“Well, then, what do you think it is?”
She whirled on him with a snarl. He cringed away, rubbed at the back of his head.
“I . . . I don’t know, I guess. I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Hadn’t really thought about it,” she repeated.
“Well, I mean, we’re just apprentices. No one really expects us to find him.” He dared a glance up at her. “Right?”
If her stare had been like an ax lodged in his skull, her scowl was more like a vise tightening about his neck. He averted his gaze as if he were looking upon a profane idol and not merely a pretty, angry girl. But it did him no good. He could feel her—the tension in her jaw, the tremble of her fists—as she leveled her ire at him.
“That,” she hissed, “is why the Lector doesn’t take you seriously, Dreadaeleon. You don’t understand what it is you have.”
Ah, look alive, old man. She’s about to recognize your skill!
“You were given a gift, a power that elevates you above the rest of humanity. Flame comes to you with a thought, lightning with a flick of your fingers. You possess tremendous power.”
He puffed up a little.
Here it comes.
“All of which is wasted because you also possess the mind of a child.”
He paused.
Does . . . does she mean you’re carefree or . . .
“Do you not grasp what we’re doing here? Did you hear nothing Lector Vemire said?”
Ah, no, she just thinks you’re stupid. Bad luck.
“You didn’t. If you did, you would realize that there are no expectations. Your common barkneck farmer expects lightning to stay in the sky and rocks to stay on the ground, and we’re the ones that shoot it out of our fingers and hurl boulders with a thought.” She stomped the earth. “We’re not children with chores, Dreadaeleon. We are wizards. We make the rules. It’s up to us to enforce them.”
Her eyes were not burning with the magical light. She didn’t exude so much as a bit of Venarie. She didn’t need to. Dreadaeleon’s legs felt weak and his breath felt heavy, just as surely as they would if she were using her power to crush him into the earth.
Vemire’s disapproval had always been something easier to contend with, if not outright ignore. The Lector’s perpetual glowers, frequent sighs, and occasional chastisements were a constant in Dreadaeleon’s life, a weight he had learned to shoulder. But Cesta—Cesta who never was at a loss for an answer, Cesta who never assumed the wrong stance for a spell, Cesta who was already taller than him and looked down on him—had words that made him feel like he was bleeding: a bright red warmth that washed over him, permeated him.
And it did not go away when she stopped looking at him.
“We’ll do it the barkneck way, then.” She pointed down the hill to a nearby copse of trees. “It was raining, so he’s probably seeking shelter. We can look for likely sites within our designated search radius and go from there.”
A moment. She cast a glance over her shoulder at him. Her eyes were no longer quite so hard, her voice no longer quite so sharp.
“All right?” she asked softly.
He nodded at her weakly. “Yeah. All right.”
And together, they set off down the hill.
* * * * *
Overhead, the sky had a one-sided conversation with them. Heedless of their ignoring it, the gray clouds muttered with distant thunder, loosed the occasional chuckle of rain, let the wind sigh. And though he was cold and wet, Dreadaeleon did not mind the noise.
Largely because he couldn’t hear it over his own thoughts.
Well done, old man. She dressed you down like a six-copper prostitute, and you simply stood there and took it. What were you thinking, doing that? That she’d be impressed with your ability to look at your feet and whimper? This’ll get back to Vemire, you know. She’ll tell him you were too cowardly to even stand up for yourself. Should have said something to her then.
He looked up, glared at the back of her head. He felt his fists tighten, his jaw clench.
Should say something to her now.
And within him, something began to boil. Something deep and solid and red-hot. Not a fire—too thick, too real for that. Nor blood—too bright and wild for it to be blood. This flowed into him like smoke, filled every vein down to the tips of his fingers and clouded his mind.
You should show her, old man. Show her you’re not afraid of her or of Vemire or of anyone else. Show her that you’re made for greater things, that she’s as blind as Vemire is. Show them all, every last stuffed coat in the Venarium, what you’re made of and—
“Look.”
He blinked.
He looked.
And he wasn’t quite sure when they had arrived here.
The trees crowded closer together here, their eaves helpfully leaning out to block the worst of the rain, permitting only a few determined drizzles in to sodden the needle-and-leaf-strewn earth. Trees long-fallen leaned against hillsides, forming a number of natural shelters.
One of which had the remains of a campfire lingering under it.
“He was here!” Cesta’s gait had a decidedly enthusiastic spring in it as she rushed to the fire. “The heretic! Lathrim!” She looked to Dreadaeleon, her eyes wide and smile wider. “He was here!”
“Well, maybe,” Dreadaeleon replied, scratching his head. “It’s not like he’s the only traveler. Someone else could have been by.” At her blank stare, he forced a weak smile onto his face. “But it’s . . . probably him? Most likely?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Look here.” She pointed to a tiny plume of smoke rising from the blackened remains of the fire. “The embers are still a little warm. Whoever was here couldn’t have been here more than a day ago.”
What, she’s an outdoorsman now too? Outdoorswoman. Sorry.
“The other heretics were discovered last night,” she said, grinning ear-to-ear. “He had to have been here, Dreadaeleon. It had to have been him.”
“Okay, we can send for Vemire, then.” He reached into his coat pocket, felt the corner of a sheet of paper prick his finger. “I’ve got the parchment he gave us to—”
“Before we do that,” Cesta interjected, “let’s make sure our situational knowledge is complete.” She shook her head. “We can’t summon the Lector out here and just point to a few embers, right?”
“Well, yes. I mean, no. That’s why I said that it only might be—”
“Good!” She shot him an enthusiastic nod. “Fan out. Find evidence of his passing and we’ll see if we can’t figure out which way he went.”
Whatever other objections he might have had—such as the fact that heretics were presumably more advanced in power than a pair of apprentices and, thus, assumedly quite dangerous—went unspoken. Cesta, who threw herself to the earth in a search for tracks with a rabbit-like enthusiasm, was clearly not listening.
Not that it matters, he thought as he turned around and began his own search. When has she ever listened to you, old man? She’s never once shown an interest in you, has she? He paused, blinked. But then, when was the last time you asked anything about her? Do you even know anything about her? She’s got a birthmark right above her left asscheek, but you can’t let her know you know that. No one must know you know that. What else? She’s driven, determined, focused—
Focus, old man. That’s what you’re here for, remember. You’re an agent of the Venarium, hunting heretics for the order. It’s important that you study everything, every log, every tree, every . . .
“Rock.”
It was, indeed, a rock that loomed before him. A tall, malformed cylinder, nothing particularly spectacular about it.
Except for the scorch mark that blackened its gray face.
He reached out, felt soot come off on his fingers. He sniffed at it curiously. Warm, recent, and accompanied by a very familiar odor. Flame of a magical nature, born of a person’s body heat, always had a very thick, heady aroma, not quite as clean as
natural flames.
He glanced around, saw other traces: a sheen of frost upon the bark of a nearby tree, a branch hanging half-severed, the new wood beneath blackened at the edges by electricity.
Someone had been expelling magic here. Clearly, not enough to do any real damage beyond a few alterations to the landscape. But it was evidence enough, just as Cesta had been hoping for.
But why? He scratched his chin. Heretics reject the law of the Venarium, but not the laws of magic. Using magic just to damage a few trees and rocks would serve no purpose but to expend energy and exhaust the wizard. There’s literally no reason to do it.
A sudden chill coursed through him. His skin prickled as the temperature dropped severely. He drew in a gasp and tasted cold on his tongue.
Unless, of course, as bait for a trap.
He saw the frost first as he whirled about, a cloud of white mist haloing the top of a fallen log. And burning through them, a pair of eyes alight with a red glow, piercing through the veil of cold and scowling.
But not at him.
“Cesta!” he screamed.
Across the clearing, she looked up at him, then followed his gaze to the top of the log. Her cry of alarm shifted clumsily into words of power, hands thrown up and sending the air before her shimmering with an invisible shield. Sloppy words, weak stance, hasty spell.
It was hardly a surprise that the spear-sized icicle that slammed into her sent her flying.
The tails of her coat fluttered like a bird’s wounded wings as she went sailing, but the air was thankfully unstained by any crimson. The icicle, then, had merely shattered her shield and not pierced her flesh.
That’s good, Dreadaeleon thought.
“Apprentices?” a deep voice asked.
And that is not.
A figure, tall and slim, leaped from the top of the log. His descent slowed unnaturally as he fell, so that his boots did not so much as crunch a single leaf when he landed. Adjusting the cuffs of a clean coat, he stepped forward and regarded Dreadaeleon coolly through clear, bright eyes.
Admittedly, Lathrim did not look like what Dreadaeleon was expecting.
His skin was pale and clean, his black hair unwashed but kept in a neat braid, and his trimmed beard betrayed only a few unruly strands. His angular face showed no gauntness or hunger. And while his eyes bore dark circles from sleeplessness beneath them, they were not the bloodshot, wild stare that he had seen on the heretics who had earlier burned.
“The Venarium cannot possibly be so shameless as to send children after me,” he said, shaking his head. “I was hoping to lure Vemire out, not his pets.”
Ah, so that’s why he was expending such minute amounts of energy, Dreadaeleon thought. Only a Lector would be able to detect such trace amounts. Go on, old man, tell him he can’t be so clever if mere children figured out his scheme.
That would have been a good thing to say, he knew.
Of course, it was not what he said.
“B-by order of the V-Venarium,” he stammered, “of T-Tower Defiant, I command you . . . you to . . .”
“And they’ve already drilled that nonsense into you, have they? I suppose the first thing one trains a dog to do is bark.” Lathrim shook his head and turned away from Dreadaeleon. “I’ve no interest in fighting the Venarium’s thralls, boy.”
“N-no,” Dreadaeleon said, shaking his head. “I have to . . . to take you in. I swore an oath.”
“You swore servitude.” Lathrim waved a hand, dismissive, as he began to stalk off into the underbrush. “I pity you, boy, but not enough to humor you. Now go to tend to your fellow dog, she looks almost as sad as—”
The heretic’s voice was cut off by the sudden bolt of cobalt electricity that arced over his head. It struck the branch of an overhanging tree, severing it neatly and sending it to the earth, smoking. He glanced at the fallen branch for a moment before looking behind him at the boy in the too-big coat, an overlarge sleeve billowing around a skinny arm that ended in a pair of smoking fingers.
“I’m not a child,” Dreadaeleon said, his eyes bursting into light. “I am a wizard.”
To his ears, that sounded pretty good. Strong, forceful; admittedly, he probably would have sounded more forceful if his spell had come even remotely close to striking its mark.
As it was, the toll from the magic spent had already torn itself out of his body. He felt his legs weaken, his breath become heavy, a sheen of sweat appear on his forehead. He wasn’t ready for a spell of that magnitude; even a clumsy show of force had taken too much out of him.
But that feeling, that wispy power that boiled angrily inside him, came flowing back into him. It bid his legs to hold steady, his breath to keep going, his eyes to burn, and his mind to reject any thought of retreat.
“As you like.”
Lathrim made a slow bow. Then shot up, a single palm outstretched. He spoke a single word. And, in a single moment, a gout of flame erupted from his hand and roiled toward Dreadaeleon in a cackling blaze.
To his credit, “hurling oneself to the side in a blind panic” did not exactly qualify as “retreating.” But the tax on Dreadaeleon’s body made it hard for him to scramble to his feet; he felt smaller and weaker than ever before. And when he clambered up, that sense of power that bolstered him began to dissipate like so much smoke.
The flames retreated back into Lathrim’s palm with another word, leaving behind only a black char line where the flames had eaten away the leaves. No stray flames or sparks had remained.
Son of a bitch, Dreadaeleon thought. He can control his fire. This is too much, old man. You have to get out of here. You have to find Vemire. You have to . . .
He forced that thought silent. Cesta was still here, with this madman, this heretic. Whatever he had to do was irrelevant. Whatever he was going to do was all that mattered.
“Don’t think I enjoy this.”
Of course, at the moment, what he was going to do seemed to fall along the lines of “die horribly, possibly while crying.”
“You deserved better than the life the Venarium promised you, boy. You deserved better than to be turned into their slave and sent to die on a mad errand.” Lathrim advanced toward him, palm still outstretched and glowing with flame. His eyes burned brightly. “Take some solace, at least, that the ones who follow you will be safer for the example you’ll make.”
His body screamed at him to run; he ignored it. His heart screamed at him to panic; he ignored that too. A wizard’s power was in his mind, his thought, that which elevated him above the common barkneck.
Think, old man, think.
But any spell he could have called to mind powerful enough to kill this heretic would be too big to control, and the toll would kill him besides. He looked at Lathrim, transfixed by the fire that sparked to life in the heretic’s palm. It was only by chance that his eyes drifted to the earth, where the fallen tree branch lay.
And it was only by fear that he acted quickly.
A word, shouted. He reached out with an invisible force, sending the air rippling past Lathim. The heretic glanced at it, unimpressed. But he was not aiming for the heretic.
That unseen force seized the tree branch, surely as it had seized the carcass earlier. And with another word and a fierce gesture, Dreadaeleon pulled.
Sloppy. Hasty. An ugly, ugly spell.
But it didn’t need to be pretty.
The branch came hurtling up behind Lathrim. Its jagged tip found the heretic’s leg, pierced his thigh. His concentration broke in a wail of pain as Lathrim fell to one knee. Now his eyes bore all the wild agony of the heretics that had come before him and they were fixed on Dreadaeleon.
He spoke a word. He raised his palm. Fire burst from his hand . . .
. . . and was extinguished just as rapidly.
Another word, spoken louder, drowning out his own. The air rippled around him as another force crashed against him and sent him flying. With a shout, he flew across the sky, leaving only a few embers behind as he cra
shed against a nearby tree trunk and lay still.
Dreadaeleon looked up as Cesta came staggering toward him, breathing heavily, barely standing from the exertion. And yet, she had enough to look at Dreadaeleon and grin broadly.
“Good work, Dread,” she gasped. “Good work.”
And that little ego boost was just enough to keep him from collapsing over and pissing himself from exhaustion.
* * * * *
There you go, old man. One fold after the other, left over center, just like they told you. How’d the rhyme go? “Once for the neck, twice for the wing?” No, that doesn’t even rhyme. Just . . . oh, that doesn’t look good at all, does it? Well, just fold that part like . . . yeah, and then do that part like . . . ah! And there you go!
He looked down at the tiny amalgamation of paper and blood sitting upon the palm of his hand. In this light, as the sun set behind the gray clouds overhead, it looked a little like a bird, he supposed. A bird that had been in a terrible accident, anyway.
But whatever deficiencies his paper-folding skills might have had, he at least got all the important parts down: the parchment had two wings, a head, and critically, the smeared stain of blood uncovered by his various clumsy folds.
He sighed. It would have to do.
He spoke a word to it—the only word it was designed to understand. The blood began to glow, revealing strange sigils painted onto the paper in the red life. With a sudden stir, the paper bird’s wings began to twitch. Clumsily, it took flight, lifting off his hand and rising past the eaves of the trees overhead and into the sky.
Dreadaeleon watched its little red glow as it sailed high, until it finally went too far for him to track and winked out of existence. He was not worried, though. The little creation would head unerringly toward the source of its blood sigil—the Lector himself—and deliver itself and the message it carried.
Depending on how far Vemire had actually traveled, it could be anywhere from one to three hours.
Which made Dreadaeleon smile.
That gave him at least a pretty good chance of coming out of this situation without being burned alive.
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