The Sorcerer’s Wife

by Dolamore, Jaclyn

“Well—when Irik shifts into leopard form, she thinks more like an animal than a girl.”

  “You should have told me that sooner. I keep feeling like I know how to fly. But…I don’t know that I really can.”

  “You just need to glide over the fence,” Velsa said.

  “I’ll have to try,” Kessily said.

  Kessily backed up and Velsa and Sorla both gripped the wire structure of the fence, watching. But what made Velsa jump was the horrible distant sound of something exploding, which rumbled through the earth beneath their feet like thunder in the ground. Distant screams followed.

  “Oh, hurry,” Velsa whispered. She didn’t want to make Kessily any more nervous than she already was.

  Kessily spread huge black wings; the spread of them was beyond what Velsa imagined, the feathers sleek and shining in sun. Velsa expected hesitation and fumbling from Kessily, but she launched into an unnaturally strong gust of wind, which caught her wings and shot her upward. She rode the wind over the fence with room to spare.

  The landing was not quite so graceful. She tumbled into a heap.

  Sorla and Velsa hurried over.

  “Are you okay?” Sorla cried. “That was incredible!”

  Kessily was breathing hard. She spread one wing, holding Sorla back. “Don’t—don’t touch me.”

  Irik never wanted to be touched when she shifted.

  But Kessily didn’t change. She just kept breathing until she seemed to regain some mastery of herself.

  “Kessily? Do you feel like you might be able to complete the transformation?” Velsa asked.

  “No.” Kessily stood up and tried to brush leaves off the back of her cloak with her feathers. “I won’t be doing that again. I don’t want to surrender my mind to a bird. I want it out of me, that’s all.”

  “I see.” Velsa was pretty sure Grau wasn’t going to be able to help Kessily, then. Extracting bird spirits from someone was definitely not in his realm of expertise.

  They picked their way down some semblance of a path. The camp was still a distance away.

  A lot could happen in the meantime.

  The sounds of booming guns and explosives rumbled in the distance with greater frequency, until Velsa realized that it had been a while since it had been quiet. The fighting was constant now. She tried to check in with Grau, but she only sensed frantic motion and nerves.

  At least he’s alive…

  In the late afternoon, they started coming upon buildings, but they were all empty of people. Although Velsa was curious about what was in them, they didn’t stop to check. There was no time.

  And they passed a body. A Daramon man, eyes glazed with death, a knife plunged into his chest.

  Daramons could heal from many grave wounds, so it was perplexing that the man would have made his way to the outskirts of camp before succumbing to death. “Why didn’t he stay and wait for a healer?” Velsa asked.

  “Look—his right arm is gone. I bet he killed himself, and he probably carried poison to coat his knife, just for that purpose,” Kessily said.

  “Poisoned knives can kill Daramons?” Velsa didn’t want to think about all the ways Grau might die.

  “Actually, no,” Kessily said. “The poison causes so much pain that it can help a willing soul ascend to death, that’s all.” She dared to get closer to the corpse than Velsa and Sorla. “There’s an attitude among a lot of the military that if they become crippled, they’ll take their lives rather than being discharged for their families to care for them.”

  “I’ve heard about honor suicides, but…I didn’t realize it was this drastic,” Velsa said.

  Kessily looked sober. “Some of them come from very traditional families, where their parents might actually be furious if they came home with such an injury. And they figure they will be reincarnated gloriously for their sacrifice. Fates’ blessing to you, sir,” she told the corpse.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Sorla said; obviously she had no stomach for death.

  And that, of course, was only the beginning.

  Chapter 19

  Velsa didn’t dare to smell the air.

  All along, she expected that their greatest challenge would be getting past the guards and defenses of the camp, to reach Grau.

  That turned out not to be a problem at all. The camp was in such a state of chaos that they might as well have been invisible. The guns and shouts were a deafening din in every direction.

  Miralem had invaded the camp carrying crossbows and swords. They were immediately recognizable in their old-fashioned armor and tunics that didn’t match. Curiously, they were all wearing goggles.

  “Blinding smoke,” Kessily said, explaining the goggles. “They realize that Daramons are easier to maim than to kill, so they make a magic-infused smoke that temporarily blinds our armies.”

  Although the Miralem looked ragtag, and they were still outnumbered by the Daramons who were often facing them two or three against one, they were clearly a force to be reckoned with.

  Velsa, Sorla and Kessily watched the scene from the top of a ledge, slightly removed from it all. A few bodies littered the rocks; whatever defenses had been perched here had been picked off and fled and no one was paying attention to this spot for the moment.

  The Miralem were most terrifying when they singled out an opponent, compelling a man with their minds. Velsa watched one Miralem man lift his hands to a Daramon. The Daramon stopped in his tracks, dropped his weapon, and spread his arms. The Miralem lifted his crossbow, which Velsa now realized wasn’t a crossbow at all, and shot the man in the eyes with a needle. He turned away, dropping the telepathic enchantment, leaving the man fumbling and blind.

  “That’s probably permanent,” Kessily said grimly. “A one on one attack like that.”

  Another Miralem seized the minds of one of the Daramons and forced him to fire his rifle at his own comrades.

  It occurred to Velsa that she didn’t hear or see the airplanes anymore.

  She could imagine what the Miralem might do to an airplane. A powerful telepath could take control of the pilot, and clearly this had happened, because as they carefully made their way along the ledge, they saw the wreckage of a plane crashed into a large gun mounted on wheels. But Kessily said that wasn’t even the biggest gun she had seen.

  Many of the buildings were charred and destroyed. Daramons knelt in a trench of dirt, running around and popping up to fire at Miralem and confuse them.

  But Miralem bodies were scattered everywhere, in some places several men fallen on top of each other. The Miralem could die within seconds from a single well-placed shot.

  Velsa couldn’t see the shore from here, but it must not be too far; the Miralem would have sailed over from the mainland, crossing the Gilded Sea, accompanied by their dragons.

  Velsa felt Grau trying to reach out to her.

  Grau? Where are you?

  She saw a vision of a building full of stacked blocks of ice and hanging meat. He felt understandably cold.

  I’m hiding out like a coward, he thought. I can’t kill these people.

  “I think Grau is in the ice house,” she told Sorla and Kessily.

  “Well,” Kessily said. “We’re looking down at barracks. I expect the mess hall isn’t far away, and the ice house will be nearby. So we’re going to have to go down there.”

  “I’d better go alone,” Velsa said. “I can’t be killed and I have some defense against telepathy. Wait here.”

  She tried to sound as if it were no great concern, to go alone—but the idea of standing on that battleground sent tremors down her spine. She found a spot behind a building where she could climb down the slope. Gravity brought her steps down hard and clumsy. She didn’t dare look back—one more glimpse of Sorla’s worried face would do her nerves no favors.

  The battle seemed to be slowing down a bit. Possibly the dead outnumbered the living by now. She tried to stay out of the way, sneaking between buildings, but bodies were everywhere. She kept her eyes up as much
as possible, seeing pools of blood and severed limbs only at the edges of her vision.

  A teleportation boom sounded somewhere.

  “Spirits have mercy,” she heard a man say. Then he shouted, with sudden authority, “We need to regroup! The other two dragons are headed this way!”

  Velsa picked up her pace, mind grasping ahead for a firm sense of Grau’s location.

  A Miralem corpse lashed out and grabbed her ankle. Not actually a corpse, then. Too late for such a realization. “Miss—are you a healer? Please.”

  “No—no, I’m sorry.” She tried to shake her foot free.

  “You have telepathy—I feel it. Please—help ease my pain, then.”

  “I can’t, I have to go!”

  He yanked hard on her boot, and she lost her balance easily because of the jewels stuffed in her chest. She toppled onto the man next to him, who really was cold with death, and she almost screamed—catching herself just in time.

  “If you can’t help me live, then for the love of mercy help me die,” the man cried, letting go of her boot to reach for her cloak.

  She kicked him away and scrambled to her feet, with some difficulty. The jewels dragged her down, especially in her panic. She felt a little of his pain and slammed the doors of her mind shut.

  She clutched her head and ran. I can’t help him, I can’t…

  A man turned the corner, before she could make it any farther. “Stop!” he commanded. “Little concubine—stop.”

  He was tall, with two sharp black horns emerging from his skull. It might have been a headdress, but with all the shape-shifters she had seen lately, she wasn’t sure. Anyway, she knew his name, by those horns.

  Dorn Darzil, the Horned General.

  “Where did you come from?” he asked. “Concubines are no longer permitted in camp.” He didn’t wait for an answer, but stalked toward her and grabbed her small wrist in his large brown hand. He dragged her forward a few steps.

  She didn’t know what to say. Dorn was another one of the Four Generals. He could send her right back to Calban. And she didn’t dare attack him. Daramon soldiers were flocking to his side from every direction. The Miralem seemed to have been fought back—or fought to the death.

  “What on earth are you made of?” Dorn asked, glaring down at her. He looked very much like kind Lieutenant Dlara, that they had known at the patrol camp, except stronger and much more fierce. A brown-skinned Islander with short curly black hair and piercing eyes, wearing all black except for a few silver ornaments. “Your weight’s all off. Well, I don’t have any time to bother with you. The dragons are coming. Stay close to me and keep your mouth shut, and I’ll figure out what to do with you later.”

  Grau…I’m in trouble.

  “The Miralem ships have been obliterated,” Dorn announced. “They’re down to a few vessels that I could only describe as ‘canoes’.” He smirked. “I will leave them those canoes, so the survivors can go home and tell their villages that we are not to be trifled with anymore. They have two dragons left. All we need to do is scare them into retreat or—better yet—send them to their deaths.”

  “Sir—our losses have been enormous. I don’t know if we can handle two dragons. The airplanes are down and we’ve lost the Beowulf.”

  Dorn rolled his eyes. “Did I not make it clear earlier? The guns will be called Big North and Big South. Calban does not get to name my guns. He’s not here risking his skin. Which one are you talking about?”

  “Big South, sir.”

  “All right, then. So we still have Big North, and the sorcerer’s brigade is intact.”

  “Half of them are blind from the potion clouds, sir.”

  “Well, they are sorcerers, not sharpshooters. Can’t they feel the land? Have the ones that can still see help the others get to the front.” He pointed at a few of the men in the crowd. The sorcerers here wore fox-ear headdresses, circlets with two little points like the ears of an alert fox.

  “Where is Thanneau?” one of them asked. “He wasn’t wounded, last I saw.”

  Dorn was starting to urge Velsa toward a rugged automobile, like an open transport carriage on wheels, when she heard Grau say, “Here, sir.”

  He emerged from around one of the buildings, looking a little pale from hiding in the ice house. He locked eyes with Velsa immediately, and briefly registered shock and confusion.

  He sees Pin’s face.

  “General—sir—” He ran toward Dorn. “This is my concubine.”

  “The one you tried to take as your wife?”

  “Yes.” Grau stood firm, although Dorn was very intimidating, even taller than Calban, almost seven feet and muscular. “She must have come after me.”

  “I did,” Velsa said, reaching for him.

  His fingers laced with hers. For one beautiful moment she was electric with reunion. Of course it couldn’t last.

  “She’s telepathic,” Grau said. “She helped me bring down the dragon at the border camp. We work together very well. I know it’s unconventional but we need everything we can get right now.”

  Dorn let go of her. “I don’t have time to argue until this is over. Take care of both of the dragons, and maybe I’ll let her stay.”

  As he hopped into the automobile, calling for a few other men to head off with him, Grau grabbed Velsa so tight she thought her ribs flexed. He pulled back a little then, clutched her head, and then her face.

  She looked away. “I had to switch faces with Pin.”

  “I see that, bellora…”

  “You hate it, don’t you?”

  “No—no, I’m just glad you made it here.”

  But she smiled faintly. “I hate it. I want you to hate it with me. It was so devastating to me and no one else even noticed. Even Sorla barely did. But you knew right away.”

  “Of course I did.” He arched his brows. “Did you doubt that for a moment? I spend enough time looking at you. But I can still tell you’re my Velsa through and through.”

  “Where have you been?” The sorcerer who had been asking after Grau butted in, as Velsa glanced toward the hill. It was probably best if Kessily and Sorla had the sense to stay hidden.

  “I got caught up in some of the fighting over by the food warehouse,” Grau said.

  “Well, you’ve dealt with dragons before, so I want you at the forefront with Kosarsa.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grau said. He took Velsa’s hand and started to follow another man with his hair in two very long black braids whom she assumed was Kosarsa. Velsa and Grau walked behind him, crossing a clearing in the camp to a patch of wind-stunted trees and very tall grasses with paths cut through them. Other sorcerers were slipping into the maze of grass at other points, some of them taking the arms of blinded comrades.

  Velsa stole another glance backward. “Kessily and Sorla are here hunkered down on the hill.”

  “Hmm.” He stopped her in her tracks. His eyes darted around nervously a moment. Kosarsa was still moving ahead. “I’m not killing those dragons,” he said. “I’m not even going to have a hand in killing those dragons. I can’t fight for these people—I can’t fight this war. We are winning. All the rumors are true about our weapons; they’re powerful to the point of it being criminal. Our airplanes were firing on Miralem in their little boats, killing them all before they even made it to shore. And the big guns—I haven’t even seen them, and they took out one of the dragons from a distance. War is bad enough but this is so—impersonal. I can’t live in a world like this.”

  Velsa couldn’t help but think that the Miralem were not really much more kind, slipping into people’s heads to take control, something she herself hated to do. It was all ugly, whatever the tactic.

  “That’s why I hid in the ice house,” he continued. “So— I want to help the dragons escape and ask them to take us with them, back to Miralem lands. I need you to do the talking, telepathically. What do you think?”

  “I think…” She clutched his arms. “It sounds like a good plan, if it could pos
sibly work. But Sorla and Kessily…we need to get them out, too.”

  “Send a message to them to make their way around the periphery of the barracks. Everyone’s clearing out of this area so they should be able to sneak through. There is an electrical generator ahead where we’ll be gathering—they’re hoping to use electricity the same way I did, although it’s not going to be as effective.” He shook his head. “We must keep those dragons alive.”

  “Grau!” Kosarsa shouted ahead.

  A straggling Miralem had rushed out ahead to confront Kosarsa. The Miralem flung the sorcerer to the ground telepathically and held up one of the crossbow-looking devices that had blinded the other man earlier.

  Grau stirred up a wind to knock the Miralem back.

  The Miralem swished his hand up and down through the air. Kosarsa’s head snapped up and then he dropped unconscious, tumbling into the grass. The Miralem turned to Grau and Velsa now, but Velsa threw up her own defense.

  “Telepathic dolls?” the Miralem said, incredulous.

  His will pushed into her, like a hand squeezing her on the inside.

  He was stronger than her, and she had been exerting her telepathic powers since yesterday without sleep. Her cloak blew back in a gust of ocean wind.

  Grau clutched his crystal, drawing out his power. The wind lifted the man a good eight feet in the air and slammed him down hard behind Velsa. Grau rushed to meet him where he fell, and the man choked, losing the air in his lungs.

  He went unconscious. Grau picked up the gun and pitched it deep into the grasses.

  “The Miralem are awfully clever about wounding us instead of trying to kill us,” he said.

  Then he looked at her outfit for a moment like he wasn’t sure whether to compliment it or complain about it. “Let’s just keep moving,” he said.

  She shot him a slight I-saw-you-looking smirk and pulled her cloak back around her.

  But he stopped to look at the sky.

  The dragons were visible from here. They hovered in the air, wings spread and rigid, well off shore, but close enough that they would only have a few minutes to prepare once the beasts began to move.