Reign of Ash

by Gail Z. Martin

  “What about the others?”

  Blaine held the door to the access stairs that wound from the roof down the servants’ staircase to the lower floors of the manor house. He let Kestel step inside first. His lantern illuminated the narrow, twisting stairs. “Dawe’s been busy in the forge. He wants to create some new weapons for us. I have the feeling we’re going to need them, so I’d like to give him the chance to make progress.”

  “Won’t Niklas think we should have a regiment of soldiers with us?” Kestel teased, but Blaine could hear the concern beneath her tone.

  “He’d probably prefer we take extra guards, but I’m not sure having more people with us made us any safer when we went to Mirdalur,” Blaine replied. “If anything, it slowed us down, made us more noticeable. I’m hoping Geir can scout for us and join us after dark. If we’re lucky, we might even find an inn or a tavern where we can get shelter. A couple of these spots will require more travel than we can finish in one day.”

  They reached the landing for the main floor, and Kestel opened the door to let them into the parlor at the end of the corridor. Blaine thought how quiet Glenreith had become. When he was growing up, it seemed the house was bustling with servants night and day. Now, the house seemed strangely empty.

  “Niklas is going to have his hands full getting his men back on their feet and trying to provision them,” Blaine said, pulling himself out of his memories. “If this does turn out to be for naught, I’ll feel a little better if we haven’t wasted his time as well as ours.”

  “What about your brother?” Kestel asked. She had thrown back the hood of her cloak, and her red hair spilled over her shoulders. As she shrugged out of the heavy coat, Blaine saw that her gown was another of Mari’s everyday dresses, a tan, woolen dress without ornamentation, not meant for social occasions. Still, it flattered her.

  “Niklas can handle Carr,” Blaine replied, a touch of bitterness coloring his voice.

  Kestel studied his face. “I’m sorry your reunion with Carr didn’t go well.”

  Blaine sighed. “At least Mari and Judith are happy to see me.” He looked away. “I’m sorry Carr was rude to you. His comments were unforgivable.”

  Kestel set aside her cloak. “It was sweet of you to defend me. But I’m accustomed to the fact that Carr’s opinion is that of the nobility, including my former patrons.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not my opinion,” Blaine replied. Kestel’s face was flushed from being outside, and her eyes were alight. As simple as the borrowed dress was, it looked good on her. Despite having just returned from the cold, Blaine felt uncomfortably warm, acutely aware that Kestel was standing close enough to touch.

  How did leaving Edgeland change everything? he wondered. Kestel’s one of my best friends. If she were interested in being more, she certainly would know how to indicate it. I don’t want to spoil what we’ve already got. And besides, Blaine thought, I’m bad luck. The last two women I loved ended up dead. I’m a penniless, outcast lord with powerful enemies. Kestel could do much better than me.

  Blaine turned away and crossed the room to pour them both glasses of brandy. He brought one to Kestel. “Have some. It’ll warm you up.” She accepted the glass, and he took a sip from his drink. “I swore that nothing would ever seem cold again after Edgeland. I guess it doesn’t work like that.”

  Kestel chuckled and sank into one of the armchairs. “So, when do we leave to test your theory?”

  “Tomorrow,” Blaine replied, leaning against the mantel of the fireplace. “We’ll be heading away from Castle Reach and away from where Geir spotted Pollard’s troops. After all, they’ve got no reason to think we’d head for a village at the foothills of the mountains. We’ll ride out, have a look around, and come home.”

  Kestel toyed with the rim of her glass. “Without magic, how will we be able to sense whether the place is null or strong?”

  Blaine grimaced. “That’s where it’s an imperfect theory. I’m hoping we’ll turn up some kind of evidence one way or the other. The question is, if Vigus Quintrel expected something like the Great Fire to happen, would he go to a place of power and hope the magic was strong enough to protect him, or hide in a null place?” He shrugged. “Let’s try going to a null place and put the theory to the test. Maybe someone there will know something about Quintrel or about the magic.”

  “On the other hand,” Kestel replied, with a pause as she sipped the brandy, “Mirdalur was a place of power. If there’s another way to bring back the magic, then odds are it will be at another place of power. Quintrel might have thought the same. Or he might have taken refuge at a null place until after the Great Fire and moved his exiles to a place of power later.”

  Blaine nodded. “And it’s a good bet that all places of power were hit during the Meroven attack. So I wonder, if there was another ritual space we can still access, has it been completely destroyed?”

  Kestel withdrew a small book from a pouch beneath her cloak. “I’ve been reading that book Arin Grimur gave us, back in Edgeland.”

  “Did you find anything useful?” Blaine asked.

  Kestel rifled through the pages. “I swear, mages seem incapable of saying anything straight out. Everything is in rhymes and riddles, and some pages can’t be read at all without knowing their secret code. But from what I can make out, the mages spent a good bit of their time and energy on rituals to thank the gods for the magic.” She looked up at Blaine. “Suppose those rituals weren’t really for the gods. Could they have been shoring up the magic, even before the war with Meroven?”

  “It’s possible,” Blaine conceded. “And if they had been doing those rituals for long enough, they might not understand the real reason.”

  Kestel fluffed her skirt as she shifted in her chair. “What if the magic really is gone for good, Mick?” She met his gaze, and her green eyes were worried. “I mean, what if it can’t be restored?”

  Blaine sighed. “Penhallow and Grimur have lived for centuries, and they both believe it can be restored. And if Pentreath Reese didn’t think we had a shot at bringing the magic back, why would he send Pollard after me?”

  Kestel looked away, watching the flames dance in the fireplace. “What if you can’t do it? Can we survive?”

  Blaine walked away from the fireplace to sit in a wing chair across from Kestel. For a moment, he watched the flames in silence. “Without the small magics, I imagine we could learn to get along. It would be harder.” He frowned as he thought.

  “Then again, farmers used their magic to keep crops from rotting after a rain, or to heal a sick cow,” he said. “Healers depended on their magic. Maybe we’d find or remember a way to do those things without magic, but it would take a while. And in the meantime, there would be a price to pay.”

  “We’re already paying a price,” Kestel said. “You’ve heard Niklas tell about strange beasts that came from the storms, and we’ve seen the madness for ourselves.”

  “Without magic of our own, there’s no way to limit the storms,” Blaine agreed. “They’re dangerous, and they seem to be getting stronger.” He sighed. “And without magic, mortals can’t hold their own against men like Pentreath Reese.”

  “Then we’d better hope that we can track down Quintrel,” Kestel replied. She rose from her seat and stretched. “I’d best go back to my room and pack for our outing. Just let me know when you and Piran and Verran want to get going in the morning, and I’ll be ready.”

  “Something’s wrong.” Piran reined in his horse and stood in his stirrups, scanning the horizon.

  “See anything?” Blaine asked, turning in his saddle to look.

  Several candlemarks had passed since they left Glenreith. It was mid-morning, and they had left the main road behind them more than a candlemark ago, journeying forward on a narrow road that seemed more farm trail than byway. Their roads had led them steadily uphill, into the foothills of the Belhovan Mountains, though the sharp, rocky peaks were still many leagues away.

  “The air fee
ls… thick,” Kestel remarked, looking around worriedly. “Let’s get going. I don’t like this place.”

  “Doesn’t look as if anyone else has been through here in a while, at least not since the snow fell,” Verran observed, looking ahead of them at the road with its unbroken covering. “The only things we’ve seen all day are some wild dogs and goats.” He looked out across the open field.

  “Kestel’s right, let’s get out of here,” Blaine muttered. But before he could shift in his saddle, a dark line on the horizon caught his eye.

  “Look there,” he said, pointing. Already the dark line had grown closer, and it undulated as it moved.

  “If that’s a magic storm, we’ve got nowhere to hide,” Piran replied. “We’ll have to outride it. Move!”

  They spurred their horses forward, slowed by the heavy snow. The darkness on the horizon appeared to be moving on an intersect course with the road. The goats in the field raised their heads, and one of them bleated an alarm that was taken up by the rest of the herd. Terrified, the goats ran in the opposite direction of the storm, nearly getting themselves trampled as they ran across the road dodging the horses and sliding on the slippery snow.

  Blaine eyed the growing darkness, which still seemed to head directly for the road. “The goats have the right idea!” he shouted. “Leave the road. If we ride at an angle, we might outrun the storm.”

  Blaine urged his horse on, galloping across the fields. It was reckless to ride at full speed across unknown ground – his horse could easily step into a hole and break a leg. But the ground held solid, frozen by the bitter cold, and Blaine took comfort in the fact that with the Great Fire, the fields were unlikely to have been turned this season. Still, he held on to his reins tightly and gripped his horse with his legs to keep his seat.

  On the horizon, Blaine could see the rooftops of a village. He hoped it was Riker’s Ferry, the small hamlet that should be a null zone if his theory was correct. “Ride for the village!” Blaine shouted. “If I’m right, if it really is a null place, the storm won’t follow us.”

  They easily outrode the goats, thundering across the open fields. Blaine could feel the nearness of the magic storm as his head began to throb.

  “It’s gaining on us,” Verran called, fear in his voice.

  Blaine spared a glance over his shoulder. The storm moved like a billowing curtain, sweeping across the land, close enough that its power pulled the snow up into it. As the storm grew closer, they could see the air sparkle and glow as the wild visithara magic pulsed. A growing hum filled the air, rising in pitch as the magic storm grew closer, and Blaine knew from the storms he had survived that the hum would grow to an earsplitting screech. Blaine fought to retain control as his horse began to panic.

  Kestel and Verran had leaned over far enough that they were gripping their horses’ manes. Both of them rode as if they were just trying to hang on, almost completely at the mercy of their horses. Piran’s expression was grim.

  “Look out!” Piran yelled. “There’s another one!”

  Blaine looked up. A shining ribbon of light hung in midair, dangerous and terrible in its beauty. Where the storm to their right had already touched down and carried with it snow and debris, the new storm had yet to descend. Worse, it was heading straight for them and moving fast.

  “Veer!” Blaine shouted, angling his horse toward the open space between the two approaching storms. The pounding in his head was amplified by the thud of his horse’s hooves, and his vision blurred with the pain.

  Behind him, Blaine heard frantic squeals from the herd of goats, which were running, wide-eyed in terror, stumbling and staggering across the snowy ground. The first storm was closing in on the goats, and as the wild magic reached the slowest animal in the herd, the goat was lifted off its feet to hang suspended in air for an instant, its hooves still pawing frantically for traction. There was a wet pop and the goat exploded, sending a gruesome spray of blood, flesh, and entrails over the rest of the herd, which scattered. The storm moved forward relentlessly, and one by one, the hapless goats were pulled into the maelstrom, screaming their fear. Blood seemed to feed the wild magic, and the color of the storm shifted, growing red with the gore of the slaughtered goats. Even the smell of the storm changed. It had first smelled like the tang in the air after a nearby lightning strike – now it was the metallic scent of blood.

  Blaine shot a worried glance toward Verran and Kestel. Kestel had grown pale, and Blaine could see that she grasped the mane with balled fists. Verran looked as if he was fighting for consciousness, hanging on for his life. Piran, out in front, was sitting tall, shoulders back, defying the storm. Blaine came up behind Verran and Kestel, unwilling to allow them to take up the rear, and smacked the rumps of their horses to urge them forward, even as the storms thundered closer.

  The ground behind Blaine began to shimmer, and he shivered as he recalled stories that amid such storms men had fallen into mere mud puddles, never to be seen again. He dug his heels into his horse’s ribs, but the frightened beast needed no urging to run for its life.

  The air around them glowed, full of luminous, tiny particles. Blaine’s lungs strained for breath, and the gasps he took felt thin, depleted. His vision tinged with red as he struggled for breath. His chest burned, lungs ached, and his heart thumped. Blaine felt as if he could sense the movement of the blood through his veins, as if the blood itself were on fire, and as if everything – blood, breath, and will – was gradually being pulled into the dark, roaring maw behind them.

  The village was in sight and growing closer with every hoofbeat. Whether the villagers knew of the storm or were just going about their business, no one was in sight, with the doors shut and the windows shuttered. A low stone wall separated the village from the fields beyond.

  The two storms closed in on each other. The hum had become a shriek, loud enough that Blaine could feel it reverberating in his bones, piercing enough that it forced a groan. With one final, desperate burst of speed, Blaine’s horse shot forward just as the two storms collided.

  Sure they were all about to die, Blaine sent his horse leaping over the stone wall, and it felt to him as if they were pushed by a wave of sound and light.

  Blaine reeled, barely clinging to consciousness. His vision was clouding, and his head hurt as if it might explode. Dimly he realized that it had grown easier to breathe. Their horses came to a halt, and both Kestel and Verran tumbled from their saddles. Blaine kept enough presence of mind to control his descent, but his knees gave out when he reached the ground and he fell to the snow. As if from far away, Blaine could hear Piran shouting his name, but then the darkness closed in and he heard nothing more.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I

  hate crypts.” Connor trudged behind Lynge and Penhallow while Geddy and Lowrey brought up the rear of the small procession. Geddy and Connor carried packs on their backs filled with supplies. Geddy, who was holding a lantern, fell a step behind and let Lowrey walk beside Connor.

  “You’re missing the point, lad,” Lowrey said in a voice tinged with wonder. “I’m sure that, before the magic died, these crypts were fairly quivering with power. Preservation spells. Memory spells to assure that descendents didn’t forget an ancestor’s legacy. Even binding spells, I’d wager, on a corpse or two someone wanted to make damn sure stayed buried.” He sounded as if he had just been invited on a treasure hunt, and for once, academic enthusiasm triumphed over his usual curmudgeonly outlook.

  “It’s still full of dead people,” Connor argued, unwilling to be distracted and perversely committed to sulking. “Not even living dead people, like when we were in Penhallow’s hiding place. That was a nice crypt, more like a parlor. This is just a tomb.”

  “Would it cheer you up to know that for several hundred years, the only ones permitted to step foot in these crypts were the priests and priestesses of the gods, the seneschal, and the direct descendants of the crown?” Lynge said, but his placating tone barely hid a chuckle.
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  Connor knew he was being unreasonable, but he wasn’t ready to give in. He had nearly been killed in Penhallow’s underground hiding place when Reese and his talishte had attacked and the roof had caved in. Twice he had run for his life from monsters in the dark through narrow, twisting tunnels belowground. The harrowing escape from Voss’s fortress via the underground river was still fresh in his mind. “Not really,” he grumbled.

  Despite himself, Connor was impressed by the grandeur of the royal necropolis. In the bedrock beneath Quillarth Castle, artisans had gone to considerable work to sculpt an entire city for the dead. Façades of the oldest buildings in Castle Reach had been meticulously duplicated, as had Quillarth Castle itself. The detailed stone models looked to be scale models of the originals.

  “It’s said that inside the models, everything is just as it was in their full-size counterparts,” Lynge continued, taking Connor’s mood in stride.

  Connor could not help but be intrigued as he looked around. Dozens of buildings were represented, and at the far edge, he could hear running water and he glimpsed a quayside much like the Castle Reach harbor.