He could feel the falsehood vibrate in the air as she spoke. Reaching up, he patted his hair. “Bad case of bedhead?”
Selene nodded. “Satisfied now? Is there anything else you’d like to ask?”
Of course, there was. He wanted to ask about her time with Sylandrea. She had previously told him that nothing had happened. And I’m not going to violate her trust by asking now that she’s defenseless, he told himself. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I just wanted to see what it was like. Your father was very keen that I should enslave lots of people and learn to read the truth the way he does.”
“I wondered.”
“Ready to start?” he asked.
“No. I’m not.”
“You look like you’ve been up a while.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” she said quickly.
“I order you not to use magic or express your turyn in any other way,” said Will suddenly.
“I was telling you the truth about Sylandrea,” she said without warning. “I was sorely tempted, but nothing happened.”
“Are you trying to distract me?” he asked, secretly relieved.
“Yes. I don’t think I’m ready yet.”
Will stood up and finished dressing, then formed a fresh source-cage. Selene started to leave, but he spoke before she reached the door. “Don’t leave.”
She froze, but her expression was full of worry. “You said you’d listen to whatever I said.”
“And you told me not to listen,” he replied, moving forward and pushing the source-cage into position. He clenched his fist and felt it clamp tightly into place.
Selene relaxed once it was in place, as though she had accepted her fate. Looking up at him, she said, “I’m scared, but now that it’s done, I feel better, at least for now.”
They hugged and then they went about their morning as though everything was normal. Will went outside and ran through his spell drills early, since he knew that soon he wouldn’t be able to concentrate. After he had finished that, he went to the kitchen and spent some time chatting with the new cook, Jeremy. Although the man was relatively young, being just a few years older than Will, he knew his craft, and Will looked forward to learning some new tricks.
Soon enough, Selene found him.
“I think I’ve made a terrible mistake, Will,” she announced.
He nodded. “Let’s go upstairs and talk about it.”
“No! I know you’re just going to paralyze me and leave me to die. Listen to me. I’ve changed my mind.”
“I understand,” he told her.
“I feel like I’m on fire,” she said suddenly. “We’ve already tried this too many times. If you don’t let me go, it will kill me.”
He tried to guide her to the door by taking hold of her elbow, but she jerked away. “Stop, please. I’m being serious. It hurts!”
The pain in her voice was clearly audible, but he knew what he had to do, much as he disliked it. Once again, he caught her with a source-link and paralyzed her. He caught her as she fell and carried her stiff body up the stairs to the bedroom. She could no longer speak, but he could feel her terror through the link, and he was certain she must be cursing him with all her heart and soul.
The hours that followed were just as awful as the previous times, but unlike those, Selene couldn’t give up. The heart-stone enchantment bound her, body and soul, and while she had fought its control once before, the pain of doing so was actually worse than the pain of slowly dying as her turyn built up to potentially lethal levels within the source-cage.
It was sometime in the afternoon when Will felt a change in her. The pain had long since become a constant, aching burn that blotted out all other sensations, but now it began to fade. Selene’s body was drenched with sweat, and her skin was red and feverish to the touch, but it began to cool. The question, thought Will, is whether she succeeded, or this is just the first part of dying.
He moved to the bedside and leaned over to press his head against her chest, listening to the slow beat of her heart. It seemed unnaturally slow. Was it about to stop entirely? The uncertainty made him want to scream. He was tempted to put the ring on so he could ask Arrogan for his advice, but he discarded that notion when he remembered that the old man would no longer help him. If she dies then I’ve lost both of them.
Twenty minutes passed, and Selene’s skin dried. It was cool, almost cold to the touch. Will couldn’t decide if that was good or not. “Can you hear me?” he asked, but there was no response. She’s unconscious, but is it sleep or a coma?
Another hour passed, and Selene’s skin began to flush once more as she grew hot. Through the source-link, he could feel her turyn levels had begun to increase. According to what Arrogan had previously told him, that was a good thing. If she were dying it should continue to drop until she passed away. That her turyn production was rising once more meant her body was still fighting to live. She did it! He remembered a similar time when he had first achieved compression.
He had gotten his source under control, then fallen asleep, exhausted by the struggle. As he slept, he had lost control of his source, and his turyn had risen once more, bringing pain and discomfort until he had awakened and gotten it back under control. It had been more than a week before he could sleep through an entire night without losing proper control of his source.
Selene’s eyes popped open, and he felt a surge of panic from her. After a few minutes her skin lost its red color and returned to normal. Will released the source-link. “You did it!” he announced joyfully.
His exhausted wife sat up quickly, her eyes burning with rage as they settled on him. “Go fuck yourself!” she swore with more venom than Will had ever heard in her voice previously. “Take this spell off of me.”
The only spell she could be referring to was the source-cage. Will shook his head sadly. “That has to stay on.”
“I’m tired. I can’t sleep like this. If I nod off, I’ll wake up on fire again,” she complained.
Will nodded. “That’s how it is. Eventually you’ll develop unconscious control, and you’ll be able to sleep through the night. That’s why we have to keep it on until that happens.”
“I’ve already figured out how to compress my source. Just take it off and let me sleep. You can put it back on later.”
He shook his head. “That’s not how this works. If we start doing things like that this could take ages.”
Red-eyed, she glared at him. “How long do I have to have this torture spell on me?”
“A month at least, and then—”
“What?” Selene looked as though she would throttle him then and there.
“Let me finish. After a month, you should be fully adjusted to this level of compression. I’m sure we could stop there, but if you want to go for second- or third-order, you’ll have to keep it on a considerable length of time after that.”
Her hand flew towards his face almost of its own accord, but Will anticipated the blow and caught her wrist. At least it wasn’t an axe, he reminded himself, thinking of his own breaking point, when he had tried to murder Arrogan. He had planned for this moment and had considered letting her vent her anger on him, but his teacher had been right on too many things to change up the old man’s method. Selene needed to be angry. She needed the emotion to inspire her stubbornness, her desire to prove him wrong. The next month would be difficult enough; if he coddled her, it would be harder still.
“Do that again and I’ll have to paralyze you once more,” he warned.
Fury was written on her face, and her words were laced with bitterness. “Why not just order me? I’m just a slave now. Isn’t that right?”
Will gave her a condescending look. “The only orders I’ll give you are these. You may use no magic and you may not attempt to remove the source-cage. Other than that, you’ll also need to participate in any and all exercises I give you.”
“Exercises?”
“Just learning to keep your source compressed isn’t enough. Once
you’ve got that mastered, you’ll still be exhausted all the time, because your body will be starved for turyn. In time, it will adjust, but to speed that process you have to train your body. You’ll learn to survive with less, and gradually you’ll also start to absorb turyn from the environment.”
“That’s ludicrous!” she spat. “How long will that take?”
“I told you. A month for this compression, then we move on to the second and the third. The length of time it takes between each depends on how well you adapt, but I’m guessing that you’re in for a rough six or seven months—at least.”
Her anger seemed to fade, and desperation took its place. “Just take the source-cage off this one time! Let me get a good night’s sleep and then you can start torturing me for months and months. Please.”
“You know what happens in the spring. We have nine months at most,” Will reminded her. “I have to make sure you’re finished before I have to leave.” A snarl rose in her throat, and Will paralyzed her before she could attack him again. “Get some sleep,” he told her. “I’ll be right here, watching over you as you sleep and wake and sleep again.”
The only response he got was another surge of anger through the link.
Chapter 6
Selene’s first week was pure misery, much as he’d expected, and by the end of it she still wasn’t sleeping through the night. She had to survive on short stretches of an hour or so before waking again to get her source back under control. Sleep deprivation didn’t make her any more pleasant to be around, either. Especially when Will informed her it was time to begin exercising.
“I still can’t sleep,” she complained. “You expect me to run around the house? Are you daft?”
“You don’t need sleep to be able to exercise,” he responded calmly.
“Listen, you mentally deficient ape, I barely have enough energy to walk across the room. I’m not about to run around,” she snarled.
“You don’t have any energy because your body is starved for turyn. Exercise will help force it to adapt. It isn’t pleasant, but it’s necessary.”
“I’m not doing it.”
Will was grateful for the heart-stone enchantment now. When he’d been at that stage of his training, Arrogan had motivated him with beatings, frequently administered in sessions that were thinly disguised as martial exercises with the staff. He doubted he would have had been able to do the same with Selene. “Get up and follow me outside. That’s an order.”
Furious, she did so, her body obeying his commands despite her defiance. He watched her carefully as they went down the stairs. Being turyn starved alone was enough to make her clumsy, and sleep deprivation only made matters worse. He caught her wrist when she stumbled and was rewarded with a hiss that promised retribution.
“Focus all your attention on what you’re doing. In your current state, you can’t allow yourself to be distracted, so if you’re walking, keep your mind on what your feet are doing. The same goes for any physical activity.”
Selene gave him an acid stare. Once they were outside, she followed his instructions despite obviously not desiring to cooperate. She had jogged for only a couple of minutes with him before stumbling and nearly planting her face against the ground. “This is impossible!”
“You can do it,” he said encouragingly. “But you have to focus all your attention on your movements. You can’t spare any thoughts for other things.”
“I was thinking about what I’m going to do to you when I’m free of this damned enchantment,” she threatened. “But even if I don’t think about that, it’s still impossible. I just don’t have the turyn. My body feels like it’s made of lead.”
He shook his head. “You don’t need turyn to move. You only think you do. Turyn makes it easier, makes thinking easier, but it isn’t necessary. You just have to keep your mind only on what you’re doing.”
She was already moving awkwardly, unable to resist the command, but she bit back, “How would you know?”
“I’ve been through this,” he reminded her, which brought another growl from her direction. Will sighed. It was going to be a long day. “No more complaints,” he ordered.
He tried to approximate the amount of exercise that Arrogan had forced on him when he had been going through the same part of his training, but it was difficult, as there were a number of confounding factors. The first of those was the fact that memory is an inherently flawed faculty. His memory of those days had been colored by the misery he had endured. A second factor was that Selene was a few years older than he had been, and while she was in good shape, she didn’t have the same physical endurance he had had.
Will discovered all this after the second hour of exercise. Since Selene was compelled to obey by the heart-stone enchantment, her body continued to force itself onward even after she probably should have collapsed. He’d made the mistake of ordering her to stop complaining without thinking through the consequences, and subsequently he didn’t realize she was in trouble until her body folded up and she began vomiting onto the ground.
Her arms and legs were still fighting to try and get her back on her feet. “Rest,” shouted Will, finally realizing what he had done to her. Selene’s face was cold and clammy, though she was sweating profusely. Heat exhaustion, he noted with chagrin. Just a little more and she might have slipped into heat stroke. Summoning a water urn from the limnthal, he began using the water to wet parts of her clothing. Then he summoned a towel and soaked it before wiping her face and head with it.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I shouldn’t have told you not to complain. You couldn’t even tell me what you were going through.”
She was too worn out to reply, but she turned her eyes away, not wanting to meet his gaze. Will didn’t know if that was because she was embarrassed, or whether she blamed him. His guilt tended to make him want to interpret it as the latter. Pushing his feelings aside, he lifted her and carried her into the house and up to bed.
After he had undressed her and made her as comfortable as possible, he retreated to the study and took out the Ring of Vile and Unspeakable Knowledge, studying it in the palm of his hand. I might have killed her with my inexperience, he thought. Slipping the ring onto his finger, he activated the limnthal, bracing himself for Arrogan’s assault.
As expected, it came instantly, but he weathered the storm until his grandfather gave up. “I need your advice,” he said.
“Go to hell.”
“I know you’ve written me off as a lost cause, but I’m trying to keep from killing Selene. You might be able to help.”
The ring didn’t reply.
“I got the heart-stone enchantment from Lognion and I used it on her, as I told you I would,” said Will, before explaining the rest of what he had done over the past month. When he had finished relaying the information, he brought up his current concern. “When I went through the first compression, I remember you forcing me to exercise almost every waking hour, but she nearly died after just two and it isn’t even that hot outside. Obviously, she can’t handle that much, but as healthy as she is, I don’t understand why this happened so quickly.”
He was answered by an empty silence, so he added, “Please. This is for her, not me.”
“You’re a fucking moron.”
“Duly noted,” said Will. “I agree with you.”
“The problem is your memory. All you remember is being tortured constantly with exercise.”
“You’re saying I remember it wrong?”
“Obviously. I only made you exercise for an hour or two every day, spread out over several short sessions. You spent most of your time trying to sleep when you weren’t eating or exercising, which is to say most of the day.”
Will blinked. It had seemed much worse to him. “Really? Just an hour or two?”
“I’m sure it seemed like an eternity to you, but I was doing my best to keep you healthy and whole. The main point of the exercise at this point is just to keep her muscles from atrophying until she
stops lying in bed most of the day.”
“You told me it was to help my body adapt to not having enough turyn.”
“That’s partly true, but without turyn she can’t do much.”
“Didn’t you say physical exercise required attention more than turyn?”
“Well, that’s an old platitude, but it isn’t entirely true. Until she adapts and starts absorbing environmental turyn, she’s going to be very limited in what she can do. Without the proper energy, her body’s internal regulating mechanisms are going to be all kinds of screwed up, everything from her breathing, to her appetite, to heat regulation. You need to be very careful with her.”
“Will you help me through this?” asked Will hesitantly. “She doesn’t deserve to suffer because of my inexperience.”
“For her sake, and since I obviously can’t take your body,” said Arrogan reluctantly.
“I won’t teach anyone else the heart-stone enchantment,” promised Will. “Once I kill Lognion, the secret will die with me.”
“Assuming you don’t die in this stupid war you signed yourself up for.”
Will hoped Arrogan’s warning wasn’t prescient. He let Selene rest for the remainder of the day and kept her exercise routine exceedingly light for the next two weeks. He felt a sense of relief when she finally began sleeping normally, and her mood improved considerably from that point on. It was somewhere around a month and a half after the first compression that Selene seemed to be mostly back to normal.
She still claimed to be tired, but it was obvious that she felt better, and Will could see that her overall turyn level appeared normal, despite the reduced glow from the spell on her ring. Since the turyn wasn’t coming from her source, he knew she had begun unconsciously absorbing environmental turyn, or as Arrogan would say it, she was a true wizard at last.
“Congratulations,” he told her one morning as they sat in the front parlor enjoying their tea.
Selene looked at him suspiciously. “What fresh hell are you planning to submit me to?”
Will laughed. “I’m honestly congratulating you. You’re a wizard now.”
Disciple of War (Art of the Adept Book 4) Page 5
