The Tainted City

by Courtney Schafer

  Cara had led all the previous difficult pitches, but she hadn’t argued when I took the rope for this final stretch. She might be better at ice, but rock was my specialty. If there was a way up those barren patches of stone, I’d find it, even encumbered by clumsy hand axes.

  Thirty feet later, I cursed my former confidence. Spreadeagled on the couloir’s side, the front points of my boot spikes barely holding in a thin slick of ice, frost-scarred granite breaking away every time I tried to hook an axe blade…fuck! I hadn’t been able to set any ice screws or pitons. If I came off now, I’d fall all the way past the belay point. Such a long fall would snap the hemp rope in a heartbeat, and if the mages cast to save me, they’d bring Vidai down on us all. The Taint charm was cold and dead on my wrist. Damn it, if only I was closer to the confluence, I’d spark it, hell with the consequences…

  The ice cracked away under the spikes of my left boot, leaving me clawing for a foothold. The right foot was going to go too, I could feel it, and I still couldn’t find an axe placement overhead—

  I let the axe drop to dangle from the leash cord knotted tight around my wrist. Ripped my glove off with my teeth, and stretched again, searching with fingers instead of axe blade—

  My fingertips locked over a lace-thin flake of rock, just as the ice beneath my right boot gave way. I hauled up in desperation, my boot spikes scraping sparks from the rock, and stabbed my remaining axe higher, knowing I was a mere heartbeat away from dooming us all.

  Chunk! A solid placement, right in the heart of an ice patch. I scrabbled again with my feet, got one boot spike into a divot in the stone. The world narrowed to fingers, axe blade, and boot spikes, my entire being focused on tiny shifts of balance as I inched up lichen-smeared stone and rime ice.

  After an eternity, my head poked over the crenellated, razor-edged ridgetop. My vision expanded outward in a rush. The Cirque’s seven Knives pierced the sky all around, the dark rock of their sheer-sided summits in sharp contrast to the snowfields lining their sides. Cradled in the deep bowl at the base of the peaks was an oval lake, the water a startling chalky blue in color. No sign of human presence showed on the tundra and rock of its far shore, but Marten had warned me Vidai’s wards included elements of veiling. The bastard could be doing cartwheels in plain view and I wouldn’t see him.

  As my ferocity of focus faded, triumph rose to replace it. Mother of maidens, what a climb! But I couldn’t savor the moment. The sky above was gray with cloud, and fat fingers of drifting fog were already creeping up the valley. I shoved my freezing hand back in its wool glove—I’d carried the damn glove in my teeth the whole rest of the pitch—and peered down into the cirque, picking out landmarks in the sweep of snow and stone. We’d have to traverse along the ridge for a hundred feet, then rappel down a sheer cliff before we could reach a snowfield safe to slide down. Hopefully the mages remembered Cara’s hurried lesson on how to stop an uncontrolled tumble with an ice axe.

  I ducked back below the ridgetop and pounded pitons into cracks to make a belay station, muffling the blows of my hammer with a folded strip of wool. Once ready, I didn’t dare shout to Cara, knowing how well sound carried in the mountains; instead, I gave three sharp tugs on the rope: Climb when ready.

  Soon enough I felt the rope jerk twice: she was on her way. As I took in rope inch by inch, the clouds lowered and thickened, streaming between the Cirque’s peaks in silent waterfalls. By the time Cara herself grunted up to my belay stance, the world beyond the ridge had become a misty gray void.

  “Khalmet’s bony hand,” she said, swiping sweat from her brow. “I’ve no idea how you led that without falling.” As the second climber, she’d had the opportunity to sit and rest on the rope, even use it as an aid in her climb.

  “It was a near thing,” I admitted.

  She spared a moment to brush my cheek with her gloved hand. “I owe Khalmet a serious offering, then.”

  I longed to return the caress, but my hands were full of rope. “A summit’s only as good as the partner you climb with—and no outrider could ask for a better partner.”

  Her smile was both beautiful and weary. “We haven’t reached the summit yet.”

  Didn’t I know it. Four hours gone already, at least two more to reach the basin…we’d be cutting it close. “I’ll go set the rappel. Protecting the traverse for the mages would take too long—tell them to just straddle the ridge and scoot their way over to me.”

  Cara chuckled. “Good thing the cloud’ll keep them from seeing how far the drop is.” Visibility was so low I could barely see the rappel point through drifting veils of mist.

  I untied from the pitons and snatched up our spare coil of rope—only to freeze, as a low, ominous rumble echoed out of the cloud surrounding us.

  “Was that thunder?” Cara demanded.

  “If it was, I’m going to kick Ruslan back down the couloir.” Just cloud, I’d told him in Ninavel. No storm—lightning loves a climber on a ridge, and we’re not all blood mages to survive a strike.

  “Maybe it was a fluke.” But the worry on her face matched mine. We’d be stuck on the ridgetop a good hour before we got all the mages down the rappel. Worse, lightning liked metal, and between ice axes and pitons, we were carrying enough to provision an army.

  “Tell the mages not to dawdle.” Nothing for it but to move as fast as we dared, and pray I hadn’t used up all Khalmet’s favor ascending the couloir.

  * * *

  (Kiran)

  Kiran scooted along the ridge toward Dev, trying not to think about the void yawning on either side or the ever-louder growls of thunder. Straddling the sharp rock of the ridgetop was uncomfortable and made movement awkward, but at least it felt a thousand times safer than trying to walk the knife-edge. At the rappel point, Stevannes was easing off the ridge under Dev’s supervision, the rope wound tight around his lean body. Ruslan and the other two Alathians had already descended the rappel rope, disappearing into cloud. Mikail was moving along the ridge behind Kiran, trailed by Cara.

  A shatteringly loud thunderclap nearly toppled Kiran off the ridge. He gripped the stone all the tighter, his thighs spasming with the effort.

  What the fuck is this thunder? Cara had demanded of Ruslan when Kiran’s master first reached the ridgetop. Didn’t Dev say no storms?

  Ruslan had snapped, The interaction of spellcast weather with natural systems is impossible to fully predict. But Kiran knew the truth: Ruslan and Lizaveta had made their best guess as to the energetic effects of Vidai’s wards when they designed the weather magic, but that guess had been wrong.

  Kiran tried to scoot faster. His ears were still ringing from the thunder. Wait, no…that high-pitched whine wasn’t his ears. It was coming from the blade of the ice axe strapped to his pack.

  “Oh, shit.” The dismay in Dev’s voice yanked Kiran’s head up. Fifteen feet ahead at the rappel station, Dev was staring at the pitons jammed into cracks in the ridgetop. An eerie blue glow played over the pitons’ metal, softer than magefire.

  Dev leaned down and snapped at Stevannes, “Move faster!” Stevannes began a harsh reply that died when he saw Dev’s face. He loosened his grip on the rappel rope, letting it slide faster around his body to increase the speed of his descent, and vanished into fog.

  Beyond his barriers, Kiran felt whispers of wild energy growing, and understood. Lightning was going to strike. Here, and soon. The ringing of his ice axe increased to a buzz that shivered his teeth.

  The rock was too sheer; the rappel rope was the only way off the ridge. Unless they cast—but then Vidai would come, and they were still too far from the confluence for Dev’s charm to work properly. But if lightning struck, Dev might well die—either from the strike itself, or in a reflexive power draw by an injured Mikail or Kiran—and leave them with no chance of protection from Vidai.

  The hairs on Kiran’s arms were standing up, the nape of his neck tingling. They’d never make it down the rope in time. Kiran twisted to call to Mikail, “We have to di
vert the strike!” If they timed the casting just right, perhaps the magic could be hidden beneath the natural power of the lightning.

  Mikail halted his frantic scrabble along the ridge, looking torn. Kiran drew in a breath, ready to release his barriers—

  “Don’t cast!” Cara bounded along the ridgetop’s knife-edge as lightly as if it were a city street. “Give me your axes.” She sliced Mikail’s axe free, jumped over him and darted to Kiran. A sharp tug, and Kiran’s axe was gone as well.

  Dev was pulling up the rappel rope; Stevannes must have finished his descent. Cara dumped the axes in front of him.

  “Lower these down. Yours too. And stay here!” She darted past Dev, her own axe still in her hand, the metal crawling with blue light. Beyond, the ridge rose toward a crooked pillar of rock half obscured by cloud. Cara scrambled up the pillar’s side and stabbed the haft of her ice axe into a crevice at the summit, leaving the axe poking skyward. Cara yanked her smaller hand axes from her pack and stood them upright beside the first.

  Energies shifted in the aether. The glow faded on the rappel station’s pitons, even as it brightened on the ice axes above. Abruptly, Kiran understood. Cara meant to draw the lightning away from them to the pillar.

  “Cara, hurry.” Dev’s face was as pale as the mist. He tied the remaining axes in a tight bundle at the end of the rappel rope and cast the rope back down.

  Cara turned, jumped for a lower rock—

  A concussion of sound and light hammered Kiran. Slowly, he became aware he was face-down on the ridge, clinging to it like a limpet, stone sharp against his chest and cheek. He raised his head.

  Cara’s ice axes still stood silhouetted on the pillar’s summit, their metal smoking and blackened. Dev was straightening up off the ridge, looking as dazed as Kiran felt. But the ridge beyond Dev was empty.

  Kiran stared, horrified. He imagined lightning lancing down to smite the axes, the concussion blasting Cara from the ridge, her body tumbling through a thousand feet of air to the talus far below…

  Dev blinked, focused on Kiran. Dread swept his face. “Cara…” he whispered, and turned. “Cara!” He yanked at the knot of the sling binding him to the pitons.

  Kiran twisted around, terrified to see the ridge behind him empty as well. But Mikail still straddled the stone, looking shaky and wild about the eyes.

  Dev abandoned the rappel station to race along the ridge, still calling Cara’s name.

  Behind Kiran, Mikail called, “She’s gone, you fool! Get back here and help us off this ridge before lightning strikes again!”

  Mikail was wrong about Cara. Straining his senses, Kiran could feel the dim flicker of her ikilhia, some twenty feet below the ridgetop—she must have caught herself as she fell, in some miracle of climbing skill. But her ikilhia was erratic, laced by fear and pain; she was hurt.

  He scrabbled forward along the ridge. “Dev! She’s alive, down there!” He pointed into the fog obscuring the Cirque’s back side.

  Mikail clamped his shoulder and whispered in his ear, “What are you doing? Let him think her dead—we don’t need her anymore.”

  Mikail hadn’t been mistaken about Cara; he’d lied. Anger shot through Kiran. He snapped back at Mikail, “How well do you think he would fight for us, stunned by grief? I don’t care how much you hate him, we need him whole!”

  Dev jerked sling cords from his harness and started knotting them together, a terrible mix of hope and fear on his face. “Cara, can you hear me?”

  A hoarse, strained whisper floated out of the cloud, barely audible. “Dev…hurry, can’t hold much longer…”

  Dev straddled the ridge, looped a sling over his body, and tossed the remainder of his makeshift rope down where Kiran indicated. “Brace me,” he ordered Kiran, and called to Cara, “Can you grab on?”

  Cara didn’t reply, but the slings snapped taut, driving a grunt from Dev as the cord dug into his waist. Kiran locked his arms around Dev to anchor him. Dev hauled on the slings, muscles straining, his teeth bared. A peal of thunder assaulted Kiran’s ears. He gripped Dev all the tighter, terrified lightning would strike them again.

  Slowly, Cara emerged out of the fog, dangling from one hand locked on the lowermost sling. Her other arm hung limp at her side, blood dark on her shoulder, bruises blossoming over her throat and collarbones. Her upturned face was pale but fierce with determination.

  Dev heaved her back onto the ridge—and clasped her to him with desperate force. “Gods, Cara. I thought Shaikar had taken you.”

  “So did I.” Her voice was a husky, damaged croak. “Got the wind knocked out of me, couldn’t yell, my grip was slipping…” Her good arm tightened around Dev. “No better partner,” she whispered.

  Love and relief were so vivid on Dev’s face that Kiran had to look aside, seized by renewed conviction that it was wrong for Ruslan to take further revenge. Talking with Dev at the couloir, he’d been startled anew by Dev’s lack of vitriol toward him. After the danger Kiran had brought to Melly, he had expected Dev to abandon all pretense of friendship. Yet even now, Dev didn’t respond to him like an enemy.

  Dev twisted to look at Kiran. “Thanks,” he said, his voice almost as rough as Cara’s. “Now let’s get the fuck off this ridge.”

  Kiran gladly wriggled backward to the rappel station. Mikail was already there, his gray eyes hard as he watched Dev help Cara along the ridge.

  “She’ll slow us down,” he muttered to Kiran. “If we don’t reach Vidai in time, our deaths are on your head.”

  “We’ll make it,” Kiran said, and hoped desperately it was true.

  * * *

  Kiran crept over the tundra, trying to keep his steps noiseless. Fog surrounded him, so thick he could barely make out the other members of the group, let alone the insanely steep snow slope he’d just slid down, sitting on his rear like a child playing on a sand dune.

  Despite everything, he’d found the descent oddly thrilling. The rush of speed had been intoxicating, snow spraying in his face and crusting his clothes, his eyes watering so strongly from the wind of his descent he could barely see…not that there was anything to see in the cloud. But Kiran remembered the view of the mountains at sunrise as he’d puffed his way up a haul rope: summits glowing pink, the shadowed couloirs a deep, mysterious blue, the panorama of spires and ridges a phantasmal vision straight out of the most incredible of explorer’s tales. The pain of his lost memories was all the more acute now he’d glimpsed what wonders they might have contained.

  When he’d leaped to his feet after finally sliding to a stop in the snow, he’d been grinning so wide his cheeks hurt. Martennan’s solemn young first lieutenant had stared at him, pain so sharp in her eyes that Kiran wondered if he reminded her of one of her murdered friends.

  Now the Alathians strode with military precision at Dev’s side. They’d left a wan but determined Cara with the spare gear at the base of the snow slope; though the Alathians had hastily bound her wounds, they hadn’t dared cast any healing spells.

  Better for me to stay clear of the fight; you’ve got enough people to protect as it is, Cara had told Dev. You go keep Vidai busy, and I’ll scout those caves at the base of the Scythe. If he’s got Melly stashed somewhere, maybe I can find her.

  Dev had protested, wanting her to stay put and rest, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I’ll stay clear of sigils and wards, I promise. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit on my ass.

  Kiran hoped she would stay safe. Vidai’s wards burned in his head, a fiery barrier mere feet away. He could feel the cirque’s confluence beyond, a mere eddy compared to Ninavel’s blazing ocean, but brilliant in its beauty nonetheless.

  Ruslan’s dark shape halted beside a boulder looming out of the mist. He beckoned Kiran and Mikail forward. Silent words came through the mark-bond.

  Here lies one of the anchors for Vidai’s outer wards. Do you feel the second pattern within?

  Kiran nodded. Deep within the area protected by the outer wards, a strange, chaotic
swirl of energies lurked, ominously strong.

  The outer wards can be shattered by a simple raw casting, but the inner pattern will require a channeled spell to break. A channel diagram flashed into Kiran’s mind, a knotted maze of lines. Once through the outer wards, Mikail and I will prepare the channels and cast. Vidai is certain to attack us; your task is to assist the guide in holding him off.

  Kiran glanced at Dev, who was edging from foot to foot, his fingers tracing the sigils on the Taint charm. At least Kiran need not worry that an instinctive power draw on his part would mean death for Dev. The confluence here was tame enough to touch directly. He could safely pull power from it to heal even the worst of physical injuries, though the healing would leave his ikilhia weakened and disordered.

  Or rather, more disordered. Kiran knew the reason Ruslan had not asked him to channel was the continued instability of his ikilhia. Even now, standing next to a source of magic as powerful as Vidai’s wards left him feeling queasy despite his voshanoi charms. But raw casting did not require much control; Kiran was confident he could strike at Vidai no matter how sick he felt.

  Ruslan continued, Once the inner wards are shattered, I will claim whatever artifact they protect. Your task then is to assist Mikail in ensuring neither Vidai nor the Alathians interfere. We must not allow the Alathians to take possession of a source of such power, lest they use it against us.

  Kiran’s nervousness rose higher yet. He could well believe the Alathians would snatch at the chance to destroy them before Ruslan could take revenge.

  I will break the outer wards for you, he told Ruslan. Then you and Mikail can conserve your strength. They would need it. Pouring channels with quicksilver was far faster than laying out rods of true silver, but the channels would be terribly dangerous to control.

  Ruslan took Kiran’s shoulder. Assent flowed through the mark-bond, a wordless expression of pride and confidence in Kiran. Kiran touched Ruslan’s hand; remembered Lizaveta winding her hands in Ruslan’s hair, pressing her cheek to his and saying in a choked voice, Come back to me, brother. A pang squeezed his heart, thinking of his own mage-brother. He met Mikail’s eyes and willed him, Stay safe.