A wizard’s spell.
The globe began to lower over his head, but Colrean thrust his hand within it and opened his fingers. There was a flash of brilliant light, a shower of small sparks that died even as they fell to the earth, and the globe was no more.
“How—”
Naramala did not finish her question, but immediately began to mutter again, building another spell. Colrean watched her intently, trying to read her lips, to work out which memory-hooks she was using in order to anticipate her casting. A few seconds after she started, he began as well, calling power as he sketched an outline in front of himself in the air. Smoke trailed from his fingers, lines of lurid too-white smoke that he drew across and up and down, weaving the smoke together to make a solid shield.
Colrean finished a scant second before Naramala unleashed an incinerating bolt of power from her staff, of such strength it blew his shield of smoke apart and struck him full on the chest, flames licking over his entire body. But the shield had almost worked, for the flames died even as they struck. Though blackened and shocked, Colrean was hardly burned.
Naramala shrieked in frustration as she saw he still lived, though he had fallen to one knee and was blinking away soot. Raising her staff, she ran forward, clearly intent on delivering a killing blow of both magical and physical force—a favored tactic of the most brutal wizards when their opponents were temporarily stunned.
Colrean raised his hand and called more magic into it, but he was dazed and could not shape it, could not get his ashen tongue to utter a memory-hook, and then Naramala was in front of him, her staff blazing with power, and she raised herself up and—
The rowan struck first. Two branches wound around the staff and plucked it from her grasp, even as another forked branch closed around the wizard’s neck. Lifting her high, yet another branch secured her legs, and then, just as a farmer might kill a chicken, the rowan broke Naramala’s neck and threw her down upon the ground.
The wizard’s arms twitched. Her heels drummed, and a terrible inhuman clicking sound emanated from her throat. Then she was still.
Colrean flinched as the rowan threw the wizard’s staff down next to her body. Coughing up soot, he groaned and leaned back against the tree, stretching out his legs. The wound in his left foot had opened again, the bandage blown off. His right boot had black-rimmed burn holes and scorch marks all over it, as did his breeches, and through the holes he could see the sheen of his narwhal-horn peg leg, and the shine of the gold bands that wound around the horn from tip to base.
The Islanders also had wizards, but they did not carry their staves openly.
Colrean looked across at Naramala’s body and then over at the Corner Post, looming dark against the lighter sky. The bronze foot of the staff high up seemed to wink in the starlight. Colrean stared at it and became certain of something he had begun to suspect.
“Come out!” called Colrean, his voice unsteady. There were tears in his eyes, tears running down his cheeks, making trails through the layer of soot. They were for Naramala, as he had once thought she was, and for his younger, foolish self, and because he was hurt and weakened, and the night was still not done.
“Come out!”
The staff in the stone shifted against the backdrop of stars, slanting down. As it moved, a line of light sprang up behind it, so bright that Colrean had to duck his head, put his chin against his chest, and cover his face with his forearm. Even shielded so, and with his eyes tightly shut, it was almost unbearably bright.
The light ebbed. Colrean risked a glimpse, raising his arm a little. There was a figure stepping down from the Corner Post—from inside the Corner Post—lit from behind by a softer light, as if deep within the stone there was sunshine. The silhouette was almost a caricature of a wizard, with the pointed, broad-brimmed hat, the trailing sleeves, the staff as tall as its bearer.
“Verashe,” said Colrean, naming the wizard as she came toward him, now rounded and real under the moon and stars, not a shadowed shape backlit by the strange illumination from the stone, a light that was already fading. “Grand Wizard.”
“Coltreen,” said the wizard mildly. She was very old, but not stooped. Still taller than Colrean, straight-backed and imposing. Her face was lined and thin, but her green eyes sharp as ever. Her long hair, once red, was pale with time and tied back under her hat, save for one slight wisp, which was escaping above her left ear. “Or Colrean, as I believe you call yourself now.”
She bowed her head to the rowan as Colrean had done, if not so deeply. A greeting of equals, or those long familiar.
“So you set your snare, and have caught two unbound wizards,” said Colrean bitterly. He lifted himself against the trunk of the rowan, trying to sit more upright, and winced as new pains made themselves felt.
“I did not even know you were in these parts,” replied Verashe. “Not until I came here, at least, and by then matters were already in train.”
“So the lure was for Naramala alone?” asked Colrean wearily. “Did you expect the Grannoch too?”
“I was not sure what might come,” answered the Grand Wizard. She knelt down at Colrean’s side and ran her fingers over the sole of his foot, once again stemming the flow of blood with magic and doing something else that vanquished the pain. A curious thing to do for a condemned man, thought Colrean, and a small spark of hope grew inside him.
“I did try to ensure Naramala would be foremost of the wizards, since it was well past time her ambitions should be thwarted.”
“You knew she had evaded the oath?”
“Of course,” replied Verashe. She sighed. “Almost every class has someone like Naramala, certain of their own cleverness and destiny. And the oath, though robust, cannot hold against continued use of blood magic and human sacrifice. She killed Cateran and Lieros too, you know, and quite a number of beggars and the like—those she believed would not be readily missed. All the while thinking herself unobserved.”
Colrean wiped his eyes and pretended no new tears brimmed there. Cateran and Lieros had been fellow students too. He remembered first meeting them, brimful with the joy of learning magic. They had both come to their powers unexpectedly, unbelieving they had won places at the university in Pran, foremost of the schools of wizardry.
Verashe ran her index finger from one burned hole in Colrean’s breeches to another, splitting the cloth all along the leg, to completely expose the limb made of gold-banded narwhal horn. In addition to the gold, the horn was deeply etched along the whorls with scenes of ships and the sea, and set with tiny pearls and pieces of amber.
“I have only seen one such…staff…before,” mused Verashe. “A wizard called Sissishuram studied with us one summer, it must be thirty years ago now. Though her staff took the place of her left arm from the elbow, and ended in the most vicious hook.”
“Sissishuram was my master,” said Colrean. “She remembered you, and told me I was a fool to risk coming back. Verashe will brook no unbound wizard, she said. Stay with us, we who are free upon the sea.”
Verashe stood up and walked across to look down upon Naramala’s body, and the staff next to it.
“How did you go within the stone?” asked Colrean. “What spell?”
Verashe didn’t answer him, instead picking up Naramala’s fallen staff, so she held one in each hand.
“I am overcurious for a man about to die, I suppose,” said Colrean. He laughed, a short laugh that ended almost with a sob. “Stupid of me, I suppose. To want to know such a thing now.”
“Are you sure you will not come back to Pran? The oath is not so terrible for someone who has no desire for power.”
“It is not the oath alone,” replied Colrean slowly. He looked up at the sky above, so vast with stars, the moon hanging in the corner. There were clouds drifting across from the west now, doubtless bringing rain. All the small sounds had come back, and the weste
rly breeze that had sprung up to bring the clouds was steadily strengthening, taking away the stench of sudden death as easily as it flung barley chaff across the field. He thought of the three villages beyond the commons to north, east, and south, with their people asleep behind barred oak doors, their windowsills salted, trusting to him to keep them safe.
“It is not the oath at all,” continued Colrean. He looked up at Verashe, unsure what he could see in her face, whether it was the executioner he beheld or the messenger bringing an unexpected pardon to the very foot of the block.
“I want…I need to stay here. I cannot live in the city, any city. I do not wish to serve the Grand Mayors, I do not desire gold and servants and all that goes with such things. I want to do small magics, for ordinary folk, and be at peace. I have found…happiness…here. I will not relinquish it.”
“We permit no unbound wizards in Pran, or Huyere, or the five cities, and those who defy this order end as Naramala has done,” mused Verashe, apparently to herself. She paused and glanced across at Colrean. “Here, among barley fields and forest, the strictures are less…straitened…shall we say. And the rowan is a fine judge of what truly lies inside the hearts of people…”
She stopped talking again, and bowed her head to the tree again, her face now shadowed by her hat. Colrean watched her, wondering, hoping.
“So, Colrean. I have decided to let you live. But if you will not be bound by the oath, other bindings must be applied, other bounds set. You must swear by the rowan you will abide here, to never go more than twenty leagues from the Corner Post, without leave from the Grand Wizard and the Council.”
Colrean nodded stiffly, and reached inside his jerkin for the silver leaf the rowan had given him, a token of its trust. He held it in his hand and spoke.
“I swear by the rowan, I shall abide here, and go no farther than twenty leagues from the Corner Post, without leave from the Grand Wizard and the Council.”
The leaf shivered and crumbled, leaving only the delicate tracery of its veins behind, and these sank into Colrean’s palm, marking the skin with russet and silver lines. If he broke this oath, the ancient rowan would know, and hold him accountable.
Colrean shivered, remembering the sounds of Naramala’s death.
“Good,” said Verashe. She held Naramala’s staff out to him. “You will need this, I think, to help you hobble to the closest house, where I trust we can have an early breakfast.”
Colrean took the staff wonderingly, and slowly used it to lever himself upright. He could feel the vestige of magic within the bog-oak and the bands of gold, but the staff’s power was almost entirely spent. It would take many years to fill again.
“Naramala?” he asked, looking at the body.
“The Rannachin would also break their fast,” answered Verashe, gesturing.
Colrean looked across the barley and saw the moon shadows there. He frowned, but only for a moment. He had no strength to dig a grave or build a cairn, and in truth, it was better nothing should remain of a wizard who had practiced blood magic. The Rannachin were known to eat even bones and teeth, and they would take no scathe from any remnant magic, as a rat or other scavenger might.
“Come!” said Verashe impatiently. “I have been fasting within the stone since the last dawn, and I am too old to miss another meal!”
“We cannot go to the closest house,” said Colrean. “Two wizards in Gamel, and none calling into Seyam and Thrake? Besides, they won’t let us in until after dawn. I warned them not to admit anyone, and they would rightly be afraid. It is farther, but I have food and drink in my forest house.”
He limped past the Grand Wizard, pausing to bow once again to the rowan, leaning heavily on his new staff. A few paces along he bowed to the Corner Post as well, and turned his head back to Verashe.
“My question remains…how exactly did you inhabit the stone? What spell could overcome such power as resides there?”
Verashe laughed. She did not have a lovely voice like Naramala’s, and her laugh was like a crow’s call. But Colrean did not mind, for it was human.
“You have a true wizard’s curiosity,” she said. “But no spell would let you dwell within this stone. It was a matter of friendship, a courtesy allowed me. We have known each other a very long time, the Corner Post and I.”
Colrean nodded thoughtfully and set forth again, stumping alongside the wall. It was much darker now, half the sky clouded, and it was starting to rain. A soft drizzle that spread the soot about his face and streaked his clothes, rather than washing anything clean.
I will need a hat he thought, surprising himself that he could think of any such ordinary thing amidst pain and grief and weariness. But he could, and he was glad of it, and he grabbed at the thought as he might a lifeline aboard one of the Islanders’ ships.
I will need a hat to go with the staff. The villagers, particularly Sommie and Heln, will expect me to fully look the part, and it will keep the rain off. I suppose the brim from Gamel, the body from Thrake, the tip from Seyam—or the other way about…
◆ ◆ ◆
Everyone knows that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery—but it can also be the most dangerous, especially when magic is involved.
Elizabeth Bear was born in Connecticut, and now lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts, with her husband, writer Scott Lynch. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005, and in 2008 took home a Hugo Award for her short story “Tideline,” which also won her the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (shared with David Moles). In 2009, she won another Hugo Award for her novelette “Shoggoths in Bloom.” Her short work has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Subterranean, Sci Fiction, Interzone, The Third Alternative, Strange Horizons, On Spec, and elsewhere, and has been collected in The Chains That You Refuse and Shoggoths in Bloom. She is the author of the five-volume New Amsterdam fantasy series, the three-volume Jenny Casey SF series, the five-volume Promethean Age series, the three-volume Jacob’s Ladder series, the three-volume Edda of Burdens series, and the three-volume Eternal Sky series, as well as three novels in collaboration with Sarah Monette. Her other books include the novels Carnival and Undertow. Her most recent book is an acclaimed new novel, The Stone in the Skull.
◆ ◆ ◆
ELIZABETH BEAR
“This,” said Brazen the Enchanter, dropping something to the slates with a crash, “is not one of yours.”
It twitched erratically, whatever it was, and rattled against itself while it made as if to crawl away. Bijou rose from her workbench and stretched the creaks and cracks from between a spine that was beginning to bend with more than middle age. She pushed her locks away from her seamed face and craned to get a better look at the whatever-it-was. Her vision blurred; in a moment she remembered she was still wearing the quartz lenses that Brazen had made her for close work, and dropped them to the end of her chain.
Several of Bijou’s more crablike creations scuttled across the floor to investigate. Bones, long and ivory. Metal with the look of silver, but it had not rung cleanly when Brazen dropped it. Jewels that did not flash quite as enticingly as the real thing.
Bijou frowned at it, and then at Brazen. “I haven’t seen you around here for a while. Shouldn’t you be off with that lady friend?”
“I broke up with what’s-her-name almost a year ago.”
“Najma.” Bijou shook her head. “I should have raised you better.”
Her former apprentice, now a master wizard in his own right, shrugged and grinned. “You can’t amend a man’s basic flaws of character, no matter how early you apprentice him. Besides, haven’t I always been dutiful to you, my old master?”
Bijou, despite herself, felt a smile elevate one corner of her mouth—just the one. The left one.
Brazen stood behind the tawdry heap with his legs braced wide, his arms crossed over his barrel body so his biceps strai
ned the brocaded sleeves of his flaring coat. His skin was of a rare, florid paleness; his hair gray-blond and waving to his shoulders. Copper wire, braided into lavish sideburns, ended in sapphires at the level of his jaw. He looked as smug, virile, and disreputable as any tomcat who has brought home the back half of something unspeakable and dropped it in his owner’s lap.
“Are you suggesting I’ve been neglecting you?” There might have been a little guilt in his sidelong glance.
“On the contrary. I had been getting an extraordinary amount of work done.”
She missed having him around, but she wasn’t going to say that. Could barely admit it to herself. Bijou’s early experience of expressing vulnerability in her family of birth had not been the sort that encouraged repeat offenses.
Bijou came around the table. She picked up the cane hooked on its edge and, rather than as a prop, used its silver ferrule to poke the twitching pile.
“You are correct,” she said. “This is no work of mine. And thus, what concern is it to me?”
“I shan’t have to salt my meat for a week, if you’re going to take that tone.” His beard broke into a grin. She refused to be irritated by him; he had been the son of her dearest friend, the wizard Salamander, and she would have forgiven him anything just on those grounds alone. Hell, she forgave him the painful fact of his paternity, and she had forgiven it to Salamander, too.
She thought of Salamander for a moment, the little crawling and slithering creatures that whispered secrets to her, the smile she kept just for Bijou. It was odd, Bijou thought, that though Brazen’s mother had been an ophiomancer and a speaker to arachnids, and his father was a necromancer, his magic was enchantment, and more like her own artificing than the wizardry of either of the people who had given to him blood and bone. She would not think that in some way her spirit animated him a little, too—but she would, perhaps, have liked to think it.
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