“I don’t know,” Lena sighed. “I can’t seem to break the link with the vultures. I’m still connected to the entire wake.”
Samira choked on her tea. “A wake of vultures?” she asked when she got her breath back. “Is that really what they’re called?”
Her voice was loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, and Robin started laughing. “A wake of vultures! That’s a good one—and, in this case, quite appropriate.”
Lena looked at her host, who looked bemused, and his daughter, who looked appalled. “He doesn’t mean any disrespect to the dead,” she explained hastily. “It’s a sort of game at the Temple: learning the names for groups of animals.”
“Like a murder of crows?” Lord Tobias asked.
“That’s one name for them,” Lena said, “but we call ours a storytelling of crows, especially since they saved Samira’s life. We also have a charm of finches and a leash of greyhounds.”
“Your Temple must be an interesting place,” Agneta said.
“It can be dull,” Samira said with a grin, “but it’s been my experience that it doesn’t happen often. There is, of course, the Peace of the God, but that’s different.”
Lena didn’t hear the rest of the conversation because her attention was suddenly completely captured by the vultures, who were watching a woman approach them—or rather the body they were protecting everyone from. They flew toward her to chase her away, but lightning sparked from her fingertips as she sought to drive them back. They swooped in dizzying circles, trying to avoid the attack while still keeping her away from the body, but a bolt grazed one of them: a searing pain across the top of its wing.
Lena cried out, clapping a hand to her bare arm and then screamed when she touched it. Her vision was doubled between the roadside where the birds were and the room where her body was, but she could dimly see a burn across her arm.
“What is it?” Samira said urgently.
“Help them!” Lena gasped. “She’s trying to kill them!”
“The vultures?”
Lena managed to nod. She heard Robin and Samira run from the room and caught the edge of Samira’s Mindcall to her Companion. Then she fainted.
* * *
When she came to, Lena was lying on the sofa, with a pillow beneath her head and a blanket covering most of her body. Her burned arm was outside the blanket, and Agneta was gently pressing a cold cloth against the injury. The cold felt good. The pressure didn’t. The pain made her feel sick—and thankful she hadn’t eaten much at dinner. And the shouting didn’t help.
Apparently Samira, Robin, and their Companions had managed to subdue the stranger and had dragged her back to Lord Tobias to answer for the attack.
“—and what you did to the King’s ward!” Lord Tobias finished angrily.
“All I did was try to deal with the vermin feasting on my son’s body!” the stranger shouted back.
“Vultures are not vermin!” Lena might feel ill, but she wasn’t taking that lying down. She pushed herself to a seated position, letting the cloth fall from her burned arm. “And they were not feasting on anyone!”
“My son’s body is still lying by the side of the road, surrounded by those flesh eaters! Has nobody here the decency to pick up the dead and lay them out in a seemly fashion, someplace where they are not food for the vultures?”
“I don’t know why your son died,” Lena said, “but I’m guessing you didn’t see the dead vulture next to him—or notice how uncorrupt his body is. Anything that touched him—or tried to eat something that touched him—died. The vultures guard the body so that nobody else dies; they chased us back when we first saw him. They were trying to save you from whatever killed him—and you tried to kill them in return.” She turned anxiously to Samira. “How many—”
“None dead,” Samira said reassuringly. “A few singed feathers, the one burned wing, and your matching arm.”
“Is that creature your familiar, then?” the woman asked.
“I don’t know what a familiar is,” Lena said wearily. As her anger subsided, the pain was becoming more noticeable. “I have Animal Mindspeech, and I’m linked to all of them right now. They’re not happy.”
“Neither am I,” the woman said grimly. She looked around nervously—as if, Lena thought, there were people in the room that none of them could see.
“I don’t believe any of us is happy right now,” Lord Tobias said. “And I am sorry for your loss. Having seen your son’s body, however, I must say that Lena is correct. The vultures have not touched it, and neither have the normal processes of decay.”
“You don’t know how long he’s been dead,” the woman pointed out.
“Lena?” Lord Tobias looked at her.
“Five days,” she replied. “That’s what the vultures say.”
“He can’t possibly have been dead that long!” the stranger protested.
“When did you last see him?” Samira asked.
“A week ago.”
“Then he could very well have been dead for that long,” Lena said. “You don’t know. You were not there, and the vultures were. They saw him die.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. It’s my Gift.” Lena sagged wearily against the sofa. Ladylike posture can go hang.
“Father,” Agneta said. “I really think she belongs in bed.”
“She does,” Lord Tobias agreed. “Didn’t you send for a Healer?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t need to be awake for that.”
“Lead the way, Lady Agneta,” Robin said, lifting Lena carefully into his arms. “I’ll carry her upstairs.”
* * *
Lena’s arm was fine when she woke in the morning, and she was hungry, so obviously a Healer had treated her while she slept. Unfortunately, while her arm was healed, except for an area of reddened skin, the Mindspeech with the vultures continued unabated. She was glad that some of them were asleep and the rest were on guard, which meant that none of them was eating. This enabled her to eat a large breakfast troubled by nothing other than doubled vision, which she could cope with as long as she was otherwise healthy.
Lena and Agneta were sipping tea and nibbling fruit-filled pastries when the rest of the household joined them. Samira and Robin had the stranger between them, and she was looking about wildly as if she were trying to see things the rest of them couldn’t.
“Girls,” Lord Tobias said, “I don’t believe you were properly introduced to our guest last night. This is Mage Photine, who lives just over the border in Rethwellan.”
Both girls murmured conventional replies, as the rest of the group sat down and began to eat. Photine seemed nervous, and she kept looking around the room. “Do you have secret passages and spyholes in the walls here?” she asked.
“Probably,” Lord Tobias said. “This is an old castle, and it was built to guard the border.”
“Do your servants use them?” Photine shuddered. “I can feel the eyes watching me!”
Robin chuckled. “My mother always used to say that Vanyel’s eyes were always watching us—I think she was trying to make sure we didn’t get into too much trouble when her eyes weren’t on us.”
“‘Vanyel’s eyes are watching you’—I think that’s a song,” Lena said. “It sounds familiar, somehow.”
“Yes,” Agneta agreed. “I think I’ve heard it too.”
“Before we become immersed in ancient ballads,” Lord Tobias said with a fond look at his daughter, “we need to deal with our current problems.”
“We should make a list,” Samira said. “Lena, are you still Mindspeaking to the wake?”
“I’m not actively speaking to them,” Lena said, “but I’m still linked, and I can’t break it. Ever since we saw them on the road, I’ve been linked to all of them.”
“So Lena is bound to the vultures,” Samira s
aid.
“And my son is dead.” Photine appeared to find that more important.
“Dead and uncorrupt,” Samira pointed out, “which is not natural. Do you have any idea how that could have happened?”
“He was working on spells to increase his magical ability, I believe.”
“Does he have older siblings who are more powerful?” Robin asked. He was more familiar with sibling dynamics than Lena, who had not been blessed with siblings—or even friends—her own age.
“Younger ones,” Photine said dryly. “Eskil was my oldest child, and very obviously the least talented. Everyone in the family knew that. I think the dog has more magical ability.”
“He probably did something stupid,” Lena said. “Young men tend to . . .” her voice trailed off, as she remembered that her older brother had done something stupid—not to mention blasphemous—and ended up dead at about the same age as Eskil.
“Is there a spell in Rethwellan to increase one’s magical power?” Agneta asked.
“Several, actually,” Photine admitted, “but they wouldn’t work here in Valdemar. There’s no magic here.”
Lena frowned in thought. “So if he tried some sort of spell that absorbed ambient magic . . .”
Photine sighed. “He would go for maximum power—I caught his little sister teasing him when I was home last—but his body wouldn’t be strong or trained enough to handle it.”
“At which point he would cross over to Valdemar in order to stop the spell,” Samira said.
“But it didn’t stop,” Lena objected. She turned to Photine. “I’ve heard that evil Mages used to get power by killing people. Does that mean that life force, whatever it is that keeps us alive, works like magic?”
“I supposed it could,” Photine said reluctantly, “but any spell he was using should have stopped at the border. Everyone knows you can’t do magic in Valdemar.”
“Wasn’t what you did to the vultures magic?” Lena asked. “There was fire shooting out of your fingertips.”
“Levin-bolts,” Photine corrected absentmindedly. “They’re more like lightning than fire.”
“Well, I can assure you that they burn,” Lena said, looking pointedly at the still-reddened area on her arm. “But the point is that you can do magic in Valdemar.”
“Vanyel’s Eyes!” Agneta said suddenly. “That’s what I was trying to remember. They guard against the sort of magic foreign Mages do. That’s why you feel that you’re being watched; as soon as you used offensive magic within our borders, they started to gather.”
“Started?” Photine said nervously. “What happens after that?”
“It’s an old ballad,” Agneta said, “not a recipe book.”
“The point is,” Lord Tobias said, “that magic does work in Valdemar, so whatever spell your son was attempting would not have stopped at the border.”
“I think it’s still active,” Lena said. “I didn’t notice at the time because I was distracted, but your . . . levin-bolts . . . were pulled toward the body. That’s why you had trouble hitting the vultures. And I think that anything that touches the body has its life energy pulled from it to the body.”
“The grass!” Robin said suddenly. “When I was guarding the body yesterday I noticed that the grass around it was dead.”
“You don’t get energy from grass,” Photine said scornfully.
“It was alive, and now it’s dead,” Lena pointed out. “A vulture ate a rat that touched the body and fell away from it as it died, and the vulture died as well. The vultures have kept anything alive from touching it since then—aside from the grass.”
“And you say it was sucking in levin-bolts?” Photine asked.
“Not completely.” Lena said, “From what I picked up from what the vultures were seeing, it seemed more like it was trying to draw the bolts in, but you were trying to hit the birds, so it just pulled them toward it. I don’t know what would happen if they actually reached the body. And the vultures appear to be convinced that any human that touches it will die. That’s why they’re staying there and keeping guard over it.” She looked at Photine. “Would it kill a human who touched it?”
“Quite possibly,” Photine said. “We would need to experiment to be sure.”
“Not with my people you don’t,” Lord Tobias said firmly.
“No,” Photine sighed. “That would be much too dangerous.”
Samira, who had apparently been pondering the various possibilities, asked, “Could the spell be what’s holding the vultures and Lena together?”
“Gifts aren’t Rethwellan’s sort of magic,” Lena said, “but they can’t be entirely natural or everyone would have them. And if the spell on the body is pulling energy from grass, maybe it could be trying to pull it from the link.”
“Which means we really need to do something about the body,” Lord Tobias said grimly. “It obviously can’t be buried where it is now. Can you transport it back to Rethwellan? What do you normally do in a case like this?”
“We don’t normally have ‘a case like this’”, Photine said crossly, “and I’m not certain what it would take to transport my son’s body safely.” She scowled. “I believe our best option is to destroy it here.”
“Cremation?” Robin asked. “If we piled wood around it as close as we could get, and you used your levin-bolts to amplify the flames?”
“No,” Lena shook her head violently. “Poisonous smoke.”
“You don’t know that,” Robin objected.
“Do you want to risk it?” Lena demanded.
“The girl has a point,” Photine said. “If we don’t know whether the smoke will be poisonous, this is not a spell I can ethically use.” She fell silent, apparently lost in thought. “Not Fire,” she murmured, “apparently not Earth, using Air would have the same problems as Fire, but maybe Water. . . .”
“Elemental transformation spells?” Lena asked. She had always been a bit of a bookworm, and the Palace and Collegia in Haven had large libraries. She had read some books on foreign magic, and she remembered that there were systems that used four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.
“Something of the sort,” Photine replied, “and Water is my strongest element. Let’s see: ‘Let this skin and all within be changed to purest Water’—if I specify purity in the spell, that should transform whatever might be poisonous.”
“But that doesn’t cover anything outside of his skin,” Lena objected. “There’s still his hair, his clothes—would that spell even change his fingernails?”
Photine looked first startled, and then approving. “It’s a shame I can’t take you home for training. You obviously have the mind for it, and apparently some natural ability. How would you word the spell then?”
“Well, I’d test whatever I came up with on the dead vulture first. If turning it to water doesn’t damage the area around it, then we know the spell is probably safe to use on a human. And if the spell doesn’t work properly, at least it will be on a much smaller scale.”
Photine nodded approvingly. “And the wording?”
“May garb, hair, skin, and all within be changed to purest water,” replied Lena. “He’s wearing gloves, so using ‘garb’ would include fingernails and anything else covered by his clothing, and his clothing needs to be destroyed anyway. For the vulture, I’d substitute ‘claws, beak, feathers, skin’ for ‘may garb, hair, skin’—I think that would work.”
“I think so, too.” Photine said.
* * *
They all went to the roadside; Photine was needed for the spells, Lena had to explain what was happening to the vultures and get their cooperation for the test spell, and everyone else was either concerned about Lena’s safety, curious, or both.
It took a while for Lena to persuade the vultures to allow a foreign Mage to destroy one of their wake, even if it was dead. But once they a
greed, the test spell proceeded flawlessly. The body of the vulture turned to water, and the water ran along both the dead grass and the grass that was still green. They observed the area for some time, during which the green grass remained that way, and the area with the dead grass started to sprout new growth. Photine, however, became more agitated.
“Yes, the spell works,” she snapped, “but those wretched Eyes appear to have called in all their friends to watch. They’re even more unnerving than the vultures!”
Lena, meanwhile, was discovering that the dead body that had anchored her link to the wake was the vulture, not the human. Her Animal Mindspeech was now back under her own control. The vultures, however, still perched in the trees, keeping watch over Eskil’s body.
“Can you do the second spell?” she asked Photine, “even with the Eyes watching?”
“Yes,” Photine said through gritted teeth. “Remind me of the words again, just to be safe.”
“May garb, hair, skin, and all within be changed to purest water,” Lena recited.
The Mage repeated the spell, and the body dissolved into water, washing the surrounding area clean. Lena could tell that the vultures were satisfied even before they started to fly away. In a few moments, all that remained were the humans and a patch of damp grass and earth.
“Now that I know my son is properly at rest,” Photine said with profound relief, “I can go home and get away from all these Eyes!”
Maiden’s Hope
Michele Lang
Spring had finally returned to the Northern village of Longfall. Sparrow walked silently through the edge of the Forest of Sorrows, where only shadowed patches of old snow remained, clinging to the darkness under the shade of the great evergreens.
The air smelled of tender, green new leaves, and she inhaled their fragrance like a tonic. Sparrow knew the forest held many unknown and hidden dangers—her old dad had been careful to warn her about them—but the air smelled so sweet, and the dappled sunlight warmed her face so deliciously that she couldn’t imagine anything dangerous happening to her on this sunny morning. Still, just in case, Sparrow carried a stout walking staff for defense.
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