“That’s pretty much it,” Wythcombe agreed. “Now, if all of you will promise me that you won’t do anything impulsive, I will retire so I can inspect the sword, then get some rest. Somehow telling you Kabot’s tale has made me all the more eager to reassure myself that nothing has changed there at the peak of Mount Ambition.”
Wythcombe did not mention the sword over breakfast, nor did he as they packed their camping gear onto a mildly protesting Rusty, and resumed their hike. The ground was growing rougher, hard and blackened in some places, brittle and almost chalky in others. Laria was reminded of what was left when a piece of pottery exploded in the kiln. She wondered if a terrible fire had come through here, but pushed back her automatic impulse to mesh with her surroundings so she could discover what memories they held. She hadn’t realized how frequently she sent out a thread of her talent to check such things until she schooled herself not to use it.
Once they were underway, and Farborn and the wolves had reported that, other than a peculiar pop-eyed lizard about the size of a hunting dog, they had seen nothing that could be taken as threatening, Wythcombe finally revealed what he’d learned about the sword.
“I don’t suspect any of you will be surprised to learn that it is magical,” he said, gesturing toward the top of his pack where the sword’s hilt poked out of his bedroll. “What might surprise you is that, as far as I can tell, its magic began as wholly beneficial.”
“Beneficial?” Ranz asked. “But you saw what it turned Laria into—even Firekeeper had to struggle to restrain her.”
“Beneficial,” Wythcombe repeated. “Once here on Rhinadei—and I suspect back where these folks come from as well—such swords were, if not precisely common, at least not uncommon. They contained magic that would let someone who knew little about handling a sword do so as if they were moderately proficient—not as an expert, certainly, but far better than without the charm. As you may be coming to understand, the study of magic is a jealous lover. It leaves little time for other arts, especially not those as demanding as swordplay. Yet, although magic certainly can be used for both offense and defense, such use can leave the user weak and vulnerable. Thus the creation of these so-called sorcerer’s blades.”
Laria asked hesitantly, “What about what Blind Seer said he saw—how it tried to take me over? That couldn’t be part of the design, right?”
“Not usually,” Wythcombe said, “although there are tales of blades that were designed to take over their wielder, usually so that they could be directed by another. This blade shows no sign of such magics. Instead, I believe it was corrupted by being left alone so long in this area. As with so many other places in Rhinadei, a great battle was fought here and many died—including the blade’s original owner. Excessive violence saturates an area—you know that better than most, Laria. Additionally, emotional energy can pool, eventually becoming a force independent of those who originally created it.”
Arasan nodded seriously. “Many a time I’ve sung a song—happy, sad, stirring—and seen how the emotions linger long after I stopped singing and the strings of my instrument have stopped vibrating. I suspect violence that scored the land as this land was scored would last a long time.”
“So the sword,” Wythcombe continued, “soaked in violence and mana for centuries. Although such swords were not usually made with a sense of purpose, nonetheless they were created to be used, to help. That’s a powerful impulse. When Laria touched the sword…”
He trailed off, inviting confidences. Overwhelmed with a sense of guilt, Laria spoke.
“I was feeling sort of lost. Not homesick, really, but lonely. I mean, I guess I’ve been feeling useless. Firekeeper, Farborn, and Blind Seer hunt and scout. Arasan has proven to be expert at running a camp. Ranz and Blind Seer are studying magic. You, Wythcombe, are teaching them, guiding us, and even without any sensitivity anyone could tell this trip was important to you. No one has asked me to do much with my talent, so…”
She stopped, having said more about her feelings than even she had realized to that point. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to blurt out that in her loneliness, she had developed a major crush on Ranz, and that wouldn’t do.
“Those would have been perfect impulses to give the sword the link it needed,” Wythcombe said, thankfully satisfied. “You were looking for a way to be more useful. The sword is designed to make someone who is useless as a fighter at least competent. When you became aware that someone was slipping into you against your will and you resisted, it fought back. That explains both the violence and the remarkable fighting skill you showed. A sword is a tool. There’s really not much of a step from being a tool to learning to use another as a tool.”
“I guess,” Laria said hesitantly. “That actually feels right. I never felt as if it wanted to hurt me. The opposite, really. Now, I suppose, you’re going to suggest that we destroy it or turn it over to someone who will purge it or something.”
“You don’t think that’s best?” Wythcombe asked curiously.
“No. I bet you think I’m stupid, but I feel sorry for it. If I hadn’t come along, it would have just stayed there at the bottom of the stream. Now, because I came along, and it tried to help me, it’s going to be, well, sort of killed. It felt like a person. It wanted to be my friend.”
She stopped, feeling more inarticulate than usual, waiting for another lecture. Firekeeper’s next words startled her.
“Maybe Laria should try to talk with the sword later—with us near to give help if it is unkind to her. Blind Seer says he would scent danger, even as he did before. If Laria could make this thing her friend, maybe that would be good. We cannot always be close to protect you all.”
“You want me to have a magic sword?” Laria asked, incredulous. “One that, if Wythcombe is right, is—uh, morally and ethically challenged?”
“Especially, you,” Firekeeper said. “You are very brave to be here, but your magic will not keep you safe. This time Blind Seer was close enough to run to help. With me. And Ranz was near. But we will not always be.”
Ranz cut in. “But don’t you people from the New World hate magic? I mean, that’s what I gathered. That’s why Blind Seer had to come here to find a teacher.”
Firekeeper looked rueful. “When I was a pup, I think as a pup and am very, very noisy about those thoughts. If I have run all these trails and returned unchanged, then I am less a wolf than an image of a wolf. I would not wish everyone to have a sword like this…”
Laria noticed that the wolf-woman’s gaze flickered over to Arasan.
“…the Spell Wielders of the Nexus Islands would have been even more terrible with such tools. But Laria? She is maybe the best, because—as she says—she has talked with this sword and believes that it did wish to be her friend. Maybe, if she is careful, she will have it so.”
Wythcombe looked with interest at Firekeeper. “Here in Rhinadei, we have a detailed series of protocols for dealing with items that are imbued with magic—whether from their original creation or as a result of something that happened later. When I assessed the sword those protocols made the process both easier and less draining. However, we are trained not to be too quick to accept the first results of our analysis—often the true nature of an item, especially one that is more than it seems to be, is hidden beneath the magic.”
“That makes sense,” the Meddler said. “Most people only look at the surface.”
“Indeed,” replied Wythcombe with a coolness that made Laria think that the Meddler was taunting the wrong old man. But Wythcombe did not let the Meddler distract him. “Let me inspect the blade further, in collaboration with Laria, if she will. If we both feel it is safe for her to use, then it is best that she gets accustomed to using it before she actually needs it.”
Laria looked up at the bulky bundle. “I’d like to give that a try.”
Wythcombe nodded sharp approval, then continued. “But not now. We’re about three days from Kabot’s gate. There’s an excellent camping s
pot ahead, and I’d like for us to reach that first.”
Throughout the rest of that day’s hike, Laria kept glancing over at the sword hilt. The yellow-green gem seemed to wink at her every time she did. She hoped Ranz wouldn’t be jealous that she was the one everyone thought should have the sword. But she hoped even more that it would be hers. Maybe then, for the first time since Ollaris’s death, she’d feel safe.
XII
BLIND SEER WAITED until he and Firekeeper were well away from the camp before voicing something that had been increasingly troubling him.
“What game is the Meddler playing? He’s all but taunting Wythcombe to question him about his dual nature. The differences between him and Arasan are becoming so apparent that even Ranz—who is so caught up in his own concerns that he hardly notices the world outside his head—has begun to notice.”
“I don’t know,” Firekeeper replied, and to Blind Seer’s relief her scent held nothing of the confusion and guilt he had detected when the Meddler had been using her as one of his toys. “Perhaps he dislikes being ignored and underestimated? I think Arasan is honestly content with serving as our camp manager, cook, and telling us stories along the trail. How close he came to dying has made him value simple things like a good meal or making a friend laugh. But the Meddler—his very name says it. He is not happy if he is not working some elaborate plan—a plan that will be for everyone’s good, of course. Now that Arasan is stronger and Laria begins to sniff out her own trail, he looks for a new cause.”
“Do you think he deliberately set Laria in the way of that sword?” Blind Seer asked. “He has been very coy about just how much magic remains to him—and I think he could hide some even from Arasan. What if he sensed, not the sword specifically, but that there was something magical there? As Laria’s teacher, he must be aware as I have been, as I think Laria herself was not—which in itself is interesting, for he as her teacher should have told her—that she uses her talent to lightly sniff her surroundings whenever she becomes uneasy. Sending Ranz to join her would be a sure way to make Laria uneasy.”
Firekeeper chuckled. “Laria is a young woman growing into her body. Ranz would need to be far less attractive for her not to feel stirrings with which I think even she is unsure how to deal. Humans confuse love and sex far too easily—especially young humans. It is easier being a wolf.”
“Ranz,” Blind Seer agreed, “is somewhat backward in these things. It is as if the cold he uses so easily has frozen his balls. Derian was easier to understand. He felt desire aplenty, although sometimes he did not know how to see invitation when offered.”
“And I am not sure,” Firekeeper said, “that, for a human, Derian was unwise. Remember how Rahniseeta broke his heart? But we stray from the Meddler. Do we challenge him, or do we wait for Wythcombe to do so? Can you sniff out what drives him?”
Blind Seer shook his head, only then realizing how habitual the gesture had become, for Firekeeper did not need it to understand him. “Here is where the Meddler denning within Arasan’s body makes such scenting difficult. The scent is often muddled, as when Arasan is confused but the Meddler is amused. Of late, I have begun to believe that—unless he is startled or does not care—the Meddler is learning to hide himself beneath Arasan, so that the body only reacts to what Arasan feels.”
“A fine skill,” Firekeeper replied, “but one that would, perversely, make the Meddler all the more eager to show off. Even when he is clever enough to learn to hide, he wants that cleverness known.”
“Well, at least we agree that he bears watching,” Blind Seer said. “Do you think you still have the power to restrain him?”
“Not as much as I once did. The blood tie was weakened when he settled within Arasan, and it has grown weaker since. I think the Meddler could be controlled by believing he had my love, but I am not willing to deceive him. Besides, he would want proof. Giving that is something I would definitely not welcome.”
“Nor I,” Blind Seer rumbled. “To smell him that closely on you… I would rip his throat out before I could think. So we must watch the Meddler closely. We may not be able to anticipate what he will do, but at least we will be ready to act whatever he does.”
The next several days were intense enough that worrying about what the Meddler might intend was, if not forgotten, at least set behind more immediate issues. As if they had crossed some invisible border, their surroundings grew more dangerous. Gone were the days of hiking through forest tenanted with monstrous things that mostly kept clear of spellcasters and wolves alike. Now, if they were not scrambling up some sharp-edged cliff, they were fighting against increasingly aggressive creatures.
In these confrontations, Wythcombe finally showed his power, and even Firekeeper had to admit herself impressed. Wythcombe’s wards dissuaded small menaces, jets of black lightning slew others more effectively than either her rapidly fired arrows or Blind Seer’s fangs. Now Blind Seer truly believed that Wythcombe could have made this journey alone, not once but often, something he hadn’t realized he had doubted until put to the test.
Faced with such threats, Blind Seer found himself unwilling to progress at the rate of Wythcombe’s plodding pedagogy. Instead, Blind Seer sought to redesign what Wythcombe was teaching him about shapeshifting magics into his own particular compendium of magical lore. As they hiked, only Firekeeper was aware how often the wolf was lost in thought, trusting her to warn him of danger.
When he slept, his dreams were as vivid as any he had experienced during querinalo. In those spaces, changing shape was far easier, and Blind Seer took advantage of that to tutor himself in rotes that would let him use his mana to force a change in the waking world. He was very careful as he did so. Here he could perceive the channels Wythcombe had mentioned, and see how easy it would be to be dragged where he did not wish to go.
The opponent that nearly undid them was neither the largest they had faced nor the most obviously dangerous.
The farther they had traveled, the more barren the cracked and broken earth had become. Wythcombe didn’t hide his concern, nor that when he had been through this way before, passage had been difficult, while now it approached impossible. The rise and fall of the land meant they often hiked treble the distance, sliding and slipping down, then scrabbling up. Sometimes the rise was steep enough that Firekeeper—who could climb anything that wasn’t perfectly smooth—needed to climb up first, then drop a line to help the others. Most of the time, she tied her line around a dead tree or jutting bit of rock. However, more than once she had to hold the rope while Laria—lightest of the company—climbed up to join her, then helped anchor the line for the next.
Rusty, the billy goat, lived up to Wythcombe’s boasts that he would go anywhere the humans could. Even so, once or twice the surface was so slick that after setting the rope, Firekeeper must haul the goat up. Then she would climb down to assist Blind Seer. The enormous wolf hung from Firekeeper’s shoulders while she used her arms to bring them up—it was that or have him run long distances to find a more gradual slope. Even with Farborn to scout, this might have put the wolf days behind the rest and robbed them of two of their best scouts. Gone were estimates of three days to the site of Kabot’s gate. Privately, the wolves speculated whether they would be able to reach the location at all.
When the first of the small scarlet butterflies had appeared, no one—not even Wythcombe—considered them other than pleasant accents in a stony landscape that darkened from shimmering golden into ruddy browns, eventually becoming dominated by vistas of crackling black. The butterflies flitted like sparks over the burned landscape, but offered no harm, not even when Farborn helped himself to a few on the wing.
Blind Seer confided to Firekeeper that for the last section of their journey, Wythcombe had been using a small amount of his power to keep himself from stumbling.
“We will need to make camp early,” he called to Farborn. “Can you find us a place, perhaps with water?”
“There is green ahead,” Farborn ret
urned. “I will go see if that also means water.”
“I will run with you. Where there is green, there may be game, and even a rabbit would taste very good right now. I might even spare some meat for the humans.”
Firekeeper waved the wolf and hawk ahead. Earlier, she had wordlessly relieved Wythcombe of his pack, for with Blind Seer’s sense of smell, Farborn’s sharp vision, and the general emptiness of the landscape, her roaming ahead to scout was not only unnecessary, but also foolish. When the Beasts departed, Firekeeper trudged along on point, trying to ignore the straps digging into her shoulders. Then, between one step and the next, the ground in front of her erupted.
The upflow was like fire without heat, splattered blood without odor. Arms outspread, Firekeeper stepped back, making herself a barrier between those who followed her and the upheaval. Only then did Firekeeper realize that the eruption consisted of thousands upon thousands of the scarlet butterflies taking flight from where they had rested, their still wings camouflaged against the omnipresent reddish-brown stone.
The swirling butterflies dodged among the travelers, covering eyes and ears, clogging nostrils, clinging to lips. Firekeeper clawed them off, but always more came to take the place of the ones she crushed. By reflex, her hand dropped to her Fang, but this was not an enemy that keen steel tooth could slay. Instead, she wildly spun her arms, so that broken butterflies splatted against her naked skin. The motion created a gap through which, momentarily, Firekeeper could see other than scarlet wings. The wolf-woman realized with horror that the surface ahead was a riot of jagged lightning-bolt crevices, some large enough to swallow a herd of elk.
“Back!” she howled, choking when a butterfly nearly flew down her throat. She felt its tiny legs moving against her tongue, bitterness when she crushed it between her teeth. She spat. Howled again. “Back!”
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