“Oh? How?”
“Kel and I both ducked before that red flash, so we didn’t see what it was. You were looking almost directly at it. What did you see?”
“A red flash,” Ezak said, as if addressing an idiot. Kel winced.
“I know that,” Dorna replied. “But what kind of a flash? Was it a flash of light, or a burst of flame? Was it in a beam, or all over? Why did it take off your hair and trim your ear, but not cut off your entire head? Was it a fireball, or lightning, or something else?”
“Oh,” Ezak said. His expression turned thoughtful. “I’m not sure,” he admitted.
“Was he burned? When you healed him?” Kel asked.
“No,” Dorna said.
“Then it probably wasn’t a fireball, or lightning.”
Dorna turned to look at him. “I thought Ezak was supposed to be the clever one.”
“He is,” Kel said, confused.
“It was a clean cut,” Dorna said. “As if something very sharp had sliced through.”
“Like…like a magical knife?” Ezak asked.
“Yes.” She frowned. “So we have some idea what we’re dealing with. Did you see a knife, Ezak?”
He shook his head. “Just a red light.”
“Did you feel anything?”
“Of course I did!” Ezak said. “I felt pain!”
“Yes, but what kind of pain? Did it feel like a knife was cutting you?”
“I…” Ezak stopped to think, then said, “I didn’t feel anything happen—one second I was fine, and the next I was bleeding all over and my ear and head hurt like death.”
“So it’s very, very fast, whatever it is. It probably didn’t just throw an ordinary knife. More likely it was raw magic.”
Ezak asked the question Kel was thinking—“So what? What difference does it make?”
“So I’m trying to think whether it might run out of ammunition, or whether we might be able to make shields or armor that would protect us while we get close to it.”
“Oh,” Ezak said, and Kel had to admit she had a good reason for her questions.
“Kel and I were thinking it must be Northern military sorcery, so if we can convince it we’re Northerners it won’t hurt us, but we don’t know how to do that, so I was thinking about shields, or making it use up whatever it’s throwing at us. Except if it’s throwing pure gaja at us, it can’t run out, ever—the World is full of gaja.”
“It is?” Ezak asked, startled.
“Yes. It is. Or sorcery would have stopped working a long time ago, when the gaja was used up.”
“Oh.” Ezak considered this. “So…the top of my ear was cut off by some left-over Northern sorcery that’s throwing knives made of pure magical energy at us?”
Dorna nodded. “So it would seem,” she said.
“It throws them at anyone it sees?”
“Apparently.”
“But you don’t think it would throw them at Northerners?”
“Right. The magician who made it wouldn’t want to hurt his own people.”
“How did it know we aren’t Northerners? I mean, they weren’t demons, were they? They were people, like us.”
Dorna opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again. She looked to the northeast and frowned, then looked back at Ezak. “You know, every time I think you two are both idiots, you surprise me by saying something smart. Why did it assume we’re enemies?”
“It probably thinks everyone is,” Kel said. “Maybe it knows there aren’t any more Northerners.”
“This thing that cut off my ear,” Ezak said. “What is it? How smart is it? I thought we were talking about a talisman, a spell, but you’re talking about it as if it’s a person, or a creature.”
“We don’t know what it is,” Dorna said. “Or how smart it is. But some talismans are…well, they can do things. They can talk. They can see. They can hear. You saw the fil drepessis—is that a spell or a creature?”
Ezak considered that for a moment, then said, “I see your point.”
“Whatever it is, there was something here that made it think it should attack us,” Kel said.
“So it would seem,” Dorna said.
Kel looked at her, trying to guess what might have made the Northern sorcery think she was an Ethsharite. She was wearing a dark green dress, with her long black hair pulled back and loosely bound in a soft green ribbon, and she had that canvas bag over her shoulder.
Ezak was wearing a tan cotton tunic that had seen better days, and brown leather breeches. His curly hair—what remained of it—was a little longer than was fashionable, but reasonably tidy.
Kel himself was wearing a dark red tunic and gray goatskin breeches, and his hair just covered his ears. They all looked ordinary enough. Had Northerners looked different, back when Northerners still existed?
A memory came to him. Ethshar’s city guards wore red and yellow now, but during the war they hadn’t. Kel thought back to pictures he had seen of soldiers in the Great War—there were murals on the walls of the magistrate’s hall back in Smallgate, and he had seen a tapestry in the south tower in Grandgate once. In those pictures, the Ethsharitic soldiers wore green and brown, while the Northerners—well, the Northerners were mostly indistinct figures in the distance, but they appeared to be wearing black and gray.
Dorna was wearing green. Ezak was wearing brown. But Kel himself was wearing red and gray, and during the war those weren’t the colors for either side. After the war the overlords dressed their soldiers in red and yellow, but it was a completely different shade of red, much brighter than the drab hue of Kel’s tunic, and anyway, how would a leftover spell from the Great War know about the change?
“Wait here,” he said.
“What?” Dorna turned to look at him, but Kel was already on his feet and running southeast, behind the low ridge.
“What are you doing?” the sorcerer’s widow shouted after him.
“Trying something,” Kel called back.
“Trying what?”
Kel was not sure just how to explain his idea, so he didn’t answer that. He got a hundred yards away from the others—he thought that should be far enough—then got down on hands and knees, and crawled up over the rise, staying hidden in the tall grass.
Then once he was over the rise, he stood up, prepared to drop to his belly if he saw a red flash. He scanned the area where he judged the Northern talisman to be, and caught the glint of sunlight on metal. He could see something shaped sort of like a horn, but with less of a flared opening than usual, atop a dark cylinder sticking up out of the grass; it swiveled toward him, and he tensed, getting ready to dive for safety.
Then it stopped, and swiveled back until it was once again aimed at Dorna and Ezak.
Maybe it didn’t think he was a Northerner, but it didn’t think he was a threat, either. It was ignoring him.
“Hai!” he called, waving at it.
The horn-shaped thing swung toward him again, then seemed to hesitate. It shifted a little further, then turned back toward the others.
In the distance he heard Dorna shouting at him, “What are you doing, you lunatic?”
He smiled, and began walking across the meadow toward the Northern talisman. If he was right, he told himself, if it really thought he was a Northerner, he ought to be able to walk right up to it and retrieve the…the fil whatever-it-is.
“Kel!” Dorna shrieked. “Get down!”
He turned, and could see her lying on the ground, peeping through the grass at him. He waved to her, then kept walking.
He was perhaps sixty feet from the Northern sorcery, whatever it was, when the horn suddenly swung toward him again, and a loud, masculine, unfamiliar voice said something in a foreign language, a language he didn’t recognize.
Kel stopped walking. He didn’t know what the voice had said, but it had the sound of a warning. The thing hadn’t given any warning before slicing Ezak’s ear off, but it had apparently thought Ezak was an enemy, where it appeared to accept Kel as a
friend, or at least neutral.
Cautiously, Kel took a step backward. The horn thing seemed to hesitate. He backed up another step, and it swung around to point back toward Dorna and Ezak.
So it would let him get close, but not too close. It didn’t attack him just because it could, but it didn’t let him walk right up to it, either. That seemed sensible enough. He smiled, turned, and headed directly toward the others.
“What did you do?” Dorna called, as he drew near enough for conversation. “How did you do that? How did you know?”
“I didn’t know,” Kel replied. “I guessed. I was ready to duck if it pointed at me, but it didn’t.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “We couldn’t really see from down here—what did you do?”
“Nothing,” Kel said. “It wasn’t attacking me in the first place. All I had to do was get away from you two.”
Dorna considered this for a moment as Kel continued to march toward her through the tall grass, then asked, “Why?”
“Because you’re wearing green,” Kel said proudly. He had figured this out all by himself. “And Ezak is wearing brown.”
Dorna stared at him. “What difference does that make?”
“Well, you said it was left from the Great War, and in the Great War Ethshar’s soldiers wore green and brown, while the Northerners wore black and gray.”
“They did?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know that. How did you know that?”
“From pictures back in Ethshar. In the magistrate’s hall in Smallgate.”
“Well, I’ll be a toad. You really think that’s it?”
Kel nodded vigorously. “What else could it be? We were trying to guess how it could tell Northerners from Ethsharites; well, how did the soldiers in the Great War tell them apart? From the colors of their uniforms. Why shouldn’t this talisman be doing the same thing?”
“Every time I think you two are hopelessly stupid…” Dorna sighed. “All right. But you turned back before you got right up to it, and I thought I heard something—what happened?”
“It pointed at me and said something,” Kel explained. “It sounded like a warning, but I don’t know the language it spoke, so I’m not sure. I thought it didn’t want to let me get too close—probably because I’m not in a Northern uniform.”
“I suppose civilians generally wouldn’t be allowed near it,” Dorna agreed. “So you think if we were wearing black and gray we could walk right up to it?”
Kel turned up an empty palm. “Maybe. I don’t know whether it wants just the right colors, or the actual uniforms.”
“Good point. We probably can’t fake the uniforms—we might have the wrong length tunic, or something.” Kel had almost reached the ridge now, and could see Dorna’s face where she crouched behind it; she looked very thoughtful. Ezak, sitting behind her, looked bored.
Kel ambled up over the rise, then sat down in the grass beside Dorna. Their actions had trampled out an area perhaps a dozen feet across, and Kel found a smooth spot to sit near one side of this cleared patch.
“If I can get close enough, I can blast it,” Dorna said, reaching for her canvas bag. “I brought a couple of weapons. They can’t hit it from here, but if I can get close enough…” She frowned. “How close were you when it warned you off?”
Kel was good at estimating distances; it was a useful skill for a thief to have when climbing around rooftops or up and down walls. “At least fifty feet,” he said. “But less than sixty-five.”
“That should be close enough,” Dorna said, digging through the bag. Things clattered and clanked as she searched, but then she pulled out something black and about the size and shape of a hound’s foreleg.
Kel hesitated. “Do you want me to use that?” he asked. “I’m not good with magic.”
Dorna looked up, startled. “You? Gods and stars, no. I wouldn’t trust you with this thing even if I thought you could learn to use it. I’ll do it.”
“But…you’re wearing green.”
She looked down at herself. “Yes, I know,” she said. “I’ll have to take off my dress.”
“But…” Kel could not complete his protest.
“You don’t need to blush. I’m wearing a shift under it. A white one, which should be safe.”
“Oh,” Kel said, relieved.
Dorna stood up, untied her belt, and began tugging at her skirt. Kel quickly turned away, looking out over the meadow toward the Northern talisman.
A moment later Dorna said, “There!” Kel turned back to see her standing there in her shift.
Never having seen a woman clad only in her undergarments before he had not been sure just what to expect, but even so, he was startled. The shift was a simple sleeveless white garment supported by two straps over Dorna’s shoulders; it exposed far more of her breasts than Kel had expected, and ended just above her knee, reminding Kel of a little girl’s summer tunic and making her look far younger than her years. She had removed her green ribbon and let her hair down, which added to the youthful effect.
The shift was almost transparent; Kel had never seen so revealing a fabric. The cheapest whore in Soldiertown was generally not as exposed as this. Despite what Dorna had said, Kel did blush.
Ezak whistled, and Dorna turned around to slap him, deliberately aiming for his injured ear. He ducked, but the blow still brushed across his head just above his half-healed wound, and Ezak winced.
“Well,” Dorna said, “Let’s see if this works.” She reached down and lifted the canvas bag onto her shoulder, then took the black weapon in hand and stepped forward, up the little ridge.
There was a red flash.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dorna dropped to the ground; an instant later, so did Kel.
He had been standing with his back to the Northern device, so he had had no warning, and had not ducked until he saw the flash, but then he had flung himself down vigorously enough that a blade of grass had gone up his nose, and he could smell the dirt beneath. He snorted out the grass and pushed himself up enough to free his hands, then quickly patted first his head and then his shoulders to see if he felt blood anywhere. He seemed unhurt.
“Are you all right?” he called, staying low.
Dorna’s response included suggestions that made Kel blush even more than her undressed state had; he was fairly sure at least one was physically impossible. When she had calmed down a little, she shouted, “Apparently it wasn’t the green dress.”
“I guess not,” Kel replied miserably. “Are you hurt?”
“No. My hair’s shorter on one side, though.”
Kel lifted his head further and peered through the grass, but he could not see the others—the contour of the land hid them both. With a glance over his shoulder in the direction of the Northern talisman, he got slowly to his feet, ready to drop again at the first hint of another red flash.
No flash came. He stood, and stared out over the meadow.
The talisman was still there, and the horn-thing was pointed at him—or at Dorna, or Ezak; they were close enough together it could have been any of them.
He turned around to see Dorna struggling to pull her dress back on while staying below the thing’s line of sight. As her head emerged from the collar he could see that the red flash had indeed cut away a hank of hair on the left side.
It had cut the top off Ezak’s right ear. Why would it be different? Why would it strike to one side at all, instead of right down the middle? It shouldn’t just be poor aim; this wasn’t a person, it was magic.
Maybe it wasn’t aiming for her head at all. Maybe, Kel thought, it hadn’t been aiming at Ezak at all. Ezak had been behind Dorna. And it obviously hadn’t been aiming at him—he was standing right here in plain sight, and it wasn’t throwing anything at him.
It hadn’t been aiming for the green dress, either, but Kel thought back to what he had seen a moment before. Dorna had been standing there in her shift, with her sorcerous weapon in her right hand, and the
canvas bag slung on her left shoulder…
The magical blade had struck her on her left, as she dropped. Her head must have already been halfway to the ground when her long hair was chopped off.
“It was aiming at the bag,” Kel said, pointing.
“What?” Dorna looked up from tying her belt.
“It hit the hair on the left as you went down,” Kel said. “It was aiming for the bag.”
She looked down at the bag where it lay on the trampled grass to her left, then at a hank of black hair that lay beside the bag. “Blood and death,” she said. “You’re right.”
“Why would it do that?” Ezak asked. He was still sitting just where he had been all along; he had not stood up when Dorna did.
“Sorcery,” Dorna said. “It must sense the sorcery in the bag.”
“But it is sorcery!” Ezak said.
“It must be able to tell that some of what I have here is Ethsharitic,” Dorna said.
“Is your weapon Ethsharitic?” Kel asked, pointing.
Dorna picked up the black thing and looked at it. “I don’t know,” she said. “I never thought it mattered.”
“It didn’t try to hit that.”
Dorna glanced at Kel, then looked at the weapon again.
“The bag was a bigger target,” Ezak said.
“That’s true,” Dorna said, still studying the weapon. Then she looked around. The sun was moving down the western sky; they had spent most of the day pursuing the fil drepessis or dodging the Northern device’s attacks. She tucked the weapon in her belt, then swung around and began moving behind the ridge, sometimes on hands and knees, sometimes on her feet but bent almost double.
When she was about fifty feet away from the canvas bag she took a deep breath, then straightened up and looked out across the ridge and the meadow. Kel turned, too.
The Northern talisman was not moving. The horn, or tube, or whatever it was was still pointed toward the ridge in front of the trampled area where Ezak sat and the canvas bag lay.
“It’s not throwing anything at me,” Dorna said.
Kel nodded, though he realized that Dorna was not looking at him and probably did not see the gesture. He turned to watch her.
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