“Where’s Spark?” Sienne asked. Another jolt of terror went through her. The artifact was still on Spark—unless it had fallen when Sienne did. She turned in a wide circle, looking for her horse. Spark was gone. A short distance away, a white lump growing dark with rain lay on the ground. Sienne ran for it. Charred holes in the canvas revealed its precious glittering contents. Sienne snatched it up, ignoring the pain in her burned hands, and tucked it under her left arm.
“Sienne, move!” Perrin shouted. Something long and dark flew at her, striking her in the stomach and knocking her backward as the air whooshed out of her. Her spellbook slipped from nerveless fingers. A flying tree. The wizard had hit her with a tree. Sucking in air desperately, she thought I need his spellbook. Wonder if he’d like to trade?
Perrin helped her stand. “It was from that direction,” he said, pointing. “You—” His eyes widened again, and he shoved her to the side just as fire erupted all around them again. His shove had sent her out of the worst of it, but again she dropped and rolled on the ground, clutching the artifact to her chest. Her spellbook, where was her spellbook? When her vision cleared, she looked around for it, felt with her right hand in case she was blinder than she thought. It was gone.
The canvas wrapping the artifact was in shreds after the second scorch. Sienne tossed the remnants aside. It wasn’t as if concealment mattered now. Perrin lay nearby on his back, his face blistered and his clothing burned badly. She ran to his side and knelt, leaning over to put her cheek near his mouth. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing. Sobbing, she shook his shoulder. “Perrin, get up. Get up!”
Steps alerted her to someone’s approach. The fingers of her right hand curled reflexively into the groove at the falcon’s neck. Instantly it grew warm. She stood, putting Perrin behind her, and turned to face the man coming toward her. He was short, with a dark beard and silvery hair, and he carried a spellbook open at waist level. Her mind numb with fear and pain, Sienne watched him come to a stop about twenty feet from her. All around them, fighting raged, but where they stood everything was still.
“Give it to me,” the wizard said.
Sienne clutched the falcon around the ankles and held it close to her chest. “You’ll have to take it.”
He smiled. “I hoped you’d say that. How would you like to die? Fire, or ice?”
“You’re giving me a choice? How thoughtful.” She had no spellbook, no convenient friends, nothing but a useless artifact that might be the key to her salvation if she only knew how to activate it. She looked down at it, willing it to give up its secrets. Not blood, not a hidden switch. She might use it as a melee weapon, battering him with its beak or clawing with its talons—
Its talons. Curved, like it was about to grab hold of something.
“No, it will be fire. It’s quicker. And I don’t want you to suffer needlessly.”
She ignored him. Could it be that simple? “Then do it,” she said, and let go of the falcon’s ankles to raise her burned left forearm horizontally across her stomach. She brought the bird down so its feet rested on her arm like they were gripping a branch.
The talons closed convulsively on her arm, piercing her flesh and digging deep. A brilliant emerald glow began deep within the artifact and grew until the falcon radiated green light. Sienne strangled a scream and lifted the falcon to chest level, keeping a tight grip on the handhold at its neck. The thing burned now, hot as scorch but smaller. She brandished it at the wizard. Nothing happened.
The wizard stared at her in growing horror. He began reading off an evocation, stumbled, began again. She took a step, two steps, toward him, ignoring the terrible pain in her arm. Still, nothing happened. The wizard continued to read, flicking his gaze at her between syllables. If this was another scorch, she wouldn’t survive even if she turned and ran now.
If you’re going to save me, now would be a good time, she thought at the bird. It didn’t react—but it was just an artifact, not a creature, so what else did she expect? The absurdity of it made her angry. She directed her anger into the artifact and felt the heat swell to an almost unbearable level. How dare this wizard try to kill her and her friends just because his master wanted the artifact? How dare he believe this entitled him to kill?
Orange light grew and coalesced around a point above his spellbook, straining to fly free. The wizard spat out the last syllables of the evocation, and it flew at Sienne. She screamed and instinctively raised the artifact to protect her face. The scorch slammed into the artifact, making Sienne step backward to keep her balance, but instead of agonizing fire, she felt—nothing. The fire vanished, absorbed by the artifact.
Sienne lowered her hands, which were shaking. The wizard’s mouth hung open in shock. His expression of surprise, as if she’d done something unthinkable, filled her with unaccountable rage—anger at being attacked, at the pain she felt, at the sheer stupidity of it all. She brought the falcon up to chest height again and aimed it at the wizard.
A beam of light, pale green like new grass, shot from the falcon’s beak to strike the wizard in the chest. His eyes went wide and astonished. The green light spread from the point of impact to cover his body, turning him green for an instant, then vanished.
The wizard dissolved into ash.
20
Sienne blinked. She looked around, thinking there must be some mistake. He’d run away, or fallen, or… her mind stuttered to a halt. She sank to the ground and cradled the falcon against her chest, ignoring the blood running down her arm to stain her shirt. There was a ringing in Sienne’s ears, the sound that comes just before unconsciousness. Rasapadi. It couldn’t be anything else. The lost spell rasapadi. And she’d used it to turn a man to ash.
She realized she was shaking again and made herself stand and walk. Alaric needed to know about this. They all did.
Perrin still lay unconscious on the ground nearby. She needed to get help for him. She didn’t know what to do if the healer was the one who needed healing. Though Perrin had no healing blessings, so what did that make him? Her addled brain was having trouble keeping everything straight. Find Alaric and Dianthe and Kalanath, get them all free of the ambush—
A dark shape ran at her, someone who raised a sword and shouted things she couldn’t understand. She raised the falcon and directed her fear and anger and self-loathing into it. It was easier this time. The man disintegrated just a foot away from her, the light wind carrying his remains to cling to her ruined shirt and trousers. She felt no sorrow at his death. She couldn’t feel anything.
More shapes with swords came at her. She turned them to ash, one at a time, marveling in her trancelike state at how easy it was to bring death when you had the right tool. Soon they were running the other way, some of them throwing down their weapons. How interesting, that they wanted to protect their swords from being disintegrated with their bodies. She couldn’t imagine caring that much about a sword.
She raised the falcon and aimed at the one figure still trying to attack her. The person ducked, caught her around the knees and bore her to the ground. “Sienne, Sienne, it’s me,” Alaric shouted. “They’re running. You can stop. Put it down.”
Alaric. Definitely she should not disintegrate him. She shook her head, feeling the numbness in her mind fade. “Get it off me,” she whispered. “It hurts.”
Alaric touched her arm lightly and swore. “Somebody help me!”
More running footsteps. “Sienne, you have to let go,” Dianthe said in her ear. “Relax your hand.”
“It’s dug into me.”
“Your other hand. Just relax.”
Sienne remembered she had two hands. She released her right one from its grip on the hand hold. The talons immediately retracted, and she jerked away from the falcon, not stopping it from falling to the ground. It wasn’t as if that could hurt it. Nothing could.
“That doesn’t look good,” Perrin said. “The burn should not be covered, but we must stop the bleeding.”
Sienne couldn’t
bring herself to look at the bloody mess that was her left forearm. “Is everyone all right? Perrin was…”
“I am well. The last fire knocked me unconscious briefly, but did not singe more than my face and clothes,” Perrin said. He took a handkerchief from inside his burned vest and wrapped it tightly around her forearm, covering half the deep puncture wounds. “Anything else—yes, thank you, that should do nicely.” Kalanath handed him a yellow scarf that Perrin used to bandage the rest of her arm. Finally Sienne felt she could look at it.
Perrin removed his flask from his hip. “Water,” he said when they all stared at him. “I believe Sienne is the worst burned of us. She took the wizard’s first shot most directly.” He poured cool water over the burn on her right arm, soothing it enough that she wished she had a stream to lay it in.
She accepted her spellbook in the tattered remains of its harness from Dianthe, then looked at her friends, reassuring herself that everyone was well. Every face was scorched to some degree, and burns marked all their clothes, but no one was glassy-eyed with pain. Well, no one except her, and she’d done it to herself.
“Spark,” she suddenly exclaimed. “Where is Spark?”
No one answered. Dread touched her heart. “She’s not dead, is she?”
“She took the same direct fire you did,” Alaric said. “She’s hurt badly. If we’re lucky, she’ll make it through the forest and we can find someone to care for her. But you won’t be able to ride her.”
Rage burned inside Sienne, and without thinking she put her hand on the artifact and felt it pulse in recognition of her anger. “How many of them were there?”
“Many,” Dianthe said. “If you hadn’t… done what you did… we would all be dead now. We were only barely holding them off.” Sienne realized Dianthe was holding her arm stiffly, Alaric had blood on his jerkin, and Kalanath had limped heavily walking to join them. They weren’t unscathed, after all.
Sienne cast her gaze toward the artifact. It felt cool to the touch and, aside from that one pulse, completely inert. “It’s called rasapadi,” she said. “It means ‘ash.’ It’s one of the lost spells, the ones the ancients had in the before times that were lost in the rebuilding. We don’t know what all of them were, but we have descriptions and names for some of them. That’s one.”
They sat silently around her, all staring at the artifact. “We can’t give that thing to anyone,” Dianthe said. “Even if only a wizard can use it, there are a lot of wizards in Fioretti alone. And even if we give it to a school, or a wizard with an impeccable reputation, that doesn’t keep it from being stolen by someone less savory.”
“And it cannot be destroyed,” Perrin said. “Except by itself, presumably.”
“Not even then,” Sienne said. “Ash can’t destroy anything that’s invulnerable—it left the wizard’s spellbook untouched, but everything else he wore or carried is gone. And an artifact is basically invulnerable. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t think it can be turned on itself.”
“A mirror? No, it would destroy the mirror first,” Perrin said.
“Then we’ll have to dispose of it some other way,” Alaric said. “But first, we have to get back to Fioretti.”
“Aren’t we safe now?” Sienne asked, feeling dread return.
Alaric shook his head. “Too many of the attackers escaped with the knowledge of what the artifact does. If our enemy didn’t know that before, he will now. He was willing to kill us for it before, and I doubt this will change his mind. We have to get this thing to Fioretti and find a way to keep it out of his hands.”
“But how?” Dianthe exclaimed. “Burying it won’t work if he’s got a priest who can scry. It can’t be destroyed. And locking it up somewhere just means having to defend against thieves for the rest of our lives.” She picked it up gingerly, as if she thought it might turn on her.
“I was thinking,” Alaric said, “we might dump it in the sea.”
“The… sea?” Sienne asked.
“Yes. If we put it somewhere deep enough, it won’t matter if someone can scry for it, they won’t be able to get at it. Unless you can think of a spell that would make that possible.”
“Well…” Sienne chewed her lower lip. “Vortex makes a spinning body of water that leaves a clear space at its center, but it can only be eight feet tall. That wouldn’t be enough if we left the artifact in the deep ocean.”
“It’s the beginnings of a plan, anyway,” Alaric said. “But one thing at a time. We need to get through the forest to the next big town and hope there’s someone there with a restorative blessing.”
“Restorative? Restore what?” Sienne asked.
Alaric and Dianthe looked at each other. They were the kind of looks that said each wanted the other to be the bearer of bad news. In the silence, Kalanath spoke. “The horse was hit in front and the side. Her face is burned and one eye is destroyed. The skin on her side is gone in places all the way to the fat below.”
Numbness descended upon her once more. “Poor Spark,” she said. “But she’s alive—that means she’ll be all right, doesn’t it?”
“It’s hard to tell how much pain she’s in,” Dianthe said, “but she can barely stand. There’s nothing we can do for her here.” She looked away. “It might be kinder if we… put her down.”
“No!” Sienne blinked away tears. “We have to at least try to get her help!”
“Sienne, nobody would blame you—”
“Muskey isn’t that far away, right? She can make it that far!”
“Muskey isn’t much more than a hamlet. They don’t even have a priest in residence. Sienne—”
Alaric put a hand on Dianthe’s shoulder. “Sienne’s right. It’s only about ten miles to Manetto. If the horse can make it that far, there’s hope.”
Sienne nodded. “Then let’s go—no. There’s something else I have to do.”
She retraced her steps, avoiding the traces of ash on the ground growing damp and mushy in the drizzling rain, until she reached the wizard’s spellbook. The rain had stopped falling, but drops still fell from the branches above, beading the book’s invulnerable cover. She picked it up and brushed it clean. The ash stuck to her damp fingers. Ash that had once been a person. She gagged, went to her knees, and vomited up everything that was in her. She barely heard the exclamations around her, was conscious only of someone holding her hair off her face and her stomach convulsing as if it wanted to turn itself inside out. If only it were so easy to rid herself of memories.
Finally, shaking and gasping for breath, she spat out the last remnants of bitter bile and wiped her streaming eyes. “Sorry,” she said.
“Do not apologize,” Perrin said. “Can you ride?”
“Spark can’t carry me.”
“You’ll ride with me,” Alaric said. “Paladin is big enough to carry two.”
She let him lead her to his enormous gelding and pull her up to ride behind him before urging Paladin on. She took hold of his waist, careful not to let her burned skin rub against his shirt. They’d stripped the saddle off Spark and given her a simple rope halter that still had to be agonizing against her face, but there was nothing else they could do. Sienne didn’t know if a priest would condescend to use a healing blessing on an animal, or if an animal could even be healed that way. Tears burned her eyes again, and she blinked them away. She couldn’t even wipe her eyes without hurting her burned hands.
A few bodies lay in the road and off to the side. The enemy hadn’t left anyone living or injured behind. Maybe those men she’d used scream on had escaped. Or maybe they’d been killed while they were helpless. Death came so easily. She’d never realized that before.
“Stop it,” Alaric said in a low voice pitched for her ears alone.
“Stop what?”
“Feeling sorry for yourself.”
“How do you know that’s what I’m doing?”
“I know how you think. You’ve never killed before, and now you’ve done so in what you probably think is the most
horrific way possible. And you think that makes you a bad person.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“I killed at least three men back there. Does that make me a bad person?”
“Of course not!”
“What’s the difference?”
She had to think about it. Thinking was so hard. “You were defending yourself.”
“And you weren’t? Sienne, I find it difficult to believe you turned the artifact on those people because it felt like fun. Any one of them would have killed you if he’d had the chance, starting with that wizard. How does it make it anything but self-defense?”
She pondered that for a while. “You said you were ashamed of how you enjoyed killing that carver wizard,” she finally said. “I think my blood triggered the artifact—woke it up, maybe—but that wasn’t what made it cast ash. My emotions did, I think. I just know I was so angry… angry enough that it was almost a tangible thing, fighting to get out of me. It’s like my anger is what killed them. And I’m ashamed of that.”
“I understand. I don’t know what it was like for you growing up, but the Sassaven teach their children, early on, to master their emotions, because for us, it’s a shameful thing to strike out at someone in anger. Maybe it’s to prepare us for the binding, and maybe it’s just that Sassaven like me are so strong, losing our temper can cause serious damage. I don’t know. The point is that losing control is… like you said, you feel ashamed. And when you actually hurt or kill someone on top of that, it can fill you with such guilt you can’t help blaming yourself for everything, even if you acted rightly.”
“Yes. That’s it. Bad enough that people died, but I can’t stop remembering how angry I felt, and I shouldn’t have let it take me over.”
“Maybe. If that was the only way to get it to work—”
“I don’t know. It drew my blood and started glowing. But then I had to… I still don’t know what I did, except I had to direct it. It didn’t immediately start turning people to piles of ash.” She cringed inwardly at how flippant that had sounded.
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