Wayward Magic

by Melinda Kucsera et al.

  Eli’s back was to her, as was the innkeeper’s as they both tackled Bahr, and she ducked into the empty hallway. Twenty seconds was all she needed as she unfolded her picking rod and slid it into the lock where it turned with ease. A few more turns and wiggles, and the lock clicked. She waited until she was tucked inside Eli’s room to fold up the rod and return it to the hidden flap in her belt.

  His travel bags sat at the bed’s foot and were the obvious place to start. But he’s been here over two weeks. Perhaps he’s settled into the room. Though if the Tribor are anythin’ like Amaskans, he’d be ready to flee at a moment’s notice. She slid her hands under the straw mattress and found only a short sword tucked near the head. A small chest rested in the corner. Shara opened it to find an extra blanket, which she shook out before folding it up and returning it. Like the rest of the inn’s rooms, no windows or closets existed to endanger any inhabitants, and she pursed her lips together.

  That left the obvious.

  She opened the larger of the two bags and found typical traveling gear: clothing, a blanket full of holes, some dried jerky, and a water flask. The small bag held some string, flint and steel, and a few other travel necessities, but when moved, something inside crinkled. The obvious pockets held smaller, expected items, but the sound came from the bag’s rear. When she ran her fingers along the bottom seem, it was closed, but the top opened when pried apart, revealing a hidden pocket.

  Someone, presumably Eli, had shoved the parchment into the hidden pocket in a rush as it came out rumpled. While not written in Sadain, Shara could read and write in several languages, including that of Shad, though she didn’t recognize a few of the words.

  Master,

  The brother is no more. I’ll wait for his bhovian baklar as instructed, then take care of that little problem, too. Itovah willing, I’ll return shortly.

  Eli

  If she took the parchment, he’d know she’d been in his room. Bredych will just have to believe me when I tell him I found the evidence. Assuming he returns… Shara shoved the note back into the hidden pouch and closed it. As she stood, silence met her ears, and her heart raced.

  Why aren’t they fighting?

  Laughter erupted, and she cracked the door open. No one stood in the hallway, but they might as well have been. Eli and Bahr stood at the common room’s edge. Both men laughed again as Eli gave the blacksmith a light shove towards the door. “Remember, you want to go home and sleep it off,” called Eli.

  Shara closed the door, her mind keeping pace with her heart. Should’ve figured he’d recognize Lorl. Bredych did warn me this guy’s smart. He’s been one step ahead of the Royal Guard the entire time, and I can see why. He knows what we’ll do because he trained with us. Dammit.

  There was no escaping Eli’s room with him standing nearby. Shara shed her cloak as well as the rest of her clothing, leaving them in a heap on the floor, and then crawled beneath the bed’s lone blanket. A few deep breaths had her calm as she waited.

  She didn’t have to wait long as his footfalls announced his entrance a few minutes later. Eli stepped inside and froze, his eyes flashing in anger as he registered the figure in his bed. When she sat up, a sultry smile upon her face, his brows furrowed, though one less than the other as a bruise developed from where he’d been hit. She stood, allowing the blanket to drop, and slid toward him.

  Her lips jutted out as she pouted at his busted lip, and she dragged a delicate finger across it. “I didn’t intend for my distraction to damage ya so much,” she said.

  While his body responded to her, his eyes remained tense as he shut the door behind him with his foot. “And why did you need a distraction?”

  “How else was I to gain access to yer room?”

  She reached up to wrap her arms around his shoulders, and he grabbed her wrists, holding them in front of him. “And why did you need access to my room, hmmm? What were you looking for?”

  Shara licked one of his fingers that held her in place. “I was lookin’ for you. I thought that was obvious by my…state of undress.”

  “So, you came here to seduce me.”

  She nodded. “I’m not exactly an innocent maiden. I figured we’d seduce each other.”

  When he smiled, the grin displayed too many teeth, and the ferality of it sent a shiver across her skin. “You’ve got too many scars across that body to ever be considered innocent,” he said as he gripped her wrists harder. He glanced at his bags and his frown deepened. “But that many scars tells me you could play me like a fiddle, and I’d probably like it. Too bad for you you’re Amaskan.”

  “I don’t understand.” Shara forced another pout and tilted her body closer to the bed. “We both are.”

  Eli shoved her, hard.

  She stumbled across the floor in the bed’s direction and glanced up to see genuine sorrow written across his face.

  “Ah, Shara, what I wouldn’t give to be here in another lifetime. The fun we could have had.”

  As he spoke, her hands moved through the clothing behind her until they found the hilt of a dagger. She undid the clasp as his hand reached for the dagger at his waist. Eli held the dagger before him, and she slid hers out of the sheath, careful to keep it behind her back. All pretense between them gone, she asked, “What gave us away?”

  “Geilish hasn’t been spotted in Sadai since he robbed the King’s treasury. I intercepted a letter to the Order that placed him over the Harren Sea on some island. You weren’t here for him, which left only me. Though to be honest, it finally clicked last night where I’d seen Malachi’s face before, or should I say Bredych? I only passed him a few times at the Order, but it was enough to recall who he was.”

  “If ya knew the entire time, why wait ’til now to kill us? Is it a Tribor requirement to stretch this out? And how does an Amaskan turn Tribor anyway?”

  “You’re stalling, but I’ll answer. I wanted to see how far you’d take it.” He glanced down at her naked body and shook his head. “Looks like you were willing to do whatever you had to in order to kill me. That’s how an Amaskan becomes Tribor.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He closed the distance between them and crouched before her, and she tightened the grip on her dagger. “The Order pretends they know what the Thirteen want and is willing to do whatever’s necessary to carry it out. But what happens when your leader’s wrong? When you’re asked to do something you know isn’t right? What will you do then, Shara? Will you blindly do what they tell you, or will you see the truth?”

  When he touched the dagger to her face, its sharpness stung, and warm blood trickled down her cheek. “And what truth is that?” she asked, though her stomach tied knots around what she worried he’d say.

  “There is no Justice, dear Shara. Only a past that can’t be changed, and the people stuck living in it.”

  Eli leaned in to kiss her, and she allowed it. In the space between their lips touching and a single heartbeat, she shoved her body against his and pinned his dagger between them. As she wrapped her arms around his waist, she drove her dagger into his kidney.

  He arched as he fell backward, crying out in pain. Shara snatched her cloak from the floor as she darted toward the door. She’d merely tossed it across her shoulders when he called her name, and when she turned, hideous bubbling foam poured forth from his mouth.

  “What’d ya do?” she asked.

  The spitting foam that burned his lips choked his sentence, but she’d understood one word. Magic.

  Unable to turn away, Shara watched as he gurgled, his eyes bulging in a grotesque manner, and the blood-soaked foam devoured first his face and then his body.

  Devoured.

  There was no other word for what the magical compound did to his flesh, and when a droplet hit the inn’s wooden floor, it began to devour it, too.

  What in the Thirteen is this? Shara backed up until she touched the door, her fingers searching for the knob as the foam ate its way across the floor. Everything it touche
d, from her clothing to the bed’s straw mattress became a melted puddle of ooze after the foam devoured it. When it reached the candle, the room’s light disappeared, leaving her in sudden darkness.

  She ran into the common room using her fingers to hold her cloak together. “Run! There’s something in Eli’s room a-and it’s destroying it. Run now!”

  Juidre, the innkeeper, tilted his head before he returned to pouring drinks as he muttered under his breath.

  Shara didn’t wait. She fled the inn and didn’t stop running until she’d reached the town’s center where she sat on a large stone and waited. Would the magic stop with the inn, or would it keep going? How many people would be awoken from sleep as searing pain erupted across their bodies?

  Thirteen, let it stop. These people don’t deserve to die. Not this way.

  A rumble of thunder overhead made her flinch, and the clouds opened up to let loose fat rain drops. It wasn’t long before the inn’s customers joined her, each one wide-eyed and soon-to-be soaked as the night sky poured forth its fury.

  “What was that?” one man asked.

  Another shook his head. “Never seen nothin’ like it. Think the rain’ll stop it?”

  They turned her way, waiting for answers, but she had none to give.

  Sitting on the rock, alone and soaked to the skin, was where Bredych found Shara almost two hours later. The rain was little more than a sprinkle, and all that remained of the Katalhum Inn stood in a foamy swamp. Nothing but the back wall remained as even the collapsed roof had mostly succumbed to the magical ooze.

  When her brother sat beside her, he stared at the inn with eyes too wide and his mouth slack. “What happened?” he whispered.

  “Magic.” Shara shivered. Bredych removed his cloak and draped it about her shoulders. Her cheek had long since ceased bleeding, but when he touched it, she flinched. “I’m fine. It’s only a cut.”

  “The Tribor?”

  “Dead.”

  “We should get you somewhere warm. Maybe there’s room at Ebitai.”

  She laughed, a harsh sound that echoed across the silent square. “Ya think they’ll welcome us after the Katalhum? We’re lucky they ain’t run us outta town yet.”

  It was then that her brother noticed the odd looks and distance the townsfolk gave them. “Who dared use magic? Was it the Tribor?”

  Shara nodded. “Never seen anythin’ like it.”

  Bredych pointed at the Katalhum’s barn. “How is it still standing?”

  “It’s detached. The rain and the dirt kept it safe. Or so I assume.”

  He stood and pulled her to her feet. The two cloaks parted for a moment, exposing her bare feet and legs. Her brother’s cheeks flushed as he silently led her to the barn. Once inside, he handed her a lit candle and pointed toward an empty stall. “Settle in while I go find you some…clothes.”

  Dusty though it was, the straw was clean and warm. She hung the candle’s lantern on a wall hook and settled gratefully into the straw. Her mind whirled as she thought about the way the foam had devoured everything. Metals had slowed it down, but even the inn’s iron stove had succumbed to it in the end. The Order’s libraries held all manner of knowledge on the ancient forbidden magics, but nothing like this. As her mind struggled to make sense of the day, her eyes grew heavy in the barn’s warmth.

  She must’ve dozed.

  When she opened her eyes next, a pile of mismatched clothing sat beside her, as well as a loaf of bread and a square of cheese. Momentarily alone, Shara took the time to pull on a too large, brown tunic that stretched to her knees, and a pair of gray leggings. A simple belt helped the tunic feel less frumpy, but nothing could help the diminutive green slippers with embroidered flowers across the top. They look like somethin’ our gran would’ve worn. Bredych must’ve nicked these clothes from someone’s dryin’ lines. Straw crunched beneath someone’s feet—two feet, not four—and Shara leaned against the stall wall, dagger in hand.

  “It’s me,” a low voice called out, and Shara relaxed. Her brother opened the stall door and nodded as he spotted her putting away her dagger. “Good to be alert. The townsfolk are none-too-happy with you at the moment. I don’t think any of them will come at us—they’re too afraid of you—but just in case, keep your weapons…weapon handy.”

  She winced at the reminder. All her throwing knives and hidden daggers were nothing more than ooze now. Amaskans traveled light, but the weapons’ loss stung. They both sat in the straw eating bread and cheese until neither of them could remain silent any longer.

  “Tell me what happened. From the beginning,” he said.

  The story tumbled out of her, from the blacksmith’s role and the evidence, to the seduction and the magic that followed. When she stopped talking, her brother sat in the straw, his knees drawn up beneath his chin.

  “I’ve heard of such things, but only once,” he said, and she gasped. “The Order doesn’t take members from Shad, no matter how much they swear to Anur, God of Justice. There are exceptions—Eli being one, and he didn’t work out—but there are very few. The Kingdom of Shad is rotten down to its core, and its people would do anything to ensure the Order lives only in the past. But once, when I was just a trainee, there was a man with skin the color of coal who came seeking shelter. He stumbled upon our Order with tales of being chased by men baring marks of a trio of lines.”

  “Tribor,” she whispered.

  “Yes, Tribor. This man had come from the islands far across the ocean looking for trade. Little did he know of Shadian treachery, and when he stumbled upon the Tribor, they burned down an entire village to flush him out. It’s called adenneith and grows only in the lone mountain range of Shad. Up in the highest reaches, where there is little air and even the mountain goats avoid it.”

  “Adenneith means ‘touched by the gods’.”

  He nodded. “I’ve never seen its use, but he spoke of it to the Grand Master. Many didn’t believe him, while others had nightmares for weeks over what he described. Who could imagine a plant with such wayward magic? I would have never thought it possible for something to burn through flesh, wood, and metal alike.”

  Shara stared at the straw. She’d seen many disturbing horrors as an Amaskan, some of them a result of her pursuit for Justice, but nothing like this.

  “Perhaps we should discuss this later,” said Bredych as he patted her hands. “Are you able to sleep?”

  When she nodded, he pulled down a horse blanket from the stall’s half-wall and tossed it to her. “We’ll leave town in the morning. We need to get back to the Order as soon as possible.”

  She nodded and stretched out in the straw. The ooze crawled through her memories for a moment longer before exhaustion took over and she slept.

  Shrill screams chased her in her dreams, and Shara fought them as she stumbled through one dark room after another. No matter where she fled, the smell of burnt flesh followed her. Something touched her shoulders, and her cries joined the others, until she saw it was hands and not ooze that touched her. She followed those hands up to their face, and found Bredych standing behind her.

  He shouted something incomprehensible amidst all the screaming, and when she shrugged, he grabbed her shoulders and shook her hard enough she thought her neck would snap.

  At the edge of her thoughts, something tickled her mind. She tried to push her brother away, but he refused to release her. He shouted at her again, and the world grew hazy. The smell of smoke drifted past her nose, and someone outside her immediate circle coughed. It sounded like her, but she hadn’t done it.

  Or had she?

  Shara’s eyes snapped open to find Bredych crouching over her, his face a mix of frustration and panic. “—ke up!” he shouted.

  The screaming reached her then as did the smoke, and she sat up so fast she nearly slammed her forehead into Bredych’s. “Wh-what’s happenin’?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Everyone began screaming, and I woke up to you screaming along with them. I thought mayb
e you could tell me.”

  Tense muscles held him in place, but he looked ready to bolt, and Shara grabbed his hand. “I was dreamin’ of magic. I doubt it followed me into the real world.”

  A door slammed open, and they froze for a moment before they both rushed out of the stall. One of the stablehands stumbled into the barn, his arms covered in foam. He made it two screaming steps before he stumbled and fell.

  “We need to leave. Now,” said Bredych as he tugged her toward the barn’s rear door.

  She followed him outside where the screaming grew louder. Most of it reached them from inside homes and businesses, but some people had managed to make it outside before they collapsed into writhing piles that swiftly grew silent.

  “How can we help them?” asked Shara.

  Her brother shook his head. “We can’t. There’s nothing we can do for them now but leave.”

  She stood still as both fire and ooze spread across Lachail.

  From ten feet ahead, he shouted, “Come on, Shara, we need to go!”

  “Ya would abandon these people? We’re the reason this is happenin’! If we don’t stop it, it’ll destroy the entire town and everyone with it!”

  “And if we don’t leave and report to the Order, it might spread there, too. How do we know this will stop at the town’s edge?”

  A young girl of ten tumbled out of a nearby building, her hands covered in bloody foam. Bredych backed away, his face pale as he stared at her. “Help me!” she shrieked as a bit of her skin dropped to the dirt. It sizzled but ceased spreading upon contact with the soil.

  “Thirteen, be merciful,” Shara whispered.

  When Bredych continued backing away, the little girl turned toward a lean-to shelter butted up against her family’s home. “Stop!” she cried out, but the girl continued inside.

  Maybe if I can get her to roll in dirt, it’ll stop the spread? Shara followed the girl to see that she’d grabbed hold of the family dairy cow.