by Cass Morris
But she could not use her own magic to bolster Vibia, not now. Latona had to engage the lemures, or at least try.
Merula’s lamp flickered as Latona drew on Fire’s strength to feed Spirit. This time, before she sent Spirit out toward the fiends, she tried to think of a shield. ‘Fire protects. That’s what the rhyme says. So protect me now.’ Like a glassblower at his art, she spun her magic, thinking of shaping its force as she had learned to shape flames.
Trepidation twinged at her. No one had taught her how to do this. Rubellia had provided some guidance, and there had been hints in the texts she had studied, but no one had shown her, no one had walked her through the steps. ‘Juno’s mercy, I don’t even know if it can be done.’
She shoved aside the twinge. Not long ago she had told her father that her magic was her own, that her magic itself taught her and guided her, the gift of the gods and their hand upon her brow. ‘If that is so, then what must be done can be done and will be done. Use Fire to shape Spirit, as heat shapes metal.’
Trusting in the magic she had spun out to shield her, Latona sent a blast of Spirit energy at one of the lemures nearest to her. It was not one of those trying to menace Vibia, but one poking in curiously from the column of high-stacked crates to their right. Its sepulchral keening rose to an angry shriek—but instead of swooping down upon her, it darted away. Nor did it strike back at her with that harpoon-like power. Her own magic remained under her control. Heartened, Latona pushed her magic further, giving thaumaturgical chase. The fiend moved swiftly, but before it disappeared from view, Latona thought she saw it grow thin, like over-stretched cloth.
But her effort had caught the attention of the others. Several now surged at her from both sides, much closer than they had dared to come before. Merula hissed in sudden pain, and magic flared from her scarf, bright red, protecting her.
Instinct told her to run, to put distance between herself and the devouring spirits—but instead, she shoved herself between them and Vibia. “Leave us!” she found herself shouting. “Leave this place and go back to the void you came from!” She touched Vibia, who straightened as though suddenly wakened by the touch. “Vibia, the charm, find the charm!” She started to turn away, but Vibia seized her hand, gripping her fingers so tightly that it hurt.
“Stay with me.” Something between an order and a plea. “It’s easier to keep my head clear.”
Latona reached for Merula with her other hand. “Stay close.” Latona imagined her shield of Fire-forged Spirit again, calling to mind what the legionaries carried: solid oak covered by leather, painted a defiant red. Then she imagined a row of them, locking together into an impregnable wall.
Vibia began to creep down the line of crates, tugging Latona along with her. Her eyes were closed, as though not seeing the fiends made them easier to dispel; she was following magical instinct alone.
‘Loose pila,’ Latona thought, as she held her shield firm in her mind while at the same time lashing out with a pulse of Spirit magic.
The fiends around her howled, high and fierce like the wind before a storm. She should have been afraid. A sensible woman would have been afraid. But with the warmth of her magic flowing in her blood, with the strength of it standing as a shield between her and the darkness, fear gave way to anger. She scowled at the presumption of these little fiends. ‘Don’t like Spirit magic flung at you, hm? Well, I don’t like Fracture magic poisoning my city.’ She set her jaw. ‘My will is stronger than yours, so it’s you who will have to learn to bear disappointment.’
A blast of cold air hit them all, strong enough to knock Latona into Vibia and to make Merula stagger. Latona’s hairs stood on end everywhere. Whatever rent had been made in the world to summon these fiends, surely this air had come through it, like Pluto’s own breath, far too icy for early October.
“We’re close,” Vibia said, opening her eyes again and examining the nearby crates. “I can feel—”
Another gust of wind whipped at them. The chill seeped into Latona’s blood, sapping her strength. The Fracture magic battered at her protective barriers. It wanted to take her power, split it off from its source, spin it away from its intended focus. The brighter she burned, the more it yearned to devour her. ‘A colder corpse than most.’ Pinarius Scaeva’s harrowing words echoed in her mind again, followed by those that the fiends had spoken through Vibia: ‘Flesh is sweet and souls are sweeter and mages sweetest of all.’
Latona’s fingers clenched into claw-like shapes, as though she could rip the fiends apart with her nails. She pushed back again, her Spirit magic against the smoky lemures dipping nearer.
“We will have you . . .” The words came from nowhere, and everywhere. Not loud, not by themselves, but like a whistle underneath the wind, the lyrical accompaniment to their wretched shrieks. Vibia’s thin shoulders shuddered, and even fearless Merula’s hand was shaking.
“We will have you . . . We hunger, and we will have you . . .”
‘No. No! I will not have it!’ A surge of anger rolled through Latona. The air around her seemed to shimmer gold, gold with hints of volcanic red, her magic suffusing the dusky light around them. “How dare you?” she shouted, not sure if she was talking to the fiends or the mage who had sent them or both. “How dare you prey on this place and these people? I will not have it!”
The golden aura around her burned brighter, hotter, even as her fury mounted. In loosing her anger, Latona seemed to have found an untapped well of power, and now she drank from it greedily.
“I am Vitellia Latona, blessed by Juno and Venus, and I tell you I will not have it! This city and these people are under my protection!”
The Fracture magic pushed against hers, like an overstuffed pillow refusing to yield to the pressure of a hand. Still she gave a mental shove. “Merula, here—” Vibia’s voice was thready, hardly audible above the unnatural wind and the howling fiends. Vibia drew Merula over to a particular crate; Merula set down her lamp, and Latona heard the scrabbling of metal against wood. She stood with her back nearly pressed against Vibia’s, one arm still pulled behind her, hand clasped tightly with the other mage’s, all her effort bent on keeping the three of them within her shield. Through the red-gold haze of her magic, Latona could see the fiends swarming around them. Dozens of them by now, formless shadows moving fast as the winds.
They were furious, and Latona was glad for it. Their rage was her victory. “That’s right!” she yelled. “You can’t have them! You can’t have me, and you can’t have them. You can’t have anyone!”
A crack! sounded behind Latona: wood giving way. “There!” Merula said. Only then did Vibia release Latona’s hand: Latona heard the slide of metal against cloth, then a slow rip, and Vibia’s muttered prayers.
Latona’s skin was hot and cold all at the same time, all the fine hairs standing on end as the blaze of her magic defended against the invading darkness still trying to break her control. ‘It’s this hard for me, and I know what I’m up against. What they could do to those unable to defend themselves—’
The thought spawned new rage, and Latona gave herself over to it until there was nothing in her but this molten wrath, golden and glowing and pure.
“I don’t know who you sent you, but I know this: You. Will. Go. Back!” Latona stamped her foot, and with that, fueled by the frustration and indignation that had been building up through months of hunting and fighting and never feeling like she was winning, she sent out an enormous blast of Spirit energy.
The noise from the lemures reached a deafening volume, a high and harrowing screech like a thousand owls crying out at once—and then, they all cut off, leaving an even more deafening silence behind to haunt the warehouse. The smoky shapes still hung in the air, frozen, and Latona’s breath caught in her chest.
“Got it!” Vibia cried, but before the sound had fully left her lips, a blast of wind stronger than all the others erupted from behind
Latona, hurling all three of them to the floor. Merula neatly turned her momentum into a controlled tumble off to Latona’s left, but Latona barely caught herself on her hands, and Vibia landed on top of Latona, her elbows jabbing sharply into Latona’s back. She rolled inelegantly off, getting a face full of dirt as she tried to right herself.
Latona arched up, looking to the ceiling.
Not a fiend in sight.
* * *
Vibia rolled again, onto her back this time. She could barely summon the strength for that much. She didn’t want to look again at the charm she had found in the box that Merula had split open. There were too many bones for one animal, tangled and intertwined, wrapped together with scraps of fur and horsehair and the gods only knew what else.
Her hand flopped about on the floor next to her until she found the hilt of her bronze dagger: a specially consecrated blade she had recently acquired, and had taken to tucking within her belts. Without that, the charm might have taken much longer to unwind. ‘Could Latona have held them off longer?’ She had heard Latona shouting, and her enchanted mantle had felt like a curtain of fire hanging over her hair. Whatever the woman had done, it had kept Vibia’s head clear long enough. ‘Just barely.’ If the fiends hadn’t gotten to her, she would soon have been overwhelmed by the sheer force of so much magic acting upon her.
Vibia turned her head sideways. Merula was already up and on her feet, kicking at the dirt where a few of the bones had spilled onto the packed earth floor. Latona was on her hands and knees, eyes cast upward. Vibia coughed, attracting Latona’s attention.
“Are you—?” Latona asked.
Weakly, Vibia nodded. “I need a moment. That . . .” She could hardly put into words how much it had taken out of her. Just holding herself together, even with Latona’s assistance, had been a mental feat. Battling the Discordian charm on top of it had her limp as a wrung-out towel. “We have to end it soon.” Vibia tugged her tunic away from her chest; she was sweat-damp all over. “I can’t keep doing this, Latona. I can’t.”
“You were brilliant, Vibia.” Ever so earnest, Vitellia Latona, ever so hale.
“Not everyone has your strength,” Vibia said. The words tasted more sour than she had intended. Latona didn’t deserve her pique, and so Vibia managed to trap the following thought before it left her tongue. ‘Or your stubbornness.’
XLI
Central Iberia
West of Toletum, the Tagus River sluiced its way through fewer jagged hills and high plateaus, and into bumpy red hills spattered with clumps of thick green forests. They had not gone far—Sempronius was loath to remove himself from the security of either Arevaci territory or Aventan towns entirely—but it was enough to show subtle changes in the landscape.
They were digging in near a point where another river met the Tagus from the north. Corvinus didn’t think highly of the location. The tributary, silty and yellow and scarcely two wagon’s-widths across, had no name. Its sluggishness troubled the Water in Corvinus’s nature, and he knew it would be troubling Sempronius as well. All the same, the place had defensive advantages. Sempronius had set up camp for his three legions a short distance downriver and on the south bank, heeding Bartasco’s advice that both the tributary and the Tagus would soon swell with the autumn rains. Two camps, in fact, each on a hilltop, within sight of each other, providing solid command of the surrounding area. The commanders had, by mutual agreement, split the Eighth Legion: Vitellius’s cohorts were encamped with the Tenth, along with a few others, while Onidius took the rest of the legion to the second hill to combine forces with the much-battered Fourteenth.
The Lusetani, they had heard, had pulled back even farther west, though no one believed they were in full retreat. They seemed to have scattered, though. Eustix’s birds and Hanath’s riders alike brought back reports of small skirmishes between their allies and their foes, of towns harassed but not overrun and put to the sword as they had been before the Aventan victory at Toletum.
Corvinus found Sempronius not in the command tent of the Tenth Legion’s camp, but in the open air of the camp’s central road, receiving a delegation of Iberians. When first they had come to the region, Corvinus had been unable to tell one set from another, though he knew the Arevaci and the Edetani considered themselves distinct and separate peoples, not only from their enemy Lusetani, but from each other—and from the Cossetans, the Counei, and certainly from the hated Vettoni. It had taken Corvinus some time to learn the distinctions. Now, though, he could see the subtle differences in how they knotted their garments, in the decorative style of their brooches and bracelets. These visitors were strangers, and Corvinus could not place them in his mental roll.
Sempronius was deep in conversation, his brow seriously furrowed, but Bartasco of the Arevaci stood nearby, burly arms folded over his chest. He didn’t look disgruntled, precisely—but nor did he look pleased. Corvinus came alongside of him.
Bartasco lifted an eyebrow at his approach and gestured toward the strangers with one hand. “Your general, I think, seeks an accord with these Tartessi, though recently we would have cut them down like wheat, had we encountered them in the open.”
That explained their unfamiliar signifiers, then. “They were not enemies until other Aventans made them so,” Corvinus replied. “If they can be made friends, we will have a greater advantage against the Vettoni and Lusetani.”
“I do not doubt the wisdom there,” Bartasco allowed. “But it seems a cold thing to me.” He watched Sempronius with the Tartessi contemplatively a moment longer, then turned away. “Come.” He gestured Corvinus along with him. “I see you working every moment you are awake. Do your weary bones the favor of sharing a cup of wine with me.”
Corvinus had other errands to be about, but Bartasco was the highest-ranking man among their allies, and Corvinus dared not risk offending him with refusal. “I shall be glad to, Lord Bartasco.”
They walked down the central path past the quaestorium, where the Tenth Legion’s supply officer was huddled with engineers, discussing where best to find the timber necessary to finish turning the camp into a proper winter fortress. Everywhere, legionaries were at work: placing stones for latrine drainage or joining wooden beams to raise barracks, all under the careful direction of the engineers. Other men were on the field beneath the hilltop camp, drilling. Sempronius was no ruthless commander, but nor was idleness tolerated. ‘Every man to his duty,’ Corvinus thought, ‘for the General does hate waste, of effort and energy as much as of resources.’
They settled into Bartasco’s tent, standing near the westward gate. It was round where the Aventan command tent was square and cast in colors of green and brown rather than scarlet, but otherwise differed little. Corvinus had not noticed how chilly the afternoon had become until the warmth of the brazier reached him.
“You are, if I have it right, not Aventan-born,” Bartasco said, when they had settled into low canvas chairs, and he had filled two cups with the golden wine that seemed to be the preference in this part of Iberia.
“That is correct. I was born in Albina, in the high mountains north of Truscum.”
Bartasco sat forward, elbows on his knees, his cup between his hands. “And you did not, I think, come to Aven by choice.”
A wry smile touched Corvinus’s lips. “That is a gentle way of phrasing it,” he said. “I was taken as a slave, yes, when I was quite young, during Aven’s conquest of my homeland.”
Bartasco’s head wagged in sympathy. “Poor luck.”
Enslavement had no legal structure among the Iberians, as it did in the nations of the eastern Middle Sea, and so it was, Corvinus had observed, often considered a pitiable condition, but not a necessarily irreversible one. A person taken by a rival tribe might eventually transition into their new community, through work or marriage—or they might escape and return home, free again. In Aven, the condition’s mutability was of a different sort, tied to the wh
im of the enslaver. A house slave might reasonably expect manumission upon a master’s death, if not earlier. Public slaves, too, could be freed after a term of service; it was a popular custom invoked by politicians, to honor one god or another. Those slaves consigned to the fields or mines faced steeper odds against freedom and, often, grimmer fates. ‘Fortuna has far more work to do when she wishes to redeem the victims of such a massive system, so codified and regulated, and reinforced by the might of the Aventan military.’
Bartasco went on, as though following Corvinus’s unspoken thought. “Yet now you stand, a free man, at the right hand of a general.”
“Aven’s laws manumit any slave who demonstrates a magical blessing. It is considered an ill thing, to keep in bondage one whom the gods favor.” It had not been the only turn of Fortuna’s wheel to have helped Corvinus out of catastrophe and into his present circumstances; the first had been due to sheer cleverness, when someone at the latifundium he’d been sold to noticed that the little pale-haired boy had a talent for numbers. He’d been bought then by the Sempronian household, to train as a clerk, escaping what otherwise would have been a hard and likely quite short life in the fields. “I was not yet ten when my talents came to the fore. I was freed, but remained with the Sempronian family for my education. Then, when the dominus inherited, he promoted me.”
“Why not return home, once you were free to do so?”
To a natural-born Aventan, Corvinus might have answered less honestly. “One life was stolen from me. There was no getting it back. A man must live the life in front of him, not the one behind.”
