Sunbolt (The Sunbolt Chronicles)

by Khanani, Intisar

  We are caged.

  The crow considers this, then hops down to the floor. I turn to face him. No wings, he notes wisely.

  Tied by magic.

  The crow peers about, then turns to look at the creature. I correct myself: Val. Dark brother.

  Yes, I say.

  Heartmate?

  No, I say so forcefully the crow hops back, startled.

  But then he gives a little caw of amusement and tries again, Nestbrother.

  Flockbrother.

  He considers this. Caged?

  Caged, I confirm.

  Sorrow song, the crow says sadly, and I know he will help.

  I point to the blood knot on the floor. Need key.

  The crow hops over and angles his head to eye the knot. He pecks at it experimentally before hopping back to me. No key.

  I smile faintly. I didn’t expect he would have a way to break the enchantment hidden among his feathers. And it isn’t a key I need, not in the sense the crow will understand. Bring sharp silver shiny? I try instead. Most importantly, Sharp?

  Sharp, the crow responds cautiously. He takes wing, flapping out the window. I’ll just have to hope he doesn’t bring back a rusty nail that will give me lockjaw. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

  Val’s voice pulls me back to the room with a shock. “How hard was it to hide your Promise?” The old fear dries my throat. He nods towards the window, “Consorting with crows. I hope you are not always that obvious?”

  He’s laughing at me. “Not normally,” I say cautiously, somewhat unnerved by his amusement. By all accounts, he should be wishing me dead. Especially since it was another mage who trapped him here.

  “Your parents hid you,” he guesses. At my nod, he continues, “And taught you?”

  I shake my head, remembering my mother’s warnings. Never trust another with your secret. I can’t undo what he has seen, but I can play it down. “It’s just whistling.”

  He says nothing in response, his gray eyes unreadable. I look away from him, waiting until the crow flaps back up to the windowsill, a nice shiny sewing needle in his beak. He sets it down, then hops along the sill, watching me. Sharp.

  Life light, I whistle back to him, the traditional praise used by birds.

  Fair winds, the crow replies in farewell. It is almost a question, as if he wants to assure I need nothing else. But I don’t want anyone to see me try this magic, not even an elderly crow.

  Sheltered nests, I respond.

  With a final glance for Val and me, the crow drops off the windowsill, swooping out over the countryside with a joyful caw. I watch after him, not really wanting to turn back to Val. I may as well have admitted some training. There’s no way to avoid it now. The longer I take, the closer we get to lunch and the creature James. Safer to trust this breather, I think, than to risk waiting.

  With heavy footsteps I return to the blood knot and kneel before it. The needle is sharp enough that a good hard jab draws blood from the pad of my thumb. I pinch it to make the blood well up and use the blunt end of the needle as a stylus. Starting at the center of the knot, I trace the pattern until just before it connects again at the center. Instead of closing the pattern, I turn the trail out, smearing the last drops of blood so that the line disintegrates.

  Okay. I stare at the knot, waiting. Nothing happens. No pulse of power. No fading of the old spell. I glance uncertainly at the breather. He looks back at me, expression inscrutable. It’s like looking at a breathing skull and wondering what it’s thinking.

  I take a steadying breath and press the bloodied pad of my thumb to the center of the knot. pain pain PAIN

  “Release,” I gasp, which is not the right word at all. I don’t know the Olde Tongue. Not well enough, at least. Bending over the blistering, burning point of agony that is my thumb, I draw on the warmth of sunlight and the swallow song once more audible. I draw on the slumbering stone beneath me, and the ancient air born and reborn, and the certain beating of my heart, the pulse of blood in my veins. “Get out.”

  Blood wells up—not from my thumb this time, but from the knot. The whole symbol pulses, writhes, bulges with dark liquid—the same dark liquid that rises up between the stones to pool on the floor. I scramble back, watching as the knot disappears beneath the growing puddle of black blood.

  A hand reaches up out of the center of the pool, a hand composed completely of light, glowing gently. It grips the stones, and slowly, slowly, a figure pulls itself out of the blood. I press myself against the wall behind me. The woman before me, her form half-obscured by her own radiance, pays no attention to Val or me. Kneeling on the ground, she braces one foot, turns her face skyward, and then she launches herself up, arms spreading as if they were wings. For a moment that lasts an eternity, she rises, and then she departs in a blinding flash of light.

  I blink. Once. Twice. Three times, the vision of her ascent still glowing before my eyes.

  “That was …” I begin, but can’t go on. Horror still clings to me, thick and viscous, only slightly mitigated by the awe of the woman rising. “That was …”

  “A soul,” the breather finishes for me.

  I shudder. No magic should take such a toll. No mage should bind another so.

  I totter to my feet and take a tentative step forward, leaning over the puddle to look for the blood knot. I can’t make it out, but I doubt it matters. “I think you’ll be able to cross now.”

  “I imagine so.”

  A faint clink. I shake my head to clear my thoughts, pushing away the exhaustion that hovers at the edges of my consciousness. The breather is still chained. I cross the room, stumbling slightly as it tilts. The magic-working has taken more from me than I would have liked.

  Kneeling before the breather, I realize that he doesn’t sit with his legs perfectly crossed. His cuffed ankle sticks out just a little, keeping the manacle from touching his other leg. Now, he straightens his leg more, bringing it closer to me. I breathe slowly through my mouth, trying not to inhale the old dead smell of him, decay and … hunger. He has given me his word, I remind myself. I’m going to have to trust it.

  I turn the cuff, noting in the bright noonday light that the skin beneath it is black and withered. The rest of his leg, while not damaged, exhibits the same sickening skeletal thinness as his face. I wipe my hands on my pants, trying to ignore the dark smears they leave behind, and set to work on the lock. I can almost forgive Saira her sins for having worn hairpins.

  Hardly a minute later the cuff clicks open.

  With the quickness of a hawk diving for its prey, Val’s hand closes on the back of my neck, holding me frozen before him.

  “Never been taught?” he whispers. This close, I can see his gray eyes flicker, his breather’s gaze drawing me in. I flinch, jerking my eyes away to focus on the wall behind him. “For a Promise hidden from the mages, you know a great deal of magic.”

  I try to keep my voice steady. “I know enough not to kill anyone.”

  “You have it backwards,” Val says, his voice the rustle of dry leaves. “Mages train to kill. It is an art form among them.” The blood knot certainly stands testimony to that.

  “My father didn’t kill.” I’m not ready to say anything about my mother. I don’t know what to say about my mother.

  “Your father?”

  I try to shift away from him, from his breath that smells of the stale air of moldering crypts, but his hand grips me tightly, much tighter than I would have thought he had the strength for, his skin burning cold. Kol had feared him for a reason, I remind myself. I might be able to break loose, at least for a moment, but then he might easily give me his death’s kiss.

  “Your father?” he repeats.

  If I lie, I suspect he’ll see through it, and that won’t go well. But my father died four years ago, and lived about as far from Godan as you can get. What’s the likelihood that this creature will know his name?

  “Rasheed Coldeye,” I admit. His lips curl back from his teeth, and his eyes—his
eyes are as bright and hard as silver coins. He’s going to kill me.

  “We must plan how to get out,” I cry, my words tripping over themselves.

  His gaze moves over my face, then falls to my hand, still clutching the misshapen torque wrench. Abruptly, he releases me. I half-fall back, dragging myself away from him. He watches me impassively.

  “We must plan,” I repeat unevenly.

  “We have no weapons, little one. Unless you can conjure one.”

  I shake my head. I doubt I could push a bolt at this point, let alone transform some item into a weapon. But …

  “We have one advantage,” I tell him, “surprise.”

  Val tosses the silver chain away from him. The cuff swings out, arcing through the far window, and clatters against the outside wall. Its chain stretches back to the wall bolt, a dark line in the bright of day. “So we do.”

  I sit on the far side of the pool of blood, facing the door. Swathed in the Ghost’s cloak, with the hood pulled low, I present a strange picture, for breathers don’t draw blood, and by any reckoning—blood or breath—I should be dead, not sitting.

  So, when the door swings open to admit the creature James with my lunch, I command all of his attention.

  “What the hell?” he growls, his voice so deep I can almost feel it through the stones. I hold my breath as he walks towards me, then pauses a bare pace or two away, pivoting towards the sight of the silver chain stretching to the window. My own chain runs across the floor to me, disappearing beneath my cloak to give the appearance of still binding me.

  James chuckles. “Vallie, lad, did you forget you were a breather and savage her? You’re not much of a fang, you know. Or,” he laughs again, “a bird.”

  Behind him, a guard has entered carrying a meal tray and a lantern. His eyes dart about as he sets the lantern by the door. Hidden in the shadows on the other side waits Val.

  James takes two steps forward, his boots squelching in the blood, his hand closing around the front of my cloak and hauling me up. “Well, let’s have a look. You might still be good for something.”

  I find myself staring into a wolf’s face, fangs gleaming. Lycan. I’ve heard of them before, men who can shift to wolf form at will, who can even adopt a demi form as James has, with a tall muscular man’s body and a canine head. Just as Kenta had, only he never looked half so terrifying as this creature.

  I close my hands on James’s fist, trying to loosen his grip, gasping as the cloth tightens around my neck. He draws his lips back into a leering, animal grin. “Oh yes, you’re still with us. Perfect.”

  His words leave me with no doubt as to his intentions. I shout, flailing at him, trying to land a kick, but my legs are hampered by my too-long cloak. Where is Val?

  James laughs, tossing me to the floor. My breath whooshes out of me, and for a moment I’m stunned by the impact, my ribs and back shuddering from this new abuse. I struggle for air, scrabbling sideways on arms and legs that will hardly answer to me, and then James’s weight slams down on me, pinning me to the ground.

  He laughs, his hands ripping at my cloak, tearing it open. I try to twist away from him, my body pinned beneath his weight. If I can just land a good punch—

  His hands close on my wrists. He holds them together with one of his own, his breath panting loud and moist in my face, canines gleaming. No.

  A bony white hand loops under James’s muzzle, yanking him back and lifting him half off me. James releases me with a yelp of surprise, his arms wheeling through the air as he tries to catch his balance.

  “Hello, James,” Val says softly, and, leaning in, he—breathes.

  I don’t know whether it is I who screams or James. Perhaps it is both of us. James withers, his broad shoulders collapsing, his thick wolf’s pelt silvering and falling out in clumps, his teeth bared in a rictus of pain. I can feel his body shriveling, the weight that had pinned me to the ground dissolving.

  Val takes one more breath, his mouth hardly a hairsbreadth from the other’s muzzle, and James groans, a sickening death rattle that gurgles in his throat and twists his fingers into disfigured claws.

  The breather straightens and tosses James’s body away. It thumps onto the stones beside me, a dead thing.

  Val’s eyes meet mine as I cower before him. They are slate gray now; his hair, night shot with silver; his face hardly older than my father’s had been, the skin smooth. I stuff my fist into my mouth to keep from screaming again.

  He stoops and unbuckles James’s sword belt, wraps it around his own waist, then checks the corpse for additional weapons. I scuttle away until my back presses against the wall.

  Val holds out a dagger. “Can you fight?”

  I shake my head jerkily. He slides the dagger into his new sword belt. “Come,” he says, the word a command, and strides from the room, his bare feet silent on the stones. I hesitate a moment, caught by the fall of sunlight on James’s aged body. Averting my eyes, I find myself looking at the guard’s corpse instead.

  I had forgotten about him. He lies on the stones by the door, his arms flung out, the contents of the meal tray he had held scattered beneath him. But, unlike James, there’s no sign that he died in pain. Indeed, I don’t remember him screaming, don’t recall that he made any sound at all. As I stare, I see his chest lift slightly, then settle again. He’s alive?

  “If you fall behind, you will die,” Val says, his voice hard but no longer brittle. I jerk my head up. He stands in the doorway, waiting.

  For a long moment, we look at each other. He is still dressed in his rags.

  “Shouldn’t you …” I start to say, then stop.

  “What?”

  For a man who has spent a year in a cell, he might have learned a bit more patience, I think, my mind curiously detached.

  “Swap your clothes?” I point my toe towards the fallen guard. “As a disguise?”

  Val steps back into the room. “Good thought.” I turn away from him, waiting as he strips down the man and dresses himself. When I turn back, I see that he has even donned the helmet with its curling face guard. The illusion is complete: he looks like nothing more than a guard—a slightly older, grizzled one, but a guard nonetheless.

  “All right?” he says. I nod. He leads the way down the winding staircase carrying the lantern. I am grateful it survived the fight unharmed; I wouldn’t want to try these steps in the near dark of the stairwell.

  At the bottom, Val hangs the lantern from its peg and motions for me to stay back. Then he steps out, sauntering along the wall. I retreat up the stairs until I’m out of sight of the door. I wait, wondering if I trust Val to return. Will he consider our deal complete now that we’re free of the tower, or will he come back? Certainly he has the better disguise for escaping.

  Something rustles in the room below. I start, then ease forward, pressing myself against the wall and peering down. A rat raises its long face, its eyes glinting, and then scurries into the shadows, just as someone enters. I freeze.

  “I have an idea.” Val’s voice reverberates in the stairwell as he starts up towards me. “The gates are open, and you are dead.”

  I swallow. “I’m dead?”

  “Someone must carry your body out. You understand?”

  He doesn’t wait for my response. He bends over and catches me around the legs, then straightens easily, tossing me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I grunt as my stomach folds around his collarbone, my arms flailing.

  “Try to be a little more convincing,” he suggests, hitching me up a little higher. “Remember you’re dead now.” I clench my jaw, head spinning, and let my arms hang down. “Better,” he says. “Hold your breath when we pass the guards.”

  He leaves the tower and makes his way to the castle gates. I close my eyes, my face rubbing against his leather jerkin, and try not to think. His shoulder is broader than I had expected, and hardly bony at all. I swallow. We’ll be through in a few minutes, I think. Then he’ll go off to wherever his allies live, and I ca
n start back to Karolene.

  “What’s that you got?” a voice calls out. I’m surprised I understand. But perhaps the guards come from different lands, and need a trade language to converse in.

  Val turns towards the speaker. “That girl as was fed to the prisoner.”

  “She dead?” The voice comes closer, and with it the sound of other boots.

  Val continues towards them. “Aye.”

  “You sure?” Val pauses as a hand catches my hair and twists my head to the side. It is all I can do not to grimace. The man holds my hair a moment longer, until my breath begins to burn in my lungs, and then he releases me, my face thumping down into Val’s back. “Pity. She mighta been some fun.”

  “The other ones came out looking old,” says a second soldier. “How’s she still young?”

  Val shifts. “Couldn’t say. Wasn’t about to ask. Maybe she killed herself from fright before he got to her.”

  The soldiers snicker. “You saw him?”

  “Aye.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Skeleton thing. Bit like a demon.” He readjusts his hold on me, reminding the soldiers of his burden. “Where should I put her?”

  “Haven’t taken one out before, eh?” the first man says. “There’s a ditch off the road a bit. Just go on down to the marker and take the path into the forest. You’ll see it.”

  “Or fall in it,” another soldier laughs.

  “Easy enough to get out if you’re alive,” the first soldier assures Val as we start forward again. Val only grunts in response, and then we are through, his boots crunching the gravel. He continues down the road with me over his shoulder and doesn’t let me go until we’ve entered the woods.

  Before I can speak, he holds a finger to my lips, then hustles me down the path.

  We smell the ditch before we reach it. The stench of dead things rotting permeates the air. I stagger to a stop some paces away, gagging, but only bile comes up. I wonder if the woman Kol killed for the blood knot was thrown here. I wonder how many other victims he has sucked dry, and how many of Val’s previous meals lie here. My stomach coils into knots.