Tormina: The Book of Maladies

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Why would you claim that something was off about the Caster section?”

  “Kaver magic—our magic—works a little differently there. We don’t know if it’s tied to something done by the original founders of the city or if there is something else to it, but whatever it is, we know that we need to be careful when we enter that section.”

  “That seems like a perfect place for a rogue Kaver to have set up,” Sam said. “Why wouldn’t you have looked there?”

  “We looked everywhere. I looked everywhere.”

  She stared at Sam, daring her to challenge, but Sam didn’t take the bait. “So, if I want to get off the island and away from the palace, I need to find a way across the canal without an augmentation and without my ring?”

  “You can always swim,” Elaine said.

  Sam grunted. “Why don’t you swim and I’ll follow you?”

  Elaine grinned. “I think that would not be my first choice. Now, if that’s all, I think you and I will resume our session tomorrow.”

  “If I’m still here?”

  Elaine nodded. “If you’re still here.”

  She turned away and headed back into the palace. Sam watched until she disappeared and then turned her attention to the others still training in the yard. One of the other Kavers—a woman by the name of Raylene—worked on something like a dance with her staff, keeping her feet off the ground, twisting the top of the staff, tapping it as she bounced along the ground. It was a delicate and difficult maneuver. Sam had tried something similar, and had some success with it, but she wasn’t nearly as skilled as that. Thoren had tried teaching her something like it, but she didn’t have the necessary skill.

  Maybe it was what she needed to try. Maybe in order for her to get off the island as she wanted, she needed to practice dancing across the ground the same way that Raylene did.

  She was determined to get away from the palace section. Even if it was only so that she could find Ralun and discover what he might do with the Book, she was determined to do it. And there was another benefit of escaping the island. She would go looking for Marin’s Scribe, and though she wasn’t sure whether she could find him, she suspected that she knew where to look. If she could find Tray, she could find that Scribe. And with him, she had to believe that she would find the Theln she wanted, as well.

  Almost as much, she wanted to get off the island so that she could go to Alec. She missed seeing him, studying with him, just being with him. Even if she didn’t have any augmentations, she wanted time with him.

  Sam planted her staff, and began her attempt at dancing across the ground. If nothing else, she would try to mimic Raylene. She might not be nearly as skilled as the other woman, but she could try, and if she were able to succeed, she would have a way off of the island.

  12

  With the Royals

  Sam stalked through the halls of the palace. She glared at everything she saw around her, looking for something familiar, but there was nothing. Every day had been the same. She continued to practice with Elaine, working with her staff, growing in skill—that much was evident to her in that there were fewer and fewer bruises on her arms—but not managing any greater success with attempting to dance on the end of the staff. She had taken to watching Raylene, taking advantage of every time she was out in the yard to copy her, and the woman had begun giving her pointers, tips that would help her improve her ability to remain aloft on the end of the staff. Those pointers had helped, but Sam still wasn’t able to manage much more than staying up for a few moments at a time. If she could have found Thoren, she would have asked for his help, but he had been gone.

  When she turned a corner, she came face-to-face with someone she hadn’t expected to see here, not so soon.

  “Helen?”

  The physicker had always been kind to Sam, but it had been a while since she’d seen her. What was she doing here now? When she had been here before, she had attempted to extract Sam’s memories, thinking she might come up with a method to pull them back out, but she hadn’t been successful. For the longest time, Sam had been disappointed, until she finally accepted that there was nothing Helen would be able to do. Not without the Book of Maladies. Not without help from the Thelns.

  “Samara. I understand that you remain well.”

  “As well as I can be.”

  “Yes, I have heard the likely cause for your lack of memories. If that is true”—there was a hint to her tone that made it seem as if she wasn’t completely convinced—“then there may not be much that we can do. It is possible that with time, and with enough coaxing, we may be able to ease some of those memories free.”

  Sam doubted that. Even if it were possible, Helen didn’t seem convinced that anything could reverse what the Book put forth. And considering the way the Book had been used on the princess, and the fact that all the healing attempted had failed, why would her situation be any different?

  “Are you here to see me?”

  “Not you, Samara. Though, I would be happy to speak with you when I’m done with this task, if you would be so willing.”

  “Of course. Anything that you think might help.”

  Helen smiled. She had a gentle face. She had deep wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and her graying hair was pulled up into a bun. Sam had taken an immediate liking to her—even if she hadn’t originally been comfortable with the sessions they’d had talking about her memories and her mother—and suspected that everyone who encountered her felt the same way. She was the kind of person that Sam always imagined a physicker to be. She was skilled, caring, and warm. The next time she saw Alec, she would have to ask him about her.

  “If you will excuse me,” Helen said.

  Sam stepped away, allowing Helen to move past her. She hurried off down the hall and disappeared through a door into a part of the palace that Sam never visited. It was an area that primarily housed the royals, and even though she’d spent some time with the princess, Sam had no interest in getting too caught up in what the royals were doing and what they were after.

  She turned away, thinking to head back to her rooms when she saw Elaine marching down the hall and through the same door Helen had.

  Her curiosity was piqued, and she changed direction.

  Where would they have gone?

  Sam suspected that Elaine was responsible for getting Helen to help her in the first place but didn’t know for certain. If she was, Sam should be appreciative. Helen had helped her, though possibly not in the way that Elaine might have intended.

  She paused at the door. It was open a crack, making it so that anyone could enter, but she only heard a few voices. She recognized Elaine’s and Helen’s, and there was a third, a deeper male voice. It wasn’t one she’d ever heard, which given the fact that Helen was here, made her suspect it was another one of the physickers. Likely one of the Scribe physickers.

  Sam pressed on the door, pushing it open just a little. Hopefully, they wouldn’t notice. Hopefully, no more people would be coming to this meeting, as she didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping as they approached. At this point, what did it matter? If she irritated Elaine, would it even be a problem?

  “You’re certain that’s what you heard?” Elaine asked.

  “I have been looking around, but there’s no sign of any Thelns in the city.”

  “She was certain that was who she saw. She said it was Ralun.”

  “Ralun would never come to the city.” This came from the deeper voice. Sam couldn’t identify it, but it sounded familiar. She didn’t know why.

  “She seems to think that this is the second time he’s been in the city, Sire.”

  Sire?

  Sam froze. Could it mean that she was eavesdropping on the king?

  She’d never seen him, other than from afar, but there were rumors about him. Even in the palace, he was rarely seen. She knew better than to put much stock into rumors, but rumors about the royals had a strange way of being accurate.

  “The second time? Ralu
n wouldn’t risk coming to the city once, let alone a second time.”

  “He would if he thought that he was safeguarded somehow,” Elaine said. “We’ve already seen that the protections placed were incomplete. If he believed that the secondary protections were absent, he would risk coming to the city, especially if the prize was valuable enough.”

  “And what prize do you think would draw Ralun to the city?”

  “The first time it was your daughter, Sire. This time… this time I think it was mine.”

  The king grunted. “Why would he risk coming here for her?”

  “I don’t know. She’s beaten him at least once, and I think that angered him.”

  “Ralun doesn’t operate from a place of anger. He’s too calculating for that.”

  “All I can tell you is what I’ve heard.”

  “Does she know?”

  “She’s the one who shared with me that he was here.”

  “Does she know the rest?”

  There was a moment of silence, and Sam found herself leaning forward. What rest would they be referring to? What else were they keeping from her? She was growing weary of Elaine keeping things from her, all because she thought to protect her. Sam didn’t need her to protect her. She had done well enough on her own, thank you very much. What she needed was to know what was taking place. She didn’t want to be kept out of any of the planning for thwarting the Thelns, nor did she want to be left in the dark about anything the Thelns might have planned for her.

  While leaning, she bumped into the door, and it swung open.

  Sam stood there, framed in the doorway, frozen in place.

  Elaine and Helen looked over to her. Sam started to back up when the deep voice rumbled, “Who is this?”

  “This is Samara,” a voice from behind her said.

  Sam turned, swearing to herself. How could she have allowed herself to get caught like this? She knew better. She had too much training and experience to allow it to happen, and yet… Here she was.

  “My apologies, Princess. I’ll just be on my way,” she said with as much deference as she could muster.

  Lyasanna stared at her for a moment, and there was a hint of a smile that quirked her lips, enough that Sam wondered if perhaps her presence here amused the princess rather than annoyed her. If it did—and if the princess thought it was funny that she was here—maybe she wouldn’t get into trouble for eavesdropping.

  That still seemed too much to hope for.

  Lyasanna pushed her into the room. She was strong—much stronger than Sam would have expected given her smaller size—and she ignored Sam’s attempts to push her way back out.

  Sam gave up and turned to face the King. No good would come from opposing what was happening now. She could run—but she doubted she could run fast enough to escape, and now that she’d been discovered, what point would there be in attempting to run?

  “You are Samara?” the king asked.

  Sam looked over at him. He was a solid man, tall—though most people were tall compared to her—and had deep black hair with a few streaks of gray peppered through it. He had a strong jaw and a serious set to his eyes. There was something about him that reminded her of Bastan.

  “I’m Samara. Sam.”

  The king frowned. “Sam?”

  Sam shrugged. “I don’t really care to be called Samara. It’s a little too formal for me.”

  The king glanced from Sam to the others in the room. She used that moment to see who else was there. In addition to the king and the princess, she saw her mother, but she had heard her, and there was Helen, who was studying Sam with a mixture of amusement and irritation on her face, and one other person, someone who’d yet to speak. He was younger, and reminded her of the king, only twenty years his junior.

  Could it be Lyasanna’s brother? She knew there was a brother, but didn’t know enough about him. He was rarely seen outside of the palace, much as Lyasanna had rarely been seen in the city, until recently. He had the same serious expression as his father, and, for that matter, the same serious expression as his sister. Though, Sam had seen Lyasanna smile, it was rare.

  “Why are you here? Why are you listening to our conversation?” asked the king.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Sam began. She kept her gaze on the king only. If she looked over to Elaine, she expected to see her mother frowning at her, and she had no intention of getting distracted as she lied to the king. “I just heard voices I didn’t recognize.”

  “You didn’t recognize the voice of your mother?” he asked.

  “Not at first. When I did…”

  She hoped that trailing off would distract him, but the king only watched her, that frown pinned to his face making it difficult for her to know whether he was annoyed with her or amused.

  “You were talking about Ralun. I’ve seen him. I can help.”

  “Ralun would not have come to the city.”

  “And I tell you that is who it was. When Lyasanna was poisoned—I mean, Princess Lyasanna—it was Ralun who was responsible. I thought that I’d stopped him, but he got away.”

  “How certain are you that it was Ralun?”

  “Very certain. I saw him again outside my friend’s apothecary, and a Theln with him referred to him as Ralun. And when he returned, when I saw him just a few days ago in the city, he was here for something else.”

  It wasn’t Sam. Regardless of what Elaine said, it wasn’t Sam that Ralun was after. It couldn’t be. Why would he care about what she did? Why would he care about her presence at all?

  “Yes. We have been discussing what Ralun might be interested in, if indeed it was Ralun.” He glanced over to Elaine, almost as if seeking confirmation that Sam could be trusted to identify Ralun.

  “They’re interested in Marin. Tray took her from me after the attack on the canals. I tried—”

  “Samara, we will not be discussing this here,” Elaine said.

  Sam looked over to her. Why was Elaine trying to silence her? Was it because she thought Sam couldn’t be trusted to participate in this conversation? Was she ashamed of the fact that Sam was her daughter—and a Kaver who hadn’t developed nearly as fast as she had hoped?

  “If not now, when? Marin hasn’t stopped her attack. If Tray took her away, it’s possible that she’s still on the loose. He will protect her, because he wants to know more about her.”

  “This is the half-Theln that we were talking about?” the king asked.

  “Yes. Trayson. This is the one Marin used to bind Samara more tightly to her,” Elaine said, pointedly looking at Samara.

  “She used her own son. I find that horrifying, yet I still wonder whether there is something we’re missing. Marin was always calculating, and she would be unlikely to have done something so cruel without a plan behind it.”

  “I’m sure there was a plan,” Elaine said. “It’s discovering that plan and finding what exactly she might have been after that is the challenge. Now that she has brought her son into it…”

  “But Tray wasn’t brought into it. He didn’t know anything about what she was doing. He’s trying to figure that out. He’s trying to find out who he is,” Sam said.

  “And yet he has helped a known threat to the kingdom,” the king said.

  “Helped? He isn’t helping her. He simply took her away after I defeated her.”

  “And did that not help her? Did that not allow her to have a measure of freedom?”

  “I don’t know that it helps her at all. If he has her, and if he’s questioning her, she’s going to be forced to share things with him that she doesn’t want to share.”

  “How certain are you that it wasn’t all part of her plan,” Elaine asked softly. “Marin is nothing if not clever, Samara. It’s entirely possible that she is using Tray to keep herself safe. It’s entirely possible that all of this was part of her plan.”

  Even though Sam knew that it was possible—she had become all too familiar with the lengths to which Marin might go to deceive—she didn
’t think that was the case with Tray. Marin cared about him, regardless of what else she said and claimed. She was trying to protect him, if nothing else. She had encouraged Sam to protect him. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

  “You may go, Samara,” the king said.

  Sam looked at the others, hoping that Elaine or Lyasanna or even Helen might say something that would allow her to remain, but none of them did. And why would they? To them, she was nothing more than a novice Kaver, still in need of training. To them, she was nothing more than an inconvenience.

  Which meant that she would not be a part of whatever took place with Marin.

  More than that, it meant that she wouldn’t be a part of whatever happened with Ralun. And if she wasn’t a part of that, how was she supposed to discover anything about the Book?

  That was what she wanted more than anything. She needed to find the Book. And she wanted to know why Marin had used it on her. What was the purpose of taking away Sam’s memories? Why would she torment her like that?

  13

  Search for the Master

  The hallway was quiet and dark. A lantern flickered in the distance, giving a little light, but not enough for Alec to see clearly. He watched for shadows, any sign of movement. There were many masters who might come through these halls that he wanted to avoid, but one in particular worried him the most. If he encountered Master Carl, he would have to turn away. It would be difficult for him to justify his presence here. At least when he’d come to the masters’ quarters before, he had a pressing need. Now, there wasn’t quite the same urgency.

  He glanced behind him. He saw no movement, nothing that would signify that anyone was aware he was here. It wasn’t that he was trespassing by coming to the masters’ quarters. It was more tradition that stated that the students should refrain from coming this deep into the masters’ section of the university. Alec had already violated that tradition more than once.