Shadowborn

Shadowborn Page 37

by Alison Sinclair

  Farquhar Broome cried out.

  All the bones in Ishmael’s right hand shattered. Reeling with his agony, Telmaine wrapped them with her magic, started to mold them whole. Ishmael said, The woman’s hands tightened spasmodically on his shoulders, and Telmaine could hear her choking. A man’s voice—Balthasar’s? No, not possible—cried, “Ariadne—”

 

  Ishmael said, but she could sense his struggle for breath. A vertebra in his spine split like a rotten log; he groaned aloud and braced himself against falling as his legs lost all strength. In his memory two revolvers cracked together and he slid limply down a wall into the mud and surrendered himself to death. Frantically, Telmaine poured her magic over the damage, repairing bones, nerves . . . Ishmael explained.

  This. You.

  The Lightborn assault abruptly ceased. Ishmael coughed to clear his windpipe, leaned over to spit blood, coughed again, and swiped his sleeve across his mouth. He sonned right and left, checking around him by ingrained habit—checking on those around him by ingrained habit. Fleetingly, he noted the humor of it, those reflexes expressing themselves in these circumstances. It was an amusement she did not share. From the floor, from where he crouched cradling the fallen woman, another man sonned back. He had Balthasar’s narrow face and fine features, but, as he wiped froth from the woman’s lips, there was a helpless ferocity in his expression that was quite alien to Balthasar’s face. This had to be Lysander Hearne. But the woman, though she was dressed in Darkborn fashion, was pure Shadowborn.

  On the other side, the older woman’s head turned toward Ishmael. Telmaine’s perception of her was overlaid with Ishmael’s knowledge. Isolde, daughter of Imogene herself, last but one survivor of that cursed generation, who had killed most of her descendants in trying to create another mage as powerful as she, and had finally succeeded in Ishmael.

  he said.

 

  She could sense his struggle with himself, conveyed in impressions rather than words, and it was all the stronger for that. He had no hope for himself: his strength was beyond his control and barely in Isolde’s. He was no more than a reservoir for Isolde to tap, a weapon for her to aim. Before Telmaine touched him, he had not even been a thinking weapon.

  She might overextend herself, she might be killed by the Lightborn or the other Shadowborn, or drained to death by Isolde or Ariadne . . . or by Ishmael himself.

  But all the love he had never declared had been in her name. She might tell herself that she was staying for Balthasar, for her children, for Sylvide’s widower and son, for Vladimer and the archduke, even. That was all true enough; if they did not, somehow, turn this battle, then all of them would suffer. But even if there had been no one else, she would have stayed for him.

  Farquhar Broome said.

  Telmaine felt him hesitate, and answered for him.

  Fortunately for decorum, he did not give her an opening to rejoinder.

  Ishmael said.

  Telmaine said. Involuntarily, she remembered her dream, his double-ended gun, and sensed his stillness, the forming of a plan. she insisted, appalled.

  An eerie sense of touch, like a warm hand brushing her face.

  Isolde spoke: “Again.”

  From the floor, Lysander Hearne said, “No,” as the woman struggled free of his embrace, rising on her knees.

  Isolde disregarded him, and Ishmael did not react, did not resist, as her magic fastened upon his magic, his vitality, once more. Telmaine reared up, raging, but Ishmael said,

 

  That was Ishmael the Shadowhunter, Ishmael the veteran, alarming and reassuring both. She had trusted him then; she had to trust him now, even though the last thing she wished was to sit passively while Isolde bled him cold of magic and vitality. He said,

  But he did not answer, not directly. Instead he fed her what he had taken from Isolde’s mind when he set his hand to hers: Imogene, monstrous in power if not in character; Ismene, monstrous in power and character; Isolde, the denigrated younger child pinned between worship and resentment. Child enough to be bewildered and terrified when Ismene died—mages were not supposed to die. Child enough to be flattered when Imogene proposed making her part of her vengeance, making her a keystone of the Curse. Child enough to believe that if she did this for Imogene, Imogene would come to care for her as she had for Ismene. Telmaine demanded, but the demand went unanswered. And she had known mothers as cruel on the earthborn scale . . . Too young to endure the horror of the aftermath of the Curse, watching the mages around her warring and dying, the earthborn who had served or befriended them burning at sunrise or melting away at sunset. Too young to endure the isolation and hatred of the others for being Imogene’s daughter.

  I might pity her, Telmaine thought, but for what she has done to Ishmael.

  She could feel the strain on him as the vessels in his lungs began to ooze again, his legs went numb, his hand ached with crumbling bones, and magic drained him. She pinched off those vessels, eased pressure on those nerves once more, but it was a shocking effort now. she whispered.

 

 

  A whisper in her mind, shockingly weak. He let her feel Isolde as he felt her, the great, thrumming rope of magic stretching out between the Shadowborn, dragging on Emeya’s vitality and magic as Emeya dragged on hers. She remembered how the Shadowborn at Vladimer’s bedside had sought to uproot her own magic and her life. Ishmael’s heart suddenly stuttered.

 

  He took a terrifying moment to answer her.

  She pummeled his stalling heart, frantic.

 

  She threw open her mind, let him have Ishmael’s intention, Ishmael’s knowledge, her determination to stay, her reasons for staying—little caring anymore about propriety.

  Broome said. And the harsh, sharp-edged Lightborn magic, expertly shaped and deftly wielded, severed the magic binding and drawing on Ishmael. Farquhar Broome said, with an incongruous, childlike glee,

  Ishmael’s heart steadied to its powerful beat. He pulled himself forward in the chair, oblivious to his damaged hand, and sonned Isolde, whose face was strained with hatred, oblivious now to anyone but her nemesis. Swiftly, he sonned the two on the floor. Hearne was alert; the woman in his arms staring. Ishmael ground out, “Are y’with us, or not? ”

  Lysander Hearne said, quickly, “With you. Don’t hurt her. Ariadne.” He turned her face to him, kissing her forehead gently. “Ariadne, it’s over.”

  A grim smile pulled Ishmael’s scar at such a presumptuous promise. ust them far as I could throw them—yesterday, not today. Magister Broome . . . >

  said the Lightborn archmage. Far to the northeast, on the summit of an earthworks, the Lightborn mage slumped to the ground, semiconscious but free. There was a brief, forceful interchange between the archmage and the other Shadowborn mage present, his mind as half tamed as his magic, his thoughts evasive and wary.

  The boy cried out, Suddenly decisive, the stronger mage smothered his warning.

  Isolde’s head turned toward Ishmael. Ariadne sat up suddenly, her mouth gaping in shock or on a cry.

  Ishmael said. His power suddenly surged around them, a wall of furnace flame. On the far side of it, Farquhar Broome’s magic played around it like a flute around thunder, coaxing, guiding, swift and deft in its touch. The Lightborn mages were there—several of them—lending their guidance to Farquhar’s. She could sense the structure of the binding, like the one Tammorn had worked on her, but that seemed no more than a cobweb in comparison to this. She could feel Isolde begin to struggle, heard her cry out to Emeya to cease and join with her. If Emeya heeded her, Telmaine was not aware of it; her attention was fully on Ishmael, on the heart and lungs and bones and muscles striving to sustain such massive, magical effort, despite their burden of a lifetime’s injury and hard use. He could not last . . .

  Isolde, her energies divided, died first. Briefly, furiously, Emeya’s ferocious energies turned on Ishmael’s. Telmaine wrapped her magic around Ishmael’s faltering heart, wrapped her will around Ishmael’s life. And then, suddenly, Emeya fell away, her last scream—that of a young child—reverberating through the link between them.

  Ishmael went limp in his chair, drawing huge, gasping breaths. She thought for a moment he was going to black out, but he stayed her efforts to lend him strength. he said at last.

  At first she could not remember where she might get back to, that she had existence herself, a body, magic, separate from his. She could feel him pushing at her, untangling her like a twining vine. she pleaded.

 

  she demanded, clutching.

  He sighed.

  Farquhar Broome said, a gentle imposition.

  Ishmael sonned Isolde, who had slumped sideways in her chair, one arm trailing, with no sense of life or magic about her whatsoever. Sonned Lysander Hearne, who sat supporting—indeed wrapped around—his Shadowborn lady.

  Lysander breathed, “You did it.” Then, his face hardening, said, “Leave her alone. Do you understand? You’d not have done that without her.”

  He does not understand at all. Ishmael and Telmaine shared the same thought, his one of weary amusement, hers of exhausted outrage. Ishmael said—answering Farquhar Broome more than Lysander.

  said the strongest living Darkborn mage.

 

 

  Raw strength of magic and rage of defeat, transmuted to fire and death, hurtled across the distance between the Shadowborn redoubt and Ishmael. Sebastien held back nothing of his magic or his furious young vitality. Ishmael was exhausted and unguarded, against them and against his own strength. Telmaine felt Sebastien’s fires roar up around him, the death magic batten onto him.

  She responded without thought, tendering her vitality to sustain his once more. Magic seized on hers, as the Shadowborn’s had, but this time it was his—all his. She began to struggle, as she had struggled then, but she was completely overmatched. She felt his vitality resurge against the death magic, and felt the heat of his power mount, but there no longer seemed to be anything familiar about it, any part of the man she loved. She remembered again his face in her dream, with its terrible regret.

  Tammorn

  Neill closed Emeya’s staring eyes and smoothed her dress down over her thin, childish knees. Her circlet of flowers had tumbled from her head and made a pale smudge in the shadows. Neill scooped it up, hesitated, and then bent his head to kiss it. He glanced toward Sebastien, who lay on his side, head propped on outstretched arm, eyes half closed, tears seeping from them, lips trembling. Neill’s face was almost devoid of expression, his eyes dark. He sighed, spilled his handful of wilting flowers onto Emeya’s chest, stood, and came back to Tam, who sat in the entrance, clinging to the sunlight.

  “I’ll be going now, I think,” Neill said, conversationally. “I’d rather not wait for that”—he gestured south with a thumb—“to get organized and come looking for me.” A wry, humorless smile. “Emeya wanted him dead from the start, but I could never see bothering about a first-rank mage, even one so adept at killing my creatures. We had bigger threats to worry about.” He glanced over his shoulder at the dead, eight-hundred-year-old child. “She couldn’t have known, any more than I. It was just that she liked my beasts.”

  Tam said nothing. He felt hollowed out, too numbed by horrors to feel glad or grateful for his life. He didn’t have the strength to hold Neill, even if he could have found the resolution.

  “I won’t take the boy,” Neill said. “If either of his parents survived this, they’ll be looking for him. And if they didn’t, there’s still the uncle. I’d rather not give anyone more reason to come after me. Try to see he’s treated decently, would you?”

  “Where will you go?” Tam said. “The Temple—”

  “Will . . . ?” prompted Neill, with a lift of an eyebrow, as Tam paused to muster his weary thoughts.

  “There are provisions in our laws—”

  “The ones that dealt so fairly with you?” said Neill, ironically. “Thank you, but no. I cannot claim to be only a boy. I’ll just be going—my creatures here will follow me. I’ll make no trouble if I’m left alone. I’m no Emeya. Maybe I’ll drop by for a beer, in a century or two.”

  “Traitor,” whispered Sebastien.

  Both men looked at him. He levered himself up on his elbow and spat in Neill’s direction. “Traitor,” he said, louder.

  “Yes, I am,” Neill said. “And because of that, we’re all still alive. Do you want to come with me?”

  The boy did not answer. He was staring at Emeya’s body, his thin chest rising and falling erratically. Neill said, “They’ll be looking for you soon, Ariadne and Lysander. Or you could go to them. I’d suggest, though—”

  Sebastien’s head swung like a lodestone findings its pole. His face twisted with hatred.

  Neill’s “Sebastien, don’t!” was late—how late, Tammorn would never know. The boy’s magic blazed out. Tam recognized in it the annulment of life that he had almost lost Fejelis to, and that his master Lukfer had died while undoing in the ruined tower, driven not at Neill, but into the vortex of unstable strength far removed from them. Tam had known magic that unstable. He had loved the man who possessed it, but he had always known that, were he not himself a mage of considerable potential, he could not have been Lukfer’s friend. Had he ever achieved control, Lukfer would have been eighth rank. Tam had no idea how the tower might rank Ishmael di Studier.

  He had time to recognize disaster, time to extend a hand toward Neill, time to draw breath to speak a useless warning, before Ishmael di Studier’s unwilled retribution reached them, his inchoate power finding shape in the form that Sebastien had thrown at him. Neill threw his own strength between it and Sebastien. Tam felt him reaping vitality from the creatures around him. Mayfly lunged past Tam, snarling at a threat he could not see. Neill caught the brindled pelt as he slid to his knees. “Get out,” he gasped to Tam.
r />   It was already too late. Di Studier’s raging magic engulfed him, too.

  Balthasar

  “It’s over,” Perrin breathed.

  Balthasar, leaning against Floria, turned his head to sonn in the direction of the voice. He was still off balance from the flux of magic around him. Perrin was speaking to her brother; the young Lightborn prince was crouched on the platform at Jovance’s side, one hand spread on the floor to steady himself, the other gripping his knee in painful self-containment. Jovance sat cross-legged and unresponsive, her expression one of intense, pained concentration. Despite his obvious concern for her, Fejelis’s face was turned toward the circle of high-ranked mages in the middle of the room. Like Jovance, they were sitting on the floor. Unlike Jovance, they were ringed by a guarding circle of mid-ranked mages and vigilants contracted to the Temple, and who held back any threat from the earthborn around them.

  The prince said, quietly, “What’s over? Can you tell me what happened?”

  Perrin’s face turned briefly toward the high masters, but no guidance came from there. “There were two very strong—very, very strong—mages. Shadowborn,” she said with an undertone of defiance. Fejelis nodded impatiently. “And a third, Darkborn, almost as strong, and unstable. The two fought each other. And the third—the Darkborn—bound them together until they died. With the help of the Darkborn and the high masters.”

  “The Darkborn was Magister Broome?” said Fejelis, frowning.

  “No. One by the name of Ishmael di Studier.”

  “Ishmael? ” said Balthasar, involuntarily.

  “You know this man? ” Fejelis said, head turning swiftly.

  “I mentioned him in the account I gave the judiciary.” Which Fejelis would not have had time to read. What were the essentials? “He’s—was; I’ll explain later—Baron Strumheller of the Borders.”

 

‹ Prev Next ›