At first, she had been a touch exasperated that Ruslan kept finding excuses for the children to interact with her. Yet his desire for them to win her love had been so evident, she had not the heart to deny him. Besides, she found the boys more entertaining than expected. Kiran, shyly adoring and endlessly curious, listened rapt to tales of her travels and shared her appreciation for nature’s myriad wonders. Even stiff, serious Mikail begged her to share stories of legendary mage-battles and cuddled up to her with kittenish eagerness when she offered affection. The boys worshipped and feared Ruslan in equal measure, as they should. But since Lizaveta had no need to worry over their training or mete out punishments for their mistakes, her, they simply loved.
“Not tonight,” she said gently to Kiran, and showed him the message charm. “I am waiting for news of some importance. Tomorrow, perhaps.”
“If you’re too busy for a story, might I at least read the star book again?” Kiran peered up at her, his blue eyes wide and winsome.
She relented. “You may come in and read, so long as you are quiet.”
“I’ll be so quiet you won’t even notice me,” he promised, tiptoeing for the shelves lining the study’s marble walls. As he passed her, he paused and said in a rush, “I hope the news you wait for is good. So you won’t have to worry anymore.”
His sensitivity to her mood was a sign of the empathy she still feared would cause trouble in years to come. Akheli needed steel in their souls, not kindness. But that was Ruslan’s problem and not hers.
Unlike Simon. Lizaveta ran a finger over the jeweled band, willing her spy to hurry up and send his report. “My worries are not yours, little one. Read if you wish, but no more talking.”
Kiran made straight for the “star book”—a treatise she had written on the movements and nature of celestial objects. The treatise had been born of his eager questions when she first showed him the patterns of the stars. What is the sky made of? Are the stars magelights? Can you cast to bring one down for me to see?
She did not need polished lenses such as the scholars of the great cities of eastern Arkennland used to magnify and study the sky. She cast with all the power of the confluence to scry the distant stars, and discovered to her wonder their immense size and the improbable distances between them. Nor were those distances wholly empty. Globes of rock and gas circled the stars, though none she had yet scried were rich with magic and life like the world beneath her feet. Countless smaller chunks of sky-stone hurtled through the silent darkness like shrapnel from some immense concussion.
She wrote the treatise to record her findings for her own future use—and because Kiran was still too young and untrained to cast spells that would let him experience such wonders directly. But oh, how he loved to read of them. Already, he had settled into a cushioned chair, clutching the slender leather-bound volume like he held the most precious of treasures.
The glory of the sunset outside faded. Magelights glimmered and sparkled like a rainbow of gemstones in Ninavel’s twilit towers. Finally, finally, the message charm warmed in her hand, signaling the spy’s missive had come.
Lizaveta sent an eager spark of her ikilhia into the charm to trigger the waiting message. A vision of hastily scrawled words appeared in her mind’s eye: The man you seek is living amid ruins in the Greenward Hills. I know not what he does in the ruins. I did not dare get close enough for him to discover me. He has been there long enough to build a cabin, and he shows no sign of leaving. I believe no other shadow man has yet located him.
Lizaveta sucked in a sharp, delighted breath. Kiran looked up from the star treatise, the azure blaze of his ikilhia flaring with curiosity, but she ignored his unspoken questions.
Simon found, at last! And Lizaveta had an inkling of his goal. The ruins the spy spoke of—she had read scholars’ treatises discussing curious artifacts found in the west, the leftovers of some vanished civilization so ancient that no one remembered its people. Most of the artifacts were broken, useless, but some contained curiously powerful reservoirs of magic, as if an entire host of mages had worked to bind power within them. Might Simon believe such a reservoir could make up for his lack of partner and confluence?
She reached for Ruslan’s mind, and caught a flash of intent concentration accompanied by a muted pulse of energies. He was leading Mikail through a spell exercise. It would endanger them both if she distracted Ruslan while he cast.
A diffident cough caught her attention. A nathahlen servant prostrated herself in the doorway.
“Great one, forgive the intrusion, but one of Lord Sechaveh’s servants has come asking to meet with you. A scholar-mage. Shall I tell her to return another day?”
“No, you may tell our visitor this is an excellent time.” Lizaveta wanted very much to find out if this visit was related to the information she’d just received. Her spy might believe no others had discovered Simon’s location, but that was no guarantee. Nathahlen were so unreliable. “Show Sechaveh’s mage to the study.” She glanced at Kiran. “You, little one, must return to the workroom. When Ruslan finishes with Mikail, ask him to join me.”
She saw Kiran’s disappointment. Ruslan kept him tightly cloistered; he had little chance to meet other mages. But he did not argue, only set aside the treatise—not without a wistful sigh of regret—and ran from the room.
The servant returned with a young mage whose belted sash bore Sechaveh’s scorpion crest beside the star-and-scroll insignia of eastern Arkennland’s Marrekai scholars.
Lizaveta dismissed the servant. The young mage bowed to Lizaveta in formal eastern style, hands extended and crossed at the wrist. She was not greatly talented. Her citrine ikilhia was a scant little flame compared to Lizaveta’s sun-bright inferno. The pale, blocky sigils on her tunic and trousers proclaimed her to be what the untalented termed a crystal mage, who raised power for spellwork by calculated placement of gemstones to absorb mere trickles of the confluence’s great currents.
“Thank you for seeing me,” the mage said, straightening. “I’m Aram Inara Naavini. Though here on the western frontier, I just go by Naavini. I love how informal you Ninavel folk are. Saves so much time, which is such a blessing in the heat. Ah, but it’s lovely in here.” Naavini looked appreciatively around the study, which was cool and spacious and quiet, its marble recesses and treasure trove of books lit by soft silver magelight from crystals held in decorative copper brackets.
Lizaveta gestured Naavini to the comfortably padded chair Kiran had so recently vacated. The girl’s pert face and small stature made her appear to be barely out of childhood herself. Of course, appearance was a poor guide to the age of even so limited a mage as Naavini, but her ikilhia sizzled with a buoyant energy that revealed she wasn’t anywhere near her first century. Only the young got so easily excited.
“What does Sechaveh request of me?” Lizaveta asked, her dispassionate tone and perfectly controlled ikilhia revealing nothing of her deep interest in the answer.
Naavini picked up the treatise Kiran had set aside, and flashed a grin at Lizaveta. “Ah! The very treatise that inspired the discovery I’ve come to discuss with you.”
Lizaveta blinked; this was not what she had expected. She had sent a copy of the treatise to Sechaveh as a courtesy to an ally. Sometimes sky-stones fell in a blaze of light to impact the ground. Sechaveh had built Ninavel on the wealth of the Whitefires’ valuable mineral deposits, but how much more precious might strange sky-minerals be?
Naavini’s discovery likely had everything to do with increasing Sechaveh’s profits, and nothing to do with an exiled enemy’s whereabouts. Perhaps the spy had been correct in his assurance that Lizaveta alone knew Simon’s location.
“Have you found a fallen sky-stone?” she asked Naavini, her mind only half on the question. The rest of her attention was on Simon. Ruslan might scoff at the idea of some ancient artifact replacing the confluence, but Lizaveta liked to err on the side of caution. Yet how might they intervene, with Simon protect
ed by the border wards?
“Predicted a future impact, actually.” Naavini’s grin reappeared, brighter than ever. If the girl was intimidated by facing one of Ninavel’s two most powerful mages, she betrayed no sign beyond the excited roil of her ikilhia. “After reading your treatise, I devised a method to chart the larger sky-stones’ paths. They’re rather well-behaved things. With the right set of equations, the math’s easier than mapping confluence currents. Setting up the equations, though...ah, now that’s the real challenge. Nobody’s yet managed it but me.”
Even lesser mages had no lack of pride. In Naavini’s case, perhaps the pride was warranted. If she had discovered a stone on the path to strike...an idea dawned, sparking fire in Lizveta’s heart.
“How large a sky-stone, and where will it hit?”
“Large enough to leave a crater twenty miles wide. The stone will strike in the Whitefires in only a week’s time.”
That explained Sechaveh’s concern. The Whitefires were riddled with the mines that poured profit into Sechaveh’s coffers.
“Sechaveh wishes for the stone to be diverted, so the impact does not destroy any of his mines?” Lizaveta would be delighted to ensure the cataclysm happened elsewhere. Specifically, the Greenward Hills. Alathia’s vaunted border wards were impenetrable only to magic and humans. The wards would not stop physical objects barren of any ikilhia, such as sky-stones. Twenty miles of devastation would easily encompass the ruins where Simon lurked. If Sechaveh truly did not know Simon’s location, he would never realize Lizaveta had defied his edict.
“The mines are safe,” Naavini said. “The stone will hit in the far southern reaches of the Whitefires and destroy only a region of wilderness. Lord Sechaveh wishes to know if you would consider diverting the sky-stone’s path so it strikes a little more south and east. Right on the city of Prosul Shadari.”
In Prosul Shadari, a consortium of Varkevian merchant houses operated a massive silver mine that was Ninavel’s largest competitor in the trade. Destroy the mine, and Ninavel would have a near-monopoly on charm-grade silver in all the countries of the west.
Curse Sechaveh and his cunning, of course he had a scheme already in mind. Nor could Lizaveta divert the sky-stone to the Greenward Hills and claim an error in casting. Sechaveh knew her and Ruslan’s prowess too well. He would understand the mistake was deliberate, and ferret out the reason for it.
Lizaveta took a slow breath, mastering frustration. “Varkevia’s great merchant houses would not take such a setback lightly. Does Sechaveh wish to provoke war?”
“Of course not,” Naavini said. “The mine’s destruction must seem an act of the gods, not mages. The spell cast to divert the stone must be powerful enough to succeed, yet so subtly done that mages hired by the Varkevians to investigate cannot detect any traces of spellwork. Blood mages are not usually known for the subtlety of their casting, but you…I hear you are the most subtle mage in all of Arkennland.”
The flattery was not subtle. In truth, it was so overt that Lizaveta suspected an attempt at distraction. Something did not quite add up about Naavini’s visit. The plan was as crafty and ambitious as one of Sechaveh’s, but he never would have confided such a politically sensitive matter to a junior mage. He would have come direct to Lizaveta to discuss it in person. Plus, that heightened, over-excited dance of Naavini’s ikilhia...
“This is your idea, isn’t it? Not Sechaveh’s. Have you even presented the matter to him yet?” If the girl had not...a spell subtle enough to fool the Varkevians could also fool Sechaveh. It would not matter if Sechaveh knew Simon’s location, if he could uncover no evidence a sky-stone strike was Lizaveta’s doing.
Iron discipline instilled in her youth by fire and pain let Lizaveta keep her breathing steady, her ikilhia calm, as she awaited Naavini’s answer.
Naavini’s brown cheeks gained a hint of red. She hesitated, and Lizaveta wondered if she was foolish enough to try lying.
“It is my idea, and no, I haven’t presented it to Lord Sechaveh. I haven’t even told him about the sky-stone. I wanted to be certain my plan was possible, first.”
Lizaveta allowed herself the tiniest of smiles. She could not have asked for a better opportunity. “A wise decision. Sechaveh will be far more impressed if you present him a fully realized plan. I, too, admire intelligence and ambition. But I cannot give you certainty of success until I have seen your calculations and charts and worked out if an undetectable diversion is possible. Do you have the charts with you?”
If the girl did, she would not leave the study alive. The gossamer protections woven about her ikilhia were no match for Lizaveta.
Naavini cocked her head, her dark eyes no longer quite so guileless. “No, I don’t. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m a trifle reluctant to hand over my work. What’s to stop you from killing me and presenting my plan to Sechaveh as your own? I can bring you the information you need to design your spell, but only if you give me a binding blood oath that you won’t seek my death, nor speak of the sky-stone to Sechaveh without me.”
Lizaveta laughed in genuine amusement. “Do you imagine I need to chase after Sechaveh’s favor? In truth, I’m quite curious why a clever mage like you would bother.” Ninavel mages had no need to seek political patronage. Sechaveh’s bargain with them was legendary: help provide his desert-locked city with water, obey his rare requests, and he would not interfere with any other magic they cast.
“Because I love the game of trade and nations. It’s fun,” Naavini said. “In the east, a mage can’t become a spymistress. Rulers are too afraid of us. But here...here we can do anything.” She leaned forward, holding Lizaveta’s gaze. “Will you give me the oath I ask and cast on the sky-stone? In return, I offer to explain the design of my calculations. I’ll even develop new mathematical methods to tackle any puzzles you care to solve. I can tell from reading your treatise how much you enjoy deciphering the mysteries of nature.”
Ah, it was a shame Lizaveta must ensure Sechaveh never learned of this meeting. Naavini was right in thinking her offer of mathematical genius would be tempting. Yet Lizaveta wanted Simon’s death more. “Shall I speak plainly? If I wished to kill you, no vow you extracted from me would stop your death. Nor have you Sechaveh’s leverage to buy yourself protection from my casting. I will not vow never to cast against you. Mages live long; who can say if we shall always stay allies? What I would give is a blood oath that I have no intention of killing you.”
There were other means of forever silencing Naavini than death. Changing the girl’s flesh to stone, and binding her imprisoned soul so none but Lizaveta could touch it...yes, that might let her get some further use of Naavini’s mathematical prowess, once the girl’s will crumbled.
Naavini was still, her slender black brows knit in a frown. After a moment, she said slowly, “But you would vow not to speak to Sechaveh without me?”
“I suggest we each vow not to discuss the sky-stone with him until we both are present.” Then Lizaveta could leave Naavini untouched until the casting of the diversion spell was complete, and ensure the girl’s continuing silence once she and Ruslan were satisfied of the spell’s success. Simple plans were often best.
Naavini was silent, her ikilhia leaping and writhing in reflection of her internal struggle. At last she nodded. “Done.”
Her agreement was almost disappointing. Lizaveta had thought the girl intelligent enough to put up more of a fight. She must want very badly for her plan to succeed—so badly that her ambition blinded her to potential dangers. The pitfall of youth. Sly old Sechaveh would have had the foresight to fear fates other than death.
Experience was the best of teachers. Lizaveta smiled and drew her barbed knife.
“Let us make our vows.”
* * *
Lizaveta checked the silver tangle of channels laid into the workroom floor once more. She had spent two very long days designing a spell based on Naavini’s equations that would send ripple after invis
ible ripple of magic to nudge the sky-stone by infinitesimal degrees until it was on course to pulverize Simon. Another layer of spellwork would hasten the dissipation of traces, like brushing away a lizard’s tracks on a dune.
“The design is perfect.” Ruslan’s admiration slid along their bond to warm her heart. He stood just beyond the outermost gleaming spiral of the pattern, ready to channel for her. “Sechaveh will never detect our involvement, so long as you are certain Naavini has not circumvented her oath.”
“She has not.” Lizaveta had kept careful watch on the girl. Naavini had not attempted to communicate with anyone. She did not even know they were casting tonight. She believed Lizaveta had not yet finished the spell design. The hour was well past midnight; Naavini would be asleep, unaware of the fate that awaited her.
Her innocence would not last long.
Lizaveta moved to the waist-high obsidian block of the anchor stone, where two nathahlen were shackled. A mother and child, not a pair of lovers, but the principle was the same. When Ruslan cast, he did not bother picking out particular nathahlen—he simply slaughtered one unfortunate victim after another until he raised enough power for his harness. Lizaveta prided herself on efficiency. Physical torment sparked ikilhia higher, yes, but anguish over a loved one’s pain was the best enhancement of all.
The mother twisted frantically against her bonds, uncaring of the bloody wounds she inflicted on her wrists and ankles, and shouted muffled cries through her gag. Her eyes were locked on her teenage daughter, who wept in despairing gulps, her thin limbs trembling.
A tendril of Ruslan’s ikilhia swept outward in a last check of the wards protecting the bedroom where Mikail and Kiran lay sleeping.
They are safe, Lizaveta assured him, repressing a sigh. The bedroom’s protections were so powerful the spellwork was near blinding in intensity.
His attention returned to the workroom. I am ready.
Lizaveta raised her knife and reached for Ruslan’s mind. They slid into perfect union. She worked as she had been taught, cutting and carving and maiming, stoking nathahlen souls to their utmost blaze. When she poured her victims’ ikilhia through the channels, layering energies to build the spell, Ruslan shadowed her every move, controlling the flow of power with perfect precision.
Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists Page 25