He rolled his eyes. “Not by announcing it to the whole island. Your boyfriend warned you they hate magic here.”
“Weaver’s cold toes. You gonna stay cranky about that? He was just out to buy Hemlock.” But she patted her brine-misted ringlets as if she were even now flirting with the sand lizard.
But quarreling with her didn’t do any good. She merely acted as if she had no idea what he was talking about.
Was he sure, himself?
He shook his head and examined their surroundings. The shipyard was bigger than he’d expected for such a small island, and surprisingly well tended. Even now, longshoremen were hauling a ramp to the ship’s side.
“We’ll be able to offload soon.” He glanced up at his turybird. “Get Sumach ready, would you? Tsai’dona won’t be up to playing with her mare for a few hours.”
Lorel nodded and trotted to the ladder into the cargo hold.
Tsai’dona tried to say something, but all that came out was a gagging sound.
Bess patted the traitor’s shoulder. “Stay put, pet. The swaying will go away soon.”
Please, Thunderer, let it stop soon. In the meantime, he’d go harness the team. He’d practiced enough during the last few lunars, he was faster than Lorel.
The silly flirt.
∞∞∞
It took four tries to find an innkeeper who would take in three giants, three normal (well, short) people, three horses, an oversized serdil cub, and a magician’s wagon, and without any mention of Kyri. It cost more gold than he’d thought possible, and he’d been forced to rent the entire rickety inn for six days.
If he had to swear one more time that he wouldn’t use magic, that he was a merely fraud who only performed tricks using prestidigitation, he’d pretend he was a lava lizard and set the whole island on fire. As if he could.
Praise the Thunderer, once their new innkeeper got a good look at his starfish-enhanced wagon, she’d laughed so hard she left a puddle on the flagstones. No more insults about magic after that.
By dusk, the horses were fed, the sandblasted wagon was under cover, and his crew were settled into their rooms.
He, unfortunately, was wide awake. A bit seasick, but absurdly restless. Why not make use of his energy?
Exploring this quaint little town would be fun. His chances of finding a wizard were close to nil, but getting a feel for the place ought to be useful. And it would impress his turybird no end when he proved he knew where he was going.
He ought to take along a bodyguard, but Tsai’dona was greener than a crabapple, and blood dotted the bandages around Lorel’s injured shoulder. Her eyes still weren’t tracking properly, either. He should haul her off to a healer, by force if necessary. Aramiel would probably be glad to help.
Hey, maybe that was why she was obsessing over the redheaded sandcrab. Concussions made people do weird things.
So, no bodyguards. And since he was counting on Bess to keep Zharyl and Aramiel in line – praise the Thunderer that Mama and Drenfeg gave the bonehead a good talking to, even if he only listened to Bess – he couldn’t take his ‘financial advisor’ with him.
He didn’t remember the last time he’d gone out alone. The sensation was… thrilling. Like he’d become an independent actor again, instead of a pintsize, crippled, despised son of a slave.
Thunderer! What if he met Xavien here? What could he say? ‘Hello, father, I’m glad I liberated you from slavery. ’ Didn’t that sound condescending? But it was true.
However, there were no slaves on Feda, and his chances of finding anybody or anything useful were pretty slim. They’d need to ship out to Nriba or Zedista the day their lease ended. No matter, it wouldn’t hurt to look. He was sure to find a bookstore somewhere.
Even at dusk, the town was humming. Spicy scents swirled from kitchens and taverns, and the ever-present smell of ripe fruit made his mouth water.
Since there was no glass in the windows, he could hear conversations a block away. Might he overhear a discussion about wizards? Or knock on a door and ask about rumors?
Oh, that would go over well. Magic was illegal on Feda.
But he didn’t need to listen to people talking, or even to ask any questions. Once he thought to look for it, a churning silver aura blazed over one section of town.
He’d never guessed a wizard’s aura could glow so intensely. Or roil so fiercely. The wizards in Shi didn’t create much light, and Lynx’s didn’t shine at all. Nor did their auras move. He’d always believed auras were basically static.
Not this wizard’s. It danced and collapsed, shivered and swirled. It drew him through the darkening streets and into what appeared to be the merchant district.
Into a tiny, stinky, filthy courtyard hidden between buildings.
Could a wizard be hiding in such a disgusting place? It seemed impossible, but the bright, frenetic aura told him otherwise.
“CricketFrog?” What an embarrassing name for a wizard. He’d hide, too, if he got stuck with such a stupid moniker. But not in a slimy abuelo snake den. “CricketFrog? May I speak with you, please?”
“Who?” a weak voice whispered.
He started to give his real name, but calling himself Viper, as if he were a wizard himself, would confuse the issue. “I was born Adoriel. Are you CricketFrog?”
“No. Not. I’m… I was… Egret?”
“A beautiful name. Very graceful.” He was babbling, and he knew it, but what did one say to a wizard who couldn’t remember his – her? – name?
A hunched form in a tattered robe inched forward. “Know you?” A filthy hand pushed the hood back an inch, giving him a glimpse blue eyes.
“My apologies, Egret.” He wasn’t sure why he was apologizing, but it seemed appropriate. “We haven’t met before.”
Was there any point in asking this sad person for help? He – She? – didn’t appear to have control over the feral aura whirling around the courtyard. Would he – it! – even be capable of binding the weapons to their holders?
Egret crept a step closer. “Friend? Find me?”
“I’d like to be your friend.” What else could he say to this pathetic creature? “How can I help you?” If nothing else, he could bring food. And clean clothes. And soap. Even from this distance, the stench oozing off its skin gagged him.
“How?” Egret whispered. “Find me?”
“You have the most beautiful, bright aura in the world.” True, as long as he didn’t mention it was the most damaged he’d ever seen.
Egret froze. “Aura? Aura?” The whispery voice rose to a scream. “Tracked my aura?”
Waves of terror poured over him. Tattered darkness rushed toward him. Clawed fingers gripped his shoulders.
A female mind clamped over his and overwhelmed him.
Agony grayed his thoughts, but he remained conscious for excruciating hours – no, decades, while his body stretched, contracted, and oozed into the mud. Urine-soaked mud. The stench invaded his nose, his mind, his being.
The air pulsated. His nostrils discovered odors he never imagined existed. Colors hurtled into his eyes, unbearably bright and clear.
Thunderer, he felt awful.
Pain radiated from his joints. His head was too heavy. Cloth pinched his shoulders and crotch. His tail felt trapped against one leg. He thrashed it, and most of it wriggled onto mud-covered stone, but its tip was caught in a leathery, hollow shell. He whipped it again, and the obstruction flew away.
Wait a minute. What tail? He had a tail?
Blast. Had she turned him into a snake? No, he had arms and legs. Then what was he? An overgrown lizard? No, he had gill slits on his neck. Well, he didn’t have a neck, but he sensed he’d be able breathe if he found water. But he didn’t seem to be a fish. A salamander?
It sounded right. It was a favorite punishment for and by wizards, according to magicians’ tales. Hadn’t Leysamura told him a story about a murdering ‘hero’ who was morphed into a salamander? Dragons remembered such things.
But why was he a salamander now?
Why couldn’t he hear anything?
Vibrations jittered through flagstone. Vibrations with a speech-like rhythm. Was Egret talking to him?
His eyes swiveled in different directions. One found Egret, in a frayed, dirty-red wool robe, cowering against a moss-covered wall far from the courtyard entrance.
The other saw Kyri.
Praise the Thunderer! Kyri could get him out of this mess. If anyone could. He’d never been in so much trouble in his life.
He could almost hear Kyri murmuring to the shattered wizard about how the quest needed the hatchling.
A quick, impassive assent shimmered down their mental link.
Thunderer’s dice! Maybe he could hear their conversation through Kyri’s ears. He opened his mind to hers.
Egret’s wails cut through his soul. Not in words, but in hopeless, raw emotions. Fear, horror, loss! Dreshin Viper? Here? Misery, anguish, despair.
Poor creature. Her sanity had fragmented into crushed glass. And there wasn’t a thing he could do to help her.
Nor much he could do for himself. His gills were so dry they ached. His skin was fouled from urine and feces polluted mud. He wanted a bath. He needed clean water. Desperately.
Where was blood magic when he needed it? He didn’t even see a way to cut himself. His teeth were too small; when he bit his paw – hand! – his teeth only pinched his slime-coated skin. Blast, that nip hurt all out of proportion.
Worse, he could feel a rainstorm hovering above the city, not quite ready to release its humidity.
Lightning blast it, he’d summoned a storm while they traveled south of Shi. He ought to be able to call down a little rain. Only enough to wash the crap off his skin.
How?
Last time he’d created a chant, and it worked far better than he’d hoped. He remembered the words. But he didn’t have a mouth to say them.
Not a problem. Since he only wanted a little rain, he’d recite a new version inside his head.
One thousand feet above,
Is moisture from the sea.
Damp air, parched ground.
Illuminate the disparity.
Lightning flashed directly above him. Instantaneously, thunder boomed, rattling the stone beneath him.
A waterfall vaster than the Setoyan plains drowned the courtyard and plastered his gills to his neck.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t even think for the misery of drowning in pouring rain. How on Menajr could a salamander drown?
Thunderer! He had to end the spell.
But mental howls tore through his mind, crushing him, burying him. Leaving him as frantic as the screamer.
Egret would get them both killed if he didn’t break away from her panic. But her terror fed his own fear in an ever-widening spiral.
He had to do something to escape her. But what?
A throbbing roll of warm velvet hoisted his chest out of the mud. And shook him. Hard.
His addled concentration broke. Or firmed. He dismissed the chant with a mental Stop it.
What had roused him?
Kyri’s drenched body was winding into a coil in front of the courtyard’s exit.
Of course. He could always count on Kyri. He launched an image of gratitude at the serpent.
It relayed its pleasure his person was now clean, including an impression it wished he’d stay out of trouble.
He’d have snorted if he had the respiratory apparatus to do so. Avoiding trouble was his main goal in life. Not that he often succeeded.
Hold on. He had succeeded, and powerfully. He’d performed a silent, newly-invented chant, and he pulled it off. Even as a salamander, magic functioned for him.
He could protect himself.
He could disintegrate the wall behind Egret and make the stones collapse onto her. He could throw magefire at her. He could toss a shield around her and capture her.
Egret’s wails vibrated through his paws, his belly, his chest. Fear exploded across the sodden courtyard. Not a slave! Cornered, trapped, humiliated. Not a slave!
Could she hear thoughts? No wonder she lost her mind.
He definitely understood her fear. The Mindbender had sent a slave after him, a wizard’s ghost who tried to capture him. He remembered the horror all too well.
Egret hesitated. Her mind seemed petrified.
He knew of a haven. A place the ghost hadn’t been able to reach him.
Where? Egret shrieked. Where, safety, anywhere? She dashed at him and grabbed at his paws.
Blast. This wasn’t going the way he’d planned. Why didn’t females ever act the way they were supposed to?
His slime smeared her hands. He wriggled out of her grasp and bolted. Or tried to run. A three-legged, sixty-pound salamander in way-too-tight trousers didn’t move very fast.
She yanked on his shirt, dragging him backward.
Whatever she was up to, he wasn’t interested in cooperating. He writhed free of the cloth.
Projecting disapproval, Kyri slithered between them. It chased her away from him, crawled back to the courtyard exit, and stood sentry there. Its whole demeanor indicated nothing was getting past its guard.
Its posture also implied it was up to him to solve this problem.
Egret wept. She turned her back on the square, leaned her face against the mossy wall, and shuddered as if her bones were dissolving. Never safe. Never.
Could he bargain with her? Would she change him back? He’d tell her about his refuge if she made him human again.
But she only wailed, Not a slave!
Maybe there wasn’t anything left of the miserable wizard, nothing to restore him. In that case, he’d spend the rest of eternity as an overgrown salamander. And he had a feeling his eternity wouldn’t last very long.
Her incoherent moans vibrated through the flagstones, across puddles of rainwater, inside his whole body. And shook the core of his soul.
The woman was as helpless as a newborn dragon. He had to help her even if she abandoned him afterward. Perhaps he could talk Kyri into eating him. Something would, before long.
Egret radiated horror, shame, confusion. Not a slave?
Thunderer, no, he wouldn’t enslave her. He was the son of a slave. He’d freed his own father from slavery.
She deserved sanctuary, too.
Listen, he wished her. Go to the second-largest library in Sedra-Kei. Tell them the Venomous Snake sent you. They’ll keep you safe. The library has wards to keep magical invaders at bay.
And he asked Kyri to move out of her way.
The serpent sent back astonishment and disappointment. But it glided away from the exit.
Egret’s shriek trumpeted through stone. She raced out of the courtyard in a clattering tangle of tattered wool.
It was done. She was gone.
He probably wouldn’t live past noon, but he didn’t regret his choice. He hoped she managed to get to Sedra-Kei. The poor thing would likely hide in the hold of some unsuspecting ship.
Kyri slumped limp on the wet flagstones.
Blast. He’d let so many people down. The Mindbender would take over, control the world, and kill anyone who opposed him. Probably starting with Kyri and Lorel. The quest had failed. He’d failed.
Could a salamander complete the quest? He could certainly try. Lorel might jump off the Deathsinger’s cliff once she saw him, though. Would Kyri agree to translate for him, even though he’d failed miserably?
Footsteps resonated through flagstone. Had his turybird followed him? She’d be bad enough, but he didn’t want anyone else to see him.
How could he get all the way to Shi without witnesses to his shame?
How would he find a wizard to salvage the quest?
A swirl of ragged red wool burst into the courtyard. Bony weight thudded onto his back. Claws sank into his temples.
Hey, what was going on? Why didn’t Kyri protect him?
A volcano of agony erupted through him. Fi
re roared from his head to his stump to his throbbing toes.
His skull and ribs shriveled into dry, rawhide leather. His arms and legs elongated – he was stretched on a torturer’s rack, and his tormentor cackled while he cranked the drawing rope tighter and tighter.
When his backbone sucked up his tail, a dull knife hacked into his gut.
He fainted before the agony ended.
∞∞∞
Pale purple sunlight glimmered in a puddle. Dawn? Must be. The light was wrong for evening.
But sunrise where? Veriz? It was fairly warm. But the flagstones looked more like a newer Zedisti construction.
Why was he laying in a puddle of water in a paved courtyard?
Wait, what was he doing in Zedista? He’d purposely skipped that city.
He pushed himself into a sitting position and examined the area. Soggy mossy walls. Muddy stone ground. No glass in the few windows he could see.
Definitely not Zedista. Even the poorest buildings had glass windows there. Too wet for Veriz. Too warm for Melad.
“Feda?”
“The city and island are chronicled as Feda.” Kyri slid away from a shadowed overhang and wriggled closer to him. “This one must obtain secure accommodations before the denizens arouse.”
“Go. Hurry. Try to get back to the wagon, if you can.” It didn’t matter that he had no idea where he was or why he was lying in the mud. In torn trousers. Without a shirt. Or his boots. Or socks. His naked stump gleamed in the brightening light.
What had he been up to last night?
Kyri glided to the nearest wall, but hesitated. “This one is solaced. The hatching is elucidated for molt.” It swarmed up the downspout and slithered across the roof.
What was that supposed to mean? The serpent took comfort in his mistakes? The extent of his error was clear?
This last one must’ve been a doozy. He didn’t remember any part of the adventure. At least he was still wearing his trousers, even if one leg was torn. Things couldn’t have gone too badly.
He’d been through the worst. And he remembered.
Alchemy's Child (The Mindbender's Rise Book 5) Page 40