Oathen

by Giacomo, Jasmine

  Ahm’s expression deepened into a calculating squint.

  “What? Do I have dead cultist in my hair?” Meena asked, ruffling a hand through her short red locks.

  “Your healing magic is very strong,” he said. “And you are very familiar with it. Are you like us, able to manifest your magic only in the vicinity of active earth elements? Or is there something different about you?”

  Everyone hushed, and Meena stepped to the edge of the table across from Ahm, meeting his eyes. Sanych wasn’t at all sure anymore that these people were on their side. The look she shot down the table to Geret and Salvor was returned with equal concern.

  “I pray I am unique,” Meena said, addressing the entire room. “Four hundred cycles ago, eleven members of the Cult of Dzur i’Oth tried to sacrifice me to gain immortality for themselves, using the Dire Tome’s magic. For some reason, the spell failed to take, and I alone survived. I haven’t aged since that day, nor have I scarred. My body heals of its own will, and I can heal those around me with a touch. I can do this anywhere, on land or at sea. The cult’s spell is permanent, and I’ve encountered nothing in the world that can affect its hold on me. I can be stopped, with extreme difficulty, but I can never be completely killed.”

  The room was silent. No one moved; all eyes were riveted on Meena.

  Ahm’s mouth opened, then closed. He swallowed. “Jacasta. Jacasta Triserren.”

  Meena flinched back in surprise. Sanych gasped, feeling her memories start linking.

  “How do you know that name?” Meena asked, staring.

  Ahm seemed overwhelmed; his hands fluttered in excitement and eventually grasped each other tightly. Murmurs shot around the table.

  “Let me tell you a short story, Meena, if I may,” Ahm said, bowing his head to her. “The founder of our organization ultimately lost both her parents to the machinations of the Cult of Dzur i’Oth. She dedicated her life to creating a series of semi-independent cells that could stand up to the cult, be prepared to defend themselves as well as innocents, and work together to destroy the cult entirely. Though it has been many generations, we have not yet managed to completely eradicate Dzur i’Oth. Yet, they have not eradicated us either. We battle each other in the heady magic-riven underworld of Shanal. We are always struggling to bring the light into darkness, while the cult constantly threatens to consume us and devour the land again, as it once did during Queen Anzadi’s War, or, as we call it, the Cult War.” Ahm’s eyes hadn’t wavered from Meena’s, nor hers from his. “Can you tell me the name of the founder of the Scions, Meena?”

  Meena blinked a few times, her face a still, pale mask. Sanych bit her lip, wondering if her guess would be correct.

  Meena swallowed and spoke into the silence. “Her name was Imshi. Imshi Triserren, my daughter. The only child Arisson and I ever had.”

  “Yes,” said Ahm, his voice low, gentle, excited. “And we,” he waved an inclusive hand at the silent, absorbed Scions, “are her descendants. You might call this a family business. Perhaps a family obsession. Our full name sums us up: we are the Scions of the Shanallar.” He spread his arms. “And we welcome you home at last, Jacasta.”

  Meena blinked, and two tears spilled over her cheeks, falling onto the tabletop. Rhona looked between Ahm and Meena. “Seamother? Does this mean we have dirtwalker cousins?”

  Meena laughed and nodded. “I believe it does.” She sniffled and looked around the table. “Stars and darkness,” she murmured, her breath catching on a lump of emotion. “Arisson always wanted a big family.”

  ~~~

  Bailik stormed across his study, fuming. Focusing his anger and frustration, he shot a black zag through the air toward an etched glass lamp on his enormous desk, and the lamp shattered into a thousand pieces, fragments littering the thick woven rug beneath his desk. Its fragile flame vanished into thin air.

  Gone. Taken by the meddlesome Scions! I’ll not survive his wrath this time. And I’ll deserve it!

  Most of Bailik’s rage was due not to his impending death, but to the fact that he had forgotten about the Scions in light of the exceptional prize he’d been on the verge of capturing. They didn’t strike with any regularity, but many of their attacks were specifically to free future victims of the Blood Plague. In hindsight, they would have seen a blitz on the farmhouse as some sort of moral imperative.

  Now I need to find another way to get the meddlesome bitch! he raged inside his skull, slamming his fist into a wall tapestry depicting the Great Tome raised in the hands of a devoted Dzur i’Oth leader. The last leader who had been able to hold the book in person, in fact, because Jacasta Triserren stole it out of the Ritual Chamber after his sudden, untimely and rather grotesque death. He glared at the tapestry, then cut his eyes over to the shattered lamp.

  Always hiding behind her magic barrier, he thought, nostrils flaring. My death will serve no purpose! She will still be out there! Oolat’s obsession with her, and his harsh punishments for failure, has wreaked havoc within the ranks of Dzur i’Oth. We are no closer to our goal, but she is closer to hers. I need to succeed. I need to prove I can deliver results. Not to Oolat, but to the rest of the cult. Once I’ve taken him down, we can get off this wild horse ride and return to Dzur i’Oth’s traditional methods of success. Our glory won’t be found in playing decades-long games, but in controlling nations and their trade. And we can’t get there until I placate the Hand of Power with what he wants.

  He stalked across the room to his bookshelf. Nearly half his magic-research books were open on the table next to it. He had embarked on a long and fruitless search for a way to break through the ancient magic that surrounded her. A way to pinpoint her when she was so solidly invisible.

  Solidly invisible. Bailik squinted in thought. He turned to the lamp he had broken, motioning the shattered glass back into a sphere, relighting the flame within. He strode to the edge of his desk and crouched by its side, gazing through the mended glass at the yellow light.

  Reaching out a finger, he tapped the glass, hearing its crystalline chime.

  A slow smile spread across his face.

  An hour later, he was summoned before the Hand of Power. He kept his eyes downcast as he approached the basalt-and-diamond throne upon its dais.

  “I return from managing affairs in the Ochre Tower to find that you have apparently captured and then lost our best link to the thief in the last four hundred cycles?” Oolat said, his voice breathy.

  Bailik was not fooled. He could see the fury in Oolat’s whitened grip on the left arm of the throne.

  “Did I not warn you properly,” Oolat continued, nearly hoarse with anger, “what would happen when next you failed me? I did not think we had reached that point so soon.”

  Only the knowledge that he had just acquired enabled Bailik to reply in a steady voice. “Master,” he said, staring at the bottom step of the dais, “it was all according to plan. Your servant may appear to have lapsed in judgment, but this is to lull the enemy into a false sense of security.”

  Oolat leaned forward. Bailik could feel his master’s white stare piercing the top of his hairless head. “I’m listening.”

  “The followers of the thief were allowed to go free, to be rescued and taken in by the Scions,” Bailik lied, “in order to gather them all at the same location with her, that we might be able to take them all at once.”

  “The Scions have many hiding places,” Oolat barked, flicking his silvery fingers. “We’ve not found one in a generation. And you have been singularly unsuccessful in breaking through the thief’s magic barrier.”

  Bailik met his master’s gaze, held up his own hand. “With your permission, Master?” None of Oolat’s followers were allowed to use their magic in his presence without his consent.

  Oolat lifted his silver digits in a gesture of agreement.

  Bailik created a glowing yellow-and-black image of his study lamp hovering above his palm. “We seek the flame, yet cannot reach it,” he said. “Her glass is too strong.
So, I decided to seek it instead of her. I reviewed the last seeking spells we cast, and cast a resonance spell into them.”

  Oolat’s eyes flared wide. “And?”

  “I found her. I can track her, not by her person, but by the absence of information her shield returns. The void that protects her also marks her.” Bailik let the illusion dissipate.

  “Where is she now?”

  “At the Red Cliff. I’m sure, Master, that you see the conclusion I do. She has joined the Scions in one of their protected bolt holes. And she has left us a hazy trail of void energy, leading straight to it.”

  “Ahh,” Oolat sighed in pleasure, sitting back in his throne. “They are indeed all ours. Well done, Bailik. Take a large force with you. Don’t let any of them escape.”

  Bailik bobbed in eagerness, nearly forgetting to keep his eyes on the floor. “Right away, Master.”

  ~~~

  Oolat sat back in his throne and watched Bailik depart in a swirl of robes. His minion was doing well indeed. Already respected and feared by the Dzur i’Oth’s general population, he had now distinguished himself by cracking the unsolvable mystery of how to track the thief. And in reporting his success, he had not cowered, but merely bowed in deep respect before his master.

  And while he had been bowing, Oolat had been plumbing him. The secret ability had more than once proved useful in the past. Though he made a regular habit of counting the abilities of his high-ranking spellcasters, tracking their bloodmagic additions, he had not done so with Bailik for some weeks.

  The last time Oolat had plumbed Bailik, he’d possessed seventeen magics. Now he possessed eighteen. The minion had been very careful not to use it, whatever it was. Which meant he was merely waiting for his chance to strike and take control.

  Useful as he was to Oolat, and to all of Dzur i’Oth, Bailik’s time with the cult needed to come to a close. It was clear that Oolat’s second was reaching a level of competency that rivaled his own. And Oolat did not tolerate rivals.

  Not even useful ones.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Count Stam Aponden took the proffered note from his assistant’s hand. “Who delivered it?”

  “Didn’t see, my lord. Likely one of the pages.”

  Aponden unscrolled the parchment and found a message from Giril n’Hara, asking for a quiet meeting in the gardens behind the palace. Something to do with Runcan’s return, no doubt, he thought. And why no one else returned with him.

  Several minutes later, Aponden found himself braving the chill fog of the winter afternoon, wrapped in a warm cloak. The rains had let up, but the paving stones at the back of the gardens were mired in cold mud. He stepped carefully to keep his boots clean.

  A blob of color resolved into n’Hara’s cloak as Aponden drew closer. Hunching to keep warm, they both drew together.

  “What’s happened?” Aponden asked.

  “You’re asking me? You called me here,” n’Hara responded, looking doubtful.

  “I did no such—” Aponden’s eyes widened, and his heart began to pound. Someone knows something they shouldn’t!

  Without a word, both men turned and began to stroll away. I need to get back to the manor, retrieve my—

  “Wait, my lords, if you please,” came a voice.

  Turning back, Aponden saw a woman step out from among the leafless trees. Her cloak, a light grey, blended well with the fog. Her accent was not one he recognized.

  “Who are you?”

  “You may call me Lady Mist. I hail from the gracious lands of Hynd, and I have an offer for you, Count Aponden.”

  He exchanged a glance with n’Hara. “What sort of offer?”

  She stepped closer, and a tantalizing scent wafted through the damp air. “The sort that nets you an empire.”

  Aponden’s eyes widened.

  “I met Counts Sengril and Armala in Ha’Lakkon—a profitable exchange for all of us. There, I learned of your goals, and how they mesh well with my own.” She slipped a fragment of paper into his hand. “I do not have much time; your Count Runcan has the ear of the Magister, and by the hearth, I know not what lies he may be whispering. Do nothing unusual today. Come to that address tonight after the last bell, both of you, and we shall discuss Vint’s future.”

  With that, she slipped back through the trees and vanished in the cloaking mist.

  “We can’t possibly go see her,” n’Hara muttered, crossing his arms beneath his cloak.

  Aponden ran his tongue along the inside of his upper teeth. “Yet, we can’t not go, either. She clearly knows enough to cause us problems if we don’t do as she says.”

  “May I suggest,” n’Hara said after a moment, “an alternate plan.”

  ~~~

  “There is a second purpose to bloodmagic, and because of it, we try never to let our spellcasters be taken alive.” Ahm reclined on a stone bench next to the hearth deep within the Red Cliff, a pewter cup in his hand. Scions and their guests gathered around on fur rugs and padded leather benches.

  Sanych leaned forward to listen, both repulsed and desperate for information.

  “When Dzur i’Oth captures one of us, Oolat chooses several of his own spellcasters to benefit from our magical ability. They each get a portion of blood to consume, and from then on, they can manifest a weak version of their victim’s gift. Naturally, Scions don’t survive the experience. Death isn’t necessary to pass on the gift, but if they kill us right after they take our gift, they ensure no one else can possess it.

  “We have a defensive spell that protects some of us. For the rest, their only defense is death before capture. We’ve learned the hard way never to hesitate with a mercy stroke.”

  Sanych felt her face pale. She shuddered at the casual relationship the Scions had with death. Meena’s immortality was one thing, but being willing to be killed by someone they knew and loved? She wondered if she’d have to adopt that philosophy herself, and couldn’t help imagining Geret’s sword plunging through her chest.

  Ahm continued relating the situation in Shanal. The cult had a terrible grip on the realm, controlling everything from the food crop production to the countries who were allowed to trade with them. They’d wormed their way into the palace itself generations ago; the Ochre Mask spellcasters in Cish were merely a front for Dzur i’Oth business dealings. And the cult had spent the last year spreading rumors of the Blood Plague supposedly ravaging the countryside, able to take an entire village out in a single night.

  At that, Sanych hissed through her teeth. The victims of Heren Garil Sa’s eruption and quake ripples, including everyone aboard the Kazhak, were not the only victims of the cult that fateful day, she realized. Her mind recoiled at the enormity of such horror, and she felt dwarfed by its power, here in its home country.

  Ruel, by her side, nudged her shoulder. “The song doesn’t end here; it’s got another verse left,” he murmured. “We can avenge them all.”

  Sanych looked up at him. She now possessed magic like many in the room with her, but she had no idea how to control it. Meena had said she’d get Sanych trained, but all the Archivist could think about was how she’d burned Rhona’s arm. Thinking of using magic again terrified her, though it wasn’t as grotesque as imagining someone drinking her blood.

  Ahm and others asked Meena to speak next, and she shared her recollections of life in Shanal. The room was completely silent as everyone listened to the ancestor of the Scions speak.

  “Imshi was born when I was just eighteen, the year before I entered Queen Anzadi’s service with Arisson. It feels so far away, now; it’s more a fact than a memory. Our work for the queen was dangerous and unpredictable, so I decided not to have any more children, though I knew Arisson wanted more; he came from a large family, always saying he wanted to spread the love around.

  “Imshi was raised at the palace, by the royal staff and the other agents as much as she was by us. And while we weren’t looking, she grew up and fell in love. She married a captain in the Queen’s person
al guard when she was seventeen. They had to postpone the wedding ceremony until Arisson and I returned from a mission in the north. Two years later, she had a son, Casson. I…don’t even know if they had other children.”

  Ahm smiled. “They had four more: another son and three daughters. And three of them were blessed with magical gifts. The Scions are strong because of them.”

  Meena continued: Shanal was destabilizing due to the work of the cult and their dark magics, and Queen Anzadi felt that her agents were going to be entering a period of intense danger while they strove to set things right. Her researchers delved into many rumors of lost knowledge and unearthed an ancient spell of protection among the crumbling scrolls in the catacombs beneath the palace. Anzadi ordered it tested out on the Triserren couple. Arisson was one of those rarest of gems in the Queen’ crown: a wielder of barrier-magic. The Queen didn’t want to lose him.

  Not knowing what they were getting into, but willing to lay down their lives for their Queen, Jacasta and Arisson accepted her will. The parchment fragments Anzadi’s men had found described Oathbinding as giving protection, survival and homing abilities to its recipients, but little else could be deciphered from them. The spell was cast, and the two were Oathbound.

  Here, Meena paused. Sanych saw the smile that graced her face, softening its hard lines, and felt a pang of jealousy. All the good men are long dead around here, it seems.

  Meena continued, explaining how she had been caught by the cult shortly afterward, and how Arisson had been able to find her using their Oath.

  “You were Oathbound at the time they tried to kill you in the ritual?” Ahm interrupted, leaning forward from his spot near the fire.

  “Yes,” Meena said.

  “Well, no wonder—” he began.

  The spells surrounding the lodge began to vibrate, giving off resonances that rose in pitch to uncomfortable levels.

  “What is it?” Salvor asked, getting to his feet and looking around, a hand on his sword.