“I ate people!” Elin snapped.
Tina shrank back. “W-what?”
Elin huddled in on herself. “Father kept us in a pen together, in the swamp. Threw in things he’d caught to feed us. Animals. People. Children, sometimes. When we were hungry we’d eat anything, even each other. I remember loving the taste of living flesh, ripped straight from their struggling limbs. The little ones were the best, but usually he’d keep those for himself.”
Tina stared at her in horror.
“What changed?” I asked gently.
Elin stared at the floor, miserably hugging herself. “When the faerie lords found us they worked some sort of enchantment, to try to bring us to our senses. I was the only one they could reach. My brothers, and my sister… they were animals. Just crazed beasts, endlessly hungering. I… I don’t know what they did with them, but… the faerie have so few children, each one is a treasure beyond price, but… I think they had to put them down.”
“That’s why I can’t risk it,” she went on. “I know that if we had children they’d be more than half human, but they’d still be tainted by… that. I still don’t dare assume a grendelkin form, for fear of degenerating once more into a ravening beast. I can’t believe that a child could overcome such urges.”
“You’re afraid they’d hurt the other children,” I realized.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry, Daniel. But I don’t dare take the chance.”
I gathered her gently into my arms. She resisted at first, but then Tina got a determined look and joined in. Finally she gave in, and let us hug her.
“We’re not going to blame you for things that happened when you were an abused child being raised by a monster, Elin,” I reassured her.
“No!” Tina agreed. “We all love you, Elin. I’m sorry I pressed you.”
“Yeah. If you don’t want to take the chance that’s your decision. But there are a couple of things you might want to think about.”
“What? Don’t tell me your magic can fix even this,” Elin said.
“No, I’m not that good. But Bast is a mother goddess, and I bet she’d be happy to help.”
“Oh! That’s a great idea!” Tina exclaimed. “You’re right, Daniel. Only, I guess we won’t be able to ask her about it for another year.”
“Well, my second point is that we might not need magic anyway. Elin, if you did have children would you keep them locked up in a pen and throw in people for them to eat?”
“No!” She protested. “Of course not! I’d… I’d feed them, and give them clothes, and hug them, and take them hunting… no, maybe not that… play with them? Teach them magic? I… I suppose I don’t really know what to do with a child.”
“We can teach you,” Tina offered. “Avilla has magic perfect mother powers, you know. Maybe I do too now? I think that’s something Bast is giving me, and anyway I’ve helped with lots of babies.”
“There, you see? If you don’t want your children to be monsters, don’t abuse them and make them monstrous. We might need to be extra careful about supervising them and keeping them out of mischief, but that’s nothing new. Tina’s daughter is bound to be a handful, and I’m pretty sure that when Cerise gets around to having kids they’ll end up being half demon. Actually, it might be good for them to have some playmates that aren’t fragile.”
“Do you really think it could be that easy?” Elin asked uncertainly.
“It wouldn’t surprise me. Look, Elin, if you don’t want children that’s fine. I’m not going to push you to do anything you don’t want to. But it seems like you actually do, and if that’s the case I think we can make it happen. It might take some time to make sure we have everything figured out, but it’s not like we need to rush. Faerie are basically immortal, right?”
“I’m a quarter human,” she pointed out. “But yes, it’s quite likely that I shall live for centuries. That’s another thing that worries me, actually.”
“You worry way too much,” Tina said, clearly exasperated. “A great wizard like Daniel isn’t going to die of something stupid like getting old.”
“Most wizards do, Tina,” Elin said.
“Not this one,” I admitted, a little embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Elin. I should have realized that was something you’d be concerned about.”
“You’re immortal?” She asked skeptically.
“No, but I can heal old age just like any other malady,” I told her. “I’m not going to get old on you, and neither is anyone else in the coven as long as I’m around.”
Elin boggled. “You can heal old age? Just like that?”
“Yeah. Just like that.”
“See?” Tina beamed. “Have faith, Elin. Whatever happens, we can work things out.”
Elin wiped the tears from her eyes, and finally relaxed into our embrace. “I… thank you. Perhaps you are correct, Tina. I’ve spent most of my life expecting the worst, and rarely been disappointed. But ever since you came into my life, Daniel, everything has been different. Perhaps we truly can just… work things out.”
“We can, Elin,” I assured her. “I know you’ve had a long, hard road to get to this point, but things are going to be different now. Don’t be afraid to hope.”
“I’ll try, Daniel. I’ll try. I… I’m sorry I’m such a wet blanket, Tina.”
Tina rolled her eyes. “Don’t you dare start apologizing for feeling bad, Elin.”
She opened her mouth, but Tina beat her to the punch.
“And don’t apologize for apologizing, either!”
Cerise picked that moment to interrupt us with a question about how Elin wanted her furniture arranged, although from her expression I suspected the timing wasn’t an accident. She pulled Elin away with a smile and a hug, distracting her with mundane details.
Tina watched them go, and shook her head. “She really needs a lot of love, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, she does,” I agreed.
She put her arm around me, and rested her head against my chest. “Well, we’ll just have to make sure she gets it.”
We stood there in silence for a moment.
“Oh, Daniel?” She went on. “I’ve been meaning to ask. What are we going to name our daughter?”
“Name her? What do you mean? She’s Bast.”
Now Tina was giving me her exasperated look. “She’s hiding, isn’t she? We don’t want to tell the whole world that she’s back.”
“Huh. Well, now I feel stupid. You’re right, Tina. I hadn’t thought about that.”
She smiled. “That’s alright, Daniel. You keep filling your head with the big, important stuff, and I’ll keep an eye out for the little things. Besides, didn’t it sound like she wants to be our daughter for real? We’re supposed to raise her just like a normal girl, so that means we need to give her a name too. What do you think about Borghild?”
I laughed. “I think some of these Norse names sound pretty strange to my foreign ears.”
She pouted a little. “Well, it doesn’t have to be that. I was just trying to think of a good name for a goddess of battle. Um, maybe Erika? Or Brita?”
“Erika sounds nice,” I agreed.
Chapter 6
High Adept Steelbinder wasn’t terribly pleased with the delay in receiving the Conclave’s new power source, but he seemed somewhat mollified when I finally delivered it the day after moving Avilla’s kitchen.
For my part, I was happy to see that he’d apparently taken my warnings about how dangerous these things were seriously. He personally escorted me deep into a maze of windowless rooms on the Citadel’s upper floors, where High Adept Ward was waiting by a sealed iron door covered in enchantments. The old wizard grinned at me as I approached.
“So that’s the miracle stone, eh? It’s a strange enchantment, alright.”
“Oh, I layered it with misdirection and defensive effects just in case,” I told him. “But yes, the heart of it’s pretty exotic. I take it this is the vault where you’re going to keep it? I guess iron do
ors are a good bet for that.”
“The Conclave has better ways to protect something like this than just a locked room, Daniel. Ready, Lukas?”
Both wizards drew short wands of rose-colored crystal from within their robes, and stepped up to the door. There were thirty or so small hexagonal holes in the iron surface, each with a symbol engraved above it. They each took a moment to select one of the holes, and then inserted the wands simultaneously.
There was a deep mechanical sound from somewhere inside the door, and then it slowly swung open. On the other side was a large, open chamber where an iron dragon sat watching us.
I blinked.
No, it wasn’t alive. On second glance it had to be some kind of giant golem, but it was easily as big as the dragon Cerise and I had fought in the catacombs a week ago. Damaging a mass of iron that big would be quite a feat even if it wasn’t enchanted, and this thing was practically covered in runes anchoring a thicket of defensive wards.
“You’ll have to stay out here,” Steelbinder said. “Only High Adepts can enter the chamber without being attacked.”
“Not a problem, Your Wisdom,” I replied. “Here you go.”
The power source was a big block of granite shaped into a cylinder, just like the others I’d been making. It weighed a good sixty pounds, but Steelbinder carried it like that was nothing. He turned to step into the room, raising his staff and chanting something in Latin as he did so.
“Let’s give the man some room to work,” Ward said, drawing me away from the open door. “Old furnace belly is always a bit touchy, and he’s liable to roast strangers if they set a foot wrong.”
I let him lead me away. I’m sure they didn’t want an outsider knowing too much about how they handled that thing, and I’d seen enough to reassure me that their power stone was going to be as secure as anything could be. Given the number of checkpoints we’d passed through it was actually a lot more secure than my own vaults, although that was partly mitigated by the fact that this place had been here for centuries. Anyone who wanted to steal from the Conclave would have a lot of information to work with, while my own defenses were a completely unknown quantity.
Still, I wasn’t too worried. The fact that the Conclave was going to have a power stone at all didn’t exactly fill me with good cheer, but I was pretty sure they’d be using it primarily to kill monsters and defend the city. That, and theirs was designed to only put out a tenth as much energy as one of mine. Even that was a pretty terrifying level of magical power, but at least I could be confident of winning any future contest of magical brute force.
“So, did you bankrupt us on those amulets?” Ward asked as we moved down the corridor. “How many did Lukas end up buying from you, anyway?”
“Only three more,” I told him. “One for you, I assume, and a couple for use in rituals and enchantment work. We set the price at a hundred and twenty crowns for each amulet.”
He winced. “That’s a pretty penny. Worth it, mind you, but I can’t see any of the Adepts coming up with that kind of coin.”
“I think that was the idea, Your Wisdom. Keep things from spreading too fast, until you’re prepared to deal with whatever fallout there might be.”
“Ah, you don’t have to keep pulling that formal crap with me, Daniel. Not in private, anyway. The name’s Boris.”
“Thank you, Boris.” That was a surprise. But he waved me off.
“Bah. It’s obvious to anyone with a brain that you’re no lightweight yourself. Where are you from, anyway? No one can place your style, and you’ve got some damned odd turns of phrase. ‘Fallout’, for instance.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, the translation magic does funny things with idiomatic speech. But I’m afraid that’s something I need to keep to myself. All I can say is I’m not from Europe, so I don’t have any connection with the factions and feuds in this part of the world.”
“But you’ve got some connection to those pet witches of yours,” he pointed out. “Beyond the obvious, I mean.”
“There’s a bit of a story there, yes. I wouldn’t be in Varmland right now if it weren’t for Cerise. But I’m not secretly plotting against the Aesir, or anything stupid like that. At this point I figure the wise course is to concentrate on surviving Ragnarok, and see how things work out.”
“Surviving Ragnarok is ambition enough for any man,” he said dryly. “Ah, if only I were thirty years younger. The cold is hard on these old bones, and the battles are worse.”
I considered that for a moment. On the one hand, I didn’t want to give away too many secrets. But on the other hand I needed all the allies I could get, and wizards are used to hiding things.
“Well, I’m sure a wizard of your caliber has options in that regard,” I said carefully. “But as it happens, my healing works on old age.”
That got me a raised eyebrow. “Does it, now? That’s an unusual talent. What’s the catch?”
“I can fix the symptoms of old age, but not all of the underlying causes,” I told him. “So if I take twenty years off a man’s age he’s still mortal, and he’ll age a little faster the second time around. I assume that eventually it would reach the point where my healing doesn’t work anymore, but I’m not actually old enough to have tested that.”
I was pretty sure that was drastically underselling my flesh sorcery, actually. But if word somehow got out I figured the ability to give someone an extra century of life would draw a lot less attention than the ability to keep them going indefinitely.
“Not bad,” he mused. “But actually getting younger would conflict with my bargain, so I’ll have to pass. My arrangements will kick in when I need them. I’ll just have to be patient until then.”
Steelbinder rejoined us shortly after that, and the three of us made our way back out of the vault complex. They both had meetings to get to, but I had one last question to ask before I took my leave.
“So, what’s the Conclave’s policy on selling magic weapons to the nobles?” I asked. “I’ve got some ideas for simple things that would help the garrison deal with the next monster attack more easily, but I don’t want to step on any toes.”
“Simple devices are fair game,” Steelbinder said shortly. “But don’t sell anyone a weapon designed to kill wizards. No golems or bound creatures of power, either. If a noble asks for something like that refer them to the Conclave, and we’ll vote on the request.”
“Understood. What about utility magic, like warmth cloaks or heating stones? Same principle?”
“That, and don’t hand out anything that consumes a significant amount of ambient mana,” Ward told me. “That’s not a pressing issue, but there are enough wizards in Kozalin that we have to be careful not to let it become one.”
“Indeed,” Steelbinder agreed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a golem animation to conduct.”
“Yes, and I’m off to the basement. The city wards aren’t going to renew themselves.”
They went bustling off in different directions, leaving me to my own devices. I had a million projects of my own to get back to, but I figured I might as well spend a few minutes checking out the library while I was here. I’d gotten access to it for myself and Cerise as part of the deal with the amulets, so I should probably find out what that was worth.
I had to flag down a servant for directions, and the interior of the Iron Citadel was such a maze I actually got lost a couple of times along the way. But there were enough servants around that there was always someone to point me in the right direction, so I found it soon enough. There were a couple of guards at the entrance, but they let me pass after checking the little bronze library pass I’d been given.
Medieval libraries look nothing like modern ones.
I suppose that subconsciously I’d been expecting a huge room filled with overstuffed bookshelves, but Varmland had neither printing presses nor a magical substitute. So instead what I found was a maze of interconnected rooms dotted with tables and comfortable-looking chairs. Here and there was a
niche where a few books rested, or a pedestal with a massive tome lying on it. Most of those were actually chained in place, and some even had protective wards over them.
Several attendants waited by the door, and as I looked around one of them scurried over to ask if he could be of assistance. He was a young man, maybe seventeen, wearing a neat gray robe with a symbol embroidered on the chest in the Conclave’s colors. After a moment I realized it was a stylized book. Alright, so probably some kind of librarian rather than an apprentice wizard.
“Today I just wanted to get a look at the library, and find out how you run things here,” I told him. “I expect my apprentice and I will both be paying a lot of visits in the future.”
“Of course, Your Diligence,” he replied obsequiously, giving me the honorific the Conclave’s Adepts used. “I’ll be happy to show you around. The Red Conclave has the largest collection of arcane works north of the Alps.”
“Shouldn’t that be ‘Your Wisdom’?” Another voice interrupted. “I can’t imagine an ordinary Adept disrupting the whole natural order of things as our visitor has.”
I turned to find a lovely dark-haired woman in a low-cut dress regarding me with amused interest. She certainly had the figure for an outfit like that, and I recognized her face from recent Conclave meetings.
“Hello, Tova,” I said. “Do you always torment the staff like that?”
She smiled warmly. “Only on occasion, Daniel. I must admit, I wouldn’t have expected to see you here.”
“Oh, I talked Steelbinder into making library access part of our deal,” I told her. “I expect you’ll see me visiting from time to time.”
“So you’ve come to an arrangement? I’m glad to hear it, Daniel. Perhaps I could give you the tour? I believe I know the library as well as any of our scribes.”
I shrugged. “Why not?”
I let her lead me around the library for a few minutes, explaining the organizational scheme and commenting on the quality of various works. There were a lot of writings on magic here, as well as a considerable selection of other works. The filing system was a complete pain, of course. They categorized grimoires based on the era and school of the author, for instance, which was useless unless you already knew the whole history of the development of European magic. I could see that finding anything useful was going to take some work.
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