Tribulations (Rogue Mage Anthology Book 2)

by Faith Hunter

  “Apologies,” he said when he’d drawn breath again. He didn’t bother to make it sound convincing.

  Liam didn’t seem to care. He nodded tersely. “If everyone is up, we might as well get an early start. Long day today.”

  “Yes!” cried a voice into the sudden silence. Mature. Female. Sounding like she was in the throes of passion. “Oh, yes!”

  “Maeve!” came an answering cry. “Maeve, wake up. For seraphs’ sake, everyone is watching.”

  It was followed by a smack that carried in the chill air.

  Liam moved almost mage-fast to jump in before another blow could fall, catching Elder Doolan by the wrist as his arm started to arc again. The elder turned on Liam, nostrils flaring with righteous anger. He ripped his wrist out of Liam’s hand, and for a tense moment it seemed they would come to blows.

  Then Maeve sat up, clutching her blankets to herself in fear of the two men rearing over her. Liam left them to themselves now that Maeve was awake and Doolan had no excuse to strike her again, but I wasn’t so sure that would stop him.

  Carrick moved and my attention snapped back to him. He took one look at the base of my bedroll, no longer glowing, and glowered back at me before pushing himself to standing. He strode angrily off the way we’d come the previous day.

  Molly was now busily rolling her bedding into a tight bundle, humming flatly to herself to tune out the fight starting in the Doolan lean-to. I heard “blasphemy” and “loose woman,” and I vowed to keep watch. The righteous seemed able to justify whatever action they chose to take, to wrap it up in Scripture, ignoring the parts that didn’t suit, and present it as the moral high ground.

  We didn’t need trouble within our little group. We had enough to be wary of outside. I didn’t assume for a second that the fact that my satchel no longer shone meant the danger had passed. In fact, I was pretty certain that Maeve’s fevered dream and mine, the kylen’s restlessness, and the glow all pointed to the same thing: Darkness was near.

  I needed to find out what was in the package I carried. But not now, while everyone was watching.

  Instead of giving in to my curiosity, I kicked free of my bedroll and stalked off in the direction the kylen had gone—not because I was eager for another encounter, but because the trampled ground was the best for what I had in mind. I needed to practice with my bata, my stick, to be ready for whatever came and to work off some of the tension that made me liable to spark like a live wire.

  Carrick must have had the same idea. He was already there, moving through the forms of savage blade, his weapon gleaming in the pre-dawn glow. In motion, the kylen was a thing of deadly beauty. It was all I could do to shut him out as I sank into my own starting stance well out of range of his sword.

  Bataireacht was not elegant like Carrick’s savage blade . . . or like any martial art. It hadn’t been codified or spiritualized. It wasn’t practiced by monks or warriors. The bata, or shillelagh, was a weapon of the street. And it was a weapon of dissidents, like me. When the English made it illegal for the Irish to carry weapons, the bata was the only one left to us. Merely a walking stick. Nothing to see here. And yet deadly in the right hands.

  I began as I’d been taught, holding my knobbed stick with its metal reinforced bulb over one shoulder to start, hand a third of the way up the shaft. I centered myself, slowed my breathing, and began—first a lunge and strike, stepping forward with my right foot as I slashed with my stick toward my opponent’s temple. Then a quick backswing, aiming for the carotid on the other side, twisting my whole body with each blow for maximum force. Next, the shaft in a two-handed grip and a powerful jab with the slim base straight for my imaginary opponent’s solar plexus. As quick as thought, the bata was up again over my shoulder, this time in a hanging guard, defending against an envisioned blow from behind. Then a pivot and swing to take on that attacker, a blow to the knee with the metal knob, meant to shatter bone.

  I swung, blocked, pivoted, attacked, moving between one- and two-handed holds as I imagined the opponent against me, seeing my father there as he had been so many times, knowing his moves like I knew my own.

  When I circled back to the beginning, I started again. Faster this time. And faster the next, until I was flying. No time, no room for thought; only movement, instinct, muscle memory. It was the closest I ever came to feeling the divine.

  I held my final pose, stick in both hands after using each end to strike at my foe, not truly ready to let go of my adrenaline high but knowing other things awaited me. My body thrummed. My heart and breathing raced. I worked on calming them as I became aware again of my surroundings, of the kylen nearby, watching me, his own practice ended and his blade sheathed.

  I met his gaze, still feeling powerful and energized, fully ready to take him on if it came to that, though I knew that confidence to be misplaced. He gave me a nod and even a bit of a bow, and when he raised his head, his eyes were glowing. “You are good. Even impressive,” he said. “Ever work with a blade?”

  I tried to ignore the way my body thrummed at his praise and focused on the question at hand. “Some.”

  When I’d told my parents that I would be leaving, my father insisted on teaching me a variation on bataireacht, one that used a blade in my free hand, but a knife, not a full sword. Not anything close to Carrick’s savage blade. I wondered whether to say so. If he was truly my enemy, keeping the secret might someday give me the element of surprise. Might save my life.

  “I’m standard-issue human,” I said, looking him dead in the eyes. It was not a confession. Unlike the neomages and others, I did not for a second equate this with lesser. “I was never offered sword training.”

  “You grew up in Enclave,” he said, not a question, but a revelation.

  “Yes. My parents worked there. I schooled there. And then I left.”

  Carrick grunted, and I had no idea what to make of that. It didn’t seem as though seraph spawn should do anything so . . . human. “I will teach you, if you’d like.”

  I stared at him. “Why?”

  “Because we are at war. Because the Dark are on our heels. If your skills are any indication, you are a warrior born. You have the footwork, and the muscles already developed. The blade is not so different from the cudgel.”

  “I don’t have a blade to practice with,” I said, but it was a weak objection. I wanted what he offered, the chance to train with a kylen. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  “I’ll arrange it,” he said, and then turned and walked away as though it had all been decided, my acceptance assumed. Not wrongly, but the arrogance of it still left me grinding my teeth.

  A quarter hour later, Liam, Molly, and Ronan had everyone set up with camp breakfast—pressed oatcakes that tasted like barely-sweetened sawdust. By the time we finished eating, they’d saddled the mules and were ready to go. Maeve Doolan seemed pinched—more pinched even than usual—and wouldn’t meet anyone’s gaze, least of all her husband’s.

  I seemed to have acquired my own personal kylen. I couldn’t shake him. All day Carrick rode beside or just behind me. Every time I looked, his gaze was on me—or off in the distance, watching for trouble.

  I couldn’t blame him there. That uneasy feeling from my nightmare stayed with me all day, and I scanned the landscape too, determined not to be caught unaware. It was hard to keep up the hypervigilance, though, especially after a disturbed night, and after a while I was looking for a distraction. Or a nap. I couldn’t afford either, but chose the lesser of two evils.

  “What are you doing outside the Realms?” I asked the kylen finally.

  He turned my way, and again I thought of a raptor sighting in on his prey.

  He didn’t answer right away, and when he did, it was to return a question for a question. “Why did you leave the Enclave?”

  I shook my head and gave him a wry smile. “I asked you first.”

  He scanned the horizon again before turning back to me. “So you did.”

  I sighed and deb
ated whether it was worth continuing the attempt at conversation. Maybe if I showed him mine. My cheeks heated at the thought. I’d meant it metaphorically, but apparently my mind had jumped straight to a more carnal interpretation.

  “My parents were in service to Enclave,” I said finally. “I was not.”

  “You weren’t happy there?”

  “I wasn’t myself. There were expectations,” I said, surprised when the words wanted to flow. “Not expectations that I would make something of myself—not do great things, or at least important things like a neomage, but that I would fetch or cook or cobble as my parents did.”

  “And you wanted—”

  “Something more.”

  “What?” he pushed.

  If my cheeks burned now it was with frustration. “I don’t know. You don’t need to know where you fit in to know where you don’t.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, releasing me from his raptor’s gaze.

  I felt relief and loss all at once. I still didn’t know where I belonged, unless it was on the road. The title of an old Pre-Ap song had always stuck with me: “Like a Rolling Stone.” That was me.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Why are you with this mule train? Is it related to the Dark attacks? Are we in danger?” I would not ask, Does it have anything to do with me?

  “Carrick!” Liam cried out, raising his usually quiet voice to carry. “Molly and Ronan are going to ride out, scout the land ahead. Can I count on you to help me guard the train while they’re away?”

  I wondered whether he really needed the help or whether he thought he was saving me from interrogation. After all, daylight was the safest time—not that it did my anxiety any good to know that.

  The kylen gave me a stonefaced nod, and rode up to speak with Liam. I couldn’t tell how he felt about being interrupted. He seemed perfectly capable of diverting my inquiries without any help.

  The kylen then dropped to the back of the train where Ronan usually rode. It gave me breathing room, but also nothing to divert me from my worry. Something was coming. I knew it. Carrick knew it. And, from the sound of things, Maeve Doolan knew it too, at least on some level.

  By nightfall my nerves were drawn to the breaking point. I set down my bedroll, but didn’t open it. I wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. What I really wanted was to sneak away, to explore what Whit Lahey had given me, and whether it could be calling the Dark. I’d rather lose my commission than my life. If the EIH felt the contents of the package important enough, they could come back for it. Although leaving it out here undefended . . . no, the Darkness was likely to get to it before the EIH, and nothing that drew the Dark meant any good for humanity.

  I was no hero, but neither was I someone who let bad things happen.

  I startled when a body suddenly appeared before me, blocking the fading light. Molly belly-laughed at my reaction. “Wool-gathering, eh?” she asked. “I shouldn’t wonder. He’s worth a daydream or ten.”

  “Who?” I asked, honestly baffled at that moment.

  “Why, the kylen, of course. I’ve seen how you look at each other.”

  “Like he wants to drag me away in chains?”

  Molly looked at me like I was crazy, her head cocked as if she might understand me better from that angle. “Sure, chains.”

  “What did you see out there today?” I asked.

  No one had said and Ronan hadn’t once today tried to get inside my clothes. It was ominous.

  The amusement leached from Molly’s face along with all the color. “Blood,” she said.

  “Way out here? Deer? Wild pigs?” I asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “Who says I don’t?”

  “Molly, I’m a storyteller. I know when someone’s telling a tale.”

  She chewed on her chapped bottom lip. It must have hurt, but she didn’t seem to notice. In the end, all she did was shake her head and turn away, hoping to put me off by giving me her back and starting her preparations for our second night.

  “Remains? Drag marks?” I pushed. And then, because it slipped out even though I didn’t really want to know, “Bodies?”

  She shot me a look that said everything. She’d seen things she couldn’t unsee and wasn’t about to relive.

  I gasped in a breath, then another, trying to convince my chest to expand, to take it in.

  “Another mule train? Have any been reported missing?” I asked.

  She’d turned back to her bedroll, and at first I thought she wasn’t going to answer me. Then, quietly, she said, “Not that we’ve heard of . . . yet. We’d never have come out else.”

  The breath I’d taken gushed out of me. We’d been riding for two days. It would be two days more to Kerry. We were as far as we could get from help, from sending or receiving news—unless Carrick had some way to send messages or unless Liam sent out a rider, leaving the mule train one guard short and that rider totally unprotected. He wasn’t going to do that.

  “I’ll . . . be back,” I told Molly.

  I grabbed up my pack and ventured out, checking first to see that Carrick was occupied and wouldn’t follow. Tom, the boy who’d been watching him since we started, must have finally gotten brave enough to approach. He stood now with Carrick, who was showing off his sword and, very slowly, the first moves of his kata. Katie, the boy’s mother, stood close by, alternately watching in concern and cooing to the baby in her arms.

  With the kylen occupied, I crept into the brush that screened the sides of our path. The weeds caught at me as I went, probably depositing seed pods and prickles I’d have to pick out later. I stopped when the high grass enclosed me entirely and then turned back to face the way I’d come, so that the swaying brush would give away anyone who might approach. Unavoidably, I’d left a trail that was easy enough to follow.

  Satisfied that I was alone, I brought my pack around to the front of my body and released the flap. If the contents were still glowing, I couldn’t see it. I pulled the package out of the satchel, marveling again at its weight. The contents shifted awkwardly inside the oilcloth wrappings. So not one thing then, but several. I squatted so that I could lay the package across my thighs and began gently to unwrap it. There was more shifting and sliding as I loosened the contents, almost as if they were alive, as if I was unswaddling a baby who was about to burst free.

  And then I twitched aside a fold of the oilcloth and something fell to the ground: a shard of metal, light-suckingly dark. Dead. Infernal. One side of the shard had obviously been worked, honed to a fine edge that was the only part of the former blade that gleamed, as though whatever blood it had last shed still clung wetly at the edges. The other side showed stress fractures from having been shattered.

  I let it lie where it had fallen for a moment, and peeled back another fold of the oilcloth to reveal the other half of the weapon—the hilt and the lower part of the blade. A demon iron sword. I knew it not because I’d ever seen one, but because I’d heard about them in my collecting of tales. I knew they were nearly unbreakable. Something major must have happened to this one.

  How would the EIH have come by a broken demon iron blade? And why would they want it? Unless . . . well, unless they didn’t trust the Light any more than the Dark. They didn’t believe the seraphs were angels or that they had anything like mankind’s best interests at heart. They’d seek out things that gave them a fighting chance if it came to open rebellion.

  I didn’t know whether the metal would scorch me or how much of its power the demon iron retained, but I wasn’t willing to touch it directly and find out. I refolded the oilcloth over the hilt and carefully moved it aside.

  The package hadn’t yet revealed all its secrets. There’d been too much shifting for just the Dark blade. The next layer revealed an amulet, as night-dark as the blade, but with a sheen, possibly obsidian, carved in the shape of a dragon curled around a mottled green stone with a blotch of crimson off-center, irregular tendrils radiating out from it li
ke blood spatter. Bloodstone? The snapped remains of a leather cord that had once held it around a neck were coiled with the amulet.

  I started to reach for it. It was so beautiful, and I wanted to trace the carving of the scales, the intricate detail of the dragon’s whiskers. The artist had even thought to carve texture into the multitude of tiny claws. Compared to the dragon, the bloodstone looked so smooth, so satiny. As I watched, the red inclusion in the center of the stone began to glow, igniting the green around it as well. I felt warmth, like I was standing too close to a fire. Or just close enough. I wanted to touch it—

  I heard the swishing of the meadow grass as something approached, and had just enough time to fold the oilcloth back over the amulet and broken blade and shove the whole bundle back into my pack. I closed the flap and slid the strap around so the pack was behind me, cutting off the glow of the amulet with my body. Hiding it.

  Protecting it? No! That felt dirty. Wrong. These were infernal artifacts. Surely no good could come of them.

  Carrick burst through the brush just as I got everything squared away, gaze shooting around as though he expected to find trouble.

  I crossed my arms and glared as he got to me. “Well, this would have been awkward if I’d been answering a call of nature.”

  “Liam has a place sectioned off for that,” he answered, unfazed.

  “Maybe it was in use,” I said. “Maybe I couldn’t wait.”

  He looked straight into my eyes, and I expected a glare, but his ice-green gaze glittered differently, strangely, as if he didn’t trust that he’d found me so innocently standing in a field. I couldn’t exactly blame him.

  “I brought you a sword,” he said, though not as if he was ready to surrender it to me. “Come, where we have more room.”

  And less chance of ambush. He didn’t have to say it.

  I sighed. In that single breath I considered and discarded the idea of refusing. There was no way I’d have the chance to sneak off again and explore the rest of what I carried, not now that I had his attention. Best to keep it diverted.