The Binder's Road (The Sequel to 'Illumination')

by Terry McGarry

  But the hunched, cloaked woman she was bundling into a wagon ...

  Louarn caught only a glimpse of wrinkled black skin, ornate white braids, and glittering black eyes. It was all he needed.

  He bade Kara fetch the Girdlers, and crossed the intervening threfts at a dead run.

  With a cry, Dabrena gave chase, but his legs were longer than hers, longer than Adaon’s, and he dodged through the crowd like a pike through water. He shoved Verlein away, spun the old woman around, and slammed her against the wagon. Instantly several new-forged blades were at his throat and back. Ignoring them, he said, “You ordered the magekillings.”

  Worilke n’Karad, Ennead wordsmith, bequeathed upon him a slow, lazy smile, and whispered, “Yes,” too low for anyone else to hear.

  “Louarn, what are you doing?” Dabrena said, coming to a halt, out of breath, just beyond the shielders.

  “Hello, Warder,” Worilke said.

  Louarn did not turn to see Dabrena react, though he heard the hiss of air through her teeth. Adaon must have stopped halfway to guide Kara to them with the Girdlers. He need only delay until they arrived, with their own blades.

  “Hands off her,” Verlein said. “Now.”

  Louarn obeyed, and turned inside the ring of blades. “Hello, Verlein.”

  She frowned. “I know you,” she said. “But I don’t know from where, and I don’t care. Step aside, very slowly.”

  “So that you can join your forces in the Head to take Dabrena’s holding? Or is it the Haunch you’re aiming for first?”

  Verlein’s frown deepened. “I told you to step aside.”

  “That’s Worilke n’Karad,” Dabrena said. “She was the wordsmith of the weather triad of the Ennead.”

  Verlein’s fighters seemed to falter, though their blades held steady enough on Louarn.

  “She’s an old, sick relative of mine who needs to be away from this place,” Verlein said. “You’ve mistaken her for some ghost of your past. The Ennead died six years ago.”

  “No,” Dabrena said. “Lerissa Illuminator still lives. We’ve always known that. And now here it seems you’ve kept her wordsmith for a pet. How interesting, that my proxy should dissuade you from your [443] holding conquests one day, and the next you just happen to be in company with an Ennead mage when you change your mind.”

  Risalyn and Yuralon came up on either side of the shielders surrounding Louarn. Verlein swore. “Where were you lot yesterday when I needed your blades?” she said.

  “We don’t fight for you,” Risalyn said. “We never did. We fought the Ennead. Do we still have to?”

  “You were in the old Holding,” one of the shielders said to Risalyn. “Is that one of them?”

  “Why don’t we take this inside,” Yuralon said. “Blades down, all of you. That man is unarmed.”

  Risalyn cast Verlein a significant look, and Verlein said, “Yes, all right. Inside. Eowi, Gilris, Jia, keep guard out here, don’t let anyone conscript this wagon, I’ll be needing it.”

  She turned on her heel and walked into the inn, and Louarn understood: The Girdlers were guarding her command. They did not want her shielders to lose faith in her. “We’ll sort this out,” Risalyn said to the one who knew them, as she and Yuralon took hold of Worilke.

  “But is she?” the shielder demanded.

  “I’m not sure,” Risalyn said. “We’ll let you know.”

  If they had to kill her, then she was Worilke. If not, she was some old relative of Verlein’s who would disappear into obscurity while the first shield returned to her post.

  Louarn did not think that the rumors that would spring from this could be quashed, or that Verlein would ever be entirely secure in her command again. But no ships had come, no invasion had manifested in six years. Perhaps disbanding the shield—or the ascent of some new commander—was not the worst that could happen.

  Not if a remnant of the old Ennead had been whispering in her ear for six years.

  A crowd had formed. Louarn moved past the shielders, away from it, toward the inn’s entrance, but sensed that Dabrena was not coming, and turned to find her staring past the shielders, at a woman in black who stood by the head of the wagon’s team of mules.

  “They can wait for me,” Dabrena said.

  “We’ll go with Louarn,” Adaon said, taking Kara’s hand.

  Dabrena nodded. “I’ll be six breaths, no more.”

  With a shrug, Louarn went into the dim interior of the inn.

  “What are you doing here?” Dabrena said, as the runner Karanthe n’Farine moved to her side. One of Pelkin’s closest, and one of the [444] runners Dabrena had been a vocate with in the Ennead’s Holding. The vocate who had vied with her for Tolivar’s affections. He had bound all three of them together in a core of friendship and competition, as only a binder could. But then Karanthe went for a reckoner, breaking the triad they should have been, leaving them for warders, leaving the Holding, joining the Lightbreaker. It was still a strangeness to see her in black.

  “I came to this leg with Kazhe n’Zhevra, who came to stop the war,” Karanthe said. “Which she did, though not till after losing her lover and half of all three armies, and then stormed off on a tear. I’ve been out here looking for her. She’s not in Gir Mened, and one of her comrades said she’d gone Headward. This is as far as she could possibly have gotten in that storm. I don’t know why I bother, really. She was mad when I knew her and she’s mad now. But I’m glad to see you.”

  Ignoring that last, Dabrena said, “That was the Lightbreaker’s bodyguard?”

  “His name was Torrin,” Karanthe said. “And he broke the light to save the world.”

  “He broke the light. He was the Lightbreaker. You helped him.” She shrugged. “Your bladebreaker is here, I’ve seen her. Try the taverns. She had one blast of a hangover, but someone healed it. She’s all fresh to start again.”

  “You never did believe in healing hangovers. Who’s doing healings these days?”

  “It’s a long story. I have business inside.”

  “I saw. That is Worilke.”

  “Yes.”

  Karanthe said, all in a rush, “I’m sorry, Dabrena. When I sent you that message, I didn’t know you didn’t know about Tolivar, I hardly knew how to scribe yet—”

  “I have business inside. Go find your bladebreaker. We may need her in the Head.”

  She left Karanthe standing in the road.

  Dabrena’s eyes were slow adapting from the sunshine outside. The windows laid bluish squares of light on the planks, but between them was only darkness at first, speckled by the arcs of nine-tapered Longlight candlestands. She found a seat saved for her between Louarn and Kara at a large round table in the center. Despite the innkeeper tending some shaken customers, out of earshot, and a serving girl waxing tables and looking often out the front door, and the smell of Strong Leg food [445] and drink, she felt a temporal vertigo, as though she were back in the old Ennead’s presence chamber, hosting shielders and runners and Khinish. How long had it been since she slept? Since the night before last, when she slept in Adaon’s arms. She needed food and rest. She was in an ill temper for this.

  Risalyn and Yuralon sat to either side of Worilke, a diminutive, widened form barely visible in the dimness. She had managed to stay invisible for six years. Shielded by the shielders, while she worked her insidious will on their leader. Verlein was separated from her by Risalyn and an empty chair, with Louarn on her other side. Adaon sat between Kara and Yuralon. Eight of them at a table that would seat nine. Perhaps she should have invited Karanthe in. The ironies were numerous.

  “So she’s alive,” Verlein said. “Why does that trouble you so? The past is over and done. Let the poor ill woman alone.”

  “She doesn’t look ill to me,” Dabrena said. “She looks old. Arthritic, a curving spine, underweight. Even magecraft couldn’t do much more than ease the pains of age. She’s stuck with those. But the only ill thing about her is the deeds she did over that long
life.”

  “And is still doing,” Louarn said.

  “We caught some of your folk in the Knee,” Yuralon told Worilke. “A woman named Elya and her cohort. They told us you had sent them out to kill mages.”

  “There are no mages now,” Verlein said.

  “Those who were mages, then.”

  Verlein made a rude noise. “No one is killing folk who were mages. You ran across a madwoman with some old grudge.”

  “We have now,” Risalyn said.

  “Someone has been killing runners,” Dabrena said. Pelkin had told her that in the holding. With a cold feeling in her belly—did it go farther than that? had she missed this crisis, in her absence? had Streln been trying to tell her this, back at the beginning? would Karanthe have told her more if she had not cut her dead in the road?—she echoed Pelkin’s words: “Whether they meant to target former reckoners or not, they were killing folk in black.”

  “Not only folk in black,” Louarn said. “Tellers. Singers. Farmers. Grafters. Alderfolk. Downmongers. A man named Croy, who was a bricklayer, a kind man who harmed none. All mages, once. Not proxies. Just mages. Journeymages. Ordinary village triads. And not one of them with a light that worked.”

  “Most were killed or disabled with a blow to the head,” Risalyn said. “And then the hands were cut off and flung away or hidden, [446] usually in some rubbish heap. As though to prevent them ever casting again. Even after they were dead.”

  Dabrena’s stomach turned. She had not known. She should not have left her holding. Yet she might do more here than she ever could have from there, hearing some delayed report of this, if there had even been someone to render one.

  “Why, Worilke?” Louarn said. “Even madwomen have their reasons, Why?”

  “When I was a girl in the Holding,” Worilke said, toying with a pouch at her belt, “some still received visits from their relatives outside. There was a boy I used to play with, in a little-used gallery where the sun shone in during winter afternoons. Too cold to work in, but a lovely playroom. I had planted some winter-blooming bulbs in an urn where they could take the sun. When the first buds came up, I was beside myself with pleasure. So was he, I thought. But when they were just about to bloom, he said, ‘My cousins are coming tomorrow. You’d better hide this.’ I didn’t understand, though a frisson of nameless fear swept over me. What were these cousins, that I should fear them? The urn was stone, far too heavy to move, and how would the cousins even find it, occupied in taking meals with their visiting families? They were only flowers. What would anyone have against them? I was more distressed that I would not see my playmate during their visit. The next night my pretty flowers were torn up, the bulbs flung out the window into the sea. The cousins, I thought. The cousins destroyed them after all. I had not met them, not seen them during their visit. But they rampaged through my Holding, destroying whatever they could find that was fragile and vulnerable. It didn’t occur to me until later to wonder how they had found that little-used gallery, unless my playmate had told them of it. To curry favor? For fear of their wrath? From the same irresistible perversity that makes a man on a cliff sway forward, as if he’ll let himself fall, just to see how it will feel? There was no telling. But the cousins came, shadows in the night, and destroyed the fragile lives I had tended.” She lifted her glittering eyes to look around the table. “The cousins will come,” she said, and gave a terrible, chilling smile.

  Risalyn threw her head back and swore. Louarn and Yuralon squinted at Worilke in a failed attempt to make sense of this allegory. Verlein said, “See? She’s mad, leave her in peace.” But Adaon said, “And so you uproot the blooms yourself, so that the cousins cannot have them? Better it should be your hand that destroys, for then at least they are still yours?” Worilke fixed on him with her sharp eyes, suspicious of him, because he had it right. Quietly, he said, “That [447] assumes that there will be a blooming. Bulbs hidden under the soil present no temptation to ... the cousins.”

  “The light will return!” Worilke said. “It was scribed in Luriel’s codex, the one that was stolen. When Galandra cast her shield to isolate Eiden Myr from the outer realms her mages had fled, it shocked the light from all of them. But within a nineyear it was back. I read it in Luriel’s codex!” She tapped her brow. “I forget nothing. Steal all the codices—burn them—it will make no difference to me. I read. I remember. The light returned to Eiden Myr. It will return again. Ignorance, vain foolishness, to break Galandra’s shield! It had a lifespan. It was a living thing. That fool boy shattered it and shocked the light from every mage in Eiden Myr. It would have dissipated in due time, like any casting. Twice nine nonned years it held, until he broke it—only twice, not thrice! It was meant to hold another nine nonned. We would have had time to make ourselves strong, to thicken the mageblood, stiffen our lax training. We had become weak. If that fool boy had left well enough alone, my Ennead would have scourged those outer realms, and by the time they crawled their way back from oblivion we would have been strong. Unassailable! Mages all, with no lightless among us. Powerful past all dreaming. But he broke it. He broke it, and I saw the face of Galandra, and I felt her great imperative: Protect.” The swelling of pride and outrage left her, and she sank into herself, went crafty and cunning, twisting the pouch in her hands. “He left us with nothing, that boy. But the light would return. The invasion would come. Our human shield would not withstand it. They would come, and conquer us, and root out any light they found. But if they found no light, there would be nothing to fear. We might return to the world as ordinary, lightless folk. Diminished, all our glory lost, our great future vanquished. But alive, and safe.” Seeing no comprehension on the faces around her, she said, in a plea for understanding, “They would root out our light! That is why we fled from them!”

  “You were rooting it out first,” Adaon said.

  “But why the hands?” Louarn said, still frowning, still struggling. “What purpose in removing the hands?”

  As though sheer viciousness needs explaining, Dabrena thought in irritation. As though the methods make a difference! “Never mind that,” she said. “Why the adults? What purpose in that?”

  Worilke regarded them with scorn. They were children asking stupid questions when the obvious was right in front of them. “The light will return,” she said. “Suppose my stewards bungled a killing? How often would they get a second chance? They must not have their hands when the light returns. Dead or alive, they must not be able [448] to cast.” Offhand, she added, “I’ve chosen death, myself. There was a light in me as well. Better to die, than live unable to cast. Death was a mercy on them.”

  “How generous of you to refrain from sparing yourself,” Dabrena said. Her bad temper at last succeeded in irritating Louarn, who threw her a sharp look to say she was not being helpful. “You’ll notice she answered your question, not mine,” she threw back at him.

  “I don’t understand why the age of the victims is at issue,” Adaon said. Nipping their wick before it could flare up. “Perhaps Worilke doesn’t, either.”

  Louarn stared at Adaon for a moment with no expression on his face, which Dabrena was learning to recognize as the indication of something clicking into place in his mind. Abruptly he turned to Worilke and said, “Your assumptions are flawed.”

  She snorted. “Luriel’s emended codex,” she said, as though shooting an arrow at him.

  This was a weapon Adaon the scholar understood. “There are references to such a codex,” he said, “but it is not in the scholars’ possession.”

  “Of course not. The bloody thing was stolen, I told you that. And I know who took it. It probably went into the sea with him, buried under a chunk of the Fist.”

  “The Lightbreaker stole the codex?” Adaon said, his pale brows rising. “That’s interesting. We might retrieve it, then, if we tracked down those who—”

  “The codex was flawed,” Louarn said to Worilke, cutting him off. “Or your memory of it.”

  “Within a ni
neyear the light had returned,” Worilke said. “Must I recite to you the specifics?”

  “It would be helpful,” Adaon began, eager for some tidbits of this lost codex, but Louarn said, “No. Simply tell me this. In whom did the light return?”

  Worilke smacked the table. “In the mages, you idiot child!”

  “Did it say so, specifically?”

  “It didn’t have to.” She sighed, and slowed her speech, prompting a remarkably dense prentice: “Who else would show a light but one who had a light to show?”

  Dabrena pressed her lips together to quell the impulse to interject. She saw where Louarn was going. Let him choose the road.

  “Did the codex say whether the light returned to some before it did others?”

  Now Worilke’s eyes narrowed. “It did not return to all,” she said warily. “But return it did.”

  [449] “I do not dispute that,” Louarn said, with a smile that would have melted the glaze off a fired pot. “But your illuminator, Lerissa, had a codex, too. Also stolen, I suspect, and from the scholars this time,” he added as an aside to Adaon, who accepted the information with a nod. Only then was it clear that Louarn had deduced that Adaon was a scholar, and had probed to see whether he had taken the codex. Dabrena turned to him; he shook his head, shrugged, and mouthed, If only.