As everyone else was.
As he willed himself to.
The silence lingered in the clearing. And when it broke, it was with a seething word.
“Well?”
From Vemire.
The Lector’s icy expression thawed, as a frown seared across his face. His eyes betrayed their usual impassive stare, narrowing in what one might call contempt, if one could believe a Lector capable of such emotion.
Comparatively, Amouran’s perpetual sneer looked downright serene.
“I want to hear you say it,” the heretic said.
“Don’t be a fool, Amouran,” Vemire replied. “I read your history. You were a promising concomitant, well on your way to earning a spot as a Librarian. You can’t possibly throw it all away for—”
“For freedom?” Amouran asked, chuckling blackly.
“For heresy,” Vemire snapped. “For a simpering fool who will eagerly spew rhetoric about freedom and liberty and just as eagerly leave you alone to face the consequences, as he’s done now.” He took a tentative step forward. “Tell me what you know of the heretic Lathrim, and I’ll see to it your sentence is commuted to penitent study.”
A smile cracked Amouran’s face. A dark and ugly scar across a tired and ghastly face.
“How kind of you, Rondash,” he said. “Instead of killing me outright, you’d see me mercifully locked away into a study to file paperwork for the rest of my life until wizards could cut me open and Harvest my corpse.” He lay a skinny hand across a sunken chest. “Why, I was a fool to forsake my duty to the Venarium for the chance to see my family again and save their lives. To think, all this time, I could have been experiencing the endless thrills of having my soul crushed out of me year by—”
“Enough.” A single word, and the chill returned to Vemire’s voice, cast his face into a mess of hard lines. “You have my ultimatum. I will have your answer.”
Amouran said nothing. He slowly craned his head around, taking in the clearing around him. He glanced at the two Venarium agents at his back before his eyes settled, once again, upon Dreadaeleon. The boy shuddered beneath his gaze and instantly cursed himself for doing so.
Stop it, stop it, stop it, he chided himself. Don’t show him you’re weak. Not in front of Cesta. You’re an apprentice, soon to be a concomitant. He’s a heretic. Show him you’re brave. Meet his eyes, old man, meet his eyes.
Dreadaeleon did so.
He met Amouran’s eyes, stared past the rims of the sockets and into the hollows beneath. Like any apprentice of the Venarium, his life of study and training had been fed with ample cautionary tales of the dangers of heresy. He had heard the stories of the reckless fiends who disregarded Venarium law and violated Venarium truths in the name of selfish pursuits of power. And in his dream, he always imagined their eyes would be wide, wild and red with power.
Not like Amouran’s eyes. While the heretic’s eyes were red from sleepless, tortured nights, there was nothing even the slightest bit insane about them. They looked at him with a soft, yielding gaze accompanied by a long sigh.
As though he were the pitiable one.
“Trial by ordeal.”
Amouran turned to Vemire, all the despair fled from his face and replaced with grim resolve. Vemire closed his eyes and sighed, as though he had anticipated this.
“Are you sure?” the Lector asked.
“I can prove that I still have worth to the Venarium by combat,” Amouran said. He slid into a stance that Dreadaeleon recognized easily: wide legs, feet firmly planted, all the better to channel the force of lightning. “If I win—”
“You will not, Amouran.”
Vemire slid into a stance that mirrored the heretic’s. He drew in a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, they were alight with the crimson glow of magic. He words resonated through the clearing, lent a power that stilled breeze and silenced smoke.
“You may act when ready.”
And Amouran did.
He did not bother breathing. His eyes erupted with the power almost immediately, Venarie flowing into his stare as swiftly as electricity flowed into his fingers.
Cobalt sparks raced down his arm, danced across his fingertips as he thrust one hand out, two fingers aimed straight for Vemire’s heart. Breathless, blazing, bellowing, Amouran screamed.
And the sky screamed with him.
The bolt that shot from his fingertips was massive, an arcing serpent of electricity that flew from his fingers, screaming toward Vemire in a jagged scar across the sky. It swallowed everything the heretic had left in him—his rage, his fear, his sorrows—and grew fatter for it, splitting the sky as it shrieked.
But Dreadaeleon could see it in his stance, in the way he shuddered with every breath. He was powerful, and his passions lent him strength, but he was also exhausted, weak, hungry.
And Vemire was not.
Two steps to the right. The Lector measured each step to take him no farther than he needed to go. And the lightning bolt, fat and gorged as it was, went hungry, flying past him and disappearing with a faint crackle of electricity.
Two fingers thrust out. The Lector took aim. One breath. The Lector narrowed his eyes. One word. The Lector responded in kind, firing off a bolt that was no wider than a spear’s shaft and existed for no longer than two breaths.
And Amouran fell dead.
The heretic collapsed. A single black hole punched through his chest loosed a long, slow sigh of steam. His body convulsed once, twice, and then lay still.
“A waste,” Vemire muttered. He glanced over the carcass to the two Venarium agents standing nearby. “Amend the list of charges against the heretic Lathrim. He’s responsible for these deaths. He’ll answer for them.” The two agents nodded and he stalked past the dead heretic. “Take care of these bodies while I consult my apprentices. We begin the search immediately after.”
Dreadaeleon was still staring dumbly at Amouran’s steaming corpse when Vemire came striding up. He noticed Cesta, snapping to attention with her hands folded behind her back, long before he noticed the looming shadow of his Lector standing over him. He mimicked her stance a moment too late to escape a disapproving glare and subsequent resigned sigh from Vemire.
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
It did not go without notice or without bitterness from Dreadaeleon that he directed this question to Cesta.
“It was his stance, Lector,” she replied. “His legs buckled slightly. He wasn’t firmly planted, and so the recoil of the lightning’s expulsion swayed him and knocked his aim off. Otherwise, the force behind it would have killed you.”
Vemire nodded. He cast a glance toward Dreadaeleon. “And?”
Dreadaeleon blinked. “And . . . uh . . .”
“And his arm was held too taut,” Cesta mercifully interjected. “The blowback almost certainly sprained it, preventing him from casting another spell. Not that it mattered. You obviously would have killed him, regardless.”
“And yet, these are all apparent after the fact,” Vemire said. “I still opted to let him strike the first blow without that knowledge. Why?”
Cesta opened her mouth to answer, but found no words. She cleared her throat, pointedly looked away.
“Because he’s a heretic.”
Dreadaeleon, to his credit, did not squeak when Vemire turned a scrutinizing gaze upon him. Rather, he chose a spot just beside the Lector’s eyes to stare at while he continued.
“That is, uh, the heretics are known for reckless ideals,” Dreadaeleon said. “They expend magic—uh, sorry, Venarie—without care for the cost or discipline needed to control it. Thus, ah, you could probably almost kind of guess that he wouldn’t be able to control his spell.”
He glanced at Vemire’s eyes long enough to assure himself that, yes, Vemire was still staring at him and, yes, the Lector’s stare did still scare the piss out of him. He shot a sideways look to Cesta for support.
“Right?”
She shot him a helpless wince in
reply. Whether it was this that caused Vemire to sigh deeply or not, he didn’t know.
“Close,” the Lector said. “But ‘close’ is not good enough for what we do.” He laid a hand on each of their shoulders. “Understand that heretics are not merely ‘reckless’ or ‘undisciplined.’”
He gestured with his chin to the three carcasses nearby, where the Venarium agents were already hastily wrapping the corpses of the heretics in herb-soaked bandages that would preserve them long enough to get to the nearest tower capable of Harvesting.
“We don’t carry out such heavy sentences for character flaws,” he said. “The Venarium stands for discipline, control, and safety. It is by those laws that wizards do not destroy themselves and only by all of us adhering to those laws do we keep our Venarie from destroying each other. It is by those laws that you entered my tutelage.”
Technically, it was by twenty pieces of gold paid to Dreadaeleon’s father by means of a so-termed ‘bereavement fee’ by Venarium accounting that earned Dreadaeleon his spot in Vemire’s study.
He had been too young to recall much about his father beyond his drunken aggressions, let alone be upset about the prospect of being removed from him. And it was simply a policy to which all nations adhered that children who showed displays of magical ability be turned over to the Venarium’s care.
Absently, he found himself glancing sidelong to Cesta. Did she have a similar story, he wondered?
You should ask her, old man. He opened his mouth. Wait! Not right now. He closed it. Take it easy. Wait until you’re alone. It’s a tender subject, after all, isn’t it? Well, it wasn’t for you, but she gets so emotional . . . doesn’t she? Women tend to. That’s what the stories say. So you bring it up, easy-like, and when she bursts into tears, you—
“Apprentice.”
He nearly broke his neck with how quickly he snapped back to attention, staring up into Vemire’s gaze.
“Trust me when I say I’m loathe to enlist you in this task at all, let alone without more study on what heretics are capable of.” He glanced over his shoulder at the two Venarium agents. “But our protocol is clear. Regions that suffer a diminished Venarium presence are under different obligations.”
Dreadaeleon’s eyes suddenly widened.
You know this, old man! Quick, show her! I mean him! Both of them! Go!
“In the—”
“In the event of an incident warranting enhanced Venarium attention,” Cesta suddenly spoke over him, “and at the Lector’s discretion, all ranks concomitant and below may be mobilized for purposes of neutralizing said threat.”
“Excellent, Cesta.” Vemire nodded. “So long as you understand what we do and why we do it, I believe you’ll be all right.” He glanced at Dreadaeleon. “Mostly all right.”
Dreadaeleon winced. You probably deserved that, old man. Quicker, next time.
He whirled about, made a few forceful gestures out in the general direction of the surrounding forest.
“What information we gleaned suggests Lathrim cannot have escaped more than ten miles,” he said. “His comrades stayed behind to cover his retreat. He will be cold, wounded, and spent, likely in the northern direction. I will be taking that route. The attending concomitants will take northeast and northwest. The apprentices shall stay together and cover the east.
“Farther west lies the city of Redgate. The heretic will avoid civilized places for fear of being spotted by additional Venarium presence. In the event you should find him, be certain of your own safety before summoning the others. All orders shall cede to my judgment.”
A pointed glance over his shoulder.
“Dreadaeleon, you shall cede to Cesta’s.”
With that, the Lector turned about and began stalking north. The agents fanned out in their commanded directions.
Dreadaeleon watched their poise as they left: heads held high, arms straight and slightly raised, all fingers spread out. A very typical detection stance, all senses open for the slight, almost imperceptible fluctuations in temperature and pressure that would denote magic use.
Vemire would be able to detect recent expulsions of magical energy for up to thirteen miles, so long as he concentrated. And he was concentrating.
Which meant, of course, that he didn’t notice the rude gesture Dreadaeleon hurled with impotent vigor at his back.
But if he had . . .
Dreadaeleon kept it up until he became aware of Cesta glancing curiously at him. He felt a sudden rise of heat to his cheeks as he lowered his hands, letting the too-big sleeves of his coat fall over them.
She merely smiled at him, patted his head, and began stalking off to the east.
As though he were a particularly naughty child.
He resisted the urge to hurl the same gesture at her and instead hurried to catch up.
* * * * *
“So, the problem, as I see it, is that he doesn’t really think I’m a wizard. Like, he looks at me and he sees the coat and the boots and the fire that I can shoot out—when it works; I was having an off-day that one time when it didn’t, it wasn’t my fault—but he doesn’t see a wizard.
“But that’s his fault. They shouldn’t even let him be a Lector if he can’t see the possibilities. I learned everything I needed to, I can recite the oaths backward and forward, and I know every stance, but I can’t work when he’s always yelling at me and if he could just see that, we’d have no problem.”
Dreadaeleon took in a long, slow breath. Dreadaeleon let out a long, slow sigh.
“I just . . . he must be wrong about me. He must.”
He opened his eyes and looked up the slope of the hill.
“Right?”
From atop the hill, Cesta looked back blankly.
“I, uh, just asked if you got that thing you stepped in off your boot.”
“Oh!” He stomped his feet on the grass. “Yeah, it fell off a little ways back. Thanks.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Good.”
“Right, good.” He scratched an itch that wasn’t there at the corner of his eye. “That other stuff was just on my mind a little lately and, you know, the timing . . .”
“Yeah, no, I got that.”
“Okay, just so you . . .” He cleared his throat, made a lengthy show of looking at his feet. When the earth, unmercifully, refused to open up beneath him and end this particular moment, he spoke once more. “So, uh, do you see—I mean, detect—anything?”
Cesta closed her eyes. She drew in a breath. She raised her hands up above her shoulders, and the sleeves of her coat fell back to reveal the tone of her arms. When she opened her eyes again, a faint red light glowed behind her pupils. Slowly, like some particularly purposeful top, she rotated in place.
Dreadaeleon knew what she was seeking: the fluctuation in temperature that would reveal the use of fire or ice, the atmospheric tingle that followed an expulsion of lightning, the subtle increase of pressure that followed levitation and use of force. And because he knew what she was seeking, he knew she couldn’t find it, even before the light faded from her eyes and a frown creased her face.
“Nothing,” she muttered. A short, haggard breath. Then the light flared back to her eyes. She stomped her foot and a wave of invisible force roiled out, bending the grass and nearly knocking Dreadaeleon to his rear. “DAMN IT.”
“It’s not your fault!” He hurried on unsteady feet to join her at the top of the ridge. “It’s . . . interference or . . . or . . .” He looked out over their surroundings, his frown matching hers. “Or something.”
Between the city of Redgate to the west and the encroaching Silesrian forest to the east, the area in which Venarium Tower Fifteen—alias “Defiant”—operated resembled less a landscape and more a particularly low-key battle between two decidedly unenthused forces of nature. Here, the rolling hills of the west met the ever-reaching forest of the east, clashing in the center in a haphazard series of dense copses broken occasionally by hills rising up with lazy defiance.
T
he earth was still damp from recent rains, and gray clouds still mumbled thunderous complaints overhead, suggesting they weren’t quite done. The scent of sodden earth and plant cloyed his nostrils, made it hard to focus. That, combined with the many hills to hide behind and trees to hide within, meant that Dreadaeleon found it increasingly hard to fault Cesta’s frustration.
“It’s not your fault,” he offered. He looked overhead. “It’s the rain, I bet. All the lightning from the rains is interfering, somehow.”
“Really?” She looked at him flatly. “Lightning from the sky, completely distinct from the latent electricity we generate and amplify through Venarie, is interfering. How on earth would that even work, Dread?”
“Well, see, that’s the thing, it’s not on earth, it’s up in the sky and it’s . . . it’s somehow . . .”
Her stare might have been an ax lodged in his skull for how keenly he felt it. He looked away, rubbed absently at his arm. And she merely sighed.
Well done, old man, he chided himself. What are you thinking? That she’ll become so infatuated with your desire to explain away her failure that she’ll pull your trousers off here and now?
He coughed.
Well, he certainly wasn’t thinking that anymore.
“Forget it,” Cesta sighed. “I’m sorry, Dread. I’m just stressed.” She took off down the hill at a decisive stalk, leaving him to hurry after her. “There’s got to be a reason we can’t find him. He’s . . . he’s cheating, somehow.”
“Cheating?” Dreadaeleon asked.
“I don’t know. Masking his magic. Using some kind of device. It’s not unheard of, right?”
“I guess.” He stumbled on a rock that she had strode over. “I mean, I’ve read about that in some . . .”
Don’t say “children’s books.”
“. . . some kind of . . . something . . . somewhere.”
Nice.
“Maybe he’s using some kind of meditation technique, then,” Cesta muttered. “Hiding his power that way, containing his expulsions.”
“Really? How would that even—”
Unbound Page 36
