by Carol Berg
A huge, warm weight settled on my back, pressing the remaining air from my lungs, and then a hand snarled my hair and wrenched my head backward. Wiry hair pressed against my cheek, accompanied by warm, beery breath. “What common pilgrim ventures a warded bridge?”
“Or travels with a lord knight dressed common? They’ve secrets, Quernay. Secrets. He’s blood born sure.” This voice, more excited than the first, came from in front of me, though my watering eyes revealed only a black blur. Two men. At least two. Friendly as jackals.
“The holy brother told us—aagh!” My scalp threatened to rip. “Please, let me spea—”
The one on my back—Quernay—jerked and twisted my neck into an impossible angle and spat on my cheek. “Answer our questions. Where be the noble swordsman?”
“Out east, waiting for me at Fe-hikal. He dresses poor to discourage thieves. Please, he’ll travel on without me.”
“Are you so worthless? Why are you here?”
“Awaiting the Reborn.”
This time the boot landed on my chin. Blood spurted from my lips and chin. Pain lanced through my jaw, trebling the strained agony of my neck.
“Try again,” said Quernay’s overeager friend with the boots, mashing his gritty sole into my face.
“Back off, Merle,” growled the one at my ear. My stomach churned at the stink of him and the onion grass and the strained posture. “You’ve been working spells, oddments. To what purpose?”
My prepared story thinned like wafting smoke. I needed something better, perhaps closer to the truth lest I be tested worse; dizziness already clouded my thinking. “I am a failed acolyte,” I said. “The mendicant’s tales . . . thought I might succeed up here.”
“And your pretty lord?”
“Despises me. Calls me lackwit. Dunce. Wanted to show him. Please, take what you will and let me go. Master said he’d leave me behind did I not join him by sunrise.”
“Mmm,” wheezed Quernay. “Methinks you’ve seen a bit too much to let you go.” The heavy man slammed my face to the ground as he climbed off my back, then snagged my clothing when I attempted to scramble away.
Without wasted word or breath, the two immobilized my legs with cords wrapped from ankles to knees. They bound my wrists behind my back and wound the rope all the way to my elbows, pinching my arms together so tightly they near left their sockets. I could not inhale a full breath.
Blessed angels, keep Ilario hidden. These two were no common bandits. They’d not touched my purse or scattered silver, and, certainly, they themselves had crossed a warded bridge. At least one of them must have some trained sensitivity to magic.
“Get him through the trap,” said Quernay. “I’ll take a look around.”
As the bigger man strode away, his excitable partner looped a rope around my chest and under my cramping shoulders and dragged me across the field. Sharp-edged grass slashed my face. Rocks ripped my clothes and gouged my chest and thighs. I fought to keep my head up, so as not to have it bashed against the rocks. Oblivion would have suited better.
Once he had bumped me up the steps, my captor dropped me on the faded mosaic like a goat brought for sacrifice. The world drifted lazily, like the water in the pool.
“Aberta,” he spat.
A great whipcrack of magic split the air, trembling the ground beneath my cheek. I tried to press myself into the stone.
Grunts of effort, mumbles, thumps, and creaks located the brutish Merle to my left. “Why the frigging saint did you have to show up here at sunset?” he grumbled. “Oughta slit your throat just for the trouble. Quernay’s, too. Get ’im through the trap. I’ll take a look around. Dung-eating goatherd thinks I’m his slavey. Thinks he’s aristo ’cause he can conjure a spell or two.”
Accepting that a mountain was not about to fall on me, I drew my bound legs toward my belly and rocked onto my side to get a look. My captor’s black shape was outlined against the violet afterglow. The temple reader’s red-haired manservant from the shrine—Merle—was wrestling with . . . I blinked dirt away. Everything looked wrong.
No matter my blinking and squinting, the view did not change. The slight, wolfish Merle was raising a rectangular slab that must surely weigh ten times his body’s total. Grunting, he gave a prodigious shove, and the slab . . . drifted . . . to the pavement. Yet it landed with a teeth-rattling thud. Then he reached through the floor and withdrew a paned lantern. My stomach heaved.
I blinked again, and my perceptions shifted. A layer of illusion masked a rectangular gap in the temple floor. But was the slab that had closed it granite or silk? Experience and estimation no longer sufficed.
Merle set the lantern on solid ground, then stepped back a few paces. “Illuminatio.”
Ah, not fair at all that a brutish thug should key a fire spell so soon after my abortive attempt to create one. But indeed, flame blossomed atop the thick white candle inside the lantern. Yet its light entirely contradicted Watt the lens maker’s tidy diagrams and explanations. My eyes did see the light, but not a beam illumined anything beyond the glass. The night, deeper black than before, snugged up around the lantern panes and trapped the fiery glow inside the glass walls.
“Illuminatio.”
This time, flame engulfed the lantern, a wind-whipped bonfire of gold and yellow that could likely be viewed as far west as Tallemant. Merle stood well away from it, his outstretched hand held flat against the flame as if to shield himself. The light beams curled about his outlined fingers.
“Illuminatio, you demon-cursed bit of wax.”
The third invocation of the key quenched the bonfire instantly. But a new flame sprouted like an eager weed from the blackened wick and burned brightly within the lantern’s confines. The beams spread softly across the paving, clean and straight as they ought.
The wolfish man bellowed laughter. “Guess you’re fuddled, eh?” He swung the lantern at my bruised face. I jerked my head back, the glare near blinding me. “We’ll fuddle you all.”
Truly my senses were entirely fuddled. The first two attempts to key the spell had not satisfied him, yet, had my eyes been closed, I would have been unable to distinguish their residue from the third, successful attempt. Impossible, I would have said a day before, yet perhaps no more extraordinary than coins that flew, stones that floated or sank as if by whim, or light beams that cast no reflection save in a human eye.
My captor gave me little time to sort it out. He lowered the bright lantern back through the hidden gap in the floor, then took up my leash and hauled me toward the same location. Gods . . .
Though the sharp edge between floor and no floor was not wholly unexpected, the gut-plummeting drop near sliced my arms off when the rope reached its abrupt limit. Gasping for air, I spewed curses as I had never in my life produced. I hadn’t realized I knew so many.
After three or four jerky lowerings, my toes touched ground, slackening the rope. I toppled like the stone slab onto the very hard, very cold floor.
Lamplight spun. The world blurred and bent. Harsh whoops dragged air into my burning chest. “Souleater’s servant!” I spoke in true conviction of Merle’s identity.
The heavy leash rope smacked the back of my head.
Boots ground on steps. Merle’s warm body stank as he bent over me. Quivering fingers pried at my pockets, unbuttoned my shirt collar, pawed my neck, tugged at my sleeves . . . searching. He crowed when he snapped the courret from its slender chain about my neck and stuffed it in his pocket. Everything else—purse, knife sheath, spall pouch, compass, crocodile charm, Gruchin’s coin, and the boots from my feet—he lobbed into the corner. I didn’t regret the wardstone’s loss. It hadn’t warned me about him.
“The Aspirant will be quite interested in your mark.” Somewhere beyond the red-hot skewers inside my shoulders, he shook my needling-numb left hand. “You’ll keep no secrets from him.”
Damnable incautious fool! I swore at myself, not at Merle. All our efforts would be wasted if the conspirators learned my identity
or, angels defend us, Ilario’s or Dante’s. Who were these people? An aspirant was a magical apprentice, not even a student of my own rank.
“I’ve no secrets,” I mumbled into the floor. “Blood’s sour. Can’t conjure a dewdrop.”
“We’ll see to that.” Somewhere behind my back a blade left a stinging track across my palm.
“Sante Marko, defend!” I bucked and twisted.
“Merle! Get off him!” The voice came from above my head. Heavy boots pounded the steps, skipping the last few to drop hard on the floor close by. “We want a body left to question.”
“Look at his mark, Quernay. See what’s fallen into our lap.”
The bigger man’s noisy breathing soon placed him close. Cool, hard hands forced my clenched fist open. Belying any implication that his object was mercy, he twisted my hand to expose its back, then gripped my bloody chin, and used it to wrench my face up into the lantern light. My tight-bound arms prevented my body following all the way.
“So, who is he?” Quernay’s broad face swam in the glare—wiry black hair, wide brow, chin like an anvil. He was none but the temple reader from the shrine, not so friendly anymore. Above him a rectangle of night marked the entry through the temple floor. No illusion masked the opening from below.
“Don’t know the mark exactly, but I’m sure I’ve seen it. It’s a good mark, I know. He’s blood, for certain, and we need—” A vicious thwack of flesh on bony flesh silenced Merle’s views.
“The Aspirant will decide what we need,” growled Quernay. “While I fetch the supplies, you get this one into the hole and yourself off to the bridge. Wouldn’t want that swordsman to lack a proper welcome should he come looking for his sorcerer.”
“Told you, I’m no confounded sorcerer,” I croaked. “And my master won’t come for me. He’s off to Abidaijar to vow himself to the Saints Awaiting. He’ll ne’er be back to Sabria. I’ll ne’er be back do you let me go. Please, I’d no intent to trespass or blaspheme. I didn’t know. . . .”
Quernay shoved me into an awkward heap. A better view did naught to soothe a rising panic. A few metres away, between me and a whitewashed wall lined with cluttered benches and shelves, a wooden armchair had been bolted to the floor. Leather straps were affixed to its flat arms and the thick, narrow plank that served as its back. Black splatters stained chair, straps, and floor, as well as a fire-glazed urn that stood next the thing. Old blood. Everywhere. Blessed saints . . .
The excitable Merle did not argue. He just watched and quivered as Quernay clambered up the stair and through the entry. Then, exposing his pointed teeth in a grin that made my skin creep, he lashed an arm-length truncheon to his wrist with a leather thong. “Need some practice,” he said, raising the club. “Need to make you tender for the blades.”
I thrashed and yelled, trying to dodge his precisely placed blows. I butted my head and shoulders against his ankles and slammed my bound legs into his, hoping to trip up his dancing steps. My antics only made him laugh the louder.
Logic screamed that Merle’s virulence made no sense. Such reasoned brutality arose from fanatical dispositions, as with the Kadr witchlords who viewed those without their particular power for magic as prey. Or it stemmed from personal bias, passion-wrought grudges over property or family, or overstretched fathers whose profound disappointments prompted them to slay their failed sons. Merle didn’t even know me.
Trussed as I was, defensive postures were futile. All too soon, I lay limp as a dead fish, logic as impossible as resistance. At one distinctive instant, my temple slammed against the bolted legs of the chair, and the world went dark. . . .
“I am no one,” I whispered as he slapped me awake again. Spittle and blood had pooled under my cheek. “Nothing. My blood is weak. Please—”
Merle didn’t seem to hear. Or perhaps he didn’t care. Sweating, roaring in high spirits, he took his brutal pleasure. To my sorrow he did not kill me.
Eventually he dragged me into a small, dark room, redolent with pungent scent, and shoved me to my knees. By the time he had fixed my wrist bindings to an overhead loop, drawing my cinched arms so high and tight behind my back as to bend my head near the floor, I could not have told him my true name, much less where I was or why I’d come.
ABSOLUTE DARKNESS. A PUNGENT SCENT that roiled my stomach. A shearing, lacerating agony in my skull. The viciously cramped rack of my upper body that left every breath a struggle. A paralyzing terror of what was to come.
As the lightless hours flowed one into the other, indistinguishable, a bitter litany beat in time with my stuttering heart. Inexcusable to let them take you. Blind. Inattentive. Caught up in selfish dreams. Unworthy. Eventually, inevitably, a warm flood soaked my breeches, firing my skin with shame and my soul with humiliation.
Unable to sit or recline, I tried once to ease the strain of my position by standing, but my wobbling knees refused to hold me. The resulting collapse dropped my entire weight on my overstrained shoulders, near wrenching my arms from their sockets. My cry reflected sharply from the enclosing walls, a knife blade prying at my cracked skull. Sobbing, desperate, I scrabbled aching knees back under me, and there I remained, vowing to every divine being never to move again.
Blackness swelled and flowed, puddled and pooled. Overwhelming. Enveloping. Cocooned in silence, my mind had difficulty holding to any sensible course. Incapable of sleep, I dreamed of faces: my dead father, whom I did not mourn; Kajetan, living, whom I did; Philippe, who had graced me with his confidence; kind, graceful, intelligent Maura, whom I had determined to trust. Ideas, imaginings, and a few small threads of logic floated past me in the dark, like coins and stones on Eltevire’s strange pond. And from time to time, a clearly formed conclusion would waggle its tail, troutlike, and attract my notice.
Materials native to this place refused obedience to the prescriptions of natural science; materials brought from elsewhere behaved themselves, the sole exception being Gruchin’s coin. Perhaps Gruchin, the not-assassin, the mule, had been bled here. Perhaps his lucky coin had been in his pocket or his boot when he was subjected to the torments of Eltevire. What kind of spellwork could ensorcel silver—the perfect amalgam of the five elements—beyond the bounds of nature, yet leave no residue? The place where it all began.
These people were going to bleed me until my soul and body shriveled like a grape left too long in the sun. Another strained inhalation. Another deluge of cold sweats. I shivered uncontrollably.
A small victory when I identified the aroma exuded by the walls. Camphor bespoke the rare whitebud laurel. Whitebud laurel, and walls so close I could feel the reflections of my own breath, bespoke a sorcerer’s hole. Lined with cypress, inlaid with camphor laurel, the exterior locked and banded with iron, such windowless closets were the single enclosure ever discovered that could completely frustrate the use of magic. If my posture had allowed me a full breath, I might have laughed at the irony of such a space wasted on me.
Another fish twitched its tail: Perhaps Merle and Quernay were actually Goram and Vichkar, the blood-thirsty companions of holy legend who had blighted history by perpetrating its first joint and mutual murder. Perhaps demonic spirits could be reborn to do mischief, just as the saints sacrificed their heavenly sojourn to come back and aid sorry humankind.
I dismissed this fishy theory quickly. I could not imagine these two as bosom friends who loved their mothers, as legend bespoke.
Father Creator, how had I come to this? What fool’s illusions of purpose had led me so beyond my safe library? Not mother’s love. My mother doused herself with lavender scent and tormented her serving girl. Since my father’s death, she would dissolve into hysterics whenever she saw me.
A scraping noise heralded a thin, vertical band of gray light that split the wall in front of me. Despite its painful brilliance, I inhaled the light, longing to be a lumenfish, able to drink in the sun’s rays, only to release them again in the long dark of sea nights. “D-did you love your m-mother, Quernay?” I croaked t
hrough chattering teeth, feeling madly brave. “Are you a f-fish?”
When he failed to answer, I ventured a glance upward, and near pissed myself again. The black-gowned form was not Quernay. Taller, surely, but less bulky overall, the newcomer wore a leather mask formed to a male’s likeness. Severe in its perfectly proportioned beauty, serene in its superiority, the walnut-hued face might have been that of the Pantokrator himself or one of his warrior angels . . . or perhaps the Pantokrator’s chief adversary. The Book of Creation named the Souleater the most beautiful of the fallen. Ophelie’s leech had worn a mask.
“Demon get! Merle’s left him pulp!” So Quernay was here, too. “Best send the lackwit back to the city, lord, else he’ll have us all dead in our beds.”
Back to the city . . . Visions of imprisonment in a crate near stilled my heart until I sorted out that he spoke of mad, wolfish Merle, not me.
The silent visitor squeezed through the slotlike doorway, built purposefully narrow to slow an imprisoned sorcerer’s escape.
“I’ve a guess this one will be too stubborn to die on us.” The throaty whisper crawled into my soul, quiet like a spider. Gloved fingers lifted my chin. With the light behind, the mask’s eye slits revealed naught but tarry voids. The thought came to me that a demon returned to the world might wear such a mask to hide his corruption. “How did you find me?”
Chilled and sick, I could summon no mettle to control my shaking. I clung to my tale. “I am nothing,” I mumbled through swollen lips. “No one. Failed. A pilgrim.”
“Let me be more specific,” said the Aspirant, low and harsh. “I believe I am addressing a very particular no one. Did your royal kinsman send you here, librarian?”
I had thought I could get no colder or sicker. “R-royal? N-not even my m-master—”
He allowed my head to drop, launching new bolts of lightning through my neck and shoulders and catapulting my head into such throbbing agony as could obliterate reason.