Markal often thought that their role as students left the apprentices stunted in youth emotionally while magic filled them with knowledge and power. He’d always known they’d need to emerge from their master’s long shadow to complete their growth, but never guessed that an assassin would force that so suddenly. Memnet the Great was dead these three weeks, and Markal desperately needed his wisdom and power.
Narud glanced first at Markal, then Chantmer. “What do we do?”
“Curse this woman,” Chantmer said in a low voice. “We’ll send her miserable soul to the Harvester.”
“No,” Markal said. “We do not fight her.” He glanced at the woman, who watched with a sharp expression. Not exactly hostile, but there was violence lurking below the surface.
“We must fight,” Chantmer said.
“Not in the way you mean it. We don’t kill her—is that even possible?”
Chantmer glared. “Oh, it’s possible. It’s most definitely possible.”
“Then what?” Narud asked, not Chantmer, but Markal.
Markal had been turning over a strategy since leaving the walled gardens, and now explained to his two companions the mixture of incantations he intended to use to rid them of the intruder before she could do further harm. Skepticism deepened on both of their faces.
“We need Nathaliey,” Narud said when he’d finished. “Where is she?”
“She left for Syrmarria this morning,” Markal said.
“To see her father?” Narud asked.
Chantmer shook his head. His eyes were deep and thoughtful beneath his heavy eyebrows. “The libraries. She’s searching for information that might help us with the master’s head.”
“That’s only a day’s ride,” Narud said. “She might be back by tomorrow. Could we wait?”
Markal glanced back at the paladin, who was still watching. “She might be back then, or she might be in the libraries for days. Weeks. It’s hard to say.”
“So we send for her,” Narud said.
“No. We don’t have time. Who knows what damage the paladin might do before then?”
“Markal and I are in agreement on that much,” Chantmer said. “We must drive her out, one way or another.”
“You can’t manage this,” Narud said. He glanced at Chantmer. “Either of you. Me, either. Not without Nathaliey.”
“Markal only needs to hold the words,” Chantmer said. “You and I will do the rest. And when Markal’s scheme collapses, we’ll resort to stronger methods.”
“You keep saying that,” Narud said. “With our strength spent? How would we manage that? Bleed ourselves to death?”
Markal had laid out his plans, but that didn’t mean he was disinterested in Chantmer’s thoughts. But before the taller apprentice could speak, Bronwyn rose to her feet and stepped down from the stairs where she’d been perched since Markal and Chantmer arrived. She reached over her shoulder and sheathed the two-handed sword. Again, it seemed so light in her hands as to be almost insubstantial.
The keepers and acolytes that Narud had left in place moved to block her, and the muscles in the woman’s shoulders tensed. “Stand aside,” she told them. “I’m warning you.”
“Let her through,” Markal called.
The others parted at Markal’s command, even the older keepers, many of whom surely held more knowledge in their heads than the raw, untested apprentice now giving them orders. Doubt washed over Markal, as corrosive as hot tea poured on a cone of hardened sugar.
“Give us space,” he told Narud and Chantmer. “I’ll try once more with gentle words.”
“I hear you, boy,” Bronwyn said.
She reached a hand over her shoulder to caress the hilt of her weapon, and when she stopped walking, she was within striking distance of Markal’s head. One swift motion and the sword would strike him down.
He held out his hands, palms up. “No harm has been done. Nothing that can’t be repaired.”
“Where is he? Where is the sorcerer?”
“You must be tired from the road. Sit in the pavilion and we’ll bring you water from the fountains and fruit from the orchards. Bread—I baked it this morning, and it is still fresh. Take it with honey and dates and you’ll be restored. Surely you have heard the reputation of food from our gardens and kitchens.”
“I know what this means, to confuse and distract. Black wizardry—I won’t take your poison.”
“Flour, egg, salt, leavening. There’s no poison in it. Just bread with honey. Fruit, water. It’s the soil of the land that makes them potent, and it’s no black magic, I promise. Be reasonable. You haven’t killed anyone, and the damage to the shrine can be repaired.”
“Where is he?”
“I told you, the master is dead. You’re too late.”
“He’s not dead, that is a lie.” Her hand tightened on the hilt. “I will kill you all if you don’t tell me. And then I will put this garden to the fire. No two stones will stand one atop the other, no living thing shall grow, no patch of ground will remain unbroken until I find him.”
Markal didn’t need Chantmer to tell him it was time to act, that his attempt at reconciliation had failed. His two companions stood behind him, one at either shoulder, and he could feel them gathering strength. Magic crackled beneath Chantmer’s skin, controlled, tense, like a drawn bowstring. Narud’s was wilder, less precise, more like water building behind an irrigation dam, ready to flood loose. Markal’s own magic was beneath the surface, strong enough in its way, but unharnessed. He would lose it all if he tried to call it.
And so he wouldn’t. But he could act as archivist for his two companions. He’d be their own library of incantations in the old tongue, recollecting the words that refused to fix themselves in the other apprentices’ heads.
“Animum, ut obliviscatur.” Turn her mind, make her forget.
The words were slippery on his tongue. They wanted to drip off his lips, to be swallowed, to be chewed like gristle between the teeth until they were incomprehensible. It took great concentration to pronounce them correctly.
Neither of the other apprentices could yet hold that particular spell in their mind, not even after lengthy meditation, but as Markal spoke, Chantmer repeated them as he lifted his hands and fixed the intruder with a hard stare. A great drop of blood rolled down each of Chantmer’s forearms and fell to the ground.
Bronwyn blinked. Her hand slid from the hilt, and her arm went limp. She turned and looked about her with a dazed expression. She faltered as if she would fall, the weight of her armor suddenly more than she could bear.
“Quickly, Markal!” Chantmer said. He was panting, his face flushed, and a violent shiver worked through his body. “The other spell.”
Markal turned toward Narud. “Indicem ire uiam hinc abierit.”
Narud repeated these words. The magic uncoiled from him like snakes and buried itself in the already confused and staggering woman. Blood ran down Narud’s arms and dripped off the end in tiny rivulets. Bronwyn turned sharply toward the path leading away from the pavilion and back toward the north gate.
Chantmer let out his breath. “What was that last incantation? You told me before—I can’t remember.”
“I sent her home,” Markal said. “Or started her toward it, at least.”
Narud had bent over double, gasping, but now raised his head. “And how long will it last?”
“Long enough.” Markal glanced at the woman, whose pace was picking up. “A day, perhaps two, before she shakes it off. She’ll ride west toward the mountains. By the time she comes to her senses, she’ll have to find us a second time. That will be even harder, and we’ll have time to rebuild our wards.”
He gave Chantmer a sharp look. “What were you intending? You had something else in mind.” His eyes fell to the man’s waist. “What are you carrying in there, anyway?”
“Never you mind.”
Suspicions were growing in Markal’s mind. “Tell me, Chantmer. We have no secrets between us.”
“Are you hiding something?” Narud asked. “Markal, what is it? What did Chantmer do?”
Chantmer crossed his arms and turned away. “It is nothing. An idea, a thought is all. We have work to do. Explain to the keepers what you—” He stopped and his eyes widened. “Why Markal, you fool!”
Markal followed his gaze. Bronwyn had stopped some two hundred feet distant, between the white trunks of two enormous beech trees that flanked the path as it entered the forest, forming an arcade with their limbs. What was she doing? Why didn’t she continue?
By the Brothers, don’t stop. Go!
The paladin reached for her sword, slid it carefully from the sheath, and held it in front of her. One hand took the blade, and she turned around to face the meadow again. She was a few hundred feet away, her face caught in the dappled light coming through the leaves overhead, but Markal swore he could sense her mind clearing simply by watching the change in her posture. She suddenly strode toward them, her face a mask of cold fury.
Markal desperately searched for some incantation. But both his companions had spent their power, literally bleeding it to the ground, and there was nothing strong enough to turn her aside that he could manage on his own.
“Did you think you could cheat me?” she called. “Did you think me a weak-minded fool from your slave markets?”
Bronwyn came at Markal with her sword. He could only flinch, his feet rooted to the ground. The blade glinted red. The keepers and acolytes came running from the Golden Pavilion, but they could do nothing. Narud stared in horror.
Only Chantmer was active. He reached into his robe and withdrew a small round object. A glass ball, one moment the color of cream streaked with amber, the next translucent, glowing from some internal light.
You devil, Markal thought. Where did you get that?
Yet a wild hope rose in his breast. Chantmer had got his hands on Memnet’s orb. For years their master had filled it with the strength that he bled from his pores. The apprentice wouldn’t be able to draw on the great wizard’s power, even if the master had been alive, but Chantmer must have learned how to use it, must have stored some of his own strength in its depths or he wouldn’t be rolling it in his palm with his eyes narrowed in concentration.
The woman, focused on Markal, didn’t see it. Holding the hilt of her great two-handed sword in her right fist, she grabbed his tunic in her left and jerked him toward her.
“I will cut you down, boy. My sword will tear your very soul asunder if you do not tell me the truth at once.”
“Yes, of course.” Markal cast a desperate glance at his companion.
Chantmer mumbled under his breath, and light grew inside the orb. He had memorized some spell, it would seem, and was trying to get the words right.
Bronwyn shook Markal. “Tell me!”
“Tell you what? I’ll tell you anything! By the Brothers, don’t kill me.”
Chantmer! Hurry, damn you!
At last the other apprentice straightened with a triumphant look. “Uitio uersurum sed volans malleis percutite eos.”
It was volans malleis, a spell to cast a pair of flying hammers, and Chantmer had done it well enough to raise a single hammer that seemed to coalesce out of the very air until it became a glowing, swirling weapon that picked up speed as it hurled toward the barbarian intruder.
Bronwyn’s back was turned; there was no way she could see the hammer before it struck. It would hit her from behind and crush her skull. Markal had wished to turn the woman aside without bloodshed, but he no longer cared. He wanted her put down.
Then, as if someone had shouted a warning in her ear, Bronwyn turned with startling speed, her sword at the ready. The hammer struck the blade. There was a terrific crash, a flash of light, and icy grit sprayed against Markal’s face. When the light cleared, Bronwyn and her sword stood unharmed and there was no sign of the magical hammer. She sprang at Chantmer with the sword drawn behind her shoulder for a killing blow.
Chantmer may have drawn power from the orb, but some had come from his own body. He staggered backward and dropped the smooth glass sphere, which rolled away, smeared with the apprentice’s blood. He sank to his knees before Bronwyn could reach him, head falling forward, exposing his neck like a horse thief before the executioner’s ax.
But the first of the keepers had reached the fight. She was an old woman named Eliana, her back crooked from the relentless punishment of the passing years, but also from decades of bending to pluck weeds that grew as eagerly in the soil of Memnet’s gardens as any other plant. Eliana had a keen eye for anything that grew unnaturally among the flowers and fruiting vines, and now she’d turned her attention to a newcomer who was as unwelcome as any weed. For years, she’d worn a pendant made of green stone in the shape of a tree around her neck. Magic flowed from the object, and her lips formed a spell.
Again, as if warned by a hidden ally, Bronwyn turned from Chantmer, and her sword swung in a wide arc. It caught Eliana a terrific blow, cleaving the old woman’s collarbone and severing her hand and pendant. Bronwyn wrenched out the sword before the woman’s body hit the ground.
All movement stopped, except for Chantmer struggling to stand and failing. The other keepers and apprentices stared at the dead woman as her life’s blood flowed into the ground she’d nurtured since her childhood.
Bronwyn stood with her sword dripping blood. “She would have killed me.” The words sounded hollow in the air. “There was magic—I could feel it. My bones would have broken. The grass would have swallowed me.”
Memnet’s Orb lay at Bronwyn’s feet, and she plucked it up. She wiped the blood off on the grass and then stared into its depths. She glanced at Chantmer, who had regained his feet at last and stood wobbling, his eyes bloodshot and his face pale as a shroud. Narud moved to his side and draped Chantmer’s arm over his shoulder to keep him from falling.
“You all would have killed me,” Bronwyn added. “I had no choice, you see.”
“You are the only killer in this garden,” Markal said. He stared at the dead woman and the horrible look on her face, then looked up. “You have done your harm. Now go. By the Brothers, leave us alone.”
Her face hardened. “No. I have only proven the truth of my words, that I will see this garden and all of you destroyed if it is necessary to find the wizard. Will you test me again?”
“I told you before. He is dead.”
“So you’ve claimed. An assassin cut off his head, threw his body over a horse, and rode into the desert. So you told me, and maybe you’re even telling a truth to mask the lies. So where is the head?”
So she knew, or at least suspected. Cutting the wizard’s head from his body had killed him, of course it had. But then what? An ordinary soul would have fled the body to wander mindlessly across the land until the Harvester collected it in his bag of souls. But Memnet the Great had no ordinary soul, and his gardens were no ordinary land.
“Well?” she demanded. “I am armed. I have proven I will kill, and you have proven yourself unable to stop me. I even have your bauble now.”
What choice did Markal have? His companions had spilled their magic. All the keepers and the acolytes together wouldn’t be able to stop this woman, who seemed possessed of godly strength, reflexes, and senses. Markal could add little through his own magic.
He had one chance, that Memnet’s eyes had opened at last. Markal thought about Chantmer and Narud, and something else occurred to him. No, he had two chances.
“I will show you the wizard’s head,” Markal said. He gave what he hoped was a significant glance to the others, but of course Bronwyn picked up on it too, and a flinty look entered her expression.
“And?” she said.
“Your instincts were correct. It’s buried in the walled garden where you first found me.”
Chantmer’s eyes widened in alarm. This, the barbarian didn’t seem to notice.
“I thought so,” she said. “Cunning boy, you sent me away, and I almost believed you.” Bron
wyn glanced down at the dead keeper, then turned toward the path with a grim expression. “Come. I won’t go alone.”
“No,” Markal said to the others when they started to follow. “Don’t follow. Look to Eliana. There are rituals for a dead member of the order, and they should be honored.”
He put his right hand behind his back as he fell in behind Bronwyn, who strode away without making sure he would follow. A spell came to his lips. It was a simple incantation. His skin burned and felt slick as blood rolled toward his fist. But even as he finished whispering the spell, he felt the strength of it dissolving into the warm breeze flowing through the garden. What emerged from his efforts was nothing but a trickle compared to the gush of power that had come from Narud’s and Chantmer’s.
Yet it was enough. Markal glanced behind him, and his fellow apprentices nodded their understanding. They had heard the suggestion he’d whispered into their minds.
-end excerpt-
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