Sword of Shadows

by Karin Rita Gastreich

  Then a strand of melody separated itself from the midnight hum, reaching toward Corey with haunting intensity.

  May the Gods spare leaves from touching you as they fall…

  The fur on his neck rose. Corey recognized the song, a daring verse attributed to Lithia, lover of the mage warrior Caedmon and one of the great magas who endured the long war against the People of Thunder.

  May the rain cease drenching your body

  May the earth stop kissing your feet…

  The music tightened around his throat, a trapper’s noose pulling him forward. He paused just outside the flickering arc of light cast by torches, heart palpitating against his ribcage, head low to the ground, back arched and tail tucked between hind legs as he paced.

  May the Gods erase your constant gaze

  Your precise words

  Your perfect smile

  Spying a corridor of shadows, Corey slipped into it, moving stealthily between stacks of crates and untended carts, heeding the sound of footsteps and shying away from the mangy stink of dogs.

  May they extinguish you without warning

  In a burst of flame

  An explosion of ice

  At last he drew near. Creeping underneath a cart, Corey lowered himself on his furry stomach and scooted forward. A table well-lit by numerous torches came into view, laden with food and drink, occupied by boisterous men. Next to it, a small group of musicians. And among them, his sweetest voice, his finest music: Adiana.

  If all this should fail, let death take me

  So as not to see you always

  In each moment

  In all my visions

  Her eyes glittered like stone. Bruises discolored her face. Yet her song was as impassioned as ever, meticulously executed through its climax.

  At the table’s head sat a powerfully built man who watched her with a predatory gaze. The others kept to their drink and conversation, while a handful of willing whores provided welcome distraction.

  The closing cadence was met with hearty applause, soon silenced by the imposing leader, who announced the end of the meal. Officers, servants, women, and musicians took their leave.

  Only Adiana remained seated with back straight and eyes downcast, hands folded on her lap, hair a river of burnished gold in the flickering light.

  “Come,” he said, and she obeyed.

  Accepting the wine he offered, Adiana drank not as a woman savoring its sweet bite, but as one intent on losing herself in a misty stupor.

  The man pulled her into a rough embrace, loosened her bodice, and assailed her soft flesh. The emptied cup slipped from Adana’s fingers. Her aura convulsed in a violent tempest of remorse, desire, revulsion, desperation.

  A low growl escaped Corey’s throat. He scuttled backwards into deeper shadows, until the undisturbed rhythm of the camp assured him no one had heard. He flinched at the sound of plates and cups clattering to the ground, followed by the Syrnte commander’s feral groan. Adiana’s cries began to pierce the night.

  Corey rose, shook the dust out of his fur, and sneezed.

  Without looking back, he departed the camp along the same shadow-filled path through which he had come.

  ***

  In the morning, flame throated warblers, yellow breasted thrushes, and black tailed chickadees summoned a reluctant sun.

  With stiff muscles and bleary eyes, Corey abandoned the post he had taken over from Borten and wandered down to the stream to refresh his face and fill his water skin.

  Mariel and the knight emerged from their resting place as the mage climbed back up the bank.

  Wary of the proximity of the Syrnte, they took their meager breakfast of tart summer berries in silence. Corey prepared tea to warm their hands and bellies. Mariel finished her meal first and, unable to contain her restlessness, started throwing her knife, hitting every mark she chose.

  “Your tutor is also skilled with the blade,” Corey commented. “Did she teach you?”

  “Yes.” Mariel extended her hand toward the beech where she had just embedded the blade. With a brief spell, she called the knife back to her grip. “Maga Eolyn taught me how to use the knife, and now Sir Borten is going to teach me how to use the sword.”

  The knight sputtered over his drink, smiled, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “If that is what you want, Mariel, then we may start today, once we have put some distance between us and that army. I’m certain Maga Eolyn would be pleased.”

  “No, she would not.” Mariel’s tone was neither insolent nor argumentative, simply subdued with truth. “But I suspect even Maga Eolyn has come to realize, as I have in these days recently passed, that one cannot live in this world without preparing for war.”

  They continued east as Borten had proposed, keeping to the narrow valley with its clear, bubbling stream. Squirrels chattered from low perches. Once in a while a crow cawed from some solitary branch.

  Corey could see from the darting of Borten’s eyes and the grim set of his mouth that the animals’ attentions made him nervous. While the mage shared his concern, he found some comfort in the knowledge that the Syrnte were not very gifted when it came to the language of woodland animals. What were obvious signals to Corey and Borten might well pass unnoticed, even by a skilled Syrnte scout.

  By midday, the sun had warmed the forest, though its light barely penetrated the broad leaves of oak and elm that dominated the grove through which they were passing.

  Corey’s gut tightened with a sudden spasm, as if someone had fastened a rope around his entrails and was pulling them out. He would have blamed the vole he swallowed the night before, but he knew better. Coming to a halt, he watched Borten and Mariel ahead of him. Then he looked back down the path they were leaving behind.

  He drew a deep breath, then patted his medicine belt and the hilt of his knife. “Well. I suppose this is as far as I come today. Mariel!”

  The girl stopped and regarded him with a questioning gaze. Corey strode forward and handed her Eolyn’s staff.

  “Be a good maga and return this to your tutor when you see her again,” he said. “Return it whole, or she will surely blame me for any damage it has suffered.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “And you, Borten.” Corey turned to the knight. “I’m loath to admit it, but you’re a good man. A worthy servant of the King and a skilled protector of the magas. Keep this one safe, as I would very much like to see her again.”

  “What are you up to?” Borten said suspiciously.

  Corey cleared his throat, unaccustomed to uncertainty, to the nervous flexing of his hands. “It would seem I am going back. Yes, that’s what I’m going to do. Go back, and follow that army.”

  A ring of metal, and Corey found the point of Borten’s sword at his throat.

  “It seems that you are not pleased by my decision.”

  “I would be most happy not to have you with us, Mage Corey. But if you are captured—or worse, turn yourself over willingly, something I would not put past you—what they learn from you may well destroy us. I will slay you before allowing you to return that way.”

  Corey glanced at Mariel, who watched them wide-eyed. He drew a resigned breath. “I’m going back because Adiana is with them.”

  “What?” Mariel’s exclamation startled a small flock of birds out of a nearby fir.

  “Hush, child!” Corey scolded. “Or they will find us yet.”

  “How do you know this?” Borten demanded.

  “I went there last night as Fox. I did not intend to enter their camp, but on a whim I wandered inside. That’s when I saw her.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Mariel’s tone was distraught, angry.

  “Because I thought it best that you—especially you, young maga—did not know.” He met Borten’s gaze. “She’s been claimed by one of the officers, a man of very high rank, though not, I’m afraid, high enough to deserve her.”

  Borten lowered his sword, though doubt remained in his expression.


  Mariel paced beside them, hands working as if to extract words from the air. “If you had told us, we could have rescued her somehow and brought her with us! We could still bring her with us. She might know where Catarina and Tasha are, and we could all be together again. Whole. A coven, like before.”

  She halted and eyed both of them with determination. “We must go back. We have to set her free.”

  “Oh, for the love of the Gods, don’t be a fool!” Corey said. “Even if there weren’t an army surrounding Adiana, by now that Syrnte commander has bound her mind to his. In the moment she sees someone she recognizes, he will know. That person will be captured, tortured, and slain.”

  “But the girls—”

  “The girls are dead.”

  Mariel stared at him dumbfounded. Her eyes watered as if he had slapped her in the face.

  “I saw it in her aura.” Corey softened his tone. “Everything once dear to Adiana is gone. The girls are beyond our help, Mariel, and so is Adiana.”

  “Then why return?” Borten asked with narrowed eyes.

  “Because I cannot…” Corey faltered. A self-deprecating laugh escaped his lips. Who would have thought he would succumb to such sentimentality? “I cannot find it in my heart to leave her. During Ernan’s rebellion, when I was arrested in Selkynsen, Adiana was the only one who came after me. Somehow, she convinced Khelia and Rishona to give her a band of warriors that I might be rescued. It was a fool’s mission, and lucky for her by the time they arrived in Selkynsen I had long since been taken to the King’s City. Otherwise she would have died in the attempt to free me, and I helpless to do a thing about it.

  “When they missed their opportunity, Adiana sent the warriors back to Ernan and traveled alone to Moisehén. There she waited, day after day, night after night, certain that on any given morning I would be publicly beheaded or burned. She waited because she did not want me to die alone, without a friend nearby.”

  Mariel’s brow furrowed. She shook her head. “Mistress Adiana often told stories of the rebellion, but that was not one of them.”

  “Likely it displeased her to learn afterwards that I was not languishing in some rancid dungeon, but rather housed as the King’s guest in the sumptuous apartments of the East Tower, a willing traitor to Ernan’s cause. I myself did not hear this story from Adiana. It was Renate who told me. I did not understand how much her devotion had moved me until now.”

  Corey looked to Borten. “Adiana is suffering a torturous dismemberment of the spirit at the hands of the Syrnte. I may not be able to save her, but I can bear witness to her fate as a friend, and stand nearby when she meets her darkest hour.”

  For a long moment no one said anything. Insects buzzed through the humid air, leaves rustled in the breeze, a chipmunk scampered past their feet.

  Mariel turned her back on the men and drifted to a nearby elm, where she leaned against the trunk and watched the woods in silence.

  Borten sheathed his sword.

  “Go,” he said. “May the Gods be with you.”

  Corey nodded and let his gaze linger on Mariel’s slender back before starting on his way.

  He had gone some thirty paces when Mariel’s shout stopped him. The girl came running and breathless, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  She thrust the staff into his hands. “Take this.”

  “Mariel, I cannot risk—”

  “Please. The forest tells me you will need it more than I.”

  “I see.” He doubted her story, but could not deny the sense of security he found in the resonance of the smooth oak.

  “You must tell Adiana—” A sob cut through her words. Drawing a shaky breath, she straightened her shoulders and wiped away the tears. “If you can find a way, please let Adiana know that we are with her. We are always with her. Our love for her will never end.”

  Corey wrapped his arm around Mariel and pressed her tight against his chest.

  “This,” he murmured, setting his lips upon her forehead, “is why the magas will never be vanquished.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Something Destroyed

  Ehekaht rehoert aenre!

  Fire flared through Eolyn’s veins and burst from her palms in twin shafts of red that pummeled the stone wall in front of her, only to be thrown back in a cloud of suffocating heat that expanded until the maga, unable to withstand the blaze any longer, released her spell with a cry of frustration.

  Hair singed and robes smelling of smoke, Eolyn stalked forward and beat her fists against the cold rock, before sinking wearily against its unflinching face, cursing Tzeremond and the spell that transcended his death.

  “It’s hopeless,” she moaned. “Nothing will break this.”

  High Mage Thelyn stepped close, his hawkish nose following the hairline cracks between well-fitted blocks.

  “You mustn’t despair,” he said. “Every mage in the City has tried his hand at this ward. You have only just begun.”

  Despite the complex layout of Tzeremond’s quarters, Thelyn and his brothers in magic had long ago determined where the secret library must lie. A careful mapping of the apartment had revealed the existence of a room near its center, with no visible entrance. It was here that Eolyn and Thelyn had focused their exhaustive efforts.

  “It’s been three days already,” Eolyn said. “Three days is too long.”

  By now Akmael would be in Rhiemsaven. Only the Gods knew how much time he had before his first confrontation with the Syrnte.

  “We must look elsewhere for our answers,” she said.

  “Where else? The libraries of East Selen? We’d waste a quarter moon just getting there and back.” Thelyn stepped away from his examination of the wall. “It’s remarkable. Common hammers and maces shatter upon touching this. Even a red flame cast with all the fury of a High Maga cannot leave a scar. I would very much like to have this ward. Let us hope it, too, is somewhere inside.”

  Eolyn groaned and let her head fall back against the wall. She covered her face with aching hands. Her shoulders were stiff, her stomach sour from having channeled so much destructive magic without the aid of a staff. They had tried every conceivable trick in their attempts to unravel the ward. She knew no spell more aggressive than the flame she had just cast.

  She turned her ear to the rough stone.

  “Would you deny me your knowledge even now, Tzeremond?” she whispered. “Our country is under siege, your King in danger. I know you have no love for me, but it is said you once loved our people. For their sake, please. Let the echo of your voice return.”

  The stone remained silent.

  Eolyn ran her fingers through her hair in dismay. It’s no use.

  “Perhaps we should rest,” Thelyn said. “Return later this evening, or tomorrow.”

  Muffled laughter followed his words, the belabored wheezing of an old crone.

  Eolyn straightened and glanced down the darkened corridor that led to the other rooms. “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  Again, the crone laughed.

  “It sounds like it’s coming from inside the wall,” Eolyn said.

  Don’t try too hard, child, a woman cackled, or you’ll break your teeth!

  Eolyn gasped when she recognized the voice.“Impossible.”

  “What?” Thelyn demanded. “What did you hear?”

  Shaking off her doubt, Eolyn rose and set both hands upon the wall. She drew a deep breath, intent upon acting before reason undermined instinct. The invocation fell from her lips as more of a question than a command.

  “Ghemena?”

  The wall remained silent.

  Blood rose hot to Eolyn’s cheeks. She felt like a fool. “Curse it all! You are right, Mage Thelyn. We should rest, for I am at my wit’s end, and subject to the whims of a woman gone mad.”

  Thelyn drew a breath to respond, but was interrupted by a thump from within the wall, followed by the scraping of stone against stone. A long slow hiss of air released into the room, like the si
gh of a weary lover, carrying the stale odor of dusty parchment.

  Thelyn laughed out loud, strode forward, and extended his arm into the space revealed by the parting of the wall. “Three years and countless mages, when all we needed was a maga with the right word! Corey will be overcome with envy at not having been here to witness this.”

  Eolyn stepped away from the shadow-filled passage, wary of what might lay inside. “I don’t understand.”

  “Nor do I. Why would your student’s name hold the key?”

  “Not my student. My tutor, the woman who adopted me. Ghemena of Berlingen.”

  Thelyn’s countenance lost some of its levity. He raised his brows and looked toward the doorway.

  “Ah,” he said.

  “Ah?” Eolyn repeated, bewildered. “Is that all you can say? You knew him better than I could have ever hoped to. Surely you must understand this mystery. What does it mean?”

  “I suppose it means the old wizard was a young man once, and like any mage, subject to the whims of aen-lasati. Doyenne Ghemena would have been a worthy choice for Tzeremond’s discerning temperament. She was one of the few of their generation who matched him in skill and knowledge.”

  “Impossible,” Eolyn said. “Tzeremond hated the magas, all of them.”

  “Did he? Don’t misunderstand me, Maga Eolyn. Tzeremond never lost the opportunity to remind us of the ruin the magas brought to Moisehén, and the danger he believed they posed to our kings. He undertook the duty of destroying them with genuine determination. But every mage has a heart, or so Caradoc taught us, and thus we must surmise that Tzeremond loved someone once. Ghemena of Berlingen is as likely a candidate as any I can imagine.”

  “He ordered her abbey destroyed! Berlingen was razed, and all within murdered.”

  “No, in fact.” Thelyn leaned upon his staff. “That is a story I can tell. Kedehen wanted Berlingen obliterated. He was certain the abbey had given refuge to the magas during the war, and thought it a nest of sedition. Tzeremond argued against the strike, out of concern—as the story is told—for the treasures held in its library. Though given what we’ve just witnessed here, perhaps he was worried about more than the burning of books. Kedehen ignored Tzeremond’s counsel, as you well know. And Berlingen is no more.”