A Wizard's Sacrifice

by Amanda Justice

  A sledgehammer inside her skull woke her, and an evil brew bubbled out of her belly and spewed onto the moss. Wan daylight dribbled through the canopy; rain cascaded through sagging cerrenil limbs. She needed a dry place to rest until the pounding faded from her temple. Shivering in sodden garments, she stumbled through the trees, gathering fallen limbs and hoin fronds. A heaving stomach doubled her over; firewood tumbled across roots and grass. Panting, shaking, she erected her tent and piled branches over soggy kindling. Sparks from her tinder box fizzled in the soaked moss. Steeling herself, she drew upon the Woern. Pain seared her temples, and she fell back onto a cold, wet blanket.

  The hammer blows to her temple held her stranded, and for a week, every drip through the waterlogged shelter saturated her heart with dread. Ashel was in trouble, possibly in danger. She needed to go to him. But all she could do was shiver and moan while the long, dull, lonely hours stoked her longing. She didn’t love him, but she loved his world of learned people who stayed up until dawn, banging fists on tables, pointing fingers, raising voices while they argued over minutia. Those debates were ridiculous and wonderful, and she loved how every evening ended with fond farewells, no matter how heated the arguments. She loved how he could make her giggle like a nitwit and how with him, she never felt foolish, even when acting the fool. She loved that he easily trounced her when they played chess or stones. She loved the tingle that raced to her heart when his fingers laced through hers, and when their lips met in a kiss . . .

  That’s just the Woern. Shrinejumping parasites! An infection of the nervous system—the source of her power and her desire for a man she’d betrayed and abandoned.

  You don’t love him, dammit. But she wanted him, and he needed her, and she was stuck in the mud because she’d thoughtlessly indulged in the transient pleasure conferred by the same parasite that drove her desire for him, and which would kill her sooner than later. The Elesendar was just an old abandoned spacecraft, but she prayed to it or fate or sheer damn luck that Ashel’s trouble wouldn’t bring him to harm before she could find him. For a week, in the rain, that was all she could do.

  At last the throbbing in her temples receded, and she climbed a nearby promontory to get her bearings. Greens and blues carpeted the land in every direction. Dundlehead! She’d lost herself in the bloody storm and let it push her west, back into the middle of the Kiareinoll. She’d been almost to the edge of Fembrosh, and now she was hundreds of miles deep in its wilds. On foot, it would take a month to reach the forest edge. “A month!” she screamed aloud. A flock of warblers burst from a nearby tree, squawking and scolding, but that was the only answer to her frustration.

  Trek east. That was all she could do. She slogged through soaked humus, clawed up slippery hillsides, slid down gullies into swollen streams. Her longing for dry feet rivaled her desire to find Ashel safe and sound, but the empty hulk circling the planet did absolutely nothing to stop the rain. Or fill her belly as one day flooded into another. Her provisions gone, she scrounged roots and sour green berries, hunted lizards and birds with her sling. Every attempt to use wizardry—for flight, fire, or forage—knocked her into the bush, retching up what little there was in her belly, so she relied on woodcraft as the weeks wore on.

  And a little thievery. Wild cats prowled the forest, leaving well-stocked prey caches in sheltered hollows. The harrier she snagged was well worth a few red, angry scratches from wet, angry cats. After securing her prize and throwing off her spitting rivals, she climbed a tree to escape the muck, settled into the crook of a branch, and cracked the arthropod’s shell. Her fingers dug into sweet, buttery flesh, and she sighed with pleasure as the first mouthful slid down her throat. Harriers were damn good eating. Hard to hunt, though. A clutch of the buggers could strip your flesh from your skeleton faster than you could scream—Vic had to admire the cats for finding a way to catch and kill even one.

  A nearby patch of hoarsgrout stirred, and the bugs streamed across the rocks and shot into another hedge, squeals echoing over scrabbling claws. A whole pride of wild cats couldn’t stampede that many harriers. Ears sharp for lupears, Vic pulled herself onto a higher branch, putting a screen of leaves between herself and the ground. Knownearth’s deadliest predator mostly ranged the Semena plains, but a few packs hunted in Fembrosh. She’d never encountered a lupear and certainly didn’t wish to meet one alone. Not without wizardry.

  The brush rustled. Her pulse quickened. A Kragnashian’s triangular head pushed out of the hedge, and her breath stopped. Tattooed mandibles clacked together; a harrier-stuffed net hung over a gleaming carapace. The creature cocked its head, antennae pinwheeling as it stopped beneath her tree. Raindrops splashed between bulbous, multifaceted eyes. She blanked her mind, just as she would in an enemy’s camp. Her lungs burned as she held her breath for a minute, then two.

  A squeal pierced the air; the Kragnashian’s antennae snapped toward a scrabble of claws, and it dove into the woods. There was a clipped scream and then only the pattering rain.

  Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, Vic waited several dozen heartbeats before she climbed cautiously down. A Kragnashian in eastern Latha. A Kragnashian crossing her path in all the thousands of square miles of the Kiareinoll. A hint of spice and tease of citrus flared her nostrils, drawing her toward a cerrenil’s flower-laden branches. During the war, she’d become so used to the Kia that she often forgot the forest sometimes altered the terrain, bringing parties together or separating them. The changes were usually too subtle to be noticed, but she’d found enough impassible hedges suddenly blocking familiar paths to know the Kia was real. The heretical question wasn’t whether the Kia existed, but why and how it came to be.

  And why it always helped her. Crouching, she found a harrier’s wing cover and two of its spindly legs snagged in tangled roots. A lure for the Kragnashian, to reveal it to her, then draw it away. “Thank you, Mother,” she breathed, hand firm on the white trunk.

  But was the Kragnashian hunting more than a meal? Was it hunting her or merely escorting Lornk and the Caleisbahnin into the east? What ploy could have brought his party out here instead of west toward an escape by sea?

  Ashel’s in trouble.

  Elesendar.

  “That wasn’t for you, my dear,” Lornk had said when she found them in Olmblablaire, with Ashel’s severed fingers on the floor. Insight knocked her to her knees. Lornk’s obsessions extended beyond her to Ashel’s family. Sashal and Lornk had been friends, good friends, before a falling out had led to a decades-long war and Lornk’s vengeance, painted in Ashel’s blood, at the end of it.

  Pressing her palm onto the cerrenil’s cold, white bark, she called to the Kia for help. “I cannot let him hurt Ashel again. Please, Mother, show me the way to save him.”

  Leaves shivered, shaking water into her face. She swiped the drops out of her eyes, and there was a path, sandy and free of roots and leaves, arrowing away into Fembrosh.

  Steedfast

  Hooves struck the earth like hammers, and the rumbling seemed to shake the sky. Up ahead, two stallions broke from the tight-packed herd, one chasing the other, heads to the ground, snaky manes standing on end, mandibles clacking. Segmented carapaces rippled as the combatants surged over the grass, drumming a martial cadence. Gray swept from charcoal to sienna as the stallions rounded on each other, and the mares and foals ebbed away.

  Amid the herd, a youth named Febbin whooped and leapt from steed to steed. He sprang onto his hands, feet kicking for balance, his face inches from writhing tentacles, laughing and hooting while the steeds hurtled across the grass.

  Wincing at his own welt-riddled wrists, Ashel patted Meager’s thorax. The mare tossed her head and crooned, segments rippling smoothly as they ran in a smaller pack comprised of the outlaws’ mounts. They had roamed the plains for weeks, time Ashel had spent honing his riding skills. Escape wasn’t yet a possibility. Meager responded eagerly to his commands when they were running with the band, but she refused to str
ay out of sight of her sisters.

  In the main herd, Febbin flipped onto a stallion and cantered across the grass to join his fellows. “Minstrel Melba! Did you see?”

  Hands locked around Ashel’s waist, Melba faced away from the boy and pressed a cheek into Ashel’s shoulder.

  “She’s worried you’ll break your neck,” Ashel teased.

  “Aw, I’ve never fallen once.”

  Melba refused to answer. Squeezing Meager’s thorax with his knees, Ashel tugged gently on her mane, and she slowed to a walk. The herd cantered on, leaving a wake of shaking ground and trampled grass. As their thunder faded, he said, “I thought we agreed we’d stay friendly.”

  “We’ve been out here for weeks, acting as if we’re on a lark instead of waiting for some sort of . . . of slavers or pirates or worse to come for you, and when they do, it’ll be on my head.”

  “It’s not your fault, Mel.”

  “It is. If I hadn’t met Joslyrn and asked him to bring me out here . . . and poor Wineyll. Elesendar only knows what’s become of her. I could have stayed in Narath and helped her out, but no, I had to try to start a revolution within the bloody Guild.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Meager lowered her head to graze, tentacles calming as her mandibles swung through a patch of orange wildflowers. She kept an eye on the herd, though, and she’d bolt if they passed out of sight. They didn’t have long to talk. Ashel bent his thumb into his empty palm. “This isn’t your doing, Mel. It’s Lornk Korng’s.”

  “How? He’s in prison.”

  “I believe he’s escaped.” In Narath, Geram sat in the throne room, bandaged leg throbbing and itching, Listening while a prison guard confessed before a jury to carrying letters for Lornk. Two other guards implicated in the escape were being tried posthumously, since they’d died during the Caleisbahn assault.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Kelmair said they were taking me to him.”

  “Why?”

  He expelled a breath. “He told me he was my father.”

  Her arms dropped from his waist. “Lornk Korng is your father?”

  “He claims to be.”

  She smacked him on the shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “What?”

  Smacking him again, Melba slid off the steed’s abdomen, tripped, and plopped backward into a nettle patch. “We’ve been stuck out here for weeks, and you didn’t tell me?”

  Stunned, he watched her climb to her feet and yank stickers from the seat of her trousers. Her scowl could light a fire. “I’m telling you now. What are you so angry about? I’m the one with a maniacal tyrant after me.”

  “I gave up everything to come out here and bring you back to Narath, and you let me think this whole awful situation was my fault!”

  “What do you mean, you gave up everything?”

  Throwing back her head, Melba howled aloud. “Typical! You have no idea of anything beyond your own damn nose. I left the Guild because of you, dammit.”

  “What do you mean, left it?”

  “I told off Reyendal before I left, and I’ve probably been expelled by now. Silnauer is getting rid of anyone who won’t support her. You were the only person she couldn’t dismiss, the only one who could stand up to her.”

  “I’m sorry, Melba. I have bigger problems.”

  “Which I would have known if you’d bloody told me! Did you tell that heretic assassin whore?”

  Ire crackled through his blood. “Do not call her that.”

  “Is that why she turned you down, Ashel? Because she cared more about him than you?”

  Hoofbeats rolled behind them. Joslyrn’s steed whickered, kicking up dust as it stopped. The outlaw raised his eyebrows and angled his head back toward the herd.

  “She wants to ride with you,” Ashel said, kicking Meager’s flanks. As the mare flew back to her sisters, he wrestled with doubt and disappointment and deep desire—everything he felt for Vic, and all of it wrapped up in resentment. The missing fingers ached, and he cursed himself. He hated this bitterness and hated himself for feeling it, and yet he couldn’t help but wonder if her latest refusal—to come with him to Mora—was motivated by disinterest rather than guilt. “You deserve better.” Shrine, that’s what people said to end things gently.

  More than a month had passed since the attack on the Manor, and Geram figured Vic should be in Mora by now. Ashel had been mad with worry until Geram regained lucidity and apprised him of Lornk’s escape and Vic’s mission. If by some miracle she found him and Melba and rescued them, what would happen afterward? What did he want to happen? He didn’t know—all those times he’d offered himself only to be refused. How much humiliation could a man take? The ache in his missing fingers should be answer enough, but those same ghostly digits clung to a hope that haunted him more than all his regrets put together.

  * * *

  That evening, Elesendar came up in lavender fringed in amber clouds. A stew steamed around the cookspoon, and as the sun sank slowly into the grass, scents of herbs and charcoal sweet as summer curled through the camp. Men and women lounged on the grass, diced over a board, tossed stones at a stake. Erik, the crew chief, sucked from a flask of harlolinde and conferred over a map with Joslyrn and Kelmair.

  Melba sat apart, plucking at a borrowed guitar. Tamping down the vestiges of his ire, Ashel brought her a dish of stew. “A peace offering.” He settled beside her. “We should be in the Kiareinoll tomorrow or the next day, by my guess.”

  “Do you think Lornk Korng truly managed to escape?”

  Ashel ground severed knuckles into his thigh, massaging a shadow of Geram’s wound. Their connection was another secret he’d kept from Melba. With her mundane worries over Guild politics, she’d shrink away if he revealed the festering wounds still inside him. “If anyone could escape from the prison outside Narath, it would be him.”

  They swallowed a few spoonfuls of stew. Laughter drifted across the campfire. “We should do something together tonight,” he said. Most nights, he and Melba had performed for the outlaws as part of their campaign to build sympathy and trust.

  “Like what?”

  “‘Forge on the Council.’” Melba’s favorite lay had everything the bandits loved—adventure, romance, fighting, treachery. Too many voices for two minstrels alone, but they’d once done a comedic production with just the pair of them, where Ashel had taken the women’s parts, she the men’s.

  A corner of her mouth tilted upward. “It’s been years, Ashel. We haven’t rehearsed.”

  “When did that ever stop us? We’ll muddle through well enough for this audience.”

  Her eyes glinted dangerously. “You’re completely aggravating when you’re trying to apologize. Let me warm them up first.”

  When everyone had settled round the fire, Melba took the guitar and stepped into the wavering light. The shadows rolled across her face, making her young, old, angry, sad. Her lips tilted mischievously, and she raised an eyebrow. Guffaws echoed through the outlaws, and Ashel leaned on an elbow. Melba’s contralto seeped into the bones like a warm spring as she roamed the circle, speaking about Fembrosh, its hidden groves, its secret powers, the legends of how the trees birthed humanity, and in the wizards’ time, humanity repaid their mothers by endowing the forest with knowing.

  Kelmair settled onto folded legs beside Ashel. One finger pointed at his maimed hand, her eyes mere slits. “A harsh thing, Shemen.”

  Whither she wanders the Relmans will know,

  She laughs in their noses and offers them crow.

  “The Exploits of the Blade”—a raunchy tribute to Vic. Melba tossed him a wink, her lips wicked.

  The Dagger is tricky, sneaky, and sly

  And the Blade is as sharp as a harrier’s cry.

  The outlaws whooped. Blood throbbed through Ashel’s neck, flooding in the same fury he’d fought for months. His stump butted his forehead. Vic could have saved him from the disg
race and the bitterness and the mockery in this song, and she hadn’t. Melba caught his glare and missed a chord.

  “A harsh thing, Shemen,” Kelmair repeated, unfolding her legs.

  Rising, he poured his rage at Vic, at Melba, at the damn plain and the outlaws and bloody Lornk Korng onto the pirate. Her gaze fell to their boots.

  As Melba’s last note faded, the bandits leapt up, hollering their approval.

  Ashel stepped into the circle. “That hurt,” he whispered.

  Melba’s shoulders tightened, but she held her stage smile, crying, “The sorcerer Meylnara would not obey the laws of the Council, and so to compel her, the Council brought a great army to Meylnara’s lands, in Direiellene.”

  Ashel shook a tambourine, trying to expunge his anger. Melba walked around the circle, telling of the exodus of wizards and troops to the southern rainforests, bending low to portray the toil of the journey, standing on tiptoe to show the height of the trees. Ashel banged the heel of his maimed hand against the skin, rattling the drerwood disks around the rim. They could not take this from him, he reminded himself. Not Melba, not the Guild, not these outlaws, not Vic. He had his voice and would always have music, if nothing else.

  Shoulders bent into the shape of a crone, he ambled around the fire while Melba plucked out an arpeggio. He took breath to sing, and at the first falsetto note, the outlaws roared with laughter.

  I’ll not abide,

  I’ll not abide,

  Their laws are not for me.

  To abide, I would lose myself.

  I’ll not abide.

  Simple enough lyrics, but the coloratura melody rose and fell rapidly round a highly ornamented musical line. Even as a child, he could never hit all the high notes; now he deliberately strained for them, and more gales erupted round the circle. Strumming the guitar, Melba answered him, her voice a hoarse, false bass.

  Meylnara, you are condemned by the Council

  For crimes beyond the measure.

  You still refuse to abide?