She choked on the last word and doubled over in grief, her blade slipping from now-nerveless fingers and dropping to the floor, where it struck with a clatter. My eyes had grown steadily wider throughout her tirade… such vehemence. I had never felt so strongly about anything. Ever. Was that what it meant to have children, to lose them?
A fresh sob ripped its way out of her, the sound so heartbreaking that I very nearly choked up myself. I took a faltering step toward her, but she looked up at me with shining blue eyes that fixed me in place.
"You promised me that you would do something," she said in a strangled voice. "So what are you going to do?"
Turn tail and run like the wind? A cynical part of me asked.
That would be the smart thing to do, I agreed with myself.
With a wave of my hand, I dismissed the voices within. There had to be something I could do to ease this poor woman's agony. Despite some efforts during my younger years, I had never been particularly good with people, and especially not women. My books and lab supplies were my friends. They didn't grieve, they didn't even notice when I frittered them away in experiments and midnight readings. The fact was, all I had to offer were facts and stories. She knew I wasn't an Arbiter, but she didn't know my true vocation, though it was distinctly possible that she might suspect. My mind groped for something, anything that I could say that might help her.
"Do you know the origin of the story of the Golden Queen?" I asked her.
The question was so strange that it interrupted her sobbing for a moment. She gave me a queer look, and I was distinctly aware that I hadn't answered her question.
"I haven't even thought about it in years," she said at last. "My mother always just told the story."
With a little sigh, I found a spot on the floor with my back against a wall not far from her, and folded my knees in front of me. "That particular story is actually older than the Old Kingdoms themselves," I said. "It comes from Old Tellar, in fact. It's been told for thousands of years. A beggar comes to each of seven Kings and Queens and pleads for them to hear him, for he brings tidings of great darkness. In turn, six monarchs refuse his pleas, until Alina the Golden Queen agrees to give him an audience. When she does, the beggar transforms into a being of light, and brings the armies of good to her side, for she had shown herself to be wise and just by hearing even the lowest of her servants. In the end, they drive back the darkness, and she becomes Empress of all Tellar for her wisdom." My mouth twisted in an ironic smile. "Of course, it helped that all of the other monarchs died."
There was a long pause, and then she said, "That's not how the story goes."
I blinked, taken aback. "What do you mean?"
"That's not what happens," she answered. "The Shadow King disguises himself as a fool and goes to the court of six Kings and Queens, and one by one, he takes over all of their kingdoms and gives them over to his shadows."
My brow creased in a frown, but I gave her an encouraging gesture. I had never heard this version of the story before. "Go on."
"Well, when he tries to infiltrate the Golden Queen's palace, her gift of light allows her to see who he is and drive him out. Then, he instead brings his great armies to bear at her border, demanding tribute—" she stopped, and pressed her hand to her lips.
"What is it?" I asked.
"All they can hear when the Shadow King invades is the baying of his hounds," she whispered.
With a thoughtful, two-fingered tap of my stubbled chin, I leaned back against the wall. "Well," I said. "Now that's interesting."
She stared at me with wide eyes, searching, asking for answers that I didn't have. "What does it mean?" she asked at last.
"Search me," I said with a shrug. "All I know for sure is that I need to get my own look at this thing, whatever it is – but suddenly I don't think an Arbiter is as necessary as you believe."
VII
Moonrise couldn't come quickly enough.
Alina had work to do, and wasn't fond of my looking over her shoulder every moment. Normally, given time to myself, I would have pondered some theory or another, or gone over one of the textbooks I'd memorized in my head again. There were plenty of ways to entertain myself, but the sleep I'd gotten the night before hadn't been enough, and the rhythmic scraping of metal on wood wasn't exactly soothing. I was too tired to think, and too distracted to sleep.
With nothing else to do, I went out into the village, trying to find any scrap of information that might help me identify whatever – or whomever – was tormenting this tiny town. The day was cold and crisp, with a bright blue sky overhead and the golden sun shining as though nothing was wrong in the world. As the minutes and hours dragged on, I heard many complaints, much bellyaching, and far too many thinly-disguised snipes from one neighbor to another, but came up with nothing of worth. Despite the fact that a death curse hung over the village like a fog, the people themselves seemed oblivious to it; too caught up in their own petty little lives to notice.
Throughout the entire day, I was able to confirm one thing. The Reaper always came at moonrise on the first night, at midnight on the second, and in the dark before dawn on the third. It was always the same, and everyone in the village echoed it.
Unfortunately, that seemed to be the only thing that anyone was sure of.
More than once, I asked myself why I was still there. It would have been so easy to simply grab one of the nicer-looking horses from the stables, proclaim that there was nothing an Arbiter could do to help them, and ride off toward the horizon like a character from a child's tale.
So why hadn't I done it?
The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I became. The answer wasn't one that I liked overmuch, but no matter how I tried to deny it, I kept coming back to the same place.
It was Alina. Somehow, despite all the failings of this pathetic little berg, she stood out above the rest.
I've never been a fool for a damsel in distress. Or any damsel, really. Women are complicated creatures that tend to put things somewhere when they were already in a perfectly acceptable place, and ask questions about difficult or meaningless subjects. For the most part, I was content to avoid them.
So what was it about this one that compelled me so?
In a lifetime of finding answers in a flash of insight, I had never been so completely without one. The feeling was distinctly uncomfortable.
Just about the time I was ready to chew my own arm off in a desperate attempt to escape the miserable backwater, the sun began its final descent toward the western horizon. After an entire day of interrogating a village full of miserable, ignorant peasants, I briefly considered the idea of volunteering to switch sides and help this 'Reaper' demolish the place. The thought didn't last long, but it was pleasant while it did.
As the western sky turned to molten gold, I returned to Alina's humble abode. She barely looked up as I entered; the scattered pieces of chair that she'd been working on earlier that day had transformed into a work of art, standing on its own now as the pressure from the assembled pieces pressed against one another in a rough-hewn but aesthetically charming way. I blinked a few times as my mind slowly came to terms with what she'd done.
"That's amazing," I breathed, even as a thought slowly percolated through my mind. Everything I'd done in my life, all of my accomplishments seemed to pale before this stunning, simple craft as I looked over the detail.
She flushed, and looked away. "It's nothing. I'll be lucky if I get five princes for it, here in the village."
My mind did the quick mental calculations – I'd forgotten that I'd crossed the border between Amaria and Valisia during my journey, and I wasn't nearly as familiar with Valisian currency. "A few silver marks for something like that?" I asked, aghast. "You must be joking. You could get three, even four times that in Elenia!"
"Is that where you came from?" she asked, turning her cool blue eyes on me at last.
Her twilight gaze caught me like an insect in a pair of forceps. I struggl
ed to say something, anything, but I was entirely lost beneath that stare. "Um… it's the last place I was, yes," I finally managed to say.
"What's your name?" she asked, and held up a hand before I could give the quick answer. "Not the one you gave when you arrived. Your real name."
I was reluctant, but the look in her eyes compelled me to answer. "Moncrief. Edar Moncrief."
As we stood there in an awkward silence, the last rays of sunlight faded from the tiny windows around us, and we were left in darkness. Alina broke the gaze first, moving to light a few candles and lamps around the room, while I stood there in perfect silence.
"The moon will rise soon, Edar Moncrief," she said. "What are you going to do?"
This woman needed my protection. She was lost, alone, and afraid, and I couldn't leave her like that. My time to flee had run out.
"I'm going to put a stop to this," I said flatly. "This 'Reaper' ends tonight."
VIII
Alina and I stepped out into the twilight air. Though the sun had only just vanished in the distant west, the bright ivory light of the Deadmoon was already visible on the eastern horizon.
There wasn't much time left.
"You need to gather everyone," I said to her. "Make sure they're armed, and don't let anyone get dragged off this time. Make sure that everyone stays together."
She opened her mouth, as if to argue, but I interrupted. "Go!" I shouted.
Her eyes narrowed briefly at me, but then she nodded, and turned to run toward the cluster of houses in the village.
No one had been able to tell me from which direction the Reaper and his hounds would come, so I had no way to be prepared for it. Instead, I turned to face the east, and watched the moon smoothly ascend over the treetops as the seconds and minutes ticked by.
At last, just when a hint of the stark white crescent was visible above the forest, the first howls came on the wind. The temperature seemed to drop several degrees as I stood there, frozen, the hairs along my arms and back of my neck rising into rigid spines. Gooseflesh covered me as the long, mournful sound carried through the air, ripe with the scent of manna.
The feeling of manna all around me was very familiar.
"Sorcery," I breathed.
My lips cracked in an ugly grin. No monster, this. Just a man, driven insane by a quest for power. He had likely unearthed some dark secret in a forgotten tomb, and instead of running in the opposite direction – like any sane man – he had decided instead to read it, take it into himself and give his mind over to madness.
It took a special kind of thought, a certain power of will, to resist the lure of madness when one invoked the sorcerer's power. I had it. Most did not, but it didn't stop them.
A sorcerer was just a man.
I could kill a man.
The baying of the hounds grew louder in the distance, seeming to echo all around me. Despite the shouting of the peasants as they raised the alarm at Alina's command, the cold wind made the world feel strangely lonely. My fingers grasped and flexed as though holding the hilt of a sword, though I possessed no weapon, save for my wits and the power over which I held sway.
You're a madman, my mind pronounced. It's been nice knowing you.
Drawing a deep breath as I attempted to shut out the more rational portion of my mind, I reached out with the power of the manna. My eyes snapped closed, and the world behind my eyelids sprang into stunning azure light.
My consciousness leapt into the air with the soaring grace of a hawk taking flight. Within seconds, I could see the world spread out beneath me, but it was not trees and earth and stone that I saw. Instead, I could see the rivers of manna as they snaked through the earth, just below the surface, carrying the deadly life energy along.
There was no font nearby – they tended to sprout up in places where humankind was closely clustered, and we were too far out into the farmlands for that. Before long, however, my sorcerer's vision seized upon a current which would be strong enough to serve whatever purposes I required, and I bent it to my will.
Power crackled in my veins as I struggled with the manna. It twisted about in my hands, threatening to slip away from me as though it were an eel that I clutched at with oil-slick fingers. Under normal circumstances, I would have drawn only what I needed in the moment that I needed it, but I was up against something entirely outside my experience, and I wanted to be ready.
It was like wrestling with a bolt of lightning. My hair all stood on end, and when I re-opened my eyes, I was ringed in a halo of brilliant blue light. My breath came in short gasps, and the world seemed darker outside my ring of illumination.
When the next howl came, it was close, and I whirled around when I realized it had come from right behind me.
Time slowed to a crawl as I came face-to-face with a slavering beast, easily half my height at the shoulder. It was rippling with muscle, looking like a cross between a large dog and a wild boar. A mane of black fur ringed its ugly head, and long yellow teeth dripped saliva. Its paws were twice the size of my hands, and it left no prints in the snow behind it. The howl died away, replaced by a slavering snarl as its crimson gaze bore into me.
In the light of those red eyes, all of my self-assured bravado burned away in an instant. My hold on the manna flow began to slip as it writhed in my mental grasp, and instead of saving it for the Reaper itself, as I had intended, my lips formed words before I could even complete a coherent thought.
"Ashatren kvi tai san!" I cried.
The ancient spell activated as I spoke its invocation, shaping the manna, forcing it to conform to the pre-constructed specifications. I became merely a conduit for the power as the flow I had harnessed routed through my mind and body, shaped into a coherent burst of cobalt light and energy that leapt the space between my hands and the beast in a split second.
Even as the power left my hands, I began cursing myself. The bolt of manna struck the creature directly in its open mouth, and the crimson eyes went dark as the cerulean light exploded out the back of the hound's head. It dropped to the ground in a lifeless heap.
The beast was dead, but all of the manna I'd brought under my control was gone. I crumpled forward, falling to my hands and knees in the snow, feeling as though every vein and artery in my body had been scorched from within. Clouds and shadows played at the edges of my vision as unconsciousness threatened. Desperate gasps of air were all I could manage, and the cold rushed in to replace the warmth I'd felt, leaving me shivering uncontrollably.
Then she was there beside me, and the golden light from her lantern pushed back the darkness. "Are you all right?" Alina's voice whispered in my ear.
I looked up and began to respond, but the breath froze in my throat as my eyes fell upon what could only be the Reaper.
Easily ten feet tall, it was as though the shadow of a dead tree had come to life. It towered over us, an inky blackness whose roots stretched out across the snow. It had no branches above, terminating in a ragged edge that looked like lightning had blasted it. Two malevolent eyes glowed a brilliant crimson at perhaps the eight-foot mark, burning through me and deep into my soul.
A cough stopped somewhere in my throat, and I felt myself choking. I had thought that being caught in the gaze of the Arbiter was terrifying, but I realized in that moment that I had never in my life known true terror. The mental pathways I used to channel the manna were burned raw. I was defenseless, lying prostrate at the feet of this monster.
No, not monster! My rational mind cried. A man! Only a man!
If this was a man, the glamour he had used to disguise himself was impressive. Without the manna I wasn't able to pierce the veil, but given what I was staring at, I had trouble convincing myself that there was something there to see through.
Alina stood and strode forward, and I reached out one hand helplessly. She stood defiant before the creature, holding a pitchfork in one hand and thrusting out her golden lantern in the other. "Give me back my children!" she shrieked, her voice breaking with gri
ef and fury. "Give them back, you monster!"
"Alina," I tried to say, but it came out only as a croak. "No—"
The Reaper's eyes flashed a blinding red, and my heart pounded so loud in my ears that it drowned out everything else. As I stared ahead, I watched one of the Reaper's roots lash out and strike Alina across the face, sending her sprawling into the snow. The golden orb of light fell to the ground and winked out.
She struggled to her hands and knees, a line of redness dripping from her pale cheek to the snow. Her blue eyes locked on mine, and she reached out one hand toward me.
The same root that had struck her shot out again, and plunged through her back in a spray of dark, arterial blood.
Her eyes widened in shock, and her mouth dropped open.
The outstretched hand, alabaster in the pale moonlight, fell limply to the snow.
I struggled to cry out, to shriek, but my lungs were frozen. The world began to darken around me, and the Reaper's eyes flashed a brilliant crimson.
No! I screamed in my mind. No—
IX
"Alina!" I shrieked, startling myself back to consciousness. My voice echoed strangely in the silence.
With great effort, I managed to sit up and look around.
There was no sign of the Reaper… or of Alina, save for the pool of frozen blood on the snow.
"No… no, no no…" I mumbled. My mouth felt strangely mushy, as though my tongue had gone numb and feeling had only just begun to return. In a daze, I struggled to my feet, looking desperately around.
She was gone.
I had failed, and now she was gone.
In all my life, I could not remember a moment where I'd felt more alone.
My hands had gone numb with cold, I realized as I climbed to my feet, brushing snow off of my knees and elbows. How long had I been unconscious? I looked up to the sky, and the Deadmoon had only risen perhaps another few inches off the horizon. Not long, then.
The Elements of Sorcery Page 7