Sorcerers' Isle

by D. P. Prior

  He stood on the threshold, taking in the sleeping Snaith, the old woman wiping pus and blood from her knitting needle so she could continue with whatever she was making, and finally let his eyes come to rest on Tey. He appraised her scars as if they were words on the page, and Tey wondered if he could read in them what she could. What did he know, this so-called sorcerer, this charlatan? More than she’d observed on the occasions she’d spied through his window?

  [Nothing of any worth,] the Shedim said. [His Weyd is a reflection in murky water at best. He is just your way out, no more.]

  Way out of what? She asked with a thought. When the Shedim didn’t answer immediately, she asked again. Way out of—

  [Do you really want this old lech poring over your naked flesh?] the Shedim said. [Your scars?]

  With a gasp, Tey banished the Witch Woman and freed the girl from her grave. She pulled up the sheet, suddenly cold and shivering.

  “Awake so soon?” Theurig gave the old woman a narrow-eyed glance. “And with such a terrible injury.”

  “I was just about to give her another drink,” the old woman said. “Only, I dropped a stitch, see.” She held up her knitting, but Theurig switched his gaze back to Tey.

  “Were you indeed?” He was still talking to the old woman. “Well, don’t let me stop you.”

  Tey heard the creak of the rocking chair, the clatter of the knitting needles being set down, but it was the swish of Theurig’s robe as he flowed toward the bed that commanded her attention. She looked up at his face, found him gently smiling. His eyes widened, inviting her to say something.

  “Why is Snaith here?” She already knew the answer, and it was likely dangerous asking, but if you didn’t push and goad, you were nothing more than prey. “I thought his parents—”

  “Contagion,” Theurig said with a shake of his head. “They had to leave the village. I did my best to warn them, but what can you do when people refuse to listen?” He sounded genuinely sorrowful, but Theurig was a master of sounding genuinely anything he liked.

  Tey bit her lip before she said too much. She switched her attention to her bad leg, matched her breathing to its deep, dull throb. Like surf crashing against a distant shore, she heard the Shedim’s scorn.

  Theurig seated himself on the edge of the bed. “You’re in something of a quandary, the two of you. But you already know this.You don’t need me to tell you the choice you face.”

  Dragged out to Coldman’s Copse and slaughtered by the Shedim, or wedded to the Weyd as a sorcerer’s apprentice. But what sorcerer would take her? And with the Shedim inside her, would others of its kind really kill her? Would it even be in their interests? Free us, Tey Moonshine, the Shedim had said. Return us to the light of day.

  “Oh, Tey,” Theurig said, studying her face and clearly misreading the knit of her brow, “you don’t want to die. You think you do, I’ll grant that, but when it comes down to it, it’s not what you really want. Otherwise, why are you still here? Why have you survived for so long?”

  Prick! Of course she wanted to die. Once more the certainty was building. Theurig didn’t know her, and she told him so with a glare. He was talking about his own fears, not hers. Death was her bridegroom. It called to her, and she went willingly into its embrace. She’d show Theurig when they dragged her out to the Copse. Then he’d see how wrong he was.

  “Tey,” Theurig said in his kindly old-man voice. It made her want to punch him. “I want you. I want you both. You’ve known this all along. Snaith has”—he tapped his temple—“aptitude. And you, Tey, you have such… how should I put it?”

  [Vitriol], the Shedim said in her marrow. [Raw. Unadulterated.]

  A confusion of emotions played across Theurig’s face before he finally settled on “…potential. But it is not my wants that determine fates; it is the Weyd’s. Many offer themselves; few are taken. The people of Malogoi have grown soft. Hardly any of ours made it to be warriors at the festival, and all the Proving proved was how weak we have grown. The good news is that so many were badly injured during the bouts, I have upwards of a dozen for the testing, and I intend for you and Snaith to join them. First, though, you must rest and recover. Velyg, a drink for young Tey.”

  The old woman poured liquid from a jug into a cup and handed it to Theurig. The same way Tey had helped Snaith, the sorcerer held her head and made her drink.

  “Leave us now,” Theurig said to the old woman—Velyg. “I will care for them tonight.”

  Tey tried to discern the sweetened pungency of the drink, but already she was starting to fade. The shuffle of feet. The opening and shutting of the door. Snaith’s snores—gentler now, less labored. Honey, for sure. She ran her tongue across her lips, touched it to her palate. Root of valerian? And… and…

  Twin pools of emerald glowered down at her—the sorcerer’s eyes. Flickers of lamplight reflected from their surface. They contracted as they moved away, till she saw Theurig’s face studying her.

  Remembered pain bloomed inside her head. It was like the first time her father had worked his sorcery: Theurig was going to drain her. She tried to summon the Witch Woman, but the Grave Girl was startled, too panicked to get out of the way. A scream rattled around her skull but could find no exit.

  Theurig nodded, satisfied, and the scream petered out and died.

  As the daze of sleep washed over her, Tey realized she’d been wrong; that under the spell of the Grave Girl’s terror, she’d misread Theurig’s nod. It wasn’t that he was sated, it was that he found her satisfactory. Suited to purpose. He had her where he wanted her, and his nod merely said she would do.

  TINKERER OF LOST THEURGY

  Tey awoke without the feeling of ever having fallen asleep. Her mind was a mire, sucking down thoughts. Her veins clogged with sludge. Her heartbeat a distant thunderstorm blown ragged by the wind.

  “It’s the potion he’s giving you.”—The Shedim. Only not in her bones. Outside her head.

  She opened her eyes onto the cavern of coal. The Shedim had its back to her, hunched over a workbench of some sleek, dark material.

  Consumed in its task, it said, “He is keeping you sedated.” It spared a quick look at her, violet eyes expanding and contracting. “Chattel is all you are to him, but it makes no difference. Be patient. Bide your time.” It turned back to its work, leaving Tey with the impression her nakedness burned its eyes.

  She approached the workbench on bare feet, peered over the Shedim’s shoulder. Smoke plumed in delicate streamers from a crucible on the tabletop. The stench of sulfur hit her nostrils, forced her to take a step back.

  The Shedim held a slender metal stylus in one hand, tip wickedly sharp and glowing red. With the other hand, it kept steady what looked like a lunula, the gold crescents some of the Malogoi women wore around their necks. It was inscribed with patterns of lines. The cold touch of recognition seeped beneath Tey’s dulled consciousness. With her fingertips, she numbly traced the ridges of the scars on her belly.

  “Your kind are reservoirs of untapped power,” the Shedim said, bringing the point of its stylus to the lunula and etching another line into the metal. “Wasted. Directionless. Such bottled-up puissance corrodes the host from within.”

  It returned the tip of the stylus to the crucible until it regained its heat, then marked the lunula with another line, perpendicular to the last.

  “Latent power needs two things, if it is to be made manifest: a focus and a conduit. A third is necessary if you are to make the most of the power you have, and to take what is possible to new and greater levels: a means of amplification. These patterns”—it indicated the lines etched into the gold with the tip of the cooling stylus—“are for the direction of raw force. They are the conduit. This you know.”

  “But how?” Tey asked. “How did I know?” Each time she cut, she intuited where to place the blade. It seemed obvious to her. She could almost see vitriol flowing through the channels in her flesh, feel the weave of her net of scars.

  “You burs
t the banks of your suffering, Tey Moonshine. A long time ago. We Shedim are attuned to such ruptures, to the particular cadence of your pain. It is… precious to us.”

  “You did this?” She indicated her mutilated flesh, fingers curled into claws and quivering.

  “Yours was the hand that held the knife,” the Shedim said, setting down the stylus and lifting the lunula to inspect it. “And yours was the intuition that drove the design. You wanted to turn predator into prey. Your prey.”

  It cracked the lunula against the desktop and it came apart in two sections, each spilling forth tangles of hair-thin copper spangled with winking lights.

  “Your focus was your hatred, and the one it was directed against. Not perfect, and not honed enough to be effective. Hatred is like fear in that sense: too chaotic, a blurring of vision, a blunting of the will. In this you need training, although even then mastery may be beyond you. Your conduit is your skin, the paths and channels you have carved into it. It is a pattern for taking, for robbing another of their essence. But that is all.”

  It held up the two pieces of the lunula. “What you need is another pattern, to take your thoughts and desires and give them birth. A crafting to achieve each specific end. And if it is well made, it will be efficient with the essence it draws from the reservoir you hold within you. It will take a little and magnify it a hundredfold.”

  It dangled the golden halves before her for a moment, then dropped them clattering to the floor.

  “I am but a tinkerer of lost lore,” the Shedim said. “And my people are scattered, the few that remain. But in the days we walked the surface of this world, in the times before the Hélum Empire stole our sorcery and turned it against us, such artifacts of power were not uncommon. Just think, Tey Moonshine: with perfectly honed focus, the conduit of your scars to fill you, and the means to direct and amplify the seething violence of your emotions, what could you fail to achieve?”

  But what would she want to achieve? Her father had already been taken care of. She’d no interest in fighting, and even if she had, her leg was ruined. What else was there, save to be some cock’s breeding cow that sewed and cooked just to make herself useful?

  “Theurig’s Weyd is a parody,” the Shedim said. “A parody of something real and potent and calling to you. Let me help you, Tey Moonshine. Help you become who you were created to be.”

  “No.” The word came unbidden, automatic. It was her default position.

  “There is a relic beneath Coldman’s Copse—”

  “No.”

  “And the one who would marry you has a way with patterns. He can hold them in his mind. His focus is unparalleled. This much I have seen through your eyes. Together, you could—”

  “What relic?” Tey said. “Something like this?” She tapped one half of the lunula with her foot. The Shedim had aroused her interest. She couldn’t say why, but it had. Something about the Copse and its reputation for death. Something about the burial mounds of the ancestors.

  “All that remains of the Shedim in this world. The pinnacle of our power. Buried so they could not find it.”

  “The Hélum Empire?”

  The Shedim’s eyes flashed. “If they were to discover the Hand of Vilchus…” It paused. Afraid to finish its sentence, perhaps. In case it came true. Or maybe it was measuring out how much it should say, and what. “They are an evil race, Tey. Worshipers of the Wyvern of Necras.”

  “And they defeated you. With all your sorcery, they defeated you. Drove you from the world.”

  “Betrayal. We were doomed because of it. Only one who has suffered as much as you could have any inkling of what we have endured.”

  Tey scoffed. Victims, is what they were. If the Shedim thought it knew her, thought it could form a bond of shared suffering and somehow manipulate her into helping it… Because that’s what this was about, she had no doubt. The Shedim might have claimed it wanted to help her, but no one helped anyone without expecting something in return. Well, two could play at that game. Right now she had no idea what her price would be. But she would, when Theurig’s drugs were out of her system, when her mood switched, as it did at whatever mystical time it chose. She was in no hurry, and this Shedim was going nowhere. It needed her more than she needed it, and needs were the bait that hooked the fish.

  The Shedim was watching her intently, reading her thoughts.

  Or was it? It liked to give the impression it knew her more than she knew herself, but clearly it didn’t if it thought it could sway her with promises of power. What would she do with all that power? It was of no interest to her. She lacked the drive to wield it; lacked the energy. If she could have just curled up and fallen asleep forever, she would have. Except, when blackness came, she knew she’d turn tail and flee the other way.

  What she needed was to wheedle her way into the Shedim’s mind, as it had hers. To gain its trust. To get its guard down. To find out the truth of its desires. And most of all, to find out what it feared.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  “I have no name. No Shedim does. Save one.”

  “Vilchus?” Tey asked. “You mentioned the Hand of Vilchus.”

  “To some he was a god. But not to all of us.”

  “Not to you? Why?”

  The Shedim’s eyes dimmed, creating the impression its focus was all within. It looked suddenly melancholy. Sullen. It was a reaction, at least. A small victory.

  “Are you still inside of me?” she asked.

  The violet eyes flared once more, then contracted to pinpricks. “Here, I am both outside and in.”

  Tey nodded, chewed her lip. She became aware of Snaith’s warmth against her back—not a memory, a present reality. She was both here in the cavern of coal, and asleep on the bed beside Snaith. Expectation tingled between her legs, in the pit of her stomach. She could almost hear the Witch Woman goading her on: “Go on, try it! You know you want to.”

  And then the Grave Girl was gone and the Witch Woman assumed control. With sudden clarity she saw a potential weakness to be prodded. She’d glimpsed it the first time the Shedim had shown itself to her, and now what had been an unformed intuition clothed itself in purpose with teeth and claws.

  Tey flashed a look at the Shedim. “You really want inside?” She lowered herself to the hard floor, lay back, mangled leg straight and stiff. With awkward scuffs and jolts, she parted her thighs.

  The Shedim stood frozen, eyes so wide its entire head was bathed in violet. In an instant, they contracted, then vanished altogether. Would it go for the lure, or had she frightened it off?

  Something shivered through her veins, sought an exit. Not frightened—repulsed. The Shedim was disgusted by what she offered. Disgusted and panicked.

  Its hand came up, fingers splayed, and the scene dispersed in a puff of soot.

  ***

  She was on the bed once more. Naked. Present. Truly present, body and spirit. Snaith was sleeping lightly next to her, rolled on one side, sheet pulled tightly about him.

  She pushed herself upright on her elbows, good leg bent at the knee, other stretched out and rigid, mottled ankle to thigh with fist-sized bruises, purple-bodied and yellowing at the edges. That was different from black all over. The leg was healing, as much as it ever would, but it would always be useless. Thing was, how long had she been away, coasting in limbo or with the Shedim in its cave? Days, it seemed. Was that an illusion, or the effect of Theurig’s potions?

  The rocking chair the old women took turns sitting in was empty. Knitting needles on the table beside it, along with the water jug—or whatever it was it contained. She and Snaith were alone, which meant they must have been stable. Maybe the crones had made another dosing error and assumed their charges were sufficiently drugged to be no trouble. Probably, the three of them—the three she’d seen—were outside gossiping, or arguing about whose turn it was to bathe her next. The thought made her twist toward Snaith, sniff the sheet wrapped around him. Did they wash him, too? They must have do
ne, judging by the fragrant scent of the soap they used, the lack of anything more offensive.

  She pinched a section of sheet between thumb and forefinger, carefully pulled it down to reveal Snaith’s injured arm. She was half-hoping it would be black with scales, but all the blackness was from bruising and dead skin. Deep furrows raked across the flesh had been roughly stitched, and the fingers seemed locked in place, twisted talons.

  She covered Snaith up once more then examined her leg. Now the swelling had subsided, she could see her own stitches, a network of them, reattaching flaps of flesh like the poorly repaired sails of her father’s fishing boat.

  She’d seen it once, before he let it go. He’d brought her with him to help cart back the booze he’d stowed on board. The sails were more thread than canvas, the hull barnacled from neglect. It was a wonder it even floated. A bigger wonder Khunt had roamed clear of Malogoi lands and lived to tell the tale. Something about the protection of a group of sorcerers, he once told her. And the demand among them for fresh fish.

  Tey pressed her thumbs into the bruising on her leg. Felt nothing. At least the scales covering her skin were gone. But what about the Shedim? Was it still there, inside her, closer to her than she was to herself? Had she frightened it away with her lewd invitation?

  No, there it was, a silken thread weaving itself between her thoughts, whittling away their edges, bending them along new paths so subtly she could have mistaken them for her own desires, her own decisions, had she not been looking for them.

  Even now she could feel it gnawing away at her mind, digging for knowledge, probing, searching.

  She dug a fingernail into her scalp, raked it along the roots of her hair. She winced at the sting, smiled at the warmth where blood started to seep, grinned when the Shedim’s poking around in her head stopped dead. She tangibly felt it withdraw from her skull, settle limpidly in her veins and marrow. What would it do now? Lurk within her, biding its time, seeking another way? Go on pretending this was some kind of partnership that she’d consented to? Or would it respond with anger?