by ML Spencer
It was many minutes before Markus finally spoke. “I heard what you do to people like him. That’s how you fill your flasks. With the spirits of the people you catch.”
“Not their spirits,” Sergan corrected him. “Their essence. If we took their spirits, they wouldn’t live long, now, would they? We drain them of their soul’s connection to magic.”
After a long minute, Markus whispered, “Is it painful?”
“Yes.”
There was no sense lying about it, for that would serve no purpose. Whether Markus learned the truth sooner or later didn’t matter one bit, for what would happen to Aram was outside of the boy’s control.
What he didn’t have to know was that Aram would suffer more than any other. Because of the vast quantity of essence within him, the extraction procedure would be prolonged and merciless, and it could be repeated as often as the boy could replenish his body’s supply. Which meant Aram was looking forward to a long lifetime spent in unbearable anguish.
Predictably, Markus’s composure broke. His eyes teared up, and he cast Sergan a look of outright hatred. “Why would you do that to someone?”
Sergan answered without looking at him, “Because we don’t have a choice. Whenever there’s a rupture in the Veil, therlings spill through and people die. If it’s a large rupture, entire cities could be overwhelmed. And we can’t send people like Aram to seal them. The Gifted are like a beacon for those that are lost between worlds. It’s like lighting a candle in the darkness, and every therling and void walker is drawn to the flame. You can’t put someone that bright at the intersection of a rift. They’d be quickly overwhelmed and devoured. That’s why this world needs sorcerers. I don’t blaze the way Aram does. I don’t glow at all, actually, not even a glimmer. That’s what makes me effective. They don’t see me coming until it’s too late.”
“Tonight, they did,” challenged Markus.
“They didn’t see me. They saw Aram. It was him they were drawn to.”
Markus glared at him. “But Aram fought them off. When you ran out of essence, all you could do was cower. It was Aram that drove them away.”
The boy was right. Aram was a treasure. A priceless treasure.
“And that’s why we need him,” Sergan explained. “With the amount of essence in him, Aram could fuel dozens of sorcerers for a hundred years or more. We wouldn’t need anyone else—which is fortunate because we haven’t found anyone else in a long time. The Old Blood has been running thin for a long while, and I fear it’s run dry. Aram might be the last person we ever find who can provide us the essence we need.” He glanced at Markus, looking to see if the boy was still listening to him.
He stopped talking, letting the logic sink in. He could tell by the look on his face that Markus understood the need. There was also a glimmer of boyish naivety, the kind that stubbornly clung to the narrative that just because something wasn’t right then there had to be a way around it. But there was no other way, Sergan knew. For society to survive, some people had to be sacrificed.
“No one should have to suffer like that,” Markus whispered.
“You’re right. No one should. But if we don’t seal ruptures as they happen and drive the therlings back into the void, then a lot more people will suffer. And we can’t be having that, now, can we?”
The boy hung his head, looking defeated. Once again, his eyes brimmed with tears, but a stubborn streak within him wouldn’t let them spill. Markus sat with his fists clenched at his sides, his jaw muscles bunching as he gritted his teeth. He muttered, “I don’t care about anyone else. I won’t let you have Aram.”
Sergan could have chosen not to respond to that, but he decided to anyway. “Of course you will. Because there’s nothing you can do about it.”
The boy went silent, and to his credit, the tears dried in his eyes. He glanced into the back of the wagon, where his Gifted friend lay, struggling for life. Sergan didn’t feel bad for him, for that wasn’t his way. He never let emotions rule him. In fact, he often questioned whether he had any.
When Aram awoke, he was horrendously cold. His teeth clattered so hard that he thought they were going to chatter right out of his mouth. He lay beside a campfire that popped and crackled, shooting sparks into the air. It was dark, and the sky staring down at him was full of stars.
He had no idea where he was.
“Welcome back,” said a calm voice beside him. “You’ve slept for an entire day and most of the next night.”
The man beside him looked familiar, but it took a moment to place him. As soon as he recognized the sorcerer, a sharp lance of fear made Aram shiver harder. He saw Markus lying across the campfire from them, fast asleep.
“I want to know something,” Sergan said in that ever-calm voice. “When you look at me, what color of aura do you see?”
Aram blinked, for he was surprised that the man knew of people’s colors.
“Right now, you’re blue,” Aram said through shivering teeth.
The man frowned. “What was I before?”
“Many colors.” The words trembled just as hard as his lips did. “Too many colors.”
Sergan lifted an eyebrow. “And what color are you, Aram?”
Aram frowned. For the first time in his life, it occurred to him that he didn’t know. He had never thought about it before.
“I can’t see my own color.”
The sorcerer scooted closer to him. “What color would you like to be?”
That was easy. “Yellow. Like Mora Haseleu.” The thought brought sadness. The last time he had seen Mora, she had been in the back of one of the wagons with the other girls from his village.
“You’ll never be yellow,” Sergan said. “You’re far more than just yellow. Tell me one last thing, for I’m curious. If you could be anything in the whole wide world, what would you be?”
Shivering, Aram hugged himself, desperate for warmth despite the thick blankets piled on him.
“I’d be a rope,” he said through trembling teeth.
The sorcerer looked at him funny. “That’s not what I meant, but all right. Why would you be a rope?”
Aram closed his eyes, growing tired. “Because ropes are the most useful things in the world. Ropes and threads and strings.”
Sergan asked, “If you were the only rope in the whole world, would you rather stay one piece, or be untwisted into strands, so that you could help more people?”
Aram only had to think about it a moment. “I would rather stay one rope.”
“Why is that?”
Aram squinted up at him. “Because once a rope is unlaid, it can’t ever be strong again. I think one strong rope would do the world more good than a few weak ones.”
The sorcerer nodded, a deep frown on his face. “Perhaps you’re right. You’ve given me something to think about, at least.”
He rose to kneel over Aram’s leg and, very gently, started unwrapping the cloth. “This is going to hurt.”
As the bandage came away, a terrible pain shot up Aram’s leg that was more than he could bear. His eyes rolled back, and he went limp.
Sergan changed the dressing on Aram’s leg, dismayed that the boy remained unconscious throughout the entire procedure. The wound was seeping again and had a foul odor, the skin around it red and inflamed. His hand went unconsciously to the vials at his waist, and he had to stop himself from removing one. They were all empty. He was out of essence and out of ideas.
Wearily, he rubbed his eyes. He was exhausted. The fight with the void dragon and its cadre had drained the hell out of him, and he hadn’t slept in almost two days. Standing, he blew out a long sigh then made his way around the fire to where Markus lay.
Sergan sat beside him and scooped an acorn off the ground, tossing it into the fire. It popped sharply, startling Markus out of sleep. The boy shot upright, looking around for the cause of the noise.
“It’s just me,” Sergan assured him.
“Is he better?” Markus asked, looking at Aram.
Sergan yawned. “Not good. We’ll be cutting it close. We’ll arrive in Karaqor by evening tomorrow.”
Markus looked at him with pleading eyes. “Can I ride in the back with him? In case he doesn’t make it?”
Sergan lay down on his bedroll, pulling his mantle tight around him and closing his eyes. “If he doesn’t make it, it’s not going to matter if you’re in the back with him or not.”
“I don’t want him to die alone.”
He sounded miserable. It was enough to make Sergan conjure a scrap of pity for him, which surprised him, for he didn’t have a lot of pity to go around.
“Fine.” He rolled over and pillowed his head on his arm. “You can ride in the back. Just get some sleep. It’s almost dawn.”
Chapter Seventeen
Mile after mile, the wagon shimmied along. Markus sat in the bed, despairing as Aram clung to life. He had put up a good fight, a courageous fight, but the infection was now swiftly claiming him. His skin was burning, his breathing labored. Every so often, he thrashed and moaned before becoming very quiet again. It was like watching Master Ebra die, only much, much worse because Aram was his friend. He hadn’t known how attached he’d become to Aram until the end. But now, after all they’d been through together, he felt as though he were losing a little brother. A very brave little brother, who had saved his life by putting his own body between him and dragonfire.
Markus wished he could give Aram more comfort to ease his passing. He held a damp cloth against the boy’s brow. Every now and then, when it grew too warm from the heat of Aram’s body, he would wring it out. But all the water in the world wouldn’t quench the fire that burned inside his body, and it was consuming him quickly. Part of him knew it was better this way, much better than the fate Sergan had planned for him. It was just horrendous to watch.
Markus knew when Aram finally started slipping away. His breathing became irregular and sometimes he forgot to breathe altogether for long seconds, just as Master Ebra had done. Recognizing that his friend was at his end, Markus set the cloth down, for he knew it had ceased doing any good. He picked up Aram’s limp hand and clung to it, fighting back tears.
“How is he?” Sergan called back from the driver’s seat.
“He’s dying,” Markus shot back, making no attempt to hide the rancor in his voice. He blamed the sorcerer for everything. It was all Sergan’s fault. He had brought destruction and death to everyone Markus loved.
“The city gate is just ahead,” Sergan told him. “We’re almost there. Try to keep him with us.”
But Markus knew that Aram was too far gone for even the most experienced healers to save him. He held Aram’s hand tight, and his lips kept mumbling, over and over, “It’s going to be all right, it’s going to be all right,” even though he knew it wasn’t.
Looking over the side of the wagon, he saw that they were traversing a road between fields of barley that looked ready for harvest. Ahead of them was an enormous city surrounded by high walls and bastions, with many clusters of houses huddled together outside the perimeter.
The wagon rattled over a drawbridge lowered over a moat and passed under the tall arch of the city gate, which was almost like a tunnel bored through the thick outer wall. On the other side of the gate, the smells and sounds of the city rose up around them. Hundreds of people filled the streets, moving everywhere, all talking and hollering at the same time. There was so much traffic. Crowds of people, carts and wagons, all jammed into narrow streets. The smell was hideous. The city stank of human and animal waste, body odor, and sweat. It made Markus want to retch. He gripped Aram’s hand harder, saddened that the boy would have to draw his last breaths in the midst of such a stench.
Small houses made of dark stone were jammed haphazardly together to either side of the street, newer structures crammed between the old. Sergan turned the wagon onto a wider avenue that was paved with wooden logs: tree trunks that were split in half and laid down one aside the other. The sound of the horses’ hooves made a racket on the wood. Aram let out a low moan, moving his head weakly from side to side.
Markus squeezed his hand, wishing he could take the pain away.
The street opened up into a large market full of merchants’ stalls and lined with shops that were open to the elements. The marketplace was teeming with people, chickens, goats, and free-ranging pigs. On the side of the street, a shopkeeper displayed pairs of shoes on his counter, while dozens more pairs hung above his head, dangling from a long horizontal pole. Other shops offered meat and vegetables, bread and fish. The merchants’ stalls were full of pots and pans, tubs and pails, and every assortment of household utensil.
Many of the people moving on the street were foreign. Dark-skinned Odessians who wore their hair in long braids, pale Cerylites with blue eyes, and veiled Free People swathed in bright colors and tinkling with bells. There were many ethnicities of people that Markus didn’t recognize, for he had never seen anyone like them before. The marketplace was full of men and women haggling and arguing, often in languages he didn’t understand. There were stone basins for washing meat and vegetables, along with tubs full of live fish and wicker cages stuffed with chickens and rabbits. He had never seen anything like it and wished Aram could see it too. When they passed by a rope maker’s storefront, where cordage of a variety of weights and materials hung from poles and hooks, Markus’s eyes grew moist again, for he knew how much that sight would have meant to Aram.
The road they traveled turned away from the market and ran adjacent to the city wall for many blocks, teeming with wagons and carts drawn by horses. Roving packs of dogs wove their way through the milling crowds. The smell of the sea filled Markus’s nostrils, making him perk up just a little bit. The odor was comforting and nostalgic, reminding him of home.
The street turned into a neighborhood crowded with houses, narrow alleys winding between them. Here, the smell of human waste grew unbearable, until Markus could hardly stand to breathe. There were flies and insects everywhere, and the inhabitants walking along the sides of the streets looked unclean. People encrusted in filth passed by carrying baskets and heavy sacks, their clothing gray with ash or dust.
The lane ahead narrowed and became uneven as houses protruded at odd angles into the street. Overhead, laundry dangled from poles between houses, dispersed between drying meats and fish. Women called to each other from balconies, and hawkers roamed the neighborhood. The sights, the smells, all of it, grew overwhelming. Markus huddled down in the wagon bed beside Aram, holding his hand, watching his chest rise and fall with each ragged, hard-won breath.
With a clatter, the wagon rolled off the boards onto cobble pavers. Markus looked to see that they were entering a wide plaza surrounded by multistory buildings with flat roofs and large porticos. In the center of the plaza was an enormous fountain where many women were gathered, washing laundry in the lowest basin. Other than the people around the fountain, the enormous square was thoroughly empty.
“Yah!” Sergan snapped the reins, driving the horses faster toward the far end of the plaza. As they approached the tall row of buildings ahead, Markus felt his nerves tingle. He didn’t know what those buildings were, but they didn’t look like any palace he had ever imagined. They were built out of tremendous light-colored blocks and stood many stories above the street, lined with columned walkways, stone bridges linking the upper floors.
Sergan drew the wagon up in front of the largest building. He vaulted down from the driver’s seat and came around the bed, throwing open the tailgate. He hefted Aram into his arms and called for Markus to follow as he rushed up a flight of stairs into the building, past two armored sentries who scrambled to throw the door open before him.
Markus ran after him into the dim interior of the building and across a wide foyer lit by chandeliers glittering with scores of candles. Sergan rushed up flights of stairs to the fourth floor then sprinted down a hallway. Markus ran after him, rushing past two men conversing in the corridor, who moved quickly o
ut of their way then stared after them as they passed. He followed Sergan all the way down the hallway to a door at the end.
The sorcerer kicked the door open and plunged inside. Markus followed him in, stepping into a dark room. In the light coming in from the hallway, he watched Sergan lay Aram out on the floor then scramble to a cabinet, retrieving a cloudy glass bottle filled with liquid.
Essence.
Kneeling beside Aram, Sergan raised the bottle and took a few gulps of the contents. Then he placed both hands on Aram’s chest and, closing his eyes, appeared to concentrate.
At first, Markus didn’t think anything was happening. But then he heard Aram moan. The boy stretched and tossed his head about, as though in pain. Sergan bent over him, moving his hands to Aram’s wounded leg, his eyes squeezed shut, his face slack. Aram moaned again, louder this time. He brought his hands up, as though trying to push the sorcerer away.
“Hold him down,” Sergan ordered.
His pulse racing, Markus rushed forward and did as he bid, taking Aram’s thin wrists in his hands as the boy’s moans turned to whimpering. Sergan’s face was red, his jaw clenched, and a vein protruded from the middle of his brow.
Beneath his hands, a light bloomed out of the darkness, spreading up Aram’s leg to his torso. It reminded Markus of the void creatures, the way they had glowed with that horrible inner light. He hoped this light was different. He didn’t want Aram becoming one of them. Sergan’s hands were shaking, and soon his whole body shook with them.
Suddenly, the sorcerer drew in a great, heaving gasp and threw himself back. He fell to the floor, where he lay panting, staring up at the ceiling with wide, unblinking eyes, sweat and spittle dampening his face.
On the floor, Aram lay still, the light within him fading. Terrified, Markus lay a hand on his forehead and found his skin cool to the touch.
“What did you do?” he asked.
