“Darthos,” I answered without thinking. Bloody gods, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Used a fake name instead. I couldn’t go around telling people I had the name of a king.
I didn’t want anyone to know where I was or what I was planning. I needed to take Orathar by surprise.
If he knew I was coming, my slim chances would dwindle to nothingness.
But if anyone could keep the secret, it would be this Whisperer. She wouldn’t want any attention, and one who’d survived this long was someone careful, someone who knew how to be discreet.
“How’d you know I was a Dark?” I asked.
“I felt you Pull from me.”
“Yes, but… no one knows that.”
She shrugged. “I do.”
“How?” I asked in bafflement.
“I think someone told me when I was a child. I can’t remember, now that I think of it.”
A Whisperer, and one who knew I was a king, and what a Dark was truly capable of.
Better to keep her close.
“So why are you following him?” I asked.
“For answers.”
“Answers to what?”
She shook her head. “It’s hard to explain.”
“What is he? Greagor.”
“You mean what kind of mage?”
I nodded.
“He’s a spellsword. A powerful one, though not as powerful as I.” She gave me a small smile at this.
“Cocky one.”
“Just honest.”
That was true enough. The power she wielded was tremendous. Far, far beyond that of the spellsword.
But a spellsword only needed a little power, to be very dangerous.
Killing magic was like that.
A spellsword could kill with one blow, even a glancing one.
Despite my resistance to enchantment, I was just as susceptible to his sword slash—or fist—as anyone else.
Though maybe Vi wasn’t.
Apparently Sienna wasn’t either, as Vi’s clawing her when we’d first met demonstrated.
“Are you sure he went this way?” Trin asked.
“Yes.”
“You sound certain of that.”
“I am.”
“How? Is your friend a farspeaker?”
“You’ll just have to trust me.”
She let out a short laugh. “Lot to ask of someone you just met.”
“Yes it is.” I looked at her meaningfully.
“Right. I guess you’re trusting me too.” She shook her head. “I hope you’re right. If I lose the trail now, I might not pick it up again.”
While I could follow the magic trail, I couldn’t guarantee he’d still be there at the end of it, since it wasn’t him I was tracking, but rather the spell he presumably still carried.
It was too bad Vi wasn’t a farspeaker. Communicating over distance would be a useful thing to be able to do.
There wasn’t a farspeaker in the land that wasn’t gainfully employed for very good salary.
Of all the magic users, they were among the most desired. It was funny how something as simple as the ability to allow two people to communicate over distance and instantaneously was so valuable. But it was, and the more power and wealth one had, the more valued this ability became. War, negotiation between kingdoms, keeping up with happenings in the rest of the world—all greatly improved by instantaneous communication. It didn’t beat face-to-face interactions, but it was the next best thing.
The magic trail turned off onto a small road.
It continued on past a tailor’s shop—not Elanos’s—and another Travelers Guild building, then turned again down a side street.
From there, it led into a tavern. Strangely there were two signs hanging above the door.
One read THE DRAGON’S TAIL, and the other THE DRAGON’S MANE.
“Here?” Trin asked, looking around as I came to a stop across the road from the tavern.
There was a vendor selling grime sausages from a cart, and he had a line even longer than the spell vendor’s. Which gave us good cover if Greagor came out.
But where was Vi?
“Yes. Wait here. Does he know your face?”
“I doubt it.”
“Well, stay out of sight anyway.”
“I’ve been following him a lot longer than you have. I’m no amateur.”
“No, I don’t imagine you are.”
“I should come with you,” Sienna said.
“No. You stay here too.”
She looked disappointed, but didn’t argue.
I studied the dual signs as I approached the building. A tavern with two names. Strange.
The doors were propped open, and I nearly ran into Vi as I entered. It was much darker inside, and my eyes hadn’t adjusted.
Her yellow ones widened in surprise. “Dartho—”
I took her hand and pulled her closer, glancing around. The tavern was not too busy this early in the day, but there were still a good number of customers. Several looked like they might not have been to sleep yet. Most of these were eating grime sausages as they nursed mugs of brown liquid—Mourning Blood most likely: a mix of mortsroot, tragweed, and pogart blood. Not exactly a cure for the previous night’s excesses, but better than nothing. “Shh, don’t use my name.”
She nodded. “He’s here.” She gestured with her head slightly. “Back there. I was coming to get you. I heard him tell the barkeep he was waiting for someone and they would be a while.”
I nodded, peering over her shoulder.
Greagor sat at a booth, a mug of not Mourning Blood, but ale in front of him, an untouched grime sausage its leaf wrap next to the mug.
“Let’s talk outside.” We exited and I led us to where Trin, Sienna, and Alva waited.
“So?” Trin asked.
I nodded. “He’s in there.”
She let out a sigh of relief.
“Who’s this?” Vi asked.
“Vi, Trin. Trin, Vi.”
“Pleasure,” the Whisperer said.
Vi shot me a questioning look.
“I’ll explain later. But the short of it is she’s following that man too.”
“And who exactly is he?”
Trin answered before I could. “His name’s Greagor Malik. He’s a spellsword.”
Vi’s yellow eyes hardened. “You sent me after a spellsword? I could have been killed.”
“I didn’t know.”
She growled low in her throat, and for a moment I thought she might lash out at me.
But then she looked away, shaking her head, her ears pressed flat against her skull, her tail swishing agitatedly. “What now?”
“Now,” I said, “we wait.”
26
“Tell me more about the spellsword,” I asked Trin as we waited for whoever Greagor was waiting for.
We were still across the road from the tavern, though we’d moved slightly so we could peer into the open doorway.
Or so Vi could. With the distance and how much darker it was inside, I couldn’t tell tits from asses.
“There’s not much to tell,” Trin replied.
“Then it shouldn’t take long.”
She let out a sigh. “He’s one of several people whose job it was to find a specific spell.”
“The framed one he got from the vendor.”
She nodded.
“What do you know about it?”
“Not much.”
“What kind of spell is it?”
“No idea.”
“So he and some others were searching for this spell… for who?”
She slightly raised one eyebrow and shook her head, pinching her bottom lip with her teeth. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“And why are you after it?”
“I couldn’t care less about the spell. I’m after who he’s working for.”
“You just said you didn’t—”
“Know who it is. No, I don’t. But I know what they’ve done.”
“Which is?” I prompted when she didn’t go on.
“Look,” she said instead of answering, gesturing surreptitiously down the road.
A woman with a long thick braid of blonde hair and a black cloak which fluttered around her calves was walking toward the tavern.
She was tall, and perhaps an elf, though the way she wore her hair made it hard to say for certain.
“You think that’s who he’s meeting?” I asked.
Trin nodded. She turned to Vi. “Your hearing is excellent, yes?”
“Yes,” Vi said, sounding annoyed.
“You should go and listen.”
Vi looked to me.
I wasn’t sure what would happen if he thought she was following him. Wasn’t sure we could take a spellsword, and whatever the elf was. If she was anything.
But if this was who he was meeting…
I nodded at Vi. “Go on. Just be careful. Don’t let them see you.”
“Trying not to get spotted will look incredibly suspicious. How about I buy a drink instead.”
“We don’t have any money,” I said.
Vi nodded at the bag on my belt.
Right.
I gave her some pennies and she moved swiftly toward the tavern’s entrance.
“I hope she’ll be okay,” Sienna said.
I wrapped my arm around her. “She’ll be fine.” I hoped.
But there was no reason for them to suspect her of anything. Before today I’d had no idea either of them existed, so they wouldn’t know who I was, or Vi. We had no reason to be at odds.
A bit later, the spellsword came out of the pub alone, looked up and down the cobbled and now-busy street, then headed to his right, back the way he’d come.
I quickly Pulled from myself to see the colors of magic.
They were there, but nothing as intense as before, the trail having faded.
He no longer had the spell.
A moment later the blonde maybe-elf came out. She did not look around, did not hesitate, just continued on out and in the direction she’d come.
What was surprising, was that I didn’t see any magic coming off of her.
“Neither of them has the spell,” I told Trin.
“What? How do you know?”
“I can see it.”
She raised an eyebrow. “See magic? I thought you were a Dark, not a wizard.”
“Yes. And we—or at least I and my line—can see magic. That’s how I followed Greagor.”
“But you didn’t see it, that magic, on either of them just now?”
I shook my head.
Vi came out of the pub, looked around to make sure it was clear, then headed toward us.
Maybe she knew what had happened to it.
“What’d they say?” I asked.
She shook her head. “A bunch of nothing. Exchanged pleasantries. Almost like a first date. Didn’t even eat his sausage.” She shook her head. “What a waste.”
“What about the spell? Did you see what happened to it?”
She looked down the road where the back of the maybe-elf’s head stood out above the crowd. “He gave it to her.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I’m positive. I have excellent vision.”
“There’s nothing though.”
“Are you sure?” she retorted.
I smiled. “Yes.” I looked again on instinct.
And was shocked when I saw a new trail of faint but intensifying magic leading out from the tavern, going in the opposite direction of the first, fading trail. Going in the direction the maybe-elf had gone.
But it faded out the closer it got to her, until disappearing completely.
“Oh fuck.” My stomach knotted, my heart sped, and a jolt of anxious energy shot through me. I knew exactly what she was.
This was not good. No, not good at all. “She’s a Breaker.”
27
A Breaker.
Breakers weren’t feared by the general public, but they were feared by any mage. Any magic user period.
They used your own spells against you—twisted and contorted them until the final effect was not at all what you had expected.
That would explain how I wasn’t able to sense any magic from her: she was proactively Breaking any magic in the vicinity. The level of sophistication that implied was worrying.
Luckily my ability was a passive one, so despite being able to Break it, she wouldn’t be able to detect it.
Breakers weren’t that uncommon. Every king, and highborn that could afford them, employed them at least some of the time.
But that didn’t make them any easier to deal with.
When I was young, an Igniter tried to assassinate my father with a firebolt.
One of our Breakers caught the spell and morphed it, twisting it in on itself so that instead of sending a blast of fire out into the world, it was sent inside the Igniter.
The clean-up from that attack was done with a broom.
Another time, during the Rektren Raids—while my father and mother were out negotiating with Rektren’s king to put an end to the hostilities—a Summoner from that kingdom had sent a giant golem to breach our gates. A Breaker had bent and twisted it into a wall to surround our besiegers, allowing us to capture them and lock the Summoner away in a warded cell where she wouldn’t be able to use her magic.
This was when I was very young, when the kingdoms behind the Wall were warring with each other for supremacy.
The unification, which was started on that very day with Rektren and which itself was a prelude to Elaria, ended the attacks—though non-violent political ones had still been common—and until my betrayal, it had been a long time since I’d seen magic done for anything but entertainment.
“Raping gods, a Breaker? Are you sure?”
“No one else would be able to do that. Not even a wizard.”
“Can you follow her?” Trin asked, her voice tinged with desperation.
“Yes. At a distance.”
She sighed in relief. “Okay. We’ll wait until she gets a bit farther away, then follow.”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“You just said you could!”
“This is too dangerous. I’m curious to find out what’s going on, but not that curious.”
“You have to help. Please.” Her desperation was plain now. She looked down the road, the back of the breaker’s head still visible in the crowd. “I can’t lose her.”
“You’ve come this far on your own. You—”
“No. It’s different now. I can’t take on a Breaker.”
“Nor can I.”
“But together we can.”
I shook my head, starting to say no again, but she rushed on. “No, look, we don’t have to take her on. Just follow her. That’s it. See where she’s going.”
“I can’t take—”
“Please,” she pleaded, her voice choking up. “I’m begging you.”
“Why are you so desperate to find out who these people are?”
An expression of sadness fell over her face, and she looked down, mumbling something I couldn’t hear.
I had a brief flash of annoyance that she was trying to enthrall me, but that wasn’t what she was doing. She was mumbling, not Whispering.
“What? I didn’t hear that.”
“I said because they killed my family!”
I stared at her in silence.
A young male orc devouring a grime sausage glanced our way, as did an old troll woman standing at the end of the line.
“Who did?” I asked in a quiet voice.
“Whoever she’s delivering that spell to.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not as I am.”
“If you know they killed your family, you must know something about… whoever they are.”
“I don’t know who they are. I don’t even know what they call themselves, if they call themselves anything. I’ve been tracking them for ages. They killed my fam
ily when I was just a little girl. That was before I knew what I was. But in my fright, I enthralled one of them without realizing it, made him think I wasn’t there, tell the others that they’d got everyone. But that night, I did something that I haven’t been able to do since. I not only enthralled him, but I got something from his mind. Just a jumbled-up mix of images and sounds. But still.”
But still, that was incredible. Whisperers were dangerous enough with only their ability to enthrall. But if they could also see into someone’s mind?
It was incredible, but not impossible. No one knew what other abilities Darks had.
Or so I had thought.
“I’ve been trying to piece them together over the years, those sounds and images. And they finally led to something, a name.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “No one. Just a merchant from the Travelers Guild. But when he wasn’t working there, he handled other things: ransoms, rewards.
“I knew from those sounds and images that he worked for that man, the one who was in the group that killed my parents.
“I enthralled the merchant, tried to get him to tell me who it was, but he wouldn’t.”
“He resisted telling you? That’s not possible.”
“I know,” she said meaningfully.
This was getting stranger and stranger.
“All I could get out of him was that there was a reward for a powerful spell.”
“The one that man, Greagor, bought.”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
She shrugged. “All I had to go on was that it had Erisi in its name.”
“That’s not much.”
“No, it’s not. I had him tell me anything he knew about where it might be.
“He knew it was somewhere in this region, and I tracked it to here, to that vendor. Finding Greagor was harder, but I enthralled every spell vendor I could find, and eventually found one who told me a man had come around asking if she had any spells with Erisi in their names.
“I got his description, then searched the city for him. When I found him, I enthralled him.”
“Wow. You’ve put a lot of effort into this. And risk. It’s dangerous to go around enthralling people.”
“I’ve put everything into this. It’s my life. I have no other purpose.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That if he got the spell, he was to go to that tavern we were at and wait. Four times a day someone would come to check, and take the spell if it’d been found.”
Curse of Magic Page 10
