by Tia Reed
Shom had been promising, she knew that much. Jordayne slipped her arms around Drucilamere and leaned against his back. She had always found immense comfort in the proximity of another body. At her touch, Druce collapsed into sobs of despair.
“This is meaningless. This is Trove’s vision come to pass. He deserved more.”
Those called premature to the Vae so often did. And in times of peace, rarely could one so young die a meaningful death.
Or could they?
“Will he survive until we can get him to the temple?” she asked, once more the schemer. She disengaged herself from Drucilamere and ran an astute eye over the lad. The ducks paddling on the lake could quack her folly, but her lover’s favourite apprentice might yet serve his realm.
“Moving him will only hasten his death.”
“But his death will not be in vain.” The command in her voice was unmistakeable.
Drucilamere took her measure. He would have no idea what she planned, and for the time being, he would stay in the dark. A risk-taker her mage might be, but of this he would never approve.
“Do it,” she said, before he could object.
Her only concern, as Drucilamere lifted Shom into his arms, was to detect the shallow rise and fall of the lad’s chest. Drucilamere never faltered as they retraced their steps along the path out of the cove. The sun sparkled on the water, the last of the wildflowers bobbed in the breeze, but the grass had the decency to shoot brown. At the city gate, a sergeant, aghast she was abroad without an armed escort and horse, summoned unwanted guards and a stretcher. They walked the streets in silence, ignoring the respectful greetings of the populace. In the cobbled triangle outside the domed Temple of the Vae, Drucilamere lowered an ear to the lad’s lips. “It will not be long,” he said, moving towards Vae’oeldin’s entrance.
“Not here,” she said, drawing a quizzical look. To ease his suspicions, she added, “We are not petitioning the Vae.”
She led him past the queries of the well-meaning monks flocking from the abbies bordering the square. They entered the older twisting alleys, trampling shoots struggling for life between cobbles, and kicking broken chunks of masonry with their ceaseless stride. An arched passage provided cool relief from the cheers and entreaties of the poorer citizens, and brought them to the non-descript lane with its non-descript shops.
“In here,” she said, opening the door to Weng Wu’s Eastern Emporium. The bell above the door tinkled as it admitted them into the dusty clutter of the front room. The scent of ginger and ylang-ylang tickled a guard into sneezing. Sweeping lacquerware from the bench into an empty basket, Drucilamere directed the stretcher bearers to lay Shom down as the bow-legged old man shuffled into the front shop. The moon and stars must have held mystic symbolism in the East, for he was wearing the same silks she had last seen him in.
“He is near death,” she said without preamble.
Weng Wu passed a hand over Shom’s body. The blue veins pushing up his thin skin matched the colour of his gown. “I cannot save him.”
“It is not why I brought him here.”
The magician’s lips settled into a thin line. “You would do this?” the old man asked.
“Those things of which we spoke are coming to pass.”
“Then bring him.”
She sidled past the tables of imitation jade and cheap porcelain. At the inner door, she turned back. Druce was staring after them, one hand over Shom’s heart.
“The taint of magic clings to this place, and it not a clean smell,” he said.
“Let the apprentice serve his realm,” she replied, returning to him.
He narrowed his eyes as he took Weng Wu’s measure, noting the ancient knowledge in the watery eyes, the pattern on his gown. She sensed the prickles of fear as understanding dawned. “You bypass the temple in favour of an oriental magician. Tell me you do not wish to take his soul.”
A djinn had possessed her, to think she could hide her intention from a mage until it was too late. Magic was his art, whether porrin induced, Eastern myth or mahktashaan lore. The passages in those thick volumes the apprentices grumbled about served a telling purpose.
“We must,” she said.
“You cannot.”
“We can.” She turned into his arm, barring him the body. She had expected resistance, but not the rough shove, nor his complete disregard for any injury he might cause.
“You will leave him,” she said, pulling rank as he slipped his arms under the lad’s shoulders and knees.
“I’m taking him.”
“Guards.”
The draw of swords was awkward when elbows could not pull back. She would see Weng Wu was compensated for the vase the knobbliest of the joints knocked to the floor. Not to the quantity specified on its tag. The fake was worth a few lek at best. Nothing to take the guards to task about since their ungainly stances among the crooked tables and splintering shelves were clear threat to her mage.
Drucilamere straightened, dropping his arms to his sides. “You would truly strike me down over this.” It was not a question.
“No. I would have you detained, unless you give me cause to do otherwise.” She stepped closer, reaching for his face.
He grabbed her wrist, his face a cloud of anger. “You cannot sway me with a kiss, Jordayne.”
“I want you to understand.”
“I understand, better than you. This is magic of the darkest kind. It is everything I have foresworn as a mage of Myklaan. It is a travesty of the Vae.” His fingers pressed tight, bruising her skin.
“Your porrin is gone, and there is little hope of securing a supply before the Terlaani are upon us. We need a defence.”
“Not with my apprentice’s soul,” he said through clenched teeth.
“With whatever it takes.”
“You heartless bitch.” He flung her arm down. His face was a picture of hate.
That stung enough to bring a tear to her eye. She would snitch it was the incense if he ever brought it up. She had made her choice. Myklaan had become her lover long before the mage. It would lie with her long after he was out of her life. “I will be what I must for Myklaan.”
“You will be what you will be for your own twisted ambitions, Jordayne.” With that he swung around. He should have walked out the door. Instead, he batted a fist into a guard’s wrist, jabbing a knee into his stomach at the same time. Wrenching the sword out the guard’s hand – the same young fool who had broken the terracotta warrior, she saw – he whirled and swung at his comatose apprentice. Two guards reacted by ramming into him. Drucilamere was a big man, but the momentum unbalanced him. The tip of the sword slashed across Shom’s middle. He struggled to force it in but the guards set upon him, wresting the weapon from him and tackling him until they had pinned him against the door. One final look of regret at the second of the only two men she had ever loved did little to appease her conscience. His eyes threatened to neither forget nor rest until he had set this to his vision of rights. The Vae forgive her blackened soul, it lasted the entire duration of his escort out.
“Is it too late?” she asked Weng Wu, tearing herself around. Blood was welling from Shom’s wound.
“Must hurry,” he replied.
She beckoned two guards who carried Shom into the back room with its relics on chaotic display to the few wealthy enough to afford the treasures: figurines and paintings, carpets and plates. Weng Wu folded his arms and dropped his chin as they set Shom down so they could drag empty crates together to form a bed. They laid Shom on it, and stepped back.
“Go,” she ordered the jittery pair, anxious to start the ritual. They crept back, insubordinate no-good do-gooders. Weng Wu made a noise deep in his throat. “Go,” she needed to say a second time.
When the door thumped shut, the old magician shuffled between stacks of crates. She heard the flap of a wall hanging pulled aside, the off-beat patter of his bent feet, the clink of glass. The vials he brought out were full of glistening liquids, thin earthy
red, thick honey, and rust. He bid her douse all but one of the candles as he poured a noxious concoction into a crucible. Setting it over the candle, he heated the liquid until a slip of steam rose. It curled across sinister shadows looming tall on the walls. She stepped closer. The responsibility was hers. She would not dissociate herself from his actions.
“You touch poison, you die.” Weng Wu said.
It was all the warning she needed to step back.
A door she had not noticed, across the wide room, opened. At Weng Wu’s sharp bark, a young man retreated and banged it closed.
“You say ne dow san li kaan,” Weng Wu instructed. Those words tasted filthy in her mouth, and yet he drilled her until they rolled off her tongue, in tones that swung from high to low. “You speak. You don’t stop or magic no work.” He was at his task again, unflustered, as soon as she had it right. This task was of consequence to her alone. Its failure would not aggrieve him. Dear Vae, its success would tear her apart. A dark rage boiled through her with the utterance. Drucilamere had been right to brand this practice unclean. There would be a price to pay for cheating death, and the atonement would be hers.
The magician dipped the tip of his overlong nail into the brew and pushed it into the wound. He coated the bloodied nail with more poison and forced it into the mouth, breaking the contaminated portion between the teeth. The corpse was deathly white. A corpse it was, though in the wan light she could not gauge if it breathed, for, Vae bear witness, had not two blessed with magic declared it beyond saving? Into air hanging close with the aura of death, Weng Wu chanted words that chilled her marrow. Evil gripped her heart, squeezing the breath from her chest. Almost, she faltered over the words, remembered the warning and recovered. The hiss of air cut through their mantra. A thread of emerald light curled out of Shom’s mouth. It twined into a crackling ball high over his heart.
“Kra tow li kan,” Weng Wu chimed, holding an empty vial high. Blue lightning struck from Shom’s heart into the light. The ground shook beneath them. The dark corners of the room slunk inward, gobbling up the feeble flame on the candlewick. Jordayne struck out a hand to grab a crate. The magician scooped the emerald ball of light into the vial, and plugged the neck. The dark crept back to the corners of the room. The flame righted itself and flared.
“This is soulous,” he said when she was standing straight.
Jordayne stared at the emerald eddy within the glass bottle. It bounded off the sides. It was not alive. It could not be seeking an escape. “I will keep this safe,” she said at last.
“As you wish, Lady,” Weng Wu replied with a bow.
He held out the prize. It was some moments before she worked up the courage to accept it. It was warm in her hand, warm as living flesh. She tucked it into her bosom, a weightless vial of swirling green that nevertheless pressed heavy on her heart.
Chapter Forty-three
When Vinsant knelt to make his morning obeisance to Mahktos, Dindarin had not yet faded from view.
“Not today,” Levi said, beckoning him onto a track that snaked further up the side of the snow dusted mountain. “Bring what you need.”
“All honour to you, Majoria,” Vinsant said by way of greeting as he limped after his master with as much speed as he could muster while levitating the Myklaani sword.
They had crossed the confluence of the two rivers that joined to form the Crystalite, entering a crisper province where morning dew glistened on fresh grass and wildflowers burst open at the first kiss of the sun. Vinsant appreciated its beauty all the more for a good night’s sleep on a cushion of air. Waking early and sleeping late had, if anything, improved his spirits. The short, secret communications he had established with Arun were fun if, by virtue of their brevity, not very informative. He had ascertained Arun could not heal his leg across the leagues, Kordahla was still nowhere in sight and that it was normal for the mahktashaan to monitor an apprentice across the links (it apparently avoided misuse of the talent and allowed the magicians to curtail any mischievous scheming, mistrusting grownups that they were) but he had not learned much else. The Minoria insisted Levi would detect longer links, so Vinsant had to content himself with a single question each dusk and dawn while Levi slept. Since the Minoria would not have gone against the explicit instructions of the Majoria if he had full faith in his leader, Vinsant had to conclude Levi was just being a pig of a mentor, the more so for leaving him with an injured leg.
His next request of Arun would definitely be for a healing word. Swollen and bruised, his leg pained him beyond enduring the deeper he dragged himself into the rugged Crystalite range. In the lower reaches, birds, rabbits and insects teemed among the stones and brush. Higher up, the barren slopes were more reminiscent of Terlaan’s arid interior, although a climb that high would tax a fit individual. Vinsant paused to ponder the caps of white that set the majestic mountains apart from all else in the Three Realms. By Mahktos, he hoped Levi did not intend to scale those heights. Perhaps the Majoria needed reminding mines were supposed to be underground. After a moment regarding Levi’s robed back, he decided to be sensible and keep his mouth shut.
A half day’s hobble later – about twenty drops of the heavy sword – they reached the boundary of bush and scree. And the path still wound up. Around yet another bend, a rickety village came into view. The handful of stick huts seemed deserted save for a nursing mother who curtsied, a barefooted child who danced around them and a grandfather too stooped with age to do more than shuffle a few steps at a time. He nonetheless hauled himself to his feet and bowed, the respectful man. After Levi signed a blessing, he led Vinsant on, to a rough track that climbed to a stone temple overlooking the huts. It was little more than a hunk of granite inside a depression gouged in the rock. The squat features and bowed legs were the only recognisable features, but the crude carving was laden with wreaths of scraggly, narrow-leaved branches.
“Mahktos is a wild god and still worshipped in the wild places. This close to His mines, He eclipses the Vae,” Levi said with his uncanny knack for predicting Vinsant’s forbidden questions. “This temple predates our founder, Shah Guntek himself. It is said he made pilgrimage here when Mahktos granted him the secret of the crystals.”
The power in this place thrummed so ancient that it eclipsed the power of the statue in the lair. Vinsant dropped to his knees. He kept the sword floating behind him. Mahktos had to be proud of him for managing that. “I feel Him. I feel Mahktos,” he said. This awe was just what he had felt when he stood in the presence of the god. The other sensation, the chill in his bones that had nothing to do with the altitude, he didn’t like so much. He turned his head to Levi but caught himself in time. No questions, no speaking. And pray his earlier comment had not fouled the Majoria’s mood. He had no wish for a repeat of today’s trek on his injured leg tomorrow.
“You may speak,” Levi said. Wouldn’t you know his voice was reverent in the face of his god.
“I,” said Vinsant. He stopped with his mouth open as the little blonde girl who had followed them up danced around him. Mahktos was bound to love the stunted flowers she threw at the statue’s feet, but the funny tune she hummed was mega distracting. And the ragged shift that left her arms bare and barely touched her knees was making his teeth chatter. She was weird to appear so comfortable in this cold.
“I can sense the djinn. It’s like there’s a constant still wind,” Vinsant said with a shudder.
“This temple is built on a rift between the worlds of gods and men. Here, the djinn make easy passage between the two.”
The girl stopped before the Majoria and looked up, expectant.
“Can’t they do that anyway?” Vinsant asked. He intended to take full advantage of Levi’s uncharacteristic openness.
“Did the Minoria not explain mahktashaan and djinn draw on the same font of power? Accessing that font is straightforward at the points it bridges the planes. The djinn come to feast upon it.” He looked down at the child. Smiling, she presented him with a blue da
isy. “You serve us well, little one,” he said, placing a hand on her forehead and murmuring a blessing.
A young woman appeared at the head of the path. Her plain shalvar kameez was worn to a dull brown, and her wavy hair was tangled by the wind, but her poverty had not made her destitute because her hands and face were clean. “They…send me to you,” she said in faltering Laanan, peeping up under her pretty lashes.
Vinsant heard Levi’s breath quicken. The word the Majoria spoke had to be as ancient as the site. The lass lifted her eyes, and nodded. “Stay here,” Levi said to him, his voice husky. He walked – walked, not glided, and clumsily, too – towards the young woman. “If you move, I shall make you climb to the peak thrice in a day.”
She was so misguided to think Levi would like her holding his hand as she led him down to the village. Vinsant shuffled around on his knees and tracked their path. Some time soon he would have to close his mouth. He had no doubt Levi meant what he said. But the pair of them were entering a hut. Surely the Majoria could not intend that with a girl.
He shook his head.
The little girl rested her arms on his shoulder.
“What do you want?” Vinsant asked.
Stone scraped against stone. She pointed towards the statue. The hollows scraped into the rock to serve as eyes were glowing crimson. And they were fixed right on him. The little girl stepped back, curtsied, and said something in whatever ancient tongue these people spoke before running off.
Vinsant presumed he echoed her sentiments when he said, “All praise to Mahktos.” Why the god insisted on watching him he didn’t have a clue. He had been a model of an apprentice. Well, almost. I’m trying to serve you well, Vinsant prayed, his eyes meeting the god’s expectant orbs. There was no response. So perhaps the eyes were looking past him, down to the hut Levi had entered. Vinsant glanced at the ramshackle village. Levi had to be well and truly occupied by now. The woman had been very young, a girl really. She had seemed willing, but she couldn’t have understood the blood honour.