Sands of Memory

by Melissa McShane

  “I wouldn’t attack you,” she said. “Unless you attacked first.”

  “I didn’t say it made sense.” Ghrita released her. “But I know you better now.”

  Alaric cleared his throat. “That’s reassuring,” he said. “Perrin, how’s Vaishant?”

  “Moving on his own,” Perrin said. He laid a hand on Dianthe’s broken arm, which glowed green.

  “I will be well soon,” Vaishant mumbled. “Kalanath, are you well?”

  “I am well,” Kalanath said, kneeling beside the divine to help him sit. “Thank you for guiding me. My vision is returning.”

  “In that case,” Alaric said, “we’ve got one last thing to do.”

  23

  The temple was no more ruined than before, though as they approached, part of the roof shifted and slid lower into the rubble. Sienne hesitated before the passage entrance, which looked more menacing than she remembered. “If we get trapped in here, it’s going to take a long time to get everyone out,” she said.

  “It’s not going to collapse,” Alaric said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “I can’t. We just survived a battle with a powerful being capable of destroying a city. I choose to be optimistic.”

  Vaishant, now mostly recovered from force, led the way through the corridors, never taking a false turn. Sienne’s nerves inspired her to make more lights than they probably needed. Behind her, Ghrita said, “Are we going to talk about what happened?”

  Alaric’s shoulders tensed. “About what?” he said, sounding too casual.

  “You turned into a mythical being and tore Jenani to ribbons. You can’t pretend that didn’t happen. We all saw it. Did the rest of you know?”

  “They know,” Alaric said. “I told you my race is Sassaven, and that we’re creatures of magic. That’s part of the magic, that transformation into my other self.”

  “It is strange,” Vaishant said. “A good strange. In our stories, the unicorn is a symbol of purity of purpose. Of desire untainted by jealousy or fear. You are a good luck token, my friend.”

  Alaric chuckled. “I don’t know about that. I hope my desire to free my people is pure, if that will make it successful. This ritual is the next step toward that.”

  “And Jenani did give us a hint about how to undo the binding ritual,” Sienne said. “And it…” She fell silent, remembering.

  “It what?” Dianthe said.

  “It was just…it mentioned a conduit. That I couldn’t stop it from being enslaved even if my conduit was open. Doesn’t that remind you of anything?”

  “The necromancer Ivar Scholten’s notes,” Perrin said. “But he did not know what a conduit was, or if he did, he failed to write it down.”

  “It was something he believed people had, that was related to his studies of the human body,” Sienne said. “Something he was trying to open. He didn’t say why.”

  “Jenani’s words suggest it would give someone power,” Perrin said.

  “Does that tell you anything about Scholten’s notes, Sienne?” Alaric asked.

  “No, but here’s the strange thing. It also reminds me of the ritual. The coming of age ritual. There’s a point where I cast change to alter Alaric’s body, and it…it’s too complicated to explain the details, but you could almost call it turning the person into a conduit for the rest of what the ritual does. It’s a strange coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe—”

  “—in coincidence. I know, Alaric. But what are the odds that a necromancer who was trying to become a lich would happen on a piece of a ritual relating to a magical race he’d never heard of?”

  “The varnwort potion connects both. It’s not such a huge stretch.” Alaric ducked his head to enter the divines’ chamber after Vaishant. “Let’s do the ritual, and find out.”

  “One moment,” Vaishant said. “I have been considering the phoenix feather.”

  “That’s got to be a lost cause,” Dianthe said. “The rest of the temple is inaccessible.”

  “Yes, but we searched the whole temple and found nothing. All that is left to search is this chamber.” Vaishant made a sweeping gesture encompassing the whole room.

  “We can look, but I don’t know that we’ll find anything,” Dianthe said. She walked to the nearest wall and examined it. Ghrita followed her.

  “My pardon, but I think you do not see,” Vaishant said, and pointed at the dome. “I believe it is there.”

  They all looked up. “Sienne?” Alaric said, and Sienne sent magic lights sailing toward the dome, making the gold gleam as brightly as if lit from within. Birds of all kinds frozen in mid-flight covered the curved surface.

  “I don’t know what a phoenix looks like,” Dianthe said, scanning the dome.

  “I see it,” Ghrita said, pointing.

  The phoenix was one of the larger birds in the painting, its wingspan nearly six feet across. Its feathers were picked out in great detail in comparison to most of the others, whose outlines ranged from highly representational to swift sketches of wing and claw.

  Sienne opened her spellbook. “I can take a look,” she said. She read off float and rose a few inches into the air. Reaching down with one foot, she gave herself a push off the floor and drifted upward, holding out one hand to keep from banging her head against the dome. Using her fingers to guide her, she worked her way across the dome to the phoenix and ran her hands over its smooth surface, closing her eyes to shut out distractions. The gold was cool to the touch, cooler than the stone surface of the dome, which was also rough in texture by contrast to the smooth metal.

  Her hands ran across something bumpy that was smoother than the stone. She opened her eyes. The feathers didn’t look any different, but her fingers felt a hair-fine crack she traced to outline one of them, a long feather near the outside of the phoenix’s wing. “I found it,” she said. “I don’t know how to get it out.” She tried to fit her nails into the crack, to no effect.

  “Sculpt?” Alaric suggested.

  “I don’t want to ruin the dome. It’s so beautiful.”

  “It’s probably going to ruin it if you remove the feather,” he pointed out. “Leave a big hole.”

  “We might also need to be concerned about the dome collapsing,” Perrin said.

  “It’s not an artifact,” Sienne said. “I can try fit.” She flipped pages and began reading. Dianthe moved to stand beneath her, her eyes on the feather, ready to catch it if it fell.

  Sienne rolled the honey-sweet syllables around her tongue as she came to the end of the spell. The feather quivered, shrank to a third its size, and fell out of the shallow cavity it had been embedded in. Dianthe caught it neatly. “It’s heavy,” she said, weighing it in her hand. “Even shrunk, it’s got some heft to it.”

  “It’s probably solid gold,” Alaric said. “I can’t imagine there’s much of the original feather left after all these years.”

  Sienne pushed off the ceiling and floated downward, hitting the floor a little too hard and rebounding. Alaric grabbed her wrist, tethering her. “Thanks,” she said. “Let me restore it.”

  Dianthe handed the feather over, and Sienne cast fit again, returning it to its original size. “Look,” she said, “the tip’s already cut into a pen nib.”

  “It is remarkable,” Vaishant said, holding out his hand. Sienne gave it to him, and he examined it closely. “It is supposed to contain a prophecy, but of what, I do not know. And I also do not know why the feather was hidden here when the divines left Ma’tzehar.”

  “They might have been afraid of what the prophecy said,” Ghrita said.

  “Possibly. Or it is dangerous, and they thought to hide it away.” Vaishant offered it to Sienne.

  “No, I think you should hold onto it,” Sienne said. “You’re a divine, and it seems appropriate.”

  “I will care for it well,” Vaishant said, tucking it away inside his robe.

  “Well,” Alaric said, looking at Sienne. “Should we wait for float to wear off
?”

  “It will only be a few minutes. We can start preparations now.” Sienne closed her spellbook.

  Alaric released her and removed his backpack. Kneeling near the wall, he opened it and removed several objects: a brass goblet, an ancient knife with a red stone in the pommel, and a metal flask. “Ghrita, Vaishant, if you’d step over near the door,” he said.

  “We can leave, if it’s private,” Ghrita said.

  “The ritual requires witnesses. I don’t think it will hurt anything for you to watch. Just don’t interfere, whatever you see.” Alaric uncorked the flask and poured a measure of a cloudy yellow liquid, bright like a dandelion, into the goblet. He set the flask aside and turned to Sienne. “Are you—”

  With a jolt, Sienne dropped a few inches to the floor. “Yes.”

  “Then…tell us what to do.”

  Sienne’s heart was beating rapidly. Now that the moment was here, doubt assailed her. Was the potion right? Had she copied the ritual down correctly—more importantly, had she memorized it accurately? Maybe she should read it from her notes. She closed her eyes and willed herself calm. She was being stupid. She’d gone over the ritual in her imagination dozens of times, acting out each step until she could do it without thinking. This would work, and she was wasting time.

  She guided Perrin, Dianthe, and Kalanath, whose eyes were still slightly filmy, to stand at points of an equilateral triangle centered on the black spot where Perrin’s banishment had broken the ring’s hold on Jenani. “Stand here,” she told Alaric, indicating a place outside the triangle, opposite Kalanath, and crossed the room to pick up the goblet and knife. “Everyone face outward—no, everyone but you, Alaric. Put your backs to the center.”

  She eyed her three friends. Would it make a difference who did what? It couldn’t hurt to follow her instincts. She handed Perrin the goblet. The liquid inside smelled fruity, like fine wine with a hint of bitterness. Kalanath received the knife, which he held resting on his open palms as if making an offering. Then, hesitating slightly, she removed the hazard deck from her robes and shuffled it three times. “Pick a card,” she told Alaric.

  “Is this really the time to risk blindness?”

  “You have to shuffle and cut the deck yourself for it to have an effect, and besides, it only works once per day. This is… I just want to be sure this will work.”

  Alaric shrugged and drew a card from the middle of the deck. “The Key again,” he said. “Is that significant?”

  Sienne let out a deep breath. It was what she’d expected, but seeing it happen gave her confidence. “I hope so,” she said. Putting away the rest of the deck, she handed the card to Dianthe. “You’ll all need to give me your items when I ask for them, so be prepared. Alaric?”

  “I’m ready.” He didn’t look at all nervous, which made Sienne’s nerves tingle. He was trusting her with his life, after all.

  She opened her spellbook to a page near the front and read the spell mirage in clear, rainbow-hued syllables. A glowing yellow symbol sprang into life, floating at the center of the triangle, and Vaishant sucked in a breath. “It is well,” Kalanath said without turning. “This is a powerful thing we do and it needs a powerful protector. God as destroyer brings great change.”

  “I hope you know what you are doing,” Vaishant said.

  Sienne walked around the triangle to face Alaric and took the knife from Kalanath’s outstretched hand. She pricked her finger and squeezed it to make the blood flow. Swiftly she drew the simple lines that made up the symbol on Alaric’s right palm. Handing the knife to him, she said, “Copy the symbol, and give Kalanath the knife. Then clasp hands.”

  Alaric repeated her gestures. The warm blood cooled quickly in the dry room. Alaric handed back the knife. “Do I clean it?” Kalanath asked. Sienne shook her head. Alaric took her hand in his large one. It enveloped hers almost completely.

  “Walk with me,” Sienne said, tugging Alaric and walking backward around the triangle, counterclockwise, until she reached Perrin. With her free hand she reached for the goblet. “Last chance to back out,” she said with a shaky smile.

  Alaric shook his head. “It’s this or nothing.”

  Sienne nodded. “Repeat after me,” she said. “From the center, to the heart, to open what is closed.”

  Alaric nodded. “From the center, to the heart, to open what is closed.”

  “I am forever faithful.”

  “I am forever faithful.”

  Sienne swallowed. “That the center will accept the offering, let this cup by my hand open the…conduit.”

  Alaric raised his eyebrows, but repeated the sentence. She’d originally translated the last word as “path,” but at the last minute, she’d felt strongly that the word should be changed. She prayed briefly that she hadn’t just screwed everything up, and held the goblet up. Alaric took it, breathed out deeply, and raised it to his lips. Sienne watched him in tense fear. It was the right recipe, she knew; they’d tested a dozen concoctions before finding this one. But she couldn’t help thinking about the possibility they’d gotten the proportions wrong. It was a sedative potion, at least in part, with ingredients like varnwort to provide a calming effect.

  It was also a deadly poison.

  Forcing herself not to hurry, she took the goblet from Alaric and handed it back to Perrin. With her free hand, she took her spellbook from inside her robe and let it fall open to change. Reading slowly, tasting each sweet syllable as it rolled off her lips, she filled her mind with images of things that opened, doors and locks and flowers and hands, and kept the last image firmly in her imagination as the spell came to an end.

  Alaric gasped. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He closed his eyes and held his breath, his jaw locked as if in great pain. She felt the shadow of it cross her, an ache that started in her chest and spread outward. The spell, in conjunction with the poison, altered Alaric’s body, transforming it subtly. The sedative effects were supposed to make it easier to bear. She couldn’t bear to think how much it would hurt without them.

  “Walk with me,” she said, continuing counterclockwise around the circle at a steady pace, even though her heart was screaming at her to rush to the next step. Hands still clasped, they circled the three motionless figures in the center twice and stopped next to Perrin once more. Sienne let go of Alaric. “Hold out your hands, cupping them,” she said.

  Alaric extended his hands. Sienne summoned water in a thin stream to pour into his hands until they overflowed, washing away the symbol. “You are washed clean of your former self,” she said, “and prepared to become something new.” Her chest ached more fiercely, and she ignored it. “Follow me.”

  She continued to back around the circle. The ache had spread to her thighs and forearms, a dull, tight feeling like her flesh was swelling from a hundred insect bites. She stopped opposite Kalanath and took up the knife again, handing it hilt-first to Alaric. He wrapped his hand around the bone of the hilt. “Close your hand over the blade, and cut,” she said.

  Alaric pulled the knife across his left hand, then opened it to reveal blood that glittered like mica in Sienne’s magic lights, flowing over his hand to drip onto the floor. He was breathing heavily and his eyes had gone unfocused. Sienne quickly gave the knife back to Kalanath. Her head was pounding, something was wrong with her vision, and the dull ache was turning into a sharp agony as if the knife had cut her flesh instead. She made herself breathe calmly. Alaric only had a few more minutes.

  She backed away again, circling the triangle twice and ending near Dianthe. “Take…the card,” she murmured, trying to ignore the pain that seared through her. “In your bloody hand.”

  Alaric did so. Blood smeared the edge of the card. Some part of Sienne wondered if it was a good idea, but the rest of her couldn’t remember what was so special about the deck that it mattered. She opened her spellbook and, blinking to make the letters stay still, cast the confusion mirage again.

  A shape shimmered into view, wavery and indistinct.
Sienne focused hard and with her last scrap of will forced it to solidify. It was a keyhole, hanging unsupported in midair. “Turn the key in the lock,” she gasped.

  Alaric pushed the card toward the lock, moving as slowly as if he were forcing his hand through a wall of tar. Sienne whimpered as pain struck her again, and she fell to her knees. Distantly, she was aware that she was dizzy from casting too many spells. She hadn’t kept track, damn it, and what if she couldn’t cast the all-important final one? Beside her, Dianthe shifted, reaching out, and Sienne shook her head vehemently. So close.

  The card touched the image of the keyhole and slid home. Letting out a groan of effort, Alaric turned the key counterclockwise. Both image and card vanished, and Alaric grabbed his head in both hands and screamed, his deep voice harmonizing with Sienne’s as she did the same. She’d never felt pain like this before, as if her bones had been yanked out of their sockets and filled with molten metal. She couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything; there was nothing but pain and a tiny helpless part of her that shrieked at her to do something or Alaric would die.

  She fumbled around in her blindness until she felt his broad shoulder. He was shuddering as if something were tearing him apart. The ritual, or the poison? It couldn’t be too late. She flung open her spellbook and forced her eyes open. Blank whiteness met her gaze. She grabbed her book and brought it up to her face until the slick invulnerable pages brushed her nose. Still nothing.

  She sobbed, and willed the pages to turn to purge. It had to be now, before the poison could rot his insides, but she couldn’t see, not even the faint brown of the paper. He was going to die, and it would be her fault.

  She strained her eyes wider. Nothing. She could remember casting purge before, to neutralize another poison, and if only she didn’t have a stupidly incompetent human brain that couldn’t hang on to a damn spell long enough—

  Something flickered in memory. A curve, a line, a swooping pen stroke. She sat on a bed whose mattress was too hard with a writing desk over her lap and scribed the smooth curves of a spell. Purge. She’d bought it on a whim before knowing it was part of the ritual, thinking at the time it might be useful someday. It had saved Dianthe’s life, weeks ago. Now it was useless, trapped in her spellbook that she couldn’t read.