Mind of the Magic (Arhel Book 3)

by Holly Lisle

  Hrogner would be dreadful company… but as long as she suspected him, and didn’t let herself rely on him, even if Gyels was Hrogner, he wouldn’t be able to trick her. And with a few other people along, she’d be safe enough.

  “I want to leave as soon as possible. Where can I find the Bontonards?”

  “Check the library.”

  Chapter 12

  THE snow at the mouth of the dwelling’s curved tunnel lay waist-deep—but it was dry and powdery, so that Faia had to wade through it, with no hope of going over the top. She stepped into a night of incredible beauty. The clouds were gone, and stars glittered in the clear sky from horizon to horizon. The burning halo of the Tide Mother, eclipsing the sun, hung directly overhead. She glimpsed it and looked quickly away. “It’s midday,” she whispered. It seemed impossible to believe.

  She waded toward the library and her lantern swung in front of her, throwing a warm yellow glow that danced over the drifts and snow-covered rubble and made shadows that shimmied and stretched like things alive. Where the snow hadn’t drifted, it rose to the middle of her thigh. The rolling white surface bore only deep tracks that ran from dwelling to dwelling; the rest of the city was covered by an unmarred blanket, with the hulking forms of the mountains rising high and dark out of it. The air was still; her breath hung in front of her like a fog. The drifts sprawled in fantastic shapes throughout the ruins, and the crisp, clean scent of the air brought back memories of winter in Bright.

  Faia stood still for a moment remembering playing with her dogs Chirp and Huss in a snow like this one, throwing them sticks and watching them plow through the white drifts trying to find what she’d thrown, exploding out of the powder and barking madly, then burrowing back in again. She smiled. It seemed so long ago. That had been—one?—no, two winters before the spring when she lost everyone. Her smile died and she felt the familiar, painful lump in her throat. More than seven years ago in all.

  She leaned on her staff and thought, How much longer? How long until I can remember them all without pain—with only happiness?

  She doubted that day would ever come.

  She waded to the raised, broken stone slabs that made up the First Folk road and climbed up. The wind had blown away some of the snow from the high, smooth surface—the road made comparatively pleasant walking. She trudged to the narrower road that led directly to the library, then stopped again.

  The First Folk statues on either side of that road stared at her with their glittering black eyes. Their winged, taloned, arrow-tailed bodies were deformed into shapes even more monstrous than the original ones by layers of snow. They were at once hideous and comical and frightening. Faia held her light higher and stared, and the lantern flame reflected in the black stone eyes. Those eyes gleamed, bright and alert. The statues of the First Folk looked so frightening—and their glittering eyes watched her with an expression that seemed sly and fierce—and always hungry.

  She shivered, only partly from the cold, and hurried down the long road between their ranks. They stared after her as she passed, and when she was beyond them, they still watched.

  She went through the gaping stone maw of the library doorway, through the drifts of snow that covered the stone floor, and walked down the long central corridor. The noise of her booted footsteps and the tapping of the brass tip of her staff echoed weirdly, and her light made only a small, hardly comforting circle in the darkness around her—while her little sphere of light made the far shadows seem even blacker and more mysterious. The library was wrong to her human senses. The angles were awkward, the scale far too large—and her light kept picking up flashes from the live-looking eyes of the brightly painted stone gargoyles that leered at her from the tops of stone shelves and the recesses of unexpected nooks.

  “Hallo-o-o!” she shouted into the cavernous spaces. Her voice bounced back to her, echoing from the vaulted wings on either side of the main part of the library and from the vast open spaces in front of her. Echo layered on echo, her chorus softening to whispers—her single voice became in an instant a choir.

  She tipped her head and closed her eyes, listening—intrigued by the permutations in that one shouted word, until the last hushed “hallo-o-o” died to silence. She smiled slowly, and in a quiet voice, sang:

  “Oh, fair was my love—as the summer, the summer

  As sweet as the rich ripened fruit on the vine.”

  The echoes sang with her, adding depth and richness to the folk tune. Faia grinned, and sang a little louder.

  “As cool and as strong as a river, a river,

  And heady as autumn-pressed wine.”

  She liked the rich reverberation through the corridors as she sang the old love song—she loved to sing, though her voice was ordinary. The First Folk library, however, made her sound wonderful. She started walking toward the back of the library, looking for the two Bontonard scholars—but she walked as slowly as she could, and sang as she walked.

  “I danced with my love in the summer, the summer,

  I danced with my love by the side of the sea.

  We danced in the dark ‘til a sailor, a sailor…

  He came and took my love from me.”

  “So I wait as the winter grows colder—grows colder,

  I wait for my love as my hair turns to grey.

  I wait where he left, by the sea—by the sea,

  For the sea shall return him some day.”

  She could imagine herself, on the stage in the square in Omwimmee Trade, gorgeous in one of the low-cut, flower-decked dresses the Omwimmee Traders wore at festivals. Her audience would be rapt. She stopped walking and closed her eyes and imagined the stunned townsfolk watching her, whispering that never had they heard the song done with such feeling or skill. She belted out the next verse, putting a lot of passion in it.

  “And now the sea blows the waves higher—and

  higher,

  And now a ship founders beyond the cruel reef.

  For now my love’s come back to me—come to me,

  But the sea brings me nothing but grief.”

  She heard a soft scurrying noise from the library’s depths. So the scholars were in one of the little side rooms.

  I can’t imagine why they haven’t heard me yet, she thought, and then she grinned. Scholars got lost in their studies so deeply, they would likely not hear the world end.

  Now she knew how to find them. And if they weren’t listening, she could go for a big finish without embarrassment. She tore into the song’s last verse, soaring through the lilting melody, and the walls of the ancient library rang with her amplified voice.

  “Don’t LOOK for your love by the sea—by the SEA,

  For the sea loves the sailor and WON”T let him

  GO-O-O!

  If ever he leaves her she’ll KILL him—she’ll—”

  “Hel-l-l-ppppp!” someone screamed. “By all the gods and demons, help!”

  The song died in midnote. Faia froze and looked around.

  Help?

  The screams came from just ahead. She heard a rumble—rhythmic pounding on something that boomed like thunder. Then the noise stopped and the screaming began again.

  “Help, for the love of the gods!” Whoever it was sounded ragged and desperate.

  Her mind raced ahead of her body as she tried to recall emergency rescue procedures, and as she tried to imagine what sort of trouble the two scholars could have gotten themselves into. What could have happened to them? She broke into a run, her lantern swinging in front of her.

  “I’m coming! Where are you?” she yelled.

  “They heard us!” a second voice shouted. “By the gods, they heard us!”

  And the first shrieked, “Here! We’re here!”

  But the echoes in the library made it impossible for her to tell, just from sound, where the two men were. She lifted her lantern at each doorway, and checked each side room, hurrying as fast as she could.

  “We’re in the tunnel!” one of the men suddenly s
houted.

  The tunnel? She knew of the passageway that led to the ancient First Folk burial grounds. It was hidden behind a secret panel in one of the statuary rooms at the very back of the library—but surely the two scholars would not have gotten themselves trapped in there. The panel had a latch that led in, but nothing that permitted anyone inside to let himself back out. Everyone had been very careful of that tunnel, always making sure that someone waited outside to open it.

  A single icy finger of fear traced its way from her neck down her back, and she stopped, shivering.

  The scholars hadn’t gotten themselves trapped in the tunnel.

  Edrouss Delmuirie and Thirk Huddsonne had wakened.

  They’re awake—they’re awake—awake—awake… . Little voices welled up from deep inside her, like ghosts from the Lord’s long night, whispering. Awake, they said—and now you have to face them, Faia. You have to face the man who tried to kill your daughter, and the man who tried to take you away from her forever. They’re awake—and now that they are, you can never pretend again that your world will go back to being normal.

  “I could leave you in there,” she whispered. “I could walk away—but then you’d just come after me, wouldn’t you?”

  She walked into the statue room, where the First Folk had hidden the passageway to their burial grounds. The towering statues of the First Folk, carved of stone in heroic poses and still covered with layers of bright paint, leered down at her, obsidian eyes glittering. Their wings formed arches over the passageway that led to the secret door; their tails curled like serpents down the sides of the pedestals on which they sat. Walking among them, she wondered what the world had been like when they’d been in it.

  She heard the men on the other side of the concealed door, and she pushed thoughts of the First Folk out of her mind. Thirk and Delmuirie shouted and pounded on the stone, their muffled voices pleading to the gods and to anyone who might be listening for immediate release.

  Faia stood beside the lever that would roll the door upward. She caressed the cool polished stone with her fingertips; if her fingertip had been a single snowflake falling into the room, she could not have rested it on the hidden lever more lightly. She waited and listened to the shouting men begging for rescue, begging with voices of increasing desperation as she did not respond and the hidden door did not open. They shouted instructions on where she would find the lever—on how she would operate it. She knew all of that; her dilemma was not in discovering how to free the men, but in convincing herself that she should.

  It would be so simple to walk away. Thirk Huddsonne and Edrouss Delmuirie would never get out without her help. They would die in the warm, waterless, sand-floored stone burial chambers of the First Folk, and someday someone would find their bones resting among the mummified remains of Arhel’s extinct first people.

  But Faia had never cold-bloodedly killed anyone. Turning her back on the two of them would put her on a level with Thirk—and she was not like him. She swallowed hard, then pressed down on the smooth stone panel, and a section of the wall rumbled and began to slide upward—and the tone of the men’s voices changed from desperation to rejoicing. “Saved!” they screamed “We’re saved!”

  Then Thirk’s voice rose over Delmuirie’s. “Don’t follow me or I’ll kill you!”

  “Why would I want to follow you, you lunatic? I do not want the cup back.” Delmuirie’s accent sounded like Faia’s maternal great-grandmother’s—only thicker. It was what the city-bred folk of Ariss referred to, with great derision, as a “back-hill frog-eater” accent. Faia, when she’d first arrived in Ariss, had spoken with a similar accent.

  Funny she hadn’t been able to pick that up when they were communicating in the emeshest. She might have liked him a little better the first time they’d met had she been able to hear him speak.

  “You don’t think I’d believe you, surely.” Thirk’s snarl still turned her stomach. Faia heard him scrambling behind the slowly rising doorway. “Light Ah, gods, I see light,” Thirk shouted.

  Faia saw hands under the stone panel that slid upward into the ceding high above, and then heads, as two men scrabbled out on hands and knees. She didn’t stay to watch; she turned and headed for the front of the library. She didn’t want the thanks of either man—she would be happiest if she never saw them again.

  “Heya!” Edrouss Delmuirie yelled after her. “Lass! Don’t go!”

  She turned, and the lantern threw long shadows around the room, shadows that for an instant seemed to bring the sculptures of the First Folk to life. Faia looked back between the rows of statues, arch-necked and bright-eyed. She looked from Thirk, who clutched a metal chalice in one hand and gripped the pommel of a sword with the other, to Edrouss Delmuirie, who looked confused and lost. Delmuirie smiled tentatively, while Thirk’s face went hard and cold while his eyes narrowed.

  “You!” he yelled.

  At least the bastard remembered her. “Me,” she said, feeling bitter, and turned to walk away.

  Thirk swore something under his breath; she heard his heavy footsteps thudding toward her at a run. She bolted, but not fast enough; Delmuirie shouted and the next instant pain blossomed in her lower back and she went sprawling, slammed into the stone floor by an unyielding weight. The lantern flew out of her hand and smashed against one of the statues. Flames licked along the spilled oil, casting a wavering light that blazed brightly for an instant; then the flames guttered low and died, leaving Faia in darkness—and pain.

  A fist struck her full on the side of the face as she raised her head, so that she took two ferocious blows—one from Thirk and the rebound blow as her head hit the stone floor.

  She lay stunned; Delmuirie shouted something and Thirk answered, but while she could make out the voices, she could not make herself understand the words. Then the weight lifted from her back with an awful suddenness that somehow made the pain worse.

  Faia couldn’t move. The agony of her right side burned so ferociously that every tiny breath was torture. She wondered if Thirk had run her through with his sword, and if she was dying. She hoped, if that were the case, that she would die quickly—she wanted nothing more than for the pain to go away. She lay curled in a ball on the icy stone floor; she felt the running footsteps of both men racing toward the outside world and freedom.

  I should have left them trapped in there to die, she told herself.

  Then a single set of footsteps grew louder again, returning at a walk.

  “Lass? Did he hurt you?” A darker shape knelt beside her in the darkness, and a hand rested on her shoulder. Delmuirie’s hand.

  “Go away,” she mumbled. She wanted nothing more than to die in peace.

  He slid his arms around her and scooped her into a sitting position, and the terrible pain, impossibly, grew much worse. She clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. No matter how badly she was hurt, she wouldn’t give Edrouss Delmuirie the satisfaction of helping her.

  She forced herself to remain upright, and with one hand tentatively felt along her side and up her back. She found no bleeding, no holes in her side—but the lightest touch along her right ribs made them feel like she was trying to cut them out one at a time with a dull whittling blade.

  “I’m fine,” she told him, though even the breath she needed to speak those three words cost her more strength than she had suspected she had. Those ribs were broken—she didn’t doubt that for an instant. Her jaw throbbed, too, from where Thirk had punched her.

  “Yon madman got away from me when I pulled him off of you—I tried my best but I couldna’ catch him.”

  “Too bad,” Faia muttered “If you had, you could have killed him.” She moved her arms forward slowly; then closed her eyes while red agony washed over the insides of her eyelids.

  “You know him, then.” Delmuirie offered her his hand. She didn’t take it and after an instant, he pulled back. “I suppose I could have killed him when we were trapped in the Klog burial grounds, but I thought him merely f
rightening—not really dangerous.” Delmuirie’s voice grew thoughtful. “He tried to be worshiping me at first. It was the uncanniest thing—he knew my name, and all manner of tales about me, though only some of them were true. But he kept asking me to show him magic, as if he thought I were some ourzurd from a child’s tale. He would not believe me when I told him I was only a man like him.”

  “I’m not surprised. You didn’t believe it when I told you the same thing.”

  There was a long silence. “We have met before?”

  “More’s the pity.”

  A sigh. “We have met before and I managed to offend you.” Another pause, another sigh. “You must be pretty, then. Every time I open my mouth to a pretty lass, I say something I should not… though I am never entirely certain what I say that is so wrong. No matter. Please accept my apologies for whatever foolwords I threw on you.”

  Faia had no intention of accepting his apology for his attempt to trap her in the emeshest forever. “You were talking about Thirk.”

  Delmuirie sighed again. “Bad enough that I am not to be forgiven, was it? Ah, well. It usually is.” He paused “About the madman, then—” Faia could hear bewilderment in every syllable. “—though I cannot hope to tell you why he did what he did. He stole my cup and my sword, and would not give them back. Called me a fraud, and said he would use the ‘holy relics’ to create a ‘new age of magic in Arhel.’ In my whole life, I have never heard a stranger thing.”

  Faia shook her head “Holy relics?”