Host

by Faith Hunter

  I took a frozen breath, inhaling air so cold it hurt my lungs, feeling raw on my scarred throat. The two-story shop and the building beside it weren’t invincible, but they were now danged hard to damage. Satisfied, I rose from my knees and studied my champards as they began to return, armed to the teeth. They were checking weapons, looking toward the Trine, the three peaks lost in the night, sharing a word or two, but mostly they were silent. They were ready, or as ready as one can ever be to face death.

  Eli was still waiting, and when my eyes met his, he stood and picked up Cheran. With a wrench of his shoulders, he dumped the mage at my feet. Cheran’s face was white with frostbite where his cheek had rested against the ice, and his eyes were slit, anger and humiliation spitting from them. He was in shirtsleeves, shivering, wrists tied with rope at the small of his back, the witch-catcher strapped around his head, rods inserted in his mouth, holding his lips apart, his tongue depressed. Unable to keep his mouth closed, spittle had dried and frozen on his face. His ankles were snugged together with leather straps over his boots.

  I inspected him with mage-sight, seeing the energy patterns like lacework over his body. “Take off his boots,” I instructed.

  At the words, Cheran bucked up and Rupert promptly sat on his back. The small mage whuffed out a breath at the weight.

  “I always get the nasty jobs,” Eli complained to no one in particular. Giving the mage a halfhearted kick, he bent down, saying, “Hope you ain’t got smelly feet, bro.” Eli grabbed a boot and pulled, as the mage kicked and fought, both of them grunting for breath. A moment later Eli said, “He’s got his ankles locked.” With a wicked grin, he added, “Want me to cut ’em off?”

  “Yes,” Audric said.

  Cheran made a strangled noise and relaxed his ankles. Quickly, Eli slid the boots off. Conversationally, he said, “I meant the boots, not your feet, bro. But whatever works.”

  Cheran struggled again, mumbling what sounded like “uck ooo,” and Eli chuckled. “Now, now. Watch your mouth. We got kirk elders nearby. Wouldn’t want to get branded, and scar up that pretty face. Hey, senior champard,” he said to Audric, holding up the boots, “I really like these. Mother, may I?”

  “Spoils of war,” Audric said.

  Eli wasn’t much larger than the mage, and as he pulled off his own boots, replacing them with the nearly priceless mage-boots, I knelt in the snow and peeled down Cheran’s right sock. Against his skin was a circlet of gold and copper, the wires braided and wrapped and shaped to fit his leg without chafing. It fit him so perfectly there were no marks, no blisters. Mage-work had gone into both the creation of the conjure and fitting it to his limb.

  “Mamma mia. That looks nasty,” Eli said of the twisted wire.

  “It is,” I said. “Very nasty.” Cheran bucked and writhed. Rupert rode the struggles like riding an untrained horse. I worried about his back, but smelled no fresh blood on the air and hoped the healing stones I had bound there were working. When Cheran wore himself out, I rested a knee on his calf and inspected the amulet.

  There were many kinds of conjures, from the simple ones I usually employed—incantations to heat bathwater or to spark the flame on my gas stove—to complex conjures that moved storms over places of drought or shielded entire cities. This amulet contained a complex conjure. It glowed with peculiar energies, and as I studied it, I decided my first impression was right. This thing had dangerous mojo.

  Careful not to touch the wires, I nudged Cheran’s foot over. The talisman was imbued with curious patterns, in colors I associated with Darkness, though it smelled of mage energies, not brimstone. Because I had made the marble egg, I recognized the amulet was a relay, a switch to draw on stored power. It was a link to a formidable energy sink, more potent than the energy sink that powered the shield over the loft and shop. The sink activated by this talisman had to be ten times bigger, and because Cheran was a metal mage, it had to be stored in metal, tons of metal dedicated to one conjure. Metal was rare and growing more scarce. I had no idea where sufficient unclaimed metal could be found, but wherever it was, it was primed for activation.

  The talisman controlled way too much power to carry around safely, proving that Cheran had great control. Without it, he could go blooey, a very messy way to die indeed, scattering bits and pieces of himself as he took out half the town. Or half of the state where the sink was.

  I wondered why he needed so much power, and doubted that the entire neomage council that licensed and sent him knew about it. If not, this was proof of something sinister in the ranks of the Enclave council. A shadow council? I should tread carefully here. Should but wouldn’t.

  I pulled the Flame-blessed blade and held it over the coil of metal. Softly, addressing the blue plasma minor seraphic being who had inhabited my tanto, I said, “I am omega mage, yet I do not demand or command. I merely ask and seek.” The blade hummed against my hand, warm even through my glove. The vibration was almost like a purr, rhythmic and soothing.

  “I am a stone mage, unable to access a metal conjure, yet I need the strength in this metal amulet.” At the words, Cheran screamed a wordless cry, spittle landing on the snow and freezing instantly. Rupert slammed his fist against the back of the mage’s head, knocking him into the ice. He fell silent, only his breathing giving away that he was still alive.

  “Is it possible for a Flame to follow and comprehend the incantation and the mathematics of a mage conjure?” I asked the blade. It grew warmer in my palm, as if excited. I took that as a yes. “Will you interpret this conjure, show me its workings, and give it over to me?”

  The purring grew louder, the heat against my hand hotter. A sizzle, like static electricity, tickled my palm, a sensation close to pain. In mage-sight, the blade grew bright, a small, thin sun, and I turned my eyes to the side to protect them, seeing only with peripheral vision. The blade pulled down toward Cheran’s ankle and I allowed the point to drop.

  It hovered over the amulet. The braided wire absorbed the presence of the Flame, warming. The anklet began to glow, quickly heating red hot, burning Cheran’s flesh. The mage began to scream. I almost pulled the blade away when I realized what was happening. But I didn’t know if that would be worse. I had a vision of Cheran’s foot severed from his leg. I steeled myself against the sound of his screams. Against what I was doing.

  With mage-sight, I watched the action of the Flame as it revealed the incantation buried in the wires, seeing it as it expanded and divulged itself. Neomages—and it had to be a group working together, as no single mage could fashion so complex and deadly an incantation—had created a weapon of mass destruction, a bomb drawing on the creation energy of luxons. Not an atom bomb. Something far more deadly. Something for which I had no name.

  Cheran was screaming in cadenced bursts with each breath, strangled grunts. The stench of scorched mage-flesh and the hot smell of metal rose on the air. In mage-sight, I followed the incantation, feeling my way through the math by instinct, teasing apart the differing strands of equations, but I was unable to hold them all in my mind. Settling myself to sit on the icy street, I opened a mind-skim as well, blending the two scans.

  Nausea rose like a cresting wave, a sour taste in the back of my throat. Holding the sword in one hand, I put the other on the street for balance. When the queasiness decreased enough for me to be fairly certain I wouldn’t toss my cookies, I looked again at the amulet.

  The relay and trigger were woven together in the anklet. They were built into the amulet, twisted wire forming two knots, one on either side of his ankle. They both sang with potential, dual notes of devastation. I blocked out both the destructive notes and Cheran’s screams and followed the leading of the Flame.

  Metal magery was a conjuring so far from stone magery that I could barely follow it. But both used heat, intense, unimaginable heat, to store and generate power. Both used luxons. With the prompting of the Flame, I followed the pathway of light particles through the incantation. South. To the place where the energy si
nk was stored.

  “Well, kiss Habbiel’s pearly toes,” I said, so surprised I uttered the small swear.

  “What?” several voices asked.

  “It’s underground. It’s stone and metal combined.” I leaned in and let my eyes trace the smooth lines of power that slid from the anklet, seamlessly south, far south, beneath the ground. Toward an iron ore deposit deep in the earth. “Rupert. You saw his papers. Did his train stop in Birmingham?” I asked.

  “For several days,” Rupert said, his voice sounding far away.

  Birmingham. Yeah. The sink was in an undiscovered iron ore deposit near Birmingham. I studied the conjure as the stench of burned flesh grew. I spotted the hand of four mages, two metal mages: one stone mage, and one earth mage. And I would bet my pants that the earth mage was Élan, the acting priestess of New Orleans Enclave.

  “Thorn?” Rupert called, his voice still sounding far away. “Unless you want him permanently maimed, you might better stop.”

  “Sure. Okay,” I said, surprised when my lips didn’t seem to be working. I smacked them once and they felt numb. Shivers wracked my body. I opened my eyes to find it was full night. Tears of Taharial, how long had I been working?

  Blinking, I pulled back to see the mage’s ankle. Shock sparked its way through me. Cheran had stopped screaming, passed out from the pain of the glowing amulet. Feathers and Fire, what had I done? My mouth went dry. The wires had burned into Cheran’s tendons and bones, leaving blackened flesh around the amulet and raw, bleeding flesh above and below. I leaned in closer and someone provided a flashlight. In its beam Cheran’s toes were still pink, so I hadn’t severed the circulation. Yet.

  I lifted a healing amulet from my necklace and snapped the string that held it in place. Working on instinct, I placed the amulet on the mage’s exposed and blackened anklebone and touched it with the tip of the mage-steel point. Instantly the Flame blazed again, and new skin sprang out from the edges of the mage’s healthy flesh. The bone snapped as charred areas fell away to litter the snow. Fresh bone filled in and rounded out, and Cheran’s muscles quaked and seized at the rearrangement of calcium and protein molecules. He groaned, coming awake, his voice sounding scratchy and strained. And still the healing continued as tendons swelled and stretched into place and skin seemed to crawl out of the blistered edges and seal it up.

  “Angel snot,” Eli said. “Would you look at that.”

  I managed a smile at his words. Minor Flames had healed humans after the battle against spawn. That had seemed nearly miraculous, but this was even more so. Healing in fast-forward. And the Flame wasn’t drained by it. I was still using the blended scan and watched the Flame pull energy through the anklet from the iron ore deposit as it healed, using whatever power source was most handy. And it did so without triggering the bomb, though I hadn’t told it to.

  And the really cool part? I understood how to do that now too. Both how to use the energies without triggering the bomb and how to trigger it at will. Using the Flame-blessed steel blade, I knew how to steal the power from a metal mage’s incantation. And if I could steal the power, I could also redirect it.

  I sheathed the tanto and found the clasp that held the amulet on Cheran’s ankle. With cold-clumsy fingers, I unlatched the wire and lifted it away. The metal was still hot, but no longer dangerously so, and I slipped the wire around my left wrist beneath the glove. It clicked softly and shaped itself to my wrist bones.

  Now that’s a really cool amulet.

  I had made impromptu plans for the coming battle. Not delicate, intricate strategy, but simple tactics along the lines of “Kill the Darkness any way we can.” Now I might—maybe—have a way to make it all work. If I didn’t blow up the town and half the state of Alabama along the way. Carefully, I eased back from Cheran.

  Deep night had fallen while I worked, and the large flakes of snow had disappeared, leaving only sleet and smaller, irregular flakes that stung as they landed. My hair was wet beneath my cloak hood, which someone had belatedly pulled up. My primes were both warm, activated to protect me from the melt, but they had done nothing for my hands and feet, which were aching with cold. My muscles had stiffened where I had been sitting for so long.

  On the wind, I smelled brimstone. Sulfur. Rot. Darkness was coming.

  Chapter 17

  I made it to my feet and stretched, hearing the creak of bones. I needed a hot soaking bath, though I wasn’t going to get one anytime soon. Closing off the scan, but leaving mage-sight open, I looked up and down the street, checking the town’s preparations. Sleet peppered down with a steady shush, settling into ruts and crevices in the ice, making footing treacherous. The temperature was falling. It was a dark night, with a heavy overcast. Not the best fighting conditions. Okay. The worst fighting conditions. But I was pretty sure there were ways to use the cold and the falling ice in battle. If I couldn’t find them, Audric could.

  My champards were gathered close, bright energy patterns in the night. This was the time when I was supposed to say something significant, something important, some rabble-rousing pep talk. And I had no idea what to say. Not a single one. I stared at the men, bracing my thumbs in my belt, the battle cloak pushed back. I cleared my throat.

  One by one they all looked up and came to something like attention. It was almost funny. I was less than five feet tall and maybe ninety pounds dripping wet. What in heck was I supposed to say to them, this bunch of brawny, battle-hardened men, armed to the teeth and waiting on me to lead them. This was stupid. Stupid!

  I opened my mouth and words fell out. “Let’s kick some butt.” Seraph stones. Can I be any more idiotic?

  But the guys laughed and seemed to relax, so maybe it wasn’t so bad. Audric shook his head with a “What am I going to do with you?” look, a not-quite smile quirking his full lips.

  I shrugged back. “Take Cheran back to the jail. Take off the witch-catcher and make sure he’s awake. Tie him up but loose enough so he can get free if he tries hard. The iron bars should provide enough metal to protect him from attack.”

  I had expected Eli to take the mage and was surprised to see Gloria Stein and her husband kneel beside him. Together, they hoisted Cheran and carried him into the night.

  Around us, the sigil brightened, lighting the street, and a downdraft of air spiraled about, smelling of cinnamon and vanilla, fresh-baked bread, mint, and pepper. It was a mélange of scents that set my knees to quivering, and I looked up, into the falling ice. Above the town, seraphs descended and hovered, wings beating slowly. There were six of them, just as in my dream, just as in Rupert’s vision, and they drifted high above the street, bright in the blended scan. Though I tensed, expecting to be thrown into mindless mage-heat, it didn’t bloom. Maybe when fear and worry reached hurricane levels, they were substitutes for battle-lust. Or maybe the purple snake and its venom had something to do with it. I’d had a lot of contact with the wheels.

  Crimson Raziel, purple and lavender Zadkiel, and teal-plumed Cheriour hovered with three strangers, all winged warriors with raven black wings and black armor, and carrying blackened-steel swords sheathed at their waists. Six. Not a common seraphic number. They usually appeared in twos, threes, or in groups of seven. Six was not a goodly portent, but then I was seeing evil omens in everything just now.

  “Give the kylen to us,” one of the interchangeable three called, his voice like bells across the night sky.

  Okay, this time the evil portent was accurate. They had come to cause trouble. My muscles quivered with panic and my breath came fast.

  “He is ours,” another dark-winged seraph said, higher tones pealing.

  The three seraphs I knew said nothing, their faces unyielding, giving little away, but it was clear they weren’t here to help me. On the wind, the stench of sulfur and brimstone grew, the scents of evil blowing off the Trine. I was running out of time.

  I forced down the fear and gripped the visa for advice. Formality in all things, it said. Well, duh. Big help there. But ma
ybe…Before I could chicken out, I shouted, “Battle Station Consulate, the only battle station sanctioned by the High Host of the Seraphim, welcomes its first seraphic visitors. My champards, those under my protection, welcome you as well.”

  “No kylen may live among the mages,” the first night-winged seraph said, answering my claim, his voice ringing like brass gongs, indescribably beautiful.

  “Why not?” I challenged, forcing my voice to settle into the tones of debate. “Why may no kylen live among humans or mages? We are all the children of men.”

  “Mages and kylen are forbidden to cohabit due to their licentious and dissolute pursuits and the numbers of kylen that are born,” the same seraph said. I named him Raven One. “The earth will no longer support the numbers of beings who once raped the planet. You may not breed indiscriminately. It is forbidden.”

  There was a lot in that speech, from sinfulness to overpopulation to the health of the earth, which had been damaged by humans, devastated almost to the point of destruction. Hence the seraphs annihilating nearly six billion people in the plagues of the apocalypse, and plunging the earth into war. And the ice age. The judgment of the Most High. Followed by the attacks of Darkness and planetwide war. Saving the earth from us? Or taking it from us?

  I took a deep breath and chanced what I believed, what I hoped, speaking as formally as I could. “Mage-heat no longer runs wild among us.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. “Sinfulness is controlled by the stone gifted to me by Zadkiel.” Partial truth. “There will be no immoral rutting between the kylen and this mage.” Full truth. I hope. “There will be no population growth. There will be no danger to the earth.”

  I added what I had once garnered from Raziel’s obtuse comments in that place of otherness where spiritual warfare takes place. “There will be only the joining in battle against the Dark, as the Most High intended, mind to mind, purpose to purpose.” Assuming that mages were intended at all. How many lies and half lies can a mage tell before seraphs kill her off?