boy, with us. She should be a Warlock, like her father, like her uncle. I would be honored to keep an eye on her, and to take up the mantle of mentor when she is ready. I would love to teach her, as I taught you and her father before her. You know it’s the right thing, boy. The girl should be a Warlock. Anything else would fly in the face of good sense.”

  D’Jenn tried to read Victus’s face, to catch some hint of subterfuge. Even though D’Jenn knew that Victus was involved in some obscure plot, part of him thought the man was sincere in this. A darker part of him was trying to calculate what it was that Victus thought he could gain by controlling the girl, by getting close to her.

  “The other thing,” Victus said, “is that her connection with the armlet will make the girl a target.”

  “What do you mean?” D’Jenn asked.

  “Wizards will want to study her, will want to study the armlet. She’ll be made to perform in one experiment or the other, or recount her experiences with it. I can help to shield her from that, and supervise when I can’t stop it. Bethany’s situation here in the Conclave will be unique. She’ll need a friend like me. In any case, I’m happy to help any way I can.” Victus stepped closer and put a hand on D’Jenn’s shoulder. “D’Jenn, us Warlocks—we’re family. There’s a reason we stick together. Tell Dormael what I said, and to come find me.”

  “I will, Honored Deacon,” D’Jenn said.

  With that, Victus turned and threaded his way back through the mass of people, disappearing in their midst. D’Jenn watched him go, feeling a whirlwind of emotions warring for dominance. Grief, guilt, anger, suspicion—they all swirled through him as he tried to make sense of it all.

  D’Jenn stood in the Common Hall for a few more moments before heading back out onto the Green. It was time for everyone to regroup, and rethink their strategy. He needed to find Dormael, and inform him of what he knew. He hurried outside.

  Rain was starting to fall in sheets as he left the shelter of the Conclave Proper. The grounds were emptying as people rushed to get out of the rain, and no one paid him any mind. The clouds were a roiling mass of dark gray and white. D’Jenn closed his eyes and tilted his head up to the sky, letting the cool water run down his face.

  Mind Flight was always a strange sensation. D’Jenn could feel his physical body, the rain pattering onto his face and wetting his clothes, but his awareness hovered over the Conclave grounds. He sent a pulse of energy skittering along the streets of Ishamael, searching out the song of Dormael’s magic.

  The spell was something he and Dormael had worked out years past. They had grown up together, trained together, and worked together most of their lives, and they could pick out the sounds of each others’ magic from anywhere. One of the things that they had done was to work out a few different ways to find one another when needed. D’Jenn believed that their familiarity with one another was the thing that gave them their edge. Dormael believed it was their supreme magical abilities.

  Dormael could be an arse, though—on purpose, most of the time.

  His Kai rang back with a harmony, touching upon Dormael’s essence and shining like a beacon. D’Jenn locked onto it and shot off in that direction. The ground fell away beneath him, and he soared toward the East Market.

  Ishamael was a strange-looking city when viewed from above. It was one of the oldest cities in the Sevenlands, and new construction was built right alongside ancient temples, or strange magical architecture. People flowed through the streets like ants, moving along lines that they themselves could not see. The river was brown, and pockmarked by the rain that now began to fall in earnest. Thunder rumbled in the skies.


  Even in the rain, many vendors still braved the streets, exchanging things with hooded customers who huddled into their cloaks. D’Jenn could feel Dormael somewhere in that sea of people, moving along streets and back alleys. The storm interfered with his spell—moving water sometimes did that—and it was hard to get a precise idea of where he was going.

  What is he doing?

  He’d expected to find his coz holed up in some taproom, not dragging his bruised body through the rain. He strengthened the connection and followed it into a side street, chasing the spell down an alleyway. D’Jenn spotted Dormael pushing past crates and splashing through puddles, running as if in pursuit of someone. D’Jenn zipped down to intercept him.

  Pain surged through his Kai in a sudden flash, bringing with it a nauseating dizziness. D’Jenn was flung from the street, as if some great hand had swatted his awareness to the side. His mind sailed up into the sky, and he could hear a strange dissonance in his ears, an almost deafening noise that grated in his mind like rusty steel hinges. His consciousness surged back toward his body.

  D’Jenn’s mind slammed into place with a force that threw him six hands along the wet grass. He landed on his back with a squelch, and shut his eyes against the rain. His head hurt like he’d been kicked by a horse, and his stomach rebelled against the rush of sensations that accompanied such a sudden return to his body. He groaned, rolling over to vomit into the grass, tasting blood and bile in his mouth. His head was pounding in his ears, and his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He heaved into the grass over and over, until stars swam across his vision.

  People began to gather around him, plaintive hands reaching down to help him stand. D’Jenn just waved them away with a growled curse, spitting thick, bloody effluvia onto the grass. He reached up to wipe his face, and his hand came away covered with wet blood. He could feel it streaming from his nose. D’Jenn climbed to his feet with a groan, waving away the plaintive hands for a second time.

  What in the Six Hells was that?

  For a moment, D’Jenn thought he had heard another song whistling out into the magic. Someone had sensed D’Jenn’s presence, and expelled him from the field with enough prejudice to serve as a warning. Whoever it was wanted Dormael alone.

  This was not good.

  D’Jenn walked up and leaned against the wall of the Conclave Proper, feeling the pitted rock under his hands, trying to use the sensation to ground himself and expel the nausea. He took one step forward, then another, regaining his balance. The cold rain helped to wake him, but his legs still felt shaky.

  There was no way he could manage another Mind Flight until his head stopped spinning, and by then it would be too late. Spitting one last time into the grass, D’Jenn set off in search of Allen. If he and Shawna disappeared, then Victus would notice. Allen, though, had spent most of his time here in leisure, ignored by the leadership. Besides—if Allen found out that Dormael was missing, and D’Jenn hadn’t let him know, there would be a fight.

  He could feel the incredulous stares of the onlookers on his back as he walked away.

  **

  Dormael slipped on the wet cobblestones and slammed his right side into the corner of a wooden crate. The wind fled from his chest, and a fresh wave of coughing came upon him. For just a moment, there had been a strange resonance in the air, some sort of disorienting magical pulse. Dormael pushed himself to his feet.

  You can worry about that when you catch her.

  “Inera!” Dormael hacked around the coughing fit. He’d meant to shout, but it came out as more of a pitiful hiss. His feet barely managed to stay under him as he teetered down a side street.

  The back alleys of the East Market were no place to be caught out alone, drunk, and desperate, but seeing Inera again was too important to care. He was surrounded by dark, old wood, shuttered windows, lines criss-crossing the alleys, and detritus in the streets. Someone shouted a curse at him from one of the windows, but Dormael ignored it. He limped around another corner after the flash of a dark cloak caught his eye, and stopped short.

  She stood at a dead end, facing him from thirty or so links away. Behind her rose stacks of busted crates, rotten barrels, and piles of unnameable things. The rain came down with a vengeance, casting a hazy sheen over everything. Runnels of water falling from the rooftops of the old buildings around them splashed onto the stones of the street.

  Something about her manner made Dormael stop short of relief. The hood of her cloak was pulled up, hiding the wealth of hair that he remembered, shadowing everything but the lower part of her face. The cloak wrapped her body like a funeral shroud, leaving only her diminutive hands visible. She made no move toward him—only stood, waiting for him to speak.

  “Inera—Inera, that is you, isn’t it?” he ventured, taking a step toward her.

  “Dormael,” she breathed, as if he’d just walked in after a trip to the market.

  Her voice was light and airy, just as he remembered. Dormael felt something rush out of him at that moment, and his eyes began to tear up of their own accord. He tried to banish the lump that had grown in his throat. He took a tentative step toward her, as if she was a wild animal that would bolt at the slightest noise.

  “I searched for you,” he said. “I searched everywhere. I thought you were dead.”

  It sounded so stupid, so banal. He had lied awake many nights fantasizing on what he would say to her, if he ever discovered she was alive. He had never entertained the possibility, of course, but he had said the words in his mind over and over again. This wet, harried reunion had ripped those words away and replaced them with the diction of a fool.

  “Not dead,” Inera replied. “Never that.”

  You betrayed her. You stopped looking for her and gave her up for dead, yet here she stands. You betrayed her! You fool! You gods-damned, fucking fool!

  “How?” he asked, master of words that he was. “How did you…I mean, I thought the Galanians got to you. Can we go somewhere? Maybe get some food? There’s…there’s just so much to say.”

  His legs trembled.

  “Alright,” she said. “Let’s go somewhere more private.”

  Her hands, those delicate hands that he remembered so fondly, moved for the hood that covered her hair. She raised her chin, fixing her light brown eyes on him, giving him a smile that made him pause. She pushed the hood back from her hair.

  Dormael’s breath caught in his throat.

  The raven hair that he had so loved, a flowing ebony river around her shoulders that she’d always refused to cut, had gone stark white. Not gray as if with old age, but white like winter snow. Those fey eyes were haunted now, bloodshot and filled with terrible wisdom, something alien and jaded, a twisted remnant of how he remembered her. There was some sort of pattern on her forehead, a sinuous design that stretched from ear to ear. Dormael realized with a start that the glyph was a scar, and had been cut into her skin. Her forearms were also covered in scars of the same fashion, lines of glyphs or text that he didn’t recognize. She regarded him like a piglet she was sad that she had to kill, and then her eyes shot to the side.

  Dormael felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in warning.

  He dove to his right as something whooshed through the air where his head had been, pain wracking his ill-used body. He tried to roll, but the combination of his injured body and the firewine foiled his effort. Instead, he went over one shoulder and ended up on his back, lacking the momentum to come to his feet again. Someone piled atop him as he reached for the knife in his boot, trapping his arm and pushing his shoulders back onto the ground.

  “Hurry, you fools!” Inera hissed.

  Dormael was shocked into immobility.

  His attacker used that moment of weakness to his advantage, and got his hands around Dormael’s throat. Dormael struggled for a moment, trying to work his chin down to shield his neck, and made a quick grab for the knife that the attacker had forgotten. He felt the hilt meet his hands like salvation, and yanked it from its sheath.
He stabbed the man—one, two, three quick strikes—and the attacker released him, trying to shield himself from the knife. Dormael put it into the man’s armpit and tried to slide from beneath him, but the bastard was too heavy to push away.

  Was this her doing? Some revenge?

  Something cracked across the side of his head, sending icicles of pain through his skull. He caught sight of Inera standing over him, cold, brown eyes alight with an unknown fury. Dormael had a moment to feel a sense of betrayal.

  Another crack, and he felt nothing at all.

  Chasing the Blood

  “He was here,” D’Jenn said. “I saw him come this way before I was attacked.”

  Allen kicked at a wooden crate that lay forgotten against the side of a dun-colored building. The rain came down in a cold, steady pour that soaked D’Jenn down to the skin. He stared over the water-logged streets, watching the runoff flow by. This was the exact spot where D’Jenn had attempted to contact Dormael, and had been tossed back into his body.

  Allen cursed beside him.

  “Can’t you just wiggle your fingers, say a few words, and find out where in the Six Hells he is?”

  “It’s not that simple,” D’Jenn sighed. “Would that it was.”

  “I’ve seen Dormael do something like that before, cast some spell that led him to something he’d lost. Can’t you just duplicate that?”

  “No. I’ve tried to contact him, to find him, to scry him out, and all I get is some sort of interference. Someone is masking his presence in the magic—and that doesn’t bode well at all.”

  “Couldn’t he be doing it himself? Maybe he’s lying with a wench somewhere, and doesn’t want to be…scried upon…or whatever it is that you call it.” Allen sounded hopeful.

  “No,” D’Jenn replied. “I know your brother’s song better than any but my own, and if he were doing this, I’d know it. There is something strange going on here.”

  Allen grumbled a curse and adjusted his weaponry.

  “What do we do, then?”