A Wizard's Sacrifice

by Amanda Justice

  peaceful haven

  can I be happy

  if I do not find my love.

  “What is it you offer?” the Center asked. “What is it you seek?”

  “I wish to trade for Victoria of Ourtown and Bethniel of Narath, Heir to the throne of Latha. In payment, I give you Song.” The Kragnashians were always hungry for human novelties—the Center’s stole was erinsheen, dyed the color of Vic’s hair. Yet another sign that he had chosen the right path. He sang Orpheus’ lament:

  Ah! You would be less harsh

  to my weeping and lamenting

  if for but a moment you could know

  what it is to languish for love.

  The Center reclined beside the fountain, eyes glittering as Ashel sang ancient lyrics that mirrored current grief. He threw himself into the performance, singing Hades’ response, repeating stanzas that seemed to pique the Center’s interest. He knew the creature couldn’t understand the words, but as it leaned forward, head cocked, Ashel’s hope crystalized into certainty as bright and hard as a diamond. The final note faded, and Ashel bowed, panting and flushed and expectant.

  “This sound was new. This sound was good,” said the Center. “You are the Voice.”

  “I wish to see my mate and sibling.”

  The Center rose to its feet. “The One and the Fulcrum.”

  “Yes.”

  The Center turned its back and curled its abdomen upward, flaring its tail segments. It turned its head; a single eye whirled over its thorax. “No.”

  The crystal core of his faith shattered, the shards ripping through his gut. He blinked as hope drained away, leaving only an ice-cold void. His legs jelly, he sank to the ground. “What do you want?” he clapped feebly.

  “Nothing from you,” the Center said as it swept away.

  Restoration and Revelation

  Worry needling Bethniel, she pushed Vic’s arm straight over her head, then slowly rotated it forward, down and out to the side. Vic sucked sharp breaths, her fists clenched in pain as Bethniel pulled the arm up for another rotation. After nearly two months, a lattice of hard white scar tissue covered the wasted muscles of Vic’s shoulder. The healers said she’d never regain full strength on her left side, but that was the least of Bethniel’s concerns.

  “You’re too kind, my lady,” Vic said, her voice soft, meek. Since Thabean had brought her back from Meylnara’s Lair, she never used mindspeech and always addressed Bethniel with deference, not the grudging affection Bethniel expected from her sister.

  “That’s it for today,” Bethniel said. “Time for your bath.” Eyelids drooping, Vic shivered on a pile of towels while Bethniel quickly sponged the sweat from her skin and combed her hair. “Now back to bed.” Bethniel pulled a clean shift over Vic’s head, threaded her arms through the proper holes, and helped her totter the few steps to the bower. Despite the stifling tropical heat, Vic’s teeth chattered as she lay down, her eyes glazed with fever. Bethniel tucked the blankets tight, and her sister sank into sleep.

  Chewing on her bottom lip, Bethniel checked the contents of the chamberpot. Not a drop of red. Bethniel’s own courses had come twice since they’d arrived. It’s because she’s so sick, she thought. Why else would Vic’s monthly blood might be absent? It’s normal for women with more muscle than fat, she reminded herself. And she’s so sick. Sitting, she stroked Vic’s hair. “You will get better,” she promised aloud. Elesendar, she must. History was written: Victoria of Ourtown had fought with the Council against Meylnara.

  “My lady,” Thabean sneered from the tent entrance.

  “Sir Thabean.” Bethniel stood and bowed.

  “No change?”

  “She’s little better than the day you rescued her.”

  Lip curled in disgust, he scowled and pulled the flap aside to admit Saelbeneth. Dismissing the other wizard, the Council leader swept over and felt Vic’s forehead. “I’ve never heard of anyone lingering this long,” she said. “Your sister must be more compatible with the Woern than most.”

  Compatible, but not completely so. “She has been very ill, madam.”

  “Even so. Thabean informs me that you say she has not been herself? How so?”

  “She . . . raves, madam.”

  Saelbeneth gave her an appraising look. “My lady, I lack your strength in mindspeech, but I am wise enough to know when someone withholds the truth. Speak plainly, please.”

  Bethniel cleared her throat, trying to expel the worry lodged there. “She—she is not my blood sister. She became my father’s ward after she escaped from one of his rivals—an evil man who held her captive.” She gulped, full of foolish prudery and horror at Vic’s ordeal. “She became a fierce warrior in my father’s service, but she has always carried the shadows of her former master’s tyranny, and now she acts as if she still belongs to him.” And as if Bethniel were somehow part of Lornk’s household—an even more disturbing idea.

  “Woern-madness takes many forms. Have you seen any glimmers of the woman you know as your sister?”

  “No, madam.”

  “And has she used the Woern?”

  “Not that I have seen.”

  Saelbeneth placed a hand on Vic’s forehead again. “They’re still alive within her; I can feel them straining toward my Woern. If mine were to mix with hers, it might restore her.” The Council leader clasped Bethniel’s arm, and her skin prickled beneath the woman’s palm. “But it would be unseemly for me to give aid to a rogue. We’ll have to continue our vigil and hope your sister recovers so she may stand trial.”

  The Council leader glided out, leaving Bethniel to stare at the place where Saelbeneth had touched her. Any fluid of the body, her mother had said. And Elekia had sent them to Direiellene together, expecting Bethniel to help Vic survive. “Oh, Vic,” she whispered. “You’re not going to get better, are you?” Any fluid of the body. She swallowed, then churned up some saliva with her tongue. How could she give it to her? Spit in her mouth? Disgust cinched her throat. Vic was so sick, how could a little bit of spit help? Any fluid of the body. Her skin flushed hot as she thought of the way fluid usually passed from one person to another. “I love you, sister, but you’d need my brother for that.” Any fluid. Rubbing her fingers together, she felt her own pulse. Mother had used her blood. Blood was thicker than water, and surely thicker with Woern than spit. Fetching a knife, Bethniel sliced her thumb and slipped it between Vic’s lips. Her sister stirred, coughed, then latched onto the thumb, sucking like a babe to the breast. “Shrine,” Bethniel swore as the burning draw grew fiercer. Her oaths grew fiercer too, until at last she extracted her thumb and toweled the blood off Vic’s lips and cheek. Her sister moaned softly and rolled back into a deep sleep. Wrapping linen round her injured finger, Bethniel gnawed on her bottom lip. Elesendar, I hope that helped.

  * * *

  In the middle of the night, Vic listened to the guard changing, the exchange of greetings, the briefing that all was quiet, complaints about the rain. She rolled over and slipped back to sleep, relishing freedom from guard duty.

  She woke again, heard the wind rush through cerrenils, paused to wonder at the damp heat coating her skin and sopping her hair. She couldn’t remember a summer so humid.

  She tossed out of other nightmares. Lornk ruled over a Latha steeped in the vices of Traine. Ashel stood beside him, casually abetting his cruelties. Bethniel mopped her face; tears stained the princess’s cheeks. A comely, dark-bearded man stood above her, his face contorted with disgust. Dust danced through light beams. Strange birdsong echoed. Bethniel sang to her, squeezed her hand too tightly. The night rolled on, not ending, the longest sleep Vic had ever known.

  At last she woke to a dull ache in her shoulder, a pang in the pit of her stomach. Ashel’s last words rang while her eyes brimmed unshed tears. Be safe, wife.

  She nestled in a bower shrouded with fine netting, a clue that fate had moved her from Meylnara to the Council. Dim light stuttered in floo
r lamps. A slope of canvas stretched from a center pole to a ring five feet above a thick blue carpet, scrolled in gold. A desk and table, a few canvas chairs crowded the floor. She crawled out of bed and stood on jittering knees. A silk shift tickled the tops of her feet. Woozily, she stumbled to a water pitcher, her mouth sour, her throat drier than Krag—she snorted. Drier than the sea. She didn’t see any cups. Arms shaking, she raised the pitcher to her mouth. Water splashed down her chin, the pitcher stuttered against the wood, and she lowered herself into a chair, shaking.

  Be safe, wife. Her skin felt brittle and hollow, like an eggshell. The ghost of his last kiss touched her lips, and something in her womb flinched. Her lungs drew in the hot, damp air; her head fell into her hands. No, not that. Elesendar, no.

  Vivid dreams of a corrupted Latha haunted her: Elekia cowed as Lornk’s wife. Ashel proud and vain as his son. Only a dream, but as real as—she gripped the arm of the chair. As real as this . . . time. The Ancients had a concept called Relativity, a kind of time travel. What would Martha say to this? Martha, Ourtown’s ranking Logkeeper, the master who’d granted Vic her sash and sent her into the world, to maintain a tradition of knowledge old and useless as myth.

  The Logkeeper’s lodge is warmer than most, smaller than most. A pallet, a desk, and books, books. Vic looks up at Father. He tugs his beard and squeezes her hand.

  “She knows all I know,” he pleads. “She’s full of questions I can’t answer.”

  “Know all you know? Theodore, she’s a child.”

  “I’ll be a good student,” she swears.

  Martha turns cold blue eyes on her. “I don’t want a student,” she snaps. “Ours is not to understand, but to preserve.”

  Seven years under Martha’s tutelage, and she’d memorized every Log in Ourtown. An apprenticeship that prepared her for nothing. Certainly not this.

  Outside the tent, voices hailed Bethniel. Bethniel?

  “Madam, sir,” the princess answered, her mindvoice as real as the chair. “Well met.”

  “Well met,” replied a man. “Saelbeneth and I have just looked in on your sister.”

  “And how fares she?”

  “She sleeps as yet,” replied a woman, her mindvoice like velvet, “but her color is much improved.”

  “Yes, madam. Her fever broke last night. I have no doubt you will soon have the answers you seek.”

  The tent flap parted for elegant brown fingers. Vic winced at the shafting sunlight, but when the flaps closed, she blinked up at the tall, slender form of Latha’s Heir. Hair grown to her shoulders, Bethniel looked for a moment like a young Ashel.

  “You’re up!” Beaming, the princess laid a hand on Vic’s forehead. “How are you feeling?”

  “I can’t remember worse, not least because of where we are. This is Direiellene, isn’t it?” Even in mindspeech, her voice lacked the strength to bridge a whisper.

  “Elesendar, it’s you!” Bethniel glanced at a bandaged thumb and flung her arms round Vic’s shoulders.

  “How did you get here?”

  Her foster sister’s lower lip folded under her teeth. “I’m always following you where I shouldn’t go.”

  The urge to scold bubbled up through Vic’s shock and weariness, but she swallowed it, said the other thing she felt. “I’m glad to see you. How long have I been here?”

  “Almost two months. You’ve been very ill. What do you remember?”

  Two months! Be safe, wife. Swallowing a new wave of emptiness, Vic shook her head. She remembered searing pain and loss, but she confined her account to Meylnara’s dungeon.

  Beth recounted her story, casting her eyes down as she neared the end. “The first wizard I met, and the one who saved you, is Thabean.”

  The one who’d loved Victoria. Something sunk into Vic’s bowels, twisted itself into stale laughter that emerged in hoarse barks. “Elesendar,” she cried, tears running down her cheeks. “Elesendar—they’ve planned it all down to the last, haven’t they?”

  “They?”

  She felt a twinge in her belly, Meylnara’s words sharp in her ears. “Don’t you feel it?” No, please let that not be true. The laughter turned to sobs, hard, heavy. Her chest hurt, it was so hard to breathe. “I can’t do it, Beth. I can’t.”

  “Vic?” Bethniel’s arms encircled her shoulders. “Don’t cry. You’re safe now. Please, you’re safe.”

  “Safe! Safe!” Vic choked. Her head and shoulder throbbed; her body trembled, and she lacked the energy for tears. There were other matters to settle—Meylnara and Thabean and the Council and History—but the sobs came anyway, gagging her. Bethniel released her, and she bent over, slipped to the floor, still sputtering and moaning in a torrent. If there were a god, be it the spacecraft circling the planet or the omnipotent creator scoffed at in the Logs, if such a being existed, then her creation had been the cruelest of jokes. Dangling a life before her and then ripping it away just as her hand closed around it? If her destiny was to stay a soldier, what ironic madness could send her to a war so completely debilitated?

  A decanter clinked, and a glass pressed cool and solid against the back of her neck. “Drink this. You’re sweating out of your skin.”

  Hands shaking, she sipped. Sweet watered wine clung to her teeth. After another swallow, she could take a breath without choking. Groaning, she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.

  “The Woern are doing this to me.”

  The princess swept a hand along her face. “I know, sister.” One of the lamps flared, the light gilding her skin, like everything in the tent. The furnishings, the brass and crystal, the drapes with thread of silver could have fed an army for months. Something twitched in her gut. Life. How long? Two months? Forty days? She laid a trembling hand below her navel. Was it firm? A year was two hundred and twenty-three days long. Babies were born in just over eight months. One hundred sixty days, give or take. “Don’t you feel it?” It was too soon to feel anything, if there was anything to feel.

  “Beth?”

  “Yes?”

  She cleared her throat. “While I was sick, did I—” Her cheeks grew hot. Even as a soldier, her courses had come regular as clockwork. “I think I might—” Elesendar, no.

  The princess clasped her hands. “What?”

  Her touch jolted breath into Vic’s lungs, made her aware that blood still flowed around bone under the brittle skin. She pulled in a long breath, then met Beth’s eyes. Their creases conveyed a strength that belied the shallow vanity the princess wore like a veil. “This is the second time I’ve been taken from my home,” Vic said. “Twice the ones I love have had to assume I’m dead.” Bethniel winced, but she waited for Vic to go on. “First it was my father. Second—” She touched Beth’s cheek. “Second, it was Ashel. I love him. I finally realized it.”

  “I’ve known it a long time.”

  “And now I think I might, possibly, be . . . pregnant.”

  Bethniel gasped, eyes tearing. “You married? I’m going to be an aunt?” Her arms flew around Vic.

  Caught in the princess’s embrace, sobs filled Vic’s chest again. “I’m not sure yet, but if it’s true, I know what I should do. What I would do, except . . . this may be all I’ll ever know of him. And this war—I don’t care. I don’t care.”

  “You talk as if we’re never going home.”

  “We’re not.”

  The princess pulled back. “We got here, we can go home. No door doesn’t let you through both ways.”

  “What do we know of the Kragnashians’ doors? Aren’t you frightened that they can do this? The Ancients flew through space, but they couldn’t move through time.”

  Bethniel’s mouth flattened. “I won’t argue religion with you.”

  “Shrine, I’m not starting a debate. Whether they were born of trees or came from the stars, will you at least acknowledge the Ancients knew more of science than we do, that they had machines we don’t have?” The princess gave a begrudg
ing nod, and Vic went on. “Whatever they had, with the Device, the Kragnashians have more. That scares me. And whatever their intentions bringing us here, I doubt they plan to send us home.”

  “It seems you have a dilemma.” A short man with eyes as bright and blue as Lornk’s stood at the entrance. He carried himself like one used to command, but the relaxed tension in his shoulders and legs suggested he knew how to fight too.

  Bethniel stood and bowed her head. “Victoria of Ourtown, this is our host, Thabean Graystone, Second on the Council of Wizards.”

  Thabean—the sight of him burned off Vic’s tears. Using Beth as her anchor, she stood. “What did you hear?”

  “I’ll let your sister tell you, madam, though she’s not much help to you, allowing me to eavesdrop so long. The Council has some questions for you.”

  “She’s still too ill to meet them,” Bethniel said, aloud in his language. “Look at her—she only just regained her senses, and she can barely stand. Saelbeneth said she should be well before—”

  “She is well enough, my lady.” He turned to Vic. “Madam, you have broken two of the highest laws. The Council will demand your death.”

  Bristling, Vic waved at the tent. “You treat your condemned prisoners very well. I understand I’ve been under your care for months—why not just let me die?”

  Chuckling, he inclined his head. “The Council always prefers rogues to die on their own, and they usually do. Yet you recovered, and quite miraculously.” He crossed his arms. “Two laws, madam. My lady, ready your sister to meet the Council.”

  The Business of Traine

  Sunlight streamed through lead-paned windows, setting the merchant’s stylus aglow and his pate agleam. Laying down the quill, he blotted sweat with a silk handkerchief before sealing an envelope and handing it to Ashel. “I wish I could do more, but . . .” He shrugged at the silver-embossed ledgers behind him.

  Ashel swallowed protests and took the note. For weeks, he’d met dozens of slotaen merchants. Round women with bejeweled fingers, lanky men sporting silver-capped teeth, old ones, young ones, svelte, rotund, clever, and dense ones. All had an iron lock on their safe and a stalwart unwillingness to ask their supplier difficult questions and jeopardize their monopoly on Knownearth’s most prized commodity: the healing ointment the Kragnashians distilled from their own blood. He looked at the envelope: Lisette, pier 4. “A Caleisbahn ship?”