She’d traveled to Cormbey for a rare herb that Granny Freithe needed. She’d lingered to learn a spell from the apothecary. Freithe had warned her only to watch her eyes, so Corrie had kept her magick tamped down. But the man hadn’t worked a spell. It was a trick with nitre and potash, and he’d added sulfur without telling her. While she was blinded and coughing, he looped both her hands with spell-binding cords and caught her. The cords sucked away her power, leaving her empty, nothing.
Like now.
She shuddered.
Sverr nudged her hands with a metal cup. “Come back.”
Corrie shook her head to dispel the memory and cradled the hot cup in her cold hands. The steam warmed her face before she sipped cautiously.
“You were deep in thought, Lyse Oyne.”
“Don’t call me that. I don’t know what it means.”
And he didn’t tell her. “Isn’t that wet shert cold?” When she only stared at it, he gave her another of those easy grins that broke the iciness of his eyes. “You can take it off and spread it by the fire. It will quickly dry.”
“And put on what?”
“You don’t have to cover up for me.”
She blushed then was angry because she’d blushed. “I’m not giving you any free looks.”
He pouted again.
She scooted around and gave him her back while she finished the coffee, almost too hot to drink but so wonderful. It warmed her core. Too soon she reached the dregs. By then, the cold air of the frosty morning had leeched all heat from the drink. She stared at the swirl of grounds at the bottom. Freithe could have read her future in the pattern.
“I’ll have it back.” He reached over her shoulder and took it.
Corrie started. She hadn’t heard him come so close behind her. But he didn’t taunt her. After slinging out the dregs, he refilled the cup from his waterskin, dropped in dark grounds, then set it to steep on a flat rock nearly in the flames. He watched it avidly, and she realized he’d given her the first cup, as courteous as any—. She stopped that thought.
Idly she scratched her forearm. Her bladder clamored for attention. “I need to use the jacks. Will you take the cords off?”
His gaze didn’t lift from the heating water. “You’ll put them on when you come back?” Corrie started to lie. He saw it, somehow. “Don’t lie. Your chances narrow when you lie.”
“Tending my business will be difficult.”
“You managed before, didn’t you? When Hardraste’s men captured you the first time?”
“I didn’t stay clean then.”
“Then, when I want people to believe you’re my prisoner on the way to Hardraste Keep, I need you to look messy and miserable. Manage.”
She stood up and shook her skirts out. “I don’t like you.”
The fool Norther grinned at the comment. Yet when she stomped toward the trees, he stopped her. “Good bush is that way,” and he nodded to her left.
The trees behind him were better cover, but she doubted he’d let her get that far. The last thing she wanted was him standing over her while she took care of privy business. The bush did look thick enough to offer some privacy.
She’d only taken a half-dozen more steps when he called, “Before you hare off, think about who you’ll have to convince to get those cords off you.”
“I worked that out, thank you.” A coughing spasm ruined her bitter irony. No one powered would touch the cords and risk nullifying their own magick. Those unpowered would see an opportunity to collect Hardraste’s bounty. She stomped away.
Sverr whistled up his horse while she acquainted herself with the bush. The placid gelding followed the charger and waited its turn to be saddled. Corrie watched through the sparse branches of the bush and wished the gelding would nip at him or step on his foot or swish his face with its tail.
It didn’t.
Skirts back in place, she stared at the creek’s meander, marked by the sinuous line of scrubby cedars. She plucked at her still-wet shirt, icy against her skin.
The sun had lifted its crown over the distant Raikon Mountains. It pinked the sky’s mare’s tail clouds. Dried grass heads swayed on thick stalks. A few birds left off their dawn chorus and swooped out, testing the frosty air. Winter had stripped the leafy trees. Snow had dusted the ridgetop.
A solid step and a creak of leather warned her only a breath before the Norther spoke. “You’re taking too long.”
She didn’t look at him. After scratching her arm, she shifted her elbows back to rest her hands at her waist. “Are we in a hurry?” A memory surfaced. She looked over her shoulder. “Are you in a hurry? How many troops did that captain say were looking for you?”
“More than I want. Come on then.”
She waited a bit, staring at the skim of snow, then trailed after him, docile as the dull gelding until the stick she needed to step over suddenly moved. She faltered then backed up. Brown snake, with scales that rippled black when it moved. Poisonous. Even marsh-raised as she was, she knew the dangerous creatures of the dry steppe, and the dust snake was one of the deadliest.
It lifted its head. Seeking prey. The tongue flicked out, scented the air. The arrow-point head turned to her.
Corrie faltered back another step—then lost her breath completely when the dust snake dropped its head to slither toward her.
She retreated, stumbling a little. The snake did not increase its pace, but it gained slowly, ever so slowly. Why is it tracking me?
Then metal flashed. The snake writhed, coiled on itself, wrapping round and round. Its contortions unseated the knife that had pinned its neck. The arrow-point head lifted. The mouth opened, exposing fangs—and Sverr came in with a second knife. He feinted with the blade. The dust snake tracked the visible danger and missed the swipe of the handaxe that stunned it. Sverr followed in with the knife, pinning the dangerous head. He chopped once.
When he straightened, the body and the tail were writhing, twisting. The head lay separate and bloody.
Corrie’s knees went watery.
He grasped her arm. “Don’t faint on me now.”
The pain of his grip shot adrenaline through her. Corrie steadied and pulled free.
“That’s twice.”
“Wh-what?”
“That’s twice I’ve saved you. Back at the inn and now. Three times when I count helping you escape villagers angry that their inn burned down.”
“They—.” She stopped to take a breath. “They weren’t angry,” she managed, determined to rebut him.
“Would have been, as soon as they found you. So, you owe me three times.”
Did he rile her deliberately? “Twice,” she retorted. “You get no credit for the villagers. And I saved you from that troop.”
“So you did.” He grinned, unfazed by her retort and his tussle with the dust snake.
He did rile her deliberately. Norther swine. “I could have killed the snake myself if these cords weren’t on me.”
“No, they’re not coming off yet.”
“Norther swine,” she said aloud.
“Come on. I want my coffee.”
It had brewed so long she hoped it was strong enough to choke him.
She trailed after, keen-eyed for any more snakes. The encounter left her deflated, and when she looked up and around, her view of the steppe offered no energy. Besides scrubby bushes and a twisting line of trees with barren limbs, the steppe offered little cover. The land rolled gently in a false shield, for any passage through the dried grasses would leave a blazed trail. The wooded ridges were too far. As long as the cords bound her power, she could not create her own cover. And she did not want to be dependent on a stranger for their removal.
She felt like using Sverr’s favorite curse.
He fell to his coffee like a man starving. Maybe he was. Her stomach was certainly empty.
She crouched, peasant-style, on the other side of the fire. Rather than watch him enjoy his coffee, she studied the knots he’d bound her with. H
e’d cinched the cords too tightly for her to twist a hand and get her fingers on the knots—even if she wanted to risk the searing pain that had wared her off escape when the apothecary had bound her. The knots looked simple and not drawn tight. She attacked them with her teeth.
“That won’t help.”
Corrie glared at him then munched around the leather. It hadn’t worked in the prison wagon either, but she still bit at the topmost knot.
She had hated Hardraste’s dungeons, but the prison wagon had been worse. Freedom just beyond wood-stick bars, lashed together with thin rope. Without guards on watch or with power at ready, she could have escaped easily. Even the least of them could have. Six of them. They all burned their fingers trying to get the cords off. As soon as they loosened the knots, the braided cords had heated. The burn felt more like a scald than dry heat. The guards who checked the cords daily, slackening the knots before re-tying them, didn’t awaken that burning block.
Corrie had resorted to twisting her hands, trying to slip out of the copper-threaded leather braid. When they reached Hardraste Keep, her wrists were bleeding. Like her, the old man had never given up. One of Prime Enstigorr’s pet wizards had overseen the cords’ removal and then imprisoned them in dank, dark cells, the very stones infused with the same spells that sapped power away. I’ll get us out, Corrie had sworn. It had taken her weeks, but she had succeeded.
“Getting the leather wet will only make it shrink as it dries,” Sverr warned her.
She spat out the taste of the leather. She wanted to cry. Her eyes burned too much.
“Do you think the spell binding you is in the leather or the metal?”
She glared at him. “Are you talking philosophy now, Norther?”
“Are you refusing to consider what is actually binding you, Souther?”
Against her will, her mind twirled over the question. Leather would eventually rot—or shrink if it got wet. The metal thread could be rebraided over and over again. Surely there were not endless binding cords but ones used over and over. So, “the metal?”
“Magick is organic, not inanimate. It could be the leather. It could be both.”
“How will you find out?”
He sipped his coffee. “I can’t. I don’t wield power. You do.”
She scowled at him. “Enstigorr’s prison cells were bespelled. I could never determine if the bane spells were in the iron bars or the very stones surrounding us.”
“Why do you call them ‘bane spells’?”
“That’s what the old man with us called them. He said the spells controlled witch and wizard alike.”
“Did the Prime and his wizards ever come into the cells?”
“Sometimes. Rarely. They never worked magick there.”
“Metal or leather and metal or stone. The only commonality is metal.”
Corrie stared at the cords. Even if she bit through the leather and unraveled it, the copper wire would still be twisted around her wrists.
“We have stories of magicked metal in Thulestreigon,” he offered, giving the name of his homeland. Most simply called it Norther land.
“You mean, talismans?” On the words, something caught in her throat. She coughed which brought on more coughs. When the spasm passed, she hunched over her bound wrists and sucked in air. She’d inhaled more smoke from the tavern fire than she’d realized. She pulled her knees up, rested her chin on them, and looked at Sverr.
While another cup of coffee heated on the flat stone, he studied the knife he’d used to sever the dust snake’s head. After cleaning the blade, he pulled out a whetstone and applied the knife edge to it. The flash and the sound soothed her. The leather braid bit into her cheek, and she considered that long blade. If a wire weren’t woven into the cord, she could saw through it.
He sharpened the hand-axe then slipped a leather hood over the sharp edge and shoved it into his pack. Then he caught her gaze. “Whatever you’re contemplating, don’t. Others have tried and come off the worst.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“I know what I’d be thinking.”
He’d be good-looking if she didn’t hate him. All ice and fire. Eyes like winter, his hair golden, his bones like blizzard-carved rock. “Who are you going to sell me to?” she asked, not lifting her head from her knees.
He tucked the whetstone into a pouch then picked up the tin cup. He blew across the coffee, sipped and blew again. “I’m not going to sell you. Since you escaped the dungeons of Hardraste Keep, you should know how to get back in.”
Her head snapped upright, and she gaped. Was he insane? He looked sane, but what he said was deranged. “I’m not going back into those dungeons.”
“Even if I pay you?”
“Take these spell cords off.”
“If you’re the witch those men thought you were, the witch who burnt that inn, you can get them off yourself. More coffee?”
“The spell cords sap my power.”
“The cords don’t drain power. They block it. It’s like damming a river. What happens when a river’s dammed?”
“The water stops.”
He shook his head, as patient as if he taught a child. “Who had your training, Lyse Oyne? They did a foul job. Think.”
She thought. She coughed while she thought and held her hands to her chest afterwards because it hurt to breathe. And then she knew. “While the cords block the flow of power one way, they haven’t blocked it another way.”
“The witch deserves a reward. Coffee?”
This time she accepted. She dropped her knees and scooted closer, but when she reached for the cup, he held it back. “Hot,” he warned.
She gathered up her skirt hem to wrap around the cup. He handed it over, his gaze on her knees. Her scowl only brought out his grin. She blew on the steaming coffee and tried to ignore him.
He looked disappointed when she took the cup in one hand and dropped her skirt, more disappointed when she stood and tugged the fabric until it covered her legs. She offered him the last coffee. He drank, looked at the grounds, sipped a couple of times, then slung it out. He kicked dirt onto the fire, smothering it.
“Want to wash in the stream?”
Puzzled at the offer, Corrie followed. What had happened to keeping her messy and miserable?
She didn’t understand Sverr. He intended to use her, taking advantage of the windfall. He intended to break into the dungeons, likely to free someone there. Wizard? Witch? He knew things of power she had no inkling of. His question of who had taught her had stung.
Was it a Norther in the dungeons? Corrie had only known the four people locked in with her, the ones remaining from those who had shared the prison wagon, the ones she had vowed to help escape. She had kept that vow—even though Greiss died, his lungs infected by the damp. Enstigorr had kept the five of them separate and treated her differently from those four, especially when she unexpectedly didn’t bend to his spells. Now, Enstigorr she truly hated. Sverr she didn’t like. She wasn’t to hate yet.
How did he know spell-binding cords only dammed one use of power? His analogy to water made sense. Wizards and wielders funneled power through their hands. How else could they manipulate it? Their toes? She stared at her feet and silently giggled at the image.
The shallow creek was icy. The ground it crossed had lost all warmth. The first snows on the steppe were imminent. She stared at the sky bluer than blue, cloudless.
“Come on,” he urged, as if she were deliberately loitering.
When Corrie stomped back to camp, she grimaced at the brown gelding that would carry her today. The gelding had the wide bones needed for hauling a mailed rider. She had stretched muscles for hours ahead of her. She wished Sverr had taken a slender palfrey instead of the guards’ horses.
She didn’t realize her groan was audible until he straightened from checking the girth. “What?” Then he nodded. “Sore already? We’ll walk some today. Give the horses a rest.”
She scowled at his
care of the horses.
“You frown at me a lot, Lyse Oyne.”
She wanted to ask what he kept calling her. Norther words she didn’t know. Instead, she put her foot into his linked hands. “You deserve to get a lot of frowns.”
“True. It would help if you thought more.”
“It would help if you shared more.”
“True.” He tossed her up.
Corrie didn’t remember until she slung her leg across that her skirt would hike up. She tugged at the fabric, her attempts to conceal her bared legs hampered by the spell cords. She couldn’t even get her knees covered.
He took in the sight. And grinned. And put a hand on her ankle.
“What are you—?” She clamped her mouth shut when he pulled her foot from the stirrup. He fiddled with the straps then slipped her foot back into the brace. She sighed with the relief to her overstretched muscles.
“Sorry.” He walked around to take care of the other stirrup. “I just threw the saddle on last night and didn’t think to adjust it. You’re long-legged for a woman, so I didn’t notice. This will help. Better?” He dared to put his hand on her exposed knee.
Corrie knocked his hand off. “Aye.” Remembering what he said about frowns, she bit her lip. “Thank you.”
“My name’s Sverr.”
She knew that, but she said, “Thank you, Sverr.” She didn’t offer her name.
He smiled up at her, but she couldn’t force a return smile. His gaze dropped to her bared leg. He grinned and put his hand on her knee again. Before she could react, he fisted the hem of her skirt. “Lift up.”
She didn’t understand, but she obeyed. He gave a hard tug, and her skirt shifted down a little, enough to cover her knee. He tucked the fabric between her thigh and the saddle. Corrie knew she should protest, but she didn’t want chafed thighs.
He was grinning broadly when he headed for his horse. Once mounted, he scanned her then chirruped to his horse. The gelding ambled forward without a signal from her.
More than a Wizard Page 3
