Cordimancy

by Hardman, Daniel

  Such a nightmare she’d been having. She still felt a lingering terror in the room. Something was wrong. Something in the bed... She stood and stepped away...

  An old wisp of a woman slumped on a chair at her bedside, grey hair escaping from the braid draped over her shoulder, hands half-caught in the pocket of her apron. This was her nurse—Shivril, she remembered the woman saying.

  The room was dark. She had a vague idea that a fire had been lit in the recent past, but perhaps that had been a hallucination; the hearth gave no evidence that this had ever been the case. Not even a glow. Nonetheless, Malena found that she could see quite clearly. A white-bearded, elderly man slept on a mat near the door. She noticed that the patches on the knees of his trousers were stained with dirt and ash. His hands were calloused, with soil ground into the whorls of his motionless fingertips.

  How was she seeing such details in the dark?

  She walked toward the window, expecting vertigo or faintness, but discovering balance and energy instead. She wasn’t even hungry, though she knew she’d eaten nothing for days.

  The air was burdened with noxious odors, but Malena found to her surprise that she could distinguish other scents as well. A whiff of basil—no, some kind of mint, maybe—came from a small earthen mug on the table. Shivi smelled of dust and grain, but the handkerchief in her lap had been perfumed lightly with doro musk. Was that a hint of jasmine coming through the window?

  She looked out at the courtyard below. A man passed through the gates and across the shadows and pools of moonlight in the courtyard, staff in hand.

  Toril. Although her husband’s eyes were downcast, she recognized his dark, curly hair, the band of leather around one wrist, the carvings on the staff of Kelun.

  She called out, compromising between volume and a reluctance to startle either him or the older couple who were asleep. It seemed that she had been too soft; he turned and waved to a companion who hurried after him, and both men continued past the well without looking up. Her voice elicited no reaction from within the room, either.

  Well. Her miraculous recovery would capture their attention soon enough. She inhaled deeply, enjoying the free movement of her ribs and the familiar chorus of the crickets.

  When the door scraped soon after, the old woman stirred. She blinked in disorientation for a moment, then scanned the room in alarm. Her eyes passed over Malena without a pause; evidently the darkness was more opaque to her eyes than to Malena’s.

  Finally she shuffled forward to unbar the door. Toril was accompanied by the priest, who carried a lantern. They stepped into the room.

  Shivi’s husband sat up, scratching his beard and squinting at the light. “Had the most awful dream,” he mumbled.

  “I don’t remember falling asleep,” Shivi said slowly. “But I have a sense of dread...” Then a thought seemed to seize her attention. She touched Toril’s arm. “What happened with your ordeal?”

  Toril looked drawn and worried, but he smiled.

  “I have found a name,” he said. “Let’s see if I can put it to good use.” He gestured at the bed.

  Malena’s eyes followed his outstretched hand to the blankets, and saw with a shock that a motionless body compressed the pillows.

  Her body.

  “She’s not breathing,” Shivi said, straightening up. “You’re too late.” Paka was shaking his head, muttering about the mist he’d dreamed.

  “I’m here!” Malena shouted, in a vain bid for attention.

  “No!” said Toril, falling to his knees at the side of the bed and allowing the staff to clatter to the floor. He reached out for his wife’s limp hand, lifted it to his lips, and squeezed tightly. Malena watched the muscles along his jaw ripple. He closed his eyes and whispered urgently.

  After a moment, he opened his eyes again, then cleared his throat and uttered a phrase in a foreign tongue. “Buómævi ñumai’irozh, munjúviliz e vo!”

  As he spoke, Malena saw an unearthly bluish luminance gather about her husband. It pulsed and flickered, almost like fire, and was bright enough to make her squint, though nobody else appeared to see it. Tendrils of power coalesced from his extremities, swirled through his chest, and then streamed upward, leaping out of his mouth and into the body on the bed.

  A dark shadow detached itself from her inert arms and legs, writhed as it clung to her torso, and then convulsed into nothing like droplets on a hot skillet. Outside the window, looming storm clouds suddenly relaxed and began to dissipate.

  A strange heaviness overtook her. Her vision dimmed. The air grew pregnant, like sky before lightning.

  The invocation hung in the air for several heartbeats.

  Then Malena felt a rushing, folding, turning inside-out sensation, and suddenly she was back on the bed. She drew a deep breath and sat up, re-experiencing the vigor she’d woken to earlier. As a heart, she had no ability to work magic herself, and seldom felt it from others—but the jolt of energy flowing through her limbs and into her fingers and toes, her eyebrows and ears and cheeks was unmistakable, irresistible, and delicious.

  Shivi leaned forward, inhaling through her teeth in wonder. The priest was smiling widely. Paka let out a whoop.

  Then Toril began to tremble. His elbows buckled, his knees sagged, and he slumped to the floor.

  “As seeker-of-the-helpless, you might discover the power to heal Malena’s body,” said Gitám. “However, you must obey the law connected with its wielding. No ordeal will alter it.”

  “What law is that?” said Toril.

  “Magic is entwined with the life force. A satarisu lives many generations by renouncing magic completely, but he loses the ability to propagate life himself. Food is less tasteful; colors fade. An osipi gains exquisite experience by allowing magic full sway in her body; her measure of years is less.

  “You walked the middle path. A portion of your magical endowment sank into the bones, where it quickens your loins and senses. The unbound remainder you have called upon freely. It has been our gift to you. Few receive greater.”

  “I am grateful,” Toril said nervously, anticipating a rebuke. “When I said on the scroll that I would yield my magic to perform the ordeal, I meant no ingratitude. My father lost his gift to pass me the staff. I am prepared to give mine to heal my wife, though it will cost me dearly. If I never kindle again, but she is restored, it will be worth the sacrifice.”

  “Well spoken, Toril; you need not fear my disapproval. However, you are trying to buy twice with a single coin. What you write on the scroll gains you access to the ordeal; you cannot now tender the same treasure for some additional advantage. Your magic is already gone.”

  Toril felt like a blow to the gut had robbed him of breath. If he had already lost the ability to kindle, then Malena was beyond his power to save. He opened his mouth to protest, but no words came out. He had been warned not to trifle with this ordeal, not to underestimate the risks or difficulty. Now his foolishness tasted bitter.

  He also buzzed with anger. He felt tricked, manipulated. Was the whole purpose of this experience to keep humanity in its place, to stroke immortal egos?

  “We are not capricious, child,” Gitám said gently. “When we Speakers decreed the conditions of the ordeal in the dawn of the world, we set the law for ourselves as well as mankind. We cannot change it now. Remember that I said power runs on deeper law than simple gifting.”

  A lengthy stretch of silence followed.

  “Will you hold your name—be who you’ve chosen—even when all hope is lost?” Gitám asked. “This is only the first truth you must confront to make the name your own.”

  Toril raised his head. “I am still here,” he croaked, “but I don’t know what to do.”

  He waited, expecting an answer. When none came, he closed his eyes, absorbed in an inner battle with recrimination and despair. Eventually a corner of his brain drew a parallel between Gitám’s recent wait for a step in the dark, and the lack of communication now.

  “Help me,” he sai
d forlornly. “I’m blind to a way forward, but I’ll move in whatever direction you point me.”

  Gitám’s response was quiet. “You seek, but are blind. Do you not hear another name in that, child?”

  Once again, the image of splayed rocks on sand flashed across Toril’s mind.

  “I am ‘helpless seeker,’ too,” Toril said, feeling diminished and weak. But even as he said it, his body flooded with a second jolt of power. This one was even stronger than the first.

  “Yes,” came the gentle answer. “You are not so different from someone you seek to help. Remember that. Now, hearken and learn why one of my names is Help-of-the-helpless.

  “Tasks performed with unbound magic have little effect on a kindler’s reservoir of power; a flame is not spent when it kindles another. But experience has taught you that healing magic is a different matter. This is because it goes into the heart and nerve and sinews of another, and it must come from the same place.

  “Though the free magic you wielded has been taken, the portion that I wove into your body remains. Would you covenant now to unweave it, that you may accomplish your purpose?”

  Toril felt a thrill of hope, plus a corresponding pang of fear. He remembered the weakness that always followed attempts to help his father breathe more easily. Malena needed far profounder intervention; what would it cost him to supply that much power?

  Attributing the healing power to kavro shilmar, and knowing the danger of the ordeal, everyone except Malena guessed at first that Toril’s collapse was fatal. Had he somehow exchanged his life for Malena’s? What had transpired in the paoro?

  Malena knew nothing of Toril’s desperate gamble; at first she inferred simple exhaustion. As Shivi explained, though, she’d grown pale all over again. Her renewed health was striking, but she knew the legends as well as anyone; imagination conjured a dozen prices that her husband might have paid, and flinched at all of them.

  However, the worst of their fears began to fade as Toril’s breathing deepened, his pulse steadied, and he showed no signs of pain.

  “Maybe he just needs to sleep it off,” Paka said at last. “It’s too late for us to make for Sotalio tonight. Let’s lock the door and catch a few winks, and see how things look in the morning.”

  The priest rummaged for bedding. Shivi yawned as she brought Malena up to date on clan politics and the work of burying the dead. Paka began to snore.

  However, Malena had never felt more physically healthy, or more awake. Her lower back and hips no longer ached; she wasn’t stiff or sore, and she was flush with energy. As soon as the others drifted off, she slipped out and headed down to the well, past still-smoldering pyres, where she washed away the sweat and poultices, and peeled back the bandage on her chest to confirm what she suspected—the stab wound had vanished without a trace. The magnitude and reach of the change in her body was stunning.

  Unfortunately, no emotional relief paralleled her physical transformation. She was astonished at her boldness going to the well—to be alone in an unprotected, morbid location in the middle of night, so soon after her attack, should have filled her with panic. And yet the terror was outweighed by an even deeper compulsion to purge her body of all evidence of the violence she’d suffered.

  Shivi—or Toril—must have wiped away blood, and worse. But with bruises erased, Malena could tell that smudges of filth on her body were not her own, and the thought made her skin crawl.

  To take her mind off the revulsion haunting her moonlit bath with a cold rag, Malena forced her thoughts elsewhere.

  She hadn’t been very coherent for the past—what?—two days? But she remembered Tupa’s horse. What had happened to her sister? Had the bandits let her live? What about her parents? That was the concern, now. She could deal with her own problems later.

  Visions of her sister flitted through her mind: Tupa bound and gagged; Tupa fleeing into forbidding forest while her parents lay motionless in pools of blood on a mountain trail; Tupa with an arrow through her chest; Tupa suffering the same fate that Malena had suffered at the hands of the bandits...

  A sob broke from Malena’s throat. Her shoulders shook. She hunched over for a moment, then shook her head.

  What about the little servant girl she’d met? Had she survived?

  Another stifled sob.

  What had her husband sacrificed to heal her? That should have been a scary question, but right now it felt safer than other topics...

  From one perspective, Toril’s loyalty was welcome. If he had ridden off to solve problems, she would be dead now. But another part of Malena was angry. According to Shivi, he’d antagonized Gorumim at the council; somehow, Malena sensed that the destruction of Noemi and her own misery were connected to that behavior. Hadn’t she warned him to be careful? And now he wanted to rush in and rescue. She had not asked for such a gesture; she’d told him to let her die. If he’d respected her wishes, she wouldn’t be facing a life of crippling, haunted memories and shame. If he’d respected her wishes, maybe he would have found and rescued her sister by now.

  What was this healing going to cost her, when all was said and done?

  What was Toril thinking, trying to lead the clan? He was not his father. It did no good for him to take the staff if he couldn’t use it effectively. Was Toril just blinded by ambition? He’d been gone to a fruitless meeting when she needed him most, and now his lack of standing among the parijan heads was going to turn him—and her—into an outcast. So much for this marriage being a step up in the world.

  Shivi said Toril had talked of a showdown with Rovin. Could he honestly contemplate such a thing when her sister was the pressing concern?

  Malena completed her crude bath and flitted back to the safety of the bedchamber, glad to close and bar the door behind her. She realized she was trembling, and took several deep breaths to calm herself down.

  Toril’s face looked troubled, even in repose. Malena reminded herself that he was shouldering burdens of his own, but it was an intellectual concession only. At the moment, being angry at him was safer than any of the other emotions she could muster. Safer than the terror, or the guilt, or the disgust...

  She sat on the bed and began plaiting her hair into a marriage braid, her expression grim. If such braids were supposed to symbolize union between wife and husband, then this one was a hollow gesture indeed.

  16

  waifs ~ Toril

  “Not that way, Hika.” Toril pulled back on the reins and called to the dog from atop his saddle. The rest of the group—Malena and Shivi, astride a spare horse from Vasari, and the priest and Paka, riding close together on a pair of sturdy ponies, also pulled up at the fork in the trail. The sun had burned off morning dew, and the acrid, putrid air of Noemi was well behind and below them now, on the far side of the valley.

  Toril felt almost as wan and depleted as he had when he’d regained consciousness at daybreak—as if he’d just finished a grueling hike, or fasted for a day, or both. In point of fact, the exertion and the lack of food weren’t far from the truth. But this weakness is different, Toril thought. It’s the price of my name. Will I feel this way all the time, now? What did it mean that Gitám unwove magic from my flesh?

  He stole another glance at Malena. Her restored health was striking—skin unblemished by contusions, lips rosy and symmetrical instead of fattened by blows, eyes clear of bruising and jaundiced shadows, posture straight and easy. She was beautiful. He’d always known that, but now she almost seemed to sparkle in the sun. He found himself swallowing.

  A part of him felt like singing when he saw her.

  Anger dimmed her, though, and it was hard to get past that. She wouldn’t meet his eye.

  When the others awoke, they’d held an informal council. Toril announced his intent to locate the mare he'd left hobbled at the edge of town, take the supplies and gear that Paka had scavenged, and ride for Sotalio immediately. The elderly couple wanted to make the journey as well; they’d lost all market for their weaving, and needed to
trade to replace food that had been pillaged.

  Malena had recounted seeing her sister’s pinto, and had argued that they needed to pursue the marauders to see if her parents and sister were alive. But she was overruled. The priest pointed out that if anybody had been kidnapped for ransom, the bandits would keep them safe, and that otherwise, they were dead already. Toril had been embarrassed by the clumsy logic—though he couldn't argue with the conclusions—so he'd added that if they pursued and found the bandits, a small band with no weapons could hardly effect a rescue. Their best course was to get reinforcements.

  The logic seemed to offend Malena. After a protest, she retreated into resentful monosyllables. She had demanded to ride with Shivi, instead of in front of her husband, and she hadn't said a word on the trail.

  Hika, Toril noticed, had trotted uphill half a dozen steps and then stopped with a yip. His eyebrows lifted. “C’mon, girl.” He gave a little whistle. “That’s not the trail we’re taking.”

  “Let’s just go,” Paka suggested. “She’s bound to follow eventually.”

  The dog yipped again and bent her head sideways, managing to convey an almost human negation. She turned back uphill, hopped once, and looked back over her shoulder.

  “I don’t think she’s just exploring,” Toril said slowly. Still sore from his last extended ride, he leaned on the saddlehorn and swung a heel over the rump of his mount, glad for an excuse to stretch. Normally the movement would have been effortless; now he just managed to keep his knees from buckling as he hit the ground.

  He covered by climbing toward the dog, leaning forward to dig his boots into the loose shale between the switchbacks. The dog bounded ahead, pausing after a moment to make sure Toril was still following.

  “Hika, we don’t have... time...” Toril panted, his ears reddening in embarrassment at his weakness. Why hadn’t he just stayed on the horse?

  Rounding a copse of poplar and scrub oak, he stopped moving.

  A protracted delay followed—so long that Shivi’s voice, when it came, sounded worried. “What’s up there, Toril?”