Sword of Jashan (Book 2)

by Anne Marie Lutz

  It was too strong. He could not touch it. The other source of magery, the ku’an magery, joined it. He could feel twin sources of power blend and join, making each stronger while Callo became just a carrier for their strength.

  A carrier who could not stand up to the fire running through him.

  “Jashan’s sword, So’mur’s heart,” he rasped. Both gods had fought over him in a little room in Las’ash city. Now it seemed they had joined forces to destroy him.

  The pain screamed along every nerve. He fought, struggled, and cursed to shove it back. He wished the magefire back where it belonged, and nowhere near him. Sweat dripped from him until his hands were slippery where they clung to the bed frame. He wondered blankly why he was clinging to the frame now that he was free, and then realized something was trying to drag him away—he did not know whether it was a god or some effect of the magery, but a pull like that of the earth struggled to take him.

  He still raged against it.

  Mage energies washed up the walls in a sheet of color, turning the room bright. There were flames licking at his fingers; he grabbed a cloth and tried to subdue them, meanwhile trying to drown the magery in the blackness he remembered from a little while ago.

  A wisp of smoke rose from the cloth.

  Horrified, Callo thrust it away from him. What if he were to set this room afire? This tiny room with no windows, with walls covered in fabric and hide? Then he would indeed be one of Yhallin’s failures, a body carried out charred beyond recognition.

  And this wing of Deephold would likely be burned as well.

  Free from the destroyed restraints, he pushed the cot aside. Standing in the center of the room with magefire arcing around him, he tried to assume the first stance in Jashan’s ritual. Swordless, he began the first turns of the worship that had kept the ku’an magery under control since he was nine years old. There was not much room, and he could not attain the peaceful focus of a normal form.

  As he spun on his heel, he stumbled, falling to the floor.

  He felt as if every nerve was aflame. He tried to stand again but his legs shook so much he could not summon the strength to do so.

  This was it, then. He was unable to stand or push the cursed mage energies back behind his wall. He had been destroyed by captivity and drugs, and the magery was uncontrollable.

  They would find him here when this was all over, probably burned by the mage energies that roared out of control. He was one of Yhallin’s failures. King Martan would not mourn him, but would undoubtedly curse the ruin of his plans. Most of the righ would exult—Callo’s death would solve a problem thrust upon them, an unacceptable bastard color mage in line for the throne. The boy Ander would be glad no one stood in his way anymore.

  Chiss and Kirian would mourn.

  And there would be no one to avenge Arias.

  He had left much undone while he struggled to control what the gods had given him. He regretted it, but only for a moment. The change from utter blackness to the roar and flame around him now overloaded his senses.

  Callo decided there was nothing else he could do. He leaned back against the padded wall and closed his eyes. He stopped fighting.

  * * * * *

  “Go in,” Kirian whispered. “Mage Yhallin, you have to go in.”

  The stuffy room was as dark as they could manage, so no light could leak into the place where Callo endured his struggle. Though it no longer mattered. Even through the walls, Kirian could hear the roar and crack of the energies Callo struggled with, and the brilliant colors of the magery streamed through the spy hole.

  Yhallin turned to her. “Kirian,” she said, an odd tone in her voice. “Think. No one can go into that room now until it is all over, or they will be destroyed along with Lord Callo.”

  * * * * *

  The mage energies abandoned the room they had been destroying and rushed back into Callo’s mind and body.

  He lay there on the floor, letting the magery consume him. It filled him as water does a jug, fitting its shape into all his corners, pushing everything else out.

  He burned with it, in pain so intense he almost passed out.

  His eyes were closed, but the space inside him was on fire with light.

  He had tried his best. He had fought it from Ha’las to Seagard, to the forest of Northgard, to here. He was not equal to it. He would fight no more. Let Jashan’s fire burn him alive if that was what the god wanted; he was done. Sighing in acceptance, he let go his resistance and allowed Jashan’s magery to etch along the trails of his nerves and his blood vessels and the paths of his life force from limb to trunk to heart and head.

  He was consumed.

  It was a relief to let Jashan do with him what he willed. The fire was in him, was him. He lay like an offering on the sand, letting the magery light him and illuminate him. After a few seconds he realized he was the fire too, fierce and angry and hungry, and jubilant.

  He felt raw, as if the magery had scoured his flesh away. He accepted that, refusing to fight, because he could not fight any more. The pain dragged his consciousness open and spread it out for the gods’ reading.

  In his mind he began to go over the patterns of Jashan’s sword ritual. Each stroke, each cut, every counter and salute as fresh as a year ago, before his life had been turned upside down by Sharpeyes’ revelations of his birth. His breath went in and out with the measured exhalations that accompanied the form.

  The magery danced, turned from destruction to exhilaration. So this was it, Callo thought in an agony of power. This was the secret of how to live through Jashan’s gift of magery. In extremity he had been forced to stop the fight against the magery—against the god. And the magery had become one with him.

  His barrier wall was gone. Magery lived in him, in his heart. He opened his eyes to see the darkness in the room, the magery subsumed in him.

  He smiled. The skin of his cheek cracked; it must be burned. But there was no pain. The door to the hallway opened, letting in a shaft of normal, human-lit lamplight, cool on Callo’s eyes after the fury of the mage energies.

  Yhallin Magegard stood there, looking haggard. “You will be all right, Callo ran Alkiran,” she said. “You have made it through.”

  * * * * *

  Callo slept for a full day after his ordeal. Yhallin had no call for Kirian’s services. Kirian and Chiss used some of this time making a list of women in a position to hire an attempt on Ander’s life. They dared not ask Yhallin for her opinion; the woman was too close to the King, although she had gone to great lengths to help Callo.

  The list was short. Mage Yhallin was on it; Lady Sira Joah, the King’s sister, far away in Seagard Castle; Queen Efalla; Lady Dria Mar.

  “She is Lord Ander’s own mother, and we know she would defend her son’s right to the throne until death,” Kirian argued. “Why should she be on this list?”

  Chiss shrugged. “All women who are concerned with the succession should be on this list. It is a task for another time to argue their merits.”

  “And Queen Efalla. I have not met her. I have heard she is more concerned with her hair style than with the dealings of King Martan.”

  “So I have heard also.”

  “Lady Sira Joah is a sennight away, trapped in Seagard Castle.”

  “Well, she is not trapped,” Chiss said. “She is not Collared. Her lord husband is dead and her son Arias as well. Who is to say she would not leave that place and involve herself in manipulating the affairs of the kingdom?”

  Kirian raised an eyebrow at him.

  Chiss’ mouth twisted upwards. “All right, I agree she is more likely to mope in her room than take any action. Nevertheless, Hon Kirian. We must include all we can think of.”

  They spent another candlemark mulling possible conspirators. At the end of the candlemark, they had added Hira Noh, the woman who led the rebel group Sword of Jashan. They stared at the list, seeing no real possibilities on it.

  When Callo awakened, he was in a strange mood.
Chiss, attending to his lord’s morning routine and his preparations for the day, told Kirian that Callo had spoken only to say good morning.

  “Nothing else, no casual talk, and he still seems exhausted,” the manservant told Kirian.

  “Is he ill?”

  “He is burned. Mage Yhallin has treated and wrapped his hands and arms, and she gave him some potion to drink with his morning tea. She said his chest is burned, not too badly, and his left leg. He has a bad burn on his cheekbone, but it is small. He moves as if he is in pain, but he has not complained.”

  Kirian made the injuries her excuse to stop in and see Callo later that morning.

  “Good morning, my love,” she said as she walked onto the balcony.

  He turned to her and smiled. The morning light struck his hair and amber eyes and seemed to turn him to gold. She caught her breath.

  It took a moment for her to steady herself. “Are you all right, my dear?” she asked.

  “I have been waiting for you.” His voice was slow and a little husky. She thought he had not used it much since he had screamed yesterday in the little underground room.

  “Well, I am here.” She walked around in front of him and ran her eyes over him. The burn on his face would leave a scar. His hands were wrapped to the mid-forearm, the salve Yhallin had used staining the bandages. Yhallin had told her that Callo was in quite a bit of pain.

  “Do I pass inspection?” he said.

  “Do you doubt it?” She bent and put her arms around him, taking care not to exert any pressure on his burned chest. “I am so glad you are well. The whole time you were in there I wondered what would have happened if I had just kept silent about . . . what you had done. What if you had died, my love?”

  “I did not.” He turned his head against hers, then winced.

  “How are your hands? What does Yhallin say?”

  He shrugged. “I will heal. It may take a few sennights, and there may be some scarring on my hands.” He scooped her closer with the crook of his arm and she went, glad to see some life in him. She wound up sitting on the floor, half-turned to lean against his knees and look up at him.

  “I wanted to come in there so badly.” She did not know if she should say it, but he should know that she had suffered with him.

  “It is good you did not. The energies in there would have killed you.”

  “That is what Yhallin said.”

  “Kirian, it is very strange. My whole life I have been building barriers, forcing mage energies I did not understand behind walls, begging Jashan for control. Now—”

  “Yes?”

  He looked puzzled. “There are no more walls, yet I am not being consumed by fire. Everything is in its place, part of me.”

  Kirian smiled. “That is good.”

  “It is good. I feel quiet inside.”

  “Yhallin said she would get you a mage cloak.”

  He snorted. “What? One of those things Arias used to wear, floating with colors all the time?”

  She nodded, grinning at his more typical response.

  “Tell her I will not wear the thing. They always bothered me—always. Besides, tell her I have not the right to wear it. I still know nothing of magery, Kirian.”

  She laughed. “How can you claim to know nothing of magery? After what you have been through?”

  “I have strength, but no education. I can do no more than light a candle or fling out energy in all directions. I need a teacher, if I should plan to become a real color mage as well as a psychic mage.”

  “His majesty would be pleased if you did become a color mage.”

  “Yes, he would.” Callo sipped more wine. His eyes looked a little dazed, from the wine or the experience he had been through she did not know. She took his bandaged hand in her own, very gently.

  “There is no need to think about such things now.”

  “Believe me, Yhallin has sent him word, and he is thinking about such things. One day, Kirian—one day and one night of peace while I learn what my own body feels like again. Then I must begin my work to fulfill my vow against His Majesty Sharpeyes.”

  “Yhallin is making plans to take you back to Sugetre once you are healed, so the King can do his binding on you.”

  Callo smiled. “I am not going back into the trap. I am going to the Sword of Jashan.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chiss came for Kirian after midnight. She was waiting, her Healer’s bag ready and her few spare clothes jammed into a cloth bag. She opened the door, grabbed her things, and followed him to the stable yard.

  Callo was already mounted. He nodded at Kirian and Chiss. Two more horses stood saddled and ready by the stable doors. A small shape huddled behind the saddle of Chiss’ mount. It was Mot, looking terrified on the back of the horse as she had not during all the other dangers that had plagued her since they had met. One of the hold’s horses made a snuffling sound from its stall as Callo’s mare led the way at a walking pace out of the stable yard and toward the gates. The night air was fitful with a gusty breeze that cooled the air and warned of an oncoming storm.

  A gaunt figure in messenger tunic and breeches stood in the middle of the opening. Yhallin held a hand torch high. Its flame snapped in the breeze. Off to the side, Kirian’s eyes separated several figures from the surrounding shadows, and realized the Mage Healer had guardsmen ready to assist her.

  Callo drew Miri to a stop before Mage Yhallin. “I hoped to avoid this,” he said to her.

  “I have placed too much trust in you,” Yhallin said. “You owe me too much to slink off into the night like this.”

  “I do owe you much,” Callo said. “So much that I hoped to spare you this confrontation.”

  “King Martan awaits you back at Sugetre Castle. He is your uncle and your King, to whom you owe your existence, as I have been told. I will deliver you back to him as I swore, in better case than when we left.”

  Kirian’s mare moved restlessly, and Yhallin’s dark eyes went to her. “And as for you—you break your oath and run once again. Did you not say you would work with me until I gave you leave?”

  Kirian was surprised that she felt a rush of shame. She had indeed promised Yhallin this, and Yhallin had done nothing to merit breaking that promise.

  “Make way for us,” Callo said to Yhallin.

  “I will not. Do you think you can best my skill with magery and win past me?”

  A sphere of scarlet magery rose like a bubble of hot glass from the mage’s hands and grew to encircle them. The night air stilled within the enclosure. Kirian reached out to touch it, and jerked a hand back as the shield sizzled with power. Next to her, Chiss was doing the same thing. The reddish cast of the bubble made Yhallin’s torch look bloody and smeared.

  Callo sighed. “Mage Yhallin, I do indeed thank you, but I cannot return to Sugetre. You know full well that the King my uncle will only imprison me until he can convert me to his will, and his true heir Ander will fall by the wayside. Beside this, all other considerations must take second place. I do not wish to hurt you.”

  One of the guards jeered. “Much chance you stand of doing that, mageling.”

  A ring of color magery encircled Callo’s hands. He reached out, gloved by his own magery, and touched the smooth, hot surface of the encircling sphere. Then he pushed, hard; Kirian could see the muscles of his forearm flex as he exerted his strength. The magery flared around his fingers as he tested it, but thin as it appeared, it did not give.

  “You have great strength, but you have not learned to use the power Jashan gave you,” Yhallin said. “You cannot win out. Agree to come back to Sugetre with me, and I will promise you will not be imprisoned on the journey.”

  Kirian grimaced. That was a noble offer, indeed. Yhallin knew full well that Callo was a man of honor, and would do what he swore. No guards would be necessary, in spite of this night’s attempt at escape.

  “I am sorry, Mage Yhallin,” Callo said. “I cannot return. Give His Majesty my regards, if you will, a
nd tell him I have not forgotten the death of my brother Arias.”

  “Fool,” Yhallin said. She sighed. “So it is, then.” It was getting hot inside the sphere. Chiss’s horse neighed and reared in panic. Mot yelped and grabbed Chiss’ waist and hung on. Kirian dismounted and held her horse close to the bridle to calm it. Standing so close to the restraining magery, she began to sweat. Her hands felt slippery on the rein.

  Yhallin gestured to her guards. The men approached the mage sphere. There were more of them than Kirian had thought; she realized there were too many to overcome in a fight.

  Kirian looked at Callo. Her lover sat on Miri as if nothing was wrong. The magery tinged his hair the same red as the torches and Yhallin’s shaven head.

  Yhallin’s men formed a half-circle around the stableyard gates to block any escape. Swords were held at the ready. Yhallin relaxed as she let the mage sphere die away so her guards could arrest Callo. The magery fell like a curtain released from a rod, all at once, and vanished into the earth. For a moment Kirian could not see; only the wan torchlight illuminated the scene now that Yhallin’s magery was gone.

  As soon as the red mage energy died away, Kirian heard Callo take a deep breath. As smoothly as the mage shield had vanished, so did Kirian’s worry. She realized there was no doubt they would come out of this confrontation well. She felt a glow of trust.

  From Miri’s back, Callo looked down at her. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “For what?” she asked. “There is no reason to apologize. I trust you absolutely to get us out of this safely.” She reached for his hand.

  “Yes, I know,” he said.

  The guards did not seem to be approaching to take them prisoner. Kirian saw two men sheathe their swords. Another man backed away from them, shaking his head as if confused.

  “What have I done?” Yhallin held her hands to her head. “I beg your pardon, Lord Callo. Of course, you will do as you should and return to King Martan in your own time.”