Summer-set
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“I don’t understand why you stay here with him,” Nerav said.
She shrugged, unwilling to explain. Her relationship with Tamel had turned strange. She had loved him before she had found out he was a sorcerer, and had sworn to herself that the discovery would change nothing. He had saved their lives with that sorcery. But then the prince’s hunter had come, and Tamel had asked her to do what she must to distract him. He must have known what he was asking.
Tamel had tried to make love to her after she rejoined him, but she couldn’t go through with it. He thought it was because he had asked her to seduce another man. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was because she had come to feel something for that man. She had been relieved when he found Iril.
She stayed with him even then because there was nowhere else to go. She had loved a sorcerer and one of the wolf-born, and at least the sorcerer felt some obligation toward her. She rather thought she knew how Ryu felt toward her after she left him.
She started when Nerav spoke again. He had been watching her brood. “You’re troubled by your decision,” he said.
“Troubled by questions,” she said with just enough seriousness to warn him away from the topic.
He frowned but changed the subject. “Tell me more about who’s come,” he said. “Are there others as powerful as Tamel?”
“No.” The direction of his questioning troubled her, but Tamel had urged her to be open with all who came to the city, to make them feel welcome. They only gained entrance, after all, upon demonstrating some sorcery. “Only those with a single talent, so far, though some of those are quite strong. One woman, Iril, commands the elements of earth and stone, and she built much of this city.”
The ground shuddered. Calanthe caught herself on her hands instead of taking a harder fall.
Nerav had kept his balance easily. “Was that her?”
“It must have been, but we shouldn’t have been able to feel it from here…” Shouts were arising from the gate. Calanthe began to run.
The ground had cracked open. People shouted questions and helped each other to their feet. One person was still in the midst of it all—Iril was slumped on the ground as though her legs had simply given out from under her, head bent and shoulders heaving. Calanthe couldn’t imagine what the effort had cost her.
She knelt by Iril. “What’s happened?”
Iril looked up and took a moment to focus on Calanthe. “We caught one of the wolf-born,” she said tensely.
The world might have trembled again, so unbalanced did she feel. “Not the prince’s hunter?”
“He bore no signet.” Iril shot a dark look at one of the guards, who stood by with a sheepish expression. “At least, I think even he would have noticed it.”
Calanthe stilled her wild hopes and told her racing heart to calm. “Are you all right?”
Iril grimaced. “Just drained. I think the city will have to wait a little longer to get built.” She held out her hand. They clasped each other’s forearms, and then Calanthe braced and pulled Iril up.
“It certainly will if you keep tearing the ground apart from under it,” Calanthe said, looking at the chasm.
Iril shook her head, even though a small laugh escaped her. “Oh, you.”
“Iril!” Tamel skidded to a halt next to them, wrapped his arms around Iril, and pulled her close. “Are you all right?”
With him, Iril let her head come to rest on his shoulder. She murmured something to Tamel.
Calanthe stepped closer to the fissure and looked down, but she could barely make out the shape of a man, dirt loosely fallen over him. Unclothed, of course, as the wolf-born were after they shifted, but she couldn’t tell anything else about him, face-down as he was. He had been knocked unconscious by the fall, she surmised.
Tamel disengaged himself from Iril to stand beside Calanthe and stare down at the wolf-born. “Someone bring me silver,” he said, raising his voice.
There was a hesitation, and then the guard dropped a few coins at Tamel’s feet.
A woman offered a ring. Others drifted away, only to return with whatever odd pieces they could offer: a mirror, a brooch, a belt buckle. Finally Tamel bent down and gathered as much as he could.
The silver began to run molten. Holding it in his cupped hands, he nodded sharply, and the ground in front of him re-formed into a sloping ramp.
“Iril.”
She came when he called, and followed him as he walked down into the chasm. She seemed to know what he wanted, rolling the wolf-born onto his side and bringing his arms in front of him.
Tamel swiftly took hold of the wolf-born’s wrists. When he stepped back, his hands were empty, and Calanthe saw that the silver had been cast into crude shackles.
She had seen him do sorcery before. She had witnessed him kill with it. But his life, and her own, had been threatened then. The wolf-born was already helpless, and her stomach felt unsettled as she watched Tamel and Iril come back up, leaving him lying there.
“He won’t be able to shift now,” Tamel said wearily. “Someone get some chains to hold him—plain iron will do, he’s weaker as a human. Put him in one of the cellars and guard him.”
“Not you,” Iril said to the guard she had spoken of earlier. “You let him in the city in the first place. We’ll trap him in with sorcery.”
The guard found pressing matters elsewhere. The way Tamel was watching him, he was fortunate Iril was weak enough to need the support of his arm around her waist.
Calanthe had forgotten about Nerav. She had thought he would follow her to investigate the source of the commotion, but a quick scan showed that he wasn’t in the crowd. She backtracked to the courtyard, but he was nowhere to be found.
Chapter Six
Ryuan woke to find his wrists bound in silver. It was foolish, but he immediately tried to shift, and failed. There was a flare of pain that eased away once he resigned himself to his man-shape.
He could tell little about where he was being held except that it was dark and he was lying on hard-packed dirt. There was a rich smell to it, like earth just turned. Had they dug out a cell just for him?
Then he remembered the earth opening beneath him. It was sorcery, of course.
He rose to the rattle of metal. They had looped a chain around his manacles and then affixed it to the wall, with just enough length to allow him to stand facing the corner.
Testing the strength of the chains only chafed his wrists. The men who had put them on him were surely more feeble than he was, but he hadn’t even had the chance to fight them. He understood now the mistrust people held for sorcery, for power that could overwhelm without recourse. And it hadn’t even been used on him, only the ground beneath his feet.
Regrets crowded the small, dark space he was in. He shouldn’t have shifted into man-shape at that last moment. He shouldn’t have trusted Nerav. He shouldn’t have left the village with such haste. He shouldn’t have plucked that flower in his mother’s garden…
He shouldn’t have loved Calanthe.
A light intruded. Ryuan looked over his shoulder, narrowing his eyes against the glare. There were two silhouettes, a man and a woman. The latter, he thought, was the one who had identified him. The other…
“I am Tamel,” he said. The light was balanced on his fingertips with no visible source.
“Sorcerer,” Ryuan snarled.
“Like all who live in this city. And like your master.”
Kaen had never used his gift beyond sensing the winds he could not help but know the paths of. “Sorcerer-murderer then.”
Tamel flinched. Then he said, “You’re one to speak.”
The woman added quietly, “Three men were killed today by one of the wolf-born.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” Ryuan said, letting the chains clank in sharp reminder of exactly where he had been and what he had been capable of doing, all this time.
“It was at your master’s command, I know,” Tamel said, impatient. “How many
of you did he bring?”
“I hunt alone,” he said flatly. Then he thought of Nerav, but the wolf-born had already abandoned him once, apparently to slay the denizens of this city. And they were no power-hungry sorcerers—he had heard their stories at the gate, and the people here had done nothing but seek a place where children would not taunt them and rocks would not be thrown at them. He had to get free and stop the killings. Once Tamel was gone, he was sure, the others would disperse, and Nerav would not have such a dense cluster of targets.
Tamel released a long breath. “You’ll tell the truth, one way or another. Iril, you have the key?”
The woman’s hands went to a leather thong around her neck. Tied onto it was an iron key. “Yes, but—”
“I won’t free him. Give it to me.”
She did, and he unknotted the key and passed it back to her. She looked as uncertain as Ryuan felt.
Tamel began stroking the leather cord between thumb and forefinger. “My arts won’t work on you,” he said to Ryuan. “Your kind was made to be resistant to sorcery, as you must know. It made you a potent threat. But there are more mundane ways to deal with you.”
The leather strip was longer and thinner now, reshaped by Tamel’s sorcery. Ryuan did not fail to notice its resemblance to a whip.
“Since I did not create you,” Tamel said, “I cannot command you. But there are other ways. We’ll begin with the small miseries. Now, who sent you?”
Ryuan saw no reason to lie. “The prince.”
The whip cracked down. “Who sent you?”
A line of fire opened on his back. Ryuan twisted and threw himself against the chains, wanting to snap the sorcerer’s face off. His muscles bunched, striving toward a shift that would not come, and his wrists burned.
“He entered the city with a man,” Iril said. She did not look at Ryuan, but her interjection almost seemed timed to have spared him another blow. “That must have been the sorcerer.”
“Find him.”
“I will,” she said, “and you will take appropriate measures against him instead of his wolf-born.”
Tamel turned to her, clearly caught off-guard. “They were created as warriors, Iril. They can bear far worse than this.”
“He’s being loyal to his master. And he hasn’t actually caused any harm.”
Tamel snorted. “Why else did he trick his way in here? Let him tell me why his master came into my city.”
“Our city.” Her voice was low. “Or because we are weaker than you, perhaps we don’t matter? Is that why you worry about this sorcerer? Do you fear someone who might match your power?”
Tamel threw the whip down and pivoted. “I’ll find him and deal with him myself.” He tossed the light over his shoulder.
Iril barely caught it. “Tamel—” She started after him, then recalled Ryuan and spun on him. “If you tell me of your master, I might be able to find him before Tamel does something reckless to either of you.”
He had no weapons but words. “You’re too kind to a chained man,” he said mockingly, knowing it would be worse for her than open anger.
She flushed. “You sound just like—” She stopped. “Your wounds will be seen to. Can you blame Tamel for his anger, though? People have died.”
“He killed a man.”
“A bandit who tried to kill him!”
“Prince Kaen would have offered him exile. But he fled, coward that he was.”
She began pacing, even in this tight space. “He told me about this. He fled any other sorcerers who might hear of how he broke the Law of Century. When none came, he realized that he must be the last one left who knew the full extent of his powers. So he decided to build this city, where those who have a trace of the gift can learn to use it without endangering others.”
“His motives are so pure, you think?”
She stopped. “You can’t build a wall between us.”
“I wasn’t the one questioning him.”
“Enough of this. Tell me why you’re here.”
“To find Tamel,” he said wearily. “Instead I sat by a gate all day, listening to that fool guard call me a dog, before getting caught by you.”
It was clear she knew whom he spoke of. “He’s good with a sword, though,” she said, then shook her head. “Or he was.”
“He was one of the ones killed?”
“Yes.”
Ryuan leaned against the wall. Despite Iril’s assertion, he had never met anyone more harmless. The guard hadn’t been bright, but he hadn’t deserved death.
“Tell me what you know,” she said, “so that I can stop this.”
He thought of telling her about Nerav, but he could not betray his own kind. The wolf-born had left him to this, but unknowingly. If Ryuan had been enslaved by a sorcerer such as Tamel, he would feel the same rage against all such men. And Nerav was the only one who could answer questions about what he was.
Iril waited until it was clear he would say nothing. “Then you must share the blame for these deaths,” she said. “Or perhaps that doesn’t trouble you.” She turned and left.
She was not completely callous. She left the light, so that he could contemplate his dismal cell in its pale glow.
Chapter Seven
Calanthe knelt by the woman’s body. It was the fifth that had been found, marked the same way as the others, with the throat torn out in a crushing bite and claw marks raking the body. The wall was scarred by fire, as though the woman had tried to defend herself with sorcerous flame, and missed—except that there was a gap in the scorch-marks, where the firebolt would have hit the assailant instead.
She hadn’t known this woman, who had fought to the last. She wished, briefly, that she had taken the time to change that, as Tamel had urged her.
The man who had discovered the body stood next to her, still staring at it in horror. She had heard his call for help, and come to discover this.
“Find Iril,” she said to him. Iril, level-headed, handled much of the administration as well as the building of the city.
He tore his gaze away. “I will,” he said, voice trembling, “but then I’m leaving.”
She kept her voice calm, so as not to provoke him. “Because you think you’ll be next?”
“Because I don’t know that I won’t be. I can’t do much, but this sorcerer might not know that.”
“You’re sure it’s a rival sorcerer.”
He hesitated. “It can’t be the prince’s hunter. He wouldn’t ambush us like this, would he? His executions are done openly.”
She thought of Ryuan hiding in shadows, silently killing off these people one by one— No. “It can’t be,” she echoed.
“Should I go to the prince? Ask him for his judgment against this sorcerer?”
She hesitated. Ryuan had spoken warmly of his foster-brother, but she still did not know what to think of a man who sentenced another to death for killing an outlaw. Would the prince bother to send his hunter here? What could he do?
What would she do, if she saw Ryuan again?
She was silent too long. “Maybe I’ll leave now,” the man said, inching toward the door. His face shone with sweat.
She hadn’t wanted to leave the body, but it wasn’t as though any more harm could be done. “Go, then. I’ll tell Iril about this.”
Calanthe found her in the empty building whose cellar held the wolf-born. Iril was picking up habits from her lover; she pushed her hands through her hair when she heard Calanthe’s news. “Another? The whole city’s going to have to be locked down to keep people safe. Curse those wretched guards!”
“They’re supposed to keep people out, not in,” Calanthe said.
“People are leaving?”
“The man who found this body didn’t seem to think he was safe here.”
“There are safeguards we can take, even if the wolf-born are resistant to sorcery.”
“Not everyone sleeps in the same bed as a sorcerer who can set wards at night,” Calanthe pointed out.
“Did you try the captive wolf-born?”
“Yes, but he spoke as though he were the prince’s hunter.”
Calanthe stared at her. “You told me it wasn’t him.”
“I don’t think so. The prince’s hunter never removes his signet, right? But there were some things he said…”
“Iril,” she said, “I must see him.”
“Tamel wouldn’t want that.”
Calanthe had always thought that Iril supported Tamel because she truly believed in what he worked toward, not because she blindly followed her lover. “If you don’t want me to see him, fine. But don’t hide behind Tamel. You know I haven’t let him rule me, but I see you’re different.”
Iril hissed in impatience. “Go see him, then!” She gestured and the floor folded downward into a staircase. Grudgingly: “Actually, you might want to feed him and see to his wounds.”
“He was wounded in the fall?”
“No.” Iril looked away. “Tamel whipped him.”
Calanthe couldn’t understand why he would do such a thing. “What did the wolf-born do?”
“He wouldn’t answer Tamel’s questions.”
Calanthe had witnessed flashes of temper on Tamel’s part, but using a whip on a chained man?
“Give me the key to his chains.”
“Calanthe!”
”He’ll still have the silver manacles on.”
“He could hurt you even as a man with his hands bound.”
“He hasn’t hurt or killed anyone yet, although I can understand it if he wants to now. Give me something to bargain with, since clearly beating the information out of him won’t work.”
Iril thrust the key at her. “If he gets free and joins the rampage of kills, you’ll be to blame.”
“That’s the strange thing,” Calanthe said, puzzled. “The wolf-born don’t massacre indiscriminately like this. They focus on their prey, a single target, and won’t be swayed from it.” She remembered watching Ryuan hunt, always bringing down the same beast he promised for their supper.