Shadowborn

by Alison Sinclair

  “Good,” Vladimer said. “Have someone call me when it’s ready to leave.”

  “Aye,” the stationmaster said, and, with no “excuse me” turned away to bellow, “No, you’ll not load that in there, unless y’want to be blown t’very small pieces.”

  He sounded so like Ishmael, her heart hurt. She tried for imperious and failed. “Lord Vladimer, did I hear you correctly? ”

  “I regret you do not have time to send to the manor for luggage, but I am certain that if you use your charm, some of these gentlemen would be delighted to oblige you.”

  Given what she wanted at this particular moment, which had nothing to do with luggage, probably not. “Lord Vladimer, a word, if you would.”

  He did not so much find as clear a corner; the quartet of men occupying it flowed out like putty. “Now,” he said. “What is unclear about—”

  “What could I possibly do in Stranhorne Crosstracks? The Broomes don’t want me using magic, don’t want me to be part of their group.” Which had been more humiliating than she would have thought possible, given that she had had to be backed, resisting, into magic, and forced into their company. Given that she had let them into her mind, let them explore the Shadowborn gift. The worst of it was that she knew they knew how she felt, and she knew they were probably right. “I haven’t the experience, and I’m too strong to be safe.”

  “So I am informed,” he said. “I am willing to take that risk. I know you can communicate over distance without adverse effects on your contact, and it occurs to me that I might need that.”

  “You’re not thinking to talk with the Shadowborn ? ” she breathed.

  All expression left his face. “No.”

  There was a silence. She stood quivering slightly with the urge to apologize, even for a question that had to be asked in this night of betrayals. “If the Mages’ Temple does not repent of its decision,” Vladimer said, in a whisper like sand blowing through dry reeds, “then I shall unrepent of my silence.”

  She pressed her back against the wall, fighting the impulse to scramble away—like the nine-year-old Telmaine whom Vladimer had surprised in his private sanctum, years ago. He said in a slightly less deathly voice, “I trust that they will, for if not”—he raised his head, turned as though to cast, but in the end did not; his hearing would have told him everything he needed to know—“it is likely we are all going to death, ensorcellment, or enslavement.”

  “Does that not bother you? ” she whispered. “All these people.”

  “I recall we had a previous conversation along these lines,” he said. “And while things that have happened since have made me reconsider some of the things I said then, I do not believe that I have done anything to regret, here.” His expression changed, disturbingly, at some thought. She would not have been surprised if he was remembering what Magister Broome had said to him; she certainly was. “If the Temple does repent its decision or find its courage, it will be immensely useful for me to be able to speak to Fejelis or his mage.”

  “I don’t . . . think the Lightborn mages will be best pleased with me.” Not if Tammorn was anything to go by. She tried not to sound as frightened as she felt.

  “A risk we must both take.” He turned his head, and this time cast over the platform. “They’re nearly ready. You recall that I said—not very long ago, if one merely thinks in hours—that there might come a time to contact Ishmael. I may ask you to do that once we reach Stranhorne.”

  “I’d be glad to,” she said. “I’d have done it already, but—”

  “I will give you an order, if you wish,” he said.

  “I don’t need an order,” Telmaine bridled. “Ishmael may need help.”

  “Good.” She expected him to move, aware that the crowd on the platform was thinning, that there was almost no one near them. Aware, too, of the presences of the Broomes and their commune: Farquhar Broome��s vast, quiet power; Phoebe’s tightly disciplined strain; the others she was learning to recognize. She could sense about them the foul taint of Shadowborn magic, from their hurried rehearsals. That sense of exclusion scraped her spirit, but shriveled into pettiness as she sensed something more about them: resolve, almost resignation. They had taken the measure of their enemy and their enemy’s magic, and they did not believe they would be returning.

  Then Vladimer said, “I have one more request of you, Lady Telmaine. I will not be made a slave to the Shadowborn again. If it comes to that—if I give you the order, or if I fall to their ensorcellment, I want you to kill me. Shoot me in the head, use your fires, do whatever you must to do it quickly and thoroughly. I will it, and I wish it.”

  Nine

  Tammorn

  He did not die. He stood on scrub and heather, in night’s very heart, and did not die.

  He did not realize until then how much he had wished the high masters had been wrong, even if it meant his death. But he could sense the protective ensorcellment on him, sheathing him but not caging him—he still had all his strength to answer his will—and they had somehow managed to make it feel more like an itchy suit of clothing than a coating of sewage. He would sense the strength and vitality of the high masters in it, but the guiding magic had been Perrin’s, second-rank sport though she was.

  Fejelis would chide him for not having paid better attention to what they had been doing, and he would accept the chiding, knowing that Fejelis would not have sunk into passive misery. He hoped Fejelis would understand, and that Tam could return something for his betrayal. The high masters had sent him to negotiate for themselves, for the Temple, and he had no choice in that—but he would also negotiate for Fejelis and the earthborn, if he could.

  The thought made him look out of himself and around. His eyes seemed to be adjusting to the darkness, rendering it less absolute with every minute that passed. There was even a thin glaze of light on the barren hills around him, like the luster on one of Beatrice’s pots, from a three-quarter moon rising to the east.

  Beatrice . . . Years ago he had promised to protect her, promised her—standing amidst the shards of glazed crockery and tiles, the sticks left of shelving and workbenches—that she need never again fear the bullies of her own guild. She had come to him on that promise. In that, too, he had failed; the Temple would surely look again at his children, and if it chose, would take over their rearing.

  He shivered. The night wind, sweeping in with the moonlight, was cold, and his clothing was styled for the heated interior of the palace and the Temple. He was standing on a dirt path on a barren heather and bracken slope. He knew such dirt paths—he had spent his boyhood driving herds along them, herds that dwindled year by year, sold off for the taxes. The soil here was even poorer than the soil in the foothills of the Cloudherds. But this scraped land was Darkborn; here the barons cared whether their people starved. He smiled bitterly into the darkness. If it were only their brightnesses suffering here, then he would do nothing for the earthborn, a peasant mage’s revenge for the centuries of oppression.

  The night seemed darker, now that he could see the moonlight, than it had before. Shadows cast by moonlight seemed far denser than those cast by sunlight. The shaded lee of the hills, the roots of the bracken, the sides of the path, all might have been folded out of the world. He shuddered and raised his eyes to a sky so filled with stars as to replete even a Lightborn eye. He had not looked willingly on the stars for more than thirty years, since his younger brother had been murdered, but even then, he had never seen their full plenitude. If Artarian had been here, he would have flung himself down on the night-damp bracken, green eyes huge with wonder, and not stirred until the sun came up.

  Magic surged, sudden, close, and Shadowborn enough to make him swallow hard. Thirty yards down the path was the figure of a man, briefly dark and then radiantly illuminated. Tam stared, the light painful to his dark-adapted eyes, at his right hand, which seemed to be holding the light. Behind the light was great strength not entirely controlled. In the Temple, with his training complete, t
he man might have been one of the high masters—a contender for archmage, even. He felt the magic rake his ensorcellment, and the man whistled. “Tammorn, I take it? I’m Neill. Emeya sent me to meet you.”

  Still staring at his hand, Tam said, “How do you do that? ”

  Neill turned up his palm, showed the coldly blazing stick within. “This. It’s quite straightforward.”

  “Not for Lightborn, it’s not,” Tam said. “Our lights need recharging by sunlight.”

  “I’ll show you when we get a chance.” Neill looked like a man in his early twenties, but then so did Tam, who was nearly fifty. He was quite tall, with an underdeveloped build, as though unaccustomed to using his muscles when magic would serve. His face was angular; hollow-cheeked; and all brow, jaw, and nose, with a lupine cast to it. His dark hair was coarse, wavy, and windblown. His eyes were deep-set, and Tam could not tell their color. He wore a long, patchwork coat of hides and furs, open over a ruffled shirt and heavy trousers. There was an ensorcellment on him, a binding of the will. The invested vitality had the feel of the mage he had spoken to when he had reached into that roil of Shadowborn power south of Stranhorne.

  He swallowed again and breathed slowly to calm his stomach and his nerves. “I am ordered by the archmage and the high masters to open negotiations with the Shadowborn.”

  “Then, first of all, don’t refer to us as Shadowborn. Our home’s Atholaya.”

  He had heard, or read, the name somewhere, but could not recall where—Lukfer had more than once had sharp words for him for his studied indifference to Temple history. If the dead could speak, it would be to say, “I told you so.”

  “Are you taking me there? ”

  “She sent me here to make sure you weren’t a danger to her. We’ve been dealt a few unpleasant shocks of late.” He did not sound as though he entirely regretted those shocks—but, then, would the Shadowborn archmage ensorcell a loyal follower so?

  He felt Neill’s magic playing around him, prying at his own ensorcellment. “How fascinating,” he said. “How long have you known how to do that?”

  The instincts of a tower-trained mage prevailed: above all, impress. “A few hours, since the Darkborn came with the ensorcellment on him.”

  “Darkborn . . . Ah, Sebastien, what have you done? Was this Darkborn named Hearne, by chance? ”

  “They didn’t say.” And to his regret, he had not asked.

  “I am sure it was.” He sighed. “Foolish boy. So the Temple sent you here with a just-learned, completely untried ensorcellment on you. To impress us, I presume, with their aptitude and the obedience they can command from a strong mage.” A glint of tooth. “Are you expendable, Magister Tammorn? ”

  Tam matched that cynical smile with one of his own, but did not answer.

  “So . . . the Lightborn Temple wants to treat with us. For what? ”

  “Should I not wait and take that up with your archmage? ”

  “You could. The problem is that Emeya is insane. Come at her direct, with reasoned argument, and you will meet only unreason. I know how to deal with her.”

  “Is that why she has you ensorcelled? ” Tam said, coming at him direct.

  The lantern sank in his hand, throwing angled shadows across his face. Of the deep-set eyes, only a hint of bluish sclera remained. “I failed to take Stranhorne, and a valued one of our number was killed. She does not think there is any such thing as failure, only willful defiance.”

  Tam lowered his voice. “You don’t have to put up with that.”

  Neill lifted the lantern and held it out, almost between their faces. “Are you trying to suborn me? Better and more beloved than you have tried. But it’s less a case of where the bread’s buttered as who’s holding the knife.” Teeth showed in his smile, sharper than before. “But I suppose you’ve earned something for that. So I’ll give you some advice: go back to your Temple; go back and tell them that Emeya recognizes no peers. If she did, she would have to recognize the one who surely is. If they don’t agree, they can test themselves against her power. I expect they will lose, though I’d much prefer that they win. Oh yes, the ensorcellment only prevents me working against her will. It does not prevent me saying what I think.”

  There was another Shadowborn as strong, and an enemy of Emeya? “Emeya’s presence was the strongest I sensed.”

  Neill’s feral smile flashed. “You’ll not get me to spill that way, Tammorn. If you’re not going to go back to your Temple, then I suppose I’ll just have to take you to Emeya. What are the Temple’s terms? ”

  “I think I should best take that up with your lady.”

  “As opposed to a mere minion? On your own head be it.” Magic surged, caught him up, and, despite his reflex resistance, lifted him.

  His first sense was of magic all around him—hideous, tainted magic that reminded him of nothing so much as a slaughterhouse in high summer. If he could endure the assault of rotting blood and hot urine and manure on his senses then, he could endure the assault of this on his magic now.

  “I don’t know why it takes your kind that way at first,” Neill said. “We’ve had the occasional mage follow our Call, though all have been low-ranked. The distress will pass, or you’ll be past feeling it. This way. Stay close.”

  Tam followed at Neill’s shoulder, stumbling despite the light the man carried. He had trodden rough ground before, but never by a single light, and he was repeatedly deceived by shadows and pits impersonating shadows. Some great violence had been done the land here, leaving it gouged, deeply scored, and stripped of scrub, bracken, grass, and tree. Only tussocks and fragments of root remained, barbs for the ankles and snares for the feet. He was aware they were on a downslope, but between trying to control his revulsion to Shadowborn magic and trying to keep his footing, he was not aware how the torn earth had been reshaped until Neill stopped moving and he looked ahead—up at a towering earthworks molded from the dirt and the embedded fragments of the plants swept up with it. His mouth fell a little open: he had a gift for inert-matter manipulation himself, but he could never have imagined having moved so much of it. . . . He could just see the top of the wall, and though the curve of it was perceptible, it must easily exceed the circumference of the tower. The slope they had just climbed down was the pit scoured to raise it. They reached an arch of earth that was not only packed but fused into clinker, and, passing through, entered a midden of sleeping animals.

  Sleeping monsters—no farm animals these, brought into the village stockade for shelter. He could smell fur and urine and feces, and instead of grain or hay, the odor was of rotting meat and old blood, for real, this time. From a mound of gray pelt that was waist-high at its apex, a spear-shaped head rose on a long neck and four slitted eyes glared at the light. Neill murmured a word that seemed to carry as much affection as command, and the creature sighed and laid its head down once more.

  A huge wolf shouldered past Tam to butt Neill’s knees. Tam had had a herd dog who liked to do that, thinking it a merry joke if he could dump people on their rumps, but it had done it to Tam’s father, and he had sold it at the lowlands fair. Neill crouched to fondle the wolf ’s ears, allowing it to nuzzle his face and chin as though those jaws could not have torn his throat out with a snap. “Hey, Mayfly, good hunting out there?”

  Tam took one look at the dried blood on the beast’s ruff and averted his gaze. Behind the beast—Mayfly—came several others, sizing up Tam for the eating and making up to Neill, whose magic spun out and around and through them. Their maker, perhaps, because Mayfly and several of the others were nearly twice the size of the foothills wolves Tam had hunted in his youth. Their master, certainly. Neill clucked at Mayfly like an old village wife feeding at her chickens, gave it a parting pat, and led Tam to stairs that followed the inner shell of the earthworks upward. Tam could not help but look back, remembering Fejelis and the others talking after their defense of the railway hut and railroad, and measuring the numbers that might yet be turned against the Darkborn and aga
inst his own earthborn. And then up, apprehensively, toward the lair of the flying Shadowborn.

  The stairs, like the arch, were built of clinkered earth, rough and uneven. Neill held the light at his side, showing him the edge, for which Tam was grateful. He wondered why, with such power as he clearly had, Neill did not simply let it carry him to the top. Unless that, too, was bound.

  And then all speculation ended with an obliterating sense of Shadowborn magic, and only Neill’s quick clasp saved him from a stumble and possibly a fall. “She’s back,” he said, quite unnecessarily. “And she wants you. Now.”

  He let Neill haul him up the last several yards, aware of the urgency in his manner. Yet at the top of the stairs, at the first sight of the person who stood there, he halted in commonplace shock.

  She was a child, a fair-haired girl of no more than thirteen. No taller than his chest, her figure barely budding, her dress a simple blue frock with a pattern of rushes and dragonflies and grass stains over the knees, and a circlet of wilting purple daisies around her curling crown. Her skin was translucent in Neill’s light, like his son’s, who had inherited Beatrice’s lovely complexion. Almost he might have believed that she was an innocent trapped at the center of this vortex of magic, rather than its focus, because no child commanded that kind of power. She peered up at him from beneath transparent lashes and smiled shyly.

  Before her magic tore his mind apart.

  He was not aware of falling to his knees and then to his hands and knees, but that was where he found himself when the magic let him go. Helpless, shaking, he vomited himself dry. In the one, two, three—however many infinite—minutes she had pillaged his mind, she had taken from him his past, his knowledge of the Temple, his knowledge of magic, and even—something the high masters had refrained from doing—Lukfer’s last gift. His life had been pulled from him in a tumble of faces, places, experiences, emotions: his hardscrabble boyhood, his muddled youth, Artarian’s death, his years of wandering, his rescue by Darien White Hand, meeting Lukfer, saving Fejelis and being punished for it, falling in love with Beatrice, finding a friend in Fejelis, his children’s births, Isidore’s death, Lukfer’s death and the carnage in the Temple, rescuing Fejelis, the high masters’ orders, the high masters’ wishes, his own hopes . . . Knowledge and memory, she had taken it all.