Wielder's Curse

by Elle Cardy

  “You don’t think much of the Guardians, do you?”

  “Never have,” she said. “Anyone who pushes their strength on others shouldn’t be allowed to continue. Look at the way they’ve treated you, yet you still seek their approval. You want to be one of them even while you run away from them.”

  Aurelius’ hands slipped from the bars. With his back turned, he muttered something about wanting to be born in a different time, pining for the times of the old magic when wielders were respected.

  The only exit Jasmine could see was through the main bars, and they were surprisingly solid for an animal enclosure. The only possible escape she could see was if someone came to visit. Hopefully someone would want to gloat, ask questions, or feed them. Then she would look for an opportunity. She’d have to use brute force against them because magic was now out of the question. Every fiber of her body cried out for her ship. Being closed up in the cell, away from the open sky, away from the sea, made everything worse.

  “Why do you suppose they locked us in here with no explanation?”

  One day she would teach Aurelius about the beauty of silence.

  “They want Finn, not us,” the kid said. “We don’t have anything they want. Except our power. That Hullian character said I had more power than most wielders in town. I could be of use to the Guardians. Why can’t they see that?”

  After three heartbeats of blessed silence, Aurelius went on. “They seemed to like your power. I think you’re stronger than they realize. You’ve used a lot tonight. And you’re away from your prize. Yet they still recognized at least some of your potential.”

  Jasmine sighed into the pen smelling of hay and pig. “Ever been fishing?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Auslam has some good places to fish on the river. You’ve never been to the banks? Never watched anyone throw in a line or two?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “And what do you use to catch fish?”

  “Bait?”

  Jasmine let the pen fall quiet. The pigs snuffled in the hay.

  “You’re saying we’re the bait to catch Finn?”

  Now he was getting somewhere.

  “How will he even know we’re here?”

  Jasmine closed her eyes. She took a deep shuddering breath, then another. “We need to get out of here.”

  “But how? Do you think when Finn doesn’t come, they’ll let us go? Isn’t the Prize scheduled to leave port tomorrow?”

  If they hadn’t already left.

  “Because there’s no chance Finn can come find us with that knife wound in his side,” the kid said. Just listening to him go on was exhausting.

  “They don’t know that.”

  “Then we need to tell them.” Aurelius pressed himself against the bars and tried to peer down the corridor beyond.

  “If you tell them anything about Finn, I will…” She didn’t have the energy to think straight. “I don’t know. Make you regret it or something.” Her threat was weak at best, but she didn’t have the will to care.

  Aurelius backed away from the bars. “I’m sorry I got us into trouble,” he murmured. “Are you going to kill me the moment you get out of that collar?”

  Jasmine studied him. His chin quivered as if he were being serious. “Do you want me to kill you?”

  Aurelius’ expression bloomed into open fright.

  Jasmine laughed to shake off her unease. “What kind of savage do you think I am?”

  Aurelius shrugged. The answer he had for everything. “You’re more powerful than anyone should be.”

  So that was what it was. Her power scared him. He had to have been wondering what else she could do when she had her talisman within range.

  “It’s not your fault,” she murmured with another sigh.

  Golden light pushed striped shadows across the pen. The pigs grunted and shuffled closer to their feed trough. As Aurelius shied from the light and crouched against the back wall, she drew closer to their only exit.

  A hunched man appeared. He held up a lantern to peer into their pen. Thin strands of hair floated about his balding head like spider webs. Age had mottled his skin and left it sagging from his bones. The power that coursed about him spoke to Jasmine of a rush of water over river stones. Flowing and eternal, hard and polished.

  The man grinned, toothless and gummy. “The girl who would hide,” he said as if that pleased him. “So many futures chitter chatter around you. You are an oncoming storm to boil the seas.”

  Jasmine stepped away. Boiling seas. Suffocating air. The end of everything. Kahld’s future. Not hers.

  “You are seen and not seen. You are a key and a lock. A curse and a blessing. You are...” He frowned. “War.”

  Aurelius came into the light and stood beside her. “You’re the one who can see visions like Marcelo. Your name is Cassian, isn’t it?”

  The old man startled and almost dropped the lantern.

  “I’ve heard about you in Auslam,” the kid said. “What do you see in me?”

  Cassian licked his lips, his gaze traveling the length of the kid’s body. The flow of his power shifted then seemed to shy from a single point in the air between them. He lowered the corners of his mouth. “Nothing.”

  A lie. He’d seen something but chose not to share. If Jasmine touched him, she’d be able to see what he had seen. She took another step back. Visions couldn’t be trusted. Too easily they could be misinterpreted.

  What she wanted to know was facts. For whatever reason, the Guardians were looking for Finn now, when they hadn’t known it was Finn they were after. It didn’t make sense the silencing was the reason since that was a common practice among the Guardians.

  “Do you know what happened in town tonight?” she asked.

  The lantern light glistened in the old man’s moist eyes. “Silva Prinkle is a beautiful woman. You need to know that.”

  Jasmine hoped this unremarkable fact was related to her question and not some random rambling of an old man losing the screws to his sea chest.

  “She married an ordinary yet honest man, Alba Prinkle. Alba had never fully felt worthy of her love, but he did his best to give her everything she wanted. They lived together in town, on the north side where the river flows past.” The old man half turned and lifted a finger to point in the direction. It didn’t seem to matter that all she could see were the stone walls of the manor’s basement. “I can see their cottage from my window.”

  Jasmine nodded. Maybe if she looked attentive, he would get to the point.

  “Forty-seven years ago, they took in a child wielder. He was only five, and his name was Cal. He didn’t much like the collar, but he grew used to it. Such a strong little boy. So eager to learn.” The man’s voice wavered as he stared at the crumpled straw. “He was treated well by the Prinkles, and his collar remained secure. But the boy had a secret. More than one.” A joyless laugh escaped Cassian’s trembling lips. “You see, the boy saw visions of the future. Ordinary visions. Terrible visions.”

  “With such a rare power, why wasn’t he taken in by the Order?” Aurelius asked.

  Cassian turned a cold sharp eye on the kid.

  Aurelius swallowed.

  When Cassian returned his gaze to Jasmine, the coldness vanished and there was only grief. “I told him… I told him, should he ever speak of his visions to anyone but me he would die. So he never did.”

  After the silence grew long and heavy, Jasmine asked, “You knew he would die because you’d seen it in one of your own visions?”

  “Not a vision,” Cassian said. “I foolishly believed Cal would be safe with the collar. And he was safe. For a while. Until Silva Prinkle grew bored. She left Alba Prinkle for the affections of another man. The baker on Fiddler Street who was even more ordinary than Alba.”

  Cassian shook his head. “Alba was devastated. Last night, he drank himself to oblivion. Cal accompanied him, as he always did. So
when Alba went to an alley to relieve himself of the ale he’d consumed, Cal followed. While they were there, two untagged wielders entered the alley.” The old man pressed his lips together, and the coldness in his eyes returned.

  The two untagged wielders might’ve been the ones Finn had witnessed fighting, one attempting to silence the other.

  “Cal recognized one of them from his visions. He was overcome by a need to do something about it and asked his drunken master for his freedom. He’d never asked for it before. As far as I know, he’d never wanted it. The foolish drunkard, in an ale-induced haze, gave Cal his freedom. Cal attacked this wielding stranger. Fenwick tells me you both identified the wielder as Finn Baracus.”

  The old man was telling the story altogether wrong. Even if Finn did know how to silence, there was no way he would. He knew the consequences. He knew it fed the Beast.

  The muscles around Cassian’s jaw clenched. “I now have the name of my son’s murderer.”

  Jasmine took in a sharp breath. Cal had been Cassian’s son. The wielding child of a wielder.

  “Cal was an abomination.” The kid’s face screwed up in revulsion. “No wonder Finn had been forced to—” He caught himself before he finished the sentence, but they all knew what he was going to say. “No wonder Finn had been forced to silence him.”

  They were wrong. They had to be. Finn would never. Could never.

  An echo of the kid’s revulsion murmured against her. What if they weren’t wrong? If that were so, then Finn had lied. And worse. He’d silenced an abomination. If he ever discovered she too was an abomination, could he do the same to her?

  She couldn’t think like that. Cassian was wrong. She needed to trust her instincts and trust Finn. Finn couldn’t silence anyone, let alone Cal. Marcelo probably did the deed and blamed Finn. Yet Cassian had distinctly said that Cal had attacked Finn. Not the other way around, as Marcelo had claimed. “Why would your son attack Finn?”

  “You don’t see visions so you can’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “So many dreams are vague. So many are wisps in the wind. The dreams I see are often just dreams, not as clear as Marcelo claims his visions to be. But the dreams about the one you call Finn? Sharp as an executioner’s blade. When it comes to Finn, it’s clear he must die.”

  “Vengeance has clouded your mind.”

  With a huff, Cassian settled the lantern on the ground. When he straightened, weariness weighed on him. “You aren’t listening. It’s about the future. Three months ago, I started seeing the one you named Finn. As did Cal. I sent messenger pigeons. Two others who see visions responded. They too saw the boy I described, though none of us knew his name. I suspect anyone who can see visions has seen Finn. And you have a connection to him. Let me see you,” he said to Jasmine.

  “You can see me just fine from there.”

  “Come closer.” His command snapped, sending a wave of sickness through her.

  There was no fighting it, so she approached the bars.

  Quicker than a whip snake, Cassian grabbed hold and dug his fingers into her skin. Power flowed over and around her, pushing into her mind. With the collar still binding her, she couldn’t resist. Images flitted past. Fire. Blackened seas. A city in the golden light of sunset. The images passed so quickly that they were hard to take hold, like reflections on rough water.

  “Too many possibilities,” Cassian hissed through his gums. “In a shroud. In flames. Smothered by shadow.”

  The Beast stirred.

  Jasmine’s collar activated.

  A wave of nausea crashed down and cut off her flow of power. She had no way of hiding and no means to protect herself.

  Cassian abruptly let go and spun around. The images evaporated, and the touch of the Beast vanished.

  “Who’s there?” the old man demanded the empty space.

  A shimmer in the lantern light. A shadow against shadows. No, it was nothing. A trick of the eye.

  Cassian wielded, whipping his power against the spot where Jasmine thought she’d seen something. Nothing happened.

  There, near the old man, a faint tear twisted in the air, a place where Nothing existed and spread like an infection.

  Cassian screamed a gurgling cry. With a loud metallic clang, he kicked the lantern in his rush to flee. Light and shadows streaked across the pens. The goat brayed, and the pigs squealed. The old man ran, disappearing up the passageway.

  Aurelius swore.

  The spreading nothingness became a presence, a shadowy, smoking entity of nightmares and malevolence. It slid through the bars and entered the cell. Jasmine pulled Aurelius against the wall. She’d sworn to protect him and that was what she intended to do. How she was going to do that, she had no idea. The Guardians had taken her paring knife. She had nothing, not even her magic.

  As the distortion in the air drew near, Jasmine braced. It was both nothing and something. A forgotten repulsion. A remembered horror. Dark and dangerous.

  Ice touched her wrist. Cold oil on frozen sand. A vision of boiling seas and darkness plunged into her. Something hard slammed against her knees. The cell floor. She must’ve fallen. Power blew through her like a gale. Her power. Not of her own free will. Sickness filled her. Acute. All encompassing.

  Aglow with fire, she cried aloud.

  Chapter 12

  The gale in Jasmine’s mind vanished and the presence with it. She jerked to her feet, and the collar around her neck fell to the ground.

  Aurelius gasped. “You did that?”

  It wasn’t her. Something or someone had freed her. Who could’ve done it? A better question was, why?

  The lantern still burned, the wick not much lower than when the strange old man had visited. The sickness caused by the collar was gone, which meant she could wield again. The weakness that came from being too far from her talisman remained. The padlock on the cell door was a mangled hunk of metal on the ground. She hadn’t done that either.

  “Did you…” she began and stopped. Aurelius couldn’t have damaged the padlock. Even without the collar around his neck, he didn’t have the strength. “We need to escape before Cassian alerts the others.” For all she knew, he may have already alerted them.

  The fool kid held her as if that could stop her. “They’ll kill us if we leave now. Probably silence us.”

  Jasmine released herself from his hold then reached for his collar.

  He pulled away. “You can’t.”

  “You aren’t winning any favors by being obedient. This is your chance to escape the Order for good.” She took hold of his collar and released him. She hadn’t needed magic to do it. It seemed anyone without a collar could do it by releasing a single catch. A simple yet effective design. She tossed it aside while Aurelius rubbed his neck.

  Distant bells rang. Warning bells in the manor.

  She wondered what Cassian had told them. She wasn’t entirely sure what had happened or who had been in the cell with them. A phantom? One of Gley’s aberrations? A powerful wielder maybe? She didn’t dare entertain the suspicion that was forming. It wasn’t possible. Surely. Weakened without her talisman, unnerved by Cassian and his fanciful stories, she wasn’t thinking straight.

  No time. Whoever or whatever it was didn’t matter for now. The whole Oakheart Order knew there’d been an intruder in the manor. They would be coming to investigate.

  Jasmine pushed on the cell door, and it opened with a loud squeal against unoiled hinges. She followed the direction Cassian had fled, up a set of stone steps. Aurelius trailed behind.

  They came to a storage room filled with barrels and crates, supplies for the adjoining kitchens. A tray of bread loaves had been left on a shelf. Jasmine’s stomach growled. She grabbed two and threw one to Aurelius.

  “I can’t steal from them.”

  “Your loss.” Jasmine took a bite of hers, ripping the fresh bread with her teeth. “Fresh,” she said with her mouth full.

&nbs
p; She opened the door a crack. The sound of running feet grew louder. She slammed the door. No longer hungry, she cast away the remaining loaf. A large barrel under a wooden crate sat against the wall. With a shove, she pushed the box off its perch. It crashed to the floor and splintered open, spilling carrots across the flagstones. She pulled on the barrel. It didn’t shift.

  “A little help here?”

  Aurelius gave her a startled expression and made no move to help.

  She growled under her breath. With what little strength she had left, she heaved against the barrel. It tipped on an angle, and the contents sloshed against the sides, threatening to unbalance her. She held on and rolled the barrel on its rim to the door. Letting it go, it jammed against the door with a dull thud. It wouldn’t hold long against a bunch of angry wielders.

  “Look for another way out,” she said.

  Aurelius stood on the spot and did a token search. He shrugged.

  There, in the far corner, a small square door at thigh height. She opened it, and a waft of rot, mold, and body waste assaulted her. It was a chute. Based on the eye-watering aroma, she guessed that was where the manor staff tossed their refuse. It had to lead outside, perhaps to the river that ran beside the town.

  “Get in.”

  Aurelius’ eyes grew so wide she thought they’d pop out of his head. The main door shuddered. The barrel in front of it shifted.

  “Now or never.”

  Still he hesitated.

  “Freedom or a silencing. Your choice.”

  Aurelius shuffled to her and stuck his head into the shaft.

  She pulled him back by the scruff of his shirt collar. “Feet first.”

  He swung his feet over the edge and white-knuckled the sides. When he refused to let go, Jasmine pushed him. He let out a yelp and disappeared into the darkness. Jasmine thought she heard a splash.

  The main door shuddered again. Power vibrated the air. With a loud crack, the door splintered into shards. Jasmine threw herself into the shaft. She slid down a slimy path until the slope vanished beneath her. Water exploded around her. She gasped for air and pushed herself to the surface. A strong current dragged her under a stone arch and into a narrow tunnel along with other refuse. Farther down, the kid clung to a floating half door, caught in the same current.