Then, I began my incantation.
The Reaper howled in agony and rage. The children looked on with dead eyes as my intoned words did precisely what I had designed them to do. Wind screamed around us, and Ramun threw everything he had at me, but he was an amateur. I didn't know where he had gained his power, but he was no expert practitioner. He had never spent long nights understanding precisely how much manna could be used, how it could be plied to achieve exactly the right result without damaging oneself or the subject.
He had not spent a lifetime learning, like I had.
My spell stripped away every layer of defense he had. First the terror glamour dispersed to the winds, and then I countered as he tried to bring it back to life. Then I destroyed the illusion of the Reaper itself, and its crimson eyes guttered out like candles in a harsh wind.
Next I dampened all other power save for my own, and though he tried to conjure a wave of fire to burn me alive, all he got was the flickering flame of a torch.
Ramun shrieked and screamed epithets at me, all while I systematically took away every ounce of power he had built up around himself. He was reacting purely on instinct now, throwing random effects and attacks at me, but none of them connected. My wards were too strong, my spell was too tightly woven to allow anything to penetrate its web.
After what seemed like an eternity, Ramun dropped to his knees in the snow, frothing at the mouth. Blood dripped from his right nostril, and his eye rolled wildly as it tried to focus.
"I truly am sorry," I said. The words were more for Alina than they were for him.
Then I spoke the seven final words of my incantation.
Ramun's eye fixed, staring straight ahead, and blood gushed from his nose. His pupil visibly dilated, and then he pitched over into the snow, unmoving.
Bile rushed up into my throat, and I doubled over, expelling the meager contents of my stomach onto the snow. In the same instant, all three of the children dropped to the ground, staring at the sky with their blank eyes.
All around me, I heard the crunch of snow as the animated dead collapsed. The power which had been driving them was gone, and now they were nothing once again.
When at last I looked up again, my heart skipped a beat.
Alina still stood before me, staring at me with those frightening crimson eyes. The pain was like fire now, and I moaned in agony. It felt like I was burning alive.
I looked around. As far as I could see in the moonlight, all of the other corpses had collapsed when Ramun had died. There was no movement in the moonlight. Ramun was face-down in the snow, his body already going stiff and rigid in death.
What was happening here?
Slowly, Alina's impossibly-pale face turned toward the house of Palis the smith.
My heart began to thunder in my chest. Sweat broke out on my forehead, although I was shivering with cold.
"I destroyed the Reaper," I whispered. "I can't… I can't do any more."
Her gaze turned back to me, and her head jerked to one side. Her frozen lips formed two words.
You promised.
I twitched as though I'd been stung. This was worse, far worse than anything I had ever imagined. How had I gotten myself into this mess?
Right. By pretending to be an Arbiter.
If I had truly been the person I'd claimed to be when I entered Warsil, it would have been my duty to strike down Alina's corrupted body with my crystal sword. The evils of men would have been none of my business.
I wasn't that person.
I wasn't an Arbiter.
Dead though she was, Alina had a point. I had promised.
Jerkily, I rose to my feet. The incantation had rendered me drastically ill, and the world swayed in front of me as I staggered through the snow.
Her corpse followed silently behind me, until I opened the door of Palis the smith's house.
Clenching my jaw as tightly as it would go, I stepped back out of the way. Though I tried to look away, her crimson gaze caught mine one final time, driving another jab of flame through me.
Thank you.
I lit the house on fire just as the screams began. No one would escape. The corruption that had been born here would die here… but not until a score was settled.
Then, I ran for my life.
<<<|>>>
Lesson III
SORCERER'S BLOOD
I
My world stopped when the knife struck.
Cold steel tore flesh and muscle on its mirrored blade. It scraped against bone, setting my teeth on edge. Blood flowed, slowly at first… and as the razor edge exited, a gout followed closely behind it.
My blood.
The sudden, sharp pain stole my breath away. I inhaled, trying desperately to block out the sudden blackness that threatened to sweep me away.
Then the blade struck home a second time.
The pain was still fresh from the first wound that my hands clutched at uselessly, trying to put the pouring red liquid back where it belonged.
"No, no," I gasped. My fingers clutched uselessly at the escaping red liquid, trying to force it back from whence it came. "Get back in there, damn you."
Why was it so hard to breathe?
In slow motion, my knees buckled beneath me. I felt the sting as I struck the stones hard, all the strength gone from my legs, but I hardly noticed. A rushing sound filled my ears, and I toppled forward, landing face-first on the dirty cobbles beneath me. My chest felt as though it were being compressed by a vise; every breath sent searing pain through the wound.
Breathe, I commanded myself, fighting through the pain.
I never saw my assailant. Only the echo of their retreating footsteps lingered in my ears.
Death hadn't made an appearance on my list of tasks for the day. I expected a fair amount of trouble to come my way, but a knife? Something so crude, so ignoble as an assassination in a dirty alley had never even entered my consideration.
Bravo, Selvaria, I sneered at the blasted city in my head. You managed to surprise me. Well done.
Blood flowed from the wound, forced to a trickle by the clutching grip of my hands, but the knife had cut deep, and the wound was mortal. I could already feel my fingers beginning to weaken as rich, wine-colored arterial blood stained my fingers and left crimson splotches on the cobblestones. A rush of burning pain accompanied each breath as I struggled to draw the next, and the next.
If I didn't do something soon, death would win.
I had no time to reach a healer. With luck, I could maintain consciousness for another few seconds, but as soon as my fingers weakened far enough, I would spill my entrails in the dirty alley. The stink of sewage assaulted my nose, and that moment pronounced my impending death absolutely certain, unless drastic measures were taken.
I'd mastered a great many things in my time, but the healing of wounds lingered beyond the grasp of sorcery. Only one item within reach had any chance of saving my poor, pathetic life.
My attention flicked to the pouch secured to my calf. The constriction of the leather band suddenly seemed achingly painful, though it was nothing compared to the desperate panic rising in my chest.
Blackness threatened to close in, and I fought it back.
I cannot die here.
I will not die here, black gods be damned.
The heartblade.
Some claimed that the use of an Arbiter's heartblade would give them great power. Others maintained that it meant only death. Very few had ever held onto a heartblade for any length of time, and most of its powers were a matter of myth and legend, not empirical fact.
Sorcerer, experiment upon thyself.
I was dying anyway. What did it matter?
I sank to my knees on the stones. Moving was hard, as it turned out. As my midsection flexed, my fingers weakened, and I barely kept my guts from dropping to the ground. Every twitch of my muscles sent new lances of pain through my bloodied guts as my heart expended my life's blood upon the cobblestones. My fingers fumbled despe
rately toward my calf, reaching for the sole thread upon which my continued existence would rest.
I couldn't reach it.
My fingers seized only inches away, refusing steadfastly to continue. Was it loss of blood, or was it paralyzing fear that gripped me in that instant?
With an immense surge of will, a desperate need to cling to life, I forced my fingers onward, unlocking the clasp that held the leather pouch shut. There was nothing in this world that I valued more than living. I liked living, and even the slimmest chance for that had to be taken. There was so much that I hadn't accomplished, that still needed discovering. I couldn't allow the weaknesses of flesh to drag me down into darkness now.
The tiny, fragile, crystalline needle tumbled out into my hand. It was shining brightly with a soft blue-white glow.
A coughing spasm gripped me, and more of my precious lifeblood spilled out onto the stones. My fingers were locked with pain, spasming tightly. The heartblade nearly tumbled from my fingers, but I managed to hold it without shattering its fragile beauty.
The moment of truth. Can I do it?
An easy choice, in the end. The possibility of life, or certain death. I resolved to choose life.
Unless, of course, the heartblade also meant death.
I'd read extensively of the Arbiters and their strange artifact. I'd attempted to study it, only to be rebuffed at every turn. The only option remaining to me, the final block between my mind and understanding, was to undo all of its enchantments, one by one, and something in me had resisted the urge. Prescience, or coincidence?
I cradled the tiny thing in my hand as though it were a fallen star.
The blackness rose up to claim me again. This time, I wasn't sure I could resist it.
I could not hold my stomach and perform the heartblade's ritual simultaneously. With an effort of will, I forced my hand open. I didn't look down, didn't look to see what happened. Instead, I moved my bloodied hand to my collarbone, ripped my robes open with the other hand, and counted down on my left side.
One rib.
Two ribs.
Three.
Just below the third rib, I drove the tiny needle of the heartblade into my flesh.
The crystal point grazed my heart, and it felt as though I was set aflame. The brilliant light of the artifact's enchantment filled my eyes, my body, and my very soul.
I tried to scream, but no sound passed my lips.
Surely, this was death.
At least it's less painful than a mug of black Mard, was my last thought before darkness overcame all.
II
Cold.
That was my first thought when consciousness returned. The second made me wrinkle my nose against the steady drops of water that fell upon it.
Realization crashed in.
My hands flew to my chest, poking and prodding my center of mass. The pain had vanished. I was lying in a rapidly-diluting pool of my own blood as cleansing rain poured through the worn thatching that covered the alley, but I was no longer losing any more precious life. I rummaged through my robes, but found only smooth skin where the blade had entered.
After a moment's panic, I found the heartblade caught up in one of the folds of my robe's sleeve, its light gone dark. I plucked it out and wrapped my fingers around it, carefully. On the ground beside me lay the silver manacle which had been clamped around my wrist, the sign of my servitude. It had broken into two pieces, with black scorches marking the shattered edges.
With careful precision, I checked the rest of myself. The large gold ring which clutched an amber gem had not moved from its place on the second finger of my left hand. My bag of tricks, consisting of several small magical artifacts which I'd imbued with various enchantments over the last several months, still hid away in a concealed pocket inside my robes. Whoever had killed me hadn't been interested in my trinkets and treasures—just my life.
A quick look around revealed no sign of other people nearby. The ambient light had vastly dimmed, but the sun had not yet set. The sunny day that I remembered had been replaced by the iron-gray storm clouds above.
For a moment, paralysis gripped my mind.
What have I done?
The haze clouding my vision pushed back at the edges, and I forced myself into an upright position. A rush of dizziness almost took me back down to the cobbles, but I managed to sit up straight and look around.
How much time had passed? I had no idea. I tucked the heartblade back into the leather case at my ankle, safely away into the velvet-lined interior. A brilliant warmth suffused me, I slowly realized, as though a hearth fire had been kindled at the very center of my being. In fact, I felt better than I had in years.
Interesting.
I flexed my fingers experimentally a few times, finding myself mostly unchanged. No immediate defects that made themselves apparent to my eyes, and as I at last climbed to my feet, the lingering haze of unconsciousness dissipated.
I glowered down at the broken silver manacle with every ounce of sneering contempt that I could muster. It had been my chain for six months. A shock collar to keep the good little lapdog in line. If only I'd known what I had agreed to when I'd accepted it, I might have chosen to starve on the streets instead.
Ah, what's the point in lying to myself? I'd never have nobly starved if there was another option available.
Gingerly, I picked up the blackened silver pieces and stuffed them into an inner pocket of my robe. The enchantment was gone from it now, but one never knew when pure silver might come in handy.
As I tucked away the broken manacle, a thought recurred. I stood on the street alive, but I was supposed to be dead.
"Black gods," I muttered under my breath, annoyed. "Why does everyone always want to kill me?"
In that moment, a thought percolated its way through my mind. If I'd been left for dead in an alley, my assassin was convinced of my death. Indeed, there would have been no way for me to have survived such an assault, had I not been holding a trump card in reserve. Two things logically followed from this train of thought.
One, my assassin did not know about the heartblade that I carried, which meant my efforts to conceal it had been successful.
Second, the city of Selvaria thought I was dead.
A weird chuckling snort escaped me. "By gods," I murmured. A new glow, this time one of inspiration, warmed my mind. "I get to investigate my own murder!"
III
The city seemed to glare down at me as I made my way through its seediest of back alleys, perhaps the first man ever to have risen again when she had struck them down—well, with his consciousness intact, anyway. Buildings which had stood for centuries, or perhaps even millennia, presented their blank and crumbling facades. I had been a fool to think that I ever could have belonged here.
Thankfully, the midnight blue of the robes that I wore masked the fact that they were stained through with blood. I'd need to make new attire a priority; the rain helped to soften the crusted wool, but the stains on the cloth were irreparable. First, though, I had to be certain that I was safe. The iron grey sky above continued to pour down water that sluiced through ancient storm drains and across the arched aqueducts that carried it cleanly to the homes of those who could afford it.
At first, I meandered without purpose. What could I do; whom could I trust? Was there anyone in this damnable place that I could be certain was not behind my assassination? I aimed only to stay away from the portions of the city which were clearly controlled by the minions of Trulia of the Thorn, the sorceress to whom, in desperation, I'd traded my freedom for a bit of peace. If any of Trulia's puppets spotted me, the charade of my death would evaporate like fog struck by sunlight.
This wandering brought me to Selvaria's slums, the worst of the worst in the decadent, rotten borough. Here there were no ancient buildings, no arching stonework that had so captivated my attention when I'd first arrived. Instead, there stood only crumbling wooden shelters that housed the poorest, the drug-addled and the mos
t miserable members of the working underclass. The streets were no longer cobbled, but instead made merely of packed dirt; or at least, they would have been, if it had not been pouring rain. The mud sucked at my boots as I traipsed along, threatening to steal them off my feet. Angry thunder rumbled overhead, reminding me that I should take cover before the storm became a full monsoon.
The rain had driven most of the populace indoors, since here there were no upper levels or walkways to shield the ground from the wet—a thin blessing, but I wasn't complaining. The muddy streets were lonely and desolate, and I must have looked quite the madman to be wandering along them in such a state as I was.
It seemed to me by chance that I looked up to behold a tattered wooden sign, swinging in the wind above me, upon which was scrawled three jagged lines in stark black paint, above a rough painting of a beer mug. The sign for the Three Claw Tavern, a place which I'd visited only once before, when I'd first arrived in Selvaria.
It was the favorite haunt of a man I knew. A man to whom I owed a favor.
I held up my hand and squinted my eyes against the deluge from above. I could only hope that the moral code of the scarred ex-mercenary-turned-professional-monster-hunter included a clause that would prevent him from killing someone who owed a favor before it was repaid. Swallowing my disgust, I pushed open the door to the Three Claw Tavern and stepped across the threshold.
The door slammed behind me as a gust of wind caught it, and I nearly let out a startled squawk. An exceptionally ugly man standing behind the bar, sporting a coif of receding black hair, a bulbous, wart-ridden nose and a mustache thicker than the mud outside gave me a hideous glare… which I realized after a moment was only an appraising glance.
"Wet outside," he said, one corner of his mouth turning up to reveal yellowed teeth.
The Elements of Sorcery Page 9
