Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong

by Greg Hamerton

  “You have been changed by what you have seen,” Gabrielle noted softly.

  “As have many others and many things. Little here lives as it used to anymore, and it will get more severe as we head north. Things that were once more like men have been turned to be rocks, and things that were once children buzz about in the mouths of sap-spiders, waiting to die. Though the people resist, much of this land belongs to the Sorcerer. The lowlands have long been his playground. All of Oldenworld will be his in the end. It really is just a matter of time.”

  “Then why have you joined him, if he brings such ruin? Why do we work on his cause?”

  “It must all be ruined before it can be rebuilt.”

  He couldn’t mean that. The way he’d said it, he seemed to believe the whole world had to be destroyed, but the certainty in his voice worried Bevn.

  “Isn’t there any alternative?”

  “The alternative is death, a final end without renewal. This way we earn ourselves a chance to continue, albeit in a changed form.”

  “There is no way to beat the Sorcerer?”

  “There is no one powerful enough to conquer him, alone or united with others. I do not come close to his level, and I was the best of the Gyre.”

  “You surprise me. You struck me as the kind who would never give up.”

  “I don’t. I have chosen to change my strategy of attack by changing my enemies.”

  “You are a dangerous man, Black Saladon.”

  “You’re not the first woman to have said that. You’ll not be the last.”

  They came to a grassy hillock with a stream which gurgled its way down a gully. The first stars were pricking through the darkening sky. A blackened tree had tumbled into the ashes of its own fire. A few flattened willows were collected in a heap against the slope, in a way that didn’t look quite haphazard enough to be natural.

  “The Nephilim are long gone. You’ll camp here tonight,” the wizard said, in a way that didn’t suggest he would be joining them. For the first time, it struck Bevn that they had no supplies of any kind, nor had they taken anything from the Hunters. He’d been so worried about not displeasing the angry wizard that he hadn’t thought about it. He hadn’t eaten since a midday meal offered by the Hunter patrol prior to reaching Bradach.

  “Drink, princeling, the water is untainted here. Gabrielle, see if you can get a fire going. Stay clear of me for a while, both of you. What I must do must be done without interference.”

  Bevn went to the stream. The wizard was going to do something magic, he just knew it. He wanted to drink like a greedy horse, but he made sure to keep an eye on Black Saladon between gulps. At first he didn’t seem to be doing anything but pacing around. Then he drew three intersecting lines in the ashes around the fallen tree, using the tip of his battleaxe. He set the tall weapon aside, and made some odd gestures in the air over the lines. Then he sat quietly.

  Bevn was disappointed. His head itched. He took the crown off and set it carefully on some soft grass beside the stream, then bent down and splashed the cold water through his hair. It felt good to rub the sweat away.

  There was a little shockwave, as if the world had been pushed aside to make space for something. Bevn jerked upright. The sky grumbled overhead, but went quiet again. Beside Black Saladon was a neat pile of goods. A blanket, a pot, a bag, some small sacks, a pile of fruit, a loaf of black bread and a great block of cheese.

  Bevn just stood there, water dripping off his chin.

  Saladon hadn’t moved. He’d just plucked their supper from the air.

  He ran to make sure it wasn’t just an illusion. When he kicked the pot, it bounced and gave a hollow ring on the ground.

  “You are a wizard! You made all of this with magic, didn’t you?”

  Saladon appeared slightly bored. “You can either make it or move it. Moving it is simpler, and much quieter. Creation of matter is a high-magnitude twist on the second axis and would trigger the wildfire, but a Reference spell is more like shuffling pieces of the world that are already there.”

  Bevn picked up the block of cheese. It was coated with red wax, and it was heavy. “Where does this come from?”

  “All of it comes from the Gyre stores. The fresh-looking stuff has been preserved for a time with Order-spells, so it might taste a bit funny, but it’s nourishing and clean.”

  Bevn was amazed. A storeroom in the air, where he could reach in any time he wanted. “Can you get anything you want from there?”

  The collected food looked like Sword-rations. He could think of a better meal already, the kind he’d enjoyed in the palace when his father entertained important guests. Roasted duck with apricots and jam, fluffy pastry and gravy, slice-fried potatoes and stuffing and those little eggs you only got in Bloomtide-month done in herbs and butter.

  Saladon picked some stray hairs from the end of his long plait. “Pretty much, but only what you’ve put in, over the years. Think of it as having a very deep pocket.”

  Gabrielle came up to join them. “Can you move people with the same kind of spell?”

  “Ah, you are quick—a similar spell, not the same. It requires far more ... concentration ... to cast a Transference than a Reference.”

  “But you could just magic us somewhere else, couldn’t you?” asked Bevn excitedly. “We wouldn’t have to walk! Why don’t you just send us to the Sorcerer?”

  But the wizard was shaking his head.

  “You are worthless to the Sorcerer without the Kingsrim, and the amount of magic I would have to use to move you when you are wearing it would need the entire Gyre. I’ve already told you, that crown makes you the most slippery thing in the magical universe. Besides, trying to move you would alert everyone to where we are, and it would bring so much wildfire down the land would light up like a bloody mountain of burning magnesium.”

  “Oh,” said Bevn, feeling his brilliant idea scattering like ash.

  “We’re actually very limited in what we can do underneath the wildfire threads. Cast a metal-weave, and you get wildfire. Cast any kind of essence flux, and you get wildfire. Even Chaos spells trigger the stuff, even simple Lumen spells, that’s how critical it is. It’s wicked stuff, it’s indiscriminate, which is why it’s so quick and so devastating and why the Gyre has never been able to eradicate it from Oldenworld. If magic was a tilled field, then wildfire is its weed—the weed that fights back at the farmer.”

  “What can I do with these?” asked Gabrielle. Her hands were covered with tiny black flies. Motes! Bevn realised. She had found some motes!

  “Apocalypse! Go easy! Even that movement could have been enough to trigger a strike. Girl, you don’t need so many in one place, haven’t you Eyrians developed a multiplier pattern yet?” He studied her for a moment. “No? Well, even more reason to go easy with Dark essence. We may be serving the Sorcerer’s ends, but it doesn’t mean we’re protected against wildfire. It is beyond his control. Most things are. That is the fundamental of his art.”

  “I will not be powerless! You can wield some of your magic. There must be something I can do that won’t upset the web.”

  “Very little, with such a basic form of essence. You’re using first-axis magic, for crying out loud! Trying to protect yourself with that is like trying to stop a falling rock by blowing at it.” Saladon watched the motes on her hands then reached across and plucked a few off the tip of her finger. He allowed them to circle over his upturned palm. “I used to play with this form, a long time ago.” The motes spun, chased each other then settled into a symbol like a five with a crossed tail. Saladon tossed his motes onto Gabrielle’s and they scattered, forming little clusters of the five-pattern themselves before falling to the ground. Gabrielle cursed under her breath. She had lost command of her essence; Saladon’s little spell had run through all of it.

  “That’s a multiplier,” said Saladon.

  The sky grumbled again, and Saladon nodded. “So I thought. Even the small spells are dangerous. Keep your Dark essence close.
Don’t try to project anything beyond the reach of your hands unless it is very small. You might be able to get away with a very thin shadow-shield, small patterns of mood, paralysis, illusions—things like that. Don’t try complex patterns like soul-stealers or summonings, or you will be burnt.” Then he shook himself, “Bah! I am not here to teach a wilful woman how to play tricks on the lumen axis. Don’t use the Dark, you’ll make a mistake.”

  He rose and retrieved his battleaxe. “If dawn comes and I have not returned, keep the sun on your back and head north-west. You are making for Willower. We’ll have to stay in the Hunters’ lands now, all the way through to Slipper.” He looked none too pleased about that. “It’ll be slow, but at least you’ll be unknown. The Hunter tribes don’t talk much to each other, what with their language problems.”

  “Where are you going?” Gabrielle demanded.

  “I have a better place to sleep.”

  She threw her hands into the air.

  “Your task is unchanged, Gabrielle Aramonde—to protect the bearer of the Kingsrim. I cannot be here all the time to hold your little hand. If a Hunter comes upon you, show him your palms, or your blades, and he might leave you alone. If it is big and has teeth, it is dangerous. Use your wits. What little you have.”

  He spread his arms wide, looked at them hard, barked a sudden laugh then he was gone.

  Gabrielle cursed under her breath.

  Bevn stared at the place where the wizard had been. He went over to swish his hands through the empty air. He wanted to have powers like that! Black Saladon had just vanished, and left them alone.

  A little twist of night air brushed against him, cool and dark.

  Gabrielle stomped to the pile of kindling she had collected earlier, and lit a fire using a small flintstone with angry strokes against her dagger. When the flames were crackling through the dry wood, they sat by the gathering blaze to eat.

  The royal King of Eyri positioned himself on an old stump, beside and above Gabrielle, so that he could catch a peek down her generous cleavage when she wasn’t looking. She stayed close by, at his feet, with her back partly toward him, staring over the flames. She rubbed her one finger absently, but her finger wasn’t where Bevn was looking. He chewed on an apricot while he watched, and explored its soft flesh with his tongue. It was sweet and juicy, but Saladon had been right. It didn’t taste quite like the real thing.

  The fire warmed him, and with the food came a flood of vitality. The night settled down like a soft silk blanket upon the tall upright heads of the trees, folding quietly into the protected glade where the grassy hillock rested under the sky. They were alone, in the wilderness. Was this the kind of place where young lovers did it? He didn’t know, but he wished he did know. His father had always taken his secret women to his bedchamber. He’d spied on them often enough to know, but Bevn suspected from what he’d been told in Ravenscroft that Gabrielle had a taste for things beyond a brief bouncy four-poster bed. He reached out then clenched his fist. She’d call him an idiot.

  She leant back against the stump he sat upon, and he could see right down the gap between her breasts to the small folds in her belly. Such smooth skin between her breasts. What would it feel like? He wanted to put his hand in there.

  Was she just tantalising him to mess with his mind, to manipulate him? He knew her old ways among the Shadowcasters. The Darkmaster had told him all about her. Sex was her weapon, a web of lust which she wove around men. But if she was weaving it around him, didn’t it mean she liked him? Well he had a weapon too. He wondered how long it would take for her to be compelled to obey him because of the Kingsrim, or whether he could command her already. She had fought for him when Black Saladon had put the pressure on.

  He tried to tear his eyes away from Gabrielle and the flesh she flaunted, but even looking at the hot flames he still had to sit in that awkward way, holding one knee up to hide the bulge and trying to make it seem a casual pose. He was as hard up as a stallion in spring.

  Maybe he should just try, before Black Saladon got her.

  He’d never get to be king if he didn’t learn how to command. One day he would rule so many people. He would have so many women. He would begin with her.

  Tonight.

  Now.

  He let one hand drop to her bare shoulder. Touching her sent a shiver through his arm. He held on long enough that she could have shrugged his hand off, but she didn’t, so he let his hand slip.

  She spun. The slap was loud, and made his cheek burn cold.

  “Take your hands off me! You arrogant little boy.”

  The words made him reel more than the blow. He had been so sure she was on his side. She had called him—

  “Oh Bevn Mellar, how are you ever going to learn to be a king?” she said, laughing. “You have no fight in you. All your bravery goes out of your head with the first strike.”

  His blood pounded in his ears. His eyes were smarting. He felt so stupid now, stupid and cowed. He got up to run away, despite the shameful bulge, but Gabrielle grabbed him by the wrist and wouldn’t let him go. He didn’t miss how her eyes dropped then her sardonic little grin as her hand opened. He felt a chill, as if a cold mist had touched his forehead. She dropped her gaze again.

  “What are you looking at, bitch?” he demanded.

  He almost died with fright at his own words. He was angry, but he shouldn’t have ...

  She slapped him again and caught his wrists before he’d even thought to back away. “Watch your tongue!” His cheek stung like cold frost.

  Fight, a little voice in his head said. Fight fight fight fight fight!

  “Watch your own tongue, trollop, unless you want to feel a blade across your throat when you fall sleep. I’ve had enough of your scorn, witch-woman! I am the King!”

  “You are far too young to want what you were reaching for.”

  “You’d be surprised what I want!” Bevn retorted.

  Butterlegs! I’d do that thing to you right now if I had someone to hold you.

  “Are you feeling alright?”

  “What’s it to you?” Bevn snapped.

  “You want me, don’t you, you sad little wretch.”

  “I’ll rip your tits off!” he shouted at her. Bevn didn’t know where he had come up with such a curse, but he liked it. The dark anger was exhilarating. It pounded through him with iron strength. He took one hard knock, then ducked when she swung at him again and ran clear.

  “Come back, princeling.” She was laughing. “Come back. You have spunk. I like that in a boy.” She came after him around the circle of ash to the far side of the fire.

  “I was just playing,” she said softly. Her eyes glistened wetly in the firelight. “I had to know that my essence works. Come here.” Her voice was like honeyed cream. Lust, shame, excitement and anger warred in a whirlwind of emotion. She came closer. Her breasts swelled within the tight thongs of her halter, right there before his face. He wished he could bury his head in them.

  “It is good to know you have a mighty manhood for your age,” said Gabrielle, wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue. He could believe in that moment that anything might happen between them. A voice within his head screamed she was manipulating him, but he didn’t want to believe it, just then.

  She gripped his arms. Excitement shot through his skin. She leant close, peering into his eyes.

  “Have you heard the tale of Ferrik’s son in Fendwarrow?” she asked. Bevn shook his head. “They tell it to caution young bucks who are too eager for pleasure. Ferrik’s son was the first conquest I made after I had learnt to master the Dark. I seduced the farmer’s boy in exchange for access to his family’s wealth. I took the boy to pieces with pleasure, and he was so entranced he gave me the strong room key. Of course I stole it all, but as I left with my takings, the boy’s mother arrived, the stupid sow. She attacked me, so I snapped her neck. The boy was too late to avert the tragedy. He could do nothing to me, because his seed was full of the motes I had driven there and
he was too afraid to fight. When I was gone, he realised it was all his own fault and, rather than face his father’s wrath, he fell onto a pitchfork and ended his life.”

  Her eyes were hard now, boring into him, piercing him like a sharp skewer through a bursting sausage.

  “That is what I am capable of,” she whispered, up close. “Never think yourself immune to me, no matter how strong your crown might make you.”

  An icy sensation passed through his groin. Bevn yelped. Gabrielle let his arms go, and turned away. “Don’t act on any of your fantasies tonight,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll not be as gentle with you the second time.”

  Bevn pulled a rude sign at her back as he sank to his knees beside the fire. The lust drained out of him, agonising and slow, but the anger remained, his own anger, welling up through the fading influence of the Dark. He’d only just realised the terrible mistake he’d made. The Kingsrim was not on his head. He had left it on the soft grass beside the stream before he’d run to Saladon. While he was unprotected, she had used her motes on him. He should have been able to recognise her Dark-spells. He’d been taught some of the basics, but she had been so quick, and he’d been so distracted by her body he hadn’t recognised his danger. She’d played him for a complete fool. He gritted his teeth as he went away to find his crown.

  He would find a way to get her back, and as soon as he reached the fabled city where the Sorcerer lived, he would discard Gabrielle. He wouldn’t let her learn the things he would learn. He would apprentice himself to the mighty Ametheus, just as he had been apprenticed to the Darkmaster. He would grow in knowledge and power, and when he was ready, he would return to Eyri as the great, unassailable and terrifying King. Ametheus would make him stronger than Gabrielle.

  Ametheus would show him how to overpower her, and everyone else.

  _____

  A time passed in Oldenworld when nothing was heard nor seen of the fearsome monster that was Ametheus. Far be it from the minds of men who tilled the fields to know, far be it from the hearts of their toiling wives to care. Rows of corn were planted. Rows of stalks were ploughed under beneath the slowly gathering clouds. Chaff was shaken to the freshening winds, and wheat was milled and bagged, and set upon the fast-moving carts flowing along the thickening veins of the state, those slick slipways which distributed the bounty of hard labour away from the rural estates to those who had less in its making and more in its taking. The same exchange could be seen a hundred times over in places as distant as western Wor Cannint and far northern Yd—the goods flowing away, the reward returning, and to most people in that time it seemed a fair exchange. They earned gold for their labours, the good gold of the Three Kingdoms, with the kings’ heads stamped upon it, as minted by the wizards in the college in Kingsmeet.