A Glimmer on the Blade

by Rachel E. Baddorf

  “Do you know the man’s name?” Anoni tried to keep her voice even, not wanting to scare away her unsuspecting spy.

  “They called him Franco. The healer’s got him now. They think it will be okay, but I mean, what do you do with only one leg?”

  Grimly, Anoni smiled. She could think of many dangerous things you could do if you only had one leg. Hopefully, those options would satisfy the commander. “Could you tell him something for me when he wakes up?”

  “I...guess so.”

  “Tell him Theresa and the boys are safe on Yoshio Mountain and to bring a boat. Can you repeat it to me?” Anoni asked, remembering the message she had received at the Clover Inn from Norsson about the Franco family’s unexpected lakeside vacation. The girl repeated it well enough. “Thank you. It’s very important that he knows. Is there anyone else who is hurt?”

  “There’s a man who’s sleeping. He has dark hair.”

  A guess that this was the prince was all Anoni could come up with. She nodded. He would be fine, she thought. She banished the pain from her mind. “So what are you doing out here?”

  The girl hugged the lamp pole idly. “I like the trees. I...like to climb.”

  The pain flared. “You remind me of a man I knew. He liked to climb too.” A scuffling noise behind caused Anoni to spin on her heel to investigate. She ducked back into the shadows with a quick motion to the little girl to hide herself. Three people in cloaks got out of a carriage at the alley’s mouth. Their voices carried down the stone.

  “We shouldn’t be here, lady,” said the tallest with a gruff voice.

  “I understand the precautions Shaiso is taking. It was his son who was attacked and all. But, I traced the lightfish breeder who sold those special underwater globes. Nice man, ever so helpful to the clergy. We couldn’t imagine they would still be under our noses in the city, but they ordered those special globes on short notice. Paid for by the Caruda House account,” said the shortest of the figures. Anoni let out a slow breath. It was Stellys. Anoni recognized her voice. Anoni realized both of her daggers were in her hands. She wished she had a crossbow or her throwing knives. Taking both daggers carefully in one hand, she put the other hand to her lips and gave out an ear-twisting whistle.

  The two guards shoved Stellys behind them. “Who’s there?” called the tall one.

  Anoni darted for them, cloak flapping behind, hissing, “Come to me, traitor!” She blocked the taller guard’s sword before he got it clear of the scabbard, while one of her daggers went into his chest. She pushed the body into the shorter guard, and used a quick and dirty hip throw to dump Stellys on her face deeper into the alley. Anoni pulled her dagger out of the body and spun back to the remaining guard. He was up again, thrusting for her chest. She kept herself between Stellys and the mouth of the alley. The guard was good, dodging around her feints, using the most of his longer blade length. The driver of the carriage scrambled down and joined him as they parried in the limited space of the alley.

  A clang and a heartrending shriek sounded behind Anoni that went on and on. She didn’t turn, but used the second’s frozen reaction of the guards to her advantage. One took a dagger in the side, the other in the throat. Spinning she found Stellys on fire, rolling in the garbage and dirt, trying to put out the flames. The girl stood on the wall, horrified, hugging the empty lamppost.

  Anoni whipped off her cloak and dropped it on the woman, smothering the flames. When they were out, Stellys opened her eyes slowly because of her burned face; half her hair was gone.

  “Hello traitor,” Anoni hissed again.

  Stellys’s scream turned to a moan of dread as she recognized who stood over her in the dark. Anoni’s bloody dagger blade came to rest on the woman’s neck.

  “I...I did it for the temple,” croaked the woman. “When the prince falls, we won’t survive.”

  “So you helped him fall,” the growl came low in Anoni’s throat. She leaned on the blade.

  “Wait! Wait! You weren’t there! I was there when his father fell to the madness. Please.”

  Anoni found herself baring her teeth; the rage and disgust were so strong. “I’m listening.”

  “Shaiso won’t win. He can’t hold the center. As soon as he makes his move, the different factions in the palace will be at war. But if we’re on his side, he doesn’t kill the clergy. We survive for another thousand years as the next dynasty takes Shaiso’s place. He doesn’t know about you. He doesn’t...”

  “You were going to use me to kill him for you...You knew I wouldn’t ever let it go. I am not a blade in anyone’s hand!” she spat in hatred.

  Looking past Anoni, Stellys’s eyes focused on something. Anoni watched as a thought dawned across her face. “My daughter...My daughters will be ready for the next dynasty and the temple will live on,” she croaked.

  Anoni’s rage went cold, so cold she didn’t even think of what she was doing. “Do you know how lions kill their prey?”

  “No! No!” The priestess tried to struggle, but her screams came from a scorched throat and lungs. Anoni stood and stepped on her throat.

  “Lions hold on, choking them of every last bit of air...” Anoni put her weight into it as the priestess’s nails scrabbled uselessly on her boot, trying to gain purchase. Anoni stomped down, crushing the windpipe in one blow. A wet whistle came from the priestess, her eyes bugging out as she struggled for air.

  “Who’s out there? There are screams coming from the garden!” It was Copelia’s voice from the other side of the wall. She was calling others to her aid.

  Anoni backed off the dying woman and looked up. The little girl was frozen in horror, tears streaming down her face. “Why did you burn her?” She took her cloak back, putting it around her shoulders despite the smell and soot.

  “She had a knife. She was coming at your back,” the girl sobbed.

  “Priya, is that you?” Copelia called from the garden, closer now, nearly there.

  Anoni had to leave. “Thank you, Priya. The nightlions came for her tonight. Tell them, the bodies can’t be found here. Do you understand me?”

  ***

  Aquillion, Caruda House

  Copelia

  Priya almost fell coming down the apple tree, but Copelia caught the distraught child up in a hug.

  “What happened?” Copelia asked.

  With the first stuttering fragments of information, Copelia jerked her head at Ammon and Ketchkei who had followed her out to investigate the screams. The priest and priestess ran for the back gate that came out at the far end of the alley. Priya sobbed into her hair as Copelia hurried for the house.

  “You saved us. You saved the prince. It’s okay. You’ll be okay,” Copelia rubbed the child’s back. Priya shuddered.

  “She burned and...she died. I killed her,” she mumbled into Copelia’s hair over and over.

  Inside, Copelia took her into the first-floor parlor and sat on a couch with Priya in her lap. Maximo ran in.

  “What’s going on?”

  Priya howled out a synopsis. The cocky little boy climbed up beside them. Though he had spent much of their collective time teasing the girl, now he did not. He put a hand on her shoulder and exchanged a look with Copelia that spoke of maturity. “Goddess will it, Priya. You had to do it. The nightlions came for Stellys. They hunted the traitor. The Goddess punishes betrayal. You had to,” the boy said.

  Ammon and Ketchkei came in looking sick. Copelia detached Priya gently. “Maximo, can you take her up to Ildiko? I’ll be up in a bit.”

  When the children were gone, Copelia pulled the two clergy deeper into the room. “Is it as she says?” she whispered.

  “The traitor burned,” Ketchkei said in a hard voice. “And then someone strangled her.”

  “Resourceful little girl,” Ammon said with grimly. “Three other bodies. Killed with blades.”

  “It sounds like Anoni, but she can’t be back yet,” Copelia said. She pulled a bell rope for a maid. When she came, Copelia asked for Sarousch
to be summoned. Copelia hugged herself. She had thought they were safe here. Their enemy had been just outside the wall and death had swooped down to clear them away.

  “Whoever it was, they were right. The bodies can’t be found here,” Ketchkei said.

  “Leave that to Sarousch and me,” Ammon said. “You two need to get back up there and summon the prince.”

  “But,” Copelia protested helplessly. They had had everything ready to start the spell when the screams had shattered their focus.

  “Delegation is a wonderful thing.” Ammon patted her on the shoulder with a false joviality as Sarousch came trotting up. “Go.”

  Ketchkei took her arm and guided her up the stairs. Behind them Ammon turned his attention to Sarousch.

  “So Master Sarousch, how much do you know about getting rid of bodies?”

  ***

  Aquillion, Caruda House

  Copelia

  They reached Copelia’s study to find the two children being held by a horrorstruck Ildiko on her pallet. Copelia had forgotten that Ildiko was still in the study with the prince on the floor. The children didn’t seem comforted in their terror by the sheet-covered body.

  Copelia came over and knelt beside them. “Priya, Maximo,” Copelia said, getting their attention. She pointed at the figure wrapped in the Caruda embroidered sheet on the floor. “I know this has been horrible, but that’s the prince you saved tonight. And we need to wake him up now.” Priya nodded, mutely. “Can you go to your room now? Miss Idris will be there for you until we are done here.” She hugged them both and whispered to the young girl, “Priya you did a brave thing today. You’re safe now. We’re all safe.” Copelia let them go and the children walked a wide circle around the prince and closed the door behind them.

  “Sorry about that,” Copelia said to Ildiko. “I forgot everything was in here.”

  “Minus five moons for memory,” Ketchkei reproved, “but if half our others are as strong as that girl, it won’t matter. They can save us.” She laughed bitterly, adding sarcastically, “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer woman.”

  “Don’t say that,” Ildiko snapped. “She did this temple a lot of good in the years before this. We forgive. That is what we do.”

  Ketchkei shook her head and went to lean a hip on the desk, arms crossed.

  “Regardless, Ammon and company are disposing of the evidence as we speak. So here we are.”

  “Right,” Copelia shook the tension out of her shoulders. She needed to do this with a clear head. “Would you draw the circle?”

  Ketchkei took up a jar and began pouring a circle of seasalt around the prince. They had rolled up the rug before they had pulled him out of the suit and into the sheets on the floor earlier that day. Copelia lit the incense, then took a silver bowl filled with water and put it near the prince’s head. Ketchkei finished and went to sit on the couch against the wall. Copelia took a moment to clean the worst of the mud from her feet. She had run out to the garden in just the casters. Then she slipped a silver robe over her shoulders to cover her shirt and split skirts. She cracked her knuckles and made sure the hand casters were loose and flexible on her fingers.

  It was Copelia’s job to pull the prince back, and Ildiko had made her memorize the ceremony. It was now or run for the hills, screaming. These people believed in her. A goddess believed in her. She really hoped they knew what they were doing. She shook herself from her thoughts, picked up the mortar, and placed the prepared herbs into her mouth. She chewed them, grimacing at the bitterness. She tried to get them out of her teeth as she stepped into the circle.

  Ildiko cleared her throat and said, “Copelia, the original spell if it survives, will be misshapen. Using the spell verbatim from the book might cause whatever fragments of the original spell that are keeping the prince alive to collapse. You’re going to have to do something much harder. You’re going to have to feel your way through the spell lines, make alterations on the fly, and pray the Goddess will work through you. If he’s lived this long, the Goddess is protecting him. She should work through you.”

  “I don’t understand the difference between the spell lines on a theomancer’s hands which everyone can see and the ones that stretch off into the air, that I can only see sometimes.”

  “The lines on a theomancer’s hands are just the physical manifestation on the much more complicated connections and paths that make up a spell. You draw the lines to shape a spell and now that you’ve taken the herbs, you’ll be able to see much clearer all the minute connections in the spell lines as they shape the Goddess’s power.”

  Copelia swallowed convulsively. She could feel the herbs taking effect. Everything around her was taking on a subtle glow.

  “Are you ready?” Ildiko asked.

  Copelia nodded dazedly. Beside the prince, she knelt and uncovered his face and chest.

  “Copelia, be very careful. You’ll be channeling a lot of power as you move through the spell lines. If it goes wrong, it could kill you. You’ll have to feel it out. Power can only be channeled out through metal and blood. These are the most basic elements of the theomantic art. Go slow,” cautioned Ildiko. She gave Copelia a reassuring nod.

  Nervously, Copelia licked her lips, pushed her fear away, and went to work. Laying her hands out in offering she recited the opening prayer. She prayed for guidance and set about laying bare the old spell.

  She took the twisted silver metal piece of the font and placed it on his chest. When in doubt, skin contact was an additive in spells. Then she cut her finger with a small knife and let a drop of blood fall into the bowl of water. Reaching over the prince, she pricked his forehead and collected blood on the blade, then carefully let the drops fall into the bowl of bloody water. She concentrated on feeling the Goddess’s power inside her. In Oruno, she had swum in the ocean and once been caught in a riptide. The Goddess’s power felt like that tide, on the periphery of her senses rushing toward her. Once it was upon her, she could feel it surrounding her and saturating her, an overwhelming alien power. She could just barely affect its paths and as it rushed around her, all she could think was that this ocean of the Goddess’s power was the power that ground the greatest boulders into sand. From a case she had found in the wooden trunk, she pulled one of the soft calligraphy brushes that lay there. Dipping it in the bloody water, she began to paint lines on the prince’s body, special curved symbols for the palms and several lines over the heart, running up the neck and face. These were the lines that the spell books said would summon the prince and re-anchor his soul inside his body. When it was how she thought it should be, she put the brush down.

  Carefully, Copelia touched his forehead as it bled a line down to his temple and put the other hand on the font. Her bloody hands closed the circuit of the spell on contact and suddenly she could see it—a web of lines of light connecting the font to the body. The lines showed the flow of the Goddess’s power and how the complex shape was anchored with a great knot in the font. She could see now that the shapes made by the lines changed the effects of the power.

  She reached out with her mind, touching the spell that was anchored in the metal of the font. As her mind sank into the spell, the lines of the spell grew on her hands, glowing with light. Her mind became one with the shape of the spell—a huge spider web stretching across the physical plain and beyond into other stranger plains she had never been to before. She could see the knot that was anchored in the font, and another that was anchored in the prince’s heart. She could see the web of lines that stretched into the distance of the physical plain, someplace far away where his soul had journeyed.

  With a careful prayer for guidance, she poured some of the Goddess’s power from the ocean of power inside her into spell anchored in him, unforced, allowing the power and her will to flow into the lines and paths she had drawn and pull together those of the previous spell. She followed the paths into the anchor in his heart, but couldn’t make sense of the mess of lines there. Frustrated, she dipped a hand in the
bloody water and ran the wetness over the twisted metal of the font. The water ran down the metal and onto his chest.

  All she touched was emptiness inside him. Thinking fast, she turned her concentration onto the font. Inside it, she could feel the tangled threads that tied it to the prince and far away, something else. She pulled, hoping it was the prince’s soul. It would not move. She pushed her power into the font, into the connection. The power fought, trying to knot in the wreckage of the past spells. She pushed at the power until it reached the end of the spell lines, rushing and rolling. His soul was supposed to be on the other end of spell, but these spell lines were passing out of this world into somewhere alien to her.

  Opening her eyes, she saw the prince was glowing silvery on the carpet, his body covered with curling visible spell lines on top of the ones she had painted, hair waving and floating as if it were in water. She frowned, thinking that the pattern was familiar.

  A faint sound emanated from his body: a clanging harmony as if great bells had been rung and a murmur of words. She glanced at Ildiko and Ketchkei and they seemed to hear it too.

  The voice grew clearer and recognizably male. “...There was this light, the roses and the singing. She is crying! Crying...”

  It continued like a stream, fluctuating in and out of hearing. In that sound, that snarl of magic was present, which she strained toward, trying to find the soul. He continued, “Small and crowded...dark warmth. No! Don’t! Don’t leave the blossoms, and the thorns, and the light. Oh the light!”

  Copelia was struck with fear, parsing this tangle. He sounded mad. Had the breaking of the magic driven him mad? Would it be better to let him go than bring him back to the shambles of sanity? No, she had to finish. To succeed if she could. But the soul was so a part of the magic now, neither element wanted to part. It was locked in the magic. “Corinado Matthias Miliarnes!” No response. According to the spell book the keystone of the spell was his name. It was supposed to dissolve when the name was spoken. “Corinado!” Nothing.