Sword of Jashan (Book 2)

by Anne Marie Lutz

  “It is to protect you,” Yhallin said. Her seat on the horse was stiff, her elbows out. Callo remembered the woman had been a street child, never trained to ride. The hint of awkwardness made her more human, drawing aside the veil of mystery she cultivated.

  Callo made a face. It did not suit him to owe Sharpeyes another debt for his safety.

  “We planned to take you to Deephold with the next caravan anyway,” Yhallin said. “We simply rode out sooner.”

  “What threatens me so much that Sharpeyes did not feel he could guard me in his own castle?” Callo asked.

  “Despite precautions, the gossip is all over the Castle that you tried to pay street thugs to kill Lord Ander. The Council has been complaining about you to the King, whining that you should be exiled. Lady Dria Mar nags the King morning and night that you are a bastard, an offense against the righ who should never have been allowed to live past the birthing chamber. Aside from the King, who is enamored of your mage gifts, the only one defending you has been the boy.”

  “You mean Lord Ander.”

  Yhallin nodded.

  Callo sighed. “I take it his defense has ceased.”

  Yhallin’s dark eyes glanced his way. Lit only by the single torch, her face was spare and otherworldly as a ghoul’s. “He has been silent on the matter.”

  Callo knew what that meant. Ander believed Callo had betrayed him, even seeking to end his life. Callo tried to ignore the bitterness that swept him. He liked the boy. This was no fault of Ander’s. In fact, the boy was tossed here and there by the intrigue that buffeted them both. Callo hoped the tide of events did not end up smashing Ander’s broken body ashore.

  The planes of Yhallin’s face lit in a brief glow. Looking around for the source, Callo discovered a drift of color magery lighting his hands on the reins. Miri must have felt it; she bobbed her head and rumbled a nervous whicker.

  “We have brought phodian with us,” Yhallin said.

  “No!” Callo flung up a hand. He willed the color magery back behind his wall. It faded away and left Yhallin regarding him. A headache began to pulse behind his eyes. He heard an echo as of a voice barely heard and shook his head to clear it.

  “I will not take it,” he said. “I will go to Deephold, do what I said I would, not for you but for someone else. But I will take no more of your poison.”

  “And if you lose control and become a danger to the rest of us?”

  “Then you may slay me. I will not spend my days more dead than alive.”

  “King Martan has gone to great trouble to make sure you are not slain,” she said. But she looked at his hands, saw the magery ebbing away to darkness, and nodded. Then she rode ahead to give some direction to the guards who led them. Callo tried to ignore the flickers of headache-induced light in his vision, and rode on.

  * * * * *

  They arrived at Yhallin’s mountain hold days later, just as the sun slipped toward the horizon.

  Red-gold rays lit the western face of Mount Vesh. The lower slopes of the neighboring mountains were cast into accelerated dusk by its bulk. Callo knew that, in any homes in those valleys, it would be night.

  Yhallin’s hold was built into the rock. Its door faced into the setting sun. As they approached, Callo began to feel the color magery fighting back against the barrier he imposed upon it. His head pounded. When the groom came to take Miri, he slid off her back and wavered as the magery swept through him.

  Kirian, who had ridden beside him most of the last day, took his wrist. “Your heart beats too fast,” she said.

  “The treatment,” Callo said. “I want it done now.”

  “Now?” She looked around. “It is dark, almost. You are weary from the saddle. I think not.”

  “Kirian.” Callo looked directly at her, his eyes meeting her soft worried ones. “It has to be now. I am done being a pawn.”

  She did not look away. Then she nodded. “I will tell Mage Yhallin.”

  * * * * *

  “Are you sure about this, my lord?” Chiss asked.

  “Not at all,” Callo replied. He looked up at Chiss, who stood over him wearing the vaguely ill expression he had worn since he had been attacked in Kirian’s room. “Are you well enough to be here, Chiss?”

  “It’s just a headache that won’t go,” he said. “I will see Hon Kirian again after you are settled.”

  “I hope it was worth it,” Callo grumbled.

  A servant came into the room and began locking his arms into the soft restraints attached to the side of the padded cot. Callo’s heart jumped. He would be helpless, left alone in this place with no one near him, for who knew how long.

  “Is there anything you want me to do?” Chiss asked after the servant left.

  Callo laughed. Chiss’ gaze sharpened as he noticed how strained Callo sounded. “Aside from sparing me all this? No. Just—if it seems too long, or if you notice anything not right, then perhaps you can speak up.”

  “Of course.” Chiss grimaced. “Mage Yhallin says she will be monitoring your condition. I will make sure I do as well, my lord.”

  “I trust you.” Callo knew his breath was coming fast. He did not like being restrained like this, and it would be candlemarks yet before he was released. If he was fortunate, that is. He looked up at Chiss. “If things do not go well—there are not many people in the world that I trust, Chiss. You have been with me through everything. I want you to know how I value you.”

  Chiss’ mouth twisted. “I am surprised to hear you say that, my lord.”

  “What, you mean after that mess at Seagard Castle?” Callo gave a shaky laugh. “I was angry. I wanted never to see you again, since you betrayed me, or so I thought. I still do not completely understand. But honor carries us in strange ways sometimes, and I have never since that time doubted your care for me.”

  Chiss looked at him for a moment, then gave an odd smile. “You are not going to die here, my lord. There is no reason to be saying your goodbyes.”

  He shook his head. “There have been bodies carried out of this place before, Chiss. Mage Yhallin was truthful about that, at least. As for Kirian . . . where is Kirian?”

  “Mage Yhallin refused to let her in.”

  “Afraid she would weep all over me? That is not Kirian’s way.”

  “Mage Yhallin does not yet know her well.” Chiss turned then and became businesslike, checking the tightness of Callo’s bonds and otherwise making sure his lord was comfortable on the padded cot. “Are you thirsty? It may be awhile.”

  “I’m fine.” Callo wanted nothing in his stomach. He did not know what was to happen here. Memories of his ordeal in Ha’las, when the god Som’ur came to test him, floated through his mind. That experience was painful, and only Jashan’s intervention let him come out of that alive. He hoped whatever awaited him here was no more difficult.

  Chiss bowed. “I will see you later, my lord.”

  “Later.” He tried to lift a hand in farewell, but the restraints pulled him back.

  Chiss left the room. Callo looked around, trying to distract himself. Thick, dark cloth covered the walls of the room and seemed to muffle sound. The floor was black, and he could see no windows. They were underground, in the lower levels of Yhallin’s Deephold, in a chamber down a hallway with no other doors. It had taken them only several days’ riding to get here from Sugetre, and yet he was so far from aid he might as well be in another world.

  Callo closed his eyes. His nerves tingled, and he knew the internal barrier he kept against the twin powers he had inherited was eroding. Put him in a battle, and he would fight. Put him in the ring, and he would use every skill to win, meanwhile delighting in the flow of action. But restrained in this strange little room, Callo felt his fears rising up to overcome him. Was this part of the ordeal—overcoming his fear of constraint?

  The door opened again. Yhallin entered, wrapped in her mage cloak against the chill of this lower level. She stood near the wall for a moment. Callo took a deep breath, trying to cal
m his jittery nerves.

  Yhallin began to examine him. She checked his heart rate with a cool hand on his wrist and looked into his eyes. She picked up his hands, testing the restraints, and placed a hand briefly on his forehead.

  “Are you still willing?” Yhallin asked.

  Callo had an uncomfortable feeling that the question was asked to protect herself from later recriminations, should something go awry. He swallowed. “Yes.”

  “You are feeling well?”

  “I was.” He rattled the restraints. “These things are . . . worrisome.”

  “Before long you will no longer notice them.” Yhallin stood. “It is not unusual for people to feel stress upon being restrained, especially when a new experience awaits them. I find this is especially true of unCollared righ, who are accustomed to little restraint in any form.”

  “Indeed,” Callo said. “When does this experiment begin?”

  She frowned. “This is not an experiment, Lord Callo. This is a method that I have used eight times previously.”

  “Still, a trial,” he said.

  Yhallin nodded. “It is. I believe you are ready. Is there anything else?”

  He paused and thought. It would be nice to delay her by talking, putting off this trial longer. But then, he wanted it over, so he could be confident his magery posed no threat to those around him unless he willed it so. He wanted done with the guardsmen, the drugs, and the confinement. Only if he succeeded would he be free to take Kirian to his bed again, confident he would not use his psychic magery as the Ha’lasi mages did, to manipulate and corrupt.

  He wanted to trust himself again. Once he did, he could proceed to fulfill his vow to avenge Arias’ murder.

  “Nothing else,” he said. “Go.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “In a hurry? I don’t know whether that will work in your favor or not. Gods watch over you, Callo ran Alkiran.”

  She went out then, taking the lone lamp that stood in the corner. The door closed behind her with a muffled sound; apparently it was wrapped with hide as well.

  Total blackness came down on Callo as if he were in a tomb.

  He lay flat on the cot, evaluating. He could see nothing. He hoped that after his eyes adjusted, a stray crack or fissure would permit some light into the room, but he was not hopeful. They had padded the walls, swathed the place in cloth and hide; they had gone to some effort to make sure there were no cracks where light could enter.

  There was no sound. The slight smokiness of the lamp was vanishing even as he thought of it, and there was no remaining fragrance.

  He took a deep breath, then another. In and out, in and out. His heart rate began to slow.

  “Jashan, remember me now,” he said, and closed his eyes to block out a useless attempt at vision.

  * * * * *

  Candlemarks later it seemed, Callo strained to see. Not even a stray filament of light crept into the room. A tangle of red drifted upward, and he followed the skein of light, until he realized they were the false visions manufactured by the eyes when there was nothing else to see.

  He thought his eyes were closed. He opened them, only to see smothering blackness.

  He tried to sense inside, to touch the source of color magery, the ku’an magery. That, after all, was the point of this exercise. His internal barrier stood crumbled and skewed inside his mind, falling apart as he knew it had been lately, but there was nothing behind it.

  He tried to reach out his hands, to see evidence of the color magery that frequently escaped his control. He felt nothing. It was as if he’d been abandoned. He had wished the magery gone, but now that he could not find it, he was stricken, as if part of his body had vanished.

  Then he began to feel the little touches, the itching.

  It was a series of touches, feathering over his skin. He knew there was no other person in the room, but nonetheless someone touched him. The sensation drew little prickles on his chest, on his thigh, the arch of his right foot.

  He tried to squirm away, but his hands only jarred within the restraints. “Agh!” he said.

  The sound of his own voice was like a bell in the solitude. He stilled, hearing the sound die away fast, muffled in all the cloth lining the walls.

  “My voice,” he said aloud, experimentally. He listened, and then shook his head. It would be much better if he could sleep, especially since he was alone, without even the color magery to resist.

  * * * * *

  “Why’s everyone so worried about a cursed color mage?” Mot asked. She slouched against a bench in Deephold’s mountain garden, sucking on sugar candy. Cleaned up and dressed in some donated clothes, she was—not pretty, Kirian thought, but the vitality in her peaked little face drew the eye.

  “He is my friend, and he is ill,” Kirian responded. “Mage Yhallin is treating him.”

  “He must be bat-crazy then,” offered Mot. “I heard o’her. She’s the Magegard.”

  “He’s not bat crazy.” Yet.

  “Almost feel sorry fer him,” Mot said. “Bat-crazy, and people out to get him too. But—nah, I don’t feel sorry for him after all.”

  Kirian could not help but laugh.

  Mot grinned at her. It was the first smile Kirian had seen from the girl since they had taken her to Sugetre Castle, then to Deephold. The girl had stopped talking as soon as they had arrived at the castle. She had accepted the clothes with no comment. Only after a bath and some food had the tightness gone from her shoulders, and she had not opened up until this moment.

  “Ya haven’t asked me about the attack on Lord Ander,” Mot said.

  “I have been worried, and occupied. Lord Callo’s life was in danger, and we needed to run. Now I want to hear what you have to say about the other man, the one Lord Dionar slew in the cells.”

  Mot made a face. “He’s a rat, that one. Always has been. My da said use him but never trust him.”

  “He exhibited some strength in the cells though. He stuck to his story—for some reason.”

  “If he’d known they was about to chop off his head, he woulda told the truth soon enough. They paid us, Hon Kirian. To say what we said.”

  “They paid you all to name Lord Callo if you were taken?”

  “Well, to say it was a yellow-eyed righ. I knew nothin’ about Lord Callo then.”

  “Did your father say who it really was, then? The one who paid you to take Lord Ander, and then lie about it?”

  “He didn’ say a name.”

  Disappointment flooded her. She had hoped this precocious child would have the entire story and be able to clear Callo’s name. “Did he tell you anything about the man?”

  Mot grinned. “Wasn’t a man at all, Hon Kirian. My Da said it was a woman.”

  * * * * *

  Callo felt he had been lying on the cot in the black room for candlemarks. His stomach was rumbling, so maybe he had passed the night and now it was breakfast time. He sighed and looked into blackness, searching within him once again for the magery that had caused so much trouble. He found nothing.

  He looked straight ahead—at least he thought it was straight ahead. He was not sure if his head was in the proper orientation.

  Then he saw a face, looming out of nothingness. It had wide empty eyes and a slash of a mouth. It seemed very close. The face said nothing to him.

  “Who are you?” His voice was hoarse. He tried to clear his throat, but he was very dry, and only succeeded in hurting his throat. He tried to swallow, but there was nothing to swallow with. How long had he been here?

  The face stared at him wordlessly. Callo blinked, and the face was gone. A pattern rose out of darkness and turned into a man, turning to look at him, scowling with sword raised. Callo jerked in his bonds, instinctively reaching for his missing sword. Then that man vanished too.

  Hallucinations.

  He had not counted on hallucinations. He had thought there would be some kind of epic battle between the magery and his own powers of restraint—or perhaps the intervention of a
god, as there had been in Ha’las. Not this endless nothing, straining to see so that he made up his own demons. He could no longer even feel the cot against his back and legs. The only sound was when he spoke, and his throat was too sore for that now. He could taste nothing, smell nothing. He drifted, a lone consciousness in the void.

  * * * * *

  There was only darkness. He felt he had been here forever. It seemed that the cot tilted under him and he pushed his hands against it, trying to hold on.

  * * * * *

  Kirian and Chiss waited at the bottom of the stairs to the lower levels. Yhallin emerged with her cloak drawn about her.

  “How is he?” Chiss asked.

  Yhallin shrugged. “I have no idea. There is still no light to see by, and I heard no sound.”

  “You cannot see much through that tiny spy hole anyway,” Chiss said.

  “Hasn’t it been a long time for the battle to have not even begun?” Kirian asked.

  “It seems so,” Yhallin said. “But there was one young man, a color mage from the south, who went an entire day before touching his magery.”

  “And what happened to that young man?” Chiss stepped aside, allowing Yhallin access to the stairs. “Was his story a success?”

  Yhallin did not reply. Kirian followed her up the stairs, more afraid than ever.

  * * * * *

  When the first burn of power came, Callo welcomed it. It awakened him from death.

  The ku’an magery came first. It was an insidious thing, something he had kept controlled since he was nine, using Jashan’s ritual to reinforce his self-control. But the color magic belonged to Jashan, and it wanted free. It ran through his veins from wherever it had been hiding like a river of fire.

  He laughed. It was easy now to break the restraints, the color magery burning them off until they were no more. The acrid stench of burnt cloth and hide reached his nostrils, and he sucked it in, welcoming it, something at last in the everlasting nothingness.

  The magery wrapped his arms like ink on his skin, and everywhere it ran it burned. Callo’s senses awoke to the pain. He tried to force the power back where it came from, as he had been doing since it appeared months ago. He opened the prison he had made for Jashan’s magery and tried to cram it back in, where it could do no harm, where it could hurt no one, where it would not kill its user with flame and pain.