Her luggage was prepared, and the bathing trough filled to precision with cool milk Mudruffle had stored in the larder. The harness that would steady her nose and mouth above the surface of the milk was in place. The butter she would slick against her skin was warm and ready in bowls.
She drained the last of the broth, though her belly was full to the point of discomfort, and tottered over to the trough to review her calculations. In the surface of the milk she saw her shrunken and dry reflection peering back at her, and a thrill of anticipation filled her. When she was done, she’d see a young woman in the reflection.
She made a sound like a crow, scolding herself for her vanity, but let her robe fall to the floor around her feet. It was time. She had to act right away, for she had no idea when Mudruffle would return to himself—today, tomorrow, the next day—and when he woke, he might return to claim the stone from her. And if he did, she must be long gone. She would go to the river, and there she would disappear in the Arkendian countryside where her order dare not seek her. Mudruffle would never find her, and she’d live out an ordinary life—perhaps even seek out Caris, or Harric.
Her stomach pulsed with guilt and anxiety, but she repressed her anger. It was she who had been betrayed. It was she whose life had been stolen and returned when it was used up and crumbling.
Sounds of horses and men startled her from her thoughts. The morning sunlight gilded the west wall of the tower, streaming in through the eastern window. The birds were active in the understory and around the tower’s crown, but it was still twilight beneath the trees. She stooped and pulled up her robe, then walked back to the main room and peered out the western window into the yard below.
She saw knights with lances. Men-at-arms with spitfires. Someone banged on the tower door.
“There!” someone cried, pointing to her window. Abellia raised a frail hand in greeting.
A knight larger than any she had ever seen entered her field of view on a charger that drove the other horses away like a dog among chickens. He was impossibly broad, thick-limbed, over-muscled, and plated with armor like a tortoise. Sir Bannus, the Phyros-rider Sir Willard had warned her about. It had to be. More monster than man, and his horse as scarred and strange as Willard’s, but a stallion. The eyes were darker purple, and the scars—if possible—more numerous and random, barbaric.
Anger rose in her frail body. She would not allow this monster to interrupt her plans. She would send him off after Willard in the wrong direction.
A voice like gravel in a bass drum boomed from Sir Bannus. “We seek the criminal Willard. We know he was here.”
“This man is no longer being here,” she chirped.
“No longer being here.” He laughed. “An Iberg. We’ll have some fun after all. Open your doors, witch. I wish to be certain the man we hunt isn’t cowering in your cellar.”
“The man you hunting would not cower anywhere. And see! I am counting here only six men. He is already kill your army. He is not being afraid.”
Bannus grinned, broken teeth in a nest of scars. To his companions, he said, “Break the door in.”
Abellia cradled the egg-like nexus in her hands, and fortified the doors with the protective energies of her moon. The nexus glowed softly, illuminating her face and snow-white hair as two men-at-arms approached the door with axes and laid into it. Their axes spun from the iron as if it were made of slippery stone. After a half-dozen futile swings, they turned to Bannus, shaking their heads.
Bannus said, “A neat trick, witch. Burn the outbuildings.”
“This is royal fire-cone stand,” said Abellia. “If you making fire, you are dying too, yes?”
“Burn the buildings!”
Men-at-arms with spitfires used glowing punks to light tinder. Abellia sent a wave of creative energies to banish the flames. The men-at-arms cursed, claiming their punks had gone out. When they fetched their spitfires to blast resin against the stable, they found the coals in their fire cups cold. Flint hammers failed to spark.
Bannus laughed. “This is a white witch. Peace magic. I’ve seen it before. Let’s see how it fares against steel.” The immortal turned his massive charger and shouted to the rear of the company, “Titus! Bring them!”
In the growing twilight, Abellia watched a hooded rider walk his horse up the path from the gardens. He led a horse with two passengers: a young man, gagged, his hands bound behind him. He wore what looked like a filthy woman’s nightdress. Dried blood decorated the front like a bib. One of the lad’s eyes had swelled shut. His nose appeared to be broken. His lip was a fat red tuber. Oddly, a belt bound the dress to his waist, but then she recognized it as a bastard belt like Harric wore. An Arkendian invention born of their obsession with blood rank. This boy’s colors were red and black, which was a low color, if she remembered correctly. Harric’s had been green and black.
A shiver of dread rolled up her spine.
Behind the boy rode a crone, a grandmother nearly as old as Abellia herself. She’d been bound about the waist to the young bastard, and she slumped to one side, white hair hanging lank over her face. As they neared, she saw both had been weeping, for there were streaks of clean skin beneath their eyes, where tears had run.
The young bastard’s eyes found Abellia, pleading. A dart of grief and pity split her heart.
The man Bannus had called Titus halted the horse beneath the window and looked up. His face was concealed by a crimson mask of polished stone. The visage carved upon it was handsome, calm, and peaceful.
“Shall we skin them for you, witch?” said Bannus. “Shall we peel them slowly, let them beg for us?” The masked one turned toward the bastard, and he recoiled from his gaze, letting out a single, body-racking sob. “Show her what we mean, Titus.”
“No,” Abellia said, raising her hand. “I come down. But you must be swearing by your bond-mount—Gygon, as he named, yes?—to release these ones, and never harm them again, nor your companions to harm them.”
Bannus sneered. He swept one mighty arm in an arc encompassing all his companions. “Hear all! I swear by Gygon, my life, my soul, my bond mate, to release these two wretches, and let them go unharmed by us.”
Abellia nodded. “You release them now, yes? If I not come down, you can easy catch them.”
The masked one hauled the captives from the horse and cut the bond about their waists. The bastard bolted and ran wildly down the path, tearing at the gag still binding his mouth. Bannus laughed harshly as the grandmother crumpled like a tiny tent without poles. She made no attempt to rise.
A stab of fear pierced Abellia’s veil of calm as she realized the old woman could not, or would not, flee. She willed a Corporal Channel into the old woman, and when it reached her, a searing fire erupted in Abellia’s hip sockets and backbone, and in fiery streaks along the skin of her entire body. She nearly crumpled as the crone had done, but willed herself erect in the discipline of her training. There was no time for weakness. She let the warm power of her nexus follow the channel into the woman’s time-ruined body, and felt the pain lessen as tissue healed and bone mended.
The nexus grew hot in her hand from the major channeling. The crone’s flesh also grew warm. Abellia eased back the amount of power she channeled from the Bright Mother; too much could burn and exhaust the tissues. It was a holy paradox: that the power of Life might conjure the shadow of Entropy in the body and in the heat of its own nexus—the very essence of the Mad Moon’s opposite power.
Steadily, the gravel in the old mother’s hips turned to granules, and then to jelly, and then to healthy sinew and bone. The empathic pain in Abellia’s hips receded, and disappeared, and the ill-twisted wires of fire in her backbone unwound, the barbs dulling then disappearing. She kept the channel open, allowing a general wash of mending to knit adjacent tissues, so the new healing would not put undue strain upon them. If she kept the channel open indefinitely, time itself would be turned back in the ancient flesh, and it would remember its youth, but the wholesale dispensing
of youth was forbidden, and even now her nexus was almost too hot to hold.
She closed the channel and peered into the yard below. The old woman remained curled in the dust, unmoving.
“No part of our bargain requires the old sack to choose freedom,” said Bannus. “You see she’s become fond of our company.”
“She enjoys my attentions,” said the masked one.
The other knights shifted nervously in their saddles, but Bannus bellowed laughter that rang in the stillness between the buildings. What horror had they promulgated upon her? Abellia opened the channel again and quested over the old woman. What she found beneath the sack dress was bewildering and horrifying, and made her step back from the window as if slapped.
Long, fresh, curving incisions had been made in the papery skin along the warp of bone and limb, and then somehow closed and healed with gratuitous scars. These were the fiery streaks she had sensed before in the skin. How were these cuts possible? The loss of blood alone from such wounds was more than any mortal could endure. And how they burned! Each scar blazed with the pain of a fresh whiplash. Abellia gasped in rising indignation. This was not healing! This was a horror of flesh and Entropy totally alien to her, and not the infamous Arkendian hokum healing either, for it was too complete—the wounds were new, yet fully closed, a feat far beyond the powers of herbs or plasters.
If only she could see the scars, she could better understand them, and better mend them, but in this case she had few options, so she opened the floodgates of the channel and let her moon’s power wash across the brutalized tissue like a tide of dispelling grace. Let the scars melt away! Let the horror be forgotten like last year’s winter! Let the old woman rise without pain! Abellia felt the skin around the scars tighten, thicken, freshen, rejuvenate. But the lattice of newly healed wounds remained etched in the skin, unwavering, as if carved by the hand of a god whose will superseded even the Bright Mother’s authority to heal.
Dumbfounded, Abellia released the channel. She’d never met a power that could resist the healing might of the Bright Mother. As if in sympathetic frustration, her nexus burned hot in her hand.
Below her, Sir Bannus stripped his helmet from his head and snarled in impatience. “Open your door or the bargain is done! We’ll bring back the bastard, and this time, we will not stay our hands! You will lie awake this night to the sound of his cries!”
The sight of the immortal’s uncovered flesh struck the wind from her like a blow to the gut. His head seemed nothing more than a mangled mass of scars like purple serpents. Indeed, the knight’s flesh bore the selfsame scars as those on his mount and those of the crone. The revelation stunned her, but the conclusion was inescapable: the scars on the crone were indeed from a god, and therefore could not be reversed by the lesser powers of the moons. And the Arkendian’s preposterous claim of Krato’s Blood in the Phyros was true.
“Find the bastard!” Bannus said. “Bring him back! The witch betrays her bond!”
Abellia raised the glowing nexus high and brought it down in a brilliant flash of light. The stone hissed sharply, searing her palm with sudden heat, and she stifled a cry, jiggling it from one hand to the other until she could let it down into the water pitcher, where it hissed and sank to the bottom, inert. There was a red burn on her right palm that would blister badly. She paid it no further heed, but peered briefly from the window to confirm the nexus had done its work.
The yard below remained still. Knights who’d lined up beside the door to take her as she emerged had slumped to the ground. Sleeping. Silent. The horses dozed. The masked one curled in the dust, breathing lightly. A fat knight fell like a boulder from his saddle, but did not wake. Even the gigantic immortal sat motionless on his sleeping Phyros.
Abellia smiled. The bastard would have time to run before the men woke, and they did not have dogs with them. That was good. But her gaze snagged on the crone.
Frowning, she retrieved the nexus from the pitcher and sent a Waking to the crone.
Nothing. No response. It was as she had feared; the old woman’s mind and body were so brutalized that she’d gone catatonic. And there was no healing of the psyche through the Bright Mother; only the Unseen could heal such wounds, if it ever chose to heal anything.
Abellia shuttered the windows and tottered to the edge of the milk trough, where she sat and considered her options. There were really only two courses of action available: one, she could leave the poor, abused grandmother to die in the hands of those monsters. If she did that, she could use her nexus to mask the woman’s pain until she passed away. Then she could wait until the knights left, at which point she could continue with her own plans. Alternatively, she could save the woman by dragging her into the tower while the knights still slept. However, in Abellia’s present weak and aged state, she would not be capable of moving or carrying the old woman; that would require a strong, young Abellia.
Tears swam in her eyes. Damn them for coming today! Had they come tomorrow, she would have been gone and free! But then another voice inside her answered that if she had not been there when the men arrived, the crone and bastard would have died horribly. The injustice of it pained her, but there was really only one choice for her. In the end, she was a healer, and healers did not abandon others when it better suited their own needs; healing others was their need.
And she could do both—she could heal herself and save the grandmother—only she must hurry.
With a tiny noise somewhere between a growl and a cry, she let the robe fall again and laid herself gingerly in the trough of cool milk. Settling her head into the harness, she adjusted her position until the milk covered all but her face. Her tiny body trembled already with the cold—so much that she feared she might lose feeling in her hands and drop the nexus she clutched against her skinny belly. Without further hesitation, she opened the only channel forbidden a white magus: a channel directly from the nexus to her own withered flesh.
The power flooded her tissues indiscriminately, and she caught her breath at the force of it, as many of her patients had before. No Bright Mother magus knew the sensation, though all had been tempted to know it. Had there been any who never fantasized of such treachery in moments of weakness? Could Mudruffle have truly seen in her something that would make her any different?
She clasped the stone in withered claws, eyes wet with tears as the power flooded her flesh. Her limbs and skin and joints warmed, then cooked with growing fever. Systems rebuilt, tissue grew and strengthened, heart pounded and lungs panted. How it burned in her bones! How the nexus scorched like an ember in her hands! The milk seemed suddenly warm and no good in cooling. Panting like a dog, she squirmed in discomfort. Her head ached. Her brain seemed to cook like an egg in its shell, and her mind spun free in wild and blurry hallucinations.
She saw Mudruffle standing above her, sticklike arms waving frantically. He burst into flames, and then the Light Bringer rose in his place. The creature hadn’t deigned to see her before, but now its eyes cut through her, damning like a flash of lightning. Then it too was gone, and there was only pain and fire in her limbs, and she feared she’d done something wrong, or triggered some kind of trap or punishment for any who dared use this channel. But she could no longer feel her hands for the pain, could no longer work her fingers to release the nexus. Hammers of heat beat in her skull. Her body jerked. Her blood seemed a-boil and heart near bursting.
Vomit and excrement exploded from her, hot and putrid. She choked and sobbed, delirious, until her mind failed, and all was blackness.
A maid who tells no lies will never marry.
—Arkendian folk saying
27
Blood & Consequence
As Willard and Caris disappeared in the willows along the bank, Harric opened the pouch and found strips of dried jerky meat inside. No…these were scabs, he realized, as he pulled one out. Blue scabs. His eyes widened. Phyros plasters. Willard had harvested the strips of dried blood of Molly’s war mask and given them to Harric. His
mouth fell open. Ballads sung of Phyros plasters and their powers were legendary: if you pushed them into a wound, the wound healed; if you ate one, your wounds scarcely affected you, and your limbs and heart filled with strength and courage. Harric snorted. More like violence and rage, he guessed. Nevertheless, it was a valuable gift. Plus, it was the only magic Willard approved of. And he’d given it to Harric.
I’ll be damned.
But what did it say about the danger Willard thought they were in?
Brolli was writing in his journal again, his mouth pressed in a grim, tight line. A glance at Kogan revealed even the priest still sullen from Willard’s display.
Harric let out a long breath. “Not what you expected of the Blood, eh, ambassador?”
Brolli did not look up from his work. His Kwendi writing tool scratched across the surface of the paper, leaving a trail of jagged marks that made up the Kwendi alphabet. Somehow today’s words looked sharper, cut deeper than others Harric had seen.
“I think it might be fair to say that he tried to warn you, ambassador.” Harric smiled. “You asked for this. Begged for this. He didn’t want to take the Blood.”
Brolli flipped the daylids onto his forehead. Golden eyes blazed at Harric, pupils black and huge—too big for daylight—but the Kwendi left the lids up.
“I must know how this Blood works.” Brolli’s voice was tight and hard, his accent more pronounced. “This rage is the thing I must see. This is what rules your people—this fire, this…tyrant Blood is what rules this land.”
Was the ambassador saying he egged Willard into taking the Blood so he could see what it did to him—to see if it made him like Bannus?
A coal of anger burned under Harric’s breastbone. Instead of raising the point, he chose a more diplomatic approach. “The Blood does not rule Arkendia anymore. The Queen rules—”
Brolli swiped his hand through the air as if batting the notion away. “Your queen has no power. Bannus cares not a fig for your queen. He rides to the north and makes war. He rides across the north and makes terror. She cannot stop him. This”—he pointed after Willard—“this is the true power in Arkendia. This is the ally or enemy my people must decide for.” He gazed after Willard, nose wrinkling as if he wished to spit a bad taste from his mouth. “And it makes the unpredictable ally, and the very bad enemy.”
The Jack of Ruin Page 23
